Family Tradition

Chapter Two

When Sheree emerged from the steaming black-marble bathroom, all she wore was a bright-berry silk charmeuse-wrap. Her long sleek legs took her out through the sumptuous bedroom and across to Ashton’s office—not that he really needed one. He was a chef.

“Ashton,” she cooed. “I’ve got something for you.”

“Huh?”

Ashton, his long hair tied back to a tail behind his head, and his bearded face ever fattening, simply stared down at his lit desk. He was looking at a small, leather-bound book.

“I’ve got something for you…”

Beside him sat a glass of Medoc. He acted as though he’d barely heard her. Whatever it was in the book seized his total attention.

Jesus, Sheree thought. Is this guy a eunuch?

Sheree had been living with Ashton Morrone for three years. He was no stud—-for sure—but at thirty-five Sheree wasn’t getting any younger. Ashton owned what was critically determined to be the best restaurant in Seattle, The Emerald Room, on the waterfront, from which he bagged a cool $250,000 per year. Another $100,000 came from his weekly cable cooking show, Cooking With Ashton, and his culinary success had allowed him to purchase this Alaska Avenue waterfront penthouse. They were nice digs, and Sheree liked nice things.

But she also liked sex on occasion, but that didn’t seem to be terribly forthcoming from Ashton. Now, a hot stiffer in her pocket… Was that too much to ask?

Ashton was Number One executive chef in the city, but he was constantly worried about Number Two catching up to him. Hence, stress.

Hence, no boner.

“The best eel in the world,” Ashton muttered, staring at the book. “That prissy son of a bitch James got twenty pounds of it from some Capitol Lake fisherman in Thurston County and served it at his own joint.” The reviews had been monumental. And Ashton, left in the dust, had been overplayed in the local cuisine scene for the first time.

To Ashton, it was the equivalent of a normal man having his balls cut right out of his scrotum.

“Fuckin’ James—mincing snob,” Ashton muttered, referring to his nemesis, one M. Gerald James, owner of the lakeside Rococo Seafood House. “That motherfucker, he have his own tv show? No! Does he get the best reviews in town and four stars in Michelin’s? No! Then the scumbag gets his hands on twenty pounds of Crackjaw Eel—by total fluke—and he’s the hottest chef in the city!”

Sheree came around and rubbed his shoulders. “Oh, honey. James can’t make hash and eggs without screwing it up. He probably molests little kids. What are you so worried about?”

“I’m worried about that fussy-faced limey cocksucker bringing down my business!” Ashton shouted from the desk. “Don’t you understand anything? How did you feel when Jenna Jameson knocked you out of the porn business? Huh?”

That again. Jesus. Yes, Sheree had worked the higher-level porn circuits in L.A. for ten years, but by the time she was “beat” she was well ready to make her exit. She wanted out—she was damn tired of five indifferent cocks a day five days a week and everyone sweating it out for the wet shot. L.A. gave her the creeps.

She was too old to keep her throne in porn but she still looked great. Last thing she wanted was to pull a Shannon McCuller and wind up doing gang-bang flicks and Rodney Moore cum-shots for a couple hundred bucks a day. Let Jenna Jameson have her reign. She’d get real tired of all those cocks up her ass just as fast as Sheree did. Good luck, blondie.

“That hag?” Sheree replied. “She can have it. I don’t want that shit anymore…. I want you.”

The comment bid a reflexive reach-around pat on her ass as Sheree continued to massage his shoulders. “Don’t you want to see what I brought you?” she asked.

He spun around in his chair.

Sheree let the silk charmeuse-wrap flow off her shoulders and down her legs, like plush shiny liquid. All that remained was her tanned, fine-lined, 36-D brick shit-house body. Nude. In his face.

Ashton winced. “Sheree!” he barked. “Don’t you understand that everything’s not about sex! My career’s going down the drain! I’ve got more important things to worry about than getting it on!”

It was everything she could do not a wrap a tourniquet around his fat neck and twist and twist and twist until his head popped off. But she had to be tactical, didn’t she? Here, she had a beautiful place to live, all the spending money she needed, her own little BMW 318, and this big fat sugar-daddy dolt. That sure as hell beat the daily colon inspections by the likes of Joey Silvera and Peter Fucking North. If she’d kept that up, by now, her anus would be bigger than her mouth, and it would be filled with just as much cum. She thought back to her very last gig; when a bulbous borsh-filled Ron Jeremy had walked in, she knew her career was over.

“I understand, baby,” she assured in a silken whisper, still rubbing his back. “I’m sorry for being so selfish. I know you have a lot on your mind.”

He errantly patted her hand, still riled up. “I gotta get that fucking eel.”

“Well, we’re going tomorrow. I’m sure you and your brother will catch so much eel, you won’t know what to do with it all.”

“You don’t understand,” Ashton said…and Sheree was getting damn sick of being told by this limp-dick fat putz that she didn’t “understand.” But she swallowed the insult as well as her pride, and then remembered that if it weren’t for Ashton she’d still be swallowing a lot of something else.

Ashton stood up from the desk, turned, and took Sheree by the shoulders. “Honey, it’s not just eel. It’s the freshwater Crackjaw eel, the most delectable and the rarest eel in the world. The A. Anguilla Mytilus. It only lives in old deep lakes with variant-low temperatures, and it only eats freshwater mussels and clams. Finding a stockpile of these things could mean an extra hundred grand per year in restaurant profits and a million a year in exports. The Japanese will buy this stuff till their eyes go round.” He sat back down, pointed to the book. “The secret is right here…”

It was a small leather-bound book printed in the late-1950's called Delectable Edibles Of The Pacific Northwest. “Only a hundred copies of this book were ever printed, and look!”

He pointed again, first to a black-and-white photograph of an eel lain out on a cutting board. It was perhaps the most hideous living creature Sheree had ever seen (Ron Jeremy being the only possible exception): the fat, long, snakelike body, with edgy fins running top and bottom. Far worse, though, was the protruded head, with big button eyes and the low-hanging vise-like jaw with which it evidently cracked open the exclusive shells of its prey.

“It’s…beautiful, isn’t it?” Ashton commented, drawing a slow finger across the surface of the old photograph. The next old photo showed a bearded fisherman grinning as he held one of the hideous things up in his arms, and the caption below the photo read: Local fisherman R. B. Brown, displays a rare Crackjaw eel that he caught on the southeast side of Sutherland Lake. Brown contends that the rather unappealing serpent is delicious and running rampant at this corner of the obscure and rarely fished Sutherland.

“See that?” Ashton hotly questioned. “‘The obscure and rarely fished Sutherland?’ Nobody ever goes to that sinkhole—it’s too cold for any decent fishing—and who’s seen this small-press book? No one!”

Sheree ran her hands down the front of Ashton’s fat-layered chest. “Well, we’re going there tomorrow, sugar. And we’re going to catch so much eel—”

“Not just any eel,” Ashton accentuated. His finger tapped the book. “The Crackjaw eel—”

“Yes, sugar, you bet.” Sheree kept running her hands up and down his body, then took a glance to see if anything was happening at his crotch.

Nada.

Eunuch. What’s a girl got to do to get some dick around here! “We’re gonna catch enough eel to fill a warehouse. Then you can just throw your head back and laugh at the mean, nasty M. Gerald James.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Ashton said in a hate-filed daze. “I’ll bury that skinny motherfucker like he never was born. Then I’ll buy him out!”

“There ya go!” Sheree squealed. She dared reach down to Ashton’s crotch. “Baby, you sure you don’t want any—”

He patted her hand. “I’m sorry, darling. I’m just too distracted right now. But I promise…we’ll have a good time once we get to the lake.”

Sheree had little else to do but accept it. “Okay, baby. I’m going to bed now.”

“I’ll be in in a while. Goodnight.”

Sheree walked off naked for the bedroom. That big bucket of lard’s more interested in eel than in me. Oh, well, at least she still had a nice luxurious life, and at least she could still masturbate.

Who knew? Maybe tonight she’d think about getting her asshole cored by Peter North…

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