Being Eloise (An Erotic Romance Collection, Books 1-3) Read Online Free Page B

thirty minutes, had given me a few notes that they could just as well have sent in an e-mail—or a text message, if they even knew what that was. No industry except paleontology has more dinosaurs than publishing, let me tell you.
    By the time I returned to my bedroom Gabriel had finished cleaning the pool and was now hidden behind a hedge that separated the pool from the jacuzzi. I checked: I was dry again, but my brain was still sopped wet with want. I cinched my robe more tightly around my waist and quietly left the apartment, sprinting across the drive to the front doors, keys in hand. I let myself inside the house. There was no sound but the familiar ticking of clocks and then the muffled notes of Gabriel singing something: a ditty in Spanish. I was there for purely logistical reasons: the bedroom above offered an excellent view down to the jacuzzi.
    Upstairs, I stood in front of the window in the narrow space between the bed and the dresser. Ever so slowly I turned the horizontal blinds until I could see down. A strip of sweat soaked Gabriel’s shirt. Backs were nice. All the fat hangs hidden. But Gabriel would be done in minutes. I opened my robe and ran my hand quickly across my breasts, pulled at my nipples to kickstart my body, and there it was: wet again. I heard a car then and the index and middle fingers of my right hand froze within me, as did the pointer finger of my left hand there on my clit. (No, I’m not left-handed, I just like to mix it up.) And I, too, was frozen. I could, of course, move, but there was this panicky hope that the sound I’d heard wasn’t real, that I wouldn’t have to do anything different, that I could, finally, just get off and take a nap before completing another hour of work and getting on with the drudgery of routine. Trick was, I told myself, I just had to not move.
    But no, a car door slammed and my hands were retying my robe and I was waiting for the sound of the downstairs front door to open. Instead, I heard Gabriel speaking and looked down to see him head back to the pool, and then I saw a woman run toward him and kiss him and then disappear under the back porch. She was black, which I mention only because when she reemerged in a white bikini, the contrast was just stunning. She had the kind of figure you only see in places far from me: California, or the Mediterranean. The water in the pool was still and hardly moved after she dove. I watched her large cloud of hair shrink and wrap against her head underwater. My eyes followed her form as she swam the length of the pool. I stepped back slightly from the window when she turned and swam back, surfacing for a breath. But she didn’t see me. Her eyes were on Gabriel.
    “Come in,” she said, but Gabriel said only “no, no, no,” casually.
    I felt such disappointment in Gabriel then. Who was she? How did a lowly pool cleaner know someone like this woman, now swimming back, her body billowing and contracting under the now-alive water? The contrast between her skin and bathing suit was stunning—and I mean this in a purely aesthetic sense: she was not turning me on. Only making me jealous. I don’t swing that way, though I wish I did. Life would be so much simpler, it often seems. Maybe. Probably not.
    What got me going again was the thought of my little unaware fantasy play-thing, Gabriel, stripping down to his underwear and enjoying the pool while the owners were away. I willed him to do it, but couldn’t hear what he was saying to the woman. She splashed him with water. And then, after a pause, out came her top and bottom, flung at him like two besotted white doves. She floated on her back, her breasts a slightly lighter shade of dark caramel, for want of a better word. And then it happened: Gabriel dove, buck-naked, into the pool. He swam after her until he caught her in a corner and they kissed and by now my hands were working my body’s mechanics again and I didn’t care when the phone in the house rang, or that