Holly and Her Naughty eReader (17 page)

“We are. Courtside seats,” he
said. He pulled two tickets off the console and handed me one. Who was this
man? I screamed, bobbing up and down in the seat.

“Max, I’m a huge fan! Did you
know? But how could you? We never talked about this?”

“I know plenty about you, Holly,
and I know this will make you happy. I want to make you happy.”

“I can’t believe this!” I
squealed.

We parked and started the long
trek to the stadium. I was jumping and skipping and hanging on to the tickets
like they might disappear if I wasn’t careful enough. Max smiled and laughed at
my antics, and then he did it again. He grabbed my hand, and pulled me close
for a kiss. We were in line to enter the stadium. I wanted this memory burned
into my brain for all my life. This sexy, generous man, kissing me outside
Pepsi Center. Surely I was dreaming.

He pulled back before the kiss
intensified and leaned to whisper in my ear. “There’ll be more of that later,
but now, it’s time for LeBron.” I gave him my megawatt smile, kissing his
knuckles interlaced with my own.

“Thank you, Max, thank you so
much. You don’t even know….”

“I would do anything to make you
smile like that. I’m glad you’re happy. Come on, let’s go get some gear.”

After spending a small fortune
on me at the pro shop, we headed to our seats. Despite my loyalty to Lebron, on
this night, with my souvenirs coming from the pro shop at the Pepsi Center, I
had to dress like a Nuggets fan, and I didn’t care. I found an old school Alex
English jersey and held it up for Max to see.

“How funny!” Max said. “You’re
an English teacher, and now you’ll have a jersey that says English.”

“Isn’t it perfect?” I said. “It
doesn’t hurt that he’s also the greatest Nugget of all-time. Look how cool
their uniforms used to be. I loved watching the Nuggets when I was a kid
because they were dressed like rainbows.”

I came out of the pro shop wearing
a foam finger and a baseball cap in addition to my new jersey.

“Is it too much?” I said.
“Wearing it all at once?”

Max shook his head and kissed me
on the cheek. “It’s perfect. Just like you.”

Our courtside seats were unreal.
I had never been this close before. I could hear every squeak of the sneakers
on the wood and every pant from the players as they hustled the ball down the
court. Max bought me a hot dog, a beer and an ice cream. He held my hand,
kissed my cheek and behaved like the most perfect guy I’d ever met.

The Nuggets eeked out a 3-point
win in the final seconds, tying the series at a game a pace. The crowd went
nuts on the final shot. With chaos all around, people giving each other five
and hugging and having more fun than people were meant to have, I jumped into
Max’s arms screaming with joy. He held me in the air, his hands tight around me
and lowered me slowly to the floor, still anchoring my body to his. When my
feet hit the floor, he took off my hat and put his hand in my hair at the nape
of my neck.

That was the scene for our first
real kiss. Our first kiss with heat and passion. Fifty-thousand screaming fans
all around us, but we might as well have been all alone. I felt myself melt
into him, kissing him in ways that weren’t suitable for public. I was lost in
him, in this moment, in the excitement and surprise of it all.

“We should probably take this
elsewhere,” he said as a guy behind us whooped at our public display.

“Uh huh.” That was all I could
manage. I was pretty sure I’d do anything he told me at this point.

We made it back to the car and
pulled into the long line waiting to exit the stadium. My hand found its way to
his thigh, rubbing up and down, trying not to go too high. He looked at me,
smirking, and put his free hand on my thigh, mimicking my motions.

“We’ll never make it out of the
parking lot,” he said quietly as we inched forward a few feet.

“Max, what is this?” I asked,
suddenly wanting some guidance, some idea of what was going on between us.

“We are meant to be, Holly. We
always were.” He squeezed my thigh lightly as he spoke, his hands burning
through the denim of my jeans. “We should get a room tonight.”

He said it so casually, like
what was happening between us wasn’t a big deal at all.

“That sounds good,” I said,
surprising myself at my willingness to take this, whatever this was, to the
next level. I had never been impulsive in relationships in the past, and I had
never just gone for what I wanted. I was tired of being good, patient, and
alone. I wanted to stay with Max. Even if what we had never survived outside
the confines of our strange road trip, I wanted the experience. I wanted him.

He took me to the Marriott. We
walked hand in hand into the lobby and got a room, just one, for one night. The
attendant handed Max the key card and he grabbed our bags and headed to the
elevator. I was suddenly struck by what was going on. I wasn’t unsure, just
surprised by how quickly this had progressed. I wasn’t drunk, but I felt
lightheaded and queasy, in the best possible way. I was seated atop the hill on
the roller coaster, about to take the plunge.

“You okay?” Max asked looking
back at me from the elevator bank.

“Yeah, I’m good.”

Chapter 18

Turns out our ‘room’ was the
luxury suite on the top floor of the hotel, with an extra-large bedroom, a
living area, a Jacuzzi, and an office.

Not that I saw any of that at
first. For Max and me, it was straight to the king-sized bed, where he was
amazing.

And strangely familiar.

I tried not to read too much
into it at first, but everything he did in the bedroom reminded me of someone
else. Of someone….fictional.

First, there was his declaration
during foreplay.

“I want to make love to you. I
want to be inside you now.”

He said that to me while we were
frantically kissing and pulling off our clothes. Not a terribly strange thing
to say considering the circumstances, but I’m pretty certain Christoph used the
exact same words the first time he had sex with Annabelle.

Second, there was an awful lot
of biting. Earlobes, lips, nipples—Max’s teeth found their way to every loose
piece of skin, and when he bit, he bit hard, just like Christoph.

Third, there was the frenetic
routine. Kissing, biting, moaning, he’s in, he’s out, his face is between my
legs, he’s up again, he’s on top of me—this too was like Christoph, who was a
master at teasing out the orgasm, staying in one position just long enough to
hint at what was coming, then moving along and engaging a whole new group of
nerve endings.

What was happening? Had Max read
the book? Did he know I was a fan?

Not that it was a good time to
ask. Max had me on my back, then on my front, then upside down. We did it on
the bed, on the table, up against the wall, and on the floor. And although he never
brought out the magical volcanic explosion of ecstasy that Christoph got from
Annabelle, I have to say, for someone confined by the rules of the real world,
Max was pretty good. Good enough to make me forget how strange it was that he
made love just like my favorite fictional character.

That is, until we were finished,
and he said, “Oh my sweet darling. Where shall I take you next?”

I sat up in bed. “Max,” I said,
“have you been reading His Golden Shackles?”

His face was blank of any
expression. “I’m sorry, what?” he said.

“The book, His Golden Shackles.
After the main characters have sex the first time, that’s exactly what
Christoph says to Annabelle. ‘Where shall I take you next?’ You even said it
with a hint of a Hungarian accent.”

The blank look on his face
remained for half a second, then he smiled.

“Did you enjoy yourself?” he
said.

“Max, please tell me you didn’t
read His Golden Shackles on my Kindle,” I said, feeling my heart beat faster
with fear. Before Vivian disappeared, she and Max had been together in the same
house with my Kindle. If Max had read it, and now he was behaving like this…

“Holly, I don’t know what you’re
talking about. Besides, this isn’t the time for talking anyway. Lie back with
me.”

He wrapped his arms around me
and pulled me down to the bed. The smell of him, the smell of sex on both of
us—it took me away. Even as my mind wanted to continue thinking about how
strange it was that Max was doing his best impersonation of Christoph Green, my
body wanted to sleep. I felt all soft and smooshy. I was so deeply relaxed
after that monster orgasm I couldn’t think clearly. I mean…I was actually
beginning to think that Max had gotten into my Kindle and somehow the magic
inside was responsible for what was happening between us. What a ridiculous
thought. That’s the sort of nonsense you think when you’re tired. I just needed
to rest. Yeah, that’s it. Rest.

I nuzzled my body up against
Max, and fell asleep.

Chapter 19

I dreamed that I was in my
classroom, giving a lecture to adult versions of my former students.

I paced in front of them,
waiting for the class to quiet down, then I went to the board and wrote
Literary Archetypes
in big letters.

“Someone give me an example of a
literary archetype please,” I said.

“The hero,” said Sam Romero, who
was a cute little gay kid when I taught him two years ago. In my dream, he had
grown into a cute little gay man with a bushy beard.

“The tragic hero,” added Penny
Lawson. Penny had been in the first 12
^th
grade English class I ever
taught. Last I heard she was a mother of three now. God I’m old.

“Yes, yes, very good,” I said.
“Give me more.”

The class started belting them
out.

“The warrior.”

“The prince.”

“The damsel in distress.”

“The fair maiden.”

“Romeo and Juliet.”

That last one came from Tom
Baker. I looked at him and nodded.

“Yes, Romeo and Juliet turned
the ill-fated lovers into an archetype no doubt,” I said.

“Gandalf,” said Jessica
Stratton.

“Gandalf is a case of a
character based on an archetype,” I said. “The archetype in this case is
Merlin. From the archetype of Merlin, the mentoring wizard with a long white
beard, we get both Gandalf and Dumbledore.”

Nods and murmurs of agreement
pass among the class.

Feeling like the class was
sufficiently warmed up, I turned back to the board and wrote three names.

Bella, Jacob, and Edward.

“What do you think?” I said,
pointing back at the names. “Three paragons of the paranormal. Could they be
archetypes?”

Silence as they pondered my
question.

“They embody some classic
archetypes,” said Penny. “Jacob is the warrior. Edward is the hero, or maybe
the anti-hero. I don’t know.”

“Yes, but I think they are much
more than that,” I said. “Or at least, they have become much more than that.
Students, I propose to you now that Bella, Edward, and Jacob have become so
much a part of contemporary literary culture that they are archetypes of their
own. Let me ask you something. Have any of you ever written fan fiction?”

Samantha Greer raised her hand.

“Any of you downloaded a
paranormal romance from Amazon in the past two years?” I asked.

Now most of the hands in the
class went up. Honestly, if this were reality, none of the guys, save Sam
Romero, would have raised their hands, but it was my dream, and in my dream,
the guys like a steamy werewolf novel as much as the girls.

“What about something from the
erotica section?” I said.

Giggles from the classroom. They
were grown-ups now, but not so grown-up they would admit to reading porn.

“Don’t lie. I know you’ve done
it,” I continued. “You bought a Kindle, completely unaware that Amazon is in
the porn business just like everyone else on the Internet. You thought you were
gonna find some cool books about vampires but you ended up reading about magic
Ben Wa balls.”

The phrase gave me a little
tickle in my loins as I remembered a special spanking session with Christoph.

“Relax, I’m not up here to judge
you,” I said. “I’m here to make you think. Are there any archetypes that have
made their way into your erotica?”

A beat, then Penny answered,
“Bella, Jacob, and Edward.”

“Precisely,” I said. “Bella, Jacob
and Edward are everywhere. Most of the erotica authors cut their teeth in dirty
fan fiction. They played around with Draco and Harry slash when they were
teens, and got serious in their twenties with Bella, Jacob, and Edward. The big
three from Twilight loomed so large in the minds of today’s crop of erotica
writers that they show up in the stories without the authors even realizing it.
Just look around in the stories you’re reading. Is there a beautiful young man
whose past is so foreign to the girl as to be exotic? Is there a plain,
unassuming girl who begins the story as a fish out of water? Is there a
gorgeous best friend who only wants what’s best for the girl, who openly loves
her even as she chooses someone else?”

“I don’t know, is there?” came a
voice from the back row. It was a familiar voice, but it wasn’t one of my
students. I looked up to see Taylor Lautner in all his beauty, standing in the
back. He was wearing pants but no shirt.

Yum.

“What are you doing here?” I
asked.

“I’m playing my role,” Taylor
said. “I am the Jacob archetype in your story.”

A loud thud from the other side
of the classroom. A shirtless Taylor Lautner was too much for Jessica Stratton
and she passed out on her desk.

“My story?” I said. “What story
is that?”

“We all play a story,” said
Taylor. “And right now, your story needs a Jacob.”

“Does it now?” I said.

Taylor walked to the front of
the room.