Seven Books for Seven Lovers

by Molly Harper, Stephanie Haefner, Liora Blake, Gabra Zackman, Andrea Laurence, Colette Auclair

  “Is that OK? Too much?”

  He’s trying to read me, responding to whatever he sees in my expression or my body language, unsure about the way I’ve gone taut and tight. I nod my head so he knows not to stop. My body feels untamed, every limb wanting to grasp him somehow but all I can do is arc my back in desire, let him take me, feel him kiss my ankle and down my calf while whispering filthy, loving things against my skin.

  Before I know how to pull back and burrow into some guarded part of my mind, I shut my eyes and squeeze tightly. My voice is so hushed, he might not hear me, but I manage to say it anyway.

  I love you.

  My words become permission for him to go harder, deeper. When he uses one hand to press down on my bent leg even more, he starts to thrust with abandon. Moving my hand down between my legs, I let my slippery fingers start to stroke and flick against my clit. He looks down to watch where we come together, letting out a few short grunts as he does. I massage and tease until I know it will only take a few vigorous strokes of him against me and I’ll break apart. Watching his face, I utter a series of demands. Telling him not to stop. Telling him to go deeper. Telling him to come for me.

  I hope he feels exactly the way I do when he tells me to give in. Desperate and drowning in the reckless perfection of us together. He pauses slightly and stares down at me.

  “Say you love me again, Katie. I want to hear you saying it when I come inside you.”

  Written on his face is everything I need, a look that tells me he’s falling apart, splintering inside with such aching tension that he doesn’t even know what to do with it all.

  And when I tell him, boldly this time, his eyes hood with need and he takes a few more deep thrusts before coming in loud, brutal-sounding gasps. Once he starts, I fall apart at the same time, choking out a high-pitched moan.

  When it all washes over me, the weight of it is too much. The force of loving him, anyone, finally. My eyes draw open to see him gazing down on me with complete contentment, a bursting happiness on his face. This, of course, makes my eyes fill with tears because I’m a damn woman and we’re genetically programmed to muck up even the loveliest moments with awkward emotional eruptions. I shut my lids to make it stop, but he sees it. The fat wet tears seep out over my cheeks.

  He crouches down to my face and kisses the tearstained streaks.

  “These are the good kind of tears, right?”

  I chuckle weakly, but his words and the fatigue of it all makes me cry harder.

  “Yes. The good, overwhelmed, scared, amazing kind.”

  Nuzzling into my face, he draws his hands over my arms, and tickles my skin with his fingertips.

  “Nothing to be scared of. I’ve got you, baby. Don’t be scared.”

  “Promise me you won’t leave.” I start to sob. “Promise.”

  Craning back to see my face, he looks at me, mystified. He opens his mouth to offer some reflexive reassuring answer and then it hits him.

  Why I want him to say it. Why it’s petrifying. Why it’s so scary that I can’t breathe.

  Through my wet, stupid, blubbering sobs, he kisses my open mouth and lets his body cover me.

  “I promise. I won’t leave. I won’t ever leave you, Katie.”

  23

  “Kate! Have you had chicken pox?” Trevor hollers into the kitchen at me from the living room, where he is talking on the phone and watching golf on TV. Yes, golf. I’m as surprised as anyone.

  I’m trying to figure out how to operate the wall oven so that the cookies I’m baking don’t burn like the chicken we roasted last night. He is zero help with any appliance in this quadrant of the house. The only exception is the nine-gazillion-dollar espresso machine that he makes out with every morning. He knows that machine inside and out. If the music thing ends up not working out, he could become an overpriced-espresso-machine whisperer.

  “Yes,” I call back, not asking why, because he’s talking to Marilyn on the phone. She’s probably trying to figure out a way to convince him that my having had chicken pox when I was eleven is a sign of the devil or something. Or that I’m still contagious and he should send my skinny ass back home on the next Greyhound bus.

  I don’t even like thinking about the Mosely clan’s bout with chicken pox. My mother had descended into a homeopathic-hippie-natural-everythingness phase, refusing to let us just use Calamine lotion like other normal people. No, she insisted we bathe in apple cider vinegar and let her smear honey on the welts. Neither of which worked. To boot, my father hadn’t ever had chicken pox, so Lacey and I were quarantined together for five days in our basement.

  Trevor ambles into the kitchen and grabs a beer out of the fridge. “McKenna has the chicken pox. My mom has to get a root canal tomorrow, so I said we’d take her overnight. I hope that’s OK. Mom will pick her up on Friday morning as long as she’s recovered enough to open her mouth and bitch about stuff.”

  I continue scowling at the stupid oven and wave him off.

  “That’s fine.” Poking at the buttons some more, I imagine that if the oven could talk, it would have an uppity French accent. “Why would you buy appliances that are impossible to operate?”

  He shrugs and then kisses my shoulder. “They were here when I bought the place. But can you hurry it up? I’m hungry.”

  He swats my ass as he walks away. He’s lucky that I like him.

  Ahem. That I love him.

  McKenna spends most of the day in bed, sleeping and scratching. I slide some socks over her hands as she naps, hoping to keep her from getting after the itching too badly. Once she nestles into the covers and nods off, Trevor heads out to ride his mountain bike for a few hours and I dig into the draft of my novel.

  We’ve settled into a bit of a routine, and he keeps telling me to work if I want to. Until the last couple of days, I haven’t had any inclination to do that, between hanging out, getting naked, and declaring our mushy love for each other. Busy, busy bees we’ve been. Plus, there were a few more of those regular life things to get in the way. Dax ate some sort of dead thing he found on the beach and got sick, and we had to take him to the emergency vet. Then we had to take the car to a detail shop after Dax yakked in it on the way to the vet. So much for my desire to seal the deal in the backseat of that overpriced behemoth. We had to go to the grocery store and buy food so we wouldn’t die of starvation. We had to go to the bike shop. Again.

  After a few hours, McKenna wanders down, dragging a blanket and pillow behind her, frowning like she wishes her skin would just fall off. Her hair is a mess of balled-up loose tangles, and the little red marks all over her make me itchy just looking at them.

  “Can I watch TV?”

  I scoot over to one side of the couch and gesture for her to sit down.

  “Sure. As long as you know how to operate the remote thingy. I’m not smart enough to even turn the TV on.”

  She flops down on the couch and picks up the Star Trek–like device that Trevor claims is “so easy a monkey could use it” to operate the TV. Without a moment’s hesitation, she pokes a few buttons and the giant screen on the wall comes to life.

  “It’s easy, Katie. See, you just press this and this and it comes on.” Pressing a few more buttons, she scrolls around the channels until a parental lock screen comes up. “If that happens, you just do this. It only happens when the numbers get bigger.”

  I watch her point the remote more directly at the screen and punch in a four-digit code to disable it. That can’t be good. Thinking as fast as someone without children can, I stutter out for her to pick a lower channel and she thankfully finds some cartoons that pique her interest.

  Tuning the noise out, I tap away on my laptop until she props her pillow against my leg and lies down against it. After a while, she rests her warm little hand on my knee and I give up. Putting the computer aside, I slouch down to watch the silliness on the screen, running my hand over her forehead to see if she still has a temperature. Then I stroke her hair, using my fingers to un
ravel the loose tangles. When we hear Trevor outside, rattling around in the garage and hanging his bike up, she raises her eyebrows up but doesn’t move.

  “Uncle Panda’s home.”

  “Yup.”

  Trevor comes in and stands behind the couch. When he does, I lean my head back and look up to see little spatters of mud all over his face and arms from the rain-sodden trail he just crashed around on. He smiles before leaning down to kiss my forehead and the oddly delicious scent of sweat and dirt is all over him. Something about boys who aren’t afraid to get dirty. These days, too many men avoid grease, dirt, mud, and blood like the plague. They make me nervous with their manicured hands, exfoliated feet, and precisely plucked brows. I don’t like them being prettier than me.

  “You guys kiss all the time.” McKenna makes a gagging sound and rolls her eyes.

  “You have no idea, kid. Why don’t you go wash up for dinner.” Trevor lifts her up off the couch and sends her toward the stairs. Once she’s gone, he leans down again and runs his hands over the front of my shirt, laying small kisses down the side of my face.

  “FYI, Uncle Panda, she knows the parental access code on the TV.” Trevor’s hands stop and his eyes get wide.

  “Shit.” He leans down and grabs the remote. “I better fix that right now before I forget. My mom will freak if she finds my, uh, special channels.”

  “Jesus.” I roll my eyes.

  “What? I was terribly lonely before you. Thankfully, I was able to find solace with a variety of naughty nurses and young coeds. I don’t know what I would have done without them.”

  He grins absentmindedly while entering a bunch of gibberish on the stupid remote. I heft myself up off the couch and head into the kitchen.

  I started a pot of soup earlier in the day, somehow finding a way to purr at the stove in soothing tones, which made it work without exploding or disabling itself. Trevor follows me in once he’s sure all those naughty nurses are going to stay where they belong and not accidentally make an appearance when an impressionable mind is looking for Bugs Bunny.

  “Did you know the property north of your house in Crowell is for sale?” Trevor says offhandedly, pulling the lid off the pot on the stove. He peers in and takes a long whiff. “Jesus, that smells great.”

  “The Pearson place? Yeah, it’s been for sale for years. Old man Pearson is a zillion years old and he’s one of those grizzled rancher types that never married. No kids to hand it down to.” Slicing a loaf of sourdough bread that we picked up at a local bakery, I stop and turn around. “Wait. How do you know about it being for sale?”

  Leaning against the counter behind me, Trevor sneaks his hand under my arm and snatches out a piece of bread.

  “The real estate guy I use told me.”

  “Why?” I narrow my eyes at him.

  “Are you pissed?”

  “I don’t know, should I be? What are you up to? Are you going to act like a Koch brother and buy up our little town, turn it into a playground for the rich?”

  “Like I could buy the whole town.” He scoffs and I raise my eyebrows at him. “OK, maybe I could. But that’s not it. I’ve been thinking about us.”

  He looks down at his bare feet and bends over to scratch his ankle. I can tell he’s just buying a few seconds of time.

  “I’m just going to say it. I want you to move here. You can write from anywhere, but I have to keep LA as my home base. But I don’t want to give up your place. I like it there, too. We can live here mostly, but head out there when we need to or want to. I’m thinking we can build a studio and a guesthouse on the property, but you only have a couple of acres. That guy’s ranch is five hundred acres.”

  “What are you going to do with five hundred acres of ranch land in Montana? Why do we need that much space for a studio and a guesthouse?”

  Oops, I just said “we.”

  He smiles because he heard me say it. Instead of tempering all his zealous “we” talk by subtly reminding him that I haven’t even agreed to move yet, my mouth got a few steps ahead of my brain. So much for acting coy about whatever his grand plan is.

  “They said I could lease it back to somebody to run cattle on or some shit like that. Or we can put a conservation easement on it with the county, promise to leave it undeveloped, and they’ll lower the taxes to basically nothing. Either way, I’m just imagining an awesome studio. It’ll be like Caribou Ranch.”

  “What is that?”

  “Oh, woman. You have so much to learn about music history. It’s a studio in the Colorado Mountains, big in the seventies.”

  “You shouldn’t mention any of that if you do try to buy it. Pearson will think you’re going to load the place up with longhairs smoking the Mary Jane, taking LSD, and having dirty hippie sex with each other. I told you, he’s really, really old.”

  “So? Aside from the details of how to get some old geezer to take a million dollars in cash from me, what do you think? About living both places? Together?”

  I drop the knife I’m using. “Are you shitting me? A million dollars? You’re exaggerating, right?”

  “He wants nine-fifty for it, but I figured if I offered him a million, he might be more likely to move the deal along before he croaks.” Tossing the last bite of bread in his mouth, he shrugs. “Don’t worry about that part. That’s my deal, and it’s not that much given the amount of land. I just care about us being together.”

  Pinching the bridge of my nose, I close my eyes and take a deep breath. I’m not sure if I’m annoyed at his elitist pishposh attitude about a million-dollar purchase or just overwhelmed at the idea of what he’s really asking. Regardless, I have a sudden sharp headache settling in my left temple. Before I have to answer, McKenna saves me by sliding into the dining room carrying a tattered blue teddy bear by the ear and prattling on about Dora the Explorer. Thank heavens for adorable little distractions.

  The day before I leave town, Trevor drops me off at Barneys to meet Kellan for lunch. As much as I enjoy seeing Kellan and laughing my ass off at everything that makes him who he is, part of me wants to stay surgically attached to Trevor until my plane takes off tomorrow. I try not to act like a silly girl and quickly kiss him good-bye before he drives off. He’ll be back to pick me up in four hours, for God’s sake. Even we can stand that long away from each other.

  Inside, on the fifth floor, Kellan is waiting in the restaurant, fiddling with his phone when I walk in. When he looks up, he stands and raises his arms in the air, and bellows across the room, “I can’t believe I’m the personal stylist to Mrs. Trax! Who knew that we would be here, even after the texting scandal I implemented, which brought your two lusty bodies together? I’m a genius matchmaker at heart. Like that pasty buffoon that hosts The Bachelor, but significantly more awesome.”

  The few women in the dining area are older, junior league types and all of Kellan’s yelling about lusty bodies has prompted them to give us some serious stink-eye. I try to avoid their stares, but give up when Kellan hugs me so hard I nearly fall over.

  “No Mrs. Trax here. Just this week’s bedmate, I’m sure.”

  “Are you kidding me? I don’t think he goes all black Amex for a flavor of the week.”

  “What?”

  Kellan grins and shakes his head at me. “You must be a tiger in the sack, girl. Like, blow his mind and his everything else. Come on, his exact words were ‘whatever she wants, no limits, go crazy.’ ” Kellan looks away wistfully. “I love the way those words sounded coming out of his mouth.”

  “Seriously, what are you babbling about, Kellan?”

  “Trevor. He called me earlier, told me to charge everything to him today, get you whatever you wanted and then some.”

  Kellan raises his eyebrows at me and the glint in his eyes tells me he has dastardly plans to destroy the inventory on hand here at Barneys. Unfortunately, I can’t see straight all of a sudden because I’m pissed.

  “Give me one second, I’ve got to call Trevor and explain the concept of bein
g a concubine to him.”

  I heave my bag down on the chair, dig out my phone, and stomp out of the restaurant, dialing him up as I huff my way out of earshot of the Red Hat Society women, who probably have called the cops by now.

  His ringtone, which previously sounded like a lullaby to me, is now so annoying that if he doesn’t pick up in three seconds, I’ll break something in this pretty little hallway.

  “Miss me already? I just dropped you off fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Yo. Daddy Warbucks. What the hell do you think you’re doing?” My teeth are grinding against each other and have made my jaw ache in just the last thirty seconds.

  “What? Why do you sound all pissed off? When I left you there, you were purring in my ear about all the dirty shit you wanted done to you in the next twenty-four hours.”

  “I’m pissed because I don’t want you calling Kellan and handing over your fancy credit card to him. I don’t need you to buy me stuff. It makes me feel like a dirty pros—”

  “God help me, Kate, if the word ‘prostitute’ comes out of your mouth, I will come un-fucking-hinged.”

  “Prostitute. Whore. Concubine. Kept woman. Whatever. I’m not in this for clothes and jewelry and furs or whatever women like that want.”

  I hear him slamming the door on his car and then he lets out a loud guttural growl. “I fucking know that. Apparently, I’m an idiot, because I thought it might be nice for my girlfriend to have some clothes or shoes or whatever the hell else she wants. Because I can afford to do that and until about three minutes ago, I thought she was the shit, so I wanted her to have what she wants.”

  “All I wanted today was to have lunch with Kellan and maybe have him pick out something for me to wear to dinner tonight. That’s it. Now he’s got dollar signs in his eyes and I’m looking like Pretty Woman out there.”

  My fingernails dig into my palms. Trevor slams another door, probably at the studio. He lowers his voice and breathes into the phone with significant effort.