Quick Study (5 page)

Looking distressed, she shook her head.

He frowned. “Did I tie you too tight?”

“You’re not inside me yet.”

He smiled. Kissed her cheek. “Patience.”

“I want it now.”

“You are very spoiled.”

“Now now now.”

“I have ways of—” he stopped himself. She was ready, he was ready, and the bench would lose its appeal pretty quickly. He felt her, testing her slick pussy, and she raised her hips to his hand. He had to step away and get his condom out of his jeans on the other side of the room while she sighed and moaned on the bench, complaining.

“Where’d you go? Costco?” she asked when he returned to her.

“Hush.” He crushed her lips with his while he found her clit and rubbed his thumb around it. She made a soft, moaning sound into his mouth and his heart lurched, loving how she sounded and tasted and smelled under him. He was afraid of finishing because he didn’t want to be finished. The thought of her going away was suddenly alarming. “What’s your last name?”

“What?”

“Your last name,” he murmured into her ear. “I feel like I should know.”

“Angelo,” she gasped, nuzzling him. He wished she would touch him, hold his face in her soft hands and kiss him like he was kissing her, then remembered she was tied.

She was tied. He felt a surge of raw, renewed desire.
Angel
. He spread her pussy apart with his fingers and pressed his cock at the entrance. 

“Perfect,” he whispered, then thrust into her. 

He wanted to feel her come around him. Wanted to feel the grabbing satisfaction of her climax, a personal reaction to him, inside her, them together. Hot, tight silk. Wet. Devastating longing filled him.

“Oh, God,” he said.

“What?” She gazed at him through half-closed eyes and he felt his heart constrict.

“Have we met before?” 

She looked at him like she knew what he meant. “It feels like it, doesn’t it?”

He held himself unmoving inside of her, struck by the sense that his life had collided with a force—hers—that he didn’t understand. “But we haven’t.”

“No,” she whispered. “I’d remember.”

His forehead pressed against hers, he nodded. “Me, too.”

She kissed him gently on the mouth, nipping at him like an innocent girl, and he was overtaken with lust again. His cock spasmed inside her and he drove in deeper, lifting his chest high enough to finger her clit with each thrust. Slow and deep, he moved in and out of her while his hand worked her and she arched her back, tugging at the bands around her wrists. Her nipples were hard, pink points, and when she began to come, he held off as long as he could, just to watch, but it was too much. He followed her over the edge, slamming into her with each contraction, lost in delicious chaos and never wanting it to end.

“Christ,” he whispered. “Bonnie. Bonnie Angelo.”

Chapter 4

H
e collapsed on top of her,
breathless and weak. After a moment, afraid he was crushing her, he shifted his weight to his feet on the floor and his hands on the bench and lifted himself up to stare with amazement into her face. His cock was still inside her and gave a pathetic jerk as though it wanted another go.

Another go. She was tied up on his lifting bench, for God’s sake! He withdrew from her, slipped off the condom, then untied her hands, his own shaking. What the hell was he doing?

“Bonnie?”

She was rubbing her hands and sitting up. Pulling her legs together. Crossing her arms over her chest. “Yes?”

Reality was crashing in. He didn’t know what to say. “You must be cold. Let me get you a blanket.”

But she was on her feet and moving towards the door. “No, no. I just want my clothes.”

“Of course,” he said, looking around. Did she already regret what they’d done? “Where—”

“In the car.” Sat back down on the bench with a small smile. “Your idea. Maybe you could go get them.”

He smiled at her, uncomfortable but liking her a hell of a lot. “Of course.” He pulled on his jeans commando and ran out to the car. When he got back, she was standing near the door and grabbed them out of his hands.

“Remember when I said I had an hour?” she asked. “That wasn’t a joke. God, what was I thinking? Poor Jake.”

“Jake?”

“My neighbor’s little boy. The one at your nephew’s preschool.” She shimmied into her jeans, still bare-chested, and her words barely registered in Paul’s brain.

“What happened to Jake?”

She wriggled into her bra and pulled her t-shirt over her head. “Me. I’m what happened,” she said. “Some sitter I am. Poor guy.”

“You have to get him?”

“Like, ten minutes ago!” She ran out the door, not looking at him. 

He sighed. So that’s how it was going to be. He followed, not hurrying, trying to figure out how he felt about her quick retreat.

Shitty.

Well, she couldn’t go anywhere without him. He found his own shirt and strode after her into the sunny driveway, wishing he’d had time to clean up. Put on his boxers. Kiss her again.

She was in the passenger seat, silent and stiff, and he climbed in beside her and started the engine without forcing a conversation. Not like he knew what to say. Or what he’d want to hear.

“You know, it’s quicker if we go to the school directly,” he said.

“No!”

“You’re ashamed. Of what we did.”

She shook her head but stared out the other window. After a moment, as the car wound down the quiet streets to the freeway, she said, “It’s just—his booster seat is in my car.”

“All right.” They drove the rest of the way to Pleasant Hill in silence, and when he finally pulled up to her apartment building, she opened the door and climbed out without once looking him in the eye.

The tag of her inside-out and backwards t-shirt was jutting out under her chin, taking the edge off his annoyance with the wall she’d put up. She looked too cute and harmless to be able to hurt him. But she was.

Then, just before she shut the door, she lifted her gaze to his. They looked at each other silently and his breath caught in his chest, wondering what she would say.

“Goodbye,” she said, and was gone.

As
it turned out, Bonnie didn’t have to take care of Jake as long as planned. With the big news about her husband’s deployment, Shannon rushed home early to celebrate. Thank God, since Bonnie was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

She couldn’t possibly record her—whatever it was with Paul—as academic research. Let alone pursue her plans with a new partner. Just looking at another guy made her feel guilty, which was crazy. No matter what she did, she felt guilty.

A week later she settled on seeking absolution from her thesis advisor, who sat across from her in her cluttered office, frowning while Bonnie wondered, why had she done it? Not for the Master’s degree, though she’d told herself that at the time. When he’d taken away her clothes and tied her up and fucked her senseless, part of her had said,
That’s OK. It’s the pursuit of knowledge.

But she didn’t know anything anymore.

“You can’t conduct sociological research on non-consenting subjects,” her advisor said. “Is this the secret plan you weren’t sharing?”

“He wasn’t non-consenting.”

Prof. Alice, her advisor, pursed her lips. “I can imagine, but that’s not the kind of consent I meant and you know it.”

“I was going to pass it off as creative non-fiction. Like a tweaked memoir. Art, not science. Interdisciplinary.”

“Then find an advisor in Creative Writing. Or Oprah. Gender Studies has enough bad press without this sort of unethical. . . research.”

Bonnie felt crushed, but knew she was right. She sagged into her chair and fiddled with a loose thread on her jacket. “I had the consent forms printed up,” she said. “But the moment never really. . . came.”

Prof. Alice snorted. “I bet.”

“If I get the next subjects to sign their consent, is it legit?”

“Bonnie, look,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “The way you’re going about this is problematic on many levels. With you as part of the experiment, vulnerable to emotional involvement and with no control group, the results are objectively useless.” She leaned forward over the desk. “You told me you were conducting interviews. Why not do that?”

Bonnie sighed. “I just couldn’t get excited about that.” She realized how that sounded and felt her face get hot. “Intellectually speaking, I mean. It’s been done.”

“I liked it, though. Each generation is different. I was looking forward to reading something current.” She leaned back in her desk chair. “The mating habits of the young is a nice distraction from wage inequality.”

“A trivial one, though. That’s what people will say.”

“So what?”

“I wanted to do something important.”

“Then go back to painting.”

Bonnie drew back in shock, blinking. “How did you know about my painting?”

“Your father talked about it.”

She nodded and looked down at her hands. “They weren’t unsupportive, you know.”

“Your mother showed me one of the wildflower paintings. A poppy.”

Three years were enough to control her grief, and she looked up into her advisor’s face with a sad smile. “She thought they were too small.”

“Like their subject.”

Nodding, Bonnie reached down for her backpack to change the subject. “Anyway, painting is no career. And I wouldn’t want it to be.”

“But do you need a career? Forgive me, Bonnie, but you must have inherited enough to live on for the rest of your life. Even after giving away as much as you were allowed to.”

Surprised Prof. Alice knew so much about her private life, Bonnie stared at her. “Do I need a career?” She looked around the office. “Isn’t this where all the feminists hang out?”

“Don’t be simplistic. You have economic freedom—so use it wisely. Pretending to be a career academic when you’re anything but is dishonest and unfair to those around you who don’t have your opportunities.”

Bonnie swallowed, reeling. “You think I’m dishonest and unfair?”

Prof. Alice took off her reading glasses. “I think you’re avoiding what makes you happy,” she said, then added softly, “to please someone who isn’t around anymore to appreciate it.”

Then Bonnie did have to fight back tears, there in her advisor’s office with her unfinished draft saved useless in her laptop and her life falling apart. Again. “I should go.” She stood up, fumbled for her backpack. “We’ve gone way over. You probably have people waiting outside—”

“I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have spoken so freely.”

But that was why everybody liked Prof. Alice. She was the kind of woman who told the truth, to anybody, big or small. Bonnie stopped at the door and forced herself to turn around and face her. “No, I’m glad you did. But I need to think about it.”

Prof. Alice nodded and put her glasses back on. “Good. I trust you.” When Bonnie stepped into the hallway, she called out, “Send in my next victim!”

He
had to see her again. Little things were nagging at him, like when she said there was something he had to know. Like the way she had come on to him, then resisted him, then submitted—with enthusiasm, God bless her—and then freaked out and fled.

Bonnie Angelo, who are you?
His sister was starting to get suspicious about him volunteering to bring little Elijah to school every morning, not that he’d seen Bonnie there again on any one of the five days, even when he sat for an extra hour in the parking lot to make sure. Sitting outside her apartment building was tempting, but he’d resisted, fearing it would make him look like a stalker.

Until now. He stared at the intercom and pressed the button he remembered was hers, feeling his heart climb up into his throat, pounding hard.

How else could he talk to her? He did want to talk, too, not just strip off her clothes and lick the backs of her knees and smell her on his hands again—

He wanted to talk. Learn more about her. Go on a date, like dinner and a movie.

And then lick the backs of her knees and smell her again.

“Hello?”

The sound of her voice set his pulse racing. “Bonnie? It’s me, Paul. Outside. Can we talk ?”

The apartment intercom crackled, but she didn’t say anything.

“Do you like Thai food?” he asked. “Let me buy you dinner?”

Silence.

He waited, then jabbed the button again. “I’m sorry I didn’t call, but I didn’t have your number.” He sighed and leaned against the building, settling in for the long haul, vaguely aware he didn’t care how pathetic he looked. Refusing to think too hard about what it might mean that Bonnie alone was inspiring him to risk humiliation and self-abasement, Paul combed his hair with his fingers and smiled at the intercom as though she could see him through the rusted speaker. “Bonnie? Please come out. I’ve—” He tried to think of something tempting. “I’ve heard about a place in Walnut Creek that grows their own galangal root. I don’t know what that is but I’m sure it’s much better than that mass-produced galangal root most people eat.”

The speaker crackled on for a moment, but she didn’t say anything, and then it fell silent.

At least she wasn’t telling him to go. He plunged ahead. “Don’t like Thai food? Maybe you’re like my sister. She says the coconut soup tastes like Lemon Pledge, but she eats Pop Tarts for breakfast so what does she know, but I’m totally cool with anything, really. Though I’m a bit of a pizza snob, I admit. Not that you have to be, I didn’t mean it like that—”

The interior door swung open and Bonnie stood there, arms crossed and smiling at him. He released the button and frowned at it.

“If you’re out here, who’s in there?”

“Both my roommates,” she said. “They made me come out here before you started playing Peter Gabriel on a boombox.”

He drank in the sight of her, too happy to be embarrassed. “You look great.” She was wearing a skirt, short enough to expose her cute knees, and her feet were bare. Little purple nails marked the end of each toe and made him want to fall to the ground and kiss each one.

“This isn’t a good time,” she said.