“Don’t be sorry. I always have trouble sleeping. And anyway, how do you know I was awake? You were asleep.”
“I could feel you tossing and turning.” His voice softened. “I dreamed about you.” He wrapped both arms around her from behind.
She tried to enjoy it. Just drop all the schemes and worries and enjoy it for a moment: the hot sunshine, the fresh summer breeze slightly cool at this altitude, and Quentin’s protective embrace, almost as if he loved her. Of course, he didn’t love her, and fantasies aside, Natsuko insisted that Sarah keep this in mind.
And then he kissed the top of her head, absently, asking nothing in return. As if he loved her.
It was all for show, she reminded herself. For Erin, who watched them from a few yards away as one man pulled at her hair and another coated it with hairspray.
To distract herself so she wouldn’t cry, Sarah asked Quentin, “What’s the name of my album?”
Quentin said, “Buns of Steel.”
Sarah squinted up at Vulcan high on his pedestal. “I thought the statue was made of iron.”
“Buns of Iron ain’t funny,” he told her with exaggerated patience.
The crew moved away from Erin’s hair. “Your turn, Q,” she called from underneath her enormous coif.
“I’m not going to wear makeup,” Quentin said stubbornly. “We go through this every time. I won’t be facing the camera anyway. I have an idea.”
Erin looked apprehensive, Martin groaned, and Owen cursed.
Quentin released Sarah from his hug and slid off the tailgate. She noticed for the first time that his faded black T-shirt was emblazoned with white words: Will cook for sex.
Sarah said, “You dressed up for the cover shoot, I see.”
He looked down at his shirt, then back up at her. “I can honestly say that I gave it no thought whatsoever. Anyhow, I had some idea I might get naked.”
“Naked?”
He took off his shirt.
“Quentin,” Sarah warned him.
“Bear with me.” The pun struck him, and he laughed so hard that he had difficulty unbuttoning his shorts. Between spasms, he said low enough that only Sarah could hear, “You want some more, don’t you.”
“Who could resist an ego like that?”
He dropped his shorts and boxers together.
“Quentin!” she gasped. “The park’s still open!”
“We got permission to be here,” he reminded her, kicking off his shoes. “Surely they expected something like this. Everybody in Birmingham knows we get naked. It’s art, right?” He pointed to the art school girls for confirmation, and they nodded.
Erin called, “We’ve been arrested for public indecency so many times—”
Quentin finished, “We should set up the Jefferson County court system to debit our account.” He walked over to the photographers, who moved back ever so slightly. He pointed and framed with his hands, explaining his vision. Erin, Owen, and Martin went to sit on the retaining wall.
Then Quentin, with his back to Sarah and the photographers, struck a pose exactly like Vulcan, one arm raised to the sky. Sarah understood the picture now: Quentin as Vulcan in the foreground, his bandmates behind him on the wall, and the real Vulcan above them and in the background. The cameras flashed, and a ring of spectators began to form.
After a few minutes, Quentin relaxed and motioned to Owen. The two of them came toward the truck, Quentin still naked. They opened the doors and rummaged in the cab.
Now that Martin was at a safe distance, Rachel had joined Sarah on the tailgate. As Quentin and Owen found what they wanted in the truck and walked by again, Rachel commented in her demure voice, “You do get used to it.”
Sarah doubted this.
Quentin slid his boxers from the tailgate as he passed—pink boxers printed with little red hearts and the words Kiss me. He pulled them on and sat by Erin on the wall.
Now Owen stripped amid murmurs from the crowd. When he took the Vulcan pose, he held up one drumstick like Vulcan’s spear.
As the cameras quietly snapped, Sarah looked at Rachel beside her. Rachel’s gaze was fixed on Martin.
Sarah said conversationally, “I know Martin’s thirty-one, but when I first saw him without his glasses as we drove up, I thought Erin had acquired a twenty-one-year-old boy toy.” Sarah didn’t add that she’d been alarmed at first. Alarmed for her plan to make Erin jealous, and excited at her new prospects with Quentin if Erin were otherwise occupied and out of the picture. And then she’d realized it was Martin.
Rachel said, “He looks young because he’s lost so much weight.”
“That, too,” Sarah admitted. She went on cheerfully, “But I’d never noticed that he has dark blond hair, or handsome dark eyes. The glasses overwhelm him.”
“He can’t see a foot in front of his face without them,” Rachel told her, nodding slowly. “That’s why he has them off. He knew I’d be here. He doesn’t want to see me looking at him.”
What Sarah had read as Rachel’s reserve, she now realized was profound sadness. She said quietly, “With your experience, I could put in a good word and get you a job doing publicity for another group signed with Manhattan Music. Get you away from here.”
“Thanks.” Rachel kept her eyes on Martin, who sat beside Erin on the wall, zoning out. “I might take you up on that. But not yet. I’m not quite through here yet.”
Owen relaxed his pose. Quentin asked the crowd, “Which one looks better, me or Owen?”
Erin said, “You look more like Vulcan.”
Quentin craned his neck to look backward and up at the statue. “I’m not sure how to take that.”
Erin said, “Uh. You’re shorter. In height?”
Owen asked, “Well, which one do you prefer?”
“We won’t see your front in the photo, right?” Erin asked. “Because all I’m getting is the front, if you know what I mean.”
Sarah predicted that they’d ask Erin to pronounce judgment on the front view next. Then there would be a fight, wooden beams, and stitches.
“Okay, that’s it,” Sarah called, walking toward them. “Wrap this up and put your clothes back on.” Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a local news van setting up in the parking lot.
“This is great publicity,” Quentin told her through his teeth.
“If you get arrested tonight,” Sarah pointed out, “you might not make the album deadline tomorrow.”
Owen dove for his clothes.
“It’s still not quite right,” Quentin said. “Martin, you want to try it with a guitar pick? Is that insulting? No, a guitar!”
“That’s okay,” Martin said. He looked toward Rachel, then looked away. “I’m not in the mood.”
“Well, I’m going to try one more time,” Quentin said.
As Owen put his clothes on and sat down, Quentin stripped. Then, cocking his head and looking up at the statue, Quentin slipped his ancient deck shoes back on because Vulcan wore Roman sandals. He pulled his T-shirt back on because Vulcan wore a smithy apron. He held the microphone he’d fished from his truck like Vulcan’s spear. Then he resumed the pose, butt still bare to the warm sun and the mountaintop breeze.
“What are the rest of us supposed to do?” Erin called to no one in particular. “Get an eyeful?” She ogled Quentin. “Just sit here and look pretty?” She smiled sweetly for the camera.
“Shield your eyes,” Owen suggested. He and Martin shielded their eyes while Erin continued to look pretty. The camera flashed, and Sarah knew that this was the album cover.
The photographers kept working, capturing the scene from every possible angle with every available light setting. Sarah sat back down on the tailgate of the truck, next to Rachel. She’d known Rachel only a few days, but she felt for her. She put her arm around her.
“I was right to break up with Martin,” Rachel whispered.
“Of course you were,” Sarah said. “You couldn’t stay with an addict. You owed that to yourself.”
/> Rachel’s eyes widened. “How long have you known?”
“Since I got here.”
Rachel sighed. “I don’t know what to do anymore.”
“He needs to go to rehab, plain and simple.”
“But Quentin says, and I know it’s true, that Erin and Owen will kick him out of the band if they find out. Then he’ll think he has nothing to live for. That’s what will happen if we do an intervention. Quentin says we just have to wait for Martin to make the call. Then we can invent an excuse for Erin and Owen and get him the help he needs in secret. But what if Martin never makes that call, or makes it too late?”
Sarah rubbed her hand soothingly across Rachel’s back. “Don’t give up on Martin yet. I think you should hang tight, wait and see, because the band can’t go on like this much longer. Something’s going to give. Can’t you feel it?” She glanced at Rachel’s placid face hiding such sadness. “No, you can’t feel anything but Martin.” She glanced at Quentin’s bare butt. “And they all look relaxed enough. But trust me. I can feel it. Something’s about to happen.”
The photographers finished with Quentin and switched their attention to Erin, who stood on the wall and let a large fan blow her skirt up like Marilyn Monroe for the back cover of the album. Quentin shuffled over to Sarah. He was still bare from the waist down but for the deck shoes. Rachel wisely went to sit in the BMW. The show was over.
Sarah would have to leave soon, too, and she couldn’t stand the thought of spending hours and hours more fantasizing about Quentin without some promise of fruition. She said, “About this morning.”
He said quickly, “Please don’t give me a hard-on while I’m naked in public.”
“Put. Your. Clothes. On.”
He slid the Kiss me boxers from the tailgate and pulled them on. Over at the wall, the other Cheatin’ Hearts applauded. “Put it on, Q!” they called.
Sarah asked, “Did your sisters give you those boxers?”
“How’d you know?” He pulled on his shorts.
Sarah eyed the Will cook for sex T-shirt. “Where’d you get that shirt?”
“Erin, I think. Women give me weird clothes.”
“Because you wear them,” Sarah laughed. “They think it’s funny that you actually wear them.”
“Where else am I supposed to get my clothes?”
“From the store?”
“I don’t shop,” he said simply. “Now. About this morning.” He stepped closer to her and held both her hands in his. “I want to try it again and see if I can do better this time. But we’re recording until late tonight.”
“I’m staying late at the office, too.”
“Then let’s make a date for tomorrow morning.”
“It’s time to switch,” she said. “Let me see if I can do a better job than you.”
He stared at her, but not with the raw want she expected. There was desire, but also mature concern, as if she’d just propositioned her high school track coach.
“This gives you pause,” she said.
He shook his head. “I can’t let you do that. I promised you from the start that we wouldn’t have sex. If you make me come, I may have to break my promise. I’ll make you come again. Let me tell you what I’m going to do.”
He leaned down and whispered the dirtiest thing she’d ever heard in her life, then continued to detail where he would put his tongue. She watched Erin and the others sitting on the wall, talking together, oblivious, while Quentin turned her nipples hard and sparked a pulse between her legs just by whispering in her ear.
She said, “We’ll see.”
She came in so late from the office that he was already in bed. Disrobing, she slid into the luxurious sheets beside him. She curled up against him, her breasts to his back, her mound to his buttocks, and her arm around his warm chest.
And couldn’t sleep. He was comatose and he still made her want him just by existing, naked. Her center burned so brightly that when she finally drifted off and awoke seemingly moments later in the empty bed in the sunlit room, she was sore. She wondered if he’d touched her in the night.
While she listened to his shower hiss, she brushed her hair, then pulled on a pair of see-through white lace panties and Quentin’s long-sleeved white shirt from the closet. She still wore the emerald necklace.
The shower shut off. She balled up the sheets in both fists in anticipation. Then, remembering Erin’s interruption the morning before, she dashed across the room and locked the bedroom door. She skidded back onto the bed just as he came out of the bathroom.
Wearing a towel around his waist.
Before she could inquire about this newfound and, in her opinion, extremely unfortunate modesty, he stopped by the dresser and told her, “No. I knew you’d do this. I already said no to this. I’ll make you again.”
“It’s Quentin two, Sarah zero,” she complained.
“Or the other way around.”
“Either way, I want to even the score.” She went to him and led him by the hand to the bed, settling him beside her against the headboard. “If you were my boyfriend, you’d want this.”
He laughed. “If you were like most of the girlfriends I’ve had, I’d be begging you to, and you’d say no.”
“I’m not your girlfriend.”
“I wish you were.” He touched his callused thumb softly to her lips. He tucked her hair behind one ear, then behind the other, in the sweetest gesture, as if he really cared about her.
She grabbed his hand and wailed, “I can’t believe I’m sitting half-naked on this bed, trying to convince a man to let me give him a hand job!”
He opened the shirt she wore and peered inside at her breast as if examining an engine before purchasing a truck. He closed the shirt again. “Me, neither. But I’ve told you. Do that to me, and I’m not going to be able to stop myself. And we decided that’s not a good idea. Because of Erin.”
His mention of Erin should have stopped Sarah cold. He was reminding her that though Sarah might be a fun plaything to toy with for a while, it was Erin he loved. But Sarah had crossed over to a place where she wanted to be Quentin’s plaything. She couldn’t imagine getting through the rest of this day without taking action. What drove her was mostly lust, but part revenge for Quentin seeing her vulnerable in the shower the morning before, and that night in the chair. And part selfless joy at giving pleasure to her handsome friend.
She said lightly, “I thought you liked games.”
“This isn’t a game. It may have started out that way, but . . . ”
“That’s the problem.” She slapped away his hands so she could open the towel around his waist. “We’ll make it back into a game. I don’t have a lot of experience.” This was the truth, but she hoped he’d think she was being coy. “You can help me with my technique. Tell me how I’m doing on a scale of one to ten, with one being painful and ten being about to come.”
Before he could protest again, she put both hands around his swollen cock.
He gasped, and swore, and swore again. “Sarah.”
She used her hands like she wanted to use her center. She slicked her thumb across the fluid at his tip, then gripped him and slid up and down his length. After several minutes of silence but for his breathing, she stopped and looked at his face.
His dark green eyes watched her with a combination of disbelief and horror, which almost made her laugh. But he didn’t argue anymore.
She said, “Number, please.”
“Ten,” he said.
There were several more minutes of silence as she playfully circled the swollen head of his cock with her thumb. She said, “Number every few seconds, please, so I can perfect my technique.”
“Ten,” he said.
She stroked slowly down one side. Then said softly to remind him, “Quentin.”
“Ten,” he said.
She stroked slowly up the other side.
“Ten,” he said.
“It can’t be ten all the time,” she scolded him. She s
lid one hand across his chest, over his heart, to enjoy the rapid rhythm. She gripped him harder with the other hand and stroked more quickly.
“Ah.” He laughed. “Eleven.” Then, “Ouch, three.” Then, “Eleven. Sarah, please don’t make me.”
His heart raced, and she was as aroused as if he were the one pleasuring her. She leaned over him, her lips brushing his lips. “Tit for tat,” she said, and pumped him hard again.
His hands were in her hair, pulling her, pressing her mouth to his mouth so forcefully that she was frightened, fleetingly. She took back control by stopping.
He broke away from her to say in agony, “Sarah!”
She gave him what he needed, as he had given it to her. She didn’t stop again until his come covered her belly and his grip on her hair slowly relaxed.
He watched his beautiful pink-haired girl slide her hands off his still-erect cock and kiss her way down in that direction, then slowly back up his stomach toward his face, the emerald necklace sliding cold across his skin and making him flinch. All he could think was, Oh no.
She kissed his neck, his chin, his mouth, and looked into his eyes with her big, dark eyes. “Did I do it right?” she asked, disappointed.
He nodded slowly.
“I guess I’ve never seen you speechless before. Is it a good thing or a bad thing?”
He shook his head, because that’s all he could manage.
She sat back on her heels. Her shirt—that is, his shirt—fell open to expose tempting white lace panties, flat belly, beautiful breasts. “This is not the response I was expecting,” she said, annoyed now. “I expected unmitigated jubilance.”
He began, “What does that mean, unmit—”
Clearly disgusted, she disappeared into the bathroom. He heard the water running briefly, and she returned naked. “Is there a gym somewhere in this house?” she asked without looking at him as she rummaged in the dresser drawer he’d cleared out for her.
“Yeah,” he said. “There’s a bowling alley, too.”
She turned around to look at him as she pulled a sports bra over her breasts. “Really? Where?”
“Not sure.”
She stamped her bare foot impatiently. “Well, where’s the gym?”