Paranormal Erotic Romance Box Set (53 page)

“Governor’s Ball at the Museum Of Modern Art. Our invitation
is in there,” Luca said and pointed at Lena’s clutch bag.

“Ah, fancy,” Lena said as she pulled the invitation from
her purse. “Is there a plan or will we just go where the wind takes us?”

“Of course there is a plan,” Luca said as he pulled a piece
of paper from his jacket pocket. “There is always a plan. So listen carefully,
we have little time before we arrive.”

Lena looked out the window and stared at the dusky sky as
Luca explained the plan.

They were Paul and Katy Kirschner and they were
conservative, family-values advocates whose public personas were strikingly
different from their private lives.

Attorney Paul Kirschner was thirty-five-years-old and from
Nebraska. He was deposited in the big city after finishing law school as a
prosecutor with the New York State Attorney General’s Office. He was assigned
to the Public Integrity Bureau as a lead special prosecutor. He was chosen, in
part, because his angelic and boyish good looks imparted a certain personality
to the theme the office was going for.

Paul was a rigid and dogged prosecutor, rarely backing
down and winning most of his cases. As a prosecutor, it was his job within his
department to litigate cases of corruption or fraud carried out by public employees
of government or private people acting in association of those deemed “the
people’s employees.” His favorite thing to do however, was research.

He was admonished a few times by his superiors for digging
into the private lives of government employees even if his snooping led to
prosecutorial cases within the Attorney General’s office. It simply wasn’t his
job to sniff out information; Paul Kirschner was not an investigator. However,
he dismissed the warnings of his superiors because Paul Kirschner fully
believed that it was his job to ferret out the disgusting mongrels and instill
morality and piety to homes across the land.

The joke of Paul Kirschner was on the public, and most of
all, his wife Katy who believed everything her husband told her. Paul Kirschner
was the most immoral of all moralists ever to don a Brooks Brother’s suit.

He found early on that his rugby-player good looks and his
charming manner gained him access to places many rational people would not
allow strangers: their children.

Paul Kirschner kept a nice collection of pictures of teen-age
girls and boys on his private phone. A phone he used frequently to gain access
to the most discrete escort services in New York. He had a definite flavor of
escort he ordered: young and innocent-looking. The girls would have to be clean
of makeup and pony-tailed; their vaginas would also have to be shaved or waxed completely.
If, on a particularly naughty night, he felt like the company of a boy, he
would order them similarly: young, fresh-faced and without pubic hair.

Spare the rod, spoil the child was Paul Kirschner’s
favorite motto in the bedroom. So much so, that he frequently had to employ new
recruits for his twisted games as the old ones refused to work with him any
longer.

Katy Kirschner pretended she had no clue what her husband
was up to in his spare time. She preferred to stuff down the niggling notion
that there was something amiss in the land of her husband so as not to spoil
the perfect world she created in her mind. Katy spent the majority of her day
trying to figure out how
not
to anger her husband.

She sat for hours in the arm chair by the window
overlooking Central Park and created lists in her head of things to do and say
that were safe around Paul. Her goal was to endear him, but she knew, in that
last compartment in her brain, a box that became ever smaller as her years with
Paul wore on, the absolute truth. Paul never married her because he loved her.
Katy knew that her wholesome prettiness, Aryan looks and impeccable breeding,
was the perfect front for Paul.

She longed for the girlfriends she had in high school, the
kind where she could discuss anything with, instead of the Park Avenue
acquaintances she had now who only seemed to want to discuss other people’s
problems. She would like to ask somebody, anyone really, what it meant that Paul
only made love to her once per week and would only do so if she was flat on her
stomach while he entered her roughly from behind. She finally got up the nerve
to ask him one day during breakfast, after rehearsing her monolog for weeks.

“Darling, I want to ask you about sex,” Katy said as she
poured Paul’s coffee.

“Sex? What about it?” Paul said and sighed.

He was more interested in the advertisement he was staring
at in the personals about a new S&M club opening than what his twit of a
wife was yammering about.

“Paul, please,” Katy said and pulled his newspaper down to
expose his face. “I think we have a real problem.”

“Problem?” Paul said. “What are you going on about now?”

Paul yanked the paper out of Katy’s hand and threw it to
the ground.

“First of all, I don’t think it’s particularly normal that
we only make love once a week,” Katy said and looked down, unable to hold Paul’s
angry stare.

“Once a week
is
normal!” Paul snapped. “What else?
Come on, spit it out, I need to get to work.”

“Well, it’s the way we make love,” Katy said. “I’d like to
look at your face. Wouldn’t you like to see my face while we do it?”

“Katy, we know what one another looks like. If you’d
rather not make love any longer, a mean, if once a week takes too much out of
your schedule, let me know now and we can work something out!” Paul said and
stood up and threw his napkin on the table.

“No, Paul, that’s not what I’m saying,” Katy said and
grabbed his arm.

“That’s just one of the problems, Katy,” Paul said as he
yanked his arm from Katy’s grip. “You never know what you’re saying. Do you
realize that there are people out there with problems?
Real
problems,
Katy. Concrete problems that they are infected with, not shit they conjure up
in their pathological minds just to irritate their husbands!”

“I’m saying I want to make love to you more, not less.
It’s not that I don’t have enough time, darling. I have more than enough time
and want you more,” Katy said as she dug her fingers into Paul’s arm.

Paul looked down at Katy’s hand and grimaced. He balled
his hands into fists and wanted nothing more than to punch her in her pretty,
whiney face. But he knew that he’d never get away with it so he vowed to order
an especially submissive hooker with a magnificently high pain threshold that
day so he could unleash his rage.

“That’s a problem too,” Paul said through clenched teeth
as he stared at Katy’s hand. “You have much too much time on your hands, Katy.
You know the other wives at least attempt to volunteer. You...what is it that
you do all day? You’re certainly not busy taking cooking classes. And, Katy, if
you don’t remove your hand from my arm right now, you are going to be very
sorry.”

Katy released Paul’s arm and he looked down at her and smiled.
She admonished herself for not following her script. She shouldn’t have touched
him while she was begging him to touch her.

“Paul,” Katy said as she backed away from him, “I just
want to find out...I mean, don’t you want to look at me? I know I’d like to
look in your eyes some time while we make love.”

“Katy look, I have to get to work. Nothing is wrong. In
fact, the ball is in your court. If you don’t like the way we make love, then
we don’t have to make love any longer. It’s simple. Now, we have the Governor’s
Ball tonight. Be ready to go by seven o’clock. I will get ready at the club.”

“Paul, please!” Katy said to his back as he walked out of
the dining room.

Katy threw herself down on the dining room floor and
cried.

“My voice got too shrilly,” she said as she punched
herself in her thigh. “My voice always gets too shrilly. I shouldn’t have said
anything. I should have waited until I practiced more.”

“Mrs. Kirschner?” a woman said. “Did you fall down?”

Katy swung around to find Rose, their maid, standing
behind her.

“No, Rose,” Katy said as she swiped at the tears running
down her face and turned her back, “I did not fall. Please, just leave me
alone.”

Katy hated Rose in that way women hate other women they
wish they were. Katy envied Rose’s freedom to be whomever she wanted. Rose was
a young, beautiful Puerto Rican girl unencumbered by societal rules and
facades. Katy observed Paul staring at Rose when he felt no one was watching.

Katy twisted back around and looked up at the stunning
Rose with her wild, curly hair that always looked perfect and mocha-colored,
smooth skin that always glowed.

Katy recalled an argument Paul and she had weeks ago when
Katy told Paul that Rose was too familiar with them and that she needed to
learn her place.

“Why, just last week,” Katy said to Paul that evening
before bed, “she said me that she was told, by
you
, that she no longer
had to wash the transom windows in the apartment. Well, I told her that you
would never say such a thing and to get to work. She actually had a bit of a
snit and pouted!”

“I did tell her she no longer had to wash the transom
windows. We can hire someone for that,” Paul said and snapped his paper, which
usually indicated a conversation was over.

“But we do hire someone for that, darling,” Katy said. “We
hire Rose for that.”

“Well, we no longer hire Rose for that. Actually, since I
pay for Rose, I hired her and I am telling you to find someone else to do that.
Perhaps a real window washing company? I will not have our domestic falling off
a ten-foot ladder because you are too lazy to open a fucking phone book and
hire a professional. Good night!”

Katy remembered the rage she felt that Paul would be so
nasty to her while caring about a stranger.

Perhaps Rose
was
the problem, Katy thought as she
scratched at the parquet floor in the dining room.

“Rose, are you fucking my husband?” Katy said under her
breath.

“
Que
?” Rose said as she walked toward Katy. “I did
not understand.”

“Are you,” Katy said as she stood from the floor and tried
to raise her head higher than Rose’s, “
fucking
my husband?”

Katy felt intense anger as Rose’s face contorted in confusion.
Katy believed Rose was mocking her.

“
Que
?” Rose said again.

“
Que
?
Que
?” Katy mimicked as her voice amped
straight to shrill. “Is that all you can say? You sound like a fucking parrot!
Oh, I’m sorry,
papagayo
!”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Kirschner,” Rose said as her voice shook,
“I do not understand.”

“Yes, I get that!” Katy said as she walked past Rose and entered
the hallway. “And go wash a fucking window or something!”

Katy ran upstairs and stood in front of his door, the room
she dared not enter: Paul’s office.

She was sure she would find it locked, absolutely positive.
Anyone, Rose included, was forbidden from entering Paul’s office. Katy was
startled when the door knob turned freely and she opened the door to his
domain.

Paul’s desk was the embodiment of Paul: hard, cold and
powerful. He had the ornate mahogany piece shipped from Italy and it took seven
men to move it to its place in his office.

Katy ran her fingertips across the edge of the desktop as
she stared at Paul’s smooth, brown leather chair sitting behind his desk. Katy
realized that the desk, despite the fact that no one was allowed to enter the
office, was free from any dust or clutter. Paul’s entire office, in fact, was
spotless.

“He cleans in here,” Katy said as she looked around the
room. “The man who won’t lift a finger to help me, dusts.”

Katy’s heart pounded as she pictured herself taking an axe
to the desk.

She walked around his desk and sat in his chair. She
rested her head back against the cool leather and inhaled. The chair, like the
room itself, smelled of Paul’s cologne. She put her hands on the copper pulls
on the middle drawer and waited to be electrocuted.

She was sure the entire room was booby-trapped. But she
didn’t care. She wanted to die.

The drawer opened as easily as the office door and she
clamped her eyes shut and tried to calm her breath. She peeked down behind her
half-closed lids as she held her breath and looked into the drawer.

And she saw...regular desk stuff. She had never been so
happy to see pens, pencils and tape in her life.

“Silly,” she said as she pushed some of the pens around in
the bottom of the drawer.

But her relief was short-lived. She knew there was
something to be found.

Katy walked the tightrope between fooling herself into
thinking she had the best of Paul to imagining the absolute worst all day,
every day for three years since she and Paul moved to Manhattan.

On her better days, she convinced herself that everything
was perfect and that Paul would not dare do anything that would blight their
marriage. Even if he had the occasional transgression, she posited, it didn’t
matter that much because he was, after all,
married
to her. Katy had the
prize. And on those days, she felt a confidence that she didn’t feel when she
swung at the other end of the continuum.

On her bad days, which were becoming more frequent, she
ruminated and obsessed--in color.

Katy would lie on her bed and stare at the ceiling
picturing the beautiful women Paul shared his best of times with. She pictured
these women on a conveyor belt, with Paul sitting on his chair, as the
gorgeous, naked models filed past him. In her head, Katy saw the list Paul made
as he jotted down all their best attributes, weighing the options as he chose
the one who would eventually replace her.