You Belong To Me

Chapter Acquaintance

'he's always dressed so fashionably.
he never stays anywhere long.
i've never seen him inebriated.
one does have to wonder if he is human!'

an acquaintance...

Trey didn't see Ali again for almost two days after that. He had long since decided(as soon as he left her room) that she didn't actually deserve his presence and therefore she was going to be without it for a while. That he could not continue to reward her ill behavior despite how much he was drawn to her as one might be to a wayward pet.

But once he shook off all those unconscious lies all he could really be sure of was that he was not strong enough to look at her and not have her at his will completely for a while. He needed a moment, Trey had reasoned, before he could subject himself to what she was to him. Damn woman, didn't she know? Couldn't she tell? Of course she could. No one was that endeared to innocence.

Her nightclothes were his pride and joy. Each made for luxury and visual gratification. Didn't she know he could see her? All wet and reeking of... of whatever the woman at the shop chose. No doubt it was just the most expensive 'ladies toiletries' in the store. He'd sent Theo and Lord knows what the man had been coerced into purchasing.

He had designed her entire wardrobe, with garment and fabric realities from the modiste, all himself. Trey chose some of his own clothing options sometimes but all the basics between his elaborate costume were for Theodore to remember. Trey couldn't recall a time where he had been so meticulous about anything as he was about Ali. How he wanted mink and diamonds and chiffon to hang on her skin was not at all misunderstood to him. The way he wanted things to fit her, the manner in which he might have liked for things to hold her was not lost on him. How he thought she deserved to be treated, what she deserved to bask in, her every whim, her pleasure if he could. What she was to him, however, was not so easy to categorize.

While Theodore was dropping him off at a social affair that could not be avoided Trey wondered why he didn't call the man Theo whenever he wanted to. Trey wasn't used to feeling that anything was beyond him, forbidden to him. There was nothing that he couldn't say and certainly not about his trusted valet. The man worked for him his entire life. And what did the staff matter? Trey sat back. He had known Theodore since he was a nine-year-old boy. Why wouldn't he know his name was Theo? Trey lifted his nose in the air and pulled the newspaper he had had on his lap up for a snap.

"Answer me this," Trey said suddenly, looking up from his paper. He couldn't hold his curiosity at bay anymore. He had to know something about him, knowing how much Theodore knew about him. "What do you do when you're not with me?"

"Wait for you."

Trey had nothing to say to that as they pulled up to the private steps of a friend of his. The affair was a small gathering of a few privileged people that lived in the local area. There were certainly more people there, Trey reflected, than he was willing to bet on church attendance. Not that he would know, he remembered when Theodore went to open the door for him.

"I don't want to be more than an hour. I'll be back here in fifty-two minutes." Trey buttoned his long overcoats gold button and checked his pocket-watch once. Lanterns lit either side of a grand staircase up to the front doors where people were being invited into the sanctuary of the home. The lights from the car behind them, a stretch lincoln not quite as long as his own and not having Trey's luxury white tires and cloth top with copper penny paint almost.

His saddlewood and white oxfords shined as he turned away from the man that knew him better than he knew himself without a word about the words they'd just shared. Trey's pinky ring and pocket watch chain and rolex gleamed in the lights of the lamps as he was accepted into the lavish him. The Myrtle's were nothing at all to sneeze at, wealthy for generations and very loose ties with nobility way back that granted them vast estates and land. Still, one could not help but notice that somewhere in all that, someone was illegitimate and therefore not receiving of a title, of being an aristocrat.