Vicarious (The Vicarious Trilogy)

Vicarious

By Sina Annin

Text copyright © 2013
Amarelle Press
All Rights Reserved

For Robin

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: The Gorgeous Sadist

Chapter 2
: Her Voluptuous Deflowering

Chapter 3
: Sex and the Photographer

Chapter 4:
South Beach Threesome

Chapter 5
: Addressing Her IT Issues

Chapter 6
: Blackmail and the Babysitter

Chapter 7
: La Cerveza Mas…

Chapter 8
: Model Behavior

Chapter 9
: Night at the Naughty Opera

Chapter 10
: Lust and the Librarian

Chapter 11
: Big Farm, Big Feet 

Chapter 12:
Wondrous Mechanical Devices

Chapter 13
: Again, My Gorgeous Sadist

Are
all literary agents as infuriating, demanding, and annoyingly attractive as mine?

My pet name for
my agent was “The Gorgeous Sadist”, a name I only ever used behind his broad-shouldered back. However, entertainment lawyer turned literary agent extraordinaire George S. Hastings was unlikely to ever brandish a riding crop or an ice cube in my direction. Instead, I was convinced that he took a deep pleasure in torturing me with his clear, intelligent gaze, masculine jaw, custom shirts and expensive cologne while deliberately ignoring the chemistry building between us.

I squirm
ed discreetly on the soft leather of the chair in his office. This was the first time in our long acquaintance that we were both single at the same time. I couldn’t resist a private literary pun…I had “great expectations” for this meeting.

He
closed my proposal, sat back in his chair, and shook his head.

“Most
disappointing,” said the sadist, after an extended silence.

“What do you mean?”
In disbelief, I leaned toward him across the polished desk. Together, we’d sold a dozen manuscripts, each one garnering a larger advance than the one before. I was making both of us rather a lot of money. In what way was I “disappointing” him?

Besides, t
he last person who called my work “most disappointing” was a high school English teacher who embraced Queen Victoria’s moral code.

“
Well, this proposal hints at great sex scenes to come, presumably after page 30. Yet, the scene on page 24 just lies there on the page, staring up at the ceiling. You can’t leave all the work to your readers’ imaginations. We both know that even your biggest fans labeled the sex scenes in your last book ‘underwhelming’ and reviewers wondered where the bedroom magic went. How can I sell this? Publishers will think you’ve lost your touch.”

My gorgeous sadist
clasped his hands and leaned back in his exquisite vintage executive chair, frowning.

“Bit of a dry spell?”

I wanted to slap his ridiculously handsome face.

“Pity doesn’t become you,” I
snapped.

“A novel without great sex scenes doesn’t become
you
,” he said. “Fix this. Then, we’ll talk.”

Not for the first time, I left his office on the verge of tears. His assistant, no doubt used to the anguish of writers
, averted her eyes and urged me to call her for another appointment soon.

Ha! Right! A dozen agents would be happy to meet with me. I
know, because I had a stack of business cards sitting on my desk. After my last writing conference appearance, they had sidled up to me after panel discussions, to murmur a few words and thrust their cards into my hand instead of shaking it. No doubt I could easily find a replacement for the gorgeous sadist. I could easily find someone less infuriating!

Except, no, I really couldn’t. Sadistic he may be, but he was one
of the best, and he was right. Not about my being a disappointment as a writer. About the dry spell, I mean. And, if I had my way, we would soon be breaking that dry spell together. This thought slowed my steps down the sidewalk.

Was I willing to give up? No. I wasn’t at all ready to leave my gorgeous sadist.

He was wrong about the writing, too. He’d implied that my personal life limited my writing. So wrong! I didn’t need to have an active love life to write great love scenes. After all, I’d written best sellers with scenes that took place in the Amazon rain forest, in 18th century Sweden, and in the Pentagon. I’d never been to any of those places. I had traveled there vicariously, through the work of historians and other writers, with poets and painters and eye witnesses. For a writer, research can often trump direct experience, while saving a bundle on airfare.

I stopped, struck by an idea. I
could and would write great love scenes because I would do my research. I would read the great books about sex, and I would watch the best films, and I would gather eye witness accounts.

Yes! Eye witness accounts were the key.
I would interview other women with great stories to tell about their own sexual adventures. I would use their stories to reconnect with the passion and sizzle of my earlier books, and to inspire my characters’ love lives.

I would prove
the gorgeous sadist wrong. I would break my dry spell
vicariously
.

“When I went away to graduate school,” said my
first interviewee, “I suddenly felt free to be myself. I was officially off the good girl path that led straight to an M.R.S. degree, and I was spending time in the field with different groups of researchers, most of whom were men. The younger researchers were usually grad students like me.”

The woman
toyed with her wine glass as we sat in a deep booth at the back of a restaurant. When I’d asked her why she had contacted me, she told me she was alone in a new city, and my ad had caught her eye. She wanted to share the story of the loss of her virginity, because in a way, it had initiated her into a new life. I was eager to hear what she meant.

“Adan was from Albania, and I was attracted to him right away,” she said. “We met in Prague, a romantic city but
its atmosphere felt vaguely threatening…perhaps it was just that I felt alone, a young American girl, alone in the company of too many men.  Adan, though, made me feel comfortable immediately. At first, he was a cheerful big brother to me, and although I felt a strong attraction, I couldn’t be sure he saw me as more than just a little sister who needed to be sheltered in an unfamiliar city.

“We spent a couple of weeks working closely together, long
days without a break, usually ending up in a cheap restaurant with the rest of our team, where I tried not to fall asleep in my soup. The beer was sour tasting and too strong, the soft drinks too costly, the food outrageously expensive, so every night, I ordered plain water with cheap broth or soup, no matter what else the café had to offer. One of the other students started calling me Soup Kitchen, but Adan never joined in the teasing. He would occasionally order a glass of wine, appear to forget to drink it, finally push the glass over to me while asking if I would do him the honor of drinking it when he could not do it himself. ‘Let’s not waste it, please,’ he would say, ‘you help me with this, too much wine.’

“I loved the sound of his voice, pitched low and throaty, and his light accent and thoughtful way of speaking.

“Of course, by the end of the first week, I was convinced I was in love. Adan never varied his kind and considerate treatment of me, so I didn’t approach him. He had a girlfriend, no, a wife, no, wait, he was engaged to someone, a beautiful European model, who was picking out her trousseau in Paris while he completed his thesis…I spent a lot of time in my head, building fanciful excuses for him, telling myself stories about why he couldn’t honorably romance me.

“In retrospect, the arc of his seduction of the young
naïve American was clear from the beginning. It was subtle, a slow plot building inexorably to a certain ending. I believe his confidence and experience made him patient, when other young men would have ignored the delicious anticipation in the drive to conquer.

“But then, I was enthralled, and didn’t suspect the skill with which he led the dance. I was willing to follow his every step, and
in retrospect, I think it may have spoiled his pleasure a little, by being both too earnest and too easily won.

“The end of our
research trip was approaching, five days away, then four, and I was beginning to panic. Adan sat next to me at dinner now, his arm resting casually across the back of my chair, then his warm hand on my back as he leaned in to offer me bread.  Only three nights left! Would he even kiss me before I had to board my flight back to the States?

“That night, I took bold action. I called his name, and lightly rested my hand on his thigh under the table to get his attention. When he turned to me and looked into my eyes, I knew that we would spend the night together. He picked up my hand, kissed it, and returned to his conversation, keeping my hand in his under the table. I could hardly speak, and spent the rest of the meal gazing into my soup, blushing furiously.

“I was assigned to share a daughter’s tiny bedroom in the family home where my thesis advisor was also staying, so Adan took me to his hotel. The room was small and shabby but neat. A single carnation rested in a water glass on the bedside table—a spot of bright color in the dull room. We kissed for what seemed hours, gently and deeply by turns. His were the most thrilling kisses of my life. The unfamiliar scent of his skin, his clothing, the roughness of his shadowed jaw and the tender touch of his hands…I felt intoxicated and strange, alive everywhere for once, not just in my head.

“For two nights we kissed, and talked and touched outside our clothes, holding each other through the night. At one point, he wondered aloud if I were a virgin. I lied and said no, but he smiled at me and stroked my burning cheek. We ate breakfast at dawn and walked to our work site hand in hand, breaking apart reluctantly a block away.  He strolled down the block and back while I went in first.

“I’m sure the deception fooled no one. My professor looked at me closely that first morning, and shook his head in response to my mumbled greetings. I suppose as long as I arrived on time for work and appeared somewhat unscathed by my adventures, he would say nothing.

“On our last evening, the group dinner was more boisterous than usual. People were excited about going home or on
to other destinations. I felt glum and tearful, but tried to hide my emotions. As young as I was, two sleepless nights were beginning to take their toll. Adan’s conversation was, if anything, brighter, more animated than ever. He told jokes and hugged me with one arm after the punch-lines. He ordered a glass of wine for me, a beer and then a shot of vodka for himself.

“At last it was over, and Adan and I left the restaurant together, arms around each other.
“’Now,’ he said, ‘my angel, you must not be the girl in the tragedy. Tonight we are lovers and tomorrow is only a distant dream. We have one last beautiful night, yes?’

“I know
it sounds overwrought as I repeat it, but I found it devastatingly romantic. He murmured these lines to me as we walked along the river and gazed up at the castle, lit against the night sky. It felt magical. I dried my tears and we stopped at a fountain to kiss. I tossed in the last of my coins, and wished, childishly, that we would be in love forever and ever.

“At the hotel, Adan undressed me
slowly and completely, and then pushed me gently onto the bed. He pulled away the sheet and blanket, and walked around the room in the dim light, gazing at my naked form from different angles. When I crossed my arms over my chest, he kissed me and said no, pulling my hands away gently, to rest above my head. He slid his hands under my back, and lifted me up just enough to place a pillow beneath me, arching my back and thrusting my breasts up. He kissed the tip of each breast, and stroked his palms down my sides. He knelt next to the bed, and rubbed his cheek very lightly across my stomach. He looked and looked, and touched me everywhere.

“’I am committing the memory of you,’ he said.

“He grazed my thighs with his jaw, he lapped my armpits with great attention, and gave me a small love bite on the inside of one hipbone. He pulled my legs apart while I lay passively, and with eyes closed, delicately savored my odor without touching me. He ran his palms over my entire body, down then up and down again. He rolled me over and nuzzled the back of my neck, and kissed the points where, he said, my wings sprout from my shoulder blades when no one is looking. He licked the back of each knee and pressed the soles of my feet to the bulge in his trousers one at a time.

“Finally, he pushed the pillow under my hips to display my rear. He nudged my knees apart and
knelt between them. He lavished kisses, nibbles and tender bites on that sensitive, untouched region.

“’I am devouring you, sweet one,’ he told me.

“He smoothed his hands over my rear and up the small of my back. His slow kisses and nibbles continued, moving into more intimate places until I was moaning and writhing. Adan’s worshipful attention to my body—all of my body—had helped me relax and be fully present in my pleasure, and as the hours passed, I felt that we were moving closer and closer to oneness.

“I felt him leave the bed, heard him unbuckle his belt and drop his clothes on a chair. He returned and hovered above me. His heavy penis was hot and pulsin
g as he stroked it across my rear, and then he let its weight fall between my cheeks. I tensed, but he hushed me and rolled me onto my back. The pillow still rested beneath my hips. He balanced on one arm as he reached down to guide himself into the heart of my wetness.

“He looked into my eyes, devouring me still. He pressed in, retreated, pressed in further, retreated a little,
and then I felt a tiny snap of pain as he thrust in fully to the hilt. I was pierced, I was impaled, I was the sheath to his sword…every cliché from every steamy romance suddenly made perfect sense. He thrust in and out slowly, filling me, defining my internal shape, in a way. The crushing realization of how empty I had been before him broke over me like a wave as I came. 

“The effect of my first experience, of that tender intimacy, was profound. Adan gave me the most voluptuous deflowering
I could have imagined.  As you probably suspect, I never saw him again. My letters went unanswered, and I haven’t had the courage to search for him online after all these years. I want to remember him as he was and the two of us as we were then.

“After returning to the U.S., I changed course in my studies, eventually moving into a branch of psychology that led ultimately to my work in sexual therapies. Now, I primarily use hypnosis to help patients achieve physical release and to ease feelings of loneliness. Adan changed my life, and awakened me to the gift of my body. I
use my training to do the same for others now.”

The woman finished her wine and smiled at me, then left without another word. As she left, every man in the restaurant turned to watch her glide across the restaurant, mesmerized by the relaxed sway of her hips. I
didn’t doubt for a moment that she must be highly successful in her work.