London Broil (16 page)

"Dark chocolate,
moist texture, and... oh! red chili pepper. Let me have another
of those."

"All right, but
you'll have to earn the next one. Now, what's this? Nuances of
oyster shell, chlorophyll, menthol, white flowers, quinine and
pineapple. A pure finish, which... mounts inexorably, and then
lingers for a minute or more."

"Oyster shell.
That has to be a Chablis," he said confidently. "A very
suggestive Chablis. Are you making these up?"

"Of course not.
It's the 2008 Domaine François Raveneau Chablis Clos. Hmm. I can
see that if I'm ever going to get you naked, I'll have to move
to the Advanced level. Meanwhile, here's another bite of cake,
and I'm going to hold a shot glass to your lips." She gave him a
sip of single malt scotch.

"Talisker," he
said triumphantly. "I'm waiting for the dirty talk. You can
start any time now."

"That's a lot of
sass from someone who's forgetting he's my student. The scotch
was a reward, not a test question," she said with asperity.
"Item number three: Very aromatic bouquet of small ripe red
fruits: cherry, raspberry, currant." She lingered over the next
sentence: "Beautiful flesh in the mouth... a delicious union of
mingled tannins and fruits."

He had to think
about this one. "Beaujolais," he finally said.

"A noble effort,"
she replied, "but I'm afraid it's Pinot Noir, the
Bouchard Père & Fils
Reserve 2008. Now take your shirt off. Not too fast. I want to
enjoy this." He was wearing chinos and one of his short
sleeved cotton shirts, this time in a small red check pattern.
He unbuttoned it and pulled it from the waist of his trousers
(not belted, she noticed with satisfaction), and held it out.

"I'll just fold this up for
you. Did you bring a clean shirt in your gym bag for tomorrow?
Good," she said briskly. "Item number four: Creamy, rich,
opulent and sophisticated. Oozes flavors of espresso, ripe
cherry, cola and licorice. Extraordinarily generous in the
mouth with a finish counted in long minutes."

"A well-aged Barolo?" he
asked. "Yes," she said, impressed. "It's the Sandrone 2004
Cannubi Boschis. James... do you have any idea how sexy you
look with that silk blindfold, and no shirt, and that
promising bulge in your trousers? Oh yes, that's right where
I'm looking now, and I'm thinking about what we're going to do
later."

"We could move straight to
the main festivities," he said hopefully.

"Oh no. You have to finish
your test. This one's a bit different. Item number five:
Chocolate notes and pepper flavor with a deep, full-bodied
earthiness, giving way to creamy espresso on the finish."

He shook his head
doubtfully. "Cabernet Sauvignon?"

"No, it's a cigar," she
answered. "Hah!"

"That's a trick question. I
want to appeal my mark."

"I said we'd start with
wine, remember? I never said they'd all be wines. Now, take
your trousers off."

"What about my socks? Don't
they count?"

"I suppose so, but they
count as one item." She waited while he dutifully peeled them
off. "Now, then: what kind of a cigar do you think that was?"

"Hmm. You said it was deep
and full bodied and chocolatey, so I'm guessing a maduro. How
long was it?" She checked a printed page from the cigar
website. "This stick is seven inches long and has minimal
veins and a smooth, satiny wrapper."

"If it's that big, then a
Churchill?"

"You are so right. It's
something called a Gurkha Special Ops Maduro Churchill.
James... do you know what it reminds me of? A certain part of
you that I want to taste. In fact, just reading that
description has made me so hot that I've pulled my top off.
And I'm touching my breasts right now. Can you picture that?
I'm crossing my arms over my chest to squeeze them together...
and I'm pinching my nipples very gently. They're getting hard
now."

James groaned softly. She
could see his hands reflexively closing and then opening, like
the paws of a cat kneading its bedding.

"The next item tests your
applied knowledge. Taste from this shotglass." She held it to
his lips. "No, keep your hands at your sides. You promised,
remember?"

"It's another scotch, a
blended one, with a hint of peat and smoke. Uhh, Loch Lomond?
A wild guess," he said.

"No, Mr. Whelan, it's
Irish."

"Coonemara! Damn. You had to
pick the one Irish whiskey that tastes of peat."

"Drop your trousers,
Whelan." He stood up and unzipped his chinos, revealing a pair
of black boxer briefs, along with a sizable erection. "You do
know that you're going to pay for this later?" he said in a
soft voice that caused a warm tendril of delight to expand
inside her.

"All right. This
is your last question. I'm going to climb into your lap now, but
don't move." She settled herself, facing him and pressing up
against his erection, then lifting herself with her thigh
muscles. "Open your mouth." And cupping her left breast, she
lifted it slightly and brought the nipple, covered with chestnut
honey, to his lips. He suckled it, making a sound deep in his
throat, and the firm tugging on her nipple caused her to grip
his shoulders and tilt her head back in pleasure. "Oooh," she
moaned.

Suddenly he
reached up and ripped off the blindfold. The renewed contact of
their eyes felt electric. "Professor Livingston, did I pass?" he
said, running his hands from her buttocks up her bare back. His
hands were always so warm.

"There were
eight questions," she said. "Stop touching me there, I can't
think straight. You had four right and three wrong and you
didn't answer the last. What was the last flavor?"

"Chestnut honey
à la Livingston," he said, bringing her face down to his and
kissing her so that she could taste the remnants of honey and
whiskey on his lips. He leaned forward, still holding her on his
lap, and picked up the bottle of Coonemara on the tray and one
of the shotglasses.

"You performed
very respectably," she said. "I recommend postgraduate study.
But you didn't fulfill my fantasy. I wanted to see you
blindfolded and completely naked."

"Drink this all
at once," he said, pouring a half a shot. She downed the
contents of the glass, coughing slightly at the afterburn.

20.
The
Superiority of Venchi Gianduja

"Do you know why
I brought the gianduja?" he asked, when she'd finished the
whiskey. "Is that why you put it in hot water when I arrived?"
She nodded, and they slowly disentangled themselves until they
were standing, then went over to the kitchen where the jar was
waiting in its warm bath. "The first time you open it, you have
to stir it," he said.

"Oh, like good
peanut butter. I rarely see that here. Don't you like it?"

"Until recently
it was strictly for Yanks, but that's changed in the past few
years," he said. "I don't quite know what to do with it."

"Ooooh. Grilled
peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Elvis' favorite. You'd love
them," she said, feeling the impact of the whiskey.

She used a stray
chopstick to mix the gianduja to a smooth consistency and set it
onto a plate, which she carried carefully into the bedroom and
placed on the bed, while he followed with the whiskey bottle. "I
can read your mind," she said. "You're cringing at the thought
of chocolate staining the bedding. In fact, what you'd really
like to do is throw down a waterproof tarpaulin over the entire
bedroom. I'm going to pull off the duvet. And as for the sheets,
they're cheap scratchy ones that I bought when I found that
Celia didn't leave me any. Heaven knows what she did with her
sheets. Maybe they were 700 thread count and she couldn't bear
to leave them behind."

He didn't
answer, but put his finger in the warm chocolate, and pulling
back her hair, drew the finger all the way down the side of her
neck. He bent to taste the chocolate, working his way from her
ear down to her shoulder. The feel of his lips and tongue made
her leg muscles rubbery. He steadied her in his arms, and
tugging at her stretch pants said, "Take these off." She pulled
them down along with her black panties and left them on the
floor. He laid her crosswise on the bed and dipped two fingers
in the gianduja, trailing them along her thighs. "Open your legs
and raise your knees. I'm going to lick this off your thigh," he
said. She followed his instructions, and felt his warm tongue
moving rhythmically on her flesh. "You're not relaxed enough
yet," he said, handing her the bottle. "Take a good swig." She
took a second generous mouthful of the whiskey straight from the
bottle and handed it back to him. He set it on the nightstand
and then settled himself over the length of her, supporting his
weight with his elbows and forearms. "So you like to feel me on
you?" he said. "I'm fourteen stone. That's not too heavy for
you?" and he let his chest press down on hers while he levered
his pelvis against her.

This was
incredible. "Gods, James," she panted against his shoulder,
trying to lift her hips against his, "for gods' sake, fuck me
now."

"Oh no. I have
something to teach
you
now. Put this beneath your bum." He slipped a pillow under her.
"Now put your hands on my head." She tangled her fingers in his
hair and felt his hot breath moving to her breasts, along her
belly, and downward to the inside of her thighs. His hands
gently spread her legs wider, wider, and then his open mouth
covered the most intimate parts of her, licking, sucking, wet,
and warm. As the critical moment approached, she pressed her
fingers into his scalp and he increased the pace until she
crested in an exquisite few seconds. While the lesser tremors
were still coursing through her, she rolled off the pillow onto
her side and kissed him, tasting herself on his lips. Not fishy,
she thought. Not unpleasant.

"What do I taste
like to you?" she asked.

He gazed up at
the ceiling, considering his answer. "A wine, I think. There are
some Moscato d'Asti wines that have a sweet smell but are on the
dry side, and they have more complex flavors than you expect. A
hint of musk. Though you also have umami. That's why I still say
you're like the crispy edges of fat on a good steak."

Shaking her
head, she pushed him flat onto his back and helped him pull off
his briefs. His penis strained up from the nest of dark hair and
his balls, fragile like two quail eggs, lay beneath. She grasped
him, savoring the velvety, soft feel of his skin, and dipped her
finger in the gianduja, anointing the head of his penis with a
generous dollop of the dark, rich confection. Then she
tentatively tasted it with the tip of her tongue. Why, there was
no comparison with Nutella. This had a much stronger hazelnut
component, and the chocolate flavor was far more robust. In a
word, delicious. She took him into her mouth, sucking him like a
lollipop. She could hear him moaning softly. Finally he said,
"Laura. Ride me." His hands pulled her up by the shoulders and
moved to her hips.

She felt
completely uninhibited now. She straddled him so that she could
feel him pushing at the lips of her vagina, and then impaled
herself on his hardness in one smooth motion, causing him to
gasp. "Christ, Laura!" She pressed two of his fingers into the
jar of warm gianduja, and then leaned forward over him, sucking
the sweetness from his fingers while moving herself up and down,
up and down over him. She looked into his eyes as his right hand
reached up to caress her left breast. But after only a few more
strokes, he lifted her off, and before she knew it, he had
flipped her underneath him. He parted her legs with his knee,
then surged into her. She felt his climax approaching, as he
changed the angle of his pelvis and his strokes became shorter
and sharper. She wondered whether it was possible for sex to be
any better than this.

Afterward, James
said, "You should drink a big glass of water before you go to
sleep." She agreed. "Hangover prevention. Want one?"

"No, I'm
fourteen stone, remember? What are you, nine?"

"I've no idea.
But I take your point: you can enjoy a lot more to drink than I
can without suffering the consequences."

They filled the
bathtub with hot water and took turns soaping each other with
her buttermilk soap. Then she lay back against his chest and he
put his arms around her. The water was still pleasantly warm.

"Laura," he said
hesitantly, "when we were talking about fantasies earlier, about
rape, I heard a note in your voice at one point that made me
wonder. Has anyone ever hurt you that way?"

She was silent
for a few moments, holding her water glass, and then said, "Yes.
As you said, it's not that unusual. I wouldn't be surprised if
half the girls I knew in college had been abused in some way. My
friend Cecily had a stepfather who used to come into her bedroom
at night and touch her when he thought she was asleep. And
Juniper was raped by one of her cousins."