Secret Keeper

by Harlan, Christopher

  As he stands there, I start to throb between my legs. I can feel how wet I already am just at the sight of him, and nothing’s even happened yet. His cock is starting to point at me from underneath his black boxer briefs, and my body starts to tingle with the anticipation of what’s going to happen next.

  He walks up to me and leans in—his hardness pressing against me and making me even more wet than I already was. His breath is warm against my ear as he whispers, “I want you to take me in your mouth.”

  I lower myself to my knees and take him in deep, moving my head slowly back and forth along his shaft as he starts to moan. Saliva is dripping from the sides of my mouth, and as I look up I see his eyes rolling to the back of his head. His entire body is tense—every muscle holding its perfect shape as I take more and more of him in my mouth.

  He suddenly reaches down and scoops me up under both of my arms. I let him lift me, and once he pulls me in I feel my body press against the hardness of his body. He whispers in my ear in a voice so deep it makes my body explode. “Lay down on the bed.”

  Normally lying spread eagle and naked on a bed like this would make me feel vulnerable, but tonight all I want is for him to be inside of me. My body is aching in a way I’ve never experienced before—craving him, like an addict needs a hit.

  With my legs still pried open, he lets his tongue do the work it was meant to do. He runs it gently around my lips, bathing them gently before licking my clit. I moan and arch my back instinctually, the pleasure shooting though my entire body as he works me over. I bite my lips and thrust my hips forward.

  And then suddenly it stops. He retracts, and stands up in front of me. My eyes run over his entire body—his ink, his incredible body, and the rock-hard cock that’s like a steel rod attached to his body. He leans down and grabs my ankles, spreading my legs to the east and west, making an unobstructed path for the massive girth waiting to be buried inside of me.

  “Are you ready for me?” he asks, his voice deep and confident.

  I nod.

  And then, without any hesitation he puts the head of his cock just on the outside of my swollen lips. He moves in slow yet powerful circles, teasing the outside of my pussy. My body is aching for him, and I don’t know how much more foreplay I can take.

  I look down as he starts to come closer to me. It looks unreal, its width and girth something to behold. He knows how big he is, and he takes his time, sliding inside of me slowly. I feel him fill me up the further in he goes. I start to feel a pressure I’ve never known before, and catch my breath so audibly that he stops.

  “Am I hurting you?” he asks gently.

  “Never,” I tell him. “I’m still not used to something like. . . that. Keep going.”

  He continues to enter me slowly, starting with the tip of his head. He stops again, as though he’s worried about me, but before he asks me if I’m okay again I take the initiative.

  “I need to feel every inch of you.”

  And that’s exactly what he gives me. Every. Single. Inch. And there are many of them. The next few minutes is passion like I’ve never experienced. He’s not only huge, he’s clearly experienced with what to do with that thing he’s packing. Not only doesn’t it hurt, it’s the most amazing feeling that my body’s ever known.

  He makes me cum unexpectedly. My entire body constricts and pulsates, my back arched and my eyes rolling back in my head.

  My body is starting to fall in love with Dylan Murphy.

  We finish, exhausted. Heavy breaths, followed by heaving chests. A little sweat to go along with it. Our bodies just married one another—they formed a sacred oath that can never be broken. I lay my head against him, and breathe in the musk that never seems to leave his skin.

  I haven’t been this happy in a very long time.

  24

  Dylan

  Last night was incredible. I’ve never been with a woman like her before. And we are together, whatever that may mean.

  I don’t need to define it right now—I need to figure out my next move.

  Chandler is back from his trip, and he asked that I meet him at his office to discuss everything that’s happened since he’s been gone. In particular, he wants to know about my conversation with Teresa. What was said. What I told her. What I think she’s going to do next. He’s going to demand answers just like he did with Tomas and the news story.

  But that’s not the conversation we’re going to have.

  I’ve made my decision.

  I’m going to step away as Chandler’s assistant—I’m going to tell him that I don’t want the job, and walk away from the whole situation.

  But first, Penelope and I are going to have some breakfast.

  I felt like getting out of the city, so I took Penelope on a long drive back to Queens again, to a diner I used to come to with my friends when I was a teen. It has the wackiest name ever—the Purple Dragon Diner—but that’s exactly what gets people to come in the door. I remember the first time like it was yesterday.

  It was our junior year in high school. I’d gotten shit faced drunk after my good friend, Renny, managed to steal some booze from his father’s cabinet after many, many failed attempts at using a fake ID at a liquor store. We drank way too much, way too fast, but we ended up trying to walk the alcohol off when we came to this place. We went inside out of pure drunken fascination—that, and being hungry as all fuck at the time.

  Still the best pancakes in Queens, I swear.

  I’m here again, only this time under very different circumstances.

  Penelope looks at the sign outside and laughs. “The Purple Dragon? Really? Sounds like a bad porno from the seventies. Back when they used to hide those videos in the back of the store.”

  “Is it crazy that I never thought of that before?”

  “See. That’s why you need me.”

  Yeah, Penelope, I’m starting to see that.

  We grab a booth by the window and order some food.

  “So, can I ask you something that might sound a little strange?”

  “You can ask me anything, you know that—strange or not.”

  I see her searching her mind for just the right words, and it peaks my curiosity as to what she’s going to ask me when she finally does.

  “I kind of asked you when we first spoke at the coffee place, but you didn’t really answer me. What do you actually do?”

  “Like, for a living?”

  She giggles. “Yeah. For a living. It just occurred to me that I don’t really know what your job is.”

  “I think I told you, I was Graham Morgan’s. . .”

  “Personal assistant, and the building manager, I know. Although I’m not really sure what that even means. But we’ll get to that part.”

  “Oh, will we now?” I’m smiling, pretending to be offended by what she just said, when in reality I’m anything but offended. I’m not the most open of books, but I like that she really wants to get to know me like that.

  “We sure will, Dylan. Come on, don’t you know me by now? I’m nosey as hell, I need to know everything about a guy I’m. . .”

  “Screwing?” I didn’t mean that to come out so harsh, but that is what we’re doing. I didn’t realize that I kind of shouted the word ‘screwing’ a little louder than it needed to be said. “Sorry. I just couldn’t think of the right word.”

  “That would be the right word, I just didn’t expect you to blurt it out like that.”

  “I guess I got so excited about us screwing that I had to shout the word at the top of my lungs. That, and the fact that there’s really no other word for what we’re doing here. Not yet, anyhow.”

  I let that one linger in the open air. It’s not a game I’m playing, just a little test. I do that with people I want to get to know better, male or female. The tests can take on a few different forms, but there are little ways to test how people feel or think about a situation without explicitly asking them. When I go out on a date with a woman for the first time, I always star
t with the same line— ‘order whatever you want, this is on me.’ How she responds to that line tells me everything that I need to know about her and how she feels about me.

  I just gave Penelope another one of those little tests.

  “Not yet,” she repeats. “Maybe one day soon.”

  One day soon, huh? Interesting.

  “But stop evading, and tell me what you do. When we met that first time you weren’t just working for Graham. You work in the building. I assume that’s why you asked to take my bags.”

  I smile and look her right in the eyes. “You were wearing jeans that fit you tightly—darker blue than most people wear, and they had a little tiny cuff at the bottom that fell just at the top of your ankles. You were wearing open toed shoes, and a light spring jacket. I remember it like it was yesterday.”

  She looks shocked, but if I close my eyes I can see her standing there that afternoon. She looked so sexy that I had to approach her. Technically, I’m not supposed to have done that—at least not with those intentions, so I pretended that it was all about helping her with her bags, but the truth is that I had to see her up close, had to look into those eyes, had to see that body. . .

  “I can’t believe you remember that. I didn’t even remember what I was wearing until you just said it. I love that jacket.”

  I laugh. “It looked good on you. But everything looks good on you.”

  “I bet you say that to all the ladies who walk through the lobby.”

  I like this girl a lot. I like her so much that I forget who she is and how we got here. This is something so forbidden that I don’t even know how to wrap my head around it. I swore to never get personally involved like that—that was one of Graham’s rules that he gave me. I can hear his voice whispering in my ear. “Never betray secrets,” he told me. “And never, under any circumstance, get personally involved with the people in the building. Keep their secrets,” he’d say. “But also learn to keep your distance.”

  That all got thrown even further out of the window last night. A few times.

  “But I didn’t answer you yet, did I?”

  “I’m glad you noticed, too. Tell me—what do you actually do?”

  Now it’s my turn to find the right words. Just the right ones, in fact, because a lot of what I do I can’t speak about, because it deals with other people’s personal information, so I have to watch what I say, and in no shape or form can I discuss the whole Chandler thing with her.

  “I said it this way once and it stuck—I’m a secret keeper of sorts.”

  “Ohh, a secret keeper. That sounds super mysterious, you know that? You already got me, Dylan, you don’t need to gas up your job just to impress me.”

  “I’m not, I promise. I know that sounds like the title of a spy movie or something, but if you asked me to describe what I do in as few words as possible, that’s what I’d tell you. I keep people’s secrets for a living. And I do it well.”

  “Interesting,” she says. I can tell she’s being genuine, too, because she’s making intense eye contact and smiling. “Like what kind of secrets?”

  “Are you serious?” I joke. “I just went on about how good I am at my job and now you want me to betray confidences?”

  “Kind of, yeah. I told you, I’m super nosey.”

  “Be that as it may, some of these things will go to my grave with me. But what I can tell you is that Graham made me the building manager, which means that when people need something, I get it for them. And when they need something done, I do it for them or find the person who can. In exchange, they pay me to keep the transaction between the two of us and never divulge it to anyone else. I’ve learned that the rich really value their privacy.”

  “This sounds like Tony Soprano stuff. You know, like that scene where he’s driving his daughter, Meadow, on a college trip and tells her that he’s in waste management. Are you like an arch criminal pretending to be a building manager?”

  That one literally makes me laugh out loud. “I promise you, I’m not Tony Soprano, or any of your other fake crime bosses. I don’t do anything illegal. Actually, a few times it’s come close to riding the line, but I’ve never crossed over it.”

  “Oh come on. Tell me one thing. No names, you can protect the people, but give me something. This is way too interesting for me to just accept and change the subject.”

  I consider it for a second. I shouldn’t. I really, really shouldn’t, but then again, there are a lot of things I shouldn’t have done, including sleeping with Penelope. “Alright, one thing, but absolutely no names, okay?”

  “I wouldn’t even ask.”

  “When I first got the job, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, like with starting any job, but I really didn’t know what I was doing when it came to being around people whose cars cost more than my grandparents paid for rent their entire lives.”

  “Tell me about it. I’m still not used to it.”

  “It comes with time. But anyways, I was a month in—completely green in every possible way, but I’m a fast learner, so I wasn’t worried. One day Graham told me to go to the seventh floor and speak with Mr. McDonnell, who you’ve probably never heard of in your life.”

  “Can’t say that I have, no.”

  “Well, Mr. McDonnell prefers that. He made his money as the founder and CEO of a private military contract firm, became one of the richest men in the world over the last twenty years.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a private company made up of former special ops guys—green berets, navy seals, that sort of thing. Mr. McDonnell, who served three tours in Vietnam by the way, created the company and won huge government contracts during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He made hundreds of millions—literally.”

  “Isn’t it funny how some of the richest, most power men in the world are people you wouldn’t recognize if you bumped into them at Starbucks?”

  “Trust me, Mr. McDonnell isn’t a Starbucks guy. He’s high on life. That, and killing insurgents for profit.”

  She nearly snorts. “You did not just say that.”

  “I didn’t tell you the punchline. This is still the craziest shit I’ve ever had happen to me on a job, and I swear it’s all true.”

  “That’s what they say, right? That truth is stranger than fiction.”

  “In this case, the truth was absolutely stranger than anything I could have made up.”

  “Just tell me.”

  “Alright. Here it goes. I’m barely a month on the job—literally—and I get a call from Graham telling me that Mr. McDonnell needs something, so naturally I rush up to see him, thinking it’s going to be something normal like help with his groceries, or whatever.”

  “I’m guessing it wasn’t about groceries.”

  “Not even close. In hindsight, I would have loved to rush upstairs and have his crazy old ass present me with a list to take to Whole Foods. Instead, I got another kind of request.”

  “What do you mean? What kind of request?”

  I start to smile thinking back on this—it really was a baptism by fire. “Let’s take a step back. I should probably have told you that Mr. McDonnell was a little south of sane at the time this was happening. His company had gotten embroiled in some lawsuits that didn’t go his way—rouge guys doing bad shit overseas—so he went into a state of retirement inside his very expensive apartment. He kind of got. . . weird after that.”

  “Weird?”

  “Yeah. Like rarely coming out weird—like his neighbors complaining of weird noises kind of weird. I hadn’t worked there long, but even over the course of just a month I never saw the man in the building. The first time I laid eyes on him was that day I went to his place. He told me that he needed me to get something for him—a piece of paper that he’d put in a safe deposit box in a pretty exclusive uptown bank.”

  “Which one?” she asks.

  “No names, remember?”

  “Except for Mr. McDonnell, huh?”

  Shit. She
has me there. “Well. . . I didn’t tell you his first name, so he doesn’t count.”

  “Right. Of course.”

  I laugh. “So. . . anyhow, he gives me the address and calls ahead to the bank to authorize my accessing his safe deposit box. Now, normally banks won’t even entertain such a thing, but he clearly had some influence and respect, and he got them to agree to let me into their vault to take a look at his box. So, I did.”

  I pause to let the anticipation build a little. “And? What was it?”

  “A list. A list of all the guys he’d killed in the war in ‘71, and exactly how he did it—in lurid detail.”

  “No way! That’s crazy.”

  “Nope. The crazy actually came later. I took the list—which was not in an envelope, by the way—back to his place, walking and reading some shit I never should have read.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Wait, it gets worse. I got back to his place with this list. I handed it to him, looking for some recognition on his face that I might have read it, but he acted totally normal—at least normal for him. He offered me a beer, so I indulged him even though I was technically working. And that’s where things really went south.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “After a beer—that’s one beer—I asked if I could use his bathroom. I was in there maybe two minutes, and when I came out I was looking down the barrel of a gun.”

  “Of a what?”

  “No, that’s not a metaphor. I was looking down the very real barrel of a very real gun.”

  “What the hell? He pulled a gun on you?”

  “He sure did.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “Let’s just say I almost went to the bathroom a second time. But luckily, I was able to talk him down. I’m good at that.”

  “Talk him down from what? Why did he pull a weapon on you?”

  “Apparently Mr. McDonnell had a raging, undiagnosed case of PTSD and he was having a bad flashback. Once I convinced him I wasn’t a spy for the North Vietnamese Army he lowered his gun and was pretty embarrassed that had happened.”