The Erotic Secrets Of A French Maid

night.

She'd been late getting the stuffed, boneless leg of lamb into the oven and it still had forty minutes to cook, plus another fifteen minutes to rest before she could cut it, according to the recipe she'd downloaded off epicurious.com. The lima bean puree with garlic and rosemary had been made ahead and waited now to be rewarmed, but the utensils she had used were piled on the counter and in the sink, and her immersion blender had flung gobs of green puree onto the backsplash, the cupboards, and her blouse. The mint truffle ice-cream terrine for dessert was safely in the freezer, the homemade chocolate sauce in the fridge, but the mint sauce that also went with it was no more than a bag of leaves at the moment.

The table was only half-set. Her hair and face were a mess. Her body was a mess, the shower she'd taken earlier now a distant, sweaty memory.

She took a deep breath, assessing the situation. The lamb was cooking on its own. Setting the table and making the mint sauce could wait. The mixed greens salad was ready to throw together, giving him something to eat while she finished everything else up. If she was going to clean herself up, though, now was her only chance.

She looked down at her hands, which were shaking. Now that she was pausing in her frantic cooking rush she realized that her gut was sloshing with acid, her heart irregularly thumping, her vision blurring from the overdose of adrenaline.

The nervous anticipation was worse than on any first date. It was even worse than the night she lost her virginity.

Am I really going to do this? Am I really going to let a man I hardly know have sex with me three times a week?

She hovered on the thin edge of indecision, swaying between telling Russ to forget it, it was a mistake, she had to have been crazy to have said yes, and going ahead with the arrangement.

Is this really what I want?

She imagined the evening: Russ eating the dinner she'd made and then looking at her, silence falling between them as they both recognized that the time had come. She would send him to her bedroom while she prepared for the sexual experiment she'd downloaded off the internet; he'd said to be creative, after all. The activity was nothing she herself had ever done and at the thought of it, her body fluttered between arousal and the fear of humiliation. Russ might be turned off by it, and she might end up looking the fool. But if it worked…

At the end of it she would climb on top of him, her thighs parting over his hips, and guide the tip of his hardened shaft to her opening. She'd feel herself stretching as she eased herself down on him, his erection filling her as she had longed to be filled for so many lonely months, and then his hands would come up to grip her hips and guide her to his own rocking, thrusting motion.

Oh yes. A warm rush went through her loins. Yes, this was what she wanted, nerves be damned! And let the opinions of others be damned as well!

Emma tossed down her oven mitts and dashed for the bathroom to give herself a sponge bath and slap on some makeup. Sitting on the back of the toilet tank was the cold-waxing kit she'd bought earlier in the week and had conveniently forgotten about. She stared at it. She lifted her short skirt and looked down, parting her thighs enough to see if it was really so bad that she needed the wax.

Holy hairy monkeys!

She couldn't show that tangle to him. Couldn't send his penis fighting through that thicket, with its dark curls creeping down the insides of her thighs like vines.

She'd shaved inside her thighs before, but it always left sharp stubble and a rash. If she was going to be someone's lust object, she wanted to be smooth and sleek and not worried about whether he was going to get sandpapered by her thighs.

She stripped and gave herself a quick sponge bath, put on some red lipstick as the quickest way to brighten up her face, combed her hair and smoothed out the frizzies with water and silicone serum, then sat on the edge of the tub and tore into the wax kit.

The instructions were full of cautions, but she'd waxed her legs a few years ago and figured she understood the basics. The cold wax came in a tube and had the consistency of honey. She squeezed a blob of it onto the small plastic spatula from the kit, smeared it over a quarter-sized patch of hair inside her thigh, pressed a strip of cloth over it, then held her skin taut with one hand while ripping off the cloth with the other.

'Holy crap!' she screeched, and slapped one palm down over her offended flesh, hoping that pressure would ease the pain. A moment later she lifted her hand and examined the damage. Her skin bore faint pink dots where each hair had been exhumed, but was otherwise a smooth, lovely patch of civilized hairlessness amid the wilds.

Emma darted naked out into the kitchen and checked the time: she had eight minutes. She darted back into the bathroom, hoping Russ would be late.

If she waxed in sensible one-inch patches it would take her forever to get it done, and impatience drove her to slather progressively wider and longer strips of wax on her skin, press on the cloth, then pull it off in a series of short jerks. Stray dollops of wax attached to her fingers, to the tub, to hairs she didn't intend to pull.

The doorbell rang and her hand jerked, sending a smear of wax from her inner thigh into the hair on her mound. 'Dammit!' With the spatula she tried to scrape the wax off, but it made things worse. She took a cloth and slapped it down on the mess of wax.

He knocked on the door.

'I'm coming! One second!' she shouted, and tried to rip the cloth off. 'Monkey Christ!' she shrieked, and tumbled in pain to the bathroom floor, her thighs clamped shut over the agony.

'Emma?' Russ called from the other side of the front door, his voice muffled.

'I'm okay!' she squeaked. 'I'll be right there!'

She lay for a moment, breathing heavily and waiting for the pain to fade, then pushed herself up into a sitting position and looked at her crotch. The white cloth was attached to her like a bandage, running diagonally across her mound and down between her thighs. She lifted up the top corner and gave it a little jerk.

'Jeee-zus H!'

There was too much wax and way too much hair. She snatched up the instruction sheet, scanning it for what to do. She turned it over, then turned back to the other side. Where did it say what to do? Where?

'Emma?' Russ called again.

'Dammit! Dammit dammit dammit!' She'd have to figure it out later. She grabbed all the waxing paraphernalia and shoved it into the cabinet under the sink. She got up off the floor and yelped as she tried to straighten up. The damn wax and cloth had glued her left leg into a raised position. Standing up straight stretched her skin painfully. 'Crap!' She'd have to hide her limp as best she could. She pulled on her bra, sleeveless white blouse, and short green skirt, skipping the underpants. She didn't want those stuck to her as well.

With the waxed cloth tugging painfully with each uneven stride, she hobbled barefoot to the front door and put her hand on the knob. She rested her weight on her right leg, the left one cocked and on tiptoe, as if it were a sultry pose. She took a deep breath and tried to calm herself, and planted a welcoming smile on her lips.

Ready or not, here she was.

Russ approached the door to his old apartment with an unsettling mix of familiarity and alienness. It had been home to him for several years, but never in that time had there been a woman behind that door with dinner waiting and the intention of taking him to her bed. As wrong as he intellectually knew this arrangement was, as wrong as he emotionally felt that it was, part of him wanted it the way a drowning man wanted to see a ship in the distance. It might be an illusion, but what a beautiful illusion it was.

And wrong! Wrong, wrong, wrong, he reminded himself. All week, he had meant to call Emma and break their agreement. He'd meant to do that even as he express-mailed her a loaded Visa card. He'd meant to do it as he e-mailed her a link to his lab test results. He'd meant to do it as he bought a bouquet for her, walked into the building, and rode up the elevator-and now, as he stood before his old door, he still meant to do it.

He looked at the flowers. What the hell was he thinking? This wasn't a date!

But what was it? His mind scrambled back through memory, trying to find a parallel. All he could think of was Madame de Pompadour, the eighteenth-century mistress to the French king. He didn't