“This is an invoice for seven million,” he says, waving the paper. “And that’s a picture that has little diamonds stuck to it.”
“Benny,” I say, deciding to put him out of his misery. “It’s a joke. Those aren’t really diamonds. You didn’t pay seven million. Nobody paid seven million.”
He looks bewildered. “It’s a joke?” he asks.
“You might have paid a thousand—tops.”
He narrows his eyes, cogitating.
“It was this silly something my gal pals cooked up to make you regret this whole wife thing. It seemed funny at the time. Frankly, it still is…”
The color is finally coming back into his face. “Jesus Christ.” He shoves his hand through his hair in the old Benny way, and this rush of lust fills me.
“You totally thought I was going to make you pay seven million for a picture of me?” I grab his arms. “I can’t believe you think I would order a picture like that! What kind of person do you think I am?”
Something flashes across his face, like the question hits him strangely.
I draw closer, heat pooling in my belly. “You think I am one of the legions of gold diggers that are constantly after you?” I hover my lips near the fleshy lobe of his ear. “Is that what you think? And I’m soooooo enchanted with myself that I must have this portrait?”
He winds my hair lazily around his fist. “I think you have some freaking nerve, that’s what I think,” he says.
“Bring me an artiste! I want the grandest picture of me, me, me! Is that what you think?”
He pulls our faces near, staring into my eyes.
“Maybe next time they’ll be real diamonds,” I whisper. “You never know. Mrs Benjamin Stearnes likes only the finest things.”
Some emotion crosses his face—affection mixed with desperation. Blunt fingers grip my arms more tightly; I can practically feel the energy vibrating through him. My pulse skitters.
He seems to give in to something, and he kisses me hot and hungry.
I wrap my arms around his neck, pressing into him, needing to be touching all of him. “You think I’m a gold digger,” I mumble into the kiss.
Protest rumbles in his throat.
“We can get a matching portrait of you,” I tease.
He growls and steals another kiss. His fingers play along the edges of my T shirt, making scorching contact with my midriff. My breath quickens as confident hands pull my shirt up over my head.
Not to be outdone, I pull open his shirt, which has pearly snap buttons, much to my delight.
“We’ll have to invite our dog park friends over for hors d’oeuvres,” I continue. “Won’t they be surprised!” I kiss his bare chest. I love his chest. I love the light smattering of hair. This man drives me crazy. “Mmmm.”
“Don’t forget Monique and Igor,” he says, relieving me of my bra while I go after his pants. We’re just a frenzy of nonsense talk and clothes getting pulled off at this point.
I reach down and press my hand against his hard cock, clad only in boxer briefs.
He groans.
“This,” I whisper. “So wet for you.”
“Fuck,” he breathes, sliding his hands over my ass.
Sensation shivers through me as he grinds me into him.
“I want to feel you inside me,” I say to him. “I need to feel you in me. Please, Benny.”
He just rumbles, all low and sexy. He grips my ass even harder, and then he hauls me right up off the floor.
I wrap my legs around him as he walks backwards, walking me toward the daybed at the corner of the place.
He lays me down. There’s a hard gravity in his gaze that sends heat blooming through my body. I touch his steely thigh as he skims his palm over my belly, down, down, down to my core. He slips a finger inside of me, then another.
Gasp!
“I like you like this, laid out for me like a feast,” he says.
He leans down to suck my breasts while he does me.
I grab his hair and hold his head in place, rife with pleasure at everything he’s doing. He’s plundering me like a marauder, and I’m there for it!
I maul his muscular shoulder with my free hand.
“Please tell me you have a condom,” I gasp. “I’ll die if you don’t. I need you to have one right now, specifically on you.”
He pulls away with a feverish look.
Without a word he disappears. When he comes back, he’s ambling back cool and slow, cock jutting out from a tawny bush of hair. He’s a sexy sculpture, hard and beautiful. He stands over me slipping it on himself—slowly—possibly even making me wait.
“Take your time why don’t you,” I say.
“I plan to.” Rough fingertips glide over my body, making me burn with need. He seems to know everywhere to touch.
Suddenly it comes to me—he’s doing the Sexorator 2000 thing.
But he keeps touching me, stoking the quicksilver sensation between my legs higher, and an evil little voice inside me asks, do you really want to stop now?”
I don’t want to stop! I need to get Benny back.
“Come here.” I reach up and pull him to me, pull him over me, and he obliges.
He climbs over me and slides his hand over my shoulder over my breasts over my belly. “You are so fucking beautiful.”
His fingers are back between my legs, doing more magic there. I rock my hips as he strokes me. He gets up a rhythm. I’m gasping and panting and forgetting to be anti-Sexorator 2000.
“Please!” I beg, arching up toward him. “Need you inside me!”
He nudges my legs apart and seats himself between them. The fat tip of his cock presses against my opening. Holding my gaze, he pushes into me.
A strangled sound escapes my throat. Pleasure courses through my veins. I’m kissing him, digging into his back, meeting his thrusts.
He adjusts his angle. “This?”
“Mmm.” I skim my hands over the hair-roughened steel of his chest and then I press my lips to the sheen of sweat on his neck. “More,” I say into his neck.
He obliges, going a little harder, a little faster. “This?”
“You taking requests or something?” I ask.
He grabs my hands so that we’re palm to palm. Slowly—ever so slowly—he presses them over my head, onto the back of the couch. “Anything,” he says.
“Now slower,” I say.
He slows, grinding against me. Bright waves of pleasure roll over me. It’s so crazy sexy…but not quite Benny-ish.
“Now…be more awkward and intense,” I say.
“What?”
“Like you’re unself-aware. Like you’re carried away. And a little unsure…”
“What the hell?” He slows. He doesn’t seem to like this request.
“You said I could request anything.”
“I think you suck at being the boss.” He lets go of my hands and puts his attention on my pussy. One ruthless and all-knowing finger massages my way-too-ticklish clit while he fucks me.
It’s everything.
I’m breaking up into bits of pleasure. Thoughts of Benny-vs-Sexorator 2000 evaporate, because Sexorator 2000 has sex tricks, and my libido is there for those sex tricks.
I’m teetering on the edge, panting and teetering and suddenly orgasming.
He loves that I’m coming—I can tell by the way he groans, by the way he begins to piston into me. Finally, here at the end, he’s somewhat losing himself.
We come very nearly together. I collapse. He collapses next to me.
I trail a finger over his muscular arm. Maybe it’s nothing for a man like Benny to stay remote, even during sex.
But I want to be close to him, not just get off, great as that is.
But maybe that’s all I get as fake wife. Random slices of him while his heart stays off-limits in a granite sarcophagus.
Nineteen
Benny
* * *
Alan and Danielle’s rooftop is a 10-story-high world of festiv
e lighting, luxury outdoor amenities, and outrageous greenery, including potted palms and massive outdoor topiaries, most notably a seven-foot-tall rabbit with twinkling lights woven all through its leaves. Guests are abuzz with speculation on how they got the massive plants onto the roof, because they certainly didn’t grow them up here. They couldn’t have brought them up the stairwell.
The sunset blazes over the river in the distance, painting glass building faces orange.
But the real wonder of the rooftop is Francine, casually elegant in a black-and-pink flowered dress. Her hair is down around her shoulders in loose waves that look unbearably sexy.
“What do you think?” she asks when I bring her a fresh bubbly water. “Are you cogitating on the topiary?”
I tuck a stray bit of hair behind her ear. “I won’t play.”
“What do you mean?”
“Its only purpose is to get people talking,” I say. “I don’t want to play.”
“I so want you to, though,” she says. “Do you think it was a helicopter? They’re saying this isn’t a proper helipad for that.”
“All the better,” I say. “What a bore it would be if this was a proper helipad.”
“You are so obstinate!” She tugs on the lapels of my suitcoat. “Tell me.”
I smile like I know. Which I do. It drives her a little bit crazy and she begs some more. I love the sound of her begging. It’s a drug that I’m quickly getting addicted to.
I should tell. Then again, I should do a lot of things. Like let Francine go. I need to do it. I’ve been in denial of that fact, but what the hell? She’s in the most difficult rehearsals of her life. She needs to relax when she’s not rehearsing, to baby that hurt knee.
I’m starting to suspect that I really am the asshole here.
“Please?”
I lean in. “Heavy-lifting drone.”
Her eyes widen. “You think so?”
I nod.
“Hah!” She links her arm into mine, pleased, and it does something to me. “Nobody guessed that. But then, a drone is just a big robot, isn’t it?”
“Entirely,” I say.
She beams at me.
“What?”
“Helicopter. Whatevs!” She pulls my arm in more tightly, pleased and proud—of me, of us as a team in the world.
Here I am, her captor. If I were her, I wouldn’t show me anything, but Francine shows her emotions, sparkling with feeling, sensitive to the vibrations of the world, all brightness and flow and beauty.
I spent so much of my life trying to contain my emotions—unsuccessfully. I get so full of curiosity, so consumed with the drive to make a thing work, that my world can sometimes collapse to a single point. I’d go at things with too much intensity. I fall in love too desperately.
A few people come over; it’s more of James’s network that adopted me, the sullen nerd that James inexplicably elevated to best friend. Like everyone, they’re curious about my long-lost wife.
We tell our origin story for about the fifth time that night. People have a hard time believing that I was ever even peripherally in the theater. She’s describing elements of the show in humorous terms—the swans, the gunfight expressed in acrobatic ballet. I remind her of other details, and she takes them up and spins them. The show really was ridiculous. Nobody knew that better than us cast members.
She hooks her arm into mine. “If you get him drunk enough he’ll sing ‘Alejandro.’”
“You never give up, do you?” I say to her.
“No way does Benny sing ‘Alejandro,’” somebody says.
“He totally does,” she says, smiling.
She was happy when I sang it. She’d be delighted if I sang it again. It’s such a little thing. What would it cost me to sing it? Nothing. The mechanical action is simple—the mouth forms consonants and vowels.
The problem is that it feels like more than just a song. I’ve resisted singing it for the same reason I’ve resisted saying so many things. The vocal cords vibrate. You string words into one honest sentence. You follow it up with another honest sentence. It should be so easy, but it feels like moving mountains.
Telling her about James was hard like that, though it did feel good after.
People are arguing about what ‘Alejandro’ was really about. Some say it was about Lady Gaga’s old boyfriends. Others say it’s about her gay friends. Still others claim it’s about the civil war in Spain. The talk flows as freely as the champagne fountain, another topiary-involved creation.
Eventually the iPhones come out.
We wind up in another group where people are talking about the park construction project—some of our favorite paths are going to be closed. Fitness classes will be canceled. Francine is telling them about something called bear walks, and also how important it is to be able to get up from a lying position without using your arms. She’s telling them about the study that she loves to quote where elderly people who can get up from a lying position without using their arms live longer.
A few people try it—right there on the rooftop—and discover that it’s harder than it sounds. We exchange glances, laughing. Francine would normally be demonstrating, but she doesn’t. It’s her knee.
Later, she grabs another bubbly water from the open bar and wanders off to the far side to look over the railing, looking out at the lights, looking so sad. And I know she’s thinking about her knee.
She should be home, resting it.
I go over. “If only Igor and Monique were here. They would show them how to rise without using their arms.”
A grin spreads across her face. “They would laugh at everyone too much,” she says. “They can be merciless.”
“Igor is so good at everything, he doesn’t understand,” I say.
“Monique, too,” she says, fixing my collar. “She’s so gifted. Igor helps her understand what it’s like to have issues.”
“That’s funny, because I find Monique helps Igor in that respect,” I say.
“Who are Igor and Monique?” It’s Jeff, another neighbor.
Francine is smiling. “I brought Monique to the marriage, and Benny brought Igor. They’re both nine, and it’s sad because Monique speaks three languages and is an international personage while Igor is still having trouble with ‘Little Teapot.’”
“Well Igor doesn’t like to show off. It’s important to Igor to make Monique feel special.”
“I’m sure she doesn’t notice,” Francine says, “what with her artwork being on display in the Louvre.”
“The Louvre?” Jeff’s wife is there confused. People are wandering over, Aaron among them.
“Our children, Igor and Monique, have been about nine years old for the last decade,” I say.
“It’s been hard on them what with our jet-setting ways,” Francine adds. “Perhaps that’s why they’re so over-achieving.”
“Igor is applying to colleges these days,” I say. “Sometimes I think he is just far too serious for a nine-year-old.”
Francine grabs my arm with a look of concern. “He thinks he’s applying to colleges? Oh, how sweet!” This she says in a pitying tone. “Like an Easy-Bake oven, but colleges.”
“You’re correct in that he’s not truly applying. He’s been invited to quite a few of them. I don’t know if he’d really have to apply, so you were right in that it’s not really applying. I’m sure they would consider Monique if it weren’t for the Victorian ailments.”
“A few things are starting to make sense with you two,” Danielle says. “Suddenly this entire weird relationship is starting to make sense.”
“Oh my god, you guys,” says a neighbor. “I was like, they have kids? They named one Igor? Who names a kid Igor?”
Francine snorts. “People who love Igor Stravinsky. Did you know that one of his ballet pieces caused a riot in the streets of Paris? The man’s a badass.”
I’m beaming at her proudly. Then I catch sight of Aaron, standing there with a fake smile that’s very much like a drea
dful rictus. He really doesn’t like Francine, ever since she reminded me how much I hate working for people.
I haven’t stopped thinking about that. I haven’t stopped thinking about our chocolate chip cookie dough discussion, either. I’ve reached out to a few people, in fact. Exploring ways to edge Aaron out. To take on a new partner. It turns out there are ways I could do it.
After James was killed so suddenly, I was in survival mode, doing all that I could to interact with the fewest people. I just wanted to be in the lab, my comfort zone. Now I’m thinking bigger—figuring out how to arrange things the way that I want instead of just reacting to them.
Chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. Who knew?
“This is what it would be like,” I say as soon as we’re alone.
She turns to me. “Yeah, right? Where they all think we’re sadly weird.”
“But we don’t give a crap,” I say. “That’s the kind of marriage that we have. And it’s a good example to set for Igor and Monique. They’ll have trouble in life if they worry too much about opinions.”
She’s grinning. There’s this feeling bubbling in my chest, and I don’t know what it is.
Until I realize it’s happiness.
God, our marriage is such a mirage, and I’m drinking it all in. I’m splashing in it. I can’t stop. I lean over and brush my lips over hers.
Her hands curl around my lapels and she pulls me to her.
“Oh, I’m sorry!” A voice. Aaron.
We pull apart.
“Didn’t realize it was showtime,” he mumbles.
I give him a hard look.
He turns to Francine. “Monica and Britney want suggestions for ballet schools. I told them that you’d know. They’re talking about sending their girls to Ballez Over America or something like that?”
“Oh, no. No, no, no,” she says. “That’s a scam!”
“Not what Monica says.”
“Oh, man!” She heads over, leaving me with Aaron, who has some bullshit to say about Juliana. Moving up the signing.
“What are you doing?” I bark. I’m not a moron; he deliberately interrupted that kiss.
“What?” he asks, blue eyes wide and innocent.
“Fine.” I walk off. Another beauty of being me is that I don’t have to make excuses when I leave. I grab another beer.
Just Not That Into Billionaires Page 18
