by Artemis Hunt
He ducks his head under the table. “I’m just making allowances. It’s not about failure. It’s about contingency. And don’t wave that weapon around.”
She makes a face at him. “Anyway, I’m up against slutty Kathy.”
He pricks his ears up. “Slutty Kathy?”
“If you sleep with her, I’ll do more than wave this spoon around. I’ll positively shove it up your – ”
“OK, OK, I get the drift. Any way I can help with Kathy? I mean Moody?”
“No, I’ve got to this on my own.” She sighs. “I can’t get you to bail me out every time I run into a spot of trouble. What will happen when you’re no longer around? I’ll have to learn to fend for myself.”
“First of all, I plan on us being friends for a long, long time – whether or not we decide to fool around or whether you decide to get married or do something equally painful and disastrous.”
Her expression flinches. “Marriage is not disastrous.”
“You obviously haven’t met my parents.”
“And you’ve obviously met my mother.”
“There you go.”
“That’s not the point. Anyway, back to the topic at hand before you so rudely distracted me. I won’t stand a chance if Slutty Kathy has her way with Old Man Moody, who is seventy if he has seen a day.”
“So you want me to have my way with Old Man Moody?”
“Can you be serious for, like, a second? This is my job on the line.”
“And this is my help that I’m offering. I’ll make a few calls. Moody can’t be that reclusive, not if he runs a multimillion dollar business.”
She shakes her head. “I’ve got to do this on my own. You wouldn’t understand.”
He throws up his hands in defeat. “OK, have it your way. But when you’re destitute and peddling your ass in the streets, don’t say I didn’t try to help.”
“Your confidence in my abilities is staggering.”
“No, my confidence in Slutty Kathy’s ability to get a rise out of that moody old pecker is staggering, and I haven’t even met her, although she’s beginning to sound interesting.” He grins boyishly.
She rolls her eyes.
He indicates her empty ice-cream tray. “End of your calorie binge? Say, have you ever thought of doing something else?”
She frowns as she puts down her clean spoon. “You mean like eating frozen yoghurt instead of ice-cream?”
“No, I mean literally doing something else other than account management.” He shrugs. “Like, you know, coming to work for an advertising agency, for example.”
“You mean work for you?” She tosses off a laugh. “No way.”
He puts his elbows on the table and leans over in earnest. “What is it that you really, really want to do?”
She hesitates. Her pretty face is scrunched up, the way it always is when she’s in deep thought. He finds himself noticing things like these about her.
She says shyly, “For the last couple of years . . . since I got into it . . . I’ve kind of, like, wanted to open a gym.”
“A gym?”
“Yeah. You know, where people go to ‘hang out’.”
“You mean to hook up.”
“Same thing.”
To you, he catches her hidden meaning.
She says dreamily, “There will be classes. Zumba. Les Mills Body Combat, Sh’bam, Body Pump. Belly dancing.”
“I thought you said it was a gym.”
“Gyms can have so much more. There will be a swimming pool. Yoga. Pilates. Cafes. Foot massages. Sauna.”
“It’s beginning to sound like a spa.” He’s interested despite himself.
She jabs a finger at him. He’s glad it isn’t her spoon. “Would you sign up for such a gym?” she demands.
“If the female trainers are hot.” He has his own personal gym in his penthouse . . . and even a female trainer to help him out. But that’s an idea. He should be joining a public gym to pick girls up. Not that he needs help in that department.
“There you go.” Her smile is spread across her sweet rosebud lips – those very lips he likes to suck upon.
“So why don’t you?” he says.
“Why don’t I what?”
“Follow your dream. Open up on your own gym. You could get a loan.” Or I could loan you the money, he thinks but doesn’t say for fear of incurring assault.
She sighs. “There’s too much risk involved in striking out on your own. It’s always better to have a stable job with a fixed salary.”
He snorts. “Whoever told you that?”
“It’s easy for you to say. You’re Brian Morton. You’ve never had to worry about money for a day in your life.”
“There are a lot of other things a rich kid has to worry about, thank you.” Like getting mugged. Like the unpredictable mood swings of your parents and uncle. “But seriously, if you want to set up your own gym, I can – ”
“I don’t want your money, thank you.”
“I was going to say, before you so rudely interrupted, that I can be your partner. A silent one.”
It’s her turn to snort. “I seriously doubt you can ever be silent.”
He’s enjoying this. But then, he has always enjoyed their banter. “You’re discriminating against me? If you’re going to open a gym, you’re going to need investors. Partners. Co-conspirators. And who better than friends to lend a helping dumbbell?”
She opens her mouth to protest, but he holds up his palm.
“‘I need to do this on my own’,” he mimics her singsong voice. “Christ, will you get a grip? Millionaires don’t get rich doing it all on their lonesome selves. They get help. Rich uncles. Investors. Friends. Internet buddies. The Billionaire Boys’ Club. No one does it alone anymore. We’ve come a long way since someone invented the wheel . . . and even he had prehistoric help holding it up.”
“I’m not used to taking risks. There’s a lot on my plate right now. And there’s that little thing about . . . ” She pauses.
He arrests her downcast eyes. “Let me guess. You don’t want to take anything from me.”
“I don’t want to make it seem like I’m only friends with you because I want to use you,” she mumbles.
He’s hoping she doesn’t feel that way about him either when it comes to sex. Because he’s not using her body for sex. He can have sex with anyone anytime. He’s with her because he wants to be.
“You’ve never given me that impression, not once,” he says, “except for when you’re playing with my penis. And I’m assuming you like to play with it because you don’t have a dildo.”
The expression on her face makes him want to laugh out loud.
“Life’s hard enough without having to be serious about it.” He reaches across the table to clasp her bunched fist. “So take your time to think about that gym.”
She hesitates, and then nods.
A shadow falls across their table. It’s their waitress – a spiky-haired teenager with more studs in her ears than earlobe space.
“Since it’s raining and all,” she drawls, “I’m going to close this place up early. So if you’re finished and all – ”
She picks their empty ice-cream trays up with a look that says, Get lost so I can clear up and go home.
Brian flashes his most charming smile. “Tell you what and all. How much would it cost you and all – ” He lingers on the ‘all’ “ – to let me rent this joint for two hours? I’ll even buy up every single tub of ice-cream you’ve got on your display.”
The waitress looks dubious. “Whatcha planning to do with this place?”
Brian’s smile widens. “Would three thousand dollars just about cover it?”
4
As Brian locks the main door of the creamery behind the departing waitress, who is beaming from studded ear to studded ear, Sam wonders what he has in mind. Is he smoking weed or something? He has offered her joints he has rolled before, and she has taken a puff to relive her college days. It had been hea
ven. They had mad sex afterwards, and she wonders if this is what he is leading to.
He flips the sign at the door to read ‘CLOSED’ from the outside. He turns. His grin is broad and infectious.
“Alone at last,” he says, striding to her.
He grabs her waist and bends her backwards. She can’t help laughing as he stoops to kiss her. It’s a rich kiss – full of promise and nuance and lip work. She kisses him back, feeling breathless, the way she always does whenever he initiates any sort of romantic gesture.
No, scratch that. Brian isn’t into romance. He has always made that quite clear. Brian is into fucking.
At first, she didn’t think she would be into their weird kind of relationship.
“It’s complicated,” she had tried to explain to Cassie.
“What’s so complicated about it?” her best friend demanded. “You’re fuck buddies, that’s all there is to it.”
“We’re not just fuck buddies. There’s more.”
It’s something she can’t put her finger on, but there’s more to their relationship than just sex. They are friends. Good friends. They do everything best friends do together, especially now that Cassie is spending so much time with Caleb. Not that Sam is complaining. There’s never a dull moment with Brian.
In fact, they do everything a boyfriend and girlfriend does together. When he is with her, she is all that matters. His entire attention is devoted solely to making her happy, except that they are not committed to each other. When he walks out of her door, he’s really out, and she doesn’t have a clue what he is doing or who he is fucking. He doesn’t have a clue who she’s seeing either, nor does he ask. She doesn’t tell him.
Only . . . she’s not seeing anyone else.
That’s what he is, she tells herself firmly. A Pretend Boyfriend. A gorgeous, rich stud who makes her feel all gooey and special inside when he’s with her, and all empty when he isn’t.
But he’s with her right now, and she’s feeling fantabulous.
Don’t think about it, her inner voice commands. Just enjoy him while he’s here.
He seems to be enjoying himself all right. His kisses become more heated. He probes his tongue firmly between her lips, licking them, tasting them. He licks the insides of her cheeks. He’s bent on exploring her mouth as much as possible, until there is not an expanse of tissue left in there that is not savored. Meanwhile, his hands roam up and down her body. He cups her breasts beneath her blouse, feeling the heft of her mounds inside her brassiere. She is always on sexual alert whenever she’s with Brian, and so she wears her best underwear. Lately, she has taken to shopping at La Perla – just to give him an eyeful before he rips her sexy lingerie off.
Oh, but he makes her melt inside! Already her hormones are coursing within her pelvic cavity, making all the organs within swollen and needy. Her pussy contracts, and she feels a twinge of aching desire. She badly wants him inside her. She can make love to him four times a day and it still wouldn’t be enough.
If she isn’t careful, she’s going to fall madly and desperately in love with him, and that would be the disaster of the decade.
“Wait,” he says, panting against her mouth. She can feel his erection beneath the thick fabric of his jeans.
He moves away from her. He goes to the windows and shutters the blinds frame by frame, so that no one can peer in from the sidewalks. Then he comes back.
“What? You’re not undressed already?” he teases, shrugging off his jacket.
Oh, so now she gets why he has rented out the whole store.
Anyone can walk in any minute, even with the door locked. The waitress could take it in her mind to come back and demand entry. The boss could decide to check up on his waitress and throw an apoplectic fit if he glimpses what they are at.
The excitement of doing the unbidden is already turning her insides into mush. Her pussy responds by ejecting her voluminous creams.
He undresses her, discarding item by item like a striptease. Then she watches him take his clothes off one by one. He slowly wrenches off his shoes and socks, and then his T-shirt . . . until he is standing in only his jeans.
She knows he doesn’t wear anything underneath.
He smiles at her tantalizingly. He unzips his jeans slowly – oh so slowly, his eyes burning into hers. His dark pubic thatch materializes.
“Now let’s pick out the ones we like,” he says, indicating the ice-cream on display.
*
When they have finished arranging everything, they have put six tables together and picked out two dozen small cups of different ice-cream flavors. They are both naked.
She lies down on the tables and he places himself upon his elbows beside her.
He digs his index finger into a tub and smears a dollop of tiramisu-flavored ice-cream onto her right tit. He bends his head and proceeds to lick it slowly off, trailing his tongue in a wet pool around her nipple. He repeats this with a pinch of lime sorbet and an ounce of cookies-and-cream. Then he posits a milky lump of vanilla on her left nipple and closes his mouth around it.
He sucks slowly, languorously. As if he has all the time in the world. Her nipple responds to his suckling by filling up with a warm rush of instantaneous blood. He gropes the mound of her left breast and lifts it so that he can take more of her nipple into his wet, wet mouth. Oh, how she loves the way his tongue swirls around her tip, massaging and flipping it so that it shudders and bounces in the hollow of his palate.
Her vagina turns into water.
He continues to dab the different flavors onto her breasts, creating icy patterns, delicious whorls of increasingly complex and colorful craftsmanship – all which he licks and sucks off her skin with relish. Her flesh is both flushed with excitement and pale from his icy ministrations – so that her tits resemble a red-and-white streaked and glistening mélange.
He drips strawberry sorbet onto the midline that traverses the longitudinal axis of her belly. He pushes the melting pink ice down, down, down with the tip of his tongue . . . until the chilly crystals cascade into the puckered bowl of her belly button. She gasps. Her abdominal muscles contract from the illicit sensation.
His tongue swirls around the basin of her umbilicus, and continues its way south. Down, down, down until it hits the hedged barrier of her pubic hair.
He looks up, smiling. Mischief dances in his liquid brown eyes.
Her flesh down there is very hot.
“So what do we do now?” he teases.
“Tongue me,” she begs.
“Say pretty please.”
“Pretty please.”
“That was too easy. I want you to beg for it.” He places both his hands on her inner thighs and parts them.
“Please, please, please, please,” she says.
“Please what? I want to hear you say it.”
“Please . . . lick me.”
“Lick what?” He knows she doesn’t quite like to get graphic, and she knows it gives him a rise when she does.
A shudder passes through her. “Lick my clitoris.”
“And what toppings would you like on it?”
Oh. A blush heats her cheeks. She doesn’t reply.
“Rocky Road?” he suggests, showing her the tub.
He doesn’t wait for her assent. His finger scoops up a generous load of Rocky Road ice-cream and he pauses between her open legs. She’s frankly unnerved when he gazes at her revealed pussy like this – as if he wants to devour her.
He licks his lower lip as he dribbles half-melted ice-cream onto her pussy. The first drop strikes the hood of her clit, and the sensation is electric – like a chip of ice upon her hot, hot flesh. She claws the table top, her whole body tense . . . waiting.
He dabs more ice-cream onto her pussy, until the part of her clit that is visible to him is all covered with it. Cold liquid worms into the recesses between her labia, and her womb contracts for the exquisiteness of it. He prizes open her nether lips so that he can pool more ice-cream into her hidden fl
esh. Her hands flutter to stop him – and yet she doesn’t want him to stop.
It’s too overwhelming – this intimate freezing of her most secret places.
She moans. Her hands come down to clutch his hair. She grabs tufts of its rich, tawny texture. He lowers his face to her creamed pussy – doubly creamed in both ways – and tongues her sticky flesh. He licks her and slathers her and makes little oscillations all around her clit and pussy lips, until she is writhing and arching her back and grinding her teeth and making little tortured noises in her throat. Her thighs are clenching to remain open because her natural instinct is to close them against too much pleasure.
His ice-cream slicked fingers creep to her pussy hole. The lightning chill extends to her snug passageway as his fingers burrow inside. They plunge leisurely in and out of her, eliciting a fresh secretion of her own creams as he continues to lave the external parts of her genitalia with his wicked tongue.
Her gasps become more torturous and her breathing becomes more labored. Her hips lift themselves off the table as he presses his mouth down on her clit. She’s cresting. Oh, how she is cresting. His teeth gently seize the wrinkled flesh in between them, and she comes violently under his mouth. The orgasm rips through her body, sending spasms throughout her entire musculature. All her nerve endings become inflamed.
He holds her down as she shudders and shakes with the tides of pleasure rolling all over her. And she has scarcely recovered when he holds up a silver foil packet and tears it with his teeth.
“Here, put it on me,” he says softly.
She doesn’t think she has the strength. But she arouses herself anyway to sheath the slightly wet condom around his marvelous cock.
He poises his body on top of her. Then he digs his entire right hand into a tub of mint ice-cream and slathers the creamy concoction all over his covered penis. He rubs his organ, making sure her eyes are upon it as it grows ever more tumescent.
When he’s ready, he positions himself between her legs. His pupils are extremely dilated as he looks down upon her with obvious desire and need. His breathing is ragged as the tip of his cold cock nudges her well-creamed pussy hole.