I sat there in my postorgasmic bliss, my skin shriveling up and the water going cold. Back and forth he walked from the bedroom to the bathroom as he got ready for work. I watched him brush his teeth in his underwear, and then he disappeared back into the bedroom only to reemerge in a pair of black slacks that hung low on his hips and accentuated the delicious V of his abdomen. The belt on his pants was hanging open, he still didn’t have a shirt on, and he was standing there barefoot. I was mesmerized by the movement of his back muscles as he looked into the mirror and did absolutely nothing but put a dab of gel in his palm before he ran his fingers through his sexy hair. He looked over at me, winked, and did this half-smirk thing while he applied deodorant in a way that made it look pornographic. I seriously wanted to nuzzle his pits.
There was an air of confidence about him that made me want to lick him from head to toe, and then maybe suck on all his little piggies.
While a part of me was relieved that he was leaving, my inner miniwhore wanted to beg him to get back in the tub and show us that magic trick he’d done with those porntastic fingers again. Just like that, Double Agent Coochie was born. All it had taken was my very first orgasm to bring her to life. And she was apparently a very shameless hoochie. Great.
It wasn’t until I heard Noah shout that he was leaving and the door close behind him that I finally forced myself to get out of the bath of sin. My bags were sitting just inside the door; I assumed Noah had brought them up. Once I was dressed and feeling a bit modest again, I decided to leave the bedroom in search of some sustenance. I hadn’t even eaten the night before because my nerves had been all over the damn place and I’d been worried that I’d end up puking right in the middle of my auction.
The house was eerily quiet, but oddly warm and cozy given how big it was. I slowly made my way down the hall and toward the staircase, checking out my surroundings in awe. It was tastefully decorated with large paintings that looked like they cost more than what my father had made in an entire year at the only factory in Hillsboro. The floors were carpeted a regal red, but the walls were kept white. Most of the doors to the other rooms were closed, but I didn’t bother to open them because I was hungry and I knew I’d eventually see them over the next two years.
Once I made it down the staircase, the eerie quiet went out the window. There had to be at least half a dozen women in gray uniforms with white aprons scurrying about like a colony of ants united in the task of making Casa de Crawford immaculate. All of that stopped the second they sensed my presence, every pair of eyes trained on me in surprise.
“Um, hi,” I greeted them.
A short, pudgy woman stepped forward with a smile as bright as the sun. “Excuse me, miss. We didn’t mean to disturb you. We can come back later if you’d like.” She waved her hands at the other women and they started gathering their supplies.
“No, it’s fine!” I said, probably a little louder than necessary. “I mean, you know … you’re not bothering me. So just do whatever it is you’re here to do, and I’ll try to stay out of your way.”
The lady turned back to me again, same smile in place. “We shouldn’t be long.”
I furrowed my brow. “Pfft, yeah. Take your time.” She bowed slightly, which was weird, and then turned again, but I stopped her. “Um, can you point me in the direction of the kitchen?”
She waved her hand toward a long corridor. “It’s just down the way and through the dining hall, miss.”
I thanked her and headed in that direction, convinced I had given the help plenty to speculate and gossip about the second I was out of earshot. Not that I blamed them. I’d probably do the same if I were them. And then I wondered if maybe I looked different now that I’d had my first orgasm. Could they tell? Surely not.
I wandered toward the back of the house and through a huge formal dining room with a table in the middle that had to seat at least fifty people. Okay, that might have been a slight exaggeration, but I swear it looked just like that table in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom when they served chilled monkey brains to the guests.
There was a door at the other end, and I swore to Christ that if I pushed it open and found myself in some ancient tunnel filled with booby traps and every insect known to man, I was so out of there. Thankfully, it was only the kitchen. But I wasn’t really sure you could even call it a kitchen. That just seemed like such a small word for the restaurant-style food preparation center that was before me. Everything was stainless steel and more sterile than the inside of a gallon of bleach. However, a quick glance around showed no sign of monkey brains or those brass cuppy thingies they were served in, so it was all good.
I looked around until I finally found a pantry that was as big as the entire first floor of my house back home, and boy, did I ever hit the mother lode of junk food. Seemed Mr. Crawford, aka King of the Finger Fuck, had a sweet tooth. I grabbed a box of Cocoa Puffs—because I seriously was coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs—and some chocolate syrup and did the happy-time dance out of the pantry and back into the kitchen.
I remembered seeing bowls somewhere during my search, but it was going to be like a massive game of Memory to find them again. After opening several cabinets, I finally scored a win and squealed, “Yay, me!” while I did a fist pump in the air.
I was my biggest fan.
The refrigerator was obvious and, you guessed it, huge. Imagine my disappointment, though, when I opened one side of it to find that it wasn’t a walk-in cold storage unit. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find a butcher living inside there with a whole herd of cattle, but I guess Noah skimped on that part.
I grabbed the milk and went back over to my stash, filling my bowl with cereal and licking my chops when I poured the moo juice over the cocoa yumminess and it turned all chocolaty. I was careful not to pour too much and make a mess, even though there was probably some little flute thingy around there somewhere to blow on to command a group of little orange men with green hair to scurry in and clean up before retreating back to the dungeon of doom and gloom with the rest of their little pals.
Yes, I had an overactive imagination, but it was totally warranted in a place as big as this.
I knew exactly where the glasses were from my previous expedition for the bowl, so I grabbed one and squirted a crazy amount of chocolate syrup into it. I swear I could hear my dentist tsking at me from somewhere deep in the recesses of my conscience.
And then it was time to start another game of seek-and-find to score some silverware. A plastic spoon would’ve been okay at this point … heck, I’d make do with a spork. Score! First drawer I opened, I hit the jackpot. Which was a good thing, because I loathed soggy cereal.