Tempted: The Numb MC

by Olivia Stephens

  “It was real for you,” Keith said.

  Kristina smiled. “It’s sweet of you to say so… but we both know that when it comes to growing up… you had me beat.”

  “I wasn’t aware this was a competition?”

  “It’s not,” Kristina said with a sigh. “It’s just that sometimes… I can’t help comparing and then…”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know… I just feel kind of… guilty…”

  “Guilty?” Keith repeated. “For what? Having a better life than mine?”

  “Well… I suppose,” Kristina conceded.

  “You have nothing to feel guilty about,” Keith said. “If I could have chosen a life like yours, I would have.”

  “Really?” Kristina asked with her eyebrows raised.

  “Growing up… sure I would have,” Keith nodded. “Any alternate life where I could have avoided seeing my mother hurt and crying half the time… I would have chosen.”

  “Yeah,” Kristina nodded. “Of course… stupid question really.”

  “You’ve never really told me what your childhood was like,” Keith said.

  “I thought I did,” Kristina said.

  “I know that your mother is a doctor and your father is a lawyer,” Keith said. “But that’s about it.”

  “Oh,” Kristina said, as she sat up with the sheets wrapped around her chest so that Keith could only see the outline of her breasts. “Well… to be honest my childhood was a good one. I mean, I can’t complain.”

  “You don’t sound convincing,” Keith said, raising his eyebrows at her.

  Kristina sighed. “I just…”

  “Feel like anything you tell me will sound petty compared to my sordid past?” Keith guessed.

  Kristina smiled. “I guess so.”

  “Tell me,” Keith insisted.

  Kristina looked at him for a second, as though she were still considering if she should share her life with him or not. “I was kind of a lonely child,” she said. “My parents were ambitious, and they were the kind of people who didn’t stop for anything… not even their own child.”

  “They weren’t around much?”

  “They weren’t around at all,” Kristina said. “I’ve lost count of how many plays and performance the two of them have missed. Sometimes I wondered why they had me at all. It never seemed like they really wanted a child in the first place.”

  “You think you were an accident?” Keith asked.

  “That would have been the simpler explanation,” Kristina said. “But my mother told me that she and my dad tried for two years before they conceived me, so I couldn’t possibly have been an accident. I think it’s more likely that they just felt as though they had to.”

  “Had to?” Keith asked, scrunching up his brows.

  “Sometimes I feel as though people get so caught up in what they think they’re supposed to do that they forget what they actually want. There’s this convention that people have been taught is the right way to go about things. Go to school, go to college, get a job, get married, and have kids. I think my parents were just completing the convention.”

  Keith listened to her talk, and he wondered if that were true. “I find that hard to believe.”

  “Of course you would,” Kristina said with passion. “You live your life the way you want to. You have the freedom to choose and an attitude that doesn’t take into account what other people think. You know it’s not like that for many other people.”

  “Are you including yourself in that category?”

  “I am actually,” Kristina nodded. “I’m following the convention perfectly. I went to school, I got good grades, now I’m in college, and soon I’ll have graduated and I’ll be working somewhere in the city.”

  “And then you’ll meet some man and marry him,” Keith said, thinking about the life he had imagined for Kristina not long ago. Apparently she had seen the same things in her future.

  “Yes,” Kristina nodded. “I probably will… and then I’ll have children and I’ll have done exactly what my parents did in the same order with no surprises in between.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Keith said skeptically.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well… you are sleeping with a man I’m sure your parents would never approve of,” Keith said. “I’m sure that counts as a surprise.”

  Kristina laughed and Keith felt the light shine out of her eyes. That was a trait she shared with Natalie. Kristina reached out and touched his face again. “I know you’re thinking of her when you look at me like that,” she said unexpectedly, and Keith felt himself jerk back slightly by the mention of her.

  “What?”

  “It’s ok that you think about her, you know,” Kristina said softly. “Why should you have to forget about someone you loved just because you happen to meet new people?"

  Keith was staggered by her understanding, but he also didn’t want to talk about Natalie. It was too close to home, and in many ways, the wound was still fresh for him. “I’m not thinking of anyone,” he denied before he could stop himself. He felt as though it was the best way to end the conversation. He saw Kristina’s eyes dull, as though his refusal to talk to her had hurt her in some way. Keith disentangled himself from the sheets, and he got out of bed to get dressed.

  “You have class in a little while?”

  “In an hour,” Kristina nodded.

  “Shouldn’t you be getting ready?”

  “I was just about to,” Kristina said.

  They dressed in silence and Keith dropped Kristina off at her class. He watched her walk into the building with her bag strapped across her back and her hair flying loose around her face. She was a stranger to him. Her world was strange to him, and yet, it staggered Keith how well she seemed to understand him. He turned from his thoughts and revved his engine. Those thoughts were dangerous, and Keith knew he needed to stay away from them. Especially because at the end of all of this, he knew he had to walk away and leave Kristina behind.

  Chapter Twenty One

  Kristina

  “Kristina?”

  “Sorry,” Kristina replied, as she watched Marie slip into the seat next to her. Literature was the only subject the two of them shared and more often than not they walked to class together. “I was somewhere else.”

  “Thinking of Keith Lee, you mean,” Marie said shrewdly.

  “What makes you think I was thinking of him?” Kristina asked defensively.

  “Well, seeing as how he dropped you off here a few minutes ago, I figure that was a good guess,” Marie said, as she raised one eyebrow accusingly.

  “Oh,” Kristina said sheepishly. “You saw that did you?”

  “Yes, I saw that,” Marie said quickly. “But if I’m being completely honest, I didn’t need proof at all. I guessed that you’d been seeing a lot of him lately.”

  Kristina didn’t bother denying it; a part of her didn’t want to have to explain herself anymore. She was a grown woman and she had every right to spend time with whomever she decided she wanted to. “I guess I have,” she said with a shrug.

  “So you are dating him then?” Marie pressed.

  “Not really,” Kristina said, trying to downplay it. “We’re just spending… time together.”

  “Are the two of you having sex?” Marie asked bluntly.

  Kristina thought about lying, but then she thought better of it. “Yes,” she said, “we are.”

  “And you’re sticking to the whole ‘we’re not dating’ routine?” Marie asked skeptically.

  “I’m not his girlfriend and he’s not my boyfriend,” Kristina clarified. “But we do like fucking each other…”

  “So what you’re saying is this is just… a friends with benefits kind of deal?”

  “I guess there’s no other way to say it,” Kristina conceded.

  Marie leaned back in her seat and took that in. “And after graduation…?”

  “I will move on with my life, and he will move
on with his,” Kristina said with finality.

  Marie regarded her carefully for a moment and then she nodded. “Ok.”

  “Ok?” Kristina said in surprise.

  Marie sighed. “I warned you, I advised you,” she started. “That’s all I can do. You’re a big girl and you’re capable of making your own decisions. Obviously nothing I’ve said so far has made any kind of impact, so I’m going to have to deal with the fact that this is something you have to do for some reason.”

  “Thanks, Marie,” Kristina said sincerely. “It is.”

  “I just have one question,” Marie said.

  “Shoot,” Kristina nodded.

  “Why is this something you just have to do?”

  Kristina took a moment to think about it. “I don’t think I’ll ever meet someone like Keith ever again in my life.”

  “That’s it?”

  “It’s more complicated than that,” Kristina said. “It’s just difficult to explain. The rest of my life is going to be filled with straight-laced guys with good boy haircuts and stable jobs that are boring as hell. I just want to know what it feels like to be with someone unpredictable and dangerous and surprising.”

  “That’s very… primitive of you,” Marie said.

  “I guess so,” Kristina said. “But he brings out the animal in me.”

  “Whoa,” Marie said, as she raised her eyebrows. “Are we talking sex now?”

  Kristina laughed. “I guess so.”

  “Good,” Marie said. “Because I would like details.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Hell yeah,” Marie said. “Let me live vicariously through you.”

  “Do you even want to live vicariously through me?” Kristina demanded.

  “Well, not in this particular case,” Marie conceded, “but I would like one torrid night of meaningless sex with someone who looked like Keith.”

  “Really?” Kristina said, surprised by that.

  “Oh, don’t look so surprised,” Marie said, sounding annoyed. “I have the need for a little adventure from time to time, too… I just don’t act on it quite as much as you do. If it weren’t for Keith’s criminal ties, I would have actually encouraged you to explore the relationship instead of warning you against it.”

  Kristina smiled. “Good to know.”

  “Well?” Marie demanded impatiently.

  “Well what?”

  “Since I’ve decided to step back and stop bugging you about how much time you’re spending with a criminal, I’m going to insist that you at the very least tell me how good he is in bed.”

  Kristina laughed, but she realized suddenly that she missed sharing stuff with Marie about her personal life. She had been so tight lipped about it in the last few weeks that it was a relief to speak freely about the more intimate details of her relationship with Keith.

  “Well, first of all… he’s amazing!” Kristina said, sighing in the process. “I mean… he doesn’t even have to try. I’m wet before he even touches me.”

  Marie raised her eyebrows.

  “That is not even an exaggeration,” Kristina said.

  “Is he gentle, rough?” Marie pressed.

  “He can be both,” Kristina answered. “Sometimes it’s both at the same time. But I love it when he handles me…. I know it seems like an oxymoron, but I actually feel this… weird sense of freedom.”

  “Huh?” Marie said as though she didn’t understand.

  Kristina laughed. “It’s hard to explain.”

  “You used to be better at describing your sexual exploits,” Marie pointed out.

  Kristina glanced around and then leaned in towards Marie so that she was the only one who could hear. “Ok, well, the other night we were at his place… and we were just eating dinner you know? We’d had sex that morning and there was no sign it was going to happen again.”

  “And then he jumped you?”

  “I was at the sink washing the dishes and he came up behind me,” Kristina said.

  “And then what?”

  “He put one hand up my shirt and the other hand down my pants,” Kristina said. “I almost broke a dish. I barely knew what was happening, and before I knew it, he had bent me over and he was fucking me over the sink.”

  “Sounds uncomfortable,” Marie said.

  “It would have been if it continued that way,” Kristina said. “But then he spread me out on top of the table—”

  “The table you were just eating on?” Marie interrupted.

  “Yeah,” Kristina nodded unashamedly. “And he pushed into me. Seriously Marie, you should see his cock, it is a thing of beauty.”

  “Apparently,” Marie said with wide-eyed amusement. “Did you come?”

  “Twice,” Kristina confirmed. “Twice that time and once in the morning.”

  “You came three times in one day?”

  “And that’s a slow day with Keith.”

  “Whoa,” Marie said again.

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s that good, huh?” Marie said sounding sufficiently impressed.

  “He is,” Kristina said with a sigh.

  “You sound sad,” Marie pointed out. “For someone who’s getting it on a regular and getting it good by the sound of it… you should be skipping to your classes.”

  Kristina smiled. “I just know it’s not going to last,” she explained. “That’s all.”

  Marie looked at her carefully. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Of course.”

  “And you’ll answer honestly?”

  Kristina wasn’t sure where Marie was going with this, but she braced herself and nodded. “I’ll do my best.”

  “If you had a choice… would you choose to be with Keith,” Marie asked. “Not someone like Keith… I mean Keith, just as he is now with all the baggage and all the… everything.”

  Kristina felt her stomach turn at the question, mostly because she had been avoiding asking herself the very same one. “It’s complicated,” she said, trying deftly to avoid answering it until she had a better idea of her own mind.

  “Try figuring it out,” Marie insisted.

  “Now?”

  “Now,” Marie nodded. “We have time. Professor Stuart is always late.”

  “I… think that Keith and I are very different…” Kristina started shakily.

  “That wasn’t my question,” Marie said, cutting her off.

  Kristina rolled her eyes. “Fine then… I guess if I were being honest I wouldn’t mind… pursuing a relationship with Keith and seeing where it would lead.”

  “Seriously?” Marie asked, but her tone suggested that she wasn’t judging, she was simply surprised.

  “Yes,” Kristina nodded.

  “Do you actually see a future with him?”

  “I mean… if you like someone hard enough… don’t you always tend to believe in the best possible outcome?”

  “Meaning that you can see yourself with Keith… in the long term?”

  “I haven’t gone that far…”

  “Meaning marriage and kids?”

  “Whoa,” Kristina said, holding up her hands. “Slow it down; I’m not going there. I just know that if I had the choice… I would like to see how things would go. That was the question you asked, and I’m answering it… honestly.”

  Marie nodded. “Do you even think someone like Keith would want to get married? Would he want to have kids?”

  “I don’t know, Marie,” Kristina said. “That’s not really what we’re talking about here.”

  “Kristina,” Marie said slowly. “You realize that we’re talking about a future for you and Keith right? What do you think that means?”

  “Anything I want it to mean,” Kristina said. “People think there’s only one way of doing things, but I disagree. Your future can be anything you want… getting married and having kids or closing shop and travelling the world or… I don’t know… living in a caravan and eating off the land your whole life. There isn’t a wrong way of livin
g.”

  “Listen,” Marie said steadily. “I get you need to have this experience. I get that Keith is this hot as fuck biker with a dangerous past and an exciting life… but you have to remember that it’s not your life. Once you’ve cleared this phase you’re in, you’re going to see that more clearly than you do now. And when that happens I just hope you haven’t made a stupid mistake thinking that this feeling is going to last forever.”