Playing for Julia (8 page)

At lunch, the salad bar again, I learn from Cathy why she had such a skeptical look on her face.

“Eric has a lousy reputation.  He’s a brilliant writer and smarter than most, but he thinks that means he can run roughshod over people, even his staff.  And he is obsessed with the war. The only people he treats well are the people who put up the money for him.  I’ve heard he is a really smooth talker with his financial backers.”

“That doesn’t sound
good, but he’s only going to be here for a week.  We’ll all survive,” I answer.

Chapter Twelve

This afternoon I decided to put on a full-skirted, white dress with black polka dots.  It buttons up the front from the hem to the scooped neckline and has a thin black belt.  It’s summery.  I am tired of wearing winter clothes in late June.  I even have bare legs—no pantyhose for me today—and strappy black sandals to complete my personal rebellion against San Francisco’s cold, foggy summer weather.

Now I am parked in my old
blue Chevrolet at the Arrivals area at the San Francisco Airport with the car heater turned on full blast, creating an artificial summer in my car. As my back-up plan I’ve brought my black jacket and a change of clothing just in case it gets too cold, which it probably will. But right now I’m enjoying my imitation summer warmth.

Then Austen ope
ns the car door, slides in and clasps my face in his two hands and kisses me, deeply, hungrily.

“
Oh god, I missed you, baby.”  He kisses me again and runs one hand down to my breast and caresses it through the dress.  Then he runs his hand up my leg under my skirt.

“Bare legs.  I like that.
And silk panties at the top of them.  I like that even more.”

I push his hand away, smiling.  “If you
keep doing that we will never get out of the airport.”

“
That’s an idea.”  He laughs.  “We could park on the other side of the parking lot and do it in the back seat.”

I shake my head, smiling.

He continues:  “This car is like the one I had in high school. It was red and the girls loved it.”

T
urning out into traffic, I ask: “Where are we going?”

“Marin.  To my place.”

“You have a place in Marin?  I thought you lived in that house on Lake.”

“No
pe.  John and I bailed out of there after two weeks of living with Tommy’s 24-hour-a-day crazy partying and rented a home in Sausalito for the summer.”

This is news.  I didn’t have to avoid that house on Lake after all.

“So, do you want to hear about my red Chevy?”  I’m watching the traffic ahead of me but I can hear the grin on his face.

“
Tell me about going to high school in No-Where Texas.  You can skip the parts about girls in the back seat and the red Chevy.”

I learn that
sports—especially football and basketball—were a big deal.  He was not on either team.  He had an English teacher his Senior year who read poetry to the class every Friday.  She was determined to bring culture to her small town students.

“Most of them thought it was stupid—except me, of course.
She left after two years and I heard she came out to San Francisco.  I wondered if she was that former school teacher who dances topless in one of those clubs on Broadway, but it turned out not to be her.  She’d be too old for that scene by now anyway. I still think of her sometimes, sitting in front of the class primly, reading John Donne’s love poems to a room full of East Texas teenagers.”

“I love John Donne’s poetry, but I didn’t read them in high school.  The poems are
a little too frank for Spokane.”

T
he home high up in Sausalito is ultra-modern. Through the wall of windows in the spacious living room I can see lights twinkling in the Berkeley hills across the Bay.  The clean lines of the dark furniture in the living room match the architecture.  Overall, it feels somewhat austere.

I don’t have much time to admire the view.
Austen takes my hand and leads me back to a bedroom that is completely out of character with the living room. A big, ornate brass bed dominates the room. The bed cover is a pale aqua blue. An overstuffed chair is upholstered in pink. The porcelain lamps on the white painted bedside tables have pink shades on them.  A stack of books are on one of the tables.

“It’s the daughter’s room,” he says anticipating my question. “The owner
is on sabbatical in Europe and took his family with him.  John and I flipped for the bedrooms.  He got the master suite and I got this one.”

Then he pulls me into his arms
.  He feels so impossibly good, as if he is part of me that has been missing until now. I run my hands into his soft black hair and pull his head, his mouth closer.  Our tongues seek out each other.  He runs one hand down my back and caresses my fanny, then pushes himself against me. I push my hips back at him softly.  He is so hard already and I can feel a needy ache deep inside me.  I hadn’t realized how much I wanted him, his body.

Abruptly he pushes me down on the bed
and lies down beside me.  He pulls off his belt, unfastens my belt, shoves my skirt up and strips off my panties and tosses them on the floor.  His hand goes down and circles around and around. “You’re juicy wet already,” he says, his voice dark and thick with desire. “I want to be inside you now, babygirl.  I’ve dreamed of this the whole damned week.”

“Yes, now.  Now.” I whisper
, my voice revealing how much I want him.

He unzips his jeans and pulls them down. T
hen we are in each other’s arms on the bed and he rams into me.  Oh god, it feels like heaven.  Nothing gentle this time.  He has pinned my arms to the bed beside my head, his finger entwined with mine, while he drives into me, pounding again and again.  He kisses me deeply, his tongue flicking around my mouth.  I love it.  My body loves it. My hips rise to meet him, again and again.  He thrusts into me, faster and faster.  His breathing is heavy and ragged.  I am panting as I feel the tension inside me grow. He roughly pushes my legs further apart and rams deeper and deeper into me.  Oh, it feels so good. I tilt my hips up more. Again and again he drives his steel-hard erection into me, harder and harder.  So good. So good.

I begin to breathe in short gasps as I feel my orgasm building deep inside.
My pulse is pounding through my body.  He thrusts into me over and over again as the quivering tension inside me builds to an uncontrollable agony.   Inside I am screaming for release.

“Oh
god, Austen.” I gasp.

“Let it happen, babygirl,” he
whispers, his voice raw and ragged.

His words are all it takes.  I am overcome by a climax that sends shudders through my whole body.
I am spinning into oblivion. Oh, god, it feels even better than before.  Release…yes, sweet release…yes…yes…oh god, yes. His body arches at the same time and he comes, emptying himself into me, my name on his lips.

We both
go limp and he collapses onto me, his body pinning me to the bed.  My dress is tangled around me.  His head is beside mine on the pillow, his breathing is heavy.  My pulse is still racing through my body.

As his breathing slows h
e rolls off of me and onto his back.  “High school sex.  Wearing clothes and fast.”  And he laughs softly.

“Maybe your high school, but not mine,” I answer
, smiling, as I lay there, limply, my dress still wrapped around my waist.  My black sandals are lying on the bottom of the bed.  I kick them off onto the floor and pull my skirt down.  He stands up, pulls up his jeans and zips his fly.

“No sex in high school, huh?”

“Not for me.”

“Well, I guess we’ll have to
do something about that,” he smiles that honey smile.  “Catch up on what you missed, but first let’s go get something for dinner.”

I think it is still morning when I wake up, but it could be later. The terrace cut into the hillside outside the bedroom is flooded with sunlight.  No fog.  I grab my toothbrush and in the all-white tile bathroom find Austen naked and shaving.  He looks so sexy, like one of those statues of Greek warriors, tall and slim with beautiful skin.  I’ve never thought about a man’s skin being beautiful before, but his is. I have an urge to run my hands down his chest with its sprinkling of hair and then on down.

Instead, I ask:
“May I use your toothpaste?”

He hands the tube of toothpaste to me as he continues to run the electric shaver across his face, then steps into the shower and turns it on.  He turns off the shaver.

“Time for a shower, Julia.”  He has a big smile on his face.  I think I know what he has in mind and I finish brushing my teeth.  Shower sex is good.

The soap smells like cucumbers, luxurious English cucumber soap.  He rubs it into the washcloth and begins to wash my back, then my arms and sides.  Again, his hand in the washcloth caresses my fanny, then goes between my legs, circling around and around.  My hips begin to move in rhy
thm with his insistent fingers.

“Be still, baby.  Be
still,” he murmurs.

“It’s hard to be still when you do that.”

“Just wait, babygirl. All things in good time.”  He is smiling.  “Turn around now.”

More cucumber soap on the washcloth and he washes my shoulders, then down onto my breasts. 
His erection is growing harder.  The warm water pours down on both of us.  He leans over and tenderly kisses one nipple, then the other.  Then continues to wash my body until his hand is again between my legs, circling, probing, desire building inside me.  I can see that this excites him as much as it does me.

“Done.”  He says and drops the washcloth to the tile floor and steps out of the shower.  He has a grin on his face as he hands me a
n oversize fluffy white towel.

“Done?”  I ask, softly.
  How can he leave me wanting more like this?

“Oh, does beautiful Julia want more
this morning?”  He asks in his honey voice.

“Yes,” I whisper
as I wrap my arms around his neck. “More.  More sex.  More with you.”

I kiss him lightly on his ear, then across his cheek to the corner of his mouth
.  He slides one hand down between my legs.  His fingers caress me round and round slowly. Suddenly he stops.  Not again, my body shrieks.

“
Let’s do it this way,” he says, leading me to the bed.  His voice is rough. “You on top, baby.”

I push his naked body down on the
messy, tangled sheets on the bed.  He is so sexy looking and so aroused.  And there it is: Temptation standing firm and upright at the top of his legs. Maybe I should surprise him.

I climb onto the bed beside him and put my hand around hi
m and gently move my hand up and down. He feels so good.  He is so hard—like velvet wrapped around steel—then I lean over and run my tongue around the smooth head of his erection.  I close my mouth around him and suck and twirl my tongue around some more. I hear him gasp in surprise and he sits up.

“
Oh baby, save that ‘til later.  I want you on top now.  I want to see you, watch your face, beautiful girl.”

He is still sitting up, facing me. 
I straddle him.  He holds my hips and guides me onto his erection, stiff and upright.  I slowly ease him into me deeper and deeper.  His eyes are closed and his mouth slightly open.  I can see from his face the pleasure this is giving him.

Then I ga
sp as I settle down a bit more.

“Austen, baby, I don’t know if I can.
  It feels—too much.  I can’t—“

He opens his eyes and kisses me gently.  His breathing is ragged.

“You can, babygirl.  Just go slowly.  You’ll stretch out.  It’ll feel good.  You’ll love it.”

He leans back on the bed and that pushes his erection even deeper into me.  I am overfilled with him.  It’s a sensation I have never felt before—pleasure verging on pain.
  He feels so big and so deep inside me.

He moves his pelvis slightly.  I gasp.  I feel it through my whole body.  He does it once again.

I close my eyes and let the sensation take over.  I begin to move up, then down.  His pelvis rises and falls meeting mine.  Up and down.  Up and down, slowly at first.  We begin to move a little faster, in rhythm with each other.  It feels good now.  Really good.  I look at his face and see the passion I am creating in him.  His eyes half-closed, his breathing heavy.

Up and down, he is thrusting into me, filling me to overflowing.  This is not like anything I’ve felt before. I match his movements, up, down, and feel an urgency beginning to build inside.  I am panting, my breathing is shallow.  A smile flits across his face.  His breathing is heavier and faster as he pushes his erection up, deep into me
faster and faster, again and again.  I am beginning to weaken from my arousal. My whole body is focused on him deep inside me.  I don’t know how much longer I can stay up on him as he thrusts into me even faster.  I am getting weak and start to slump.

“Austen, I can’t—“

“Take my hands, baby.”

He reaches up and takes my hands, our finger entwined, holding me upright.  Now we are both moving faster and faster.  Up and down, almost frantically.  I feel him deep inside and feel my orgasm coming.

“Ohh.  Ohh.  Ohh.”   I gasp, my head falls forward as I begin to lose all control.

“Give it up, babygirl.  Now.”  His voice is hoarse, thick.

Once, twice more he thrusts his pelvis up and his stiff erection into me. I climax around him as I feel him thrust up once more and come inside me. Oh god, it feels so good…so good. I crumple onto his chest, panting, and my pulse pounding.  I can hear his heart thumping as his arms close around me.