Author’s Note: Bluette, Celest, Centura, and Blade Ballet belong to
Brian Vigue; all other characters created by the author. Mature
readers only due to sexual content and language.
Bluette bounded into the suite, gym bag swinging,
to discover that what had been peace only an hour before had descended
into
chaos. She could hear hysterical sobbing from one of the bedrooms even
over the babble of alarmed conversation among the staff, the
other girls from Attraction, and one uniformed hotel rent-a-cop.
A pair of maids were cleaning up the sad petal-strewn
remains of what had been a really nice floral arrangement, while a third
delicately
tweezed broken glass from the carpet and a fourth sopped up water.
The last time she’d seen the vase with its spray of roses and baby’s
breath, it had been on the round little table beside the mini-bar,
and now it was clear across the room in pieces by the sliding glass door
onto the balcony. Someone had pitched it, elementary dear Watson, and
given that it had been sent to Maeve by Dustin “D.J.” Mack,
Bluette was able to put two and two together without much strain of
the old gray matter.
Centura was nowhere to be seen, but Celest was lounging
against one wall. Catlike and sultry in black leather and high boots, looking
better without trying than the hottie from The Matrix could manage
even with a full team of wardrobers and makeup personnel, the brunette
was observing the proceedings with one sardonically raised eyebrow.
“What hit the fan?” Bluette asked Celest, noting
that even in the midst of their concern, the bellhop and the rent-a-cop
were instantly
distracted by her arrival.
Their gazes swept greedily from Bluette’s cap of
blond hair to the mouth that made half the men in America wish they were
microphones,
skipped to her most prominent attributes where they strained against
the formidable harness of her sports bra, slid down her bare midriff,
lingered on the curves displayed by painted-on spandex short-shorts,
traced the long and muscular lines of her legs, didn’t bother with her
feet, and jumped back up to about chest-height. All of this, Bluette
regarded with her usual mix of disdain and glee, making sure to shift her
hip to one side and inhale deeply as she half-turned to catch Celest’s
response.
“Little Maevie is realizing certain truths that
should have been self-evident,” Celest said dryly.
“D.J.?”
“Dumped her.”
“The flowers? Decoy?”
Celest shook her head. “Don’t know.”
“The shithead couldn’t have waited one more night?”
Bluette groused. “We came that close to a perfect tour and now our
opening act
is throwing a major wobbly over her scumbucket boyfriend. Remind me
to send him a big fat thank-you note. Has anybody talked to her?”
“Not since she chucked that vase against the wall
and threw the phone out the window and slammed out of here like a March
wind.”
Bluette did a double take – sure enough, the phone
in the living room was dangling half in and half out of a hole in the window,
from
which cracks radiated like those electric bolts imprisoned in crystal
balls. “For someone as little as she is, she sure can throw hard. What
about Sandi or Tess?”
“Between them, they don’t have the brains God gave
long-grain rice or the guts He gave a flatworm.”
Bluette sighed and glanced at the digital clock.
“Give me five minutes to grab a quick shower? Then I’ll see if I can talk
to her.”
Celest shrugged and adjusted the trademark orange
headband that seemed to glow against her dusky skin. “No nevermind to me.
She’s
in her own room now and if she wants to trash it, no skin off my nose.”
Before she could escape to her own room – the suite
was really most of the hotel’s top floor, six wedge-shaped bedrooms around
a
circular living room – the rent-a-cop seized the day and approached
her.
“Bluette!” he hailed, sounding like he would have
been right at home among the crowds of hopefuls that waited backstage after
each
concert, all hoping to catch her eye and be taken around the world
by one of MTV’s video pinup goddesses, and get a feel for themselves
to find out if the Famous Two, the members of Blade Ballet that never
got listed in the album credits, were real or not.
He was twenty-something and kind of cute in a clean-cut
sort of way, and Bluette’s first impression was that he’d gone into the
security-
guard biz because police work was too dangerous and the various branches
of the armed forces were too much work, so this was the only
way he could wear a snazzy uniform and carry a baton. California-boy
blond and tan, which probably meant long hours in a sunbed here in
dreary Seattle. Teeth like a Colgate commercial, must have cost his
parents a fortune.
“Yeah?” Artful toss of the head, speculative look
from under long lashes, and it didn’t matter that she was still sweaty
from an hour of
aerobics.
Johnny Rent-A-Cop’s baby blues bugged out and he
visibly forgot what he was going to say. What did it matter if Attraction’s
good girl
Maeve Colwyn was crying her head off in the other room when he was
up close and personal with the one, the only, Bluette?
“Uh … um … er,” he said brilliantly.
“Make it snappy, One-Adam-Twelve,” Bluette said.
“I’m on my way to the shower.”
At that, his eyes glazed over, and she didn’t have
to be a mind-reader to know he was seeing her preening under the spray
in the tiled
steamy stall, lathering herself all slick and soapy, probably rubbing
a washcloth in slow, languid circles over her breasts while suds coursed
the length of her body. Bluette slapped her hands together briskly
just in front of his face and he jumped like he’d been gunshot.
“Right!” he blurted. “Yes. Well. I was hoping to
get … uh … a statement from you on the incident.”
“I wasn’t even here,” she said. “All I know is what
I’ve heard since I got back, and that’s not much. So, do you mind?”
He looked crestfallen, as if he’d hoped she would
ask him if he had a minute to come in and scrub her back, or maybe use
his Schick Blue-
Blade chin as a living loofah. “Sure. Thanks for your time. I … uh
… I’ll be at the concert tonight. Row 7, seat J.”
“I’ll look for you,” Bluette said, and he grinned
like a kid on Christmas morning.
Tess, the Attraction drummer who was never going
to be awarded an honorary degree from MIT, broke away from the cluster
of hotel
employees to tap hesitantly at Maeve’s door. From the other side, the
sobbing stopped long enough for a breathy and gasping, but still clear-
as-water voice to call out, “I said leave me alone!” followed
by the solid whack of something – five’ll getcha ten it was the room copy
of the
Good Book – hitting wood and rebounding. Bluette checked the clock
again, did a little mental math, and hoped she would have time to sort
this crap out before showtime.
She went into her own room, making sure to close
the door firmly behind her and deter any curious peeping from the bellboy
or her
uniformed admirer. The complimentary gift basket, from which she’d
scarfed two gourmet chocolates after lunch and then guilted herself into
a workout, was still on the nightstand. Avoiding it, she stripped and
made for the shower, where just for the sake of old One-Adam-Twelve
she did spend a bit more time than purely necessary soaping up.
After, with her hair blow-dried into a fluffy cloud
(she’d leave the styling to the team that would be waiting at the Key Arena)
and wearing
soft gray sweats with a navy-blue logo shirt autographed in iridescent
silver ink by all of the Seattle Mariners, said shirt knotted well above
her navel, she went back into the main room.
The debris was cleared away and the staff had finished
with whatever questions they’d been asking, probably most of which were
about
liability and their fears that this was going to turn into one of those
metal-band destructathons. Celest and Sandi were gone too, and Tess was
sitting on the round couch that circled the sunken fireplace, pretending
to read the latest copy of VIP and throwing frequent, anxious looks
toward Maeve’s door. Only ominous silence came from behind it now,
and while Tess might not be the sharpest crayon in the box, she was
imaginative enough to buy the notion of Maeve pulling a “goodbye cruel
world” stunt.
Unfortunately, Bluette could see that too. Maeve,
a nice Irish girl whose parents had come from the Auld Sod itself, was
operative-word-nice,
and totally in the wrong line of work. It would be just like the silly
twit to hang herself or slit her wrists over D.J. Mack, guitarist for the
Flirty
Boys. Not since 1997 when Blade Ballet had toured with Scarlet Angel
had Bluette met such a scuzzball.
She crossed the living room with a purposeful stride,
and Tess watched her with a plaintive puppy-dog hope. “You gonna talk to
her?”
“See if it’ll do any good. You know what happened?”
Tess shook her head. “We came back from the Music
Project exclusive tour, and she said she wanted to call him. Next thing
we knew,
kapow.”
“Kapow,” murmured Bluette, and knocked.
“Go away!” came Maeve’s reply.
To which Bluette opened the door and walked on in.
The room was considerably neater than she expected, even neater than the
amiable
whirlwind in which Bluette herself lived. Aside from the Bible on the
floor and a scatter of crumpled-up balls of paper, the place was pretty
much okay.
Maeve Colwyn herself was another matter. The looks
that had turned Bluette’s thoughts to idle speculation more than once on
the tour
bus had deserted her. That sweet heart-shaped face was both ashen and
blotched. Her eyes were puffed and so red-rimmed she could
have passed for a lab rat. Like Bluette’s cha-chas, Maeve’s hair was
so perfect everyone thought it had to be fake, but that hip-length
cascade of curly strawberry-blond was real, unpermed and undyed. Normally
perfect, that was. At the moment, it was in tangles and long
strands, as if Maeve had been pulling at it, not quite literally tearing
her hair out in her despondency.
But her wrists were unmarked, and she obviously
hadn’t hanged herself. She was hunched over the desk scribbling busily
on the denuded
pad of guest stationery, and upon reaching the bottom of each sheet,
she tore it off, wadded it up, and flung it violently to the floor.
The sight of the girl with her streaming eyes and
wild hair and simple green dress triggered some vague association in Bluette’s
memory.
Something fitting with Maeve’s heritage, maybe … yeah. Those crazy
ghost-women who washed the clothes of those about to die, crying
to themselves as the blood flowed down the streambed. Celest would
know for sure; she had the most eclectic storehouse of historical and
cultural facts of anyone Bluette had ever met.
“Look, Maeve, we’ve got to talk about this.”
“I don’t want to!” Even hoarse from sobbing, there
was no mistaking that lilt.
Bluette deliberately picked up the nearest paper-wad
and smoothed it out. Scrawled across it in thick black strokes were words
she
wouldn’t have expected out of Maeve, not in about a million years.
Words she wouldn’t have even thought Maeve knew.
“Give me that!” Maeve all but flew at Bluette, scrabbling
for the paper.
“Here you go.” She let her have it, then sat right
down and made herself comfy. “So what finally tipped you to the fact that
he’s an asshole?”
“How did you know?” The childlike hurt in Maeve’s
face stirred both pity and a hint of exasperation in Bluette.
“Everybody knows. Everybody in the business, anyway.
Not the fans. They think the bad-boy look is all for show, like his brother
Joey
and the rest of the Flirty Boys. But it’s no secret that D.J. is the
biggest dick – and believe me, I don’t mean that literally – since
Nick Diamond
got himself killed.”
“I thought he was nice!” Maeve wailed. In times
of stress, the accent that she’d almost totally lost came back, turning
‘thought’ into something
close to ‘thoot.’ “I thought he was a nice boy!”
“Naïve … sorry, Maeve,” Bluette said,
“what ever gave you that idea?”
It had to have been the strangest pairing, at least
from the inside view of the music world, in a long time. D.J. Mack, for
whom the sex and
drugs were more important than the rock and roll, and Maeve Colwyn,
who despite the protestations of other girl-band stars, probably really
was the only virgin in the field. But the blinders were off now, and
Bluette had to ask again.
“What tipped you off?”
“He sent me flowers.” Maeve’s manic, tearful agony
had departed, that one last wail taking everything else out of her that
she had left to
give. “It was so sweet of him … but then, when I talked to him on the
phone … he said … he said …”
“He’d found someone else?”
“No … but that if I didn’t ‘loosen up’ soon, he
was going to. We’d only been together three months! I told him I wanted
to wait, and he
said …”
“Put out or get out,” Bluette guessed.
A miserable Maeve nodded. “I told him I wasn’t that
kind of girl and he laughed, and told me that all women were … were … I
don’t even
want to think of the word he used. Except me. I was, he said, nothing
but a useless little girl. Oh, how could he be such a … such a bastard?”
The floor-litter of written testimonials aside,
Bluette was sure that had to be the strongest word Maeve had ever said
out loud. She moved
to sit beside the distraught Maeve, putting an arm around her.
“It’s okay. You’re better off without him.”
“And all this time, to think that everyone knew!”
Maeve turned wide, guileless eyes on her, eyes as blue-gray as the winter
ocean off the
Irish coast. “Did they, Bluette? Did everyone know?”
“Well, yeah. We were surprised he didn’t show his
true colors sooner, if you really want the truth. He’s been in and out
of more holes than
a prairie dog who can’t remember where he lives.”
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?” Now a new, shamed pain
crept into Maeve’s voice. “Why didn’t my friends warn me?”
“I bet they tried. I bet you didn’t listen, or just
insisted he was a nice boy.”
Maeve hung her head. “I may have done.”
“Look, the thing to do now is forget about him.
He’s scum. You’re better off, believe me.”
“But to think that he tricked me, lied to me, all
this time!”
Bluette grinned. “What, so you wanna get back at
him?”
“I wouldn’t even know how,” Maeve confessed.
“When it comes to getting even with men, you’ve
got an expert right here.”
“You … you’d help me?” A new, probably entirely
new to her, hard and angry glint turned those eyes to blued steel. Gone
was the lamenting
Juliet and the driven-insane-by-grief Ophelia … something a little
more Lady Macbeth was in its place. Out, damned D.J.
“Gladly. I never miss a chance to make a man crawl.”
Bluette laughed, and Maeve smiled tentatively, no doubt thinking that Bluette
was kidding
and really having no idea how very true it was. Men were okay in their
place, but then, so was Preparation-H. “Tonight’s our last show, so what
did you have planned after that?”
“I don’t know if I can go on like this --”
“Horseshit. You can and you will. Don’t you think
he’d love it if you had to cancel? He’d eat it right up. So you’re going
to go on and you’re
going to sing your ass off, Maeve. You’re going to give Seattle the
show of a lifetime!”
She saw Maeve’s resolve waver and took the girl
by the shoulders, got her face almost kissing-distance, and stared straight
into her eyes. The
sheer force of Bluette’s personality couldn’t help but overwhelm the
poor thing, forcing Maeve to cave in as easily as an ex-jock trucker might
have forced a computer geek’s wrist to the table in an arm-wrestle.
“You’re right,” Maeve said. “That’s just what I’ll
do. Sing … sing my ass off.”
“Way to go!” For a moment, Bluette considered closing
the rest of that distance and kissing Maeve, but two things stopped her.
First, if she
did, Maeve would probably jump right out the window in her shock and
it was a hell of a long way down from here. Second, Maeve wasn’t exactly
at her delectable best this particular moment. Leave that for later,
she decided.
“I was supposed to fly back to Los Angeles tomorrow,”
Maeve said. “We were taking a couple of weeks off before hitting the studio
to record
the new album. D.J. and I … we were going to go to the new Disneyland
park.”
“No, that’s great.” Figures, she thought, Disneyland,
why not the malt-shop and the sock hop while you’re at it? “I’m headed
for L.A. too. Hef’s
birthday is coming up and I promised I’d be there this year. Anyway,
this is what we’re going to do …”
**
Bluette arrived at Maeve’s cottage at seven-fifteen,
under a riotous Los Angeles sky filled with color. The brush fires in the
mountains had lent
the sunset a particularly vivid glow, which almost made up for the
dense layer of smog worsened by the smoke.
Cottage. There was no other word for it. Like something
a Disney princess might live in while hiding from her evil stepmother and
awaiting the
handsome prince who was going to make everything just peachy.
“Guess that makes me the fairy godmother,” Bluette
snickered to herself as she parked at the curb and eyed the long, steep
flight of steps that
climbed the slope, to where the cottage nestled in a cluster of trees
and flowering shrubs.
The contrast between that whimsical setting and
herself was apparent even to her, and if any of the neighbors had seen
her, they would have
goggled or fallen dead on the spot. The neighbors – the Three Bears,
the Seven Dwarves, the Three Little Pigs, Hansel and Gretel … it had to
be, because every other house Bluette could see was just as cute as
the one in front of her.
She looked around, expecting to see a host of friendly
woodland animals doing yard work. Closest she got was someone’s dog, but
in this
fairytale neighborhood even the mutt scrounging around the trash cans
was wearing a bright pink bandanna, and cocked its head so adorably at
her that she wouldn’t have been surprised if it started to talk. Or
sing.
In such a place as this, one did not expect to see
a busty blonde bombshell in a black vinyl microskirt, boots, an unzipped
denim jacket
tattered artfully into long strips from the shoulders to the waistband,
and a halter top of electric-blue that mimicked the Survivor logo (not
that
it was readable, the lettering strained and squashed as it alternately
rose and dove over the hills and vales of Bluette’s cleavage). Her hair
was
teased until it begged for mercy, large silver hoops depended from
her ears, and her make-up was sultry without being cheap – for the price,
it had damn well better not look cheap!
As she began the long trudge up the steps, Bluette
wondered if sometimes she dressed a little extreme even for a rock star
…
She reached the porch at long last, small muscles
in her thighs and calves twitching from the exertion – it wouldn’t have
been so bad in athletic
shoes, but in five-inch heels, her legs were crying for mercy. The
porch was lined with – heaven help us! – gnomes. Seven of them, and could
she guess their names? What do you think? There were also windchimes
shaped like fairies and unicorns.
Maeve opened the door before she could ring the
bell. “I don’t think I can do this,” she said by way of greeting.
“It’s going to be fine.”
Bluette stepped inside, and Maeve’s entire face
turned into an exclamation point as she got a good look at the outfit.
Maeve herself, following
Bluette’s instructions to ‘dress like a bad girl,’ wore black suede
pants that looked like the sort of thing a highwayman or 18th century poet
might
wear, and a shiny gold tank top with – gasp! – no bra. She was clearly
unhappy about it too, crossing her arms over her perky but small breasts.
Her only other token nod to bad-girldom was lipstick of fire-engine
red.
“I called as soon as the message came in,” Maeve
said, averting, with effort, her eyes from Bluette and gesturing to welcome
her into Fantasy-
land. Every available space was crowded with prints and paintings and
sculptures and carvings that continued the same theme begun outside.
Amid all the knickknacks and novelties, the few electronics and appliances
seemed weirdly out of place. “It went just like you said. I didn’t
answer when it rang, just listened to him.”
A red light was blinking on the answering machine.
Maeve pushed a button, and after the beep, D.J. Mack’s voice filled the
room. “Hey, Maeve.
Okay, okay, I’ll come by tonight and get my CDs and stuff. Don’t know
why you couldn’t send them over. I guess you want to yell at me. Suit
yourself. I’ll be there around eight.”
After that, a click and then nothing. Maeve fiddled
with the machine, so that the light began to flash again, giving the impression
that she hadn’t
checked her messages at all.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” she said again.
“Sure you can.”
“But …”
“You want to pay him back, right?”
She nodded, that strawberry hair a paler echo of
the sunset.
“Relax, would you?” Bluette set a companionable
hand on her arm and felt Maeve thrumming like a high-tension wire. “We’re
just going to order
some pizza and have a good time.”
“Are you sure this is the right idea? To make him
think I’m … I’m …”
“He was pissed at you because he thought you were
a stuck-up Miss Priss prudy-girl, right? So the absolute worst thing you
can do to him
is make him realize you had some secrets of your own, make him want
to drop dead in agony at the very idea of what he’d been missing.”
“What if he tells?”
Bluette tossed her head, earrings jangling, and
laughed. “Who’d believe him? Sour grapes because you broke up with him
– don’t even say
it; as far as the rest of the world needs to know, you did the dumping.
With your reputation, it’s the last thing anyone would ever expect.”
“Just so,” said Maeve. “It’s ludicrous. No one would
believe it. Not even D.J. How could I ever hope to convince him that ...?”
“He’s not going to need much convincing. Every guy
is ready and willing to believe that about any gal. The magazines they
read and the videos
they watch will have done all the groundwork ahead of time. The problem’s
in making sure it looks natural.”
“Exactly! How can something like that ever be natural?”
“We can debate that one another time. The important
thing is, Maeve, that you come across as relaxed and enjoying yourself.
That’s the
impression you want to give. Relaxed. Enjoying.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“That’s why I’m here to help. Come on. We’ve got
a while before the pizza gets here.”
Bluette led the pliant and unresisting Maeve through
the cottage, to the single bedroom at the back of the house. It was primarily
in shades of
cream and pink, and Bluette saw right away that while the chair by
the window would work fine, the twin-sized daybed simply wasn’t going to
do.
The carpet, however, a plush expanse of dove-grey with roses, was deep
and soft.
Maeve, in her bad-girl outfit of black and gold,
stood in the middle of her own bedroom looking as though she felt as out
of place as a nun at a
strip club. She would have felt far more comfortable and at home wearing
some frilly white nightie. And slippers. With bunnies on them.
“What do we need to do?” she asked.
“Make it look genuine.” Bluette nonchalantly began
to undress. Jacket, boots, and she was reaching for the zip in the back
of her skirt when she
caught Maeve’s goggle-eyed stare. “What? Never been around another
naked woman before? Nothing I’ve got that you don’t have too. Only
diff is, I’ve got the economy-sized, Costco packaging on some items.”
A red tide washed over Maeve’s face, but she giggled
all the same, and even if it was a shrill and nervous one, it was a noise
Bluette was glad
to hear. “That’s certainly true. And I have. Seen other women, I mean.
I went to an all-girls boarding school in Boston. But you … you’re …
they’re …”
“Real.” The zipper undone, she began wiggling her
skirt down past her hips. Beneath were high-cut panties in a snakeskin
pattern, but of a
metallic blue that Mother Nature had never envisioned. A tattoo, a
butterfly in bright hues, graced one inner thigh, and this in particular
caught
Maeve’s glance like a magnet. “Though sometimes they even doctor the
pictures, can you believe it? Like they needed to. So tell me more about
this girls’ school.”
“There isn’t much to tell.”
“No after-hours playtime with your roommates?”
The red tide turned to scarlet. “I don’t know what
you mean!”
“Oh, yeah?”
Stammering and fixing her gaze on the floor, Maeve
confessed, “Well, there was one time … one of the older girls … she snuck
into my room
one night and got into bed with me. She wanted me to touch her, wanted
to touch me too.”
“Did you let her?”
“A … a little. She was insistent, and I didn’t know
any better. But I made her leave.”
“Why?” Bluette could tell that the recollection
was having an effect on Maeve; against the thin fabric of that gold tank-top
poked two little points.
“I … I was afraid.”
“Because it felt good?”
Mutely, Maeve nodded.
“There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s supposed
to feel good.” Bluette moved closer and pitched her voice low. “Did you
come?”
“No!”
“But you almost did. And that’s what scared you,
that’s why you told her to scram. But it’s okay, Maeve. You touch yourself,
don’t you?
No harm in that, is there? So there’s no harm in touching someone else.
Or having someone else …” here she stroked Maeve’s hair, “touch
you.”
Maeve shivered. Her gaze darted up to Bluette’s,
then dropped to the floor again, but she didn’t draw away.
“If we’re going to make this look good,” Bluette
whispered, “we’ve got to relax and trust each other. I’m not going to hurt
you, and I
know you’re not going to hurt me. Go ahead.”
Slowly, shakily, Maeve touched Bluette’s wrist.
Her fingers crept, timid and mouselike, up to the elbow.
“See?” said Bluette. “I don’t burn, and I don’t
bite.” Her breath wanted to quicken at the fun of this seduction, but she
controlled it and
kept it calm. That strawberry hair was as lush and silken as it looked,
and she could hardly wait to see it spread out across the carpet as the
perfect and only backdrop for Maeve’s nude body.
“I don’t know what to do,” Maeve said.
“Try this.” Bluette leaned in and brushed her with
a light, brief kiss. She felt the other girl’s intake of breath in a gasp.
There was a sweet
taste to her mouth, a pink taste, and maybe it was the association
with the hair but Bluette’s first thought was of strawberries again.
Grasping her shoulders gently, Bluette pulled Maeve
against the cushiony pillows of her breasts and kissed her again. A firmer
kiss this
time, and as she flicked her tongue swiftly over Maeve’s lips, she
caught that taste again and placed it – not the fruit but the flavor, pink
Quik
powder stirred into milk.
Maeve sighed and put her arms around Bluette, palms
against the bare-skinned curve of her back. A subtle change went through
her body,
the tension seeping away. It wasn’t quite relaxation, but it was bordering
on acceptance.
So Bluette took full advantage of the moment and
turned the testing kiss into a full-blown frenchie that left Maeve breathless
and more than
a bit starry-eyed; Bluette had never personally kissed D.J. Mack, but
she knew people who had, and was fairly sure that she could outdo him
with one lip tied behind her back.
After that, it didn’t take much coaxing for Maeve
to agree to let Bluette lift her tank-top over her head, revealing no tan
lines on skin that
might have never been hit by direct sunlight, pale and beautiful. Her
breasts were just as small and perky as envisioned, but tipped with nipples
of delicate pink, the very shade of strawberries just ripening to succulence.
Maeve glanced from herself to Bluette and a shadow
of doubt began to come back, a shadow of inadequacy, as she measured her
own
against the Famous Two. Before that doubt could find a foothold, Bluette
cupped one in each hand and murmured the old adage about more
being wasted, and all objections seemed to melt away like frost.
Emboldened now, Maeve tried to fit her hands around
Bluette’s, confined as they were by the electric-blue spandex. She caressed
them
diffidently and unsurely, but she did caress them, and when
Bluette tugged the bandeau down to her waist to let them spring free in
all their
proud glory, Maeve didn’t make so much as a murmur of protest.
Nor did she when somehow the two embracing women
got lowered to the carpet, nor when Bluette couldn’t resist any longer
from finding
out if those nipples tasted as strawberry as they looked. Maeve uttered
a small soft cry of mingled pleasure and disbelief as Bluette’s skillful
mouth went to work, neglecting neither side.
Once she had indulged for a while, she leaned back
and wordlessly invited Maeve to reciprocate, and only the barest flicker
of hesitation
preceded Maeve bending her head to first kiss, then lick at, a rigid,
coral-red peak. A luxurious torrent of silky hair fell over Bluette’s bare
torso. She curled her hand around the back of Maeve’s head to urge
her to greater diligence, none-too-subtly encouraging her to alternate
teasing fluttery licks with the hard, deep suckling that she liked
so much.
They were writhing on the floor in slow languor
and Bluette had just decided it was time to move below the waistband of
Maeve’s black
suede pants when the doorbell chimed – it was one of those musical
jobbies and it didn’t surprise Bluette in the least when the tune it played
was a snippet of ‘Over the Rainbow.’
Maeve sat up, startled and blushing as if caught
doing something nasty – which, let’s be honest, they were from the perspective
of most of
the uptight country. “It’s him! It’s D.J.! I can’t let him see me like
this!”
“That’s the whole idea,” Bluette said. “But settle
down. It’s just the pizza guy. I’ll go let him in.”
“The what? Let him in?”
“All part of the plan.”
“But … but …”
“Trust me. I know him. Not all pizza guys are scrawny
pimply dweebs or burning-eyed psychopaths.” She sprang up, shucking the
bandeau
that had been relocated to service as a belt, and pranced through the
cottage in just her metallic snakeskin panties.
Opening the door, she smiled brilliantly at the
man on the other side. He was wearing a red uniform with a white and blue
Pizza X-Press patch
on the pocket, a nametag that read “Lance,” and white high-top sneakers.
A steaming cardboard box was balanced on one hand, the tantalizing
scents of cheese and crust and spices following the breeze into the
house.
Bluette looked past him, down the long flight of
stairs, to where a nondescript hatchback was parked behind her car. It
had a plastic lighted
sign mounted on the roof – Pizza X-Press, Hot and Ready in 30 Minutes
or It’s Free.
“Are you?” she asked with a sly smile.
Lance, who was six-foot-heaven of muscles and bronze
all overtopped with a tumble of chocolate-brown hair, grinned. “Aren’t
I always?”
“Where’d you get the car? Nice touch.”
“Couldn’t drive my Beemer.”
“No, guess you couldn’t.” She stepped back and beckoned
him in, leaving the door slightly ajar.
Lance’s lip curled as he took in the setting. “Kinky.
So what’s the deal? Debbie Does Wonderland?”
“Damn near.” She took the pizza box and led him
toward the back of the house, refreshing him on his role.
Maeve was still sitting in the middle of the floor,
her discarded tank-top clutched to her chest, eyes eating up her face.
“Bluette … Bluette,
what’s going on?”
“Don’t worry. Lance is just here to watch.”
“What?” Her face went dead white. “Watch us?”
“Take it easy,” he said warmly. “I swear, it won’t
do a thing for me.”
“Lance is an actor. And gay. I know him from way
back, and asked him to do us this little favor.”
As Maeve tried to assimilate this knew information,
Lance stripped out of his red jumpsuit as casually as Bluette had shed
her own clothes. He
had on skimpy black briefs underneath, which bulged with an impressive
package.
Bluette watched him with a sort of wistful appreciation,
thinking ironically to herself what a shame it was that one of the few
guys she could
actually tolerate was one she couldn’t ride like a carousel pony. Or
maybe that was why she could tolerate him. He was one of the limited selection
of the male population who could actually carry on a coherent conversation
with her, and not just stammer and drool and never raise his eyeballs
above her collarbones.
Lance situated himself in the chair, legs stretched
out. “Whenever you’re ready, ladies.”
“I don’t understand?” quavered Maeve.
“It’s okay.” Bluette rejoined her on the floor.
“Let’s just pick up where we left off.”
“But …”
Bluette silenced her with a kiss, and soon overcame
Maeve’s concerns. Part of it was her own skillful strokings and nuzzlings,
part of it was
Maeve’s increasing confidence as Lance merely sat there and watched
with all the interest of someone dragged by a blind date to a movie he
had no particular interest in seeing. Soon, thanks to Bluette’s ministrations,
Maeve was beyond caring, or even remembering, that they had an
audience.
Seeing her distraction, and seeing by the nightstand
clock that it was five minutes until eight, Bluette gave Lance a signaling
wink. He nodded
in return and closed his eyes, drumming up some private fantasy of
his own. It didn’t take long until he was primed and ready – hot and ready
in
30 seconds, or it’s free, Bluette thought, and laughed.
Bluette peeled those suede pants off of Maeve and
found white stretch-lace panties with clusters of little sateen roses and
ribbons at the hips.
She had never realized before what fantastic legs Maeve had … long
and lithe and shapely, and what a darlingly sleek little rear end.
Lance brought out a finely-shaped instrument and
began to play, his fist curled loosely around it as he worked it up and
down.
Maeve didn’t notice. Her eyes were dreamily closed,
her hair fanned out just like in Bluette’s imaginings. She had initially
mustered enough
modesty to press her thighs together as Bluette’s hand slid between
them, but as Bluette persisted, gradually Maeve’s legs relaxed. It was
an
easy task after that to persuade her to let Bluette roll those panties
down. The thatch of hair beneath was downy and kitten-soft, and a red-gold
a shade or two darker than that on Maeve’s head.
The girl was quivering, in anticipation rather than
fear. Her eyes stayed shut, rapid breaths slipping in and out of her parted
lips. She mewled
faintly as Bluette nudged her knees apart and took position between
them. Watching Maeve, taking both pride and delight in the way every new
touch brought rapturous expressions, Bluette gently petted and fingered
until Maeve was moaning in abandon.
From the front of the house came a perfunctory knock.
The door, ajar, would be swinging open … he would be frowning, stepping
inside.
Having seen the pizza car outside, he’d be smelling the aroma of it
on the air. Seeing the light blinking on the answering machine, hadn’t
she
gotten his message? Didn’t she know he was coming over to get his stuff?
Where …?
Bluette ‘psst’-ed a warning to Lance, who was lost
in a world of his own – a world no doubt populated by more hardbodies and
hunks than
a double-sized International Male catalog. He opened his eyes and pretended
to be absorbed in the spectacle before him as his hand continued
to pump, faster and slick.
Parting Maeve wide, opening those tender strawberry-pink
folds, Bluette put her agile, knowing tongue to work. The first contact
made
Maeve’s back arch off the floor, and a surprised, ecstatic cry burst
from her. She sank her hands into Bluette’s tousled blond hair and held
on as Bluette lapped and circled and probed.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw the bedroom
door swing the rest of the way open. D.J. Mack got a full step into the
room before the
scene hit him, and stopped dead in his tracks. Bluette spared him a
single glance, a single smoldering glance straight off of the most recent
cover
of a Blade Ballet album, making sure he recognized her.
Absolute thunderstruck astonishment rooted D.J.
to the spot. Bluette experienced a sudden weird transference and saw what
this must look
like from his perspective, exactly as she’d planned it to look. There
in front of his bulging amazed eyes, his prim-and-proper ex-girlfriend
was
thrashing and crying out, on the verge of an unbelievable orgasm. And
one of the most desired women in America (in nothing but snakeskin-
pattern undies and a smile), was about to give it to her. While some
guy, some incredibly lucky stud of a pizza guy, pleasured himself eagerly
while looking on. That same lucky guy who would, in all probability,
join the pair of minxes for the second course!
A senseless gabble of sound came from D.J. Mack.
Bluette, with a haughty sniff at the Flirty Boy, bent again to her delicious
task and applied
herself with vigor. Maeve came like the Fourth of July, one dazzling
series of explosions after another, wailing a long and drawn-out “Oh, God!”
in that clear, unmistakable voice.
Lance, whose timing excelled and who was ever the
showman, went off at that moment too, grunting like a lion and spouting
like a whale.
“Oh, God,” Maeve said, this time in a strengthless
gasp. Still with eyes tightly shut, she half-rolled onto her side and draped
one thigh over the
other, shuddering in reaction.
Bluette rocked back on her heels, licking her pouty
lips and purring and in all ways acting the cat who’d just been at the
cream. She pretended
to be ignoring D.J., but actually kept a close eye on him as the shellshocked
look on his face gave way to one of slow but incredulously dawning
awareness.
“Hey, what the hell?!” he said.
At that, Maeve jumped and looked around, and saw
him standing there, gape-mouthed. “D.J.!”
“What the hell? What the holy fucking hell?”
he elaborated.
“Who’s the guy?” Lance demanded.
“Who’s that guy?” D.J. countered.
“Is that the shithead that dumped you?” Bluette
asked.
Maeve scrambled to her feet, that gorgeous hair
flying around her, stark naked and beautiful, high color in her cheeks
and sparks snapping from
the blued-steel of her eyes. “What the fuck are you doing here?” She
delivered the line, F-word and all, with brilliant anger and purpose. Bluette
could have applauded.
“What are you doing?” D.J. shot back.
An insane but brief urge to yell “Wazzuuuuup!” seized
Bluette. She resisted, keen to see if her coaching had paid off.
It had. Maeve glared at D.J. as if she could fry
him to a grease-spot with the power of her fury. “Get the hell out, you
son-of-a-bitch!”
“But … no, hey …” D.J. looked from her to Bluette
– idly stroking her own breasts just to rattle him – back to Maeve. A greedy
piggish glint
had come into his eyes. “Hey … I’m cool … I’m not mad.”
“You dumped me, or did you forget?”
“That was … hey, that was before I knew … I thought
you were --”
“I know what you thought I was,” hissed Maeve. “You
thought I was a nice girl. I thought you were a nice boy. Looks like we
both had our
secrets!”
“I guess he didn’t know you very well,” Bluette
said. “What a dumbass.”
“Maeve, honey, listen to me. We … um … why don’t
I just …” He kind of flapped his hand at his shirt buttons. “We can work
it out. I know
we can. I made a mistake.”
“I’ll say!” Maeve said. “Get out.”
“No, don’t be like that … you want to have fun with
other girls, hey, believe me, that’s A-OK with me!” He probably didn’t
realize how pleading,
how desperate, he sounded.
“You want to stay.” Her voice dripped contempt.
“That’s what you’re thinking?”
D.J. swallowed with an audible click, rasped his
tongue across his lips, gorged on Bluette and Maeve with his gaze, and
bobbed his head like
one of those tacky spring-necked dogs found in the rear windows of
cars.
“Yeah, right,” sneered Bluette.
“Hey, aren’t you one of the Flirty Boys?” asked
Lance, as if he hadn’t known, though of course Bluette had given him the
whole story beforehand
when she’d set all of this up.
“You want to stay,” Maeve said again. “You really
want to stay. You like the idea of two women going at it, is that it?”
Bobbing, faster, that rear-window dog in a car going
over train-tracks at high speed.
Bluette suddenly knew where Maeve was headed with
this and held back, with effort, a hard-edged grin of admiration. Hadn’t
taken much to
bring out her inner bad girl, after all! Lance picked up on it too
and looked at Bluette with a tilt of the head as if to ask if he was really
hearing that.
She nodded slyly.
“You think,” Maeve went on, “that we’d want you
to join in.”
“Sure,” said D.J. “Girl-girl, that’s only the warm-up
act.”
Maeve planted her fists on her hips, jutting her
perky little breasts arrogantly at him. “Well, I tell you what. I’ve always
wondered about watching
two men together. Why don’t you and Lance there do a warm-up
act of your own, and then we’ll see if we want to join in?” She
glanced to Bluette
for support, and Bluette gave it in the form of an enthusiastic nod.
“Fine by me,” said Lance, and evidently it was,
because although he’d just shot jets all over the upholstery, he was rising
to attention again just at
the idea of having one of the Flirty Boys get down on his knees and
wrap some hot lip-synching lips around his unit.
D.J. couldn’t have frozen faster if he’d been dunked
in liquid nitrogen. If his eyes had bulged before, they bugged out now
like they were going to
yo-yo out of their sockets. “Huh?”
“You heard her, stud-boy,” Bluette said. “You wanna
play? Those are the terms.”
“I’m no goddam fag!” D.J. proclaimed, staggering
back a pace, as if he thought Lance might just leap out of the chair, drag
him down, and slide
in the back door before he knew what was happening.
“I do believe that is a double standard,” Maeve
said. “I guess you’d better go.”
“Yeah,” said Bluette, standing and coiling an arm
around Maeve. “We have some … unfinished business to attend to.”
“That’s right.” And, magnificently, just as if she’d
done this sort of thing a million times before, Maeve turned to Bluette
and soul-kissed her.
A whine of sheer agony burst from D.J. When they
parted, he tried again. “You don’t need this guy! Send him away, and I’ll
take care of you
both, you never had it better!”
Bluette laughed, not her patented girlish Betty-Boop
giggle but a full, throaty, mocking laugh. “Oh, sure!”
“You want to stay, you heard the conditions,” Maeve
said, daring him with her eyes, though underneath the dare, Bluette sensed
a tremor of
apprehension – what if D.J. took her up on it, and then she had to
follow through?
D.J. risked a look in Lance’s direction, quick and
scared as if he thought Medusa might be sitting over there and one
glimpse would petrify him.
Lance, idly rubbing himself, dropped an inviting wink, and D.J. almost
leapt out of his skin.
“Huh-uh, no way, not gonna happen!” he announced
in a shrill squeak. “This is crazy! This is totally crazy shit!”
Maeve shrugged. “Your stuff is in a grocery bag
on the kitchen table.”
“Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way
out,” added Bluette.
“But … but …”
“Sorry,” she amended. “Don’t let the door hit you
in the butt on the way out.”
With a final look of utter wounded disbelief, D.J.
backed out of the room on stiltlike legs. Maeve followed to throw him the
bag of his belongings;
it smacked into his chest and he only caught it by reflex. Bluette,
lounging in the bedroom doorway, smirked at him as he tried one last time
to beg
his ex to reconsider, and Maeve cut him dead with a look.
She slammed the door behind him hard enough to make
two fairy dragons and a sculpture of Cinderella’s castle leap to their
ceramic dooms from
a shelf, and watched through the curtains as D.J. presumably tottered
down the stairs to his car.
“Fantastic!” Bluette cheered. “Did you see that
sorry piece of crap? You were wonderful, Maeve!”
“I can’t believe it. I can’t believe that really
happened!”
“Damn,” said Lance. “I was hoping he’d go for it.”
He had retrieved his clothes and dressed as gracefully as a Chippendales
dancer in reverse. “I
better get going too. You owe me twelve bucks for the pizza, Bluette.
Plus tip.”
Bluette rolled her eyes at Maeve. “Most guys would
tip us for getting to see what he just got to see.” She fished a
twenty from her purse and told
him to keep the change.
With Lance gone, it abruptly struck Maeve that she
was naked. On the heels of that, the rest of the realization of what she’d
done loomed over
her, poised to topple like a pre-earthquake-code building. She sank
against the edge of the kitchen table, blinking.
“Oh, God,” she murmured, but there was no orgasmic
joy in it this time, only a numbed, stunned shock. “I … you …”
“Mmm-hmm,” said Bluette. “And how.”
“Was it … convincing?”
“More than convincing.” She smiled her most sultry
smile. “I’d call it genuine.”
Maeve nodded, almost against her will.
“So,” Bluette said, “what now?”
“Well …” Maeve blushed and looked shyly at her.
“You did say we had unfinished business …”
Bluette grinned and held out her hand. Maeve took
it, and they returned to the bedroom together.
**
The End