The Sensual Mirror by Marco Vassi Page A

ten years. Not that he had ever done anything blatantly crooked, but that more than a few of his deals resulted in safety variances being waved via judicious gifts to mine inspectors. He just knew that a prosecuting attorney would consider the payments bribes, and that was an ugly word for which people were arrested and put in prison.
    And beyond all that was his awareness that he wanted to see Julia again, that his desire for her, which had been filed under “inactive” for so many months was blazing again. Leaving her place was difficult for more than one reason; when the phone had rung he was just beginning to feel the second erection, one that would last for hours, and was starting to smile at the visions of opening Julia up beyond anything she’d ever experieiced before, even with her athletic husband who, Eliot was convinced, didn’t understand about dirty sex and clean sex. That was the real source of Eliot’s appeal, more than his money and sheer staying power; ultimately, he was a back door man, burning his way into women’s secret gardens and evoking their most cunty dreams, playing dirty old man to the little girl in them.
    “And then there’s muscle brain,” Eliot said to himself as he stepped out of the tub. He had met Martin five or six times and finally it became painfully obvious to both of them as well as to Julia that they would never manifest anything more friendly than a strong dislike for one another. Eliot grudgingly gave Martin full marks for his physique and took Julia’s word that he could be a responsive lover, but nothing would ever convince the older man that the younger stud had anything but chopped beef where there should have been a brain. Now, however, he faced the unpleasant prospect of Martin’s possibly finding out that he had fucked Julia, and in all of her openings, and in Martin’s very bed.
    What would he do? Eliot wondered, having no illusions as to how long he would last should the gym instructor decide to beat him to a pulp.
    “Well,” he sighed, drying himself, wrapping a dry towel around his waist, and putting his hand on the doorknob, “it’s the lady or the tiger all over again.” Then suddenly, unaccountably, he felt very young, very rakish and devil-may-care. He was up to his eyes in trouble, and it made his heart light to know that he was still capable of causing havoc with sex. One woman loved him; another was slightly foolish for his cock; and he faced the possibility of a jealous husband. Thus, when he opened the door and stepped into the living room, he was smiling. But Gail, whose anger had largely abated, was expecting the same slightly frightened and contrite man who had gone into the bathroom. When she saw Eliot emerge, washed, powdered, calmed, and smirking in smug self-satisfaction, her rage erupted once more.
    He saw his error in timing a split second before the cocktail glass came hurtling at him, and had just enough time to duck as it smashed into the wall in back of him, the vodka, olive, toothpick, and lemon slice splashing in random disarray behind it. He straightened up and faced the reality, the fact that all the trouble he had been fantasizing was here, real, and would require that he invest time and patience in dealing with it. He would not be allowed the pleasant tingle of transition from one woman’s asshole to another woman’s cunt.
    “I was worried sick!” she said, throwing the words at him with as much force as she had used on the glass.
    “Now, now,” he said, his hands raised in front of him in a gesture of placation, padding toward her steadily and warily. He got a picture of himself that was quite unpleasant, a short, pudgy middle-aged man in a dingy apartment trying to make nice to his mistress because he’d kept her waiting a few hours. The fact that he was a powerfully weathy financier, and attractive and virile enough to have a dozen of the world’s most beautiful women ready to lie at his feet, made his present