Friends With Partial Benefits (15 page)

Victoria said, "Slide together. I want you both in my mouth at the same time."

Austin and Steve looked at her skeptically.

"Trust me. You won’t be disappointed."

The guys didn’t look at each other as they spread their legs apart and moved together until their knees were touching, but they were still too far apart.

Victoria frowned. "One of you is going to have to put your legs over the other. Sorry, I’m new at this and..."

Austin looked at her, alarmed. "Now, wait. I’m not—"

He stopped talking when Victoria leaned down and devoured him with her mouth. Shutting his eyes tight, he groaned. With her mouth still occupied, she reached over and grabbed Steve’s erection. Pulling her mouth off Austin, she moved it to Steve's manhood and gave him a preview of what was to come.

Victoria pulled her head up to look at one, then the other. "I’ll keep going, but only if you move closer together."

They never moved faster in their lives.

For the next forty-five minutes, Victoria experimented with her two friends as she tried to fit two things in various places originally designed for just one. Some of the things they tried worked better than others.

When they were finally finished, Austin and Steve scooted away from each other to the edge of the sofa pieces, appearing like they felt strange about what had just happened as they avoided eye contact with one another. Victoria moved a step away and wore a huge, satisfied smile as she slumped to her knees on the floor. She paused a moment to catch her breath while staring at the carpet. She ran her tongue around her lips then glanced up at their tight bodies. "You guys want to go for a swim?"

The next day, Rob left Jillian's house early to spend the day with Laura. Waking around 10:30, Brian went for a swim. Jillian got up soon after and sat out by the pool. She made Brian pancakes from a mix, but she did follow his griddle tips, and they weren’t bad at all. They ate the cakes while sitting side-by-side on the lounge chairs, and she stole a few glances at his bare chest and legs as they spoke.

"I have this dinner party coming up soon, and I want to make a special dessert. You have any ideas?" Jillian asked.

"I make a mean lemon meringue pie. I use, like, triple the egg whites so it ends up being this giant meringue layer on top."

She shook her head no, since egg whites kind of made her want to vomit. It was something about the texture.

"How about chocolate éclairs? They're a pain in the ass to make, but they’re good," he said.

"I was thinking about more of a cake."

After pausing to think for a moment, his eyes widened. "I make this cake. It’s kind of my own personal creation. I put it together from a couple different recipes. It’s like a chocolate mousse ganache cake."

Jillian’s face lit up at the thought of chocolate and the impressive sound of the name. "It sounds good, but is it hard to make?"

"It’s really pretty easy."

"Do you make the cake from scratch like your pancakes, because that—"

"No way. Cake from scratch usually tastes like crap. I use a mix."

Jillian smiled and was on board as he continued, "You whip half the cream and fold cooled melted chocolate into it. Then you heat up the rest of the cream and melt semi-sweet chocolate into that, while stirring it constantly, until it turns into, like, this silky, rich mixture. Then you just pour it over the top."

She looked at him, confused. "How, exactly, do you 'fold' something?"

"If you want, we could go to the store, get everything, and I could show you how to make one today. Then you could easily knock it out by yourself when you need to." She gave him a broad smile.

When they returned from the grocery store, Jillian prepared the cake mix as Brian sat on a stool at the kitchen island, watching her. She glanced up from the bowl. "So, who’s your favorite men’s tennis player—Federer?"

"I, uh, really don’t like any of the recent players. They’re all baseliners, and they hit these 140 mile-per-hour serves that no one can return. All the points are either aces or forty-shot-long, incredibly boring rallies. The pro game has changed so much. There are no true rivalries." She nodded in complete agreement, and he kept at it. "They all hang back and just hit the ball as hard as they can. They hardly ever take chances," he said, looking at her. "They’re all a bunch of pussies. I say take a chance and get your ass to the net once in a while."

"You are exactly right. So who’s your favorite player, all-time?"

"You’re going to think I’m a nerd, or something." He began fooling with the napkin holder in front of him. "I’m a McEnroe fan all the way."

She gasped. "I love him! He’s the reason I started playing."

"Me, too!"

She looked at him, confused. "But wait, you weren’t even born yet when McEnroe was playing."

"I was a toddler for some of his comebacks, but my father was a huge fan, and he had video tapes of all the big matches." He looked away, thinking, then said, "My favorite is the Borg-McEnroe U.S. Open final of—"

"1980," they said in unison and shared another smile. Jillian moved a half-step closer to him.

"I think I still have a few old matches on grainy videotape. Do you remember that match at Wimbledon that same year?" she asked.

"Yeah. Mac saved five match points before he finally lost. Great match." Staring down at the floor, he looked to be replaying the memory in his mind.

"I remember that."

He shook his head, smiling. "Freaking Johnny Mac. He changed tennis forever."

After they came down from their Johnny Mac high, Jillian put the cake in the oven, and when it was done and had cooled, Brian walked her through the preparations of the simple chocolate mousse. He instructed her to cut each round cake layer in half to create four thin layers, then watched as she placed the first layer on the cake plate, followed by a third of the mousse, another layer, more mousse, still one more cake layer, mousse, and then the final cake layer on top. The cake stood about nine inches high when they were done. Next, he showed her how to make a double boiler out of a metal bowl and a small saucepan, and he watched as she heated the cream while stirring it constantly. When it started to get warm, he instructed her to add the semi-sweet chocolate.

As Jillian continued stirring the mixture in the bowl, she began to frown. "I think I must have done something wrong."

"Just keep stirring," he said, "When you make ganache, before the chocolate and cream really mix, it’s supposed to look like a disaster."

She kept on mixing and just as fast as it started to look really horrible, with the different shades of white, brown, and chunks of chocolate all fighting against each other, it came together into the dark chocolate silk, like he promised.

She smiled at him, pleased.

Grinning proudly, he glanced at her face. "You see? Now take it off the heat."

Jillian removed the pot from the burner, and he told her to taste it. She reached in with a finger, tasted it, and smiled. She presented her finger to him, he swiped a bit off with his finger, tasted it, and then nodded. They shared another brief, passionate, middle-school moment as they stared at each other for a little too long.

Then Brian cleared his throat. "We’d better get that on the cake before it cools too much."

He walked her through pouring it and spreading it evenly over the cake. As she poured it, they both drifted away momentarily, somewhere wearing less clothing and pouring the chocolate over something more fun—like each other. She snapped out of it first, and when he finally did, he helped her smooth the ganache over the cake by steadying her hand as he looked over her shoulder, their bodies pressed together. When they were done, the cake looked magnificent, and they put it into the refrigerator to set.

Brian looked into her eyes. "Do you want to, uh—"

"What?" Jillian asked, looking at him anxiously with her lips slightly parted.

"Hit some balls?"

She beamed. "See you out there in two minutes."

They both rushed upstairs as if the conversation had gone more like,
We’ve only got about an hour. Do you want to get naked and do it?
They each were down to underwear seconds after entering their separate rooms. Jillian decided to change her panties to something a little sexier, since they would be on display—at least partially—when she bent over to retrieve balls from the court. And maybe she planned on doing a little more of that than was actually necessary.

Once they were on the court, tennis became this intense sensual experience for both of them. It was adorable in a somewhat disturbingly lame way. It really was their sex replacement. They both began to grunt during some key shots, almost to the point where someone only listening might think the on-court couple was really having some mind-blowing sex.

Brian took the first set, and they were tied at six-all in the second. He did spot her panties on several occasions, and more blood had collected in his groin than was really needed at the time. Jillian was wet almost the entire match, a combination of the feeling of the sexy underwear against her skin, along with her proximity to the guy she was at the very least incredibly attracted to, if not smitten with completely.

The tiebreak to decide the second set was long and grueling, and it was the climax of the match in more ways than one. In a tennis tiebreak, the player who serves first in the tiebreak serves once, and then the players alternate, with each serving twice. The first player to get seven points wins, as long as he/she wins by at least two points. Brian and Jillian traded points all the way up until they were tied at sixteen points each, which is equivalent to playing nearly six full games of tennis. When Jillian called the score, they both stopped and looked at each other.

She said what they were both thinking: "This is exactly that Borg-McEnroe 1980 Wimbledon fourth set tiebreak."

He nodded. "And I’m McEnroe."

"Go ahead, be McEnroe. He may have won the tiebreak, but he eventually lost the match."

While McEnroe did win his memorable tiebreak 18–16, Jillian and Brian’s didn’t end in the same way. They continued trading points up to twenty-all, and by any measure, it was a long one. Not as long as the 70-68 record-smashing tiebreak at the 2010 Wimbledon championships between Isner and Mahut. Those two lunatics played for eleven hours over a three-day span and neither seemed to play aggressively enough to win. At times, both Isner and Mahut looked to be playing to set the record or—at the very least—playing to not lose, instead of to win. Isner won and went on to be crushed in his next match due, of course, to exhaustion.

Unlike Isner and Mahut, Brian and Jillian were both playing aggressively and taking chances, even though they were exhausted and sluggish between points. Brian had six opportunities to win the match, but each time, Jillian was able to erase the set point with a tough shot, a lucky bounce, or an error on his part. She didn’t have a set point opportunity until she went up 21–20. That's when Brian hit a shot into the net.

Serving her first set point, she held her head high as she looked at him. "Don’t get discouraged because you blew all those match points, but I’m going to put you away right here. You had your chances, but this is getting ridiculous."

Brian glared at her, breathing through his mouth. He was exhausted, but he mustered the energy to smirk and say, "Bring it."

Jillian blasted a serve to his forehand, and he hit a good, deep approach shot, then rushed to the net. She drove a shot down the line to his forehand. Brian dove, barely got his racquet on the ball, and hit a brilliant touch drop volley. He ended up splayed out flat on the court.

Rushing the net, she stuck her racquet forward and stretched with everything she had, without looking. She caught the ball on the edge of her racquet, apparently just before the second bounce, and it flew over the net for a winner. He watched as she hit the shot, but he was partially-blocked by the net. It seemed like the ball might have bounced twice before she hit it, but he wasn’t certain.

She looked at him, breathless. "I’m not sure I got it, did you see?"

"Nice shot. It was clean." Too exhausted to continue, he rolled over, pulled his legs toward his chest, and looked at the scrapes on his knees while struggling to catch his breath.

She rushed to his side of the net. "Your get was incredible—like a young Boris Becker. Are you okay?"

"I’m fine," he said as he slowly got to his feet.

Jillian trailed behind while he limped slightly to the bench, and they rested there for a few minutes in a sort of pseudo postcoital, spent bliss. Then they looked at each other with the same "I-can’t-do-it-anymore" look.

She sighed. "We’ll have to finish this another time."

Glancing over at her, he simply nodded.

She took a sip of water as her eyes lingered on his muscular legs. "Um, what are you doing later?"

"Nothing. I think."