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Category: Erotica/BDSM Erotica
Description: Leda always dreaded the holiday season until a co-worker from GUYO (Give Us Your Opinions) invited the lovely lass to a party where she met? him. Liam was a classic Renaissance Man whose latest job was teaching at the prestigious BALI (Bay Area Literary Institute). Soon, Leda and Liam were loving each other with a passion that outshines the brightest of gifts. But a mash note from a student threatens to douse the flame and leave Leda heartbroken. Leda eventually confronts Liam and he leaves. Will their love survive the wreckage of temptation? Only the brightness of their love can pull them from the darkness of mistrust, back to each other's arms. Olivia London is a true genius when it comes to intoxicating erotica and this, her wonderful new novel, proves just how good she can be! Olivia's stories have appeared in Ruthie's Club, For the Girls, Oysters & Chocolate and Salon.com. She has contributed to numerous anthologies including Lesbian Love 3, The Bad Girl's Sweet Kiss, and The Mammoth Book of Threesomes and Moresomes.
eBook Publisher: Renaissance E Books/Sizzler,
eBookwise Release Date: October 2012

Available eBook Formats: OEBFF Format (IMP) [76 KB]
Words: 15242
Reading time: 43-60 min.

Chapter One

One look at my fellow passengers on public transport told me I wasn't the only person who dreaded the start of another work week. The woman who sat next to me was mumbling into her bottomless purse and I thought she had gone mad until I saw her traveling companion emerge from a mess of tissues and personal effects. A russet-colored Chihuahua with merry-andrew eyes stared me down as its owner cooed words of endearments into the perkiest little ears I'd ever seen. To avoid the tiny dog's judgment, I stared straight ahead and tried not to ogle the crotch blocking the aisle and window seats. I'm not offended by crotch shots. Just for fun, I imagined I could stop time so that it was only me and the straphanger frozen in a moment of louche unrest. I pictured appreciative hands cupping the back of my head as I released a cumbrous cock from its corduroys and welcomed the endowment into my hungry mouth. I closed my eyes in gratitude as the magnificent flesh pumped like a bellows, expanding into its consummate measure. The stranger's hands still circle while he moans and tilts his head back as I orally consume his penis in the hushed heat of a zipless suck.

The bus chunked to a stop and I caught a glimpse of the man in full. Not my type. I could go back to reading my book. I wondered what to fix for dinner, trying to remember how long eggs keep before going bad. Seats vacated and the man with the comfy pants sat, taking his erection with him. I hadn't dated in a long time, preferring to dwell in the realm of fantasy. When I do lope around the lake of my imagination, lost in a reverie of an anonymous encounter, in the back of my mind an archetype emerges: a handsome, clean-shaven, well-read sensitive sort who was raised Catholic and can feel my pain. The straphanger had a beard.

It was the first week of November, my fifth year away from home. The kind of week when none of my favorite bakeries had day-old goods and The New Yorker cartoons weren't funny. I was dreading going back to Florida for the mad Christmas rush having carved a niche for myself in the Bay Area. San Francisco is the perfect place to be if you're young and single. In Florida, only widows and nuns don't have to worry about their waistlines and they comprise a large portion of the female population.

I had a humdrum job in consumer opinion research and like anyone manacled to metronomic employment, I thought about sex constantly. I thought about sex with Vince Viperbin who was as close to my type as I was going to get at Give Us Your Opinions. VV's first vaulting ambition was to be a rock star, but, that not being plausible having never learned to play an instrument, he would settle for screenwriter. On breaks, Vince would call me to his cubicle vouchsafing the latest pages of Market Street and expect me to kiss the ten-point font I found difficult to read. Market Street was the San Francisco version of Wall Street and the script was basically Wall Street only Darryl Hannah's character was a crack-addicted stripper.

"Vince," I'd say with gentle verve. "You can't take dialogue from a famous movie and insert it into your soi-disant original screenplay. You've got that 'greed is good' speech in here. Everyone knows that speech."

"In my version, the big shot says 'Greed is great.' There's a difference. Gosh, did you even read it?"

Vince snatched his future out of my reach and turned on the heels of his scuffed second hand shoes. I knew he wouldn't be walking me to the bus stop after that spate of tough love.

With Thanksgiving and Christmas looming like colossi of guilt over the counterpanes of Catholic girls everywhere who choose to fuck rather than marry and procreate, a roiling panic sets in right after Halloween.

Here was my dilemma. I could fly back to Tampa where my mother can't talk to me like a normal person. She begins every sentence with "Honey, you could be so pretty if..." We could be discussing the threat of terrorism or nuclear war and she'll say, "Honey, you could be so pretty if you stopped frowning and worrying about things you have no control over."

Second option: find a date for the holidays. But where? VV seemed decidedly fuckable at first with his pallor endemic to the great indoors and a mouthful of braggadocio but he shaved his head and started writing screenplays. I watch very few movies and only those which serve my art. I remember the disquiet I felt seeing an English actress play Angela in Angela's Ashes only to worship and adore said actress for playing a vulnerable prostitute in Breaking the Waves. There was no point discussing these films with a man who wore more earrings than a sorority girl. When I first started working for GUYO, my boss Parker Drum said, "Vince has been here longer than any of us. He looks scary but he's really nice."

I stifled the rejoinder that people who look scary aren't always especially nice to me. He had a tattoo on his neck and wore a silver skull ring. Though we were approximately the same age, these affectations made me feel old. Still. I became obsessed with seeing him naked. Vince had a habit of scowling especially when he was on the phone but when he smiled his face crumpled into a sweetness that was hard to bear without the solace of touching.

I imagined us touching in the shower. I love giving head under balneal conditions. With his back muscles pressed against the cool tessellated tiles, I'd kneel on the slip guards of the tub and lather his lingam with my love. Oh, to use my tongue like a parbuckle slinging his cock athwart the rocky terrain of my desire. Heaven!

Every time I passed VV in the hall I knew it would be good between us and wondered why he couldn't see that. I finally learned to let go when I saw him at the bus stop embracing Pamela Pim. Pam was the company's graphic designer who never updated her wardrobe post art school outré. Her French-manicured nails were typically painted in a black and white Mondrian design and the day she stole my crush from under me she was wearing Van Gogh's Starry Night printed on a frock barely covering her dorsal.

Well, she could have him. Let Parker squint at her man's tiny prose and try to make sense of his script. Truth be told, they made a cute couple.

The holiday clock was ticking in its gaudy ormolu and, given my social circle, I had no choice but to try the personals. I responded to a man's witty ad on a site I won't mention other to say it's a great place to sell your unwanted furniture and bobbleheads. And it's free. For brevity's sake, I'll refer to my online connection as TJ. The picture TJ posted with his ad showed a clean-shaven man with a serious but kind-looking face working at a computer. He looked really sweet, actually. I couldn't wait to meet him.

We agreed to meet at Dolce Dream on Columbus, my favorite Italian café in North Beach.

Imagine my surprise when a lanky, ponytailed guy who could have been a grifter waved to me from a corner table. What to do? I was raised to be polite to the point of chewing off a limb before offending anyone so I took a deep breath and soldiered on.

When a lithe waitress bounded toward us I ordered my usual cappuccino and biscotti. TJ's request was a stolid café noir.

"If you only want one Italian cookie, it's a biscotto. As long as you're ordering biscotti, you may as well get another one." Giving me a look over, he added, "You don't have to worry about your weight... yet."

Oh, great, I thought. I'm going to burn my tongue trying to finish my coffee in a hurry

After a mutual exchange of wary glances and awkward but necessary pleasantries, I pointed to a set of snapshots arranged neatly on the table.

"What are these?" I asked.

"These are pictures of my son! His mother took him for the day so I could meet you."

"Are you married?"

TJ chuckled and leaned back in his seat. "Och, no. Beth is a good woman, the mother of my child and all that, but I never married her. She's too strong-willed." Translation: Now, I totally misrepresent myself on the Internet, and, by the way, I'm looking for a door mat.

I learned a valuable lesson that day. Trying to find a date online is like going home for the holidays and hoping your most cloying family members will (just this once) treat you like an adult.

TJ was loathe to let me go but when he trumpeted his views on vegetarianism and the nobility of vegan virtue, I had my out.

"How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat?" I asked, quoting Walt Whitman. In times of trouble, it helps to remember Leaves of Grass.

My date said he had to go meet another candidate who responded to his ad and I, left to my own devices, decided to stay and enjoy the ambiance. I even ordered another biscotto.