Desperate Thoughts: The Gift (17 page)

Dallas lay in bed, unable to sleep and wondering if Katrina was suffering the same fate—and for the very same reason. Did she want him as much as he wanted her? Katrina was but a few steps away, yet he dare not go to her, for he was a guest, and then there was Katrina’s mother, who was just across the hall. For Dallas, sleep came minutes later, but it would be short- lived, for soon Katrina stood over him, completely nude and pondering how to proceed...

Dallas must have been in a deep sleep, since he didn’t feel it when Katrina peeled the sheet carefully off him, exposing his muscular body, six-pack abs, and sizeable manhood. She quivered when his impressiveness sprang into view. For a long time, she kneeled next to the bed, just studying his body and savoring his scent. Taking his sex into her hand, Katrina worked it until it was rigid while she watched him sleep. When Dallas woke, he looked into her eyes, swallowed hard, and whispered, "I’ve been waiting for you."

Just as fast as his sex expanded, it lost its firmness and flopped against his leg. Katrina looked down at it in disappointment and then moaned in frustration. "What’s wrong?"

Dallas said sheepishly, "Sometimes that happens to me. Sorry. Ever since I cheated on my wife with that whore in the pool, I haven’t been able to—"

Jillian stopped typing and thought she might be heading in the wrong direction with this. How did her ex-husband get into the story? But then again, most men are assholes, she thought.

Picking up the glass of wine from her nightstand, she took a long sip and then replaced it. She highlighted the last paragraph about Dallas’s problem, hit one key, and it was gone. Just like his boner. She laughed out loud.

Jillian wasn’t exactly in the correct frame of mind to write at the moment, especially on this particular subject. She stared straight ahead and wondered about the likelihood of Dallas slipping in the shower, striking his head, and dying instantly. Or maybe an earthquake could strike, and Dallas’s amazingly perfect body would be trapped under a giant beam.

What the hell kind of name was
Dallas
anyway? She thought she might want to give her character a real name like Stewart but figured no one would believe that a guy named Stewart could give you six consecutive orgasms in one night.

What was she doing, anyway, writing novels about people having amazing sex when she’d never had any? Okay, maybe once or twice twenty years ago, but none since then. She had no right. If people knew that she was the one writing these books, they wouldn’t buy them. She was a fraud.

Jillian picked up her wineglass and took another long drink. She grinned, wiped those unhelpful thoughts from her mind, and started typing again...

Katrina took his sex in her hand and worked it until it was rigid. As she studied it closely, Katrina noticed two red bumps on the underside of his pathetic excuse for a penis. She recoiled in horror
—

Jillian hit the backspace key to erase everything after Dallas’s "sex" started expanding. Romance novels about erectile dysfunction and STDs weren’t exactly big sellers. She closed the lid on the laptop and tossed it gently onto a pillow at the foot of the bed. She emptied her wineglass with one last sip and turned on the television.

Jillian Grayson wrote under the pen name of Jaclyn West. She’d written fourteen bestsellers so far and had more money than she needed flowing in, so her next novel could wait. The book royalties had paid for her large, beautiful house in Miami. She still had plenty of money, even after the divorce, which forced her to part with nearly half of her earnings to her bastard ex-husband.

She’d never forget the day she came home early from a book tour and found George performing oral sex on that slut in the pool, the pool she had paid for and an act he rarely, if ever, did for her. Jillian always thought he hated oral sex or, more specifically, he hated the giving part. But there he was, naked, standing in the shallow end of the pool, and going to work on some other woman as she floated in the pool on a ring, which Jillian had also paid for. The pool oral sex thing actually looked like it might be kind of fun, and Jillian often wondered why George had never once tried that on her.

That day, when Jillian spotted them from the second floor balcony off their bedroom, she had watched for a little longer than she’d care to admit. Maybe that was because all her erotic romance writing had left her desensitized to sex, at least a little. At first, it didn’t seem real; it was as if she was visualizing a scene for a book, not watching her husband cheat on her.

When she finally came back to earth, Jillian left the house and went to the side of the pool. She snuck up on the adulterous couple and stood there until the woman being serviced noticed they had an audience. The woman tapped George on the shoulder to get his attention. When George turned around, he had a guilty look on his face that Jillian would never forget. Jillian wouldn’t let the naked woman back in the house to get her clothes. She simply threw the clothes out the door. The woman was forced to get dressed outside and shamefully leave through the back gate. George went into the house, got dressed, and left through the front door. It was the last time he ever set foot inside.

Jillian didn’t cry that day; instead, she put on a pair of kitchen gloves and retrieved the ring float from the pool. When her attempts to drain the float of air through the valve seemed to be taking too long, she stabbed it ten times with scissors. That could possibly have been overkill, but it did the trick and gave her a much-needed outlet for her rage. Jillian called a company to have the pool drained, scrubbed, and refilled at the cost of fifteen hundred dollars. It was worth it, she thought, because she would never have been able to dip a toe in the pool until every last drop of that contaminated water was replaced.

She imagined what George had been up to all those times she was traveling. What types of women had he explored in and out of the pool? How long had he been screwing around and with how many women? Although Jillian was out of town quite a bit, she had never suspected anything, since George never seemed to be sneaking around, nor was he ever evasive about where he was going or what he had planned. Their sex life was never great or very active, but he seemed to be an attentive and loyal husband—at least, most of the time.

Once Jillian discovered the infidelity, she wanted to know if George had left her with any other little surprises. She went to her doctor for a complete STD panel of tests, and luckily for him, she came back clean. Had George left her with something, she would have cut off his balls, or worse.

Jillian could always come up with stories and had never suffered from long bouts of writer’s block in the past. But lately her male characters ended up mangled in some horrible accident, diseased, or unable to perform. She could not focus. Even though she had no personal interest in the lifestyle, she pitched an idea for an all-female, lesbian romance novel, but her publisher declined. Maybe she would try to write in another genre, she thought, but this romance stuff used to come so easily to her.

She was sitting on four unfinished manuscripts. Once Jillian found a story heading down the wrong path, she would start another, but that technique didn’t seem to be working for her, either. Since the divorce, she found herself unable to finish a novel, and she was beginning to think that maybe what she needed was a complete break from writing.

She couldn’t blame George completely, because ever since her first bestseller, she definitely was less attentive to him than she needed to be. It was probably at least ten percent her fault, although she never admitted that to him. Even so, did he really need to screw other women in their house, especially in their pool? Couldn’t he have gotten a divorce first or at the very least done it in a hotel or something? What if their son, Rob, currently attending college in Georgia, had come home to catch his father doing what he was doing with another woman in broad daylight? Rob would have been devastated.

He’d be home for Spring Break in about six weeks, although Jillian was sure he’d spend nearly all his time with his girlfriend, Laura, who was going to school in Miami. They’d been dating since their junior year of high school, and it looked like these two kids were in love and would be married once they graduated from university.

Even though she knew she wouldn’t see him much while he was home, Jillian looked forward to his visit. She knew her son was the only truly good thing to come out of the marriage.

Jillian grabbed the remote control and changed the channel just in time to catch the Super Bowl as it was ending. She had forgotten it was on. Not that she would have tuned in anyway. She used the Packers’ victory celebration as a distraction from thinking about romance novels or ex-husbands or even men in general, although she did like the way Green Bay’s quarterback filled out his tight football pants. She might be bitter, but she wasn’t dead.

Staring up at the ceiling, she wondered what had brought her to this place in her life. How had she ended up all alone in this big house? What had she done wrong? She glanced back to the screen. When she saw an image of the Steelers locker room filled with nearly naked men, she thought about her best friend, Victoria Wilde. Jillian wondered what she was doing. She checked the time and saw it was still early. Grinning, she wondered why she bothered checking, since even two in the morning would still be early for Victoria. She grabbed the phone and dialed. The phone rang three times, and just as Jillian was about to hang up, she heard the click. After five seconds of complete silence, the sound of soft moaning spilled through the phone.

Jillian listened for a moment. "Victoria?"

"Hello?" Victoria finally replied in a throaty drawl.

"Hey, what are you doing?"

"Oh, uh... not much. I just have a friend over."

"Sorry, I’ll let you go then."

"No, don’t worry about it. I can talk for a few minutes."

Victoria was sitting on the sofa in her living room, wearing a skintight, cleavage-featuring top. She had just turned thirty-nine but looked much younger, as she was in spectacular shape and dressed like a woman in her late twenties. Her "friend" wasn’t currently visible at her eye level, but he was nearby.

"So, what’s going on?" Victoria asked.

Jillian sighed and began, "I tried to do some writing tonight, but I’m struggling
again
. I’m just not in a very sexual mood."

"Why don’t you try watching some porn? That always gets me in the mood."

"I don’t have any... porn," Jillian replied, taken aback a little by the suggestion.

Victoria moaned slightly, "Yeah," in a low voice.

Narrowing her eyes, Jillian asked pointedly, "You sure this is a good time?"

"I think the ice melted," Victoria said.

"What?" Jillian asked.

"Sorry, I was talking to my friend."

"Oh. You sure you can talk?"

"I have at least five minutes before I finish."

"Okay…" Jillian said, a little confused.

Victoria slumped down low on the sofa, her miniskirt pulled up to her waist. Her twenty-six-year-old friend Austin’s head was buried between her legs. He was extremely busy.

"You have no porn? Really? Check Rob’s room. I’m sure he has a stash."

"I will not go searching my son’s room for porn," Jillian replied, horrified.

Pulling the phone from her ear, Victoria tapped the young man on the shoulder, gave him a tired look, and said a little curtly, "Ice."

The young man pulled his head up and then smiled at her. "Sorry. I was so totally focused."

Victoria put the phone back to her ear and continued, "Come over here, and you can borrow some of mine."

"No, thanks. I think I’ll just go to sleep."

Austin slipped a piece of ice into his mouth then went back to work between her legs. When his super-cold tongue reached Victoria’s clit, she dropped the phone and squealed. She closed her eyes and moaned. "Oh, yeah... that feels good."

Jillian widened her eyes. "Victoria? Victoria, are you sure I’m not interrupting anything?"

Victoria put the phone back to her ear. Her lips were slightly parted, and her eyes were almost closed. It was becoming increasingly hard to concentrate. She heard Jillian’s voice.

"Victoria, are you there?"

"Oh, sorry about that."

"Who’s over there? What are you doing?"

"Oh, yeah. Keep doing exactly that," Victoria said with her eyes closed. She opened her eyes and then grinned. "Jillian, have you ever had anyone perform oral sex on you while sucking an ice cube?"

"What? Ice? No!"

"Well, that would certainly help you write-- Oh, my..." After breathing in deeply, Victoria moaned.

Jillian made a face as she asked, "I’m almost afraid to ask. Are you, uh, doing that... now?"

Victoria exhaled slowly and said languidly, "Yeah, and it’s... amazing!"