Being Eloise (An Erotic Romance Collection, Books 1-3) (20 page)

“Listen, Drake,” I said. “I don’t like playing this kind of game. I don’t know if it’s you who’s got these weird fetishes or if it’s Olivia. I think it’s Olivia, but you’d know.”

“Put it on,” he said.

“I’m not going to put that on,” I said. “Not unless you suddenly get bird flu.”

“Olivia’s not going to like this,” he said, scolding.

“Tough shit,” I said. “She’s not going to like this either. But I want to see if, maybe, you might.” I reached into the pocket of my skirt and took out the pills. His erection was gone. But not for long, I thought. I took out a pill and held it and the glass in front of Drake.

“Open up,” I said.

He shook his head.

“Open up, fucker,” I said.

“Put on the suit,” he said.

“I’m giving the orders,” I said.

“Well, we’re at an impasse then,” he said.

I couldn’t help but laugh. A naked bound man claiming
this
was an impasse? Olivia might control the ropes most days, but she wasn’t here. I was. And I didn’t see an impasse.

I put the pill on the dresser and crushed it with the bottom of the glass of water. I dipped a finger into the water then swept up the white powder from the counter and the bottom of the glass. I got up on the bed, lifted Drake’s balls out of the way, and shoved my finger where Olivia had wanted the bright yellow hazmat dildo to go.

Drake gave a little gasp. “Olivia will
not
be happy about this,” he said.

I left him to sulk, then went back to their master bathroom and took a long shower. I dried my hair and combed it back. I sat down at the make-up area and found a shade amid Olivia’s lipsticks that I liked and applied it. My face in the make-up mirror stared back at me showing every pore, every imperfection. Look close enough and everything’s imperfect. Look closer and everything is empty space between electrons and nuclei. Everything is the same. But I didn’t want to be just a collection of electrons and protons and neutrons and incalculably empty space. I wanted to be Eloise Spanks: mother, lover, friend. I wanted myself back.

I dressed in my own clothes and stood out on the bedroom balcony. Clouds were rising up in the sun’s wake. A wind had picked up. I was going to miss the pool on the other side of the house, but that was about all I’d miss of this place.

I found Drake semi-diagonal on the bed. He’d managed to pull down the runner on the dresser and was within a few inches of the phone. I picked the runner off the floor and put it back on top and put the phone where it belonged.

“How were you going to dial?” I asked, and laughed. I picked up the phone, an old corded phone, and wound the cord around Drake’s erection, then held the receiver to his ear. “Go ahead,” I teased.

Drake’s eyes were closed and a slight smile was on his lips so I quickly unwound the cord. “No more of that,” I said, angry at myself for having so quickly fallen back into the easy role of tormentor. That was not Eloise Spanks. That, maybe, was the empty space, that was maybe emptiness itself, but it wasn’t me. This was me:

I took the chair from the writing desk and put it in the middle of the floor. I unbuttoned my blouse slowly, my fingers going from one button to the next, but my eyes fixed on Drake’s eyes. His fat little cock ticked like something that keeps catching itself just as it’s about to fall asleep.

I wasn’t wearing a bra. I turned around and took off the top and tossed it over my shoulder to the bed. It was with some pride that I saw I’d made it land on his crotch. At least I wouldn’t have to stare at it. Not quite yet, anyway. Next I unzipped my skirt and let it fall to the floor, followed by my underwear, trying my best to make this strip-tease something he wouldn’t forget, not because it was in any way risqué or unusual but because it was not. There wasn’t any special lighting. There was no music vamping in the background. It was just a woman undressing for a man, without a costume, without props, without artificial stresses.

My pumps were the next to go. Then, with only the stockings left, I sat on the chair and slowly unrolled a stocking down one leg. I arched my leg back and up and pulled tight at the remaining stocking. I looked at him as wantonly as I could muster for a man toward whom I felt only pity.
God damn!—
I made him swallow! I stood and put my other, still-stockinged leg on the chair and slowly unrolled the stocking. And then I was naked, like Drake.

“Do you like what you see, Drake?” I said.

He nodded just barely.

“I can’t hear you.”

“Yes,” he breathed.

I climbed up onto the bed and undid the tie on one leg. Then I pulled away my blouse from where it had landed and looked at his penis, Olivia’s
schlong
.

I held my mouth over it as a tease, just as I had that Wednesday before, but this time I took him in. His whole body twitched and that free leg of his pulled in and lay beside mine. I was slow and sensual, and generous if I may say so. I didn’t know if Olivia was like this with Drake on non-Wednesdays, but I doubted it—she hadn’t expressed much interest in true physical intimacy.

When Drake started that pre-cum pant, followed by that even closer pre-cum silence I withdrew and looked up at him. I went over to the other leg and untied it and ran my hands up both legs, then over his stomach and chest and shoulders out to the two bound arms. I put my nipples to his lips and at first there was nothing, and then that tongue of his came out and encircled my nipples. I reached down and pushed his cock against it and lowered myself against him and worked myself along him until I could feel myself getting wet. And then I kissed him, the taste of whisky on his tongue but I didn’t mind it, didn’t mind either the fact that his tongue was slow to respond. I had hours. I went down on him again, just as soft, just as slow, and again I withdrew and this time his tongue met my tongue. I untied one of his arms and it at first lay where it was released, then slowly ran up my leg and my ass and up the hollow of my back and back to my ass. All it would take was the smallest change in position and he’d be in me. I looked him in the eyes, held his face, this sad-looking face that had somewhere along life’s path mistaken pain for pleasure, that thought money was life, that thought wives were women like Olivia. All this I naïvely felt I could undo. I could save him and damn Olivia.

And then he was within me.

I rode him slowly and stared down at him and he looked like he was about to cry just before he came in me. But I didn’t stop. I rode him at just the same pace, slow and sensual and giving him the full range of my hips. I was more than well-lubricated by his cum. I closed my eyes and pretended this was Mr. Irldale beneath me, someone kind and equally vulnerable and wanting nothing but the same thing as I. Comfort. It was like this for at least half an hour.

“Eloise,” Drake said, “Oh Eloise,” and he came again.

I climbed off of him and stood beside the bed, my legs stiff.

“There,” I said. I leaned over and kissed the head of his cock, not with a whip, not with a slap, but with my lips.

Drake breathed heavily. “I love you Eloise,” he said.

I smiled. Maybe I was too good at this. “That’s your cock talking,” I said. I gathered my clothes together.

“You haven’t come,” he said.

“No,” I said.

“Can I try?” he said and I straightened, skirt and blouse in hand.

This was the part where I’d planned to leave him, just after he’d been given a taste for how real lovemaking should feel, even if there wasn’t any love actually there. This was where I was supposed to go downstairs feeling vindicated that I’d done what Olivia
hadn’t
demanded. I’d
had
her husband. This was the part where I was going to pack my belongings and leave for anywhere, it didn’t matter. The campsite where my son was, first. Then a new apartment. This was the part where the head
and
the heart wins. And if you’re the reader who sees strength in me, well, stop reading and remember me as so.

The rest of you…

“Eloise?” Drake asked, gently, softly.

I didn’t realize how strong my need for pleasure was until I dawdled a bit too long. I was unprepared for its veto power. Plus it would just
kill
Olivia, wouldn’t it? I dropped my clothes back on the floor and climbed onto the bed. I reached over and began to untie Drake’s last bound wrist. Drake pulled the pillows out from behind him and scooted down the bed until his head was between my legs. His hands went around my ass and pulled me toward his mouth. Now it was my time to flinch as that tongue went full bore, first into my vagina, then over my clit.

“Easy tiger,” I said. “Easy.”

His hands gripped tighter, now holding me by my hips. But his tongue complied, flattened, grew soft and gentle and I was filled with nothing but the ache of wanting to come, nothing but anticipation pushing back against the lapping of his tongue. I felt his fingers run down my back, down the crack of my ass, and then feel my labia. I pressed gently against his tongue. He inserted a finger, then withdrew and inserted a second, maybe a third, and then, slowly, so slowly and without breaking the rhythm of his tongue, all three entered me and my mind was just the blank slate of an orgasm—the empty space between what I’d done and what I was going to do. A place where even science has no answers, or if they do, I hope they keep them to themselves.

Afterwards, I picked up my clothes and dressed. Drake lay there on the bed, still hard, but his face soft and his chin glistening. I went down the stairs, out the door, and across the courtyard, then up to my apartment. I went to my own bed and pulled the suitcase from beneath, an empty one—no lock—and set it on the bed. I looked at all that empty space inside that would be filled within the hour.

First, though, I called Olivia and put my phone down. I put the voice recorder next to it and played her the sound of Drake calling my name and coming. If I was going to leave, I was going to leave with some style, whatever the repercussions.

I’d fight for work. I’d fight to keep custody of my son. I’d fight for the things that matter, but on turf I could call home. On conditions that were mine.

Which is how I’d end this book if it were fiction—with a recapturing of self-confidence, with the spark of triumph that you just know will lead the main character to safety somewhere beyond the last pages. But this is real life and not so neat. Burning your bridges is immensely satisfying. And immensely stupid. I was naïve. Even after all that had happened in the past year, I was still naïve.

Olivia left a dozen messages all of which I deleted before she got to the end of the first sentence, usually silenced somewhere around
bit- fuc- whor- har- trai-.
I was only calm because I knew she was too far away to reach me.

I found a place that rented rooms by the week, an old motel beside a tire shop. I took an upstairs room. I had enough credit on my cards to last maybe two months. But two months—without the pressures of the Drakes, without the distractions of Terrance, without any work—felt like ages. Give me two months of this kind of concentrated time and I could do anything, I thought.

By the time I returned to the Drake residence later that day to pack up more of my belongings, there was a For Rent sign down by the street. By the time I returned again, the locks had been changed and my dining room set, lamps, and assorted kitchenware sat behind the For Rent sign. I left it there—all but the good cookware from my wedding, back when it seemed important that I have the best pans to fry my eggs and brown my meat. I can still remember setting up our wedding registry, choosing the essential crap with which I thought I needed to be happy. But no amount of weight could hold our relationship stable—it billowed and twisted and broke free all the same. I put the heavy cast iron pieces into a bag and walked off. The cookware would survive me as long as I didn’t lose them somewhere along life’s path. They were practically immortal.

I blocked Olivia’s number. Then, when the phone calls didn’t stop, I blocked the second number she called from. Then the third. Finally there was silence. I drove out to The Falls where my son and Sam were finishing up their Spring Break camping and found them taking down their tent.

“Mom’s here,” my son said, seeing me. He said it as an alert to Sam, and with a tone that crushed me. Where was my son, the one who used to run to me, to ask to be lifted up into my arms, who kissed me? It was as though he’d been kidnapped, vanished, devoured.

“Sam,” I said, to my husband’s stare.

“Got a call about you,” Sam said, standing as he folded the tent’s stake poles.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said.

He eyed me and I knew he knew more than I wanted him to know about me and about the Drakes.

“Tell your mom what we caught,” he said finally.

“Rainbow. This big,” my son said, to what could only be some prehistoric scale of trout.

“Tasty?” I asked.

“We let it go,” my son said, and I could hear the disappointment in his voice. I could almost believe that Sam liked camping. But gutting a fish? Never.

“We got a new place,” I said to my boy.

“Why?”

“It’s closer to school. You won’t need to take the bus.”
Or get a ride,
I thought to myself.

“It’s only Saturday,” Sam said.

“I know. I know,” I said, though really, I did want to take my son home with me. It would have been no fun for him though, what with the place dank and filled with cardboard boxes and the depression of downsizing.

“I just wanted to go for a drive, see what you boys were up to,” I said.

“Aw. She misses us,” Sam said.

“One of you,” I said, and my son stuck his tongue out at Sam, then laughed and I loved him again.

I spent Saturday night polishing the ol’ resume and all day Sunday going after temporary work, whatever I could find. The big stores in town were hiring, but not immediately, not until after the long wait of classes and indoctrination and drug testing, etc. And not on a Sunday. I wanted the kind of job you could find in the ‘50s—not that I was around then, mind you. The jobs where you could pick up the
Help Wanted
sign up front, go see the manager, and be working that same day as a stock filer, or waitress, or gas pump attendant. It didn’t matter what job I could find—I just wanted to have a roof overhead. But the only signs like those were for waitressing, and I was too old and too inexperienced, plus I now had an aversion to taking orders.