The List

by Alice Ward

  My waiting room was thankfully empty and I locked myself behind the inner door. I dialed the colt and she answered on the second ring. “How about dinner, fair one?” I asked.

  There was a girlish giggle at the other end. “You’re asking me out again already?” Another coquettish laugh went straight to my dick.

  “Miss Homecoming Queen, you know I want you. Why pretend?”

  There was silence and a wave of fear passed over me. Had I offended her? “Are you there?” I asked finally.

  “I had to put my crown on the dresser,” she came back with a witty retort and I knew I had my work cut out for me. “Well, now, what did you have in mind?”

  “I know a quiet little place downtown that serves the best Italian food outside Jersey,” I invited. “Pick you up at seven?”

  “Hmmm… so now I’m a pick up, huh?” She laughed again and it was musical. “You know where I live?”

  “I have my ways,” I reminded her.

  “Ahhh, yes, your ways. See you at seven.”

  The line went dead and I grabbed my things and headed home to shower and change. On the way, I stopped at a small flower shop that was just closing. I bought a dozen long-stemmed red roses and had the box wrapped with a gold ribbon.

  It was an obstacle course at the house to avoid Mother and Father, but I pulled it off. Now that they were not paying tuition, my accountability to them had ended.

  I was to inherit the trust Grandfather had left for me in a few weeks. Staying at the farm had been a convenience up until this point. It was time for that to change.

  I pulled up to Auggie’s farm, the gravel drive lined by dogwood trees spaced fifteen feet apart. Their leaves were beginning to color, a sign that winter would be early this year. I pulled into the wide turnaround between the house and the paddock and shut off the car. I debated on waiting to give her the flowers until she got into the car but realized they needed water. Armed and yet even a bit nervous, I approached the door, but she met me there.

  “Jesus, you’re gorgeous!” escaped from my mouth before I even thought about it. Her hair was wound into a series of braids that seemed to crisscross her head in an intricate pattern. She had little glittery studs I assumed were diamond-headed pins tucked between them. She was wearing a low-cut pale pink silk dress with six-inch heels that wound up around her ankles. Her make-up was minimal, which suited her perfectly. I wanted to pick her up and fuck her right there, but settled for a light kiss on her cheek because I had no idea who might be spying on us.

  “Come in! I want you to meet Dad and Mother.” She tugged at my sleeve.

  Why do I feel sixteen, awkward and as if my acne just exploded? “These are for you,” I told her and handed her the bouquet, for which I got a second kiss.

  She handed them off to someone behind her and then led me through a maze of the kitchen, hallway and into a large room that was banked by floor to ceiling windows. A grand piano was guarding one corner and I saw the backs of a man and woman seated on a floral upholstered sofa.

  “Mother, Dad, this is Worthington LaViere, III. Worth, I’d like you to meet my mother and dad.”

  Auggie’s dad stood and came toward me. I shook his hand. He looked a bit pale and overwhelmed, the sort of fellow who wears that look indefinitely.

  I wasn’t prepared for what came next, however. Auggie’s mother began to stand and then fell back against the cushions, her face robbed of a smile and any shade of human color. I felt a jolt and fought to keep control.

  The woman whose extended hand just dropped into her lap was none other than Jervis’ Jezebel.

  Auggie

  I couldn’t believe Mother’s reaction. You would think Worth had just slapped her. Of course, I noted that he had an odd look as well. Had they met before? I’d better not have any trouble out of her over this. She would not win. Her days of running my life have come to an end.

  I sensed trouble was coming so I quickly said, “Night!” and tugged at Worth’s sleeve to come with me. We got into his Porsche and the poor man behaved as though the devil was at his heels.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Not a thing,” he said shortly and without conviction.

  “You’re lying. Have you met my mother before?”

  “She just reminded me of someone I knew once. Took me a minute to realize it wasn’t the same person,” he said. I chose to believe him... for now, that is.

  We were at the restaurant in no time. I liked my car, but I liked his better. Everything about him had his personal sense of style. He was sleek, fast, smart, witty and self-possessed. His car fit him well. I wondered if he felt as good as he looked and then blushed for my own benefit.

  We had a quiet table in the corner with a linen tablecloth, real silver, and china… at least we did. I noticed other tables had simpler settings and when I picked up my fork and looked at it, he said, “Only the best.” I was blown away by his attention to detail.

  “So, why did you become a psychologist?” I asked him.

  “To play with peoples’ heads,” he said without hesitation.

  My head jerked back a little at that response. “What… like you’re entertained by what people think?”

  “No, because people are essentially malleable. They become what you suggest they are. They are what they think they are.”

  “And how does that help them?” I was confused.

  “Doesn’t, not every time,” he said coolly while cutting the lasagna he ordered. “They come to me because they think they’re broken. They’re generally not broken at all. If I let them go home thinking they’re still broken, they will be. It’s that simple.”

  I swallowed, needing to know the answer to the next question, but dreading his answer at the same time. “So do you? Do you let them go home feeling broken?”

  “Depends.”

  “On?”

  “Whether they’re a good person. I let bad people go home broken.”

  “Wait,” I said, setting down my fork. “Are you saying you mess with people’s lives and don’t legitimately help them like your oath compels you to do?”

  “You’re living in a bubble, dear Auggie. People don’t come to me to be fixed. They come to me to hear it’s alright to be a total screw up, or to use others, or to cheat on their spouse. I’m sort of the medical version of a confessional priest.”

  “That’s wrong,” I said, and felt the flatness of the words.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re supposed to make them better.”

  “So,” he said, laying down his knife and looking at me. “You think a priest listens and helps or does he simply give his parishioner the illusion that he’s forgiven and the guy goes right back to what he was doing?”

  I frowned. “Never really thought of it that way.”

  “Of course you didn’t, Auggie. You’re a sweet-hearted idealist and I like that. You don’t want to become sour and cynical like me.” He seemed resigned to some sort of inherent evil within himself.

  “How did you get that way?” I asked carefully, not sure if he knew what I meant. He did.

  “I suppose you could say it was bred into me. Father dabbles in finance and business, I dabble in the psyche that supports his finance and business. Men are only as important as they believe themselves to be. I prefer to look at what I do as evening the odds. Making all men equal.”

  “What a fascinating, although perverted, way to look at the world,” I said before I thought about it.

  He looked at me, the strangest expression on his face. “You’re smart, you’ll see it eventually and that makes me sad.” His voice held real regret.

  “Why sad?” I was drawn to this man’s opinion and words like a moth to a flame. I sensed there was a danger of rejection more powerful than anything I could imagine, but it was like stepping into the cage with the lion in the meantime. I liked the danger… the thrill of his mocking bluntness.

  He looked over the table at me and stared at my eyes. “My
dear Auggie, I happen to want to be like you again, and if I can’t do that, I want you with me. I want to be in the glow of your innocence and goodness, to smell the world as you must sniff it, to give people the benefit of the doubt that they are innately good before you look for the cracks that always eventually appear.” His words ended in a wistful whisper.

  I felt sort of pleased and sort of offended at the same time. “I’m not a child, you know. I’ve seen some things.” I stuck up for myself.

  “I don’t doubt you have. I would prefer you forget them. It would please me very much if you would begin life anew, right now, right here, with me.”

  “What are you saying?” I felt a heat deep within me.

  “Don’t be coy, Auggie. You know very well what I’m saying.”

  “I’ve known you less than a month,” I protested.

  “Is there a designated period of time that must pass before I decide I want you?”

  His logic was so damned simple, so essential and so direct. I wanted to bask in his space, as well. It felt adult and audacious, a combination of environments I had been denied my entire life.

  I didn’t answer him. I never said a word as he threw a hundred-dollar bill on the table and stood, taking my hand and pulling me out of the restaurant behind him. I didn’t flinch when he pulled me into the shadow of the building and kissed me. It wasn’t a first date sort of kiss. It was a melding of two bodies, even souls, in a fervent need to be one. His tongue searched my mouth and I opened wider, turning my head in an effort to get closer to him.

  I tasted the wine on his tongue and it was an aphrodisiac, but nothing compared to the male energy emanating from his body. It surrounded me like a force field and while I stood close to him, I belonged to him. He kept me safe, valued and unique. I wanted to belong to him.

  I didn’t protest as he put me in the car and drove to the Hilton, pressing a bill into the doorman’s hand in return for a key. We stepped calmly into the glass elevator and I wrapped my arms around his neck, closing my eyes against the height. I felt like I was in the canister at the drive-through bank, momentarily lost to the outside world but filled with treasure upon arrival.

  Worth opened the door and my dress was suddenly on the floor and my hair was being unbraided with his inexperienced fingers. I brushed them away and loosened my hair myself while his hands and eyes brushed my nipples softly and with longing. I don’t remember when he became naked, but it felt like he’d always been that way. He wore clothes well, but he wore his skin far better.

  My hair, unbound, lay over my shoulders and brushed my waist as I sat with my back to him, cradled between his thighs. His long arms held me against him, his hands fondling my breasts and his mouth kissing the soft flesh beneath my earlobe. I had never experienced anything close to the sensations he was awakening within me.

  Still seated against him, he used one hand to part my legs and stroked me, pulling me tightly against the hardness pressing against my ass. I was being fondled from both sides and it was the most intense sense of being protected I’d ever felt. “Auggie,” he whispered, but not to me. More like he was assuring himself that I was there, in his arms, adhered to his body.

  As the quickening began, my breathing became fast and I heard myself mewling like a kitten. I pushed against his penetrating finger in an effort to find my release, needing it harder, deeper. He would not grant it, not so easily.

  He plunged a second finger inside me and twisted them, pressing right against the bundled nerves deep within my core. I came, hard and fast, caught by surprise by the suddenness of it.

  “That’s my girl,” he growled.

  In one deft move, I found myself lying on the bed, the light from the nightstand illuminating the fiercely possessive look upon his face as he raised himself over me, his eyes trailing over my body as he rolled a condom down his length.

  In a sharp thrust, he was inside me and had caught my hands, forcing them over my head. In the dimness of the room, I could just make out the glitter of his eyes, but the desire I saw there caused me to lose my breath.

  I couldn’t keep my eyes open, so I let them drift closed. I was compelled to blank out the visual and live in the world that was touch and smell. His aftershave was organic and familiar, as nostalgic as the smell of my horse. As Worth rode me, I fantasized that we were aboard Carlos, making love as we galloped through a vast wilderness. In my blindness, I imagined I was lying naked astride my horse’s strong back with this man driving himself into me. Every so often, he would leap, his hooves going airborne as Worth held me fast and hard. It was power incarnate and I knew in that moment, I’d met the culmination of everything I’d ever dreamed.

  Our bodies were slick with sweat as they glided together in a world belonging only to us. His hips slammed against mine one last time, driving him deeper, pressing the base of his cock hard against my clit. A low, harsh noise left his throat as he came, his dick jerking and pulsing inside me.

  As he stiffened, I opened my eyes long enough to see his head fall back, his mouth open and those mocking eyes close in exultation as the electricity passed between us. The vision of his internal transport brought me to climax and I cried out my release. He captured the sound in his mouth.

  When he finally fell to my side and held me in his arms, tears of passion and happiness flowed down my cheeks. “My god, but your eyes are like looking into the ocean,” he whispered and tenderly kissed the tears until, with a palpable desperation, he kissed my mouth… hard. It was not a kiss to render excitement, but one of laying claim. I gave it willingly and there was a knowing that passed between us. We had crossed a finish line and decided to share in the win. It was that moment when “I” became “we” and the two of us would never separate in this world. I somehow knew it. We hadn’t known each other for long, but it didn’t matter. I felt complete.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Worth

  The sun once again stole its way between the drapes, but this time, the burning came from within. I recognized it as desire. This was unlike me. The adornments of the night never interested me in the daylight. They were disposable, like the tiny bottles from the mini bar glittering on the floor. As I focused, I made out that there were, indeed, things glittering on the floor but they were her diamond-headed pins, not broken shards of glass from bottles heaved against a wall in drunken disgust.

  She lay against me, her mouth slightly opened in a pout of innocence. Her thick lashes lay against her cheeks and I could not help myself. I bent and kissed her eyelids, pushing back the blankets so I could run my palm over her nipples and down into her soft womanhood. She stirred and in her sleep, rolled to face me, pressing herself against my cock, already hard and yearning. Reaching for the nightstand, I soon rolled on a condom. A moment later, her body accepted mine. Both of us lay on our side as I rocked back and forth gently. We came. I with the realization that I’d never let her go and she, in the orgasmic confines of an awakening dream.

  I held her as she slowly surfaced, my eyes memorizing the curve of her hip, the texture of her perfect skin and the symmetry of her beautiful breasts. She was, in my opinion, perfection. The idea that she would have fallen into the world of a marriage of convenience sent fury through me. She’d always been mine.

  “Good morning,” whispered rosy lips chafed by my stubble.

  “Good morning to you, queenie,” I teased her.

  “Not nice,” she managed, stifling a morning yawn. “Need coffee.”

  “Already on the way up,” I told her and the timing proved me right as there was a knock at the door. I pulled the blankets over her nakedness and grabbed my pants as I headed to open it. The bellboy wheeled in a cart filled with domed dishes. I tipped him and indicated I would take it from there.

  I went into the bathroom and came out, tossing a courtesy robe to her. She slid into it as she folded her knee beneath her and came off the bed to inspect the cart of food. Her eyes lighted when she spotted the juice and she drank it quickly. “Geez, I was
thirsty,” she said.

  “That’s because you snored all night,” I teased and she blushed, quickly wiping the corner of her mouth seeking dried drool. “See what I mean?” I pointed out.

  “What?”

  “You didn’t snore but my suggestion of it caused you to behave with guilt and embarrassment. That’s what I mean about people… they are what you tell them.”

  She wrinkled her nose and took another sip. “Well, you can keep that manipulation to yourself,” she responded saucily. “You’re not as smart as you think you are, you know.”

  “Is that so?” I prodded her and was rewarded with a flash of those green eyes.

  “Not everyone is as gullible as you might think. It will backfire on you and you’ll lose credibility,” she pointed out.

  “There is no shortage of patients, sweet Auggie.”

  She looked at me doubtfully and with some disapproval. Why did that suddenly bother me? I don’t remember ever worrying about seeking approval.

  “Time I got home,” she commented, picking up the pieces of her wardrobe from the floor.

  I took this as a signal and nodded. I had some of those many appointments waiting.

  ***

  She was looking out the window and frowning as I drove her home. “What’s wrong?” I prompted her.

  “Do you by any chance know Mrs. Jessup, the lady who had all the marvelous barbecues at Derby?”

  “I’ve heard her name, but don’t know her personally… why?”

  “Mother asked me to visit her. Her family just put her in Sunset Village. Do you know the place?” she asked in a voice that explained her sadness.

  “Yes, I do. I did some interning there one summer.”

  “Worth, I don’t ever want to end up in a place like that.”

  “You won’t, darling Auggie, I promise.”

  “I don’t think Mrs. Jessup ever thought she would, either. Her family manipulated her out of money. Left her penniless. She never worked, you know, so she’s reliant on Medicaid now and that’s where she’s gone. It’s so sad. It’s breaking my heart.”

  This was clearly preying on her mind. I knew the Jessups and remembered the old lady. I couldn’t tell Auggie that Mrs. Jessup’s daughter-in-law was on my patient list. “Why don’t you do something to make it better?” I prompted her.