Merriment in the Museum - Book One in the Rock My Socks Off Trilogy (3 page)

Chapter Four

T
HE
L
IVING
M
USEUM OF
the American Rocking Horse was, by contrast, not Jacob’s idea of a good time. His tastes ran to fanciful fonts – not prancing, rococo animals with wild, Victorian-era eyes. But the success of a book on fonts had proved to be a fanciful notion itself; and with Jacob’s handsome jacket-flap photo flapping impotently over stacks of unsold books that were now headed back to the publisher’s warehouse, well-paid magazine features were something he knew he had to get used to again.

So he was forcing himself to spend this Tuesday morning at the museum, which was housed in a huge warehouse along the city’s Pacific frontage.

He was surprised to find that an attendant had to unlock the main display area for him.

‘When is the museum open to the public?’ asked Jacob.

‘Oh, it’s not open to the
public
,’ said the attendant, a fussy little trout-eyed man whose picture, Jacob decided, probably appeared next to the word ‘officious’ in any good illustrated dictionary.

‘That’s an interesting interpretation of the phrase
living museum
, isn’t it?’ Jacob couldn’t help saying. ‘But I’m sure it’s not your fault. It’s just a comment for the curator, really.’

‘
I
am the curator,’ the man responded. ‘No matter what Sylvia Hodgeport says.’

Jacob had no idea who Sylvia Hodgeport was, or why her opinion regarding who was or was not the curator of an obscure, perpetually closed museum should be a controversial one. Fortunately, as Jacob was a feature writer and not an investigative journalist, he felt no obligation to pursue the topic. So he merely nodded.

The airplane-hangar-sized building was immaculately clean. The floor had been polished, the walls had been painted a delicate shade of cream … in short, a beautiful space had been designed to house and display these grotesque creations.

God, they were hideous. They really
might
have been cute, Jacob admitted, had they been the size of mantelpiece ornaments. But, large as life, they made his mind run to firewood rather than feather dusters.

They resembled real horses the way a cupcake decorated by a committee of kindergartners might resemble a slice of bread. The wood of their flesh had been carved here into unwieldy braids, there into an impossible gown or an ostentatious waistcoat, and everywhere into mismatched garlands that hurdled the boundaries of good taste and kept galloping on. Their facial expressions all managed to blend some degree of equine arrogance with a healthy dose of human idiocy.

And so many of them! At floor level … on risers … some even hanging from skyhooks like absurd, repulsive Pegasuses. For the purposes of the assignment, the setup was ideal – down to the fact that everything was extremely well labelled, with a surfeit of historical documentation. There was good lighting, and, thanks to the never-open-to-the-public policy, there were no distractions. It was enough to make Jacob want to either throw up or take a nap.

He sat down on a bench and closed his eyes to reflect. Would he always have been so devoid of interest in an assignment like this, he asked himself, or was it simply that it could not successfully compete for his attention with Normandie’s magnetism? Maybe he was getting too old to divide his enthusiasm efficiently between demanding work and incipient love. And there was no denying that love was what it was – he was certainly old enough to recognise
that
.

He opened his eyes. He shuddered. No, this was not a side effect of love. The rocking horses were simply horrible, and that was that.

By noon, he felt he needed a gallon of coffee and a world full of sunshine to shake him out of the unpleasant combination of nausea and stupor. It was, unfortunately, raining; but he grabbed a latte from the nearest barista and walked briskly in the direction of food. He slipped into a burrito joint he’d noticed in the neighbourhood and sat with his back to the door, testing his reading knowledge of simple Spanish by means of the imported movie posters on the wall.

‘Is this seat taken?’ Normandie had materialised from behind and glided swiftly into the chair across from him.

‘No,’ said Jacob. ‘Is your ass taken?’

‘You took it last night,’ she said. ‘Don’t you remember?’

‘Hmm. Yeah, I thought it looked familiar. Hey, how in the world did you know I was eating lunch here?’

‘I was about to ask you the same question.’

‘Pure serendipity!’ he marvelled.

‘Or maybe I was subconsciously drawn here by your irresistible, masculine pheromones, luring me across Golden Gate Park.’

‘How did your subconscious know the irresistible animal scent was me, and not those Golden Gate Park bison?’

‘I think you’ve showered more recently.’ She leaned across the small Formica table to nuzzle under his arm. ‘Mmm,’ she said approvingly.

He couldn’t pretend that he fully understood her aversion to planned hook-ups. She had warned him at the outset that he shouldn’t rely on her to commit to premeditated dinners, theatre outings, concerts … And yet, she had already established a pattern of casually but consistently showing up in his space and in his life – and she welcomed it when he did the same. And, whenever and practically wherever they coincided, they meshed, coupled, and merged. They had begun to speak openly in the language of partnership, but they lived as if the thread of their relationship were quasi-accidental. Normandie seemed to thrive on a predictable pattern of spontaneity, and Jacob was wise enough not to disrupt or even question that.

‘It seems that we’re always walking down streets,’ he said as they headed toward the LMARH.

‘What else would we walk down – the sides of buildings?’

‘I just mean that so much of our interaction occurs while we’re en route from one place to another. Sometimes it seems we spend almost as much time coming from places and going to places as being places.’

‘I see.’ She thought about this for a minute, while their solid, waterproof shoes went
clomp clomp clomp
along slick cobblestones and skimmed the occasional puddles.

‘I have to admit,’ she finally said, ‘I often find it even more fun to be on my way someplace than to actually be someplace.’

‘You’re kinetic.’

She stopped, took his hand, and pressed her body against his. ‘That’s one of the sweetest things anyone’s ever said to me.’

The light rain poured daintily around them while they kissed.

‘They’re enough to make you puke, aren’t they.’ Though he was very glad of her company for his afternoon session with the rocking horses
–
he would have been glad of just about anyone’s company, with the possible exception of the troutly curator – he took pains to distance himself from the cloyingly precious subjects of his 5,000-word article-in-progress.

‘Remember, Jacob,’ Normandie said valiantly, ‘they were originally made for children.’

‘Quite true,’ he said. ‘I don’t blame the children. Kids just hop on and ride. They can’t be expected to have good aesthetic sensibilities. The important thing,’ he added grudgingly, ‘is that they have fun.’

‘The important thing is that we have fun, too,’ said Normandie, stroking Jacob’s arm. Then she whispered, ‘I forgot to wear panties today.’

He pressed his fingers against the lightweight fabric of her summer skirt, and verified what she’d just told him.

She smirked. ‘And what was that you just said –
hop on and ride
?’ In another moment, she had straddled the largest – and possibly the most hideous – rocking horse in sight, one that had evidently been built to accommodate an entire small family of aesthetically undiscriminating children.

‘Dee!’ Jacob knew that the officious management could walk in at any time.

She looked back at him, with a challenge in her eyes. ‘Hop on and ride,’ was all she said.

It was an offer he could not refuse.

‘Don’t you get turned on by the thrill of possibly getting caught?’ she asked as he snuggled up behind her and the contraption began to jiggle equivocally beneath them.

‘No. Personally, I’m more into the thrill of
not
getting caught. However, I’m turned on enough by your bare cunt on a rocking horse that the getting or not getting caught is incidental.’

While clinging to her waist with one hand, he reached underneath her with the other and nestled his fingers into her wet spot. They would just have to hope that this additional layer of varnish wouldn’t damage the antique finish.

Sensuously, they began to rock, their combined weight easily directing the horse back and forth. Jacob kept two fingers firmly implanted in Normandie’s pussy, and as their bodies travelled to and fro the fingers did the same: a delectable microcosm.

His free arm was wrapped tightly around her, and he could feel her heartbeat reverberating through her entire torso. She was rocking within the rocking – she was evidently using the sculpted saddle horn to generate the friction she needed against her clit. Soon she was coming, her cunt clenching and her firm bottom pressing frantically against his stiff crotch. He wondered how he was going to dismount from the ridiculous vehicle under the burden of such a huge hard-on.

With the grace of a lewd ballerina, Normandie scooted herself 180 degrees, using her slippery, gaping snatch as a fulcrum. Once she was facing him, she unzipped his jeans while Jacob rested his hands on her shoulders. They rocked more slowly now, her ass doing the work. With a glint in her eye, she reached underneath herself to moisten her hand, then stroked him, rocking all the while. She brought him off quietly, directing his spurts of release right onto the summer fabric of her lap. Then she kissed him, as if the mess had been his gift to her.

‘I may have to reconsider my opinions about rocking horses,’ said Jacob.

Chapter Five

A
FTER ANOTHER DAY OF
observing and note-taking at the LMARH – including two delicate hours guiding the efficient but monosyllabic photographer Susan Weedon – Jacob was ready to write the damn article.

On the shores of the galloping Pacific, in the shadow of San Francisco’s most cavalier skyscrapers, lives a curious herd of once-tame horses. Now semi-wild, they have been led to water but show no signs of drinking …

And so on, for 5,000 nauseating words that made Jacob himself feel like drinking. Thank goodness it was the editor back in New York who would have to sift through the dozens of pictures that Susan was likely to turn in. Jacob had conscientiously directed the photographer to the specimens he was planning on writing about, but she had taken each one from six or seven angles, and he really didn’t want to have to look at the results.

He had not had the courage to inspect the big horse that Normandie had tamed with her delicious wetness for any residual stains. And if Susan had noticed any unusual glimmerings through her lens, she hadn’t said anything. But, then again, she would hardly be likely to break her near-total silence to exclaim, ‘Look, Jacob! I think that’s a
sex stain
!’

The door to the lab admitted him silently. Normandie was, as usual, alone here – the department hadn’t been able to grant her an assistant – and Jacob admired her back before announcing his presence. Though she was faced away from him while working at her computer, it excited him to note that her legs were spread apart, that under her desk she flashed the wall from inside her miniskirt. Even if she chanced to be wearing panties – which Jacob was lucky enough to know was a big
if
– he could get into the image of her soft, cotton-clad pussy beaming from between her legs.

Jacob was a man whom many friends and acquaintances admired for his ability to put ideas into words. And yet sometimes he felt that he hid behind the words – or, more accurately, that he used words as a substitute for the vivid emotions he sometimes seemed to lack. But around Normandie, there were times when he felt that it was the words that were lacking and the emotions that were having their day in the sun.

‘I thought you might like lunch.’ Those words would do, for the moment.

She swivelled to greet him, flashing him in the process. Ah, so we’re in lime green panties today, Jacob observed to himself with a twitch in his groin.

‘You look lovely in lime,’ he said.

She looked confused. Her eyes scanned her aqua top and black denim mini. Then the light went on, and a mischievous, hungry smile shone out.

She glided forward on her task chair until she nearly collided with him. ‘Did you really come here for lunch?’ she asked, using a forefinger to tease a line above his belt. ‘Or did you come here, for example, to get your hands on some lime green panties?’

‘Mm,’ said Jacob, nibbling from the base of her throat toward her shoulder. He loved these low-on-the-shoulder summer jerseys.

‘Or perhaps,’ she said, ‘you came here to tweak some nipples.
They’re itching for it today
,’ she confided conspiratorially, directing his hand onto her chest and positioning his fingers.

Their mouths ate each other while he tweaked.

‘Then again,’ Normandie panted, ‘maybe you came here to touch some soft ass.’ She pushed her chair back, hopped out, and grabbed hold of a nearby filing cabinet, jutting her tight-skirted rump his way.

Jacob had hardly ever seen her quite this randy in the middle of the day, and he congratulated himself on having chosen this particular point in the week for dropping by the lab. He immediately gave her the firm but painless swats she craved. He could see her lime panties again, from behind this time, see them moistening before his eyes. He dropped to his knees.

Cotton had never tasted so good. He was eating her pussy right through the panties – sucking, licking, nibbling. She was saturating them with nectar, and the filing cabinet was rattling ridiculously as she shimmied in place, clutching the damn thing.

He wrapped a hand around her waist to seek her clit. The clit finger did her from above, descending from the waistband of the panties, while his mouth continued to dance against her panty-encased cunt. When she pressed her ass against his forehead and brazenly squeegeed a damp, trembling orgasm across his face, Jacob came in his pants like a happy, helpless virgin. She collapsed on top of him, and he felt the oily pleasure of her hot, dripping cunt pulsing onto his sticky trousers.

It was a hot day, and they didn’t mind taking their lunchtime walk without reference to a change of underwear. Normandie whispered that the warm breeze was tickling her moist panties back to dryness, and Jacob could feel his recent splash of come baking onto his boxers. Her hair was a lewd blonde in the afternoon sunlight, and Jacob felt ecstatically dirty to be on post-fuck parade with her, reeking of sex, knowing her neat little lime panties were stained and sagging as her creamy thighs advanced along the sidewalk.

Back at the lab, he gave those panties extra attention before inching them downward, savouring their aroma and their fatigued limpness as he caressed her through, around, and within them. When, at last, she wiggled them impatiently down and off, he claimed them and held them briefly to his face, before placing them lovingly on her desk.

‘Enough with the panties,’ she exclaimed, leaping for his fly and hustling him out of his pants. She sank into the couch, oblivious to the heavy reference books scattered to each side of her, and moved him into position, guiding his cock to where it belonged. Jacob took her cues – and her knees – and, within moments, he was pounding her into the cool vinyl, moving like a corkscrew … until he ultimately popped. In his throes, he wedged the heel of his hand against her mound and pressed, until he felt her inner volcano erupting in response.

‘I want your hands all over my body. Isn’t that crazy?’

They were talking in the lab bathroom, where Jacob had just unzipped. ‘Crazy?’ he said. ‘Why? I mean, it works for me.’

‘It’s crazy because we just fucked thirty minutes ago. I can’t spend all day, every day, naked beneath you, soaking up pleasure with every cell of my body.’

‘Of course not. Sometimes I should be beneath
you.
’

Normandie studied his steady stream of piss. It seemed to soothe, almost hypnotise her. ‘Do you think I’ll lose my grant if I turn in a pair of sex-stained panties instead of a report next month?’

‘I think you should compromise, and turn in a sex-stained report.’

‘Has anyone ever told you that you’re a very attractive pisser?’ she asked.

‘No. Put it in the report.’

But Normandie did resume working, and Jacob sat quietly in her office, making fussy hand-written revisions to the manuscript of his magazine article.

‘What would you do if I discovered a new galaxy?’ she asked, just when he was getting ready to leave.

‘Congratulate you.’

‘Would you feel threatened?’

‘By a galaxy billions of miles away?’

‘By all the attention I’d get.’

‘No. You
should
get attention.’

‘The media might be on my ass 24/7.’

‘For that, the line forms here.’

He stepped forward to kiss her goodbye, then stopped. ‘And what would
you
do if I won a Pulitzer Prize?’

‘Fuck your brains out – same as always. Oh, and maybe we could do some champagne or something.’