Guilty Pleasures

by Bertrice Small

  “Can I come and help you?” he asked innocently.

  Nina laughed. “I’d never get there, and Ashley would wonder why her shop wasn’t open. We’re extra busy now with the winter weddings and the holiday ahead.”

  He sighed. “Then I’ll just have to satisfy myself with another of these muffins,” he said, “and a cup of coffee.”

  “Muffins are in the warming oven,” Nina told him, hurrying from the kitchen.

  Back in the bedroom, she sneaked a look at her bed, with its very tumbled sheets and down coverlet. Yes, indeed, someone had had wonderful sex in that bed recently. She stepped into the walk-in closet that served as a dressing room for her and pulled off the fleece pants and top, then pulled on a pair of beige-and-cream tweed slacks and a natural-colored cashmere turtleneck sweater. Cashmere socks and saddle brown ankle boots completed her outfit. She exited the closet and went into the bathroom, where she put on her lipstick, gave her short hair a final look, and, grabbing the elegant little shoulder bag from the top of her dresser, hurried back to the kitchen.

  He looked up from buttering a blueberry muffin when he saw her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should be dressed and ready to go myself, but damn, these muffins taste good.”

  “No problem,” Nina said with a smile. “Take your time. Remember, we don’t lock our doors here in Egret Pointe. When you go, just close it behind you.”

  “Do I need to move my car?” he asked.

  “I walk to work on nice days,” Nina told him.

  “Dinner tonight?” he asked.

  “I’d like that,” she answered.

  “You still want to be my girl?”

  “Robert, I’ve been your girl from the first time I saw you up there on the silver screen,” Nina told him, and then she hurried out the door. She hoped she wasn’t dancing as she walked down Maple Lane. She sure as hell felt like dancing. Dancing and singing. She had not been unhappy with her life. Sure, it was lonely sometimes being a widow, but after the initial shock of Charlie’s death had worn off, she wasn’t unhappy. And yet, suddenly she was filled with euphoria, and it felt as if she had actually been in a holding pattern these last years. She wasn’t certain where this sudden relationship with Robert Talcott was going, but did she really need to know?

  The builder had promised that Robert’s house would be ready by Christmas. Robert had taken Nina’s advice from their first dinner together to heart, and the architect had agreed. He had designed a long, low, single-story house with lots and lots of glass to take advantage of both the view and the sun. They had used a lot of green technology and kept the site as pristine as possible. There were solar panels across the roof to heat water and run most of the electric.

  The floor plan was simple. A two-sided stone fireplace divided the living room from the dining room. The kitchen was galley style and very efficient. There were two bedrooms and two luxurious bathrooms. The master bedroom had a fireplace too. They had dug a cellar, and it was completely finished, with a storage room, a small exercise room, and a large, comfortable den. Nina had fallen more and more in love with the house as it was built and took shape.

  “I can’t wait to have sex with you in the bedroom,” Robert told her one late November day. “Ryan is building a spectacular bed for me. I’m actually going to start living here this weekend. Trial run of all the systems to make certain nothing needs adjusting, or if it does to do it before all the furniture arrives.” Then the blue eyes twinkled. “The workmen are gone for the day,” he said, waggling his eyebrows at her.

  “There’s no bed,” she reminded him.

  Reaching out, he first pulled her into his arms, then put her back against a wall. “We could do it here,” he murmured in her ear.

  “Here?” her voice squeaked. She had heard that you could do it standing up, but Charlie, bless him, hadn’t been an adventurous man.

  “Here,” he repeated. He unzipped his fly and pulled out his already hard dick, then began pushing her skirt up. “I am so damned hot for you, woman! Just thinking about us here in this room gets me hard.”

  “You are one adventure after another,” Nina told him, laughing softly.

  “I’ve saved all those years of pent-up passions just for you, Nina Parsons,” he said, and he pulled her panties down. Then his hand cupped her, and she sighed.

  “I have to admit, Robert, I’m enjoying those pent-up passions,” Nina said. Then she kissed him hungrily. Her clit was absolutely throbbing. “Do me,” she whispered in his ear, the tip of her tongue licking at him.

  Reaching around, he slipped his palms beneath her butt, and raised her up. She wrapped herself around him with both her legs and her arms, feeling him, now guiding his penis into her wet, welcoming vagina. The delicious sensation of the thick, sturdy length slowing plunging into her body was so incredible she came immediately, and he laughed.

  “What a greedy, bad girl you are,” he teased as he began to fuck her.

  She clung to him, letting the erotic rhythm of his skilled cock lull her into a semiconscious state. “Don’t stop!” she begged. “Don’t stop! God! It is soo good, Robert!”

  He laughed again, and began moving with increasing speed now. “I’m going to come!” he groaned. “Jesus, you feel so damned good!”

  “Me too!” she gasped, and she felt the hard spasms as his come filled her.

  They stood entwined until at last Nina’s legs fell away from his torso, but she didn’t dare loosen her embrace about his neck. She would collapse into a small puddle if she did. She just knew it. Finally she said, “Isn’t it illegal for two people our age to be having such wild sex?”

  “Is it? Arrest me, Officer,” he teased her. His big hand cupped the back of her head. “Move in with me when this place is finished.”

  Nina was stunned by the invitation. Yes! Yes! the little voice in her brain shouted. “I’m not certain that’s a good idea,” she heard her practical self saying.

  “Do you want to get married?” he asked candidly.

  “I’ve been married. So have you. Marriage isn’t the point here, Robert. We’ve only known each other a few months.”

  “Long enough to know we like each other. Long enough to have incredible sex,” he said. He was a little surprised by her refusal.

  “Let’s wait a little longer before making any changes to this relationship,” Nina advised. “Can’t we just remain best friends with benefits for a little while more?”

  The cell in his pocket began to ring. “Bridge to Captain Kirk! Bridge to Captain Kirk!” Robert Talcott was a Star Trek fan. Automatically he pulled the phone from his pocket. His eyebrows lifted in surprise. “I have to take this,” he said, “but this conversation isn’t over, Nina.” Putting the phone to his ear, he said, “Sallie! Long time.” Then his face grew serious. “Slow down, Sallie. Stop crying. I can hardly understand a word you’re saying. What? Damn, I’m so sorry, sweetie! Franklin? Is she going to be all right? What? No, I can’t. I’m starting rehearsals in a couple of weeks. I’m building a house. No. What part of no don’t you understand, Franklin?”

  “What is it?” Nina whispered.

  “Sallie’s longtime lover just got killed in an accident. They want me to go out to the coast and make a show of sympathy with her,” he said softly. “You know the kind of stuff they do. Ex-husband rushes to grieving star’s side.”

  “Go!” Nina told him.

  “I don’t want to leave you until we settle this,” Robert Talcott said. “I don’t want to be that Lyon Roberts again.”

  “You won’t. You aren’t,” she assured him. “Look, being widowed suddenly is a horrible thing to have happen. Granted, your marriage was hardly a conventional one, but you were married and together for a lot of years. Go to her. It will be good publicity for you too. The house will be finished, and I’ll be waiting for you when you get back. Okay?”

  “Promise?” The blue eyes looked anxiously at her.

  “Promise,” Nina said. “You can count on it!”

/>   “Franklin, my fiancée says I should go, so I’ll catch a flight tomorrow,” he said. “Yeah, fiancée. Her name is Nina. I love her, and we’re going to have a nice normal life together. No, it’s not public knowledge yet. Tell Sallie I’ll be there.” He closed the phone shut.

  “I’m not your fiancée,” Nina said breathlessly.

  “If you expect me to go to California to stand by the side of a grieving star ex-wife, then we are taking this relationship to the next level before I leave,” Robert Talcott said.

  “We’ll deal with a ring when I get back, but I want to know you’ll be here waiting for me. And while Egret Pointe might be shocked by the widow Parsons moving in with the semiretired movie star, they will hardly be shocked by my fiancée moving in with me. We can have the longest engagement in the history of mankind, Nina, but we are now engaged. Hell, I’ve told a Hollywood agent. You can’t back out now.”

  “You are totally insane,” she responded. “I’m not giving up my house, even if I do move in with you.”

  “You don’t have to, brown eyes,” he said, and then he pulled her close, kissing her very firmly. “Will you marry me, Nina Parsons?”

  “Eventually,” she agreed, “maybe. I don’t want to make you a liar in front of a Hollywood agent,” she said, and they laughed together.

  He left the next morning for California, promising to be back in a few days’ time. Nina couldn’t help but check out the television gossip shows in the evening after work. Nancy Kramer, Sallie Blair’s longtime assistant, had been killed driving home to Malibu when a tractor trailer had blown two tires and gone out of control, literally running over her small sports car, the gossip mavens reported. Ex-husband Lyon Roberts had flown to her side. There was film of Robert hurrying through LAX to a waiting limo.

  And as the days followed, there was film of him escorting Sallie Blair, looking vulnerable, beautiful, and so damned young, into the church where the funeral was held, and then again out of the church. The paparazzi caught them at the cemetery, a weeping Sallie putting a rose on Nancy’s coffin as it was about to be lowered into the grave. A week went by. Robert called to say he was going to remain a few days longer. Sallie’s people feared she was suicidal, and he seemed to be the only one who could comfort her.

  “I can’t be certain if she’s playing to the balcony or is really that upset,” he told Nina. “God, I hate it here! And I miss you.”

  “Stay a little while longer,” Nina advised. “I can’t believe anyone would be that coldhearted. After all, she was with Nancy longer than she was with you. If you leave, and she attempts something foolish, you’ll feel terrible.”

  “Thanks, brown eyes,” he said. “I’ll be back by Christmas. Rehearsals start in January, and I want some time with you before then.”

  Nina resorted to her Victorian fantasy after a few days. She had simply grown too used to regular loving to be without it. Her twenty-year-old alter ego had slipped away from her family one autumn afternoon to pay a visit to her fiancé, Lyon, in his bachelor’s quarters in the town. “You promised me a treat if I would come,” she said coyly as he took her cloak to set it aside. “What is it?”

  Lyon smiled wickedly at her. “It’s something I was introduced to in England, darling.” He went to his desk and drew out what appeared to be a broad leather strap, the ends of which were cut into strips. “It’s called a tawse, darling, and it is used to warm the bottoms of naughty little girls. Would you like to try it?”

  “Will it hurt?” she asked, eyes wide.

  “No more than a hard spank,” he assured her, “and the sex that follows is quite delicious, I promise you.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Lyon,” the young Nina demurred.

  “Come, darling, take off your gown and petticoats. I want you in your corset and stockings,” he wheedled her. “I’ll tawse that wicked little bottom of yours, and then we will have a lovely fuck. You know you want to fuck.”

  She did. Slowly, with a pretense at reluctance, she disrobed until she stood only in her corset, her breasts swelling over its top, and her black stockings, which were held up by the corset’s garters. Her mons was visible, as was her backside. “What do I do now, Lyon?” she asked him.

  Taking her into his arms, he kissed her a slow, deep kiss, his tongue foraging with hers. Then he led her over to the small tapestried sofa with its high rolled arms. He bent her over one arm. Her toes were just barely touching the Oriental carpet. Then, to her surprise, he wrapped a silk cord about her wrists, fastening the end to a hook hidden beneath the sofa’s cushions.

  “Oh! Oh!” Nina cried out. “You have bound me. I have no escape from you.”

  He laughed. “Yes, I have tied you down, darling. It will but add to your excitement.” He took off his quilted velvet smoking jacket, unbuttoned his shirt at the collar, and opened his fly to pull out his penis so it would be easily available when he was ready to fuck her. Picking up the leather tawse in one hand, he ran his other hand over her smooth plump posterior. Then a wicked light came into his eye.

  Leaving her a moment, he went into his bedchamber, then returned with a small jar of lubricant. After swirling his middle finger about in the jar, he parted the cheeks of her buttocks with the thumb and forefinger of his other hand. “A little ass-fuck to begin, darling,” he said as he slowly began to insert his thick finger into her fundament.

  “Ohhhh!” Nina squealed. “That is too naughty! Take it out! Take it out!”

  “You’re being a bad girl, Nina,” he scolded as he buried the finger to the knuckle. “You will take my finger, then later a dildo, and finally a cock there because it will please me, and as my fiancée, it is your duty to obey me.” He frigged her for a few minutes to underscore his point.

  “Oh, I hate you! I hate you!” she half sobbed.

  He laughed. “Now, my darling,” he said, finally withdrawing the finger, his hand smoothing over her rounded flesh, “you are deserving of a good tawsing for your impudent behavior in attempting to deny me my rights.” He wiped the lubricant from his finger, then picked up the tawse and brought it down across her bottom.

  Nina shrieked, although the truth was, it hadn’t hurt at all. It had just stung her flesh, and as he continued to rain blows on her ass, she began to feel a tingling in her nether regions that seemed to grow with every smack of the leather. “Ohh!” she cried. “Ohh!”

  He ceased his punishment briefly to put his hand beneath her, cupping her mons, feeling the heat and dampness. “Another five good ones and you’ll be more than ready to be fucked,” he told her. His cock was already swollen and eager. He laid the required number of blows across the now hot pink flesh. Then, tossing the leather aside, he grasped her hips with his two hands and thrust into her. “Ahh, Nina, my love,” he moaned. “This is so perfect.”

  “You are a horrible man!” she complained at him as her hips moved in time with his cock. “I hate you! I do! Oh, fuck me, Lyon. Fuck me deep and hard! Ohh, that is sooo good. Don’t stop! Don’t stop!” And he didn’t until the Channel closed for the night. Her fantasy, however, wasn’t enough anymore, now that she had come to know passion in the real world again. In the days to come, she punished her fantasy lover for that fault.

  Robert wasn’t back by Christmas. Instead, Nina began watching the gossip shows regularly. Rumor had it that Sallie Blair was suicidal. Rumor had it that ex-husband Lyon Roberts was staying at her Malibu home. Was a reconciliation possible after all these years? The television gossip reporters smiled into the camera knowingly. Wouldn’t all be right with the world again if Hollywood’s former perfect couple were reunited?

  And when the paparazzi began taking pictures of Robert and Sallie Blair together out walking on the beach, relaxing in her hot tub, and having dinner in some cozy and intimate restaurant in Beverly Hills, Nina found herself beginning to wonder if maybe something was happening. And why not? Sure, he said that the marriage had been one of convenience and that Sallie was gay. But what if she was bisexual? And now, wit
h the loss of her longtime companion and lover, she wanted Robert back?

  When he’d called two days before Christmas to tell Nina that he wouldn’t be back, her heart sank. “I can’t leave her alone this particular Christmas,” Robert Talcott said.

  “I’m alone,” she said softly. She was suddenly tired of being the noble one.

  “Oh, brown eyes,” he said to her, “don’t make me feel any worse than I already do about this. I never liked Christmas in California. I was going to put a tree up in the living room, and we were going to decorate it while looking out at the bay. I wanted to shop for a hundred presents for you and put them all under that tree. I want to go to midnight mass at St. Anne’s with you, then come back to the house to drink whiskeyed eggnog, and have wild monkey sex with you.”

  Nina sniffled. “How soon after Christmas can you get back?” she asked him.

  “Sallie has asked me to remain until after New Year’s,” he said. “It will be a tough one for her.”

  “And will Valentine’s Day be tough too? And the long Presidents’ Day weekend, and St. Patrick’s Day?” Nina said, suddenly angry. “You’ve got rehearsals starting at the end of January. Will she let you come back to New York to do the show? Or will she go into her mourning act again and have her people beg you to stay a bit longer? Do you know what I see every night on Access Hollywood and Entertainment Tonight and The Insider? Pictures of you and your ex-wife in one cozy situation or another, with the reporters all twittering that the rumors are that you’ll remarry. Tell your ex-wife to suck it up like a big girl. Come home, Robert! And if Sallie Blair is going to kill herself over Nancy’s death, then let her do it, and be done with it, damn it!” And Nina slammed down the phone angrily. Then she burst into tears.

  She didn’t sleep that night, and dragged herself into the shop the next morning.

  Ashley was there before her. Christmas Eve was always a busy day, and she knew Nina could use the help. “You look like crap,” Ashley said. “Are you all right? Are you coming down with something, Nina?”