Legal Page
Title Page
Book Description
Dedication
Trademarks Acknowledgement
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
New Excerpt
About the Author
Publisher Page
The Tutor
ISBN # 978-1-78651-078-5
©Copyright K D Grace 2016
Cover Art by Posh Gosh ©Copyright September 2016
Edited by Faith Bicknell-Brown
Totally Bound Publishing
This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Totally Bound Publishing.
Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Totally Bound Publishing. Unauthorized or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.
The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.
Published in 2016 by Totally Bound Publishing, Newland House, The Point, Weaver Road, Lincoln, LN6 3QN
Totally Bound Publishing is a subsidiary of Totally Entwined Group Limited.
Warning:
This book contains sexually explicit content which is only suitable for mature readers. This story has a heat rating of Totally Burning and a Sexometer of 3.
THE TUTOR
When physical touch is impossible, intimacy may become a powerful work of art or a devastating nightmare—but, above all, it’s an act of trust.
Struggling writer Kelly Blake has a secret life as a sex tutor—it pays the bills. Celebrated sculptor and recluse Alexander ‘Lex’ Valentine can’t stand to be touched. When he seeks out Kelly’s advice incognito for what he sees as his ‘self-abuse problem’, the results are too hot to handle.
Kelly terminates their sessions due to her unprofessional behavior, and Lex takes a huge risk, revealing his identity to her at a gala exhibition, his first ever public appearance. After Kelly helps the severely haphephobic Lex escape the grope of reporters and paparazzi, rumors fly that the two are engaged, rumors encouraged by well-meaning friends and colleagues.
The press feeding frenzy forces Kelly into hiding at Lex’s mansion, where he convinces her to be his private tutor. They discover quickly that touch is not the only road to sizzling, pulse-pounding intimacy. But intimacy must survive the secrets uncovered as their sessions become more and more personal.
Dedication
This novel is dedicated to Kevin and Victoria Blisse and Kay Jaybee, who were my inspiration for The Tutor—that and a can of pears in heavy syrup. You three are the best.
Trademarks Acknowledgement
The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:
Subaru: Fuji Jukogyo Kabushiki Kaisha
iPhone: Apple, Inc.
Coke: The Coca Cola Company
Diet Coke: The Coca Cola Company
Tic Tac Candy: Ferrero
Hustler: Larry Flynt Publications
King Kong: RKO Radio Pictures; Radio Pictures
The Ugly Truth: Columbia Pictures
Rush’s 2112 Overture: Anthem Records; Mercury Records
Avengers: Marvel Characters, Inc.
Audi R8: Audi AG
Bose: Bose Corporation
The Incredible Hulk: Marvel Characters, Inc.
Iron Man: Marvel Characters, Inc.
The Oregonian: Advanced Publications
Dictaphone: Nuance Communications
The Exorcist: Hoya Productions; Warner Bros.
Carrie: United Artists
Aliens: Brandywine Productions
Kodak: Eastman Kodak Company
Bruce Wayne: DC Comics
Xavier’s School for the Gifted: Marvel Comics, Inc.
Pride and Prejudice: Public Domain
Nick Fury: Marvel Comics
iMac: Apple, Inc.
Speedo: Speedo International B.V.
Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups: Hershey’s Chocolate & Confectionery Corporation
Kleenex: Kimberly-Clarke Worldwide, Inc.
Tweets: Twitter, Inc.
Empire State Building: Erst Empire State Building, L.L.C.
Diet Pepsi: Pepsico, Inc.
Wet Wipes: Roberts, Trevor
Red Hots: Ferrara Candy Compandy
Hershey’s Kisses: Hershey’s Chocolate & Confectionery Corporation
Pulitzer: Pulitzer Arts Foundation
Technicolor: Techinicolor Trademark Management
Cheshire cat: Disney, Inc.
Jeep: FCA US LLC
Louis Vuitton: Louis Vuitton Malletier
Kurt Geiger: Kurt Geiger, Ltd.
Google: Google, Inc.
Amazon: Amazon Technologies, Inc.
Google Earth: Google, Inc.
Metro: Cenntro Automotive Corporation
Pretty Woman: Touchstone Pictures; Silver Screen Partners IV; Beuna Vista Pictures
Doctors without Borders: MÉDECINS SANS FRONTIÈRES INTERNATIONAL
Twitter: Twitter, Inc.
YouTube: Google, Inc.
iPad: Apple, Inc.
Maglite: Mag Instrument, Inc
Land Rover: Jaguar Land Rover Limited
Chapter One
“Get out! Get the hell out now! Dillon! Dillon, get this bloody woman out of here!” Lex managed to keep his knees locked and his feet under him until the blasted model, robe slung hurriedly around her, clothes and bag bundled in her arms, was out the door and out of his sight. Then he collapsed in a heap, the floor coming up to meet him with a breath-jarring thud—not that he could breathe anyway, not at the moment at least. The room spun around him like a tilt-a-whirl at an amusement park, and his skin slickened with cold sweat. He knew the fucking drill by now, but it never got any easier and never got any better, not even when he was expecting it, and he sure as hell hadn’t been expecting it this time. As he fought back nausea and vertigo and several other little unpleasantries his doctor had slapped labels on so long ago that he couldn’t recall their names, he heard his PA passing the horrid model, who was now blubbering as though she were the injured party, off to V. Officially, V may have been just the housekeeper, but he and Dillon had long contended she was an alien sent from her distant planet to study Earth and see if there was intelligent life. The Valentine House, they joked, was probably not the ideal place to succeed in her mission. Still, the woman had persevered. They figured it was only because of her alien intellect and a sense of humor that allowed her to handle all the insanity with grace and aplomb.
Which was way more than he could manage at the moment, lying with his cheek plastered against the cool slate tiles of his studio, listening to the rush of footsteps and the woman’s nearly hysterical sobs as V—her name was Vida, but they’d always called her V, calmly led her away to someplace where she could change, have something warm to drink and maybe a bit of whatever Cookie had baked that day. After that, she’d be paid well for her traumatic efforts, politely reminded of the non-disclosure agreement she had signed before she came to model for Lex, and sent on her way. She would not be back.
Another treacherous tilting of the floor and a quick spin of the room had Lex praying to the gods of equilibrium and dignity that he could at least manage to keep his breakfast down. Though dignity was already well gone, he thought. Cautiously, he half opened one eye, and got a quick glimpse of a well-polished pair of loafers before he slammed it shut again and decided there was wisdom in holding his fetal position on the studio floor for just a little bit longer. After all, Dillon had seen him in far worse situations.
“You gonna be all right?” Dillon asked softly.
Lex made some non-committal sound at the back of his throat—about all he could manage at the moment. He heard the brisk clip, clip of Dillon’s loafers across the slate, then the sound of running water and the footfalls of his return, and when Lex could smell the spicy dark scent of his PA’s soap, he risked reaching out for the glass of water he knew the man had set down next to him.
“Anything else?” Dillon asked. “Do you need to throw up?”
“No. I’ll be fine,” he said, easing himself ever so carefully into a sitting position, still holding onto the floor with one hand and keeping one eye shut. He took a cautious sip of water. “She touched me,” he managed after he felt confident the water would stay down.
“I gathered,” Dillon said, settling on the floor next to him.
“She came up behind me while I was finishing the sketch. Honestly, I thought she was gone. She was supposed to be gone. Then she—Jesus, Dillon, the next thing I know, she’s all over me, and she was cold, so fucking cold.” For a second he thought he might change his mind about throwing up after all as, with a hard shudder, he recalled the chill of the woman’s bare flesh against him. “And I couldn’t get away from her. I couldn’t get her to leave me alone, and she was cold, she was just so cold.”
“Fuck, bro! I’m so damn sorry,” Dillon said. “I was just outside in the hallway. It all happened so fast.” The studio door was always kept open and, when Lex worked with a model, someone was always close by. But there had never been an incident before, so protocol had gotten lax.
“I mean what the hell? I swear I didn’t do anything to make her think… I mean, I wouldn’t. You know I wouldn’t.”
“I know that, man. I know that. Besides, she knew the rules. They all know the rules before they work with you.” He stood and looked around the room until he found the blanket Lex kept handy for models to wrap up in between sketches and on breaks, then laid it on the floor next to him and plopped back down. Lex pulled it around him with a shiver. Even in early summer, the studio was fairly cool and models were warned ahead of time that Lex preferred to work in an unheated space. “There’s just something about a vulnerable man that sort of gets the female of the species right here.” Dillon tapped his palm against his chest. “Makes ’em want to get all nurturing and rescue-y, you know?”
“I don’t look vulnerable. Do I look vulnerable to you? And I don’t need nurtured or rescued.”
“Trust me,” Dillon said, “you don’t have to be vulnerable for them to see you that way. And let’s face it, there you stand, the long-suffering artist with that mussed hair and just the right amount of stubble, like maybe you just got out of bed, and they start thinking maybe it should be them you just got out of bed with. Hell, bro, I’d be after you myself if I wasn’t your best friend.” He shrugged. “And if you were a little more versatile in your preferences.”
“Too damn bad I’m not, pal. It would sure make my life a whole lot easier.”
“Oh, I doubt it,” Dillon said with a shake of his head. The smile on his face darkened. “I seriously doubt it.”
Dillon knew about complications in relationships. He knew way more than he ever told, Lex was sure. But at least Dillon could have a relationship.
“Is he all right?” There was a clatter of dishes and silver and V blew into the room with a tray loaded down like it was mealtime. “He didn’t throw up, did he?” The two of them always talked about him as though he were their seriously ill patient who had lost all cognitive skills.
“No, he didn’t throw up.” Lex managed a fair imitation of her voice that earned him a jaundiced look, but nothing else. If he didn’t throw up, V fed him. If he did, she waited an hour then fed him. He grudgingly admitted that Dillon and V together knew exactly what he needed and they didn’t let him intimidate them out of it.
“Well then, he needs something warming to ground him. Cookie’s potato leek soup and a nice cup of chamomile tea is just the ticket,” she said, plopping down on the floor next to the two of them.
To his astonishment, she managed not to spill either soup or tea in the process. Once seated, she efficiently poured tea as though they were at the dining room table rather than plunked down on the studio floor discussing his unexpected close encounter with said floor and what should now be done about it.
“I’m not hungry.” But he grudgingly spooned up some soup and swallowed it back just to make her leave him alone. He had to admit it tasted pretty damn good, so he had another bite while they went right on talking about him as though he weren’t there.
“Well, I can certainly understand why the poor woman thought he needed a little cuddling,” V said. “Look at how pale he is. He’s the epitome of the suffering artist.” She eyeballed the soup then him with a gesture that needed no words, so he shoveled in more soup. “But I really thought Ms. Philips was a keeper. I thought she understood the ground rules and would abide by them. Poor dear was ever so upset when I left her with Cookie. I’m sure she’ll never do it again.”
“She won’t because she won’t get the chance,” Lex said, this time dropping the spoon back onto the tray with a loud clatter. “I can’t run that risk.” Besides, he didn’t want to try to sketch someone who had seen him so vulnerable, who had seen him…not at his best.
Dillon helped himself to one of the homemade Parmesan bread sticks and spoke around a mouthful. “I’ll start looking for someone else. We always get résumés. Most models would kill for an opportunity to work for him.” There they went again, speaking around him.
“Don’t the two of you have things to do?” he said.
“Not till you finish your soup and drink some of that tea too. It’ll help calm you,” V replied.
He was their boss. He could force the issue, but they both knew he wouldn’t, and he knew that whatever it was they had to do would get done and then some.
“I’ll make sure he finishes, V, darling. Why don’t you go get on with the accounts? I know you’re up to your eyes in it at the moment.”
“Well, if you’re sure.” She shoved her way to her feet with a cracking of joints heartily protesting time spent on the hard floor. “Make sure he doesn’t get up until he’s ready. And make sure he drinks that tea,” she called over her shoulder as she headed for the door. At the last second, she turned and gave him one more look-over, just in case they’d missed something, just in case this time was different than all the other times they’d sat with him until he could function again. Something was different, but he wasn’t about to tell V that.
When they were both sure that the housekeeper was gone, Dillon turned his eagle eye on Lex. “Well?”
Lex did his best to focus on the last of the soup, but Dillon had been his best friend for years, long before he was his PA, and he didn’t miss much.
“You had a naked model with a very nice, very natural rack rubbing up against your back before you went ballistic on her then hit the floor.”
“You’re seriously asking me if I got a hard-on from this whole experience?”
“Well, not the whole experience, obviously, but didn’t you, you know, feel something before you felt what you usually feel?”
“Not long enough for it to cancel out the old reliable, if that’s what you were hoping,” Lex said, downing the now tepid tea in a single gulp. He fought back a blush. “Besides, these days it wouldn’t matter if I were doing the accounts for V, I’d still be…uncomfortable. It’s ridiculous,” he said. “If I don’t figure out what the fuck my problem is, and soon, I’m going to have repetitive stress syndrome.” He flexed the fingers of his right hand. “Can’t be all that great for my work either.”
Dillon shot a glance back at the door on the outside chance that V might be eavesdropping, which the woman wasn’t above doing. Then he scooted a little closer, careful not to make any physical contact, and spoke between barely parted lips. “I might have an idea.”
“You might?” Lex shooed the man away from the last breadstick with a snap of the napkin against his wrist, then grabbed it and chomped one end.
“Give me a little time to research it and I’ll get back to you,” he said, rubbing his wrist as if Lex had actually wounded him. Then he rose to his feet and left him to eat the last of his breadstick in peace.
He knew how Dillon was when he had an idea. He was never sure whether to be excited or terrified. He forced his way to his feet and turned his attention back to the half-finished sketch of Sally Philips now lying on the floor next to the overturned easel among a scatter of other sketches. He had given the whole thing a shove when she’d trapped him between the easel and her half-naked body. Even as he shivered at the thought of her cold touch, he felt a tightening in his jeans.
“Fuck,” he whispered under his breath. He wadded the drawing into a ball and tossed it across the room. Truth was, he’d had a hard-on the whole time he was sketching her, but that was often a part of the creative process. He’d read enough to know that creative energy was very closely linked to sexual energy and libido, but under the circumstances, he had very little outlet but a good jerk-off session. Surely Ms. Philips hadn’t noticed his chub. He never wore anything that might give away his secret when he was working with a model. Surely she hadn’t thought that he was interested. He wasn’t. Even if she had been his type, he had given up hopes of anything resembling a relationship or even a quickie with a stranger in an alley a long time ago. He righted the easel and picked up the sketches, organizing them and placing them back in the pad, careful to extract the ones he’d done of Sally Philips. A setback, indeed. They were nearly done. Only a few more sketches and he’d have been ready to begin work on the sculpture for the new women’s and children’s hospital, but he knew he’d never be able to see sketches of her now without breaking into a cold sweat and feeling slightly nauseated, neither of which was conducive to creative efforts.
Chapter Two
“Attention! Kelly Blake, please report to the stockroom. Kelly Blake, report to the stockroom, please.”
Why the hell would anyone be calling Kelly to the stockroom in Eddie’s Supermarket? She hardly ever shopped here. She’d only stopped in to pick up a can of pears in heavy syrup for her friend, Myrna, who was planning some silly treat for her kids from a recipe she’d found in the back of some women’s magazine. Myrna was the queen of women’s magazines. She read them all and tried everything in them. Most of the time the result was a disaster, but how much harm could she do with a can of pears?
“Kelly Blake, please report to the stockroom. Kelly Blake, to the stock room, please.”
She resisted the urge to shout at the speaker that she was coming already. She’d never been called over the loud speaker for anything before, and she blushed hard, hunched her shoulders and hurried through the cereal aisle toward the back. As her name was called yet again, she couldn’t help feeling like she was a kid being called to the principal’s office for some secret crime—so secret, in fact, that she had no idea what it might be.
The voice sounded oddly familiar, slightly nervous. Well, loud speakers would do that to a person, she supposed. Though it was such an anonymous thing, still having your voice booming out there for the whole world to hear might be almost as intimidating as being the one summoned. Clutching her tin of pears to her chest, Kelly made her way to the back, intrigued by the prospect of seeing just what really was behind the swinging double doors with their metallic sheen and their round windows that made her think of submarines or space ships. Still, the loudspeaker referred to it as the stockroom. That wasn’t very glamorous, was it? But then again, who knew what might go on between the rows and rows of canned goods and soft drinks? A murder? Perhaps a clandestine rendezvous? Perhaps it was a time portal, and she was about to step back into the Middle Ages. Maybe it was a wormhole and she’d end up in another dimension or on another planet, or perhaps she’d parked the Subaru in a no-parking zone and the supermarket police were waiting to punish her according to her crime. As she cautiously shoved her way through the double doors, and found herself in a maze of laundry detergent boxes, canned dog food and wooden pallets piled high with shrink-wrapped paper towels, toilet paper and napkins, the one thing she had not expected to find beyond the open back door, where the smokers were all banished when they lit up, was Andy Matthews. He stood shifting nervously from foot to foot under a battered green awning that protected the smokers from sun and rain alike. Andy didn’t smoke. Hell, she knew for a fact Andy was just barely old enough to drink legally.
When he looked up and saw her, he reminded her of a frightened rabbit about to make a run for it. In spite of his ripe old age of twenty-one, startled as he was, he could have passed for fifteen, standing there with his face redder than the Eddie’s smock he wore, which was at least two sizes too big for him.
“Andy? What’s going on? Is everything all right?” she asked.
“I know what you do,” he blurted without so much as a greeting. For a moment, she was afraid he was going to hyperventilate. “I mean, besides writing romance. I figured it out,” he said, his voice cracking on the last word.
“Oh?” She leaned against the doorframe, wondering whether to murder him and drag the body back into the maze of merchandise, or to turn him over her knee and spank his skinny ass.
“Oh, it’s not blackmail or anything,” he said, shaking his head so hard that his neck popped. “It’s just that…” He bit his lip, and, for a moment, she was afraid he might cry, but that was just the way the shadows fell across his jaw. “Well, I need your help—with a girl.”
“I figured it wasn’t a guy. Though I have no problem one way or the other,” she said, stepping outside onto the cement slab. It startled poor Andy so much that he backed up tight against the metal railing. Perhaps he did think she would do him bodily harm. “What I do have a problem with is being paged over the loudspeaker to come to the back of Eddie’s Supermarket. Most of my clients make an appointment with my secretary and she sends them an invoice.”
He shook his head. “Oh, I couldn’t do that. I…” The blush that had never quite left his cheeks flashed with a vengeance. “An invoice?” His voice cracked again. She knew he was paying for his own education and working several jobs to do it.
“What exactly do you need, Andy?” she asked, glancing down at her watch. She had another client clear across town in two hours. This was supposed to be just a pop-in, pop-out stop.
“There’s this girl. I really like her. A lot.” He stepped away from the railing, as if speaking of her made him suddenly lose his fear in his enthusiasm for love. “We’ve had six dates and I want to…you know…but I never have before and I want to know…you know?” The poor guy was going to self-combust if he got any redder. He seemed to have suddenly lost the power of speech. He sputtered twice, gave a couple of fish gasps then nodded, unable to meet her gaze.
“You want to know how to please a girl, and you expect me to give you the lecture and the hand-outs on your fifteen-minute break out behind Eddie’s Supermarket, assuming, of course, that no one else decides to take a break and have a smoke.”
“They won’t,” he said breathlessly. He shot a look over Kelly’s shoulder back into the bowels of the stockroom, just in case. “I always time my break so I can have the place to myself.”
Kelly couldn’t help it, with the topic being what it was, she gave his crotch a surreptitious glance, and he reddened still further and tugged his baggy smock down over the telltale areas. “Not for that!” he said. “I… I like to read, and I don’t like to have to breathe other people’s smoke while I do it.”
“Fair enough.” Kelly did her own little glance back into the stockroom, then took pity on the guy. God, she was such a sucker. “What have you done so far on those dates?”
Damn! She had hoped that the fact that she’d agreed to help would ease the poor kid’s discomfort, but his face went from red to purple and he was suddenly gasping for words. “I, that is we, we, we, we, we kissed. With tongue. She liked that okay. We both did. We liked it a lot.” The color in his cheeks softened and the distant look in his eyes told Kelly that he was remembering just how much they had liked it. “And I touched her…” He nodded to Kelly’s chest.
“Clothed or skin to skin?” Kelly wondered if the poor guy had asthma as he struggled to breathe.
“Clothed.”
“Anything below the waist?”
“I, I, I, I touched her…down there. But only through her jeans.” He dropped his gaze and shifted from foot to foot.
“Did she like it?”
If the poor kid could have managed it, Kelly was pretty convinced he’d have disappeared through the ground. “She put my hand down there, then she touched…” He nodded down to where his fist still held the wadded front of the Eddie’s smock protectively in front of his crotch.
“Sounds like you were on the right path. Then what happened?”
When he didn’t answer, Kelly shoved a hand against her hip and swallowed back the impatient curse just waiting to darken the air between them. “Look, do you want my help or not? Because I have other clients who do.”
The realization that she was going to help him lit his face like neon and he dropped his hands to his side, squared his shoulders and met her gaze. “I told her I didn’t want to rush. I told her I wanted it to be really good for both of us when we finally did it, then, well, I ran like a scared kid.” He shrugged, once again unable to meet her gaze. “I figured she’d never talk to me again. I figured it was over, but then I got this.” He shoved his iPhone at Kelly with a text from ‘Jenny’ that read—
Last night was the best thing that’s ever happened to me. It will be good, Andy. So, so good! Free tomorrow night?
“That was last night,” he managed as she returned his phone. “I have six hours.”
“All right.” Kelly couldn’t help it. She loved a good challenge. She looked down at the can of pears. “I need a can opener and a roll of paper towels, or maybe some wet wipes. This is going to get messy.”
He disappeared like a shot into the stockroom and returned way faster than Kelly would have thought possible with all three. On the plastic garden table, she wiped a clean spot with a paper towel, then opened the can of pears. He watched wide-eyed. “Pull up a chair next to mine. As close as you can get.” With some effort, she pulled one slippery pear half out of the can and laid it on a wad of paper towels with the open side up, making sure there was just enough of the heavy syrup coating it that it was slick down through the middle. She figured, by that point, the guy would see where she was going with this little exercise, but he only stared at her blankly.
“Have you ever seen a woman’s—?”
“No! Not a real one, I mean only in porn.” He shot her crotch a quick glance, then his face lost all color. For a second, she feared he’d pass out completely.
“Oh, don’t worry, I’m not showing you mine, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”
“Oh, I’m sure yours is nice, really cool and all, but Jenny—”
“Jenny’s is the one you want to see, and touch. And kiss. I get it.” Carefully, she picked up the pear on its cushion of paper towel and, holding it palm up in her left hand, began to stroke the hollow of it with the middle and index finger of her right and, if it were possible, the kid’s eyes got even bigger. The way he shifted in the plastic garden chair told her he got it at last. “This is cooler than she’ll be when you touch her and not quite as soft and giving as she’ll be when you open her with your two fingers. That’ll be a little different too. She may be already open and ready for you. If not, you’ll have to gently finger your way in between the folds of her flesh to the soft, warm center, and you’ll be surprised at just how warm she is.” She rubbed her fingers together, now coated generously with the heavy syrup, and he drew a tight breath. “She’ll feel less syrupy, more creamy. And when you feel her, when you feel how warm and creamy she is, believe me, you’ll want to taste her, just as she’ll want to taste you. The taste of a lover, and the scent… Well, put the two together and there’s nothing in the world more delicious, more magical. You try it.”
She held the pear half palm up, at about the level of a woman’s crotch, about in the place she would imagine Andy’s Jenny to be if he were kissing and fondling her, then Kelly reached across him and pulled his hand down to the waiting pear half.
“Don’t be nervous. Relax. Have fun with it. You’re both new to each other and being a little awkward is part of the pleasure of the first time together. Laugh about it, enjoy it, ask her to tell you if you’re not sure what she likes. How can you know if she doesn’t say? Lovers, good lovers, talk to each other. They’re lovers, not mind readers. Now. You touch the pear, like it’s Jenny, talk to me, like I’m her. That’s it, start from the bottom just like you’re opening her folds. That’s it, that’s good. You might be kissing her, caressing her breasts, she might be stroking your erection. It’s okay for you to tell her what you like too, you know? What woman doesn’t want to pleasure her man? Or you might want to look at each other’s body. The body of your lover is a feast for your eyes.”
Andy got the hang of it quickly enough, but it rapidly became clear to Kelly that his imagination was about to get the best of him. “Is that your Coke?” she asked, motioning to the can on the table.
He managed a nod.
“Good. Take a deep breath, take a drink, then take another deep breath. Big lesson, Andy. This is not a foot race. Jenny won’t thank you for hurrying things up, unless it’s a quickie, then that’s another lesson for another time. This is getting to know you, sex. This is discovering your lover’s responses to sex. It’s not meant to be hurried. Now, give me your hand.” She guided it back into the pear and drizzled a bit of juice over his fingers. “Trust me, you want it wet and slick. Now, if the pear were a woman, there would be a little pearl-like node right about…there.”
“Her clitoris,” he whispered in awe.
“That’s right. Wait just a second.” Kelly wiped her sticky fingers and fumbled in her purse, until she found the box of Tic Tac Candy. In her awkward effort to shake one free and still hold the pear-half in position, she shook half of them out on the ground before she managed to get one between thumb and forefinger and push it into the soft flesh of the pear-half right at its apex. “Not quite anatomically correct, but closer. Now, use your thumb right there.” She guided him to the protruding end of the Tic Tac. He made a little sound at the back of his throat at the contact and began to circle it with his thumb. “Good, that’s good.”
Suddenly Andy was rocking in his chair. “Jenny,” he whispered, as though Kelly were no longer there. “Show me what you like. Show me what you want.”
Kelly’s pulse accelerated to a gallop as she guided Andy, shifting his thumb just slightly to one side. “Sometimes direct contact is too intense,” she instructed.
“What about tongue?” He sounded like he’d been running hard rather than fondling a damn pear-half.
“Never known a woman who didn’t like a little tongue on her Tic Tac.”
The words were barely out of her mouth before he grabbed her by the wrist and brought hand paper towels, and pear—complete with its Tic Tac clitoris—to his mouth, licking from the bottom end of the pear up through the center and circling the mint before settling his lips around it in a juicy suck and lick of a kiss.
“That’s right. That’s it. You got it.”
“Do you like that, Jenny? Is it good?” he whispered against the pear’s slippery opening.
And damn if Kelly wasn’t shifting in her seat. Most of the time she talked people through their doubts and problems, most of the time it was more theory and communication than anything else when she tutored people. But this! Well, sometimes object lessons were the best.
In fact, sometimes they might be just a little bit too good. Andy gave a soft grunt and shuddered in his seat, and her phone pinged a message warning her if she were going to make it to her session with the Hammersmiths on time, she needed to leave now.
“Gotta go,” she said. “Good luck with Jenny. It’ll be fine. You’ll see. Oh, and keep the pears.” She fled back through the stockroom and left Eddie’s Supermarket without any pears in heavy syrup for Myrna’s women’s mag treat.
Chapter Three
“Please tell me you haven’t been standing there long.” Lex sat on the ground, leaning against the trunk of a large oak, his focus on a sculpture of man and a woman in the throes of passion, a tangle of arms and legs, mouths open in their ecstatic moment of release. Contemplating the statue and what he had been fantasizing when he’d created it had led him to his own release, though he hadn’t needed much help.
“I saw nothing, and even if I had, I wouldn’t tell you. I just assumed you’d be out here. V said you were in the Other Studio, and when you weren’t there, I figured you’d be here.” The Other Studio was what they had always called the barn at the edge of his private sculpture garden where he worked on nothing but erotic pieces. They were never intended for anyone else’s eyes. The art world that so admired his work had no idea that there was another facet to Alexander Valentine’s creativity. Masturbation in stone—that was what it was, he supposed—but it did help to create in marble what he knew he couldn’t have in the flesh.
“You all right?” Dillon asked.
He nodded, lifting his face to the late afternoon sun. “I’m better now, at least for a little while.”
“V said you were down here last night. She figured you must have been dreaming.” He came and sat across from Lex, leaning his back against the plinth of the sculpture.
Lex grunted. “The woman has to be an alien. I can’t fart without her knowing it and telling you the details.”
Dillon nodded. “I’m guessing in the early days I was abducted and equipped with a device that relays all relevant information about Alexander Valentine’s digestive history to the mother ship.”
“No doubt by means of an anal probe,” Lex commented.
“Those are the best kind.”
“You would know, I suppose. Now is there a reason you disturbed me in my masturbatory solitude, or are you just a pervert?”
“Well, I’m not just a pervert,” Dillon replied with a little tilt of his head as though he might have had to think about it for a second. “But there is a reason why I sought you out in your pleasure garden. I have two models I think are worth calling in for interviews. Do you want to meet with them or do you trust V and me with their interrogation?”
“Why don’t you two do it? I was the one who picked out Sally Philips after what I thought was a very thorough interrogation and you see where that got me.”
“Consider it done, bro.”
“So? Why are you still here, then? You’re disturbing my handiwork.”
“Well”—the man stretched long legs out in front of him and folded his arms across his chest—“I actually came out here because of your handiwork.”
“You really are a pervert.”
Dillon only shrugged and offered a wicked smile. “Nothing slow about you, bro.”
“What then?”
He folded his legs under him Indian style and scooted forward. “You remember when I told you I’d do a little research to see if I could maybe find you some help as a preventative for repetitive stress syndrome?”
“Hard to forget,” Lex said.
“You know my cousin, Andy?”
“What about him?” Lex had met the kid a couple of times. He knew that he was studying chemistry in Portland State at the moment, putting himself through the program with the aid of a couple scholarships and several part-time jobs. Lex had offered to help, but the man had wanted to do it himself. He respected that a lot.
“He knows this woman who’s a tutor.”
“A tutor? What, you mean like for chemistry?”
Dillon chuckled and cocked an eyebrow. “Well, I suppose you might be able to look at it that way, sort of, if you had a good imagination, but no. She’s a sex tutor.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Lex shoved his way to his feet and headed back toward the house. “I don’t think a cock doc can help me.”
“No, wait,” Dillon scrambled to join him. “Hear me out.” He caught up and fell into step next to Lex. “It’s not like you think. This woman’s policy is perfect for you. Apparently when she sees a client, it’s strictly no touch.”
“No touch? Seriously?”
Dillon nodded and continued. “She doesn’t touch anyone and they don’t touch her. She arrives clothed, remains clothed and leaves clothed, completely untouched. She doesn’t play with her clients, if you know what I mean. She advises and coaches. Very strictly hands off. Andy says the hands-off policy is the woman’s number one rule. The way she sees it, people’s sex issues won’t be solved by her feeling them up.”
“And how the hell would Andy know this woman?” Lex asked, slowing his pace as they came into sight of the house. He couldn’t help it. He was way more interested than he intended to be.
“He mows her lawn, and her secretary’s. Quite by accident, he ended up mowing the lawn of a couple who also happened to be her very satisfied clients, and he started doing a little investigating on his own. Apparently he wanted to be Casanova to some girl he’s dating. He was pretty closed-mouthed about it, but… Well, he did think of you.”
“Oh, that’s thoughtful,” Lex grumbled “Glad to know my eternal chub is mentioned in hushed tones on freshly mown lawns all across Portland.”
“Oh, don’t be a dick. You know Andy would never say anything. He only knows about your situation because he was here once when—”
“When I had a close encounter with the floor. Yes, I remember, but I don’t recall that I or anyone else had my cock in their hand when it happened.”
“It’s not about your cock,” Dillon said. “It’s about the fact that no one but you can touch said cock.”
“And therefore it’s about my cock. So what does your cousin think—that I should let this woman advise me while I slap the monkey?” The thought made him very uncomfortable, especially in the region of his crotch, which was quite disturbing. Too disturbing to even contemplate, and yet he found himself asking, “So your cousin’s just taking someone’s word?”
“Actually my cousin had a little encounter with our sex tutor last week, and apparently it was a rather life-changing experience.” Before Lex could ask, Dillon raised his hand. “All I know is that it involved a can of pear halves in heavy syrup out behind Eddie’s Supermarket, and, as a result, my awkward virgin of a cousin is suddenly getting laid on a regular basis, and quite well if I’m to believe the lucky bastard.”
“A can of pears?”
“I know it’s not exactly what you’d expect from a sex therapist, but that’s what he told me, with a shit-eating grin that practically split his face.”
For a moment, the two men walked in silence, Lex thinking about his midnight rendezvous with the statuary in his private garden. It hadn’t been so much sexual release he’d craved as intimacy, and for that there was no real substitute. He figured his raging libido was as much about his isolation as it was about sex, but he didn’t see how a sex therapist…er…tutor could help him with that.
“You don’t have to meet her in your home. I can call and set up an appointment for you and if she’s not okay with meeting you in a hotel room, you can meet her at my apartment. Hell, I stay here most of the time now anyway, so it’s free.” Before Lex could respond, he added, “Don’t worry, bro, I’ll check her out very carefully before I set anything up, and I’ll double-check with you before we go through with it. Even if you back out at the last minute, I’ll just pay the woman. Maybe pay her a little extra for the inconvenience and that’ll be that. No skin off anyone’s teeth, and no one is any worse for the wear, except maybe your poor aching hand.”
“You’re an asshole, you know that, Dil?” he said, as both men ascended the stone steps to the patio.
“So I’ve been told. Look, dude, I’d lend a hand if I could.”
“Hell, if you could make it all better, I’d for damn sure let you.”
“Shall I give this Kelly Blake a call, then?”
“Let me think about it.”
“All right. Just let me know.”
* * * *
It was well after midnight when Lex woke wet with sweat, heart racing from a dream he couldn’t remember—it wasn’t a nightmare. He always remembered the nightmare. It was always the same and it was far too terrifying for him to ever forget, though he wished like hell he could. He shoved his way from under the comforter, knowing sleep would elude him now. He pulled on a pair of training shorts and a ratty hoodie and slipped into the darkened hall barefoot, because he knew only too well how lightly V slept, and fucking Dillon wasn’t much better. He wished they didn’t worry so much. It wasn’t like there was anything they could do, and he functioned just fine—not normal by any stretch of anyone’s imagination, but he’d learned to compromise and improvise. He had his routine, and it worked for him. Thankfully he had the entire Valentine fortune to make sure he could compromise and improvise in style, if there was such a thing. And even more thankfully, he had a safety net of people, friends he could rely on to run interference when the shit hit the fan like it had with Sally Philips.
At the back of the house, he made his way through the kitchen, grabbing a couple of Cookie’s homemade snickerdoodles from the cookie jar and a bottle of water on his way out. There was a reason they called her Cookie. There was nothing she couldn’t do in the kitchen, and she kept them all very well fed. But her specialty was homemade cookies, and snickerdoodles were his favorites. They always turned up in the cookie jar the day after he’d had an incident, and they never lasted long. He considered them just what the doctor ordered. He did all right for himself, he thought, as he bit into one of the little delights, licking cinnamon and sugar off his lips. He managed. He stepped outside to find a heavy moon in the night sky and paused for a moment to look up at the stars before he made his way down to the Other Studio. It was always the Other Studio where he went when he woke in the middle of the night, even if it was the nightmare that disturbed his sleep. The Other Studio was purely escapism from his isolation. It was all erotic sculpture, though some of it bordered more on romance, and it was for his eyes only. His present work was a woman, naked except for an open chemise which exposed her high, firm breasts and the muscles of her belly tightened in arousal. One hand slid between her open legs and the other arm was thrown over her head. He now worked on her face trying to capture the tipping point when all the effort results in that ecstatic moment when there’s no turning back. She was his counterpart, he thought, caught in the perpetual need for release that never quite satisfies and unable to figure out why.
He slipped out of the hoodie and began to work on her expression. It was little more than a blank piece of stone at the moment. There was no emotion, no tension, none of the concentration that went with the effort of masturbating oneself to orgasm. As he worked, he recalled his dreams, or at least bits of them. There was a woman. She didn’t have a face either, he thought. At least he never saw it. He followed her into the sculpture garden, watched her unseen as she walked among his erotic works, stripping as she went, caressing a marble breast here, a stone cock there, and in between, as she stripped, as she touched and caressed his work, she touched and caressed herself, breasts warm and soft, nipples heavy with arousal, nearly as hard as the stone that turned them both on. And he wanted her. He wanted to trail his fingers along flesh and sinew, warm and giving under his palm. He wanted to curl his fist in her hair and pull her back to him, bruise her mouth with his. He wanted to lift her onto one of the stone plinths of the sculptures she caressed, open her thighs and look at her, touch her down there where it was only ever marble that he touched, down there where he only ever imagined the inner warmth of arousal. And when he had explored her with his eyes, with his hands, with his mouth, then he would take her hard and deep and pour all of what was trapped inside him into her, and she would willingly receive all that he gave.
With a jerk and a groan, he came back from the fantasy, fist tight around his cock, spilling himself onto the partially carved lips and down over the breasts of his creation. Christ, it always felt like it would rip him apart when it happened like this, when the dreams weren’t nightmares, but so full of longing that he felt nothing could ever fill the void. When he’d finished coming, he slid down onto the stone cold floor, fumbled his shorts up over his cock and fell asleep.
* * * *
“Here, bro. You look like you could use these.” Sunlight shown through the open windows of the studio and Dillon squatted next to him with a cup of coffee in one hand and his hoodie in the other.
“Fuck,” he mumbled shoving himself into a sitting position. He grabbed the hoodie and then the coffee, burning his tongue on the first eye-opening sip.
“You’re welcome.” Dillon sat down on the floor next to him with his own cup in hand. “Another hard night?”
“Fuck you,” Lex mumbled into his cup.
“In my dreams, dude, in my dreams.”
“A man ought to be able to have a wank in the privacy of his own home without the whole household interfering.”
“Shall I take the coffee back?”
Lex clutched the cup to his chest and growled at his friend, who only shrugged and sipped his own brew. They sat for a time in silence, surrounded by the scent of coffee, for which Lex was thankful. He hoped it would overpower the scent of sex, if he could even call what happened to him in these little episodes sex. But the coffee covered up nothing, not to Dillon. Though, bless the man, it was at least an effort to ease any embarrassment he might feel.
“Haven’t been able to get hold of either of the two models,” Dillon said.
“That’s going to set me back.”
“I’ll sort it shortly.”
“I’m sure you will. Thanks.”
Through the open door, the two watched a robin in the rose garden battling with a worm.
“You should come and have breakfast. Cookie’s making huckleberry pancakes.”
Huckleberry pancakes were his favorite and they were always a sign that everyone in the house, including Cookie, knew he’d had a rough night. But then they always knew, didn’t they?
“I need a quick shower first,” he said.
“Just don’t linger or I won’t promise there’ll be any left.” His friend finished his coffee and stood, motioning for Lex to do likewise.
At the kitchen door, Lex stopped and turned to face him. He took a deep breath and threw caution to the wind. “Why don’t you make me an appointment with the cock doc? I don’t suppose it can hurt. And don’t eat all the pancakes.” As he headed through the kitchen, he gave Cookie a wave. She waved a spatula at him and puffed a stray strand of dark hair out of her face.
Chapter Four
“I would suggest that you start with something a little lower tech.” Kelly coughed and waved the thick cloud of baby powder away from her face with the copy of Hustler