sex.lies.murder.fame.

by Lolita Files

  “But why?” she cried, pressing her cheeks into his firm pecs.

  “I don’t know.” Penn’s voice was low, almost a whisper. “I kind of feel…I don’t know…connected to you. Like I know you already. Like I’ve always known you.”

  She opened her mouth, but he cut her off.

  “I know, I know. It’s crazy, it’s cliché, it might even seem borderline psycho. It’s every bullshit line ever said by every bullshit Lothario in every bullshit movie ever made.”

  She clamped her lips, chewing at the bottom from the inside.

  “But it’s the truth,” Penn said. “I felt like that the second I spoke to you when we were in Barnes and Noble. It was crazy. Like this charge went between us or something.”

  Beryl’s eyes were wide, and then so was her mouth. Her smile was fantabulous, fully flashing her teeth. All BriteSmile-zapped thirty-two of them.

  She was crying again, but this time it was different. This was a happy cry. It was the I-just-hit-the-Love-Lotto squeal of cathartic release.

  “Here, take these.”

  Penn had opened the bottles and was handing her the pills.

  “I usually take them in the morning,” she said.

  “It is morning.”

  “But I always take them around seven.”

  “I’m concerned about you collapsing again,” he said.

  She was mortified.

  “It doesn’t happen that much.”

  “It’s happened four times already. That I know of…”

  “One of them wasn’t a cataplexy. I got hit in the head with a door, remember?”

  “Right.” Penn smiled. “Those blackouts, so that’s what they’re called? A…cataplexy?”

  She cast her eyes toward the floor.

  “Yes.”

  He lifted her chin with his finger, encouraging her to look at him.

  “Don’t be ashamed, Beryl. I’m not judging you. I’m staying, remember? That is, if you want me to.”

  There went that grin of hers. It was a rose amid thorns.

  “Yes. I want you to.”

  He reached for her left hand, turned it so the palm was facing up, and dropped the pills into it.

  “So take these already. It’ll make me feel better. I’ll get you some water.”

  “But then I won’t be able to get to sleep.”

  “Right. Well. Perhaps we can come up with something to do.”

  They were in the Delorme sheets!

  Beneath the promised paradise of the Frette Demetra Foglie Arredo duvet!

  And he was on the McRoskey! At long last, he was on the McRoskey!

  And he was impaling her, piercing her bony loins with the ferocity of every long-lost noble ever restored to the throne. Penn was Anastasia, Aragorn, Arthur—all the A s and more. He was back in the seat of luxury, and this sex-denied, sleep-disordered insipid little misfit beneath him was just the person to usher him into the awaiting laurels of fame and wealth.

  He had chosen his prey well. The narcolepsy was a gimme from the universe. So was the obsessive-compulsive thing, which he hadn’t mentioned but, when he found the second bottle of medication in her purse, he’d investigated that drug, Anafranil, on the Internet, too. Clomipramine was used for narcolepsy as well, he’d learned, but it was primarily a drug for obsessive-compulsive disorder. She was probably an ob-com. She had all the markings of it. He had studied obsessive-compulsive behavior at NYU, so he knew a thing or three enough about it to take a better than wild guess. This was most outstanding. He couldn’t have asked for better. She had a defect. Defects. Which made her doubly desperate, doubly insecure. It had accelerated everything.

  He’d found condoms, very neat and organized, in the cabinet under the bathroom sink, right where she said they’d be. Trojan Ultra Pleasure. Trojan-Enz Large. Lifestyles Ultra Sensitive, thin lubricated. The woman was nothing if not prepared. It was disarming at first, seeing such a stash at the ready, until Penn caught the expiration date on the side of one of the packets. July 2002. He checked out another. October 2000. The silver packs of Lifestyles were so old, they were curling at the seams. January 1998. Damn. This was the sign of either a serious fucker who’d suddenly staved off or a diligent planner who didn’t score much. Ever, it seemed.

  He had grabbed the ones most recent (fortunately for him they were the Trojan-Enz Large), then he got down to work.

  And now he was giving the punch-drunk girl beneath him a most thorough thrashing, a thrashing in the best way, a beating of the body that rendered her a protoplasmic puddle. She was blubbering, hollering, crazed. Never had she been fucked like this. And he was looking at her, eye to eye. He instinctively knew no one had done that to her before. Most, he bet, just squeezed their eyes shut, or hit it from the back. She probably never had a man hold her gaze with longing passion as he pushed his way inside of her. Penn swooped down upon her with a determination he wanted her to believe was divine, preordained love. Fate had arrived. Fairy tales were coming true. Sex and the City and every tale of equal ilk women like her dreamed of were proving more gospel than fiction.

  Penn speared her with purpose, gusto, and a finality designed to eclipse every thought she ever had of him in the future. He intended to do the job many more times in the days and weeks to come, but he wanted this first fucking to leave an indelible print on every cell of her being. He didn’t want her to take a breath without feeling the lingering pleasurable pain of him on top of her. He wanted her lower lips to sting when she sat down or went to pee, a Pavlovian reminder of his sturdy meat, which he had positioned in her face with deliberate confidence an hour earlier as he kneeled above her on the bed. He wanted her to see how huge his proffering was (and it was), wanted her to realize that everything about him was grand—not just his face and his body, but his instrument of pleasure and propagation. She would be lucky to get this. This wanted her. This was a once-in-a-lifetime miracle. Outside of him, she would never get the chance at something like this again.

  She misinterpreted why he had put his manhood so close to her face and, after an extended moment of shock and awe as she took in its size and beauty, she reached for the raging meat and pulled it into her mouth. He leaned down, taking her face in both hands.

  “No,” he whispered. “You’ve had a hard night. This is all about you.”

  He had removed himself from her surprisingly dry mouth and slid down her belly.

  “Nice abs,” he’d said, running his fingers over the six tight bumps.

  He kept going down, pressing his face between the scarce meat of her thighs and into her wetness. He understood at once why her mouth was so dry. All the moisture in her body had beat it down south, having gotten the clarion call that something between her legs was about to give. She was glistening, leaking, oozing upon the bed, her pussy raining glee at so much attention.

  Penn worshipped the area for what felt like forever, the better side of sixty minutes, giving his lips a good smear of Kiehl’s first, then sending her over the cliffs of ecstasy eight times and counting. It was the first time she’d ever come with a man. She’d had lots of self-evoked moments, but had never experienced orgasm during the sex act itself. Sure, she had cataplexied during sex once, but that wasn’t the same. And Penn was eating her like she was a most delicious meal. It was too much. She popped and popped and popped without respite.

  The longest any man, including her gynecologist, could have ever been down there was ten minutes. Her genitals were actually ugly, if genitalia could be described that way. The inner lips, the labia minora, were large flappers, elephant ears that stuck to Penn’s face like leeches as he lapped at her Frankensteinian clitoris. Her clit wasn’t as big as a penis, but it was larger than anything he’d ever seen. The pinky of a five-year-old, that’s what it was. The thing was at least that big. It was a rod that made him feel a bit uneasy at first as he sucked on it, but he soon gave himself over to the bigger picture, which was to get her to submit to his will. That alone was worth sucking her skinn
y clit-bone.

  After he ate her, he thrust himself inside her slickness, no warning, no prep, just ramrod action designed to immediately break her will. She squawked and clawed at the air, then scratched at his back. Turned out she was a yipper, a screamer, first-class.

  “Aaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiyeeeeeeyeeeeeyeeeeeyeeeeeyeeeee! Jesus, Joseph, and Mary! OhGodOhGodOhGod!”

  “You feel so fucking good,” he moaned, ramming her hard, his eyes locked onto hers. “Beryl. Fuck. Beryl. Fuck. Fuck.”

  Penn knew the power of repetition, what it would do to someone like her, just hearing her name over and over like that.

  “Beryl, you’re killing me. You feel so fucking awesome. Your pussy is so hot.”

  “Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeyeeeeeeeeeeeyeeeeeeeeeeeyeeeeeeeeeee!” she squealed.

  He raised himself up on his arms, a foot of space between his torso and hers, and pounded her pudenda with a fierceness, angling his dick in and out, sometimes pulling it back just to the tip, then plunging it in, watching it knock the wind out of her chest.

  “Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeyeeeeeeeeeeeyeeeeeeeeeeeyeeeeeeeeeee!”

  He lowered himself, his mouth close to her ear, still pounding her, a butcher at steak.

  “Tell me you don’t have a boyfriend,” he whispered. “It’ll kill me if you can’t be all mine.”

  “Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeyeeeeeeeeeeeyeeeeeeeeeeeyeeeeeeeeeee!”

  Her eyes were rolled back in her head, Linda Blair–style. She dug so hard into the meat of his back, she broke the skin.

  “It feels like you’re mine, Beryl. Tell me, tell me you’re mine.”

  “Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeyeeeeeeeeeeeyeeeeeeeeeeeyeeeeeeeeeee!”

  She thrashed underneath him, her eyes pure white, pupils gone. Seeing himself wield such power over her gave Penn the extra wind he needed to close the deal.

  “I fucking love you,” he moaned. “I know it. It’s crazy, but I already fucking know it.”

  Beryl came right then. Hard, solid, a cardiac arrest. Everything in her stopped. The thrashing, the rolling eyes, all of it. There was nothing but the pounding in her chest as she watched, catatonic, as Penn kept pumping above her. She held on to his back, pressing her face into his shoulder. She felt him shudder as he came. She clung on, refusing to let go of the moment, the insanity, the dream.

  Penn’s body went limp against her. He lay on top of her, stroking her hair, their loins a mess of melded stickiness.

  Beryl’s mouth was at his ear.

  “Did you just say you loved me?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  She hesitated, then, “Did you mean it?”

  “Yes.”

  She was trembling beneath him. He could feel it. Her bones rattled like Ichabod Crane’s. He wondered if another cataplexy was on its way. He could sense her struggling for words, words he already knew were coming before they were even spoken. He began a silent count. How long would it take her to say them?

  One.

  Two.

  “I love you, too.”

  Women were the stupidest creatures alive.

  Oops!!

  …Hotshot Kittell Press editrix Beryl Unger sent everyone scattering when she literally hit the floor at the Astor Place Barnes and Noble last night. The drama took place in the middle of a book signing for Pulitzer prima donna Canon Messier. “She just collapsed,” said a stunned spectator at the packed event. “It scared us all. Thank goodness I was still able to get my book signed.” Some are speculating whether the fainting spell means Unger’s in over her head at work, or if it’s a sign of something else. “It couldn’t be pregnancy,” says our spy. “Her face is the ultimate contraceptive.” Reps for Barnes and Noble and Kittell Press declined comment.

  Sharlyn’s mouth hung open, her bagel with a schmear poised just at the entrance. After the initial shock set in, she began to laugh. Hard.

  She was sitting upright in bed reading Page Six. Beryl’s face a contraceptive? That was beyond cruel.

  Sure she was laughing. The phrasing was hilarious, even though it was bitingly mean. Beryl was a nice person. She couldn’t help that Mother Nature had been kinder to her body than to her face. The woman was an excellent editor and a loyal friend. She was enthusiastic and enterprising. Everything a writer could wish for.

  But damn. That was some funny shit.

  Shar put down the paper, trying to decide if she should call Beryl and warn her about it. There were several editors, at CarterHobbs and outside of it, who’d been resentful of her fast ascent. They’d be snickering behind Beryl’s back and in her face. She needed to be warned. A friend, a good friend, always gave the heads-up.

  Sharlyn reached for the phone. It was early, just after six-thirty. She always had the papers brought to her at the crack of dawn. She figured Beryl would be up. She was always up. Shar sometimes wondered if Beryl slept at all.

  She was awake, her eyes boring into the wall.

  Aside from the medication, which was keeping her alert, she couldn’t have slept anyway. She was walking through a dream and didn’t want to do anything that might make it go away. His arms were around her midsection as he spooned her back. She could feel the soft heave of his breathing. Perhaps he was asleep.

  “You gonna get that?” he asked.

  “Oh. Um. You want me to?” She realized how silly the words sounded as they exited her mouth.

  “It’s up to you,” he said.

  She was unsure of what to do, not wanting to displease him or give off the message that she couldn’t think for herself. Or that she didn’t answer her phone. Suppose he called some morning, if he was still around, and she was unable to answer because she was in the shower or sleeping too hard? He might think it was because she was canoodling with someone. He might never call again. She couldn’t let that happen. Not with him. He was…the one. The time to set the tone was now. She reached for the receiver.

  “I don’t know if I’m ready to share you just yet,” he said, gently pulling her back. “It’s early. Can’t we have just a few more minutes? This’ll all be over soon enough.”

  “What do you mean?” Beryl asked in a panic, turning toward him as the phone rang for the fourth and last time.

  “Ssshhh,” he said, covering her mouth with first his finger, then his lips. His kisses were light and spare, lingering over the tender mound of freshly injected collagen in the area that should have been her cupid’s bow. “I mean sooner or later, we’ve got to get out of this bed, that’s all. Relax. This isn’t a one-night stand. Not for me.”

  “Me, neither.”

  He smiled, his blue eyes dancing.

  “Awesome. I was hoping this wasn’t just something you did. You know, stage blackouts so you can pick up guys.”

  “That’s not funny, Penn. I’m still pretty mortified over you finding out.”

  “I’m glad I did,” he said, kissing her left cheek as he leaned over her, pressing her back into the bed. “Otherwise I would have missed all this, you know?”

  “Yeah,” she said, choking with bliss. “I know.”

  Sharlyn decided against leaving a message.

  “Oh well. I tried.”

  She pushed away the breakfast tray, swung her legs over the side of the bed, and stared at her laptop, which was sitting on the foot of her luxurious chaise just across the room.

  “I’m going to write today. Yup. Today, I’m going to write.”

  She got up and walked her naked body past the chaise and the laptop, toward the master bath. The phone rang. Perhaps it was Beryl calling her back. She picked up the cordless extension in the bathroom.

  “Hello?”

  “Girl, you better wake up!” the happy voice sang.

  It was Diamond DeLane, television personality, former circuit court judge, proud member of the African-American community (first and foremost, dammit, she was black!), ultra-celebrity (in her mind, anyway), and overall appreciatrix of living la vida opulence.

  “Hey, girl. I was already up.”

  “You kn
ow I was gonna blast you if you weren’t,” Diamond laughed. “I got the early-morning call, so now it’s your turn. I’m not going to be the only one snatched out of her beauty sleep. Look alive, girlfriend. We’ve got things to do.”

  “Parties to plan!”

  That last comment came from a third voice, Aurora Kash, celebrated songstress, party giver, partygoer, and beloved socialite, whose last name was one of the biggest understatements of all time. Her spread in the Hamptons practically had its own zip code. She had once married very well, but she was single now and thrilled about it. Divorce had its privileges.

  “Hey, Aurora.”

  “Good morning, Shar. Diamond and Shar! How adorable is that? Perhaps that should be our theme tonight. The Diamond and Shar Show.”

  “It’s the Diamond, Shar, and Aurora Show,” Diamond said. “I like that. It sounds intergalactic.”

  Sharlyn turned on the shower, letting it steam up the mirrors a while as she did other things.

  “So to what do I owe this pleasure, ladies? What theme for tonight are you talking about?”

  “We’re throwing an impromptu party,” both women replied.

  “When?”

  “Tonight,” said Diamond.

  “In honor of what?”

  “In honor of everything,” answered Aurora.

  “And nothing,” Diamond added. “It’s in honor of the fact that we’re all fabulous. Life and love are great. What more of a reason do we need?”

  “It’s nothing sprawling or overdone. Just a few friends getting together for a good time.”

  Sharlyn knew what “a few friends” meant. It could be anything from thirty people to three hundred. She stood at the sink in front of the steamed mirror. Neither of these women did anything small, and now they wanted to celebrate life and love? With an impromptu party? Life might be great but love wasn’t all that. Miles was still gone, she was still horny, and all the partying in the world couldn’t take the edge off. She reached for her sonic toothbrush and squeezed on a glob of paste.

  “So why are you calling me so early? My husband is out of town, as usual, so I don’t have any plans tonight. Count me in.”