Brazen Read Online Free PDF Page B

between us and it frightens me, so I drink more. He
takes the glasses after a little while and sets them on the coffee table,
ignoring the coasters. I fix this transgression and then he pulls me back into
the cushions and kisses me.
    It’s been
forever since I’ve kissed anyone. Since well before the divorce, and even
before the sex dried up in my marriage. My husband and I still fucked long
after we quit bothering to be affectionate toward one another. The last time I
did this, it turned my stomach. This time, it’s wondrous. Behind the wine, I
can taste him. The faintest trace of salt and some elemental
human flavor. His hands cradle my jaw, and he’s in charge. He starts
with nips, little bites on my lower lip. Then suckling. His tongue traces the seam of my mouth then penetrates—just as it did to my
pussy four nights ago, except this moment is a hundred times more intimate and
personal and raw.
    I study his
handsome face with my hands, feeling his cheekbones and his temples, pressing
my thumb against the shallow cleft in his chin, brushing my fingertips over his
closed eyelids.
    I pull my
mouth away and ask, “How old are you?”
    “How old do
you want me to be?”
    “Between
twenty and twenty-eight.” I’m nervous now, hoping he’ll lie if need be. I study him
harder. He has little signs of wear, a hundred tiny things that combine to
create something the other boys don’t possess. Dignity. Experience. Substance and wisdom.
    “I’m going to
disappoint you again,” he says.
    “My assistant
is going to get a stern talking-to. Didn’t he check your ID?”
    “He did,”
Sean says. He kisses me. “Then he said something about an exodus and said you’d
forgive him.”
    “So how old are you?”
    “Thirty-two,”
he says, and I feel something cold drop into my stomach—danger. He’s young, but
not young enough. It has nothing to do with the fetish, the taboo, the harem, the rules. It has everything to do with reality. In reality,
I could never be with a man who’s twelve or fifteen or twenty years younger
than me. It’s an impossibility and a relief. That Sean
is only seven years my junior is scary. That I could be seen with him out to
dinner at a restaurant and not be judged is terrifying.
    “This isn’t
going to work,” I say. I pull away from him and I feel chilly.
    “I wasn’t
suggesting it would.”
    “What do you
want from me?” I ask again. “From this?” I wave my
hand to mean the room, the house, the scenario. Us.
    “What do you want from this?”
    “I think it’s
pretty obvious.”
    “Let me stay
for the evening,” he says, “and I’ll show you what it is you really want. Just
let me stay, and watch you with the others and you’ll see.”
    “You watch
and I’ll see?”
    He nods.
    “You’re a
cocky little shit,” I say, and I smile at him, amused. “Let me pour you another
glass.”
    * * * * *
    By nine
thirty, the boys are all here. Lots of them change into pajamas when they
arrive, and soon the fourth floor is full of young men in low-slung flannel
bottoms, like a fraternity sleepover with funeral parlor etiquette.
    Troublemaking
Sean is acting suspiciously well-behaved. He slid out of his jeans as the
festivities began, and he’s sprawled in his boxer briefs in my favorite reading
chair again, looking as if he’s in on some secret. And he must be. How else
could he be here, looking so smug, drinking my wine, watching me with such
disobedient fervor?
    His eyes
follow everything. Each time I sink into a new seat beside a new boy, he
watches. There’s a first-timer here tonight—Sean’s replacement. He’s young and
tan and hung like Christmas has come early, and I make sure his legs are spread
wide in Sean’s direction as my hands unwrap the presents. When I order him to
stand so I can kneel and take him in my mouth, I make sure Sean gets our
profiles. I call another boy over and I take turns sampling them. It’s hot, as
hot as it’s ever been, but they have