There was a pause. Then a calm Asian voice, sounding like Arnold Li doing one of his routines, said, "Derivery."
Kenzie slapped the palm of a hand against her forehead. Damn! she swore under her breath. She'd completely forgotten about Charley's Burmese takeout. Now she was stuck with the bill!
Pressing the buzzer which released the downstairs door, she projected, Gee thanks, Super Dick! Thanks a whole fucking lot! Then she went to dig through her shoulder bag for her wallet. Being between paydays, it was depressingly thin. In cash, she had three tens, three fives, and three singles to her name.
There was a soft, cautious rap on the door. Composing herself, she once again unlatched all the locks and opened it.
A polite Asian youth, holding a large, neatly stapled brown paper bag in front of him, was standing in the stairwell. "Herro," he said, giving a polite little bow.
"How much?" she sighed.
"Fawty-faw, ninety-three." With a friendly smile, he indicated the bill stapled to the top of the bag, then ceremoniously handed it over. In return, she gave him the entire contents of her wallet.
"Keep the change," she said. "And thanks."
He bowed politely. "Thank you."
Shutting the door, she locked herself in for the third time, her nose wrinkling as she caught a whiff of Burmese food. For once, instead of making her mouth water, it caused her stomach to do flip-flops—not surprising, considering that her food budget for the entire rest of the week was shot. She'd be forced to eat Burmese for days, after dumping the beef satay and chayote pork. No way was red meat going to touch her lips.
Stomping to the kitchen, she shoved the bag into the fridge and slammed the door shut. "Gee, thanks, Super Dick!" she muttered, adding: "Super Dick, my ass!"
Chapter 10
Bedroom his, bedroom hers.
The Goldsmiths had separate connecting suites, a reciprocal convenience in more ways than one.
Robert tended to stink up the room with his cigars while reading business reports late into the night, and then snored like a bull with defective adenoids. Dina couldn't live with cigar smoke, or without nine undisturbed hours of beauty sleep.
He invariably woke up after four hours, horny as all hell. She was not crazy about being jerked from the midst of sweet dreams, especially not by a hirsute, two-hundred-sixty-pound sex maniac on whom everything drooped but the flagpole.
Consequently, they had long since arrived at a mutually acceptable arrangement: they slept in separate bedrooms and had set aside specified times for conjugal sex. Between those occasions, each had other outlets to satisfy the most imminent urges.
Robert had his Blow Job (as he thought of Bambi Parker and her long list of predecessors), as well as his trusty right hand and a stash of oral porn videos. Dina had her ivory-colored vibrator and her own hidden stash of videos, starring—what else?—hard-bodied, muscular young males with hair in the only two places she found acceptable.
Of course, when Dina wanted something badly enough, she wasn't above bending the conjugal rules. With Robert, she knew exactly which buttons to push.
At six-fifteen that evening, Robert turned off the multiple jets in his white marble shower and grumpily wrapped a white cotton bath sheet, like a giant sarong, around his substantial middle. He looked like one of the Aga Khans of yore—or, more recently, the average state-run Black Sea resort-goer somewhere in the former Soviet Union.
Not that he had a personal beef about the way he looked—if he had, he'd have done something about it. The truth was, he'd long ago come to terms with his body. If other people found him offensive and pear-shaped, then so be it. That was their problem. Corpulence had never interfered with his sex life, especially since it was a given that so long as you were rich enough, you could look like the Elephant Man and still get your pick of the litter.
Selecting a cigar from the bathroom humidor, he sniffed it, rattled it next to his ear, then snipped off the end with a silver cutter and lit it. Once he got it going to his satisfaction, he clamped it between his teeth and puffed away, diddling with the sink's dinky gold and rock crystal faucets Dina had insisted upon installing, and which he loathed.
Damned Frenchified things! Each time he used them, he hankered for his plain, old-fashioned chrome fixtures, the honest kind of plumbing stocked and sold in the discount hardware department of every GoldMart store across the country. The kind he'd grown up with, and you could repair with a standard lug wrench instead of a bunch of special-gauge, la-di-da jeweler's tools.
The kind I want back! he thought crankily, the unusually large mound of shaving cream he squirted into his hand, as well as the noisy vigor with which he slapped lather onto his face, attesting to the irritation he felt at having to shave for the second time that day. And all because of a damned last-minute invitation to the Met!
Robert puffed angrily on his cigar, the blue smoke mixing with the rising steam, creating a dense, pungent cloud which the bathroom's one useful item, the giant distortion- and fog-free mirror, kept magically clear.
Parties, how he detested them! And God, how Dina thrived on them! But why she couldn't do like other socialites and get herself one of those faygeleh walkers to squire her around, he'd never know—just as he'd never understand how anyone could devote her entire life to crashing society and sucking up to a bunch of hypocritical snobs who didn't give a rat's ass about her.
Well, he'd do what he always did at these kinds of functions. Wait until dinner was over and then wander off to some quiet place where he'd be joined by five or six like-minded cronies—all self-made billionaires who, like himself, had been dragged along by their younger trophy wives. While everyone else danced and air-kissed and stabbed each other in the backs, they'd light up cigars and tell each other off-color jokes. And inevitably get around to reminiscing about the "good old days," back when they'd been hungry young machers with nothing more than a few cents and a dream, and times had been rough, but life—ah life!—that incredible journey ever full of surprises had been infinitely more challenging, more exciting, and most of all, more satisfying than it had been ever since!
Lost in thought, Robert was oblivious to the fact that his bathroom door had inched open a crack.
And that a slitted aquamarine eye was peering in at him.
Out in his mirrored dressing room, Dina quickly stepped back from the door. Her lips were compressed in a grim line. She had seen quite enough. Too much, as a matter of fact.
Dressed, her husband was hardly a pretty sight. But undressed ...
She instantly slammed a mental door on that train of thought. Continuing along it was entirely the wrong approach. She knew from experience that the anticipation was always worse than the act itself. Her lips abruptly turned down at the corners. No, that wasn't quite true. The act was worse. Far worse ...
Putting off the inevitable, she looked at her infinite reflections in the mirrored closet doors.
The sight which greeted her made her cringe.
She was wearing a pink baby doll top with thin halter straps and white lace trim over matching crotchless white lace panties. There was a white lace collar around her throat and a big white maribou pom-pom pinned to her hair. To top it all off, looped around one index finger was a red ribbon. And dangling from it was the huge, stuffed red satin heart emblazoned "Daddy."
Dina could only shake her head in baffled wonderment, her multiple reflections mimicking her every move. Really, it was too, too bizarre. A woman her age dressing up like a baby doll! How any grown man could get sexually aroused from this was entirely beyond her.
However, if this was what it took, then so be it.
Clenching her jaw determinedly, she adjusted the low-cut bodice so that her breasts swelled voluptuously and left her strawberry nipples strategically exposed. She ran her tongue across her lips to moisten them. Then, swallowing all remnants of pride, she grasped the gilded doorknob and slipped into her husband's jungle-humid steambath.
He was so immersed in shaving
, the cigar clenched between his teeth, his head wreathed in a smog of smoke and steam, that he didn't even notice her—at least, not until she opened her mouth.
"Daddy," Dina crooned softly in her very best baby voice.
She had it all down pat. The pout. The starry false eyelashes. Even the penciled-on nose freckles.
"Ba-by's horny!"
Dina's entrance had its desired effect. Robert's head swiveled, then turned back to face his own fog-free reflection before he did a classic double take. He nearly choked on his cigar.
Dina was standing in the doorway, splayed legs planted wide. Sucking on a thumb while twisting her torso childishly from side to side like a six-year-old.
Robert knew his priorities. Tossing his cigar and razor into the jasper sink, and happily oblivious to having nicked his chin, he gave her his full and undivided attention, unconsciously licking his lips while eating her up with lust-filled eyes.
If his face hadn't been such a dead giveaway, Charlie raising the front of the bath sheet in an immediate salute certainly dispelled any remaining doubts.
"Hey, l'il girl!" he rasped, loosening the towel from around his porcine waist and letting it drop. Without even touching it, his erect penis twitched and bobbed—a little muscle control trick he was particularly proud of.
He held out his arms. "Come on over to Daddy, baby."
Dina took her thumb out of her mouth and stuck out her bottom lip petulantly, swinging the red satin heart back and forth, back and forth, the twenty-nine-year-old regressing to six trying to make up her mind.
Finally, she looked up from under demurely lowered lashes. "Daddy's little girl needs to give some head!"
"Well then, I'd say this is his l'il girl's lucky day!" Robert looked down at himself. "See? Lookit the treat Daddy's got for his l'il baby!"
Dina glanced, with pretended interest, at the thick circumcised penis with its curiously asymmetrical ruff and wondered, as always, who had botched his circumcision.
Licking her lips with feigned hunger, Dina approached her husband. "Daddy, may I?" She looked up at him with huge pleading eyes. "Please?"
The words were barely out of her mouth before he grabbed hold of her head and shoved her face down into his crotch. No foreplay for Robert A. Goldsmith. No, siree! One moment his wife was standing, and the next he had her—slam bam!—down on her knees.
Already wheezing heavily, he spread his legs wide. Leaning back against the scalloped edge of the sink, he thrust his ample hips forward, and uttered two words:
"Start eatin'."
Dina, swallowing her revulsion as she'd swallowed her pride, opened her mouth and closed her lips around him, devoting considerable energy and talent to his penis and, by obvious extension, to his dangling, hairy testicles as well. But she was careful not to touch, nor so much as graze, any other part of his body.
Oh no; she wanted every bit of his vast powers of concentration to be centered right there in his crotch—for Dina Goldsmith, like all women (and certain men), knew that when a man was aroused, his brain was no longer in his head but between his legs.
But first she had to bring him closer to orgasm. Tightening her mouth around him, she set seriously to work. Sucked in and out. In and out.
Strangely, she herself felt absolutely no arousal whatsoever. No wetness flooding her loins. No trickles running down the insides of her thighs. No swelling of her nipples.
She was dry and closed. Not that there was anything wrong with her, or that she couldn't get turned on. She just couldn't get turned on to her husband. Sex with Robert was, alternately, a duty, a weapon, or a method by which to extract favors.
Her cheeks drew in as her mouth sucked furiously with pretend hunger, and inflated as she withdrew.
God! Tears were beginning to form in her eyes and her lips were becoming so numb she could barely feel them. How much longer was this going to last? She needed to give her mouth a break! But his wheezes were speeding up; she almost had him where she wanted him.
Soon, she consoled herself. If I don't stop now, it'll be any moment ...
She sucked like a maniac. Faster, faster. And then she could sense a convulsive shudder starting to pass through him, felt his engorged penis straining, readying itself for imminent explosion.
And it was at that very instant, a mere fraction of a split second before he could reach orgasm, that she stopped and—plop!—let his penis slide out of her mouth.
The engorged organ strained and jerked in midair, like a confused, heat-seeking missile searching for a target which had suddenly disappeared.
"You fuckin' stopped!" he growled accusingly.
Dina raised her head and looked up at her husband with her best Daddy's Little Girl eyes. This was the precise moment she had been waiting for.
"Baby needs a fa-vor from her Daddy."
She batted her starry lashes, the skillful tip of her tongue diddling just enough with his penis to keep it straining on this side of orgasm, like a dog pulling on its leash.
"Yeah?" he rasped, all rational thought replaced by the urgency of dire physical need. "What kinda favor we talkin'?"
Feminine intuition served Dina well, and she fondled his testicles cunningly while artfully giving his twitching penis some cautiously resourceful sucks. Then she stopped again, keeping him poised on the maddening, excruciating brink of exquisite orgasm.
She hung her head and twisted her shoulders childishly. "Baby's best friend needs help!"
"Baby's best friend is her Daddy's dick!"
Robert guffawed raunchy laughter.
"Baby means her other fwend. Zandra."
Raising her eyes, she fluttered her lashes, her tongue darting out and thrumming his penis just enough to keep him right up there on the wall.
"Please, Daddy?" Thrum. "Pretty please? All she needs is a job."
"A job?" he rasped blankly. "Uh, what kinda job?"
"One at Daddy's new company," Dina said, expertly drilling the tip of her tongue into the one-eyed snake's cyclopic eye. "Zandra knows all about Old Masters!"
Old Masters! Warning bells jangled and a cold sweat suddenly sleeked his entire body. Aw, shit, he thought, anything but that! Anything!
Robert A. Goldsmith might have been thinking with his penis, but that didn't mean his mental faculties were entirely shot. Christ Jesus! He'd have to be certifiable to stick his wife's best friend into the very same department at Burghley's of which his current Blow Job, Bambi Parker, was about to be put in charge! All it would take was for the two of them to hit it off and—yap! yap! yap!—his ass would be grass.
For, Baby Doll routines aside, he knew that if Dina so much as suspected he was playing around, she'd have his balls on a platter. Sliced, chopped, diced, and fried.
"Daddy'll think about it," he grunted, trying to postpone the inevitable. "Now, shut up and be a good l'il girl. Finish off what you've started!"
Dina's lips closed around the bulbous knob some more, her tongue making slow, deliberate revolutions, bringing him even closer to the very precipice of orgasm.
She stopped again.
"Please, Daddy?" she begged. "Pretty please?" His penis twitched and bobbed desperately, meeting only air.
She gave it a mere whisper of a lick.
Her husband cracked. She could tell from the agonized wheeze he emitted.
"Oh, all right," he gasped, making the decision with his penis and suspecting, but momentarily not caring, that he might live to regret it.
"Oh, thank you, Daddy!" Dina squealed. And her mouth pounced and gave his hot pulsing phallus her all.
His semen was boiling, and not ten seconds passed before he tensed. For one tiny instant he was absolutely still, and then a convulsive shudder passed through him and he exploded in a protracted, overwhelming, if one-sided, flood of magnificent release.
Dina struggled to her feet as Robert dizzily staggered, gasping for air, and reeled from wall to wall before collapsing heavily on the toilet. Body limp, and penis getting there fast
, too.
Well, there's one thing that can be said for my husband, Dina thought smugly as she fled to her own suite, where she quickly rinsed out her mouth with handfuls of water before gargling with mouthwash. Once he gives his word on something, it's as good as gold! Robert never, ever reneges, no matter under what circumstances a promise might have been extracted. His peculiar sense of honor would not permit it.
She was dying to share the good news with Zandra, but a quick glance at the nephrite and pale pink enamel bathroom clock showed that, even with the unromantic but necessary sexual interlude, she had less than forty-five minutes to get ready.
Not a whole lot of time for most women to cleanse off smeared makeup, step under the shower, dry off, paint on her public face, and get dressed from scratch.
But Dina Goldsmith wasn't most women. She was one of a kind, and gifted with considerable foresight.
First, she'd had the sense to lay out tonight's entire wardrobe on her bed, right down to her shoes, pantyhose, silky blonde hair extension, diamond barrette, and every last carat of jewelry.
Second, as far as makeup went, well, she had that down to a science, too.
And third, Dina's personal fashion philosophy was nothing if not pragmatic: No woman should ever wear anything she couldn't put on in five minutes flat, and the same went for makeup.
Forty-five minutes later Dina was ready. She wore Damin Industries' patented Stay-Put Backless, Strapless Push-Up bra inserts that came in a blue aluminum can and a plain, deceptively simple white silk gown from Louis Feraud—the better to set off the long-sleeved killer jacket from Yves St. Laurent, sumptuously trimmed with gold laurel leaves at the neckline and waist, and entirely encrusted with twenty pounds of faceted cut glass.
She looked like a million, but wore at least ten. Who said diamonds weren't a girl's best friend?
There was her diamond solitaire ring, a flawless D in a pear cut, which weighed sixty-six and a half carats.
Too Damn Rich Page 10
