Merriment in the Museum - Book One in the Rock My Socks Off Trilogy (5 page)

Chapter Seven

He’d never known anyonewhose personality was quite so revved up. Normandie wasn’t overbearing, she wasn’t tiresome, she wasn’t ridiculous … she was just, it seemed, one hundred and ten per cent herself. Every word and action had a signature upon it – from the crisp way she chewed, to the elongated posture in which she habitually fell asleep, to her trademark laughter, bright on top with undertones of secret wisdom. Her laughter connoted sex, to Jacob. Not surprisingly, he liked to tickle her all over, and her laughter always tickled him back.

He hadn’t noted the precise day on which his centre of gravity had shifted from speculating about the depth of his attractiveness to her to deliberately presenting himself in the way he hoped would please her; or the precise week when striving explicitly to please her had shifted to automatically, unconsciously being the person he wanted to be for her. By now, his every thought and decision reverberated against an image of her, when the real thing wasn’t close at hand. His idea or ideal of her had become his touchstone.

‘You’re my touchstone,’ he told her one morning.

‘No wonder you touch me so much,’ she said with approval. ‘But just move your thumb down a few millimetres … Oh! Yeah.’

‘Now I understand why you scientists are always pushing the metric system.’

‘Mmm-hmm,’ she purred, with an unscientific wiggle. ‘Push my metric system.’

It felt strange when he had the epiphany that she was, in some ways, like the sister he’d never had. A buddy. A playmate. An ally through life’s uncertainties. He’d never before been romantically involved with a woman who felt so much like ‘home’.

‘Am I the type of woman you imagined you’d end up with?’

‘First of all, let’s dispense with that expression “end up with”, if you please. It sounds so depressing.’

‘Good point. What should we say instead? “Start out with” doesn’t convey the full extent of my meaning.’

‘How about “go around with”?’

‘Deal.’

‘And, to answer your question: No. Do you really think I could have imagined anything remotely like you?’

‘Ha! I’ll try to take that as a compliment.’

‘Please do. And, while you’re at it, you can take
this
as a compliment as well.’
This
was a combination lip lock and nipple pinch. ‘So what about you … Am I the type of man you imagined you’d go around with?’

‘No. I thought I’d end up with a woman.’

‘You thought you were a lesbian?’ She’d told him she enjoyed boy-girl-girl threesomes – as did he – but his understanding was that her primary interest had always been in men.

‘No, I knew I wasn’t a lesbian. But I was a dating-fatigued girl who thought she’d eventually just pack it in and find a congenial housemate – whom I always visualised as a woman.’

‘What did she look like?’

‘Sort of like me.’

‘Why, you vain creature!’ Jacob beaned her with a throw cushion.

‘Hey, I said I wasn’t a lesbian; I never said I wasn’t a narcissist. Anyway, my gorgeous imaginary roommate was quieter than I am. A quieter version of myself. Wouldn’t that make an ideal housemate?’

‘Depends. Do I get to go to bed with both of you at once?’

‘No, we take turns with you. It’s a small bed.’

‘Fair enough.’

‘So, you can see that it’s a big adjustment for me … giving up on giving up, reorienting myself to “going around” with someone to whom I’m sexually attracted.’

‘Even more than you are to yourself, you mean.’

This time, she beaned him with the cushion. ‘Oh, and I suppose you’ve never indulged in the delicate art of self-love?’

‘Maybe once or twice,’ he conceded. ‘Per day.’

‘Be careful you don’t use it all up, with none left for me.’

‘There’s plenty for you. And your non-existent housemate.’

‘Let’s see.’ She grabbed at his jeans and, with practised fingers, unzipped them in an instant. The zipper made a noise that sounded like ‘
Yep
.’

‘Told you,’ he said. ‘You see, I – ahhh.’ There was that mouth again.

That evening, the sky was scheduled to clear, and Normandie seized the day – or rather the night – to take a trip out to the observatory. She invited Jacob to accompany her, and, for the first time, they held hands on a commuter train.

Her opportunity for serious work would come later in the evening, but they went early enough to ‘play with the big telescope’, as she so scientifically put it. Jupiter was awaiting them in the sky upon arrival, and Normandie made haste to set things up just the way she wanted.

Then she dropped her pants.

‘This is one of the reasons I became an astronomer.’ Her eyes were gleaming like stars.

She had positioned the eyepiece of the monstrous telescope so that she’d be able to gaze on the warm, sensuous shape of Jupiter while Jacob fucked her from behind. She steadied herself with the telescope’s handles and pointed her bottom his way, her feet playing restlessly within the nest of jeans. She was already breathless. ‘You think I’m kidding.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I think you’re wonderful. Delicious. Irresistible.’ He punctuated the last adjective with a playful slap to her rump. ‘But kidding? No way.’ He peeled the panties down and slapped her again, even more softly this time – sensually.

Then he couldn’t wait any longer. She was so wet, so enticing. Soon his own trousers were at his feet and he was pushing sweetly into her, holding her by the elbows while she continued to clutch the telescope handles.

Even Jacob knew what Jupiter looked like – he loved the famous red spot that resembled a hungry cunt, and the liquid stripes that enveloped the planet in what looked like layers of feminine desire. Though he couldn’t see what she was seeing, he visualised the planet throbbing around him as her moist warmth responded to his thrusts.

‘My clit,’ breathed Normandie. ‘Can’t let go.’

He got her drift: she needed to keep a symmetrical grasp on the handles, and so it was his responsibility to trigger her climax. He’d certainly had far less appealing jobs in his time.

And it was not only an appealing job – it was also an easy one. A tender push of her button made her tremble. Her chasm oozed for him, and the substance of her body seemed to coalesce into an orgasmic homogeneity. She maintained her grip on the telescope, but, apart from that, she seemed to lose contact with the world around her.

The pulsating, striped planet exploded in Jacob’s mind, and his corporeal explosion followed suit.

Afterward, he found a blanket in the utility closet and spread it on the floor by the window, so that they could camp there peacefully and look – with the naked eye and the naked everything – at the deepening starscape.

‘It’s even more beautiful when you understand it,’ Normandie said.

‘I don’t think it would be for me,’ said Jacob. ‘I think it might lose something if I could analyse its mysteries.’

‘I guess I’m just turned on by knowledge.’

‘Thank goodness,’ he replied, drawing a finger along her slit.

She kissed him. ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to start rattling off facts about the constellations we’re looking at?’ she offered.

‘No, please don’t. I love the stars for their inarticulate beauty. And I love you for your
articulate
beauty. But it’s two different kinds of beauty.’

‘I understand. How about if I just point and say, “Ooh! I know something about that star!”’

‘That will work.’

She immediately tried it out. ‘Ooh! I know something about that star!’ She specified a particular point of light with an eager forefinger.

‘You’re brilliant,’ said Jacob.

She pointed in a slightly different direction. ‘And I know something about
that
star, too.’

‘You’re gifted.’

‘And that one!’

‘You are exceptionally well qualified for your job as an astronomy scholar. And you have the cutest fingers.’ He took hold of the one she’d been pointing with and brought it to his lips.

She sighed. ‘I wish you had something to be as passionate about as I am about all that.’ She gestured at the heavens.

‘I do. You.’

‘That doesn’t count,’ she said, wagging the famously cute, recently kissed finger. ‘Though I’m glad you said it.’

After last night – the telescope had been just the first act – Jacob was not quite sexually depleted, but he was physically exhausted. So, he lay there lazily and watched Normandie, who was reading an astronomy journal and sliding a finger idly in and out of her snatch. He focussed on listening for the telltale squelchy sound.

‘Is it soup yet?’ he eventually inquired.

In response to this obvious clue that he was awake, she put down the expensive, quarterly periodical and climbed on top of him.

‘Good morning and I love you,’ he said. ‘But I’m tired.’

‘Too tired even for this?’ she said seductively.

‘Maybe.’

‘I feel like a ripe fruit this morning. Grab me and plunge in.’

She was so horny he could smell it. ‘I think I need breakfast.’

‘Fruit is perfect for breakfast.’

Jacob closed his eyes.

‘How about this, lazy boy?’ She crouched over him, a squatter staking her claim and claiming her stake. ‘I’ll do it to you, until you’re doing it to me without even trying.’

‘Well … if you really don’t mind doing all the work.’

‘Do I look like I mind? Come on, hungry man. A nice, warm cup of cunt for breakfast.’ And she slid herself slowly down his pole.

The feeling was luscious – each up stroke felt, impossibly, more delicious than the preceding down stroke, only to be superseded itself by the down stroke that followed. Jacob could not believe that, minutes before, he had been inclined to turn this down in favour of Cheerios.

‘I’ve decided to stay here for a while,’ he said later, at the lab.

‘I’m afraid you can’t,’ Normandie replied. ‘I need to spread some charts out there in a minute.’

‘I don’t mean here on the couch. I mean here in
San Francisco.
’

Though she was smiling at what had become a favourite running joke, she looked a little concerned beneath her sparkle. He knew she was afraid that he would do his career damage. It was touching.

‘Relax.’ He abandoned the couch to the forthcoming charts and came forward to take her hand. ‘The editorial job in New York would have been too much of a bore, and not what I should be doing with my energy.’

‘As long as you’re sure …’ She trusted his judgment enough to look relieved, and this, too, made him feel good.

‘
But
,’ he clarified, ‘I wouldn’t have taken a better offer in New York, either. Not under these circumstances.’ He gestured grandly toward Normandie, his ‘circumstances’.

‘So what
will
you be doing with your energy?’ she asked. ‘Such as it is.’ She poked him in the chest, the memory of her recent anxiety already submerged beneath the latest wave of puckishness.

‘Eventually, I’ll find something here. Something, hopefully, that doesn’t involve rocking horses. Till then, I thought I could keep myself occupied by helping you.’

‘Helping me?’

‘Exactly. In a just world, you would have been given a research assistant, and I can think of nothing better to do with my time right now than pitch in around your lab.’

‘But you’re a writer, Jacob!’

‘The glorious and non-existent Freelance Writers’ Union has nothing in its rules against members assisting beautiful astronomers. And the non-fiction literary world won’t miss me if I wash bottles for you for a month or two.’

‘We don’t wash bottles in astronomy.’

‘Fine. Scrub planets. Whatever. Let’s get started.’ And he actually rolled up his sleeves.

Chapter Eight

‘Dude, are you really going out with Normandie Stephens?’ said Brandon, as though the idea surprised him.

This was, Jacob hoped, his final meeting with the
HHH
liaison – a lunch meeting to submit local expense records and make sure the magazine had a complete package for Jacob’s contracted feature story. The Normandie angle represented the only time Brandon had shown any interest in Jacob’s affairs, and this expression of interest did not fill any deep voids in Jacob’s life.

‘What is this – high school? I’m “going out” with her?’ He was sincerely amused, if also irritated. ‘Yes, we’re in a relationship, if that’s what you mean.’ Overall, he preferred the way Kate had put it.

He reflected that, for Brandon, high school was the relatively recent past.

‘It’s cool,’ said Brandon, irrelevantly. Then, in a display of unjustified camaraderie, he helped himself to a handful of Jacob’s french fries.

Jacob absorbed the fact that by having a beer with Brandon the other night, he had evidently cooperated in degrading their relationship from a professional one to a french-fry-snatching one. He sort of wished he’d insisted that the meeting at the pub occur at the office instead, despite the conspicuous absence there of agreeable, house-dancing nymphs.

‘Not that I care … but what, pray tell, makes you raise an eyebrow – and a fistful of my personal french fries – at my relationship with Normandie?’

‘Y’know, I just never thought of her as your type.’

He knew that Brandon couldn’t help being annoying; but he wondered why the guy couldn’t at least be annoying in a slightly less annoying way. ‘You barely know me, Brandon. Since when do you spend your time thinking about what my “type” is?’

‘Hey, don’t forget, dude, you met her at
my
brother’s party.’

Jacob was blinded by the flash of illogic, and he literally blinked. ‘OK … Does that mean you’re in on the ground floor? Am I supposed to invite you into bed with us or something?’

‘No can do. Busy week.’

‘Have some more french fries,’ Jacob said.

‘This may be a stupid question … but if you insist that there are no bottles for me to wash, then why are you wearing a white laboratory coat?’ He had arrived for a working evening to find her absorbed in her latest research, but dressed with uncharacteristic scientific formality. He now looked briefly around the room, pretending that he was still not one hundred per cent convinced that the lab held no dirty bottles.

She turned to face him. ‘Sometimes I just want to feel like a glamorous scientist. It helps when the research becomes tedious.’ She advanced on him. ‘But, on this occasion, I had you in mind.’

And before he could articulate another question, she unbuttoned and shed the garment, revealing an undercoating of purple velvet panties and bra.

‘Wow,’ Jacob said. ‘I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you in
that,
either. Not even when you’ve been out at the
big
telescope.’

‘Tonight I’m dressed for you to do the observing.’

He spun her around, the velvet panties attracting him at once to her velvety ass. He ran his hands over the velvet, and it felt so nice that he was reluctant to move on. But finally he peeled the panties back and gave them a head start down Normandie’s legs, so that she could dance them off and kick them away.

He caressed the crack of her bottom intimately. With his hands on her ass, away from her pussy, he let her experience her arousal privately for a while, her legs closed, her sex warming and moistening in secret. Then he coaxed her thighs apart, so that he could participate in her wetness. First, he did so with his fingers, teasing and nurturing. Then, when she breathed heavily for more, he dropped to his knees and let his tongue do the walking.

When they moved to the couch, she took the panties with her. She clutched them like a talisman while he fucked her, wringing the velvet undergarment into a taut bundle of erotic energy. When she came, it looked to Jacob as if the panties were having an orgasm, too; and when he came, he grabbed them in his mouth and wrestled her for them, dragging their softness across her nipples while he pounded between her thighs.

‘Thanks, Gary,’ Jacob said quietly into the phone. ‘I’ll get this new thing to you as soon as possible. If you feel it doesn’t work, you still have the – ugh – rocking horses. But I think you’re going to agree that those can wait another month.’ He hung up, then joined Normandie, who was posing in front of the Hauser University telescope for Susan Weedon. At Jacob’s request, she was wearing her lab coat – this time with more than just sexy underwear beneath it, however.

‘This is so sweet of you,’ Normandie said, when the photographer was out of earshot.

‘What you’re doing is important. People should know about it. And it’s a way I can help you that goes beyond just proofreading decimal points.’

After Susan had obtained a variety of shots of Normandie, the telescope, and Normandie with the telescope, Jacob ushered his lover to a chair, claiming a stool for himself en route.

‘I’m going to switch on my tape recorder now, if that’s OK, and you can just officially repeat the stuff you told me the other day.’

‘In bed, you mean?’ She twinkled at him. Susan was twenty feet away, packing up her equipment, but Jacob thought he saw her blush.

‘Uh – no. I was thinking more along the lines of the discoveries you’re making.’

‘I recall making some very
nice
discoveries in bed with you.’

‘Thank you. Um – can we talk about astronomy for a while? Just to humour me?’ He was delighted that she was having such a good time with this, but her flippant attitude was beginning to make him feel a little silly about the whole thing.

‘Oh,
astronomy
! But of course.’ Normandie wriggled in her seat and then, miraculously, became quite serious and scientific. Jacob switched on the machine.

‘Dr Stephens, I believe you’ve been making interesting discoveries about the composition of some distant galaxies.’

The scientist took another break, and the pixie returned. ‘What’s with the “Dr Stephens” shtick? Since when do you call me that?’

Jacob rolled his eyes and switched off the machine. ‘Mere professional rigour,’ he said haughtily. ‘I know that, for now, I’m the only one who will be listening to this tape. But perhaps someday, when you’re world famous and they’re writing books about you, someone will want to listen to the original transcript of our historic interview. That person, whoever it is, might not wish to listen to questions addressed to Sex-cheeks, or whatever I’ve been calling you lately.’

Susan was
definitely
blushing now.

Normandie was laughing. ‘You’re right. OK, let’s get on with it.’ And she became serious again.

On went the tape recorder. ‘
Dr Stephens,
I believe you’ve been making interesting discoveries about the composition of some distant galaxies.’

‘Yes.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘Most of the galaxies that have been catalogued to date are believed to consist of stars within a certain limited range of compositional matter. However, recently we have been observing some galaxy clusters, new to us, that appear to deviate from this model in terms of …’