She knows me that well and doesn’t even wait for me to respond. Plopping down in the modest—okay, cheap—guest chair on the other side of my desk, she leans forward expectantly.
“What?” I ask with raised eyebrows.
“Don’t you play stupid with me,” she says, pointing her finger at me. “I’ve been dying to hear how last night went.”
“Oh, that,” I say casually, knowing it will irritate her. I’ve actually been waiting for her to wander over so I could tell her all about last night. She was the one I’d called from the restaurant, asking if she’d go let my dogs out and feed them. I was currently a proud mom of another rescued golden retriever—from the pound, not from a man beating the poor thing—and a tiny Pomeranian, also rescued from the pound.
Settling into my chair, I kick my feet up on my desk. I dressed casually today because I don’t have court, depositions, or clients. Casual means jeans, a frilly blouse for a hint of femininity, and a pair of strappy sandals with a low heel.
Placing my hands over my stomach and lacing my fingers, I try to keep my expression serious. Frannie is about ready to fall out of her chair as she leans forward, waiting for my story.
Finally, I break the silence and grin. “I had three orgasms last night.”
Her eyes go round, and her mouth drops open. “Three? You had sex three times with the man?”
I shake my head, my grin getting bigger. “Only once. Well, only once with penis in vagina. He gave me two orgasms, and then after… well, just with his hand.”
“After?” She gasps.
I nod exuberantly. “He was amazing. I mean… Frannie, I’ve never experienced anything like it.”
“Did he have you barking at the moon?” she asks sagely.
I giggle, having no clue what that even means. “Let’s just say he had me making all kinds of sounds I didn’t even realize were possible. No way could I try to replicate them right now.”
She wiggles her butt, moving it to the edge of her seat. Her voice lowers. “And when are you going to see him again?”
“In court on Tuesday,” I tell her, my smile slipping a bit.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” she says, dramatically holding both hands up, palms toward me. “You do not have sex with a man you just met, let him wring three orgasms out of you, and not have plans to hook up again.”
“Well, we didn’t make plans.” I raise my chin up in defiance, really as a fake show of confidence in how I let it play out. The truth is, though, I wish he’d have asked for my cell number or gave some hint he might want to see me again.
But he didn’t, so the only thing I can think is it was just a one-night stand. I knew going in that was probably all it would be, but coming out on the other side?
With my body feeling like jelly and my knees weak as he walked me to my car?
I wanted another night, damn it.
“So call him,” Frannie suggests.
“Nope,” I say with a hard shake of my head. “Not going there. It sounds desperate.”
“Girl, if I had the night you had, I’d be desperate for more,” she mutters.
And yeah… I feel the same. But that’s not unusual. Frannie and I are so much alike, despite the moderate age gap. And it’s more than just age. Frannie’s been married to her husband Billy for twenty-four years. They have two kids, ages twenty-five and twenty-one. Not hard to do the math on that one and figure out the first baby came before marriage.
But the very first day I’d opened my law office beside Do or Dye, Frannie came over and introduced herself. We hit it off like I’d never done with another woman before. I expect that’s because in the modeling industry, for those three wretched years I was doing that type of work, all the women were catty and competitive. After that, I was serious about college and law school, as well as Christopher. There just was never a time in my life that was conducive to developing a friendship of my own.
Until Frannie.
“Call him,” she urges. “Just pick up the phone and dial his office. You’re a modern, progressive woman. You can totally call him up and invite him out. Or to your house. Or here… desk sex is good, too.”
I snicker. “You’re so bad.”
“Do it,” she demands, pointing to the phone on my desk.
“Seriously?” I inquire, still very unsure. What if he thought last night was horrible and wants nothing to do with me?
“Yes, I’m serious,” she says. She stands from the chair and reaches out to pick up the receiver. When the phone rings, it startles us both. She gives a yip and jumps backward, and I start laughing as I reach for it.
I take in a deep breath and answer, “Viveka Jones.”
“Vivvy…” My mother’s voice hits my ear, and I can’t help the grimace. Frannie’s eyebrows rise in concern.
I lean forward and put the call on speaker, laying the receiver back in the cradle so Frannie can listen.
My mother continues. “I’ve left you several messages on your cell, but you haven’t called me back.”
Frannie rolls her eyes and settles into the guest chair, glaring at the phone. She doesn’t like my mom, and she makes no apologies for it.
I, on the other hand, love my mom, but that’s because I feel obligated to. I mean, we’re blood. I have to love her, right?
“I’ve been busy,” I say, forcing my voice to soften and not sound so guarded. Can’t help it, though. My mother causes my defenses to lock into place every time we speak.
“Well, I’m going to be visiting the area, and I wanted to set aside some time so we can get together,” she says, her Swedish accent still fairly thick even after twenty-two years in the States. While I worked to soften mine over time, she has actually made hers more pronounced.
She once told me that all rich men love exotic, foreign women so she really hammed it up sometimes.
My stomach sinks. The last thing I want to do is visit with my mother, and oh God… I’m going to hell for even thinking that. I suck it up, put on a brave face, and ask, “When will you and Stephan be arriving?”
Stephan is husband number three—some tycoon who makes his money in things I don’t understand. He’s also eighty-three years old.
My mother sniffs. “Oh, good God. You don’t think I’d bring Stephan with me, do you?”
Well, yes, Mother. He’s your husband after all.
“Then you’ll be coming by yourself?” I ask, which means she might want to stay with me, although that’s a long shot. She prefers luxury accommodations, and my little house is as about as far from luxury as possible. She’ll spend the entire time berating me for not making my marriage work because while Adam doesn’t make the type of money Stephan does, being married to a neurosurgeon is still quite respectable.
“No, I’ll be traveling with a friend,” she says evasively.
“Who?” I ask. My mother has no friends. She doesn’t care enough about people in general to develop a sincere friendship.
“Just a friend,” she clips out, and my eyes shoot over to Frannie’s. She gives me a knowing look.
It means my mom will be traveling with a boy-toy.
I wrinkle my nose at the thought. My mother is fifty-three, but she likes her men young. I’m guessing her “friend” will be in the late twenties to early thirties range.
So gross.
“I’m thinking the end of next week,” she continues. “Carmine wants to try some deep-sea fishing off the coast, so I’ll hang out in Raleigh while he does that.”
Frannie mimes gagging by sticking her finger in her mouth and silently retching. I nod in agreement.
“I’ll call you in a few days once we make our flight reservations,” she says, not even bothering to ask if this is a good time in my life for a visit. “Chat later.”
And she hangs up.
Frannie shakes her head, giving me a pitying look. “How someone as sweet, caring, and humble as you came from those ovaries is beyond me.”
The bark of laughter that escapes is well
warranted. Frannie never fails to brighten my day, even on the heels of a telephone call with Tilde Sjögren. Of note, she refused to take her husbands’ last names because she didn’t want to lose the exotic nature of hers. She about had a cow when I married a man with a simple name like Jones, and she tried to talk me in to keeping my maiden name.
I give Frannie a wry smile. “You know, I think that call would have actually bothered me more had it not been for those three fantastic orgasms I had last night. I’m feeling all kinds of loose and relaxed, even after that.”
“Girl, I need to talk to Billy,” she says as she pushes up from her chair. “I love my husband, and he makes sure I get my happy ending. But after almost a quarter-century of marriage, I think I deserve three in one night.”
I have to drop my feet to the floor from my desk, doubling over in laughter. I practically wheeze, “A quarter of a century? God, that makes you sound as old as Methuselah or something.”
Frannie stares down her nose at me primly, tapping her finger on my desk. “I’m just saying… knowing that’s possible, I’m going to be educating my man on the wonders of a woman’s body and what she might be capable of with the right effort.”
“Oh, God help poor Billy,” I say, still chuckling.
“You going to call Ford?” she asks, getting us back on track with what we’d been originally talking about.
“I don’t think so,” I say, having lost all my fire and gumption she had me worked up to before my mom called. It’s just not in my nature to be so forward.
Frannie plants her palms on my desk and leans over, her expression going somber. “You should call him. You’re amazing, and I bet it would make his day. But I also get it might be hard for you. So I’m going to make a prediction.”
“And what’s that?” I ask dryly.
“You’ll hear from him by the end of the day,” she says with a firm nod of her head. “Mark my words.”
I don’t think it will actually happen, but I enjoy the fluttering in my belly over the prospect. Regardless, I have to get to work on my pecker brief because no matter how magical Ford’s dick or hands are, he’s still my enemy come Tuesday morning.
CHAPTER 5
Ford
I lean to the right and whisper, “Seriously, Leary… did I really need to come here with you today?”
“Yes,” she hisses from the side of her mouth. Her eyes are glued to a large, flat-screen TV at the front of the classroom. The blinds are closed and the lights are off, but it’s not totally dark in the room as some of the morning light filters in. “I didn’t want to be the poor pathetic woman all by herself in the first class.”
“But this is something your husband should be doing,” I mutter, knowing it’s pointless to argue since I’m already here and stuck for the next hour.
“And he would be here if he hadn’t been called into court for an emergency restraining order,” she replies. I knew this, too. Reeve needing to bail on his and Leary’s first Lamaze class couldn’t be helped.
Leary being Leary just marched right into my office and said, “I need your help.”
I thought she was talking about a legal case, so I readily agreed. Next thing I knew, I was at a community center in a small classroom with ten other pregnant couples hoping to gain some sort of Zen perspective on childbirth.
I guess there are no lengths people won’t go to for their best friend. And Leary is undoubtedly mine. We are partners at the law firm of Knight & Payne, and we are also former part-time lovers. The lovers part changed two years ago when she met Reeve Holloway and fell head-over-heels in love with him. I had known Reeve before they met. He’s a really decent guy, so I wasn’t bent out of shape or anything. I’m also beyond happy for Leary, but I do like to grumble about some of the shit she puts me through.
There’s an instructor standing at the front of the classroom making some welcoming remarks. Leary is seven months pregnant and because her husband is in court, I am the substitute father today. Leary assured me I would not have to do anything stupid because the first class was usually informational.
I lean toward Leary again. Pregnancy has filled out her face some and despite the obviously rounded belly, she’s still an incredibly beautiful woman. But that beauty does nothing for me now. There was a time I lusted after it, just as she did me. It all seems so long ago, and I’m grateful our friendship always stayed intact over the years while we were on again and off again.
We chose the table at the back of the classroom, and I’m speaking low enough I can’t be heard. “Didn’t you get enough humiliating satisfaction when you made me the maid of honor at your wedding to Reeve?”
Leary snickers and leans into me. “You were not a maid of honor. I just asked you to stand by me during the wedding. I even called you the best man to everyone.”
That was true. It wasn’t even awkward.
“Besides,” she adds with a chuckle. “If I had wanted to torture you, I would have made you wear a peach dress with big puffy sleeves and a satin bow on your ass.”
My answering soft laugh lets her know that I really can’t be mad at her for much. Leary is about the best person I’ve ever known, and I’d pretty much walk through fire for her. So, if she wants me to attend a Lamaze class, I’m going to do it.
The instructor is not what I expected. I thought somebody a little bit younger would be teaching this class. Instead, Mrs. Craig is matronly and old-fashioned looking. It has to have been at least three decades since she’s given birth—if she has, in fact, actually experienced childbirth. I just assume they would have someone teaching this class with practical experience. Still, I guess most of this is just medical and scientific. Anyone could probably teach it.
“Okay,” she says in a calm, serene voice. “How many of you in here have actually seen a child being born?”
Being at the back of the class, I can tell exactly who is in the same boat as I am. Practically no one raises their hand.
Mrs. Craig beams. She has found her fledglings to teach all the mysterious ways of childbirth. “Well, we’re going to rectify that right now. I have found that often our biggest fears stem from the fact that we don’t know what to expect. Now you can read textbooks, literature, and talk to your doctor and friends who have given birth, but there is nothing like seeing it happen, so you know exactly what you are facing.”
Another whisper to Leary with a tinge of faux fear to my voice. “We’re going to watch somebody give birth?”
“I suspect it’s going to be on the TV,” she returns sarcastically.
Well, I suppose this could be interesting. I’ve always been fascinated with how the human body works. There was even a time while I was an undergrad that I was torn between law school and medical school. I think I would’ve been a good doctor. Of course, knowing what I know now and having had an amazing legal career, I know I made the right choice in going to law school. A lawyer is what I’m supposed to be.
Mrs. Craig walks over to a laptop sitting on a small table below the TV. It’s apparently hooked up with an HDMI cable, and that means Mrs. Craig isn’t as old-fashioned as I thought. She taps a few keys on the keyboard, and a video starts running on the screen.
At first, I’m all into it. This is clearly a professional production, and I’m assuming it was shot with the idea in mind to be instructional. There is a husband and wife in a private room, and she seems to be okay. She’s not doing any of that huffing and puffing breathing I’ve come to associate with the term Lamaze, and she and her husband are smiling at each other.
The video goes to show the doctor coming in to check how far along she has dilated. Her feet go up in stirrups, and the cameraman walks right around so I get a good shot of what pregnant pussy looks like. Other than the fact the pregnant woman doesn’t do much maintenance down below—although I will chalk that up to her probably not able to reach it—it looks like any other pussy.
I lean toward Leary and whisper, “That’s a brave woman right there.”
Leary mutters, “You’re not kidding. I’d never let anybody put a camera that close up between my legs.”
The video continues, and I start to get bored. As has happened several times since last night whenever my brain is given some respite, I start to think about Viveka. In particular, I keep replaying over and over again that amazing fuck followed by the best hand job I’ve ever had in my entire life. At forty-three, I can say it’s not natural for a man that age to bust a nut twice so close together.
And because I’m thinking about sex and how sweet her pussy was, my dick starts to get hard.
Even though I’m sitting at a table at the back of the darkened room with my crotch out of sight, I do not want to go full-blown hard-on. For one, it’s just icky sitting next to Leary now that we are only in the friend zone. I also don’t want the frustration of having a hard dick and not being able to do anything about it.
I prepare to cycle through my usual storage of memories or images of horrific things to get rid of my pecker problem. Nuclear war, starving children, and that one time I watched the film Xanadu. All of those have proven to be effective in the past, and I decide to think about Olivia Newton John. But then my eyes seem to focus on the TV screen, and I realize the woman is now in active labor.
I know this by the fact that she is sitting with her legs spread wide and held up on one side by her husband, and on the other by a nurse. Her face is beet red as she pushes. The doctor is sitting on a stool that’s rolled up right in between her legs, and the cameraman deserves some kind of Oscar because he has managed to find an angle over the doctor’s shoulder so everything that’s happening is visible.
And it’s absolutely fucking horrifying. The woman’s vagina is stretched beyond limits. Bile coats the back of my throat when the doctor uses a scalpel to cut her open even further—as in he widens her vagina with a scalpel.
I swallow hard to avoid vomiting.
There’s a lot more coaxing, a lot more bearing down by the poor woman who seems to be in excruciating pain, and then something starts coming out. Dark hair, blood, and nasty clotted yellow shit. The doctor starts easing the baby out, and the woman pushes so hard she starts shitting herself right there over the edge of the table.
The Pecker Briefs Page 4
