by Alexa Day
But that time he hadn’t gotten to say goodbye.
Chapter Three
Seated behind the mountainous reception desk, John suppressed the urge to stand and pace. Instead he settled for checking his watch against the time displayed on the phone in front of him. In the last half hour, as the parking lot outside lay empty and dark, he had checked the time four or five times.
He went over his preparations for Grace, making sure no one else would see her, making sure he had covered his tracks. If anyone found out he had slipped a friend some of the pills for any reason, he’d be looking for another job. If anyone found out he’d done it to help reinforce the existing test data, he’d have trouble finding another job.
He’d left nothing to chance. He’d given Grace all the appropriate instructions. He’d scheduled their meeting well after business hours on Friday night, when the main building would be deserted, except for the cleaning crews and a handful of people burning the midnight oil. He’d substituted Grace for Subject 3258, who had quit just last week. To the rest of the world, it would look like Subject 3258 was still participating in the testing. If he’d done his homework, only he and Grace would know differently.
He checked the clock again. Time seemed to be congealing around him. If only he’d brought something with him to keep his hands busy.
Nerves. Part of it was his typical seventh-grade-science-geek response to Grace, and to be fair, part was because he was putting his career on the line. But the real problem was that he didn’t have nearly enough answers for the open questions that filled his imagination in ways that had little to do with the laboratory.
What would she tell him?
Would she have lots of stories for him?
Was he ready for that?
The buzzer made him jump. John pressed the button next to the speaker and heard Grace’s voice over the crackling intercom.
“Hey, you didn’t give me a code word,” she said.
“I knew I forgot something.” He thumbed a switch to raise the gate, admitting her to the parking lot, and waited for her headlights to sweep across the darkened windows of the building. When he saw her approaching the big glass doors, nervous energy propelled him toward her.
You’re just excited because you’re finally going to get some real data. Take it easy.
Grace slipped past him, her petite frame almost brushing against him, and took off her coat. Her black turtleneck and jeans showed off a figure that was all woman, curvy and lean. She pushed chin-length hair behind one ear and revealed a smile like a cat’s after a three-course canary dinner. For a moment he forgot all the risks that went with their illicit mission.
“Big smile,” he said, making sure that the main door’s security lock clicked shut behind them. “Does that mean you’re a satisfied customer?”
Grace folded her coat over one arm. “More than satisfied.”
“Is that so?” John asked.
She nodded, still grinning. “Want to hear all the juicy details?”
Of course he did—until she asked. Now, as the end of the question hung in the air, he wasn’t so sure he still wanted exactly what he had asked her for. And the smug look on her face said she knew it.
“Come on,” she said, patting his shoulder. “I’ll go easy on you at first.”
John led Grace through a warren of corridors into the unadorned room where he interviewed his subjects. The white cinderblock walls reflected the fluorescent lights with almost painful intensity. A sturdy wooden table crowded most of the tight space, and John’s coat and briefcase already waited on the far side, where he’d arranged his notes, his microcassette recorder and an overabundance of pencils and pens.
Grace draped her coat over the empty chair on her side of the table before sitting. John shut the door behind her and then took his place across from her, just as he had with dozens of other people, close enough to observe their physiological responses and distant enough that they couldn’t see his notes. He tried without success to make himself comfortable in a metal chair that looked as if it had been stolen from a 1960s’ prison movie.
“Do you mind if I tape you?” he asked. “I want to make sure I get everything. I tell everybody that nobody else will hear it, but that’s doubly true in your case.”
Grace picked up the recorder. “You still use actual tape?” she asked.
“Instead of digital?” He nodded. “But just for you.”
She returned the recorder to its place on the table. “Why?”
“Three reasons. Nothing is ever left on the recorder—once I take out the tape, the recorder’s empty. The tape is easy to keep private—if it’s with me, no one else can get to it.” He looked up at her and smiled. “And if anything goes wrong, the tape will be easier to eat.”
Grace laughed and leaned back in her chair. “Can’t argue with that. Tape away.”
He engaged the recorder with a click and slid it into the center of the table. Then he sat back with one of the notepads, which he tapped with one of the over-sharpened pencils. “Okay. Let’s hear it.”
John turned his attention to the blank page, writing the date and time in the upper right corner and waiting for Grace to begin. Often he’d found that his subjects would communicate more if he wasn’t looking at them. In this case, he worried that he wouldn’t be able to concentrate.
“You know I went to see Tal right after I saw you on Monday,” Grace said. “He thinks this is a great idea, by the way. He wants to be first on the list when you come up with one of these pills for men.”
Still holding the pencil, John rotated his hand, listening to the tendons pop. Tal is helping you, he reminded himself.
That’s right. Good ol’ enthusiastic Tal is helping you.
“I know this is a secret,” Grace said, “but I didn’t think it was fair to ask him to do all this without knowing.”
“No problem.” John popped his wrist one last time and glanced up at Grace. “As long as he doesn’t say anything.”
“His lips are sealed. So what do you need to know?”
“Let’s start at the beginning. Right after you took it, did you… feel anything?”
“Anything…like what?” she asked playfully.
“The little chill we discussed.”
“I did feel that. Really cold, but just for a few minutes, until I got to Tal’s.”
The sound of his pencil seemed very loud between them as he took note of the chill. “And then what?”
“As soon as he opened the door I felt really…agitated.”
“Nervous?” he asked. “Jittery?”
“Horny.”
John looked up from his hastily scribbled notes. Almost everyone had reported fidgeting, pacing or generally feeling antsy. No one had mentioned this before. Not to him, anyway.
“You look surprised,” she said. Her self-assured smile was back in place.
“Me? No, no, no. Not surprised.” And he wasn’t, really. It was just that she was so matter-of-fact about it.
“You’re sure?” she asked.
“I’m sure. Keep going.”
“Okay.” Grace stretched her legs out in front of her, gazing at the ceiling. “So as soon as I saw Tal, I felt this rush. I just had to have him.”
John watched her take a long breath before she moistened the center of her upper lip with the tip of her tongue. She was reliving it now, whatever she had done that night. He wrote down the counter number from the cassette recorder.
“Any chance this was just your normal anticipation? For your friend, I mean.”
“No.” She took a deep breath and slid her palms down her thighs. “Usually we’ll talk a little or have a beer first. That night I was just all over him. I couldn’t get to him fast enough.” She glanced over at John. “It was a little scary, to be honest.”
“Increased urgency.”
“Yeah, definitely.”
He took note of her symptoms and of her movements now as he looked on. “Okay. Then what?”
/> Grace turned back to the ceiling. “Everything was more intense. When he put his hands or his mouth on me, it made me so…so wet. Everything he did made me want more.”
Had she lowered her voice for his benefit? The color that had begun to bloom on her face told a different story. She wasn’t spinning a yarn for his entertainment. The recollection was turning her on.
More. He could practically hear her saying it. More. Please. More.
“And then?” He tried to maintain a neutral tone of voice.
She bit her lip. “I don’t know. It’s hard to describe. I was ready to come as soon as he touched me. It was like being a teenager again.”
“Out of control?”
Her eyes met his. “Yeah! Mmm. Out of control.” Her voice lowered again, as if she were sharing a secret with him. “Like being in heat. That have-to-have-it feeling, you know?”
Increased arousal. He watched the words forming on the notepad in front of him. How long had it been since he’d felt out of control? How long since pure animal hunger threatened to take over—and he had done nothing to stop it?
“John?”
He looked up at her, praying she couldn’t see the truth of his attraction on his face.
“Do you all have a name for this stuff yet?”
He rubbed the smooth surface of the pencil’s eraser with his thumb. “I think they’re still haggling over the one they’ll take to market. Last I heard, they were calling it Impulse.”
“Impulse.” She pressed those full lips together. “I like it. Impulse.”
“Think that’ll work?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. There is something…liberating about losing control. Giving in to biology.” She smiled. “But then I don’t mind having the extra scoop of ice cream either.”
He chuckled. “So you’re aroused.”
She blinked and he savored that moment, enjoying the rare sight of Grace in shock before he pointed at his notes with the pencil.
“Oh!” she said. “With Tal. Yes.”
“Everything he does makes it worse.”
Slowly she shook her head. “Oh, no. Better.”
“Stronger.”
He watched her consider the choice of words. “Stronger,” she agreed.
He took note of her increased sensitivity, careful to use the word they’d chosen together. “And then?”
“He made me come—right there. We hadn’t even gotten undressed. We were just inside the door.”
John stared hard at his handwriting. “Did he penetrate you?”
Silence stretched out after his question until he looked up to find her grinning at him. “Oh my God,” she said, amusement in her voice. “You’re blushing.”
“I am not.” Blushing. He snorted. He did this every day. He’d heard far worse than this. Hadn’t he?
“You know,” she said, “it’s going to get pretty graphic before I’m finished.”
“Well, that’s why we’re here.” He turned back to his notes and pushed his glasses up on his nose. “So get graphic.”
The metal chair creaked softly and he glanced up to find Grace sliding toward the edge of her seat. She rested her elbows on the table. Her fragrance enticed him—warm, inviting, like one of those sinful desserts she never refused. He looked into the liquid heat of her dark eyes and when she spoke again, the sultry tone of her voice was unmistakable.
“He pulled me closer,” she said, “so I was pressed to his body. Tal’s built like a football player, all muscle and heat. He put his hand between my legs. I was so wet, I almost came the second he touched me. And then he put his fingers inside me—three of them, in and out, in and out—and I wanted more, I needed more, and then I came. I came very hard.”
“Very hard?” He could feel the rise of heat in his face now, the blush he had just denied, but he didn’t care. Nothing mattered more than what she was telling him.
Nothing but his own growing desire for her.
“Mm-hmm,” she said. “Very hard.”
“On a scale of one to ten, ten being—”
“The kind of thing people write songs about? Hmm. Six.” She leaned back, pulling that warm, sensual scent with her. “Tal is usually good for a five through an eight. But I don’t usually come like that for a hand job, standing up.”
Her somewhat clinical assessment of Tal as she moved away made it easier for John to regain a shade of his composure. “Okay. And then what?”
“He took me upstairs. We made it as far as the bed for the next one. He took off my panties and went down on me.”
Well, what a perfect, unselfish little son of a bitch.
“Listening to him eating me made me even hotter. I was so wet I could hear him working me over, and just when I thought I was coming, whenever I was close, he would come up for air or say something to get me going.”
John considered asking what sort of thing Tal would say, but then he thought better of it. He didn’t need to know that. He wasn’t even sure he really wanted to know. As it was, he’d have to listen to this section of the tape again so he could write down the appropriate details from the first orgasm.
“And you came again?” he asked. He knew he shouldn’t prompt her this way, but the tension was unbearable.
Grace nodded.
“Harder than last time?”
“A little harder. Let’s call it a seven.”
“Seven.” Trying not to look at her, trying to keep it professional, he asked, “Just so I know, how many climaxes are we talking about?”
“That night? Four.”
Four was two or three more than he was accustomed to hearing about. Certainly well within the realm of normal experience, but more than he had prepared himself for, even under the most optimistic of circumstances.
Grace broke the brief silence. “What’s wrong? TMI?”
“No, this is exactly what I wanted.”
“You sure? I can scale it back if you want.”
She tipped her head to one side and grinned at him, as if she were issuing a challenge.
“Oh no, don’t do that,” he said. “This is perfect.”
“Good.” Grace laced her fingers together and rested her hands on her lap. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. You’ll let me know if I’m boring you, I hope.”
“I don’t think there’s any chance of that.”
No, he wasn’t bored. Not by a long shot. Listening to her recreate her night with that buddy of hers—and this one night promised to provide him with more detail than the other subjects had come up with in weeks—was anything but boring. Grace was a fountain of information. He could hardly keep up with her. He hoped she’d never stop.
But listening to her was torture.
How long could he keep from visualizing her in bed with this guy? Worse, how long could he keep from thinking about taking Tal’s place?
And now the knowledge of what pleased her would invade his thoughts, adding depth and detail to already potent distractions. He could see her in his bed, her head thrown back in ecstasy, her black hair shimmering in the faint light. The thought of her voice, husky with desire, had disrupted his concentration all day. Playing with fire. The flames drew him like a moth and he was starting not to care so much about being burned.
When she had finally come to the end of her narrative, telling of those last two orgasms, which she rated a seven and an eight, John shifted in place and asked her the most important of his questions.
“Was anything else different? Did you notice any other changes?”
Her teasing smile slowly faded from her face and as he watched, her mouth set itself in a thoughtful frown. He silently counted five full seconds before she answered him.
“Just one thing. I didn’t stay. I left and went home.”
“You don’t usually do that?”
She shook her head. “No, I usually sleep over. Tal’s okay with it and he’s good for a morning quickie. Plus I’m sleepy afterward. Ready to bed down.”
Next to the
notation, Subject does not sleep over, John penciled in a star.
“So what happened this time? Why’d you go home?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t sleepy at all, which is kind of weird.” She sighed. “I guess I just got tired of the Walk of Shame.”
John bit the inside of his lip. He needed to do something. To hold her hand. To comfort her. But even if he knew what to say to her, he couldn’t do it now, not when she was reporting back to him.
He wrote, not sleepy at all and tired of the Walk of Shame, and then he gave her the only solace he could. “Tal never stays with you?”
“Nobody ever goes home with me.” Her expression brightened again, mischief in her smile. “That’s a rule. After all, I can’t sneak out of my own place, can I?”
John turned back to his notepad, now dark with his handwriting. “No, I guess you can’t, can you?” He let the tip of his pencil hover over the page, not sure of how or whether he should record her observation. Finally he straightened in his chair and put the pad back on the table. “Okay, that’s everything, unless you have anything else to add.”
“Nope. That was pretty painless.”
He smiled. It probably had been painless for her. He was the one who’d be up late haunted by thoughts of her in and out of Tal’s bed.
“Painless is what we’re going for,” he said and stopped the recorder with a snap.
They walked out into the parking lot together, quiet now after their conversation. Her car was next to his, beneath one of the street lamps, and he followed her over to her door. Grace took her keys out of her pocket and unlocked the car before leaning against its flank. The parking lot was empty but for the buzz of the streetlight and the rustle of the breeze against the dry husks of leaves.
Grace tugged her coat around herself and looked up at him, and for a minute, he felt as if he were on a date with her, entering that awkward pause when she would tell him she had a good time and he would decide whether she would resist his kiss or receive it.
Or return it. Oh yes.
“Hey, before I forget,” she said, “Tal had one more question.”
