Under the Rose (15 page)

Exhibit A:
The throne on top of the dais is an antique, intricately carved affair, covered as it is with bas-relief scenes from the Grecian underworld and crowned by two large globes on the front of each armrest, which, it turns out, are great places to hook your calves when you’re in particularly intimate positions wherein you are on the chair and he is…well,
not
on the chair, but rather, on the dais. On his knees. It was a gorgeous piece of furniture really, probably part of a set along with that diamond-dust mirror down near the kitchen. The only thing that might have improved upon the whole experience was if we’d had the mirror nearby. But I digress. I’d never thought of the straight-backed throne as particularly comfortable, but now I don’t know if I’ll be able to consider it at all without immediately breaking out into a sweat.

Exhibit B:
Sex on the conference table may be a bit of an old saw in the corporate world, but sex on the Rose & Grave conference table, beneath the starry dome, surrounded by wood paneling and oil masterworks and George, George, George…I think I owe the good Diggers a couple hundred bucks. At one point, I grabbed his shoulders and stopped him.

“Do you think this place is bugged?”

“That would be fun.” He swiveled a bit, demonstrating a move I swear is illegal in three out of five states.

“George! It’s not funny. I’m creeped out by the idea that this could wind up on tape.”

“Smile for the camera, ’boo.” He chuckled, then reached down between us and made me gasp. “Come on, you think we’d still be forced to do all that transcribing in the Black Books if they had the Inner Temple wired?”

“Good point,” I managed to get out in between labored breaths.

“Then again,” he said, and rolled us both on our sides, “see that third star over there? Looks suspiciously like a lens, don’t you think?” He pulled me on top of him and grabbed my hips. “I think this is my best angle.”

I promptly came, so it was clearly my best angle as well.

Exhibit C:
We ended up on the floor of the Inner Temple, lying on top of an unused robe, directly beneath the oil painting of Connubial Bliss. And I still had my underwear on, mere technicality though it was. George seemed fascinated by it, constantly running his fingers beneath the straps at my hips and in the back, obviously pleased as punch the flimsy scraps of material weren’t in the least impeding his current activities. And I had to say, I was with him on that one. I’d always figured thongs were supposed to be sexy for the boys only; I’d never realized what a turn-on they were for me until George showed me their full potential.

“Remember what I said the other day?” His voice sounded gruff and breathless. “About what I was thinking during your report?”

“Yes,” I murmured, looking down at him through half-closed eyes.

“This is it. This is what I wanted. I saw you standing here in front of this painting, talking about those other guys, and I wanted you. Right here. Like this. This is my fantasy, ’boo. You are…my fantasy.” He squeezed his eyes shut, and I felt his chest shudder beneath my palms as his breath caught.

So I took over, happy to oblige any and all of this man’s fantasies. Because it was no longer a secret he’d satisfied all of mine.

I hereby confess:

What happens in the tomb

stays in the tomb.

8.

Weird Sisters

Over the years, I’d heard many rumors about the wonders to be found in George Harrison Prescott’s bedroom, including, but not limited to: black satin sheets on the bed, mirrors on the ceiling, and a jukebox that only played Barry White.

Negative on all three. Well, there was a little mini-jukebox (which I later learned was a present from his father on the occasion of his father’s wedding), but it held a variety of songs by a variety of artists, and as far as I knew, “Fight for Your Right to Party” didn’t count as a make-out song. The sheets were standard university-issue blue, there was a normal mirror hanging on the inside of the closet, and I was spooning with George on the narrow single bed. His arm was draped loosely over my waist and the stubble on his chin was scratching my shoulder blade.

T
HOUGHTS
I H
AD
T
HAT
M
ORNING

1)
Wow, did I really do all the things I did last night?

2)
My thighs feel a little stiff.

3)
This is nice. I could hang out here and cuddle with George all day.

4)
Except I have that seminar at 10:15.

5)
And I have to pee.

One moment more of relaxing in George’s arms, feeling our entire bodies pressed up against each other, back to chest, thigh to thigh. One moment more of hearing his breath in my ear and relishing his warm hand on my belly. And then I stretched a little and slipped out of bed.

I was buttoning my jeans when he blinked awake. “Morning.”

“Hi.” Dude, was that shyness? Wherefore had I suddenly become shy in front of George Harrison Prescott?

“Are you leaving?”

I giggled. Strike two. “Yeah, I’ve got work to do.”

He rolled onto his back and put his hands behind his head. “But I’ll see you tonight?”

My heart rate skyrocketed.

“At the meeting.”

Of course. The Thursday meeting. “George, I always go. Besides, it’s lobster night at the tomb.”

“Good point.” He smiled, but didn’t move from his prone position. “See you later, Boo.”

And that was it. I left his room, got out of the suite without any of his suitemates noticing me (no grist for the Prescott College gossip mill, thank you very much), and made it back to my suite. Lydia’s door was closed; I was safe. It was over.

But it wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.

The next few weeks passed in a flurry of sexual activity. Ostensibly, I was still taking classes, writing papers, doing problem sets, and working on getting together a thesis topic. But I can barely remember classroom discussions and I’ll be the first to admit my papers weren’t exhibiting their usual level of literary passion.

Josh had stepped up his efforts to discover who was responsible for the leak to the website, and though we each devoted plenty of time to trying to find this guy (or girl, as Nikolos insisted on reminding us at every opportunity), the identity of our leak persisted in eluding us as efficiently as Jenny eluded every Diggirl who tried to corner her into a private conversation. (And, to be honest, shitty as it sounds, the more often she avoided us, the less we all felt inclined to speak with her about it. We already knew how she’d respond.)

We’d decided, en masse, that a formal confrontation, which was the standard club M.O., would be too much for our shy brother to handle, so the best thing to do would be to go to her one by one and express our concern that perhaps her boyfriend failed to treat her with the proper respect. A girlfriend intervention. But she proved a slippery little sucker. It was nearly impossible to contact her outside the tomb, and we never caught her alone inside, or without the trappings of one of Josh’s top-priority electronic missions to track down the traitor.

We weren’t getting very far on that front. Once, when Lydia was out of the room, I asked Josh if he thought it had anything to do with the strange Phimalarlico e-mails all the Diggirls had received at the begining of the year. After all, the patriarchs had also received mysterious e-mails on the private account. And the weird poem had included the lines “Cut through the web in which you’re caught/Learn of the thief who can be bought.” Could that not be a reference to our current scandal? After all, we were dealing with stolen information sold to a website.

“Or maybe it was an even more pointed reference,” I went on. “Remember what Jenny said to Graverob—er, Nikolos the day we found out about secretsofthediggers.com? We still have no idea who sent those e-mails, or what they mean, but what if they were a clue? It’s the first time this has occurred to me. What if the ‘thief’ is a play on his name?”

Josh laughed, thankfully ignoring my slip of the tongue. “That’s a bit obscure, Amy. You’ve been reading too much Dan Brown. But I like your first idea. I’ll ask Jenny to do a little digging into the source of those e-mails.”

“You don’t think it could be Nikolos?”

“He might be the most inappropriately named member of our group,” Josh replied. “One guy who never needs to be a thief. And even if money isn’t the motivation, Nikolos is probably the last guy who’d be interested in further angering the patriarchs. He wants them back on our side, remember?”

I nodded. “So then, who doesn’t have a huge trust fund, and possesses a yen to piss off the patriarchs?”

He met my eyes. “You mean, aside from you?”

The only thing I could guarantee was it was neither George nor myself. We were far too busy to bother with anything so mundane as selling society secrets.

Let me lay it on the line for you: George Harrison Prescott is
insatiable.
We hooked up between classes, after Rose & Grave meetings, before dinner in the dining hall. We hooked up in his room, in my room, in an entryway bathroom shower stall, in the library stacks, and, on one incredibly ill-advised occasion, in the Prescott College Common Room. On the very same couch, I might add, where I had previously resisted his considerable charms.

It never got old. We’d be in the middle of some fascinating political debate at a society meeting, and all of a sudden I’d catch myself reminiscing about some particularly enjoyable interlude, flush scarlet, and look over to Puck, who was almost always watching me, and certainly knew exactly what kind of naughty thoughts were going through my head. As soon as we were released from the tomb, we’d sprint back to his place, and stay awake until the wee hours doing everything but debating. Or we’d be sitting there in the dining hall, having lunch with all our Prescott College friends, and I’d feel his hand on my thigh. His gorgeous copper eyes would glint at me, and next thing I knew, I was talking about some non-existent reading I had to do that afternoon and George would mention a load of laundry and off we’d go—this time to hook up on the counter near the griddle in the momentarily abandoned Prescott Buttery.

George never ran out of places where he wanted to have sex with me, nor out of ways in which to do it, and, to my credit, I didn’t spend much time thinking about who else he might have done there or how. I didn’t spend much time thinking at all. Brandon would have been so proud of me; he’d always insisted I overanalyzed every situation I was in, destroying it before it ever had a chance to blossom. But with George, I was living entirely in the moment. He was beautiful and fun and sexy as hell, and I really didn’t care what else he was up to as long as he kept making me feel the way I felt whenever we got together.

Besides, we were together so often that, oversexed as the boy is, I don’t think he had the time or the stamina for anyone else.

Halloween, always momentous on the Eli campus, came around again, and since it was our last, the seniors I knew went all out. Most of us Diggirls raided the tomb’s costume supply for our outfits. Lucky, of course, kept to her new policy of avoiding the rest of us and was nowhere to be found. Thorndike, who still hadn’t shaken off the latest in her series of colds, rallied in the getup of an Amazon queen, though the rest of us advised her that the skimpy costume was unlikely to protect her from the elements.

“The reason you keep getting sick,” Angel said, holding up a stunning Georgian ball gown, “is that you don’t take care of yourself. Explain again what you have against wool?”

“It’s a matter of sustainable agrarian models. Small farms are fine—” Thorndike paused to sneeze.

“The reason you keep getting sick,” Lil’ Demon interrupted, “is because you won’t take those supplements I gave you. With a vegan diet like yours—”

“I’m not taking anything that quack gave you, okay?” Thorndike snapped. “And to be honest, I don’t think you should, either. Just because it worked wonders on Jessica Simpson—”