Bait

by Jade West

  And then the conversation shifts. My stomach lurches.

  “Hey, Sarah, do you know why she left Hampshire? Seems quite a drastic move.” Lauren’s always so nosey. Always.

  “Guy trouble, I think,” Sarah answers. “Said she thought his dick was worth it until she got here and found better.”

  More whooping, and I cringe. I know they all think it’s Jack’s dick I’m singing the praises of. All except Jack himself.

  All except Jack and the monster behind me.

  The monster’s voice is rough in my ear. “Is that fucking so?”

  My embarrassment thrums. My pussy eats him up.

  “Where is she?” someone groans – Kelly from sales, I think.

  The monster grunts against my neck. “They think you’re fucking him, don’t they? They think you and him have a thing?”

  I nod and spread my legs for more. Harder.

  “Let’s put them right on that, then, shall we?” he growls. My nerves barely have time to prickle before his mouth clamps on my neck.

  Teeth. Fuck, he’s a biter.

  He pinches. Hard. Sucks harder with his dick buried inside me.

  I moan for him. I couldn’t stop if the whole fucking world was watching.

  I work myself back against that huge fucking dick and take everything he’s giving. His fingers speed up on my throbbing clit and I’m so wet I feel myself trickling down my thighs.

  One bite isn’t enough. I’m on the edge at the second, and my ears ring as I crest at the third.

  Oh fuck. Fuck.

  It’s beautiful agony. My whole body screams in silence.

  And so does his.

  His body is wired muscle against my back, his grunts pained as he comes inside me.

  He pants against my shoulder and I press my cheek to his.

  Our breathing matches.

  I feel his heartbeat against my back.

  “I’ll go look for her,” Jack says finally, and the horror zings through me like lightning.

  I tear the gag from my mouth and toss it to the floor, scrabbling to push the monster away enough to tug my slutty dress back down.

  I’ve barely covered my tits as the footsteps round the corner. The monster is still zipping up his jeans as Jack comes into view.

  And oh the fucking horror.

  My smile is zany and awkward, my cheeks burning as the two parts of my world collide.

  Jack starts when he sees me. His eyes widen as he sees the guy at my back.

  My heart pains for him as he shifts into professional gear. There’s only a flash of disappointment before he’s all smiles.

  “We were worried about you,” he tells me. “Wondering where you got to.”

  I don’t even know where my phone is. I gesture to nothing as I tell him I just got back from my call with Mum, but Jack’s already stepping to my side, his hand outstretched to introduce himself to the monster.

  I wish the ground would swallow me up.

  I don’t even know his fucking name.

  “Jack,” Jack says. “I work with Abi.”

  There it is. Abi again.

  I can’t look behind me. I can’t face the awkwardness as his eyes meet mine.

  I figure he’ll bail with a grunt and a see you later, but he doesn’t. His hand is big and warm against my back. The bulk of him so reassuring as he steps to my side.

  “Leo,” he says, and my jaw hits the floor. He takes Jack’s outstretched hand. “Good to meet you.”

  “Same,” Jack says, even though he’s lying. He gestures back to the garden. “Do you wanna join us? Excuse the stupid outfits, it’s tarts and vicars.”

  I hold my breath. Please. Please, please, please.

  “I’m driving,” he says, and my heart drops. “But introductions would be nice.”

  I’ve lost the power of basic bodily functions when my monster – Leo – steps out into the light after Jack.

  I’d never be able to follow him if he didn’t take my hand and pull me along after him.

  The girls’ faces are a picture. I can only imagine what mine looks like.

  And I can only imagine the grilling I’m going to face when the monster leaves.

  The thrill makes my heart sing.

  But not as much as Leo does.

  Twenty-Three

  Insanity is knowing that what you’re doing is completely idiotic, but still, somehow, you just can’t stop it.

  Elizabeth Wurtzel

  Phoenix

  I shouldn’t be here. I don’t know why I am.

  I don’t know why I’m shaking their hands and smiling so politely and using my real name.

  Abigail can’t stop staring at me. Her eyes are big, blatant, the alcohol stealing any coyness. Though she might be a little more self-conscious if she could see the love bites darkening on her neck.

  I’m glad everyone else can. I feel like a caveman with her at my side, my arm wrapped so possessively around her waist.

  This is ridiculous. Crazy. Idiotic and most definitely fucking insane.

  But I can’t stop.

  I can’t bring myself to play this down as nothing and say my goodbyes.

  “Where did you guys meet?” Lauren – I think – asks. She looks between us and I look down at Abigail.

  I love how my black swan flounders.

  “I, uh, met Leo at, ummm…”

  The sound of my name from her mouth makes me thoroughly uncomfortable, but weirdly excited at the same time.

  She looks up at me, but I give her no help whatsoever.

  And then she surprises me, which seems to be a running theme for this evening.

  “We met online,” she says. “On this like… introductions website…”

  A circle of raised eyebrows give way to whoops and chatter. I’d usually hate this shit.

  “Online?!” one of the other girls asks. She looks me up and down, and I think she’s had more than her bandwidth of tequila already. “Wow, you’ll have to give me the web address.”

  The Lauren girl points between us, one to the other. “So, is this a thing? Are you guys dating?”

  “No,” she says, straight off the cuff.

  Her reaction makes me want to wrestle her to the floor in front of all of them and fuck her tight little asshole with an audience.

  Her eyes meet mine and widen. “No, I mean, um…” she starts. I hold her stare. “I mean, I dunno… it’s early days…”

  Better.

  Lauren laughs aloud. “Abigail Summers. You’ve been caught behind the bins with your knickers down. Proverbially if not literally. Have you even seen the state of your neck? I don’t think the days are that early somehow, you little minx.”

  Oh the beautiful fucking horror on Abigail’s face. It makes my dick harden all over again.

  Her hand jumps to her throat, as though she has a hope in hell’s chance of hiding them. It makes me smirk.

  I love that I’ve marked her. I love that she’ll be conscious of those for days.

  She isn’t the desperate lost soul I met online. She sparkles. Shines. She’s lively and full of life.

  Stunning.

  Being at her side makes me feel all kinds of fucked up. My truck is calling, and so is familiar turf, but my feet stay rooted to the ground and my arm stays firm around her.

  “Are you coming to the summer barbeque?” the guy asks, and it takes me a beat to remember I have to play ignorant.

  “The what?”

  It’s Abigail who steps in to answer. “It’s nothing really, just some work barbeque for charity.”

  I wonder if she’s trying to head me off attending, if so it’ll be so much more of a thrill to turn up unannounced.

  She is trying to head me off, I see it in her eyes. In the way she sweeps the conversation around to her blonde neighbour and how she picked out her nail colour.

  Even as she’s angling the topic away from social engagements her fingers come to rest against the small of my back. I like having them there.

>   I like it a lot less when her fingertips sweep upwards.

  Slowly.

  Steadily.

  My scars itch.

  Even as I want more, they itch and prickle under my clothes.

  And unfortunately that’s just about the moment I know this show has to come to an end.

  “I’d better run,” I announce. “It was nice meeting everyone.”

  I pull my arm back from her, hating the way she moves with me on instinct. Hating the way I have to force my body from hers.

  She’s confused. I see it in her eyes.

  “Well, I, um…” she begins, as everyone watches on. “I’ll be seeing you.”

  “You will,” I say.

  And then I leave.

  Quickly enough that I don’t change my mind.

  Abigail

  For all the glitz and sparkle and optimism of having Leo at my side with his arm around my waist, there’s a part of me that realises the futility of this crazy pairing.

  People just don’t meet like we did and manage to make an actual relationship out of it.

  Even the thought is crazy.

  Beyond crazy.

  It should be a relief to dismiss it as an unfortunate case of social precedents forced upon us, but it isn’t.

  Knowing his name should have meant little more than confirmation of the fact he’s not a total psycho, but it means everything.

  I can’t stop thinking of him. Speaking his name in my mind. Hissing out his name as I come at night with my fingers inside me. Saying his name out loud as I stare in the mirror and touch the love bites on my neck.

  The grilling I got from my friends was worth every second of awkwardness.

  Having him at my side felt nicer than it ever should have.

  And now he’s gone.

  No sign of him over the weekend. No ominous presence waiting in the darkness for me to venture outside. I know that, because I find myself outside a lot. Walking. Waiting. Lingering and hoping.

  The next working week gets off to a perfectly regular start without any sign of him jumping out at me.

  The guys ask if he’s going to be joining us for the next night out at Diva’s and it feels pretty disappointing to have to say it’s unlikely. He doesn’t join us. Not that week and not the next, either. His marks have all but gone from my neck and it feels like I’ve lost him.

  Leo.

  My pussy aches for him. I ache for him.

  So I keep myself busy. I call people from back in Hampshire and keep on top of social media. I spend evenings at Sarah’s place, or she at mine. I take walks for the hell of it and enjoy them.

  I try not to be agitated at the radio silence. I try not to worry about the passing time and whether he’s grown tired of me already.

  In the main I do a good job of it, but by the time the second weekend comes and goes without hide nor hair of him I’m reaching the end of my tether.

  I didn’t want to use the phone number he called me from that evening in Diva’s. I didn’t want to have to ground this thing in something so ordinary as a telephone conversation.

  I fear he’s not going to leave me any choice, so midway through my next working week without him, I dig my phone from my handbag and try his number.

  It rings and rings. My heart drops when I know he’s not about to answer, but still I wait around for his voicemail.

  It’s generic. An automated voice reading out the number I dialled and asking me to record a message.

  I record a simple one, as calmly as I can manage to pull off.

  “Hey, it’s me. I’m just… waiting…” I take a breath. “I hope you show up soon.”

  He doesn’t. Not that night and not the night after, nor even the weekend after that.

  I call again and it rings back through to the same voicemail.

  This time I don’t leave one.

  I check online and reactivate my deleted profile. His is greyed out and unavailable.

  I search for Leos in Malvern with tattoos and unsurprisingly find nothing at all worth anything.

  Part of me worries something has happened to him. Part of me worries about the fact that something could happen to him and I’d never even know it.

  Part of me wants to know where the hell he is and what’s taking up so much of his time that he can’t at least send me a message back in return.

  A see you soon, or even a thanks but no thanks.

  Anything would be better than being ignored.

  I’m in deep with someone who I’ve never even kissed properly, even though I’ve taken his dick in all the way.

  I feel invisible again, just like I did with Stephen in the aftermath of the great explosion. Questioning whether any of this ever meant anything at all.

  Whether he was just a guy out for a good time and now he’s done.

  I don’t want to believe it.

  I don’t want to believe my monster is gone.

  But by the end of the next weekend I do.

  Twenty-Four

  We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

  T. S. Eliot

  Phoenix

  Staying away from my black swan is harder than I ever anticipated. Ignoring her voicemail has been a far greater challenge than I ever expected to encounter as the result of a crazy online hook-up.

  But it’ll be worth it.

  Using that front door key for the first time and have her genuinely not expecting it, will be worth it.

  Worth the cravings for her sweet tight snatch that present themselves all day long.

  Worth the pang in my gut that says I could be ruining something so much deeper than the fantasy we set out on in the first place.

  But it can’t be anything deeper.

  As much as I may want to, I’m not about to drown the girl in my shit ton of baggage when she’s only just getting clear of her own.

  My scars itch for a reason.

  Because they’re raw.

  Deep.

  Ugly.

  I’ve got a brother who wants my blood, and a boy who may not be my blood, who can speak but doesn’t, and shows no sign of doing so for the foreseeable, and a sister trapped in the middle of it all.

  All that and a business that may not survive the insurance verdict when it finally comes in.

  No.

  Abigail needs a monster in the darkness. A thrill to spike her adrenaline when real life proves too monotonous.

  I’ll give her both of those things and spare her the rest.

  I’m beyond excited when the time comes. I’ve been aching for this for weeks.

  A Monday night seems perfect timing. I’m barely able to function at the office as the time draws near.

  The anticipation was supposed to be all for her benefit, but as my dick throbs with desperation enough to fucking pain through the afternoon, I realise it’s been as much for mine.

  Serena can’t hold back a smile when I pick up my keys after Cameron’s bedtime routine.

  “Mud wrestling?” she quizzes. “I thought it must be about time.”

  “I’ve been busy,” I lie.

  “I hope you can make it up to her,” she says with a quirked eyebrow.

  “Make what up to her?”

  She shakes her head like I’m a dumbfuck. “If she’s happy to coast along for a couple of weeks without seeing even a piece of you, then she’s a considerably more patient woman than I’d be.”

  It’s my turn to quirk my brow. “We’re not engaged, Serena.”

  She laughs. “Oh, Leo. You underestimate the savage seas of female emotion, I fear. Buy her flowers if you have any sense.”

  It makes me smirk as I leave. Flowers will be the very last thing on Abigail’s mind this evening.

  The drive over there is tense. The beast in my belly spreading its wings where there’s no space for them.

  I’ll be all but breaking and entering. That itself is enough to spike my
adrenaline. I feel strangely criminal, as though I’m being watched in the darkness. Followed as though I’m up to no good. Pairs of eyes feasting on my ill-intent and set to call the police out.

  I could really do without that kind of attention.

  I park up in the loading bay across from her place and watch the lights through the window. Two shadows move in the living room.

  There’s a sickening flash of jealousy until I realise the other shadow belongs to the blonde girl next door.

  I guess they’re watching something – I see the lights from the TV moving on her ceiling.

  It feels like a lifetime before two shadows turn to one and those lights finally go out. I wait until long after midnight before I lock up the truck and head on over.

  I’ve already considered the communal door lock. We had one similar on our old storeroom. These things aren’t robust, just token gestures added to older buildings to deter opportunists.

  I’m not an opportunist. My intentions are sinister and unbridled. It’s easy enough to yank that thing loose from its catch with enough force behind it.

  My footsteps are quick and light, the key to her apartment in my hand before I’ve even reached her landing. I slip by her neighbour’s door and across, holding my breath as I ease that key home and turn it to the right.

  The door swooshes as it opens, but doesn’t creak. The catch makes the lightest click as I close it after me.

  And then I’m in.

  My heart pounds along with my fucking cock.

  I feel like a fucking monster for real as I cross her darkened hallway and press my ear to her bedroom door. I hear nothing.

  Perfect.

  I’m careful as I retreat to the kitchen and take a glass from the drainer. I press myself into the corner next to her storage cupboard and count down from ten.

  And then I slam dunk that pint glass straight into the sink.

  Oh the fucking noise. It even makes me start, my pulse in my temples as my mouth waters.

  I count up from one. At five her bedroom door opens. I feel every second of the tension as she pauses in the hallway. At ten the kitchen light flicks on and I see her face reflected in the window. No makeup, tired eyes, her long hair piled up in a messy bun.