Guilty Pleasures (20 page)

From the Diary of Millicent Deafly:

Today, I endured the most embarrassing situation. I don’t want to talk about it, though. I don’t even want to think about it. I’m still shaking. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d stayed.

Suffice it to say that Will wakes up parts of me I thought were long dead. Heaven help me, I want him.

Bloody hell, he just plain turns me on. I’ll talk to you later. I’m taking a cold shower right now before I combust.

Okay, I’m out of the shower now.

It didn’t work. I can’t stop thinking about it. His arousal and mine. I wanted him, a visceral craving. I couldn’t breathe. I can’t remember when I last wanted a man. Hmm . . . it’s been years. Eight or nine years, maybe more.

Even longer since I last got involved. And the last time I got involved, I regretted it bitterly. I’ve been clean and clear for twelve years. I’ve gotten used to being alone, to the peace, the soothing predictability of painless days. But still, he moves me, and not just physically. Beyond the wanting, something in him touches me.

I need to go to bed—like right now. Goodnight.
 

It is now three thirty in the morning and I just made some extra-hot cheese enchiladas. I ate them all. I also had hot chocolate with marshmallows, three Crunchie bars, and half a jar of chunky orange marmalade on toast.
 

I’m still hungry.

I want Will: Will on toast, with chocolate, lots and lots of chocolate. I want to devour him. My whole body feels like a starved salivating mouth, swallowing on empty. What should I do?

Chapter 14

“
If I Was The Woman and You Were The Man
”
is a country song by the Cowboy Junkies, that illustrates my idea of taking role playing one step further into role reversal.

Let
her
be the man. Let her seduce you, touch you, make love to you as if she were in fact the traditionally dominant male partner. Let her give free rein to her imagination, loosen her restraints, and ask her to please you as if
you
were the woman.

—Sensual Secrets of a Sexual Surrogate

Lance was well pleased with the evening’s progress. The expression he’d glimpsed in Millie’s face had been panic and arousal, not fear, not rejection. She’d run, not from him, but from herself. He’d felt her muscles loosen with pleasure, the slow lassitude of desire overcoming her. He’d assumed the passive, subservient role. He was subject to her will, and so much more alluring in his apparent helplessness.

How long would it be before she was tempted to test the extent of her control over him, and herself?
Not long.
Her long denial, the harsh repression of an essentially warmly sensual nature would not permit any slackening of her iron control.
 

The slightest loosening would end in an overwhelming and uncontrollable tidal wave, sweeping away every trace of restraint.

Yes, a good night’s work.

Or was it?

Is this what I want? Do I want her to be in love with Will? Seduced by Will?
 

A sick ache told him
no
. He wanted her to love him, Lance. Not Will. He wanted her love. He had to think this through.

Tomorrow was Sunday. He had two days to relax, rethink his strategy, and catch up with the rest of his sadly neglected life. Seeing his grandmother was on the top of his list, then a call to George, and he’d have to see if there was time to do some serious exercise for the first time in a week. He had glimpsed the first blurring of his abs, the coy announcement of incipient abdominal fat. He was determined to eradicate it before it set in permanently. Lance sighed. Getting his muscles burning, every tendon stretched to snapping point? This, too, was ecstasy.

With a shuddering groan, Lance spilled his pleasure into the tangled sheets. These dreams with Millie were driving him crazy. This had to stop; he had to snap out of it. Daytime Millie moved him with her unaffected warmth, but the one in his dreams was another matter.
 

Daytime Mille had, he sensed, sensitivity, a rare delicacy of feeling allied with a steely resilience and a quirky, salacious sense of humour that he found irresistible. He felt a genuine liking for her, a welling tenderness; a perhaps unwarranted trust that left him exposed to her, spontaneous and free for the first time in too many years. He could not hide himself from her. Will’s fragility, his vulnerability, was his own; the trap was the truth.

The nighttime version of Millie was his own suppressed desire, the sexuality he’d been living vicariously through his clients. A shadow life, a life of sterility and lies, much less honest than her frank avoidance of a pain she
chose
not to face. In avoiding making a choice, he’d chosen to avoid life.

For the first time, Lance was afraid. He was in way over his head. For the first time in twenty years, he was not indifferent. This woman aroused not just his sexual desire that he could deal with, she made him feel. Exactly what he was feeling was not something he was prepared to think about just yet.
 

He made himself a camomile tisane, and listened to Neil Diamond croon “Love on the Rocks” as he sipped it. Soothed, he went back to bed and fell into a restful, dreamless sleep for the first time in a week.

The next morning, Lance woke tranquil and refreshed. He called his grandmother and told her he’d be over for tea. He called George and chatted about the wedding and how smashing Francine was. He told George how he loved the idea of the period costume and wouldn’t mind helping him pick out a ring tomorrow. He e-mailed his long-suffering ghostwriter three chapters worth of revisions, and the raw material for four more. Finally, he felt he had regained some control of his wayward affairs.

Monday found Lance loose-limbed and relaxed, enjoying his day off in a way he hadn’t in years. At ten in the morning, he was at the costumier’s—a dark little shop filled with rolls of colourful fabrics and rows of hanging costumes, like the moulted skins of mythical creatures.
 

A cheerful middle-aged man with a determined paunch and blue spotted fingers measured him and helped him choose the fabric for the suit and the cape. He deftly sketched out quite a flattering little portrait of Lance in his Sherlock persona, then quoted a breathtaking figure for a nineteenth-century dress suit and cape.
 

Lance agreed and wrote out a hefty check.

They solemnly shook on a due date for delivery. The man recommended a reputable antique shop specialising in pipes, and Lance set off to meet George at the jeweller’s.

The jeweller turned out to be a friend of George’s who dealt in Victorian and Edwardian jewellery, and he happily set out tray after tray of rings glittering on black velvet.
 

A dazzling display of amethysts, opals, garnets, diamante-garnished jet, topazes, fancy diamonds in an astonishing array of shades from champagne to chocolate brown, sapphires, pearls, delicate cameos, lapis lazuli, and enamelled marquisette shone before them.

George hesitated between a delicately framed cameo, gold tendrils clasping the beautifully mottled shell carved into a remarkably refined profile bearing a decided resemblance to George’s fiancée, Francine, and a lovely garnet and gold ring, the richly coloured stones forming an intricate love knot.

“What do you think, Lance? Help me out, man!”

Lance smiled. “George, it’s your call, but honestly, I like them both.”
 

George’s hovering jeweller friend delicately hinted at a substantial discount on a dual purchase, so George ended up buying both; the garnet as a wedding ring, and the cameo for Francine’s birthday.

From there, they popped into George’s father’s tailor, who’d agreed to whip up morning suits and a dress shirt—cut from Victorian patterns—on short notice.

The hatmaker, conveniently nearby, measured George’s head and wrote up an order for a silk top hat to be colour-matched to a swatch provided by the tailor. George’s tranquil joy was contagious. He was filled with a quiet confidence in the future and in his decision.

Lance envied him.

After a long, leisurely lunch with George, Lance returned home. He was taking care of some personal errands when he was startled to see an e-mail message from Millie. He was surprised to feel his pulse speed up as he opened it. It was a very short, to the point message asking him to come to work at the usual time tomorrow morning. The message was polite and impersonal. He reread it several times.

He checked the rest of his messages and responded with a few polite and impersonal messages of his own. One was to his mother, expressing his filial concern for her health, and wishes for her continued well-being. He inquired into her lawn bowls average and sent warmest regards to her current love victim. At the end of the message his signature read YOUR DUTIFUL SON, LANCE.

He responded to Jane De Mondio’s malicious curiosity with a few well-thought-out quips, and before signing off, he set up a meeting with his editor for next Monday at twelve as she wanted to discuss changing the
Sensual Secrets of a Sexual Surrogate
’s index into a more reader-friendly structure. Lastly, he ordered a selection of books on creative and exotic cuisine from the local bookstore.
 

Caroline had left a voice message on his cell expressing concern and regret for the tone of their last conversation. She said she looked forward to seeing him at the wedding, and asked if they could perhaps kiss and make up.
 

Lance deleted it. He didn’t want to think about her, of what she’d meant to him, of how he now believed she’d used him. Instead, he thought of Millie’s intrinsic kindness, her humour, and unfailing optimism. She made him laugh. She made him forget himself.
 

It was clear he wanted her. He refused to think of his mission—his original sordid motivation was now a vague shameful shadow in the back of his mind. He wanted her to love him, and she would.
 

A determined, confident Lance tucked himself into bed at nine thirty and dropped off into a delicious, dreamless sleep.