TURN ME ON

by Kristin Hardy

  At the instant before the point of inevitability, he put a hand on her head to stop her. "Go over onto the bed," he said, his voice strained. He turned the camera on, aimed it across the room and then turned on the television. The image of the bathroom door popped up on the screen.

  Sabrina stood up and kissed him.

  "Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked. "There's no tape in it—it's just displaying the scene on the monitor."

  "I want to watch us," she said, her eyes bright. She reached out and shifted the camera on the bureau, aiming it toward the bed, then she stepped in for a long, hot kiss, twining her tongue around his. "And I want you, on the bed, on your back."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  He lay down across it and she crossed the mattress on her knees, unable to resist bending over to taste him one more time, glancing up to see their images on the screen. It was a private voyeurism, a way to watch and be watched that included only the two of them. Her arousal pitched higher.

  Stef made a sound of frustration. "Why don't you come over here so I can reach you?"

  "I've got a better idea." She straddled him and slid herself back and forth on the hard length of his cock a few times, until she could feel the flush of arousal coming on, until she could see his jaw clench. She leaned in for a kiss, then she rose just a bit so he could reach himself. She could feel the tip of him rub against her and she gave a little moan. Then he pumped his hips up: The sensation of his erection driving into her, deep and hard, tore loose a cry she didn't know she was capable of.

  And from somewhere, the madness came, the pent-up desire from all they'd watched. His hands were on her breasts, her hips, driving her motion. Then he flipped her over so that she was on her back and he was on top of her. Suddenly, the monitor was forgotten, and all she could see was the tight purity of his face as his pleasure gathered and he surged over the edge, dragging her with him.

  * * *

  16

  « ^ »

  "I don't know why you didn't hire caterers, Cilla," Kelly grumbled, fishing sticks of chicken satay out of the broiler and setting them on a serving dish.

  Cilla threaded chunks of meat and bell peppers onto a skewer. "I figured having an honest-to-God barbecue would give the guys something to do. Keep 'em out of our hair while we gossip."

  "I thought we wanted them in our hair," said Delaney. "Wasn't that the whole point?"

  "We're appealing to their caveman instincts—meat, fire, women." Cilla set the finished skewers on a platter and started up another.

  "My mother always said that the way to a man's heart was through his head and his cock," Delaney said, adjusting the neckline of her little flowered sundress.

  "Wow, she really said that?" Sabrina looked interested.

  "Well, technically, no. She said the way to a man's heart is through satisfying his appetites. I just extrapolated."

  "Hell, the way to my heart is through food and sex," Kelly muttered, picking up the satay platter and heading out the door with it.

  "She forgot the sauce." Sabrina picked up a dish of peanut dip and bowl of tortilla chips and went after her.

  Outside, the night was balmy and clear, with a light breeze to tease the flames of the tiki torches flickering around the backyard. The blue glow from the pool lit up the dozen or two guests milling around. The task had been for each Supper Club member to invite one female friend and one male friend, with the request that each of them do the same, and so on. Given how early it was, it looked like they were on target for a good crowd.

  Sabrina caught up with Kelly at the food table. "Hey, you forgot the sauce."

  "I knew there was something I was missing." Kelly bent over to get a beer, her stretchy black-and-white opart skirt riding up dangerously in the back.

  "Careful there," Sabrina said, standing behind her. "I think I just saw your tonsils."

  "Sorry, Mom. Does that mean you don't want one of these?"

  "Not at all." Sabrina grabbed the bottle opener from the table and cracked open their bottles. "May the road always rise to meet you." She clinked her bottle against Kelly's.

  "So how's postproduction going?"

  "Not bad," she said bemusedly. "It's funny. I was so prepared for it to be a battle, but somehow we both have the same vision for what the end product should be, and Stef's got much better instincts for getting there."

  "That's encouraging. Maybe he learned a thing or two during the filming."

  "Maybe we both did."

  Kelly drank and stared across the pool meditatively. "I miss being on the shoots, you know? It was exciting. I can see why you like it. I'm going to have to propose more on-site features."

  "Don't expect them all to be like True Sex."

  Kelly laughed. "Trust me, darlin', short of a porn movie, I don't think any of them could be quite like True Sex." She quieted for a moment. "It was just fun hanging around with you guys all those days. I miss the crew," she said wistfully, and hesitated. "I miss Kev."

  "I wondered."

  "More fool me. I figured I'd get him out of my system pretty quick after things were over with. I even went looking for a guy to have a fling with, but I just couldn't get into it."

  "Why not try a fling with Kev?"

  Kelly sighed. "I don't think it would be that easy. You can't have a fling with someone when you know them well enough to care about what happens."

  "Some people would say that's the only time you should have one," Sabrina said dryly.

  "Maybe." Kelly took a meditative drink of her beer. "Maybe."

  * * *

  "Get a load of this street," Kev said, as he drove his mint-green Corvair through the Brentwood neighborhood. On both sides of the street, manicured lawns ran up to an eclectic collection of polished houses. The boulevards were broad, that itself an extravagance in an area with some of the highest property values in L.A. Turn-of-the-century oaks and eucalyptus nodded over the houses. Discreet signs warned of high-tech security systems. Beverly Hills might have been showy, the Westwood Corridor might have been chichi, but in Brentwood, money was discreet.

  "By the way, thanks for the invitation," Kev said, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.

  Stef watched the house numbers. "I figured I'd better get you out before that sad-sack look on your face became permanent. The way you're moping around all the time, I'm starting to get depressed."

  "I never mope. I'm just being … thoughtful."

  "Is that what you call it? No wonder I don't pay you to think."

  They drove past a house clotted with cars. "That it?"

  "Yeah. Park anywhere would be my guess. So don't you have another one of those panty hose commercials to shoot?"

  "Yeah, so?" Kev drove to an open stretch of curb.

  "Well, that should cheer you up. The last time you did one, all you could do was gush about the talent they've got modeling the goods. If you're going to get thoughtful, I'd figure that would be the one to get thoughtful about."

  "Nah." Kev dismissed it. "Not my type." He looked over his shoulder and backed the car snugly into place.

  "Since when are beautiful redheads not your type?" Stef stared at him and then opened his door. "Or are you more into blondes these days?"

  Kev scrubbed a hand through his hair, leaving it more spiky and disordered looking than ever. "It doesn't matter. Let's go meet some new women. Whose party is this, anyway?"

  "One of Sabrina's friends. I'm supposed to meet up with her here and catch a ride home."

  Kev looked around as they walked up to the front of the extravagant thirties-style bungalow. "Nice digs."

  "I'm sure she'll be happy to hear that you approve," Stef said dryly. He knocked on the door and waited, but no one answered. "The address is right," he muttered.

  "Oh, just open the damned door. There are too many cars here for it not to be the party." Kev reached past him and turned the knob just as the door opened up to reveal Kelly.

  "Hi, Kelly. Good to see…" Stef's voice trailed
off when neither she nor Kev moved. It was interesting, he thought looking from one to the other. He'd never quite seen so well-matched a set of poleaxed expressions.

  "What are—"

  "It's good—"

  They both stopped and just stared at one another. Stef eased past them to get through the door. "Well, I can see you guys have things to talk about. I think I'll just go find Sabrina."

  And if they needed any more of a nudge than that, he thought, they were beyond his ability to help.

  Stef walked from one room to the next, searching for Sabrina. Only a handful of people were around, none whom he recognized. It was later than he'd thought, it seemed, judging by the ravaged table of food in the dining room.

  The house was one of the type once common in L.A.—hardwood floors, coved stucco ceilings, clever niches and cutout between rooms. He crossed under the archway that divided the dining area from the kitchen. The glow of lights and sound of voices outside caught his attention. Through the kitchen window, he could see the pool area, complete with patio, landscaping and colored spotlights.

  And a steaming hot tub.

  His jaw tightened and he consciously released it as he searched out the slider that would let him out onto the patio. He just needed to find Sabrina and everything would be fine. A glance around the handful of people in the backyard didn't reveal her. He started for the hot tub. Steam rose from it, twining around the heads and shoulders of the people inside. He saw what he thought could be the back of Sabrina's head, but couldn't discern details.

  Then she turned around.

  "Stef!" She rose and he stopped in his tracks. It was a trick of the light, he told himself. It was a trick of the light, because there was no way she'd be in that tub nude with all of those people, not after all they'd been through.

  He hesitated. He thought he saw some expression flit across her face, something like hurt, then she was climbing out of the tub, tugging at the sides of her bikini bottom. Because she was wearing a suit, he saw, it was just a peachy tan that, in the lights, had blended with her skin tones.

  "Gee, Stef, you look surprised. What, you thought I'd be tubbing alfresco?" There was a little wounded note in her voice that grabbed his gut and made him ashamed of himself.

  Sabrina picked up a towel from a pile on the patio table and wrapped it around herself. "You're late."

  "I got held up trying to get some paperwork finished that they need in Athens tomorrow." He stepped in to kiss her. "I brought Kev. I thought it might cheer him up."

  "You know Kelly's here."

  "I figured."

  She raised an eyebrow. "That should be interesting."

  "My thoughts exactly."

  "You always play matchmaker?" she asked.

  "Never. Hell, I can't even figure out my own love life most of the time. The last thing I want to do is try to mess around with anyone else's."

  She gave him an indecipherable look. "Well, maybe we should get you a drink and you can drown your sorrows."

  "I didn't mean—"

  "Later, Stef," she said sharply. "This is a conversation we don't need to have right now. Why don't you come on over and say hi to the rest of the gang?"

  * * *

  The headlights of Sabrina's car strobed across the front of Stef's house as she pulled to a stop in the driveway. "Well, here you are, home safe and sound," she said brightly.

  "I think we can count on that." Stef paused expectantly. "Aren't you going to turn off the engine?"

  Sabrina reached out to adjust the air-conditioning vent. "I thought I'd go home for tonight."

  "Don't," he said softly. "Come in and talk with me."

  "We've been talking all the way here."

  "Sure, about the new Gebry retrospective, and how tacky you think the new Jaguar looks, and how much you like Paige's new boyfriend. Pretty much about everything except what's really bothering you."

  "There's not a whole lot to say, Stef. I saw the look on your face tonight. I know what you were expecting, which was a little hard to choke down. I guess I hoped that by now you'd trust that I'm not the same person I was back then. It shouldn't have been a surprise."

  "It wasn't. The whole scene just took me back, that's all."

  "To that night in college? Forget it, Stef. I have."

  "You haven't forgotten it any more than I have. We're both carrying it around or we'd be in the house instead of sitting in this driveway."

  Sabrina was silent for a moment, then reached out and turned off the ignition. "Fine. Let's go inside and talk."

  She'd never been in his house before. Perhaps because his offices were close to Venice, they'd always wound up at her place. Now, she looked around at the clean industrial styling, at skylights, hardwood floors, dramatic modern art on the white walls. It looked more like an art gallery than a home.

  "The deck on top has a view of the Pacific, if you want to go up there," Stef said diffidently from the kitchen.

  "This is fine," she said and crossed to the sofa. The curved triangular top of the blond wood coffee table before her held a bowl of colored glass spheres. "You've got a nice place here. I didn't realize documentaries paid so well." She sat down and ran her hand along the satiny wood.

  "It's a matter of making the right choices." He walked up the stairs and handed her a glass of wine.

  "Making choices. You always were good at that. Like when we broke up. I never quite knew what happened. One minute, things were fine, and the next, we were over. Poof. No explanation, no dialogue. Just a decree."

  "I couldn't figure out how to explain it all then. I didn't think you'd understand." He stayed on his feet, moving restlessly, around the room. "I've only started to understand it myself."

  "So try me now."

  Stef stopped and turned toward her. "I guess I owe you that." He looked down into his glass. "I suppose it starts with my grandmother. She raised me, mostly. I mean, my parents were around, but they worked a lot. So she took care of me."

  "What did they do? You would never talk to me about any of it." Her glass of wine sat untouched.

  "I was still really angry at them then. Business development, management. They're both fast-trackers, quintessential yuppies. Good enough people, I guess, they just should never have had kids. I see that now that I'm grown and they're more friends than parents." He wandered over to the freestanding marble-faced fireplace that separated the living room from the dining room. "I mean, it's not that they didn't love me, but I think my mom decided to get pregnant mostly because she read all the 'have it all' books. She got married, got her MBA, and a baby was just part of it.

  "And then, suddenly, she had this squalling little creature who wanted her attention when she needed to work overtime to finish a business plan and get that promotion. So she managed me like she would any other project—she delegated. I reported to my grandmother—work, achieve and stay out of the way."

  Children learned what they lived, Sabrina thought. When goals were all you heard about, they became all that mattered. "How did your parents react when you told them you wanted to go to film school?"

  "About the way you'd expect," he said dryly. "It was a foolish idea, I'd never make a living, I was chasing pipe dreams. At first, they refused to pay for it. They finally agreed to cover it if I double-majored in business, but only if I made dean's list throughout."

  "I remember you working like a dog. Doesn't sound like much fun."

  "It wasn't. Then you came along." He looked at her then and crossed to the couch to sit beside her. "You were such an enigma to me when we first met. You were the exact opposite of what I'd always been—doing everything on impulse, always chasing after fun. And yet you were smart, you were talented. I'd watch you and I couldn't understand it. My MO was set a goal, make a plan and follow it."

  "I remember." Though she'd never understood it, until now.

  "It drove me crazy, the way you just nonchalanted your way through life, and yet I kind of envied you. You had this gift for letting go e
ffortlessly, for not worrying about the consequences, and somehow everything always seemed to fall into place for you. Me, all I ever did was think about consequences and what happened next. And your family…"

  "Ah yes, my family."

  "They made me miss mine," he said simply, picking up one of the glass spheres.

  She frowned. "They don't seem very much like the picture you paint of your parents."

  "Not my parents. My other family. My mother's obsession was blending in, getting ahead, making money. She, my dad, both worked so hard to escape the ethnic neighborhood, to hide the fact that they were children of immigrants." He rolled the glass sphere around in his hands. "But my uncle Stavros was just the opposite. For him, it's always been all about family. I used to go visit for a week or two every summer and it was something else. Big, noisy, chaotic … they had six kids, not counting all of the second cousins and great-aunts in the area who'd come over on the weekends. Never a quiet moment. Everybody had an opinion and they weren't shy about letting you know it. And God forbid if a kid was disrespectful. But any little thing one of us kids did—hitting a baseball, carving a stick—you'd have thought we hung the moon. And laugh? God, they laughed. Your family reminded me so much of them."

  "My mother asked about you at first, after." Sabrina hesitated. "It was hard."

  "I've missed her, too."

  She leveled a look at him. "But you knew I wasn't stepping out on you with that idiot in the tub."

  "I'm not sure what I knew back then," he said frankly, "except it ripped me open to see a man with his hands on you. And it didn't seem to bother you at all."

  "Because it didn't mean anything."

  "To you, maybe. But it did to me, and the more I thought about it, the more it meant. Everything was just so easy for you, everything was about having fun."