by Lauren Rowe
I laugh again. “I could only do it because you’re so damned limber and strong. You’re the reason that worked.”
She beams at me. We’ve discovered yet another way we’re a match made in heaven. I suddenly have an actual, coherent thought: I love this woman more than I ever thought possible.
My heart continues racing. “I thought I was going to pass out for a minute there,” I say. “I was seeing stars.”
“Oh God.” She laughs. “That wouldn’t have been good with me in that position.”
I sit up and touch her face. I’m suddenly earnest. “I’d never let anything happen to you. You know that, right?”
Her entire face contorts like I just gave her a puppy.
I love this woman. I want to tell her so. I want to look into her eyes and say those three little words. I want her to understand they’re not just words to me—that they’re my new religion. I want her to know I’ve never said those words to anyone else, that I’ve been reserving them, waiting my whole life to say them to her.
But nothing comes out of my mouth. Again. What’s wrong with me?
She beams at me. “I know that,” she says softly. “I trust you. That’s why this works.”
I know the “this” she’s referring to isn’t the elusive “cascading sixty-nine.” No, the “this” she means is “Jonas and Sarah”—the two of us, together. It’s our off-the-charts chemistry. It’s how she gets me and I get her. It’s how she makes me laugh when no one else can. It’s how I told her about what happened to my mother—even the parts I’m ashamed of, even the parts that reveal my worthlessness—and she didn’t run away. It’s how I cried to her, sobbed to her, actually—even though I’d sworn off crying a long time ago. And it’s especially how she held me close and cried along with me.
I look over at her. She beams at me.
On second thought, maybe the “this” she’s referring to isn’t “Jonas and Sarah,” after all. Maybe the “this” is just Sarah herself, the new Sarah who’s learning to let go and claim her deepest desires. Because now that she’s given free rein to what she wants rather than what she’s supposed to want, she’s becoming a new woman every single day, right before my eyes. I can see it, plain as day. Fuck, anyone could see it. It’s in the way she walks, the way she talks. The way she struts. The way she fucks. Maybe I’m just along for the ride, her instrument of self-discovery, a mere conduit to her most powerful self. I don’t know. And I don’t care. As long as I get to be the one lying next to her, the one making love to her, the one fucking her brains out if that’s what she wants, whatever, I don’t give a fuck what the “this” is she’s referring to. As long as it includes me, I’m in.
I rub my hands over my face. Jesus, this woman is my crack.
There’s a beat. I should say it now. But I want to say it when I can show her and tell her at the same time. I don’t trust myself with words alone—they’ve been a struggle for me ever since that whole year as a kid when I didn’t speak at all.
She clears her throat. “How is it possible every single time gets better and better and better?” she asks.
“Because we were made for each other,” I say softly. And because I love you.
Her smile widens. She pushes me back onto the bed and swiftly straddles my lap. She leans down and kisses me tenderly.
I rest my hands on her thighs. “Where the hell did you get the idea to sixty-nine me all of a sudden?” I ask. “That was a pleasant surprise.”
She looks at me sideways. “Jonas, I’ve been reading sex club applications for the past three months, remember? I’ve been stockpiling ideas the whole time.” She winks.
“Oh yeah?” I like where this is headed. “You’ve picked up an idea or two, have you?” I cross my arms under my head and gaze up at her.
“Yes, sir,” she says, her eyes ablaze. She rubs her hands along my biceps. “Maybe just a thing or two... and now that I’ve got the right partner... the perfect partner…” She leans down again and kisses me. “My sweet Jonas.”
My heart leaps. “Sarah,” I breathe. I want to tell her. She deserves to hear it from me.
She whispers right into my ear. “Madness.”
I exhale and close my eyes.
I know I should be happy to hear this word—she’s telling me she loves me in the exact way I’ve taught her to say it to me—the precise way I’ve trained her to say it so as not to scare me off. Love is a serious mental disease, I explained to her, over and over, quoting Plato—pointedly avoiding the more pedantic but direct route to the same message. I glance away, trying to collect my thoughts. I feel like I’m failing her with all my secret codes.
“Oh, Jonas.” She leans down and peppers my entire face with soft kisses—the thing she does that makes me want to crawl into her arms and cry like a baby. “Don’t think so much. Thinking is the enemy.”
“That’s my line,” I say.
She nods. “Then you have no excuse.” She runs her fingers over the tattoo on my left forearm, sending a shiver up my spine. For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories.
I close my eyes. She’s right. I inhale deeply.
She caresses my right forearm with her other hand. Visualize the divine originals. And then she runs her fingers from my tattoos to my biceps, to my shoulders, and across my bare chest, tracing every crease and indentation and ripple along the way.
She’s right. I need to stop thinking so much. Love is a serious mental disease. Yes. Madness. Why am I freaking out about the exact words we use? The feelings are there, I know they are—for both of us. The words don’t matter.
Her fingers migrate downward to the ruts and ridges of my abs.
I exhale. She knows how I feel. With every touch, with every kiss, she’s telling me she does, and that she feels the same way. Why am I over-thinking this?
“Hey, remember my ‘sexual preferences’ section on my application?” she asks.
She means her so-called verbal application to the Jonas Faraday Club—the application she refused to write out for me in detail because she’s a royal pain in the ass.
“As I recall, you summarized the entirety of your ‘sexual preferences’ with two little words.”
Her fingers move to my belly button. “Jonas Faraday,” she says, poking me with her finger. She slides her fingers from my belly all the way up to my mouth and begins lightly tracing my lips. I kiss the tip of her finger and she smiles. I grab her hand and pretend to eat the sexy ring on her thumb like I’m the Cookie Monster. Her smile gives way to a giggle. She sticks her thumb in my mouth and I suck on it. She laughs with glee.
“And that’s still one hundred percent accurate,” she says, pulling her thumb out of my mouth. “Jonas Faraday. Mmm hmm.” She leans down and skims her lips against mine. “But I think I’ve got a few... um... additions to my ‘sexual preferences’ section—ideas I’ve been stockpiling over the past three months. We’ll call it an addendum to my application.” She laughs again and kisses me full on the mouth.
I feel like I’m holding a lottery ticket and she’s about to announce I’ve got the winning numbers. “What kinds of ideas?”
She smiles wickedly. She knows I’m on pins and needles and she’s enjoying torturing me. “Well, I’m still formulating the exact specifications of my addendum,” she says coyly. “And you’re only on a need-to-know basis, anyway.”
I frown.
“But I promise you one thing, my sweet Jonas—whatever I come up with, it’s gonna bring you to your frickin’ knees.”
Chapter 3
Sarah
At Josh’s arrival, Jonas is a new man. Other than when Jonas and I were going at it like upside-down-intertwined-X-rated-Cirque-du-Soleil performers a couple hours ago—and let me just say an enthusiastic woot woot and a hearty hellz yeah in fond memory of that acrobatic deliciousness—this is by far the most comfortable and confident I’ve seen Jonas since we discovered my ransacked apartment earlier today.
“Hey,”
Josh says, putting down his duffel bag and bro-hugging Jonas. “Well, hello, Sarah Cruz.” He embraces me next. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“Get used to it,” Jonas says. He winks at me and I smile back. Jonas has made it abundantly clear he’s elated I’m here, regardless of the circumstances.
“So what the hell’s going on?” Josh asks, concern unfurling across his face.
In all the chaos of our return from Belize, Jonas hasn’t yet told Josh what’s happened. And, damn, there’s a lot to tell him—not the least of which is how Jonas applied to this depraved thing called The Club, and, oh yeah, how Sarah worked for said depraved club, and oh yeah, how we’ve recently discovered it’s just a global brothel, and, hey, guess what, the bastards just ransacked Sarah’s and Kat’s apartments and stole their computers. All Jonas said over the phone to Josh was “I need you” and Josh hopped a plane, no questions asked. But now it’s time for details.
Jonas moans. “It’s so fucked up, man.”
Josh sits down on the couch, his face etched with anxiety. “Tell me.”
Jonas sits down next to him, sighing like he doesn’t know where to begin. He runs his hand through his hair and exhales loudly.
I don’t blame Jonas for feeling overwhelmed—he’s got a helluva lot of ground to cover. But before Jonas begins speaking, Kat comes out of the bathroom and strides into the room like she owns the place. Josh glances toward her movement, and then away, and then does a double take worthy of Bugs Bunny. The man might as well be shouting “bawooooooga!” at the sight of her while his eyeballs telescope in and out of his head.
I would have thought Mr. Parties-with-Justin-Timberlake would have a bit more game than a cartoon rabbit—but, no, apparently not. Silly me, I should have known no mortal man, whether he has celebrity friends or not, can play it cool upon first beholding the golden loveliness of Katherine “Kat” Morgan. The woman is every teenage-boy’s fantasy sprung to life—the tomboy-girl-next-door who goes off to college and comes back home a gorgeous and curvy and vivacious movie star (except, of course, that Kat works in PR). Why would Josh, unlike so many before him, be immune to Kat’s special blend of charm, beauty and charisma?
Kat sashays right up to Josh like he flew to Seattle just to see her.
“I’m Kat—Sarah’s best friend.” She puts out her hand.
Josh smiles broadly. “Josh.” He shakes her hand with mock politeness. “Jonas’ brother.” I can feel the electricity between them from ten feet away.
“I know,” she says. “I read the article.” She motions to the business magazine on the coffee table, the one with Jonas and Josh on the cover wearing their tailored suits. “I sure hope you’re more complicated than that article makes you out to be.”
Josh looks at Jonas for an explanation, but Jonas shrugs.
“If the article is to be believed,” Kat explains, “Jonas is the ‘enigmatic loner-investment-wunderkind’ twin—and you’re just the simple playboy.”
Josh laughs. “That’s what the article said?”
“In so many words.”
“Hmm.” He smirks. “Interesting. And if someone were writing a magazine article about you, what gross over-simplification would they use?”
Kat thinks for a minute. “I’d be ‘a party girl with a heart of gold.’” She shoots me a snarky look—that’s the phrase I always use to describe her.
Josh smiles broadly. “How come I only get a one-word description—playboy—and you get a whole phrase?”
Kat shrugs. “Okay, party girl, then.”
“That’s two words.”
She raises an eyebrow. “In this hypothetical magazine article about me, they’d spell it with a hyphen.”
Oh, man. Ka-pow. Talk about instant chemistry. I look at Jonas and I can tell he’s thinking exactly what I am—get a room—albeit in some warped Jonas Faraday kind of way, I’m sure.
“So what’s going on here, Party Girl with a Hyphen?” Josh asks. “I take it we didn’t all congregate here to party?”
“No, unfortunately,” Kat says. “Though, hey, we did have some of your tequila earlier, so thanks for that.” She twists her mouth. “No, I’m just here to support Sarah—and, well, I think I might be some kind of refugee in all this, too.” She looks at me sympathetically. “Although I think maybe Jonas is being slightly overprotective having me stay here. I’m not sure yet.”
Jonas bristles and clenches his jaw, obviously not thrilled at being called overprotective.
“You’re a refugee in all this?” Josh asks. He looks at Jonas, confounded. “What the fuck’s going on, Jonas?”
Jonas grunts, yet again. “Sit down.”
Josh and Jonas sit.
Jonas takes a deep breath and starts to explain, beginning with Stacy’s yellow-bracelet-clad appearance and diatribe at the sports bar, then moving on to our “amazing” trip to Belize and the scary surprise we discovered in my apartment upon our return, and finishing up with his extreme concern that The Club might try to ensure my silence through means more violent than stealing my computer and wrecking my apartment. Throughout it all, Josh listens intently—nodding, pursing his lips, and occasionally glancing at Kat and me. For our part, Kat and I don’t make a peep while Jonas speaks, though we exchange a crap-ton of meaningful glances, smirks, and raised eyebrows the entire time.
In addition to engaging in a near-constant nonverbal dialogue with Kat, I also make several observations while Jonas speaks. One—and I realize this is totally irrelevant to the situation at large—holy frickin’ moly, Jonas Faraday turns me on, oh yeah, boy howdy, booyah, hellz yeah, whoa doggie, there’s no doubt about it. Just watching his luscious lips move when he speaks—and how he licks them when he’s pausing to think—and how one side of his mouth rides up a little bit when he’s making a wry observation—just seeing the intelligence and intensity in his eyes and noticing the tattoos on his forearms and the bulge of his biceps when he runs his hands through his hair—and a thousand other things about him, too, all of them heart-palpitation-inducing—it’s enough to make me want to get all over that boy like tie dye on a hippie.
Gah.
The second observation that leaps out at me while Jonas is speaking is that, man oh man, my supernaturally good-lookin’ boyfriend’s got the hots for me, too—like, oh my God, so, so bad—and, looping back to observation number one, that effing turns me on like boom on a bomb. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so turned on by him being so turned on by me, considering the circumstances—I’m certain I should be consumed with fear and apprehension instead of my hormones right now—but I can’t help myself. When Jonas says Belize was “life-changing” for him and calls me “magnificent” and “smart as hell” and “wise,” and when he stutters a bit and blushes like a vine-ripened tomato when he says all of it, I feel like he’s standing on a mountaintop declaring his raging, thumping, ardent desire for me. And it turns me on.
I’ve never felt so adored and safe and free to be me in my whole life as I am with Jonas. It’s like I’m a big ol’ vat of mustard—just yellow mustard and nothing else—and up ‘til now I’ve lived my whole life worrying the guys I’m attracted to, the guys who say they really, really like mustard, might actually crave a little ketchup or relish or mayo to go along with their mustard, at least occasionally—and who could blame them? And then, all of a sudden, through dumb luck in the most unexpected way, I’ve stumbled upon the hottest guy in the universe who happens to have a bizarre mustard fetish, an insatiable appetite for frickin’ mustard to the exclusion of all other condiments! It’s like I can’t lose, no matter what I say or do or think because I’m goddamned mustard, bitches. It’s blowing my mind and wreaking havoc on my body to be adored like this, to be seen and understood and accepted so completely. Not to mention fucked so brilliantly. Jonas fucked me so well in Belize, a howler monkey outside our tree house lit a cigarette.
It’s like I’ve been bottled up my whole life and this beautiful man has uncorked me. Yes, that’s it—I’m frick
in’ uncorked, baby. Pop! And now that I am, all I keep thinking about is giving my sweet Jonas, my Hottie McHottie of a boyfriend—my baby, my love, my manly man with sad eyes and luscious lips—pleasure and excitement and thrills and chills and orgasms and assurances and safety and adoration and understanding and acceptance and good old fashioned fuckery like nothing he’s experienced before—“untethering” him the way he’s so profoundly untethered me.
Gah.
But enough about that. For now. Obviously, we’ve got bigger fish to fry than satisfying my insatiable lady-boner for the supremely gorgeous Jonas Faraday.
Focus, focus, focus.
Whew.
The third (and more germane) observation I make while my muscled, rippling, smokin’ hot, hunky-monkey of a boyfriend speaks to his brother—wooh! I just made myself hot for him again—is that Jonas noticeably doesn’t start his explanation to Josh by mentioning any details about The Club—neither its existence nor its purported premise. At first, I’m confused by that omission, but quickly it becomes clear that particular piece of exposition isn’t at all necessary... because... wait for it... Josh already knows all about The Club. And even more surprising than that, it’s also quite clear, based on a couple things Jonas says—for example, “Hey, Josh, did you keep any of your emails from them?”—that Josh himself was a member of The Club at some point before Jonas.
The minute that shocking but fascinating cat lurches out of its bag, Kat shoots me a look that says “holy shitballs”—and I acknowledge her expression with a “holy crappola” look of my own. Very, very interesting. Apparently, neither Faraday apple fell too far from the Faraday horndog tree.
But although I’m surprised to find out about Josh’s membership, I’m not fazed by it. Maybe it’s because I’ve processed so many applications, including relatively tame ones from globetrotters like Josh, most of them perfectly normal and sweet. Or maybe it’s because, since meeting Jonas, my own rampant sex drive has enslaved me and turned me into a horndog, too—so how could I presume to judge anyone else?