She complies and I push my tongue clear into her hole. She gasps. I shove it in more, fuck her with it, and then I fuck her with my fingers while I drag the flat of my tongue clear up her pussy.
Small hands fly to my hair gripping the strands as I lick her.
My name gusting out of her lips is the hottest thing I’ve ever heard. I take her folds into my mouth and I suck, letting her feel the inside of my mouth. I suck her and then I lick her some more. And then she’s coming, crying out, sex pulsing under my merciless tongue.
“Oh my god,” she says as she comes down. “What…” she asks, breathy, unable to form whatever question flew through her mind.
My hands are on her breasts now, and I’m kissing them. For the first time since we started, I let myself really take in this situation. It’s Francine—fucking Francine!—Sprawled out on my couch, naked and dizzy from an orgasm that I just gave her.
And everything in me swells, so much so that I’m in danger of rocketing right out into space.
Her hands are on my hair again and she pulls my mouth up to hers.
I get back ahold of myself and kiss her expertly, smooth with just the smallest edge of hunger showing, the perfect amount of tongue.
“Oh my god,” she says into the kiss, wriggling under me like the pleasure is still radiating through me. My cock might never go down again. And then her hand is on my belt.
“Off,” she says, giving me back my command. And I comply, clambering off the couch. I pull off my shirt first, because we’re doing things my way. Her nostrils flare as she looks me over. She trails lazy fingertips down my stomach, my six-pack.
“Mmmmm,” she says, and all of those hundreds of daily crunches in the workout studio are worth it, hundreds of crunches, reps upon reps of every muscle workout possible, all fueled by imagining just this moment.
Except not quite this moment.
It was a product of my juvenile imagination after Vegas nine years ago. It involved Francine being filled with remorse for having cast me aside like she did. It was her lusting after me, bitterly regretting her mistake, filled with lust and so freaking sorry. And I’m of course indifferent to her. I’ve gone on to bigger and better things. She has no more chance with me for anything but a quick tumble.
As one year turned into two, I grew out of that ridiculous fantasy, stopped orienting around her, stopped even considering her, though I kept up the workout regime.
I unbuckle my belt, yank it off with a flourish and toss it.
Francine slides her hands up my jeans-clad thighs, up to my fly. “Let me,” she says. “I want to…” Pressing a palm over my impossibly steely erection. “I want to go all kinds of crazy on you, Benny!”
I’d imagined her saying things like this, but more generic. And I wouldn’t be affected the way I am now—I’d feel nothing but cold victory, the triumph of showing her what she’d never have, somebody so far beyond all of those losers in limos that she dated. I saw myself looking down dispassionately as she closed her lips over my cock. And then I’d grab her head and pump right into her.
Reality, needless to say, is radically different.
The high, excited hum she makes when my cock springs free kills me. She kisses the side of it, making Francine sounds.
I can barely function enough to shove my garments off my legs.
She looks up with a lusty smile. “I am going to so...” She doesn’t finish the sentence because she’s Francine.
She kisses the other side of it and I shove my fingers into her glossy hair.
I think my skin might peel off from sheer desire. “I am going to so...” And then her mouth is over me, finishing this sentence. I’m stroking her head, spinning so hard with pleasure it’s a wonder I can keep standing.
I come with a guttural cry.
She waits for my dick to chill out before pulling her mouth off me, because that’s how physically in tune she is with me.
“That’s one way to punctuate a sentence,” I say.
“Sometimes an exclamation point just won’t do.”
I’m laughing in spite of myself.
She beckons me down next to her, and without thinking, I go, squeezing in next to her on the small couch.
Francine only wants a divorce in the end. The sooner, the better.
Even so, I pull her head to my chest, wrap my arms around her head. I don’t want to let her go, but I don’t need to be face-to-face. I don’t want a divorce, but I don’t trust her in some essential way. I want to be free of the past and that kid that I was, but it’s all around me.
Her scalp is moist with sweat against my pounding heart.
“Are you a cuddler, Benny?” she asks.
“No,” I say.
I can feel the shape of her cheeks change, as if she’s smiling. She doesn’t believe me.
I’m not smiling. I’m looking up at clouds through the skylight, all puffy and fluffy and weightless against that technicolor blue. They look fake.
Fifteen
Francine
* * *
I’m still coming back to planet earth, nestled in his arms. We’re cuddling. I don’t care if he wants to believe it’s something else; that’s what we’re doing.
For a while there, I felt so connected to him and his vexatiously cogitating ways. It felt like we were being real together. I loved it. But then the next minute, he was Sexorator 2000, cool and smooth and uber-confident, the sexiest and most confusing being ever to walk the face of the earth.
Even so, it was hot. I’m still vibrating from the things he did to my body. And I pulled him off of it in the end. Sexorator 2000 is awesome, but Benny’s better.
I turn and look up at him. I slide my palm over his cheek. He seems so somber. “What is it?” I ask.
“Nothing,” he says.
He’s not big on introspection—James definitely had his number there. There’s clearly something on his mind, but you can’t pull it out of him. He likes to stay remote.
I’m glad he had a friend like James. There are not a lot of people in this world who can look past that resting annoyance face to see the true beauty of Benny, but James obviously did.
And the fact that Benny’s madly loyal surprises me not at all.
Will he ever find a home for Spencer? Maybe he doesn’t want to let that connection to James go. Maybe he plans to ride out his allergies. There was so much I wanted to ask him but I don’t want to push it and make him shut me out all over again.
“You want a snack?” he asks.
“Does it involve cheese and crackers?”
He’s off the couch, pulling on his clothes. “It does now.”
“Yay!” I say.
He disappears, and I reassemble myself, trying to put the least pressure on my knee, which is feeling nice and loose and nearly normal for once.
Sixteen
Francine
* * *
Benny leaves for the office after that, and I do a recuperation day, taking full advantage of the semi-spa nature of the bathroom, and then I head to 341 to pick up some more clothes.
I hang out with Noelle up on the new rooftop garden that Malcolm created. She shows me her new planters. She has big berry-growing plans.
I don’t go into the full rundown of what happened between Benny and me on the couch, meaning the story gets pretty vague after him holding an ice pack on my knee.
Even so, she’s amazed. “I think he’s into you,” she says.
“It definitely seems like that at times, but I don’t know if he’ll ever forgive me for acting like a freak and making a pass at him and then ghosting him,” I say.
We’re leaning over the railing, staring at the building across the street, trying not to look in people’s windows. That’s the deal you make in New York. You see, but you don’t look.
“I tried to apologize to him,” I continue, “but he doesn’t like to talk about the past. I think he will never really trust me.”
“Yet he makes you play his wife,”
she says.
Luckily, there is big drama at her work, and I’m happy to hear about it, to get my mind off of the strangeness of Benny.
I don’t see him that night at all.
The next morning when I trot out to the kitchen to grab coffee and a quick snack, his favorite mug is on the counter.
I put my hands around it. It’s still slightly warm. I think about his hands on it. His lips. I run my finger all around the rim. Is he avoiding me now? Is he going to be an asshole again?
There’s a knock at the front door. I go, thinking it might be Benny, and feeling happy about that, but it’s Mac.
“You have to knock?” I ask. “I thought you just came in and out.” Like a butler, but I don’t say that.
“I always knock before I come in, but I do then let myself in if I have work here to do,” he says, breezing past. “And I have tons to do to get ready for your class.”
“Wait, what?”
He goes on to inform me that my class is all set for five o’clock after I get home from the dance studio. He had waivers signed and plans to have some chairs set up and parking figured out for those who need it.”
“Parking…” I say.
He’s going on about how there’s probably only room for ten to view from inside the workout room but he’ll set up a lounge just for the parents in the den. There will be snacks.
“Wait, back up, Mac! This class can actually happen?”
“You requested it the other night,” he said. “Have you changed your mind? You said the class needed more practice times and that you wanted to use the space and have me make it happen. I’ve got two times worked out, but there’s a possibility for a Saturday one. I was able to use the class roster you forwarded to interface with the parents and get everybody’s a-okay.”
“And Benny’s okay with it?” I ask, stunned.
“He’s good with it. He says this is your home, too.”
I felt...elated. The girls need more practices. Adding another class time or switching class time by even ten minutes is traditionally half a day’s headache, and here Mac has achieved the feat of scheduling entirely new class sessions. We won’t be able to do barre work without a barre, but I’ll take it!
“Okay,” I say, practically backing away lest he change his mind, and also I’m running late at this point for the studio. “It’s decided. They’ll be here.”
I lose myself in company class, working like a demon at the barre, letting the music wash through me.
It’s hard not to keep going back to everything that happened. Center work begins, and I watch my colleagues in their grand pirouettes as I rehash the emotional roller coaster of being with Benny. I am really and truly falling for him again.
It’s been ages since I’ve felt close with a man. It’s just that guys don’t ever seem to measure up, and somewhere along the line, I got too busy for the whole dating thing. Not hard when you’re in a professional ballet company.
Eventually Annie and I are up for grand pirouette combinations. I use my heel to guide my rotation as the ballet mistress counts to eight, over and over again.
Class wraps up and I go down to the pocket park at the end of the block, thankful to spot an empty bench. I grab it in between bites of banana and give Kelsey a quick call and tell her the news that Mac, butler-slash-household manager extraordinaire, has worked his magic and put in a class tonight.
“Oh, I know. He called me too,” she says.
“Oh,” I say. “Well... Wow.”
Kelsey is just laughing. “Not only that, but I told everybody at 341 that you’ve got a butler helping to manage our class now, and we all laughed at how easily you’re sliding into your hated billionaire lifestyle. Mia told me to tell you to pass her the Grey Poupon.”
“Boy, you really don’t want me to send that limo to pick you up now, do you?” I say.
“I don’t even know you right now,” she says.
Of course I do send Alverson to pick Kelsey up, because I might as well enjoy the perks of being Mrs. Benjamin Stearnes while I have them. Up in the penthouse, Kelsey and I help Mac set out waters and a cheese-and-vegetable platter for the guardians. I’m about to say he doesn’t really need to do any of it, but he seems to have worked hard on it. I also don’t say yet again how shocked I am that Benny would be okay with it.
The students and their parents and guardians arrive. Everybody is stunned by the new practice space. “It’s just temporary,” I explain. “I don’t really live here.”
“If you lived here, you probably wouldn’t be teaching dance classes,” one of the mothers says.
“Oh, I’d still do it,” I say, and it’s the truth. I’d teach the girls for free.
We get the girls all herded into the space and Kelsey and I start the gang on their warm-ups, going from fast walking to backwards walking to the dreaded bear walks.
Mac’s been busy. The heavy bag has been hoisted up and he pushed the weights to one side. A row of chairs at the far end creates a natural barrier to the boxes. I’m glad. Making sure the boxes and their contents remain private is important to me. Maybe it’s ridiculous that I have this sense of protectiveness over him and his weirdly private ways, but I do.
The fact that I have to stay in the doorway and not set foot into the room doesn’t stop the class from being awesome. The space is bright and full of light, and the girls feel like they’re on stage a little bit, and they glow with pleasure. The girls just never stop being fun.
What’s more, my being trapped in the doorway doesn’t stop Kelsey and me from doing our usual routine of acting like we’re having fun, power-lounging and inspecting our nails while we put the girls through the rigorous and punishing warm-ups. It’s our special ritual, and the girls love being screamy and complain-y while we act like we’re having fun watching them toil.
There’s one point where I’m just laughing, and the girls are dancing, and I’m looking at the scene from outside of myself, in a way, and I realize that working with this troupe is peak fun, peak creativity, and peak happiness—professionally, anyway.
I’m shocked.
Is it truly possible that I’m the most fulfilled when I’m teaching this class? I get tons of energy from it. I love it. I look forward to it. When did class start being more fun and fulfilling than my work on stage? I try to think back...a year? Two years?
I love performing, and I love company class with my colleagues, but it has felt like a dark cloud in my life because of my knee. All the worry, the pain, the anguish.
I always imagined myself hanging on as a performing dancer for as long as possible, but do I need to reassess that? It’s a shock even to ask myself the question.
“So,” Kelsey says, breaking me out of my reverie. “You’re settling into Chez Billionaire like a boss!”
“Stop!” I say. “Quite the opposite.”
“Gonna need more than that,” Kelsey says. “I need an update. And by update, I mean me and everybody else at home. You had definite strange chemistry the other night at Wilder. We all saw it. Don’t deny it.”
“Okay, it’s going intensely and vexatiously confusing. Will you accept that as my answer?”
Kelsey’s studying my face. “No.”
I clap and call out a direction change.
“Maybe you guys should be...at least dating maybe?” she tries.
“He’s making me play his wife. I think the tell-me-your-favorite-hobbies phase is moot at this point,” I say.
“Guys,” Kelsey grumbles. She goes out onto the floor and models a move, something I can’t do being banished from the hardwood flooring, but that just lets me hang back and enjoy the girls and think about my life.
Nobody asks why I stay in the doorway.
The ballet is based on a Netflix show that these girls are wild about; it was decided by the group that this would be the theme and we did the choreography together. It’s exuberant and fun like a ballet should be—far more fun than the Sevigny ballet.
Is this whe
re my heart is?
They’re leaping when Kelsey comes back to stand with me.
“So what’s his deal, really?” Kelsey asks. “Is he using you to make sure that every woman he has a tryst with in the future understands she will always be the other woman? Is it a simple case of being a commitment phobe?”
I yell out another few commands, trying to ignore the weird way this sits with me. Benny with another woman. Having sex with women that he doesn’t even like. Having sex with any other women at all. Even as Sexorator 2000.
“I don’t know about him being commitment-phobic. I think he only gives a slice of himself,” I say. “He gives you a slice of himself at a time but he’ll never let you into the whole pie.”
“You would hate that,” she says. “You of all people would hate that! You always want to know everything.”
“Are you calling me nosy?” I tease. “I mean, please!” I sweep a hand at the jumbled-up wall o’ cardboard mountain looming on the far side of the otherwise spartan workout space.
“Good point.” The song is over. “I got it.” She grabs the masking tape and sets up a few little markers for the next part of the number while I pull up the next song on the phone.
The girls are excited and keyed up and distracted with the new space—they don’t want to buckle down, but we threaten more bear walks and that gets them concentrating.
Mac comes up and stands next to me at one point, reporting on the mood of the parents in the den. Apparently they’re enjoying the new class lounge. He asks how the space is working, and I tell him that there’s a wild group leaping run we can’t do, but other than that, this amount of space is more than workable. I cannot thank him enough.
He insists that he’s just doing his job but I can see that he’s pleased. He heads back to monitor the parents’ drinks and things.
Soon after, my skin prickles with awareness, and I turn and there’s Benny, coming down the hall wearing a business suit and an annoyed look, but it’s not his super annoyed look; it’s more like his bemusedly annoyed look. They say that the Inuit have dozens of words for different types of snow. I could give you just as many words for Benny’s annoyed looks.
Just Not That Into Billionaires Page 16
