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In the middle of The Priory kitchen, her father loses his mind on Rupert over a spun yarn in the paper and some poorly-taken paparazzi photos.
No one in the room is particularly amused by the display, and even Rupert, who was just handing off the paper as if it were the greatest joke he’d ever read, seems uncharacteristically at a loss for words now.
Her father spits at him, “You promised me you wouldn’t touch her.”
Taggie doesn’t understand until she does.
And then she doesn’t know which is worse: that her father made Rupert promise not to touch her, an adult in her own right, or that Rupert actually agreed to it.
Everyone’s watching the three of them in stunned silence while Rupert tries to explain that nothing happened and, anyway, she’s seeing Seb, isn’t she?, and Taggie tries—and fails—to not think back through everything with the lens of this new information:
All the times Rupert’s extricated himself when they’ve gotten to be a little too close, his affection turned almost fatherly while the looks that he gives her have remained unchanged. Cameron.
Taggie remembers how much it got into her head, seeing him with Cameron in her family’s living room. How it somehow made her think of that evening at the Jones’s, when he’d humiliated her in front of everyone in Rutshire it’d felt like. It was different, of course, but watching the grown-up intimacy between him and Cameron—casual, easy—she was reminded of exactly how small he’d made her feel then.
She doesn’t think it makes any difference, knowing that Cameron might not have been his first choice. Maybe she wouldn’t have started going out with Seb if she’d known, but it hardly seems productive to think about when what’s done is done.
Except she’s looking at Rupert now, in the kitchen, and he’s looking at her, and Taggie wonders if maybe those same pieces are falling into place for him, too.
Things start to escalate again soon after—Rupert makes a couple off-color jokes like he always does, and her father tries to physically shove him out of the house.
It’s only when her father hits him right in the face that Bas and Freddie jump in to finally put an end to the melee.
She shouldn’t be surprised it got to that point since her father has never been one to keep his temper in check, but, usually, it’s over something to do with her mother—not her .
It’s strange, the feeling that thought gives Taggie. Watching her father wring his knuckles, she almost forgets that she’s angry with him.
But then Rupert storms out, with no small amount of urging from Bas, and Taggie remembers.
Everyone wisely calls it a day and empties out of the house shortly after. Seb is uncomfortably normal when he kisses her on the cheek and tells her that he’ll see her tomorrow.
Her father doesn’t even say two words to her afterwards, barely seems to remember she exists as he passes her on his way upstairs. He’s in search of her mother, no doubt, who Taggie saw leave with an exasperated look once the shoving started.
“So I leave and things finally get interesting around here,” Caitlin pouts when Taggie finds her in the living room.
Taggie says nothing as she drops heavily beside her sister on the couch.
They sit in silence like that for a while until Caitlin asks, “What are you going to do, Tag?”
Taggie told Caitlin she didn’t know but then, after some contemplation, found herself rounding up Gertrude and starting the near-dark, slightly unsettling walk over to Penscombe Court.
At his front door now, he opens up after her second knock, sporting a fully unbuttoned shirt and holding a bag of frozen peas to his face. To Taggie’s credit, her eyes only linger on his obscenely-sculpted torso for mere seconds.
Rupert takes her in a bit dejectedly before squinting down at Gertrude, who has started to nose at his legs.
“This might be the only time I ever say this to a woman showing up at my door like this,” he states by way of greeting, leaning his shoulder against the doorframe, “but I don’t believe it’s a very good idea for you to be here.”
Pushing through the urge to snap at him, Taggie tells him, “I just wanted to make sure you were alright.”
He drops the bag from his face, allowing her to take in the purple bruise starting to form along his cheekbone. It’s nothing too horrible, it’ll probably be gone in a few days, but seeing the damage brings about that strange feeling in her again.
“While I very much appreciate the visit, angel,” he says, sounding too genuine for his next words to be all that convincing, “I’m afraid I’m much too vain to go on tempting fate where your father is concerned—one bruise is quite enough.”
“And yet you seemed to have no problem pushing him earlier.”
Shoving off the doorframe, Rupert concedes, “It fell on deaf ears when I tried to explain myself; I admit I didn’t handle that very well.”
Taggie inwardly beams a bit at his concession, but it’s short-lived.
“Though, you might’ve helped matters by corroborating that nothing, in fact, happened in that car.” He walks back into the house, heading down the hallway without a glance back at her.
As reluctant as his behavior is, she takes it as an invitation inside. Pausing to make sure Gertrude is in before shutting the door, they both then follow after him.
Taggie’s only been inside his house once before, on one of the days they went campaigning around town together. He needed some documents from the house before they returned to The Priory, and she insisted on coming inside instead of waiting in the car like he suggested. He didn’t seem to care until she couldn’t stop laughing at the utter ridiculousness of one man living in such an ostentatiously large place. Every room they passed through, she only laughed harder. Rupert told her when they were back in the car, with endearing sincerity, that she was never allowed back on his property again.
Now, she replies, “Maybe it was a bit of belated payback for how you handled the whole Cameron thing.”
A lie, of course, and they both know it. She was flustered and caught up in the details, that’s all.
Still Rupert laughs, sincerely and contagiously, and says, “Maybe I deserved it, then.”
She bites her lip on a smile.
He stops in one of his many sitting rooms, grabbing a bottle of whiskey from the counter and drops down on a couch. Keeping a respectable distance, she takes a seat beside him, slipping out of her jacket and leaving it to rest behind her. She knows that if he truly wanted her to leave, he would tell her to; Rupert Campbell-Black is certainly not the kind of man to avoid honesty for the sake of manners.
Strangely, despite the strangeness of the day, Taggie feels an immediate sense of ease and comfort as she leans back against the couch. It’s not the first time she’s experienced her mind quieting around Rupert, but the connection has never been quite as apparent as it is now.
“I didn’t mess things up between you and Seb, did I?” he asks after a moment.
Taggie shakes her head, trying to quell that distant feeling of guilt that comes up and feeling even guiltier for it. “He’s very…understanding,” she explains, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
“Yes? Well, thank God for that.”
There’s something weighted behind his words that causes her to say, a bit randomly, “You’re still seeing Cameron.”
It’s not a question because why wouldn’t he be? She knows the kind of female company that Rupert likes to keep, and Cameron fits in amongst them wonderfully: women with strong personalities, who are self-assured and have just the right amount of sex appeal. Women like Sarah Stratton and that journalist he brought to the Baddingham estate who later took off with his car.
Women that aren’t at all like Taggie.
“Sometimes, I suppose,” he replies, with the same amount of enthusiasm someone might possess in a doctor’s office. “It’s complicated.”
“I would’ve thought that her joining Venturer made things less complicated,” she says, unsure why she’s pressing the issue when she’s been trying to remain as unaware of Rupert’s extracurriculars as possible .
He looks at her, smiling in a subdued way that makes her chest ache. “Yes, well, it was never just the business that made things with her complicated, unfortunately.”
Taggie is speechless as she watches him lift the whiskey bottle to his lips, taking a healthy swig from it before leaving it to rest on his thigh. The implication he didn’t even try to hide, his huge hand wrapped around the bottle—she suddenly yearns for some liquid courage, too.
“Can I have some of that?” she asks.
Rupert shrugs, handing the bottle to her and then leaning his head against the back of the couch. “I suppose getting you drunk will just be another thing I’ll have to answer for when Declan comes ‘round again.”
She scoffs. “Trust me, if I get drunk it’ll be because I want to.”
But her confidence stumbles when she takes a big swig of her own and it sends her into a coughing fit. It burns her throat, threatening to come up again the second she successfully gets it all down.
Rupert laughs, reaching out to place one of his huge hands on her thigh, squeezing it gently as if to help her calm down. She doesn’t even think he means to do it, but they both seem to become aware of it at the same time.
To make matters even more confusing, he doesn’t move it right away. Worse, he squeezes Taggie’s thigh again, rubbing his hand over her jeans a couple of times before letting his hand drop back to the couch, away from her but just barely.
She can still feel the brand of it—the size. She’s imagining what it’d feel like on her bare skin. The bit of whiskey is making her feel drunk already.
Rupert clears his throat and asks, too quickly to be a casual subject change, “No cinema date with Seb tonight?”
She tries to regain the ease she felt when she first sat down. “We have done other things together, you know.”
“Is that so?”
Suggestive tone—Taggie would hit him herself if the direction didn’t make her feel so terribly needy, and for all of the wrong reasons. She hates how easy it is for him to get under her skin.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Whatever you say, angel.”
He’s smirking and she’s blushing.
The truth is that she and Seb haven’t done anything beyond some slightly-rushed, over-eager (on his part) making out in the back of his car. Taggie doesn’t know whether it’s her lack of experience, or her frustratingly complicated feelings for Rupert that have gotten in the way of her initiating anything further, but she does know that she feels guilty about it every time she’s around Seb. She’s grateful that he’s not the type of guy to press the issue, but she knows she won’t be able to hold out on him forever.
Now, she’s thinking about sex and she can’t get her mind back on track, even as Rupert starts speaking like he’s trying to get her attention.
“You’re a man, right?” Taggie interrupts suddenly, turning bodily towards him on the couch.
He blinks, narrowing his eyes at her skeptically, but still says, “Last I checked, darling.”
She fights the blush on her face. “I mean, like, you know what men…want, and like and stuff, right?”
He frowns at her now, seeming to take the question oddly seriously. “Is this still about Seb?”
She shrugs in a way that very obviously means yes.
“He’s not pressuring you in any way, is he?” There’s controlled anger in Rupert’s tone, and she realizes she’s gone about this all wrong.
“No,” she says too loudly. “No, not at all.” Then, quieter, her face heating more and more with each word, “We haven’t actually done anything, Seb and I. My experiences are…limited, and I’m worried I won’t have any idea what I’m doing, and I just hate feeling like everyone else my age has done so much more than I have.”
“Oh, angel,” he says, sounding annoyingly calm for how much it took her to say all of that. “There’s no rush when it comes to these things—when you’re ready, you’ll do it. And, in my opinion, there’s really nothing for you to be all that worried about; men are actually very simple when it comes to sex, believe me.”
“I get the… sex part, I’ve done the sex part.” Taggie ignores the way he stifles his amusement at that, no doubt thinking her very young and silly for referring to it in that manner. “It’s the other stuff I’m worried about.”
He raises his eyebrows at her. “The other stuff?”
It takes everything in her to say, “Like—blowjobs, that kind of thing.”
His amusement only grows at her obvious discomfort. He adjusts his position on the couch, tossing the thawed bag of peas to the coffee table.
“While this is definitely a very stimulating conversation, darling, I’m struggling to find the reason you’re having it with me and not that boyfriend of yours.” For all of his amusement, there’s something slightly strained about the way he speaks.
And maybe it’s because of that and the utter craziness of the day, maybe it’s the bruise on his face or the image of her father walking right by her after everything, but Taggie then says, “I just thought…maybe you could show me how?”
She can’t look at Rupert after the words are out of her mouth, too late to take them back. She only came here to see if he was okay and to apologize on behalf of her father. She has no idea what possessed her to start this conversation, much less what possessed her to ask if she could use him for a lesson in oral sex.
Christ, what the hell is wrong with her?
It’s unnervingly quiet for several moments, in which Taggie feels incapable of doing anything except stare at her hands in her lap.
Then— “Taggie,” Rupert breathes, his voice rough as sin. “That’s not something we can do.”
Her stomach feels as if it drops to her feet, her tear ducts becoming active as if on command. She’s embarrassed and irrationally disappointed, and feels so terribly young. Of course he doesn’t want to do anything with her— certainly not after getting punched in the face by her father over the mere idea that something transpired between them.
“I’m sorry, it was stupid of me to even mention it,” she says, sounding humiliatingly choked-up about it. She stands, grabbing her jacket from the back of the couch.
“Taggie—”
“Please, can you just forget I ever said anything?”
She doesn’t make it two steps before he’s reaching out and grabbing her wrist. She hadn’t even heard him get up from the couch.
“Taggie.” Her name from his mouth, the near-pleading way he says it, makes all the air rush out of her body. “Taggie, please.”
She somehow faces him, finds him so close that all she can think about is burying her face against his chest. He hauls her into him seconds after the thought flits through her mind.
“I’m sorry,” Taggie says again, desperate and pressed into the bare skin of his throat. Rupert only holds her tighter.
“Fuck, Taggie,” he breathes, firm fingers on the back of her head. “I’m so horribly lost when it comes to you.”
And she knows, then, that he’s as incapable of turning her away as she is of leaving.
When Taggie falls to her knees before him, Rupert slides his hand into her hair, gripping it so tightly it hurts. The last of his restraint held there in his fist.
This is insanity; she can’t quite believe he’s giving her this.
“Taggie—”
How many times is he going to say her name?
“Please,” she begs him, trembling hands at his belt. “ Please , Rupert, can I?” It’s only a show from her, asking. Only a front from him, his resistance.
Humiliating herself willingly, discovering he’s in similarly bad shape when he nods tightly and says, while he holds her hand briefly against his waist, “Go on, then.”
She undoes his belt, pulling the leather through the loop. She’s somehow surprised to find him so hard when she gets his trousers unbuttoned and unzipped, seeing the very noticeable print straining against his boxers. It makes her light-headed and impossibly wet, knowing he’s this hard for her.
Taggie forgot, somehow, just how big he was, and the reminder now leaves her mouth dry. But she pushes on, watching the muscles in his abdomen tighten and flex while she gets the band of his underwear down enough to free his cock.
She’s shaking again as Rupert lifts her chin, forcing her eyes up to his face. A moment in time, their eyes locked, an understanding passes between them that feels entirely too meaningful for this act alone.
She feels tears starting to form again as she grabs onto his forearm and he lets out a rough breath. “Open your mouth,” he tells her, seeming to understand exactly what she needs from him.
She’s still looking at him and her hands are still trembling, and she thinks, suddenly, that she wants him to make her. Never in her life has Taggie had a thought like that, but it hits her now and she can’t escape the intensity of it.
“Open your mouth, sweetheart,” he says again. His voice is wrecked, his hand on her jaw a bit too rough to hide his desperation. She likes it so much that she wonders if her underwear is even redeemable at this point.
Rupert understands seconds later—and of course he’d understand this too; he probably mastered the art of female desire well before she was even born.
So he helps her, takes matters into his own hands— literally— as he thumbs open her jaw, keeping her mouth wide for him while he uses his other hand to bring his cock to her bottom lip. Another moment of understanding passes between them—her desire, his ability to fulfill it. More than that, his clear want to fulfill it. A power exchange that makes Taggie throb between her legs, makes her seek out the seam of her jeans for some much-needed relief.
She wonders if either of them still believe he’s giving her practice for Seb.
“Like this,” Rupert tells her, bringing her small hand to his cock. She wraps her fingers around him, heart hammering and her stomach clenching when that makes his breath stutter. He squeezes his fingers over hers and she tightens her grip, noting the way his hips follow her hand, subsequently pushing his cock further into her mouth.
She doesn’t need him to tell her to wrap her lips around him, she thinks that’s the logical next step. And when she does, he curses, his hand finding its way to her hair again.
“A quick little study, aren’t you, darling,” he praises through gritted teeth. “I’ve always admired that about you.”
She preens under his words, wanting to be good for him, wanting to be like his other women who know exactly what they’re doing and can probably bring him to his knees.
“Flatten your tongue—there you go, that’s perfect, Tag, you’re doing so well.” And, miraculously, Taggie can tell that she is making him feel good, because there’s nothing false about the way his cock throbs in her mouth or the way his groans fall from his lips.
Rupert lets her explore without vocal instruction for a bit, but she quickly picks up on what he likes based on his reactions to the different things she tries. Speeding up, slowing down, using her hand where her mouth doesn’t reach, flicking her tongue over the head of his cock and tasting the saltiness there.
She makes a mental note of how much he especially seems to enjoy that last one.
“Relax your throat, angel,” he tells her, and she listens to him so eagerly.
She knows it’s coming, braces herself for it when he fucks himself deeper into her mouth. So deep he’s in her throat, and she fights against the persistent need to gag. But he holds himself there, his stomach rising and falling with his quick breaths, and she almost wonders if she can come just from seeing him so lust-drunk and knowing that she, Taggie O’Hara, made Rupert Campbell-Black like this.
“ Fuck ,” he swears. She doesn’t know how the one word from his lips contains so much —feeling and sacrifice and need. She takes him deeper and he almost rips at her hair. “ Fuck, Taggie. ”
She’ll be chasing this high for the rest of her life.
He gets rougher with her after that, seems to forget that this is her first time and he’s supposed to be going slower. But Taggie doesn’t care—not when he seems to want her so much that it makes him reckless.
“Christ, look at you, so pretty with my cock in your mouth,” Rupert says to her, fucking her mouth now in earnest thrusts. She does her best to keep up with him, and that seems to be good enough for him.
He only has to give her a few more notes, and then they create a rhythm that works for both of them. She hollows her cheeks out like he tells her to, and he brushes away the automatic tears that form under her eyes with rival gentleness.
Eventually he tells her, “You’re so good, Taggie, going to make me come.” The gravel in his voice makes her feel almost there herself.
When he spills into her mouth, his groan sounds as if it were ripped from him against his will. She shifts on her knees at the sound and the heavy taste of him on her tongue, trying to find the seam of her jeans again.
She swallows while he catches his breath, and he lets out another curse watching her throat work. She loves the taste of it simply because it’s him.
He helps her to her feet after pulling his pants back up, pressing his lips to her temple while she skates her fingers idly over his chest, following the hair littered across his perfect skin.
“Thank you,” Taggie says, wincing at how sincere she sounds. Rupert laughs, she can feel the vibration of it under her fingers as she shoots him a look. “You know what I mean.”
“I believe I should be thanking you for that.” Eventually, he pulls away from her, but only to lean forward and kiss her on the lips. It’s only slightly more than chaste, but there’s a promise in it that sets her heart racing. She can’t believe she did all that without kissing him first; she almost worries what he must think of her. “I’m very good at returning the favor, you know.”
And that. That she very much believes, and would very much like to experience when they have more time.
“Will you be around Friday evening?” she asks.
“I will.”
“Can I come find you then?”
“I’ll be waiting, angel,” he says without hesitation.
She’s smiling as the two of them search for Gertrude, coming to find her curled up beside one of Rupert’s dogs in the study.
“Come on, girl,” Taggie says, laughing as the dog begrudgingly gets up and follows her out.
Rupert insists on walking with her through the woods, and she’s not inclined to say no even though she feels bad that he’ll have to walk back alone.
At a safe distance from her front door, they stop to part ways.
She turns to him before he leaves. “I’m sorry about earlier, by the way. He shouldn’t have hit you,” she tells him, because she didn’t get a chance to say it earlier. “He should never have made you promise something like that, either.”
“A lot of good that promise did.” He fixes her with a guilty smile which she returns from under her lashes. He lets out a breath after, chucking her gently under the chin as he adds, “I’m not sure either of those things are true, angel; if you were my daughter, I’d have probably hit a lot harder.”
She blinks at Rupert as he then bids her goodnight and leaves. She stares after him until she can no longer make out his shape in the dark.
In bed, Taggie slips her hand between her thighs, and she comes with his words still echoing in her head.