The Hyacinth House Pt. 01

"Don't worry, Jillian, it's fine," he replied casually, as he got into the passenger seat beside Maddy.

A minute or two later, Jilly wondered exactly what he was referring to when he'd replied, 'It's fine'. A minute after that, as Maddy swiftly accelerated away from a set of lights, she asked, "Adam, was it this type of car you described Juliette in, when she was in the back seat going to Madelyn's house?"

"Yes, exactly this car. And I wrote it into the American Girls' story too, although nothing happened in that one. It was going to, but I wrote them into the airplane instead, and sent them off to the island." He turned around to look at Jilly, who'd slid across to sit behind Maddy. "Why do you ask?"

"A powerful car, leather seats, a woman in the back seat. I can be O going to Roissy, just like Juliette."

"Tell me about O," said Maddy, curving in and out of the annoyingly slow traffic, her hands confident on the wheel, learning to gauge the car's power. She thought of Madelyn in her little sports car. Ha, yours doesn't measure up to this one, bitch! A tiny smile formed on her lips and her eyes narrowed. Am I competing against a fictional character? I'll win, if I am, because I'm the real Maddy.

She flicked the indicator and slid into another lane, feeling how the car settled back on its rear wheels as she eased her foot down on the accelerator, ready to pounce. Her nipples tightened as she easily handled the car's silky smooth power. Who needs a cock? she thought, when I can drive this one.

"Shall you tell her, or shall I?" Adam replied, looking directly at Jillian, answering Maddy's request.

Jillian looked right back at him, carefully smoothing down her skirt. "You tell her. It's so much better told with a man's voice." She laid her head back against the rear pillar and closed her eyes to listen. She angled her body to its most curvaceous advantage, her left hand resting carefully on her thigh, drawing his eye to her centre.

Adam shifted too, to better see Jillian and to watch Maddy's profile as she drove. He turned the music down just a little so it served as a soundtrack for his voice, slightly English, beautifully spoken, as he outlined the first part of the story of O. He saw Jillian nod as if she too remembered bits of the story as he told it; and when he described O in the back of the car, lifting the cloth of her dress to sit bare bottom naked on the leather seat, he was rewarded by a sultry opening of Jillian's eyes as she gazed back at him.

Jillian eased her body up from the car's leather seat and rearranged her skirt as O would have done. She unzipped both boots and eased them from her legs, revealing a pair of black lace stockings. Looking straight into Adam's eyes she raised one side of the skirt, slipped her hands under it, wriggled three or four times, giving him a glimpse of creamy white thigh as she did so; and with a lazy smile, pulled her knickers down her legs. She placed them neatly on the seat beside her.

"See Adam, I wore blue knickers, just for you." She looked up to see Maddy's eyes in the rear view mirror. "Find a fast corner would you, babe, so I can slide."

"Jilly, you didn't just say that!"

"I think, darling, she just did." Adam commented. Jillian then, so unlike Maddy.

Maddy picked up his hand and placed it on her thigh. Jilly wasn't having all of him. After all, Maddy had seen him first, and it was she who'd inspired his story.

Maddy drove the fast car down the southern freeway, and Jillian sat in the back. Adam turned the stereo up. The big car sped past Madelyn's truck stop, but nobody saw it. Reality tightened, and they each could feel a new tension in the steel cocoon. Adam licked his lips, and looked across at Maddy. There was a faint flush on her throat, and she gripped and released her hands on the wheel.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"Down to the river," replied Adam, after a short pause, as if there were many answers to her question and he had to select the most suitable one. He tapped the phone to turn the voice back on. "Just follow the instructions."

He turned to Jillian. "Are you comfortable there, in the back?"

"Oh yes," she replied. "Everything's... fine." Her eyes looked up at him slowly. A tiny smile creased her lips and she looked away, dragging his gaze like smoke.

Adam smiled, flaring his nostrils as something began to smoulder.

Half an hour later Maddy eased the car down an exit ramp, looping under the freeway and onto a narrower road. As Maddy slowed for the tight corners, Jillian stirred and put her boots on. She put the knickers into her bag, then pulled out a compact and lipstick, and redid her lips. Adam watched her apply the little red cock, and she winked.

"Maddy, babe, can you drive more smoothly? You're making it awfully hard."

"Jilly!"

"To do my lips, naughty girl. Isn't she naughty, Adam, always thinking of something else?" She snapped the compact shut. "There. Perfect. Adam, what do you think?" Jilly posed with her brilliant red fingernails showing off her perfect red lips, a challenge in her eyes, daring him to disagree.

"I don't know, Jillian. Is that a bit of lipstick on your teeth?"

She glared at him, knowing full well that it wasn't; but she made a show of it anyway, opening up the mirror again, inspecting herself once more, before snapping the compact shut. "There, Mister Clever. It wasn't. Humph." And she turned herself away, quite deliberately doing up a button on her blouse to hide two inches of cleavage. "What are you looking at?"

"Oh, Jilly," Maddy exclaimed. "Stop showing off. You know he's looking at you. Aren't you, Adam?"

Adam, who was enjoying the play-acting between the two women, replied, "Of course I am, darling. Who wouldn't?"

"You're just saying that, Mister Writer Man. You and your words! So unreliable. I think I shall write my own." Jilly turned in her seat to look out the window. She waited a perfect ten seconds. "Are we there yet?"

"Does she ever stop talking?" Adam asked.

"Only when her mouth's full," Maddy replied.

Jilly's laugh, when she heard Maddy's reply, was delightful. "Well, if I'm lucky, I'll get sandwiches."

"Jilly, what on earth are you on about?"

"The picnic, babe, the picnic. I'll look good on the rug, don't you think?"

"My god, Jill, do you ever stop?" Maddy glanced at her friend in the mirror, a conspiracy of laughter in their eyes.

"She's like my cat," Adam said. "She'll exhaust herself eventually, and sleep on the way back home."

"Speaking of cats," said Jilly, "Maddy, did you bring yours?"

"Ha ha, Jillian. Adam, just ignore her. She won't go away, but at least she looks pretty."

Jilly undid the top two buttons of her blouse, revealing the lacy blue cups of her bra. "You can look now, Adam, if you like." Her eyes closed, trapping him inside her mind.

Maddy, who'd been following the map directions, eased the car to a stop. Below them, a short walk away, the river lazily coiled through the landscape, its surface a constant ripple of movement and light. Trees shaded its banks, their leaves shimmering in the light breeze. They were the only people around.

"Look, there's a flat piece of ground, shall we go there?" Adam pointed to a spot, some twenty feet from the water's edge. "Come on, ladies, let's go." He stepped out of the car and went around to the driver's side to open the doors for the women. Maddy got out first, and stretched her arms up to the sky, her hands held together, twisting and stretching her muscles.

"Ahh, that's better. Come on Jilly, wake up!"

Jilly deliberately waited until they were both looking down at her. She swivelled her legs elegantly to the ground, then offered both hands up for assistance. "Well, my little slavelings, assist the duchess from the car, quick, quick!"

They pulled Jilly up from the car, and Adam spun her around to hold her back against his body. She posed against him, leaning her head back against his shoulder in an exaggerated twist. "Ooo, how delicious. Look how strong he is, Maddy. I shall be swept away, I'm sure."

"Thrown in, more likely." Maddy grinned. Little curvy Jilly next to tall graceful Adam, they really did fit together quite nicely. Maddy remembered how he'd held her like that in the garden. She'd fitted against him nicely too, and she wondered exactly how that happened, with the same man but two quite different women.

Adam, who seemed to know but wasn't saying, stood between the two women, his arms around their waists. They each leaned towards him, relaxing into his presence.

"Gosh, Mads. Two women and one man. What on earth are we going to do?" Jilly looked out over the river, watching the slow, lazy movement of the water. "Will we be jealous of each other, do you think?"

"Don't worry, Jilly. We'll think of something, I'm sure." Maddy looked straight ahead, surprised at her own confidence, saying that. "We won't be jealous, we'll just want more."

"Ahh, do I get a say?" asked Adam.

"Don't be silly," they both said, in unison.

"Who's idea was this, for a picnic, anyway?" added Maddy.

"You're right," said Adam. "It wasn't mine."

They both turned to look at Jillian. "Oops!"

A breeze shimmered up ripples on the water. The hot steel of the engine block ticked as it cooled, and far away, a bird called. The moment stopped, and started again. It was going to be a good day. The rain, when it came, would come later.

* * * *

"Where do the ideas come from?" asked Maddy. "I mean, I know the opening sequence of the Madelyn story came from us meeting in the street, but the rest. Where does it all come from?"

The picnic basket lay demolished; what they'd not eaten the ants were taking away, even on a cool day. Adam topped up their wines, knowing he'd be driving back. Both Maddy and Jilly had had two or three glasses each and the early afternoon sun had been warm on their skin, so they were all quite mellow. The frisson in the car lay unspoken between them, but each knew the others were quietly aroused, quietly waiting, gently wanting, but why hurry? They had plenty of time to know each other better.

Maddy sat with her back against a tree, playing with Jilly's hair as her friend lay with her head in Maddy's lap. Jilly in turn had her boots on Adam's thighs, ankles crossed, her coat wrapped around her for warmth. Adam had brought a big pillow down from the back seat of the car, and was lying back on it.

They'd compared the colour of Jillian's knickers to Adam's eyes and agreed she'd not got the shade quite right, so the knowledge she was bare underneath her skirt wasn't completely forgotten, but wasn't central, either. The little froth of cloth wouldn't have covered much, but the idea of it was delightful.

"Well, I was guessing, really, wasn't I?" argued Jilly. "I've not had the chance to gaze deeply into Adam's eyes, not like Miss Fingers here. And not like the divine Juliette. Where did she come from, that little tart? She was gorgeous! And Bonnard? Surely you know someone as the basis for those characters?"

"No, not really," Adam replied. "Madelyn, sure, the opening scene was based on Maddy and I meeting that day in the street; and those three coffee women in the Amanda story, they were all real. But as soon as anybody walks through a door or gets into a car, then you know it's story telling, my imagination kicking in."

"And rivers, in that Arthurian one, they're always crossing rivers and streams. What's that all about?" Maddy asked.

"That's pretty obvious, surely? The symbolic rivers, Styx, the life blood of the Nile. The rivers in the Garden of Eden and Babylon. Flowing water, flowing blood, the stuff of life. It's the archetypal stuff. Jungian, mostly. Probably."

"Which one's Jung again?" Maddy asked. "Freud's all about dreams and Oedipus fucking his mother, loving and hating your father. I know about that, but which one's Jung?"

"He's all about archetypes, the female side of a man, the male side of a woman, that kind of thing." Jilly knew. "Alex's doppelgänger sister, in Adam's incest story. Remember that scene where the sister's lover sees them both in the mirror, and they're two parts of the same person, male and female."

Jillian turned towards Adam. "You're actually quite strange and weird sometimes, you know that? Those black and white witches, all that blood, all that hair. The crazy queen. I don't know you at all, but the bits I've seen of you, what Maddy's mentioned, and reading your male characters... they're pretty much you, I'm guessing; you just write a fantasised you. But your women. Where do they all come from? Because your stories, really, are all about women. The men don't seem to matter so much."

She sat up, and moved closer to Adam. "Am I wrong? Who on earth are all your women? Where do they come from?"

"You're right. My male characters are easy, they're all basically me. Alex in my stories is the younger me, university, my twenties, early thirties; and Adam is me, now, pretty much. Alter ego and fantasy me, obviously, but I'm too lazy to construct other male characters." He stopped, pondering something. "The alien angel. That's not me."

"Thank God for that," remarked Jillian. "I'd really be struggling to picture your fine cock if that creature was the model."

"Jilly, that's rather forward, isn't it?" Maddy protested.

"Let's not pretend, Mads. We got into Adam's car and we're down by a river. Doesn't that mean something's going to happen? He said so himself."

"But we're not characters in one of Adam's stories."

"No, but I've got my knickers off, and you got your wish fulfilment by driving really fast, so something must be happening." Jillian turned to Adam. "Anyway, if we were to get written into one of your stories, how would you portray us both? Since Maddy is nothing like Madelyn, and I'm not in a story at all, how would you write us?"

"Now that," said Adam, "is quite a fascinating question. Let me think about that for a sec, see if I can figure out my thought process."

"Yes," said Maddy. "Like your Sara story. Some of that one must have been real. Just a girl working in a café, and you met her. The basic idea of that, it's too simple to be made up, to all be fiction. The drawing stuff, obviously that was made up, and maybe the Ruth stuff too. I couldn't tell. But the Sara sections, they were really sweet, I liked how you described her coming out for a chat, playing with her hair, and describing your own thoughts. Writing about innocence, that's actually quite touching. I thought so, anyway. She reminded me of someone."

"She reminded you of you, Mads. You were just like that after you left school. Before you got your legal secretary job."

"What? You mean innocent? Is that what you mean?"

"Babe, you're an innocent now. What do you think you were like at nineteen?" Jilly looked at her friend. "You were, Mads. Pretty naive. Certainly compared to me, anyway." She turned to look at Adam. "I'm more sensible now, though. I was a bit of a tearaway, back then."

"You mean Jilly Smithers isn't quite real?" Adam asked. "That's a shame, she was started to grow on me, your Jilly."

"Oh you divine man, now you're teasing." Jillian lapsed back into character for a moment, then returned to her earlier question. "Seriously though, if you were to base a story character on us two, how would you go about that?"

* * * *

"I think it would go something like this," replied Adam. "You first, Jillian, because you're more demanding. I pick up on some key part of a person, their personality, what stands out most and is instantly recognisable, to me at least, and I think I exaggerate it slightly."

"So you'll get a great pair of tits, Jilly," said Maddy, "with a deep and delicious cleavage; and my ass will be two firm, muscular globes. My thighs will crack walnuts." Maddy sat up straighter, listening to every word, her eyes bright.

Jillian went a step further. "I'll be even more forward, then, will I? More so than I usually am? Assertive. I'll get what I want. I'll just take it, right? No messing about?"

"That's it, no messing about. Just take what you want."

"Now that, Adam, is a pretty powerful idea. I can do that."

She moved forward and crouched over him, her thighs each side of his hips, her weight not on him yet. "Lie back, beautiful man. If I'm going to do this, I might as well do it properly."

Jillian looked down upon Adam, seeing his dark blue eyes holding her gaze. She ran her bright fingernails down his cheek and smoothed hair back from his temple. She was grooming him to adore her, and wanted him to see her clearly.

She glanced over her shoulder to make sure Maddy was watching, because she knew Maddy liked to watch. Jilly had never tasted her girlfriend's body, but they'd been in situations, two or three or even four times, where Maddy had watched her at drunken parties take a man upstairs and see them fuck. She'd stand by the door, never coming in and sometimes keeping people out, and watch how Jilly took the man in her mouth, watch him mount her, or see how Jilly would slide down onto a cock, depending on her mood. She'd never see them come, she'd always close the door and go away, and Jilly would find her later, nursing her last drink for the evening. "Can we go home now, Jills? I want to go home."

And six or seven months later, it would happen again, but by then Jilly would have a different man. Maddy would still take her home, make sure she was inside the door, then drive to her own apartment by the sea. Jilly wasn't sure who was saddest, but that was just how it worked. Love was a precious thing, but neither woman seemed to find it. Jilly with her endless men, and Maddy with no man at all. And now, here was Adam, and he was probably going to be no different, just more again. Just a fuck.

Jilly mouthed, "I love you," to Maddy, and turned back to Adam. She carefully spread her coat around her, spreading it over Adam's legs. She pulled and tugged up her skirt until it too was spread in a circle around his thighs and gut, her bare naked slit pressing down onto his cloth covered thigh. She was a little wet inside, left over arousal from the car, but was hot and dry against his jeans. She felt a small shift as he started to thicken, but she was being Maddy now, sitting upstairs at the netball game a long time ago; it was her arousal she was after, not his.

But she was Jillian too, older, more experienced, craving more sensation. She slowly undid the buttons of her blouse, revealing her full breasts constrained in the blue brassiere, not quite the colour of Adam's eyes, but close enough.

Her slightly plump, rounded belly was curved above the waist of her skirt, and she watched, fascinated, as Adam placed his hands upon it, almost in reverence. The palms of his hands were warm, even though the air was cool. She was intrigued that the first thing he held was her belly, and she smiled, remembering that it was a constant image in his stories, a man gently holding a woman's belly.

"Adam," she asked softly, with a quick understanding, "do you have children?"

"Yes, I do," he replied. "They're both adults now."

"I thought so. You've held another woman's belly, and felt them kick inside."

Jillian leaned down to kiss him, her breasts grazing his chest, wanting a part of such intimacy, but not wanting to know who that woman was. The mother of his children wasn't here, Jillian had this moment. She was his.

"Your hands, Adam, you're so gentle." She undid the buttons of his shirt, one by one, and raked her red nails through the silvery curls on his chest. "Undo my bra, there's a clasp at the front. I want to feel my skin against yours."

Adam reached up and found the clasp, and undid it. The weight of her breasts as she knelt above him dropped into his hands, soft and heavy. Her nipples, thick already from the cold, were dark brown, a contrast to her pale skin, and stood proud from the crinkled areola. He pushed up hard against her breasts, and she cupped his hands in hers, and squeezed tighter.