Puppet Read online

  Chapter Four

  Twenty years before meeting Carin, Justin had studied at the University of Pennsylvania. He earned an undergraduate degree in economics and an MBA from The Wharton School before Carin shooed away even her first high school suitor. After graduation, Justin moved to New York City where he purchased a condo in Tribeca with money borrowed from his father. His dad had made a fortune from inventions he’d patented, which were still being used in today’s steel refineries. Beyond the condo, his dad had provided seed money for a commodities trading company Justin planned to open.

  Justin took a small interior office on the seventh floor of the Flatiron Building and called his new firm JC Chemical. He had a mathematical mind, a penchant for taking risks and a willingness to work hard, and these attributes quickly propelled his fledgling business forward.

  As JC Chemical flourished, he continued working late hours and most weekends. While others in his position might have slowed down, he rarely took vacations. He garnered more satisfaction paying down his father’s note in half the agreed-upon time, and establishing larger, independent lines of credit from banks. He made his first million within two years and the next several came even easier. In the company’s fourth year, he upgraded to a suite of offices on the Flatiron’s eighteenth floor. He enjoyed stellar views of midtown while trading diammonium phosphate and potash in two-thousand-dollar Armani suits. He kept his body in shape playing squash a few times a week at the Manhattan Racquet Club and he jogged in Central Park most weekends. At night he kept up with the latest clubs and restaurants with clients or the bimbo du jour. Other than that though, Justin had few true friends and made time for little beyond JC Chemical.

  He traveled for work considerably, being away at least a day or two each week. As a single-minded loner, he welcomed the travel. He developed a playboy’s lifestyle that quickly became a comfortable habit. Countless times over the years he’d chat up a woman at his hotel bar and bring her up to his room. Sometimes he’d forget her name after sex and have to negotiate around that fact until he could get her to leave.

  This routine began to change within weeks of dating Carin. As the first month crept toward two, the routine stopped completely. While Carin had experienced angst from sleeping with Justin weeks after meeting him, he was equally perplexed by his lack of desire for anonymous sex.

  * * * * *

  It was the first week of the New Year. Justin and Carin had dated solidly for two and a half months. Justin was in a hotel room in Los Angeles and Carin was in her house, a modest three-bedroom on Drury Road on the Stamford/Darien border, just a few miles from Justin’s lavish beach house. Knowing Carin was three hours ahead, he called as the sun began to set outside his room’s windows.

  Weeks earlier, he had brought up the idea of phone sex. “Me being away a lot makes it a logical option,” he had reasoned. By this point, Carin had become comfortable with Justin’s openness but she hadn’t been sure about his suggestion.

  “It isn’t something I really do,” she had replied. “Especially not when on the phone!”

  Now, Justin lay on the mattress in his boxers, a hand towel by his side. They talked for ten minutes about his client meetings and another ten about Carin’s day. As a teacher at The Greenwich School, a private institution for intellectually challenged kids, her workweek was filled with unique and taxing situations, and Justin liked hearing about them. The kids exhausted her but when talking with Justin, she never seemed discouraged. Even after her toughest days, Carin talked optimistically about her students’ future opportunities rather than their current failures.

  Justin found himself listening with admiration as Carin gushed about one student’s simple accomplishments. As her story wound down though, he saw his opportunity.

  “What are you wearing, Carin, honey?” he asked.

  “My pinkish nightie. The cute one you like. I’m going to bed when we hang up.”

  “You might as well get comfortable now.”

  “I crawled in a while ago. I knew you’d call soon.”

  “You’re in bed now?”

  “Yep.”

  “Great…do you want to try it with me then?”

  “Oh boy,” she responded. “I was wondering if you’d bring this up.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “I think you've made me crazy these past two months. I hope you know it’s only you who’s done that to me. I pray, pray, pray you know that.”

  “I do know that. That’s what makes it special, right?”

  “That makes it very special.”

  “It makes it special for me too, knowing it’s new for you and that I’m the one you chose.”

  “It’s happened quickly, Justin. At least for me it has. I’m not used to being…wanting. Like, just a few minutes ago, lying here and waiting for your call, I was thinking of some of the things we’ve done. Oh boy. I don’t know what to say.”

  “You’re doing great so far. What were you thinking?”

  “Just everything. Our bodies together.”

  “I miss yours so much, Carin. I love it. Do you like mine?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Not at all.”

  “You know I do! Your chest. Your stomach muscles. Your legs.”

  “My penis? You like my penis?”

  “You’re funny. You know that?”

  “That’s your way of saying you like it?”

  “Yep.”

  “How does it compare?”

  “I have next to nothing to compare it to. You know that.”

  Justin stayed quiet, waiting for more. Not getting it, he again said, “Tell me more about what you were thinking.”

  Having experienced Justin’s persistence time and again over the past couple of months, Carin had to know that stalling was hopeless.

  “I like thinking about your body,” she said softly. “About making you excited. Is that what you want to hear?”

  “It’s a good start.”

  “This is weird.”

  “Tell me about that.”

  “About what?”

  “About making me excited. You said you like thinking about making me excited.”

  “I do. When you’re away, like now.”

  “What do you think about?”

  “You’re always away, baby.”

  “What do you think about?”

  “I don’t know. Just being together. We’ve been doing so much, you know? You have to remember this is all pretty new for me.”

  The telephone line was silent while Justin draped the hand towel over his stomach. Shadows slid down the walls as the sun tucked itself in behind the skyline.

  “Tell me more things I want to hear,” he said.

  She was quiet again, but he met her resistance with silence.

  Finally, she offered. “Here’s something you’ll like. When you’re away, I practice.”

  “Practice?”

  “On my fingers.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “With my mouth.”

  “Like you’re sucking me?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “You’re not kidding?”

  “I don’t touch myself. I just lie in bed before going to sleep and close my eyes and do that. In the shower in the mornings too, sometimes. But only when you’re away. It makes me feel close to you.”

  “You were doing that before I called?”

  “A little.”

  “Wow!”

  “I practice doing it the way you like. I love doing what you teach me.”

  “I’ve noticed. You like being guided.”

  “By you I do. It’s like I’m your puppet or something.”

  “You’re going great, Carebear. This is totally working for me. Don’t stop.”

  “What are you doing now, Justin?”

  “Can’t you guess?”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “I'm…should I do something? Touch up top maybe? I can’t believe I jus
t said that!”

  “Believe it, baby. You’re my puppet, right? Isn’t that what you just said?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, Puppet…touch up top while I’m touching below.”

  The phone was quiet, save for some distant rustling.

  “Oooohhhh, baby,” Carin moaned. “I don’t know how you do this to me. Being in love seems to override everything. Even if I am going to Hell. I know you think it’s silly but it’s not.”

  “I’m so hard, baby. Tell me what you’re doing.”

  “You know.”

  “Rubbing your nipple?”

  “Pinching. But lightly.”

  “Do you wish my mouth was on it?”

  “Oh yes…!”

  “I love when you’re on top of me, Carin…with those big breasts dangling down.”

  “And you’re looking up so masculine and handsome with those blue eyes staring at me so intently.”

  “And I put your nipple in my mouth.”

  “It feels soooo incredible when you do that!”

  “So incredible you can’t help but wiggle your little hips down onto me.”

  “Ohhhh gosh, Justin, I love your mouth on me! It makes me crazy.”

  “I’m imagining those perfect boobs dangling down, putting my lips on your nipples. Sucking them. They get very erect, baby. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Yeah, right. You, Mr. Experienced.”

  “I’m serious. You have the most lively nipples.”

  “Lively?”

  “It’s amazing how responsive they are. They get so long and stiff in my mouth.”

  “Oh baby, I want that now!”

  “You like that?”

  “I love when you make them lively!”

  Justin chuckled. “It shows, honey. I love it too.”

  “Tell me what to do, Justin. Do you want me to touch down there? A little?”

  “Yes, Puppet. Touch there…a little.”

  He waited for the response he knew he’d get.

  “Oh…gosh…I’m so…you wouldn’t believe me right now!”

  “You’re wet?”

  “Very.”

  “I should be making love to you.”

  “I wish you were…slowly…all night long.”

  “Or not slowly?”

  “You could love me fast if you wanted. You do that already.”

  “You like me fucking you hard?”

  “Justin! My gosh! I wouldn’t call it that!”

  “But you do, right?”

  “It's not uncomfortable with you. It's just you loving me with all your passion. It makes you excited so I like it.”

  “It makes you excited too, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And it makes you come?”

  “Uh…huuh.” Carin let out a soft giggle through jagged breath.

  “Are you going to get excited for me now?” he asked.

  “You want me to?”

  “Yes.”

  “I always do with you. You make love to me perfectly.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You can make love to me any way you want.”

  “Because you’re my puppet?”

  “That’s a good name for me.”

  “You like being my puppet?”

  “I like the me you make me. It’s a different me. I love all my firsts with you.”

  “I love that they’re firsts.”

  “I want to do that position again. What was it, the backhand cowgirl? The one that made my legs sore after. You remember.”

  “Backward cowgirl.”

  “That one!”

  “Puppet, put your fingers inside.”

  “Huh?”

  “Put one or two inside yourself.”

  “In my mouth again?”

  “No, precious.”

  “Oh baby.”

  “Do that for me and tell me how it feels.”

  “I just…I don’t—”

  “Try, Puppet. Let yourself go. For me.”

  It wasn’t as long a wait as Justin had expected.

  “Oooohh, Justin. You’re making love to me!”

  “It feels good like that?”

  “I’ve never… You want me doing this? Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re doing something too? Promise?”

  “I’m so hard it’s ridiculous.”

  “I’ve never…oh my gosh!”

  “It feels good?”

  “Yes! You’re excited I’m doing this for you, right?”

  “I’m just waiting for you.”

  “Oh… Okay… Okay…”

  “Put your phone on speaker and lay it on the bed, baby.”

  “Okay.”

  “Now put two fingers of your free hand into your mouth and moan so I can hear.”

  “ Mmmmmmmmm…”

  “Are you sucking me?”

  “Uh huhhhhhhh!”

  “Like you did when practicing before I called?”

  “Uh huh!”

  “And your other hand? I’m making love to you still?”

  “Uh huh!”

  “One finger?”

  “Firsss one…now twwooo. Oooohhhh gaaahhhhh!”

  “Put your fingers on your clit now, baby, and rub it fast while sucking me.”

  “Mmmm… Mmmm. Mmmm… Ohh Jus’n… Ohh Jus’n!”

  “That feels good?”

  “Mmmm!

  “I think it’s time to come, Puppet.”

  “Oh! ’Kay! For youuu! Oh Jussin! Oh Jussin! Oh Jussin!”

  Carin’s first phone orgasm was long and loud. She didn’t hold back her excitement, and hearing her unsuppressed rapture made Justin come hard into the towel.

  Afterward, as they lingered on the line, they discussed how they had discovered something that would keep them close when he was traveling. The sun had fully set outside the hotel’s windows and Justin lay in total darkness on the bed. He could hear Carin sniffling twenty-five hundred miles away. He whispered his appreciation and she replied in her softest voice.

  “Thank you for making me do that, baby. I loved it.”

  “I loved it too.”

  “You made me feel like I was with you. My eyes are watery now but that’s okay. It’s just because I miss you and you were so sweet with me.”

  “You’re very easy to be sweet with.”

  “I wasn’t too loud for you?”

  “No, baby. I loved hearing you love me.”

  Part Two

  Chapter Five

  Much to Carin’s delight, Justin had given her a house key before leaving for his trip to LA. He had taught her how to engage and disengage the security system and requested she be at his house upon his return, which was also to her delight. The day of his scheduled return, she had driven to his house directly after finishing at The Greenwich School. By this time, Carin had stayed overnight on many occasions, but having an opportunity to roam the rooms alone at a leisurely pace was something she looked forward to. Justin was a collector of modern and contemporary art, and though her tastes leaned toward Monet and Degas and even an occasional Thomas Kincaid, she was eager to learn of and appreciate her boyfriend’s esoteric preferences.

  After pulling her car around the circular drive out front, she spent the first five minutes of her self-taught, art appreciation class contemplating a six-foot-high, bright-orange, iron mobile displayed on the lawn outside the front door. The piece was Justin’s latest acquisition and Carin knew he was infinitely proud of it. Futuristic in its abstraction, it featured three long appendages sprouting from a trunk. All three limbs had paddle-like heads that swung mildly in the day’s light breeze. Carin assumed the mobile was a significant piece of art but to her it looked more like a bunch of ladles on a giant utensil caddy. She had failed her first art test, but upon entering the premises she at least didn’t trip the alarm. She hung her coat in a closet in the foyer and was determined to find more appreciation in the paintings throughout the house. There
were perhaps a hundred in total, taking up most of the mansion’s wall space. For an hour she roamed the rooms and hallways, studying each picture. Some seemed like mere collections of paint drips or scribbled lines or meaningless geometric shapes, but others moved her considerably, bringing out feelings of love or loss or confusion, even sexual intrigue. One large piece above the living room fireplace mantel captured her imagination entirely. Through soft swatches of amber and pink, she deciphered a wonderfully erotic image of a nude woman reclining expectantly on a bed. The woman’s gaze was settled on something beyond the viewer’s sight and Carin was convinced it was the woman’s lover, with whom she’d soon make passionate love. To Carin, the anticipation and devotion captured in the woman’s pose and countenance was what love was all about.

  After her quiet tour, she retrieved her coat from the foyer closet. She climbed the winding staircase, walked the long hall to the master bedroom and went out onto the deck. To her far left, she viewed sixty yards of privet hedge separating Justin’s house from a neighbor’s. Along the hedge, halfway to the water, a slate-lined lap pool with attached hot tub steamed invitingly. To her right, off the kitchen, was an expansive patio featuring an elaborate grilling station and purple-padded teak furniture. Farther to her right, across the yard and tucked into the trees, a link fence draped in green netting surrounded a tennis court. Directly before her, at the end of a long allee of green grass, stood Justin’s dock, where during the summer he moored a fifty-foot cruising yacht she’d seen many photographs of on her tour.

  Carin sat on a lounge chair until she was cold and then headed inside for a hot shower. Afterward, she went downstairs and picked a bottle of wine from the fridge in the pantry. She opened the bottle using a newfangled corkscrew Justin had recently taught her how to operate, and then took the bottle and two wineglasses through the kitchen to a table in the breakfast nook. She could hear the grandfather clock in Justin’s book-lined study strike six as she set the glasses and bottle on the table and calculated the precise moment of Justin’s return. His plane from California was scheduled to land at La Guardia at six-ten. Allowing five minutes to taxi on the tarmac, ten for Justin to claim his bags, another ten for him to find his limo, and forty-five to drive to the beach house, Carin calculated his arrival at 7:20. Freshly showered, shaved, lotioned, scented, manicured, pedicured, and adorned in a gift of new lingerie she’d found awaiting her on Justin’s bed, she was ready for his return. A short, silky robe, also found with the lingerie, was tied at her waist. She was poised for an unveiling.