Paranormal Erotic Romance Box Set (3 page)

I looked away when Nellie looked at me as she took
Conrad’s penis out of his pants. I stared at the movie screen and the man at
the naked woman’s head shoved his penis roughly into her mouth while he kissed
her breasts. The man between the woman’s legs shoved his penis into her and
pumped his hips back and forth as the woman flailed her arms.

“Hey Brandt,” Nellie said, “watch me.”

I looked at Brandt who sat back in his seat and stared at
me. He had a sheepish look on his face, but he did not seem embarrassed. I, on
the other hand, would have crawled under my seat if I didn’t think I’d contract
something from the floor. Brandt shifted in his seat a few times and he
unzipped his pants. I was shocked, but not shocked enough to look away.

Brandt pulled his penis out and I froze. I had seen naked
men before. Sometimes by accident as the other models changed, sometimes in the
magazines Katt kept in her room and sometimes up close when my dates
incorrectly assumed I was that kind of a girl.

“Touch it, Sophia,” Brandt said in my ear. “All I can do
is think of you.”

My hand, as if it belonged to the kind of girl who touched
men’s penises in pornographic movies, moved slowly toward his lap. Brandt’s
penis was hard and stood straight up. I looked up at him and he looked down at
himself and smiled. Brandt brought two hands around his penis and gripped it
tightly.

And then I thought about what Nellie would do to me if she
happened to look over and see me fondling Brandt. I pulled my hand back quickly
and dug my nails into my leg.

“I can’t,” I whispered. “Put it away.”

“But it wants you,” Brandt said and stroked his penis.
“Touch me.”

“No.”

“Then watch me. Watch me touch myself and think of you.”

“Please stop,” I said and stood up from my seat.

I dropped my purse on the ground and crouched down to pick
it up. Nellie was sucking Conrad’s penis. I looked back over at Brandt and he
was stroking his penis. I found my purse and stood up and the man sitting behind
us leaned over Nellie’s seat and watched her sucking Conrad’s penis while he
played with himself.

“Hey lady,” said a voice from the back of the theater,
“either sit the fuck down or get back here and blow me!”

“I’m sorry,” I said to whoever cared and tripped over
Nellie’s legs as I tried to maneuver my way around her.

“Sophia,” Brandt said, “wait.”

I braced myself with my hands as I hit the concrete floor.
The floor was cold and slimy and I bit my tongue from the impact of my fall. My
knees ached as I got up and began my ascent up the corridor toward the door
leading out of the theater.

“Sophia,” Nellie said, “what the hell?”

I ran out the door and into the corridor. When I got into
the lobby by the concession stand, I was frightened to see I was alone. I
looked out the glass door and wondered how long it would take to hail a cab
from the sidewalk as there didn’t seem to be a cab stand around and there were
certainly no cabs idling in front of the theater. I wished Katt was home so I
could call her. She’d get in a cab herself and come down and pick me up.

As disturbing as the whole scene was to me, I was more
disturbed by the fact that I was turned on by watching Brandt and the movie. I
wanted to do the things to Brandt he wanted me to do in the theater. I wanted
Brandt to do the things to me that the men in the movie did to the woman.

“Sophia!” Brandt said as he came running toward me.
“Sophia, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said and turned back toward the front door
of the theater. “I’m really not this kind of girl, Brandt.”

Brandt grabbed my arm and turned me toward him.

“I am really sorry if I upset you. I just got carried
away, do you understand?”

“Yes, of course,” I said.

“No, I’m really not,” Brandt said. “Between the movie and
everything that was going on and being so close to you, I mean, I’m really
sorry.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “I’m not passing judgment. I just
want to grab a cab and go home.”

“Well, I’ll go with you,” he said and walked me toward the
door. “I mean, I’ll wait for the cab with you, if that’s okay? I don’t want you
waiting alone.”

Brandt opened the door to the theater for me and we waited
outside on the sidewalk for a cab. We chatted with one another easily and when
he asked if he could take me out to dinner the next night, I was on cloud nine.
Until I thought of Nellie.

“Look,” I said as I looked into his gorgeous blue eyes,
“Nellie really likes you.”

“But I’m not interested in Nellie. I’m interested in you,”
Brandt said and touched his nose to mine. “There is not an instance I can think
of that I would ever be interested in Nellie.”

“But Nellie and I are friends of sorts. I know how she
feels about you and she’d be crushed if she found out we went out.”

“Marry me,” Brandt said.

“What? We just met.”

“I don’t care,” he said. “I know what I feel. I’m a good
man, Sophia. I’m a traditional guy who, despite the fact we came here, believes
in the value of family and honors that. I’m going to be extremely successful
too. I have job offers lined up all over Manhattan. I’ll take very good care of
you.”

“I have my own money and my own career.”

“I know you don’t need anyone to take care of you, but you
deserve to have someone take care of you. I want that someone to be me.”

“Brandt --”

“Sophia, just promise you’ll have dinner with me tomorrow
night? Quick, here comes a cab...promise me.”

I looked down the street and a cab with its vacant signal
glaring against the black of night came toward us.

“Promise!” Brandt said.

“I promise,” I said and sighed as I raised my arm and
hailed the cab.

The cab came to a stop in front of the theater and Brandt
took his wallet out of his pants and opened the front passenger door.

“I have money,” I said as he talked to the cab driver.

“Hush,” Brandt said, “it’s my job to take care of Sophia.
What’s your address?”

I gave Brandt my address and he relayed it to the driver.
He opened the back passenger door and helped me into the back seat of the cab.

“Mrs. Brandt Therrault,” Brandt said and gave me a kiss on
my cheek that I felt in the small of my back.

He pulled away from me, held my face in his hands and
looked into my eyes. When I looked into Brandt’s clear eyes, I thought I could
see all the way into his soul.

“What about Nellie?”

“Don’t worry about Nellie,” Brandt said and stepped away
from the cab, “I’ll take care of her.”

“I wish it were not a sin to have liked it so.”

Veronica Franco

The day after the movie theater fiasco, I was walking to
the limo waiting outside my building to take me to a photo shoot and Nellie
popped out from behind a potted plant.

“Are you alone?” She said.

Her eyes were swollen and red-rimmed and she seemed very
angry.

“What do you mean?” I said and gestured for the driver to
wait for a moment.

“Well, I half-expected Brandt to saunter out of your lobby
with you. You know, the morning after the night before.”

“Nellie, he waited for a cab with me. I had to get out of
that horrendous place,” I said. “Although, it’s nice to know he didn’t go back
inside.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Nellie said.

“Oh? What would you say?” I said.

“Nothing. I can’t wait until he and I go out again.”

“Again? I’m surprised you’re still interested in Brandt
given how familiar you were with Conrad.”

Nellie wrung her hands and I noticed that they were red
and peeling as if they were soaked in a tub of scalding water and then
air-dried in a freezing wind.

“Oh, listen to the queen of everything. Just who do you
think you are, Sophia? I should be mad at you. I’m sorry I didn’t know what a
fucking prude you are.”

“Nellie, I have to go. This is the car that’s picking me
up for my shoot this morning,” I said and backed toward the passenger door of
the car.

“Wait!” Nellie said and stretched her arms toward me. “I’m
sorry. I know I’m not like you and it’s going to be super hard to get Brandt to
see me as anything other than a friend, but I do think I have a shot.”

Nellie looked pitiful and sad and pathetic.

“I understand,” I said. “I really do have to go.”

“You’re my best friend right?” Nellie said. “Please say
you are.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Um, how do you know where I live?”

“Oh, because of this,” Nellie said and fished a folded
piece of paper out of the pocket of her jeans.

Nellie handed me the paper and I opened it. It contained
my itinerary for the Gloucester swimsuit photo shoot.

“Where did you get this?”

“You dropped it the day we met. I picked it up and saw
your address.”

“Why didn’t you give it to me yesterday?”

“I dunno,” she said and looked around the street. “Well, I
gotta go. I just wanted to see how you were.”

“I’ll call you later,” I said.

“You will?” Nellie said as she swung around to face me.

“Yes, of course. I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true,” I
said as I got into the limo.

I kept my dinner date with Brandt that evening and after
that, Brandt and I snuck around Boston like two adulterers for five amazing
weeks. I avoided almost the whole of Newbury Street for fear of running into
Nellie and couldn’t face her to tell her the truth.

When Katt came home from Europe, I introduced her to
Brandt. She found him dreamy but, as she said, schemey. She said there was
something about him that got under her skin, but I brushed her aside and
declared her cynical. She tried to curb her criticisms, but there were still
some sticking points she could not help but comment on.

Brandt was always a perfect gentleman with me and our
dates never ended with anything more than a kiss on the cheek or peck on the
lips. Something the hedonistic Katt found very disturbing.

“I’m just saying,” Katt said to me while we shared lunch
in the park one afternoon, “I find it odd that the two of you had your first
encounter in a smut theater and he got his cock out and ever since
then...nothing.”

“I told you, our first meeting was an unusual
circumstance. He got carried away at the theater because of the surroundings.
Ever since, he’s been nothing but a gentleman. I’m not going to lie, I am very
tempted to go all the way with him.”

“All the way? You haven’t even gone a stone’s throw of the
way with him. I find it strange that you go from him urging you to grab his
cock in public to not even feeling you up.”

“He’s traditional,” I said.

“Yeah, some traditionalist,” Katt said and sighed. “Look,
I think the whole virgin thing is cute as a button, Soph, but he’s a man.”

“And you’re just cynical, Katt. Brandt loves me, he just
happens to have self-control and respect. He knows I want to wait until we get
married.”

“Sophia, you do not have to marry a man to have sex with
him. We are in the swinging 60’s in case you haven’t noticed. Please, just ask
yourself if the reason you want to marry Brandt is because you want to fuck him
or if you want to marry him because you really want to be Mrs. Brandt
Therrault.”

“I want to marry him because I really want to be Mrs.
Brandt Therrault. Come on Katt, please be happy for me,” I said and gave her arm
a squeeze.

“Fine, but only for you,” Katt said. “And yes, maybe I am
cynical and maybe I don’t like the fact that you’re going to end your career,
which is taking off, by the way.”

“It’s something that I agreed to. Besides, when Brandt
takes a job in one of the Manhattan firms he interviews with, I will have a
baby right away. That’s something that both of us want. I can’t model if I’m
pregnant.”

“Gads! A baby? You’re so young.”

But I didn’t care.

I wanted to marry Brandt, I wanted to make love to Brandt
and I wanted to have babies with Brandt. By now, I gave up both my books and my
fashion magazines and only read housekeeping, bride and parental-type
publications. I would be a perfect bride, a perfect wife and a perfect mother.
And within all this giddiness, there was still the problem of Nellie that
needed to be addressed.

Nellie called my apartment several times a day. Poor Katt
usually took the brunt of it and I asked my agent to look into changing my
telephone number. I caught Nellie several times hanging around outside my
apartment. I got into the habit of looking down the street before I turned a
corner or having my driver drive past my apartment to make sure she wasn’t
there before he dropped me off. A few times the limo blew past Nellie waiting outside
for me while I hid on the floorboard of the car.

I told Brandt that I could not go on avoiding her for much
longer and that there was no reason we should hide our relationship. Brandt
promised he would tell her, but every time I asked, he put me off.

“I’ll take care of it, baby, I promise,” Brandt said one
day as he walked me to my apartment.

He looked up to the top floor of my building with an odd
smile on his face. He was transfixed as he looked at one of the windows in my
penthouse.

“What?” I said.

“I can’t believe that’s yours. I mean, it must be worth a
fortune. Do you really own the whole thing?”

Brandt never discussed money or what I had versus what he
did or did not. I understood he came from a middle-class family of
professionals who lived in Providence. They didn’t have as much money as my
family, but that was a non-issue. As Brandt said, he was going to be a famous
lawyer and would soon be making his own sizeable income.

“Yes,” I said. “I own the whole thing. It was transferred
to me when I turned eighteen. Why?”

“I dunno, just seems excessive,” he said.