by Selena Kitt
“Ewwwwww, then I’m definitely going to Ashley’s.” Christa wrinkled her freckled nose, and Jim smiled. She looked exactly like her mother when she did that.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jim asked, heading down the stairs.
“You know!” Christa called back, making squeaking sounds. “Ee-eee-eee-eee-eee!”
Jim flushed, looking back over his shoulder, recognizing her attempt at the imitation of the sounds of the mattress he shared with her mother, but Christa was already in her room. “You can hear us?” he asked, thinking it had been so long, he couldn’t really remember the last time he and Rachel had made love.
“Well, only the bed, actually,” she replied, peeking her head around the corner. “Which is good, really, because Ashley’s mom sounds like Lassie, you should hear her! Owwww-owwwww-owwwwwwwwoooo!” Christa howled and then giggled.
“Christa!” Jim tried to make sure he intoned the right amount of disapproval.
“Oh, Dad, you should hear the words she uses!” Christa said, her eyes widening. “I can’t even repeat them to you!”
“You shouldn’t,” he agreed, turning fully toward her on the stairs now, his hand gripping the rail. “What does she say?”
“Dad!” Christa’s complexion pinked, but her blue eyes were dancing, as if delighted with his question.
“Okay.” He shrugged, moving to go. “Just curious. You can tell me if you want.”
“Wait!” Christa lowered her voice to a conspiratorial tone. She came and plopped herself down on the top stair, tucking her hair behind her ears and looking past him as if she were afraid someone might hear her. “Dad, she says the naughtiest things, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you!”
“Try me,” Jim replied, shifting his weight on the stairs. He was wearing dress slacks that didn’t hide an erection very well, and he could feel himself beginning to stiffen at the thought of dirty talk. Standing here looking at Christa’s milk-white thighs splayed open to show the crease of her sex in red jogging shorts wasn’t helping the situation much either, he mused.
Christa was really blushing now, and her voice rose an octave as she repeated, “Oh David, fuck me harder! Oooo yeah, I can take it all! That’s it, baby, slam your prick into my hot cunt!”
Jim’s eyes widened as he listened to her, breath caught in his throat, his cock straining against his underwear. “Okay, Christa.” He turned his back to her, not willing to risk her seeing how hard she had just made him. “Enough.”
“You said you wanted to hear.” She pouted, flouncing up the stairs and going back to her room.
“Thanks for sharing,” he called back over his shoulder as he turned the corner toward the kitchen. Jim leaned against the counter, cheeks flushed, cock throbbing. Jesus, all those nasty words out of Christa’s mouth! He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to imagine Rachel saying anything like it, and simply couldn’t.
Maybe tonight, he thought, shifting the bulge in his pants and getting the bottle of wine from the counter. He set up two glasses and sat down at the table, willing his heart to stop beating so fast. From here, he could see the Parker house, which was parallel to the Stevens’ on the next block, where Ashley and her apparently raunchy mother lived. Jim had seen her on many occasions over the years, but he never would have guessed that Linda Stevens could open up her mouth and say anything close to the string of words Christa had put together upstairs. He wondered if she had just been putting him on.
He saw the headlights of Rachel’s Intrepid appear on the garage door, and he smiled, imagining her gathering up her purse, her bag with all her lesson plans. It was such a sweet moment of anticipation, the time between knowing she was home and waiting for her to appear. The side door opened and she swept in carrying a hamster cage, complete with hamster.
Jim stood, his eyebrows raised as he moved instinctively to help her. “Uh, what’s this?”
She let him take the cage and he looked around for the best place to put it, deciding on the counter. Jim peered in at a little sleeping ball nearly the color of peach fuzz curled into one corner.
“Taffy, remember?” She began unslinging purses and bags from her shoulder, hanging them over a kitchen chair. “Classroom hamster. Jody Cornwell was supposed to take him home over spring break, but he has the chicken pox, and I couldn’t get anyone else’s parents’ permission in time. Poor little guy had to wait in the car while I was visiting with Kathy after work—uh, and what’s this?”
Rachel stood staring at the glasses and the wine and looked up at him, pushing her dishwater blond hair out of her face and frowning. Jim had used the corkscrew when he got home, careful to avoid an unmasculine display, just in case. He uncorked the bottle and began to pour them each a glass.
“We’re celebrating.” He offered her a glass of wine.
She smiled, her eyes questioning, and shook her head. “You know I don’t like this stuff.”
“Try it,” he said, clinking his glass with hers.
“What are we celebrating?” She lifted the glass to her nose, wrinkling it at the smell. Jim smiled, seeing again the resemblance between Rachel and his stepdaughter.
He waited, watching her sip it, her eyes surprised as she took her first taste. “It’s good, isn’t it? We are going out to dinner, just the two of us.”
“But what’s the occasion?” She took another sip. “This isn’t bad. Fruitier than most of the wine you’ve made me drink.” She winked at him. “But it still tastes like alcohol.”
Rachel sat at the kitchen table, kicking off her heels. As often as she complained about them, she still wore them, and Jim liked imagining her standing in front of a classroom of kindergarteners in those heels. She looked up at him, waiting.
Jim took a gulp of his wine. “We’re going to see my play.”
“Your… play?” Rachel set her glass on the table and stared at him.
Jim began talking fast. “It’s a long story, really, but I wrote it just after our honeymoon, and it was sitting up there gathering dust, and I took it out in January, when I made that New Year’s resolution to start writing again, remember?”
Rachel nodded, and inclined her head at him to continue.
Jim took another gulp of wine. “Well, it’s kind of funny how it all fell into place. I mentioned I was writing more than just copy to John, and he told me he was doing his photography again, and he’d entered his photos into some contest.”
Rachel stood, taking her glass to the sink.
Jim continued. “And he won something, actually. Anyway, I mentioned the play, and he told me about a woman he met who was starting a sort of dinner theater and she was looking for original plays.”
Rachel poured the rest of her wine down the sink, rinsing the glass and setting it on the counter next to the hamster cage. “So what’s this have to do with you?’”
“Well, she liked my play and she said she wanted to direct it,” he replied, pouring himself another glass of wine.
Rachel turned to him, crossing her arms over her chest. “And you want to do this?”
“Well, I kind of already did.” He avoided her eyes and took another gulp from his glass.
“Jim,” she sighed. “Is this, you know… one of those kinds of plays?”
“Well, yeah.” He stood and put his arms around her waist. “It’s an erotic kind of thing.”
Rachel rested her head on his chest with a sigh, holding completely still. “Well, I guess that tells me what you think of my opinion.”
“Come on, Rach. I was hoping you’d be excited, even a little proud...” Jim hugged her, kissing the creamy part in the middle of her platinum hair.
“Of what? You writing dirty stories?” She sniffed, shaking her head.
“I—” Jim was about to deny it and stopped. “I know how it makes you feel. I didn’t want to make you—” He shrugged, searching for the word. “Uncomfortable?”
She raised her eyes to meet his and Jim felt an urge kiss her perfect little mouth in a way
he never had before—he wanted to smear her pale pink lip gloss over her face and grind his lips into hers until she gasped. But he knew better.
Still, she was so naturally beautiful, her eyes like blue glass as they searched his face for something, her cheeks already slightly pink at the mention of what she termed “naughty stuff.” It was an endearing term, and she was dear to him, but their short courtship and just ten-month marriage had him wondering if his appetite had already changed. Maybe that was what all the erotica writing was about, his craving for another flavor, a different color, something spicy with his sweet.
“I really don’t want to have any part of it, Jim.” She looked up, blinking at him. “Don’t you understand that?”
“Come on, Rach…” He hugged her shoulders but she shrugged him off.
“No.” She took a step back, frowning. “It’s not okay with me. I don’t like that you did it, I don’t like that you hid it from me. I just don’t like it. You know, Brian never would’ve done anything like this. Never.”
He didn’t say anything about her reference to her perfect ex-husband. Sometimes he wondered why she’d ever divorced him in the first place. But of course he knew—Brian Davis had left her for another woman, a dancer. Someone exotic. More exciting, he imagined. But he wasn’t going to tell her that.
“Please. Listen, we’ve got to go in about half hour,” he admitted, looking at his watch. “We need to be there by six.”
“You need to be there. I’m not going anywhere.” She didn’t even look at him as she passed, and he heard her climbing the stairs, pausing to talk to Christa. He thought of her reading the card and poured himself another glass of wine. He lifted his glass to the hamster cage.
“Here’s lookin’ at you, Taffy,” he said, drinking it and wishing it was a shot of whiskey. He tapped on the glass, and the hamster yawned, showing its long teeth before turning and snuggling back into the little nest it had made for itself in the cedar.
When he went upstairs to ask her once more to come with him, he found her in the bathroom with the door locked and the tub running. On their bed, the card had been ripped into tiny pieces and the lingerie he’d left out had been shredded with a pair of scissors. The dress remained untouched.
Jim left it all, straightening his tie in the full-length mirror on the back of their bedroom door before heading out. He stopped at the bathroom, knocking gently. He noticed Christa’s light still on and wondered why she hadn’t left for Ashley’s yet. Probably still chatting on her cell phone.
“Rach? I’m leaving. Aren’t you at least going to tell me to break a leg?”
No answer. He sighed, turning to go, and then heard her call, “I hope you actually do!”
The play was such a success, he stayed far too long drinking at the after-party backstage, so long he was afraid he might get arrested for drunk driving on the way home. Although that might be preferable to facing Rachel, he mused, opening the driver’s side door of his Audi and sliding in. The car still retained the heat of the day—spring in Texas, he’d discovered in the past ten months, was hot, especially for a man used to the northern temperatures of New England.
He’d grown up in Massachusetts, which was where he’d met his future wife at a local coffee house, while he was spending the summer teaching college courses and she was visiting relatives. It turned out she’d been licking her wounds after her marriage breakup, and the courtship had been a whirlwind affair. He’d fallen for her hard, so hard he’d given up his teaching position, found work doing editing from home, and had married her and moved to Texas, all without ever even meeting her teenage daughter or seeing their new home.
Christa had been shocked when she arrived home from a summer at her father’s in California to find a new man living in her house. He couldn’t blame the kid. He could hardly believe it himself. Both his mother and his sister had railed against his decision, but he wouldn’t hear any of it. Rachel was the one. He’d been looking for someone like her his whole life, had remained unmarried, if not unattached, waiting for the right woman to walk into his life, and she finally had. The first time he saw her, that china doll face, her blonde hair, like an angel, the sweetest vision of his life, he just knew.
And then he’d met his new stepdaughter.
Jim quickly inserted the key so he could turn on the air conditioning. Images from the play he’d written soon after meeting his new stepdaughter ran through his head on a loop, all bright and sultry and hot. He’d written a good play, and the audience had shown their appreciation with two curtain calls, where a Lolita-type affair ended rather happily, instead of in tragedy, although the girl in question was, of course, of legal age. Lolita couldn’t be published in today’s politically correct climate, he thought, flipping the vent up so it blew directly on his flushed face. He was drunk. Far too drunk to drive.
The thought of climbing into the backseat and sleeping it off occurred to him just at the same moment that Christa’s tousled blond head popped up between the seats behind him, like something from a horror movie. He yelped—giving himself credit for not screaming outright like a girl—and twisted around to look at her.
“What in the hell are you doing here?”
She rubbed her sleepy eyes and yawned. “I came to see your play.”
“How did you—?” But of course he knew. His argument with Rachel hadn’t been quiet. Christa had overheard them. “…get here?” He finished his sentence differently than it had started out, watching, bemused, as Christa began to climb through the seats to the front. She tossed a pair of heels over first and then slid a slender, pale thigh through the narrow opening between the seats, wiggling her way through, climbing over the console.
“Ashley came with me.” Christa rolled her eyes at his shocked expression, settling herself into the passenger seat. “Don’t worry I didn’t tell her it was your play. I told her I was meeting a boy.” Christa turned toward him in the dimness, the circle of a streetlight making her eyes gleam. “She thought it was totally perverted, by the way.”
Jim felt heat creeping into his cheeks. “And what did you think?”
“I thought it was fucking hot.” She grinned, propping her bare foot up on the seat, fully facing him now, unladylike in her dress, letting her slim thighs part, giving him a view of her panties. The dress was an elegant little black number, but her panties were plain white cotton. Her mother bought them for her, he knew. They were exactly Rachel’s taste.
“Christa!” He was very glad for the darkness, both because of the redness of his face and because of, God help him, the erection beginning to tent his trousers.
“What?” She laughed as he reached for the gearshift, making the car lurch as he pulled out of the parking lot. “Isn’t that what you wanted? For people to get off? That girl went around in her underwear for half the play! Why did you name her Crystal?”
“I liked the name.” Jim shifted his Audi into a higher gear as he merged onto the highway. He liked driving a stick-shift, liked the control it gave him. He was careful to observe all posted speed limits.
“Uh-huh.” Christa laughed again, soft and knowing. She fished her purse from the back, and Jim couldn’t help glancing over as she did, her skirt riding high up her thighs, revealing the tender, rounded curve of her ass under those cotton panties, the stretch of her tendons behind the knee, bare pink-painted toes curled against the dashboard as she reached and panted, searching the backseat.
“Found it!” she announced, plopping back into her seat, both feet up on the dash now. “Sorry I didn’t tell you I was coming, but I felt bad when Mom said she wouldn’t. I thought one of us should show up and support you.”
“Well…” How could he fault her? In fact, he was proud and pleased she’d shown up. He glanced over as she fished a pack of gum out of her purse, unwrapping two and stuffing them into her mouth. She crumbled the little foil wrappers and dropped them onto the floor, much to his chagrin. “Thanks. You could have let me know you were here. I would have invite
d you backstage.”
“Nah.” Christa blew a quick bubble and snapped her gum, flipping on the radio. “Ashley wanted to go to the new teen nightclub in Houston, but I told her I was meeting someone, so I made her go without me.” She blew another bubble, bigger, held it longer this time, her pink tongue searching, stabbing through the sticky mass and popping it as she turned the radio dial. “Besides, I wanted to surprise you.”
“Well, you sure did.” His knack for understatement had never been so pronounced.
She grinned, settling on some pop station he didn’t recognize, her sideways look both knowing and a little shy. “The good kind?”
“Yes, sweetheart.” He reached over to pat her hand, which was resting on the rise of her pale knee, hoping it came across as a fatherly sort of thing, rather than the lecherous creeper he was feeling like. The argument going on in his head was one any psychiatrist worth their degree would love to be privy to. He was thinking thoughts he knew he shouldn’t let himself ponder. He was too drunk, too high on the night’s performance, and still too dejected by his wife’s rejection, to keep his thoughts at bay tonight. “It’s probably not the sort of play your mother would want you watching, but I appreciate the support. I truly do.”