by Lola Darling
The foresty theme continues inside, but in here, it actually makes sense. The interior reminds me of a famous architect whose stuff I’ve seen pictures of before, Gaudi. It’s all curved archways into adjoining rooms, and spiral ceilings that make me feel like I’m inside of a seashell, complete with a chandelier that looks like a nautilus. The floor is a rich, deep mahogany, but in an adjoining room, I catch glimpses of tiles that look like fossils.
Suzie walks us through the place like it’s nothing, not even bothering to acknowledge the weirdness or the fact that we’re both gaping at the house. “I’ve put you both in the north wing, since that’s where the guest rooms are, hope that’ll be fine. But really, leave your stuff anywhere, use any rooms you like, I don’t mind,” she says as she marches through a sloped archway and across a living room.
A cozy little fireplace is set into the wall, the opening shaped much like the outside of the house, mushroom-like, but the fireplace itself designed to look like a flower, iron petals opening in front at the grate where you could feed it wood.
A short, curved staircase leads us up to a second floor—I think we’re one or two mushrooms away from the entrance by this point—and onto a landing tiled in more fossils. I feel like I’m walking across a prehistoric forest, tiny ferns and snail shells curled beneath my feet.
“Chloe, I stuck you in the blue room, though feel free to call dibs on the other one if you don’t like blue, I wasn’t sure…” Suzie pushes open a door that I hadn’t even noticed, its pale wood paneling blended into the wall so well. Through that door is an underwater world.
She wasn’t kidding about the blue. Tiles in every shade of blue line the walls, dark toward the floor and growing lighter toward the ceiling. The ceiling which, I realize when I look up, is entirely skylight. The glass is so clear that I can see every detail of the leaves on the trees above us, and the sunlight that sneaks through and dapples the floor of the blue room. Even the bed matches, it’s decked out in aquas, the comforter patterned like a wave.
It looks like sleeping at the bottom of a river in the forest.
“Blue is my favorite color,” I say with a small smile.
Suzie claps my shoulder as she crosses the small bedroom. “I thought so.”
Behind her back, I catch Max’s eye for a second, and we both press our lips together to suppress sudden laughter. I’m not sure if we’re laughing at the absurdity of the house, or how strangely lovely it is.
Then Suzie pushes open a door in the far wall of my bedroom. “In here’s the bathroom,” she’s saying, as I shuffle after her into the tiled space—at least this room looks a bit more conventional, although the blue underwatery theme continues. “And here’s your room, Max,” she adds as she opens another door.
Right on the other side of the bathroom.
My stomach clenches.
Ah. Conjoining rooms. Only a bathroom to separate us.
That’s fine, I think.
That’s not fine, the more honest part of my brain replies.
Judging by his quick, piercing glance as he passes me, Max agrees more with the honest part of my brain. He presses his lips together, then crosses the bathroom and disappears into his room.
I steal a peek inside— “The green room,” Suzie’s in the middle of introducing it, and I can certainly see why. If I’m sleeping at the bottom of a river, he’s sleeping in the canopy of a forest, all vibrant greens and deep brown wooden furniture. But I only look long enough to establish that there’s another doorway out of his room. At least he won’t be walking through mine at all hours of the morning.
I ignore the fact that part of me is a little disappointed by this.
I turn my back on the bathroom and Max’s adjoining room, trying to focus on unpacking my behemoth of a suitcase instead. Footsteps echo in the doorway, though, and my whole body tenses in anticipation. Did he come back through? Does he want something?
When I turn my head, though, it’s only Suzie, leaning against the door frame of the bathroom, which is curled in a seashell shape above her head. She smiles, a little too knowingly. “You two had better take full advantage of this place while I’m gone, you hear me?” She lifts an eyebrow as she awaits my response.
“I … uh. We’ll certainly get to work right away—”
Suzie interrupts me with a snort. “That is not what I’m talking about and you know it. I’ve seen the way you two eyeball each other.”
My cheeks instantly flare red hot. Can he hear her through the bathroom? Her voice is pitched low, but this house is all big, empty, echoing rooms. “We do no such—”
“Oh, hush with the protests.” She waves a hand. “I don’t care what you do, as long as it’s what you really want to do. So. If you want that, girl?” She jerks a thumb over her shoulder. “Go and get it.”
I’m standing there with my mouth hanging open like an idiot as she crosses my room to leave. Just before she pulls the door closed behind her, however, she turns back to me one last time.
“And if you don’t,” she adds, with a twinkle in her eye. “I sure as hell will.”
12
Max
As we work our way through the mid-1990s up through the 2000s, Suzie’s exercise videos morph from low-definition, poor sound quality nostalgia trips into something else entirely more hilarious.
“Oh my god, is she actually doing this right now?” Chloe gapes at the TV screen.
We’re in the farthest mushroom of the house, in a room that looks like a cross between the inside of a whale and a spaceship. The walls curve around us tightly. Unlike the rest of the bright, sunny house with its sweeping views of the trees and hillsides that spill away from the property, this room has no windows.
“The better to amplify the entertainment system,” Suzie explained before she left a few hours ago. And it is quite the entertainment system—the TV takes up an entire wall, curved slightly to fit flush against the wall where it sits. The couch across from the TV is a cross between a love seat and a row of chairs at a movie theater—each side of it reclines separately, and it’s got more cup holders than I would possibly know what to do with.
Beside each seat, there’s a cooler stacked with anything we could possibly desire, from cheese platters to more chips and dip options than I care to count, and, naturally, a healthy stock of wine, beer and even a few liquors.
The old, familiar temptation tugs at me at the sight of those, but I’ve long since learned to suppress it. Today, I think it’s only flaring up from nerves.
“Yes,” I answer her a little belatedly. “I believe she is actually doing that.”
On the ruthlessly high-definition screen, the better to showcase the poor quality of the DVD we’re viewing, a decade-younger Suzie Steel is shaking her ass at the screen in her crossover “dancercise” series.
“What is that supposed to work out?” Chloe says as Suzie starts a side-to-side motion—ass-shake, step, stomp, ass-shake, step, stomp—all with the camera still zoomed in on her admittedly perky rear end.
“Glutes?” I suggest as I tilt my head for a better view.
Chloe snorts and swats my arm. “You’re enjoying this way too much.”
“The woman knows how to move, come on, you’ve got to give her that,” I reply as younger Suzie transitions into a drop-it-low sort of move that reminds me of squats, but with a lot more slow hip rolls involved.
“True, but I mean, can you imagine trying to do that in a club? Look.” Chloe hops to her feet, taking me by surprise, and tries to imitate the move Suzie’s doing. “It looks ridiculous,” she calls over her shoulder as she drops her waist toward the floor and wriggle her hips in a slow circle. In the jeans she’s wearing, I can tell exactly how toned and sculpted her ass is. I stare at the curve where her long legs meet her ass, and fight the sudden urge to run my hands over those hips she’s still gyrating.
“Come on, you try.” Chloe laughs, exaggerating the dance to make it even more ridiculous, but from where I’m sitting, this is
having a dangerous effect on me. Before I do something really stupid, I jump to my feet with her, ignoring the painful throb in my crotch, trying to fight the mental image of everything I want to do to her right now.
The list does not include dancing.
But I do that anyway, hoping it will distract some of the blood flow that’s rushing south.
The problem is, once I’m standing beside her, with her still bent almost double, I have a clear view down the front of the loose-fitting blouse she’s wearing. A red-hot lace bra cups her breasts, pushing them up and out in a way that I cannot possibly ignore.
Fucking hell. I want to grab her right here and bend her over, yank those jeans over her hips and rip off whatever tight little panties she’s wearing underneath. I want to bury my face between her legs, taste every inch of her, make her scream in that sexy, throaty voice of hers.
Then she tosses her head back hard, that hair flying across her face, her full lips parted for breath. Her eyes catch mine, a knowing glint in them, and my cock throbs, hard, against the seam of my jeans.
Get out of here, Davis. Before you do something stupid.
But she’s stopped dancing. So have I, actually. She’s still standing right beside me, close enough that our arms touch when she pulls herself upright. The shock of her hot skin brushing past mine nearly sends me over the edge.
Neither of us break eye contact. Her lips press closed, then open again, and we’re standing close enough that I can feel the soft exhalation when she sighs faintly.
Fuck it. I tilt my head to the side, and she mirrors me, both of us leaning toward one another, and this is inevitable now, I need to fucking taste her.
“Do you have service?” she asks, abruptly, straightening her head again.
It takes my brain a second to catch up. Not much blood left up that high anymore. “Uh. What?”
“Email service.” She pulls her phone out of the front pocket of her jeans and flashes the screen at me. “I don’t have any.” She’s slightly out of breath, her voice higher pitched than usual. Panicked, you might even say. “I need to check some things—I think I had service in the other part of the house. You okay to keep going through these videos for a bit? I won’t be long!” She speaks so fast I don’t have time to sneak a word in edge-wise. Before I know it she’s backing out of the room, smiling, but in a way that looks a lot more like she’s about to hyperventilate, not like she’s actually happy.
I open my mouth to respond—with what, I’m still not quite sure—but she slams the door to the video room behind her, leaving me standing there like an idiot.
A rock hard idiot.
Fuck. I need to do something about this, badly. My brain isn’t helping, it’s stuck on replays of Chloe’s lithe body swaying in front of me, her perky tits, the perfect curve of her waist into her full hips.
But I’m not just going to take care of myself in the middle of Suzie’s living room. I wait a few minutes to be sure that Chloe has left, and then I pause the video and slip out of the room. It takes me a minute to find the right staircase up to my room—I hope if this house has a name it’s called the Mushroom Maze—but eventually I manage to jog up to my door and sneak inside. There’s no sound anywhere in the hallway. Chloe must still be downstairs, maybe in the front room with the fireplace that we passed, or outside on one of the decks checking her email.
I don’t waste time. I step into the bathroom and lock my bedroom door behind me, pulling my shirt off, because after this I know I’ll need a shower. Then I’m done with thinking about reality.
All I can picture is her. What I want to do to her.
I unzip my jeans and lean against the shower door, my hand already wrapped tight around my cock as I let the fantasy envelop me. We’re back in the video room, only this time I don’t waste time feeling guilty for my filthy fantasies.
When Chloe stands in front of me, I grab her and pull her onto my lap, one hand around that slender waist, the other buried deep in her wild curls. She melts against me, lifting her face to mine as I claim her lips in a long, hard kiss. She slides her knees onto either side of me, until she’s kneeling above me on the couch, and I use the opportunity to slide my hands beneath her shirt, tearing it off in one smooth motion.
Her lacy bra falls away next, revealing her supple tits, the perfect size to fit in my palms. I bend to catch her nipple in my mouth, my tongue swirling around the the tight peak in slow, languorous circles. Her breath hitches and she arches her back, pressing her chest hard against my face. I let my teeth graze the hard tip of her nipple, lightly, gently, and I savor the shudder that runs through her entire body.
My hands are already dropping down the smooth, flat plane of her stomach to wrestle with the clasp of her jeans. She leans back as she undoes my jeans as well, pushing them down far enough that my rock hard erection springs free. She leans back away from me, her eyes on my cock, hungry. But I’m not ready to let her go that easily, though. I catch her waist, draw her back in, our mouths crashing together as our tongues grapple between us. Neither of us can get enough of the other, we want to swallow one another whole.
I push her jeans down around her hips, her underwear along with them, and grip her firm ass. Chloe arches her neck, her lips parted as she moans, “Fuck me,” between gasping breaths.
I sink into her with a groan, keeping my hands tight on her ass, pulling her down hard, my cock bottoming out on the first stroke. God, she’s so fucking tight.
I’m close to the edge, my hand tighter around my dick as I imagine plunging into her again and again, making her ride my cock, forcing her hips up and down, watching her tits bounce an inch from my face as her back arches and her desperate gasps grow louder and louder … I move my hand faster, gritting my teeth now, right at the brink.
That’s when the bathroom door—the other one, the one I didn’t even think to lock—flies open.
13
Chloe
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.
I perch on the edge of my bed, silent, my eyes shut tight. Maybe I can just pretend that never happened. Maybe the next time I sit down in the video room beside my colleague, he’ll pretend I didn’t just almost fucking kiss him. After shaking my ass at him for a minute solid.
What the hell was I thinking?
But we’d been watching those videos for an hour, laughing and joking at Suzie’s antics. And the last one was so over-the-top that I couldn’t resist pointing it out. It had started as a joke, but then I started dancing, and I felt his eyes on me, and I could literally feel them. I never knew what people meant when they said that until now.
It felt like his hands all over me, running down my waist, squeezing my ass. It felt like his hot skin on mine. It felt like a step away from fucking, and we weren’t even touching, only looking at one another.
I am so screwed. And not in a good way. Even if he would probably screw me in the best possible way, if I asked him. I’m pretty sure the man knows his way around a bedroom. Or a few hundred bedrooms, most likely.
What is wrong with me? This is the office manwhore we’re talking about. The guy who, according to Martha, has hooked up with at least a dozen of the women we work with. Probably more that I never heard about, because some people at least know how to keep their mouths shut.
But this stupid, burning desire isn’t going away. If anything, it’s getting worse every day. Ever since my first wet dream about him, he’s been showing up in my head every night. Making me gasp and moan and come every fucking time.
But the Max in my brain and the Max downstairs are two very different people. One is a fantasy, and one is a disaster waiting to hit me like a freight train.
I take a deep breath and let my eyes wander to the window out over the fields behind Suzie’s house. It’s late afternoon already, the sun tinting the leaves above my skylight golden bronze. Through the window, the fields seem to stretch on forever, already a rich gold color from autumn. I wonder what grows out there, past the leafy forest that surrounds the h
ouse.
Maybe I should go out and take a walk. The fresh air might do me good. Screw my head back on straight.
Except I’m still vibrating with suppressed energy from earlier. My pulse keeps thundering through my veins every time I let myself remember what happened, our bodies so close, almost touching, his head tilted as he stared down at me, bending over me, eyes intent on mine. I could smell his breath, peppermint fresh, and hot against my forehead. And those eyes, dark, deep green, the same color as the paint in his room. It reminds me of the jungle, of the wilderness. They’re wild, those eyes of his.
And hungry, when they fixed on mine.
Of course, mine probably looked the same. I can’t even look at him without wanting to tear his shirt from his body and run my hands over his sculpted muscles. I want to reach between his legs and grab his thick cock. I’m so desperate to feel that cock inside me that I’m already soaking through this pair of panties.
Never mind the walk idea. I need a shower first. A long, cold shower.
And, okay, maybe I need to rub it out a couple times while I’m in there.
I toss my phone aside. I never even bothered to refresh my email. There’s no way I could concentrate on anything I’d need to say right now. I abandon it on the comforter and pad across the room to press my ear to the door that leads out to the hallway. There’s no sound outside it.
Good. He’s probably still downstairs, on the other side of the house, buried in the videos I’m supposed to be helping him analyze.
Sitting alone in that dark room, reclined in the couch, his eyes boring into mine even in the dim light from the screen…
Cold shower it is. I shimmy out of my jeans and grab a towel from my suitcase, then tiptoe across the room to the bathroom door, wearing nothing but my sheer, lace bra and thong. My head is still several rooms away, lost in a fantasy, as I fling the bathroom door open.
Only to freeze in shock, halfway across the threshold. My mouth falls open.
Because there stands Max, leaning against the shower, naked all the way from his gleaming pecs, down his ripped, washboard abs, to—well, way past his waist. His eyes are half-shut, his lips parted to reveal gritted teeth, as his thick, strong hand works his weeping cock.
