Beautiful Losers (Modern Erotic Classics)

by Remittance Girl

  When he wrapped his arms around Jean, and pulled him tight to his chest, I heard Jean sigh, and took that as my cue to make another, less dramatic exit.

  Jean’s hand shot out and grabbed my ankle as I got to my feet. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Well, I thought I’d go home. I’ve got laundry to do and, if I turn up at work tomorrow in the same clothes I wore today – you know – people are going to start to talk,’ I joked.

  ‘Don’t go. Please,’ said Jean. ‘You can wear some of mine. I’ve got lots in Sebastian’s closet.’

  We were about the same size, but Jean was a good four inches taller than me. ‘I think everything you’ve got is a little long for me.’

  It was Sebastian who looked up, still holding Jean in his arms. ‘Shirakins, don’t be difficult. It’s the wrong time to be worried about what you’ll wear tomorrow.’

  That was rich, coming from someone who wouldn’t be caught dead in the same outfit twice in one month. Still, I got the sense that both of them were frightened that a wound that had been hemorrhaging only an hour before and had only just started to clot would break open and start bleeding again if I did anything to change the precarious balance that had been established with all this talk. I relented.

  ‘Okay. But can I have permission to pee?’

  Jean loosened his grip and snuggled back into Sebastian’s chest. ‘Only if you promise not to be too long, and bring a bottle of something on your way back.’

  I used the downstairs washroom and spent some time cleaning up my face. What I would have preferred was a shower; my earlier adventures with Sebastian had left a dirty, sticky feeling that still lingered. But I figured if I took too long someone would feel the need to come hunting for me. I did the best I could with a sink and a guest towel, and grabbed a bottle of vodka on my way back to the living room.

  There hadn’t been any reason to worry. I got back to find Sebastian had laid Jean down in front of the fire and was kissing him with an intensity that made it clear I could have bathed for hours and no one would have noticed.

  I cracked the bottle, took a swig and curled up on the couch, hands tucked between my knees, contemplating their lovely silhouettes moving against firelight. It made me think of those Indonesian shadow puppets I’d seen a film about. All the characters were princes and kings and Hindu gods, each with a thousand years of mythology behind them. And what, after all, was mythology if not baggage and history dressed up for public consumption?

  There were my two shadow puppet princes, each with his own mythologies, kissing and undressing and caressing each other, casting the dark and distorted versions of themselves on the living room wall, casting out the demons.

  Sebastian was very gentle with Jean – not his usual boisterous self at all – and Jean wasn’t giggling or joking. When they’d discarded their clothes and lay skin to skin, there was nothing but the sounds soft breathing and wet kisses.

  I had another sip of vodka, feeling drowsy and wrung out. With half-closed eyes, I watched Sebastian enfold Jean in his arms, lifting his chest to his mouth to suckle Jean’s nipples, first one and then the other. He coaxed soft raspy moans from his lover’s throat. Jean lay back, his arms flung out like a man in the act of surrendering.

  They moved together, slowly, sinuously, their breaths becoming more urgent as they mouthed and licked each other’s skin. Jean slid his hands over Sebastian’s ass and squeezed, forcing a groan and a thrust from Sebastian.

  Uncurling myself from my nest on the couch, I got up as quietly as I could and went upstairs to grab the box of condoms and the lube, since I was pretty sure Jean didn’t carry any around with him, and Sebastian had only been wearing those cotton things. In the drawer of his bedside table, I found stuff I couldn’t even guess the function of. The condoms were easy, but there were about fifteen different kinds of lube. Did they want something that heated up, or tingled, water-based? Or – nah, not the sparkly shit or the one that smelled like cinnamon – that wasn’t even lube. I found a black bottle of something called Eros and unscrewed the cap. It didn’t smell of anything, and I thought it would do. I also took the opportunity to take off my boots again, so I didn’t have to go clomping back into the living room.

  But when I got back downstairs, I just left the stuff on the coffee table, because they obviously didn’t need it.

  Stretched out side by side, head to toe, they were nuzzling, and licking and slurping at each other’s cock like . . . well, I didn’t have a frame of reference for it. It was the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen. My feelings were caught between ‘oh, that’s so sweet’ and ‘fuck that’s so hot’.

  Lazily, Jean and Sebastian took turns engulfing each other’s erection. Jean lay almost still, sucking while Sebastian moved his hips easily, sliding in and out of Jean’s mouth. Then they switched, and Sebastian would lie still and Jean would move. It went on that way, each of them trading off, for what seemed like an hour.

  Finally, after all the sighs and moans and wet sucking sounds grew more and more urgent, Sebastian pushed Jean over onto his back and finished him as Jean whimpered and thrashed. Then they sat up, kissing deeply, passionately, and Jean curled his fingers around Sebastian’s cock and brought him with his hand.

  I stifled a moan and rolled over to face the back of the sofa. All it took was the momentary pressure of my clasped hands between my legs, and I came, shuddering, silently. When I opened my eyes, I was staring at the brocade upholstery wondering if I had come for myself or for them. I felt like a parasite, having fed my own pleasure on the poignancy of theirs.

  ‘Oh my God!’ said Jean. ‘Look what she brought us!’

  Turning back to face them, feeling sort of dazed and embarrassed, I gave them as nonchalant a smile as I could manage. ‘I thought you might need it.’

  Sebastian was on his knees, wiping the cum off his stomach with his pants. ‘Seems not.’ He grinned.

  Jean came over and sat on the sofa beside me, his pale body looked almost fragile. He bent down and kissed me. It wasn’t like any kiss he’d given me before. Raw and messy, driven and deep, it wasn’t the studied, precise, deliberate way he usually kissed me. It was as if he’d been kissing Sebastian so long, he’d forgotten to switch to Shira mode. I wondered if he noticed.

  ‘Come on, Shirakins, let’s all have a shower and go to bed.’

  I struggled into an upright position on the sofa. ‘I really need to get home. You’re fine, you two. And I really need to get clothes for tomorrow.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ huffed Jean, pulling me to my feet. ‘I told you, you can wear something of mine. Or just wear the same skirt and borrow a shirt.’

  As he dragged me by the hand up the stairs, I decided not to mention that the front of my skirt was obscenely stained with my juices. I just let that one pass.

  Behind us, Sebastian said, ‘Anyway, you should bring some of your stuff here. I’ve got a shitload of closet space. In fact, you could just move it all over.’

  I had no intention of giving up my cosy independence with Lizzie. But still, it struck me as a very odd way to ask someone to move in with you. I stopped outside the door to Sebastian’s room, but Jean, buck naked and adorable from the rear, just continued down the hallway.

  ‘We can’t all shower in Sebastian’s bathroom. It’s too small. Come on, his parents en suite is huge.’

  I turned back to Sebastian, puzzled. ‘Yeah, huge!’ he echoed.

  At the very end of the corridor, Jean pushed open a door I hadn’t peeked into during my illicit weekend exploration. The room was a very creepy cross between a Leave It to Beaver pipe dream and a Northanger Abbey nightmare. The bed was a gigantic four-poster thing with gathered brocade curtains, like something from a medieval castle, but the rest of the furniture was a mess of fifties modern, Victorian pomp and stuff that looked vaguely Italianate. There were large and rather boring abstract paintings on the walls. Opposite the bed, above a chest of drawers, hung a portrait of a very beautiful older, dark-haired woman
. She was seated on a chair I recognized from the living room, wearing an impossibly twee-looking Chanel suit. From the bones, and the complexion, and even the eyes, I knew it was Sebastian’s mother.

  ‘Why in the hell don’t you sleep in here?’ I turned almost circle to see an overly gilded and marble-topped dressing table. The room even had its own fireplace.

  Jean had already gone into the bathroom, but Sebastian stood beside me and shrugged. ‘I was never allowed in here when they were alive. I got most of my comfort in my nanny’s room.’

  I slipped a hand into his. ‘You make it sound like they didn’t like you.’

  ‘They didn’t,’ he said, and pulling me towards the bathroom. ‘They were selfish assholes who loved no one but themselves.’

  It was the sort of statement that makes you want to say, ‘Oh, I’m sure that’s not the case,’ in a comforting yet vaguely patronizing way, but then I hadn’t met his parents and, from what little I’d learned about Sebastian, I had to wonder if it wasn’t true.

  There was more than enough room for us to shower together in his parents’ bathroom – us and another ten people. Lined in pale grey slate, it had one of those glassed-in shower areas you see at expensive gyms, with spigots on three walls. Jean had them all running and the room began to billow up with steam.

  Pulling my clothes off, still dumbstruck that someone could live in a house with rooms like this and not want to use them, I realized that Sebastian had simply decided to stake out his territory and, for the most part, leave the rest to the ghosts.

  There was much squealing and whooping and squirting of shampoo bottles, but I felt somehow apart from it all. Standing in the water spray with these two beautiful men, I felt so female and out of place. Perhaps it was just a hangover from watching them in front of the fireplace; perhaps it was Jean’s admission in the kitchen that I was there as a proxy. Whatever the reason, I felt alien and wrong.

  Jean, however, was almost in a state of euphoria. I could see that something had changed, like some part of him had been set free. Sebastian was just being Sebastian, only nicer and gentler with Jean.

  It still felt good to crawl into Sebastian’s bed, the three of us cuddling like kittens. It still sounded lovely to listen in the dark to the people you cared about breathing softly in their sleep. I knew they liked me, cared for me, loved me even. But I couldn’t get past the feeling that I’d arrived at this privileged place as a substitute, second-rate orifice.

  The next morning, I woke up early, slipped out of bed without waking them, and went home.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:

  GIFT HORSES

  At ten o’clock, while I was sitting on the floor of the warehouse scrubbing lipstick off microphone grilles, coming to the conclusion that pearlescent pink is a colour that only trailer-trash, tone-deaf whores would wear, a package arrived for me by bike courier. It wasn’t the expected box of Neutrik cable connectors I’d ordered the week before, because it came with a folded-up note on top that read:

  Shira:

  Why aren’t you wearing my jeans?

  Jean

  Why aren’t you wearing me?

  Sebastian

  I thought about opening it. In fact, I gave it a little shake, but nothing rattled around inside. Did I really want to get into this right now? I wondered. More gut-wrenching, soul-shredding, unfathomable drama? No. What I really wanted to do was get the goddamned lipstick off those microphone grilles. I put the package down by my feet and went back to work.

  I’ll admit that my eye strayed to the package once or twice. And after two of the roadies walked by, I ripped the card off the top and stuffed it into my pocket, just in case they decided to read it. It wasn’t until the box started ringing that I realized there was no ignoring it. Wiping my hands on a towel, I took a box-cutter and opened it up. It was one of those thin, sleek black hand phones. By the time I got to it, it had stopped ringing.

  I may have been the only person in the world who didn’t have or want a mobile phone. And believe me, people thought I was a freak for not owning one. But I just didn’t like the idea that people could get you whenever they wanted. It was like being trapped, at someone’s beck and call. I hated the way people walked down the street talking into them just to make sure you knew how incredibly popular they were.

  Nonetheless, it was sort of pretty. Nicely designed and it fitted comfortably in the palm of my hand, with enough weight to let you know you were really holding something. It must have cost a fortune. Tentatively, I thumbed the sliding panel up – which activated the screen. This was a mistake. In place of the usual bland picture of an abstract texture for the background was a backlit close-up of Jean’s lips around Sebastian’s cock. Yes, it could have been other people’s body parts, but it wasn’t—I could tell by the shade of lipstick. A sudden fit of paranoia made me glance around to make sure no one had seen it. I quickly slid the panel shut. Halfway to putting the phone back in the box, it rang again. Out of the packaging the ring was much louder.

  One of the roadies walked by staring at me. ‘Aren’t you going to get that?’

  I smiled and shook my head, desperately trying to find the switch to turn to damn thing off without activating the obscene screen. Finally, defeated by technology, I answered it.

  ‘Yes! What?’ I shouted, walking out into the loading dock.

  ‘Well, you didn’t like it when I phoned you on your office number.’

  ‘Sebastian,’ I sighed, shaking my head at the air.

  ‘Don’t you like your prezzie?’

  Why was it that all the men in my life could make me feel like an ungrateful bitch? ‘It’s very nice,’ I said, trying to sound conciliatory.

  ‘Like the picture?’

  ‘Um . . . very funny.’

  He laughed and his voice switched into deep, breathy seduction mode: ‘Don’t you wish they were your lips? Wrapped around my hard, throbbing cock? Can’t you just taste me? Oh fuck, I want to feel your hot mouth around me!’ In the background, at what I guessed was some distance away, I could hear Jean faking loud, porny orgasmic squeals.

  ‘Shut up. And tell him to shut up too. The both of you! I’m at work. I’m tired and I’m confused.’

  ‘What are you confused about, Shirakins?’ The voice had changed again, now it was like oil sliding over rocks. It slithered into my ear.

  ‘I can’t talk about it right now,’ I whispered, moving out of the way as four guys wheeled a case of effects racks out to one of the waiting trucks. A frigid wind blew through the loading bay, and I shivered and headed inside. ‘I’m at work.’

  ‘You said that before. Don’t be boring, darling. What’s confusing you?’

  Oh, I hated that voice. It was cruel and slithery and sexy. ‘You. Jean. The two of you!’

  ‘What’s to be confused about? We both love you. We both want to make you come until you lose your sanity.’

  I was madly rushing up the stairs towards my office, feeling my nipples shrivel into painful beestings, when I barrelled into my boss, Michael, on his way down.

  ‘Shira? Are you okay?’ Michael asked, looking at me oddly. ‘You’re all flushed. Are you sick?’

  He reached out and felt my forehead with the back of his hand. ‘You’re hot. Feverish. I think you’ve got something.’

  ‘He’s right. You are hot,’ snickered Sebastian.

  It was only then I realized I still had the phone clamped to my face. The problem was, if I took it away from my ear, my boss would see the screen. ‘I’m fine,’ I squeaked.

  ‘You don’t look fine to me.’ Michael peered over his glasses at me with a concerned expression. ‘Maybe you should go home. Isn’t your gig on Thursday? You don’t want to be sick for that. We’re all coming to see you play, you know. Even Hippie Dave.’ He laughed.

  ‘You look pretty fine to me, Shirakins. Especially riding me. But he’s right. You are sick. Come home.’

  I took my chances with the screen and whipped the phone down, pressing it agains
t my thigh. ‘Really, Michael. I’m fine. Just sweaty, you know. From cleaning those mics.’

  He gave me a look of grave doubt. ‘I can’t remember when you had your last sick day. Have you ever even taken one? Go home, honey. We don’t need you today.’

  Having gained a little bit of sanity back, I gnawed at my lip, considering. ‘Do I still get paid?’

  Michael laughed. ‘Of course you do. Get out of here!’ he said over his shoulder, continuing on down the stairs.

  It wasn’t until I reached my battered old desk, and was thinking that a day off might not be so bad – I had laundry to do – that I noticed a squeaky sound rising from my leg. I raised the phone to my ear.

  ‘What the fuck? You almost got me fired!’

  Sebastian stopped singing down the line at the top of his lungs and said: ‘You have the world’s nicest boss, Shira. Don’t lie. I heard the whole thing. Come on. Everyone knows Michael Fredrickson is an old queen! He’s a sweetie. Rumour has it that he fucked half the San Francisco scene back in the day, you know.’

  Wow. That was news to me. I thought my gaydar was pretty good, but obviously I was wrong. Then I stopped to think about it. ‘Bullshit, Sebastian. He lives with a woman who bakes granola cookies.’

  There was an evil chuckle on the other end of the connection. ‘That doesn’t mean shit in my world, girl.’

  ‘Look. I’ve got to go. Thanks for the phone.’

  I hung up without waiting for an answer. My nipples had stopped pinging like little beacons, and I didn’t want to give him a chance to say anything filthy and get them started again. Sliding my fingertips along the top of the phone, I found the discreet little power button and switched it off.

  Even after deciding to take advantage of Michael’s offer, it still took me a while to get out of the shop. I rinsed off all the grilles and set them out to dry, dumped the dirty water into the drain out back and rinsed the bucket. I signed in a bunch of equipment being returned by a particularly ferocious-looking Rastafarian guy with razor blades in his dreadlocks. But thirty minutes later, I had my coat on and was out the door.