The rest of their lunch date, however, continued on in this strained, uncomfortable manner, and after a time it became impossible to ignore any longer. Julie scarcely said a word to Amy unprompted. Amy did her best to keep the conversation going in as innocent a fashion as possible, but no matter what she said, Julie seemed to give a word in response, or else nothing more than a noncommittal smile.
Amy still didn't want to breach propriety or encroach into territory that she knew wasn't her business, yet it seemed as though Julie had something on her mind that she couldn't force herself to speak up about.
Finally, Amy had to speak up. “Look... Julie, are you alright? I don't want to pry or anything, but you've seemed... I don't know... Like something was up. I don't want to be nosy, but if you need someone to talk to...”
“It's Steve,” Julie blurted out, all of the sudden, and she seemed pained at having finally brought it up. “Your Steve...”
This was about the last thing Amy had been expecting, and she paused for a moment, blinking as she took this in. “Oh?” she said, waiting patiently, but with a knot in her chest.
Julie hesitated, her jaw quivering. “Look, I... I didn't even know whether I should tell you... I don't know anything, other than what I saw... I don't want to cause problems, or make accusations, without... Oh God...”
She put her elbows on the counter now, her head in her hands.
Now, Amy was really beginning to worry.
“Julie... What did you see?” Amy pressed, scarcely hanging onto her composure.
Julie took a deep breath. “Amy... You're my friend... And I wouldn't be troubling you with this, but I just feel like it would be wrong of me not to mention it. Steve... I... I saw him the other day... With another woman...”
Amy kept staring, giving no reaction to this news, and waiting for further information.
“I honestly have no idea what the circumstances were, but... But they were holding hands... Looking like a lot more than just acquaintances...”
“And where was this?” said Amy blankly, a bit stunned. It was the only immediate question that came to mind.
“Just out, on the street... Downtown, the other day...”
“I see...” she said, moving her lips a few times without saying anything in her astonishment. “Well... Thank you for telling me...”
Going home to Steve that night, and pretending like she didn't know anything, had been like sheer torture for her. When their paths crossed, Steve acted all innocent and oblivious, greeting her with a cordial smile.
“Hey hon. How was your day?”
He tried to kiss her on the lips, but Amy had turned away, so that his mouth met her cheek instead.
“Is something wrong?” he asked, and she had a burning urge at his asking to slap in the face.
“No,” she said instead, shaking her head from side to side. “I'm just tired.”
Something was holding her back from accusing him just yet. She told herself that it was for the sake of practicality-she didn't yet have any solid evidence that what Julie had told her bore any weight. Not that she would ever have accused her best friend of lying, but what if she just hadn't seen correctly? Maybe she'd thought she was seeing Steve from a distance, but it was really someone else. Or, alternatively, maybe it was Steve, with another woman, but she'd mischaracterized the nature of their relationship in her mind. Maybe it had only looked like they were holding hands, but it was just a friend of his... It really could have been any number of things.
Deep down, though, she knew there was another reason for keeping this newly gained information to herself. Deep down, she believed that Julie had genuinely seen what she'd believed she'd seen. That Steve was more than capable of cheating on her, and that the fact of his doing so suddenly put into new light a lot of erratic behavior going on right under her nose for the last few weeks.
She wanted, desperately, to cling to the ignorance she'd enjoyed up to this point, to hold on to the slim hope that maybe, just maybe, Steve could truly be innocent of the sins of which Julie had accused him.
But as the days wore on, and Steve's acting skills became more and more shameless, Amy could no longer help but call him, at last, on his bullshit.
He had just gotten into bed with her, and had leaned over to kiss her goodnight, when suddenly Amy stopped him short.
“Steve, I... Have you been cheating on me?” she asked, point blank.
Steve looked at her for a moment slack-jawed, but didn't deny the accusation.
He broke down crying.
He seemed, almost, relieved at being found out. Like the dishonesty of his actions had been torturing him, and having finally been caught in his own web of lies might finally provide him with some relief at long, long last.
He confessed to everything. He gave Amy the girl's name, how they'd met, the extent of their infidelity. He'd seemed, almost, as though he was confessing to a priest, giving up all his secrets to a neutral third party in hopes of being absolved from his sins.
Of course, though, Amy was hardly relieved in hearing all of this, and the burden of misery he'd been shouldering simply shifted its weight from Steve onto her.
How the hell could he have done this to her? And how the hell did he expect her to respond?
He was weeping openly by the time the entire confession had been made, promising that, if she could only find it within her to forgive him, he would be true to her forever. It had all been a huge mistake, and it would never happen again. He'd been so stressed with his job, at such a confusing time in his life, that he'd acted the part of a selfish idiot and risked losing the woman he truly loved.
It was all so easy for him... Like snapping his fingers and just absolving himself of all of it. And he expected Amy to go along with it, to buy into his act of penitence and just forget about all that he'd done to her.
Amy had tried... She'd really, honestly tried to forgive him.
She told him she would try to forgive him, but that for now things would have to change. Steve started sleeping on the couch. The two of them didn't have sex for the time being, and although Steve was around nearly all the time to prove to her the fact of his innocence, the two of them scarcely exchanged words or interacted with one another outside of meals they sometimes shared together.
He was giving her the time she needed, but Amy couldn't decide whether all the time in the world would ever be enough.
He'd wounded her, in a very big way, and as deeply remorseful as he genuinely seemed about his actions, she didn't know whether it was something she could forgive.
They'd been together for years now, since their sophomore year of college, and up to this point Steve had been the man she'd felt certain she wanted to spend the entire rest of her life with. He'd been sweet, handsome, kind-in short, perfect...
There had been no question in her mind, up to that point, that he had been “the one,” but now?
Now she simply didn't know what the hell to believe...
She'd needed to get out of the house tonight. Even with the distance between them, her proximity to Steve had felt sweltering, and she'd needed to escape his presence.
Now, the tears welled up so intensely in her eyes that she couldn't see, and the world seemed to spin around her as she struggled to keep going.
She froze, however, and could see clearly the barrel of the gun presently stuck straight into her nose.
Her blood seemed to run cold, every nerve in her body frozen, as the mugger scowled at her, looking dirty and vicious, and perfectly capable of shooting should she see fit to raise a single finger in protest.
“Give me your purse! And the ring!” he snarled, and she began to shake all over, her scattered brain leaving her immobile. “Do I look like I'm fucking around?!” he insisted, when she still didn't move, and this spurred her to action.
Quickly, she thrust the purse out to the man, and with quivering hands moved to take off her engagement ring-somehow, this felt symbolic of something, even in her present s
tate of absentminded anxiety...
Now, the mugger had everything she could have given her in his possession. Yet his eyes roved up and down along her, as though contemplating Amy herself as an additional object of his spoils. He decided better of this, however, thank God, and nodded at her with a smile. “Have a lovely evening,” he growled, and turned in the opposite direction to dash off.
Amy stood paralyzed to the spot, her heart beating like a hummingbird's in her chest. Her hands were balled into shaking fists, and she felt like screaming, or collapsing onto the ground.
Suddenly, however, she found herself doing neither. Instead, she was bringing her hands up to her mouth in alarm, screaming at the top of her lungs with her eyes wide open.
Out of nowhere, a black, shadowy figure had come gliding out of the darkness, like a man-sized bat, in the direction of the fleeing assailant.
Amy's scream unwittingly alerted the mugger, who turned just in time to see the mysterious figure swooping down towards him. He drew his gun, and began to fire up at whatever the hell the thing was. The muzzle of his pistol flashed, again and again and again in the darkness, so that Amy felt certain he must have blown the shadowy figure to Swiss cheese.
However, the newcomer to the scene seemed unaffected by a single one of these gunshots, and began to duke it out with the mugger, raining blows down upon him right and left. Amy was too far away, not to mention far too panicked, to see clearly just what was going on. But she thought she saw the gun fly out of her attacker's hand and spin across the street, followed by several intense blows from the direction of the newcomer onto the anatomy of her attacker.
Finally, she saw the mugger fall to the ground in a heap. The shadowy figure gave it a few last kicks for good measure, and then stooped down to retrieve something from the man's collapsed form.
The next thing she knew, the dark figure had turned to face Amy, and was gliding in her direction like a phantom.
Her heart was in her throat, and her shoulders tensed as the being approached, getting closer and closer. It felt like a dream somehow... Like it couldn't possibly be real.
And then, at last, the figure emerged from shadow. He was the living definition of tall dark and handsome despite the terror of the circumstances. His ebony flesh glistened with sweat as his shirtless torso heaved with breath, his muscles bulging, and Amy's possessions clutched firmly in his hands.
Amy's vision began to blur.
As they'd been threatening to do for several minutes now, her legs began to wobble, to give way underneath her.
She found herself collapsing to the ground, stopped from a hard collision with the pavement only by the muscular, protective arms of her savior.
Chapter 2
Amy began to stir. Her eyes slowly opened, and she struggled to make sense of her surroundings.
This wasn't her apartment...
She was in bed, fully clothed, which, in itself, seemed rather odd. She sat slowly up from the mattress, groaning from the weariness in her bones as she studied the room around her. She looked over to a dresser across the room, and caught sight of her purse and engagement ring sitting there.
She had a sudden recollection of the scene that had taken place immediately prior to her loss of consciousness.
She began to feel nervous, not knowing how afraid she should be of the man who'd rescued her. She wanted to slip out of the apartment and run back home as quickly as possible, yet she feared exiting the room, and encountering the man outside, waiting for her.
However, just then the door to the bedroom creaked open, and a spike of more immediate fear came shooting through her body.
He came slowly up to her, as though fully aware of the effect he was having on her, and something about his care in this regard eased her. She began to lose sight of her fears, and instead became mesmerized by the appearance of the man. He was wearing a black tank-top now, but it scarcely concealed the rippling of muscle beneath his flesh. His broad, dark pecs, the agonizing rungs of his six-pack abdominals...
“Are you alright?” he asked, in a low, caring voice.
Amy's eyelashes fluttered, and she struggled to think straight as she came up with an answer. “I am now...” she said, and she realized how this sounded. “You saved me...” she added, as though to clarify what she'd meant.
“I just... Saw what happened, and... Well, I couldn't just let that creep get away with it. Did he hurt you?”
Amy slowly shook her head, but her eyes remained wide and affixed to the man, unable to get enough of him.
“That's good,” he said, and when she continued not to say anything, he added, “My name's Justin.”
“Amy,” she quickly said, and she realized she was smiling girlishly up at him. She didn't know what the hell was wrong with her, but she seemed to be going gaga for this complete stranger, drunk as she was on his very presence. Thoughts of Steve and his infidelity seemed to drain from her mind for the first time in weeks now, and she welcomed, instead, the immersion of herself in the reality of this new, perfect being.
“Pleasure to meet you, Amy,” he said, and his smile as he said this was mesmerizing. “I... I have your things back, over there on the dresser...”
“I saw,” said Amy.
“I imagine it's all there... I mean, I didn't look through the purse or anything, obviously...”
“I trust you,” she said, feeling more and more in a trance as the moments went by.
They stared into one another's eyes so long that they might have gotten lost, until at last Justin blinked, and averted his gaze from her. “Well... I'll let you rest some more... I imagine that was all pretty traumatic.”
He was just getting ready to get up from the bed, when suddenly Amy reached up and placed a hand on his wrist.
He froze, and turned to look at her, his expression unreadable.
“Come over here,” she said dreamily. Justin remained rooted to the spot, however, and when he didn't respond to her advances, she found herself leaning forward, parting her lips.
She didn't know what the hell she was doing... Normally, this would have been completely out of character for her. She scarcely knew this man, and technically speaking she was still in a committed relationship with Steve-even if it was one just hanging on by a thread.
But before she could stop herself, she was pressing her warm, wet mouth against Justin's, breathing in his air. His lips were unresponsive for a moment, but she kissed him several times over. She bit down lightly on his bottom lip and pulled back, and this got him reacting to her. He kissed her back now, and for several seconds they continued in this manner. At last, however, he lightly brought a hand to her shoulder, pushing back on her. Her breasts were heaving wildly as she tried to remain patient, though in that moment she wanted nothing more than to lunge forward and to devour every last ounce of meat from his bones.
“Look, I... You're in shock... You've just been through a very traumatic experience, and you're... Vulnerable... I don't want to take advantage of that...”
This consideration only made her want him more, and she smiled seductively at him, practically able to feel his defenses falling as her lips twisted up into such a malicious grin.
She shook her head, slowly from side to side.
“I can't explain this,” she said slowly. “I know I don't know the first thing about you, but... Somehow I just know. I want you... The way you came into my life, at the time when you did... Like you're my... My guardian angel or something...”
He seemed taken aback by this, and then a certain gravity fell over his features. “I'm hardly an angel...” he said, and he spoke the words with such dark inflection that it seemed to set them both off worse than ever.
In spite of his own protestations, now it was Justin leaning forward, preparing to devour her whole.
Their lips met, and melted together once more. Their kisses were deeper, wetter, more intense than before. Her spine prickled, goosebumps erupting across her flesh, and sweat pouring along her taut
, heaving body. She wrapped her arms up around his neck, and pulled him down onto her, crushing herself with his weight, and loving the pressing of air from her lungs as their bodies entwined.
She felt him hardening up against her, the bulge in his jeans pressing up hard against her through the fabric of her skirt. She wrapped one leg up around his waist, squeezing him tightly into herself, and he began to gently grind his body into her, dry humping her through the layers of their clothes. She moaned slightly against his lips, and he pushed his tongue into her mouth. He twisted it around her cheeks, bringing it so far back down along her throat that she might have choked on the delectable thing. She pushed her own tongue back into his, and the pink, fleshy units collided, entwined, saliva pouring from mouth to mouth and back again.
Tangled Kinks: The Complete Series Page 29