Let’s see if we can make this work. Given that multiple people can comment at a time, it might overlap a bit, but let’s give it a shot.
Since Eva Longoria’s book is probably going to be “written” with assistance and possibly in its entirety by another writer, let’s give her a hand.
Let us compose the first chapter (or two) of Longoria’s romance novel. Each of you has 150 words to write, and we’ll add on to each other’s paragraphs. It’s a quick-action round-robin creation of the most tawdry, ridiculous, Longoriastic romance novel ever.
Then we’ll vote on the best contribution and annoint the winner with pixels and, if I can get her agent on the phone, a signed photograph of Longoria. Or a picture of a desperate housewife. I bet I can find one in my neighborhood. And hell, I’m not a housewife but I get plenty desperate if there’s no chocolate in the vicinity so you might just get a picture of my fine self. Now how’s THAT for inspiration?
Here are the rules:
You have 150 words; I’ve temporarily upped the comment character limit so you have a crapload of letters to use. But please limit to 150 words (give or take 5).
Your paragraph should continue the previously posted paragraph in the story but work quickly – this is about speed, absurdity, and Eva Longoria’s writing career. We want your comment posted in the thread location where you want it to appear, but we also have to get this thing out before the stardom sparkler that is the Housewives most Desperate burns through its last 15 minutes.
I won’t give you too much structure – this is about wanton creativity and vivid, dare I say desperate, imagination, after all. But do work in the use of the word “longoria,” if you can.
On your mark, get set – go!
Chapter One
Eva’s dark mysteroius eyes fluttered open to view her luxurious bedroom. “Oh, it was such a lovely dream,” she sighed deeply her pert breasts straining against the tight silk bustier. She rolled over and scooped aside the beautiful silken bedclothes and walked to the window. She had a large opulent house, a free designer wardrobe, and bucket loads of money, but was it too much to ask to have someone to share it with, she wondered, wonderingly?
Just then the unmistakeable glint of hairless man-titty caught her attention, it was Duff the poolboy, flexing his biceps while skimming the pool with his long wand.
“Nah, Eva said, dismisfully, “That happened last season.”
Padding softly to her closet, Eva gazed at the racks upon racks of designer clothing gifted to her by admiring studio execs and various companies that were absolutely salivating for her to wear their latest design. “I just can’t decide!†she whimpered, jutting her full lower lip out in a way that she had been told was absolutely adorable. “What do you wear when you’re trying to find true love?†She began tossing outfits onto the bed, each one skimpier than the last. Finally, she decided on a bright orange tube top and skin tight, olive green shorts. “Perfect!†she cooed to her reflection, the mirror capturing not only her petite, barely dressed self but also the of bare-chested, hairless gardener working on trimming the bush outside her window. Traipsing lightly to her kitchen, which she just found existed last week, Eva stopped short. A man stood before the sink!
But it wasn’t a stranger. This was a man she used to know, when she was still young and on the cusp of womanhood. He had pursued her, wooed her, seduced her, and then left her. She never dreamed she would see him again, this handsome man. Her Rafael.
But now, Rafe was back in her life.
“Hello, love,” he said, his hungry brown eyes drinking her in. His shirt was snug against his rippling muscles. She gulped, remember how those muscles had looked years ago, tan and firm and smooth. Oh, she longed to run her fingers through his luscious brown hair! It was just as she remember it, short in front and long and flowing in the back.
“Rafe, I can’t believe you found me!” she cried.
And then she paused. What if he knew? What if he knew about the secret she had kept all these years … the child with Rafe’s brown eyes.
Eva pursed her rose bud lips, and her eyes filled with apprehension.
And what a man!
Well-washed denim hugged every curve of his hips and thighs. Taught, sun-kissed skin rippled, slid over muscles and bones as he worked, knife flying through the vegetables on the counter.
Crisp lettuce littered the counter like rose petals strewn on bed . . . juicy grape tomatoes the colour of her nipples lay wet and gleaming in a shallow bowl.
“Hi,” he said, voice low and seductive. “I’m Tony. Greens sent me over with your lunch.”
Eva blinked her eyes. She shook her head till the silken strands of her hair flew about in the breeze. She opened here eyes and looked again. No, there really were two men standing in her kitchen. Rafe, her long ago lover and Tony, the new salad god. Hmmmmm… she thought.
As she evaluated the possibilities, she let her gaze wander over the men in front of her.
Rafe just stood there. His lust-glazed eyes reflecting no intelligence backto her. Obviously, he hadn’t changed at all. Good. She didn’t like her men to think too hard.
Tony jiggled the salad bowl suggestively. “What kind of dressing would you like?” His eyes hinted that he was more interested in undressing her at the moment.
Eva pouted, puckering her lips in a sexy moue. Lunch… Would they go for it?
And then she spoke her thought aloud. “Actually, I’m not interested in a salad today. What I want for lunch is a manwich.”
Whatever would she do? TWO gorgeous men in her kitchen. Tony, the chef of her dreams that Greens had finally managed to seduce away from her archrival, Melanie Luscious…and Rafe, the father of her secret child.
Who should she choose? Her high alabaster forehead knitted pensively.
Rafe curled a long masculine finger under her chin and gazed deeply into her deep velvety purple eyes.
“I know about our son. My mother, Longoria, told me everything. Why would you keep him from me? How could you leave me on the eve of our wedding?”
“Longoria! You could never see that she always hated me, Rafe. She drove us apart!”
“But we need never be apart again, my love,” Rafe said gazing deeply, yet vapidly, into her eyes. “You’re rich now—I mean, what possible objection could my mother have? You are the one who has always held a place in my heart.”
He took her hand and placed it over his man-titty, a tit she couldn’t help but ruefully notice was substantially larger than her own size 0…
But that wasn’t important. What was important was that Rafe was back. Yes, the secret about the uber-secret baby was out. Yet that wasn’t the only secret in her life. How many lies would she be forced to tell before he found out the truth and left her?
Eva did’nt say a word.
She tuned with a smile on her lips, ready to tell Quinn.. er uh.. to tell Rafe that we might be hearing from Amelia .. uh hearing from Longoria soon, only to find he was right behind her and his face was intent with a look she could not mistake. He was ready for something entirely different.
“Tell me Sookie, … oops I mean Eva…that you don’t want me to kiss you, and I’ll back off,” Quinn…damn I mean, Rafe said and then he was kissing her.
(browniepoints for who can tell me where I “Viswanathaned” that from?)
“You wanted what for lunch?â€
Kissing would have to wait. Tony’s voice pulled her attention and lips away from Rafe’s strange-yet-tantalizingly familiar mouth.
Oh. Damn. Did she really say that out loud? Eva touched an acrylic nail to her throbbing lower lip. It never failed. The moment she dressed for love, Rafe came waltzing back into her life. Did she need this? Her personal life on permanent reruns? Afternoon teas with Longoria, who if she approved, only did so because Eva was now wealthy, famous, and fabulously dressed.
Or maybe a mid-season replacement was more in order. A man who could cook? That was a start. Eva checked for telltale mullet signs, but the back of Tony’s neck was nicely tanned.
“You know, now that I think about it.†Eva had the impression that Rafe stiffened, but well, she’d seen that before. “Now that I think about it, I’d rather have—â€
Huh. So she’d fallen for it, the man pretending to be Rafe thought, waving Tony the chef and Eva’s request for a manwich aside with one masterful gesture of his hand.
Now, to take his plan one step further. Lives—and past lives—depended on it.
“Darling…” he trailed a finger up her slender neck, then brought it under her chin to tilt her pretty head back. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten. Perhaps your housewifely desperation has crowded out the memory of this—” his other hand delved between her lush breasts to pull out a gold filigreed locket, and dangled it before her eyes.
She gasped. A vision rose up, unbidden, almost like a memory. She was corseted, beribboned, silk-clad, and whirling in the steps of a waltz…with this man. And Longoria, dressed all in black, was looking on. Only Longoria was no longer her mother. She was…
“Darling?”
Eva shook herself, forcing a smile to come to her trembling lips as she gazed into Rafe’s crystal-like eyes. “Yes, my love?â€
“Don’t you remember?†The locket twirled lazily between his fingers, catching the light and dancing before their eyes. “It was so long ago…â€
“I remember,†she breathed, her eyes drifting shut as she was lost on a wave of memories long forgotten, lives that had been secreted for decades. “Senior prom…â€
“Yes,†he hissed, the word harsh in the otherwise quiet kitchen. “Senior prom, nineteen eighty…â€
“HEY!â€
“…ninety six…†He raised a brow, wondering how much longer she thought she could get away with her charade. “You wore that dress…â€
“I loved you, Rafe,†she choked out, pushing him away. “And you left me!â€
“I never left you!†he shouted, his temper snapping. “You walked away and never came back!â€
“I had to fix my bangs!†she sobbed.
“My god,†he breathed. “All those years we wasted. How can we ever get them back?â€
Eva trembled with emotion. “As long as we’re together now. Nothing will ever tear us apart again.â€
“Oh my darling!†He locked her in a passionate embrace, holding her firmly against his man-titty. “I’ll never let you go again.â€
His lips met hers, and she welcomed his tongue into her mouth.
“Eh hmm.†They were interrupted by Tony clearing his throat. “How sweet. But there’s a problem with your little reunion. Eva is now married to me.â€
“Eva? Is this true?” Rafe inquired, inquireingly. Eva bit her knuckle, tears, glistening in her dark mysterious eyes. “Ouch!, she said, hurt in her voice, “that hurts everytime I do that!”
Rafes strong hands gripped her upper arms, “Damn it Jim… I mean Eva, is this true?”
Eva silently raised her hand to show him the ring on the third finger of her left hand.
“That’s enough of that,” came the sinister voice at the door way.
Eva turned her dark mysterious eyes to the doorway. “Duff? What are you doing, should’nt you be scrubbing the Jaccuzi(tm)?”
Duff produced a very menacing looking gun. “Not today, Terri!”
“It’s Eva!”
“Whatever,” Duff shrugged.
“You are coming with me, now.”
“Rafe? Are you going to stand for this? Rafe? Tony? Where did you go?”
Puzzled, Eva turned her dark myterious eyes to Duff again.
“What are you going to do with me?” she asked.
“Hey I’m just the delivery boy, Terri, Duffs lip curled in to an evil smile, your fate is up to my boss Mr.Garlioa.”
“I’m Eva!”
Duff shurgged broad shoulders, “Whatever.”
Duff hauled Eva across Hollywood, to the office of his sinister boss, Mr. Garlioa. Duff was merely a henchman, although his dark, mysterious eyes had made Eva’s pulse pound with a quickening fear. But she should have saved her pounding pulse for a real villain.
Mr. Garlioa sat behind his massive oak desk. His office commanded an impressive view of the city below, and Eva wondered if anyone had ever noticed how people look so small – like little ants – when veiwed from such a height.
“Miz Eva,” the nasty, nasty man hissed, catching her attention.
Like Irish Setters, Eva had difficulty maintaining her concentration for long, although she heeded commands well. Espcially kinky commands from mysterious henchmen. She gazed up and down Duff, lamenting the fact that he was only a main character in her drama. She returned her attention to Mr. Garlioa, even though he had neither mantitty nor mullet.
“Miz Eva, we have a problem. It’s about your show… and your future.”
(correction: Duff is a minor character)
****
Rafe grinned. Pretty Tony may be, but Rafe knew where his interests lay, and said lay was not with Eva.
Tony stalked past him, salad bowl in hand.
“Problem?” Rafe’s grin downgraded into a smirk.
Tony slammed the salad bowl onto the counter. A cherry tomato bounced off his chin, and a slice of moist cucumber clung to one firm, bronze tipped male mound. “The ungrateful bitch was too busy looking through her closet and staring out the window to even TRY my salad. I even handwashed the golden raisins for her.”
Rafe’s smirk faded to a mock-serious expression. “Let me taste it, then.”
He strolled over, hips moving gently in a way that he knew drew attention to his package. He bent slightly, and the tip of his tongue flicked to the warm skin just under the still-clinging cucumber. Hooking it with his tongue, he drew the morsel into his mouth, delicately nipping at it as it went in. He chewed leisurely, enjoying Tony’s discomforture, and swallowed. “Delicious.”
“Did somebody mention the future?”
Suddenly, blocking the twenty-million dollar view, from Gariola’s office, appeared Zarkor from the planet Zabulous, king of brawny elven aliens.
Zarkor brooded behind his long silvery bangs and attempted to master his massive alien member, which was more frisky in the lighter gravity of earth, and in the presence of this edible Eva.
“Master,” hissed his whipcord-strong, elegant alien sidekick who might possibly feature as a hero in a sequel. “Shall I…deal with Gariola?”
“Nay,” Zarkor flashed a glowing grin which attracted Eva so strongly, her Brazilian wax sprouted stubble. “Gariola was about to discuss Eva’s ratings, I believe.” He waved his emerald-like sceptre, raising a mighty magick wind to send his lissome locks into a dancing tangle. “Speak on, minion.”
“Master!” Garlioa stammered. “I- I was just telling Miss Hatcher here about, the the…No Master! No!!” Garlioa slumped dead, his head making a hallow thud on the desk.
“Nice work Zarkor,” said Lag-Orion.
“Nay, that was not me, Zarkor intoned deeply. “It seems that Garlioa was working both sides of the fence, my dark and brooding side kick.”
Eva’s dark and mysterious eyes shot sparks of heated anger at both men.
“What the hell is going on here?” she spat. She stood, balling both fists at her waist, which only helped to define her impossably tiny waist.
‘Well, as long as he’s gone…‘Zarkor began, and with a smart snap of his fingers, Eva found herself, the silver banged Zarkor, and his elegant sidekick back in her kitchen. Just in time to witness…
‘Rafe! What are you doing?’ Eva gasped, her petite, yet attractively pert bosom heaving in indignation.
‘Well, my pretty, it looks like your husband and your prom date have found something else in common,‘Zarkor intoned.‘Perhaps it’s best you didn’t go for a manwich after all. They may have skipped the cream cheese and just gone for ham…if you know what I mean’
‘Ahem, Master,‘sidekick Glargh interrupted, ‘We did have orders to please Ms Longoria however we could…’
‘Are you suggesting?‘Zarkor asked pensively.
‘I am suggesting.’ Glargh confirmed expenctantly.
This subtlety was too much for Miss Eva, who started heaving her bosom again
‘Oh do stop that, my dear,‘Zarkor snapped,‘You’ll put someone’s eye out. Glargh is merely stating that we should…
“Miss Longoria, you’re on in 15 minutes!”
Eva snapped awake, alone in her trailer. She looked around to make sure no one saw her wipe the drool off her chin.
Like that chic with the braids in Kansas, she had been asleep. It had all been a dream within a dream… within a dream: Rafe, Tony, the cucumber slice, the mullets, the incongruous spacemen, all those people calling her Teri Hatcher. She tried to sort out what it meant, but the unfamiliar exertion of thought left her dizzy and nauseous.
But if it was all a dream…? She quickly looked at herself in the mirror, panicked. Pout – check. Fabulous and excessive wardrobe – check. But she was still alone.
Eva sighed the sigh of a wealthy, sighing, self-pitying hack. What would she do when people realized that her shrill, catty facade was no act? What life would she have when the party was over, the dance was done, the song was sung, the… where was I?
Eva was ready to face facts for the first time in her over-exposed life. No dark, mysterious hunk of mantitty was going to strut suggestively into her life – his mullet flowing in the wind and his Tom Jones indicating a desire to hump vigorously. She had to make something of her wasted existence before the needless hype died down and she was left in the dark, where no one could see her flawless pout.
Resolved to her true, true, really true calling, Eva looked around for a pen and paper. She would write down all of her weird thinky things. She could! She would become An Author – the sort of woman every good Bitch would cheer.
But just as Eva sat down to write, there was a knock at her trailer door…
“… Take Eva back to our tropical planet, Zabulous, where she will, of course, charm the Zarbarbians to the bottom of their pulsing hearts—from glowing green atrium to acidic ventricle?”
“Don’t be stupid; hearts aren’t green,” said Eva, who had broken enough men’s hearts to have a thourough knowledge of the Cardiovascular system.
“You are smarter than you look,” King Zarkor was amazed.
“And, of course, I could not leave without my secret son, Longorius!”
Rafe (who had, admittedly, been paying more attention to Tony than to beautiful Eva) turned his head towards Eva, thick mullet billowing.
“You named our son after my late billionaire father?” He gave a manly gasp.
(Whoops! Need to refresh page… this conversation, of course, is heard by Eva through the chrome door of her trailer… being feisty, she must argue back through it…”
Her perfect white teeth bit deep into her pouting upper lip. How foolish she had been! To have kept the truth from Rafe for so long, only to blurt it to his face in an ill-planned moment of pique! Now Rafe would surely guess the truth of that dark and terrible Mardi Gras night when, drunk on banana daquiris, Eva had slipped and broken her Carmen Miranda heel on a rain-slicked cobblestone, and how she had limped into the arms of a masked stranger who claimed to be a travelling door-to-door shoe-salesman but who, in fact, was none other than Rafe’s long-suppressed superhero alter-ego that had emerged after the tragic canoing accident that had nearly claimed Rafe’s life as a child. Would he ever forgive her when he realised she had secretly burned his therapy records in order to keep his secret identity hidden from the paparazzi?
One look at the puzzled, cocker-spaniel-like tilt of Rafe’s head, however, convinced her that the roguishly sensual man was not too quick on the uptake. She forced herself to remain cool and aloof.
“Of course not!” she snapped as she heaved her beautiful curvacious bulk from her dressing-room table. “Now, if you will excuse me, your majesties, I must go to my loveless yet satisfying career. My public needs me.”
Rafe flashed her a reckless, sneering grin that made her blood boil with rage, even as it stirred her senses and made her think, quite irrationally, of biting the buttons off his poofy blouse and riding him like a pony. She longed to slap the irritating smugness from his face. Instead she bustled past him, in a whisper of satin and perfume (his), to the soundstage.
Eva was but a single step from the cameras when, without warning, a strong and unfamiliar hand seized her wrist.
A pair of smoke-gray eyes peered unflinchingly into her own limpid pools as an affronted gasp issued from her lips.
“Let me go!” she spat feistily, even as the stranger’s muscular arm snaked around her waist and pulled her flush against him.
“You life is in danger. Just play along.”
Before Eva had time for more than a cutely puzzled wrinkling of her nose, (or what would have been a cutely wrinkled nose had the Botox not been doing a superb job,) the stranger covered her mouth in a heated kiss.
Well, I AM an actress… she thought, shrugging as she let her hands tangle themselves in his thick dark curls.
His hand skimmed her jaw as he broke the kiss and turned to the astonished crew.
“I’m her husband. Family emergency,” he growled authoritatively.
Still gripping her wrist, he pulled her with him towards the emergency exit.
[Sorry, I cut myself off there because I’m a hamfisted Neanderthal.]
“Who are you?” Eva asked, still looking back at the soundstage as she tried, unsuccessfully, to free herself from the grasp of the stranger.
“Theo Monteraine. I’m a cop. Don’t argue, Princess. I didn’t want this assignment. I’ve got better things to do than play babysitter to a coddled B-rate actress with delusions of grandeur.”
Too bad my higher-ups still don’t forgive me for my partner’s death. Hell, I can’t forgive myself for Jack’s death.
Theo grunted dismissively and kept walking towards his parked car with Eva in tow.
“I’m taking you to my family’s ranch in the Texan country side where familial angst and earthy sexual metaphors await us. You’d better start getting used to jeans and boots, Princess.”
Jeans and boots? But—would they be designer jeans? Jimmy Choo boots? Something in the sinister (yet alluring) gaze of Theo Monteraine told Eva that the answer was no.
Pulling Eva through the parking lot by one delicate wrist, Theo did not glance back at Rafe and Co., nor at Eva’s adoring public, as they stared at her retreating (and satin lingere-clad) form. “Why did it have to be a woman?” Theo wondered. “A raven-haired, beautiful woman, like Camilla… but, no—” He would not think of Camilla. Could not, after what had happened to Jack.
“Ow!” Eva gave a silvery cry. “My wrist!”
Theo stopped, a few yards from his car.
“I may be alone in this world, but I always wear my charm bracelet!” Eva held out her wrist, showing Theo how a sparkly silver bracelet was cutting into her golden skin. “It was given to me by—”
Theo groaned. “I am a brute,” he thought. “It’s just been so long since—what was that!?”
Rafe and Tony, alias “the bug” and “the enforcer” stood in their path, really big silver guns identified by numbers that Eva didn’t know and didn’t care to know. The guns were BIG and pointed at her.
“Just a minute, Monteraine,” The Bug snarled through gritted teeth. “She’s ours. We were paid good money to take her to her true owner.”
“Oh, no. . . Not . . ” The world spun and she felt as if she might puke. No, not in front of these brutes.
“Yes.” The Bug sneered at her. “After you rejected me and my baby, I had to do something. The sheihk is waiting in a helicopter nearby and we’re not letting any jeans-wearing world-weary cop drag you to Texas. You’ll thank us, Eva. It’s about 100 degrees there.”
“Please,” she sobbed her dark mysterious eyes filling with tears. “I don’t understand.”
“Yes you do, sister,” The Enforcer snapped.
“Sister?” she whispered. Would the nightmare never end? Hadn’t it already? What happened to that chick in Kansas?
“Naw, just kidding.” He bared his perfect white teeth, gleaming in his perfect tanned face. “I think. But enough talk. You.” He waved his big gun at Theo. “Give us your 48 glock. We know you won’t shoot anyone. Not after what happened with your partner. And you.”
He grabbed her and his fingers dug painfully into Eva’s delicate wrist. “You will be eating salad, my precious. And thanking me for it. Oh yes.” His mocking laughter stung her ears and filled her with loathing, tinged with disquieting lust. “The sheikh and his camels are waiting.”
“Wait,” she said. “I gotta pack first.”
Never forgetting her academic roots as a P.E. major, she packed her five-hundred-pound Louis Vuitton suitcase (the buckle alone forty pounds) with lightweight puce and lemon track pants, a glittery Juicy top that she ALWAYS wore braless when she did yoga (officer, it wasn’t my fault their SUVs exploded when I jogged across the street. They should be more careful … besides, I believe in the environment … this is why I drive a hybrid SUV. I got it free you know), her new Chloe wardrobe her publicist begged her to wear to the next three weeks of red-carpet functions, and her very very favorite pair of Citizens of Humanity jeans. When they weren’t looking, she snuck in her secret emergency weapon, her thirty-pound electric hair roller. And her emergency travel makeup bag.
Because, like, duh, who cares about the red carpet when the SHEIKH is waiting for you?
Heart beating madly, she took a deep breath and faced her new exciting future as the 604th concubine of the great and powerful sheikh. This time, she knew, it was love.
Eva stepped off the plane and onto a red carpet that was spread across the sand,leading to a tent heavily festooned with gold sashes. She smiled while strolling forth(all those award show appearances were finally paying off!)and wondered if she needed to knock before entering.
That seemed silly,even for her,so she called out”Oh,sheikh,your long awaited Longoria is here!” A deep voice replied”Enter,my prize”. Eva put on her actress game face and went in,only to find Teri Hatcher in a harem girl outfit,fanning a near naked Ryan Seacrest,lounging on pillows. Eva did what any red blooded woman would naturally do;she screamed in terror at such a sight.
The naked Seacrest—a gold-fringed shawl over his lap, Eva was relieved to note—smiled. “No one,” he said, “Gets to the sheikh without getting through me.”
“Really? Says who?” asked Eva, who was not feisty for nothing.
At that moment, Terri (who had not eaten in years) gave a gasp and crumpled to the ground, twig-like legs splayed out of her beaded skirt at odd angles.
“Now is my chance!” Eva turned towords the door of the tent. She knew that the Bug and the Enforcer had taken off in their helicopter again. She got to ther door—there was no one in sight. Eva started running. And running. And running. Across the sand…. Damn, was it hot. Texas couldn’t be any hotter! What was it Rafe had said—
Eva fainted, mysterious eyes closing as she fell to the hot ground. But, at that moment, a man dressed in white rode up, on an Arabian steed. He grabbed Eva before she hit the burning ground and hoisted her up on his horse.
The man on the horse adjusted his snowy white cravat with one hand while grasping Eva about her dainty yet fiesty waist.
He inclined his head to her.
“I am Lucien, Duke of Devlington. You seemed to be in distress,” he murmured.
A gasp escaped from Eva’s trembling red lips. What was an English lord doing on a horse in the middle of Texas? Then her eyes fell upon his diamond stickpin and his broad shoulders, and she decided it didn’t matter.
The events of the day began to catch up with her. Her brain was all tied up in thinky thoughts, and her vision began to swim. She felt herself beginning to swoon …
She awoke slowly and to the most delicious, unexpected sensations. The Duke of Delvington – known worldwide as a famous cad some nicknamed the Duke of Devils – was currently delving into her cleavage with his tongue.
Shocked, but undeniably aroused, Eva had the presence of mind to knock the man uselessly about his brawny neck and shoulders. Doubtless, he could not feel her kittenish attacks through the curtain of hair that was his first-rate mullet.
A mullet on an Englishman? Egad, was it possible?
Damn, but she was doing that Kansas thing again. Was she in the desert of some exotic foreign Sheikh, or in Texas, or in some fantasy world beyond her capacity to comprehend? Ah, but he was kissing her again, his tongue delving again, and she cared not a whit.
“Sir, you must unhand me,” she gasped, surprising herself with a rather convincing Southern belle accent. And her dialect coach said she was a hopeless case! She had only required the right inspiration.
“I cannot, Eva, my sweet. I was sipping tea in my jolly good English manor house, and I had a vision of your beauty, like a Bat Signal. I had to seek you out.”
“But… but you’re tonguing my breasts!” she moaned, overcome by passion and unable to resist the tongue that made the notorious Duke so very dangerous.
He raised his head to meet her gaze, his dark eyes daring her to resist his mullet, his dukedom, his myriad charms – none of which included subtlety. “You fainted, my sweet. I had to revive you somehow.”
“Oh, well then that’s OK, I guess. When your tongue touched my quite impressive cleavage, I could feel it pulling deep in my longoria…”
The rakish, stallionically erect and happy Duke gazed down at his curvy prize with something akin to wonder. “I’ve heard it called lots of things, but never that, my sweet. You are a delight, aren’t you? Tasty, stacked and not-so-bright, just like I like them.â€
“Thank you so much. It’s always so rewarding to meet yet another fan of my work…I do work hard, you know…â€
“Haud yer wheesht, me lassie.†His English accent suddenly evaporated and was replaced with something completely at odds with his oh-so-English appearance…he sounded almost Irish, or like he was attempting a really bad pirate impression. “Arrrrgh, me lovely and bumbleheaded wench, I’ll be takin’ you off to bed you until you canna hardly breathe.â€
Which didn’t sound too bad to her, except for…
Her thoughts swirled like soft-serve ice cream in her mind. She felt so very torn. On the one hand, there was Duff the blond pool-boy, who may or may not have been a mere dream-wisp in that bizarre sequence involving Ryan Seaquest, but on the other hand there was her beloved Rafe and the illicit son they had had together. Then, too, there was the sultry hot-blooded Tony . . . and the well-muscled green-skinned King Zarkor . . . the dark and dashing Theo . . . damn, she would need more other hands than the goddess Sarasvati to keep track of all the luscious, entirely inappropriate men in her life. At present she was more concerned with Lucien’s other hand, which had landed on her knee and was slowly stroke its way toward what for the sake of the children present we shall call the centre of her womanhood.
“Hey!” She slapped his wandering paw. “Hooks off me, Man-Meat!”
“Forgive me, my darling.” To Eva’s everlasting dismay, he ceased his explorations at once. “I was overcome by desire. And absinthe. But I so hoped that my tongue between your delectible breasts might jog your memory!”
“Leave me alone!” she screamed. “What do you want from me?”
“You remember nothing, my life’s passion? Nothing of our lives together? Don’t you even remember . . . this?”
Eva gasped as the rakish duke shoved the tattered hem of her gown high up her thigh to reveal the strange symbol of a black rose, delicate as lace, which Eva vaguely recalled having gotten in a night of drunk Double-Dog Daring with a group of her sorority sisters.
“How did you know about the tattoo?” she demanded. “No one knows about that except for Buffy St. John and Millie Van Horne and Candy Montmorency and the doctor who treated me for hepititus!”
“Then how do you explain . . . this?” With the same passionate gesture he had used to hike her skirts, he ripped open apart his unlaced poet blouse to reveal the same black rose.
“You mean . . .” Eva whispered, tears in her eyes.
“Yes, darling,” he murmured. “I was your tattoo artist.”
((Eek, Diva! Double-post! But it could still work!))
Eva gasped. That night—so long ago! Whisps of memory came back: memories of cheap wine, of still being in love with Rafe, of Buffy St. John’s glittery green eyshadow, of a dark street slick with rain and discarded cigarette stubs. And… that man. Eva squinted at him. Yes! It was he! She remembered the mullet, the floaty white blouse opening over a tanned chest, and—oh, she remembered now! Drunkenly tripping over a cigarette butt in her high-heels, clutching at thin air, being caught by a young man. She remembered his shirt fluttering open, though it was tucked into his tight breeches. She had seen that tattoo and known that she must have it!
“But—” her thoughts swirled like that one twisted-wind-thing that attacked the Kansas chick. “But, when you caught me, all those years ago, you just said ‘I am the Dread Pirate Lucien. Tattoo?’ You didn’t say anything about being a Duke!”
“My wicked father still lived, Miss Eva. But I have now retired from the seas, rich enough to live in the style to which you, as a famous actress, will have become accustom…”
Eva smiled, and let the Duke begin to kiss her neck.
“But!” This thinking thing was hard, but Eva had nearly got the hang of it, now. “How did you tattoo your own chest?”
(I thought Eva deserved her HEA – couldn’t leave her hanging!)
“Tis a long story, my dear, involving half-breed Indians, mermen, a Navy SEAL, and other assorted misfits. Are you sure you really want to think that much?”
“I am not sure – not about anything! I don’t even remember if I’m in Texas or some Arabian desert!” Eva pouted in that way that made every man pant with wanting, and her beloved Duke was no exception. Gosh, but he was all that and a bag of chips – if she ate chips. Her very own Alpha male who could commit. It was a dream come true, like something out of those thingies with the lots of pages!
“What are you certain of, princess?”
“I’m a princess, too? I’ve always wanted to be royalty!”
“It’s just a term of endearment, Eva.” The Duke began to nibble and suckle his way back toward her womanhood.
“Oh. OH,” she moaned. Found it! Through the thick haze of her passion, she declared triumphantly, “All I know in this whole crazy mixed-up world is that your mouth feels great.”
“Sounds about right,” the Duke of Delvington said with a mischievous, devilish laugh. How he did adore his talentless, pouty, air-headed American tart, although he could not say why – as was the case sometimes with heroines.
And in the aftermath of his selfless, perfectly executed cunnilingus, Eva whispered, “I don’t ever want to loose you, my perfect Duke/pirate/tattoo artist. Never leave me.”
“Eva, my love,” he whispered against the sensitive flesh of her inner thigh. “As you wish.”
And as every good romance fan knows, when a dread pirate says “as you wish,” he really means “I love you.” The End.
**Applause**
That was great- I really enjoyed Sweet Savage Desperation!