Bleeding Heart

by AM Hartnett

  Give me a decade, and I’ll be the nosy neighbour demanding others re-sort their recyclables.

  ‘Aaaaah,’ she said upon opening the cupboard. Four tiny handmade espresso mugs awaited her selection for her virgin apartment’s first cup of coffee. She wouldn’t be having espresso, but a cup from beans that were ground the night before.

  I should call Mom.

  She shook the thought right out of her head. She wasn’t going to think of her mother and how depressed she had sounded on the phone the previous afternoon.

  She’d stayed home long enough. She could afford it now that she was working.

  It had been the end of the world when she announced she was moving out. April had explained to her mother that she was a big girl, that she wasn’t going to get murdered in her bed, and that she wasn’t going to get an STD.

  April made her coffee and took it, along with her tablet computer, back to her big bed. She made a wall of comfort with the oodles of throw pillows she had bought, then settled in, wiggling her butt until she had that sweet spot, and clicked her way to the opening pages of her book.

  Yet she couldn’t concentrate. Barely four pages in, she set the tablet aside and looked around.

  Like the rest of the apartment, the bedroom had come cheap and to her exact desires. She’d taken nothing from her old bedroom. Not that she had wanted the white canopy bed and matching storage her mother had picked out when April was ten. She had gone with a sleek chocolate-brown with red and white accents. There was nothing new about the contents of her closet, but the narrow dresser in the corner was filled with her other splurge of lingerie. Nothing too kinky, just some sheer undies and colourful bras, and a garter belt and stockings she didn’t have to hide from her mother’s disapproving eyes.

  And then there was the basket underneath the new bed.

  She was looking forward to breaking that queen bed’s cherry with someone, using the contents of that basket. She’d had enough unpleasant experiences of screwing on unwashed sheets with the sound of rowdy roommates playing videos games just outside the bedroom door, and that was only when she’d had boyfriends who weren’t in the same boat as she was.

  She could have gotten by with her old double mattress, but she’d wanted a bed made as much for sex as it was for sleeping.

  And there was the new vibrator.

  It cost almost as much as her security deposit and she could have better spent her money elsewhere, perhaps getting a coffee-maker that had more bells and whistles, but after taking her masturbatory sessions in thirty-minute windows when her family home was actually empty, she felt she had earned her stylish vibrator.

  As soon as the caffeine had kicked in, she rolled onto her side and slid the basket out.

  Hello, Miss Scarlett.

  It was a top-of-the-line rabbit, with words like ‘ergonomic’ and ‘dually stimulating’ and ‘supple’ in the description, and she’d almost talked herself out of it, given the number of less expensive toys she should have bought, but the reviews had enticed her.

  Two orgasms in five minutes.

  Never came before I used this.

  Almost passed out.

  April flopped on her back and closed her eyes, then turned the vibrator on.

  She gave herself just a bit of pressure through her panties. The little rounded ears of the rabbit hummed, and for a second April listened for movement. Realising she was alone, that no one was sleeping across the hall, nor would they come knocking at her door for some silly reason, she relaxed and increased the power by one setting.

  Good, but not not great. She was definitely feeling the effects of the toy, but there was something missing.

  The mindfuck.

  Her fantasies weren’t usually about real people. She made them up in her head, like she was the J. R. R. Tolkien of masturbatory fantasies.

  She’d never admit it, but her fantasies would have been perfectly at home in a paperback romance: meeting the bad boy at midnight on a lonely stretch of beach or burning off sexual tension in an office hate-fuck.

  She scrolled through the chapters of her sexual anthology, but it was the blank pages at the end that caught her attention.

  Big arms. A crooked grin. Intense blue eyes.

  Viking? Too cheesy. Biker? Maybe. Construction worker? Getting warmer.

  A late-night panic. A smoke alarm that won’t go off. A knock at the door. Getting wet watching him stretch to reset the alarm. Realising her nightgown was too low cut and too high up on her thighs. A lingering ‘good night’ at the door. A longer ‘good night’ up against the door with her back pressed to the surface and her leg wrapped around his waist.

  ‘Oh…oh, there we go,’ she puffed out as she really started to feel the effects of the vibrator around her clit. Her next flash was of her landlord looming over her, naked and glorious, that naughty smile as good as the vibe he teased her with.

  April wriggled out of her panties and spread herself open as her imaginary lover did the same. Fingers parted her folds and the effect of the vibrator went from good to fucking phenomenal.

  Living at home, she’d mastered the art of a brain-melting orgasm in perfect silence. Now, with no need for a buffer, she couldn’t hold it in. She was soaked and throbbing as in her mind he leaned over her and jiggled the vibe around her clit.

  April sucked in a deep breath, and then fantasy and reality exploded in powerful waves and she cried out.

  She didn’t drop the vibe between her legs when the pleasure became too much. She let the fantasy linger and, like the man of her imagination, she didn’t relent. She took it as long as she could, until her body took over and bucked to be free.

  ‘Oh. Wow.’

  Her legs were so wobbly she didn’t think she could stand if she tried, and she was slippery everywhere. Leaving the vibe on the bed beside her, April closed her eyes and shuddered with the aftershocks.

  The vibrator had given her the biggest bang for her bucks, but it was the thought of being exposed like that for Seth Axworthy that made it that much more delicious. Even as she sprawled there like her bones had been liquified and the thrum of her climax could still be felt along her inner walls, she couldn’t wait to have a second round with both her vibe and the fantasy that went with it.

  With a great sigh, April pushed up onto her elbows. That’s when she saw her voyeur.

  The black cat, Marco, sat prim and proper on the window sill staring at her.

  ‘You little pervert,’ she called to him as she swung her legs off the bed.

  The previous tenant must have let him in, she thought, as she went on wobbly legs to the bathroom. She cleaned the vibrator and left it to dry on the edge of the sink, then drew a bath.

  ‘Well, that was something else,’ she said out loud as the tub filled. She washed her face and clipped her hair up, then pulled out a lone strand.

  ‘I wonder what I’d look like as a redhead,’ she said out loud, and, as soon as the tub was ready, she cut off the water and quickly called the salon for an appointment while she waited for a second cup of coffee.

  Back in the bedroom, the cat still peered inside. He stood on his hind legs and pressed his paws to the glass, and April was won over.

  ‘Just for a minute,’ she said as she pushed the window open.

  The cat wasn’t shy. He butted his head against her palm a few times, then stepped up onto her knees. One quick sniff at her coffee cup and he made another sound, then leaped past her into her apartment.

  ‘Make yourself at home,’ she called after the cat as he strutted through the small labyrinth of cardboard boxes and plastic bins left to unpack. She continued to sip her tepid coffee while keeping an eye on the cat, and contemplated the possibility of getting one her own, some unwanted gentleman from a shelter or a kitten with the energy and ambition to shred her brand-new sofa.

  The cat paused at the foot of her platform bed, then stood on his hind legs for a better look. The thought of a stray rolling around on her clean sheets would have
sent her scrambling as soon as the cat leaped up, but her earlier spying told her that this cat was Seth’s little prince, used to the luxury of a soft bed like the one he had found.

  After a quick exploration of the mattress and an approving twitch of his ears, the animal turned and strutted back to the window.

  She stroked him from head to tail. ‘I hope you’re not the first of many men to go running from my bed once you’ve had a roll around in it.’

  The cat curled onto her lap, and April settled back. She was down to her last mouthful when the sleeping beauty in her arms lifted his head and pricked his ears.

  A moment later, April heard a whistle.

  ‘Marco! Going out! Window’s closing!’ came a husky male voice.

  April jostled the cat, but he simply looked up at her and blinked.

  ‘Go on. I’m not fighting for custody.’ When the cat still didn’t move, she emptied the cup and set it aside, then scooped the cat up into her arms and set him down. ‘Go home.’

  Another whistle, this one more insistent than before. ‘Marco! Get your hairy balls in the apartment or else I’ll wax them when I get a hold of you!’

  April giggled. ‘Scoot!’

  Another blink, another mournful meow, and Marco sat on her foot.

  ‘For fuck’s sake!’ came the exclamation from downstairs. Accompanied by irritated muttering, the fire escape shuddered with the extra weight. ‘Marco! Come!’

  ‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ April exclaimed as the cat made his way back to her window. She scooped him up and cradled him in her arms, then carefully stepped down to meet his owner.

  As the bulky figure loomed up like a movie monster from the level below, April stopped in her tracks.

  He wore nothing but low-hung pyjama pants. His chest and shoulders went on and on, and all that bare skin was splashed with patterns of dark ink that made him look unearthly.

  He looked from the cat in her arms to her hot face. ‘Hey.’

  ‘Hey,’ she managed to get out breathlessly. ‘Um, I think this belongs to you. He crashed my party-of-one.’

  ‘Yeah, he’ll do that,’ he replied, and took the last step to bring him to her level – or, to be more accurate, a good foot and a half over her level. As he closed the gap between them, April found herself wanting to retreat, cat and all, into her apartment and away from this intimidating brick wall of a man.

  He quickly plucked the cat from her arms and turned his stare upon her.

  ‘Sorry about that. If you don’t want him hanging around your window, wipe some Pine-Sol on the sill. He can’t stand the smell.’

  ‘I don’t mind, really. I…’ she began, but her barbarian landlord was already on his way back down the fire escape. The backside was just as intimidating as the front and went on and on.

  The fire escape stopped juddering and then she heard the scrape of a window being closed. She blew out a deep breath and leaned against the brickwork.

  ‘Welcome to Winsloe Court,’ she muttered, then turned to head back inside, a second session with her new vibrator a definite possibility.

  Chapter Three

  One had to expect hearing the sounds of other tenants when living in an apartment building. God knows he had heard enough of Evie and Ryan’s when they lived there, and in the end he had contributed to those sounds. Then there was Mrs Boyd’s ringer turned up all the way because she could barely hear a thing, and the woman who lived alongside him who worked from home and shouted into her laptop all day in whatever language she happened to be doing business in that week.

  But he’d never get used to Katy Perry. God, he hated Katy Perry, and that’s exactly what was coming from April’s apartment, along with the shrieks and laughter of what he could only assume was a girls’ night in.

  He sat in front of his computer. His new computer. He’d gotten it the same day as that damned phone and, even though he knew nothing about computers, he knew he had bought himself one hell of a machine. Over a grand, sleek and thin, with keys that lit up when he turned it on. As the sales kid had explained to him the various operating systems, he’d almost felt his mind physically stretch. So he asked for something as close to his old one as possible: just a computer with no touch screen, no navigating through pages of apps, and generally idiot-proof.

  He’d walked out of the store with a Macbook and an iPhone. The wireless printer was still in the box, a massive thing that looked like it was more at home in an office than in his apartment. He could claim it all as a business expense in the end, but he’d still have to use it.

  For now he was just happy enough to be screwing around online. He preferred the drag-and-drop of his online fantasy civilisation to the tap-tap-tap of his phone’s version. His fingers were too big and the pen-thingy gave his hand cramp, and Marco had figured out it was playtime whenever Seth put his hand on the phone. He’d been trying to text earlier that day and the recipient thought he was having a stroke, with the way the cat kept hitting send.

  The cat lounged on the sofa, tail flicking and eyes glaring as he enjoyed a good sulk. With the third instance of ‘I’ve got the eye of the tiger, a fighter, dancing through the fire’ Seth had taken the rare and drastic measure of shutting the window, preventing Marco’s usual evening jaunt, and vengeance would no doubt be taken at 3 a.m. with a slap to the face.

  Leaning back in his chair, Seth swivelled back and forth as he looked at the clock. Only 9.30 p.m. Quiet time didn’t start until 10 p.m. He couldn’t go up there after her just yet. The music wasn’t so loud to be a nuisance, and he couldn’t be a dick and tell her to turn it off just because that kind of music made him want to bury the claw end of his hammer in his skull.

  And, to make it worse, he hadn’t had a smoke all day. That alone would have been enough to push him over the top – or in front of traffic.

  His gaze went to the blue and green abstract painting over the sofa, the one Rita had done during her attempt to become an artist.

  He knew what she’d say.

  Stressed, Wolfman? Well, you know the cure for that, don’t you?

  It wasn’t as good as the original cure, but it would do. He got up and went to the bedroom. As soon as he opened the window, Marco bolted through the door, bounced off the bed, then made his exit to chase mice or battle the Joker or whatever Marco did when he was sprung free.

  Seth left the window open just enough to let the cat through, then closed the bedroom door behind him and hoped he’d hear the cat scratch before the destruction of his pillow cases started.

  Back in the living room, he closed the curtains, then loosened the drawstring on his fleece pants. He pushed everything down to mid-thigh, dropped in front of the computer and went to his favourite porn site.

  Getting his cock out was easy. Getting it hard – not so much.

  He tipped his head back and closed his eyes, but he could still hear the subtle thump coming from above.

  I can’t get an erection listening to this, he thought, and cast a dubious look at the threesome on screen about to get friendly. I can’t listen to that, either.

  He kicked off his pants and went back into the bedroom, where he grabbed the orange earplugs from the nightstand and the small bottle of lube next to it.

  If you’re smart, Wolfman, you’ll keep it in your pants for a while longer and see if you can get one of your playmates to come over.

  Yet he wasn’t so interested in his playmates after the whole thing with Evie and Ryan. He had enjoyed the intensity that went with doing something a little taboo, and all he got with hook-ups was something wet to put his dick in.

  And so, once he stuffed the earplugs in, he slicked his hand and closed his eyes once more to scroll through his short roster of past lovers.

  Rita? God, Rita was at her best when she was in control, straddling him and bucking like crazy.

  Yet he didn’t linger on Rita. It would get him off, no doubt, but afterwards he’d be left with that hollow feeling that would keep him up all night.

 
; Instead, he conjured Evie. She didn’t have the same bag of tricks as Rita, but she’d been insatiable. She liked it with a little bit more push and shove, and she liked being talked dirty to.

  She also came with the bonus of Ryan, whom Seth only liked part of the time but who could suck cock like no one else.

  He couldn’t linger on Evie or Ryan too long, either, he discovered as he started to lose his hard-on. Thinking of the couple who used to play in the two apartments above his, he was reminded once more of his solitary state.

  He tilted his head back to the scene on his screen. Like most porn, the focus was on the woman. Blonde. Pouty lips. Big blue eyes. A little like…

  He groaned and cranked his wrist faster.

  April.

  ‘Now we’re talking,’ he murmured to himself and picked up the pace.

  Not that he wanted to become that grizzled old landlord who got an erection every time he thought of his hot young tenant, but it was hard not to when she was so damned cute.

  The sundress she wore had been bad enough, but getting a look at that tiny robe…

  God bless that fucking cat. When she was holding Marco, her robe was open just a little. Nice tits. Fantastic tits.

  And that blush, like she had been doing something really naughty before he came up the fire escape.

  He slowed his strokes, picturing her puckering those plump lips around the head, eyes on his as she took him deeper, then speeded up as he imagined that messy hair spilling everywhere as she bucked on top of him.

  Or I’d fuck her half-dressed, he thought to himself as he jerked his slippery length faster. I’d put her down on the edge of the bed, pull down her panties, open her legs and tease her a little, then turn her over and make her scream.

  His balls tightening, Seth gripped harder. He imagined her squeezing her trembling thighs together as she came. He lifted his hips, and euphoria raced through his body as he came. One hot spurt after another landed on his thighs and he kept jerking until there was no more.