Cruising the Strip (14 page)

“Food. Food and a bottle of wine, and I can do anything. Even get through the last hundred pages of this manuscript.”

Scrolling down the screen with one hand, Jules snagged the desk phone with the other and punched in the extension for room service from memory. One thing she loved about traveling was room service—not just the food, but the clean sheets and the fresh towels and the bed turned down every night. She’d never admit it, but she enjoyed being pampered. With the receiver tucked between her ear and shoulder, she deleted half a sentence and retyped it
without
the gerund as she listened to the phone ring. She’d have to run a search for the word suckle and expunge it from the manuscript. Whoever heard of a grown woman suckling anything, let alone a—

“Hello?”

Jules dragged her attention away from the screen. “Hi, this is—”

“You’re late.”

Frowning, Jules checked the clock. A few minutes to eight. The in-room dining menu stipulated full dinner service until eleven, and after that, “snacks” were available all night. If you didn’t mind paying five dollars a potato chip.

“I’m sorry—”

“Sorry isn’t good enough.” A woman’s voice flowed to her, low and almost playful.

Jules hesitated. “I just wanted to order—”

“You’ve suddenly acquired a taste for something new?”

“I’m sorry?” Jules realized she was repeating herself. Obviously, she needed an editor for more than just her manuscripts.

“Since when do you like to give the orders?”

“I’m sorry,” Jules repeated, feeling like a parrot and not a particularly smart one. Didn’t some of them have a vocabulary of five hundreds words? “Is this room service?”

“Well, that’s one way of putting it.”

Silence descended and Jules realized she was supposed to say something. Dialogue had always been her strong point, and now she was having trouble forming whole sentences. “To whom am I speaking?”

There, that came out nicely.

“You called me. Don’t you know?”

“Uh…” Jules cleared her throat and looked around the room. Everything seemed perfectly normal. Just an ordinary $900 a night suite in an opulent Las Vegas casino hotel. Her shoes lay next to the bed, her trousers draped over a chair. Her briefcase sat open next to her on the floor. She was barefoot in boxers and a T-shirt, which was what she always wore when working. Everything was exactly as it should be, except some time in the last twelve hours she had developed a cognitive disorder of some kind and couldn’t carry on a sensible conversation. “I just wanted a charbroiled hamburger and a bottle of Merlot.”

“The last time we talked you wanted me to spank you until you came all over my silk stockings.”

“That wasn’t me,” Jules whispered. And as she said the words, she suddenly wished it had been. She had a sudden image of being stretched over the creamy, bare thighs of a woman wearing a black silk camisole. A black lace bikini just covered the woman’s shaved pussy, and black satin garters stretched taut to the top of black silk stockings. Jules’s hard penis nestled between the woman’s thighs. As a small hand struck Jules’s ass sharply, she thrust downward, rubbing the flushed head against smooth skin. The swift stab of pleasure obliterated the pain and she knew with the next blow she would explode.

Jules blinked and the image disappeared. She looked down, almost surprised not to see an erection tenting her boxers. Her clitoris stiffened very nicely and rubbed against the cotton of her shorts. “I’m sorry. I have the wrong number.”

“Are you sure?”

A foot away on the desk, the screen of her computer beckoned. She was used to escaping into other worlds, other lifetimes, other lives. Hers was a world of shifting boundaries, and sometimes reality was as fluid as a keystroke.

“Aren’t you waiting for another call?” Jules asked.

The woman laughed. “He missed his chance, but the hour’s paid for.”

“Maybe he’s trying to call right now.”

“It will do him good to be disappointed. He’s grown too confident.”

“I feel sorry for him,” Jules said.

“Do you?” Surprise. Curiosity. “Why?”

“I imagine he’s been looking forward to this call all day.”

Laughter. “He’s been looking forward to it all week. I’m on a business trip, but I made a special date with him. After he begged.”

“Are you going to punish him for being late?”

“Oh, yes. I’m going to tell him exactly what he missed.”

The low, throaty voice washed over Jules as if hands were skimming over her skin. She heard rapid breathing and realized it was her own.

“Tell
me
,” Jules urged.

“I’ll do more than that. I’ll show you.” A pause. “Would you like that?”

“Yes. I would.”

“Put this call on hold and take off your clothes. Then use the handset by the bed and tell me when you’re lying down.”

Jules pushed the hold button and sat for several seconds. She could disconnect the call and it would be all over. She could go back to her editing. She could prepare for the next day’s presentation. She could spend the rest of the night alone. And she would never know the end of the story. Abruptly, she stood and pulled off her T-shirt, pushed her boxers down, and strode naked into the bedroom. She didn’t turn on a light, but hurriedly picked up the phone.

“I’m here.” Jules stretched out on her back, the phone resting on the pillow next to her ear.

“And what are you doing
here
?”

“I’m a writer,” Jules said. “I’m here for a conference.”

“I saw a horde of people with pens attacking several women in the lobby the other day. Would one of those sought after women be you?”

“Probably not.” Jules laughed. “I’ve signed a few autographs, but I don’t usually incite a riot.”

“What do you write?”

“Love stories.”
No,
Jules thought,
they’re more than that.
“Stories about women in love.”

“And sex? Do you write stories about women having sex?”

Jules closed her eyes so she could concentrate on the voice. Alone in the darkness, the sound of the husky tones so very close to her ear created an intimacy that made her stomach tingle. “Yes. I write about women having sex.”

“And you? Do you have sex with women?”

“Yes,” Jules replied, feeling strangely relaxed. Almost languid. The room was warm and she lay naked on the sheets. “I have sex with women.”

“And men?”

“No.” Jules thought of the man who was supposed to be talking to this woman right now. She imagined him poised on the other end of the phone, having anxiously waited all week for the special call. He would be excited. Had probably been excited for hours, watching the clock, hearing the sultry voice in his mind, anticipating how it would feel when she whispered to him. “Do you only do this with men?”

“Do what?”

Jules brushed her hand over her belly and felt the muscles tense beneath her fingertips. Lazily, she circled her navel. “Have these private conversations with men.”

“My clients want me to make them come. Usually they want me to make them
beg
to come. Men and women are all the same in that moment.”

“I don’t want you to make me come.” Jules bent one leg and rested the ball of her foot against her opposite knee. Lightly, she stroked up one thigh, over the delta between, and down the other.

“Aren’t you excited?”

Jules tapped her finger lightly on her clitoris. She was hard and swollen and she had to force her hand away. If she started in on it now, she wouldn’t want to stop until she came. “Yes. I am.”

“Then you must want—”

“What do you do to make them beg?”

Jules heard the woman catch her breath, as if caught off guard. “I offer them the one thing they crave.”

“What’s that?” Jules skimmed her palm up the center of her stomach and then over her breasts. Her nipples tingled at the glancing caress. “What is it they want?”

“Permission. They want my permission. Permission to take pleasure. Permission to come, no matter what it is they need.”

“When they come, do you feel the rush?”

“Yes,” the woman said, her voice thick. “Yes, I feel it.”

“But you don’t come, do you?”

“No.”

Jules rolled her nipple between her fingers, harder and faster until her clit jumped and her pelvis lifted from the bed. “When you hang up the phone,
then
you make yourself come, don’t you?”

Jules could barely make out the choked reply. “Yes.”

“It’s hard to wait, isn’t it? When you’re so hard. And so wet.” Jules slid a finger over her clit and between her lips. She was hot and thickly wet. She kept her fingertip pressed to the underside of her clitoris, but didn’t caress it. The tense shaft throbbed against the length of her finger. Through the phone, she heard panting.

The woman had started masturbating, something she must deny herself during those other phone calls. Even though she wanted it. Even though she needed it. Self-denial was power, too.

“Sometimes you come without touching yourself, even when you don’t mean to. Even when you don’t want to.”

“Yes.” A strangled sound, half-sob, half-moan. “Are you making your clit hard right now?”

Jules pushed down against her hand and rubbed her clit rapidly for twenty seconds, then stopped. “No.” But she couldn’t smother her groan.

“You’re lying,” the woman laughed breathlessly.

“I know you’re fondling your clit,” Jules countered.

“Mmm. I am. God, I don’t think I’ve ever been so big.”

“Not even when you’re making some poor guy come all over your black silk stockings?”

“They don’t make me ache the way you do.”

Jules curled one finger inside and massaged the spot that made her clit rigid. If she masturbated her clit at the same time, she’d orgasm right away. She pressed her finger to the hard core. “Ah. God.”

“What are you doing?” The woman was gasping. “Are you making yourself come?”

“Is that what you want?” Jules’s legs strained as her body arched off the bed.

“Yes. I want to hear you come.”

“Will that make you come?” Jules started to work her clit between her fingers. Her stomach tightened and the telltale tingling began at the base of her belly.

“It will. You know it will.”

“You don’t come for them?”

“They don’t want me to.” Her voice sounded high and thin. “Their pleasure…oh, I’m getting closer.” She gave a shuddering moan. “That’s what they want. Their pleasure—not mine.”

“Ours,” Jules groaned. “I want ours. I’m coming. I’m coming now.”

“I…I…”

A scream penetrated Jules’s awareness as she writhed and twisted on the bed. When the last jolt of pleasure trailed away, she fumbled for the phone. “Don’t go,” she managed to croak. Seconds, minutes passed and only silence greeted her. Jules pressed a hand to her stomach, still aching from the powerful contractions. “Are you there?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sorry you let yourself come?”

“I’m not sorry you made me come.”

“I’m going to hang up soon and order that room service,” Jules said.

Laughter, tinged with sadness.

“Will you join me?” Jules waited, utterly still.

“Should I plan on you switching hands on me again?”

Jules smiled. “I’d say that would be a safe bet.”

“Then how could I possibly refuse?”

“So, do you two want to come in for awhile?” Monica asked. “I’ll break out some champagne and we can talk…or whatever.”

I looked at my wife, Sheri, because Monica was her friend—well, work colleague, anyways—and this was Sheri’s trip. I came along because I’d never been to Vegas and I wanted an excuse to get out of doing yard work for a week. Besides, Sheri and I hadn’t had a chance to really cut loose since she’d taken the job as head librarian at the university at the same time I decided it was a good time to start my own business. Between the two of us, we’d been working fifteen hour days, six days a week, for over a year, and I couldn’t remember the last time we had a night out that ended with us having wild sex until the sun came up. When we first got together, all-nighters, nooners, and quickies in the shower were daily fare. It wasn’t that we’d lost interest; we just didn’t end up in the same place at the same time, physically or otherwise.

We’d had plenty of sex since we got here, but after spending three hours in a strip club watching practically naked women slither around the stage, I was ready for more. Still, if Sheri wanted to spend some time with Monica and her girlfriend, Tate, I could handle it. When Sheri was ready, I knew I would be. I’d been pretty much ready twenty-four hours a day since the plane touched down.

“Well, if you’re sure,” Sheri said, looking from Monica to Tate then me.

“Fine by me,” I said gamely.

“Oh yeah, it’ll be fun.” Monica, a small, tight-bodied brunette in a short, tight black skirt and clingy halter top, keyed the lock and held the door open. Tate, taller than Monica by half a head and far quieter, nodded in agreement.