Guilty Pleasures (31 page)

Chapter 22

Don’t turn lovemaking into a marathon or attempt “twenty-three positions in a one-night stand” like Prince does in his song
“Get Off.”
Prolonging the actual intercourse for inordinate amounts of time is also not advisable. Most women complain that their partner kept moving them around like a doll or that just as they were getting to a climax, their partner switched to something else. Even worse yet is the complaint their partner kept on and on for hours, making them tired, bored, and sore.

You don’t have to stick to the missionary position, or to a strict eight minutes of penetration timetable, but don’t turn sex into an athletic ordeal, either.

Making love is about pleasing your partner, and letting her please you.

—Sensual Secrets of a Sexual Surrogate

Lance woke to a strange inner silence. A feeling of well-being perfused his body. He was lying in a bed not his own. A soft mattress—not like his own orthopaedic-approved rigid mattress guaranteed to keep your spine straight—enfolded him, even as he embraced fragrant warm flesh.
 

Millie had fitted herself to him, every yielding curve cradling his body. She was naked under the duvet; warm, sweet-smelling, and naked.
 

Lance grinned as he remembered the evening’s end.
Shit
. He eased back to move his sudden hardness away from her. Murmuring, she shifted right back at him, her soft bottom unerringly finding his erection. Lance groaned. This was definitely going to be hard. He carefully started to shift on the bed, trying to get up without waking her.
 

Millie turned and threw a leg over his, snuggled closer and sighed.
 

He tried to extricate himself.
 

“Where are you going?” Her eyes were opened, drowsy, her lips swollen with their kisses.
 

“I’m . . . I was going to the loo? Getting breakfast?”

She smiled sleepily, and her hand drifted down to caress him. “Don’t go . . .”

Lance groaned. “Millie, stop right there.”

“Here?” Her malicious fingers gripped him through his boxers. “Right here?”

“The rule . . . no nakedness, not . . .” Lance groaned.

She frowned crossly and got up, reached into a closet and pulled on a long flannel nightgown. “That covered up enough for you?”

“Some pants, please.”

She complied with ill grace, and dashed into the bathroom briefly. She drew back the covers. “Now, Will, let’s see what we have here . . .”

Lance closed his eyes as she slid her fingers into the opening of his boxers to spring him free. Her mouth—wet, hot and hungry—closed around him.
 

Breakfast was very, very late.

Predictably, their day off was spent in bed. Lance made it home at five, with just time enough to shower, change, take a look at his e-mail, and dash out for dinner with Millie. She was taking him to her favourite restaurant, and afterwards, who knew?
 

Lance found himself laughing.
What a surprise! What a delicious surprise!
She was responsive and greedy. Her passion astounded him. She was like a child in a toy shop, curious, open, eager to explore. Underlying it all was warmth and a tenderness that tore into him, exposed his loneliness and his longing for love.

“No fool like a fool for love.”
Now I’m talking to myself! Mad! Quite mad! Wonderfully mad!
Not once had she sought reassurance or his approval on her appearance.
 

Millie had given him uninhibited access to her body with no sign of self-consciousness. She’d explored his body, enjoying it not for its perfection, but as a conduit to her own pleasure, and to his.

Lance stepped out of his shower. He pulled out his razor, lathered up, and wiped at the misted mirror. He burst out laughing at the spectacle of himself, lathered from nose to navel in shaving cream, with a massive hard-on. “You just wait, Millie Deafly! I’ll have myself some revenge tonight!”

Deliciously tired from the day’s activities, Millie finally sat down and caught up with her diary before taking a brief afternoon nap. She had to rest. She was meeting Will for dinner, and he seemed to have a talent for wearing her out.
 

5

From the Diary of Millicent Deafly:

In girlie news: Well, I got my own back on Will for all his teasing. After all, turnabout is fair play. The dear man is really very . . . let’s just say, there’s a lot to work on, very hard, too. But there’s no challenge a committed workaholic can’t overcome, I’m sure.

I’ll just have to work long, hard hours . . .
 

Doing hard time for the crime, so to speak . . .
 

Oh my God, can you believe these puns? Only you know this disgusting, deliciously depraved side of me. Although I have a feeling poor Will is about to find out as well.

After all, a dirty mind is a terrible thing to waste, and mine has been a-wasting for years and years.

Chapter 23

Learn to kiss from her. Women are better kissers than men.

Women
love
to kiss. You can never overdo really good kissing.

Rather than just a prelude to sex, think of the great kiss as an end in and of itself.

—Sensual Secrets of a Sexual Surrogate

Lance picked Millie up at eight that evening at her home in Regency Square. She bounced out in a swathe of shimmering purples, blues and emerald greens that resolved itself into some kind of an African-style silk kaftan. She offered him her mouth, bit at his teasingly, and ducked out into the street. She hummed, and whirled like a happy child. She stopped, the silk settling slowly around her, and looked at him with solemn eyes. “Tell me it’s safe to be this happy, Will. I’m drunk on you . . . on us.”

He found himself grinning hugely. He picked her up off the ground and spun her around. He was kissing her ravenously. “If you’re not safe, then neither am I. I don’t want to be safe, Millie. I want to be out here, with you, on open ground.”
 

She smiled up at him, nodded, and kissed him back. “Come on then, Will, let’s go adventuring.” She took him to a tiny restaurant with frowning black-wood African masks staring down from the walls and colourful fabrics draped from the ceiling, not two blocks away from her house.
 

A tall black man with an even bigger smile swallowed Millie into a meaty hug. “Welcome, dear Millie.” He led them to the farthest corner of the restaurant, over which hung a latticework copper and glass lamp throwing tremulous patterns of colours and shadows onto a tiny table. He settled them in, folded his massive arms and waited solemnly.
 

“Gerard, this is my friend, Will. Will, Gerard. My dear, we are starving, and we’d love whatever you’ll be having for yourself. So, surprise us.”

Gerard’s smile widened impossibly. He nodded and vanished.
 

“I hope you like spicy, Will? This is a little different. It’s East African cuisine. Most people have never tried it. It’s a mixed bag of influences: Arab, Indian, North African, Portuguese, and of course, your more typical African food. People have been trading spices up and down that coast from the Nile Delta to Madagascar for thousands of years, and the result is amazing.”

“Sounds exotic, spicy,” Lance said as he grinned suggestively. “Spicy I just love, Miss Deafly!”

Gerard came back with a large woven basket of millet cakes and several small bowls with various sauces. He plonked it all down and rushed off to return with a huge jar of beer and glasses.

Millie tore a chunk off one of the coarse flat cakes—rather more like pancakes than bread—and dipped it into one of the sauces. She offered it to Lance, smiling, letting her fingers linger on his lips as he took it. It was delicious. Some kind of mix of green onion, mint, chilies, and coriander leaves.
 

He gripped her wrist and brought her hand back towards his mouth and carefully licked away a drop of sauce from the delicate tracery of veins at her wrist. She was laughing, shimmering in the lamp light, so perfect, so free.

They ate from each other’s fingertips, a spicy cashew nut sauce, some kind of a red chili mix, heavily flavoured with nutmeg and cloves, a hot banana curry, and mashed pumpkin leaves with sun-dried shrimp and ground peanuts. They licked every drop from palms, fingers and lips; tasting each other, drinking up the strong beer.

Gerard brought over a broad wooden platter filled with chunks of grilled beef, a wooden bowl containing something that looked a bit like a yellowy coarse purée, but turned out to be cornmeal, sliced green mangoes dusted with chili powder, and a thick red sauce of what looked to be mashed up tomatoes, garlic and even more chilies.

Millie showed him how to deftly roll the cornmeal up into small balls, dip them in the sauce and flip them into his mouth. She fished chunks of smoking beef on wincing fingers, cooling them with the mango and the sauce. She kissed him, leaving the taste of her tongue in his mouth. The bite of the spices and the sourness of the mango made her mouth taste even sweeter.
 

Lance felt lost. Her hands wove stories; her eyes sparkled at mysteries, leaning towards him, offering herself. “I’ve never felt so naked with anyone,” Lance said, flushing. “I love who I’ve become with you.”

Millie nodded, her hands embraced his. “I feel that, too, Will.” She giggled. “I’m just saying whatever comes into my mind, for the first time in my life. I hope I don’t shock you.”

“No, I’m not shocked. It seems natural. Right.”

“Will, tell me about you.”

“Me?”

“I told you my story. Tell me yours, tell me about that woman who hurt you.”

Lance hesitated, unsure. “Look, my mother wasn’t very . . . nurturing. You could say I was an investment of sorts. I was pretty much left to my own devices. So this woman, she was my best friend’s mum, my mother’s friend. She was kind and beautiful and fun. She talked to me, invited me to stay for dinner, lunch, included me in the family outings. She gave me the attention, the affection I didn’t get from my mother. I loved her. And then one day things changed.”

“Your first, Will?”

“Yes. First lover, first love. We were lovers for three years, and then she married my ex-stepfather.” Lance grinned painfully. “Sounds like a really bad soap, doesn’t it? Except for the pain—that wasn’t fictional. I still loved her. For years and years I loved her.”

“And then what happened?”

“Oh, there were a lot of women, Millie; a lot of failed experiments. Then for a long time I just . . . I chose to be alone. Then you happened.” He reached across the small table, cupping her round face in his hands, kissing her lips, murmuring her name into her opened mouth, savouring the tang of spices and the beer on her tongue.

Gerard returned too soon, bearing a coconut pudding of unparalleled creaminess and a bottle of marula liqueur. They lingered over the dessert, unwilling to finish and an end a perfect evening.

Dizzy on the marula, Millie called for the bill, settled it, then wove, Lance in tow, through the now crowded restaurant to the suddenly cold street. Their hands tangled, they walked aimlessly.
 

Outside her house, Lance stopped at the door. “I’m going home, babe. I can’t come in tonight.”