Flirting with Fire: A Summer Camp Swingers novel

Allie’s eyes danced with amusement.

“He gets a little uppity,” I explained, “especially if he thinks he’s the reason we get laid.”

“‘We’?” she laughed. “Oh, God, that’s good! I’ll have to use that sometime.”

“He’s always good for comic relief.”

“You both are. Still… tell him it doesn’t matter what he looks like. Besides, I didn’t see him— Wait! Why’m I doing it now? I didn’t see you in all your glory until today. Although I’ve… um… seen some very lifelike sculptures.”

“Oh?”

“Mmm hmm. Let’s see… the fountain one was my favorite. You know the one…”

Priapus Pool Boy, for an LA couple’s Medici-inspired garden.

“And the obelisk?” Allie laughed. “Oh, God, the veins were perfect!”

The Johnson Monument, six feet tall and slimmer than the real thing, commissioned by a gay couple, complete with a circle of fifty small Pride flags around the base.

“The boner bud vase…?”

Tulips Are Better Than None, a realistic porcelain penis with an opening at the tip for a “spurt” of flowers.

Christy had a thriving word-of-mouth business in erotic art, and we had a special relationship with a few patrons who commissioned us together, as artist and model. The LA couple were swingers in their thirties, bisexual, childless, and wealthy. They were also perverted, even by my standards. The gay men were just a regular couple, friendly voyeurs who shared Christy’s fondness for phalluses.

Our friend Sara had introduced us to the third, an older woman who’d been delighted by the bud vase. She was a character in the San Francisco art scene, a sui generis widow who was literally in a class by herself.

Countess Irina spoke with a vaguely European accent and looked like a well-preserved sixty, even though she was at least a decade older. She didn’t drink or smoke, and she swore she’d never had plastic surgery. “Clean living, darling.”

She was an interesting lady, a wealthy art patron with a taste for old-world elegance. She dressed impeccably in Chanel or Dior, and she was often mistaken for someone’s rich grandmother who’d wandered into the wrong gallery party. “Oh, how lovely and colorful and exciting, darling.”

We learned about her double life when she commissioned a second piece. “Something impressive, darling.” Christy had been saving an oblong chunk of pink imperial porphyry, and she used it to create Hard Rock Cock, a two-foot version of yours truly. “Oh, how marvelous, darling! Shall we compare it to the original?”

In private, Irina’s accent sometimes slipped, especially when she was tired. Then she sounded like a dustbowl refuge from a Steinbeck novel. “You won’t tell, will you, darlin’?”

Whatever her background was, she was as rich as Croesus, as horny as a succubus, and had the inhibitions of a madame. She told us once that she’d actually been a high-end call girl, “A courtesan, darling,” before she’d fallen in love and married one of her regulars.

“Still, that wasn’t the reason I had sex with you,” Allie finished.

I frowned in mild puzzlement—I couldn’t remember what we were talking about.

The little head cleared his throat.

Oh, right! How could I forget?

How, indeed, he said dryly. Still, I suppose the countess is a good reason to be distracted.

Mmm.

“Like, I dated a guy in college,” Allie was saying. “He was thoroughly normal, maybe even on the small side. But he— Well, let’s just say that I was horny all the time, and it had nothing to do with his equipment.”

I replayed what she’d just said and made an educated guess.

“Did it have to do with his brother’s equipment? Yeah, I know all about it. Or, should I say… them.”

Allie had had a relationship with identical twins when she was twenty. It had started with one brother but had quickly progressed to both, usually at the same time. They’d dated for about a year, and things had been pretty wild toward the end—threesomes and gangbangs and porn, oh my!

“I should’ve known,” Allie said. She paused but then shook it off. “Still, it proves my point. Reese and Rob— I’m guessing you know their names, like I know Tiffanie. They weren’t anything special in the dick department, but they totally did it for me.”

“Oh, I get it. Like I said, I’ve heard some of the stories.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” she murmured.

“Oh?”

“Uh-uh.” She glanced at the alarm clock on the nightstand and then sighed.

My words to the girls at bedtime echoed in the back of my mind, Six o’clock comes early.

“Yeah, me too,” I said aloud. “But I’m too wired to go to sleep.”

“And I’m too talkative. Sorry, I get like this sometimes. It isn’t the sex. Just… talking to a man. Like, intimately. Flirting is fun, but this is way more satisfying.”

“It is.”

“Besides, I’m still in the mood.” She forestalled me with a laugh. “Later. Right now, I’m parched. Do you mind…?”

* * *

I pulled a couple of bottles from the fridge and handed one to Allie.