Tomás did not want a battle with Shenar, but he was troubled by her fascination with pornography as a therapeutic tool. He recalled how her eyes had shone, the pupils larger than usual, despite the concentrated studio lights. Her enthusiasm had seemed, well, manic. She had looked a little drawn, he thought, as though she might have been losing sleep, but her breath had blasted fresh and sweet, humid with mint and coffee, so he knew her health wasn’t suffering. She hadn’t jumped when he touched her. She had touched him back, warmly, as she always did. And she radiated with her belief that she was on to something.
Tomás strode through the utilitarian double doors onto the forested Redmond campus. AniMate had bought this plant from Allied Signal when the bottom dropped out of the defense market. The sprawling, military-like research laboratories had taken a lot of internal renovation during their conversion to audio and video studios. The facades still looked demure and security conscious but the landscaping had begun to reflect its new owner. Chicken wire fences had been removed, allowing the forest to mingle with the lawn. More saplings had been added, both deciduous and coniferous. Employees who were handy with gardening had spread patches of wild color between the rectangular, dun colored buildings.
Although cloudy, it was a misty layer that allowed laser slices of sun. Tomás ducked his head from a mischievous beam and noticed a flock of Canadian Geese landing across the street. Shenar was obviously surprised at his wariness, he mused, as he watched the largest of the flock scout, head lifted high, for water.
When Shenar had excitedly pulled him into a vacant studio as they passed in the hall, he sensed he was about to hear something miraculous. Now he wondered about the nature of miracles. Her idea was brilliant. She’d executed it with inspiration. Apparently the sequence he saw was her second. Already, he could tell, technical expertise was taking hold; the action was disturbingly life-like and Shenar had disguised herself only modestly, probably so viewers wouldn’t think the female was themselves. She was ready to bring in some specialized techs. He was scared.
He wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. He guessed she’d expected him to be as enthusiastic as Frank must be. He was going to have to talk to Frank, soon. Maybe something could be done with it, although he couldn’t imagine what. Something would have to be done with it before it was presented to Sumitomo. Surely Frank understood this.
Tomás passed a rose bush at the northwestern edge of the campus, between the parking lot and 148th N.E. Sterlings. One of his favorites; one early bud, just unfolding, delicate, polished lavender. There had some false warmings this year. The flower wouldn’t last long. He pulled out his pen knife, opened it and sawed through the stem at a growth ring. As he headed back to the complex, he sanded the tip with the file on his pen knife and removed all the thorns.
Shenar looked up at the tap on her door. Tomás held the rose in front of his face and raised his eyebrows. Shenar burst into a smile on the other side of the window. She looked defenseless. Tomás opened the door and entered, offering thrust ahead of him, as she came around her desk. She was wearing a subtle scent, sandalwood, or something, he guessed. It complimented the rose.
“I know you were expecting me to like the, uh, sequence,” Tomás ventured.
“And, I know you didn’t.” There was no tension in her voice.
“I wasn’t expecting you to develop your ideas so, ah, literally. And, I certainly wasn’t expecting to recognize you as one of the participants. It’s something I’m going to have to mull over.” He was still holding the rose out to her. “Did Frank know you were going to show anyone else the sequence?”
Shenar studied Tomás’. “He knew I was going to show it to you. That was okay with him.” She dropped her eyes below the level of the rose. “Even though I’ve disguised myself, no one else will see it.” She looked back up into his eyes. “Only my image was scanned in. I created the other image and the things those images do.”
Tomás remembered seeing her and Frank through the kitchen window. He remembered them both beneath the comforter, unaware of an intruder. He wondered if Shenar was watching his memories, if she understood why it had been easy for him to watch the video; why he’d been, in fact, riveted. Watching a woman with whom you want have sex having sex, not with her husband, your brother, but a fantasy image, maybe him; a delight too rudimentary to deny. You stare. And wonder. And fantasize.
“It’s okay,” Tomás assured her. “I trust Frank’s judgement. He wouldn’t have allowed me to view this if he’d felt intimidated by it.” Or, maybe he would, but that’s not something you’d understand, he finished silently.
Shenar finally looked at the rose. “A Sterling,” she said, “my second favorite rose.” Her expression relaxed. She bent and closed her eyes and sniffed just above the heart of the bud. “Mmm, it has a scent.” She looked up at him and guided his hand toward his face. “Smell.”
Tomás wafted the blossom beneath his nose, nodded, then handed it back to her. “It’s for you.” He touched his forehead with a fingered peace sign, like a New Age Boy Scout. “I’m very impressed with the work you’ve done...”
She had the rose in her hand, now, and was gripping it between her breasts. Urgency carved her face. He didn’t want to get into it, again. He dodged behind the desk and peaked over it, dramatically. She acknowledged his maneuver with a smile, then reflexively dropped the rose. “Oh!” she said as she retrieved it, examining her hand. No thorns!” She grinned at Tomás. “How thoughtful!”.
“What’s your first favorite?”
Shenar looked puzzled, then nodded. “Ah, my favorite rose...the black rose. It’s a black rose that brought me here.”
Tomás waited for more information, but she offered none. She looked as though she was imagining a mythic black rose as she gazed at the Sterling. “Do they smell?” he ventured, hoping to bring her back to the moment.
She looked at him directly. She’d not been far away. “Yes. At least, the one I received had a scent. It had been transported by air from Seattle. When I heard it had come from Seattle, I decided I would live here, someday. Make my, well, one of my homes here.” She looked back down at the rose shyly, as though she was somehow betraying someone by telling Tomás this.
Did Frank know about her preference, he wondered.
“Well, look. I’m not ruling your sequence out completely. I mean, it’s certainly adventurous. I see why Frank likes it.”
“I’m not sure Frank likes it. I think he’s overwhelmed by it.”
Smart woman, Tomás thought. She’s probably right. Frank is probably mesmerized. He can’t believe, well, he can’t believe Shenar. That she’s his wife. “Does Bob know about it?” Tomás asked.
Shenar smiled coyly. “No. But I know what he’s going to say. He’s one of those self-made men, so he’s going to be scandalized. And he’ll be thrilled that I’m the cause, because he doesn’t like me. He can’t understand why Frank married me, you know.”
Tomás knew. “I’m surprised you know that.”
“I’m just full of surprises, today, aren’t I!” Shenar was laughing, and relaxed, once again.
Her quick switches unsettled him.
“Look,” he offered, “you never know about Bob. He is self made, just like you. Just like me. Just like Frank. He’s not a company man.”
Shenar relented, but with a haughty nod. “I know. And he’s,” she paused, dropping into sing-song, “bright, despite his manner.”
Tomás glanced at her sharply. “He’s not merely ’bright’,” he imitated her accusatory emphasis.
Shenar glanced at him with what looked like remorse. “I know,” she said. “I know. Look. I’m tired. I didn’t think exploding this idea on you was going to be so exhausting.”
“You’d been saving it up,” Tomás joked.
Shenar laughed. “You’re right! I’ve been having these fantasies of how you would react, how you’d call me a genius, ahead of my time...” Tomás joined in the laughter. She had picked up her things, including the rose, and they herded each other toward the door.
Shenar stopped Tomás, held the rose to his nose, leaned dramatically into him, and kissed him on the cheek. He thought he felt the tip of her tongue on his skin, through minutely parted lips, as though he had been brushed with a dew misted flower.
She swept him noisily into the hall and they strode and chatted into the parking lot.
Tomás touched the hollow of his cheek where Shenar’s lips had been. He was still imagining moisture there. “Carl. It’s Tomás. Where can I get a black rose? Before tomorrow afternoon?”
On his way to the plant he was still fingering his cheek and feeling foolish. He couldn’t do this. He was getting in way too deep. He didn’t want to suggest anything to this woman, he scolded. I’ll leave the rose in my car. We’ve settled our quarrel, at least for the time being. This rose is way overdone.
He took the bloom into the building. He couldn’t just let it wilt in the back seat. He kept it in his office most of the afternoon, trimming off the thorns, filing the tip of the stem down, slipping it back in a coffee mug serving as a vase. Around three o’clock, when he knew Shenar would be in Building 5, he slumped by her office, slipped in, and dropped it on her desk.
By four-thirty she had not acknowledged the rose. He collected some discs he needed to review, stepped into the hall and closed his office door. At the junction in the two main halls, he peered down the south wing. Shenar’s light was off. He could avoid her and still short cut to the parking lot. As he passed her office he glanced through the glass. Nothing was in the vase and her desktop was clean.
She had taken it home. Would Frank notice it? Did he know it was her favorite? Would he ask her where she got it? Why hadn’t she acknowledged it? Had the black rose embarrassed her? He felt like a school boy.
Frank peeked around the corner just as Shenar entered the foyer. All she carried was one very dark rose. She noticed him, grinned mischievously, and minced around him into the kitchen. Frank grabbed for her, but she eluded him and pranced toward the opposite end of the room, trailing the black rose along the cooking island.
Frank lunged at her from behind and twirled her around, just before she escaped around the butcher block. She leaned back and held the rose between them. “I have a secret admirer,” she teased.
Frank grinned and shifted in closer. “If it’s a secret, how do you know I’m not your secret admirer?”
“Oh,” she corrected, “he’s not a secret from me, only from you!” She shouted the last word, wriggled out of his arms, and danced into the conversation pit.
Frank took out after her. She dodged him around the occasional table and jumped the sofa. Frank stopped to marvel at her agility. She turned to check her progress, then darted back to entice him out of his smiling stupor. He grabbed at the rose as she flashed by and plucked it from her. She circled back, but he protected his treasure in his arms and sunk into the recliner. He regarded the rose at eye level and spoke past its dark beauty toward Shenar. “Tomás gave it to you.” He had recognized the handiwork on the stem.
“Yes,” she answered, as quietly as he had asked. “Sometimes, I wish...”
Frank looked at her. He knew what she was going to say. He encouraged her with his eyes.
“I wish he knew someone like me who wasn’t married to someone like you.”
“Well put.”
The two looked at each other. Frank nodded solemnly. Her nod echoed his. Frank’s heart swelled. “Come here.” He spread his legs to either side of the recliner to make room for her and leaned back.
She knelt before him and anchored her hands under his knees, then lifted his legs over the arms of the chair. She rubbed the inside of his thighs and slid up the chair, continuing part way up his torso. Her breasts nestled against either side of his stiffening shaft.
Frank sighed. He stroked her hair with his hand, her face with the petals of the rose. She sniffed at it as it passed her nose. A muscle at the base of his groin twitched. Her snuffling reminded him of the way she liked to nuzzle his balls, the noises she made as she attended to him.
Her hands were rubbing at his dick, now. She had raised herself higher and was unzipping his slacks. Languorously, she undressed his lower half, sliding the fabric meticulously under his ass, up his thighs, raising his knees to pull the legs off. Each time a length of cloth was removed from the base of the V his legs formed, she would greet his dick lavishly, licking and rubbing it, until he moaned and rolled his head back. When he was completely displayed, she slipped out of her clothes and slid up his body like a snake, until he could feel her lower abdomen humping lightly against his organs. He enwrapped her with his arms and traced her spine with the butt of the rose stem as she licked his mouth and urged his tongue to follow hers.
Frank dodged and played, his tongue entangling with hers, and lightly stroked the entire length of her back with the tip of the rose stem. Sometimes he’d slip it between her upper buttocks. She’d start, then spread her thighs, as though inviting him further. He would notice her tongue suddenly full in his mouth, probing. He’d withdraw the rose toward her shoulders, until she’d shiver and moan. He remembered a jar of Vaseline on the end table. He knew its lid was off; Shenar kept it open and handy to resoften her lips. He dipped the butt of the rose stem into the Vaseline, then brought it back, this time laying the rose, blossom toward her thighs, on the cleft between her buttocks. He wrapped her close with his arms, encouraging her body to nestle with his. Then, staring into her eyes, he drew the bottom tip of the rose stem down between her buttocks. Shenar stared at him and pulled her knees forward, spreading herself further. Frank imagined her anus tightening, and heard a soft whimper.
Frank pulled the stem tip down hard between her buttocks. She lifted her knees again and closed her eyes. He felt the stem dip slightly. Shenar moaned. He looked at her. She opened her eyes and whispered, “Ooohh,” and shook her head slowly from side to side. She moaned again and dropped her head onto his shoulder as he drove the tip into her.
Shenar flattened her torso against him. He imagined she was trying to anchor the bud inside her for better stimulation; he assured her he would not to let the rose go by pushing the pencil thin tip further into her. She sighed and raised herself. He gripped her and pushed again, and stared down her back at the rose, blooming out of her anus.
He was overcome with need. He picked Shenar up and positioned her firmly over himself. As he was lowering her, she gripped his penis and guided them together.
Shenar leaned forward and ground into Frank. She grazed his chest with her breasts and moaned and wrenched in his grasp. Frank reached around her crouching figure. He rested his fingers on the rose stem protruding from her buttocks. He could feel the contractions of her anus through the motions of the stem; with each squeeze the rose stem buried itself further in her hole. He imagined the anal tension building inside her. His heart surged, with his dick. He encouraged himself, and Shenar’s anus, with his thrusts from below.
The rose. The black rose. Where is it, now? Who is touching it? What is Frank’s reaction? What is Shenar’s? Tomás’ thoughts are slaves to that damn black rose.
He imagines himself calling their house.
All he needs is the slightest “Hello” to possess their bodies, to know their wetness and plunge into it.
It’s true, he thinks, I’ll be fucking her after you die. He imagines the black rose in a vase by the bed, reminding Frank. He closes his eyes.
Tomás’ hand trembles and sucks, as he imagines Shenar’s mouth, her cunt, her ass. He drains all his strength from himself.
At sun-up he walks the street with a pleasurable mixture of vulnerability and possession, as though he had been both of those obsessive, sweaty, rutting people. He is downtown, just east of the piers. The mist has just burned off. The air is not yet brittle.
| Text & Graphics © 1999 by Gail Rae Hudson | Background by
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