“Elope?” What does that have to do with being confined to the bedroom? “Hmm . . . Well, if it makes you feel better, the entire time Morgan was here we had an outstanding, and might I add thorough, exploration of our erogenous zones.” I reach in the top drawer of the nightstand and turn on the electric-blue vibrator Kenny brought home one day last summer. At first I was offended, but she innocently thought it was a couples’ game, so we turned it into one. Nightly.
“And now you’re getting back at me by having your sister here?” She pushes my arms off her hips. “I knew you hated Morgan.”
“Whoa. Hate is a strong word.” First Moll, now Kenny? Maybe there’s a severe case of PMS going around. “I like your brother—hell, I think he’s a great guy.” True story. Most of the time.
The sound of a fist pounding emits from the other side of the wall. “It’s true! You hate Morgan!” Molly shouts it out like a battle cry.
“Holy crap, she’s listening,” I whisper.
“These walls are paper-thin,” Molly belts out. “I can hear every darn word. Keep it down, will you?”
“Will do.” I don’t bother shouting. Apparently there’s no reason.
“So what now?” Kenny shakes me as if we’ve got a serious problem on our hands.
“It’s all right. Don’t worry about it. It won’t be for long.” My fingers demand to drift lower over her soft skin, but I resist the urge.
“Don’t stop.” Kenny wrinkles her nose as she wiggles into me. “I kind of like where you’re going with that.” She says it a notch below a whisper.
I place my lips next to her ear. “Once I move Molly we can resume our challenge. She’s ruining my mojo.” I hate to admit it, but my little sister hardly fits into the hostage standoff I’ve got planned for tomorrow.
“Oh no you don’t.” She shakes her head emphatically. “I’ve got papers to write and a wedding to plan. You are going to fuck me tonight, Professor Elton, and quite proficiently.” She says it like she means it, and the last thing Kenny does is whisper.
A hard groan comes from the next room.
I give Kenny a weak salute and switch off the lamp. Suddenly I’m half-afraid Molly has garnered X-ray vision and soon we’ll be a visual disturbance as well. I swipe the remote off the bed because the TV affords just enough light for me to enjoy Kenny’s body, and I turn up the volume a good few notches.
“There.” I glide in next to her and Kenny ravenously tears off my clothes. “Looks like someone’s hungry.”
More pounding ensues. “Then make her a sandwich!”
Shit.
I shake my head at Kenny, wild-eyed. I’ll never get it up with Molly joining in on the festivities every few seconds.
Kenny pulls me into a violent kiss and yanks at my cock like she’s about to pull it right off my body.
“I want you to do something totally insane,” she pants. Kenny looks hotter than hell with her lids hooded, her hair melting around her in a shadowed puddle. Lucky for me my hard-on has decided to wake up and take a look for himself.
Kenny pants into me. “Take my body and make it your own.” She shakes me by the shoulders when she says it and the thumping resumes.
Crap.
I compress a smile and start in on kissing every square inch of Kenny’s beautiful body while Molly complains to a friend on the phone.
I hope at least one of us has a good time tonight.
4
IMAGINE THAT
Kendall
Storm clouds hover over Carrington, dark and thick as molasses. I pull my cardigan tight around me as I stare helplessly down at my laptop in the early morning hours at Starbucks. I keep looking out the window for inspiration—hell, for a skywriter I could quasi-plagiarize—but nothing.
Crap.
I highlight the entire last page and hit delete.
“This isn’t working.” I shut my laptop with a bang, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it never blinked to life again. Not even Starbucks and all its fresh roast–scented magic can draw another sentence from my sexually weary soul.
Ally comes over and hands me a hazelnut macchiato, extra caramel, easy ice. I love how well she knows me.
“So? How’s it going?” She doesn’t bother taking a seat. She’s working her shift, and the last thing I want is for her to get into trouble because of me. No point in both of us being incapable of pulling an income.
“I’ve got half a scene. Molly came over last night, and the chapter went right out the window along with my dream wedding.”
“Don’t get so down over it. It’s no biggie. You mentioned Cruise and you had a good time last night.”
“True.” I happened to say those very words as soon as I set foot in this heavenly scented establishment.
“Well, there you go. Just embellish a little. This isn’t a documentary. No one is going to rewind and check for accuracy. This is a work of fiction, remember?”
“Embellish,” I say as if the word isn’t even in my lexicon, and at this point it may as well not be. “Embellishing requires an imagination, and obviously I wasn’t present the day they handed those out.”
“Oh, come on. You can make last night whatever you wanted it to be.” She gives a little wink. “You can even throw in a little annoying dog named Polly if you like.”
“Right.” I make a face as she scuttles back behind the counter.
I open my laptop and take a deep breath. I can totally embellish. It’s a perfect idea. I mean, God knows I had all kinds of crazy thoughts about what might happen last night, and Molly interruptus was nowhere near the short list. I scratch my head and take a sip of my drink. Mmm, so much damn caramel—Ally knows I love me some caramel.
Ooh, here we go. I start back in with Penny and Cruz. She’s just entered his apartment, looking forward to that “extra credit” he offered, and of course he’s wearing nothing but a towel.
A private smile warms my lips. I love it when I come home to find Cruise in nothing but a towel.
Penny gets on her knees and begs for one last assignment. She needs a passing grade or she’ll be kicked out of school forever.
No, wait, that’s a bit dramatic.
She’ll lose her scholarship and have to hoof tuition like the rest of the peons at Garrison.
Wait—I’m not actually going to reference Garrison, am I? I could get sued and find myself in all kinds of legal misery over this. They’ll take me to the cleaners. I’ll be liable. Not that there’s much to clean. Oh hell.
Harrison University. There. That’s better.
I continue the scene with Penny begging Professor Belton to have his way with her. And Professor Belton, perv that he is, demands she take her clothes off before dousing the two of them with vats of caramel.
I take another careful sip for inspiration.
Penny drops to her knees and engages in the most calorie-laden blow job known to man while professor Belton thrusts himself freely—
A pair of warm hands cover my eyes.
“Boo,” Cruise whispers in my ear, and I bounce in my seat, spastically slamming my laptop shut and christening a three-table circumference with my extra caramel, easy ice macchiato. And judging by the brown goo dripping off the coat of the girl in front of me, Ally may have added extra, extra caramel.
“Oh no! I’m so sorry!” I jump out of my seat and try to clean the mess with nary a napkin in sight, but the girl makes a dash for the restroom before I can destroy her coat any further.
“I’ve got this!” Ally makes big eyes at me before darting over with a dozen dish towels.
“Let me help.” Cruise insists, but she bats him away.
“That’s why they pay me the big bucks. Why don’t you take your girlfriend on a mystery date?” Ally winks at me. “I’ll handle the rest. Now go on, get out of here.”
I bite down on my lip while quickly putting away my things.
Cruise hands me one of Ally’s dish towels, and I wipe down my hands.
“I was just thinking
we’ve got some catching up to do.” He’s got that come-hither look in his eyes, and I’m hopeful that a whole new storyline is brewing for Penny and Professor Belton. “Are you free?”
I’ve got class in less than ten minutes.
“Of course I’m free. My next class isn’t until two o’clock.” If I’m missing sociology, I may as well miss trig, too. “Creative Writing.” My lifeline to a beautiful wedding and, apparently, an exciting sex life.
“You’re really enjoying that class, aren’t you?” He leads us out into the brisk fall air.
“More than you’ll ever know.”
Cruise and I stroll around campus hand in hand, and for a minute it feels like last semester, as if we had somehow passed through a time portal and were right back at the beginning.
I tug at his arm as I snuggle into him. “How many things would you change about us if you could go back to the day we met?”
Cruise blows out a breath and ponders this for a moment.
“Exactly zero.”
“What?” I jump a little at his answer. “Really?”
“More than anything I would want us to end up right here, doing this.” He plants a quick kiss on my lips. “I’m a big believer in things ending up the way they’re supposed to.”
I gaze up at him, this handsome man that destiny somehow thought to plant by my side.
“Me too,” I whisper.
Cruise meets me with a kiss that says thank you to fate and destiny, and maybe even Cupid, for bringing us together, right here at Garrison—safe in one another’s arms.
Creative Writing drones on for the entire livelong hour while Molly busies herself contorting her body into every sexually suggestive position possible. I’m not sure what makes me more nervous, the fact Molly is so ready and willing to lie down for the professor or the fact I’m going to ask him to help me in my own creative writing endeavor—which entails having him review the naughty thoughts I’ve committed to paper.
I wait until most of the class clears before pulling myself off my seat.
I turn to Molly. “Look, I need to speak to the professor for a second. You mind hanging out a minute? Maybe wait by the door?” God, I’d die if she tried to listen in. The last thing I need is for her to blurt out to Cruise that I’m documenting our sexual shenanigans. He’ll think I’m perverted or, worse, clinical, and that sex is nothing more than some scientific experiment I’m partaking in while jotting down my findings.
I head over just as Kurt is about to buckle up his briefcase.
“Excuse me,” I say, leaning in, and noting Molly less than ten feet away.
Crap.
I press in close until my lips are practically in his ear. “If you don’t mind, I have a tiny favor to ask.”
He blinks up in surprise. “Ask away.”
“I’m writing this book—for class, of course—and I want to know if you could help review for me as I go.”
“No rush for perfection.” He pushes his glasses up with his finger. “Take your time with it. The assignment’s not due for months.”
“No, you don’t understand. I’m very into this book, and I can’t wait to share it with my girlfriends. In fact, I’m putting it up on Sorority Net to share with all my friends, chapter by chapter as I write.”
“What’s the hurry?” He looks stymied by my rush to publish.
“It’s sort of a specialty book, an explicit specialty book detailing what goes on behind closed doors—you know, of some fictional couple that isn’t real.”
He straightens, and it’s clear I had him at “explicit.”
“Anyway,” I continue, “I have a very active imagination and dozens of sexually frustrated friends who are begging to read this book right this minute. They’re all itching to get their hands on it so they can finally get some damn relief, if you know what I mean. They’re desperate and lonely.”
His brows rise, a nervous grin flitting across his lips. “Well, if it’s for a good cause, I’ll edit the chapters as quickly as you can get them to me.” He darts a glance at Molly. “I’m more than willing to help the desperate and lonely any way I can.”
A dull laugh thumps in my chest.
I bet.
Cruise
After I drop Kenny back at Garrison, I head home and find a barrage of moving vans clogging up the driveway.
Moving vans? I frown at the eccentric display. Kenny had my head tucked firmly in the clouds for the past few hours, and now the sight of a dozen U-Hauls has efficiently shot me back down to earth.
“What the?” I park on the shoulder of the road above the B and B and head on over to the chaos.
Lisa, aka the Skin, is down below, barking out orders at the movers while they haul couches out of the bed-and-breakfast.
Wait one fucking minute. Those movers are working in reverse. That’s my stuff going into the vans.
I jog on over. “Hey, Lisa,” I say, trying not to let on that I’m as pissed as I am. And for damn certain, addressing her as “the Skin” is out of the question. I’m not fostering anyone’s junior high fantasies, with the exception of Kenny’s, of course. Instead, I get right to the point. “What the hell?”
“Keep it moving!” she howls at the arsenal of buffed-out boys she’s got crawling along the property like an army of sugared-up ants. It’s then I notice she’s got one pale milky eye, and the other is nothing but a big black pupil. Something tells me that’s a manufactured look, and judging by the new rainbow added to her hair, I’m willing to bet there aren’t too many genuine things about the Skin in general.
“You gotta relax, man.” She huffs as she snaps on her sunglasses. “The Plague likes things a certain way. We’re sending this junk to storage and putting it all back in place just before we split. What the Plague destroys, the Plague rebuilds, man.” She shakes her head at the B and B as if she feels sorry for it, and, right about now, I do, too. “Someday you’re going to get on your pretty boy knees and thank me for this.”
“It’s doubtful,” I deadpan. “Look, you need to knock this off. That’s my grandfather’s furniture. Everything you’re tossing in the back of those trucks needs to be put back where it belongs right now. They’re like”—I shake my head as my grandmother’s desk is carried into the hungry mouth of a moving truck—“antiques!”
“It’s just the living room and three upstairs bedrooms,” Lisa counters. “The chef thinks the kitchen’s pretty cool. We’ll throw in an extra ten K once we shore up the bill, so don’t sweat your pretty little balls over it.”
“Ten K?” Holy shit. It takes everything in me not to help clear the old crap out of there faster.
“The Plague has a strict rider for their dressing room, and every detail needs to be just so.”
Did she just refer to the B and B as the band’s dressing room?
“The Plague runs a lot smoother when things are exactly the same in every location across the country.”
“Like a traveling home.” I nod into her lunacy.
“That’s right—they can’t be home so they bring home with them.”
One of the guys carries in a strange-looking chair with leather and chains dangling from it.
Normal people who use hotel rooms are satisfied with basic creature comforts like a bed and bathroom.
Two movers haul a mirrored coffee table out of one of the trucks and muscle it inside while another pair drags in a bed frame with mirrored paneling.
“You’ve got a theme, huh?” I ask.
“The Plague believes mirrors are the pathways to new realities,” the Skin replies. “The soul cannot breathe if it cannot transcend into new dimensions night after night.” She strums her long black fingernails over her chest.
“Yeah, well, tell ’em to keep their interdimensional jaunts quiet, and I’d like every soul asleep by ten. We’ve got neighbors around here, and we’ve never given anyone any trouble.”
She glances up and snarls at me like a rabid dog. “You’re a negative spirit, and I won’t
have you influencing the Plague with the cheap lyrics bleeding from your lips. Nothing pulls them into a bad frame of mind before a show more than someone trying to sell your brand of bullshit.” She claps her hands over her head and lets out a cry of agony.
“You okay?” I’m not sure I’m buying her brand of bullshit, either.
“Get away!” The words bleed from her lips with a moan—like cheap lyrics to be exact. “You’re repugnant! You’re cynical. You’re uninterested in everything we’re doing.” She bites the air between us, and I take a full step back. “For God’s sake, you sound like my father.” She belts it out so loud, I’m half-afraid the cops are going to haul my ass off to jail for assault.
“All right.” I continue to back up with my hands in the air. “Do your thing. I’ll be in that little tiny cabin behind the property. See me before sunset about leaving a deposit.”
I make tracks down to the house, shaking my head as I pass the moving trucks.
She’s a nut, but she had me at 10K.
A couple of hours drag by, and the moving trucks keep coming and going. I’m worried that soon I’ll look out the window and the entire bed-and-breakfast will be gone—even though it would be a relief on some level.
One of the reasons I went to Garrison this morning was to track down Dr. Barney, one of the grant directors for my now nonexistent fellowship. He said Professor Bradshaw was still in remission and returning to his old ornery self and spending his days on the golf course, which made me glad. Memories of filling in for him and teaching his class last semester make me shake my head. I loved teaching that class—being with Kenny in that class. Anyway, I asked—just this side of begging—if there was any way he could get me back into the graduate program and was met with an emphatic N-fucking-O. Strangely, I’m okay with it. There was something freeing about Garrison cutting me loose last spring. And, truth be told, I don’t mind running the B and B. People kill to have their own businesses, and I’ve had one handed to me on a silver platter. The real trick is getting it to produce a profit. I’m grateful for the B and B, but I can’t let go of Garrison, either. I guess a part of me, my ego to be exact, was sort of hoping to be published once I’d finished up with grad school. It was going to be the icing on the scholastic cake.