Being Eloise (An Erotic Romance Collection, Books 1-3) (8 page)

2. I tied Terrance to my bed, arms
and
legs, and sat on his sweet, sweet tongue like the existence of a tomorrow was just a faint rumor.

I was—and knew I was—corrupted. If all that hard work that D. H. Irldale had put in led to happiness, why not just skip the work and go straight for the physical happiness at least. I sat over Terrance until I came, then lay on top of him where he lay, still clothed—he wouldn’t let me undress him. But I had the opportunity. I undid his pants.

“Hey. No,” he said, face still glistening from being under me. “I mean it.”

There was a look on his face that I hadn’t seen before. It made me feel like I was no longer good—that’s as simple as I can describe it.

“Why not?’” I said. “Let me at least return the favor.”

He was straining at the ropes now. One of those dominatrix types would do as they please, but that wasn’t me. None of this was my idea, after all. At least not originally.

“Okay,” I said. “Stop pulling. You’ll hurt yourself.”

That I
still
hadn’t even seen his
equipment
was a tease. I asked him (again) if he was somehow injured down there, or had something, or if there was some kind of religious reason and he just shook his head with that goofy smile on it. It kind of pissed me off and made me want to extract
something
from him. I climbed back over his face, his tongue at the ready.

I came again, but didn’t get off of him. Instead, I stayed there over him until my thighs were quivering—and not in the romance-novel sense but from muscle fatigue—and I finally just let my weight sit on his mouth. I rubbed up and down against his lips, his stationary tongue, the sounds of his heavy breaths from his nostrils like a wild animal and I felt myself build and build and impossibly build until I came again, squirting like I had that afternoon in the Drake’s guest bedroom. This time I didn’t even care about the mess. I climbed off of Terrance and fell back into bed, exhausted, keeping the sensation of happiness in my head a few moments longer, just a few, before I became fully conscious of the situation: me riding on a young, tied up man. You could go to prison for a thing like this. I never wanted to let him leave my bedroom.

“I could go to prison for a thing…” I began, then noticed that Terrance didn’t look so good.

“Terrance? Terrance!”

I shook him but he was out cold.
I’ve killed him,
I thought then.
I’ve killed him.
Perhaps the first man to lose his life in the act of cunnilingus. But no, he was breathing. I wiped his face and quickly undid his wrists and ankles and lay beside him, listening to him breathe, my hands shaking from fright as they tried to shake him back to consciousness.
Should I call an ambulance?
I thought. I had the phone in my hand. Would he suffer from brain damage brought on by oxygen deprivation? Would he be paralyzed? I swore I’d take care of him for the rest of his days if he’d only wake up. And if he did, indeed, wake paralyzed, please, please not the tongue. He came to then and took a deep, deep breath, then looked at me and gave me a grin.

“Intense,” he said.

I put down the phone and started crying, alternating between sobbing and laughing. I made him hold me until I fell asleep.

Olivia said I brought the L.A. weather with me, but it was just a weekend-long Indian summer. Still, the cover came off the jacuzzi that evening and I found myself invited over to have a soak. The Drake’s were generous with the pool and jacuzzi and I’d had friends over on several of the weekends the Drake’s were out of town, friends who I won’t say more about other than that we go back a long way, too long for them to deserve mention in the middle of my little depravity.

Drake and Olivia were both already in the jacuzzi when I arrived. They handed me a narrow glass flute of some kind of deliciously sweet white wine. I climbed in wearing my black one-piece.

“Crossing the English Channel?” Olivia asked.

“I know, I know,” I said.

Drake was a true Jacuzzi-er. Intensely concentrated at the act of relaxing, I could tell he was aiming the jets at one muscle at a time.

Of course, I should have been writing, not relaxing. I’d asked for extensions now for two small jobs, all because of Terrance. Earlier that day I’d complained to Olivia, partly in jest, how I’d have to give up Terrance so I could get some work done, otherwise I wasn’t going to be able to make rent, to which she had replied:

“Give up work instead. The apartment money is my business. I’ll give you free rent for three, no, six months. Hell, a year. Go have fun. Write it all down.”

She was serious. But I hadn’t known what to say. I’d turned her down, of course. But now, in the jacuzzi, I followed my bliss.

“You know that thing we talked about earlier today?” I asked.

“About the apartment?”

“Yes. I’ve changed my mind,” I said. “I’d be grateful.”

“Grateful for what?” Drake asked.

“Oh, I’m going to put in new blinds,” Olivia said, then smiled at me. “There’s such glare in there.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Don’t mention it.”

I moved over and let a jet of water massage my shoulder blades and the tightness in my neck.

“Olivia tells me you’re writing a book,” Drake said.

“Oh, just this sports autobiography,” I said. I felt a foot brush against my leg and pulled mine back. An accidental touch, but still, it felt awkward on top of the weirdness of being in the jacuzzi with my landlords.

“I thought it was a exposé,” Drake said.

“He means your project.”

“Oh. That. I don’t know. Been throwing some ideas around.”

“I think she should write about suburban sexual behavior,” Olivia said. “What do you think, Drake?”

“Mmm.” He seemed disinterested. She could have suggested seventeenth-century tax-collection methods and it would probably have elicited the same response.

“All the things that go on behind closed doors in neighborhoods like this one,” Olivia continued. “Imagine.”

“Been done,” Drake said.

“That’s a good reason to do it again,” Olivia said, then turned to me. “Tell us all about it.”

I felt hot, and not just from the jacuzzi. When she referred to suburban sexual behavior was she referencing herself and the mysteries of that upstairs bedroom, or—as it seemed to me—did she mean me and Terrance? Surely not a book about a ghostwriter who was given the opportunity to drop a few of the less interesting (and poorer paying) writing assignments and focus, thanks to the free rent, on what? A book about sex?

I wanted Terrance just then, I don’t know why. Maybe it was the strong tongues of water from the jacuzzi’s jets. I stared at the darkness of the woods to cool off.

“So how’s work, Mr. Drake?” I asked. But Olivia was on to me.

“Let’s not get off topic, now.” She said it mischievously and scooted away from Drake. Her right foot rose out from the side of the jacuzzi, her toes running along the edges of Drake’s ear. It surprised me: somehow I didn’t think of people with grey hair being so frisky, even if only in jest.

“I’d rather not talk about work,” Drake said. “I’ll start venting.”

“And he doesn’t stop,” Olivia sighed, her leg drowning. “I’m waiting for him to retire just so I don’t have to hear the complaints.”

“I’m only in my sixties. Who retires in their sixties?”

“
Everyone
,” Olivia said.

“Not in this business.”

“Work till you die, then,” Olivia said. “If it weren’t for me, the stress would kill you.”

“Speaking of stress…” Drake said.

He reached out of the jacuzzi for the panel and the jets died down. The frothing water went to something akin to a slow boil. Beyond, I could now hear the rasping of a few hearty late-fall insects. “They’re awake in Singapore now,” Drake said. “I’ve got a meeting to call into. Hand me my towel, would you dear?” he asked Olivia.

“Leave the jets on, hun. We’re still enjoying ourselves.”

While he complied, Olivia reached for a folded towel nearest her and threw it toward the house.

Drake looked at his wife, then at me. “Eloise,” he said. “Would you mind closing your eyes? I don’t want to offend your sensibilities.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant, at first. “Okay,” I said, closing my eyes. I heard him climb from the jacuzzi.

“It’s safe to look now,” Olivia said, but she was having fun. Not that I saw much. Just her husband’s pale backside, splotchy with heat, and the gravitational compass of his penis as he reached down to collect his towel. I closed my eyes again.

“Little late now,” Olivia said. “You had yourself a nice long look. I saw that.”

“You said to.”

“I didn’t say drink him in.”

“Olivia, now,” Drake scolded, even as I heard him walk away. “Don’t embarrass her.”

“I’m having fun,” Olivia said. “Doesn’t anyone here have a sense of humor?”

“
You’re
not naked are you?” I asked, eyes still closed.

“Of course not,” Olivia said.

I peeked. “I’d never have come over if I’d known you were both, you know…” I said. I tried to make sure, but the jacuzzi lights were obscuring a view of Olivia, plus I didn’t want to exactly stare.

The French doors to the house opened, then shut.

“Have you given my idea any more thought?” Olivia asked.

“Which one? The book? Tennis again? I don’t think I’m really cut out for…”

“My invitation. Some research for your project on modern suburban sexuality.”

“Well, that’s not really my project.”

“Either way. Tomorrow’s Wednesday and Drake will be by for lunch. We’ll take it at the club. Be back here around two I should think. I’ll leave the back door unlocked.”

“I’m not really a hands-on kind of research person. I prefer the Internet,” I said.

“Nonsense,” she said. “Nothing but garbage there.”

“I don’t think Mr. Drake would appreciate…”

“
Mister
Drake is the least of your concerns,” Olivia said.

“I should have concerns?” I asked.

“Figure of speech.”

The French door opened and Drake came out in a robe. “Did I leave my phone out here?”

“No,” Olivia said.

“I can’t find my phone. I’ve gotta conference in in five minutes and I can’t find my phone. Dana was supposed to call me in but I gave her the evening off.”

“Use mine.”

“The number’s in an e-mail.” He stood there, helpless.

“Look on the kitchen counter,” Olivia said, sending her husband back inside. She shook her head in mock exasperation, then looked to me. “I think you’ll be interested by what you learn,” she said.

“I’m not really that kind of…”

“Sure you are,” she said, a little too quickly for my taste. What did she know of me? Of who I was, what I was comfortable with, what I was interested in writing?
I
didn’t know myself.

“It’s not in the kitchen,” Drake shouted.

“Oh for Christ’s sake. I’m gonna get one with a chain and have it bolted to your hip,” Olivia said, climbing out of the jacuzzi, buck naked. She marched past her husband into the house, where, as she turned to pick up his phone from a side table, gave me a view of the glint of pierced nipples and a studded belly button. They argued for a moment in the house and I took that as an opportunity to climb from the pool. I took a last swig of the dessert wine, grabbed my sandals and towel, and ran painfully across the gravel to the apartment. And there, in the apartment with the shades drawn, I transcribed more of my conversation with Mr. Irldale, me and he, the only two sane ones in this whole universe.

I spent most of the next day on two tasks. First, I organized all of my notes from my interview with Mr. Irldale on my laptop and printed out a fresh copy of the autobiography. Then, as the printer churned out the pages, I went through my bottom desk drawer, the one with my many fractionally finished projects, and took the entirety of them to the trash can outside, beneath the stairs. It was quiet out. Midmorning. The house was whisper-still and both Olivia’s and Drake’s cars were gone. Just for kicks, I walked to the back of the house and tried the door. It was locked. Some small sense of disappointment, I’ll admit, passed through me. I tried the handle of the other French door and the door gave. Spooked, I shut it quickly then turned and went straight back to the apartment. I fed the printer another ream of paper and while it continued churning out Mr. Irldale’s life-in-prose I took out a fresh piece of printer paper and put it on my desk and wrote, at the top.

RULES:

1. Write something real. Unvarnished. Unexaggerated. For once in your life.
   
2. Finish it. You are not allowed to abandon it.
   
3. Start now.
   

And I did. I was a page into the first chapter (which you’ve read, obviously, unless you’ve just skimmed here) by the time the printer had finished and quieted down, its unfathomable mechanics relaxing with an electronic sigh. I sent three e-mails, two to the same editor, and burned a couple of bridges to force myself down a different path. I now had only sixty or so percent of my previous workload. I turned back to my project and kept writing. On and on, skipping lunch. And then I heard Olivia’s car pull into the drive in front of their house. I looked at the clock: 2:06.

I had ten seconds. Fifteen maybe. I stood, uncertain, then dashed out of the apartment, crossed the drive and to the unlocked door, unseen. I sprinted upstairs to the spare bedroom and pulled at the louver doors and fell into the empty closet, sliding down the back wall panting, not so much from the spurt here—it was all an anaerobic impulse
—
but from surprise. I was
doing
this!

I heard Drake’s car pull up the drive. Olivia said something and then the front door closed. I looked around the closet for something to sit on and found a collapsible luggage stand leaned against the wall that had more support for my weight than the creaking wicker hamper lid. I opened it and sat down on the wide canvas sling. The closet was stuffy. And I couldn’t see the entire bed through the fixed louvered slats from this low angle. I looked around and considered climbing the shelving to the top, a couple feet shy of the ceiling. I heard them talking downstairs and just like before, I acted instead of thinking. The shelves were sturdy hardwood and smelled of the blocks of cedar sitting in each opening. At the top I lay amid the dust, resting my head against my hands. I had a straight view down to most of the bed and bedroom.