Dishing the Dirt with Avalon Granger
Can’t say who, precisely, but if you’ve been following the undercover (and on the airplane, behind the bar, and beneath the pier) romance of a certain dark-eyed, well-built Italian movie stud and his nubile young personal trainer, then it won’t surprise you in the slightest to hear that a little acrobat is on the way. No confirmation from either source, of course. (It’s never that easy, is it?) And a raging silence emanates from both of their PR agencies, but how long can one hide that sort of news? Check back here in a month or two as the tummy swells, and listen to me say, ‘Ha, I told you so!’
In from the ‘rubbing the right way’ department, here’s a tale about the head of one of the movie studios – and we mean one of the big boys. A married exec with a secret condominium located high in the Hollywood Hills requested a massage from an exclusive Beverly Hills salon. Not some sleazy massage parlour, you understand, but a stellar skincare centre frequented by the stars. He greeted the stunned masseuse totally naked at the door, led by a part of his anatomy that could in no way be described as a ‘little me’.
Did she saddle that horse and ride it?
Well, let’s just say that she left with more than a tip in her pocket.
And turning our beady eyes on ourselves, we have news of the dirty variety that only yours truly could dig up. Back from a recent tour of Europe, Zebra’s own editor-in-chief was spotted at a Hollywood club, making eyes with not one, not two, but three different pinup girls…and wouldn’t you know they covered the gamut in hair colours: one blonde, one redhead, one brunette. Couldn’t have been more picture-perfect if Klimt had painted the scene as a mural or if Hefner had requested the clinch for a photo shoot –
‘You can’t put it in, Granger.’
Avalon sighed as she reached into her slick patent leather clutch, searching restlessly for a cigarette. ‘The readers love this stuff,’ she said without looking up. ‘You’re just a fucking prude.’
‘I’m not a prude.’
‘An old woman, then. A stick in the mud.’
‘Not a stick,’ Alex corrected her patiently. ‘A friend. There’s a big difference between censoring your column and saving your ass.’ He watched as Avalon finally found the cigarette, and then toyed with it, refusing to light the mentholated Kool in his presence. ‘You know exactly what Dashiell’s like and how he feels when people pry into his private life.’
‘Yeah, I know him.’ Avalon let that sentence hang, her striking green eyes intent on Alex’s. A silent message passed between them that was readable only to people who had a specific piece of knowledge about Avalon’s past. Pete, seated in his usual spot on the sofa, looked over, but as he couldn’t decipher the nuance of the statement, he turned back towards his laptop and continued to ignore the discussion. ‘Anyway, I know that he’ll love it. This column is pure bragging fodder. He can laminate the thing and show it to his buddies down at Star Fucker.’
‘Dream Maker,’ Alex corrected her automatically. Always the editor.
‘Come on, Harris,’ Avalon said softly, and her voice took on the slippery edge of a sultry sexual proposal. Although they’d never done it, he knew simply from the way she spoke what it would be like to be in bed with her. Raw. Hard. Unbelievably intense. But wasn’t every aspect of Avalon’s nature dripping with come-ons? ‘What man wouldn’t want to be called on the fact that he was fucking three different beautiful women at the same time?’
‘Dashiell. Dashiell is the man who wouldn’t want it.’
‘Then he should drag his sorry ass to work and read the copy himself. If he doesn’t like it, he can use his own diamond-studded red pencil to cross it out.’
This was a fair comment, and Alex didn’t have any reply that would diffuse the truth in what she’d said. No, it wasn’t Dashiell’s job to be a copy editor, and it was widely known that he rarely paid much attention to the content of his own paper. But since returning from his European jaunt, Dashiell had visited the office infrequently. Instead, he’d spent his time taking meetings in posh restaurants, dating young starlets who were easily dazzled by his wallet, if not his good looks, and having a wild time, which apparently included fucking in trio. For some reason, Dashiell didn’t seem to notice that when he was gone, the paper seemed anchorless. Drifting.
Alex wished he had the guts to confront Dashiell about the situation, to tell him that all parts of the newspaper worked better with Cooper at the helm. There was no sane explanation for it. The editor-in-chief simply had the kind of personality that made everything seem easy. When Josh had failed to pull in ads, Dashiell was often able to change things around with a phone call. At the same time, Alex was glad that his boss had been making himself scarce, and this is why he didn’t respond to Avalon’s comment. He had a personal reason for wanting to keep his boss away from the office: young Jessica.
‘It’s staying in,’ Avalon said, pouting prettily when Alex, lost in his thoughts, hadn’t responded to her demand. That got his attention, and while she watched, he walked the few steps over to her laptop computer, highlighted the paragraph, and deleted it with a single violent keystroke.
‘Out,’ he said, and his tone of voice was dead serious. ‘I’m calling rank,’ he said now. ‘Find something else.’
‘Something like the fact that Dash did this totally hot redheaded bombshell after a private party two weeks ago and nobody knows who she was? I mean nobody. I’ve scoured, I’ve begged. I’ve offered cash money, as well as a few more private services. I can find nothing more.’ She was pushing her luck, but Alex refused to bite.
‘Write something that’s not about Dashiell,’ Alex said, moving back to sit in his plush leather chair and pretend to be deeply involved in a file on his screen as Jessica walked into the room.
* * *
For Jessica, November seemed to fly by. She worked at the paper, doing her very best to learn how to be a necessary component of the staff. Although she’d told Alex that she was taking only two classes, easing her way back into the regiment of schoolwork after her two-year hiatus, this was a lie. In reality, she’d dropped out after the first week. She saw no point in sitting in a stuffy classroom, listening to long-winded lectures delivered by boring professors. The real world called to Jessica, and she focused hard on what she could learn from her new teachers.
Within a month of being hired, she had become indispensable to several of her higher-ups. Josh used her to calm any irate customers with her soothing manner. Avalon asked her to schedule appointments, arranging meetings with celebrity PR firms and personal assistants.
And then there was Alex.
Alex gave her the chance to watch him work. Positioning her at the desk closest to his, he let Jessica spend all her free time learning his methods of controlling the motley crew who made up the paper’s staff. Some of the writers needed coddling in order to turn in their pieces on time. Others demanded a heavier hand. Alex was able to behave in either manner required, growing hard-edged or mild-mannered, as the situation called for.
This was all interesting to Jessica, but she found that what she really was learning had nothing to do with her goal of being a big-time journalist. That wouldn’t happen until Alex finally gave her a real assignment instead of having her write the little advertising column. Instead, she spent her days deciphering the intimate dance that went on between the people involved with running the paper.
This afternoon, when Jessica came in from the upstairs office, she sensed tension in the room between Avalon and Alex. But although she turned her head from one to the other, trying to gauge where the energy was coming from, she found that she was in the dark. As always. She wished that Zebra’s staff would open up to her, would let her in on the secrets behind the relationships. As she sat back at her desk and began to type, she promised herself that she’d pay closer attention. Work harder at learning more.
Power, and the way it was played with – that was what intrigued her the most.
* * *
‘Edit this, if you’d like,’ Avalon said, pushing a hard red plastic disk into Jessica’s hands and giving her a quick smile, white teeth flashing between crimson-slicked lips.
‘Your column?’
‘Give it the once-over, but don’t change anything,’ Avalon told her, narrowing her green eyes slightly and letting Jessica see a look of danger swirling deep within them. ‘Not a word. Not a comma. Just let me know what you think.’
The gossip columnist shot Alex a look over the intern’s head that Jessica missed – it was a ‘Fuck you, Harris’ look, and he won it from time to time for cutting items from her column. Avalon could never truly accept that Alex had the final say when it came to her writing. But he did. That was a fact.
While Jessica watched, Avalon slid into her snakeskin-printed leather trench coat and took a peek at the heavy gold man’s watch that dangled loosely from her wrist like a bracelet. ‘Got an important meeting,’ she said, speaking to the room at large rather than anyone in particular. ‘I wouldn’t want to be late.’ Josh, who had wandered by the open doorway, laughed softly as he walked by. Then, with a wink over her shoulder towards Jessica, Avalon slipped out of the door.
* * *
The first part of the column was identical to the one that Alex had read. But the last item was something that Avalon had chosen to put in just for the hell of it. Alex would cut this piece as well, which was fine. Screw him. It wasn’t for his eyes that she’d written it.
File this one in the mysterious admirer department. Not secret admirer, because some of us know the name of the man behind that mask. But under anonymously enamoured, we have found one of the Sun Kings of Hollywood. And he is smitten.
White roses have arrived three times now for a young writer at Zebra. As she searches to find the identity of her high-end gardener, will she discover her true love, or will she uncover only thorns?
More to come, my Kewpie dolls, I’m sure. Where there are long-stemmed white roses there is…oh, maybe not fire, but definitely thorns.
And remember who had the news first.
Jessica read the item twice. She wished she could talk to the columnist, but Avalon was long gone, off to her next appointment. After staring for several moments at her computer screen without seeing anything before her, she thought she understood what the woman was doing. Avalon wanted to let Jessica know.
To know that she was paying attention.
* * *
‘How does that feel?’ Josh murmured.
Avalon couldn’t immediately answer. Not verbally, anyway. In her mind, she imagined that her body had suddenly been transformed into the material used in one of those mood rings from the 1970s, beaming out a range of colours that clearly showed her lover exactly how excited she was, and how close she was to climax. Josh wouldn’t have had to ask if this were the case. He’d have seen the beams of pulsing red light shot through with hot violet flickers, and he’d have understood what total dream-like pleasure Avalon was experiencing.
‘Tell me, baby,’ he insisted, obviously wanting her to say the words out loud.
But what were the words?
Josh had this way of dining on her pussy that made Avalon dripping wet from the moment he approached the task. Just the sweet memory of what he could do with his tongue turned her on, and she often stroked herself to mental playbacks of being with him. Part of the excitement was the earnestness with which he approached the job. Josh couldn’t seem to wait to get in between her thighs and start lapping at her. There was no sense that he was doing it only to get her to reciprocate. In fact, he was one of the few men she’d been with who rarely seemed interested in 69ing. When Josh was nuzzling, he wanted to concentrate on what he was doing. To do it right. To get her off.
And, oh, did he ever.
‘Come on, Ava,’ he urged now, ‘talk to me and I’ll talk to you.’
What did that mean? Avalon looked down at him, glancing at the intersection between her thighs where Josh was comfortably situated. Rather than make him explain, she did as he asked. ‘I love it when your tongue flicks lightly against my clit,’ she said, pushing up on her arms so that she could watch every little detail. ‘Lightly, like a cat’s –’
‘Like this?’ he asked. His tongue tickled her pussy lips, nudging them apart gently, and then tapped softly against the pulsing oval of her clit. Avalon sighed and closed her eyes, steeling herself for the ride. When she held on and forced herself to wait, the climax always became so much more intense. ‘Or like this?’ he murmured, and this time he spoke against her body, so that she could feel the vibrations of the words directly against her skin. That’s what he meant. He’d talk to her – into her – against her pussy so that the words themselves became part of the pleasure.
‘Just like that,’ she told him, feeling his soft hair brushing against her inner thighs. He was doing exactly as she’d asked, touching her clit so lightly that it was almost like a long, soft feather stroking her up and down. They’d played that way once before, at a staff Halloween party two years prior, right after the end of his relationship with Tiffany. Avalon had dressed as an exotic flapper from the twenties, with a fringed black dress that barely covered her thighs and a fantasy-inducing feather boa around her neck. Ideas had instantly blossomed in Josh’s mind when he’d caught sight of the boa. He’d wanted to tie her up with it. To tickle her all over with the very tips of those midnight-black feathers. Ultimately, they’d spent most of the early morning at his house, where he’d run the deliciously decadent feathers along her belly, her breasts and erect nipples, and between her plump pussy lips. The boa had been destroyed, while the memory of the night lived for ever.
Avalon relished the feather flashback, but suddenly, she wanted something else. Something harder. And she knew Josh well enough to know exactly how to get what she wanted. With one hand, she reached between her legs and got a handful of his thick blond hair, pulling him up fiercely so that she could look directly into his eyes.
Since they worked together in such close quarters, occasionally she actually forgot how good-looking he was. She took him for granted. He was Josh. Her co-worker. Her buddy. But the hard, unbreakable shell of the advertising executive seemed to disappear when they were in bed, leaving his striking face open and almost innocent. His blond hair was mussed now, and his jaw had the baby-soft shadow that light-haired men often get. Not a rough beard, but something fine and downy, like peach fuzz against her skin.
Avalon took a moment to stare into his waiting gaze before she spoke. She wanted him to appreciate each word that she said. ‘Tongue-fuck me,’ she told him when she was ready. ‘Drive it into my pussy hard. Make me really feel it.’
He didn’t ask any more questions. Didn’t query her as to how much pressure she wanted, how deep she desired him to go. He simply obeyed. The power shifted quickly and fluidly between them as she arched her hips and worked back against him. But that was acceptable. The best part of their relationship was the balance. Sometimes Josh was in charge. Other times she took hold of the control. The power.
This thought made her smile. She understood that the young intern was on a quest to learn about power. To decipher who had it and, more importantly, how she could get it. Avalon found Jessica’s innocence fetching, yet her aspirations were infinitely simple to read. The girl’s thoughts were right there, shining in her large blue eyes. Yet for some reason, Avalon had decided to like her. To help her, mould her, show her the way. What she wouldn’t have given for someone to have done the same for her ten years earlier, when she was starting out. But there was no need to dwell on the past. Avalon had made her way on her own.
Some day, during a round of drinks, she’d explain to Jessica all about the real source of power, because Avalon and Josh played with this erotic substance all the time. Josh telling her what to do for him. Demanding action and growing aroused when she followed his commands. His cock hardening as he made Avalon crawl before him across the floor. Completely nude, her body glistening with a thin sheen of sweat, her entire being focused on pleasing him. On obeying. Or Avalon, clad in some black PVC dress that she’d bought in the wilds of Hollywood, long legs encased in thigh-high boots and black fishnet stockings, telling Josh exactly what he’d better do if he didn’t want to test her wrath.
For now, she wrapped her legs around her lover’s back and held on.
Taking what she wanted until she wanted nothing more.
* * *
Despite the fact that Alex never made it to Marina’s dance recital, she hadn’t kept true to her ultimatum. Whenever he came home from work, there she was, waiting. Of course, she never actually looked as if she were waiting for him. She’d be doing dance moves in the living room, the stereo cranked to some Björk tune that he’d never heard and instantly didn’t like. Or she’d be soaking in the bathtub, rose petals scattered in the scented bubbly water as if she thought she were the star of some romance novel.
From the appearance of things, Marina had decided that she could keep their relationship going simply by refusing to believe it was over. She talked to him about inconsequential daily happenings that real couples would discuss: the recent rent increase on his apartment, the lack of a cable modem. To Alex’s dismay, she actually moved more of her belongings into his closet, and each time he opened the bathroom cabinet, several of her cosmetics would fall out and roll along the counter. In the past, he’d often found women’s personal items disconcertingly charming. The mystery intrigued him. How exactly did one use all the little pots of coloured creams and rectangular cases of powder? Within himself, he knew that if these had been Jessica’s belongings strewn through his apartment, he’d have been instantly turned on.
With Marina, he was simply overwhelmed.
He had to end it. Stage the finale to the long-running production with her. Didn’t matter if she was a hellcat between the sheets, she was destroying his mind. He knew the why and the where. The only problem he had now was how.
So when Marina picked a fight with him early on a Sunday morning, he remained surprisingly calm, listening to her arguments and nodding the way a therapist would to an overly animated patient. Maybe he’d been waiting for a situation like this, knowing that she couldn’t keep up the good-girl charade indefinitely. Previously, his voice would have risen to match hers in pitch as he fought back. Today, he simply refused to get involved in her nastiness and then be forced into the psychotic little make-up dance/post-fight sex scenario that had plagued their entire relationship. No more. He didn’t have the energy to relive this particular drama.
‘You’re fucking awful to me,’ Marina said in a self-pitying tone. ‘You use me when I please you. Discard me when it suits you. Then take me back again, playing head games with my mind.’
Maybe he behaved in the manner that she described, but she was guilty of the same actions herself. It was as if she brought out the worst in him, because he’d never been this way with another woman. During a discussion with Pete and Avalon, after they’d witnessed a bit of Marina’s over-acted drama and asked why the fuck he put up with it, he’d spent hours making up excuses. His favourite statement was that the rocks in his head fit the holes in hers. The sick joke didn’t make him laugh any more.
Now, the quieter he got, the louder she became. Her cheeks grew almost as red as the velvety Mrs Claus suit she’d worn on Halloween, and Alex let her yell. Taking the abuse. Finally, when she’d let it all out, he said, ‘You make a lot of sense, Marina. And I realise something now that I didn’t understand before.’
Marina waited expectantly, a look of success already glistening in her leaf-green eyes. He could tell from her body language that she thought he was going to apologise, maybe get down on his knees before her as he’d done so many times in the past, slide her gauzy nightgown up her lean thighs and press his lips to her cunt through her panties. Whisper how sorry he was and beg her to take him back before pleasuring her, sliding his tongue up inside her pussy. Satisfying her with his mouth to let him repent for his irrational behaviour. Making those sensuous circles that spun around her clit before tapping the point of his tongue against the button of pleasure.
He didn’t.
‘I can’t make you happy,’ he said. ‘It’s not your fault. It’s mine.’
She stayed where she was, head cocked to one side like a curious parakeet, obviously waiting for the rest of the apology. There was none forthcoming. Quietly, Alex handed her the clothes she’d discarded the previous evening and motioned for her to get dressed. She moved like a sleepwalker, and he had to dress her himself, guiding her into her capri pants, putting her own hands on the buttons and watching as she automatically did up the fly. Her shoes were mules, and he put them in front of her to step in. Then he helped her with her cropped denim coat, handed over her purse, and led her, still somewhat stunned, to the door.
‘I need my key back,’ he said, searching within the impossible depths of her black leather bag until he found the sterling silver heart-shaped ring and pulling the correct key off of it. ‘I don’t think we should talk to each other for a while,’ he added as an afterthought. ‘No calls. No visits. Trust me, it will be easier.’
Then, ushering her out into the hallway of the condominium, he shut the door between them and returned to his bedroom to lounge alone on his mattress, relishing a sense of inner peace that he hadn’t felt for a long time.