Adrian Lessons Read online

  Adrian Lessons

  A novel by L.A. Rose

  Copyright © 2014 by L.A. Rose

  All rights reserved. This work or any portion thereof may not be utilized or reproduced in any way, with the exception of review purposes, without the written consent of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblances to real persons, living or dead, is unintentional and entirely coincidental.

  ~1~

  He carries me backward into the fountain, the water soaking my clothes until my nipples stand out, hard and clear, under the fabric. He kisses me fiercely as his fingers dip beneath my skirt…

  And then he slips in the water and we both go ass over teakettle…

  Nope. Try again, Cleo.

  “Take it!” he screams at the top of his lungs. “Take it, it’s so fucking hard!”

  He could beg all he wanted, but there was no way I was beating his Solitaire app for him…

  Okay, that’s the opposite of sexy.

  “I’m going to fuck you so hard you won’t know up from down,” he growls, and I’m instantly wet. He trails fiery kisses from my jaw to my breast. I’m panting with desire. He guides my legs open, his huge muscles rippling. Suddenly, all of his skin ripples. I sit upright on the bed and watch, stunned, as my gorgeous man twists and writhes, rapidly transforming into a giant lizard…

  “A giant what?”

  My creative genius is interrupted by one Marie Santos, roommate, partner in crime, and occasional best friend, leaning over my shoulder. I stop typing. “Sometimes you just gotta trust in the muse, Marie. And sometimes, the muse demands giant lizards.”

  “Cleo…”

  “I saw a lizard in the bathroom yesterday. This is a great example of how random things really work themselves into the writer’s subconscious.”

  “Cleo.”

  “And anyway, I have this gut feeling that lizard erotica will be the next big thing. I have a whole list of title ideas. Stegosaurus in Stilettos—dinosaurs are lizards, right? Raptors in Rapture, now there’s a spicy one—”

  “Cleo,” Marie breathes, and not the sexy kind of breathes, like He breathes into my ear all the filthy things he’s going to do to me. The I’m-going-to-decapitate-you kind. “I’m on a deadline. Which means you are on a deadline. I thought we were on the same page here.”

  “Well, if we were on the same page here—” I point at my computer screen— “We’d probably be fucking. Which, hey, I’m not saying I’m not interested, our drunk makeouts weren’t the worst—”

  Marie blushes six ways from Sunday, the way she always does when I remind her of our totally normal college experimentation. The way she does whenever the topic of sexy times arises. Not the most common problem for a girl with a three-book steamy romance deal with HarperCollins.

  So if she’s the bigshot author, why am I the one hunched over my computer screen, typing about cocks and vajayjays and giant lizards when I should be working on my senior thesis?

  It’s a long story.

  “Cleo,” my beleaguered roommate moans again, getting on her knees in much the same way that her protagonist did three chapters earlier, although Marie’s mouth is being sadly underutilized to nag me. “I don’t want HarperCollins to think that I’m a flighty kid who can’t make deadlines, just because I’m in college. You and I have a deal. I’ll take care of the plot, the story, the characters, the setting—”

  “And I’ll write the sex scenes,” I finish her sentence for her. Just like I usually help her characters finish, except when I have writers’ block. Then they turn into giant lizards instead. “I know.”

  Marie stands up straight. She’s wearing her stained, oversized Statham sweatshirt, an obvious sign she’s balls deep—or cervix deep, really—in a first draft. Other symptoms: rancid Taco Bell breath, glasses so smudged it’s amazing she can see through them, and eyes rimmed with tears.

  The tears get me. “I’m sorry, Marie. I’m honest-to-God trying—”

  She makes a noise in the back of her throat like a miniature lawnmower just got tangled with her tonsils.

  “Okay, maybe I wasn’t trying so hard at this particular moment,” I admit. “But I have been trying. My sexiness tube is blocked up, is all. I’ve got an extra-large tampon shoved into the vaginal cavity of my smut creativity. You feel me?”

  Her fingers twitch. I’m sensing that the only part of me she wants to feel is my neck while she strangles it. I backtrack. “What I’m trying to say is that I have writer’s block. Big time.”

  “How do you get writer’s block,” she hisses at me, now in full-blown Anxiety Marie mode. “All you have to write is porn! You love that stuff! You’ve been writing smut ever since you were fourteen and you figured out what fanfiction was!”

  I get a little misty-eyed, thinking back on my first creative endeavors. I was a big Trekkie as a kid, and Spock had some beautiful moments with Uhura under my watch. But now’s not the time to get sentimental.

  I spin in the rotating desk chair we bought from Goodwill the day we moved in. “Maybe I need to go on a writer’s retreat. In a cabin somewhere. Nothing but the birds and the bees. Then maybe I’ll be able to write again about the birds and the bees.”

  “That’s it!” Marie slams both hands down on my desk. It’s such an unusual display of aggression for my perfect writer’s stereotype of a roommate—mousier than the actual mouse living in our heater, whom we’ve named Kevin—that I start.

  “What’s it?”

  “A writer’s retreat.” She takes a couple calming breaths, as instructed by her therapist. “That’s what you need.”

  “I was kidding, Marie.” I spin twice more in the chair. “I have a full courseload. A writer’s retreat is gonna happen just like Heath Ledger is going to come back to life and show up on my doorstep with roses and a bottle of cherry lube.”

  “No, no, no. What I’m saying is that you need time to get inspired and rediscover yourself, right?” Marie hops up and sits on my desk, face shining. She’s in Idea Mode now. “Normal writers do that by holing up in a cabin or whatever. I’d do that by holing up in a cabin. But you—” She blushes.

  Dear Lord.

  She’s about to make a sex joke.

  “You need help with a different kind of holing,” she stutters.

  I make the sign of the cross on my chest and look skyward before recovering. “So what you’re saying is that I should find the nearest men’s brothel and book a weeklong stay.”

  “I’m saying it’s been a month since Eric.”

  I wince. I do not need to be reminded. “I broke up with him, remember?”

  “Still. You were dating for three years.”

  You heard that right. Three years. There is nothing more annoying than the word years when it’s being drawn out for emphasis.

  I usually dance around this topic. The truth is, I have a secret. Doesn’t everyone? But this is a biggie. Not even Marie knows about it. And it has to do with Eric.

  “For someone who writes completely amazing sex scenes, you’ve been pretty out of the sex scene,” says Marie almost gently, and I can tell she’s really worried about me, because she doesn’t blush at the word “sex.”

  Sometimes I want to write her Catholic parents a strongly worded letter.

  And by “strongly worded” I mean I want to send them a piece of paper with the word “COCK” typed fifty times in a row. Just to watch them detonate.

  I never claimed to be an angel.

  I rotate slowly in the chair, dragging my toes through our shag rug. “Somehow I don’t think sex with some rando is going to magically bring back my mojo.”

  Marie jumps off my desk and draws herself to her full height, which is an adorable four feet, eleven inches. “Cleo! Listen to me. You are a vi
brant woman. This is your peak. You have to get out there and take advantage of it. And I’m not talking full-on sex. What I really need for my next book is lots of foreplay scenes. Lots and lots of foreplay.”

  I consider it. Then I swivel around to face her.

  “No, no, and no.”

  ~

  “Yes, yes, yes!” says the boy above me.

  It’s Friday night, I’m a little drunk, and I took Marie’s advice and hooked up with a rando. Famous last words.

  Now, in my sex scenes, that chant of “yes, yes, yes!” has to be earned. The yeses come after maybe the third orgasm, or while the man runs his pointed tongue over the protagonist’s swollen—well, you get the picture. And the picture is not work-safe.

  These yeses are courtesy of one David Englebarry, and no, I have not done anything remotely fantastic enough to deserve them. Except have boobs.

  Yep. The kid managed to unhook my bra and now he’s chanting yes like the Red Sox just scored the final inning in the Super Bowl.

  What? I write sex scenes, not sports fiction.

  “They’re just boobs,” I say, which is not the sexiest thing to come out with mid-hookup, but I’m genuinely fascinated. Has he never seen breasts before? Has he grown up believing that women were constantly balancing grapefruit halves on their chests? Hasn’t he watched Game of Thrones?

  “You’ve got awesome tits,” he announces, congratulating himself more than me.

  Then he bends over and continues giving my mouth a dental exam with his tongue.

  Pro tip: Never hook up with guy whose last name is Englebarry. Even if his apartment is just downstairs from yours, in the off-campus building so filled with students that it’s nicknamed Party Planet. Even if your idiot roommate insists that he’s “completely gorgeous, Cleo!” A six pack does not a sexpert make.

  I think—

  Oh God.

  I think he might be a virgin.

  He resurfaces with a slurping sound to offer, “This is awesome, Chloe.”

  Oh hell no. I was tempted to let this play itself out for a few more minutes—that’s how resolute I was to make my first post-Eric kiss, and actually my first non-Eric kiss, a good one—but he did not just call me Chloe. Does he think I’m a eighties teen-movie mean girl? I whip my bra off the edge of his bed and slide out from underneath a hundred and eighty pounds of deceptively hot boy. “David, I just remembered. I have a thing.”

  “A thing?” He stares at me, both of us waiting to see if I’m nice enough to come up with a halfway decent excuse.

  “Yeah. A thing.” Turns out I’m not. What I am is relieved. I wasn’t ready for this after all. I’d rather curl up naked in bed with my one true love, whose name starts with Net and ends with Flix.

  “You’re joking,” he whines, slumping back across his college-boy sheets that probably haven’t been washed since mommy visited. Cheer up, bucko. Sex was definitely never on the table anyway. You got to see my boobs! An honor previously reserved for Eric, my doctor, and Calem Smith, the freshman I drunkenly flashed my senior year of high school!

  “If I were joking, you’d be laughing. I have an awesome sense of humor,” I say. Though not as awesome as my tits.

  “Come on—you can’t leave me like this.” He grabs my arm half-playfully, tugging me toward the bed. I pull free. This little exchange turns out to be vitally important, because it’s the reason my bra is still off when the door opens.

  Once, in high school, Eric’s mom walked in on us. I’d whipped the blanket across our legs and claimed that it was windy outside when she asked why my hair was so messy. Today, there’s no time for that. Just a hand on the knob, a low chuckle, and one of the deepest voices I’ve ever heard saying “…Shit.”

  I turn eight thousand shades of red. New variations on that beetroot color are discovered in my capillaries. All around the world, artists hold conferences as they decide how to best incorporate these new colors into their palates.

  I do not meet the eyes of David Englebarry’s apartment-mate. I almost flee directly into the hall, boobs swinging akimbo, before I realize there are probably other boys out there—and two boys who I don’t want to see my boobs having seen my boobs is enough for one day. I break several world records in how quickly I apply bra and shirt to my body, aim myself at the door, and zoom past that hand on the knob.

  The large, strong hand, with a hint of muscular vein and a little V-shaped scar on the back.

  The hand attached to a boy who I very, very determinedly do not look at.

  ~2~

  “It was a disaster,” I moan into my Monday morning strawberry-banana-soymilk-protein smoothie. Even the flax seeds aren’t making me feel any better. Marie is walking me to class to hear all about my hideous post-Eric hookup—or rather, I’m speedwalking to class to outrun my shame, and she’s just barely keeping up.

  “I’m not the hookup type. I’m just not. I’m the write-sex-scenes-so-filthy-I-could-make-the-sun-blush type while also being the twenty-two-years-old-and-only-ever-had-sex-with-one-person type. I’m a natural contradiction. Like Jennifer Lawrence. Atchoo!”

  “Bless you. And why is Jennifer Lawrence—” pants Marie.

  “I thought his eyes were going to fall out of his head when he saw my boobs, okay? I don’t think he even realized women have secondary sex characteristics. He seemed fundamentally surprised about it. Atchoo! And then we got walked in on—”

  “You’re kidding,” she gasps. “By who?”

  “His roommate, I guess. I didn’t exactly take down his license and registration. I didn’t even look at his face. I just ran for it. Atchoo! Not only did David not look like Brad Pitt, like you swore, he was a walking germ pit instead, and I woke up with a cold.” I sniffle, whipping a tissue from my pocket and wiping my nose.

  “Oh no.” Sympathy buzzes all around her like a cloud of annoying flies.

  I brush them away and slurp up half a frozen strawberry. “Your genius plan to revitalize my writer spirit fell through. I’ll just have to go to India to discover myself like that chick in Eat, Pray, Love, Sleep, Masturbate and whatever else. Atchoo!”

  “No, I had a—” And she trips, nearly falling flat on her face. I slow down. It is eight thirty a.m. on a Monday, after all, and while I may be a morning person, my stumpy-legged roommate is most certainly not equipped for a hearty jog across Statham’s massive campus. Even though we’re running late.

  “Ow,” she grumbles. “They really need to deal with these gopher holes. Anyway, I had a better idea.”

  “Considering your last idea got me in bed with high school virgin disguised as a college student, I think I’ll pass.” I finish off my smoothie and chuck it in a trash can overflowing with last night’s beer bottles and, dare I say, used condoms. “I know what you’re going to say. That I should try again. But honestly, I’ve come to terms with real-life sex being shitty. I’m just stuck in a little rut with the writing thing, but I’ll get out of it. Really.”

  In response, she shoves a newspaper at me.

  I peel it off my chest. It’s not just any newspaper. It’s the Statham Blotter, that student-run dishrag that people only read to see who got in trouble with Campus Security over the weekend. Occasionally they run articles by freshman whining about the food in the cafeteria or profile some perpetually drunk sucker on the men’s lacrosse team. “Sorry, I don’t need to blow my nose at the moment. Or wipe my ass.”

  “No, look at this.” She stabs her thumb at the page it’s been folded open to.

  “Advice from the Sex King,” I read. “Is this a sex advice column? Come on, Marie. I could have come up with something snappier than that.”

  She prods the paper again. “Just read it!”

  I sigh and lower my eyes.

  Dear Sex King,

  I write erotic fiction for a living, but recently I’ve been unable to come up with anything. Writer’s block. I think it has something to do with the fact that I got out of a long relationship recently, and haven’t had sex
since. I’d love to rediscover my sexual side and hopefully stimulate my muse in the process. Any ideas for how I should go about doing this?

  Sincerely,

  High and Dry

  “Did you send this in?” I demand. “Marie! What the hell?”

  “Chill out.” She sips her own smoothie, unruffled for once in her life. “Nobody’s gonna know it’s about you—”

  “You’re always so paranoid about people finding out that I write your sex scenes. I can’t believe you’d put it in the Blotter!”

  “I didn’t.” She rolls her eyes at me. “I said you write erotic fiction. Nobody’s going to read that as ‘writes the sex scenes for her friend’s romance series.’ Just read what he wrote in response. It’s—”

  I crumple the newspaper up. I’m about to chuck it in the nearest trash can, but this one’s even more stuffed than the last, and having hippie parents left me with a deep-rooted anti-littering stance. I stuff the balled-up newspaper in my tote, vowing to ceremonially burn it later. “I’m not getting sex advice from some hopped up frat boy who thinks he’s the world’s biggest gift to women because someone blew him once at a party.”

  She opens her mouth to protest, but we’ve arrived at the Abraham Shapiro Academic Building. Her English seminar is down past the cafeteria. My Psych lab is here. I blow her a kiss. “Don’t stress. I’ll sit down to write after dinner today.”

  “Hang on. I have these allergy meds that will help a ton with your congestion,” says Marie, rummaging in her bag. I love her, but the girl’s a hypochondriac. She goes through at least four things of pills before she catches sight of the clock mounted just inside my building. “Damn it! Professor Greene’s gonna kill me. Here.”

  She shoves a random baggie at me and runs for it, her bag bouncing off her notoriously sticky-outie butt. She’s earned the nickname of The Upperclassman with Lower Class among the freshman, though they’re all too scared of her Catholic sensibilities to make a move.