by KT Morrison
He sat back now, emptied, disheartened by their blank blinking faces. “So that's...that's what I'm passionate about right now. That’s what I want to do.” His hand returned to the flat stainless knife and nervously flipped it over and over.
Krista inhaled, her eyebrows raised, and she turned to look at Tim. He nodded to her. She leaned forward now and laced her fingers through one another between her cutlery. “Geoff, we want to work with you...”
“But?”
“But?” she repeated.
“I sense there’s a but...”
“You shouldn't. The only caveat would be that we want you to be exclusive to us for three books.”
“Three?” He felt his eyes tearing up, he squinted. He would die if these two saw how emotional he could be.
“Three over the next year and a half. That won’t include Laetitia Lily’s book.”
“That’s still a possibility?”
“Not a possibility, she selected you. I championed you, but the decision was hers. We need you exclusive to do the Lily book.”
“What?” He couldn't believe it, wished his Nia could be here with him right now. “I thought...she wasn’t here...I thought...”
Krista’s eyes stayed on him, she said, “To be honest, I don’t think it’s likely you’ll meet with Laetitia. With her schedule and you in Toronto I believe most of your communication on the book will be through me.”
“That’s fine,” he laughed. “That’s fine...” he had to wipe at his eyes to clear the wet, “Ha, I’m not a fan or anything...well, I mean, you know...”
“Not her demographic?” Tim said.
“Right. Exactly,” Geoff said, taking his napkin and rubbing his eyes and laughing. “Sorry,” he sniffed, “just a little excited...”
Krista said, “So, I take it that’s a good sign?”
“Sure. I mean yes. Yes, I will sign exclusive.”
Krista smiled now and curled a finger to someone standing behind him, the waiter with their food. “That’s fantastic, Geoff. I'm as excited as you are.”
The plates were set down on the table, steaming hot. He was hungry but maybe too excited right now to eat. The BMW scared him, Nia’s job scared him, her fling with her boss scared him. But now he knew they’d be okay.
Tim said, “After we eat we’ll go back to the Tower and we’ll sign some papers.”
Geoff looked down at the pale pink swoosh of butter-glistening flesh. He laughed. He’d sign those papers as long as he didn't explode first. He had to call Nia.
NIA
She skipped dinner. Got home from work at seven and didn’t undress. She primped her hair and brushed her teeth and she waited in the kitchen, sitting in the booth watching the alleyway for any sign of him. She played Drop7 on her phone until the sky went from blue to a shimmering amethyst.
He wasn’t coming. She’d dropped every hint she could. She wouldn’t beg. He would be home by now.
The phone went in her skirt pocket and she poured herself a glass of red wine and headed upstairs but left the kitchen door unlocked. Ran a hot bath and took her clothes off and put her long black hair up in a high ponytail and twirled it into a loose knot. The hot water eased a lot of the tension out of her and she soaked for almost forty-five minutes. She checked her bikini wax, took a razor and tightened it up a little. She left herself silky smooth all over and rubbing her fingers to check had made her own heart race.
So old gentle Geoff, love of her life, had secured himself a three-book-deal with a major publisher and was picked by Laetitia Lily herself to draw her children's book which was sure to be a best seller. In her rough estimation that could be a quarter million dollars at a minimum over the next eighteen months.
When she’d met Geoff at York and he was just that affable fresh-faced art student she had never pictured him as being successful. She knew he was the type who would achieve happiness and meet responsibilities and generally live his life on a straight and narrow path. He was full of surprises her husband.
Her mild-mannered fellow had his own darkness. He liked it in her but never looked in the mirror to realize part of him hid in the shadows too. She liked that part. His shadowy spectre was flirting with her shadowy spectre and it looked like their could be a love connection. It wouldn’t be long before those two groaning, swirling, libertine forms were sharing a plate of pasta, their fang-toothed mouths slurping a strand of spaghetti simultaneously and meeting in the centre for a kiss like Lady and the Tramp.
She dried off, admired herself in the mirror, swinging her hips around and looking at her ass from a few different angles and liking what she saw. Tight lacy and swooping lingerie was peeled up and over, her bosom hefted in a sheer balcony bra and a black silk robe ending at mid-thigh went over it all. Just in case her lover changed his mind and showed up on her doorstep after all.
Odie’s room was dark and it felt strange to have her out of the house again. There’d been a lot of changes in the Kane household recently and there were bound to be more. Golden evening glow streamed in through Odie’s window and got soaked up by the lacy tent Geoff had hung over her bed. Recently she’d only thought of Rocco when she’d seen it. Laying under it, mid-afternoon while he fucked her with her shirt tied around her face. She’d sprinkled when she came. Could feel her own wetness spritzing and spurting from her, pattering on her tummy and her chest. Wasn’t the first time that had happened. A man had to really hit those spots to bring that out of her. Rocco had conjured that moisture from her. That big dick stud really did it. The fucking man of her dirtiest dreams. But laid bare and bound and painfully skewered by him was only a part of her excitement that day. Knowing she was being watched. Knowing her husband was witness to her decrepitude. Knowing what he was seeing and that he was aroused by her badness had brought that explosion from her easily. She wanted that again. She wanted Geoff to watch and enjoy. And more. Much more. This was just the beginning.
She headed downstairs, not tired enough to sleep. Went down to the kitchen and poured another glass of wine then headed out and stood at the top of the stairs and looked across their neighbourhood. Black tree horizon, purple night lit from below by the Village beyond. She padded down to the studio in her bare feet and went in to sit with Geoff’s things.
It was dark and cold in there and she left it that way. Just a quiet fan hum and the dim light from colourful dots on electronic equipment left in sleep mode. Flicked his mouse and brought his main iMac awake. Opened a browser and found his porn site. Saw his recommendations. Hubby watches, hubby films, wife takes big, wife sucks his best friend, wife’s first bbc...Geoff had his thing. She loved that he had his thing. They could do this together. If she loved him for who he was she would be loved in return for who she was.
She sipped her wine til the glass was empty and watched the things that technical algorithms out there in the universe thought Geoff would like. She saw what he liked. She watched housewives’ white legs wrapped around black men’s waists as they were pounded. Saw wive’s cradle balls and suck big cocks while their husbands recorded. Saw a young wife take anal from an endowed kid she and her husband found on a dating website.
This should be a violation, getting this glimpse into the mind of her husband but she did it with love. There was no judgment, only curiosity. She was open-minded, interested and frankly aroused.
She shut it down and opened the Dropbox folder. Her dirty husband had not yet scrubbed a certain video’s existence. She smiled. Maybe it could live a few more days. It opened with a mouse click, the video she’d recorded of her and Rocco in the front seat of his pickup truck. Recorded with love for Geoff.
Her feet came up, and her toes curled over the lip of his Herman Miller and she watched her bad self on the screen. Tried to picture watching this through Geoff’s eyes and wondered what he saw. What it was that aroused him. Her fingers absently stroked at the squished flesh under her panties. He liked Rocco’s cock. She did too. Ugly but awesome. She smoothed her open palm over the backs of
her bent thighs and let her hand brush her sex some more, felt a warmth there now, a dampness. On screen Nia sucked another man’s big cock. Just like what he watched online. But she was prettier than what she’d seen. Rocco was bigger than what she’d seen. This would have a lot of value to a man like her husband. Her fingers slipped under the ruffled edge of her panties and she felt her slick skin there, felt her aroused flesh.
She tried to picture a video of Geoff with another woman. A beautiful woman, his eyes on the camera as his tongue slipped out of his beard and tasted her shaved sex. What would arouse him about her with another? She didn’t like the thought of him with another at all. She slipped a finger inside herself and thought more about Geoff watching her. That made sense for some reason. Her with another man made sense to her.
Her chrome vibrator was slipped out of the silk pocket of her robe and she turned it on. Screen Nia had her mouth wrapped around Rocco’s girth and she bobbed on it. It was lewd. The vibrator hummed over her panties bringing out a shrill wriggling pleasure that clutched her heart and drooped her eyes. Now Nia’s pretty hand stroked him. Geoff had watched it. Rocco’s eyes had seen this, Geoff’s eyes had seen it. She had been there, looking up into the iPhone while Rocco filmed, making eyes for her husband. But she watched it now. Waiting for Rocco to come. All three of them had waited for him to come. Three people wanted his masculine white fluid filled with his squirming seed to roil in his big balls, to fill tubes and writhe through organic passageways conjured by that beautiful woman she watched. Three people had been excited by his thick eruption. She watched it now and she came. Gasped and sighed into Geoff’s studio as she watched the white spurts part his hole and splash her face and run down her fingers.
Her mind’s eye pulled back farther. Her legs clamped together and squeezed all those girl muscles she had. She coaxed her orgasm longer, stretched it high and thin, holding her breath, her brain’s camera pulling wide for her husband and she focussed on his arousal if he were to see now as she made herself come sitting in his studio in his chair, watching the video she’d sent him, her pussy sucking on the gift he’d snuck off and bought her one horny day in the spring...
25
Open Window
Saturday, August 12th
NIA
A whole day to herself and she did nothing. It was wonderful.
By five o’clock she really missed Geoff and wished he was coming home tonight instead of in the morning. She lay on the couch, home alone, and texted him.
Nia: miss you
G-Force: miss you too!
Nia: how was the museum?
Geoff had stayed an extra day to spend some time in the city. He wanted to go to the Guggenheim and he wanted to go to the AMNH, and to MOMA. She wondered if he went alone. Maybe someone from Sparrow House went along, some pretty little editor. She had bat her eyes and convinced him she could show him the city. Nia could trust that man though. Trust him with anything. Her life.
He told her all about the museum. She couldn’t tell if he went alone or not. Why did she even care? She knew she could trust him, so what was the issue? Just her thoughts from last night bubbling up. Exploring how it would feel if Geoff wanted her to watch him with another woman. Which he didn’t. But it had put it in her head. She thought of some twenty-two year old NYC hottie who loved his talent and his interesting, studious look. A girl like that would want to fuck him. What if she came on to him? He wouldn’t do anything but it bothered her thinking of some cunt trying to put her hooks in her man. Did Geoff like that feeling? Did he ever feel like digging his nails into Rocco’s face?
Now he was sending her digital drawings he’d done on his iPad at the AMNH. They were making her laugh. Funny looking elephants and antelopes and gorillas. Shaggy looking beasts with hilarious but carefully understated googly eyes. He had a knack for making a simple drawing really funny and engaging.
She laughed out loud even though she was alone. Glass of wine on the coffee table, bare feet and sweatpants and a comfortable old T-shirt. She longed for her good buddy to be home and they could turn the TV on and she’d lay in the V of his legs and eat popcorn. The windows were open and she could hear kids playing in the backyard next to them, the sounds of the Saturday afternoon Village beyond that. Traffic was loud, a motorcycle rumbled.
She texted him and told him she was in Geoff-mode.
G-Force: what’s that?
Nia: on couch, PJs, wine, Netflix. wishing you were here.
G-Force: So happy baby-home in morning we’ll spend all day
Nia: can’t wait
There was a knock at the front door and it made her frown and squint. Who the fuck visits? Who the fuck comes to the front door?
She slipped off the couch, walked the hall with phone clutched in hand, the polished wood wavering with the light from the window set in the door. There was a figure there. Standing, waiting, hands coolly wedged in front pockets of tight denim. A familiar shape. He was looking up and down the street, his strong calm profile taking in the neighbourhood his ex-girlfriend lived in with her husband.
NIA
“Dino? What are you—”
“I was in the city, thought I’d come by.”
He looked good. He looked really good. Tight rough jeans, the cuff turned up, beaten brown leather boots. His motorcycle was parked in front of the house, nosed in between two sedans, gleaming in the sunlight. Tight white T-shirt struggled over his muscular build. His skin was tan, his hair glossy and black. She could smell him from here. Light cologne and his familiar male smell. It put a funny feeling in her stomach.
She leaned on the jamb, holding the screen door out with one hand. He put a boot up on the sill. She looked down, watched it scrape its way across the wood, entering the threshold of her home. “You weren’t in the neighbourhood,” she said evenly, without a smile.
“Think I came all this way after work only to see you?”
She looked behind her, back into her quiet, empty home. “What if Geoff was home?”
“He isn’t home?” He smiled then, his eyes narrow.
“You know he’s not.”
He shrugged, said, “Maybe. I have my spies.”
“What would you come by for?”
“I’ve missed you.”
“That’s nice,” she said, playing it cool. Her mind was reeling. This fucking asshole was here for one thing.
He sensed her derision, his posture softened, he leaned on the jamb as well, his eyes level with hers. “I’m not kidding. I hadn’t thought about you in the longest time. I forced myself not to, and fuck, Nia, it wasn’t easy. You’re in my life again and I can’t get you out of my mind.”
This fucking charmer. His big build, his masculine hand on his denim thigh. God, those big black eyes. “Come in,” she said, dropping the screen door on him and letting him deal with it. Trying to keep some control here. She gave a sexy walk through the hall, headed to the kitchen. In her sweatpants. Knew his eyes would be watching her God-given ass. She swayed it for him. She looked good even in old cotton sweats.
In the open door of the fridge, she said, “Beer? Wine?” He was behind her now. Not politely putting the island between them but right up next to her. She had bare feet and he could crush them with those big size fourteen boots she saw down there. If he wasn’t careful he could do a lot of damage.
“Beer,” he said.
She took a bottle of one of Geoff’s fancy microbrews and gave it to him. He looked at it strangely, like he was concerned it was non-alcoholic.
She stood under his big body while he twisted the cap off and scattered it across the island countertop. He took a swig.
“So, what do you want from me?”
“We were so good together...”
She walked to the family room where she’d been laying on the couch. “You come here to show off your platitudes?”
“What’s that?”
She picked up her glass of wine and she took a sip. “Clichés,” she said.
“You don’t think we were good together?”
“It was so long ago, Dino. It’s over. I’m married.”
He ignored her. Took another sip of beer and he stepped into the family room. He set the bottle down on a low bookcase next to a vase of flowers. There was a picture there of Nia and Geoff and Odie. He picked the pewter frame up to look more closely at it. She could see his thumb blot out Geoff’s face.
“You got a good life now.”
“I do,” she said. “Don’t you?”
“Yeah, I do,” he said and he set the frame down.
She took another sip of wine. “How many kids you got?”
“Three.”
“Good for you, Dino.”
“Yeah,” he sighed.
“You love Stacy?”
“Sometimes.”
“Sometimes I bet she loves you too.”
“You’re such a bitch.”
She smiled. “Let me show you around...you’ve never been here.”
“Never invited,” he said.
She led him down the hallway and he brought his beer. She showed him the Dining Room and the Living Room that looked out onto the street where his motorcycle was parked.
“There’s a powder room there,” she said pointing over the railing at the door to the right of the stairs as she walked to the second floor. “There’s more upstairs.”
When she got to the landing she slipped across to Odie’s room and closed the door. “This way,” she said, heading to the bedroom.
He stopped at Odie’s door. He opened it. She stopped in the hall and leaned on the wall. He held the knob and put his head in her daughter’s room and he looked around. Took in her Princess room that Geoff had done up for her in pretty pinks and hand-painted scrollwork, her mosquito tent that hung over the bed and the custom Geoff J. Kane oak tree that spread out from behind her bed and its branches reached across the entire wall, curling the corner and trying to touch the frame of her window.