by Mimi Strong
I didn't know I could feel so good—that I could feel that way with a man. I'd just assumed people in love were exaggerating, but it really was… just like this. Blissful. Perfect.
We moved as one, slowing down, and then we settled as our connected parts pulsed together.
After a moment, he said, “I hope that was… good?”
We were both lying on our sides now, facing each other.
I kissed him, nibbling on his lower lip, then said, “Do you really want to know how you compare to other guys? Not that there've been many of them or anything, but I'll tell you if you want to know.”
He frowned, then said, “I've never been with anyone else, but yes, I want to know. Since the first time, it's been driving me crazy.”
I took a deep breath and told him the truth. “Even our first time, when you weren't sure of anything… that was the single best time I'd ever had. And it's only gotten better.”
“You're not just saying that to boost my confidence?”
“Nope. It's absolutely the truth.” I ran my hands over his body, stopping with one palm over his heart. “Some people are naturally amazing at sex and they make their partner better.” I grinned. “I guess I'm just one of those people.”
He laughed and pushed me back, rolling on top of me. “You're so cheeky!”
As he kissed my lips, chin, and neck, I said, “If we're being honest here, tell me something. When we had sex the first time, right here, were you doing it for practice?”
He stopped and looked at me with a serious expression. “You mean, was I thinking of you as a sex coach?” He frowned. “That's why you mailed me the check, isn't it? Did I make you feel…?” He rubbed his wrinkled brow with one hand. “Oh, now I feel awful. Just awful.”
“Because it's okay if you were,” I said. “I don't mind. I know that it's different now, of course, but I can understand if you just wanted to get your first time out of the way, and—”
He shushed me with his finger on my lips.
“Not like that,” he said. “I wasn't thinking about getting it 'out of the way.' Or practicing. Or anything.” He kissed me slowly, then continued, “I wasn't thinking anything at all. No thoughts. I just wanted you. I wanted to be inside you, on top of you, underneath you, anywhere you'd have me. Since the first moment I saw you, that was what scared me. How bad I wanted you.”
“You've got me now.” I was teetering on the brink of crying. I felt so happy, so deliriously happy to be with him, that it was confusing. “I'm yours.”
He kissed the tip of my nose. “And I'm yours.”
“So, should we get dressed and go to the museum now?”
“The museum?” He gave me a big grin. “What makes you think we're going there?”
We crawled to the edge of the bed and both reached for our clothes.
I said, “Uh, your insane love of dinosaurs?”
“I do love dinosaurs, but I have something different planned.”
I thought for sure Devin would be taking me to the museum, but we went instead for a long drive, out to the country. We talked about our favorite movies and books, and he called me a geek about a million times, because of my love for sci-fi.
After about an hour, we arrived at a quaint farmhouse. We got out of the car, stretched, and walked up to the porch. Devin wouldn't say who we were visiting. The door opened, and we were greeted by a charming old man, very wrinkled, but spry.
He shook my hand and said, “I'm Rudy, and I'm eighty-nine.”
Devin said, “Rudy is my great-grandfather.”
I swatted Devin on the chest. “You didn't tell me I was meeting your family today.”
He grinned. “Didn't want you to get nervous.”
“Nothing to be nervous about,” Rudy said. “Any friend of Devin's is a friend of mine.”
“Feather's my girlfriend.” He turned to me. “Unless, of course, she isn't.”
We were still standing on the porch, and I took Devin's hand. “Well I'm certainly not your Style Coach, so that would make me your girlfriend.”
“Style Coach,” Rudy said. “Is that a real thing?”
I retrieved a business card and handed it to him.
“I should say something cute now,” Rudy said. “Because I'm old, and everything in this world seems so crazy to me… but this makes sense. When I was growing up, we had a lot of rules about what a person ought to wear and how they went about dating. There aren't so many rules now, are there?”
“No,” I said. “And people do need help.”
He put the card into a pocket on his overalls. “I'll let you know if I need an appointment.” He slipped on a pair of gumboots outside the door and led us down the front steps. “Feather is a nice name,” he said as he stooped down to pick something up. He turned and handed me a long, white feather. “That's from one of the geese,” he said.
I thanked him and examined the feather as he took us on a tour of the farm, from the goats to the chickens. It wasn't a big, industrial farm, but he had a few people working there, and they supplied organic goat's milk and eggs to a few restaurants in the city, including the one in Devin's hotel.
The feather in my hands was light, yet strong. Feathers are made of keratin, the same stuff that's in our hair or in reptiles' scales. Everything with feathers is a bird, but not all birds fly. With penguins, the feathers provide insulation and a waterproof barrier. One more fun feather fact: some dinosaurs may have been covered in feathers, not scales.
I ruffled the vanes of the white goose feather, then pulled them straight and smooth again.
Maybe it was the sun shining down on the green grass and trees around me, or the sounds of the happy animals being fed, but I got that feeling that everything was going to be just fine.
Whether I went back to school or not, I knew what I was born to do.
I'd helped Devin with his problem, and now he seemed happy. Certainly I was happy to have him as my boyfriend, which made me less than objective, but I didn't feel bad anymore about what had happened between us, with the blurring of lines and boundaries.
I ruffled the feather and straightened it again, even smoother this time.
Maybe everything made sense, even my name.
It's funny, isn't it?
My name is Feather, and I help people learn to fly.
Rudy was called away to help with something, and Devin led me to a little wooden building that had been painted green at some point, and before that, red.
“I have something to show you,” Devin said.
Laughing, I said, “I bet you do.”
He opened the door and pulled me into a dark space that smelled of fresh hay.
Alone now, he wrapped his arms around my back and kissed me, moaning with exaggerated pleasure.
I pulled away giggling. Little things were moving in the dim light around us, hopping around and hopping in and out of a narrow door that led to a fenced-in outdoor enclosure.
My eyes adjusted.
“Bunnies!”
Devin reached down and scooped a small, white furball up. “French Angora rabbits.” He waved it near my face. “Terrifying, aren't they?”
“Absolutely horrifying,” I said with a grin. “Oh, please, whatever you do, don't make me hold one.”
“The baby ones are the most repellant,” he said, handing me one and then scooping up another one for himself.
“Their little ears!” I cooed.
“I'm a horrible boyfriend, aren't I? Taking you for a long drive only to muck around with a bunch of animals.”
“Without a doubt,” I said, leaning in to kiss him as we both held our tiny bunnies. “Worst date ever.”
The Three Keys to Happiness
In order to be happy, every person must have:
1. Something meaningful to do.
2. Someone to love. (Friends and family and pets all count.)
3. Something to look forward to.
It's really that simple.
THE END
&nb
sp; The Typist - Billionaire Novelist #1
Description: A broke college graduate is hired by a reclusive billionaire author. Her official job is to type for him. Her unofficial job is to satisfy his every sexual desire, or drive him crazy.
Length: 13,900 words, or 56 book pages long. This is #1 of a 4-part series. Books 2-4 are available separately and not part of this anthology.
Spice Level: Very spicy, with frequent, graphic sex scenes. WARNING: Contains some rough sex and roleplaying. There is one group sex scene later in the series.
Turn the page to dive into The Typist / Billionaire Novelist #1, by Mimi Strong.
Or click here to return to the main Table of Contents.
PART 1: One Hairy Beast and One Sexist Beast
The temp agency was tight-lipped about the typing assignment. Stranger yet, they sent me for a full medical before they booked the contract.
I'd never been to Vermont, and I'd never worked as a typist for someone writing a novel, so I was curious. Being new to the work force and just out of college, what did I know?
Most importantly, I needed the money for rent, and the job paid well. Suspiciously well.
I wondered if the client had requested a hot-tempered redhead specifically, or if that would simply be a bonus gift with purchase. I definitely had the red hair, all natural, and my friends insisted I was the fiery one of our group. Some people say redheads have more sex, but if you ask me, I'd say they just have better sex. All that aggression over years of being teased and called strawberry-bush and ginger has to go somewhere.
Me and my trusty firecrotch headed off to my mysterious two-week typing contract, eager to spread a little redhead excitement to some boring writer's life.
It was a pretty day in July when the cab driver let me out at the edge of the woods. The Vermont trees smelled different from the city. Fresh. Suspiciously fresh.
I pulled on my backpack, heavy with two weeks' worth of clothes and toiletries, and stepped boldly into the woods. As per the instructions I'd been given, I followed the trail that led up the mountainside to the secluded cabin that was my destination. The lush forest on either side of the trail was fresh and magical, with ferns of all sizes on the ground, and tall coniferous trees mixed in with sugar maple and paper birch trees. Everything was emerald green in the summer sun, but I could imagine the spectacular warm colors that would appear in the fall. The air was cool and moist, like rain was on the menu but not a guarantee.
After an hour of hiking and a bunch of mosquito bites, the forest lost its magic. My legs quivered, and I was reevaluating the items I'd packed. Did I really need hairspray? The bottle did weigh half a pound. I stopped and sat on a stump, rifling through my things. Why were my blue jeans so heavy? Something rustled and snapped in the old-growth forest behind me. It was not the sound of a person sneaking up on me and stepping on a twig by accident. Rather, it was the sound of a large beast who didn't care if a puny human detected it.
I froze, my breath squeezing in and out of my lungs through a constricted throat. The forest-crunching sound was coming closer. My nostrils wide, I could smell the beast—a musky, rotten smell. Slowly, slowly, I turned my head, and found myself face to face with an enormous, hairy creature.
In retrospect, it was foolish of me to think that a moose, a chewer of grasses and leaves, would want to eat me. However, I looked into those black eyes, embedded in that shaggy, block of a head, and I promptly lost my mind.
My legs, no longer tired, sprung into action, and I took off at a full-on sprint, up the trail. I'd nearly made it to the cabin, so the run was only five minutes, tops, but for the previous few months, the only cardio exercise I'd had was strolling to and from the cafeteria between classes and study sessions.
I flew up the three steps to the door of the cabin and banged on it like a madwoman. The door opened, and I nearly knocked over the man in my rush to get inside.
The cabin interior was dark, compared to the sunny outdoors, and I couldn't see his face.
The man spoke, his voice deep and calm, with a neutral American accent, possibly a West Coast transplant. He said, “I presume you're the one the agency sent? Tori, is it?”
“Moose!”
“Unusual name. But I like unusual. I'm just making some grilled cheese sandwiches. Would you like one, Moose?”
I caught my breath and with it, my thoughts. “I'm Tori, but I saw a moose out there. On the trail. Scared my pants off.”
He took a long, appraising look down my body. “Nope.”
We were in a mudroom, a vestibule with rubber boots and plenty of hooks for jackets. The man turned and walked through the interior door, toward the scent of grilling bread.
I followed, bumping into the door frame because my backpack was still slung over one shoulder. My backpack? I smacked myself on the forehead for having terrible survival instincts. If I'd actually been in danger, say if the moose had been a flesh-consuming zombie moose, those seconds I spent picking up my backpack and letting it slow me down could have cost me my life.
I kicked off my dirty sneakers and dropped the backpack, then got a good look at the place. The interior was larger and more sumptuous than I'd expected. An enormous chandelier made of antlers and a thousand tiny lights hung from a vaulted ceiling, lighting the spacious open-plan interior. To my left, a wood-burning fireplace that was large enough to walk into dominated one wall, with three good-sized sofas placed around the hearth, as well as chairs and wood side tables. To my right was a long dining table with a dozen tall-backed leather chairs, and beyond that was my dream kitchen.
My apartment kitchen, the one I'd had a hurried piece of toast at that morning, featured about six inches of working counter space, between the stove and refrigerator. This so-called “cabin” had a kitchen that could service a neighborhood restaurant.
The man buttering two slices of bread for a grilled cheese sandwich was not at all the type of boss I was expecting. I figured this mysterious novelist would be chubby, bald, and hunched—hobbit-like. Before I left home for the assignment, my mother and I had joked about me pushing a dresser in front of the door while I was sleeping at night, alone in the woods with some neckbeard goober.
A thought came to me, sharp and clear, like a voice in my head: He's the one who'd better barricade his room at night!
He had light hair, the kind of ash blond that hid gray hairs, and it was just long enough that it feathered at his temples. His hair was thick and his hairline came down low on his forehead, into a small widow's peak. His jaw was wide and square with a crease in his chin—the kind of handsome bone structure it would be a shame to hide under any more than a few days' stubble. His eyes were not the gray-blue you'd expect with his fair coloring, but a rich, deep blue, like sapphire with a hint of green.
Did I know him? His face was familiar, as though he resembled a well-known actor, though I couldn't think of which one for the life of me.
He looked up from the grilling sandwich and smirked, seemingly aware I'd been checking him out. Being an author, he was probably good at observing people, plus he had life experience points on me. The crinkles around his eyes and the lines on his forehead would make him about forty or so. It was hard for me to guess his age, as I'd been hanging out with nobody but college students the last four years.
I wondered if all that life experience made him a better lover. We were to be working closely together for two weeks. I'd dismissed the idea of fraternizing with my boss, but now that I saw him, everything changed. He had no ring on his finger.
He was still looking at me, and smiling. Could he read my mind? I felt dirty and guilty, my cheeks growing hot as I blushed.
He flipped the sandwich, spanked it with the spatula, and said, “How fast are you?”
“Beg pardon?”
He nodded down at my hands, which I was wringing together nervously. “As a typist. How fast do you type?”
I spread out my fingers wide and stared at my hands, my prized tools. “One hundred words a m
inute, though my accuracy's better at about ninety.”
He quirked up one eyebrow. “Sometimes a slow hand's good. Sometimes hard and fast is the way to go. Or a mix.”
I held back my response for a second to think. The man was a bestselling novelist, who worked with words for a living. His double entendre was not an accident, not at all.
Oh, but I could give as good as I got. There was a reason my girlfriends got me to write their flirty emails and text messages for them, and why my nickname was Tori the Torrid.
I took a deep breath, leaned up against the counter so my cleavage showed at the top of my blouse, and said, “Some people would swear I'm ambidextrous. That's how good these hands of mine are.”
He mouthed the word wow and spanked the grilled cheese sandwich a few more times.
I said, “Thanks for making lunch. I am ravenous. That hike and my oh-so-awkward meeting with the moose worked up my appetite.”
He chuckled as he put the sandwiches on plates and led me over to the long dining table. After setting the plates down, he reached his right hand out to shake mine.
“Nice to meet you, I'm Smith Wittingham.”
His hand was hot and firm, his eye contact unwavering. Those chilling blue eyes had a ring of green around the pupil.
“Smith?” I took my seat directly across from him. “I wonder if I've read any of your books. What's your most popular one? I've mostly been into textbooks the last four years, not a lot of time for fiction.”
“That's too bad.” There was a bowl of mixed greens on the table and he served us both some salad instead of answering my question.
He was so familiar, from his looks to his name.
A bird outside flew past one of the windows, and he turned to look. As I saw him in semi-profile, everything clicked into place. That was the pose he used in his author photo, and I had read his books.
As he turned back, he raised his eyebrows, his forehead furrowing.
“Everything okay?” he asked. “That was just a bird, not the killer moose coming back to finish you off.”
