Erato
S. Wolf
Published by S. Wolf at Smashwords
Copyright 2010 S. Wolf
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Note: This story contains sexually explicit material, and is intended only for persons over the age of 18. By downloading and opening this document, you are stating that you are of legal age to access and view this work of fiction.
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“Rose, why are you getting dressed?” said Jacob, lying back on the bed with the sheets up to his waist. “We still have some time before you have to leave for Australia.”
She was pulling up her khaki shorts, and Jacob caught a last glimpse of her pink panties as she tucked in her denim shirt and buttoned the pants around her waist. He had to admire how great her ass looked in those shorts, even though he’d rather have her naked in bed with him.
“We don’t have as much time as you think we do, my love,” she said in her sexy Irish accent, giving him a smile. “If we start something now we’ll just be interrupted.”
“I’ve cleared off my entire schedule for the afternoon, just so we could be together,” he said, patting the empty half bed beside him. Even though they had just finished making love less than a half hour ago, Jacob wanted her again, and with her adventure in Australia coming up, he wasn’t sure when they could get together next.
She accepted his invite and sat on the bed, leaning over to kiss him. His arms encircled her waist and pulled her close, pressing her back onto the bed as their tongues met. Her large warm breasts pressed against his chest through the material of her blouse, and her arms moved around his shoulders, holding him.
“Jacob Penner, you are so naughty,” she said, breaking the kiss to smile at him, her green eyes sparkling. “And I really wish we could do this, but I’m telling you, it’s not going to happen.”
He smiled and ignored her, reaching his hand down between her legs, pressing against her mound through the beige material. She gasped in his ear, and he could feel the heat of her through the heavy fabric.
“You’re so cruel,” she said laughing, “You’re going to get me worked up and then leave me.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he grinned, sliding his fingers up her inner thigh and under the edge of her shorts, finding the silky material of her panties. Hooking his fingers, he let the back of them slide over her mound, feeling the cleft of her lips under the sheer cloth.
She groaned again and held him tighter, pressing her hips against his hand, wanting his touch on her.
Then she gave a small laugh, and he pulled back and stared at her, a questioning look on his face.
She was grinning. “Told ya so.”
“Wha
The phone rang, startling Jacob out of his typing reverie. He wasn’t expecting a call. He had left explicit orders with everyone that he wasn’t to be disturbed this afternoon. Checking the caller ID, he saw it was his lawyer and best friend, Paul Robison.
“Dammit,” he said, pressing save on his word processing program, opening his cell phone, and sitting back in his chair.
“Paul, this better be important,” he said, annoyance in his voice. Paul and him had been friends since they were kids, and were each other’s best man at their weddings.
“Hello to you too,” said his friend, “and yes, it is important. Your future ex-wife is now claiming she wants the vacation house in Vermont.”
“Paul,” he said, trying to keep his voice level, “I told you I don’t care about that. I just want her out of my life.”
“I know,” replied Paul, “but I’m your lawyer too, and part of what you’re paying me for is to look out for you. She’s screwing you man.”
Jacob’s attitude softened. “Ok, if you want to fight her on the Vermont house, feel free.”
“Thanks. Um,” Paul began again, “there’s something else we need to talk about.”
“What’s that?”
Paul was still tentative. “I’m getting word from my sources that Meg has hired a private detective.”
“Why?”
“To investigate you.”
“Investigate me? For what?”
Paul paused again. “Buddy, with the way she’s treated you these past few years, I wouldn’t blame you if you had found someone else. But if you have, you better stay away from her for a while. Because if this P.I. gets hold of any evidence, Meg is going to clean you out.”
Jacob smiled. Meg had spent the last few years of their marriage accusing him of having an affair, even though she was the one he had discovered fucking one of the roofers they had hired to work on their house, when he came home unexpectedly early from a trip.
But Jacob wasn’t in the habit of lying to his friend, and didn’t want to start now, so he chose his words carefully.
“The detective isn’t going to find anything,” he said, “because there isn’t any evidence to find. You can stop worrying about it.”
“So where are you now? You didn’t pick up your home phone.”
He felt a flash of irritation return, but decided to tell Paul the truth. “I’m in a hotel room downtown at the Hyatt.”
“Alone?”
He looked around the empty room from his seat at a table in the corner. The beds were still perfectly made. “Of course I’m alone. I just needed to get some writing in, and Meg still has keys to the house. I can’t concentrate knowing she may pop in at any moment.” And then added, “Which is why I asked that no one call me.”
“Ok ok,” he friend said. “I get the hint. I’ll let you get back to what you do best: making millions with your imagination. I’m heading out of town for a few days, but I’ll give you an update when I get back. Take care Jacob.”
“You too Paul, and tell Bonnie I said hello.” Closing the phone, he stared at the words on the computer screen and wondered if they could pick up where they’d left off. He scanned through what he had written already, trying to will the muse back into his head, but he knew that never worked. Sighing, he clicked the screen closed and leaned back in the chair, closing his eyes and rubbing them.
Meg was right, there was another woman. A woman he was hopelessly and profoundly in love with, and had been for a while. However, the kind of love he was in, most people would call a mental illness. And in some ways he had to agree with them. Because the truth was, he was in love with a woman who didn’t exist.
Of course, the word ‘exist’ has several shades of meanings. For example, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet never existed. Yet, despite that fact, millions of readers have shed tears for this pair of doomed lovers. And Bram Stoker’s Dracula has been creating fright in readers for over a hundred years. How can characters that don’t exist cause so much emotion in people?
Rose was like that. Except that she wasn’t an invention of some long-dead writer. She was his creation, brought about as his imagination went into overdrive in the throes of subconscious writing.
A visit from the muse. That’s what writers call the feeling of being in the zone, when the words are just flowing out of them, almost as if they were coming from somewhere else. When this happens, sometimes things occur in the story that weren’t planned, and the writer doesn’t even recall how they thought of it. Plots will turn and twist on their own, and characters will go off in a different direction than what was originally laid out.
It happened with Rose that way. She first appeared as Alvera Torosa in his short story, ‘Blood on the Blade’ (first appearing in Playboy), where she was a cute blonde secretary who flirted shyly with the main character, Jonathan Preston. Jonathan didn’t make it to the end of the book, meeting his demise by a crazed killer who turned out to be his son from a brief affair during spring break, but Alvera stuck in his mind.
In his next book, a novel entitled ‘Dagger in the Heart’, he intended her to be a casual fling for his Milos Dagger character, an adventure hero so popular with his readers, this was the sixth novel to feature him. In this book, she was Rose O’Tare, a beautiful red-haired jewel smuggler with a heart of gold, who spoke with an Irish brogue and loved just as fiercely as she fought. His readers probably didn’t recognize she was the same character as Alvera, but in his mind, he knew she was.
Jacob wasn’t quite sure how it had happened, but by the time the book was completed, she was a main character, and had captured the heart of the elusive Dagger. The book ended with the start of their wedding ceremony on a beautiful Greek isle. surrounded by clear blue waters. And at the time, if he was being completely honest with himself, Jacob would have admitted he was a bit jealous of Milos.
When trying to think of what his next novel would be, he couldn’t get her out of his mind. He began it as another Dagger opus, picking up where the last one had left off, with a band of rogue Mediterranean pirates attacking the wedding. Out of retribution for a previous run-in, they killed Dagger’s betrothed just before she could say, “I do.”
Jacob wept as he wrote her death scene, tears falling on the keys of his laptop as she died slowly in Dagger’s arms, telling him that she would love him from beyond the grave. Milos hushed her and told her she was going to be fine, as he futilely attempted to staunch the bleeding from the wound in her chest. But when her eyes went glassy and her breathing stopped, he lifted his face to the heavens and screamed in anguish, vowing vengeance upon those who had done this.
That night, after writing that scene, Jacob had gone to bed but couldn’t sleep. He tossed and turned, his thoughts only about Rose. It was almost as if she had really died, and he was grieving for her. Tears were in his eyes when a seed of an idea came to him, and by the time he woke up the next morning, his plans for the book had changed.
It turned out to be his biggest seller ever. When the advance word for ‘A Rose for a Dagger’ came out, most of his fans were upset to hear that Milos Dagger was going to die early on in this installment. But when they got to the scene where he stepped in front of his beloved, saved her by taking the bullet himself, and then died in her arms, very few readers finished it with a dry eye. And when Rose reacted to this by turning her face to the stormy heavens and screaming in anguish, vowing vengeance upon those who had done this, they knew they had been given a new hero – or in this case a heroine – to love. Rose stepped right into Dagger’s role, globetrotting the world and getting into and out of adventures by the skin of her teeth.
Before meeting Rose, Dagger had always been a ladies’ man, bedding woman casually and often during his adventures. In the one book they were together, they had a passionate love affair, and were only with each other. After Dagger’s death, Rose remained chaste, even though man after man attempted to seduce her.
When asked about this in interviews, Jacob always explained that she was being faithful to her one true love – Milos Dagger – who had given up his life to save hers.
But that wasn’t the real reason that Rose refused the advances of other men. The real reason was because Jacob couldn’t bring himself to write about her with another man. He couldn’t stand the thought of her being with someone other than himself.
And he was with her. Although most of his books didn’t shy away from sexual situations, none of them could be described as erotica. He was very tactful when dealing with the subject, using coy phrases and ending scenes abruptly before cutting to a later scene that made it obvious what had happened, but sparing everyone the messy details.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t write erotica. It fact, despite his huge success writing action novels, erotica was what he did best. But his writings in this genre never made it beyond his own laptop.
He wrote it to be with her. The first time he tried it, he felt slightly embarrassed at the start, but as the scene went on, the muse came to visit, and the words just flowed out from his fingertips, as if coming from a secret well within him.
That first time he was with her began with them on a veranda of a beach house in southern Spain, sitting in side-by-side reclining chairs, watching the sun set over the ocean. As the last sliver of sun disappeared over the horizon, he reached out and rested his hand lightly on hers. He was nervous, not sure how she would react to this, but she took his hand and held it softly, their eyes meeting.
Moments later, they were inside on the bed, locked in a fervent embrace, releasing emotions that had been pent up for too long. Her passion surprised him, and she turned out to be an intense and inventive lover.
After they finished, they lay in the bed together, holding one another and talking, discovering each other the way new lovers do. But soon their words turned to passion again, and they made love a second time, this time more slowly and gently, building towards their climaxes and then falling asleep in each other’s arms.
When Jacob finished writing he just stared at the screen in stunned amazement. He had been a writer his entire life, but had never felt anything as powerful as this. It was almost as if he had just lived through what he had just written. And the feelings he had for Rose before the story were now magnified, as if he had really held her in his arms and shared those intimacies with her.
This had happened right after the release of ‘A Rose for a Dagger’, and in the five years since, five more Rose O’Tare novels were published. He had actually written eight, so great was his passion for writing about her, but he only released one a year to his editor, with the last three at home in his safe. And she was extremely popular with his readers. So popular that a few years ago, Hollywood came calling, wanting to turn ‘A Rose for a Dagger’ into a big budget movie. But the negotiations stalled when he refused to give up editorial control of the movies, fearing what they would do to Rose on the screen. And when he thought of all the beautiful actresses available to play the role, not one of them could live up to his mind’s eye view of her.
All during this time, he continued to be with her, whether it was alone in hotel rooms during his book tours, or home in his study after Meg had gone to bed. He would open his laptop and disappear into their world, typing away, bringing them together to share their love once again. He never tried to lie to himself and think that this wasn’t cheating on his wife. He knew it was, just as if Rose had been real. Because his love for her was real, and that’s all that matters when it comes to infidelity.
But the incident with the roofer had happened before Rose appeared, and his heart had grown cold towards Meg. He surmised that if she was fucking the hired help, she was probably sleeping with others too. Who knows, maybe he invented Rose to fill the void that Meg abandoned? Discovering Meg’s cheating had hurt him, but after the first time with Rose, he no longer cared what his wife did. She could screw the entire New York Yankees, including the bat boys, and it wouldn’t matter. As long as he could spend time with Rose. That’s why he just wanted this divorce over with, and if giving up his vacation home in Vermont, or his Corvette, or half the royalties to his books, including future ones, would bring that about, then he would agree. Because being with Rose was the only thing that mattered.
He sometimes considered the possibility that he was mentally ill, and thought about checking himself into Pineview Institute, where his father had spent the last years of his life in a state of dementia. He knew that anyone looking at it from the outside could only conclude that he was nuts. But they would never see it from how he saw it – how alive Rose became when they were together, how she seemed to come from outside of him, moving his fingers across the keys to create her, demonstrating her love for him in every kiss and caress, every word she spoke to him. Yes, Rose loved him just as much as he loved her. He felt that every time they were together.
But he was beginning to fray around the edges in his public life. Two months ago he was at bookstore signing copies of his latest, ‘A Rose from the Ashes’, when the public got a glimpse into his personal obsession.
“I’ve been a fan of yours since your very first book Mr. Penner,” said the middle-aged woman standing in front of him with a glowing smile on her face.
He smiled back. “That’s very kind of you to say, and please call me Jacob. When people call me Mr. Penner, I always look around to see if my dad is standing behind me.”
The woman beamed at this. “Ok Jacob.” She giggled a bit.
He had his Sharpie poised over her book, open to the back of the front cover. “And what would you like me to write?”
“To Rose, with love,” she replied.
He cocked an eyebrow. “That’s your name?”
“Yes,” she replied, obviously very proud of the fact. “And my friends tell me I look just like her.”
He looked at the woman. Other than her red hair, which looked like a dye job to him, she looked nothing like his Rose. And he wasn’t sure what her friends were comparing her to, since there were no pictures in his books, and he refused to allow his publisher to depict Rose on the covers. Instead, they contained a single red rose, accompanied by some other object that matched the title of the book.
“Spitting image,” he replied, keeping his smile firmly fixed on his face.
She gushed at this, and he began writing her request. She leaned down into him, as if she was watching him write, and her hand curled into his free hand, squeezing it. She brought her lips to his ear, and whispered, “And I’m just as good in bed as her too.”
His sharpie paused for a moment, making a little blot in the ‘L’ he was in the middle of, but then continued on its way. He was used to this. He had realized success early in life, getting published and on the best-seller lists while still in college. So at thirty-four, he was still relatively young for someone with his kind of resume behind him. And while he wasn’t considered a looker when he was younger, maturity had been kind to his face, giving him a rugged handsomeness. His body, while slightly thicker, was just a lean as it had been in his college days. Combine that with his success and money, and occurrences like this were a fairly common experience when he made public appearances.
She stood back up, and he finished with his signature, closed the book, and handed it to her. He noticed that she had left something in his hand – a small folded piece of paper – which he discreetly placed into the inside vest pocket of his suit jacket, giving her a wink as he did so.
There would probably be a few more of them in there by the end of the signing, and they would all end up in the same place they always did: in the wastebasket of his hotel room, unopened and unread. Before Rose he had been faithful to his wife, and after Rose, no other woman could compare.
The woman smiled and left, convinced she would be getting a call from Jacob soon. Another satisfied customer.
He turned his attention to the next person in line, a man standing in front of him with arms crossed. He wasn’t carrying a book to be signed, but that was ok with Jacob. Many of his fans just wanted to talk to him, and despite all of his success, he still enjoyed hearing what individual readers had to say about his writing.
“Hello sir,” Jacob said, “How are you today?”
The man just stared at him for a moment, and then said “You shouldn’t have killed him.”
Hoo boy. Another one of these nuts. Five years had passed and there were still some people upset about Milos Dagger. Although he was flattered that someone would care that much about a character that he had created, they also scared him a bit.
Jacob gave the man a sympathetic smile. “I’m glad you enjoyed the character of Milos,” he said, “And remember that Milos will always live on in the pages of his books, so that future generations can enjoy him too.” He had said this before, and hoped it wasn’t coming off as practiced.
“At least Milos used his brains to get out of trouble,” continued the man as if Jacob hadn’t spoken, “all Rose has is her tits and ass.”
The smile left Jacob’s face. “Sir, there’s no need to be insulting.”
“That dumb cunt couldn’t count to three if you gave her the one and the two.”
Jacob stood. In a low voice he said, “You better watch your fucking mouth.”
It wasn’t low enough however. The people standing in line, who had been engaged in quiet conversations between themselves, now gaped in silence at the scene unfolding in front of them.
“She’s nothing but a cheap whore in a fedora,” said the man, staring at Jacob.
Jacob’s left hand flashed out and grabbed the man by the shirt, holding him in place while his right fist connected with his face. The man’s eyes rolled back and he slumped to the floor, out cold.
Unfortunately, a teenage girl in line was using her cell phone to take a video of her literary hero at the time, and the next day the entire incident was splashed across the internet.
The asshole fan got a broken nose from the encounter, plus his son’s college education paid for, thanks to a quick settlement brokered by Paul.
His publisher insisted that Jacob do the national interview shows, to prove to his fans that he wasn’t the nut job seen in the video. Everything was going well until last week, when he appeared on the Today Show and was interviewed by Matt Lauer. Matt tossed him a few softballs before throwing a fastball up near the chin.
“So Mr. Penner,” said Matt, “you seem to be a bit overprotective of your heroine, Rose O’Tare.”
Jacob could see on the monitors in the studio that they were showing the video of the bookstore incident in the corner of the screen as they talked. He wasn’t sure why, because who the fuck hadn’t seen it yet? But he just smiled, and said, “I think every author is protective of their creations.”
“I don’t recall Ernest Hemmingway ever laying out anyone for criticizing the Old Man,” said Matt, a smug smile on his face as the audience laughed.
“That’s true,” said Jacob with grin, “but the Old Man wasn’t as hot as Rose.” This got a bigger laugh from the audience and Jacob was feeling a little better.
“So, if I called Rose a whore, would you punch me?” asked Matt.
Jacob’s smile disappeared. “Why would you do that?”
“It’s just a hypothetical question, Mr. Penner.”
“No, it’s a stupid fucking question, Mr. Lauer,” replied Jacob.
The live East Coast audience saw a commercial immediately following that line, and the later western feeds excised the interview altogether. But of course, once again the internet came to the rescue, where the entire interview was shown, including the resulting shoving match between Jacob and Matt.
Jacob’s publisher cancelled the remaining interview dates, and released a statement that said Jacob Penner was under stress due to his impending divorce, and that he wanted to apologize to his fans. They asked Jacob to keep a low profile for a while, hoping everything would blow over. They also asked him to consider therapy, but he told them to fuck off.
He spent the night of the disastrous interview in Rose’s arms, her body giving him pleasure as her words comforted him, telling him everything would be alright.
Now he sat in his hotel room, still pissed a bit at Paul for interrupting his afternoon with Rose. He was just about to give the writing another try when his cell phone went off again. He picked it up without checking, assuming it was Paul calling him back to give him one more detail about his hellish divorce.
“What do you want now Paul?” he said.
But instead of his friend, he heard the feminine voice of Meg, and he immediately wished he had checked first.
“Not screening your calls any more Jake?” she asked.
She knew he hated to be called that. He had told her on their first date that he thought it made him sound like a toothless hillbilly.
“What do you want, Meg?” he said, sounding as tired as he felt.
“Just wanted you to know that I’ve decided that the house in Vermont should be mine,” she said, “I’m the one who picked it out, decorated it, and spent many a weekend there while you were off on your book tours.”
He was about to add that she also probably spent those weekends screwing other guys in it, but wasn’t in the mood to argue about that again. “Yeah, Paul already gave me that jolly news. He thinks I should fight you for it.”
She laughed, but there was no joy behind it. “Why do I get the feeling that if it wasn’t for Paul, I would own everything of yours?”
“A few more calls like this, and I may not need Paul to remind me what’s mine.”
That quieted her. He could tell she was thinking about what to say next.
“Who is she Jacob?”
“She?” He knew what she meant. They had had this conversation many times before.
“Don’t play stupid. I’ve known you for fifteen years, and I know for a fact you’re in love with someone else.”
“Meg, I haven’t touched another woman since I met you.” He thought it was a nice dodge to her question, in addition to being the truth.
She was quiet for a moment, and then said, “You’re lying. I know you’re lying.”
He shrugged, and then realized she couldn’t see him. “I don’t care what you think anymore Meg.”
That must have stung her, because she came back with, “I saw your performance on the Today Show last week. Nice and sane there hubby. Pretty soon you’re going to end up in Pineview like your daddy.” She laughed harshly.
He felt the spike of anger rise, and pushed it back down. She just wasn’t worth it.
“And what’s your problem with that cunt of yours? Rosie, is that her name? She’s a fucking character in a book, and you defend her more than you ever defended me.”
“Meg, why don’t you just shut the fuck up, for once in your life?”
She laughed. She had finally gotten a rise out of him. It had been hard to do lately.
“There you go again, getting angry over her,” she said, “You know, if I thought for a moment that you were completely bat shit crazy, I would think that she was the one you were having an affair with.” She laughed hard at this.
“Fuck you Meg,” he said, snapping the phone shut and throwing it against the far wall, watching it break and fall in two pieces on the carpet. Even the greatest writers were at a loss for words sometimes, and a simple “fuck you” was all they could muster.
He lay down on the bed and tried to clear his head. He felt the anger coursing through him. First his day with Rose had been ruined, and now Meg had called to torment him. She had gotten close to the truth there, and he had screwed up by not laughing it off. At the very least, he had given her ammunition for future battles.
He wanted to go back to Rose. Something in the back of his mind warned him not to – he had never gone to her angry before. Sad? Yes, plenty of times. But never angry.
Despite the inner warnings, he got up and went back to the table where his laptop sat, and flipped open the case. The writing from earlier today was still up, but he decided that they couldn’t continue with that. He would start anew.
He closed the file and created a new one, staring at the blank screen just sitting there waiting for him to begin typing. He closed his eyes and thought for a moment, and then started.
He lay on the bed thinking of her, wishing she would walk through the door. He really needed her right now.
He stared at the screen. Nothing was coming.
Staring at the ceiling, he wondered where she was – wondered how she could leave him like this, so hurt and angry.
He tried to make his mind a blank, waiting for the muse to join him. Finally he continued.
As he laid there his anger rose, thinking of her off somewhere, while he was here hurt. He needed her now. Did she not have any gratitude towards him? After all, he had created her out of nothing. He had made her everything she was, and loved her like no one else would. How could she abandon him now in his pain?