Paranormal Erotic Romance Box Set

by Lola Swain

  “I did,” she said and closed her eyes.

  “Why are you thinking of this now? And why do you look so damned maudlin?”

  “Because, now you are to be married on this day and I feel like I’m losing you,” Katt said.

  “Oh, Katt,” I said and sat next to her on the couch, “you are not losing me! After Brandt and I return from our honeymoon, we will move to Manhattan, but I’ll be back often. And this place will still be mine and of course, yours.”

  Katt shook her head and wept.

  “And hey,” I said, “you could come with us. Wouldn’t that be terrific? I know you have things about Brandt you don’t like, but there is good stuff there, I promise.”

  “Didn’t last night scare you at all?” Katt said.

  “What, with Nellie? No.”

  “Oh, come on, Sophia. That girl absolutely froze my blood.”

  “Look, yes, she was hysterical, but she was upset. However pathological Nellie’s obsession with Brandt is, she believes her feelings for him are real. Even though Brandt certainly did not reciprocate, Nellie believes she is in love.”

  “But you cannot be saying that scene was justified. Please, tell me that isn’t what you’re saying.”

  “It was extreme, yes. But I would be upset too. Besides, her reaction is a testament to how incredible Brandt is. Look how much Nellie feels for him even though he doesn’t feel the same.”

  Katt shook her head and lit another cigarette as soon as she put the first one out.

  “You sound like those women,” she said and took a long drag on her cigarette. “Those women we saw on the television interview who were hit by their husbands.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said as I touched my neck. “Brandt never laid a hand on me.”

  “The justification, Sophia,” Katt said and blew a stream of smoke into the air. “You justify away everything to do with Brandt. And I am concerned that one day you won’t have the chance to excuse his behavior.”

  When Katt threw every anxious thought back at me, I lost my mind.

  “That is it,” I said and jumped up from the couch. “You are no different from the others. You refuse to be happy for me and Brandt and I will not listen to it any longer!”

  “Oh, what others are you referring to, Sophia?” Katt said and chuckled. “Who else even knows about you and Brandt? Your parents? They met him, what, one fucking time? And then there’s nasty Nellie. The whole of fucking Boston knows how happy she is for you and Brandt now, don’t they?”

  “I never once judged you or your life. In fact, I’ve been nothing but a supportive friend, despite what I thought of your choices.”

  “What choices, Sophia?”

  “Are you serious?” I said and laughed. “How about the endless stream of men for starts? My God, Katt, you may as well set up a conveyor belt and replace your bedroom door with a revolving door.”

  Katt’s face turned red and she stood from the couch and balled her hands into fists.

  “Number one, that fucking well sounded like judgment to me, Sophia Pearson. Oh, excuse me, Sophia Therrault. And number two, perhaps if you got on your bloody back and spread your fucking legs at the end of my conveyor belt, you wouldn’t be so keen to lose your virginity to the first creep who comes down the pike.”

  “You are not welcome at my wedding, Katt Lawson!”

  “That suits me just fucking fine! I may be a lot of things you find disgusting but the one thing I am not is a liar which is a hell of a lot more than I can say for you.”

  “I am not a liar!” I said, lying.

  “The fuck you’re not,” Katt said. “You know this whole thing with Brandt is desperate and wrong. You are giving up modeling at the height of your career because he says. You are resigned to being a nineteen-year-old homemaker and baby maker because he says. You’ve given up your whole fucking identity before you’ve even found it, why? That’s right, all because he says. You’ve lost me, you will surely lose your family when they find out the stunt you pulled and I know, as sure as I’m standing here, he will isolate you from all your other friends! What have you got left?”

  “I have Brandt,” I said. “And that’s all I need.”

  “You reckon?” Katt said and stared into my eyes. “Well, that ain’t fucking much.”

  And then, there was nothing but the silence between two people who each just spit insults at each other out of raw anger and self-justifying despair.

  Katt’s breath came out in fits and heaves and I was dizzy. I took a deep breath in and turned to go into my bedroom.

  “If you’ll excuse me, I now have thirty minutes to get ready for my wedding.”

  I ran into my bedroom and slammed the door. I picked up the beautiful porcelain jewelry box that sat on my vanity, a gift from Katt when she went to Morocco. I looked at my face in my mirror. It was ruddy and rough and bloated. Just like Nellie.

  “Fuck you,” I said and hurled the jewelry box into the glass.

  The mirror shattered and jagged shards of glass flew around my room. The jewelry box, once one of my most prized possessions, was obliterated and all that was left were pearly pink and iridescent cobalt chunks and fragments.

  I threw my wedding dress on and did my makeup in the last hunk of glass that survived the impact and remained in the mirror’s frame. I grabbed my suitcase and opened the bedroom door and peeked into my living room. Katt was gone. I slammed my bedroom door and headed out of my apartment as the final piece of glass broke free from the frame and shattered on my bedroom floor.

  I hailed a cab and the driver, after I explained that I was late to my own wedding, sped toward City Hall. I was ill with anxiety. But when I looked out the passenger window of the cab as we stopped in front of City Hall, I saw Brandt pacing the courtyard, looking like an absolute prince in his Hardy Amies suit.

  “He showed,” I said as I looked out the window.

  “Course he showed,” the cabbie said and turned around and looked at me. “You are a most beautiful bride. Too beautiful for the City Hall.”

  Disapproval was contagious in Boston.

  “Thank you,” I said and handed the driver my money. “Keep the change.”

  “Thanks, lady. Hey, make sure you make a wish before you say I do. Everything is different after that.”

  I opened the door to the cab and waved at Brandt. He spotted me and smiled and ran through the courtyard toward the street.

  “My wish already came true,” I said to the driver as I got out of the cab.

  “Whatever you say,” the driver said. “Have a nice life, lady.”

  I slammed the door to the cab and turned around to face Brandt.

  “Sophia! I thought you weren’t coming,” he said and hugged me.

  “Why wouldn’t I come?” I said.

  Brandt pulled away from me and held my hands in his. He stepped back and held my arms out while he stared at me.

  “Because not a lot works out for me,” he said and looked at his watch. “Shall we go?”

  Brandt took my hand and pulled me through the courtyard and up the steps to the front entrance of the building.

  “Hey, where’s your friend? Wasn’t she supposed to be here?” Brandt said as we blended in with the crowd trying to get into City Hall.

  “Um, I just wanted it to be us,” I said. “That’s all we need, right? Just us?”

  Brandt looked down at me and smiled as he grabbed the door.

  “Interesting tidbit about this place,” he said as he held the heavy front door open and pushed me inside the building, “they’re building a new one, in case you weren’t aware.”

  “A new what?” I said and waited for him to join me in the great foyer.

  “A new City Hall,” he shouted from the doorway as he held the door for others who filed into the building. “Should be ready in a few years. If you weren’t in such a rush to marry me, we could have had the ceremony in the new building.”

  An older woman who Brandt helped inside
the building looked at me with disapproval as she passed. I looked at Brandt, now inside and joining me in the foyer and shook my head.

  “I’m sorry, but did you say that I’m rushing you into this?”

  “No, I don’t think that’s what I said,” Brandt said and took my arm. “Come on, we need to go to room 124A.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said and dug my kitten heels into the hexagonal tiles, “that is what you said, Brandt. You said that if I weren’t in such a rush to marry you, we could have been married in the new City Hall building.”

  Brandt turned and looked at me and then at my hand still gripping his arm. He put his hand over mine and removed my hand.

  “No, Sophia,” he said and sighed, “I most certainly did not say that. You heard me wrong, plain and simple.”

  “I’m sorry, but I did not.”

  “And you’re positive? You are absolutely one thousand percent positive that I said what you think I said?”

  “What I know you said. Yes, I am.”

  “Ah, but you did not say you were absolutely positive,” Brandt said and chuckled. “You didn’t say positive so you cannot be positive. You have to say the words to be in the right.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Exactly, you don’t know what I’m talking about. You are confused and talking, as they say down the Bowery, out your ass,” Brandt said loud enough for more than a few passerby’s to give us a second glance.

  And I remember this strange unraveling feeling in my head as if the gyrus detached itself from my cerebral cortex and began to unwind. I tried to think back to exactly what he said, but as if he never said it at all, I could not remember a thing.

  “Tick-tock, Sophia,” Brandt said and tapped on the face of his watch. ‘Tick-tock.”

  “I don’t know wha—”

  “Yes, I know you don’t know,” Brandt said and laughed and stroked the side of my face. “Look, this is silly. Don’t you think this is silly?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Terrific,” Brandt said and grabbed my hands. “Now, who wants to get married? Let’s see a show of hands.”

  Brandt raised his hand, lifting my hand in his, and stretched my arm until it strained in my shoulder socket.

  “Looks like two people right here who want to get married,” Brandt said and pulled me into his body. “I love you. I want us to go into 124A, say those vows and get on with our lives. Don’t you want that?”

  “Yes, that’s what I want too,” I said and buried my face into his jacket.

  He smelled of strength and validation.

  “Good, my girl. And then we’ll be on to the best part, won’t we?” Brandt said and lifted my face up and brushed his full, cushiony lips against mine. “The honeymoon.”

  He pulled me into Room 124A of City Hall. I heard not a word he said to the Clerk announcing our arrival. I spent the entire six minutes it took me to repeat the stock statements that hundreds before us spoke, wondering if he did or did not say what I thought I heard him say. And not until Brandt was told that he could kiss the bride and he lowered his face toward mine, did I realize the bride the Clerk referred to was me.

  “Snap out of it, baby,” Brandt said as he leaned toward me for the kiss, “you’re my wife now.”

  And that was it. Six minutes of mimicry that was to begin my end and I was his wife. There were no witnesses or photographs. The only thing I can remember about that wedding now, was the thought.

  As if I stood at the mouth of a dark, menacing ally. All I had to do was turn left and circumvent the danger. But I went straight ahead into it. My pride was such that I’d do anything to avoid what I knew: that something was not right.

  Brandt pulled me out of City Hall much the way he pulled me in. He threw my suitcase in the trunk of his car and off we went on the two hour drive toward Cape Cod.

  After drove for a bit, Brandt put his hand on my knee and gave it a squeeze.

  “You’re awfully quiet over there,” he said. “What are you thinking about?”

  What was I thinking about?

  I wondered what would happen after I had to face Katt and my parents, both prospects I was not looking forward to. I wondered if Brandt would take me straight to Manhattan after we left Cape Cod. I had money. I didn’t really need to go back to Boston. I could just arrive in New York with my suitcase and the clothes on my back. I was sure Brandt arranged for an apartment. He mentioned the week before that he had a job lined up. Surely I didn’t need to go back to awful Boston. Surely I could just run away with my husband and start a new life.

  “Hello?” Brandt said and tapped on my head with his finger. “You in there?”

  “Yes, I’m sorry,” I said and turned to him and smiled.

  He was so incredibly handsome.

  “Well, why the long face and mute tongue, little girl?” Brandt said and reached over and tugged on my earlobe.

  “I’m just thinking,” I said and smiled.

  “Of?”

  “Of,” I said and sighed, “our new life. What do you think it will be like?”

  “Our life? Our life, will be incredible, Sophia.”

  I snuggled next to Brandt as we drove through the quaint town of Kingston. As he went down a small side street, I saw modest houses and lots of land with lush green grass and cute little ponds. I tried to picture myself in one of those houses as we neared what he told me was Faunce Memorial Forest. I felt so far removed from the concrete and steel of Boston and felt homesick for the familiarity.

  Brandt pulled into a shady area under a large oak tree and turned off the car. I looked out onto a large green space and watched children whacking balls back and forth and flying kites. I tried to picture myself running around with children, perhaps bringing them there with Brandt and having a picnic.

  “This is lovely,” I said.

  “Yep, it sure is. This is a nice town,” Brandt said and pulled the seat of the car back. “You know what would be good right now?”

  “Food?” I said and put my hand over my stomach, which growled so loud, I thought it was digesting itself.

  “Food?” Brandt said and chuckled. “It’s not even eleven o’clock. Didn’t you eat breakfast?”

  “No,” I said and looked out the window wondering if I should tell him about my fight with Katt. “I was too excited to eat.”

  “Well,” Brandt said and pulled me into his side, “you must always eat breakfast. We’ll get you something later. No, what would be good right now is a blow job.”

  Brandt pulled his shirt from his pants and undid his belt and lifted his hips slightly to bring his pants down to the middle of his thighs. He pulled his penis out of his underwear and stroked it.

  “Brandt,” I said and looked around the park, “there are people everywhere, children everywhere.”

  “I have a hard-on, Sophia,” Brandt said and stroked his penis faster. “And, you are my wife. It’s okay now.”

  “It has nothing to do with me being your wife. It has to do with modesty and I’m pretty sure, legalities. Like I said, there are people everywhere.”

  “So, you’re saying no? I hope this isn’t a sign of things to come. Or not to come, as the case seems to be,” Brandt said and pushed me away.

  “Brandt, I’m saying no because I don’t want to get in trouble. And honestly, I thought our first time together, in that way, would be a little more intimate than putting my mouth on it in the front seat of your car.”

  “Look away, Sophia,” Brandt said and moaned as he rubbed his erect penis slowly down to the base and all the way up to the head. “I will take care of this myself.”

  “Didn’t you hear anything I said?”

  “I’m tuning you out. I refuse to listen to your yammering and I am pleasuring myself. If you don’t like that, leave,” Brandt said.

  I looked at him and he rested his head back on the seat. He moaned and his eyes rolled back in his head.

  There was time at that point. I could get out o
f the car, leave my suitcase and walk to a telephone. I could call…

  Who?

  Okay, I could take a bus. I’d take a bus back to Boston, get an annulment and then I could…

  What?

  I already got out of my contract with Ford. At any rate, I thought at that moment, I just needed to leave. I put my hand on the door handle and pulled.

  “Do not!” Brandt said and lifted his head and glared at me. “I swear to Christ, Sophia, you will never regret a thing more if you step one motherfucking foot out of this car.”

  Thinking back on that scene, forty-four years later, is sort of funny. Brandt screaming at me at the top of his lungs, hard cock sticking out of his pants like a grain silo in the middle of a sweet, Norman Rockwell setting. Idyllic madness.

  Back then, of course, I took my hand off the door handle and sat back against the front seat.

  “Thank you,” Brandt said and went back to working himself. “Now, I want my cock sucked. You are my wife now and you should be the one sucking it. Come on.”

  He reached across the seat and grabbed my arm and yanked me toward him. He wrapped my long hair slowly around his hand until it pressed into the back of my head.

  “I’ve never done this before,” I said.

  “It’s okay,” Brandt said, “I’ll show you how. Open wide now.”

  I opened my mouth wide as if I was laid out in front of Dr. Mickelson and he was checking my molars for cavities.

  “Now, even though it’s called a blow job, you don’t actually blow. Put your mouth around my cock.”

  Brandt pushed the back of my head down toward his penis and I opened my mouth wider as he lowered my head. When it was inside my mouth, he instructed me to close my lips around it.

  “Oh, that’s nice. Your mouth is hot,” he said. “Now start sucking. Hard. And watch the teeth.”

  I sucked on his penis like I remembered sucking on my thumb. I sucked on his penis in short little bursts and he seemed to enjoy, judging from his loud moans, how I was doing it. I swiped my tongue back and forth across his hard, wide shaft like a windshield wiper while I sucked him hard.

  “Fuck, you’re good at this,” Brandt said and moaned. “You sure you’ve never done this before, you filthy little whore?”