by Ann Jacobs
“I don’t know,” Casey murmured.
“Then don’t do it. McDermott’s probably too buttoned-down to appreciate one anyhow. Besides, he’s already seen you. He’d notice if you suddenly got yourself tattooed or pierced.”
Casey smiled. “I always wanted to pierce my belly button.”
“Do that later. When you’ve got some private time to heal.”
Lisa fingered the gold ring in her navel through the thin silk of her robe. “I got this done when I swore off sex for Lent, my senior year in high school. It took almost that much time for the pain to go away. To tell the truth, the thing doesn’t do much except give some guys a visual turn-on.”
Okay. She wasn’t getting a tattoo and she wasn’t getting pierced. Casey still had a way to go in the next two days. The other preparations Lisa had mentioned sounded more pleasurable than the prospect of having needles poked in and through her.
“Will you go with me?” she asked.
“Sure. I’ll call Tony’s and set up the appointments. We’ll take off from work and do it tomorrow afternoon.”
* * * * *
The next afternoon Craig sandwiched a workout in between the end of the domestic violence trial and some night court arraignments that Wells had tossed his way.
Casey wasn’t at the gym, and that disappointed him. The woman was getting under his skin. In more ways than one. He understood missing the hot surge of lust that hit him every time he looked her way. That, he’d take care of this weekend. He wasn’t so certain he’d ever get his fill of her bright smile or the flirty way she looked at him. How the hell could he make love with her and not complicate things?
Damn it, he’d die if anyone found out he’d never… He was ready for firsthand sex education but not for a life partner. He liked Casey too much. Obviously, if she’d taken the afternoon off to get ready for a big date as Russ had told him when he asked, she must like him, too.
He couldn’t think about that now. He had things he needed to do. And he didn’t have a lot of time.
The bright red condom machine caught his eye. It still said “Sold Out.” He’d have to stop by a store and buy one. Make that several. Fresh ones. He chuckled, recalling one author’s comment that like milk cartons at the neighborhood convenience store, condoms had expiration dates. The warning that as birth control they were ninety percent effective at best wasn’t quite so funny.
Oh well, Casey was probably on the Pill.
Recalling an interesting chapter in one of his books, he decided he should take along some toys. Toys that were a far cry from beach balls and surfboards.
Craig shook the water out of his hair, then toweled it dry. If he hurried, he’d have time before he had to be in night court to check out that new triple-x rated store across the street from the gym.
Moments later he hesitated outside the shop called Erotic Invitation, staring at the well-endowed mannequins in the window. Then he fought off a wave of embarrassment and stepped inside.
No way was he going to let Casey know he was a novice.
* * * * *
Tony’s House of Passion should have been called Tony’s House of Torture.
Casey squelched a squeal and gritted her teeth.
She could hardly believe this sadist named Luisa was humming.
Humming, mind you. Humming some sweet old-fashioned lullaby that Casey remembered from her childhood. The woman was obviously enjoying the pain she was inflicting on Casey’s tender flesh.
For the past four hours Casey had been kneaded and pummeled, steamed and iced down, plucked and scissored and body-wrapped, all for the sole purpose of beautifying herself for Craig.
Obviously Tony’s knew their business, because they’d saved the worst for last.
Having to get naked and spread her legs for this sadistic Brazilian Amazon should have served as warning of what was coming. But it hadn’t. The pubic trim had only hurt her pride. And the warm wax actually felt soothing going on.
She hadn’t been prepared for the agony that followed when Luisa started slapping pieces of cloth onto Casey’s mons and labia and ripping the wax away.
“Just a few more pulls, senhorita. Then I use the tweezers.” Louise snatched another strip away.
“Please hurry. Ohhh.” It felt as to Casey if Luisa had torn her skin right off. If she lived through all this, having sex with Craig had better blow her mind.
“Want some more champagne?” Lisa asked.
Casey held out her glass, then gulped the tingly liquid. Maybe if she drank enough, it wouldn’t hurt so much.
That was wishful thinking. The champagne didn’t help. Tony’s probably didn’t have enough of it around to dull this kind of pain.
Luisa snatched off another strip of hardened wax from between her legs.
Casey howled again.
Some sex goddess she was. She sounded like one of her daddy’s calves that had gotten caught up in a barbed wire fence.
It didn’t help when Lisa laughed.
“How can you be finished already?” Casey asked when she caught her breath.
“Waxing takes longer the first time. I just needed a touch-up.”
Casey took heart at the hint that this process apparently got easier with repetition. Lisa didn’t seem to mind the monthly visits she made here.
“It hurts like hell,” she said after Luisa had yanked away another of the strips.
Not to mention that her legs were aching from being spread apart and manipulated into positions that would do a contortionist proud.
“Trust me. Craig will like the results. So will you. Your pussy’ll feel smooth as a baby’s.”
Casey hoped so. She didn’t imagine that getting tattooed could hurt any more than having most of her body hair ripped out by the roots.
Luisa tapped Casey on the hipbone. “The worst is done. You relax. I trim you nice little heart.”
A few minutes later Casey checked out Luisa’s handiwork in a three-way mirror in Tony’s dressing rooms.
Except for a very tiny patch of short curls shaped like a heart and centered on her pubic mound, she was indeed as smooth as a baby.
She shook her head. “Well, I can definitely wear my new thong bikini now. No wonder it hurt!”
Luisa dusted her hands off on her white lab coat. “Your man, he will love it,” she gushed. “So soft. So smooth. So sexy.”
Casey wasn’t sure she liked the bare-ass look, but she was afraid to hurt her torturer’s feelings. If she did, the woman might take another look and find a hair or two that she’d missed.
“Look, now you can wear this.” Lisa held up a black lace G-string, then dropped it into Casey’s hand.
Casey slipped it on. The scrap of lace covered up her heart-shaped patch of hair but not a whole lot more.
She reminded herself of one of the strippers she’d seen in X-rated movies on late-night cable TV. Only the garter belt and fancy stockings were missing.
“I couldn’t—”
“Sure you could. Try this, too.”
Suddenly a see-through black garter belt hung from Casey’s boneless fingers. “You’re sure?”
“Mike loves mine.”
“What about stockings?”
Lisa handed over a package of off-black thigh-highs with seams up the back. “I’ve got fishnets, but I think these will be better for you. They go with this.”
Casey gasped when her roommate held up a scoop-necked black minidress that looked as if it might fit a four-year-old.
“I’d never squeeze into that.”
“Yes you will. It stretches.” Lisa demonstrated.
It stretched all right. It also sprung back with a vengeance as soon as Lisa let it go.
The dress just might cover the bare essentials. But Casey doubted it.
“Maybe I ought to concentrate on stuff to wear in the bedroom. I don’t think I could go out in public in that.”
“The purpose of this is to lure him into the bedroom, girlfriend. Wear it in the car o
n the way to Sanibel if you want to get him really, really hot.” Lisa laughed again, as though she thought Casey’s reticence was downright funny.
“Craig will think I’m a hooker.”
“No he won’t. Role-playing’s fun. Pretend you’re a stripper. Strip for him when you get to your room, and then make him strip for you. I think I’ll get Mike that hot cop outfit we saw in the other room.”
A few minutes later, Casey left Tony’s House of Passion with her new Brazilian bikini wax, a barely-there thong bikini, a fistful of see-through barely-there undies, and one black spandex washcloth masquerading as a dress.
Not to mention the matching short black satin robes she’d picked up for herself and Craig.
After all, they’d have to take a break from sex every now and then.
Wouldn’t they?
She’d resisted Lisa’s suggestion that she take along a black leather riding crop they’d looked at.
Come to think of it, though, the idea of bending over while Craig used the crop on her bare backside had her wet and twitching between her legs. Maybe she should have bought it.
After all, she was determined to become a bad, bad girl.
Maybe later…
Chapter Six
Erotic Invitation lived up to its name, and more. Craig gave a cursory look at the other customers in the sex toy store. Good. Nobody he knew was here.
He gave the men’s sexual aids a cursory glance but saw no need for the tubes and vacuum devices that promised erections to any guy who hadn’t been declared dead. He had the opposite kind of problem and a definitive plan for solving it, for which he was grateful. Those things looked like medieval torture devices.
So did the cock rings—but he recalled that one of his books had mentioned they came in handy to prevent coming too soon. Craig took another surreptitious look around before stepping up to the display, again finding no one he recognized. Quickly he dropped the least wicked looking of the rings—one that resembled an overly thick, rounded rubber band—into a shopping basket the clerk had handed him when he came through the door.
That handled, he moved on. The quantity of choices rivaled that at Toys ‘R’ Us, though no kid should lay eyes on the toys in here.
There were strap-on cocks. Vibrators. Dildos. Anal stimulators and oversize make-believe tongues that wiggled when you turned them on. Some looked disturbingly real, like parts neatly dismembered from their owners’ bodies. Suddenly Craig felt compelled to protect his own gonads.
The dildos came in all colors, shapes, and sizes. There were even double ones, one of which was nearly three feet long. Some boasted add-ons he couldn’t imagine a reasonable purpose for, but he figured Casey might like a vibrator. The guy who wrote one of his books had mentioned that lots of women did. He’d enjoy watching what it did to her rosy, sensitive nipples to be stimulated that way.
After checking out the inventory, he settled on a flesh-colored plastic vibrator with a generic shape. It reminded him of a slender flashlight. He took another furtive look around and found the coast still was clear, so he grabbed the vibrator and dropped it into his basket.
He looked for condoms next. Erotic Invitation had a wide selection of them. The choices boggled his mind. French ticklers. Banana bangers. Multicolored and tiger-striped rubbers in small, medium, large, and colossal sizes. Ones with ribs and bumps and all sorts of painful looking protrusions.
What the store’s buyer apparently had forgotten to order were plain garden variety safe-for-sex rubbers like the one his encyclopedia of sex recommended. He doubted any of these condoms had been designed with safe sex being the primary goal, so he made a mental note to stop by the all-night pharmacy near his apartment on his way home and buy a box of the plain vanilla kind.
Vanilla?
A display on the end-cap drew Craig’s attention. It advertised vanilla condoms, along with a selection of other flavors. According to the hype, the things were edible. Maybe he’d buy some just for fun.
Casey might like the taste of them. She certainly had seemed to enjoy tasting him. His cock twitched, as if it wanted him to know it liked her intimate attention.
Chuckling at the irony of it, he picked up a pack of cherry-flavored ones. Hopefully she wouldn’t get the significance.
Beyond the condom aisle, a display of edible oils caught his eye. He figured since he was a sucker for chocolate, he’d like licking it off her nipples—and her pussy, too. Wincing at the price, he picked up a small bottle. There must have been some good reason for the stuff to cost ten times as much as chocolate syrup from the grocery store, although he couldn’t figure out why by reading the ingredients listed on the label.
Oh, well. It wasn’t as if he was going to make chocolate milk. He dumped the bottle into the basket.
Maybe he’d get a video. The store had thousands of tapes and DVDs. Labels on end caps proclaimed one row straight sex, the next gay and lesbian.
Another row promised films of threesomes and orgies, but since he recalled a comment in one of his books that most women didn’t get turned on by porn flicks, he decided to pass on getting one. He did, however, stop to check out the books and magazines, and picked up one of the tamer ones that advertised an article about phone sex on its cover.
The imaginatively displayed leather and chains against the back wall didn’t turn him on. And the selection of torture devices next to them actually made him cringe. Using any of the things on display could get the user sent up for ten to twenty if his or her partner complained.
“You into S&M?”
“No.” Craig swung around toward the sound of a gravelly voice.
The man was wearing more chains than the store had hanging on the wall, and he had more scars on his face than Al Capone.
Craig had seen him before—at the courthouse being arraigned, he thought.
What had the charge been?
Drugs? Assault?
He didn’t recall, but from the way the guy was ogling him like a starving dog eyeing a tasty treat, he guessed the crime might have had something to do with sex. Gay sex involving some of the wicked looking devices that gave him chills just looking at them.
Craig had a sudden urge to run. He was used to dealing with weirdos in court, where there were always plenty of cops to keep things under control. Unfortunately he didn’t see any cops in Erotic Invitation. He imagined the store owner liked it that way.
Craig’s would-be dungeon master reached out a black-gloved hand and patted him on the butt. “Don’t get pissed, honey. I just asked.”
Panic set in, fast. “I’ve got to go.”
Craig grabbed a small leather whip from the display as he strode away. Not that the puny thing would do much to beat off the S&M freak.
Fortunately the clerk was speedy. And Craig’s wannabe S&M partner didn’t follow him to night court.
Afterward at the pharmacy near his apartment, Craig bought several boxes of condoms.
* * * * *
Practice makes perfect.
Anyhow, that’s what Craig’s mom used to say when she tried to get him to do his homework.
He stripped, laid some condoms on his kitchen table, and sat down to work up a hard-on and try them on for size. The thought of guys unzipping their pants and trying them on in the store, the way people tried on shoes, made Craig laugh. If he stayed with the DA’s office long enough, he’d most likely prosecute some pervert for doing just that.
With any kind of luck, ogling the illustrations in the magazine he’d bought would get him in the mood. God knew he didn’t need much help. Thinking about tomorrow night with Casey had his cock hard and aching before he even found the centerfold.
He unwrapped the condom he’d bought in the machine—and watched it split when he tried to roll it on. Good thing Russ had interrupted them the other night. Otherwise he could have gone from virginity to expectant fatherhood in a matter of a few seconds.
That possibility didn’t horrify Craig as much as he’d imagined it would.
Still, he figured he’d better check out some of the supposedly foolproof rubbers he’d just bought. The things really did come in different sizes. It took him three tries to find ones that fit.
Okay. Maybe he’d call Casey and experiment with phone sex. God knew he was primed to come. No surprise to that. His cock had been more or less hard for the better part of three days and nights.
The condom got tighter as he got harder, so he took it off. Then he turned on the speaker phone and dialed Casey’s number.
“Hello.”
His balls tightened at the honeyed sound of her voice. “Hello yourself.”
“I thought you said you’d be curled up with some dry old law book tonight after you got out of court.”
“I was reading, but I couldn’t get you off my mind.”
“I’ve been thinking about you, too. Where are you?” she asked.
“Sitting at the table, looking at a book.” She didn’t need to know the book was a porn magazine, or that it was opened to a page with pictures of a naked woman with big boobs, sucking some guy’s cock while he ate her pussy.
She also didn’t need to know the woman reminded him a lot of her.
“I’m in bed,” she told him.
He wished to hell he were right there with her. “Want me to come join you?”
“If you do, I’ll make you come,” she said, and he could almost see her sexy smile.
“I’m counting on it. This time tomorrow. Why don’t you make yourself come for me now?”
“On the phone? That wouldn’t be any fun.”
He lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “I bet we could make it fun.”
“I’m not sure I know what to do.”
Her nervous laugh made him wonder again if he’d pegged her wrong. She sounded breathless. Almost virginal. But turned on. Definitely turned on.
Craig had to quit attributing his own insecurities to Casey. “Let’s improvise,” he told her, certain she wouldn’t appreciate the dialogue the porn stars had spouted to each other in the little phone scene he’d just read. It hadn’t done a lot for him, to tell the truth.
Sliding the magazine aside, he opened one of his books and started flipping pages.
