Being Eloise (An Erotic Romance Collection, Books 1-3) (30 page)

“What I’m supposed to do with those?” I said.

He took one and quickly wrapped it around one of his wrists. This was not what I had in mind. I had pictured something over on the futon, maybe.
Maybe.
Perhaps nothing more than kissing. Or nothing at all, our first reunion postponed until I was at his place, behind the closed door to his bedroom, the room plastered, I imagined, with posters of star systems, covered in equations, maybe a poster of Einstein (the one with the goofy face) tacked to the ceiling. I’d raise my I.Q. with every quick fuck. My fantasies did
not
involve Ma Bell’s curlicues.

And I say that just so you know that I
did
have
some
resistance, at last up in the safety of my head. The trouble is the rest of my body: the willing hands, the unstoppable legs. And realizing resisting was hopeless, I rationalized…we did have the whole floor to ourselves, after all. “It’s a terrible idea,” I said, even as I began wrapping one cord around both of his wrists.

“It’s terrible,” he said, and got down on his knees. I unzipped my skirt from the side. No, wait, I may have been in jeans. At any rate, I
do
remember whatever I wore coming off surprisingly quickly. Yes, it
was
jeans—none of my skirts have pockets. Terrance pried off my underwear with his teeth just as he had on the inaugural consummation back east and I found it just as silly and oh-so-thrilling now as then. Thanks to Terrance, being on the receiving end was old hat for me, though, so I quickly sat atop the curved inner corner of a desk, right where a computer would eventually go, left leg spread left. Right right. So so right. He walked over on his knees and buried his nose in my hair down there and breathed in so hard I could feel the passing of air through my pubes and into his lungs. Then his tongue emerged and he kept it there just off of me, teasing. If I’d been reserved that first time last year, I was not so now. My legs swung together around his neck and pulled him close and he began.

At the beginning of my time in San Francisco I’d felt pride that I’d left everything (except my son) and come west, even if I was in spirit more a 69-er than a ‘49-er. Still, I’d felt the dawn of a new Eloise. But now, with twice the conviction, I felt certain I’d been so
wrong
to ignore Terrance those months.
Why shouldn’t I have this?
I leaned back, head in the corner, my legs hooked over his shoulders. I looked to see if he was watching me, but his eyes were closed, concentrating. I snuck my hands up under my shirt and found my nipples already hard. With my fingertip on a nipple, I tried to copy the patterns Terrance traced on my clitoris, but he was too fast. This was his version of left, right, left, left, right. Inimitable. I thought of those three college girls of his. He’d shown them stars; now my black skies were lighting back up.

I felt my nerves switch over to the purely tactile and, within, the purely warm. I felt his joined hands come up to where I overhung the desk, thumbs tracing the edge of my bottom, then rising up to trace my vulva. He inserted a finger into my vagina, but I reached with my feet and pulled his hands away.
There’d be time for that later; keep this pure.
My hands ran across the smooth desk, along the wool-like texture of the cubicle’s sides. I was a steady pant, he a muffled moan. I needed to hold something in these last moments, but there was nothing. I reached forward and grabbed his hair and came then against him, my body nearly sliding off the desk had it not been for Terrance’s face keeping me in place. I didn’t squirt, thank goodness. I’d hate to explain
that
stain. Terrance tried to stay there on me, but I pushed him off, overly sensitive. His face was smiling with pure pleasure. Just like the good old days.

I reached over and grabbed my jeans, then pulled out the bandana and wiped his face, holding it, for a moment, against his nose. If it’d been perfumed on the walk here, it’d give him a different scent on the walk back. He went up to kiss me and I kissed him back, always a little hesitantly. I didn’t especially like the taste of myself on him (or anything), but he kept kissing and soon the taste was back to just his own and I reached down to his pants and unbuttoned them even as we continued kissing. Then I pushed him off me, got down and slapped the table. “Your turn,” I said.

I pulled off his pants, then his boxers, and there was the same penis I’d seen made sloppy wet by his French Canadian ex-mistress, but now it seemed, well,
fresh
. Pink as an eraser and just as smooth.

With me now as pleasure giver, I played the equal tease, bringing my tongue within an inch but then stopping, mock-licking the shaft, swirling the air around the head. Terrance, too, played the same game, his bound wrists coming behind me, pulling my head forward and bringing me over him. I took him in halfway, at first incredulous that I’d done the whole thing before. Okay, truth: I thought to myself
this can’t be the same one. There’s no way.
And like that night long ago, he pushed me hard to take me in all the way. This time I did not acquiesce.

“No,” I said, letting him fall from my mouth. “I do it
my
way. I
hate
your hands on me when I do this. Rule #1.”

Terrance brought his arms above his head, his fingers fanned out in both hands. “Sure,” he said. “No problem.”

What would Rule #2 be? I wasn’t sure, then knew. “And no backdoor stuff,” I said, adding, “unless I ask for it.” Which I was sure I never would, but this sounded less bossy. I teased him slowly with long hard licks. I still wasn’t completely confident in my understanding of exactly the ratio of submission and dominance that made Terrance want me so strongly. I had to give him something, though, or why wouldn’t I be replaced by the French Canadian? Given time, he’d talk her into letting him go down on her; she seemed to have no problems tying him up. Or why not the college girls? I was both immensely proud that I was, in his eyes, above his easy access to a trio of sophomoric pleasure, and also completely insecure as I didn’t know why I held this state in his mind. The mysteries of Terrance were to my benefit. My former landlord/nemesis had claimed it was a relationship with an aunt of his that he was trying to recreate, though he’d laughed when I repeated the story.
Have you met my aunts?
he asked me.
Ugh. The thought. No,
he’d said.
I like older, domineering women because they’re older domineering women. It feels like cheating, not in an adulterous way, but, you know, like I’m jumping up to where the sex is already figured out and well practiced and everyone’s inhibitions are already gone.
Whatever. Maybe I was more open-minded, less hung up, flexible. It was one of these qualities, or perhaps others, that had secured my being hired on the second floor. Okay, okay, on a probationary one-month hire, and mostly because I fit the look and mold of Carla, who I believe I’ve mentioned briefly, and who was out on maternity leave. There, on the second floor, I wasn’t to be touched. Here, though, I could physically receive what my clients at work wanted to give me. Pleasure.

Oh, and obviously I wasn’t thinking all this right then, as my mind was first bubbled warm from the oral sex and then focused on taking Terrance’s cock in all the way, my way. I pulled out to catch my breath, then stroked him with my hand while I scooted down and licked each testicle, feeling them contract under the touch of my tongue. That such an ugly piece of anatomy could give be so sensitive was a marvel to me. Then I took his
schlong,
as Olivia used to say, within my mouth again, down, down, deeper than before, all the way until I heard a bell ding, like from a twisted carnival barker’s attraction:
Step right up, step right up and see if you have what it takes to deep throat an over-average-sized male penis. Ladies, Ladies, do you have the ability to make such length disappear like this woman right here? If so, try your luck and maybe you, too, will take home one of these wondrous prizes no housewife should be without…
Maybe those words didn’t rattle off in my head just like that, but I swear I saw a picture of such a scene right there in my head. For the bell was real. Terrance heard it, too.

“Elevator,” he said.

Of course.
I pulled my head back, my mouth empty, my lungs panting for air. I could picture it already, the movie sold out, the time misremembered—one always gets caught from the unexpected variations in the counted-on routines. But it was too quiet for that. My son and Eli would be yapping on about something by now. I went down to the floor and looked under the space of the cubicle’s partition. I couldn’t see anything but those damn cereal boxes, and then a foot stepped over the line, then the other, so close that I felt compelled to quickly stand, and in doing so, I banged my head terrifically hard on the underside of a desk.

“Well hello!” said a voice, cheerfully. Petunia.

Getting up, I saw Terrance sitting upright with a sense of modesty I’d never witnessed from him before, though I must say that his was a very immodest modesty, his hands cupped around his groin but not doing the best job of concealing the whole package.

I emerged, holding my head. It wasn’t as bad as I’d first thought. The bump on my head, that is. The situation? Worse. I wiped my mouth and pulled my shirt down tight.

“Well now!” Petunia said. “What were you looking for, dressed like that? A plug?” She laughed.

I cracked a weak smile. Terrance let his erection slip from concealment and made no move to cover it. I found myself trying to see Petunia through his eyes. No, he wasn’t interested, but he’d found her unthreatened, mischievous even, and he wanted to show off. Petunia didn’t seem to mind one bit.

“I thought you went to the movies,” I said.

Petunia’s eyes finally returned to me. “Movies? No thank you. Catch some head lice, the flu, listen to people talk for two hours? I don’t need that entertainment.”

“Me neither,” I said, trying to smooth over the situation, as though we were just three people chatting around the water cooler.

“Clearly,” Petunia said, giving me the obvious once-over. “Now I didn’t mean to interrupt anything, but since I have…” She lifted her hands and shook two small white boxes in front of me. “Should I give them to you now…or do you want them later?”

“Oh,” I said.

She raised an eyebrow and her face was ninety-nine percent mischief, one percent lipstick.

“Is it your birthday?” Terrance asked.

“Yes!” Petunia lied. “Except she got
you
something!” She turned to me. “It’s this one, right? Not someone else?”

“It’s him,” I said, as Terrance got up and stood beside me, his curiosity peaked, and the rest of him still in that state.

“Hmm,” Petunia said, now unabashedly eyeing Terrance’s penis. “You’re right,” she said. “I’m glad you went with the size up.”

“What is it?” Terrance asked. It had been that kind of day for him:
Where?
What?
And maybe soon,
why?
The answer to that last question was still being worked out by me.

“I don’t have to pick up the kids for a while,” Petunia said. “Do you want me to show you how it works?”

“Let Terrance decide,” I said, seeing how much of her was pure bluster. Was the high school senior who got the football team to howl still this Petunia?

Petunia opened the lid of one box, then closed it again and put it down on the desk. “Not this one,” she said. Then she opened the other box and looked inside, then up at Terrance.

“Well?” she asked. “Do you want to see what Eloise bought you?”

“Yeah,” Terrance said, looking over at me, happily puzzled.

“It’s a little trinket. Something for you to wear,” Petunia said.

And as much as I was, at first, mortified to have Petunia walk in on us
in flagrante delicto
, it sure made the next part easier. It wasn’t me that had to broach this next bit. It wasn’t me that had to figure things out. Petunia was there to do it for me. She was clearly eager, this
little trinket
having worked out so well for her. She presented the box to Terrance.

Terrance lifted up the lid, then laughed. Now in his hands was the clear male chastity cage I’d ordered. The cock cage. (Under $50 with tax and shipping, if you’re curious, dear reader.)

“There should be more,” Petunia said, digging through some cotton at the bottom. “Here it is.” She pressed a tiny stainless steel lock into my hand, the key already inserted. “Well?” Petunia said to Terrance. “Aren’t you going to say thank you?”

“Thank you?” Terrance said. I tried to read his face but whatever he truly felt was hidden by that grin, the grin of the recipient of a gag gift, the grin of someone knowing they’re being watched.

“So, should I show you how to put it on?” Petunia said.

“Please,” Terrance said. “Show me.” He was daring her, and being just awfully naughty in front of me.

“Not like that, I can’t,” Petunia said, nodding at his erection. “Go tidy up, get your mind off your girlfriend here. Go put all those cereal boxes away before the Lithuanians arrive.”

“I’ll help,” I said, but Petunia grabbed my arm.

“He can manage,” she said, and Terrance left the cubicle and made his way slowly back toward the kitchen, one step, one box, at a time.

“He’s gotta be limp to fit in,” she explained. “Did I just spring this on him? Didn’t you tell him?”

“No,” I admitted, dressing quickly.

“Tsk, tsp,” Petunia said, though her eyes said otherwise.

The whole idea of giving Terrance a chastity cage had really been Petunia’s idea, and a good one at that, at least back when I’d been upstairs with her behind the computer, placing two orders: one for myself, I mean Terrance, and another for someone else. Now, though, Petunia’s presence took away the mood, though I suppose that was for the best. I wasn’t giving him the cage to exactly enhance our sexual relationship. It was, instead, intended to enhance our nonsexual one, though I couldn’t help feel a kind of haunting that it was really to assuage my own insecurities. To have one’s boyfriend—yes, I’ll admit that’s how I was picturing him—beholden to you for all release and pleasure—it was untrustworthy of me, a crutch. And yet, it was perfect. I’d know that he hadn’t been with anyone else, hadn’t been giving himself any pleasure that could, otherwise, have been spent on me. And—perhaps this was why I was hired on the second floor—it gave me a tweak of pleasure inside to imagine Terrance alone in his apartment, under lock and key, not knowing when I’d e-mail him next, when I’d come over, when he’d be able to feel himself within me. It would be like I was always there with him, binding his hands, tying him down, making him contemplate the pleasures he so wanted to give.