It was evident to Cynthia that Ann had invited her to Thomas Randolph's funeral to rub it in how well off Tom had left her, to put Cynthia on notice that she was going to fight Cynthia's behest from Tom's will, and to compare how the two former intimate friends had held up over the years. Cynthia went to the funeral to assure herself that her first husband was actually dead. The snotty FFV—First Families of Virginia—Randolphs had made her life hell, even before the divorce. She sorely wanted to pay them back, to bring them down a couple of notches.
She was surprised by but didn't worry about a fight over the behest stemming from the twenty-year-old divorce settlement. At the time Tom had screwed her out of three valuable Marc Chagall lithographs in the divorce settlement, claiming he had brought them to the marriage when, in fact she had, and he jolly well knew that. He'd been toying with her by screwing her out of the artwork when it had been Tom who had screwed up by screwing Ann. She since had found the receipts for the lithographs and was waiting for a good time to rip them away from him—hopefully with maximum exposure for his smug family. He'd stolen a march on her by dying and leaving them to her in his will. That he'd left anything to her obviously stuck in Ann's craw and thus the impending fight that Cynthia was sure waving the receipts would scotch.
Cynthia was going to Richmond the day of the funeral anyway and already had reservations at the swank Jefferson Hotel, which she had immediately dropped on the funeral staffer who called her so that there was no awkwardness about whether she'd be invited to stay at Riverbend and with the possibility that the staffer would tell Ann that's where she was staying. The Randolphs had always been top-drawer snooty in Virginia, with one of Tom's namesakes down through three and a half centuries in Virginia being the plantation owner who had married Thomas Jefferson's oldest daughter. On top that, the linage of first-son Thomas Randolphs was traced—the Randolphs claimed—back through maternal lines to Pocahontas, the legendary Indian princess, the first war bride in the European conquest of what was to be the Virginia colony. Riverbend, an estate on the James River upriver from Richmond, had been in the Randolph family since before Thomas Jefferson was spending his childhood at the neighboring Tuckahoe plantation.
Both Tom and Ann, who had once been Cynthia's best friend—her very, very (Very) close friend—had assumed Cynthia married him to wiggle into the FFV set—but she'd done so, rather, because he was a handsome devil and had a big dick. She'd found that his whole family consisted of dicks.
She had found Tom was just as good in bed as Ann was, and that was saying something. The kicker was that Ann apparently felt the same way about Tom and was more taken with becoming a Randolph, and, when Ann had come up pregnant nearly twenty-one years earlier, Cynthia had lowered the boom. This had come as a surprise to both Tom and Ann, who didn't understand why they couldn't just go on as a threesome. Cynthia left Tom, the poor man looking confused, with a bundle and Ann hissed her off the Riverbend property, more concerned at the time at the loss of the bundle than of Cynthia.
And now Tom was dead and Cynthia, mainly because she had been coming up to Richmond from Lexington anyway to consult with some of the neurological surgeons she edited for at the Medical Center of the Virginia Commonwealth University—VCU, had been invited to the funeral. That was curious, but she thought that, as long as she was in Richmond anyway, she might as well see Tom sink into the ground and, perhaps, just perhaps, make a little bit of mischief with the Randolphs.
Well, maybe a lot of mischief. Cynthia hadn't learned of her first husband's death from the newspaper obituaries. She heard it from Ann's lawyer who presented the news in the form of a request for Cynthia's lawyer's name so he could formally refuse to hand over the Chagalls Tom had left her and to dispute ownership of the property in Lexington Cynthia now occupied, a very nice Dutch colonial in an upscale university neighborhood. That would be a wild goose chase, as Cynthia had all of the documentation on having inherited that from her side of the marriage.
Ann was going to suffer a bit for that, Cynthia had decided. Cynthia's main obsession was with the Randolphs, but Ann had chosen to become one of them.
* * * *
"Ding dong, Thomas Randolph is dead. Long live Thomas Randolph. Here, I saw you come out on the terrace without a drink, so I brought one to you, you lovely lady. I must say you've aged a lot better—a whole lot better—than Ann has."
Cynthia, who had been standing and watching the James River roll by at the foot of the back gardens descending down from the Riverbend mansion turned her slight scowl into a fake smile and turned to face the embodiment of why she had lost two decades of being the mistress of Riverbend. This had been her favorite spot for viewing the world of the Randolphs.
"Thank you, Tom," she said, taking the glass of whatever liquor the twenty-year-old son of Thomas and Ann Randolph, also, by family tradition, named Thomas Randolph, from the young man.
"You're a brave one for coming by the house afterward," he said, giving her a smile that almost broke her heart as much as it reminded her of her husband when he was young—and pursuing her. This was the her nearly son—the son she should have been allowed to have with Tom. And he was every bit as beautiful as his father had been—tall and straight and solid, with the family's hallmark curly sandy-blond hair. Robust. And that smile.
"I had gotten a ride with the Daltons. Ann . . . your mother . . . pinned them down on coming to the reception and when it was revealed I was riding with them she quite loudly said I must come too. It's a mystery to me why she'd do that. None of it embarrassed me, though, so I said I would. I must say you are quite chipper for having just come from a funeral service and internment—not to mention of your own father."
"Well, you know how it is," he said.
"No, how is it?" Cynthia asked.
"As I understand it, my circumstances haven't been all that much different from what you experienced with dear old Dad—and the Randolph clan. We were definitely on the outs, he and I and they, when he went permanently on the out."
"Like me in what way?" she asked.
"You know—Dad and your best friend? And how the Randolphs razed you from the time you and Dad met. They're razing me now too. I don't like that—or them—any better than you do."
"You found your dad sleeping with your girlfriend?" Cynthia asked, going to the nub of the young man's issue.
"No. With the gardener."
"I don't see how—"
"I was sleeping with the gardener too. I rather think I was sleeping with him first—and that Dad knew that."
Oh. This was going to be harder than she had thought. Cynthia had a thing with young men—and young men had a thing with her, which she attributed mostly to how voluptuous and top heavy she was. She found that young men couldn't resist big tits—and women of a certain age; women who had retained their looks but could be counted on to have considerable experience and willingness.
She'd seen photos of the latest generation of over three century of Thomas Randolph first borns, a junior and lacrosse team star at the University of Richmond, and, looking across the open grave at him at the funeral at Hollywood Cemetery, she'd realized that he was even more handsome and sexy in person. He had given her a couple of flirty smiles in return, and she was quite certain that he knew who she was—and probably even that she was an active cougar. A kernel of a plan to sting Ann, and, more specifically, the Randolph clan, had been forming in her mind. But if he was into male gardeners. . . . But he was suggesting that his father had been into male gardeners at the end, and that, in itself, was a hoot on Ann and the Randolphs. So, Cynthia gave a little hoot.
"Don't let that put you off," he said, a bit defensively. "It's 2020. I sleep with women too. Sex is sex is sex."
He had reached out and touched Cynthia's elbow and she realized that he said that to her cleavage rather than looking into her face. Maybe this wouldn't be as difficult as she thought after all.
He had moved into position behind her and had an arm around her and a hand cupping Pride—she'd named them both; the other one was Glory—and she'd turned her face to his and they kissed, when they heard the sharply blurted, "Junior. We have guests in here. Judge Haver wants to meet you."
Tom, the nth, laughed, and said to Cynthia's ear in sotto voce, "I understand you're staying at the Jefferson Hotel. I'll call." Then he turned and strode back to where Ann was standing at the French doors leading into a vast living room.
There was little doubt, Cynthia thought, that Ann had seen them together, which was just one delicious morsel in what Cynthia had planned for Ann. She was pleased, though, that the young man seemed to have been as delighted in the scene as she was. None of this was his fault.
And he was, after all, a real hunk—a chip off the old, departed, bastard Tom.
The young man had made her randy. After having dinner with the Daltons at the Tobacco Company Restaurant in the Shockoe Slip district between the State Capitol and the James River and being driven back to the Jefferson Hotel by them, she changed into a cocktail dress and slipped down to the bar. There she sat at the end of the bar and sipped martinis until one of the young businessmen or political staffers gathered there after work took her for hooker and was guided by her to her hotel room. By the time he realized that a hooker wouldn't have her own room at the pricey Jefferson Hotel, she had her cocktail dress off and his trouser puddled on top of her dress on the floor and was kneeling between his knees, naked except for her black stiletto heels, and rubbing his cock between Pride and Glory to engorge it in preparation for sucking him off.
By the time he was flat on his back on the bed, kneading her breasts with his hands and she was straddling his hips and riding his cock, he didn't care who this voluptuous, raven-haired older, but very well-preserved buxom woman was who was devouring him alive. He was getting the ride of his life and Cynthia was sucking the youth out of a handsome, virile, well-muscled professional man who was as randy as she'd been and not shy about approaching a hooker.
* * * *
The next morning Cynthia was at Virginia Commonwealth University's West Hospital on Broad Street to meet with a couple of the urology doctors she edited journal articles for, Adam Hampton and Rebecca Klausman. They brought with them a young intern, a native of Mumbai, India, Larraj Mehta. He was a particularly handsome young man—tall and slender, berry brown, with silky black hair and a close-cropped beard and mustache. The top button of his white lab coat was undone and Cynthia could tell that he had a gold chain necklace with a gold medallion on it and black curly chest hair.
Her discussion was with Hampton and Klausman as they told her the background and technique of various new aspects of their urology work they were writing about and she needed to understand when editing their work. Her gaze, however, frequently went beyond them to the Indian intern sitting behind them who seemed mesmerized by Cynthia's bosoms. She thought he was dreamy—and young enough for her to want to take out for a ride, so she leaned back in her chair and let Pride and Glory flirt with the young man.
It worked. When the session was over, the doctors, who had been so steeped in their surgical procedures that they hadn't noticed their intern flirting with Cynthia, suggested that Mehta escort Cynthia through the labyrinth of halls and levels of the West Hospital to the visitor's entrance, and he was delighted to do so.
"Are you familiar with Richmond, Mrs. Barnes? Do you know your way around?" he asked as they were riding down in the elevator. She was standing closer to him than was necessary and he found her scent intoxicating. As most men did to a voluptuous woman of her certain age, he spoke to her tits. His fingers were flexing with the desire to touch them.
"I live in Lexington," she said. "And it's Ms. Barnes. I'm not married; I'm divorced."
He smiled. She always liked to get both parts of that out with young men—that there was no husband as an encumbrance, but that she'd had one, so she knew what to do with a man in bed. Men in Larraj Mehta's age bracket, especially ones who looked at her the way he had, were forever on the make for an older, but well-preserved, woman who was available and experienced. They were the easiest prey for cougars like Cynthia, who were always on the make for young meat.
