Holly and Her Naughty eReader (5 page)

I pulled the keys to my rental
out of my purse, as if they had the power to bring the car all the way across
town.

“I’m so sorry, Max,” I said. “I
didn’t mean to disrupt your Sunday with our antics.”

“No problem at all. I’m glad you
guys had fun.”

He spoke in a relaxed tone, as
if there was nothing awkward about being in the room with me, the girl he stood
up ten years ago. I followed his lead.

“Why weren’t you there?” I
asked.

“You mean at the reunion?” Max
said.

I nodded, realizing my question
could easily have meant
why weren’t you
at the ice skating rink that day
. Score one for me with the double
entendre.

“I probably should have gone,”
Max said. “It’s just…I got divorced not too long ago. It hasn’t been a friendly
split. My ex-wife and I shared a lot of the same friends, including a lot of
people who would have been at the reunion last night.”

“I understand,” I said.

A perfect silence fell upon us.
Then we were looking at each other and waiting. I got the feeling he had
something he wanted to say.
Say it, Max
,
I thought.
Tell me you’re sorry about
standing me up. I’ll tell you it’s okay. We’ll both feel better
.

“So anyway,” Max said. “You’re
welcome to stay. Vivian won’t work all day. I imagine she doesn’t feel any
better than you do.”

I sighed. Clearly Max didn’t
care about our missed date as much as I did. He probably didn’t even remember.

“Does she always work Sundays?”
I asked.

“Pretty much. Saturdays too.
Very competitive at her office.”

I shook my head. Who would have
thunk that crazy Moongirl would end up as a nose-to-the-grindstone attorney?

Before I left, I went back down
to Vivian’s basement, in large part to confirm that the place was real. I found
the room exactly as I remembered it. Weird, witchy decorations on the walls,
shelves of candles and herbs, and a tree stump in the middle with five candles
on it. The room smelled like the smoke that had made me so loopy the night
before. My Kindle laid face-down against the far wall. Feeling embarrassed
about my behavior the night before, I grabbed the Kindle and ran back upstairs.

My cab arrived at eleven. Max
opened the front door for me and said, “Bye now.”

“Bye.”

Have a nice life. Don’t forget to write. If you’re ever overtaken by
extraordinary guilt for what you did to me ten years ago, you should give me a
call and we’ll talk about it.

The cab driver took me to the
Sheraton, site of my reunion, and I found my rental car sitting alone at the
back of the lot. I drove to a nearby Walgreen’s and bought a gallon jug of
water and a bottle of Advil. Then I went back to my hotel.

I was staying at the Wyndam by
the airport. It was strange, to say the least, to come to Albuquerque and stay
at a hotel rather than the house I grew up in. A year before, my mom decided to
sell her house and move to my sister’s neighborhood in Toledo. My sister,
Emily, had a perfect life in a perfect house with three perfect children.
Unlike me, Emily hadn’t gotten bogged down in academics or career. She chose
the fast track to suburban bliss. She went to the gym twice a day, she never
ate more than 1400 calories, she spent most of her money on makeup, hair, and clothes,
and she snagged a dentist for a husband. Now she spends a few hours a week
coordinating things with the nanny, the maids, the handymen, and the
accountant, and the rest of her time screwing around.

With my mom and sister gone, with
our house sold, and my old friends having moved on with their lives, I really
didn’t have any roots left in Albuquerque. The trouble was, I didn’t have many
roots in Dallas either. What little I had put down got ripped from the earth
when I caught Derek in bed with a teenager.

I arrived at Room 552 and went
straight to the shower, where I tried to wash the stench from the night before
off my skin. From the perfume I had spritzed before the reunion to the
cigarette smoke at the bars to whatever weirdness happened at Vivian’s house, I
was a stinky mess, and I stayed in the shower for a good twenty minutes. When I
got out, I tied a towel around my hair, put on a robe, and hopped into bed.
Without a thought to what I was doing, so ingrained was the habit, I snatched
my Kindle out of my purse, forgetting that it was broken.

Or that I thought it was broken.

It wasn’t until I was on my back
with my legs under the covers, with the screen bright and clear and my finger
flipping through the carousel of books on the screen, that I remembered the
scene of a Kindle clattering on the airport floor and refusing to wake up.

“It’s fixed,” I whispered.

I reached down and pushed the
button on the bottom of the unit. In and out with ease, the screen going black
when I pushed the button the first time, waking up again when I pushed it the
second. The screens and the menus were all in order. My bookshelf was exactly
correct. The battery was full.

That last one was particularly
strange. Even before I dropped the Kindle, I could have sworn the battery was
half-empty.

“Huh,” I said, as my finger
swiped through the carousel until it landed on
Mane of the Werewolf
. Was I misremembering what happened at the
airport? Maybe the Kindle just needed some jostling around in my bag to fix
itself.

Then I remembered a strange
moment during Vivian’s trippy ritual when I tossed the Kindle across the
basement. Could it be that the first drop broke it, and the second drop fixed
it?

Whatever. A rare stroke of good
luck for me. I opened
Mane of the
Werewolf
and started reading right where I left off.

It was a frigid morning. Sula awoke to find herself huddled underneath
Blair’s arm and chest.

My brain must have been on
hyperdrive after that weird incense Vivian had burned the night before, because
I swear I could feel my own back pressed against the big, beefy chest of Blair
the werewolf.

His hand slid gently across her bosom and she touched his arm, ever so
gently, guiding it downward, encouraging his hand to explore her nether
regions.

It was on that line that I
completely lost myself in the story. No joke, some after-effects of Vivian’s
little smoke ceremony, perhaps combined with a night of drinking and a handful
of ibuprofen tablets…whatever it was, my brain didn’t just create a vivid
picture of the story I was reading. It put me inside it.

I was right there, lying on the
ground while Blair, the werewolf with the heart of gold, was pushing his hand
into my “nether regions.” I could feel the cool bed of grass under my cheek,
the hot, wet breath of Blair on my neck, and the strong touch of his hand as it
worked across my hip and into my panties.

Blair was in human form at the
moment, but I remembered how he was full-on wolf when we fell asleep. I
remembered not only because of having read it, but like it had really happened.
My memories of the story were as vivid as the story itself.

I was in it. I was Sula
Valkyrie, the heroine of
Mane of the
Werewolf
.

Blair’s fingers found their
destination and a “shiver of pleasure” went up my spine. Even though I was well
beyond the point of a passive observer reading the words, I felt them as they
happened. I knew the author had used the words “shiver of pleasure” because it
was exactly what I felt, and let me tell you, a shiver of pleasure is pretty
darn nice.

Then “Blair licked at my neck”
and I felt my own “carnal canine” awaken. We turned and pressed our lips
together. Blair used his tongue to “tease my mouth open wide” and I moaned like
“a salty bitch in heat.”

He pulled me close with inhuman strength and my breasts were crushed
against his sternum. Our hearts pounded in time. His hard cock burst forth and
reached out like a striking snake, and before I knew it, he was inside me, our
bodies writhing together as one, and I cried out in joyous pleasure as he
rocked me again and again until I howled like a dog in…

You get the picture. Suffice it
to say, I had a lot of fun that afternoon. After Blair took me on an hour-long
journey of animal sex, a shapeshifter appeared and stole me away to his cave
where he made me his sex slave until Blair retrieved the Amulet of Angoroth
from the Crystal Palace which he used to find me and free me and we almost got
away but the shapeshifter and his minions caught us and we all fought and Blair
sacrificed himself to set me free and he died in my arms THE END.

Suddenly I was back in my bed,
looking at my Kindle and listening to my phone buzz. I put down the Kindle and
reached for my phone. The screen told me it was my mother calling.

Confused, no…baffled…utterly
baffled about where I was and what had just happened, I answered the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hi Holly. Just checking to see
how things went last night,” my mother said.

“It was good,” I said.

“Oh, I’m so glad to hear. High
school reunions are so special. I remember the time I…”

As my mother recounted some
story from days gone by, I tried to orient myself. I was back in my room at the
Wyndham Hotel. I was in bed. This was the real world. My name was Holly
Pritchett, not Sula Valkyrie.
Mane of the
Werewolf
was a novel on my Kindle.

Clinging and beeping sounds
crept through the phone line as my mother spoke. It sounded like she was in a
video arcade.

“Where are you, Mom?” I said.

 
“Oh Holly, we’re at the casino! Emily took me
here for lunch and I’ve been playing the slots for an hour now. I’m up three
hundred dollars!”

Weird. I was in a hotel in
Albuquerque, apparently suffering from some sort of hallucination, and my mom
and sister were at a casino somewhere in Ohio. Once again the
what-am-I-doing-with-my-life
feelings
welled up inside me.

My mom decided to tell me all
about what she had for lunch at the buffet. “Salad and corn bread and stir fry
and lobster and prime rib and…” I waited patiently for her to finish all she
wanted to say, then I bid her a good afternoon and ended the call.

My head a bit more clear, I
looked back to my Kindle. The screen had gone blank. I pushed the button to
wake it up and was about to slide the yellow arrow when I wondered if I was up
for more. I had gotten so deep into that story—I completely lost myself as a
reader. I wasn’t seeing words or reading sentences; I was physically immersed
in the book. I was living as one of the characters!

My heart racing, I decided I
wasn’t ready for another out of body experience just yet. I put the Kindle down
and called Vivian.

“Hey, how are you?” Vivian
answered, speaking like an old friend who hadn’t heard from me in weeks.

“What was that incense we were
breathing last night?” I asked.

“Incense? You mean the mojo?”

“Mojo? What’s mojo?”

“Well, technically, it wasn’t
just mojo. It was my own special brew. A little mojo, a little mescaline, a
little wormwood, a lot of peyote…”

“Peyote? Vivian, that stuff
really messed me up!”

“Relax, Holly. I’ve been smoking
this brew for years. It’s all natural and completely safe. Plus, if your work
does drug testing like mine does, you’re in the clear. They don’t look for
anything I put in there.”

“I’m not worried about drug
testing, Viv.”

“Then what’s the problem? I
don’t know how much you remember, but you were pretty darn funny last night
when you were high. I think you had a good time”

“I’m sure I did,” I said. “But
that’s just it. I think I might still be high.”

“Lucky you. I’ve never had a
high last longer than a few hours with that brew.”

“Vivian, I was just reading a
book on my Kindle, and I had this crazy hallucination that I was inside it.”

“I thought your Kindle was
broken,” Vivian said.

“Turns out it’s fine,” I said. “And
when I got home this afternoon I started reading the same book I had read on
the plane, and…I don’t know. It was so weird. It was like I left the real world
and entered the book.”

“What book is this?”

“It’s called Mane of the…you
know, I don’t think it was the book. There was nothing special about the book.
I started reading it earlier in the week. It’s just paranormal erotic
boilerplate.”

“Paranormal erotic boilerplate?
You’re a real book snob, aren’t you?”

“I’m being serious, Viv! I had
this crazy hallucination while I was reading.”

“Was it a good hallucination or
a bad one?”

That question was easy. Thinking
about Blair’s sinewy body rubbing up against mine, the faint smell of wet dog,
the perfect length and girth of--

“It was a good hallucination,” I
said.

“Sounds like you should be
happy,” said Vivian. “You should read some more before it goes away. I’ve never
had something like this happen with my brew. I’m kind of jealous. So you were
like…in the story?”

“Completely inside it. I turned
into the narrator.”

“Like some Neverending Story for
grown-ups?” Vivian said.

“Something like that, yes.”

“Wicked. Did you know Moongirl
is the name Sebastian shouts out the window at the end of that movie? You can’t
really hear it, but that’s what he says. My nickname saved Fantasia.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Forget it. I wonder if there
was something different in that batch we burned last night. I did use Miracle
Grow on one of those plants. You know, if you’ll excuse me, I think I should go
home and smoke, then I’ll try reading a book to see what happens. I know just
the book to try. I’ll tell you tomorrow if anything exciting happens. In the
meantime, maybe you should go find another book to read before the party’s
over.”