“Still, that wasn’t the reason I had sex with you,” Allie finished.
I frowned in mild puzzlement—I couldn’t remember what we were talking about.
The little head cleared his throat.
Oh, right! How could I forget?
How, indeed, he said dryly. Still, I suppose the countess is a good reason to be distracted.
Mmm.
“Like, I dated a guy in college,” Allie was saying. “He was thoroughly normal, maybe even on the small side. But he— Well, let’s just say that I was horny all the time, and it had nothing to do with his equipment.”
I replayed what she’d just said and made an educated guess.
“Did it have to do with his brother’s equipment? Yeah, I know all about it. Or, should I say… them.”
Allie had had a relationship with identical twins when she was twenty. It had started with one brother but had quickly progressed to both, usually at the same time. They’d dated for about a year, and things had been pretty wild toward the end—threesomes and gangbangs and porn, oh my!
“I should’ve known,” Allie said. She paused but then shook it off. “Still, it proves my point. Reese and Rob— I’m guessing you know their names, like I know Tiffanie. They weren’t anything special in the dick department, but they totally did it for me.”
“Oh, I get it. Like I said, I’ve heard some of the stories.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” she murmured.
“Oh?”
“Uh-uh.” She glanced at the alarm clock on the nightstand and then sighed.
My words to the girls at bedtime echoed in the back of my mind, Six o’clock comes early.
“Yeah, me too,” I said aloud. “But I’m too wired to go to sleep.”
“And I’m too talkative. Sorry, I get like this sometimes. It isn’t the sex. Just… talking to a man. Like, intimately. Flirting is fun, but this is way more satisfying.”
“It is.”
“Besides, I’m still in the mood.” She forestalled me with a laugh. “Later. Right now, I’m parched. Do you mind…?”
* * *
I pulled a couple of bottles from the fridge and handed one to Allie.
“Cranberry. For the plumbing.”
She smirked. “You might have to inspect it later.”
“I have the perfect tool for the job.”
She snorted at the corny line, although she followed with a sly glance at the tool in question. I replied with one of my own, at her bare slit. Then I closed the refrigerator door and plunged her into shadows again.
“C’mon,” I said, “I wanna hear more about the twins.”
The security light over the pool house shone through the windows and outlined a walkway of sorts. I followed it into the living room and through the pocket doors by the master bedroom. The shadows deepened in the hallway as we passed the door to the grotto.
“Maybe tomorrow we can do it in there,” Allie said.
I chuckled. “So you’re already planning next time?”
“Sure, why not? I mean, Christy’s gone, and you don’t leave till Saturday. She said I could borrow you…”
The guest bedroom welcomed us with a warm glow from the bedside lamp. Allie closed the door behind us, and her expression went from amused to thoughtful.
“Nothing,” she replied to my curious look. “Just that it’s a little weird. I mean, talking about sex in one breath and your wife the next. Not to mention that she’s one of my best friends.”
“Welcome to the lifestyle.”
“I dunno about that,” Allie demurred. “I’m having sex with you. That doesn’t make me a swinger.”
“It’s a step in the right direction.”
“Maybe. But… I’m not so sure. I don’t exactly meet all the requirements.” She paused the conversation by twisting the cap on her drink. She climbed onto the bed, while I enjoyed the view. Then she sat cross-legged, waited for me to do the same, and picked up where she’d left off.
“Talking about Reese and Rob made me think of it. I mean, my qualifications. Besides, you’ve already been hinting.”
“Sorry, you lost me.”
“Earlier, this afternoon. You wanted to know if I’m… you know… into women.”
“Oh, that. Right. Well, are you?”
“I— I’m not sure. I know that’s a lame answer, but…” She shrugged. “I don’t have much experience. And before you ask, I’d like to establish some ground rules.”
“Of course.”
“So… I haven’t told Christy any of this. Some of it, obviously, but I left out parts.”
I lifted an eyebrow.
“Ground rules first. Please don’t tell her. I don’t want you to lie, but…”
“I don’t have to volunteer anything. Got it.”
“She’s gonna start hinting anyway, especially after you and I— I mean… this…” She gestured. “Us… but I need some time.”
Leah had taught me a thing or two about interviews over the years, so I knew better than to interrupt. Sure enough, Allie sighed into the silence.
“So, my experience with women… I guess I should start at the beginning. Okay, you remember I said I was a good girl in high school? Well, I really was. I didn’t lose my virginity until senior prom, which is a cliché all by itself. And I didn’t blow a guy until later, when I was eighteen.”
I nodded and stuck to Leah’s interview playbook.
“So I was pretty innocent when I left for college,” Allie continued. “I got there and oh my God! Culture shock, big time. I mean, I was basically a small-town girl. My roommate was the same. We had a lot in common, even though she was from New Hampshire. Her parents were a dentist and a teacher, and she wasn’t that serious about Judaism either.”
Allie’s father was a NASA project manager and her mother a crew training specialist. They were highly educated, liberal, and Jewish in the Deep South, a combination that was still as rare as hen’s teeth.
“Anyway, I guess you could say we bonded,” Allie went on. “Before you ask, nothing happened. Christy told me about her and Wren, and my stories’re nothing like theirs.”
“Then… what’d you do?”
“What do you think? We got drunk and fooled around. I’m pretty sure she was a virgin, and I practically was. We didn’t really do anything, though. We kissed a little and felt each other up. I guess it started as a joke, but you know how it is.”
I nodded.
“It felt good but… weird at the same time. I mean, guys get insistent, you know? And rough. It wasn’t like that. So it felt… weird.” Allie shrugged. “That’s the only word I can think of. Soft, maybe. And slow. Frustrating? I dunno. We did it again, like, a week later. We weren’t as drunk but we didn’t go any further. And the next day we were too embarrassed to even talk about it.”
I’d known plenty of women who were bi-curious but hadn’t done anything because they’d bought into the lie that “nice girls don’t do that.”
Allie took up her story again. “We never did anything after that. Just those two times. I started dating a guy in the spring, and she met someone too. She lost her virginity, and I was getting laid on a semi-regular basis. So… like, we never repeated our drunken fumblings.”
That sounded familiar too.
“Anyway, fast forward over my sophomore year. My roommate in the fall was a total JAP, a self-centered nightmare. It was bad enough that I moved into a single in the spring. I had a couple of boyfriends, but nothing serious. We only did the usual things. We did it a lot, but just boy-girl stuff.”
“Then you met the twins?” I prompted.
“Yeah, like, the first week back for my junior year. I had a friend who lived in their building. That was when I really started to go wild. I’m sure Christy told you.”
“The basic outline.”
“I’ll tell you more—I have some pretty fun stories, kinda like you—but some other time.”