Dead Sexy

by Linda Jaivin

  Another woman lay strapped on her back to what looked like a gymnastic horse. Her plum-coloured corset, one of those old-fashioned ones with criss-crossing thongs, began just below her hard nipples and ended with a flare above her bare hips. Her legs were spread apart, her ankles tied on either side of the strange black bench. She squirmed, tossing her head from side to side, as a handsome black man in a leather harness teased her pussy with his fingers. Each time he brought her to the verge of orgasm, he would stop and watch impassively as she writhed and begged for him to continue. Her juices soaked the bench between her legs and even from where Nicola stood she could see that her clit was so swollen that it seemed in danger of bursting.

  Nicola felt herself getting very, very turned on. It was, she thought, like all the sealed sections in the world come at once—so to speak.

  Fox caught a glimpse of Johnny across the room, wearing little more than two lithe brunettes. ‘Doesn’t look gay to me,’ Fox whispered accusingly.

  Nicola shrugged. She could feel Fox’s cock pressing into her back. As the brunettes sank to their knees and applied their shiny lips to Johnny’s impressive erection, Fox pulled Nicola to him and slipped his tongue into her mouth. Nicola’s eyes stayed on Johnny for a few seconds before she abandoned herself to her fireman.

  Stumbling over the bodies, Fox and Nicola found a spot in the corner. Fox pulled Nicola’s frock above her waist and clawed down her G-string. ‘Reel out that hose, fire boy,’ she said. She pushed him lustily against the wall and hooked one leg around his waist. He came with the force of an uncapped hydrant. After they’d exhausted themselves, Fox held her close. They stood like that while the frenetic activity around them continued unabated.

  ‘They’re all still going!’ Nicola whispered in amazement as she tugged her frock back down.

  She peered around as discreetly as possible for another glimpse of Johnny and caught sight of Liz instead. She was performing some sort of striptease in the centre of the room. Fox ducked as her bra came flying past his head with the velocity of an intercontinental missile.

  ‘Aw, Nic,’ he said, tucking his damp shirt back into his trousers. ‘I love you, girl. But this place is beginning to freak me out.’

  ‘Me too,’ Nicola admitted, ‘C’mon,’ she said, pulling at Fox’s hand, ‘let’s get out of here.’

  Her next column—‘Celebrate Your Fantasies!’—was, Nicola thought, her best to date.

  Liz agreed. ‘Nicola, that was hot,’ she exclaimed, slapping her hands on her desk for emphasis, and immediately recoiling. ‘Ouch!’ she cried, rubbing her fingers. ‘Shouldn’t do that with rings on.’

  Nicola winced in sympathy. ‘Thanks, Liz. Nice of you to say so.’

  ‘I mean it!’

  ‘As you know,’ Nicola replied cautiously, ‘it wasn’t entirely a work of imagination.’ Nicola and Liz had never discussed the party. There’d been so much work to do since getting back to the office after the Christmas break that the subject had been easily avoided.

  Liz went coy for a moment. Then she pulled up a chair, plopped down in it and leaned forward. ‘What do you think of Johnny?’

  Nicola thought for a moment. ‘Charming, good-looking, sexy and…’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Scary.’

  ‘Scary?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s like some sort of…some sort of sexual predator.’

  ‘He’s a tiger.’ Liz made big cat’s paws and growled. ‘And I’m a tigress.’

  Nicola laughed. ‘Sounds like you two should get together then.’

  ‘We did. That very night. And we’re going to get together again very soon,’ Liz confided, leaning so close that her TicTac breath fogged Nicola’s glasses. ‘Don’t you worry about that.’

  The phone rang on Nicola’s desk.

  ‘I’ll let you get to it,’ Liz said and sprang to her feet, breaking a heel in the process. ‘Shit,’ she cried. ‘My Manolos!’ As she limped off to see if the art department had any superglue, Nicola picked up the phone.

  ‘Nicola Biondi speaking.’

  ‘Love your work, darling, love your work.’

  ‘Thanks. Er, who’s this?’

  ‘Guess,’ came the teasing voice on the other end.

  ‘Johnny?’

  ‘Did you and your man have a good time at the party?’

  ‘Yeah, we did,’ she replied warily.

  ‘It looked like you were having fun. And you obviously got a lot out of it.’

  Nicola felt her cheeks grow hot.

  ‘Professionally, I mean.’

  Was he chuckling?

  ‘I’d like to invite you to another one.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, I’m not sure that Fox…I mean…’ Fox had said that one orgy was probably enough for a lifetime.

  ‘Leave him home then.’

  Nicola snorted with disbelief. ‘I don’t think so.’ She glanced across the room. Liz was talking to the art director while throwing her arms in the air as though trying out for a Dannii Minogue video. Nicola lowered her voice. ‘Besides, I think it’s probably a good idea to confine your attentions to one woman in any given office at a time.’ That was so Anabelle, she thought proudly. Cradling the phone between ear and shoulder, she reached for her keyboard to tap it in. It could even be the subject of her next column. What Johnny said next so astonished her that her hands froze over the keys.

  ‘I am. Who else would I be paying attention to in any office that had someone as enticing as you?’

  ‘What d’you mean, who else? Liz,’ Nicola whispered.

  ‘Liz?’ Johnny sounded genuinely confused. ‘Liz who?’

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ Nicola said curtly. Some men.

  ‘You know what, my dear? You’re a challenge. And there’s nothing Johnny likes more than a challenge.’

  Nicola hung up, shook her head and typed, ‘If You Know Her New Love Is a Bastard, Should You Tell Her?’ The bit about hitting on colleagues could go in the second or third paragraph.

  When the daily gifts of flowers and chocolates started to arrive on her desk, Nicola made sure no one saw the cards, which she quickly plucked off and shredded. She read his first few emails, then forced herself to hit delete whenever a communication from Wright Angles appeared in her letterbox. Her colleagues, including Liz, professed themselves wildly envious of her relationship with her romantic and ardent fireman, and made all the usual jokes about not wanting to put his spark out. Only Nicola knew how inflammatory her situation really was.

  ‘How’s it going with Johnny?’ she asked Liz as casually as possible.

  ‘RrrrrrrrrrrRR,’ Liz answered, baring fangs. Nicola hadn’t a clue what she meant by that, but presumed things were going all right.

  The gifts grew more outrageous: a teddy bear in bondage gear, a hot-pink cat-o’-nine-tails, beautifully bound editions of erotica and, finally, a box containing a pair of ruby-red stilettos. Nicola felt it was like trawling the Penthouse Forum section for insights into male attitudes towards sexuality—appalling and titillating all at once. When she mentioned some of these items in her column, Johnny phoned. ‘You talk the talk, Nic,’ he said. ‘Do you walk the walk?’

  ‘Not with you,’ she replied, hanging up.

  Despite herself, Nicola began to imagine what it would be like to sleep with Johnny. It started out innocently enough, as the close-one’s-eyes-and-think-of-George-Clooney sort of thing one did from time to time when making love to one’s regular squeeze. She fully expected that Fox occasionally slept with Drew Barrymore and Kate Winslet, as well as several of her friends—in his head, of course. Though she ordered herself to stop fantasising about Johnny, it was like that old trick where someone tells you not to think of an elephant. Soon, she was thinking about Johnny all the time.

  ‘Just one drink.’

  ‘You’ve made me a happy man.’

  ‘Don’t get too excited. It’s only so that I can give you those shoes back. And the other stuff.’

  ‘Don’t the
y fit? You can exchange them.’

  ‘Johnny,’ Nicola sighed. ‘I’ll see you at six. We’ll talk about it then.’ After hanging up, she dialled her home number. The answering machine clicked on. ‘Fox? Uh, I’ve got a function tonight, a, uh, lipstick launch. I’ll be home later.’ She paused. ‘Love you!’

  She did, too. Sure, she sometimes regretted that their lovemaking seemed a trifle same-old. But that was stupid. Fox wasn’t a fashion house, obliged to come up with exciting new hemlines every season just to keep its place on the catwalk. ‘True Love Has No Use-by Date!’ she’d written. So why, she now interrogated herself, was she giving herself several hours for a drink with a man whose intentions were as transparent as the negligee that was his latest gift?

  And if it was ‘just one drink’, why was she wearing her red silk cheongsam with silver embroidery, the long silver scarf that went with her favourite blouse and sheer black stockings? Not to mention the matching red Yves St Laurent bra and panties. Talk about ‘Dress for Success—in the Sack!’

  She’d even popped into a salon near the office for a lunchtime trim after discovering the unsettling similarity between her hairstyle and one of the ‘Haircuts That Make You Look Fat!’ photo-featured in the latest issue of a rival magazine.

  All that afternoon, while struggling with an article on ‘Celebrity Foreplay!’—one of Liz’s headline ideas that she had to massage into an actual story—Nicola ran in her head the filmclip of their approaching rendezvous. Johnny would try to kiss her on the lips. She’d turn her cheek to him. His look of disappointment would be searing. Feeling sorry for him, she’d be sweet, but he’d take advantage of this and, the second they pulled their stools up to a table, he’d slip a foot up the inside of her leg. Although she’d pull her feet out of reach, he’d forge on, sliding a hand up her thigh. She’d sigh, reach down and put it on the table. Incorrigible, he’d wait until her hand came to rest by her cup and he’d cover it with his own.

  ‘You just don’t get it, do you?’ she’d say. Leaving the gifts neatly stacked on the table, she’d walk out with dignity, shaking her head and paying for her own drink as she left.

  Then, as in the most dreadful sort of tearjerker, he’d run out after her. She’d melt into his arms and allow him—just one kiss! It would last for some time before she finally, decisively, broke free and strode up the street, thus removing him from her life like Bad Cholesterol.

  The bar where he’d suggested they meet was one of the trendier places in the Toaster. She’d never been there before. She was awestruck by its mysterious, submarine lighting and chic interior. It was like having cocktails on a coral reef. It wouldn’t have surprised her to see an octopus or stingray perched on the next stool sipping a Midori cocktail. Fox never suggested going to places like this.

  Johnny was occupying one of the high bar tables when she arrived. He stood up to greet her. She pointedly aimed her cheek at his lips. When he simply bussed her lightly and stepped back to hold out her stool, she felt let down, as though she’d packed her bag for a trip to Paris and stepped off the plane in Perth.

  She ordered a chablis and he asked for a gin and tonic. ‘So, Nicola,’ he began, folding his hands under his chin, ‘tell me all about yourself. I want to know everything.’

  This wasn’t in the script. ‘Oh, there’s not much to tell, really,’ she demurred.

  ‘Oh, I bet there is.’ Johnny’s eyes performed the little trick known in romance fiction as ‘twinkling’.

  Nicola found herself describing how she grew up in a small town out west, how she’d studied accountancy in Bathurst and come to work at the magazine. He seemed most amused when she confided how she’d got her current job. He prompted her with the occasional question, his hands thoughtfully stroking his glass as she spoke. Nicola tried not to stare at those hands. They were manicured and smooth with long, artistic fingers. He wore his stylish, expensive suit as though he were born in it. She thought of Fox’s broad hands and spatula-like fingertips, and how he looked in his own best suit, handsome but stiff and slightly pained-looking, as though he couldn’t wait till he could shuck it off and get back into a pair of jeans.

  For some reason, though she knew she ought to, Nicola failed to mention how she met Fox. In fact, she neglected to mention their relationship at all, and Johnny didn’t ask.

  Johnny still hadn’t made his move, though his eyes never left her face and she felt as though it was the skin of her neck and not his glass that he was fondling with those fine hands. She willed the hands in her direction, and silently commanded his thighs to press against hers—if only so that she could pull away from them. Her own hands lolled invitingly on the table, her crossed ankles inched forward until they were centimetres from his own. She gave Johnny looks so steamy they could have frothed every cappuccino in every cafe for blocks around—this at least was what Damien Mann thought behind his aviator sunnies as he observed the pair from his table in the corner.

  Johnny seemed oblivious to all the subtle signals she was sending. Nicola wondered if she’d completely misread him. Yet there was the evidence of all those gifts he’d sent, now piled up in a shopping bag by her feet. Or maybe, she reflected with horror, he simply did not find her attractive in the flesh. Perhaps he’d forgotten what she looked like. Lip used the photo of a generic thirty-something model, glamorous yet wise in a vacant sort of way, over the column. Suddenly self-conscious of her thighs (‘Thighs of Despair!’) and tummy (‘Shock Photos—Real Women’s Stomachs!’), Nicola flinched. She thought of how Fox had always generously claimed he loved her body just as it was. Fox. What was she doing here with this man, anyway? She felt confused, desperate. Sweat trickled between her breasts. Worrying about perspiration stains—silk was awkward like that—she pinched the fabric of the Chinese-style frock and pulled it away from herself.

  Johnny leaned back in his chair, as discreetly cheerful as a trapdoor spider gazing up at the finger of a small child. ‘What d’you say, Nicola? Would you like to come back with me to my place?’

  ‘Yes,’ Nicola breathed. She felt ridiculously, indefensibly, undeniably grateful.

  When Johnny led her inside his elegant warehouse conversion in Surry Hills, Nicola had to clamp her jaw tight to keep her teeth from chattering, though it was not much cooler there than in the bar.

  Johnny, she realised, looking around her, was a class act. He worked in a respectable and lucrative profession, he frequented the trendiest bars and his style was evident in both his dress and his environs. His split-level flat was airy and light, thanks to a wall of glass bricks. The decor was minimal, yet comfortable, the curvaceous lines and vibrant colours of the designer sofas and tables contrasting with the stark, metallic finishes of the benches and stairwell, with its striking banister of twisted cable. ‘Men You’d Like to Be with—and the Places You’d Like to Be with Them in!’

  ‘I’m in love with Fox,’ she blurted.

  ‘That’s nice,’ Johnny replied. ‘He’s a lucky man.’ His expression gave nothing away. ‘Can I offer you a martini?’

  She nodded. ‘I promised myself’—Nicola swallowed—‘I promised myself when I got together with him that I wouldn’t, you know, make love, to anyone else so long as we were together.’

  ‘How sweet.’ He mixed two martinis in a retro cocktail shaker.

  They clinked glasses.

  There was something else Nicola felt compelled to get out of the way. ‘Johnny,’ she demanded. ‘Be straight with me. What’s going on between you and Liz?’

  ‘Liz?’ He scratched his head.

  ‘My editor. Don’t pretend you don’t know who I’m talking about.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘Aren’t you seeing her?’

  ‘Is that what she told you?’ Johnny frowned.

  Nicola was taken aback. ‘Well,’ she conceded, ‘not in so many words.’

  ‘Poor thing.’ He shook his head. ‘You know, I don’t want you to say anything to her about this.’

  Nicola
nodded uncertainly.

  ‘I’m serious. I think she’s delusional.’

  Nicola wanted to protest, but she believed him. She suddenly felt very sorry for Liz. At least that was one less person she was betraying. Betraying? What was she thinking! She wasn’t betraying anyone. She was just going to finish her drink, return the gifts and leave.

  ‘Be sexy! But be sensible!’

  Johnny put on a CD. Slinky ribbons of jazz floated into the room. Nicola felt the pulse of the double bass all the way down to her knickers. She looked at Johnny over the rim of her cocktail glass and fingered the side-buttoning frogs on her frock. He smiled his crooked smile.

  ‘Nice dress,’ he said. ‘It would be even nicer around your ankles.’

  Nicola’s cheeks flushed the colour of her frock. ‘I don’t think…’

  ‘But, my dear, you do. I can see it in your eyes.’

  Nicola’s mouth opened. No sound came out. She felt like every note of the double bass was being plucked on a tightly stretched sinew deep inside herself.

  And Johnny still hadn’t made a move. He watched her coolly, sipping at his martini.

  Nicola couldn’t bear the suspense another moment. She put her drink down on the coffee table, threw herself at him and clamped her lips onto his.

  She didn’t anticipate Johnny’s reaction. He extricated himself from her grasp, gripped her shoulders, and held her at arm’s length. ‘Whoa, whoa, my pretty little filly.’

  Nicola stared at him, humiliation written all over her features. Johnny grinned, a gleam of triumph in his eyes. He folded his arms across his chest.

  ‘Now,’ he said, after a long pause, holding out a hand to her, ‘shall we proceed?’

  Nicola’s heart beat fast. She understood then that Johnny made the rules. It was strangely exciting. Besides, in relinquishing control, she felt that in some small way it absolved her of responsibility for her actions.

  At the top of the steps was a small hallway. At one end was a bedroom with an ensuite. At the other was a locked door. When Nicola started towards the bedroom, he pulled her back. ‘I have someplace far more exciting to show you,’ he said, reaching up over the doorframe, plucking a key from its hiding place and opening the door.