Four Bidding For Love (a novel)


Part 18: Sweet Payback (9/8/12)



     Robin complied, and though he tried to avert his gaze, his attention was irresistibly drawn to her soft flesh, which reminded him most powerfully of Aphrodite come to life.
     Even as Robin's large brown eyes widened in astonishment at their predicament, she said, "You've seen boobs before, so there's nothing for either of us to get worked up about."
     "Yes, of course," he replied, but his inability to shift his gaze suggested just the opposite, or at least the likelihood that he'd never seen an equivalent of the rounded perfection which now glowed so invitingly before him.
     "I'd like my shirt, if you don't mind."
     Robin swallowed hard and then nodded, croaking, "I'm so very sorry." Trying to appear unruffled despite her nakedness and Robin's brassiere-entangled hand, Alexia shuffled over to the sofa and her shirt.
     Leaning against the back of the sofa, Alexia faced her young neighbor and said evenly, "Now just slip the straps off my arms, and I'll put on my shirt."
     With their bodies bound in such proximity, Robin's nervousness was palpable as he gently pulled the ensnared straps down her forearms. In the strained silence his gaze shifted to the warm flesh just a few inches from his quivering fingers, and the eighteen months since his college girlfriend had left him weighed most heavily. While it was true he's seen a clothing-free female before, his girlfriend's features had been, well, different; the one similarity seemed to be the firm sweetness of irrepressible youth. In the unspeakable tension of the moment he blurted, "I can't believe you're 31," and instantly regretted it.
     The compliment needed no explanation, and Alexia's "Thank you" was dourly polite; but when the tangle of black lace finally fell to the hardwood floor, her expression softened. Finally freed, Robin bent down to retrieve the bras and handed them to his resplendently half-naked neighbor.
     It was a fittingly useless gesture of politeness, and as she took the entwined intimates she said, "Since you've seen this much already," and then tilted her head to kiss him full on the mouth.
     It was an unexpected and therefore intensely electric embrace, and Alexia ended the kiss with her handsome young neighbor with an ambiguous hesitance.
     "Now be sure to test that toaster before handing over the T-20," she said, and he replied in a faintly automatic voice of strained politeness, "Yes, of course," before enveloping her with a kiss of his own.
     This second kiss was even more unexpected to both participants than the first, and as Alexia wrapped her arms around him she instructed through heated breaths, "Make sure the poster is The Thief of Baghdad."
     Again Robin said, "Of course," and then pressed past his neighbor's crumbling reluctance to renew their kiss. Yes, he was very much attracted to Kylie, but Aphrodite, or at least an amazingly sexy simulacrum of one, had just invited him to remove her bra and then kissed him rather passionately.
     Alexia was having her own filmic fantasy, for kissing her 25-year old friend who would have been at home in a Bollywood romance had turned out even nicer than she'd first imagined.
     Robin reached down and unbuckled her trouser belt, and Alexia stiffened. "What are you doing?"
     "Your belt buckle is poking me," he whispered.
     "As long as the belt's all you take off," she murmured as sternly as she could manage, for she had no intention of allowing more than an extended kiss.
     But the baggy trousers had only held tenuous purchase on Alexia's hips, and once the belt slipped free so did the trousers, falling effortlessly to the hardwood floor round her ankles.
     Resisting Nature's urgent mating call—for it had been three years since Viggy had left, and she'd found no one remotely worthy of intimacy since except the one man who'd rejected her so painfully—Alexia took a gulp of air and asked, "I want that poster before I start house-sitting. Can you get it tomorrow?"
     Alexia's very unmannish lavender lace panties afforded a powerful distraction to rational thought, and Robin replied between unsteady breaths. "Yes, of course. It's already arranged."
     "Good," Alexia whispered. Footsteps clumped above them to the upper flat's door, and as Dorrie and Janson entered their upstairs flat, a sense of inevitability and sweet payback caused Alexia to pull Robin down onto the soft cushions waiting so patiently behind them. It's about time they heard someone else having a good time on the sofa, she thought, and the immense satisfaction she felt in that surprised her as much as the momentum generated by her hapless entanglement.
     As feelings long forgotten swirled through her, she mused, call it payment if you want; here I was, wondering how to thank him, and what sweeter way than this?

Next: A Wine-Soaked Promise


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