Friends Wanting Benefits (25 page)

That day, when she spotted them from the second floor balcony off their bedroom, she had watched for a little longer than she’d care to admit. Maybe that was because all her erotic romance writing had left her desensitized to sex, at least a little. At first, it didn’t seem real; it was as if she was visualizing a scene for a book, not watching her husband cheat on her.

When she finally came back to earth, Jillian left the house and went to the side of the pool. She snuck up on the adulterous couple and stood there until the woman being serviced noticed they had an audience. The woman tapped George on the shoulder to get his attention. When George turned around, he had a guilty look on his face that Jillian would never forget. Jillian wouldn’t let the naked woman back in the house to get her clothes. She simply threw the clothes out the door. The woman was forced to get dressed outside and shamefully leave through the back gate. George went into the house, got dressed, and left through the front door. It was the last time he ever set foot inside.

Jillian didn’t cry that day; instead, she put on a pair of kitchen gloves and retrieved the ring float from the pool. When her attempts to drain the float of air through the valve seemed to be taking too long, she stabbed it ten times with scissors. That could possibly have been overkill, but it did the trick and gave her a much-needed outlet for her rage. She called a company to have the pool drained, scrubbed, and refilled at the cost of fifteen hundred dollars. It was worth it, she thought, because she would never have been able to dip a toe in the pool until every last drop of that contaminated water was replaced.

She imagined what George had been up to all those times she was traveling. What types of women had he explored in and out of the pool? How long had he been screwing around and with how many women? Although Jillian was out of town quite a bit, she had never suspected anything, since George never seemed to be sneaking around, nor was he ever evasive about where he was going or what he had planned. Their sex life was never great or very active, but he seemed to be an attentive and loyal husband—at least, most of the time.

Once she discovered the infidelity, she wanted to know if George had left her with any other little surprises. She went to her doctor for a complete STD panel of tests, and luckily for him, she came back clean. Had George left her with something, she would have cut off his balls, or worse.

Jillian could always come up with stories and had never suffered from long bouts of writer’s block in the past. But lately her male characters ended up mangled in some horrible accident, diseased, or unable to perform. She could not focus. Even though she had no personal interest in the lifestyle, she pitched an idea for an all-female, lesbian romance novel, but her publisher declined. Maybe she would try to write in another genre, she thought, but this romance stuff used to come so easily to her.

She was sitting on four unfinished manuscripts. Once Jillian found a story heading down the wrong path, she would start another, but that technique didn’t seem to be working for her, either. Since the divorce, she found herself unable to finish a novel, and she was beginning to think that maybe what she needed was a complete break from writing.

She couldn’t blame George completely, because ever since her first bestseller, she definitely was less attentive to him than she needed to be. It was probably at least ten percent her fault, although she never admitted that to him. Even so, did he really need to screw other women in their house, especially in their pool? Couldn’t he have gotten a divorce first or at the very least done it in a hotel or something? What if their son, Rob, currently attending college in Georgia, had come home to catch his father doing what he was doing with another woman in broad daylight? Rob would have been devastated.

He’d be home for Spring Break in about six weeks, although Jillian was sure he’d spend nearly all his time with his girlfriend, Laura, who was going to school in Miami. They’d been dating since their junior year of high school, and it looked like these two kids were in love and would be married once they graduated from university.

Even though she knew she wouldn’t see him much while he was home, Jillian looked forward to his visit. She knew her son was the only truly good thing to come out of the marriage.

Jillian grabbed the remote control and changed the channel just in time to catch the Super Bowl as it was ending. She had forgotten it was on. Not that she would have tuned in anyway. She used the Packers’ victory celebration as a distraction from thinking about romance novels or ex-husbands or even men in general, although she did like the way Green Bay’s quarterback filled out his tight football pants. She might be bitter, but she wasn’t dead.

Staring up at the ceiling, she wondered what had brought her to this place in her life. How had she ended up all alone in this big house? What had she done wrong? She glanced back to the screen. When she saw an image of the Steelers locker room filled with nearly naked men, she thought about her best friend, Victoria Wilde. Jillian wondered what she was doing. She checked the time and saw it was still early. Grinning, she wondered why she bothered checking, since even two in the morning would still be early for Victoria. She grabbed the phone and dialed. The phone rang three times, and just as Jillian was about to hang up, she heard the click. After five seconds of complete silence, the sound of soft moaning spilled through the phone.

Jillian listened for a moment. "Victoria?"

"Hello?" Victoria finally replied in a throaty drawl.

"Hey, what are you doing?"

"Oh, uh... not much. I just have a friend over."

"Sorry, I’ll let you go then."

"No, don’t worry about it. I can talk for a few minutes."

Only two blocks away Victoria was sitting on the sofa in her living room, wearing a skintight, cleavage-featuring top. She had just turned thirty-nine but looked much younger, as she was in spectacular shape and dressed like a woman in her late twenties. Her 'friend' wasn’t currently visible at her eye level, but he was nearby.

"So, what’s going on?" Victoria asked.

Jillian sighed and began, "I tried to do some writing tonight, but I’m struggling
again
. I’m just not in a very sexual mood."

"Why don’t you try watching some porn? That always gets me in the mood."

"I don’t have any... porn," Jillian replied, in a voice clearly indicating to anyone paying the least bit of attention that she was taken aback by the suggestion.

Victoria, however, was preoccupied and slumped down low on the sofa, her miniskirt pulled up to her waist. Her twenty-six-year-old friend Austin’s head was buried between her legs. He was extremely busy.

Victoria moaned slightly, "Yeah," in a low voice.

Back in the Grayson home Jillian narrowed her eyes and asked pointedly, "You sure this is a good time?"

"I think the ice melted," Victoria said.

"What?" Jillian asked.

"Sorry, I was speaking to my friend."

"Oh. You sure you can talk?"

"I have at least five minutes."

"Okay…" Jillian said, a little confused.

"You have no porn? Really? Check Rob’s room. I’m sure he has a stash."

"I will not go searching my son’s room for porn," Jillian replied, horrified.

Victoria said a little curtly, "Ice."

"What?"

"Again, sorry I was talking to my, uh, oh…" Victoria exhaled deeply. "Come over here, and you can borrow some of mine."

"No, thanks. I think I’ll just go to sleep."

Jillian heard rustling over the phone as if it had fallen then she could make out a voice say, "Oh, yeah... that feels good."

"Victoria?" She widened her eyes. "Victoria, are you sure I’m not interrupting anything?"

There was no reply.

"Victoria, are you there?"

"Sorry about that," Victoria finally answered.

"Who’s over there? What are you—"

"Oh, yeah. Keep doing exactly that." Victoria moaned. "Jillian, have you ever had anyone perform oral sex on you while sucking an ice cube?"

"What?" Wrinkling her nose, Jillian shook her head. "Ice? No!"

"Well, that would certainly help you write. Oh, my..." After breathing in deeply, Victoria moaned again.

Jillian made a face. "I’m almost afraid to ask. Are you, uh, doing that... right now?"

Victoria exhaled slowly and said languidly, "Yeah, and it’s... amazing!"

"And you’re talking to me?"

"I can multitask," Victoria replied casually.

Jillian’s mouth flew open as she thought about how to proceed.

"So, what else is up?" Victoria asked.

"Should you really be talking to me with some guy doing that to you?"

"Well, I figured I’d be returning the favor soon, and..." Victoria paused to exhale deeply again and continued, "I certainly wouldn't be able to talk to you then."

After Jillian nodded, her face registered mild agreement. "Oh, that makes sense... Wait, no it doesn’t... I’m going to go."

"Oh... yeah, Austin." Victoria paused for a moment. "Jillian, what I meant was when my mouth is full, it'll be really hard to hold a conver—"

"No, no. That part I got," Jillian interrupted. "I think I’m going to go and let you—"

"You should... totally try this. It would clear up that writer’s block issue immediately. When’s the last time someone went down on you?"

Jillian made a sour face. "I’m just going to—"

"I mean, like, really got in there and did a good job with it?"

"Okay, I’m really going to hang up now."

As Jillian hung up the phone, her sick expression morphed into a smile, which eventually transformed to something akin to confused longing. She actually could go for some good oral sex right about now. She stared blankly ahead as she tried to recall the last time anyone did that to her, much less if he did a good job while doing it. She couldn’t remember exactly, but she knew it’d been a long, long, long time.

Rob Grayson was throwing a Super Bowl party in the on-campus suite at Georgia State University that he shared with five other guys. The suite was ordinary, with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a common living area. It featured one extraordinary thing, though. Rob owned the biggest television on campus.

His mother, a bestselling author, had purchased it for him. He never told anyone about the types of books she wrote, because he was totally embarrassed by them. He told people his mother wrote legal thrillers under a pen name. He didn’t want to admit that she wrote about perfect-bodied men and gorgeous women with huge, full, bouncing breasts having mind-blowing sex.

Rob and his best friend, Brian Nash, both college seniors, had lived together with most of the same guys in the same suite since sophomore year. Virtual opposites, the two had been best friends almost from the start. They never shared a room, since they were on different sleep schedules. A morning person, Rob preferred early classes, while Brian enjoyed sleeping in and attending afternoon classes. They spent most of their time together at bars and hanging out.

Another probable factor in their close friendship was that neither had been preoccupied with an on-campus girlfriend during the entire time they had known each other. Rob had a longtime girlfriend back in Florida, and Brian... Well, Brian was shy with women. He’d had a few girlfriends over the years, but none were ever serious or lasted more than a few weeks.

At the height of the Super Bowl party, about thirty people crowded into the living area, watching the game on the seventy-inch high-definition screen. Most were Steelers fans, but a few, including Rob and Brian, cheered on the Packers. After the game, the majority left to hit the local bars, but four of the guys and two girls—a junior named Natalie and her roommate, Cindy—stayed behind.

Brian was a little drunk. He sat on the sofa and watched Natalie and Cindy talking to Rob and another guy from the suite. Natalie was wearing a bulky white sweater and tight gray stretch pants. Her ass looked amazing in those pants. He’d noticed the curve of her backside much earlier, and whenever given the opportunity throughout the night, he stole a quick glance.

Brian had seen Natalie around campus before, but he had never met her. She had been invited by some of the other guys in the suite, but he didn’t know much more about her. He’d heard that she didn’t currently have a boyfriend, but he wasn’t all that interested, since she was a little tall for him and always seemed so full of herself. But now he was beginning to rethink his initial impressions, since she did look spectacular in those pants.

He sipped his beer as he alternated between watching the postgame coverage and the other people in the room, who were trying to coax Natalie into doing something. He wasn't paying close enough attention to know what they were talking about. Natalie rolled her eyes, evidently persuaded, and removed her sweater to reveal a tight camisole underneath. Brian perked up in his seat, since this was now much more exciting than the postgame coverage. Was she going to take off more?