A Novel Seduction by Gwyn Cready

literature.
    Her fingers had slowed and stopped. She looked at the screen.
In his later novels, Irving does just the opposite, using Harold and other metaphors to demonstrate sex sex sex Ynez on top?
     
    She gasped, looking both ways to see if anyone else had seen this, and pushed the chair slowly away from the desk.
    Now,
that
was weird.
    She supposed it wouldn’t hurt just to check to see where they’d netted out. She’d have to know the answer in order to write the article, after all, right?
    She grabbed the book and stretched out on the bed. Where had she been? The third chapter? She found the page, reread the scene with the struggle and the pill, feeling the same lurch in her belly, then scanned ahead. Chapter Four, Chapter Five, Chapter Six—bingo!
    “Kiss,” “caress,” and the all-important “iron length.” This was the spot!
He laid her out on the velvet-covered bench, heedless of the floor-to-ceiling windows whose diaphanous silk drapes billowed in the cool summer breeze. She would be his at last.
     
    In an instant Ellery was right there with Ynez, laid out on the bench like some Egyptian queen on a palanquin, gazing out the museum windows, feeling the heavy press of Axel between her—
    Axel?
    Harold, she thought firmly, though the scene certainly called to mind that summer night she and Axel had first succumbed.
     
Her breasts quivered with the beating of her heart.
“You will be my first,” she said in a small voice.
    “My first”?
There’s no way this is Ynez’s first time, Ellery thought. Not a she-devil who can fight her way to victory!
Please
. Ellery scanned the next paragraph and leapt to her feet, horrified.
    “This is
Britta
?” she cried. “You’re bedding
Britta
after saving
Ynez’s
life? How did that little upstart worm her way into your bed?”
    She paged furiously back to the start of Chapter Four and started to read.
    The blare of her cell phone lifted her out of a place so deep in the story, she thought for a moment Romgar had returned with the he-devils.
    “Hello?” she said, heart pounding from the shock.
    “I thought you were coming over after you checked in?” Axel said.
    She looked at the clock. An hour had passed! “I was… working.”
    “On the story?”
    “Yes!” She hopped to her feet.
    “Good to hear. I’m going to have my cell turned off. Long story, but call the bar if you need me.”
    “Fine. Whatever. See you soon.” She lifted the suitcase onto the bed and unzipped it. Harold had thankfullybeen diverted before he succumbed to Britta’s questionable charms, though it was clear he was going to be making some very bad decisions about her soon.
    Ellery tossed the phone on the bed and pulled out the first thing she could grab. The red-spangled thong. Perfect. Just what one needs for a long night sitting at the bar. She could almost feel the rash starting. She threw the thong aside and dug deeper. A V-neck sweater cut halfway to the navel, a halter dress, a see-through blouse meant to be worn over a camisole without a camisole, a leather miniskirt, a purple bustier, three lacy satin bras, a handful of barely-there underwear, a pair of jeans so skinny she wondered if they needed to be torn in to pieces and shellacked onto her buttocks, a foot of condoms and the aforementioned slip dress.
This for Scotland, London and Pittsburgh? In November?
Had they left none of the clothes she’d started with? She considered wearing the neatly creased slacks she’d arrived in, but with her sister’s “You can give a zebra a TiVo, but what’s the point?” still ringing in her ears, she didn’t dare.
    Ellery kicked off the slacks and all three pairs of underpants and went for the most conservative panty: a lipstick-red retro bikini that managed to evoke both a sixties Maidenform ad and
Playboy
magazine. She unfolded the jeans and considered. She and Jill were theoretically the same size, though Jill had hung on to those coltish teenager legs and sported an ass