Friends With Partial Benefits (9 page)

Looking into the mirrored wall, she saw what he was up to and allowed him to have a moment. When it started to feel uncomfortable, she said, "I think I’m done."

"What?" Brian asked, dumbfounded.

"Could you, uh…?"

He snapped out of it and stood up. "Sorry."

She brought the weight down, slowly slipped her legs from behind the pads, and sat up on the machine.

"How’d I do?"

"Great. Your form was... perfect," he said.

Moving to the bench press, he loaded two forty-five-pound plates onto each side, as Victoria looked on while stretching from side to side. This was a total of two hundred and twenty-five pounds, of which Brian could normally do two repetitions. But that was generally after a few warm-up sets at a lower weight. It was twenty pounds short of his maximum, but he was in the mood to impress Victoria, so he figured he would start there.

She moved to the yoga mat, about ten feet away, and watched Brian in the mirror as he lay back on the weight bench and prepared to lift the bar from the rack.

After adjusting his hand position, he glanced over at her as she worked herself into the downward-facing-dog yoga position, her string-covered ass staring back at him. She held the position, and she looked great.

Brian exhaled deeply, lifted the weight off the rack, and brought it down to his chest. He heaved it back up for one good repetition. Feeling strong, he steadied the weight above his chest, preparing for his second rep, and looked toward Victoria again, just as she was adjusting to a position with her legs spread. At that moment, her bikini bottom came untied on one side and slipped from her hip, exposing a gorgeous view of half of everything she had. Brian’s eyes widened. He brought the bar down to his chest a little harder than he intended, and he seemed powerless to push it up.

While Victoria remained preoccupied with grabbing the loose string of her bikini bottoms, he made grunting noises. Looking at him through her knees, she realized he might be in trouble. She quickly straightened and rushed to him, as the other side of her swimsuit bottom became untied and fell from her body. She stood next to him, unsure what to do, considering she was completely nude from the waist down and only a foot from his face.

Brian again struggled to lift the weight from his chest and failed, as he looked right into her beautiful midsection.

"Help me!" he finally blurted out.

Shaking her hands in a panic, she paused to think. Then lifting one leg over him, and straddling him—her naked parts just six inches from his face—she grabbed the bar with two hands and attempted to lift it away from him. He looked directly at her womanhood and froze. He didn’t or couldn’t attempt to help her at all. Instead, he stared as if he were in a trance. She struggled once more before losing her balance and falling back, landing right onto his groin and causing him to yell out in pain.

It was at that the moment that Jillian walked into the room. She spotted Victoria nude from the waist down, sitting on top of Brian as he fought to balance the weight on his chest. Jillian rushed over.

"Victoria, what the hell are you doing?"

"I’m trying to help him."

"Why are you naked?" Jillian asked.

"I’m not naked—not completely anyway," Victoria insisted.

"I told you to stay out of the pool."

"I didn’t go in. I swear."

"Then why can I clearly see your nipples? Your top is soaking wet," Jillian said curtly.

"I, uh, was hot, so I used the spray bottle."

Jillian glared at her, since that was a clear violation of the spirit of her no-using-the-pool rule.

Struggling to speak, Brian groaned, "GUT HIR UF ME!"

Jillian heard something, but she couldn't make it out. She leaned in close to him, and he tried again.

"Get. Her. Off. Of. Me."

"Oh." Jillian gave Victoria an annoyed look. "Could you get the hell off him?"

After getting to her feet, Victoria moved away from the bench, while Jillian got behind Brian, in the proper spotting position. She counted to three, and together they returned the bar to the rack. Still lying on the bench, Brian breathed deeply.

Jillian glared at Victoria. "Why were you giving him a lap dance?"

"I wasn’t," Victoria shot back.

"And why aren’t you wearing bottoms?"

"They fell off when I was doing some stretching," Victoria said casually.

"Maybe because you’re not wearing anything close to proper workout attire?" Jillian looked down at the still-uncovered Victoria, noticed she was hairless down there, and said, "My God, you’re completely shaved?"

"You like it?" Victoria asked.

Jillian didn’t respond, so Victoria looked at Brian who was, of course, staring right at it again.

He glanced up at Victoria’s face, smiled, and returned his attention to the area in question. "Personally I prefer a ‘landing strip,’ but now you’ve got me rethinking that... I do like it."

Victoria smiled as Jillian pondered what exactly a ‘landing strip’ was, but she let it go rather than ask.

The women both looked at Brian and noticed his shorts, which sported a slight bulge, as well as a big wet spot in the center.

Victoria laughed. "Looks like someone got a little too excited."

Sitting up, he looked down at his shorts and said defensively, "I did not."

Brian and Jillian gave Victoria a suspicious look.

Victoria made a face, looked down between her thighs, and then back to Brian’s shorts. "Okay, maybe it was me."

Victoria ran a hand down between her legs, as Jillian looked on with a horrified expression and Brian watched, open-mouthed. Pulling her hand back, she said casually, "Yes, you’re right—it was me. Sorry about that. I’m really, really weaa—" She stopped talking when she saw Jillian’s dismayed look and then hurriedly said, "Sweaty. I’m very sweaty. It’s hot out there. That, um, Florida humidity, and all." Victoria repeated towards Brian, "Sorry."

He simply looked at her like a lost puppy. "Don’t worry about it."

Catching Jillian's glare, Victoria asked, "What?"

"I told you to put on the cover-up."

"There wasn’t time. I saw him fall off the treadmill and rushed in to help."

Jillian inquired of Brian, "Is this true?"

"I did sorta fall off the treadmill," Brian admitted sheepishly.

Jillian grabbed a towel from a table and tossed it to her friend. "Would you please put this on? Why don’t you do us all a favor and go back out and work on your tan?"

Looking a little sad, Victoria held the towel for a moment before reaching down to pick up her bottoms. She walked from the room, not bothering to wrap the towel around her waist.

Brian said, "Thanks for helping me. I’m not sure what happened. Usually I can handle that much weight."

"I think I know what happened," she said.

Brian stood and shot her an embarrassed grin as she added, "Sorry you had to see all of her like that just now. It was—"

"Oh, no... I saw it before when she was on the leg curl machine."

"What?" Jillian asked.

"She had me spotting her earlier on the leg machine, and everything just sorta popped out—if you know what I mean. Proving that you’re totally right about that not being a proper workout outfit." Brian glanced out the window to watch Victoria as she headed to the pool. "She’s a real firecracker."

"She’s a Darren Star production."

After grinning, he gave her a confused look.

"Darren Star, the creator of Sex and the City."

His eyes lit up. "Oh, Samantha. Yeah, I’ve seen an episode or two... maybe," Brian said a little hesitantly.

She chuckled, and then they both watched as Victoria unabashedly slipped the bikini bottoms up her legs and over her ass as she stood near the pool.

Jillian added, "Maybe a little more like Samantha on female Viagra." They smiled and shared a nod.

"Has she always been like this? I’m not complaining, just curious," Brian asked.

"Her husband died two years ago. She worshiped him. He was only forty-two, and they had a very active sex life."

Brian gave her a solemn look and asked hesitantly, "He didn’t, uh, die while they were... doing it, did he?"

"Surprisingly, no," she said with a slight grin. Her expression sobered as she revealed, "It was a brain tumor. Ever since then, she’s been living life to the fullest. She rarely says no to anything."

"I’ll bet," he said. "That’s not a bad philosophy. You never know what could happen."

They shared another nod and looked at Victoria as she lay in the lounge chair, once again squirting down her bikini with the spray bottle.

"He left her with a lot of life insurance, an unfilled sexual appetite, and a little mad at the world. That’s a dangerous combination."

When they could both clearly see Victoria’s nipples again, Jillian said, "Now I’ve got to take that from her." Then she headed to the door.

"Don’t do it on my account," he said.

When she reached the door, Jillian tossed over her shoulder, "Rob could come home, and he doesn’t need to see those."

Brian watched her go, disagreeing with her one hundred percent.

Brian rushed up to his room and went into the bathroom; he noticed the remnants of Victoria’s lap dance were still slightly visible on his shorts. He pulled them off, took a close look, and then shook his head and smiled as he stood in front of the mirror. When he closed his eyes, he saw visions of Victoria as she bent over before him. He didn’t think about her long but instead started having all these fantasies about Jillian as he stood staring blankly in the mirror. Minutes later, when he finally pulled himself back to reality, he glanced down at his erection, which was fighting to break free from his boxer briefs. Ashamed, he looked up at himself in the mirror. How could he be fantasizing about doing that to his best friend’s mother? He stripped off his clothes and showered, ignoring his massive erection. It would be a cold shower—a really cold one.

After the unfulfilling shower, Brian walked to the window and saw that Jillian and Victoria were still out by the pool. He decided he’d spend the rest of the day in the house rather than go out and risk joining them. Maybe that way he could avoid throwing himself into another potentially embarrassing situation. He felt Victoria was an attractive but dangerous woman who acted as though a giant meteor was four hours from destroying the planet, and she wanted to bang as many guys as she could before impact.

Rob returned from his day trip with Laura just before dinner. She had been arguing with him most of the day about why he chose to bring Brian home with him, since it would undoubtedly lead to Rob and her spending less time together. She had planned to spend most of the week with Rob having sex, but he'd been back more than a day, and they still hadn’t done it once. The trip they took that day was unavoidable, and Rob felt like he couldn’t leave Brian all alone in the house on only his second night in Miami. But Laura demanded that he spend the night with her, especially since it was his birthday. She promised to find an attractive friend for Brian so they could double date, but on such short notice, Laura didn’t have a chance to find someone for that night.

Rob swore to Laura that it would just be the two of them going out that night, but then he thought he had a better idea. Brian could be their designated driver. It would be his birthday gift to Rob. That way, both Rob and Laura could start drinking at dinner, get really drunk at a bar afterward, and they could spend most of the night with Brian while he drove them around the city.

When Rob and Brian picked Laura up, Brian could tell that she was not at all happy to see him in the driver’s seat, and it wasn't until she downed her third drink at the restaurant that she finally appeared to get over it. While Brian knew that the happy couple hadn’t seen much of each other recently, he didn’t know that it had been almost three months since they'd actually had sex. Out of the corner of his eye, Brian could see that during dessert, Laura began feeling Rob’s crotch under the table. She either didn't care that he noticed or figured he couldn't tell. Then after dinner, on the way to the bar, Brian was convinced that she performed a hand job on his friend as they sat huddled next to each other in the back seat. He couldn't see it, per se, but he could certainly hear it in Rob's cracking voice as they struggled to make small talk during the ten-minute drive.

Jillian began working on her manuscript around 10:00 p.m., but she couldn’t get the term, "landing strip," out of her head. In her mind, she flashed back to Victoria’s presentation down there. When she finally shook Victoria’s prepubescent look from her head, she stripped and took a good look at her own neglected area. And while she wasn’t completely out of control, Jillian thought she was probably—at the very least—in need of an update.

When Jillian performed an Internet search for "landing strip"
and found that the very first result was not an airport landing strip but a Wikipedia bikini-waxing page, she had to giggle. She marveled that even some of the most innocent phrases are slang for a body part or a sex act and can lead to some very un-kid friendly results. Eventually, though, she found exactly what she was looking for, including explicit pictures, and picked up advice on trimming and shaving that most sensitive of areas. She also viewed a lot of pictures of variations on the landing-strip concept and picked the one she found most appealing.