Cherry Blossoms

by KT Morrison

  11

  Black Glasses, Black Lingerie

  Tuesday, July 11th

  NIA

  “Well, what do you think?” she said.

  Nia tentatively held the arms of her new glasses at her temples and watched Geoff’s reaction carefully.

  She was sitting at the dining room table, Geoff just coming in from the city, back from a late-afternoon meeting with Jenny at Evergreen. Rocco had sent her home to work, the company had its Quarterly and she had to finalize the HST for the retail and some of the aggregate sales. Rocco was working a tractor today up in King City because Doug had sprained his ankle and was off for two days (his doctor’s note had said). Odie was at an Arts Day Camp this week and next week, and she’d be home in about an hour. Then Odie had gymnastics after dinner.

  On her way home from Dragon she’d stopped at the optometrist to pick up her brand new no-longer-a-hot-young-chick glasses. She went with a heavy black frame. That was the mood she’d been in that evening when she’d picked them. Austere, going for gravitas. Now, closing in on the day she was going to have hot animal sex with another man, she felt like they made her look…well, old.

  Geoff stopped though, mid-step, and she saw an honest look pass his face and she smiled—knowing that expression.

  “Shit. Wow, hot, Nia.”

  He meant it.

  She smirked, twisted her mouth up, frowned at him dubiously, said “Thanks, baby.” Happy that he liked them but, then, also aware that he liked her with no makeup and messy hair. She could have put on swimming goggles and Geoff would say, Oh wow, hey, you look hot.

  Still, it was nice to be appreciated. He came to her and she hugged his waist and he kissed the top of her head.

  Geoff busied himself in the kitchen, got dinner ready while she kept up with her inputs and when she was done, the laptop closed, she folded those glasses up and put them away, joined him in the kitchen and helped him with his pasta sauce. Showed her white husband how you did it.

  GEOFF

  Odie was growing tired of gymnastics. You could see it in her. She’d gone through the Shooting Stars program, Rising Stars last year, and now here she was in the recreational gymnastics program, All Stars, learning vaulting for the first time. But she was an obviously disinterested seven-year-old, the youngest in a class that went all the way up to twelve-year-olds. The stage where things started to get just a little, sometimes a lot, competitive. Odie had no desire to be a gymnast. Nor did she have the developing body that a gymnast would need. She was going to be a big girl. Big in a voluptuous beautiful breathtaking way. Her heart, it was beginning to show, really lay in art.

  Geoff sat with Nia on the sidelines of an hour and a half long class, watching Odie stand and wait her turn to run down the line and practice her vault approach, her run technique, two instructors down the line, encouraging and guiding. Mostly she stood and looked at the ceiling while the instructor was talking. She would occasionally try and do a handstand on her own. Then talk to herself about it. Nia looked to Geoff and smiled, shook her head at their quirky girl.

  Geoff touched his chin to her shoulder and then nodded his head to the door, communicating to her with his eyebrows. She nodded too and picked up her purse. Geoff got Odie’s attention, pointed to his watch, mouthed, We’ll be back, then motioned like he was drinking a coffee. Odie rolled her eyes.

  Geoff caught up with Nia in the lobby, looking up at Odie’s class picture from last year. He took her hand and they walked out onto the sidewalk together.

  GEOFF

  “It goes with your black glasses.”

  “He’s not going to see me in my glasses,” she said, holding a black panty and bra and stocking set by its wooden hanger and draping it along her body, one thin knee pointed out.

  He’d brought her to the sex shop in the high Victorian home a block down from Odie’s Gymnastics class. She’d been as nervous as him that first day when they snuck themselves in, which was surprising given how usually confident she was. Of course this was the neighbourhood they lived in and it might be embarrassing to be seen by some of Odie’s friends’ parents.

  “You need them to read on the laptop.”

  “So?”

  “How…you work right next to him…you’re going to squint when he’s around?”

  “Yeah,” she said, smirking and looking down at the silky fabric of the lingerie.

  “Is squinting sexy?”

  She laughed, held the hanger out again and looked the set over once more. She said, “I think I like this one.”

  “You are getting very vain,” Geoff continued, pretending to chastise her, talking about her reading glasses.

  “What do you think?” she said and she put the set against herself again.

  “I think I’d like to see that on.”

  “Should I try it on?”

  “Oh, you should definitely try it on,” he nodded, eyebrows high and encouraging.

  She got suddenly girlish and very unlike his cool-headed Nia and she hopped over to the fitting rooms with her lingerie. He hoped she understood that he meant she had to show him.

  He wandered while she was in there, looking around at some of the other kinky items they had for sale. There were harnesses and things that were crotchless, leather masks of very good quality, a lot of fucked up things going on in this city he thought…they were just another piece of the puzzle weren’t they? Who knew the crazy things some of the people they knew might get up to.

  They were just here for her weekend away—Nia had a shortage of nice under garments. Beautiful girl like her can’t go out in her cotton underwear. Not on a special weekend like this one, not one wh—

  “Geoff!” a quiet hiss. He turned, saw her in a glossy parquet circle surrounded by mirrors in a half moon around her. He saw ten of her, all angles, saw her almost bare ass reflecting behind her, the swell of her hips, her slender back and the sharp edges of her shoulder blades. She waved him over, laughing because her call had brought some looks from other shoppers, now trying not to look like they were still looking. He went over, saw she’d come prepared, the lingerie over a nude set of underwear she was wearing, a thong though, like what she was trying on, so her bare globes were free for anyone to see right now. She was stunning.

  “Is this all right?” she asked him. She had a balcony bra with a thin frilled edge, a thong panty in black lace and a lacy embroidered (and sheer) suspender belt.

  She stood, sexily poised, one knee bent, toe pointed, her face confident but friendly. He got a little jab. He just got pushed back to friend-status. She was looking for an opinion. Will my boyfriend like this? Do you think he’ll notice me? That feeling he had with her so strangely sexually imprinted on him twelve years ago—just that sudden wave of realization clutched his heart and surged his prostate at the same time. He felt a rigidity between his legs.

  “These slides,” she said, adjusting the straps of the bra, “are real gold, Geoff…”

  “You’re so incredible, Nia. This is it. This was meant for you.”

  She smiled warmly to him, her face softening and showing him her love.

  He said, “Turn around for me,” running his index finger in a circle through the air.

  She did, turned around, throwing her hair over her shoulder and watching him watch her and enjoy her. She went around twice, doing it on her tip-toes and flexing those long legs for him. He felt a happy strange sadness come over him, a welling in his eyes—no tears but a surge of warmth for her. Like the bittersweet tinge of a parent sending their daughter off to college, happy for the future but sad for what will be gone.

  GEOFF

  Nia had left the lingerie items she’d decided to get on the counter with the same young girl with the tattoo on her neck that he’d bought the silver dildo from the last time he was here. He’d tagged along with Nia as she walked some of the shelves and flicked through some of the books. She’d stopped at a display of gag gifts and he’d wandered off, found himself at the archway that led
to the room of phallus shapes. His big veiny friend was still there—thick, heavy, curved with the tiresome effort of supporting its own weight. It stood proud, yet somehow aloof, under the white beam of a halogen spot still on its special glass pedestal.

  “Hey, Nia—come here,” he hoarsely whispered, and he nodded his head to her where she was standing looking at the boxes of condoms now. She wandered over, frowning.

  “What?”

  “Come here.” He walked her to the enormous dildo on the stand that he’d been mesmerized by on the first visit here.

  The starburst NEW! announcement was gone but it still stood on the same glass pedestal in all its veiny glory. Thick, gnarly, a slight downward curve, an enormous flared glans that looked as big as a doorknob.

  “What is it?” she said, looking at it as she came to stand beside him.

  His heart raced having her witness this horrible thing with him…wondering what she might think of it. “It’s a dildo. Look at the size of it.”

  “Yeah, it is big,” she said, her eyes going up and down it.

  “You don’t think it’s…ridiculous?”

  “Why?”

  “The size…”

  She looked at it again, frowning, said, “It’s a really big dick…what?”

  “You’ve…you’ve, like, been…with…”

  She chuckled now, realizing what he was thinking. She looked over her shoulders to see if anyone was watching then she cautiously reached out and put both her hands around it lightly. It was huge in her grip. Her fingers couldn’t close on it and half of it still showed above her fists. She said, “That’s…yeah, that’s a big dick. That’s like Dino.”

  His heart pounded. “What?” he hissed in disbelief.

  “Yeah, that’s a lot like Dino,” she said. “Except he has a heavy foreskin.”

  “Oh, Nia,” he reeled, put a hand out behind him and gripped the edge of a shelf, part acting for her benefit and part natural response. He steadied himself against it.

  “What?” she laughed, putting her hands down to her side again. “What did you think a big dick looked like, Geoff…they’re big, buddy.”

  His heart tingled warmly now at the delight she was taking in this. This was exciting and hurtful and it was all on the very edge of being more than he could handle. She put her side against his and he felt her hand rubbing his back, she soothed him, “You okay?”

  “Wow, shit. That big?”

  “Yeah, Geoff. I suspect that will be quite like Rocco too.”

  “It’s so big.”

  “It’ll fit.”

  “Fuck, Nia, you’re killing me…”

  She laughed again, out loud, she put her arm around his waist and he leaned into her.

  “Do you want…do you want me to buy it for you?” he asked her.

  “No, Geoff, I like my little one you got me.” Little one? It was longer than him. “I like my cocks to be real, to have hot blood pulsing through them,” she whispered, knowing now she was driving him crazy. “I don’t want a rubber one, I want Rocco’s hard throbbing meat inside me—picture it Geoff, picture that opening me up,” she said, clutching his arm now and nodding at the big flesh-coloured weapon with her chin.

  “Okay, Nia, we gotta get out of here.”

  “Getting hard?”

  “Yeah. Yeah,” he agreed, wanting to say more but worried that people would notice what they were up to. Plus, any more talk like this and he wasn’t going to be able to hide what was happening between his legs.

  “Stop looking at it then, come help me pick out some condoms.”

  She walked him back, holding hands, to where she’d been standing in front of the condom display. She read condom boxes while he stood next to her rubbing the heel of his palm into his warm forehead. His upper back felt sweaty, clammy. He stepped back, still reeling, wondering if he was going to get over this hurdle. He felt like calling it off now. He felt like saying that it was fun to pretend but it was time to get real. He looked again at that precious figure of hers. Her bare slim legs, the seams of her little toes along the curved edge of her leather ballerinas. She wasn’t a small girl, she was as tall as him…but she was slender and graceful. He looked at the thinness of her thighs, her fine wrists as she held a box of Extra-Large Rough Rider condoms and thought of that vicious looking cock and how his wife was non-plussed—Yup, that’s a penis, she said. It would be thicker than her wrist, it would surely hurt her, wouldn’t it? God, he selfishly thought, what did she really think the first time she’d put her hand on his penis? Was she disappointed?

  “These ought to do,” she said to him, tapping the cardboard box with a long hard nail.

  “You going to use all of them?” he said weakly, trying to be funny but surprising himself how distant and hoarse his voice sounded.

  She made a happy sort of shocked face, she clutched his forearm and said, “Wouldn’t that be something?”

  They walked to the counter for the checkout together and Geoff put his hand in his pocket for his wallet. “Here let me get this for you.”

  “I make money now, Ge—”

  “Yeah, but I want to…”

  She nodded with a knowing smile, said, “Is this part of it…you know,” glancing over at the girl at the counter, trying not to give away too much.

  He nodded. This was part of it. His wife. Buying her things—for her to wear to seduce another man, for her to be wearing when she was used by another man. His heart was pounding. He was even paying for the latex that was going to be stretched over another man’s enormous cock before he shoved it in and out of his beautiful lady. He was buying something for another man to come inside while his cock was buried deep in the woman he loved. Why the fuck was this so exciting? His only regret now was that he’d not arranged to be there. Maybe he really did want to do more than allow her this dirty freedom, maybe he wanted something from it too.

  The girl gave a little glance to the extra-large condoms, Rough Riders, a black silhouette of a cowboy riding a bull against a setting sun. She placed them in a plain black shopping bag with the very expensive but oh-so-worth it lingerie, and Nia said to him loudly, earnestly, “Well, if you burst those ones I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

  The girl looked at him, blankly, not lustily, just up to his face, she’d heard and understood what Nia had said. He went beet red.

  When they were on the street she finally burst out laughing and she put her arm through his and leaned against him while they walked.

  “Jesus, Nia—what the…my face went so fucking red…”

  She was still laughing, cracking herself up with her own joke, she said, “I’m putting in a good word for you…help you get a date.”

  “With that girl?”

  “No,” she smirked, waved her hand at him, waved the idea away, showing him she was only joking.

  “Nia, I don’t want to sleep with anyone else—I’ve got the most perfect woman in the world on my arm.”

  Her face crumpled, her brow down, her mouth pursed.

  “What?”

  “You just made me feel so bad.” She stopped on the sidewalk, people parting around them. Her shoulders slumped and she looked guilty.

  “Don’t, Nia,” he said and he put his hands on her shoulders.

  She said, “You’re everything to me, you know? You’re enough. More than enough…”

  “I know, baby. I didn’t say that to hurt you. I’m not interested in other girls, like, at all. But I know I’m your cutey-pie, I know I have charm. I know you love me.”

  “I do. I really do. And I was kidding about…a girlfriend. I’ll never share you…”

  “Now you made me feel bad.”

  She hugged him, whispered in his ear, “We’re pretty fucked up.”

  He held her tight.

  NIA

  They got back and took a spot against the wall of the small Gymnastic centre in the lower retail level of a four-storey office block and Odie was none the wiser. They each had a tall paper c
up of Kenyan Pig Irons they stopped and got between here and the sex shop. We just went out for a coffee. Nothing to see here.

  They watched the end of the class. Odie was off in Odie-Land again, doing her own dance, talking to herself, anything but paying attention to the instructors. She was silently singing a song now, and doing a dance for her dad behind some bigger kids’ backs, making Geoff laugh and almost double over, holding his coffee out so it wouldn’t spill.

  The end of this week was a heartbeat away. Seventy-two hours from now she’d be in the hotel with Rocco, and with a license to do what she wished. This wonderful laughing man next to her, this beautiful daughter who didn’t give a shit about gymnastics anymore…they were everything to her. She was about to embark on something crazy, and as lascivious as it may seem she still wanted it. Despite this warm happy moment with her family, she knew, one-hundred-percent knew, that she would fuck Rocco this weekend.

  She put her hand on Geoff’s back and he turned and smiled to her, gave her a kiss. He leaned himself back against the cinderblock wall with her, still smiling, watching Odie now run up and prepare for a vault.

  She watched him, watched his happiness. He was beautiful; her best friend.

  12

  Hotel Sanguinet

  Friday, July 14th

  NIA

  The last two weeks with Rocco had been a simmering pot that Nia had struggled to keep from boiling over. She had it in her mind how she wanted this to work with Rocco and she knew, was completely sure, that she wasn’t just going to spread her legs for him one day in the pickup truck. Not the first time. She wanted a carefully cultivated experience, and while a dirty part of her wanted to get spread hard and urgent right fucking now another part of her enjoyed the exquisite torture she was tickling herself with as she dragged this out. Rocco damn well knew what was going to happen in Montréal and Nia had been playing the part of a loving wife who was struggling with her attraction to her masculine boss. She did not let him know that she was definitely going to fuck him this weekend.