by Lisa Cach
"But you don't want to be his young little sex trophy, either, stashed away in his apartment to come pork whenever he feels like it."
Emma scowled. "Why not? Why not for once just have fun with sex, instead of trying to tie it up into a big complicated relationship? I don't have time for a relationship. I don't feel like nurturing some guys ego and having him suck up all my free time. I have better things to do!"
Beth gaped at her.
The waitress set their lunches in front of them. "Is there anything else I can bring you?"
Emma flashed her a smile. "No, thanks."
The aroma of chicken cacciatore stirred Beth back to the present. "I always thought it was true love and Prince Charming you were waiting for. I never thought you cared about sex for the sake of sex."
Emma dug into her grilled salmon. "Yeah, well. Just because I didn't have any for a long time doesn't mean I didn't want it."
"But do you really not care about not having a relationship along with it?"
"I just…" she started, but then couldn't find words to explain what she had not yet completely reconciled within herself. "I just know that I'm horny and that I want to devote my energies to my career right now. Can I have sex on a regular basis with the same man and not get emotionally involved? I don't know. I've never tried."
"Can you even enjoy it that way?"
"I'm willing to give it a shot."
"I had a few relationships like that, where by the end I didn't care about the guy," Beth said. "Whenever we had sex, while I was lying under him and he was grunting away on me, tears would roll down my cheeks. The worst part of it was that the jerk never even noticed."
"Jeez, Beth. If you were crying during sex, why did you keep doing it?"
She shrugged. "The relationships usually ended a couple weeks later. It became a pretty good warning sign that things had gone sour."
"I should think so."
"The weird thing was, I didn't know that I felt nothing for the guy anymore until I started crying. It's like my body knew, even if my brain didn't."
Emma shivered. "I hope that doesn't happen to me."
"If it does, don't ignore it. No orgasm is worth feeling like crap."
Emma tried to shake Beth's words off. "I wonder if men ever feel that way?"
"I can't imagine that they do. An orgasm is an orgasm is an orgasm to them. What's not, to like? I mean, they pay hookers for sex, and that's got to be about as 'I don't care about her' as you can get."
"I guess you're right," Emma said weakly.
"Isn't there a famous quote that goes something like, 'Men don't pay women for sex. They pay them to go away after.'"
Emma was getting queasy. She wanted Russ to like her; to respect her, even. To enjoy spending time with her. "I read somewhere that when a man comes, he gets the same burst of oxytocin that a woman gets when someone hugs her."
"What's oxytocin?" Beth asked.
"You know, it's that hormone that makes people bond to each other. Mothers to babies, women to men. You'll supposedly get big bursts of it when you breast-feed."
"God, I hope so. At the moment I feel like this baby is the alien that took over my body."
"Anyway, women get bursts of oxytocin when they're touched. Men only get a healthy dose of it when they come. It makes them feel love. Supposedly." Emma shrugged.
"Which would explain why they declare their devotion after they've had their little 'moment.' And here I always thought it was gratitude for sex that prompted that 'I love you.'"
Emma laughed. "Nope. Chemicals."
Beth sighed. "I always knew that I'd better put out on a regular basis if I didn't want Ty to stray."
"I hope there's more to his fidelity than that," Emma said. "I hope there's more to any guy's fidelity. We can't all be the same to them."
Beth speared a mushroom with her fork. "Just a hole to put it in. That's all we are."
"You don't really believe that, do you?"
"I don't know. Sometimes I feel like all I am to Ty is that woman who does his laundry and cooks his dinner, and who's convenient when he wants to get off. He doesn't even seem interested in the baby." Beth sniffled.
"But you know he loves you."
"Does he? Maybe it's the path of least resistance for him to stay with me. He hates confrontation. He'd rather endure misery in silence than fight."
"But I think that's true of most guys," Emma protested. "Have you talked to him? Let him know how you're feeling?"
Beth snorted. "Oh, yeah, that will go over well. The last thing a guy wants to hear from any woman is, 'We need to talk.' No, I think your plan to seduce your cute landlord is better than I first thought: sex without attachment, where you can take what you need and leave the rest of the relationship mess behind. Everything will be on your own terms."
"That's what I'm hoping," Emma said, but found herself plagued by a niggling sense of doubt.
Chapter Eight
What's all this?" Russ asked. Emma looked up from where she was pouring the juices out of the roasting pan into a small bowl. "Don't look at those!" How could she have forgotten to hide her dismal sketches for the train station?
"What are they?" he asked again, a glass of Chianti in one hand, the other hand moving the sketches around her drafting table.
Emma slammed down the pan and scampered around the breakfast bar to the living room. "Don't look! They're terrible!" She grabbed the papers and flipped them over.
"I didn't see anything terrible. What are they drawings of?"
"They're designs for a train station," she admitted. "For the King Street Station, actually. There's a contest."
"That's right, I heard about that. So you're going to enter?"
"Not if I can't think up anything better than this," she said.
"If I can offer a piece of advice?"
She stiffened, wary of criticism. "What?"
"I don't know anything about architecture, but I know a little about committees. Whatever key words or phrases they use in describing the objective of the contest, be sure to repeat those same words and phrases back to them in the description of your entry. They love that."
"Oh," she said, and blinked in surprise. "That's very helpful."
He laughed. "You didn't think I was going to try to give you advice on the design, did you?" He gestured at the photos on the wall. "With an eye like yours, I have no doubt you'll come up with something stunning."
She smiled crookedly. "Thanks for the confidence. I wish I shared it."
"If you keep working at it, I'm sure you'll surprise yourself with what you can create."
Emma headed back to the kitchen, hoping that was true. Everything she drew felt hopelessly pedestrian. No hint of flair, no nod to the uniqueness of Seattle beyond the tired attempt to throw salmon and fir trees into the design.
Over the weekend she'd found herself abandoning her drawings in favor of preparing for tonight; it was more entertaining to plan a complex dinner and sexual escapade than to sit and stare at blank paper and face the fear that she didn't possess the creativity she needed.
Tonight's sexual extravagance was number 64 from 101 Ways to Shock His Rocks, a piece of fine literature she'd purchased at a sex shop. Personally, she thought that number 64 was treading into disturbing territory, but the description promised to draw a night of unforgettable, primitive passion from her man. Who was she to argue? She'd thought that most of the stuff in the sex shop was icky, but it wouldn't be such a profitable business if it didn't deliver what it promised.
At least, that's what she'd told herself as she handed her Visa to the cashier and slunk out of the store with a big plastic bag of obscene treasures.
She plated their meals and carried them and the bowl of pan juices out to the table. Russ joined her.
"Duck stuffed with chicken liver, candied orange, and pears," she announced, setting the plates down. "Green beans braised with tomatoes and basil. And there's a cream cheese crostata with orange marmalade for desse
rt."
"This is amazing."
She stared at the plates of food, so prettily done, and frowned. "It's not."
"What?"
She sat down as he held her chair for her and clenched her teeth against the threat of tears. "It's just recipes from a magazine. I didn't even come up with menu myself: I used the magazine for that, too."
"Uh…so?"
She shook her head angrily. "No creativity! A true cook creates her own recipes and instinctively understands what foods go together to make a meal. I just follow the directions I'm given!"
"I'd have a mess on my hands if I tried that. I probably wouldn't know what half the ingredients were, to begin with."
"But maybe you'd be creative. I'm not-I don't take any risks. I don't substitute, I don't experiment, or vary. I don't fling things together with whatever is in the pantry."
He was quiet, seeming not to know how to respond. Why was she dumping this on him? He wasn't her boyfriend. He wasn't here to listen to her problems; he was here for a pleasant evening of food and sex.
"Let's eat," she said, picking up her fork. "It's getting cold."
They ate in silence for several minutes. Emma stewed in a broth of her own insecurities, basting herself with self-criticism. When Russ spoke, it was as if the words were coming from far away and it took her a moment to hear what he was asking.
"Did your mother cook this way? Duck, chicken livers, etcetera."
"Sometimes. Not usually. It would be a bit much for two picky kids."
"So once you were on your own, you started cooking this way?
She laughed. "It's not exactly in my budget."
"And yet you expect yourself to have mastery of a skill that people spend a lifetime developing?"
She stabbed a bean with her fork and lifted it up as Exhibit A. "Beans and tomatoes are humble ingredients. There should be creativity even with humble ingredients. I've cooked plenty of beans and tomatoes in my life. Why did I never think to put them together?"
"That's an impossible question. You may as well ask why you never paired beans with apricots or peanuts or kumquats."
"I appreciate your attempt at logic." She knew he was trying to help, but sometimes logic didn't tell the whole story. "The answer would be the same, though: I'm not a creative cook."
"You're too hard on yourself. It takes mastery of the basics of any skill before creativity and experimentation can be done with a regular degree of success. I doubt that at your age you have sufficient mastery of any skill to allow you to be a creative genius in its sphere."
"I think you meant to comfort me by saying that," Emma commented wryly.
A little frown of worry appeared between his brows. "Did I succeed?"
She shrugged one shoulder, feeling a bit better despite herself. "Perhaps."
He nodded in satisfaction and turned his attention to the duck, cutting off a neat piece with knife and fork. "Good. A bit of reason is more effective than a hug. Lasts longer, too."
Emma coughed on her sip of wine. "I'm no longer puzzled that you're not married yet."
He looked at her in surprise.
"Oh, come on," she said. "Don't tell me you honestly don't see that a woman you were romantically involved with would want the hug first, reasoning later. If at all."
"But reasoning and thoughts do affect a person's emotional state."
"And so does a hug, at least for a woman. And the hug will get quicker results."
"Give a woman a hug and she's happy for a day. Teach a woman to reason and-"
"You did not just say that."
"No, I didn't. You interrupted me."
She raised one brow. "Excuse me. You were saying?"
"Teach a woman to reason, and she'll find seventeen ways in which you are wrong, with subparts A and B for six of them."
"You have a hostile view toward women, don't you? I thought you were just kidding, that first day when you told Kevin that gold diggers would be after him."
"It's not a hostile view."
"Then what is it?"
He chewed for a minute, then glanced her way. "Wary."
She cocked her head. "Wary? Why?"
"Alien race. Can't predict what they're going to do. How they're going to react."
Had someone hurt him, beyond the ordinary heartbreaks of love? Emma stared at him, trying to discern the truth from the subtle clues hidden in inflections of his voice and the microexpressions of his face.
"Men and women hurt each other," she said. "That's never going to change; it comes with the territory. But it's a glorious territory, all considered, and I wouldn't want to live my life without spending a good deal of time in it."
"Just not now."
"No, not at this moment. Except like this," she said, gesturing between them. She looked at him for a moment, considering. "Can I tell you something?"
"Sure."
"I wasn't certain, initially, that I wanted to do this. I mean, it's kind of sleazy-sounding on the surface, don't you think? After all, being paid for sex isn't exactly what most girls aim for in life."
"Er, no, I suppose not."
"But the truth is," she said, leaning forward confidentially, "I'm kind of having fun."
His brows rose.
"I know! It's crazy, isn't it? And the naughtiness kind of turns me on. I know that submitting to a man's sexual appetites for the sake of money is supposed to be degrading. I'm supposed to be ashamed. But I'm not. Bad me, huh? And bad, wicked you."
"I've thought a hundred times about canceling our arrangement."
That surprised her.
He went on, "You're not the only one who feels they're supposed to hold themselves to a higher standard of behavior."
"Then why didn't you call this off?"
He looked at her incredulously. "You really need to ask?"
A slow grin stretched across her lips. "You like it, don't you?"
"Don't look at me like that."
"Like what?"
"Like a witch who has her victim under her spell."
"Is that what I've done? Ensorcelled you?"
Emma felt a surge of arousal. She would never have guessed that a man could want her badly enough that he would go against his own sense of decency to have her. No one had ever wanted her like that.
She stood and came around the small table to him, feeling utterly confident. She slid her hand around his neck and kissed him slowly, brushing him gently at first and then running her tongue lightly over his bottom lip.
He turned toward her, hands going to her waist, his desire answering her demands. Without thinking she straddled him, sitting on his lap with her panty-clad crotch wide open and pressed against the zipper of his trousers. She felt him thickening beneath her, and rubbed herself against him.
The kiss deepened, mouths opening, and she sucked on his tongue, sliding her own along it, reveling in the texture and the memory of what that tongue had done to her before. She felt his hand in her hair, holding her to him as if he would devour her. The strength of his arm around her waist felt better than anything else, the power of his lust and of his male body, so much larger than hers, making her feel deliciously small and desirable. She'd brought him to this state of arousal, and now she wanted him to set her free of control. She wanted to be taken.
Which reminded her. "We still have crostata to eat," she breathed, breaking the kiss.
"Forget the crostata?
She found purchase on the floor for her feet and lifted her weight off his lap. After a moment his arms around her loosened and she climbed off him, going back to her place at the table. She picked up her flatware as if to resume eating.
"Crostata?" he said in disbelief.
She looked at him and smiled with satisfaction. His shirt and hair were rumpled and he looked like someone had just woken him from a dream. "I worked very hard on it. I also worked hard on my preparations for the other things we're going to do tonight."
"Flexibility in the face of changing circumstances
is very good for creativity," he said earnestly.
She laughed. "Maybe. But you still have to wait."
Emma cut herself another bite of duck and felt a quiver of doubt. Maybe it wasn't so wise to stop now. Maybe it would be better to go for it while the mood was upon them, instead of trying to make the evening fit her carefully planned script.
But after all that planning and practicing and debating and buying the right music, she couldn't bring herself to alter her plan.
She ate the last of her duck, which had turned out better than any duckly improvisation she could have made. Maybe Russ was right, and she shouldn't expect herself, with her limited experience, to be able to innovate.
But then where did that leave her chances with designing the train station? Maybe she was reaching beyond her grasp.
The small voice of her soul rebelled against the thought, just as it had always rebelled-quietly, often unobserved- when she felt that someone expected less of her than she expected of herself. She never wanted to be mediocre or settle for "good enough." It was the curse of being a perfectionist.
There must have been a hard-driven perfectionist inside of Russ, as well, to have achieved what he had. How else was a young person going to make it in this world?
"These are your instructions."
Russ took the typed sheet that Emma handed him. "Instructions?"
"For our 'entertainment' tonight."
Instructions. Great. He scanned the sheet, his attention catching at the script in the middle. "You want me to say that?" he asked in disbelief.
She nodded, her face serious. "Please."
He scanned the rest of the sheet, growing alarmed. "You're sure about this?"
She nodded.
"I don't want you to get hurt."
"I won't. And look, see there?" She reached over the top of the paper and pointed to one short sentence. "That's our 'safe' word: apple. If I say apple, then we stop."
Hell's bells. He'd never engaged in sexual activities that required a safe word. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her to forget this crazy plan and just have good, plain, old-fashioned sex. But then he met her eyes and saw the uncertain, hopeful expectation there, and he remembered that she'd worked so hard on her plans for this evening. "Okay, let's give this a go."