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That set them off on a train of reminiscences. Once Babylona had become ordained as a minister solely because she wanted to officiate at a wedding where she could say, “You may now fuck the bride,” and the bridegroom would fuck the bride. It wasn’t even for a show—it was just her twisted idea of fun. “What is a wedding about if it’s not sex?” she’d said, and when anyone tried to answer that question, she’d waved the objections away and said, “Well,
this
wedding will be about sex.” At last she’d found a couple who were willing to take part in what she called “the beautiful sacrifice of freedom to eros.” At the moment of truth, she pronounced the promised words in solemn tones. The bridegroom began shyly to kiss and fondle his betrothed. But as he pulled up her long white skirt and actually entered her, he was stunned to hear Babylona, clearly having lost control, adding, “Yes . . . you may
all
now fuck the bride.”

There was a minute of embarrassed silence, in which (Jared swore) two men had actually risen from their seats before being shamed back into them by a general shout of “Babylona, please!” and “Babylona, shut up!”

Then there was the time she had scheduled an orgy at a famous New York restaurant, spending untold dollars to reserve it for a private party. The trouble was, she hadn’t told the management what
kind
of private party it was. Not only were they alarmed when the diners began to throw off their clothes and make hay among the plates of caviar, but they hadn’t taken the precaution of putting curtains up in the windows. So there was a general melee of waiters trying to separate couples, only to be dragged into clinches with nude beauties, which then turned into a half orgy, half brawl that ended by doing twenty thousand dollars’ worth of damage to the place. When the cops arrived, they had to push through a crowd on the sidewalk that was so large and uncontrolled that traffic was stopped on Fifth Avenue. At least one man had left his car sitting at an intersection and walked right into the restaurant and joined in.

From telling stories about Babylona, they strayed into reminiscing about their own old times. There was their first time together, when Jared and Emily had crept under the punch bowl table at a party and almost not quite had sex, a business of clothes in disarray and frantic fumblings, deliriously like being fifteen again. They had consummated that friendly lust a few days later in Jared’s dressing room, a misspent afternoon-to-midnight in which Jared had launched on an exploration of her sexual responses, including a two-hour pussy-licking session that forever changed her conception of how good orgasms could be—and how many she could have in a row (they gave up at a hundred, reasoning that it was a nice round number). The next day they traded notes on the phone and discovered they had both lost three pounds.

For a while after that, they would meet every Friday night, enjoying a kind of second adolescence together that was all about being half in love with your best friend. There were blow jobs in taxis and fucks in doorways; everything took on a halo of delightful irresponsibility. Once they had crept off at a party and had sex on the coats heaped on the bed in the master bedroom. Finding that they’d left a stain on someone’s camel-hair coat, Jared had unhesitatingly put the coat on and they had snuck out of the party, giggling like idiots, to spend the rest of the night finding an emergency dry cleaner and waiting while the coat was cleaned. By the time they got back to the party, everyone was gone, and the host was puzzled by Jared’s explanation that he’d gotten the wrong coat; there were no coats left. Jared wore that coat all winter, hoping and fearing to eventually meet its owner.

Now, for the hundredth time, they talked about why they had never been in love with each other, why life couldn’t be that simple. Somehow it had been obvious from the start that they were made for each other—but only in a particular, limited way. Jared said for the hundredth time, “We’re just too alike.” And Emily said for the hundredth time, “We even have the same birthday. It’s uncanny.” And for the hundredth time, they both sighed and stared into space, wistful.

By then the ice-cream tub was standing empty on the coffee table and they were holding hands.

Then Emily said shyly, for the first time, “The thing is, I think I fell for someone, too.”

Jared flinched and looked at her. Then his hand tightened on hers. “You’ve been holding out on me. You have a boyfriend I don’t know about?”

“No. I kind of have an ex-boyfriend without ever having had a boyfriend.”

She told him the story quickly. When she got to the part where she’d started crying, he scooted over and put his arms around her. So she finished the story nestled against his chest, the warmth and familiarity of his body making her feel that somehow everything would be all right.

“But who is this man? Not one of your almost-movie stars?”

“No . . . it’s Ralph Anderman, the business guy.”

He stiffened, and she pulled away slightly, trying to see his face. “What?” she said. “Do you know something about him? Something bad?”

“Oh, God,” he said. “That explains it. It’s definitely bad, but I don’t know how bad. Valerie’s decided he should be her first.”

“Valerie? Valerie LeBlanc?” For a moment, Emily didn’t believe it. “But you were supposed to be her first.”

“Believe me, now I wish I’d just agreed to that. It’s a gross thought, but what’s a miserable twenty minutes compared to being persecuted to the end of your days by the Evil Virgin?”

“But why Ralph?”

He looked at her unhappily. “I was asking myself that. Does she have anything against you?”

Emily shrugged. “How would she even know that I cared about him?”

He shook her gently by the shoulders. “So my little girl is in love?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, but she blushed and a smile forced its way onto her lips. Her heart felt heavy and bright at the same time. “Well, I feel like I’m in love. But it’s probably over, so . . .”

“You can’t give up like that,” Jared said seriously. “It’s probably not what you think, anyway. What if he just has commitment issues and he’s dying for you to break through his commitment issues?”

“Um, that’s not very likely.” Emily laughed. “Guys with commitment issues are usually dying to stay single.”

Jared shook his head. “Speaking as a guy with commitment issues, I can state authoritatively that what guys with commitment issues are dying to do is have sex with
you.”

She laughed. “Is that a formal offer?”

“Let me turn it into an informal offer.” He kissed her, letting her laugh into his mouth as he cupped her ass with one hand and pulled her against him. She could distinctly feel the shape of his hard-on through the soft material of their clothes.
Ralph will never know,
she thought vaguely. Then, with a pang of hurt, she altered that to
Ralph wouldn’t care.
Then she was kissing Jared back, letting the comfort of his uncomplicated desire and fondness ease her bruised feelings.

He stood up and stripped off his clothes with familiar casualness, flashing her his famous devastating smile. She couldn’t help staring with admiration at his body, which he kept in perfect shape: washboard abs and massive arms on which the muscles softly rippled as he moved. And then there was his cock. Semierect, it was already longer than most men’s cocks when fully hard, and rosy and sleek. She sat up and reached to stroke it gently along its underside. It twitched in response, hardening to the touch. Taking it in her hand, she let her fingers play along its silky surface while it grew, stiffening and showing its slight curvature. Looking at it, she immediately imagined it sliding into her, stretching her vagina with an excruciating smoothness.

“Oh, the magic touch,” he said, and groaned as her fingers tightened and released. He bent a little to pull the drawstring on her pajama bottoms and slipped his hand down to find her wetness. Meanwhile, she leaned forward and took the head of his dick between her lips. It was already so hard that she had to pull it down and hold it against its natural rearing toward his belly. Instinctively, his hips thrust forward an inch, and she tasted a sweet drop of precome on her tongue. She licked it off, letting her tongue play over his cock’s tip.

“Oh, God,” he said, and moved his hand to find her clitoris with his fingers, using her own wetness as lubricant as he played with the sensitive nub. She moaned, feeling as she always did that somehow it was her pussy moaning; the sensation itself was like a sustained, sweet moan. He cut off the noise by sliding his cock more deeply into her mouth, and she sucked it, feeling his pulse as it hardened further in response. Then time stood still as she sucked him, taking his cock a little way into her throat. The feeling of almost choking was a subtle turn-on. He was bent sideways, his fingers fucking into her. With each thrust he let them play over her now lusciously slippery clit.

“No, wait,” he said. “I want to fuck you.”

Immediately, she knew what she wanted. Sliding off the couch, she positioned herself with her arms on the coffee table, inviting him to enter her from behind. She watched him in the mirror as he knelt behind her, his face transformed by need. Then came the familiar wonder of his cock opening her and filling her impossibly perfectly, so that it felt both overwhelming and exactly right. He went into her slowly, slowly, making her gasp as he hit a point where she thought she could take no more—and then went on and showed her that she could. As his balls pressed against her clitoris agonizingly sweetly, he paused and leaned forward to pull her pajama top open, taking one breast in his hand and fondling it gently. He kissed the back of her head, and the tenderness of it made her tremble. “I love you, Emily,” he said.

“I love you, too.”

With his hand holding her breast, he cradled her against him, his slightly dazed smile meeting hers in the mirror. Then his hips began to move, fucking into her with delicate, knowing movements that seemed to feel for her inner sensations, triggering ever new impulses of pleasure. He had shut his eyes, but she continued to watch in the mirror as his body tensed and released, the muscles flowing under his skin. He was beautiful—this was beautiful. The feeling of his cock meeting her again and again was building into an intensity that lingered just below the point of orgasm. Emily arched her back, letting him drive in deeper. And he felt her need and began to fuck her harder, at the very edge of control. He let go of her breasts and moved his hand down to her clitoris, teasing her with feather-light touches there. That did it: She began to come with wild, helpless spasms, her eyes shutting into a delirious blackness in which his cock pounding into her was the only remaining reality. The orgasm peaked and eased. She opened her eyes to see him in the mirror, biting his lip and then convulsively gripping her to him as he tensed into his own orgasm.

As his cock pulsed inside her, he kissed the back of her neck. She felt his limbs relaxing around her into a grateful tenderness. At last he said, “Thank you.”

She smiled. “You don’t have to thank me.”

Then they were separating, pulling their clothes back on. It was an instinctive movement backward from the intimacy they shared; both of them naturally drew a line after sex, wanting a little space to reaffirm that what they had was, after all, friendship.

When they were sitting back on either end of the couch, exactly as before, though with an added undertone of calm and warmth, he said, “I’ve been thinking about it. I think I should fuck Valerie.”

“Excuse me?” She laughed. “You were thinking about it while you were fucking me?”

“No! God, no. Did it seem like my mind was elsewhere? No, when you were telling me about your man.”

“He’s not my man.”

He rolled his eyes. “Whatever you want to believe.” Then he said, with a flippancy beneath which she could sense his loving protective-ness for her, “I have a friend in need. I’m going to make the ultimate sacrifice. If Valerie still wants me.”

“You don’t have to do that,” she said softly. “Ralph wouldn’t . . . sleep with her. I mean, he wouldn’t do it on camera. I’m sure he wouldn’t.”

“Look, I could have sworn she had something up her sleeve. For some reason, she thought she could make him do it.”

Emily looked at him, touched. He was meeting her eye with a stubborn set to his jaw, as if daring her to argue with him.

Instead, she found herself saying, “I am in love, you know.”

“I know.” His face softened. “Love. I wonder if that’s really what’s happening to me.”

“Maybe talking to her would help you figure it out,” Emily said lightly.

“Shh,” he said. “You know I will. I’m just savoring this last moment before I become completely obsessed.”

“I think that moment is over.”

Jared smiled slowly. “Oh, well. Takes a lovesick fool to know a lovesick fool.”

 

 

 

 

“
S
ohow did you end up here?”

It was Thomas, the black guy Zaza had had a mini-crush on ever since she got to the house. He was leaning against the bar, drinking the last of the martinis they’d been given in a surprise gift at seven. His green eyes were fixed on her with the slightly self-conscious libidinousness that seemed to be common to all the residents.
Don’t look at the camera,
she told herself.

She cleared her throat, keeping her gaze fixed on Thomas’s face, and said, “Oh, I just drifted into it. I mean, I had a little role on that soap opera
Midnight’s Secrets.
”

“No way!” Janice put in from the floor, where she was looking through a contact sheet of nude photographs of herself, circling the ones she liked. “You were on that thing? I love that show.”

“Just a few episodes,” Zaza said. “I got killed in a tragic car crash on my third day.”

“I hate when that happens,” Janice said. “You get to fuck anybody?”