Guilty Pleasures (40 page)

Never had Lance yielded so unthinkingly to desire. Always foremost in his mind had been the pleasuring of his partner. Now he discovered himself greedy for his own pleasure as well as hers. They talked for hours, lying in her bed, entwined in the sticky aftermath of love. He laid tracing stories on her skin, unravelling the memories of his geeky adolescence, listening to her delighted laughter. They went to a gallery opening—one of her friends painted tiny odd pictures of insects you had to look at through magnifying glasses—and ended up fucking in the bathroom. She seemed to find the kitchen unbearably erotic and he dribbled the pesto sauce she was preparing for the pasta down his chest and onto his groin. The pasta burnt and lunch was late.

Lance woke and lay watching the stripy sunlight on her bedroom ceiling, the golden motes dancing in the air. Contentment flowed over him. Never had he felt so secure, so sure. He would become Will and give up Lance. He would live this simpler, pleasurable life to the fullest, never again would he think of the tawdry beginnings of this love.

“Will . . .” Millie stretched languidly and yawned unselfconsciously, her pink tongue curling like a cat’s. “Are you hungry?”

Lance nibbled at her salty shoulder. “Only for you.”

“Still?”

Lance grinned. “Always, my lady. My hunger overwhelms me at this very moment.” He swung himself over her and trapped her outstretched wrists in his hands. He looked down her plump, succulent body and felt himself harden.
 

She glanced down and giggled. “Oh sir, how can a poor maid resist?” She arched her neck to nip at his lower lip, spreading her thighs, lifting her hips invitingly.
 

Lance took her slowly, watching her face as he entered her, her eyes bright, her lips parting as if they, too, were welcoming him into her wet entrance. He withdrew slowly, then gently thrust in, never quite reaching her depths, keeping to a slow, maddening rhythm. Millie was gasping, arching her back to impale herself more fully, struggling up to reach his mouth.
 

Lance stopped. “No, my lady, be still, you move and I stop.”

She subsided and Lance resumed his delicious torture.

“Do you feel it, Millie? Look at me, love. Do you feel me? I love you, Millie. I love fucking you. I love watching you come . . .”

She was shuddering under him, moaning, a feverish flush colouring her cheeks, her eyes glazing, and her lips trembling a low moan. “Will, please, Will! Please . . .”

“Tell me what you want.”

“Please, I want more. Please, Will . . .”

“What do you want, Maid Millicent? Tell me.”

“Fuck me, Will. I want you to fuck me hard.”

Lance thrust, letting himself go, filling her, burrowing into her womb, feeling her wrap herself around him, matching him thrust for thrust. He looked down at her closed eyes and parted lips. “Open your eyes, Millie. Look at me, love, look.”

Her eyes wide, she panted, gazing up at him. Lance watched as her orgasm took her. He looked into her eyes as he allowed himself his own release, shouting out her name and his love.

Lance went home to a hot shower. For the last three weeks, he’d been popping in to change his clothes, pick up his snail-mail, and for his middle of the day naps, only rarely spending the night in his own bed. He sorted through a pile of envelopes, separating the inevitable bills. It all seemed strangely foreign, full of odd concerns and unfamiliar names. Lance had sent an e-mail to the costumier asking him to deliver the Sherlock disguise to his home address by the twenty-fifth—one week away—so he wrote out a note to the building’s super asking him to take delivery. He threw out a mouldering block of tofu and some blackened vegetable matter of uncertain origin bubbling in his fridge, and left money for his cleaner.
 

His life organised, he crawled into bed for some sorely needed rest.

A yawning Millie staggered in from her evening “outing” with Horse.

From the Diary of Millicent Deafly:

It keeps happening, this amazing merging, this ecstasy between Will and me.
 

How did I live without this? I sent Will home tonight. I’m actually sore—raw and sore, to tell the truth.

He doesn’t look at all hideous when he comes, no popping eyes or lecherous snarl. He looks like a man in love. He keeps telling me he loves me and I keep saying silly, senseless things back. I don’t want to lie or hurt him. I just want to keep on doing this.

I don’t know what this
thing
is, though. It’s so completely out of my experience that I hesitate to label it. I don’t know what I feel. I love him, or I’m in love with him, yes, but there is some part of him I just can’t read, something missing. I feel he is sincere, and yet not being completely frank . . .
 

This feeling, I’m sure, is just paranoia, a sick inheritance from my past.

I will get over it.
 

Chapter 32

As the lucky man on whom she practises the ancient art of fellatio, be aware of a few basic rules:

1. Don’t push—she decides how much of you she can take in.

2. Whatever you do, don’t grab her head. Caress her cheeks, her temples, or her hair.
Do not
grip her head in your avid little paws!

3. Encourage her to wrap one hand firmly around the base of your shaft. It feels good,
and
will help her to control any sudden movements you might make.

4. Don’t come without warning her. She might not feel up to
that
.

5. Reciprocate. Be a gentleman; remember ladies come first!

—Sensual Secrets of a Sexual Surrogate

At four o’clock in the morning, Lance picked up Serge, shivering and cursing in the icy rain.

“Shit a brick. This would freeze the bollocks off a stone bull.”

“Good morning, Serge. Nice, soft morning, isn’t it?”

“Soft is my hairy arse. It isn’t—hairy, I mean— just in case you’re curious . . . wanna see?”

Lance laughed. “I’ll pass, thanks. Where to?”

“Just meat and poultry today. This poor bugger married a die-hard vegan, won’t even kiss him if she thinks he’s eaten meat. She sniffs at his shit, can you believe it? So once a year the Vegetable Lady goes to Nevada for a week, the Ultimate Nirvana Congress of Heavenly Leeks, or some such crap, so he comes in and eats lots of meat the very first day she’s away, so the stuff will have time to work through his system before she comes back. It’s all very hush-hush. They’re both famous, so he has to be discreet. Half the time we work for crazies, I swear.”

“Goes to show what some men will do for love. Some will give up meat, some will change their lives.”

“You’d better believe it. Poor suckers.”

Back at Guilty Pleasures, Serge leaned into the van. “By the way, Millie wants us in a little earlier to plan out the week. Be here at three in the afternoon, okay?”

“Sure, Serge, see you then.”
 

Lance threw himself into an extenuating workout—long overdue—a shower, and then he went back to bed for a midmorning nap. He was living a crazy life, and was starting to understand Millie’s isolation. The fragmented days and the odd working hours were not conducive to an active social life, to any kind of life.

Once, he’d had a great social life, but no sex life. Now he had a great sex life, and no social life whatsoever.
Whatever happened to equilibrium?
 

Still, he didn’t think a so-so social life and a mediocre sex life would suit him either. Lance cuddled down on his futon and sighed. This woman had turned him inside out, his life was upside down, and everything else was back to front.