by Christa Wick
"We should probably get back to packing."
13
Rhea
Leaving Wylie's bed that Sunday afternoon, I put a distance between us I didn't want. But after chasing me for a month and finally getting me to surrender, he wasn't about to retreat.
He just needed a new plan of attack, something all his years in the military made him an expert at formulating. His primary resources were the kids and the shelter. Harbor House was the only place he could be sure of encountering me and the kids were my known vulnerability.
Seasonal considerations played into his campaign. The teens were two months into summer break and four out of every five weren't content to spend the entire day entertaining themselves with all the new books he had donated to the common room. That meant arguments over the remote control and more disturbing activity, like some of the kids getting picked up for panhandling.
So the sneaky bastard brought in his father's mineral samples and called on the resident expert—me—to teach the kids about geology. Initially, that only attracted two kids, Rachelle and her ghost, Eric. Rachelle already knew as much as I did after discovering the small collection I had in my room and reading the books I kept on geology. Eric just liked to be around the willowy teen beauty.
Undeterred by the clear lack of interest, Wylie got Director Coombs to sign-off on a day long field trip to Greene County in the northeastern corner of the state. Coombs only signed off because it was all at Wylie's expense, including the four passenger vans he wound up having to rent once the rest of the kids caught on to the fact that if they listened to all the boring "rock" talk, they could get out of the city for a full day.
The typical teenage disinterest that had prevailed when Wylie initially brought the mineral samples to the shelter evaporated after the first field discovery in Greene County. Eric found a piece of rose quartz, which he promptly gifted to Rachelle. Almost simultaneously, Alex found a quarter fragment of a thin shelled quartz geode, the crystals so clear he swore he'd discovered a diamond.
Seeing the smiles and excitement on more than twenty faces that had been filled with sophisticated boredom only seconds before, and then turning to find Wylie's gaze locked on me, I was a goner all over again.
I spent the following Sunday, and a whole lot of Sundays after that, in Wylie's bed.
We were a couple, sort of. I had a job he couldn't go near and another job he was often at but not as my boyfriend, just the most popular volunteer to ever walk the halls of Harbor House. But we didn't fight about it.
Not exactly...
I mean, hardly ever...
"I'm just saying you shouldn't be taking a bus back and forth to that part of town and you damn sure shouldn't be cutting through that alley before or after work."
Wylie had me on my back, naked, his big body every bit as nude and draped over mine. Our clothes were in a tangle at the foot of his bed, our socks and shoes littered the hallway, the mess a by-product of having missed the prior Sunday together and the resulting eagerness to be sweaty and in one another's arms before we could get the front door locked.
"And we lose two hours every Sunday because you won't let me pick you up from the shelter or take you back."
I tried to scoot out from under him, but he pulled one of his dirty tricks by kissing on my neck. And then his hands started doing all the things he knew would drive me crazy, making my pussy achy and pounding as he simultaneously pushed his agenda.
"You could buy a car."
I froze and glared at him. The man had two very thick fingers twisting slowly inside me and he was going to throw that out there? I tightened around him. He pulled out but didn't stop his attack.
Sliding his slick fingers between my swollen labia, he started a slow up and down assault on my clit, his mouth running the entire time with words I'd already heard before.
"I know, cars cost too much, payments, insurance, gas...where oh where does a peer counselor at a homeless shelter get the money for all that?”
By this point, he was just being mean. He was indirectly talking about my money from dancing, which had gone through the roof for some crazy reason after I started messing around with Wylie every Sunday I could. Paulie said it was because I finally smiled while I worked, making me seem more approachable even if I wasn't.
Whatever the reason, that money wasn't really mine. Every Monday I got a cashier's check and a first class stamp and then all that I had earned, minus taxes, flowed out of my hands forever.
Wylie didn't know that and I wasn't about to tell him. It wouldn't stop the arguments about the car—which I knew were really arguments about me working at Tuttle's. It would just be one more thing to argue about.
Drawing on all my willpower, I stopped gyrating beneath his talented fingers and pushed at his chest. If he wanted to be a sarcastic jerk, fun time in the bedroom was officially over.
His fingers stopped but he didn't move. Leveraging my weight, I rolled away and sat at the end of the bed, my foot sorting through the clothes in search of my undergarments.
"Then let me buy you a car," he offered, sitting next to me and amicably bumping my shoulder as if he hadn't just thrown my being a topless dancer in my face. "I'll cover the insurance, too. Your bus fare right now is more than gas and maintenance. So you won't be out a single penny."
He had danced around making this offer before but had stopped short as I stared at him in stony silence.
"Not happening."
I reached down for my panties. Wylie slid his arm around my stomach and tipped me onto my back before I could secure them.
"Right, I can't drive you to Tuttle's or pick you up, can't buy you a car, and can't get so much as a smile from you at the shelter."
Great, we were now onto argument number two. Same refrain, different Sunday.
"More than two months in my bed, baby, and you're still shooting daggers at me when I see you at Harbor House. Hell, even when no one is around."
"I can't act as well as you do, and I can't switch it on or off at a moment's notice."
I tried to get up again. He relented—for about five seconds. Then he had me stomach first on the mattress. His actions didn't frighten me. I knew he was frustrated, but the energy coming off him wasn't angry. As far as I had ever experienced, Wylie never got angry. And I was the only one with whom he seemed capable of even being frustrated.
"Let me up," I monotoned.
"Baby, if I let you go every time you ask, we wouldn't have made it past that first Sunday."
He was right. I tried to leave even when I didn't want to. I didn't really want to go right then. I wanted to be beneath him, his mouth busy teasing me instead of our having this dumb argument that would never be resolved to his satisfaction.
"We're breaking the rules," I reminded him, still trapped on my stomach. "I love my job at the shelter."
His fingers strummed along my bottom, his rugged chin denting my shoulder as he tried to find a new way to argue an old point.
"You love the kids and Mae," he corrected at last. "The job is how you interact with them. And your stabby eyes aren't fooling anyone, baby girl."
Turning my head, I glared at him, his face so close to mine I went cross-eyed and looked away.
Grinning, he gave my bottom a light tap then returned to strumming.
"It's true. Anyone who doesn't like me is crazy or faking it. Everybody at Harbor House knows you're not crazy. And they know you would do everything in your power to get someone you couldn't trust away from the kids. So you're clearly faking it, baby girl."
"Mae's the only one who has it figured out," I said. "And she's known me since I was sixteen."
Done throwing logic at me, Wylie sat up and put his feet on the ground. Cautiously, I got onto my knees and crawled toward the end of the bed, wary of him maneuvering me into some new position and everything starting all over again.
He looked like he had his eyes closed, but I knew better. He'd tricked me that way more than once. They were either
opened just enough for him to see, including the side glance he had to be giving me right then, or the man was a damn Jedi Knight who saw with his mind.
"Look," I said, giving up any idea of getting dressed until he was on his feet and out of the room or the argument was clearly over. "I need time to figure out how to make this work without the kids having to give up either one of us."
"Problem is, Rhea, you're trying to figure it all out alone."
14
Rhea
Great, we were back to the money from Tuttle's, circling the secret destination of all that cash. He acted like I was the only one with secrets, like he didn't wake up evasive after the occasional Sunday afternoon naps we took together, the ones he tried to stay awake through while I slept in his arms.
Maybe that was what we should be arguing about.
I opened my mouth then snapped it shut. Part of me didn't want to know what troubled his dreams. It was like I had a fifty gallon barrel already full and swollen with heartache—mine and all the shelter kids over all the years—and there was room for only a few more drops of rain before the barrel was too full and burst.
Only the barrel was my heart and the little bit of Wylie's afternoon dreams I had listened to told me his hurts were far more than a few drops. They were all the hail and rain and winds that front an F5 tornado.
Ford...hang in buddy. Freddie's still with us, he's gonna get you patched up.
Chopper's here. Stay with me, Ford, Peggy's gonna kick your ass if you miss that flight home.
Stay with me, buddy.
Fredericks, fucking do something! What do you need to save him?
I had Googled the two names, along with Wylie's. There had been no casualty listings. But they were Special Forces, a twelve-man team with two survivors. The rest were the unnamed dead to everyone but their family and friends.
Ready to puke, I scrambled off the bed. If he tried to ninja me, I would ninja him right back. I wasn't weak. Hell, I was a professional contortionist. I had just never tested whether he would meet force with more force because I didn't want to learn that he would, that he was exactly like the men I had grown up around, the men most of the kids at the shelter had grown up around and a few of them would become in turn.
"You're not going, Rhea."
Fuck if I wasn't. Staring him down, I scooped up my panties and put them on.
He let me, but his narrowing gaze warned me not to pick up the bra.
This was the end. One of us was going to push too hard—if I hadn't pushed too hard already.
I reached for my bra. He snagged my wrist, the grip solid but loose enough that I had room to twist and try to free my arm.
Wylie was quicker and far stronger than he had let on in our previous wrestling matches—and clearly every bit as agile as I thought I was. He spun me into his arms then flattened me across his lap, belly down, my face turned away from him. With a strong forearm across my shoulder blades and his free hand securing my hip, he had me locked in place.
"What do you think you're going to do?" I growled.
"Spank you."
His answer was so ludicrous, I thought I had misheard him.
"What did you say?"
"This," he answered, his hand coming down hard on my ass.
Smack!
"This is not acceptable!" I protested in chunks, shock and a touch of outrage at my stinging backside making my tongue too thick for fluid speech.
"Here, I'll make it acceptable." He slid his fingers under the leg band of the panties I had just put on and gently circled the exterior of my pussy. "You're more than willing for me to shut up and fuck you, baby, for me to pretend like I understand why you're cold to me at the shelter and ignore where you go at night when I don't even understand the point of why you have to go."
Out his hand came to deliver another hard smack.
Then right back under the panties to find me still wet from his teasing seconds before.
"Thomas, please, let's talk about this out of bed."
What he was doing turned me on. I think he already knew that, had seen something I didn't understand about myself—or something about me when I was with him—during all the lighter tussles we'd been through when we disagreed in bed.
But I had no desire to discover just how turned on I could get by this harsh handling or how rough he was willing to play.
"There's no out of bed, Rhea." Finding me increasingly slick between my legs, he pushed three fingers thick into me. "It's either us, here, fucking, or us at the shelter. You leave no time for talking. You kiss me good-bye and then you're off to Harbor House or...elsewhere."
Finding a new spot on my ample bottom, he smacked me again with no reduction in force. Then he put his thumb in my pussy, juicing it up before pressing the pad against my anus. I jerked, then calmed momentarily as he shoved his fingers in my other aching hole.
"By the time we're done, you will have come for me."
Cocky bastard!
"And you'll have agreed to ease up at the shelter."
Shit, he had to pick that one. He would have had an easier time getting me to agree he could be in the audience at Tuttle's.
I shook my head in denial.
His arm slid from my shoulder blades. His hand knotted in my hair. Never letting up on the pressure between my legs, his fingers and thumb continued to tease me toward submission.
"I don't want to do this," I protested.
His fingers slid out to find my clit, trapping it in a firm V while his thumb hooked inside my pussy and then there was only pressure, no movement.
"You want to get out of my bed and stop coming back?"
I didn't answer. That wasn't what I wanted at all. I wanted him to relent. I wanted to nap in his arms, this time with him sleeping, too, and no bad dreams. I wanted to wake up and make love before I had to catch my bus back to Harbor House.
"Every time I step foot in the shelter," he continued, "I wonder what the hell I did wrong to have you so mad at me because of all the annoyed, pissy looks you're shooting my way."
My eyes started to mist over. I could hear it in his voice. He had moved beyond frustration to pure hurt.
"I don't want to quit Harbor House," I choked out.
"I'm not asking you to, baby."
I shook my head, his iron grip in my hair pulling at my scalp. "I don't want you to quit volunteering—the kids love you."
"That's not happening either," he answered, both of his hands moving to roll me onto my back. "Just let me work, baby."
I wasn't sure what that meant until he slid off the bed, stripping away my panties as he went. We were back to gentle persuasion but with me close to being hysterical. Eyes closed, he gnawed and licked slowly at my pussy, his fingers and thumbs moving in and out of me, pulling at my labia, working my clit, stretching me like he did before he could fit his cock inside me.
My eyes dried up as I squirmed against the mattress, our argument, and his agenda, momentarily forgotten.
His hands still working my pussy, Wylie climbed back onto the bed, his body on its side next to me. He sucked and kissed at my throat, a thousand-thousand thrills shooting through me as he showered attention on the sensitive flesh.
I tried to capture his head, to pull him up for a kiss and let him know how sorry I was, that I could truly be sorry even if I couldn't relent and change. He evaded me, his gaze steady on the flesh he worked between my legs. And then he did it again—only three times in a row and twice as hard across my mound.
My pussy, enflamed, only seconds away from climax, howled in pain from the sudden blows.
Then his mouth was back down there, kissing away the hurt, licking and sucking, shushing the protests that tried to make it past my lips.
Another hard smack. I tried to curl up into a ball but he wouldn't let me.
His mouth returned, ten times as tender and loving and arousing as before. Fingers gently probed inside my pussy, stroking at that knot tucked just inside the entrance.
; So close...so close, please don't spank it again...let me go over...please, let me go over...
I didn't say the words, at least I don't think I did. They would have been in vain because he smacked the swollen flesh again, an imprint of his hand flushing for one second and disappearing the next. Another smack, his green-gold gaze as dark as obsidian as he looked at me from where he still waited between my legs.
"Please, Thomas," I begged.
"It stings," he either said or asked like I was some kind of moron.
"Yes."
He kissed the hot, hurting flesh, laved his tongue over the spot on my mound he had just smacked.
"But it feels good, too."
"Yes," I agreed again as he surged up my body, his cock spearing into me and his eyes suddenly hazel again as he stared into mine.
He took hard strokes into me, his gaze never leaving my face.
One stroke, two, three...all that was needed for me to reach my own crescendo...
And then he held still and all but broke my heart.
"Baby, what you do at the shelter just stings."
15
Rhea
We fell asleep that Sunday holding one another, our grips fierce. There were no bad dreams. I skipped the bus, made love with him and then let him drive me back to Harbor House. I stopped the stabby eyes when he volunteered and let him pick me up and return me on the Sundays I spent at his place.
A few Fridays later, I even touched his arm as I left to take one of the kids to a routine doctor's appointment.
When I returned, Wylie was gone and Coombs wanted to see me in his office. I grabbed a notepad and the binder I kept all our open items in before pouring two cups of coffee and heading in for the unscheduled meeting.
I put one of the coffees in front of him and sat down. He stared at the cup a few seconds then pushed it aside.
"I'm afraid I may have to fire you, Rhea."
For all the time it took Coombs to squeeze out the words, they still hit me like a fast swinging sledgehammer to the chest. My lips parted, my brain ready to explain that whatever he thought he had seen between me and Wylie the last few weeks, it wasn't what he thought.