Calendar Girl - An erotic novel (Xcite Erotic Romance Novels) Read online

  ‘Yes, of course. Please, I mean. I like the feel of it.’ It was true. I liked the feel of hot come raining down on my skin but had never admitted it out loud before. Another freeing, brave rush of exhilaration. Who knew non-sex sex could be so empowering and fantastic?

  I put my hand on the vibe, working it inside of my wet cunt the same way he had, pushing the same place as the pleasure built and built, layer upon layer of arousal. ‘I’m pretty darn clo–’

  ‘Right there with you, Merritt,’ Eli said and nodded.

  I let it come. That wall of euphoria smacked me broadside and I came with a cry as the deepest orgasm yet seemed to ring me dry. Eli let out a groan and a gasp and the warm torrent of his orgasm hit my skin like the warmest summer rain.

  I looked up at him and shook my head. ‘No good?’ he asked.

  ‘Wow,’ I said. ‘Just wow.’ I couldn’t even find the words.

  ‘So you’re not disappointed?’

  ‘Fuck, do I look disappointed?’ I laughed and laughed until my shoulders shook.

  ‘You look ...’ he cocked his head regarding me. ‘Hungry.’

  ‘Man, you are good! I’m starved.’

  ‘Chinese?’

  ‘And he scores again,’ I said while he led me to the shower.

  Shrimp Lo Mein and more wine. I kissed him goodnight outside the Chinese restaurant and walked home. It was only a few blocks to my house. Jeffrey was waiting in my living room.

  ‘How did you get in here, young man?’ I joked.

  ‘I pulled the key out of the gargoyle’s ass,’ he said.

  ‘It’s not in his ass, it’s in the dirt under his tail.’

  ‘Whatever. Whatever.’

  ‘So what’s with the visit?’ I asked, dropping my bag and heading into my room for pyjama pants and a tee.

  ‘Moms and Jeffrey are having gay boy smack down 2010 in my living room.’

  ‘What?’ I froze, pulling my hoodie on over my tee.

  ‘She came over to talk and he said something or other about going on that gay cruise with me later this year and she flipped like a hot pancake.’

  I rolled my eyes. This was going to be torture, getting my mother to adjust. Every time we thought she had, she found a new way to surprise us and show us that she hadn’t. ‘Lord. Do you need to stay here?’

  ‘I’m sure they’ll be done soon.’

  ‘What does she think she’s going to do about him going on a gay cruise?’ I sighed long and loud, pouring us both some iced tea.

  ‘Report him for drug smuggling.’ He took the tea and drank it down in three big gulps. I poured him some more.

  ‘You are shitting me, right? That was a joke,’

  ‘No, ma’am. That is what she said. Your mom is a bit off her nut.’

  I sighed. I knew it. ‘But doing that to him?’

  ‘Hey, all parents react differently. My mother asked me what took me so long to come out and I came out when I was 17. Your mom ... well, she’s going to fight it tooth and nail and DEA all the way.’

  ‘Christ.’ I sipped my tea and smiled. Before I could wipe the smile, he caught me.

  ‘Give up the details, sister.’ We plopped on the sofa and he flipped through to a rerun of a rerun of a rerun of a sitcom we both loved.

  ‘Nothing to give. We didn’t sleep together.’ And that was the 100% truth.

  ‘Nuh-unh. Something happened. You are all glowy and loose.’

  ‘So?’ I stared straight ahead hoping he would lose interest.

  ‘So the only thing that does that to my Merritt is multiple orgasms. With a capital Oh-oh-baby. Spill.’

  I felt the smug look on my face. Tried to hide it. Failed. ‘He got me off,’ I said softly.

  ‘How many times?’ Jeffrey leaned in like I was spilling state secrets.

  ‘Multiple times. More than once. More than necessary but duly appreciated.’

  ‘Lord, oh, Lord. The girl is loose and lazy with the orgasms.’

  I laughed and finished off my tea. ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘You gonna see him again?’

  ‘Of course I am. I just don’t know if I’ll ...’ How to put it?

  ‘Fuck him blue?’

  ‘Yeah. That.’

  ‘I think you will. But take your time. You deserve a break today.’

  ‘At McMerritt’s?’

  ‘Amen, girl. Amen,’ Jeffrey said and found an old movie starring John Cusack. I curled my head on his taut belly and promptly fell asleep.

  Jeffrey woke me at two. ‘Moms called and said I can come home. I’m gonna git.’ He was slowly peeling me off of him and trying not to jar me all at once.

  ‘Did they get it all worked out?’ I asked, groggy and ready to fall back asleep.

  ‘She said I could come home because I have disowned him, Jeffrey. He is no longer my son, and I quote.’

  ‘Oh, good,’ I groaned.

  ‘They’ll get it worked out,’ Jeffrey assured me. ‘Nothing more than growing pains is all.’

  ‘What are we growing?’ I asked and turned over to snuggle into the cushions, too comfortable and too lazy to get up and go into my room.

  ‘A drag queen, of course,’ he said and leaned in and kissed me on the forehead. ‘I’m locking the door on the way out,’ he whispered. I waved him goodbye and went back to sleep.

  My mother and Simka could wait until morning.

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE BANGING WOKE ME. I didn’t have an appointment until 11, so I’d decided to indulge and sleep in. But the fucking banging. So I stumbled to the door to answer. ‘What, what, what, what!’ I yelled. I opened to door to my brother, fist raised for another round of banging. ‘What the hell, Jack? Are you trying to a) break down my door and b) scare the shit out of me?’

  ‘Mom says she’s going to report me for drug trafficking if I go on a gay cruise,’ he said and pushed past me.

  ‘I know. That is old news. And she won’t, Jack. She told me in high school that if I didn’t start dating that boy with the earring that she would have me put in the juvenile detention centre. She’s just blowing hot air. She’s not ready to accept all this 100 per cent and she’s going to do it her own way,’ I said, stifling a yawn. I shuffled into the kitchen and started making coffee and Jack lit a cigarette. ‘Take that outside!’

  He grumbled but put it out under the streaming faucet. ‘You used to smoke,’ he complained.

  ‘Used to. I used to smokebut then I pulled my head out of my butt and quit.’

  ‘Oooh, so special.’

  ‘Nope. Not special. Determined. It was the hardest thing I ever did,’ I said truthfully. I hit the start button and waved him to the table. ‘You hungry?’

  ‘Yeah, actually. I haven’t eaten since lunch yesterday. Mom had me so torqued up last night I couldn’t even think about food.’

  ‘Eggs?’

  ‘Eggs work. Got sausage?’

  ‘Mooch,’ I said but pulled it out. It was nine o’clock, I had plenty of time to eat and get dressed. When I bent to get a frying pan, my mind spit out a memory from a dream I’d had. A particularly graphic hot snippet of sex with ... I strained my memory. Probably the boys. ‘No ... Penn,’ I said.

  ‘Who? What? Who are you talking to?’ my brother asked, picking at a bit of peeling laminate on my placemat.

  ‘Don’t do that! You’ll ruin it.’

  ‘Sorr-rrrry. Who’s Pin?’

  ‘Penn,’ I said. ‘He’s a client. I dreamed about him, I must have some anxiety over the job is all.’ Oh boy, I was lying through my teeth.

  ‘Or your jonesing for him.’

  I shook my head. ‘No.’ Lies! ‘So why does Mom not want you to go on the cruise?’ I cracked three eggs and started to whip them.

  Jack shrugged and rolled his eyes. ‘I don’t know. Maybe she thinks it’ll make me moregay,’ he snorted.

  ‘Maybe she’s afraid you won’t come back,’ I said. ‘Remember when I got married and moved out, she was a wreck, and I was second favou
rite. You’re her favourite. Maybe she’s just afraid you’ll meet the guy of your dreams and move to Greece or Italy or something.’ It had some logic in it.

  ‘I guess. And she loves Jeffrey. So, why the fuck is she so nice to him and when I say I’m gay she goes completely bonkers?’

  ‘Jeffrey is not her son. She doesn’t have to keep him. She doesn’t have to worry that folks might be small-minded or cruel or bigoted to him. She would care if they were but she doesn’t have to worryabout it,’ I said. I poured the eggs into a hot pan and started to stir. The sausage sizzled, reheating on the tiny oven top grill.

  ‘Are you defending our mother?’ Jack was laughing, shaking his head. He patted his crown where the hair was starting to thin.

  ‘I guess I am. To a degree,’ I amended. ‘Just give her time, Jack. She might be a royal pain in the ass during that time, but try and let her work through it. She will. And she will not report you for drug trafficking or anything else. They are empty threats.’

  ‘Fine. Now feed me, Seymour!’

  ‘Little Shop of Horrors,’ I said without thinking and then I did that. I fed the moose that is my brother and sometimes goes by the name of Simka. And dances in a cage.

  Dr Calibri was helping the hoarder go through her bags of trash and I was working on her keep pile. Trying to evaluate where things would work best, how much storage was needed and if she needed some more storage brought in. I found a flood of art supplies. Oils and watercolours and palettes. Canvasses and brushes. And a finished piece. A large flower the colour my grandmother had always called Aubergine. It’s pretty much eggplant, Merritt, but doesn’t Aubergine sound so much fancier? I smiled at the memory.

  ‘Artist,’ I said to myself and my mind went to Penn. The tool boxes he’d requested had been way less expensive than custom cabinets. I would order Dr C’s patient a few and we’d get her art organised. ‘Art can be therapy,’ I said.

  ‘What’s that, Miss Evans?’

  ‘I told you, doc. Call me Merritt. And I said art can be therapy. I found all this.’ I showed him what I had and what I planned on installing.

  ‘You’re right,’ Dr Calibri said.

  ‘About the tool boxes?’

  ‘About the art being therapy. It was all mixed in with that chaos, but she made a fuss about keeping it. So it’s important. More important than bags of cans, old kitty litter bags or trash. So it might help unlock what needs to be addressed. Good job, Merritt,’ he said and patted my arm.

  I had to give credit where credit was due. The art stuff made me think of Penn and Penn had asked for the towers and in his work I had seen flashes of the kind of darkness that could bog a person down but it was balanced with the visual bliss of art.

  ‘Visual bliss,’ I said. ‘Just like him, hotty-hot-hot.’ I giggled and then said to myself, ‘And stop talking to yourself, you nut.’ I dialled the hardware store and got the owner Andy. ‘Andy, I need ...’ I eyed up the cascade of supplies. ‘Four more of those tool tower thingies. I’ll call later with a credit card number and the address for delivery.’

  Then I hung up and dialled Eli. ‘Interested in a huge cheese pizza, a bottle of wine and ...’ I cleared my throat. ‘A repeat of last night?’

  There was total silence and I panicked. Feeling like I was using him for orgasms. I didn’t want to be that way. It had simply been enlightening, the no-sex sex. But then Eli spoke and I could hear the smile in his voice. ‘My place or yours?’

  ‘Mine?’

  ‘I’ll bring my toy box,’ he said and then, ‘Oh crap. They’re getting ready to write a ticket on my truck. Gotta go, baby. I’ll be there at six?’

  ‘Perfect.’

  ‘Oh and Merritt?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Mushrooms on half?’ He said.

  ‘Just for you,’ I laughed. And your magical box of tricks.

  Then he was gone and I was humming to myself. My head full of tool boxes, approaching sex, hoarders, orgasms, pizza and then ... Penn. I tried to push that one back.

  He showed up showered, shaved, smelling fabulous and holding a small black box that almost looked like a tackle box. ‘Have you come to fix something, good sir?’ I teased.

  I came to increase your flow of pleasure,’ he said, stepping in and kissing me. ‘I smell pizza.’

  ‘With mushrooms.’

  ‘My favourite,’ he kissed me again, backing me to the wall and arching his lean hips into my pelvis. I worked my hand between us and felt the length of him with my fingertips first and then my palm. He groaned and thrust gently into my hand.

  ‘Should we eat first or–’

  ‘Room temperature pizza is really best,’ he said.

  ‘I agree.’ I did sink to my knees, he only gave me a few moments, but I freed his cock from his pants through the zipper and I took him in my mouth. So intimate, more so than sex I felt, having his cock in my mouth.

  I sucked him until his hands tangled in my hair and he gently brought me up to eye level. ‘Bedroom?’

  ‘Upstairs, down the hall. Last door,’ I said, but he knocked the breath out of me by bending and coming up under me, carrying me over his shoulder like a caveman.

  ‘Let’s go, lady,’ Eli said and started up the steps, his work boots clomping on the risers.

  I was wet and ready and my stomach felt full of buzzing energy when he laid me back on the bed and tugged at my yoga pants. Underneath I was bare and he immediately planted his lips on my pussy and started to treat me to his oral attentions. ‘God, you know, I have to tell you that you are so, so, so good at that. I don’t even know how to tell you how good,’ I rambled as he licked a little slower, torturing me in the most delicious way.

  ‘I think so, so, socovers it,’ he said, his voice rumbling around my pussy and vibrating through my entire pelvis. I heard the latch on the box and shivered with anticipation. Then the quiet hum of the hot pink vibrator sounded and he slipped the tip only into my cunt. His tongue kept working until I was practically begging him with my body. Then he slipped it fully into me and started to work my g-spot.

  Eli took me right to the edge, so that I had great fistfuls of my bed sheets, and then he hit the button for the next highest setting and I came, long and hard and loud, chanting. ‘So, so, so, sogood.’

  We worked our way through the toy box and when he had wrung the fifth orgasm from me and I had begged, he stood and got himself off, decorating my belly with splashes of warm come.

  I laid there, breathless, spent, so relaxed I felt boneless and finally said, ‘Wine? Pizza?’

  ‘Take a hot shower with me and yes. I’ll wash your back. I’ll wash your front,’ he said, pulling me up. Eli kissed me and I realised I liked him. I mean, I really really liked him. He was everything that a girl looks for and he hadn’t even fucked me yet. Not technically.

  I followed him in and let him do just that. He washed my back, my hair, my front. He pushed two fingers into my pussy and pinned me up against the cool white tiles and got me off by teasing my g-spot and fucking me hard with his big, strong handyman fingers.

  ‘Food,’ I said finally and we dove into the room temperature meal. Red wine and pizza and a boxed chocolate cake for dessert. We watched reality TV and made fun of dramatic people. We drank more wine and he went down on me at midnight, licking my pussy until I gave up one more orgasm and then he carried me to bed and curled up next to me. Long and warm, he spooned me and I drifted off.

  In the morning, I found his note that said he’d call me later. That he had an early job and hadn’t wanted to wake me.

  I couldn’t wait for him to call, but I had to be honest, it worried me. It was only early May and I liked him so much. Turns out, he solved that dilemma.

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘HEY, YOU!’ I SAID, squishing into a booth at Pearl’s with my brother and Jeffrey. They had their heads together plotting their cruise. My phone rang and I shushed them.

  ‘Well, pa-ah-ahrdon us,’ Jack said and I stuck my tongue out at h
im.

  ‘Hey, Merritt,’ Eli said. I could tell right away.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I have to talk to you.’ The wind whipped at his cell phone and I lost his voice for a moment.

  ‘Is this you have to talk to me as in we have to talk?’ I asked boldly though my stomach had bottomed out and I felt sick.

  There was a long pause where all I could hear was his breath and the wind. Traffic noise butted in once or twice but then he said, ‘It is. But it’s not what you think–’

  ‘Let me guess, it’s not me, it’s you,’ I said softly, biting my lips, determined not to cry. Why? Why had I let myself like this guy so much? It was far from love but had definitely tiptoed into the region of huge like and appreciation. I really liked Eli and how he handled himself. How he made me laugh. How generous, kind and funny he was.

  ‘It’s not you, Merritt. It’s Cathy. She came back and ... well, I love her. We broke up about two months ago and I thought I was better.’

  ‘But you’re not?’ I sighed. The two ‘J’s as I now thought of them were still sitting, heads together, but very obviously eavesdropping on me.

  ‘I’m not. I’m still in love with her and when she asked for me back. I was powerless to say no, to be honest. I’m really sorry, Merritt. In any other instant–’

  ‘Oh, no worries. No, no, no worries,’ I lied. ‘But is this why you um ... why we didn’t ...’ I really wish that the two ‘J’s would stop staring at me. I bared my teeth and they looked away like cowering puppies.

  ‘It was because you weren’t ready. You said so. And I liked you. And I think part of me wasn’t either. It seemed a good way to handle how badly I wanted you without stepping on your feelings. Or mine.’

  ‘Well, there you have it, then,’ I said. My heart seemed to have twisted in my chest. It was a painful sideways off kilter not-good-enough feeling that stole my breath. ‘I wish you both well,’ I made myself say. Because when all was said and done, Eli was a great guy and deserved to be happy.