by Noel Amos
Karen pulled Adele from between her legs and wrapped her arms around her. The schoolgirlish mouth was now red and sticky. Karen kissed it and tasted herself.
'My turn,' she breathed.
Adele did not protest, her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were wild. She helped Karen unbutton her grey-and-white check frock with trembling fingers to reveal a broad but shallow bosom with candy-pink nipples. Karen bussed them quickly with her lips as she pulled the long skirt to the girl's waist. Her legs were lean and her belly was flat. Her navy blue panties were dark with her juices, plastered to the hair of her prominent mound. A musky, flowery, woman smell filled Karen's nostrils as, without thinking, she closed her mouth over Adele's vagina and began to suck her through her knickers.
'Oh God!' yelled Adele.
Karen lifted her head. 'Am I doing it wrong?' she asked.
'Please, please...' muttered the girl, almost incoherent as she pushed Karen back into her crotch and began to rub her pussy against her face. It seemed to Karen, as she tugged the sodden panty gusset to one side and slid her tongue between Adele's swollen labia, that she didn't have to do much at all. The girl was so excited that the merest whisper of breath upon her quim was enough to send her over the edge. And over the edge she went.
Afterwards, lying back on the rumpled bedspread, with Adele's hands gently exploring her breasts, Karen said, 'Is it always over so fast?'
'What do you mean?'
'Girls making love. I thought it was meant to be a more subtle process than with men.'
Adele stiffened, her fingers ceased toying with Karen's engorged nipples.
'Haven't you slept with a woman before?'
'No. You've just taken my second virginity.'
'I wish I'd known, I wouldn't have been so piggish. Are you about to get up and flounce out of the door?'
'Actually, I was about to ask you if we could try a few things.'
Adele relaxed and her fingers resumed their dalliance. 'What things?'
'I was wondering what it was like to do a sixty-nine with another woman...'
Twenty minutes later Karen had found out. It was far superior experience to doing it with a man, there was no doubt.
'It's a much better fit,' she enthused. 'A man's cock gets stuck at the wrong angle half the time.'
'And it's impossible to come off together,' said Adele. 'Not to mention getting a mouthful of spunk. Yuk.'
'Don't knock it. I love it when I'm with the right man.'
'There's never a right man.'
'What about your boyfriend, Adele?'
The girl pulled away from Karen and folded her arms across her slender chest. 'Will's my fiance. We're getting married in the spring.'
'Does he know you like girls?'
'You must be joking. He's rather straight.'
Karen looked at the downward tug of Adele's pretty mouth and resisted the urge to kiss it.
'So what would Will do if he turned up right now and found us in bed together?'
'He'd die. Correction, he'd kill me first then he'd die.'
'So you won't have any more... toothaches after you get married then?'
Adele turned her big hazel eyes on Karen full beam. 'Why are you asking? You're not exactly faithful yourself, are you, Mrs - Hastings?'
Karen said nothing.
'You're married to Monty Hastings,' Adele continued. 'He's been in our shop for signing sessions. I've seen you there too.'
Karen shrugged, there was no point in denying it. But she wasn't to be deflected from her own line of enquiry. 'If you prefer women, Adele, why are you getting married?'
'I like Will. I really do. He doesn't make me do things I don't fancy in bed.'
'But marriage is for keeps, Adele.' In theory, she added for her own benefit.
'I know. The truth is, a woman can't give me what I really want. I want children and so does Will - don't you understand?' Karen didn't reply, she understood only too well. She folded the girl into her arms and hugged her.
After a moment the hug turned into something more significant.
Karen ran an exploratory finger the length of Adele's pussy crack - it was a long, delicious journey. She mustn't get sidetracked by this girl's personal dilemmas, she thought. However, Adele's situation was not without further possibilities. An idea was forming in her head.
'Ooh!' squealed Adele as Karen fingered her clit. 'I've seen you in the shop lots, Karen. Each time I've wanted to put my head up your skirt and lick your cunny. And now I have - I still can't believe my luck.'
'Before you get married, Adele, you've got to tell Will you like girls.'
'I can't!'
'Would you like me to help you?'
'What do you mean?'
'A threesome.'
'What!'
'Think about it. I bet he'd love to watch us making love.'
'Oh.'
'And he could join in. He could be included in your dirty little secret.'
'But how could it be done?'
Karen laughed. 'Don't worry about that. Leave it to me. In return I need a favour.'
'What's that?'
'I've never felt a vibrator on my pussy. You wouldn't happen to have one, would you?'
Adele's eyes gleamed as she rummaged in her bedside drawer.
Karen watched her with the glow of past and future satisfaction singing in her loins. She'd always wondered why authors said they enjoyed the research more than the writing. Now she knew.
Chapter 7
So far Lucian had had a frustrating day. For the first time in his publishing life he was faced with a challenge - to kill off Whimsical Walks as painlessly as possible and to set in motion the new erotic series. By mid-afternoon this double-headed test of his ability had left him looking down the barrel of failure. Double-barrelled failure at that.
As far as Walks went, it was a question of pulling the plug on any project due for publication after the end of the year - and for ditching those in that period that hadn't yet been delivered.
'But it's about to go in the post to you this morning,' squealed author Nancy Bollard.
'Sorry, Nancy, but you've been saying that to me for the past three months. You're beyond your deadline and I've got to cancel. I've got no leeway.'
'I'll sue, you beastly little Nazi! This would never have happened in your uncle's day.'
That was true enough, reflected Lucian as he replaced the phone, shaken by the third abusive conversation in a row with people whom he had once counted as friends. Though that, he knew, was his fault rather than theirs. 'Never confuse good author relations with true friendship' had been one of Uncle Basil's sayings. On second thoughts, the old bastard would have had no compunction about dumping some of these deadbeats.
As for the erotica, Lucian had a killing schedule. He had nine months in which to find, commission and process a launch list of three titles, to be followed by three more each month after that. As yet the series had no name, no cover style, no market profile and, most serious of all, no authors. Lucian picked up the phone and dialled some literary agents.
'I've got a librarian in Basingstoke who churns them out,' said Bill Dougherty, 'but Pervertimento have her tied up for the next five years. Not literally of course though, off the record, I don't think she'd object.'
'Oh God, not you too,' said Francesca Fry. 'My writers are legitimate professionals but all you publishers want these days is smut. I've got plenty of self-help authors and craft specialists. On second thoughts, Iris Maynard could do you a fabulous Knit Your Own Dildo if the money was good enough.'
But the most depressing response came from Marilyn Savage, the well-known literary piranha who, at publishing lunches, was rumoured to devour the editor as well as the entree. 'For God's sake, Lucian, what's the point?' she screamed. 'You'll offer me peanuts and my writers aren't monkeys, even if some of them behave as if they're in a zoo. Anyway you're too late, New Threshold and Pervertimento have the market sewn up. Don't bother, darling, that's my ad
vice. Now, what's the latest on your wicked Uncle Basil?'
Lucian finally got Marilyn off the phone and surveyed the sheet of paper on his desk. He had headed it 'Launch list April 3rd' but beneath that the empty space mocked him. He considered heading for the Rat where he could at least get pissed with the Art Department.
The phone rang and he snatched it up. It was Samantha the receptionist. 'I've a Miss Pilgrim here to see you.'
Lucian bit back the curse that sprang to mind. It was not politic to be rude to Samantha.
'I'm not expecting anyone,' he said, 'and I'm just about to leave for a lunch appointment.' With the Art Department - he had definitely made up his mind.
'She wants to deliver her manuscript to you in person. You commissioned it, she says.'
'What's her name again?'
'Tania Pilgrim.'
Lucian remembered now. Whimsical Walks in West Marimba by Pilgrim had been in the limbo file for some time, the author having failed to deliver and vanishing, it seemed, off the face of the earth. Lucian gave vent to a heavy sigh. For this feckless writer and her redundant offering to turn up today of all days was about the last straw.
'Get rid of her, Samantha. Tell her to leave the book and I'll write to her.'
'I don't think you want to do that,' replied the receptionist sotto voce.
'I bloody well do.'
'Lucian,' she continued, 'if you don't see her I shall tell Ms Lynch about the stains on the boardroom carpet.'
'Oh Christ,' moaned Lucian and put his head in his hands. That was the position in which Tania Pilgrim discovered him two minutes later.
'Shit a brick,' she said in a broad Australian accent as he looked up from the desk, 'either you've had an operation or you're not the Mr Swan I met last time.'
Lucian stumbled to his feet, dazed by the sun-tanned bubble-blonde in cut-off denim shorts and pneumatically filled lemon T-shirt who stood before him like an answer to a lonely man's prayer. Samantha, he thought, you're more than a mother to me.
'You probably met Basil Swan,' he said. 'I'm his nephew, Lucian.'
She looked at him closely and grinned, her small gleaming teeth a brilliant white in her bronzed face. 'That's right. He commissioned my book. I'm afraid I'm delivering a little late.'
'Too late for Uncle Basil, certainly. He left the firm a few weeks ago.'
T. Pilgrim seemed unfazed. 'Too bad,' she said, 'but nothing's going to spoil this moment. I've been looking forward to it.' And, from a battle-scarred rucksack, she produced with a flourish a thick brick of close-typed A4 paper. 'Here's Whimsical Walks in West Marimba, Mr Publisher, I'm sorry it's three years overdue.'
After that it seemed churlish for Lucian to pour cold water on her triumph by revealing that her efforts would never see the light of day. So he said as little as possible while she chattered about travelling, writing, the thrill of being back in England and what a hell of a time she had had in Marimba. As she spoke, Lucian admired the cute rash of freckles on her nose, the eyes as blue as a tropical sea and the points of her nipples thrusting like thimbles against the fabric of her tight top.
She uncrossed her sturdy bronze thighs - thighs that had propelled her athletic frame half the length of a continent, Lucian reflected - and reached once more for her rucksack.
'I'm sorry I'm running off at the mouth,' she said, delving into a canvas compartment, 'but I only arrived yesterday morning. I kind of get off on just talking, you know? Say, do you mind if I smoke?' She held up a lumpy white tube of paper, obviously some kind of hand-rolled cigarette.
'I'm sorry,' said Lucian, 'but there's a ban on tobacco in the building.'
Tania grinned like a slice of melon. 'That's OK then, 'cos this ain't tobacco, it's finest Marimba weed.' She lit up and smoke as thick as an allotment bonfire swirled around the room.
Lucian closed the door and opened the window. He didn't have any objection in principle to marijuana but refused the spliff when she offered it to him. Two years of his life had been lost to dope, passing in a haze of moody guitar solos and pizza-and-chocolate binges and wee-hour hysteria. Somewhere between picking up a bog-standard degree in Eng Lit and his mother imploring him to shape up and take the job Uncle Basil had laid on for him, Lucian had quit. He'd not smoked since.
'Hey, come on, man, don't look so down.'
Lucian gave Tania a wan smile. Her euphoric good humour and the sunshine of her presence suddenly flooded him with self-pity. Here he was, with a broken heart and his job on the line, faced with the prospect of telling this bouncing breath of fresh air that the three years she had spent fulfilling his firm's commission had been a total waste of time. He held out his hand for the joint.
'Way to go, Lucian,' said Tania as she handed it over. 'This is the best grass you've ever tasted, I swear.'
Lucian groaned inside. As far as he could remember that was what dopeheads always said. He took a hit and the smoke scorched the back of his throat like breeze from a barbecue, hot and pungent.
He handed the joint back to her and after a moment she handed it back to him. As it went back and forth she said, 'Lucian, there's something about my book I've got to explain.'
'Oh-huh.' He had the stinking cigarette between his lips again. It didn't seem to have got any smaller.
'Don't get me wrong,' she said, 'I'm very happy with it. In my opinion it's a fresh approach to travel-writing. But, I've got to admit, it's not exactly typical of your Whimsical Walks series. It's much more - er - personal.'
'Really?' Lucian tried to sound interested but, in the circumstances, it didn't really matter about the book - he wouldn't be publishing it anyway.
'I mean,' she went on, leafing through the typescript and pulling out a page, 'there's stuff like this.' She passed it across the desk.
'This morning on the beach,' he read, 'opposite Oyster Island, I met Jim the fisherman who offered to row me across. As I stepped into the dinghy he threw in a large plaid rug and I wondered why. As he rowed me over the waves, the muscles rippling in those great shoulders and his long hair rippling in the wind, I had a very naughty idea. Then I realised the naughty idea wasn't all mine as I noticed the way he was staring at my bikini. As he had his eyes on my chest anyway I thought I might as well give him his money's worth and I took off my top. I thought he was going to drop an oar. Not that it would have mattered - from where I was sitting it looked like he had a spare in his pants.'
'I see what you mean,' said Lucian. 'It's certainly different. As you say, a fresh voice.'
'It gets a lot fresher than that, I can tell you. Wait till you get to the bit where the fishing crew kidnap me for a fortnight.'
'What?'
'Well, it wasn't a kidnap to be honest. I stowed away on the trip to be with Jim and things got out of hand. Christ, I shouldn't be telling you this, we only just met. But, as my editor, I guess you're kind of like my doctor, aren't you? I mean, it's in the book, anyway.'
Lucian grabbed the typescript and began to flick through the pages. As he did so it became clear why the project had taken so long to complete. What Tania had been up to in Marimba had not left her with the time or the energy to write.
'Would you be prepared,' he said, inspiration striking, 'to put in more of this kind of stuff?'
'More?'
'Yes, lots more, make it up if you have to.'
'Oh, there's no need to make it up - I mean, that's why the book is so late, I kind of got sidetracked.'
'Sidetracked?' said Lucian, his head in a marijuana muddle. 'Do you mean you followed the track on the side of the road going the same way? Or was the track on the side going in another direction?'
'No, no,' she said. 'It's just that the tracks on the side had guys on them and I had to go down those tracks to...'
'To what?'
'What?'
'To do what on the tracks with the guys?'
'Get laid, of course.'
'Of course. How fantastic.'
'It was.'
'I bet.'
'So am I.'
'We must sound like idiots.'
'Who cares? Can I kiss you?'
'Of course, that's why I'm here - to deliver my book and my body. Are they acceptable?'
'I have to examine them, I'm afraid.'
'Well, look at my body first, for crying out loud...'
In the smoky fuggy haze of his office it seemed to take Lucian an age to cross the short distance to Tania's chair, to fall on his knees between those outstretched bronzed thighs and press his oh-so-dry lips to a plush curling mouth that opened to suck him in like some exotic sea creature. The phone was ringing as he kissed her and when it stopped he could hear traffic outside in the street and then muffled voices from the corridor - all alien sounds echoing from a distant place. In his hands was the only reality, the golden globes of her full round breasts, tanned like the rest of her ,the dark crinkle of her nipples abrading his lips as she stroked his hair and held his face to her bosom.
Her eyes were closed as he rose to his feet in slow motion and pulled his cock from his trousers. Yet her hand found his upstanding spike and pressed it to her tits in one movement, as if she were expecting to perform just this intimacy with a man she had met barely half an hour earlier.
'Mmm,' she said and dipped her head to lick the crimson head of his tool. 'Yes, do it to me there.' She was working his penis with her fingers, pressing it into the deep valley between her breasts and in the state he was in, his cock stoned-sensitive from the joint, his mind completely blown by the glorious bronzed expanse of her, it didn't take more than a minute.
'Oh yes!' she breathed as he inundated her big brown globes with his seed. 'Spunk off on my tits, Lucian, just like your Uncle Basil.'
It was only later, sprawling between her legs, his hands full of her beach-ball-firm buttocks and his tongue deep in the sweet and sticky folds of her honeypot, that the implications of her words sank in. There was no doubt that he still had a lot to learn if he were to be as successful a publisher as his distinguished uncle.