by Jamie Knight
As I get out of my car and head up to my front door, I think, I wish I could’ve told him the good news. I wish I could’ve let him know how many of those little slugs I saw running out of the building, and taking all of their crap with them.
I sigh and smile, imagining the look he might have on his face: the gratitude, the love, the relief all present there, all because of me.
In my head, I imagine Tommy saying, “Thank you so much, Melissa. Thank you so much for taking those risks. For being so brave and strong for me. Without you, I might have been beaten up in there!”
I imagine his cute face flushing with heat. His eyes moistening with emotions, both good and not so good. Which only succeeds in making him appear more adorable and more in need of my care.
“Without you,” I imagine him continuing, “without you, I’d still be in danger. I’d still be suffering, if you hadn’t been the big, bad woman, and dealt with it all like that!”
With these thoughts, I hate to admit it, but I’m feeling aroused, happy, strong, and giddy. With Dennis, I was never able to be the one coming to the rescue. I was never able to be the strong, confident one. That would’ve emasculated and embarrassed Dennis too much. He wanted to be the man in that way. He wanted to be the strong type, and me — he wanted me to come running to him, submitting to him — always.
But right now, I’m feeling on top of the world. And incredibly horny.
By the time I get up to my front door, get the lock undone, and myself into my condo, I’m raging. I’ve got a pussy that needs tending to, now.
And that’s all because of Tommy, I think, feeling terrified and happy about that at the same time. Because of the way I imagine him being with me and to me, because I was there for him. Because I came to his rescue.
I quickly shut and lock my front door behind me, making plans to go to my bedroom. The place where I love to work these kinds of things out.
I know I shouldn’t be having those thoughts about him! I shouldn’t be thinking about Tommy that way. How hot he is, how he would say things to me, what he would say… I don’t even know if he’s interested, but I can’t help it!
With these thoughts, I quickly make my way to my favorite chair in my favorite part of my bedroom — the part that’s been made over into a small reading area. It’s been styled to look like a parlor or a smoking room from early Victorian England, but better. More books, less cigar smoke.
Once in my favorite chair, I unzip the front of my pants, unbutton them, slide them and my panties down my legs, and set myself free.
I began to touch myself, telling myself I should think about Dennis. But I don’t seem to have any desire to do that anymore.
I start to make small circles around my clit with my fingers, chastising myself for having the wrong kind of thoughts and desires right now.
I used to wish that Dennis had decided to stay in America with me and that he didn’t make me feel so bad about my choices. I tried to make myself focus on Dennis by remembering the first time he came to my defense like that — the same way I came to Tommy’s.
He put himself in the firing line when, at a club, I was being harassed by guys, a whole gaggle of them who decided they had nothing better to do than harass me. Me, out of all the other women there.
It was because I was particularly feminine and sexy looking that night. I wore a lot of makeup in a pinup style, and these guys were more than willing to make my life a living hell because of it. They just didn’t want to take no as an answer.
He told the guys to leave me alone, and he was very menacing about it. I think I started falling for him because I knew he could protect me. But sometimes he could be a real asshole, even to me.
I start to imagine Tommy’s thick cock even though I had told myself not to think about him. It’s big, hefty.
I feel myself rubbing the nub of my clit faster and harder, but to go along with the images in my head, I imagine what Tommy’s cock feels like as I take it in my mouth. As I stretch my lips around it and start sucking on it, I imagine how full it makes me. How far and completely it stretches my lips and my cheeks, and how there is almost not enough room for my tongue to lick and tickle it, but I manage.
I imagine riding up and down on him to the same speed as my hand motions, slipping a few fingers into my pussy. And my noises of pleasure that I’m making, I imagine they’re for Tommy. I imagine he’s thanking me for pleasing him and for loving and protecting him, much the same thing I said to Dennis all those years ago.
In my imaginary mouth, I feel Tommy’s cock swelling, his balls sucking inward. His member pulsating in my mouth, vibrating on my lips and down my throat. I put my hand on Tommy’s imaginary belly, and keep going down on him. Sucking on him. Tightening my lips and dragging them up and around his cockhead, but it’s when I grip his belly tighter in my head, that I go.
I release all of my stored-up tension and cum in one long, quivering mess. With me, it’s never quick. It makes my body tense and releases over and over again. My pussy juices flow out, like silk or like water, and it does so now. With it, goes my fantasy of Tommy.
As I feel my juices drain out over my hand and fingers, I imagine Tommy looking up at me the way I looked up at Dennis that night, full of love and respect. In my eyes, he has a yearning, a desire for something I hadn’t really allowed myself to have until that moment.
I sigh, feeling the depth of my guilty pleasure. I just thought about Tommy when I had told myself I wouldn’t. I sigh again, clenching my fists. I’m so mad at myself.
I shake my head, deciding it’s time to get up and wash my hands and try to forget about all of my problems. As I carefully shuffle myself over to a sink to wash clean, I feel terrible. Beyond guilty.
And that’s when I also realize something else: I left my stupid phone out in the car, on the passenger seat.
I quickly shake my hands dry, put on my pants again, and hurry toward my front door.
If I’m not too late, my car will still be there. And not broken into, and not minus a smartphone.
When I get out to my car to retrieve my phone, it’s not gone. Nor has my car been broken into, thank God. But there is a message from Dennis, and it was left at a really odd time, which was also at around the time I pulled up in my driveway and left the phone in the car.
That was about thirty minutes ago. Technically, he should still be in the middle of work, without any time to call me.
This, as well as something I’m not really able to name, is a big reason why my stomach starts to knot. It turns over like mud, as I pick up the phone and dial into the voice message app again.
From the first few seconds of sketchy, muffled audio, it’s clear to me that this is an accidental dialing from him. Meaning he didn’t mean to dial me. Another part of his body did, and since I was the last person he called, it put through another call to me. A kind of “butt dialing” situation, as most Americans put it.
But I quickly began to suspect that some higher power, some God, rather than punishing me, is actually looking out for me. On the voicemail message, I hear Dennis’s voice.
While I can’t make out anything he says with any clarity, I can tell by the rhythm and tone of his voice that he’s flirting and being charming. His voice has that low, slow rhythm to it. That singsong quality that he only gets when he’s ladling on the charisma.
I listen more closely to the message, hoping to hear something, one word clearly, but there’s nothing. The only thing I catch is the sound of another voice besides Dennis’s. When I first hear it, I find myself hoping that it’s a male. I pray that it is, though my heart immediately starts to tell me something different. That it’s another woman, not another man.
The person is soft-spoken, gentle sounding. A lot like how I sounded when Dennis and I were first dating. But more mischievous than that. I can hear it in the voice. The way it answers Dennis. The way its tone is nimble but cutting or lighthearted and deadly as if they’re enjoyi
ng playing a game of cat and mouse.
The message cuts off before I can get any more information out of what I’ve just heard. It’s probably better that way, as I’ve already gotten enough. I’ve gotten enough to know that my boyfriend’s is up to something. Or someone.
Whether it’s serious or not, it doesn’t matter. I’ve somehow been given a view into some kind of exchange that he didn’t expect for me to hear.
I get out of the voicemail application but save the message. I don’t really want to save it. I don’t really want to hang onto it, knowing that it confirms at least partially, something I’ve been afraid of. That something being that Dennis is seeing someone else. Someone more local than me, even though we agreed to stay with each other despite the distance.
I slip the phone into my pants pocket and wander back inside. I close the door behind me and lock it, deciding that I’ve definitely earned some wine and chocolate now.
Between the mess Tommy found himself in today, my part in trying to clean up the mess, and now this — the clandestine message left on my answering machine, with hints of possible friends of Dennis’s with benefits — I’m feeling incredibly stressed and overwhelmed.
While I know it’s hypocritical of me to be feeling worried or scared or betrayed by this possible “other woman” since I’ve been fantasizing about Tommy, an associate-turned-assistant-lawyer, but it’s unavoidable. I pour myself a glass of wine (a ridiculously full one) and go and get the biggest bar of chocolate I own and start in on my dinner.
I’ve always felt insecure around Dennis. Not just because he’s had a flashier, fancier career than me, but because his looks and his personality attract all kinds of women to him.
Being a model makes him irresistible to nearly everyone who meets him. Which is fine. Initially. Until you start hearing those other women whisper behind you back and say things like, “What does Dennis see in her? What’s she got that so special? She’s not even that accomplished. Not compared to the rest of us.”
When you start hearing things like that, you really start to wonder yourself. You really start to fear that maybe he will go and find someone else.
And it’s not until right now, when I’m sitting on my couch, drinking wine and eating my weight in chocolate, that I realize how worried I’ve been about this. Not just recently. Not just since he started being less regular about calling me, but the entire time. Even when he was back in New York, I worried about it.
Except now, I’ve got a reason to worry even more. Whoever he was talking to, that woman seems to have caught his interest. And possibly in a more-than-professional way.
Well, if he forgets to call me on Friday like we originally planned, I won’t be surprised. At least I’ll have some idea of what — or who’s — been distracting them.
I take a big, sour gulp of my wine.
And at least now I have some idea why he sounds so disinterested in me.
I swallow the wine, letting the bitterness coat my throat. There’s an odd sweet aftertaste that follows, but I just cover it up with more wine.
Even if he wasn’t expecting to tell me so clearly. Or at all.
Chapter Twenty - Tommy
I’m not usually happy to be home. My dad and I (yes, unfortunately, I still live with the bastard), live in a not-so-nice part of New York. While a good portion of the city is being developed into a trendy, vacationers and young-professionals paradise, filled with all kinds of restaurants, nightclubs, bars and lounges, malls, and boutiques, that doesn’t define the place where I live.
The part of New York City I live in is a little more run down. It’s a little less developed and cultured than a few blocks down. That’s where they have these new townhomes being built.
Where my house is, it’s an old development. It was initially supposed to be a great neighborhood for families. They built a lot of houses along with ours, but that never came to fruition.
Families did move in, but they were very troubled, like my own. Often they were made up of single parents, or blended families, most of these families didn’t really follow the good-neighbor, small-town-America vibe that this whole neighborhood was originally going for.
So, when I drive up to my house, with grass mostly dead in the yard, weeds overgrowing in places, and the trees barely hanging on to some kind of life, I’m not ashamed anymore. I used to be when I would go and come from college at the nearby University, but not anymore.
I’ve accepted the fact that my childhood home looks like this, and will always look like this. How could it not? It matches the man I have to live with: old, over-grown in a lot of areas, and doesn’t give a shit about how he looks, what people think, or whether or not he’s being a “good dad.”
I say I’m not usually happy to be home.
But I am today.
And that’s because Dad’s not home.
When Dad’s not home, that means I can actually get a break emotionally, spiritually, physically, and mentally. I can actually take some time to myself. Do what I want, eat what I want, wear what I want, without him starting shit with me. Which he’s never passed on a chance to do when I’m within spitting or yelling range of him.
With my partial afternoon/evening of freedom in mind, I hurry to get out of my car, get in the house, and get started on some me-time.
I didn’t bother to partake of any masturbation or sexual release at the office, even though the opportunity was there, it’s been swirling around in my head. It’s been building and layering throughout the drive home, and now, the moment I step inside the house through my basement-entry, I can’t keep the thoughts back. I start immediately replaying in my head everything that happened to me.
As I thunder my way down the stairs to my “cave”, my sanctuary — the large basement-bedroom I’ve had since I was thirteen — my mind is plastered on Melissa.
The way she helped me and how her face looked when she was coming to my rescue.
How curvy and firm her body is.
My body temperature spikes just thinking about it.
My blood warms, filling me up in more places than one.
I remember when Melissa said I was handsome. How beautiful she looked as she helped me get myself together for my interview, and my cock responds by filling, growing, and stretching upward.
I stop on the stairs, gripping the handrail. The last girl to say something like this to me was the neighbor girl, Jane White. The first girl I had a crush on. The first girl I kissed and planned to make love to. Until Dad walked in on us, freaked the fuck out, and shipped me off to a disciplinary camp.
I’m scared to be seen as handsome, to have Melissa say this about me, because the last time someone complimented me that way, my life became a living hell. I lost all the ability to truly be myself and see myself as worthwhile.
My dad harassed me like a demon, and I’m afraid of that now. Though over a decade has passed, I’m right back there. I’m standing there naked, with Dad ridiculing me about my bigger body. I’m sweating and virtually hyperventilating.
Then, like Melissa really is a guardian angel of some sort and not just an amazing secretary, a vision of her appears in my head. It’s like she’s been conjured there by my fears. By my trip down memory lane.
I see her standing there, the same way she stood in the door this morning when she came to my defense. I see her eyes glowing with dark, immovable power, strength, and ferocity. Her lips and eyes say, “I’m dressed like I’m fabulous, but don’t underestimate me. I’m still a tiger, and I’ll still maul you to protect the one I love, even in fabulous pink dresses.”
I remember the way she lovingly rescued me from my darkness, my impending destructive mode with a gentle hand in mine, and a gentle word in my ear. In my imagination, she does a version of it now. I imagine that she is there with me, her hand on my shoulder. One hand in mine, guiding me down the rest of my flight of stairs.
I imagine what she would say to me if she were here. If sh
e knew the fear and desire I’m haunted by.
“My dearest Tommy, don’t worry about your father. He’s old, and he is shortsighted. He’s cruel and no different than those legal aids. He thinks his view is the right one because he’s had it reflected back to him so many times, but he’s not. He is not justified in his cruelty, and just like I did with those legal, I will not hesitate to protect you against him, too.”
I imagine she takes my hand, leads me to my bed. She stands there, beginning to undress. She fiddles with the collar on her dress coyly.
“You have every right to accept the way you look.”
She slowly unbuttons her dress. One by one, she goes down the line of buttons, letting me savor each motion, each twist of her fingers. Each inch of skin shown to me. It’s soft and smooth. Unbelievably kissable. If she were here right now, I might just do that. Take her place unbuttoning her dress and kiss her all the way down, with each button.
“You have every right to be attracted to me, Tommy.”
At this point, her dress is all the way undone. At least, that’s what I imagine. Now I’m able to see her sexy, slim stomach and the curve of her breasts in her black lace bra. The definition that creates the perfect hourglass of her form.
Fantasies are fine,” I imagine her saying to me, her English accent even sexier, heavier than normal. “They’re harmless. And after the harm done to you today, you deserve nothing less, my dear Tommy.”
Logically, I tell myself I shouldn’t fantasize about her this way. Any more than I already have, since she’s already taken.
She’s a woman I can’t have. I can’t taste her without destroying her current relationship and possibly both of our careers. But I can’t help it.
I’m more than a little hard now, and I’ve already unzipped my pants. I pull them down and let my dick spring free of my underwear. I put my hand on my shaft and start to stroke before I can stop myself.
I’m seeing her come to my defense all over again and give all of those annoying legal aids a piece of her mind after getting on her last good nerve. I remember how serious and strong her face was. Her face was super stern and super sexy. A queen’s face, but with more beauty and fire. I rub myself harder and faster to this idea. This image I’ve conjured.