"One small piece," she said sternly, her brown eyes watching as he reached for one. "Smaller! Take the end piece!"
"Yes, Elsa," he said with a grin, taking the tiny end piece and putting the moist, garlic and oregano slathered bite into his mouth. He chewed slowly, savoring the burst of flavor across his taste buds. "Damn, Elsa," he said when he was done. "This is some good shit."
"You mean it is excellent garlic bread," she corrected. "I do not cook anything that should be referred to as 'shit'."
"Sorry," he said. He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. "It's excellent garlic bread. I can't wait to taste the rest. Is Rachel upstairs?"
"Yes," she said, smiling at his praise and his kiss. "She was down her mooching things a few minutes ago and then went up to change for dinner just before you came in."
"Groovy," Jake said, heading toward the staircase in the other room.
"Dinner in ten minutes," Elsa called after him. "So if you choose to engage in any sort of squalid activities please make them quick."
"Yes, Elsa," Jake dutifully replied.
He found Rachel in the bedroom, sitting at one of the desk chairs writing a letter to someone. She smiled as she saw him, standing up to walk across the room and greet him. She was wearing a pair of white shorts and a sleeveless blouse, her blonde hair flowing down around her shoulders. She kissed him, welcomed him home, and handed him a fresh rum and coke on the rocks — a drink she knew he was partial to after a long day of recording.
"Thanks, babe," Jake said, taking the drink and enjoying a long sip of it. "How was your day?"
"Just perfect," she said. "I went shopping this morning at Nordies and got this new outfit. Do you like it?" She gave a quick spin.
"It's very nice," he said, giving a little pat on her ass.
"Thank you," she said. "After I got home and ate lunch I worked out for an hour on the treadmill and then laid out by the pool for a bit. Then I went and visited Mom at the restaurant. I just got home about an hour ago."
Jake took another drink and then set the glass down. He asked a few questions about her mother, mostly because it seemed expected of him. As she chattered on he removed his wallet and the loose change from his pockets and then undressed to his underwear. He put on a fresh shirt and a pair of shorts. Rachel followed him around as he moved in and out of the walk-in closet, continuing to talk.
Rachel was pretty much living with him in all but officialdom at this point. She still maintained her apartment with Maureen (who was over to visit no less than three times a week), still paid rent on it (or rather, Jake did), but she hadn't actually slept there in months. Most of her clothes, makeup, and personal hygiene items were now kept in Jake's dresser drawers, bathroom drawers, and walk-in closet. She slept in his bed, ate meals prepared by Elsa, went shopping and to hair appointments with a credit card Jake had given her, and occasionally entertained her friends in the backyard or the entertainment room.
Chapter 4b
Jake did not feel she was taking advantage of him. He liked having her live there. The domestic cohabitation appealed to his sense of relationship and seemed to help keep his life in some sort of stable rhythm. He enjoyed having someone to talk to when he came home after a long day of recording. He liked having a companion to go out with to the movies, to social obligations, to the beach, or just to picnics up in Griffith Park. All of these were roles the groupies could not fill in his life, things that made him feel like an ordinary man instead of a celebrity.
For the most part Rachel filled this role well, without complaint, and without taking advantage of her position in his life. She doted on him at every opportunity, always making sure she was well dressed and well made up for him. She didn't abuse his hospitality in any way, had never gone on a spending spree with his credit card, had never tried to get more out of him than what he'd given her. And she absolutely loved sex, had, in fact, become almost obsessed with it since their first session after the pre-Grammy party.
"I never knew sex could be this good," she'd confessed to him one night after a particularly amorous session on the entertainment room couch. They had been drunk that night, having just returned from the housewarming party for Matt's new house in San Juan Capistrano.
"There is a lot to be said for sex," Jake had replied, his head resting on her stomach, the taste of her juices still strong in his mouth.
"I always thought it was overrated," she said. "I mean, I did it before I met you but I never thought it was anything to write home about. Not that I had a lot of experience or anything. My first time was when I was twenty."
"Twenty?" he asked, surprised.
She giggled. "Yeah. I was real good at putting my boyfriends off when I was in high school and my first year of college. I'd let them feel my tits, put their fingers in my panties, sometimes, when they got really desperate, I'd jack them off. I knew I was good looking and they all wanted to be with me so it was easy to get away with putting them off for months, you know what I mean?"
"Yeah," Jake said, remembering how long she'd made him wait. "You were a cock tease."
"Exactly," she said, laughing. "And I was good at it too. I escaped from high school with my cherry intact. It wasn't until I met Stan that I finally went all the way."
Stan was the history major she'd been dating — and quite obviously in love with — when he'd first started coming into the restaurant where she worked. "He was your first?"
"Yeah," she said, a hint of nostalgia in her voice. "I really liked Stan. After we dated about three months or so I gave it up to him one night." She giggled. "He shot off as soon as he touched my pussy with his dick. We tried again a little later and he actually got it inside that time but once he broke my cherry he shot off again before he could even start to move. That was pretty much it for that night, which was probably a good thing since I was really sore."
"Wow," Jake said, feeling pity for the poor bastard. "What about later? He got better, didn't he?"
"Well... he started lasting a little longer," she said. "I won't say it was better or anything. I mean... it felt okay but I never came with him. I never came with anyone before until you."
"Not even with the doc?" Jake asked, referring to her last boyfriend — the one Jake had basically stolen her from. "All that studying of anatomy and nerve paths didn't give him an edge?"
This produced another giggle. "I was the first live girl he'd ever gotten his hands on. He came in his pants the first time I let him touch my bare boobs. When we did start doing it he never lasted more than a minute."
"Not even after practice?" Jake asked.
"He didn't get a chance to practice very much. We only did it three times before I broke up with him."
"Three times?" Jake marveled, recalling that she and the doc had been together almost five months. Assuming she'd made him wait two months before giving it up the first time that meant they'd had sex about once a month. Once a month! This was inconceivable to Jake. It was also quite a contrast to the Rachel he knew. Rarely did a twenty-four hour period go by in which they weren't at each other at least once. Many times they did it twice, even three times a day. Rachel, who displayed a hunger for orgasms that seemed like an addiction at times, was the one who initiated most of these sessions. She had even learned to give a blowjob to completion without throwing up or even gagging, although it was obvious she still had no great love of this particular act.
There were a few sour spots to the relationship, however — things that Jake wasn't quite sure how to deal with or even if they were something he needed to deal with.
Rachel had dropped out of school in the middle of the last semester, abruptly abandoning twelve units of classes at one of the most prestigious public universities in the nation. Her reasoning for this was sound enough. It was no longer possible for her to walk the campus without being constantly accosted by reporters asking her about Jake and fellow students who wanted to either try to score free concert tickets, meet Jake and/or Matt, or who wanted to know how often Jake beat her and if she needed any help. Two of her instructors had actually given her cards for the local chapter of WEAVE — Women Escaping A Violent Environment. All of this attention made it impossible for her to learn anything and tended to distract both the students and staff in all of her classes. And so, she'd left. She hadn't talked to Jake about this beforehand, she just did it and explained herself later. Nor did she seem to have any regrets about it.