Authors: Alexa Day
IllicitImpulse (3 page)
He’d coaxed her into staying long enough for a morning
shower. In the steamy heat, she’d amused herself by making him turn around
beneath the water, first in one direction and then the other, appraising him
with one of her mischievous little grins. Grace stood safely away from the
water, carefully wetting one of his washcloths before withdrawing to the far
end of the bathtub to smooth lather over her long legs. She had made Tal
promise not to touch her, so that she’d have some chance of getting to work on
time without her hair looking all wild. Instead he had caught her by the wrist
and pulled her to him, the water running over them both, his cock at full,
aching attention against the supple fullness of her thigh.
They’d both gotten wet that morning. Very wet and very warm
and more than a little loud. As she’d promised, Grace had been upset about her
hair—but not until later.
Maybe that was why she’d left so early this time. If she
thought he was going to stop fooling with her hair…well, she was wrong about
that. He thought it looked just fine, wet or wild. Still, she’d been a little
weird tonight. More responsive than usual. More aggressive than usual.
Tal grinned. If those experimental pills caused all that,
he’d be more than happy to test them out as much as she wanted. He could live
with that kind of weird.
Too keyed-up now to sleep, he returned upstairs and threw
the empty beer bottle into the plastic recycling bin with a loud
plink
.
Turning back to bed, he noticed another bottle on his end table, a half-full
leftover from the football game Grace had interrupted.
The letter lay next to the bottle and beneath the remote
control. Tal pinned the envelope to the table with his finger and pulled the
letter out, careful to avoid the condensation left behind by the forgotten
beer. He traced the delicately drawn tendrils of ivy that marked the left side
of the envelope. Equally delicate handwriting spelled out a return address he
had committed to memory. He tucked the letter between his thumb and index
finger and took it back to bed.
He studied the lettering that formed his name on the front
of the envelope, looking for something in the shape or spacing of the letters
that would have given him a clue as to the surprise that lay inside. Nothing
hinted at the sucker punch concealed in the pretty paper. Tal opened the drawer
of his nightstand and tossed the letter inside with the others.
He hadn’t really been lying when he’d said Grace’s
postcoital departure was a new experience. That was true in its way. Somewhere
in that drawer, beneath a stack of ivy-adorned letters was a note written on
the corner of a takeout menu, something that had been waiting next to his alarm
clock one morning years ago. He had been left to sleep alone then too.
But that time he hadn’t gotten to say goodbye.
He went over his preparations for Grace, making sure no one
else would see her, making sure he had covered his tracks. If anyone found out
he had slipped a friend some of the pills for any reason, he’d be looking for
another job. If anyone found out he’d done it to help reinforce the existing
test data, he’d have trouble
finding
another job.
He’d left nothing to chance. He’d given Grace all the
appropriate instructions. He’d scheduled their meeting well after business
hours on Friday night, when the main building would be deserted, except for the
cleaning crews and a handful of people burning the midnight oil. He’d
substituted Grace for Subject 3258, who had quit just last week. To the rest of
the world, it would look like Subject 3258 was still participating in the
testing. If he’d done his homework, only he and Grace would know differently.
He checked the clock again. Time seemed to be congealing
around him. If only he’d brought something with him to keep his hands busy.
Nerves. Part of it was his typical
seventh-grade-science-geek response to Grace, and to be fair, part was because
he was putting his career on the line. But the real problem was that he didn’t
have nearly enough answers for the open questions that filled his imagination
in ways that had little to do with the laboratory.
What would she tell him?
Would she have lots of stories for him?
Was he ready for that?
The buzzer made him jump. John pressed the button next to
the speaker and heard Grace’s voice over the crackling intercom.
“Hey, you didn’t give me a code word,” she said.
“I knew I forgot something.” He thumbed a switch to raise
the gate, admitting her to the parking lot, and waited for her headlights to
sweep across the darkened windows of the building. When he saw her approaching
the big glass doors, nervous energy propelled him toward her.
You’re just excited because you’re finally going to get
some real data. Take it easy.
Grace slipped past him, her petite frame almost brushing
against him, and took off her coat. Her black turtleneck and jeans showed off a
figure that was all woman, curvy and lean. She pushed chin-length hair behind
one ear and revealed a smile like a cat’s after a three-course canary dinner.
For a moment he forgot all the risks that went with their illicit mission.
“Big smile,” he said, making sure that the main door’s
security lock clicked shut behind them. “Does that mean you’re a satisfied
customer?”
Grace folded her coat over one arm. “More than satisfied.”
“Is that so?” John asked.
She nodded, still grinning. “Want to hear all the juicy
details?”
Of course he did—until she asked. Now, as the end of the
question hung in the air, he wasn’t so sure he still wanted exactly what he had
asked her for. And the smug look on her face said she knew it.
“Come on,” she said, patting his shoulder. “I’ll go easy on
you at first.”
John led Grace through a warren of corridors into the
unadorned room where he interviewed his subjects. The white cinderblock walls
reflected the fluorescent lights with almost painful intensity. A sturdy wooden
table crowded most of the tight space, and John’s coat and briefcase already
waited on the far side, where he’d arranged his notes, his microcassette
recorder and an overabundance of pencils and pens.
Grace draped her coat over the empty chair on her side of
the table before sitting. John shut the door behind her and then took his place
across from her, just as he had with dozens of other people, close enough to
observe their physiological responses and distant enough that they couldn’t see
his notes. He tried without success to make himself comfortable in a metal
chair that looked as if it had been stolen from a 1960s’ prison movie.
“Do you mind if I tape you?” he asked. “I want to make sure
I get everything. I tell everybody that nobody else will hear it, but that’s
doubly true in your case.”
Grace picked up the recorder. “You still use actual tape?”
she asked.
“Instead of digital?” He nodded. “But just for you.”
She returned the recorder to its place on the table. “Why?”
“Three reasons. Nothing is ever left on the recorder—once I
take out the tape, the recorder’s empty. The tape is easy to keep private—if
it’s with me, no one else can get to it.” He looked up at her and smiled. “And
if anything goes wrong, the tape will be easier to eat.”
Grace laughed and leaned back in her chair. “Can’t argue
with that. Tape away.”
He engaged the recorder with a click and slid it into the
center of the table. Then he sat back with one of the notepads, which he tapped
with one of the over-sharpened pencils. “Okay. Let’s hear it.”
John turned his attention to the blank page, writing the
date and time in the upper right corner and waiting for Grace to begin. Often
he’d found that his subjects would communicate more if he wasn’t looking at
them. In this case, he worried that he wouldn’t be able to concentrate.
“You know I went to see Tal right after I saw you on
Monday,” Grace said. “He thinks this is a great idea, by the way. He wants to
be first on the list when you come up with one of these pills for men.”
Still holding the pencil, John rotated his hand, listening
to the tendons pop.
Tal is helping you
, he reminded himself.
That’s right. Good ol’ enthusiastic Tal is helping you.
“I know this is a secret,” Grace said, “but I didn’t think
it was fair to ask him to do all this without knowing.”
“No problem.” John popped his wrist one last time and
glanced up at Grace. “As long as he doesn’t say anything.”
“His lips are sealed. So what do you need to know?”
“Let’s start at the beginning. Right after you took it, did
you… feel anything?”
“Anything…like what?” she asked playfully.
“The little chill we discussed.”
“I did feel that. Really cold, but just for a few minutes,
until I got to Tal’s.”
The sound of his pencil seemed very loud between them as he
took note of the chill. “And then what?”
“As soon as he opened the door I felt really…agitated.”
“Nervous?” he asked. “Jittery?”
“Horny.”
John looked up from his hastily scribbled notes. Almost
everyone had reported fidgeting, pacing or generally feeling antsy. No one had
mentioned this before. Not to him, anyway.
“You look surprised,” she said. Her self-assured smile was
back in place.
“Me? No, no, no. Not surprised.” And he wasn’t, really. It
was just that she was so matter-of-fact about it.
“You’re sure?” she asked.
“I’m sure. Keep going.”
“Okay.” Grace stretched her legs out in front of her, gazing
at the ceiling. “So as soon as I saw Tal, I felt this rush. I just had to have
him.”
John watched her take a long breath before she moistened the
center of her upper lip with the tip of her tongue. She was reliving it now,
whatever she had done that night. He wrote down the counter number from the
cassette recorder.
“Any chance this was just your normal anticipation? For your
friend, I mean.”
“No.” She took a deep breath and slid her palms down her
thighs. “Usually we’ll talk a little or have a beer first. That night I was
just all over him. I couldn’t get to him fast enough.” She glanced over at
John. “It was a little scary, to be honest.”
“Increased urgency.”
“Yeah, definitely.”
He took note of her symptoms and of her movements now as he
looked on. “Okay. Then what?”
Grace turned back to the ceiling. “Everything was more
intense. When he put his hands or his mouth on me, it made me so…so wet.
Everything he did made me want more.”
Had she lowered her voice for his benefit? The color that
had begun to bloom on her face told a different story. She wasn’t spinning a
yarn for his entertainment. The recollection was turning her on.
More.
He could practically hear her saying it.
More.
Please. More.
“And then?” He tried to maintain a neutral tone of voice.
She bit her lip. “I don’t know. It’s hard to describe. I was
ready to come as soon as he touched me. It was like being a teenager again.”
“Out of control?”
Her eyes met his. “Yeah! Mmm. Out of control.” Her voice
lowered again, as if she were sharing a secret with him. “Like being in heat.
That have-to-have-it feeling, you know?”
Increased arousal.
He watched the words forming on
the notepad in front of him. How long had it been since he’d felt out of
control? How long since pure animal hunger threatened to take over—and he had
done nothing to stop it?
“John?”
He looked up at her, praying she couldn’t see the truth of
his attraction on his face.
“Do you all have a name for this stuff yet?”
He rubbed the smooth surface of the pencil’s eraser with his
thumb. “I think they’re still haggling over the one they’ll take to market.
Last I heard, they were calling it Impulse.”
“Impulse.” She pressed those full lips together. “I like it.
Impulse.”
“Think that’ll work?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. There is something…liberating about
losing control. Giving in to biology.” She smiled. “But then I don’t mind
having the extra scoop of ice cream either.”
He chuckled. “So you’re aroused.”
She blinked and he savored that moment, enjoying the rare
sight of Grace in shock before he pointed at his notes with the pencil.
“Oh!” she said. “With
Tal
. Yes.”
“Everything he does makes it worse.”
Slowly she shook her head. “Oh, no. Better.”
“Stronger.”
He watched her consider the choice of words. “Stronger,” she
agreed.
He took note of her increased sensitivity, careful to use
the word they’d chosen together. “And then?”
“He made me come—right there. We hadn’t even gotten undressed.
We were just inside the door.”
John stared hard at his handwriting. “Did he penetrate you?”
Silence stretched out after his question until he looked up
to find her grinning at him. “Oh my God,” she said, amusement in her voice.
“You’re blushing.”
“I am not.” Blushing. He snorted. He did this every day.
He’d heard far worse than this. Hadn’t he?
“You know,” she said, “it’s going to get pretty graphic
before I’m finished.”
“Well, that’s why we’re here.” He turned back to his notes
and pushed his glasses up on his nose. “So get graphic.”
The metal chair creaked softly and he glanced up to find
Grace sliding toward the edge of her seat. She rested her elbows on the table.
Her fragrance enticed him—warm, inviting, like one of those sinful desserts she
never refused. He looked into the liquid heat of her dark eyes and when she
spoke again, the sultry tone of her voice was unmistakable.
“He pulled me closer,” she said, “so I was pressed to his
body. Tal’s built like a football player, all muscle and heat. He put his hand
between my legs. I was so wet, I almost came the second he touched me. And then
he put his fingers inside me—three of them, in and out, in and out—and I wanted
more, I needed more, and then I came. I came very hard.”
“Very hard?” He could feel the rise of heat in his face now,
the blush he had just denied, but he didn’t care. Nothing mattered more than
what she was telling him.
Nothing but his own growing desire for her.
“Mm-hmm,” she said. “Very hard.”
“On a scale of one to ten, ten being—”
“The kind of thing people write songs about? Hmm. Six.” She
leaned back, pulling that warm, sensual scent with her. “Tal is usually good
for a five through an eight. But I don’t usually come like that for a hand job,
standing up.”
Her somewhat clinical assessment of Tal as she moved away
made it easier for John to regain a shade of his composure. “Okay. And then
what?”
“He took me upstairs. We made it as far as the bed for the
next one. He took off my panties and went down on me.”
Well, what a perfect, unselfish little son of a bitch.
“Listening to him eating me made me even hotter. I was so
wet I could hear him working me over, and just when I thought I was coming,
whenever I was close, he would come up for air or say something to get me
going.”
John considered asking what sort of thing Tal would say, but
then he thought better of it. He didn’t need to know that. He wasn’t even sure
he really wanted to know. As it was, he’d have to listen to this section of the
tape again so he could write down the appropriate details from the first
orgasm.
“And you came again?” he asked. He knew he shouldn’t prompt
her this way, but the tension was unbearable.
Grace nodded.
“Harder than last time?”
“A little harder. Let’s call it a seven.”
“Seven.” Trying not to look at her, trying to keep it
professional, he asked, “Just so I know, how many climaxes are we talking
about?”
“That night? Four.”
Four was two or three more than he was accustomed to hearing
about. Certainly well within the realm of normal experience, but more than he
had prepared himself for, even under the most optimistic of circumstances.
Grace broke the brief silence. “What’s wrong? TMI?”
“No, this is exactly what I wanted.”
“You sure? I can scale it back if you want.”
She tipped her head to one side and grinned at him, as if
she were issuing a challenge.
“Oh no, don’t do that,” he said. “This is perfect.”