Little Brats: Taboo A-Z Volume 1: (Forbidden Taboo Erotica) (Little Brats Boxed Sets) (6 page)

“I—”  Jim was about to deny it and stopped.  “I know how it makes you feel.  I didn’t want to make you—”  He shrugged, searching for the word.  “Uncomfortable?”

She raised her eyes to meet his and Jim felt an urge kiss her perfect little mouth in a way he never had before—he wanted to smear her pale pink lip gloss over her face and grind his lips into hers until she gasped.  But he knew better. 

Still, she was so naturally beautiful, her eyes like blue glass as they searched his face for something, her cheeks already slightly pink at the mention of what she termed “naughty stuff.”  It was an endearing term, and she was dear to him, but their short courtship and just ten-month marriage had him wondering if his appetite had already changed.  Maybe that was what all the erotica writing was about, his craving for another flavor, a different color, something spicy with his sweet. 

“I really don’t want to have any part of it, Jim.”  She looked up, blinking at him.  “Don’t you understand that?”

“Come on, Rach…”  He hugged her shoulders but she shrugged him off. 

“No.”  She took a step back, frowning.  “It’s not okay with me.  I don’t like that you did it, I don’t like that you hid it from me.  I just don’t like it.  You know, Brian never would’ve done anything like this.  Never.”

He didn’t say anything about her reference to her perfect ex-husband.  Sometimes he wondered why she’d ever divorced him in the first place.  But of course he knew—Brian Davis had left her for another woman, a dancer.  Someone exotic.  More exciting, he imagined.  But he wasn’t going to tell her that. 

“Please.  Listen, we’ve got to go in about half hour,”  he admitted, looking at his watch.  “We need to be there by six.”

“You need to be there. 
I’m
not going anywhere.”  She didn’t even look at him as she passed, and he heard her climbing the stairs, pausing to talk to Christa.  He thought of her reading the card and poured himself another glass of wine.  He lifted his glass to the hamster cage. 

“Here’s lookin’ at you, Taffy,”  he said, drinking it and wishing it was a shot of whiskey.  He tapped on the glass, and the hamster yawned, showing its long teeth before turning and snuggling back into the little nest it had made for itself in the cedar. 

When he went upstairs to ask her once more to come with him, he found her in the bathroom with the door locked and the tub running.  On their bed, the card had been ripped into tiny pieces and the lingerie he’d left out had been shredded with a pair of scissors.  The dress remained untouched.

Jim left it all, straightening his tie in the full-length mirror on the back of their bedroom door before heading out.  He stopped at the bathroom, knocking gently.  He noticed Christa’s light still on and wondered why she hadn’t left for Ashley’s yet.  Probably still chatting on her cell phone.

“Rach? I’m leaving.  Aren’t you at least going to tell me to break a leg?”

No answer.  He sighed, turning to go, and then heard her call, “I hope you actually do!” 

The play was such a success, he stayed far too long drinking at the after-party backstage, so long he was afraid he might get arrested for drunk driving on the way home. 
Although that might be preferable to facing Rachel,
he mused, opening the driver’s side door of his Audi and sliding in.  The car still retained the heat of the day—spring in Texas, he’d discovered in the past ten months, was
hot
, especially for a man used to the northern temperatures of New England. 

He’d grown up in Massachusetts, which was where he’d met his future wife at a local coffee house, while he was spending the summer teaching college courses and she was visiting relatives.  It turned out she’d been licking her wounds after her marriage breakup, and the courtship had been a whirlwind affair.  He’d fallen for her hard, so hard he’d given up his teaching position, found work doing editing from home, and had married her and moved to Texas, all without ever even meeting her teenage daughter or seeing their new home. 

Christa had been shocked when she arrived home from a summer at her father’s in California to find a new man living in her house.  He couldn’t blame the kid.  He could hardly believe it himself.  Both his mother and his sister had railed against his decision, but he wouldn’t hear any of it.  Rachel was the one.  He’d been looking for someone like her his whole life, had remained unmarried, if not unattached, waiting for the right woman to walk into his life, and she finally had.  The first time he saw her, that china doll face, her blonde hair, like an angel, the sweetest vision of his life, he just knew. 

And then he’d met his new stepdaughter. 

Jim quickly inserted the key so he could turn on the air conditioning.  Images from the play he’d written soon after meeting his new stepdaughter ran through his head on a loop, all bright and sultry and hot.  He’d written a good play, and the audience had shown their appreciation with two curtain calls, where a Lolita-type affair ended rather happily, instead of in tragedy, although the girl in question was, of course, of legal age. 
Lolita couldn’t be published in today’s politically correct climate,
he thought, flipping the vent up so it blew directly on his flushed face.  He was drunk.  Far too drunk to drive. 

The thought of climbing into the backseat and sleeping it off occurred to him just at the same moment that Christa’s tousled blond head popped up between the seats behind him, like something from a horror movie.  He yelped—giving himself credit for not screaming outright like a girl—and twisted around to look at her. 

“What in the hell are you doing here?”

She rubbed her sleepy eyes and yawned.  “I came to see your play.”

“How did you—?”  But of course he knew.  His argument with Rachel hadn’t been quiet.  Christa had overheard them.  “…get here?”  He finished his sentence differently than it had started out, watching, bemused, as Christa began to climb through the seats to the front.  She tossed a pair of heels over first and then slid a slender, pale thigh through the narrow opening between the seats, wiggling her way through, climbing over the console.

“Ashley came with me.”  Christa rolled her eyes at his shocked expression, settling herself into the passenger seat.  “Don’t worry I didn’t tell her it was
your
play.  I told her I was meeting a boy.”  Christa turned toward him in the dimness, the circle of a streetlight making her eyes gleam.  “She thought it was
totally
perverted, by the way.”

Jim felt heat creeping into his cheeks.  “And what did you think?”

“I thought it was fucking hot.”  She grinned, propping her bare foot up on the seat, fully facing him now, unladylike in her dress, letting her slim thighs part, giving him a view of her panties.  The dress was an elegant little black number, but her panties were plain white cotton.  Her mother bought them for her, he knew.  They were exactly Rachel’s taste. 

“Christa!”  He was very glad for the darkness, both because of the redness of his face and because of, God help him, the erection beginning to tent his trousers. 

“What?”  She laughed as he reached for the gearshift, making the car lurch as he pulled out of the parking lot.  “Isn’t that what you wanted? For people to get off? That girl went around in her underwear for half the play! Why did you name her Crystal?”

“I liked the name.”  Jim shifted his Audi into a higher gear as he merged onto the highway.  He liked driving a stick-shift, liked the control it gave him.  He was careful to observe all posted speed limits. 

“Uh-huh.”  Christa laughed again, soft and knowing.  She fished her purse from the back, and Jim couldn’t help glancing over as she did, her skirt riding high up her thighs, revealing the tender, rounded curve of her ass under those cotton panties, the stretch of her tendons behind the knee, bare pink-painted toes curled against the dashboard as she reached and panted, searching the backseat. 

“Found it!”  she announced, plopping back into her seat, both feet up on the dash now.  “Sorry I didn’t tell you I was coming, but I felt bad when Mom said she wouldn’t.  I thought one of us should show up and support you.”

“Well…”  How could he fault her? In fact, he was proud and pleased she’d shown up.  He glanced over as she fished a pack of gum out of her purse, unwrapping two and stuffing them into her mouth.  She crumbled the little foil wrappers and dropped them onto the floor, much to his chagrin.  “Thanks.  You could have let me know you were here.  I would have invited you backstage.”

“Nah.”  Christa blew a quick bubble and snapped her gum, flipping on the radio.  “Ashley wanted to go to the new teen nightclub in Houston, but I told her I was meeting someone, so I made her go without me.”  She blew another bubble, bigger, held it longer this time, her pink tongue searching, stabbing through the sticky mass and popping it as she turned the radio dial.  “Besides, I wanted to surprise you.”

“Well, you sure did.”  His knack for understatement had never been so pronounced. 

She grinned, settling on some pop station he didn’t recognize, her sideways look both knowing and a little shy.  “The good kind?”

“Yes, sweetheart.”  He reached over to pat her hand, which was resting on the rise of her pale knee, hoping it came across as a fatherly sort of thing, rather than the lecherous creeper he was feeling like.  The argument going on in his head was one any psychiatrist worth their degree would love to be privy to.  He was thinking thoughts he knew he shouldn’t let himself ponder.  He was too drunk, too high on the night’s performance, and still too dejected by his wife’s rejection, to keep his thoughts at bay tonight.  “It’s probably not the sort of play your mother would want you watching, but I appreciate the support.  I truly do.”

“Meh.”  His stepdaughter rolled her eyes, tapping her feet in time to the song’s beat on the dash.  “We both know she’s a prude.”

“Christa…”  He admonished her, but he felt her words more than heard them, a stab in his gut.  Rachel hadn’t always been like that, he reasoned.  When they’d met, she’d been a little reserved, yes, had liked to make love (and called it making love, not having sex, never “fucking”) in the dark.  So she always liked him on top, so what? It felt just as good that way, didn’t it?

When had they stopped having sex? He couldn’t remember.  Three months ago? Four?
Just before I’d sold my play,
he thought.  Just before he’d begun to really take notice of his stepdaughter prancing around the house in sheer baby doll nighties, undressing with her door open, teasing him about not shaving by rubbing her cheek against his in the morning like a cat looking for attention. 

“Not like Ashley’s mom.”  Christa glanced over at him, smirking, and then repeated her earlier performance, mimicking Ashley’s lusty mother.  “
Ohhhh yeah, baby, stick that big fucking dick in me! Pound my pussy! Do it hard, make me feel it! Make me come all over your
—”

“Christa!”  His cock was throbbing.  Thank God their street was a dead-end road with few streetlights.  He turned down it, seeking an even deeper darkness. 

“Oh come on, Dad.”  She laughed, a light, breathy sound.  “Those two were practically fucking on stage.  They talked dirtier than that.  And
you wrote about it
.”

He couldn’t deny it.  “It was an adult play.  You really shouldn’t have come.”

“I’m an adult.”