by Marr, Maggie
“You didn’t enjoy this evening?”
I roll to my side. We’ve fucked on the deck, in the kitchen, and twice in the living room. A fire warms the dark living room where we’ve just finished.
“You’re avoiding the conversation.”
Right. For so many good reasons, not least among them that I’m angry, and talking about what she’s done isn’t going to change my anger. Nope, instead of talking I’ve been engaging in this sort of drive-by fucking with Tara ever since her Wonderfuck story published.
“We need to figure this out.”
“What’s to figure out?” I roll onto my back and stare at the vaulted ceiling. “I fell in love with you and you used me for a headline.” I’m pissed, and petulant, and my feelings for Tara have emotionally castrated me. What man wouldn’t be filled with rage?
“I had a story to write—”
“You wrote about my private life without telling me.”
“I didn’t know it was you—”
“Bullshit.” I turn my head toward her.
“Until ....” She looks away from me and toward the fireplace, takes a deep breath, and then looks back. “Do you remember the first night we were together? The night you ditched me at your place and took off?”
“Not my best moment, but yeah, I remember.”
“You came back late that morning. You’d left me all alone at your place hoping that I’d leave before you got back. That was shitty.”
For a split second I feel bad, because she’s right. That was shitty, and my behavior got worse.
“I woke up before you left and there was a buzzing noise. I thought it was your alarm, but it wasn’t.”
I close my eyes. My Wonderfuck phone.
“I opened the drawer of your nightstand and there was a flip phone. Of course I opened it. I’m a journalist, and it’s buzzing. I flip it open and there is this text, which simply says ‘Want to play?’ and me being me, I text back ‘Play what?’ And the response I got back was ‘Wonderfuck’.”
“You’re not helping yourself with this story.”
“I’m not trying to help myself. What good would lying be at this point? I’m trying to explain what happened. To see if you can understand my side and we can move forward after this or decide if we’re over.”
Over? If it wasn’t for my cock we’d be so over, but so far the only person my dick’ll get hard for is Tara.
“Then what?”
“Then you kicked me out of your apartment with the standard, ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ speech. I went home, ate a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, and remembered a conversation.”
“What conversation?”
“With my girlfriend. A couple months before she’d ended a long relationship with a man and she needed to rebound. One of her friends suggested she call this guy who had made her friend feel better. Not just better.”
Tara breathes deep and her breasts move up and down.Fuck. I want her again.
“But he made her remember who she’d been before she let this asshole-guy destroy her. This guy brought back a part of her that she’d forgotten, and this guy had a name, a very strange name. A name that I’d now heard from her and seen on your phone. His name was Wonderfuck.”
I pull my gaze from her breasts and again stare at the ceiling. I close my eyes.
“I start searching. I post on some message boards. I ask when I’m out with girlfriends. I even start to see this word, Wonderfuck in bathroom stalls and that’s when....” She pauses.
I roll to my side. Her face glows in the firelight. Her voice fills with sadness and a heart wrenching realness in her words.
“I started not to care about the story. I didn’t want the story. I didn’t need the story. What I needed was what Wonderfuck could give me. What Wonderfuck could provide. I missed you and I missed that piece of me that I knew. God Jake, I knew what Wonderfuck could give me back. You could awaken that part of me that I needed to go on with my life, to be whole, to be strong,.He could bring back the woman that I was before I lost her and traded her in for whatever Douchey-McDouche-Nugget wanted in a woman.”
Tears drip down her cheeks and she wipes them away with the back of her hand. I fight the need to kiss them away, to sit up and hold her, to tell her it’s okay, because as much as I want to comfort her, what she did, how she did it, wasn’t okay then and isn’t okay now.
I can’t meet Tara’s gaze any longer. I can’t forgive her. Damn, but I understand what she wanted and what she was going through. Fuck, if I can understand, then I can empathize, and if I can empathize then I may forgive her. But I’m not ready to dole out forgiveness, not now, not yet, not in this moment. I’m still too justified in my rage and I want to keep my anger. Hang onto to it like a life preserver in a fucking storm.
“I got some women to talk before I met with you that first time, and because of what they said, I knew that I had to see you. I wanted you as Jake, but you wouldn’t have me that way. You’d already told me that you wouldn’t. So I made a decision. If you wouldn’t be with me as Jake, maybe you’d be with me as Wonderfuck.”
I tilt my head. I glance into her eyes. She lifts a brow. “You heard my voice on the phone message,” she says softly. “You had to know.”
“I knew.”
My words come out raspy and thick with emotion, almost as though saying them makes my complicity more real. I don’t want these facts to be true, but they are. I knew. When I texted Tara I knew who she was. I guessed what she wanted and I took the risk. Intentionally. For reasons that I’m not quite sure of now, I took the risk.
“I wanted you too...I just didn’t know how...I didn’t know if I could be with someone again. I...” I close my eyes and take a deep breath. Admission of introspection... vocalization of introspection is not easy for me. “I’ve used Wonderfuck to stay safe.”
Tara nods and there’s a look is in her eyes like she’s figured all this out. Maybe she has. She’s been with me as both Jake and Wonderfuck. She’s written about me. Maybe she’s analyzed me inside and out and nothing I say or do surprises her. Maybe she knows me better than I know myself. Maybe that’s part of why I’m angry with her.
“When I got to the hotel I knew that you realized who I was and that I was coming to see you. I was terrified you’d throw me out or not be there. All I knew for certain was that I needed you, and if I couldn’t have you as Jake, I’d take you as Wonderfuck.”
Heat burns my eyes. The weight of her words exhausts me. “I don’t know where to go with this...us....from here.”
Sadness winds through my body. What we could’ve had together, what we lost, what Tara did, created this toxic mix of could-have-beens that I can’t see a way past. “Why the story?” I search her face for the understanding and the forgiveness I so desperately want. I’m begging her to help me find a way past what she did to me, to us.
“I...I didn’t have a choice where the story was concerned.”
“We all have choices.”
She glances away and her gaze drops to her hand, palm flat on the carpet. She shakes her head and says nothing more. In the silence after her words, even though I seek it, I still find no path to forgiveness.
“If I could take it back I would.”
I don’t believe her. I want to believe her words, but I don’t because there are too many good things happening in her life for me to believe that she’d trade them for my love.
“Please, Jake, can’t we at least try? I didn’t want to hurt you. I just wanted women to know that they aren’t alone. That they don’t need to stay with the men that hurt them. That there are good men who are generous and kind and want to have sex with them no matter how ugly the men in their lives have made them feel.”
I lie on my back and stare at the ceiling. My heart wants to try again with Tara, but my head tells a different story. The drama of being with her is almost too much for me to bear.
“I don’t know how to trust you.”
“I feel the same way.”
/> My heart jolts. I turn and look at her.
“You’re not the only one with doubts.” She raises an eyebrow. “You spent the last five years sleeping with hundreds of women. Doesn’t help that I walked in on my fiancé banging a woman in his office six weeks before our wedding.”
It’s easy and selfish of me to forget that Tara has her own demons to deal with. Each of us does. I’m asking her to trust a man who uses sex as his primary source of serotonin.
“If I can trust you not to sleep with ten women a week then I think you can at least try and trust me not to betray your confidence.”
“It was never ten.”
“More?” She lifts a corner of her mouth and smiles at me.
I roll toward her and drop my arm over her waist.
“Can we leave Wonderfuck behind?” Her eyes peer at me, a solemnity on her face. “Can I be Tara and you be Jake and we can be together? Just us. Not me looking for a story and not you fulfilling your vocation. Can we do that? Can we try?”
Every part of me longs to say yes to this woman, regardless of the betrayal, the past, my problems, her problems, our shared history. Every part of me wants to move forward with her by my side, and yet, there is flag tinged red, hovering in the distance, waving back and forth, because life is just not this easy. Not for me. And I don’t know if what we’ve built is strong enough to withstand the problems that will inevitably shake each of us and this relationship we both want to have.
“We can try,” I say. Her gaze has me. My body and heart is hers. To deny my desires and feelings is a lie.
I lift myself up and I’m above her now. Tara’s bright blue eyes are joy and sunshine and all the goodness in the world.
“That’s what I want. For us to try, and to be with you,” she says.
I press my lips to her lips, and in this moment I know that while we both believe that we’ve agreed to leave the past behind and try to be together again, life has a way of shaking you to your core.
Chapter 46
I open my eyes and the sky is blue. The gray is gone, the wind has ceased, and the surf is at peace. Outside the window, a vision of a calm and beautiful blue ocean. For the first time in what feels like forever I’m calm too. My rage is gone. Was it the sex or the conversation or the simple knowledge that I want to be with Tara and Tara wants to be with me and we’ve decided to be together?
My cock is hard. First time that I’ve woken with an erection in ...well since the last time I woke beside Tara. My erections have taken on a life of their own. Precious like gold, I look down at my hard cock. This morning wood shouldn’t go to waste. Lucky for me I hear the thumping of footfalls on the stairs.
I’m ready. So fucking ready. I put my arm beneath my head, propped up on the pillow, ready to give Tara the full effect of my cock and my desire. The door opens and I shift forward.
“I brought you coffee.” She holds two very full cups. She glances toward me.
I’m naked. Every fucking inch of me is buck naked and my cock is rock hard.
“I have something better than coffee.”
“Yes you do.”
I roll from the bed in all my naked, alpha-male -I’m-going -to -fuck -you -so -hard glory and take both cups of coffee from Tara. I set them on the dresser. I hope we spend enough time fucking that the coffee grows ice cold.
I turn back to Tara. She wears only a T-shirt and bedhead hair. She’s sexy. Shockingly sexy. As much as I don’t want it to, my heart pings.
I take her chin with a gentleness that escaped me since the article, but is now hitting me full in the chest. I’ve not felt kindness toward her since that fucking email on my phone telling me about her article. I pull her lips to mine and a soft gentle kiss comes from me. A kiss that says more than ‘I want you’. This kiss says I still love you. I wish my kiss said I forgive you, but it doesn’t. I don’t have any forgiveness in my heart.
Her hand slides down over my cock and she grasps me in her hand. Fuck, yes. The pressure of her hand sliding up and down my sex, yes, this is what I want. I duck my head and my lips slip over her taut nipple. Like hot sugar. I roll the flesh in my mouth and suck.
“Jake.” My name embossed with desire. My finger slides between the lips of her sex. She is hot and wet. I press my fingertip to her clit and stroke the bit of flesh. I slide two fingers deep inside her, and the muscles of her sex tighten around me.
Heat rushes through me. I release her nipple and my lips drift across her chest. Her hand grasps me tighter and she pulls away from me and backs toward the bed. She sits and I stand before her, my cock in her hand. My cock that can only get hard for her. My cock that doesn’t desire any other woman but Tara.
She lays back and guides me up over her. I kneel on the bed above her and she pulls my cock into her mouth.
Fuck. I fight every urge I have to slam down into the heat of her mouth. She is beneath me and so vulnerable. Her hands grasp my ass and she presses me forward and I go with the rhythm she directs.
Heat. Liquid heat and pure suction. Pleasure pulses through me. Locked on the place where my cock glides in and out of her lips. A tingle shoots up the back of my legs. Heat courses through my body. I won’t last long. Her tongue circles the tip of my cock. Oh, fuck. My body throbs. Her hand clasps my ass and she slowly pulls me in and out of her mouth while her lips clamp around me. She presses me forward and sucks hard on my cock.
I pull my cock from her mouth and I turn my body. I can’t continue. I want her flesh in my mouth. I need to taste her sweetness. She pulls my cock deep into her mouth and I spread her legs. Her hot sex is in front of me and I part her with my hand and stroke her with my tongue. Tara’s hips roll up and I pull her clit deep into my mouth. Her sucking increases. She likes my measured stroke. I swirl my tongue over her clit. She pulls my cock deeper into her mouth and sucks harder.
I want her. I need to be in her.
Yes, god, yes.
I turn back around and my body is over her. She is hot and wet and her legs fall open for me. Her hips roll up and down and her breath pants from her lips. She grasps my cock and presses me toward her sex. I slide in and her legs clamp around me.
Her body is ready for me. I’m on the edge and need to come. I slowly slide my cock past the ring of her sex.
“Faster, harder, please, oh my god, fuck me,” she says.
Flesh against flesh, my body slams into hers. Tara’s eyes lock on mine and in her gaze I see a thousand questions and a thousands thoughts. We are one as I move in and out of her sex. Her body fits mine and heat barrels through me and through the base of my back.
“Yes, fuck me Jake. Fuck me harder.”
I press in deeper and my body clenches.
“God yes, oh Jake, god yes.”
I grab her and roll onto my back. She’s above me, riding me. I cup both her breasts and pull her forward. This beautiful woman who is nearly maxed out on passion rides me. Ride my cock. Wonderfuck me.
“Fuck, this feels good.” I’m lost again and I grind into her sex. She pushes back and leans forward, her hands planted on my shoulders. I hear a noise. I glance past her and toward the door.
What the fuck?
A woman stands in the doorway. An older version of Tara.
I watch her watching us. Her hand clasps her throat. She doesn’t move. She makes no noise. She simply stands there and watches. I grasp Tara about to move her, when FUCK Tara shifts down on my cock and heat races through me.
I explode into Tara and she lets out a yell, her sex shivering and shaking and tightening around me. My entire body hardens. Tara collapses forward onto my chest. Both our hearts beat fast. I suck in air. Deep breaths. I pull my arm around Tara more tightly. She raises her head and looks into my eyes.
I glance past her. Empty. The doorway is empty.
“Uh, I think there was...I think someone is here.” I press my lips to her forehead. “I think your mom saw us.”
Tara’s eyes widen, then narrow. Her face tightens. “What do you mea
n? Why do you think that?”
“Because I saw a woman in the doorway just as we were climaxing.”
“Shit,” Tara mutters under her breath. Her jaw muscle tightens. She slides from me and is off the bed and toward the bathroom. “I’ll take care of it.” She pulls on a pair of sweatpants and a shirt form the chair on the far side of the bedroom.
“Are you okay?”
She nods, walks out the bedroom door, and I hear her walk down the stairs.
I shower. I dress. I walk down the stairs. Voices in the kitchen. Is her mom still here?
“I wanted to see you, besides your father left his raincoat here. Why didn’t you tell me you were using the condo this weekend, I never would’ve—”
“Wouldn’t what?” Tara asks, her hand on her hips. “Watch us have sex?”
“I didn’t watch you.”
“You watched nearly the entire time.”
I walk into the kitchen and am greeted by silence and irritable looks. My heart pounds and my throat tightens.
“Mom, this is Jake,” Tara says by way of introduction.
Mrs. Jennings eyes me from top to toe and then back up. Her look seems disapproving and cold, which would make sense because she just caught me having sex with her daughter. But even while her face holds judgment, I see in her eyes that look. The look I’ve caught from women for the past five years. I know that look. She’s hungry and wants what I can provide.
“Mrs. Jennings.” I reach for her hand. She shakes mine, holding it just a millisecond too long. Her gaze is just a bit too intense.
“How did you two meet?” she asks. “Wait... are you the one who—”
“Came by late one night to find Tara? Yes, that’s me.”
“Oh yes, I remember that now. Tara’s mentioned you before that even, and then after of course.”
There go Mrs. Jennings’s eyes again. Looking at me as though I’m a side of grade-A prime rib hanging from a rope in the center of the jungle cat exhibit at the zoo, and she’s head lioness.
“I see you found her.”
I glance at Tara who’s moved on from making small talk with her mother to making fresh coffee. Her face flushes a bright shade of red.