Fast & Loose by Elizabeth Bevarly (the giving tree read aloud .txt) 📕

her journal. He wasn’t. That would be despicable. Nevertheless, he was intrigued. Intrigued enough, in fact, that he experienced one of those TV moments where he imagined an angel version of himself appearing on one shoulder, and a devil version of himself appearing on the other.

Don’t do it, said the angel Cole. It would be wrong.

Go ahead, said the devil Cole. And, being a devil, he threw Cole’s own words back at him. She’ll never know.

But the angel Cole hung in there. How would you like it if someone did the same thing to you? it asked.

Oh, come on, the devil replied. Just a peek. You know you want to.

It’s a violation of her privacy, the angel reminded him.

Just read a couple of pages, said the devil. Hell, it’s probably all boring stuff, anyway.

It’s her private thoughts, said the angel. If she wanted you to read them, she would have written them on the bathroom mirror.

If you met her in a bar, the devil countered, by evening’s end, she’d probably tell you all the stuff she has written down, anyway.

Devil Cole had a point, he had to admit. In this age of YouTube and SmokingGun, nobody had secrets anymore, and more often than not, they were the ones to reveal them themselves, often with badly digitized video.

Only the lowest of low and the scummiest of scum would open that journal and read it, angel Cole said. Only the slimiest of slime and the sleaziest of sleaze and the ickiest of ick and the dirtbaggiest of dirtbags and the—

Okay, okay, I get it, Cole told his angel. Sheesh.

But his devil cut in again with another She’ll never know, evidently realizing that was a biggie for Cole.

Back and forth the two aspects of Cole’s conscience went, until finally, the devil went over to his opposite shoulder and just shoved the angel off. Then it leaned against his ear and said all kinds of things Cole knew he shouldn’t listen to. And then, suddenly, his finger twitched involuntarily, really, and it accidentally, really, clicked on the mouse, which inadvertently, really, opened the file marked Daily Journal.

Fine then. Just call me Dirtbag.

He would have immediately clicked the mouse again to close the file, really, but his gaze lit on the words so wonderfully erotic, and there was no going back after that.

The file had opened with a word processing program that automatically went to wherever the writer had left off last, so he scrolled to the top of the latest entry and saw that it was dated two nights before his arrival in Louisville. That would have been a Wednesday. Who found something wonderfully erotic on a Wednesday? Okay, yeah, that was also known as hump day, but Cole had never gotten the impression it was that kind of—

Anyway, nobody was erotic on a Wednesday. That was the middle of the week. His hostess, however, evidently spent her Wednesdays a lot differently than most people.

Tonight was incredible, the passage began. He so surprised me tonight. I showed up needy and demanding, certain I knew exactly what I wanted from him. I’d had a rough day, and I wanted it traditional. I wanted it predictable. I wanted it comfortable. Comforting. But the way he looked at me when he came to me, I knew he had something else entirely in mind. No, he told me, I wasn’t going to get predictable and comfortable tonight. Tonight, I was getting something different. Something dangerous. Something exotic. Something spicy and hot. Something he’d discovered in one of the clubs in Bangkok that polite people in the western world never talked about.

Whoa, this guy got around, Cole thought. Wasn’t Thailand supposed to be one of those countries that, when it came to sexual exploration, turned a blind eye to, oh…everything? Not that Cole knew, of course. He’d seen something about it on the Discovery Channel.

When he told me what he was going to do, the journal continued, I really didn’t want any part of it. It just didn’t seem…normal. Or safe. I wasn’t even sure if it was legal here.

Holy crap, what was it? Cole wondered. He read on.

But then he looked at me the way he does when he wants to change my mind—and knows he can. He touched my shoulder in that way of his, then pressed his fingers to his lips in that way that promised untold pleasure. I shiver whenever he does that, because I know what those fingers can do, and how experienced is that mouth. When he does that, I know I have to turn myself over to him completely. To take whatever he gives me and…mmmmmm…relish it.

Now they were getting somewhere.

Oh, my God, it was so wonderfully erotic. When I opened my mouth and he filled me…

Yeah? Cole thought, Go on…

The heat of it…The texture…The taste…

What about them…?

It was almost more than I could bear at first, there was just so much. But he kept coming with it, and coming with it, until I couldn’t open my mouth fast enough to take it in. I wanted more. And more. And more.

Oh, God…

It was the insertion of the cumin, I think, that enraptured me most. Though the way he opened me to the turmeric was spectacular…

Wait a minute, Cole thought, his fast-rising, ah, interest suddenly cooling. Cumin? Turmeric? Those weren’t sex toys or dirty slang words for body parts. Those were spices. He’d seen them in the pantry downstairs. He backtracked to the first paragraph. Something spicy? Something hot? He read over the entire passage again. She wasn’t talking about sex. She was talking about food! She was describing the dinner she had. The he she was writing about wasn’t a lover, it was a chef. Maybe even her waiter.

Well, hell. He’d gotten all worked up over a Thai dish he couldn’t even enjoy now, because she hadn’t had the decency to name the restaurant where she’d been eating or even what she’d had. Other than a wonderfully erotic time.

Eating, he thought again.