Love Defies Us

by Stoneback, J. M.

  Before allowing him to respond, I grab his hard biceps and pull him into the bedroom. I get it. He’s hiding his feelings like a child who wants to hide from the boogie man. But I don’t blame him. If I had a fiancée who cheated on me and left me for my uncle, I wouldn’t have been nice about it. But I want to prove to him that not all of us are not bad.

  Once he comes into my room, he glances around. My room is huge and spacious. Clean and everything in its place. I always keep my makeup on my dresser on the right and my lipstick collection is organized by color. Even my clothes in my drawer are arranged by color. I like to have everything neat and organized.

  Then he picks up a digital picture of me and Jasper when we went ziplining over the river last year and he sets it back down. I take off my robe and his eyes are glued to my body as if they’re trying to melt my skin off. Then I grab my t-shirt with the Little Mermaid on it and put it on. He eyes a stack of old diaries, he randomly grabs one and swipes through the pages and reads out loud.

  “I want to feel his love beneath me, like when you lie on a towel in the Sun on the beach. I want to burn with his passion and his desire. I want him to love me like I’m his precious object.”

  He flips through some more pages and reads out loud again

  “What’s the antidote to heartbreak? Love. Love conquers us all. Love devours us all. Love consumes us all. It’s what human nature tries to strive for-to be loved.”

  His muddy eyes meet my coal ones and a shiver down my spine feels like an ice cube burning me. “Who were you speaking about?”

  I put my head down, embarrassed. “No one.”

  Then I drag my eyes back to his and curiosity dances on his face. “You’ve never been in love?”

  I shake my head and I look out the open blinds. Rain pitter-patters on my window. It’s raining so hard that the only thing I see is blurred gray. “I always wanted to know how it feels to be in love. To have that unconditional love. To have that love like the classic romances, like The Notebook or The Choice.”

  He frowns at my words in disgust. As if my words are the most disgusting thing he ever heard.

  “You get your feelings out on paper,” he says.

  I nod slightly. “Yes, it’s the best therapy. You should try it sometime.”

  He removes his shirt and shorts, tossing them on the floor.

  “Can I use your shower?”

  “Sure, Jasper keeps new packets of underwear for his boyfriend in his room, let me go get one.”

  “Boyfriend?”

  “He has a girlfriend and boyfriend. He loves his polygamous relationship.”

  He glances at me as if I told him that Jasper was an alien. Shocked and curious. That’s a common reaction I get when they learn that my best friend has an open relationship.

  “Would you be interested in a threesome?” he asks.

  At least he isn’t acting like a cliché, asking me a whole bunch of weird-ass questions about Jasper’s sex life.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” My mouth turns up into a wicked smile.

  “It would be hot to watch another woman eat your pussy, but I don’t want to share you.”

  I twist my watch around my wrist. “I wasn’t thinking of a woman joining us, I was thinking of another man. Double penetration.”

  “Fuck no. No man is getting what’s mine.”

  “I’m not yours.”

  “You are until the first week of June. And after this is over with, you will remember me as the guy that popped your cherry. The guy that fucked you good. And every time your sweet little cunt is getting fucked by someone else, you will be comparing them to me. You will realize that they won’t measure up to me. It’s me you’ll be thinking about while he fucks you. It’s me you’ll think about when you touch yourself.”

  My cheeks burn and my pussy throbs at his words. I don’t think I will ever forget Felix. He’s my first lover. “Why would you want me to keep thinking about you forever?”

  “I want you mentally, since I can’t have you physically forever.”

  His words steal the breath out of me and melts my heart into a pulp. I avert my eyes to the gray carpet.

  “I’ll be right back.” My tone is uneven and soft. Softer than I ever speak. What is Felix doing to me? We both know that we won’t be together in the end. But I would do this fling with him again. Even if I know how this will end. Even if my heart is on the line.

  I disappear from the bedroom and knock on Jasper’s bedroom door. When he doesn’t answer, I turn the knob and he’s splayed out on the bed with nothing on. His round ass cheeks are facing the air. Thank God, he’s facing the mattress because I don’t want to get a peek show of his dick. I forgot that he sleeps naked. I go to his walk-in closet and grab the boxers from a box that says “extra shit” and close the door behind me. By the time I make it to my room, I hear the shower and I place the packet of underwear on the white marble counter. Then I head to the bedroom, grab all his clothes, and dump them in the washing machine. I go back to the bathroom and watch him shower. I watch him take my Dove soap and squirt it on his hand and scrub his marble chest, then his abs, then he strokes his dick a few times hard. My core tingles and my breasts are heavy—very heavy.

  Once he’s finished washing his delicious body, he turns the knob, cutting the water off. He steps out, water dripping from him, wetting the white tile floor. His dick is still hard and I glance up. My breath is labored. The look on his face tells me that he’s about to feast on me like I’m his favorite meal.

  “Sit on the counter, remove your panties, and spreads your legs.” His tone is husky and hotter than a stove. I do what he says as I slide my panties off and toss them to the hamper next to the door. I sit on the counter and spread my legs as wide as I can. He stalks slowly towards me with a smirk on his face. He gets on his knees, hooks his arms over my thighs, and his warm tongue greets my clits. I moan softly. Then he picks me up as he makes out with my lips, and my body shakes. I grab a fistful of his hair. He removes his lips and I whimper.

  “Is that good?” His lips are glistening with my wetness, and he carries to my bed, throwing me on it.

  “Shut up and finish licking me.” I push his head down and he barely moves and he grabs my hands, pinning them above my head.

  “What have I told you about that bossy attitude?” he tsks.

  Felix pounces on me, and before I know it, he thrusts inside me without a condom.

  With. Out. A. Condom.

  I inhale sharply.

  It feels raw and edgy. And so, so, so, bare. He feels so much better without a condom. Pleasure ripples through me like a desert storm. He yanks my hair hard and kisses my forehead, then my neck, then my breast. Never ever my mouth.

  “Fuck, your pussy is squeezing the life out of my dick,” he whispers against my ear.

  “No, your junk is too big. It doesn’t make any sense for it to feel like you’re poking holes in my gut,” I say between breaths.

  “You’re on birth control?”

  I nod. I grab his ass cheeks and squeeze hard, digging my nails into his flesh.

  “Good, I’ll empty out inside of you,” he says. “Fuck, Sadie. Shit.”

  Then I moan loud and hopefully I don’t wake up Jasper. He thrusts harder, harder, harder.

  “F-Felix, I’m coming.” He doesn’t respond but rests his forehead on mine.

  Several moments later, he throbs, and he shoot his hot cum inside of me. He rolls off me and pulls me into his arms, and I lie my head on his chest, listening to his ragged breath.

  This is too personal.

  This is too nice.

  This is too warm

  And most of all, this is too intimate.

  We’re swimming in dangerous water and slowly I’ll be drowning in Felix.

  And if I don’t stop this fling, then my heart is going to drown until its last breath.

  Felix

  The next morning, I get up and glance towards the window and it stopped raining. I hate the f
ucking rain, it makes me depressed. Then I glance to my right and Sadie is not in bed. Usually she’s not in bed when she spends the night at my place.

  I throw on my clothes I had on last night and take a piss and snatch a toothbrush from the marble counter, brush my teeth. I don’t what came over me to tell Sadie about the miscarriage. Pillow talk is something I tend to stay away from with the women I keep around for fucking. No one knows about the miscarriage. Not my mom. Not my dad. Not my band mates. I had to give Mae thirty thousand for her not to go to the media about it. The thought not having my daughter pings my chest. Mae being on the arm of a rock star made her crazy. She loved the fortune. Not so much the fame. Sadie is not the gossiping type, so I doubt she’ll share it with anyone else. And telling her about it, felt like a relief.

  Today, I have to work with the band to work on a few songs. Well, mainly with Easton, he’s the one that writes all that emo shit. Easton acts as if he’s the band and we’re the back-up singers. I don’t want to put up with his nitpicking and expecting perfection out of the band. And the band bickering about bullshit. I’m going to ditch them and hang out with Sadie.

  When I swagger into the hallway, I hear laughter from the kitchen. The kitchen reeks of wealth. Stainless still fridge with a computer screen on the door that’s says “Good Morning.” The granite counters, and the floors of black marble are so black that it’s going to suck us in. The cabinets are white as milk and silver pots and pans hang from the ceiling.

  Jasper and Sadie sit at the bar attached to the kitchen island and her head is lying on his shoulder. I hate the fact that he’s so close to her and that he knows everything about her. He knows her secrets and deep shit about her. And all I know is traits, like traits you’ll post about on a bullshit dating website.

  He sees Sadie as a little more than friends, I can see it in his eyes, in the way he looks at her. As long as he doesn’t try to touch her then everything is fine between us. I don’t play about someone touching what’s mine, and as long as he’s not trying to play in my toybox then we’re okay. Their backs are facing me so they don’t know I’m standing here, eavesdropping on their convo.

  “You need to get your shit together,” she tells him, lifting her head from his shoulder.

  “I do. I fucking do. Since when did my life become a Jerry Springer show?”

  “When you decided to have open relationships with two people. How do you keep those two sexually satisfied? I’m only fucking one guy and it’s hard for me to do that.”

  I clear my throat. “You do fine. I just need a blow job every now and then and to be fucked four days a week, maybe five depending what kind of week I’m having.”

  They both turn around at my words and she frowns.

  “I got to get going,” Jasper’s voice grows dark and low. He stands up from the bar stool. I put my hand up to stop him.

  “Why the rush? I want to hear about how you keep two people satisfied. I had a couple of threesomes, and it wasn’t hard unless it was two women but th--”

  Sadie shoots me a glare and Jasper laughs. Then it’s an awkward silence.

  “You don’t have anything to worry about with me and Sadie. There is nothing going on between us. She doesn’t want me.” He strokes her shoulders.

  But how the fuck do you feel about her? I want to say. I’m not about to get in the way of their friendship. We’re not going to be together long. She’ll marry well, probably another CEO like her dad. And me, I’ll have different causal relationships with different women. The story of my life.

  “I’m not worried about shit,” I lie straight through my teeth and her face turns the color of a brick.

  “Right,” Jasper says, his facial expression is blank as a sheet of paper. “You want some breakfast? Sadie can’t cook worth a damn, her veggie omelet turned out too damn dry, so I got some real food. Mickey D’s.”

  “Shut up,” she says, shooting him a glare.

  “What did you get?”

  “Sausage, biscuit with pancakes,” he answers.

  “I’ll take it.”

  He grabs the food from the paper bag and slides it over the black granite to me. I eat in silence.

  “My flight leaves in an hour and I need to go. I’ll text you when I land,” he says to Sadie and he gives her a side hug.

  He nods at me then heads to the front door.

  “What are you doing today?” I ask her. I spent too much time with her already, but this girl is addictive.

  She shakes her head. “Nothing, just catching up on a few shows and maybe read.”

  I gobble down the food. “You got any board games?”

  “I have checkers.”

  “Get it out.”

  “Don’t you have rehearsals with the band every Saturday?” She cocks her head to the side.

  “I do, but I don’t want to go.”

  “Why not?” She heads to the hallway closet and stands on her tippy toes to grab a box from the top shelf. Now I want to say forget the board game and just get down to fucking.

  “I want to spend the day with you.”

  Her cheeks turn rosy red and surprise skips across her face.

  Then she beckons me to follow her into the dining room and she sets the board on the black marble dining table. I glance up and a chandelier with drops shaped like nipples dangles from the high ceiling. I park my ass in the beige chair as she perches across from me.

  “Which color do you want?” she asks.

  “Black.”

  She turns the board around.

  “You go first,” she says.

  I place my hand on my chin, staring at the board. I move my piece to the right. Her face is blank, and she studies the board as if she’s studying for an exam. Focused and determined. I like how she’s tapping her index finger on the table as she thinks and the way a few strands of silky hair fall over her face. Man, I’m hard as a rock right now. We don’t speak for the next ten minutes.

  “You never kiss me.” She keeps her eyes trained on the board. “Why?”

  She asks out of the blue. My shoulder stiffens and I rub the back of my neck, then she looks at me with curiosity in her eyes. I was wondering when she’d get around to asking me why I wasn’t kissing her soft lips. Sadie is a detail-oriented person and she’s in tune with everyone around her.

  She moves her checker to the right, then I jump two of hers, collecting them and setting them to the side. She’s inquisitive. Too inquisitive.

  “Other parts of your body deserve my attention.”

  “Be honest with me.” There’s intensity in her eyes. The truth is I don’t kiss her because it’s too intimate, and I don’t want to lead her on thinking that this will be something more than a fuck. It’s nothing more and nothing less.

  “You’ve never been kissed, Thumbelina? You want me to pop your cherry in the kissing department as well?”

  I lean forward, my mouth closer to her, and her breath hitches and her chest rises and falls rapidly. She smells like fresh peaches and summer rain. She smells like something I want to eat. I’m not going to kiss her. Kissing will push our relationship in a direction I don’t want to go. And I don’t want to hurt her in any way.

  “Of course, I have. I kissed a guy that my mom arranged for me to marry. That kiss was lousy though. His breath stank so bad I thought he ate a skunk ass.”

  I cock my eyebrow for her to go on. What the fuck? Did she say arranged marriage? Who the fuck does that? What kind of family was she was born into?

  “I broke things off with him before I went to college. He was sixteen years older than me and his family owned a channel on network tv station.”

  “Why did you break things off with him?”

  “My dad forced me to. He wanted me to live my life.”

  “You would have gone through with it?”

  She nods reluctantly.

  “Why?”

  She moves her checker across the board. Her beautiful eyes zero in on the shiny hardwood floors, then she
looks at me with guilt on her face. Maybe it’s embarrassment. Maybe it’s shame. Who the fuck knows with this chick? Sometimes her expression is harder to piece together.

  She waits a few more moments before responding.

  “It would have made my mom happy. I want her love and I want her to accept me.” She smiles sadly. Her sadness looks like someone who’s been searching for love in the wrong places.

  Fuck me. It makes me mad that she doesn’t get the kind of love a child should receive from a parent.

  I never thought of her as a people pleaser.

  I move my checker and don’t respond because, honestly, I don’t know how.

  “I want to kiss you. Like kiss you, kiss you. Not the peck you always give me on the cheeks and forehead but a full-blown make-out session. Like I see on those cheesy romance movies.”

  “No.” The word is firm. No explanation. No second-guessing. No changing my mind. She’s making this situation more awkward. This is what I feared would happen if I slept with her. She would want something that I’m not capable of giving her. Love.

  “I’ll make out with your pussy, those are the only lips I want to kiss,” I lie.

  Her face freezes in place then she moves her checker.

  “Fuck everyone else in what they want you do, and do what makes you happy.” I change the subject.

  I hop her two checkers and thirty minutes later, I win the game. Her eyes drill hole into the board.

  “You want to play another game?”

  “No.”

  “You have any other games we can play?”

  She shakes her head as she places the board and checkers into the box. Frustration clouds her face. She’s in deep thought, and her tell is when she bites her tongue.

  “What do you want to do?” I ask her.

  “Are you afraid to fall in love? Is that why you don’t want to kiss me?” Her tone is raspy and her face turns the color of ripe cherries.

  Women just can’t let shit go, can they?

  “I don’t do love or romance or any of that shit. Either you deal with it or don’t.” My words are harsh. Harsher than I intended.

  I run my hands through my hair, and she flinches at my words and crinkles her nose like she smells something foul. It doesn’t stink in here. It smells a mixture of her and Jasper. Fresh peaches with manly body wash.