‘Baby, I’m gonna come.’ No sooner had he spoken the words than she felt the beginning of his orgasm. He collapsed on top of her and lay there for a bit. ‘Man, I’m starving,’ he said. ‘What’s for dinner?’
‘What’s for dinner? What’s for dinner? Hey! What about me?’
‘Oh, Emmie, oh no!’
Immaculata laughed. ‘It’s all right. This was only round one. There’s some Chinese in the fridge and then you can have me for desert!’
He rolled off of her, looking kind of sheepish, and headed in the direction of the kitchen. She realized she was still holding her hairpins. She set them on the bed table and followed his retreating form.
About the Story
The Plaza Hotel sits at the south-eastern tip of Central Park, at Grand Army Plaza, bounded primarily by 5th Avenue and Central Park South (or 59th Street). It’s been there since 1907. It was sold in 2004 and closed its doors to the public for renovation. Since the renovations were expected to take an unknown amount of time, the hotel staff, many of whom had worked their entire adult lives at The Plaza, were let go. I had the pleasure of attending the last affair held in The Grand Ballroom before the hotel was set to close. The waiters were surly, but who could blame them?
You see, New York is a city of professional waiters; not the sort of waiters who tell you their names and don’t know how to pronounce the specials, but the sort who belong to the waiter’s union and have made a career out of waiting table. It’s the same for the housekeeping staff, the bartenders and the doormen at all the elite institutions, like The Plaza.
So The Plaza was sold to some Israeli guy and then it was closed. I guess, in a way, the thought of losing the landmark made me feel a bit like the surly waiters. The evening and my thoughts about the closure stuck with me … and then morphed into an erotic story about my city. Go figure. But that’s what I do. Most of my thoughts end up working their way into an erotic story somewhere along the line.
Park Suite is another of my love songs to New York and, as with any good love song, it’s got its passionately dirty moments, as well as its romantic ones. I hope you were able to get a taste of the energy, the people, the attitude and the romance of the city. If you did, even a little, I’ve been successful.
Passion Hack
by Michael Hemmingson
1
Fifteen minutes after her boss left for lunch, a man in a blue shirt delivered a dozen yellow roses to Jill Emerson. On the card: Happy birthday, sexy darling.
There was no mistake about who sent them; there was only one man who called her sexy darling and she both loathed and welcomed it. They were meaningless words from him because he was a married man, and they were words that made her feel attractive and wanted.
It wasn’t like there were any other men saying these words, or delivering her flowers.
Her boss, Evan Hudson, a tax lawyer, returned forty minutes later and she could smell the three-martini lunch lingering around him.
‘Well, look at those,’ he said, eying the roses.
She had placed them prominently on her desk.
‘Yes, they came while you were away, Mr Hudson.’
‘Looks like someone is vying for you attention, Jill.’
‘They seem to have gotten it, Mr Hudson,’ she said.
He went into his office leaving her at her small desk, her manual typewriter, her phone and intercom, and her roses.
A few minutes later, the intercom buzzed. ‘Can you come in here for a moment, Jill?’
‘Yes, Mr Hudson.’
She straightened her long brown wool skirt, adjusted her pale blue blouse, opened the door to the inner sanctum of her boss’s office, and walked in.
She knew what was coming and she was both scared and excited, like she always was.
It was a different world in his office: the space was huge, three times the size of the room she rented in the Village. There was original art on the walls, and framed photos of Evan Hudson’s trips around the world: big game safari in Africa, marlin fishing in the Florida Keys, trout fishing in various places in America, climbing mountains somewhere in Europe. He kept photos of his wife and three kids on his desk. At age forty-seven, Evan Hudson, Esq., was a success, fit, tanned, had a full set of hair, some grey, always wore $200 suits, and was attractive to many women, whether he was married or not.
And here she was, she thought, just 22 years old today, and she was in love with him, trapped in a hopeless fantasy that one day soon he would leave his wife and marry her, and she would have her photo on his desk and the new Mrs Hudson.
He was at the fully-stocked bar, making two scotch and sodas.
‘Bitters?’ he asked.
‘Yes, please.’ Why did he always ask what he should have known? How many drinks had she had in this office with him?
He turned and handed her the drink. ‘I just wanted to say, Jill … happy birthday.’
‘Thank you for the flowers … Evan.’ It was Mr Hudson outside this space, where others in the office might hear them, Evan inside, or in a bar, restaurant, or hotel room.
‘Cheers.’
They drank. He gulped the scotch down and she sipped. It was afternoon; she didn’t like to get tipsy this early, or at work.
She knew what was coming next. He was feeling randy after the martinis.
‘My God, those big beautiful breasts,’ he said, moving in to grab one with his free hand.
Then he kissed her.
She could taste the vodka and vermouth on his tongue, mixed with cigarette and scotch. Not the best for kissing, or even smelling, but she was used to it, and she wanted him now. Her fear subsided, replaced with sinful lust.
She whispered, ‘Take me if you want.’
‘A birthday roll.’
‘I’ve been waiting for this all day,’ she admitted, without shame.
‘You wanton little wench, always ready and willing for a good time. Have I said how glad I am that I hired you?’
Jill unbuttoned her blouse and removed it. Then: off with the bra. Hudson immediately placed his hands and mouth on her breasts, licking and gently biting her hard, pink nipples.
‘Firm, wonderful, 22-year-old tits,’ he said, his voice muffled.
Yes she knew: he didn’t get this at home from his 39-year-old wife.
They moved to the leather sofa, where clients usually sat, where he had undoubtedly made other young women in the past. She never asked how many other secretaries he had slept with and she didn’t want to know.
She removed her skirt and panties, leaving the garters on. She wore them to work because she knew how much he liked them.
Hudson was pulling down his trousers and loosening his shirt and tie.
‘My diaphragm is in, don’t worry,’ she told him.
‘You came prepared,’ he said with a little laugh. ‘You tricky trollop.’
‘This sinning strumpet wants you now, darling,’ she said with her arms out.
He took a moment to admire her. ‘A natural blonde, how lucky am I? Sometimes I feel like I have it all.’
You do, she thought, you have a large home on Long Island, you have a wife who is a successful children’s book author, you have children who excel in school, you have a profitable job, and you’re laying your blonde secretary: what more could a middle-aged man desire?
He positioned himself over her. She took his erect manhood in her hand and guided it into her warm, dark wetness. She always had to do this, he had bad aim. That was all right with her. She liked to touch it. She liked how it felt. He was the third man she’d been with in her life and she never touched the other two. She wondered what it was like to have it in her mouth; she heard about girls doing this but she had not tried it yet. She was too embarrassed to bring it up with Hudson and she always hoped he would ask her but he never did.
They
made love for twenty minutes on the office couch. The one positive factor of his three-martini lunch was that alcohol caused him to not reach fulfilment so fast; when he didn’t drink, sex was generally five minutes or less and it usually took Jill ten minutes to reach satisfaction. Today, she had two of them: two birthday orgasms, feeling light-headed and warm from the bourbon.
Afterwards, they lay on the couch in each other’s arms and didn’t speak for fifteen minutes. It was very nice being this way; they were comfortable with each other’s naked bodies, like married people.
‘Again?’ she suggested.
‘Oh, I wish I could, sexy darling, but I’m an old man,’ he reminded her, ‘and there’s still work to be done.’
With that, he stood up, pulled his trousers up, adjusted his tie.
She dressed.
‘Take your time, darling,’ he said. He sat behind the oak wood desk and leaned back in the swivel chair. ‘I love watching you put your clothes on after sex,’ he told her, ‘as much as I love watching you take them off.’
She gave him his show: slowly putting her skirt back on, zipping it to the side, snug against her round hips. She her put bra on, turning away to tease him. ‘No fair!’ he said and chuckled. She did a little dance with the blouse, then buttoned it up.
‘Thank you for the flowers and the sex,’ she said.
‘Hey, that’s what I’m here for.’
‘Need any letters typed?’
‘In a few minutes, darling. Oh, I’m leaving two hours early today, at three, so you can leave whenever you want after three.’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Why three?’
‘Andrea is in town, meeting with her editor,’ he said cautiously. Andrea was his wife and he knew it was a sensitive subject with his secretary/lover.
‘I see,’ Jill said.
She tried to not to let it show: disappointment, anger, jealousy. She loathed these feelings; she only wanted happiness, contentment, and love.
‘Dinner tomorrow night, perhaps?’ he said.
‘OK,’ she said weakly.
She turned to leave.
Her boss said, ‘Hey, happy birthday again, sexy darling.’
‘Thank you again … Mr Hudson.’
Sitting at her desk, she wanted to scream and cry. The other secretaries in the office passed by and commented on her nice roses. ‘Your boyfriend, or a secret admirer?’ they said.
She only smiled and didn’t reply.
The smile was an effort.
She felt miserable.
She wanted to jump off the Empire State Building.
And maybe she would. She’d go have a few drinks and then make her way over to the tall building, ride the elevator to the top, and end her pain in one quick gesture of hopelessness. People jumped from there often, she heard, making quite a mess on the ground, the way King Kong did in that Fay Wray movie.
What was she doing? Was she crazy? She felt pathetic. Here she was, twenty-two, and crazily in love with her married boss. Was it love, truly? It was something.
He’d never leave his wife, they were too good a couple: the rich lawyer and the respected author. She had seen their photos in the society pages and tried to picture herself in the role. She was just a simple girl from Bloomington, Indiana, a secretary with no college degree.
The only thing she had going for her was her looks: long blonde hair, big breasts, curvy hips, sleek legs. When she had come to New York three years ago, age nineteen, men told her she could make money modelling; not fashion or glamour modelling, but semi-nude or even nude. She was told there was quite a market and girls made a good living. She refused.
Here she was, today, on April 21, 1959: twenty-two and going nowhere. She had no future, at least not with Evan Hudson, Esq. Why couldn’t she meet a nice, unattached man here in Manhattan, her age, maybe early 30s, looking for a good wife to settle down and have 2.5 kids with? The New Jersey house, the summer cottage upstate, three cars, a maid or nanny, the whole works. Was that too much for a girl to ask for, to dream?
2
Jill Emerson left the office at 3:30 p.m., a half an hour after her boss departed to meet his wife. She finished up the letters he had dictated on the recorder, placed them in envelopes and into the outgoing mail bin, and got the hell out of that building on Eighth Street near MacDougal.
The one good thing about working in an office near Greenwich Village was that she could walk to work; she had rented a simple room two months ago. Before that, she lived in Brooklyn and had to take the crowded, smelly subway and deal with the prying eyes of perverted men and college boys asking her for a date.
Also, with a room nearby, Hudson didn’t always have to rent a hotel room if they were going to spend time together. He didn’t care much for the room, too cramped; he liked to spend his money on lavish suites uptown. They had only spent the night together once during the past five months, when his wife was out of town.
Thinking about her lacklustre, tawdry affair made her want to drink. She decided to go to the bar on Seventh Avenue, not too far from where she lived in the four-story brownstone on Grove Street, a quieter section of the Village, away from all the jazz clubs and beatniks on the street shouting out poetry and playing bongos.
The bar was called Rainy Day. It was a cosy, dark little hole in the wall, generally a mixture of business people and Village residents who didn’t mind the over-priced drinks. She had never been here alone; she always came with Evan, and he paid for the drinks. What the hell, it was her birthday, she would splurge on a few.
On her second martini, feeling warm and fuzzy, she decided the hell with Evan Hudson, married lawyer, and she would go to bed with the first man who bought her a drink and tried to make her. She hoped he wasn’t too old or bad-looking.
C’mon, boys, who will it be?
Several men in the bar had looked her over, but none had yet come to talk to her.
Finally, one sat next to her at the counter.
He walked in, looked around, and took the empty seat next to her. He ordered a beer. He acted like he didn’t notice her. She pushed her breasts out ever so subtly and asked the bartender for a third martini.
‘Olives, get lots of olives,’ the man next to her said. ‘Three, maybe five.’
‘One is good enough for me,’ she said.
‘They’re healthy, good for your liver as the booze eats it away. That’s why I stick to beer. I feel sorry for my liver. We used to be such good pals.’
She giggled. A funny guy. She considered him: she guessed he was in his mid or late twenties, or he could be in his early thirties and just had a boyish look to him. He also had a boyish charm, with that almost irresistible smile; his teeth were a little uneven but they looked healthy and white, not always the case with barflies. If he was a regular boozer, he seemed out of place for the Village in a flannel shirt and khaki pants.
‘How about your heart?’ she asked.
‘Eh?’
‘Are you friends with your heart?’
He thought about that. ‘I’d like to be, but the ol’ heart is a stranger. Maybe I need to take my heart out to a romantic dinner.’ He drank a shot of rye next. ‘Or maybe just go straight to the sack with it and show it a wild good night, one for the books.’
She sipped her martini as he ordered another shot, this time bourbon, and another beer, mumbling it wasn’t a rye sort of day.
She said, ‘I’m starting to think my heart has it in for me. It’s my secret enemy, wishing me ill will.’
‘A foe?’
‘A friend who betrays.’
‘A nemesis!’
‘Sure.’
‘Best to break your own heart first, before someone else does,’ he said. ‘This way you’ll be toughened up when someone comes after it, ready to toss it on the linoleum and smash it under boot.’
She
giggled again. ‘You’re a funny man, Mr …?’
‘Challon. David Challon.’
‘Mr Challon.’
‘David, please.’
‘Dave?’
‘Dave works.’
‘I’m Jill.’
‘Hi, Jill.’
‘Hello, David.’
‘Dave!’
‘David,’ and she giggled again.
‘Can I buy you another martini?’
‘I’ll have what you’re having.’
‘Bourbon?’
‘Why not. I started the day with it.’
‘Two bourbons!’ he said to the barkeep.
3
He wasn’t from the Village, said he lived uptown in a rented room. He was down here to visit ‘a friend’ and stopped off at Rainy Day before taking the subway back home.
Jill didn’t press him if this friend was a woman or a man, since he said the word with a bitter inflection to his voice.
She didn’t care, either.
She liked him, though; he was witty and articulate and could hold his booze well. He wasn’t hard on the eyes, either; which was why, after a number of drinks, she invited him to her room on Grove Street and they immediately got busy with the act of sex.
She pushed Hudson out of her head; she didn’t want to think about the fact that she would now have slept with two men on the same day. That’s something tramps and prostitutes did, not a career girl.
What did it matter?
He was here; he was taking her clothes off; he was already naked, and they fell onto the single bed that sat in the corner of the room, where she took her pleasure from the obelisk of his strength .
It erupted into a quick and furious climax. The bold delights she sought thrust her to a crest and dropped her as if the earth had fallen away from under her lust-drunk body. She lay there, trembling and quivering, with the warm delight of fulfilment.
And she lay sleepless that night in her bed, going over it again and again. She wanted to make it last for ever in the aching sweetness that was never meant to last, too violent to last, too agonizingly pleasurable to end.
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