by JJ Giles
“I bet you’ve seen some interesting things,” she commented.
“Well...I haven’t seen anything new for awhile, so I’m starting to believe I’ve seen it all. Probably the most memorable was a guy who couldn’t achieve orgasm without the current of a garden variety kitchen appliance.”
Cherry laughed.
“It is rather humorous, but the truth is he couldn’t even get it up without a corroded wire wrapped around his penis, laying near an outlet to plug it in intermittently.”
“And you cured him?” Jerry asked.
“Just like dropping a quarter in a slot machine,” she said with a wink. “The guy was so scarred I don’t know how he could even feel it.”
“You treat women, too?” Cherry asked.
“I have quite a few women come through my door. Mostly middle-aged inorgasmic women. Sometimes younger...they can’t stand to be with men and refuse to accept that they’re gay. For the most part, it’s younger men with premature ejaculation problems.”
“Pray tell,” Cherry asked curiously.
“It takes two or three sessions to get them to relax and learn to trust me, but basically I teach them how to masturbate...by themselves, so they can concentrate on the stimulation rather than on what someone else is doing. To withdraw that stimulation if they’re too close and then go back to it.”
Cherry squirmed. “Couples?”
Broadly, Morgan smiled. “Can you see me standing beside of a bed watching two people go at it and telling them what they’re doing wrong? But when couples come in it’s usually because one is terribly unsatisfied, usually the woman. So I train men how to do it right. And they don’t even know they’re being trained. On the flip side, men who want more out of their wives and can’t get anything but straight sex...occasionally the women can be trained if they truly love their husbands. Unfortunately in my experience, those cases usually end up in divorce.”
“No doubt,” Jerry said smoothly.
“So what’s your complaint, Daddy?”
Quickly, he looked at her with a little snarl and then looked back to Morgan a little embarrassed. “My daughter has no inherent inhibitions.”
But Morgan saved him with, “I think you’re father has fallen into the trap most middle-aged people do. Habit,” she said respectfully, “which leads to boredom and the ensuing lack of sexual excitement unfortunately extends into every aspect of their lives.”
“Interesting. And you shake things up a little bit?”
“As often as I can,” she said smiling at the double entendre.
Jerry relaxed back into the chair, having heard Morgan explain by saying nothing, actually. That she turned him on was evident the day he met her. That he was falling hopelessly in love with her came like a thief in the night holding a blade to his throat. Give in to it or die.
“Hey JD,” Cherry suddenly shouted. Morgan turned to see an elderly man in shorts and polo shirt waddling toward them.
“Look who's here,” JD said.
“What the hell are you doing, JD?” Jerry asked happily.
Heavily, he dropped into the chair next to Jerry. “Ah, my back yard’s getting torn up and Helena went to London and her sister to get away from the noise. I thought I’d come down here and flirt with some pretty girls.” Casually, he winked at Morgan.
“JD Rockingham,” Jerry offered. “JD...Morgan McFaye.”
Shit, Morgan thought. One of the richest guys on the planet. And Jerry knows him. But he was a client of Brian’s and the entire situation made her squirm. “It’s a pleasure,” Morgan said. “Some landscaping, you said?”
“A brilliant young man,” JD offered. His gaze narrowed to study her a moment. “I know you, don’t I?”
Morgan shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“I’ve seen you somewhere,” he insisted.
Her eyes closed and a little prayer that she not be recognized totally issued silently. Just because she once upon a time worked in his corporate offices didn’t mean she was still his two o’clock appointment every Monday afternoon.
“JD, you need to come up with another line, baby,” Cherry teased. “Everyone’s heard that one...including me.”
“Hey, little girl...the good thing about getting old is...” Suddenly his vision trailed off. “Shit, I forgot what I was gonna say.”
Cherry laughed heartily.
Jerry smiled. JD might have been failing physically, but he still knew where all the bodies were buried. And if he thought he’d seen Morgan somewhere, he had, Jerry knew.
JD slumped over the table and turned to Jerry. “And you, boy. I got a fresh shipment straight from Havana, some of that German gin and brand new deck of cards.”
“Too bad I don’t have enough money for you to cheat me out of,” Jerry offered.
“C’mon, boy. I’ll float you a loan. All the boys are in town right now.”
Jerry glanced at Morgan. An all night cigar-smoking, gin-swilling, ball-scratching poker game sounded enticing. “I might stop up later.”
“When the hell did you get so old?”
“I’ll stop in for a few hands later.”
JD grumbled as he pulled himself to his feet. “Ya’ old fart.” Slowly, JD toddled off.
“If you’ll excuse me, Daddy, I gotta check on some things.” She rose out of the chair to return toward the hotel.
In the distance, the sound of steel drums rose and rushed toward them on the breeze. “If you’d like to go play cards, don’t worry about me,” Morgan said softly.
“I was going to invite you to the club later to dance with me.”
“That sounds wonderful. But truthfully, I don’t have anywhere I have to be until Monday at five.”
Encouraged, he smiled. He had an appointment at five on Monday, too. “So I’ll take you dancing tomorrow night and you just might service that client at five on my jet?”
“Isn’t your jet a little small for that?”
The very thought of having her at all, much less like that made him swell. Deeply, he peered into her and then leaned over the table to take her hand. “Morgan,” he started quite sincerely, “I didn’t bring you down here to be fodder for my daughter’s fantasies.”
She grasped his hand and slid the other up his arm. “It’s alright, Jerry.” Because actually to just give into it was too easy just now. To just surrender and let someone else make the decisions was the only thing that felt right.
“You’re sure?”
“You have a good time and I’ll see you sometime tomorrow,” she whispered.
Quickly, he raised her hand to his lips and kissed the back of her fingers with his tongue. He wanted to shout it, to reveal it, to let it spill from his heart and tell not only her but the entire world that he loved her. Rather, he only turned her hand and planted soft, wet kisses in the palm.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he whispered. Slowly, he rose and walked away. If he didn’t leave now, he might never.
* * * *
The sway of her gait was unmistakably seductive and Morgan watched intently Cherry’s return to the table. So many years since she had been propositioned. Self-consciously she shifted in the chair, unable to tear her eyes away from the slender, nearly naked torso, the soft but vivid blue sarong hanging askew from the ledge of her hip or the near naked breasts.
“Just you and me, I guess,” Cherry offered.
“If I’m not too much trouble,” Morgan mewed.
With her gaze locked to Morgan’s eyes, she whispered, “None whatsoever. But in your less than anxious and somewhat guarded style, I perceive you as a woman who is either hopelessly involved or recently dumped.”
Morgan shook her head, grimacing at the accuracy of that. “I didn’t know I was so plastic.”
“Which is it?”
“I’m not sure,” she said softly and lit a cigarette. “I’ve been living with one incredible man for ten years and then one day he just flipped out. His family is kind of a mess...”
“
Whose isn’t?”
Morgan shrugged. “Against my admonition he’s gotten involved emotionally with what they’ve been putting themselves through for years and years and years. Of course, I’ve become the bad guy.”
“What are they like?”
“I’ve never met them. When I met him he was estranged from them and since some people are better off apart I never questioned it. Now he’s gotten involved again and refuses to introduce me so I’m beginning to wonder if my career isn’t the problem.”
“Has he ever indicated that to you before?”
“Never,” she whispered. “In fact, I only on very rare occasions do the surrogate thing anymore. But when I need a strong healthy, well-hung male, he’s right there at my feet ready to fuck anyone I put in front of him.”
“Whoa,” Cherry offered with a leer. “It sounds like he’s got some serious problems. He gets all the strange he could possibly want while you save yourself for him? Guy needs a shrink.”
“I don’t know. I think there’s a little more to it than that somehow. What, I don’t know and since he never returned my daily phone calls for the first month, I have to assume he doesn’t want to be bothered. That was three months ago.”
“I’m sorry,” Cherry said affectionately. “But if the guy doesn’t come to his senses, there’s someone else who is hopelessly in love with you.”
Morgan tightened as if it were an assault. “I, uhh...I don’t wish to sound insensitive, but love isn’t supposed to part of the deal.” Nervously, she glanced toward the hotel. “I don’t know where he got my name...that’s not unusual, but from his e-mails he sounded desperate. He wasn’t referred by the medical community.”
“I expect after all these years he is desperate,” Cherry said. “My mom is miserable and wants company...and a lot of it. My brother and I used to talk about how we wished they’d get divorced.”
“That doesn’t happen often.”
“That’s how bad it was for all of us. We got the hell outta there as soon as the starting bell rang and haven’t been back.” She leaned forward to accentuate her coming statement. “But I see some awful big changes in him. That he would expend the time and effort to come down here and talk to me about...my parentage says an awful lot. Something or someone has reawakened him. I don’t want him to be alone anymore,” she said insistently. “So whether it’s you or someone else he relies upon, it’s definitely you I have to thank for awakening my Prince with a kiss...from your wicked whip.”
Stunned, but delighted Morgan broke into easy laughter. She knotted the napkin on her lap and then tossed it to the table. “Yet...something tells me he’ll never be my submissive,” she said smiling self-consciously.
“No, he won’t,” Cherry said quickly. “My father is one of the finest disciplinarians that ever lived. It’s pure poetry to watch him work. As a matter of fact, my brother isn’t bad, either. But the songs of sorrow my father can coax out of a submissive can rend the heart. He plays the human body like a violin.”
It sent chills up Morgan’s spine that settled in her heart. But the obvious question of what the holy hell are parents doing in a discipline room with children scared her badly. “You...and your brother and your father...?”
“Obviously, you haven’t seen the Lair. My brother said he was seventeen when Dad caught him and his girlfriend playing in there. I was probably seventeen when Dad took me there for the first time to introduce me to the steamy side of life. Let me take my girlfriends there. He spent a lot of hours with me teaching me how to handle a whip and a whole lot of other things I haven’t seen since. So I take it from that that my father is exceptionally inventive when it comes to toys.”
“We haven’t gotten to that place yet,” she admitted.
“What are you waiting for, baby? I can see how bad you want it.”
Nervously, Morgan nestled deeper in the chair. “It’s been a very long time.”
“And you don’t go there with your boyfriend, do you?”
“He’s...just so heartbreakingly submissive. I don’t know if he could even get it up for that.”
Cherry nodded and snapped her fingers at a passing waiter to bring more drinks. Her eyes sparkled in the dancing torchlight, her short black hair on the edge of a fresh ocean breeze. The way Cherry studied her unnerved her.
“So tell me something,” Cherry said. She leaned closer, studying Morgan as if she were a museum piece. “This has to be a put-on. Did my father name you...Morgan McFaye?”
Morgan hesitated and fell back a little. “No,” she said. “I really am Morgan McCrory McFaye. I, uhh...I was born on Easter morning in church.”
Cherry’s eyes narrowed. “You must be joking!” Cherry gasped.
A half-smile dug into Morgan’s cheek. “It really is no joke. My mom was not about to miss Easter mass because of an insignificant thing like being in labor. I’ve been hearing about this all of my life from everyone who witnessed it. They put my mom on the carpet up on the Altar that morning where I was born. One of the parishioners was a medic, I guess, and I was delivered right there. The priest grabbed me up and baptized me as soon as the cord was cut. He named me Morgan after my father, McCrory, my mother’s maiden name. McFaye, our surname.”
Breathless, Cherry stared. Trying to envision the scene, she gasped, “Wow! To see something like that go down in Church on Easter morning.”
“Apparently it affected quite a few people quite deeply. But I don’t understand. Why would you think that’s a joke?”
Cherry stared blatantly at the red-haired witch of her father’s fantasies as if Jerry merely conjured her to life. “My father is an amateur Arthurian scholar. The legends of King Arthur and Camelot have fascinated him forever.”
Morgan nodded, listening intently. “I don’t know much about it.”
“Supposedly there was a King Arthur who ruled what we know as England today. There’s no actual proof although my father would like to search it out. Arthur may have been simply a character of literature. But legend has it that Arthur had a half-sister. Her name was Morgan le Fey.”
Instantly, Morgan brightened as her growing discomfort of being a joke evaporated. And the occasional references Brian had made to Morgan le Fey made sense now. “Pray tell,” Morgan said repeating Cherry.
“The original Morgan le Fey was, unbeknownst to Arthur, his sister. She was also impregnated by Arthur and gave birth to Arthur’s son, Mordred. Legend has it that Mordred insisted on his place in King Arthur’s court and challenged his father for the throne. It brought ruin upon Camelot and Mordred murdered his father.
“Through subsequent retellings, Morgan became a witch, as you might imagine. A changling, once the beautiful seductress that could bring men to ruin, sometimes an angel who could raise men out of despair.”
Nervously, Morgan clutched at the curvaceous glass containing a drink.
“But in my father’s quite unlimited imagination, and now that I know what I know about him, Morgan le Fey was not only a changling, both dominant and submissive at his will, she was the good witch, a beautiful fey who could stroke passion in the hearts of men. He used to tell us bedtime stories about Morgan. How she plucked flowers from the field, rerouted wars away from her people. How people came to her be cured of their ailments and all Morgan had to do was mix up some poppy seeds, tree bark and mushrooms to make it all go away.”
Easily, Morgan laughed. “Poppy seeds and mushrooms? That recipe could make you make you feel good about anything.”
Almost laughing, Cherry nodded. “No kidding! The point is I grew up wanting some of that red-haired, green-eyed witch myself. I can imagine how smitten he was with you when he heard your name. That you appear exactly as he described is damned near...actually fucking scary. That you go about curing people’s ailments is not even funny anymore.”
Morgan drew in a deep breath. She winced. “But somehow, it’s just me.”
Heavily, Cherry sighed. “It’s like you’ve stepped out of his imagination i
nto his arms. I’m happy for him and he deserves a little happiness in his life.”
Morgan looked away to the flowers on the table. “He’s a good man,” she whispered. “At least there’s a good man in there somewhere. I’ve known him long enough now to know that he’s never trusted anyone because he’s been treated very badly all of his life. Of course, I don’t know the details, only the symptoms. But he’s responded very well.”
Relying not only on her personal experience but also the miserable story he related this morning, Cherry said, “It’s true. He doesn’t really know what the love of a good woman is and I can see he’s craving it very badly.”
“Yeah, but uhh...all of my clients fall in love with me,” she whispered. “I help them through things that no one else could or would. But they’re still clients.”
“But you don’t drop everything you’re doing to fly to a different hemisphere for just any old client.”
Ah, that was true. Painfully true. If Brian was sitting at home waiting for her, this would not be happening. “Busted,” she said with a smirk.
“And you’re terribly torn because you haven’t gotten over this other guy. If this other guy came back, you’d find yourself in a great big mess.”
“To wrap it in ribbons and bows, yes. The kind of mess I’d probably cut my throat over. I have no intention of leading your father to impossible conclusions. I only agreed to come with him because he feared badly your rejection. Didn’t feel like he was strong enough to handle that alone. So this is not some romantic weekend getaway.”
“Well...” Cherry announced. “I say enough about men. My opinion is they should just go pile up somewhere and screw themselves like they’re doing right now. JD Rockingham is nothing but a thief and a cheat.”
Morgan only nodded because she knew JD in the biblical sense but didn’t know him personally. She shrugged. “I, uhh...” and then lost the thought as quickly as it came.
Slowly, Cherry rose out of the chair to her full height of almost six feet. Morgan watched, spellbound, her heart thudding in her chest. Cherry’s lean arm stretched long, her hand extended to Morgan.
