Anything for Money: A Sex-For-Hire College Romance (18 page)

“Too much!” I cried.

He didn’t answer. His galvanic thrusts subsided, until each was more of a flinch than thrust. I was sensitive too, but more alive and energized, and my body hummed on top of him like a happy ice-cream maker.

* * *

I
unpeeled
from RJ like a suction cup and eased next to him, snuggling under his arm. For a long while, we simply laid still and breathed as lights from the traffic slid across the walls.

I was alert enough to notice when he peeked at me. We smiled at the same time, and our smiles didn’t fade. We just kept at it, too happy to quit.

“Rebecca,” he said, “is it too soon to say the word ‘love’ to you?”

“After everything we’ve been through? No, it’s not too soon.”

“Then I’d like to tell you something.”

The room was quiet and serene. It shimmered as my eyes filled with tears. RJ spoke the words, and filled my heart with joy.

A
s you probably know
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L
indsey Flinch Bedder
was born in either 1983 or 1988, the records are lost. Why are we so hung up on numbers? She’s young, fulsome, and fabulous, that’s all that matters. She might be a little defensive.

Lindsey writes funny erotic romances about women provocateurs, the adventures they have, the strangers they provoke, and the men who love them.

As you’re reading this, Lindsey’s house might be on fire. She is over four years sober, but her judgment still hasn’t improved. Let’s see, what else. She’s back in school. She wants to be a cougar with the college boys, but can’t seem to wedge their bodies into trees. Also, Lindsey’s sense of humor seems to alienate college boys.

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T
rapper and Emmeline
(kinky romance novel)

The Octoviad: The Tentacle Chronicles Omnibus
(adventure romance novel)

Remote Control Checkup
(erotica short)

I
f you liked this book
, you might like my super-kinky romance novel
Trapper and Emmeline
! Here is the first chapter.

I
was a second-semester sophomore
, on the first day of spring classes at NYU. I was the world’s youngest twenty-year-old, but I thought I was hot shit.

Emmeline was less than ten minutes away from entering my life.

M
y latest girlfriend
had broken up with me two weeks earlier in a scene like the sack of Rome. It played out at a restaurant in front of our parents, who were meeting for the first time. It seems Brynna took issue with the pile of porn under my bed, and also with some escapades in my diary that she recited to us with perfect recall.

Brynna and I had many relationship problems, the main complication being that she was a psychopath. But she was
my
psychopath, and I missed her crazy energy. Suddenly single, I vanished into my man-partment with my roommates and became a Jägermeister sponge.

I only emerged when Spring Semester started. I cleaned up, shaved, and went into the world to score with easy NYU coeds.

I wasn’t ready.

The long hibernation put me under too much pressure to succeed. I felt slow and awkward, but I forced myself toward a curvy blonde girl outside the door of my first class.

She was precisely my type. Black lace choker, too-bright lipstick, disorderly drug chic clothes that only the most awesome girls could pull off. She was inviting and seemed to know it. Obviously she would be receptive to a stammering, sweaty boy trying to interrupt her reading.

Trapper,
I told myself,
be brash and embrace a philosophy of you’re-probably-going-to-screw-this-up.

“You look like you’re built for speed,” I told her.

Her eyes drifted up to mine, where I stood ready to eye-fuck her with manly confidence. To seal the deal, I had a big, desperate smile that I tried to keep going, but it but flagged on my mouth like one of those inflatable roadside balloon men.

With unhurried blinks, the girl closed the book she’d been reading. I took that as a good sign. Her eyes were arctic blue.

“You said what?”

Her voice was lovely, a tinge of a Russian accent.

“You’re built for speed, girl!” I said. I’m not a kind of guy who adds ‘girl’ to a sentence, ever. Hearing myself say it, I understood why. People around us turned to watch.

“I must not understand,” she said calmly.

“Oh, it’s just a thing we say,” I said. “It’s a joke about your small chest.”

Crap! What the fuck did I just say?
‘Small chest built for speed’ is something the girls on my High School swim team said. Why I reverted back to swim team, and why I used her chest as the centerpiece of my pick-up, I’ll never understand.
Big fuck-up.

She seemed to agree with that.

“I am certain I did not hear correctly,” she said coldly.

If I were going to salvage this I would have to double down. If you’re going to die, die big and take out bystanders.

“I think your small chest looks great. There’s nothing wrong with tiny breasts. You shouldn’t worry.”

“Is this a social thing for which I have not any patience?” The more I seduced her, the thicker her Russian accent became. “My breasts are considered very large.”

Fuck! They were!
How did that happen? Usually I’m somewhat aware of a girl’s breasts.
Fuck! Incompetent!

“See what I mean?” I blurted. “And that’s after only two minutes of talking to me.”

“I am confuse,” she said. Her voice was still without emotion. “Am I more sleek and fast with my breasts gone?”

If I could have pulled a plug in my ass and farted myself out of her eye line like a deflating balloon, I would have. Those balloons change direction quickly and they are hard to track; I would have a real chance to escape.

Those were my thoughts. In the real world I merely reached for my ass. She took a quick step back.

“I’ll explain, girl. I didn’t see your huge breasts because I’m not a guy who goes around seeing big tits. I’m about the personality. The woman’s soul is what I love. I love women’s souls best. I want to devour them.”

What was wrong with me?

My brain wanted to tie up my mouth and leave it as an offering for the Russian girl as she stalked closer through the forest. Maybe if she had the mouthpart, she wouldn’t chase the brain part through Siberia and kill it too.

But her arctic eyes had my brain frozen. Lacking any other ideas, it decided I should explain myself again.

“Not devour in a cannibal way,” I laughed. “Munch, munch—look, a hand! Yummy! High five, right?
God dammit, Trapper!
For the record, if your breasts were smaller, we’d be having drinks by now. Usually the ‘built for speed’ thing is funny for a woman to hear. A girl who was referencing a different girl told it to me—so it’s not insensitive in any way. Long story short,
that’s
how generous I am about going out for drinks.
Shit!
Not in a charity way. I date girls with every size of breast.
Fuck!
And I don’t eat them, either. Just the souls—just kidding.
Shoot me now, please.
”

Arctic Blue didn’t even try to parse this out.

She tilted her head sideways and machine-gunned a series of Russian syllables that could have expressed any of the emotions she was successfully keeping off her face. Her friend answered from the other side of the hall. Arctic Blue replied with another string of words that contained ‘cannibal.’ If she was anything like Google Translate, it didn’t look good for me.

“Look,” I put my hands up. “Let me tell you something. These words I’m saying aren’t in English either.”

Because I had the sudden belief that I could undo the last five minutes of my life, and never know humiliation on this scale again, if I gave up something important to me. Like my knowledge of English.

“My friend says this is a pick-up, and that you are an idiot.”

“What matters is what you think, not your friends.”

“I think you’re worse than the men in Russia, and look how far I moved to get away from them.”

“To me that says, ‘I came all the way from Russia to meet an American man.’”

“And someday I will. Now I leave.”

She edged around me and skipped over to her friend, her composure finally cracking into a bright smile. She laughed, a delightful sound that almost made my disgrace worthwhile.

“See how fast you can move?” I called after her. “You’re built for speed.”

“
W
ow
, just wow.” It was a female voice behind my shoulder. “I was here today, and I
saw
that. It will echo through history. It was over too soon.”

“It felt like it lasted hours,” I said.

“Nope. You insulted her chest in fifteen seconds, and were eating her soul by the two-minute mark.”

The Russians were giggling to each other and watching me.

“It’s hard to get back in the saddle,” I said. “Especially when you have to approach it ass-first.”

“So that was a serious attempt? Do women make you angry?”

I became aware of a scent in the air. A gentle perfume. It came from the girl next to me. Why don’t more women wear perfume?

“Ha-ha. And before you ask, I’m not gay.”

“But you experimented to make sure?”

I finally broke into a smile and turned to her.

Thank you, universe!

I relaxed and met her eyes. She was as tall as me, with a slim build but large breasts—I would check those first from now on. Her hair was a mass of yellow-brown curls. Her face was a
sparkling home run
—obviously my mind was still struggling with a stunted command of English. Either that or a minor stroke had decimated my speech center. Her face was perfect beyond reason in the Mediterranean set, olive-skinned, smooth, with bright eyes and a knowing curve on her mouth. New York is full of models and could-be models, but her face had all those model-faces beat, simply by its expressiveness. Her crinkled eyebrows, a squinted eye, and a tilted head—all told me she was amused, interested, and waiting for a response.

So yes,
thank you, universe!
I didn’t have to waste one erg of brainpower to decide that I would never, ever have a chance with her. I could relax.

“Of course I’ve experimented,” I said smoothly. “It’s college.”

“We use the scientific method here,” she grinned.

“Hypothesis: everything is awesome until proven otherwise.”

Her eyes flicked to the ceiling. I would come to learn that this indicated a thought that was novel to her, and which she was considering. “That’s a nice way to put it. Everything I don’t know about existence is now awesome, and only a very thin slice has been proven boring or bad.”

“Let’s put that Russian girl over on the slice, shall we?”

“What’s your next step with her? Did you bring your knives?”

A face, breasts, and funny too. I smiled widely at her, and she leaned against the wall smiling back. She was slim, I was right about that, but something about her was also solid. She was truly
present
in the hallway. Planted to the floor, giving the impression of weight, like a metal desk you have to walk around. She felt anchored, and next to her I felt anchored too. Nothing was inward, everything was outward. I ceased caring what bystanders thought about my utter failure with the Russian, and my anxiety inverted into amusement.

As pretty as Arctic Blue Russian girl was, she was a pencil sketch compared to the girl now in front of me.

I said, “Well, seeing as how she’s Russian, I’m thinking about constructing a giant impenetrable wall so I never have to interact with her again. Like a giant curtain.”

“An iron curtain?” She grinned. “Fitting, because this class is Cold War History.”

“Obviously, some Russian girls still have some hard feelings about how that turned out.”

She laughed. “I bet that was fifteen years before she was born.”

“Russians have long memories that start in the womb. My name is Trapper. What’s yours?”

“Emmeline.”

“Emmeline?”

“Emmeline. I can’t wait to see how you fuck that up.” She glanced at the Russian girls, who were watching our conversation with sudden interest. Her voice changed. It went higher, with a trace of tension. “Maybe we could make her jealous, Trapper. You and me, practicing our pick-up skills. I can make Russia wonder what she’s missing.”

“I bet you could!” I laughed. “Look—the door’s finally open. Let’s get good seats.”

I snagged her wrist as I went past. I wouldn’t remember the baffled, nonplussed expression on her face until a few weeks later. Whereon I found an empty stall in the bathroom and pounded my head against the wall to teach my brain a lesson. Emmeline had made a play for me on day one! And I had laughed, and dropped us both into the friend-zone. And then, with her safely walled off, I lusted after her in secret, like I was twelve years old again and NYU was Summer camp.

W
ithin a week
, Emmeline and I were meeting before every class at the nearby coffee shop. It was ridiculously easy and entertaining to talk to her. I was never tongue-tied; I always needed her to know something I had just thought of. Her feeling of presence, the solidness I’d noticed during our first conversation, continued to grow on me. I soon carried a bit of it with me, even when she wasn’t around.

Having Emmeline as a friend was like being smart-drunk, that brief window at the party when you’re buzzing heavily but still functional. I imagine it’s how superheroes feel all the time. Men stopped in the street when she walked past—but I was the guy next to her. I was the guy who picked fuzz off her sweater. I let her re-button my shirt, which I intentionally screwed up. I made her laugh.

As great as things were, however, I was worried. I didn’t want to lose our privileged routine, but I didn’t want to be just a friend either.
What were we?
Not a couple. Was I her gay friend?
Oh God
—did she think I was gay? What did I say in that first conversation? Did I make a joke—or did I emphatically say I liked women, over and over? Maybe she felt relaxed with me because I’m gay. I’m not gay. Being gay would be awesome, because it looked so easy from the outside. Maybe
… no.
Were my signals hetero enough? Emmeline worked out more than me and could bench press heavier weights. No wonder she seemed so solid, her body was ripped. Did
that
mean something?

In this fashion, my mind occasionally fragmented into unappealing, inter-looping thoughts, like a bucket of eels. It was no help in producing ideas to make Emmeline see me in a romantic light. Because as inept and ineffectual as I was, I still had hopes for us. I got in the way of every man with enough nerve to approach her. I developed ninja cock-blocking skills.

Then one morning before class I was late to the coffee shop, and I saw her scanning the crowd for me. She looked concerned and alone, isolated somehow from the rest of the crowd—as isolated as I felt when we split paths after class.

My heart gave a little lurch to realize that I might
already
be preferred in her life. Then my heart gave a
huge
lurch when she saw me, and her face bloomed into a smile. I walked up to her and took her hand, and she let me. My pulse roared in my ears, momentarily blotting out everything else.

Holding hands with Emmeline was like a Boeing 747 engine test in my skull.

E
mmeline was wearing
jeans and a tight button-up shirt. It was so tight that the last few dispirited buttons were unequal to the task of keeping her cleavage hidden. They only remained buttoned for a few minutes, and then sprang open like a parlor trick, to her constant great amusement. Emmeline found the strangest things funny.

In the coffee shop, Emmeline leaned forward to give her coffee order to the guy behind the counter. When her top exploded open, his pen skittered across the counter, and they both lost the thread of the transaction.

She flubbed her order.
Half-caff double latte blah-blah.

She broke down in the middle, and nearly died of embarrassment.

“Shit!” She leaned toward him entreatingly. Her breasts swelled forward, framed by a low-cut bra and the traitorous blouse. The bottom of the blouse slid up her ribs. “I’m sorry! Don’t take me to coffee jail! They over-roast the beans there.”