Merriment in the Museum - Book One in the Rock My Socks Off Trilogy (8 page)

‘Are you sure the galaxy can’t be a teddy bear?’ asked Jacob, thoughtfully. ‘If it’s cuteness you’re after, that seems safer.’

‘No,’ said Kate definitively. ‘We already said it was a rocking horse. Besides, there are
two
popular constellations named after bears. We don’t want the public to think that astronomers are completely lacking in imagination.’

‘Ursa Major and Ursa Minor aren’t
teddy
bears,’ said Jacob peevishly.

‘No teddy bears in my cosmos, and that’s final,’ said Kate.

‘Come on, dear,’ interjected Normandie. ‘Wednesday-night shagging, remember?’

‘Right,’ said Jacob, brightening. ‘Goodnight, Kate.’

‘Goodnight … teddy bear.’

Chapter Twelve

On the subway, Normandiecouldn’t keep her hands off Jacob. And as they walked from the station to her building, she alternated between dashing ahead of him, then back, like an over-eager puppy, and singing sultry lyrics from a Blondie song.

‘Goodness,’ said Jacob, ‘one might think you were a bit keyed up.’

She kissed him without breaking stride. ‘Sitting in front of those cameras, it was like my ass was cooking in my seat, my cunt simmering in its marinade. I could hardly sit still, it was so thrilling.’

‘It has been quite a night.’

‘No. It’s been quite an
evening
,’ said Normandie. ‘When I get you home, then it’s going to be quite a night.’

‘You are a dynamo,’ Jacob said with admiration. ‘It’s a wonder you don’t leave the earth’s orbit entirely.’

‘I’m too smart to leave the planet while you’re on it.’

‘You’re sweet. And, yes, smart.’

‘It’s a fact. But tonight, all I want to be is a giggling, hard-nippled creature with a hungry cunt … dripping into panties that have been yanked halfway down my ass. Take me there, Jacob. Make me that creature tonight.’

‘I’ll do my best.’

‘Fuck, I’m hot,’ she said as she unlocked the door. ‘I hope I can keep my fingers out of my panties long enough to let yours in there.’

She was making him pretty horny, too, and he clutched the nearest bottom cheek through her skirt.

‘I know!’ she exclaimed.

‘You do?’

‘The jewelled skirt. Oh, damn, Jacob, tonight can be the night you fuck me in my jewelled skirt.’

‘I’ll check my calendar,’ said Jacob, before she grabbed at his cock, as if his jeans didn’t exist. ‘Ooh,’ he said, appreciatively. ‘You know, that was my penis you grabbed there.’

‘Yeah, I thought it was probably yours.’

The jewelled skirt had been purchased at a flea market. It was a handmade garment of stiff, lilac-coloured cotton, onto which an assortment of colourful glass jewels had been glued. A dry cleaner would not have liked it.

She had never tried it on before, and Jacob was surprised to see that this skirt – now all that she was wearing – was really designed more like an apron. Normandie, who had examined it before purchasing it, must have realised this all along, he noted. Now, her glorious ass was displayed in a luxurious, six-inch swath where the edges of the apron failed abysmally to meet. And this swath of ass, at the moment, seemed to Jacob to be the most appetising thing he’d ever seen.

‘I feel so ordinary compared to you,’ he said.

‘Then put on a towel or something and be exotic like me,’ she said with a laugh.

So he did. He went into the bathroom and selected a handsome, but skimpy, burgundy towel and swapped it for his clothes.

Inspired by her exhortation to ‘be exotic’, he also grabbed a crisp, navy blue pillowcase. Then he emerged, to parade before her in the bedroom, using one hand to keep the towel in place and the other – with pillowcase – to stroke his cock, which protruded through the gap in the towel. When not stroking, he dangled the pillowcase in front of his loins like a veil.

Normandie was convulsed. ‘Oh, baby, that’s funny … but it’s so sexy. Keep doing it.’ Between bouts of laughter, she swayed sensuously, and her jewels glimmered in the light.

He danced slowly toward her, and when he came within reach, she removed his hand from his shaft and replaced it with her own. Then she spun gracefully around and lined the gap in her garment up with that in his. They moaned together as she pulled him forward and his hot, hard cock made contact up and down the cleft that separated the cool cheeks of her behind.

He dropped the towel as she dragged him to the bed. Normandie lay face down on the mattress, managing to keep Jacob’s cock precisely in place in her ass cleft, her cheeks framing his sausage like a bleached white bun. He pressed down gently, and she moved his hands under her chest to explore her naked breasts. Her whole body began to vibrate as he squeezed the soft flesh and teased the nipples, while his cock throbbed cosily against her ass, biding its time.

‘Now,’ she said, sounding as if she were so distracted that it was an effort to articulate even a single syllable. She slithered onto her knees, then lowered her front half while presenting her bottom, putting her face back down on folded arms.

Slickness was the dominant attribute that Jacob felt as he slid into the warm channel between her legs. ‘My favourite channel,’ he quipped. He worked his thing wildly inside her and felt her inner flesh respond to every nuance of his movements. Her toes fluttered against his thighs, until they stiffened in pre-orgasmic paralysis. His fingers rendezvoused with hers upon her clit, and the two lovers let themselves through the door of sensory overload. In Jacob’s arms writhed the giggling creature of pleasure.

Jacob was surprised to hear the shy, trembling voice of Susan Weedon when he answered his phone.

‘Is this Jacob?’

‘Susan Weedon?’ he responded. Though she’d spoken a minimum of words to him at the museum and at the observatory, she was unmistakable. ‘How are you, Susan?’

‘This is Susan.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘So anyway … I need to talk to you.’

‘Oh. OK …’

‘About the rocking horse photos.’

That was odd. Though that article had been pushed back to make room for Normandie’s controversial spread, it had been signed, sealed, and delivered, with the layout complete and approved and every photo accounted for. He hoped that Gary wasn’t taking advantage of the slack in the timetable to rip the whole thing apart and make them produce a new set of pictures. Jacob would definitely ask for more money if he had to spend any additional time at the LMARH.

But he assented to the meeting, and within an hour he was on his way to meet Susan at a café. He deliberately left his copy of the proofs at home, since nobody had officially contracted with him to do additional work on what he’d understood to be a completed project. If Gary needed that, he would have to approach Jacob in the proper fashion. Susan did not constitute the proper fashion; nor, Jacob stated in his inner monologue, did young Brandon.

He spotted Susan as soon as he walked into the café. Whether it was because the light of the afternoon sun was catching her auburn hair just right, or because there was something intrinsically intense about her face or posture, he wasn’t sure. He waved, then got himself a coffee before joining her at the table.

‘Thanks for coming.’ She spoke almost too softly for him to hear, above the low rumble of ambient chitchat and a relatively quiet indie rock album.

‘No problem,’ he said graciously. ‘So what’s up?’

‘On the phone, I said we needed to talk about rocking horse pictures.’

‘Indeed you did,’ he said with a sigh.

‘I was lying.’

She had only spoken some twenty sentences to him in his entire experience of her, and now she was revealing that one of those sentences had been a lie. Jacob sipped his coffee while he tried to decide how to react to this. What he decided was that he didn’t know how to react to it.

‘OK.’ He really wasn’t sure if it was OK, but ‘OK’ seemed the best response he could come up with.

‘I have something else to tell you. Ask you.’

Jacob realised that she was shaking, and suddenly his uppermost concern was that he put her at ease. ‘Relax. Ask away.’

‘You’re not angry?’

‘No. I was dreading the trumped-up rocking-horse-related meeting, so I’m actually relieved.’ He was instantly glad he’d been candid, because he saw her face relax into a smile – possibly for the first time since he’d met her.

‘I enjoyed the rocking horse session. And the other session,’ she said coyly, as if she were revealing a secret.

‘I’m very glad,’ he replied noncommittally.

‘I liked seeing you and Normandie together.’ She paused. ‘Which rocking horse did you fuck on?’

Heads turned as Jacob spattered coffee onto a laminated menu.

‘I don’t remember mentioning …’ he began when he’d caught his breath.

‘A photographer learns to observe things. To read between the lines. To pick up on unspoken cues.’

‘I see.’

‘So which horse?’

‘The biggest one.’

She nodded sagely. ‘I thought so. It had a special glow to it.’

‘I knew I should have sponged it down,’ said Jacob. He couldn’t believe he was having this conversation with a woman who had, up until five minutes before, been almost too shy to ask him how he liked the house coffee. He wondered what had gotten into her.

‘The two of you have chemistry. Know what I mean?’

He assured her that he did.

‘I think of you guys a lot, actually.
Know what I mean?
’

This time he wasn’t sure whether he did. ‘Think about us?’

Her laugh, like fairy bells, surprised him. ‘Do I have to paint you a picture?’

‘I thought you were a photographer.’

‘I
masturbate
thinking about the two of you.’

Jacob looked around the room, wishing that Susan had not chosen this particular statement as the loudest statement of her career. The indie rock record seemed to have hit a particularly quiet moment, and even the espresso machine had gone silent to make way for Susan’s announcement.

‘So, I was thinking … maybe we could do another photo session,’ she said, very quietly.

Chapter Thirteen

‘What do you think?’ Jacob asked Normandie.

‘What do I think of the two of us as the subjects of an erotic photography session? I think, “When do we get started?” – that’s what I think. It’s long been a dream of mine to do something like that, to be one of those people in delicious black-and-white tableaux of flesh and pillows and ecstatic facial expressions.’

‘So Susan is helping you attain a lifetime goal. That’s a talent in itself.’

‘What do you think of her?’ asked Normandie. They were sitting on the unmade bed, fully clothed, because the bedroom was where Jacob had found Normandie when he’d returned from his meeting with Susan. The bed smelled like Normandie had jilled off after the nap she’d admitted to; Jacob relished the image of her lounging there in an impromptu diddle, working restless fingers in her panties just because it felt so good.

‘Susan is a terrific photographer, able to capture anything from the beautiful – that’s you – to the inexplicable – those you-know-whats at the museum. I’m sure she’ll do a wonderful session.’

‘What else do you think of her?’

‘What else? Well, she’s a little strange, of course … quiet – until she starts declaiming in cafés about her sexual fantasies, that is.’

Normandie ran a finger down the length of his chest. ‘Is she sexy?’

‘Oh,’ said Jacob. ‘To me?’

‘No,’ whispered Normandie with polished sarcasm, ‘to “Weird Al” Yankovic.’

Jacob reflected. ‘Yeah, I guess she is. To me.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Normandie said, still whispering.

Tell me about it
was a cue, in their relationship, for the party of the second part to relate or create a sexual fantasy. So he understood now that he was being called upon to spin a vignette with Susan Weedon at its centre.

Normandie reclined on the bed. Her quasi-golden hair was framed by a crimson pillowcase.

‘Susan is one of the quiet ones that you have to watch,’ he began.

‘I would love to watch her.’

‘She goes about her business, never saying a word … but she’s tuned in to every detail, especially sexual details. She notices where your skirt clings to your ass. She sees when my cock stiffens slightly in my trousers. When your hands brush casually against me, Susan Weedon can detect minute changes in the composition of my perspiration. And she can smell when you’re aroused, perhaps even before you realise you’re aroused.

‘So she goes about her business, and she logs all of this, never saying a word. She records it and takes it home with her, much like her camera records the things that it’s supposed to.

‘She lives alone. She can strip to her underwear in the living room without anyone noticing. Her underwear is incongruously loud – hot pink thong and lace bra, I believe – and this incongruity is the whole point of Susan Weedon.’

Normandie’s hands had moved to just inside the top of her jeans, and her mouth formed a little ‘O’.

He continued. ‘She’s in her living room, but she doesn’t settle down yet. She keeps in motion, prowling her own apartment in her underwear, thinking in circles about me and you, replaying everything she’s observed. She’s alone – she can take everything at her own speed. She’s restless between her legs, and her hands repeatedly drift to her crotch.’

‘Repeatedly drift,’ echoed Normandie. Jacob could see that she was easing herself into masturbation.

‘Finally, she’s so wound up there’s only one place she can take it. So she buries her little bottom in the corner of her living room couch and kicks her legs up and down while she rubs furiously over the thong – and inside it as well – palm squeezing, thumb pressing, fingers dipping, thighs quaking … mind reeling with my cock and your scent and the artist’s conception of me fucking you against the wall of the Living Museum of the Goddamn American Rocking Horse.’

‘Oh!’ Normandie was coming, rocking herself on the bed.

‘I want some of that,’ Jacob told her, his cock pounding in his pants.

He got some of it.

‘While you were out, I got a call from another television show. They’ve booked me for August.’

‘You’re going to be the toast of local TV.’

‘This one’s national.
Gimme Some Science!
’

He knew the programme. A network had ingeniously put an accessible, hour-long science programme in the hands of Priscilla Ray, a former supermodel whose intellect was even more impressive than her pout. They’d added a creative team who could find the glamorous, humorous, or fascinating side of any topic, and the result was a prime-time cash bonanza built out of ratings-risky subjects like insect reproduction and alloy composition.

‘You’ll be great!’ Jacob said enthusiastically.

‘Yes, we will,’ Normandie concurred.

‘We?’

‘They want Professor Jacobs, too.’

‘Why?’

‘I guess they think you’re “good television”.’

‘
Good television?
Good grief. I think I need a cup of coffee.’

‘You’re drinking a cup of coffee, sweet cheeks.’

He shrugged. ‘OK, then. Professor Jacobs I am. Why not.’

‘That’s the spirit.’

‘What about you? You don’t mind going on national television and continuing to lie about outer space?’

‘In for a penny, in for a buck,’ she said philosophically.

‘Do you mean that?’ Jacob asked.

‘I think so. It sounded good, anyway.’

‘Because I have an idea, if you’re interested. It’s not exactly honest, though.’

‘Then it will fit right in.’

‘Suppose we brought an image. You know, a slide of your adorable rocking horse galaxy.’

‘Wouldn’t I love to! But where does one get slides of non-existent galaxies?’

‘One asks one’s photographer friend to make them.’

‘That’s asking a lot of Susan, isn’t it?’

‘We’d have to pay her, I assume – unless she’s as turned on by the prospect of Photoshopping whimsical galaxies as she is by the prospect of photographing our lovemaking.’

‘You never know. But, OK, I’ll keep my chequebook handy.’ She thought a moment. ‘This means we’ll also have to trust her with the secret.’

‘We’re talking about a woman who’s just confided her masturbation habits to me within earshot of an entire café’s worth of people. If you can’t trust someone like that, whom
can
you trust?’

‘Your grammar is better than your logic, Jacob Hastings,’ said Normandie lovingly. ‘But I believe in your instincts.’

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