by Kris Ripper
They’d kissed me simultaneously, on each cheek, like ridiculous children. Jamie said, “Promises, promises.”
And they were. We weren’t doing that today. Certainly not in our suits.
But there was one thing we could do, another item on my very long bucket list. And oh, god, was this what I was now? A broken dam uttering a stream of fantasies I’d never spoken?
As expected, when I confessed the second thing, they immediately turned us back toward the house.
What the fuck did I just do? Except I knew what I’d done, and as nervous as part of me wanted to be, most of me was excited as hell.
I was gonna go down on Jamie. Finally.
“Just to be clear,” I said, keeping my voice very smooth and sexy, and in no way breathless from being half dragged over sand. “I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“What, you didn’t google?” She pretended to gasp. “I’m insulted, sir! There are resource materials freely available!”
Actually, I had googled. Er. I paused. “How much of a nerd does it make me if I did?”
They laughed.
We retired to the attic, maybe because my bed had the freshest sheets, maybe because the light was good, or the ventilation. Maybe because this was my fantasy, and thus it was fitting that we did it in my space.
Alex came up behind me and carefully pulled off my suit jacket, leaving it on the back of a chair. “Trust your instincts,” he said softly.
I wanted to point out that this was just sex, and I’d never been defeated by a sex act before, no matter how new I was to it, but I also wanted to keep looking at that familiar tenderness in his expression. I didn’t want to say anything that would…make him regret being so gentle with me in that moment, deft fingers at my buttons, bowing his head just a little to attend to my zipper.
He left my socks on and kissed my hands before rising to undress Jamie the same way. We made somewhat quicker work of his clothes, since there were two of us, and we were each less patient than Alex.
This moment again. Us in our underthings. I wanted to grandstand, take the pressure off, but instead I did the thing we might have done months back. I kissed Jamie, pulling her against me, keeping my eyes just barely open.
She tasted like coffee. That seemed fitting somehow, for a goddess.
“You nervous?” she murmured into my ear.
“No chance. You won’t let me screw up your orgasm.”
“Bet your ass I won’t.” Her eyelashes fluttered against my cheek. “How long have you been thinking about this?”
The easiest answer was, Since the first time we had sex. But that wasn’t quite true. “If I answer that honestly, I might get your boy in trouble.”
“He’s our boy, and Alex being in trouble sounds like fun.”
“Uh oh,” he mumbled. “Um. Okay. In my defense, I was really new at stuff, okay? I had, like, questions.”
We both looked at him, still locked together, turning our heads at the same time.
“You had questions about oral sex and women…and you asked Jus?”
“He had to know more than I did!”
“You could have asked me.” She was trying not to smile. I could tell.
“Which is what I told him at the time.” I snapped my fingers impatiently. “Hello, could we move this along and mock Alex later for his failures at eating out ladies? I’m sort of busy. Or would like to be.”
She turned back. “Since then? That was…years ago.”
“Yes, yes, whatever. Look, it wasn’t a desire then. You asked me how long I’ve been thinking about it, and when your idiot boyfriend was fretting about whether or not he pleased you, I thought about it. That’s all.”
“That’s kind of hot.”
I rolled my eyes, quickly losing track of all that tenderness and care I’d felt earlier.
Then she kissed me. Tenderly. With care. And I kind of…swooned into her, letting her take just a little bit of my weight, her hands tightening at my waist.
“Oh boy,” Alex whispered.
Oh fucking boy. Right, now I needed to…figure out what I was supposed to be doing. I mean, I’d seen diagrams. But it’s different, actually touching a woman. Not bad—good, very good—but new to me.
There are, of course, mechanics to these sorts of things. Tabs and slots and physics problems to be solved. I was the one who led us to the bed, who laid her back, as I had never done a lover before, not with this kind of attention. I wasn’t sure she’d ever allowed it, for that matter. Our Cork, letting me brush her hair back. Letting me slide her fancy dress boyshorts down her legs. Alex unclipped her bra, kissing her as he did so, baring her to the air, to our eyes.
She was so fucking gorgeous, every line, every curve of her. It was completely unfair. “You’ve ruined me for men.”
“All men?”
“All men who aren’t in this room,” I clarified.
“Oh good. That was my goal.”
I ran my palms up her thighs, which were pale and stretchmarked and preternaturally soft, her skin almost velvety. “Jesus, Cork. You’re so fucking sexy.” I kissed one thigh, then the other. And I could smell her—the essence of her, the center of her—but I took my time. Ran my fingers over the small hairs of her belly, traced her navel with my tongue, dragged my nose up to her breasts and kissed each of them, heavy and magnificent and inviting more touch, more play.
She reached out to hook my neck, then, with her other hand, Alex’s. “Kiss. Right now.”
We blinked at each other across her body, strangely hesitant. His cheeks were flush, his eyes clear.
“Alexander, I…” But maybe words were overrated. I reached out to brush my fingertips over his jaw, and he slowly leaned in.
“Me too.”
It wasn’t a kiss of fireworks and trumpets blaring. It was a kiss of afternoon sunlight shining through mist, a blurred rainbow across the sky. The smallest hint of magic, if you let yourself believe.
I let myself believe.
I’d never gone down on someone with a vulva before, but most sexual skills are adaptable. I explored, took my time, tasted and touched. I slid a finger inside her, but she shook her head, so I withdrew it. Before I could put all that incredibly convenient lubrication to use, Alex had captured my hand at the wrist and—
Oh, god. He should not be permitted to suck on my finger like that. Not ever. And certainly not now.
Jamie moaned, reaching down. “I’m coming now. You can participate or not.”
“I can—while you—?”
Two of her fingers spread her lips apart, an inverted V that exposed everything, and it was so fucking shameless, so utterly naughty. So deliciously perfect.
“Fuck me,” I said, and lowered myself to her, lapping at her fingers (she laughed), then concentrating on her clit. I had no idea why there was a cultural joke about men not being able to find it, since it was blatantly freaking obvious, even without one’s partner helpfully guiding the way.
“Oh fuck, oh god, oh sweet Jesus—”
Alex shifted over us, over her, I think licking her nipples—or nibbling at them—and Jamie fell apart in the most glorious way I’d ever seen. She lost control, thighs shaking, knuckles white where she gripped the sheets, heels digging in as she thrust up into my mouth.
All three of us panted as she came down from the high, her fingers, unclenched, lightly combing through my hair. “I give that performance…a solid B plus.”
“B plus?” I didn’t have enough energy to be outraged. “You must be joking.”
“All right, A minus. I don’t want you to worry you peaked your first time out of the gate.”
Alex laughed. “I’m sure Jus will find a way to beat his own record.”
“B-fucking-plus,” I muttered, because they expected it. But I let it drop, because they wouldn’t expect it. Always good to keep your lovers slightly off balance. “Thank you, Cork. That was very informational.”
“I would have thought experiential.”
&n
bsp; “That too.”
“Mmm.” Alex appeared in front of me. “When should we do it again?”
“Soon, sometime soon. Ish.” Except there was a flaw to that plan. I grimaced. Damn. No time like the present to explain that the next two weeks were going to be a nightmare because the two weeks before a show were always a nightmare, and I didn’t know if I’d be able to see them much, and (my voice was getting a little high pitched) I didn’t want them to take that as me withdrawing because it wasn’t, I swear—
Alex kissed me, jolting me into the moment, out of my head. “It’s okay. Will you spend the night before the show? By then everything you need to do will either be done or not, right?”
Jamie tugged my hair. “Plus, we might be able to help with any tension you’re experiencing.”
“I don’t know. Maybe. It’s hard to believe this is really happening, that Chad really pulled it off.” A thought occurred to me, one of those blinding moments when you realize you’ve assumed something that may not make sense. “You’ll come, won’t you? To the opening?”
“Bet your ass,” Jamie said.
“We were planning to unless you said no.”
“I want you there.” It was bald and inescapable. And true.
“Good. Decided. Now then, lads, let’s go find brunch somewhere.”
I rarely drove to and from the Saints house. It was odd to be the one piloting our excursion back in time, from the futuristic fog enclosed tidal estuaries reclaimed from human civilization, to towns and highways, which never seemed more foreign and bizarre than after spending the night at the Saints house. I dropped them off at their apartment and retired to my own.
It should have felt like any other night. They were no more present now than usual; it was still me alone in my apartment, where I felt safe and comfortable. A solitude that I valued even when it overlapped with loneliness.
Yet in the absence of loneliness, the space felt different. More dimensional, more alive somehow. I resisted a swan dive into romantic nonsense—barely—but I couldn’t deny that I felt…buoyant. And that whatever we’d done, with our shared fantasies, our promises, it had changed something in me. At least for the moment.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
MONDAY STARTED ALL right. Until Chad showed up. He sniped at me that he could hear my music even though I had ear buds in, bitched endlessly at his talk radio, and asked every ten minutes if there were any new emails (because he couldn’t be bothered to just check his phone, and I knew he could get email on his phone because when he took a picture he wanted me to see, he always sent it through Yahoo, not, god forbid, text).
By Tuesday, any lingering feelings of hope or optimism had fled me. I put my head down and powered through the minutes, which dragged endlessly, until I could leave the workshop. I didn’t say goodbye.
By Wednesday, though, I knew this was beyond my ability to fix. The last weeks before a show are always a nightmare. It’s not unusual for me to show up in the morning and find Chad still working from the night before (which wasn’t bad, because eventually he’d stumble home and I’d have the shop to myself). It’s also not unusual for him to be a beast about literally every single possible thing. I’ve heard him scream at people who honked their car horns too loudly, rant for ten minutes about the weakness of his coffee (which he, of course, had made), and memorably, during a particularly difficult spell when we were first working together, go off at length about some guy on television.
It took me about three hours to eventually work out that he’d been talking about Anderson Cooper, who’d just come out at the time. It’s gotta be disappointing when you’re baiting someone and they’re paying so little attention they don’t even realize it.
Then again, that level of inattention was probably why I still had a job.
On Wednesday I showed up at my usual time and Chad was already there. With the radio off, which was ominous. The only sound in the room was the scritching sound of his fingernails rasping across his beard scruff. He was sitting on an overturned trash can, staring into space.
Make that: sitting on the overturned shredder can. There was a pile of shreds and the prank porn magazine on the floor beside my desk. I sighed and scouted for the whiskey.
Beside him on the floor. Still three quarters full. I didn’t know if I should be relieved or disappointed. I did know one important thing: it was time to call in reinforcements.
My email to Colin was meant to be calm, but perhaps a slight edge of hysteria bled through. He arrived less than half an hour later and walked straight to my desk, completely bypassing Chad, who hadn’t said a damn thing since I got there.
“How’s the project?”
I cast about for a good way to answer that question. Then I gave up and told him the truth, keeping my voice down below the level of the industrial fan. “It was great. But he’s stalled out. I’m not sure how to snap him out of it.”
“How close are we?”
“We aren’t bad.” I pulled the current binder over and flipped to the master list of pieces we needed completed, a list that entirely avoided the soon-to-be-unavoidable issues of transporting everything to the gallery, mounting what needed to be mounted, displaying what needed to be displayed, and executing the roughly five hundred last minute things that would never make it to a list, but would still need to be done.
In the next week and two days.
“The framer needs—”
I gestured to the corner where I’d put everything completed that needed to be framed. One painting was going in raw (so to speak), and then there were the sculptures. “He’s still working on Dawn, Dusk, and a few drawings.”
Colin nodded. “I’ll take the rest to Frank this afternoon. He won’t mind the last minute jobs. I think he kind of gets off on it.”
I’d never met Frank-the-Framer, but I’d seen a lot of his work, and if the man said he’d get it done right, he would. “Okay. Then he’s still dithering over the stained glass and he really just needs to buckle down on the last drawings. You know him and drawings.”
He just slightly rolled his eyes. “But in your estimation, we’re okay?”
Chad took another swig of my whiskey and belched.
I leaned in closer to Colin Paulson than I’d ever been before. “He can’t do this for another two days. If you can jolt him out of the artistic ennui, then it’s all fine. If you can’t, you may as well pick some shit at random and prepare yourself for some merely decent sculptures.”
He smiled. Decent was Chad for I could do better in the dark with crayons and newsprint. “No worries, Justin.”
Oh, no worries, right. That was all well and good, but this was the worst I’d ever seen my boss, and it was freaking me the fuck out. By this point in a project, the workshop was usually full of sound and fury. Not the steady hum of the fan and Chad sitting lifelessly on a trash can.
“Trust me.” Colin took a deep breath and a fortifying gulp of what I was pretty sure was just coffee. Then he marched over to his father and took the man’s whiskey.
Actually, my whiskey. But I didn’t think it was the right time to make a big deal out of it.
“This doesn’t seem to be greasing the wheels, Dad.”
Chad grunted.
“Plus, it’s not your brand.”
“Justin’s.”
“You stole Justin’s booze?”
“Shdn’t have it ’ere ’nywy.”
“Well, regardless, it’s not working.” The hand with the whiskey bottle seemed to…beckon me. “Justin’s going to go out and get you a real nice vat of black coffee, and you and I are going to talk.”
Chad grunted.
I snagged the bottle as I passed on my way out of the shop and stowed it behind a crate near the door. As I was leaving I heard Colin say, “So Marsha and the kids are really looking forward to going to your birthday this year.”
For the first time in three days, Chad sounded more awake than asleep. “Like hell that tramp and her ungrateful little bastar
ds are coming to my birthday!”
Interesting tactic. I wished Colin well and didn’t hurry getting coffee.
* * *
By the time I came back it was all over. The battle had been fought, the casualties (probably absent Marsha and her absent bastards) had been counted, and the trash bin had been righted.
Chad was on his feet, more or less shouting at Colin. While Chad shouting only made him sound more like a total prick, I kind of understood. Because Colin gave zero fucks better than anyone I’d ever seen. Like, he just stood there, this vaguely contented expression on his face, occasionally nodding, hardly blinking no matter how much Chad escalated, and when he spoke, it was in this calm, measured tone, like there was nothing on earth that could disturb him even a little.
It was amazing. And it clearly enraged Chad, which was probably why Colin was so good at it.
But the relevant thing was that Chad was kicking.
When he finally ran down, sputtering, Colin offered him the coffee I’d placed on the table before invisibly sliding back to my desk.
“This isn’t over! I won’t have that woman at my birthday!”
“I completely understand, Dad. Sorry to disturb you. I’ll let you get back to work.”
“You’re goddamn right you will. Jesus! Like I’m not busy enough this week without having to deal with this bullshit from you.” He kept muttering as he turned to the worktable he’d been using to plan out the stained glass.
Holy shit, I mouthed to Colin.
He nodded his head in the direction of the door.
If I’d thought Chad was paying attention, I probably wouldn’t have followed. I liked Colin more, but Chad was the guy I was stuck with in a room five days a week. But he was slamming shit around on his worktable and I knew from past experience of trying to get his attention during such moments that there was no fucking way he was even aware of my presence.
Colin was standing on the sidewalk, still smiling, when I reached him. “He’s so predictable.”
“That was fucking intense. And I don’t know who Marsha is, but I feel for her.”
