Greenhouse Summer (28 page)

—the door opened.

And out staggered Prince Eric Esterhazy and Stella Marenko in a state hardly more fit for public consumption.

Her hair was a mess. Lipstick was smeared all over her face. Her short skirt was hiked halfway up one buttock. One of her enormous tits was just about hanging out.

His hair was also a rats’ nest. The top two buttons of his shirt were missing. His face was smeared with lipstick too, and there was a
bloody bruise under one ear. And his
fly
was half open, though at least his cock wasn’t hanging out.

What a spectacle! Couldn’t they have at least washed their faces, combed their hair, and pulled up their drawers properly afterward?

“I hope I haven’t interrupted anything important,” Monique Calhoun said in a voice like a cryogenic stiletto.

Eric stood there grinning stupidly like . . . like someone caught with his pants down.

As Stella Marenko had intended.

“Oh we jus’ having little philosophy talk about state of world and ethical structure of universe,” Stella woozed, giving Monique a broad wink that didn’t seem to improve her current opinion thereof.

“But we’re finished now,” Eric told her.

“You’re
sure
?” said Monique, glancing portentously down at his crotch.

Stella laughed. “Whoops!” she said, reaching down to reseal his fly.

Eric shrugged weakly and gave Monique a vapid smile. Like it or not, and he wasn’t quite sure why he didn’t, he was going to have to go along with this bedroom farce to cover the true nature of his tête-à-tête with Stella.

As Stella Marenko had intended.

“And your, ah, slip is showing, Mrs. Marenko,” Monique said with poisonous sweetness. “Not to mention your tit and your ass.”

“Thank you,” Stella said blithely, smoothing down her dress, pulling up her bodice.

“Would not want to upset Ivan, da?” She gave Monique a conspiratorial one-of-the-girls look. “Men are such jealous beasts, da? No need to know.”

“My lips are sealed,” Monique told her with Saharan dryness.

Stella Marenko regarded Eric like a prime cut of meat, gave Monique yet another stage wink, ran her tongue slowly around her mouth like a cat licking cream.

“No need to go
that
far,” she said.

A sentiment which in that moment Eric amply shared.

“Do you think you can . . . navigate by yourself, Mrs. Marenko?”
Monique said. “Prince Esterhazy and I have a bit of business to discuss.”

“No problem,” Stella told her. “Exercise clears head. Handsome prince is finished doing
my
business, now is turn for him to do
yours
.”

She walked away slowly up the corridor a few paces, turned, gave Monique Calhoun one last juicy wink. “Have fun,” she said, “but don’t do anything I haven’t done already,” and exited, stage left.

“What was that woman doing with you in there?” Monique said acidly after Eric Esterhazy had dismissed the tech and they were alone in the computer room. “Showing you what made Catherine the Great great? Something to do with screwing horses, wasn’t it?”

“You’re jealous!” Prince Eric said in what seemed like genuine surprise as he stood there looking as if he had just played overmatched stand-in for the said equine stud service, which he probably had.

“I am not!” Monique snapped back.

Eric gave her a warm winning boyish smile. “Relax,” he said, “I find it charming.”

Monique did not know what to say to that.

His smile was so innocent,
pure
, she would have had to say if he hadn’t so obviously come straight from a heavy horizontal wrestling match.

Why
, after all,
was
she angry? Who Eric Esterhazy went to bed with, assuming they had gotten that far, was none of her business. What was more, he had made it abundantly clear almost every time they had met that
she
could enjoy his considerable physical charms whenever she chose to. And the main thing that had kept her from taking him up on it was that his own opinion of his animal allure was manifestly higher than even her own.

Was
she jealous?

But of whom and why and of what?

Jealousy, after all, is not a rational logical reaction, she told herself. And you’re here on business. So get professional.

“I am not jealous,” she said very evenly. “But I
am
annoyed with you.”

Eric draped himself languidly over one of the chairs in front of the wall of computer screens like a fashion model, legs akimbo, so as
to display, no doubt deliberately, the still-or-perhaps-once-more formidable bulge in his pants.

Which, considering the circumstances, Monique had to admit was a feat she could only consider impressive.

Or quite flattering.

And either way or both, therefore exciting.

Infuriatingly so.

“Why?” he said, teasingly, all-too-knowingly. “Because I didn’t save my virginity for you?”

“Because you were off playing hanky-panky with Stella Marenko while I needed you here for serious business,” Monique Calhoun told him.

Eric spread his arms, leaned back, manfully refrained from uttering the horrid cliché about how anger enhanced her attractiveness, which it didn’t.

But the way the images planted in her mind by false appearances aroused her lustful jealousy against her will, and his almost painful state of fiery unfulfilled arousal, certainly did.

“Well I’m here now,” he said instead, “and I’m all yours and open for business, serious or monkey.”

“You certainly have a high opinion of yourself, Eric Esterhazy!”

“My only flaw,” Eric said dryly, “is an unfortunate tendency to false modesty. But I
am
working on it.”

It amused him to see her choking back laughter. Eric was not accustomed to being left achingly horny by the sort of masterful cock-tease Stella Marenko had worked on him, though watching a woman making an ultimately futile attempt to pretend she found him physically resistible was something with which he was very familiar.

The combination of both at the same time was a unique pleasure and he found himself quite enjoying it.

Well all right, Prince Handsome, though lightweight,
was
charming, and the source of his charm was that he acknowledged his lack of seriousness without taking it seriously, which, Monique supposed, was what it took to make a successful gigolo or phony prince.

“Seriously, Eric—”

“Seriously? Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer a little monkey business?”

“Not now, maybe later,” Monique found herself blurting.

“Business before pleasure . . .” Eric said agreeably, but without changing his spread-legged posture or removing that inviting bedroom smile from his face. “On the other hand. . . ”

On the other hand, maybe we should just get it over with now
was the clear implication. And Monique accepted that they were not going to leave this room without doing it.

After all, she reminded herself, that was what she had come here to do for
tactical
reasons in the first place, to literally screw the Marenko table talk recordings out of him.

Business before pleasure?

Here was one of those all too rare moments when they were going to coincide.

Eric Esterhazy was one attractive male animal. Prince Eric was also a famous lady-killer whose looks and attitude clearly indicated that his reputation was not unjustified. Eric could have his choice of hundreds of women and just had.

Yet this handsome male creature, who had apparently come straight from a session with a hungry amazon which should have left him limp as an overcooked cannelloni, was ready, willing, and eager to rip off
her
clothes this very minute and fuck her on the floor.

Perverse or not, it was the ultimate compliment.

And the ultimate turn-on.

But why not enjoy that sweet perverse tension a while longer and turn it to advantage in the pragmatic matter at hand. . . ?

“I want something from you,” Monique Calhoun told Eric. She still hadn’t taken the other seat in front of the monitors, which Eric found promising, yet hadn’t approached him any closer, which he found amusing in the manner of a cobra patiently awaiting the approach of a mesmerized bird.

“Who am I to thwart your desires?” he said.

Now she did approach his chair, standing over him, looking down, giving him a nicely complex smile back. “Who am I to thwart yours?” she said in an insinuating tone.

She reached down and ran a finger through the air about five centimeters from his fly. “But I want a quid before you get your pro quo. . . .”

“I’m all ears . . .” Eric said.

Monique Calhoun stared frankly down into his crotch. “Not from where I’m standing,” she said.

Eric laughed. So did she.

He sat up somewhat straighter, spread his legs even wider, moved his right hand toward his inner thigh. “Have a seat then,” he invited.

“Not so fast,” Monique said.

“Take it as slow as you want,” purred Prince Eric.

“Let’s just see how slow
you
can stand to take it,” Monique said, reaching down and undoing his fly. There was nothing particularly huge or unusual about what emerged eagerly from its restraints, but the way Eric simply maintained eye contact without moving, without showing surprise or impatience, as she slowly ran just a fingernail up its length, was something very special indeed.

“Now then,” Monique Calhoun said, hiking up her dress and pulling down her panties, “the matter of quid pro quo . . .”

She reached down again, and this time just flicked the head of Eric’s cock playfully. Eric suppressed a moan of agonized delight.

“Your wish is my command,” he said.

“Is it?” said Monique. She bent over, kissed him lightly on the lips with just a flick of tongue, but at the same time clutched him quite firmly down below.

“Try me,” said Eric.

Monique massaged him to within a tasty millimeter of causing him to lose it, which, under the prolonged circumstances, did not take very long, and then held him there, right on the edge.

“Find this . . .
trying
enough?” she said.

“You’ll have to try me a bit harder than that, Mata Hari,” Eric declared heroically.

“Ve haff our vays,” Monique said, moving forward to straddle Eric Esterhazy, positioning herself just short of impaling herself sweetly
upon him. It was a difficult position to hold in more ways than one, but as with a less erotic gymnastic posture in a competition routine, the degree of difficulty perversely made it more enjoyable.

“So what do I have to do to . . . get you to reach the bottom line?” Eric said.

“I want copies of all the recordings you’ve automatically been making of the Marenkos’ table talk,” Monique said.

Now Eric almost
did
lose it.

What was that old American folktale about Brer Rabbit and the briar patch? The rabbit pleads with the fox to do anything but throw him into that nasty old briar patch, which, being his home and escape route, is of course precisely what he wants the fox to do.

And leaking those recordings to Monique and hopefully allowing her to wheedle him into assisting in her inquiries to see what she was after was likewise precisely what Eduardo wanted
him
to do!

Should he surrender at once?

Oh no, much more credible to play hard to get!

“Automatic recording . . . ?” he said innocently.

“Don’t tell me your . . . equipment can’t handle it!” Monique said, giving it a squeeze.

And ever so much more enjoyable.

“You’re about to discover just how much my equipment
can
handle. . . .”

“Not until you admit you’ve got what I want.”

“All right, all right,” Eric told her. “I’ve got what you want . . . I’ve got . . .
everything
that you want.”

“The recordings . . . ?”

“That too.”

Monique Calhoun smiled, seated herself upon him, then began a deliberate, languid rotation.

“Now then,” she purred, “the name of this game is
you
don’t get to come until you agree that I get what I came for.”

“Fair enough,” Eric told her. “But I should warn you, I’m a slow deliberate player. It might take some time to reach the endgame.”

“Getting there is half the fun. . . .”

“At least,” said Eric, and he relaxed into it, and sighed, and favored her with a low moan of pleasure.

And they sealed the bargain with a deep open-mouthed kiss.

How slowly could he stand to play this game?

Very slowly indeed.