by Gail Bridges
“Uh, sure,” I said.
She bobbed about, plucking a fallen luggage tag from the floor, straightening a flower vase on the windowsill, latching the wardrobe door, switching on the lamps beside the bed. She pointed to the far side of the room. “The bathroom is over there.” She gestured to the wall across from us. “Extra blankets are under the window seat.” Then she took three steps over to the dresser and picked up a basket. “Condoms,” she said, shaking it. “They’re all over. Free for the taking. And lube. Also free.” She looked up at us, winking. “Take handfuls. Put them in your pockets—you’ll need them. Use them, please. No protection, no sex. It’s inn policy.”
Policy? What kind of place had a policy for condom usage?
“You’ll use them?” she asked, waiting for an answer.
“Fine,” I said.
“Okay,” said Josh, shrugging. “We can do that.”
“Wonderful!” Zenith grinned. Her smile was contagious. She radiated a heady mixture of sensuality and…what? Grace? Freshness? Good old-fashioned niceness? All of the above? Whatever Zenith’s secret was, it enthralled both me and Josh. I knew that because he had my hand in his and was squeezing it. Hard.
“Umm,” said Josh, sounding breathless, “what do you teach, exactly?”
“Lovemaking. Sensuality. Erotic touch.” Zenith threw her arms out in an all-encompassing gesture. “And it’s wonderful!”
Josh and I stole a look at each other. He arched an eyebrow.
“I’m a Guide,” she said again. “There are four of us and we all teach the same thing. We have the best job in the world.” She laughed, a delightful thing. “But first things first. You must be hungry. Look! I brought you an evening meal.” She flung her hand to the left, toward a table where plates and glasses and silverware and covered platters were neatly laid out. “And chocolates too! Why did you get chocolates? He must really like you. None of the others got chocolates!”
“Oh?” I tore my gaze from her to the window on the far side of the room. It was dark out. All I could see was a faraway light and a few stars. I took shallow breaths, fighting to get enough air, annoyed by the tight-fitting bodice of my wedding dress. I wanted to get out of it in the worst way. “I suppose he liked us. I guess.”
“He did.” Zenith nodded toward the dinner table. “See that note card? It’s from him. Be sure to read it before eating. Okay? It’s very important.”
“Sure,” Josh said.
“Good. Leave the dishes here—I’ll collect them in the morning.” Zenith went to the still-open door. Then, her hand on the doorknob, she turned back to look at us through her fall of hair. “Breakfast is at eleven. Even if you screw like bunnies all night, drag yourselves down, you hear? Don’t miss it! The dining hall is on the first floor, near where you came in. See you then!” She closed the door behind her and Josh and I were alone.
“It’s one thing after another in this place, isn’t it?” he said.
I nodded, biting my lip. It certainly was. If you could call my shocking attraction to a beautiful woman with Burnt Sienna hair a thing.
Josh’s hand fluttered at his side. “She was…um…”
“No! Don’t talk about how gorgeous she was!” I gave him my most ferocious frown. “Not on our wedding night!”
“Okay. I won’t.”
I kissed him. “But she was, wasn’t she?”
He laughed through the kiss, which made an unusual sensation on my lips. Kind of like trying to talk underwater. I liked it.
“I’m starving,” he said. “And yes. She was. You liked her—I saw!”
“Maybe,” I said, kissing him again. Then I broke away. “I’m hungry too. C’mon.” I took his hand and we stood over the table, taking it in. “Wow,” I said, sniffing, trying to identify the many tantalizing smells. “This is…unreal.”
Unreal was right.
It wasn’t a small table. It couldn’t be and still hold the six covered platters. Plus a small, coconut-covered cake on a crystal pedestal, a handful of shell-shaped mints in a miniature dish, a coffee service complete with real sugar and cream, the chocolates, wineglasses and a bread basket. So much food! Much more than the two of us could handle but I wasn’t complaining. It seemed like hours and hours since our reception, not that I’d had anything to eat, what with all the hugging and speechifying and toasting.
I’d do my best to make up for it now.
Squeezed amid the platters were two slim vases of yellow flowers of a type I’d never seen before. And tapered candles. And tiny cut-glass salt and pepper shakers, a set for each of us. And soft linen napkins of—I squinted—Manganese Violet with a touch of Cobalt Blue, a favorite color of mine. The napkins were delicate little works of art, origami almost, folded into long-necked swans that perched atop snowy white plates, so perfect I wondered if I could take my swan home with me without ruining it. Probably not. In a swoon of delighted anticipation, my mouth watering, I leaned over and lifted the lid from the largest platter. Four plump steaks nestled in a bed of wild mushrooms. The aroma nearly knocked me over.
Josh dipped his index finger into the sauce and slurped it noisily into his mouth. “Oh my god. You have to try this.”
But I’d already replaced the cover. “Not yet, Josh! We can’t eat yet. We’re supposed to read the note first. Remember? Where is it?” I fell into the nearest chair, wedding dress, high heels and all. I picked up a white envelope in the very center of the table, from where it leaned against a candle. “Christ! It says Mr. and Mrs. Joshua Taylor. I hate that! I’m me. I’m not Mrs. You.”
He ignored that. He was busy snatching a mint from the candy dish.
“Put that back,” I said.
“Fine. But I may die of hunger if this takes much longer.”
I read the note to myself, sucked in my breath in surprise, then passed it to him.
He read it, then met my eye. “A game!”
“A sex game,” I clarified, “for the two of us. It might actually be fun.”
“It might.”
“Lots of fun.”
Josh narrowed his eyes. “It says here that he’s offering a prize if we complete the game.”
“That’s a dirty old man who wrote that.”
“Shocking, really.”
“Appalling.”
Josh leaned back in his seat, batting the letter against the edge of the table. “It says if we want to play, we have to follow his directions. If we want our prize tomorrow morning at breakfast, we have to do everything his way.” He scratched his knee. “We can’t touch each other—or do anything—without following his directions from this moment on. Angie. That’s…sick.” Josh eyed me, his glance lingering on my bust, as Mr. Freaktown had called it. “It’s sick. But tantalizing. Can we do that, Angie? Can we make our wedding night into a game? His game?”
We stared at each other, motionless.
“Should we?” I whispered.
“We shouldn’t. Definitely we shouldn’t. Why are we whispering?”
I cleared my throat. “I don’t know.”
“Really, we ought to do the opposite of whatever that man tells us.”
“I know.”
“We ought to grab our stuff and leave.”
“I know.”
His chest rose and fell. Rose and fell. He leaned forward. “Angie, it’s crazy, but I think I might want to play along. Give me your hand.” He set my hand on his crotch. “Feel that? I have the world’s hugest cock! Just thinking about his game is making me hard.”
I gave his erection a helpful squeeze through his suit pants. Still holding my hand on his lap, I leaned closer to him and whispered as quietly as I could, barely even moving my lips, “Josh. My love. It’s our wedding night. I want you. I want you bad. I’ve waited for you all day. This whole thing…having rules. Doesn’t it make you want to break them? Doesn’t it make it all seem that much more tantalizing?”
He kissed me. A light, gentle brush of lips. “Yes. It does. Absolutely.”
&nb
sp; I breathed the next words right into his ear. “Just so you know, I’m sopping wet down there…”
“Down where?” he breathed back, his groin pressing against my hand, his cock straining the seams of his dress pants.
“A place you’ll soon be exploring. And yes. We’re this close to breaking the rules.”
“So we’re going to play?” He stared at me, unblinking.
“We’ll play. Then tomorrow morning, after we get our prize, we’ll leave.”
“After breakfast?”
“Immediately after breakfast.”
We kissed again, breaking the rules one last time. Then I leaned back and took a deep breath. The letter lay on the table beside Josh’s dinner plate, where he’d let it fall. I picked it up. Read it a second time. Met Josh’s eyes. “It says to begin the game by taking the napkin off the bread basket.”
“Go ahead.”
I did so, revealing a deck of cards nestled beside a small pile of whole-wheat rolls. Rolls! Fresh from the oven! My hand hovered over the nearest one. My mouth watered, my nose twitched.
“Don’t do it,” said Josh.
Giving him an exaggerated sigh, I picked up the top card. I ran my finger over the ornate raised scrollwork, then turned it over. “Card number one. It says we start the game by serving each other one ladle of soup. Fine. We can do that.” I leaned over the table, deciding which covered dish was most likely to hold soup. I chose the deepest one, a tureen, and took the lid off. “Yum. Tomato bisque.”
I served Josh, then he carefully filled my bowl. “Now we’re supposed to draw the next card,” I said, hoping we’d actually get to eat the soup.
Josh took a turn, reading aloud. “Take turns sharing the details of a favorite sexual memory. One memory for one swallow of soup. No more, no less.”
“Okay,” I said. “An explicit memory?”
“It doesn’t say. Just a detailed memory. But probably yes.”
“You go first, then.”
Josh picked up his spoon, dipped it slowly in the soup, stirred. Steam rose in a delicate vine, then dissipated. He held the spoon to his lips. “Here’s a memory. We did it… Um, we had sex—this is so weird, Angie—at your uncle’s house when they were on their trip to Europe. On their living room couch. Remember?”
“I do!”
“It was so cold we kept our jackets on. Butts to the wind but with our coats on!” He laughed, then slurped loudly at the soup.
I smiled at the memory. “We were such kids.”
“You were a kid. I was a suave ladies’ man. We can have water, right?”
“A ladies’ man? No. You weren’t.” I waved my spoon in his direction. “The card doesn’t say anything about water. Have some.”
He drank, regarding me over the rim with his eyes. “Your turn. Go for it.”
I thought for a moment. “Okay. I’m remembering the first time we had sex. The very first time.”
“I’m interested. Go on.”
“I was so worried! Terrified, in fact.”
“Really? Terrified of what? Of me? Of sex? Of getting pregnant?”
“No.” I held my spoonful of soup at my lips, poised and ready for my first taste. “None of that. I, um… I’d just gotten over my period! I was afraid you’d see the spots on my underwear! But you didn’t.” I swallowed my mouthful of soup. “Delicious. Absolutely delicious. I want more.”
“I know. Me too. The guy must be some sort of perverse genius. Making us want it more by withholding it!” He paused. Drummed his fingers on the table. “Do you know what? I did see those spots. I just didn’t let on. It’s my turn again?”
“I knew it!” I watched those long fingers, wishing they were touching me and not the table. I shivered. “Yep. Your turn.”
Josh filled his spoon, then waited for a drip to plop back into his bowl. “I’m going with our first time also. I was nervous too—I was sure you’d think my dick was ugly because of the way it…um…kind of leans to the left. But you didn’t think it was ugly.” He ate another spoonful of bisque. “Or maybe you did. What spice is that? Thyme?”
“No! Your dick is adorable!” I refilled my spoon. “It’s thyme, you’re right. Thyme and another spice I can’t place.” I looked at the forbidden platters of food. And those chocolates. “I’m so hungry I can hardly stand it! This is pure torture!”
“Maybe that’s the point? Stomach hunger and sexual hunger, combining to make us go crazy?”
“Maybe. Probably.”
He shook his head. “Well, it’s working. Quick! Before I perish! On to your next memory!”
I laughed. “Okay. It’s a good one. The time we were camping in the Olympic National Forest. Remember? All those trees? It rained almost the entire time? We couldn’t get the campfire to light? Well, it was like two o’clock in the afternoon, and we were hanging out in the tent, fooling around, messing with each other because there was nothing else to do—”
“And those people in the next space yelled at us! I remember!”
“That’s right!”
“They called us, what, moral deviants? They told us to get a room!”
“Yes! How ridiculous was that?”
“Totally ridiculous!”
“Mortified, weren’t we?”
“Maybe you were.” He made a lewd gesture with his spoon.
“Stop that!” I said, reaching for his arm. “You’re teasing me. How am I supposed to stay away from you if you’re teasing me?”
He shook his head in mock dismay, his eyes at half-mast. “You’re the tease! Just sitting there, all tarted up, pretending to be a bride.” He set his spoon down. “You know, I had no idea we were making so much noise that day.”
We smiled at each other. This wasn’t so bad. I swallowed my tomato, thyme and something-else bisque, wondering what the rest of the evening would bring.
“I’ve got a good one,” said Josh. “Remember Tilly? What a crazy dog. Every time we had sex she would jump onto the bed and try to get between us. What the hell was wrong with her?”
He tipped soup into his mouth.
“She was neurotic. How long ’til we eat some real food?”
“Forget food,” said Josh, “when do we get to have sex?”
I rested my hand on the bread basket. “There’s nothing stopping us from cheating.”
“But I want a prize!”
“Fine.” I looked out of the nearest window. From my seat at the table, I couldn’t see the twinkling lights of the town that I’d noticed when Zenith had been in the room, only inky-black sky. “Okay. A couple more, then. I’ve got a recent memory. From only two nights ago.”
Josh raised his eyebrows.
“It was midnight. We were…doing it. We were almost done. After we…you know…switched positions but before we…ahhh…” My voice trailed off. I swallowed. “Josh! This is brutal!”
He leaned forward, wanting more. He made a small noise deep in his throat, his lips parted just a little. “Please,” he said softly.
It was that “please”, so sincere, so genuine, that got to me. How could I refuse? I took a deep breath and continued. “So. You were doing that thing you like—and I like too—you were going…in-and-out, in-and-out…of me, yeah, in and out of my…you know…” I threw up my hands. “Argh! I can’t do this!”
He closed his eyes then opened them again. “Angie,” he whispered, “it’s making me so hot, hearing you talk like this. Don’t stop now! Keep going.”
“I want to! But it’s so hard to describe sex. Especially when all you want to do is have sex!” I took a much-needed drink of water. “That old man must have known how impossible this would be.”
Josh grinned and licked his lips, the fiend.
Gamely, I went on describing my memory, trying not to look at him lest I leap across the table and ravish him. “Anyway, you started kissing me. I was on top. I was leaning over you, and you were kissing my neck, remember? Josh, I thought you’d given me a hickey. Right where it would show on m
y wedding day! I thought was going to have a heart attack.”
“Jesus, Angie,” he said, tapping the spoon on the table. “What kind of person would do such a thing? I would never do that.”
“I know, I know. I was just being an idiot.”
I ate my spoonful of soup.
“Tell me again about the in-out, in-out thing.” He made the lewd gesture with his spoon again. “Was it like this…or more like this?”
I swatted at him. “Stop it.”
He sat back. “The other spice is cinnamon—I just figured it out.”
“Enough memories,” I said, flustered and feeling hot, too hot—alarmingly hot. “Let’s turn over the next card.”
He reached for it. He read it. He frowned.
“What?” I said.
“We’re so screwed, Angie.”
Chapter Four
“What’s it say?”
He set the card on the table. “We either eat something or we take off an item of clothing. Not both.”
He was right. We were screwed.
“The blue cards at the bottom of the deck will tell us what to do.”
“Fine,” I said, reaching. “Shall I draw a blue card, then? Get us started?”
Josh eyed me. “Wait a second.”
I put my arm back into my lap.
“You don’t suppose that weirdo has cameras in here?”
I looked at the high, dark ceiling. If there was a hidden camera, where would it be? In the light sconces? In the heating vent? I frowned at the blinking red light of a smoke detector I hadn’t even noticed before. “No. He wouldn’t.”
But somehow, I wasn’t so sure.
Josh’s mouth twitched. “There might be.”
Staring at my husband, my hand clutching a blue card that I’d drawn but not yet looked at, I realized with a jolt that we were enjoyingthis. My senses were heightened, my body quivering with anticipation as I wondered what each new card would bring. I could tell just by looking at him that Josh was affected in the exact same way, which took me to a whole new level. Who would have thought that being told how to have sex—or how not to have sex—would be so sexy? Who would have thought that a hidden camera, real or imagined, would make me almost faint with excitement?
