True Divide

by Liora Blake

  Jakes eyes widen as he waits for my answer.

  “Explain what? It’s my old cheerleading uniform. Obviously.”

  I step away to open the oven door and then pretend to read the directions on the back of the pizza box. The dry cleaning bag makes a rustling sound. When I take a quick glance over my shoulder, Jake is shoving the uniform toward me, pushing his arm out until it is entirely outstretched, elbow locked, and then shaking the bag again.

  “Put it on.”

  A quick chuckle leaves my gaping mouth. “Excuse me?”

  He takes a step forward. “Now. Go put it on so I can finally live out one of my teenage fantasies. I want to fuck you in it. You never let me do anything but get up under the top a little. ‘Can’t get it dirty.’ ‘Coach would kill me if it got damaged.’ ‘I represent the school when I’m wearing it.’ Blah, blah, blah. Put. It. On.”

  The tone of his voice indicates this isn’t up for discussion, and in the glow of that directive and the heat from the open oven door I’m standing in front of, I feel a tiny bit like a fainting spell is only seconds away. Jake steps closer and grabs the pizza box from my hands, tossing it onto the countertop while kicking the oven door closed with his foot. Once my hands are empty, he shoves the uniform into my chest and presses until I grab it with my own hands.

  Stepping away, Jake’s gaze turns mischievous when he sees that I’m clearly feeling a little jumpy and flustered. I can’t decide if I’m turned on or not. Is the fact I can’t breathe a good sign or what? No idea.

  What I do know is that Jake is definitely turned on, no question, because the glint in his eyes only momentarily distracts from the way he just pointedly slid his hand along the front of his jeans and then gritted his teeth a little. And Jake getting hot about something usually only leads to the same reaction in me. It’s a side effect I can’t seem to control. When he goes out of his mind, it sufficiently drives me there with him.

  In a near whisper, I muster the few protests I can think of.

  “Jake, come on, it probably doesn’t even fit anymore.”

  He stops and narrows his eyes for a moment, seeming to consider my argument. Then he shakes his head slowly, a grin curving slightly across his lips.

  “It’s totally going to fit. And those curves are going to make it even better.”

  With that, he begins urging me out of the kitchen. When we arrive in the entryway, I stop and lean against the newel post at the bottom of the stairs. Jake comes to stand behind me, the length of his body pressed against mine, nestling his mouth right next to my ear.

  “No bra, nothing underneath. Got it?”

  He doesn’t give me a chance to answer or respond, simply smacks my ass and then bites down gently on one of my earlobes. When I start up the stairs, I realize exactly how turned on I am. Quaking and short of breath, no question, my body has already decided this is a perfectly sensible idea.

  Small favors, but the uniform does still fit. The skirt sits a few inches higher than it used to, but it zips, thank God. Riding at the smallest part of my waist, but flaring provocatively from my hips, the new fit only means I’m showing a bit more leg than I previously did. Wild guess, but I’m thinking Jake won’t mind. Before, it would hang a few inches below my belly button, still loose even then. Standing here in front of the full-length mirror in my bedroom, I consider doing my hair up the way I used to—a perfectly curled ponytail with a matching red ribbon—but decide that might be taking this whole thing a little too far.

  I step out of the bedroom and come to stand at the top of the stairs, taking a quick breath in before descending, expecting that I’ll find Jake in the living room waiting for me. Instead, he’s standing near the front door, flipping my key chain around in his hand.

  “Hey there, pretty girl.”

  I want to, simultaneously, leap toward him and bolt from the room. Whatever he has in mind, I’m about to get wrecked alive, and I shouldn’t like the idea as much as I do. Unfortunately, my body doesn’t quite understand why my brain insists on hesitating. Jake steps a bit closer, then pauses and gestures me forward with a curl of his index finger.

  “I was right, huh? It fits.”

  “Which is good for you. Because if it didn’t, me wailing on the floor while eating an entire of quart of ice cream to drown my sorrows would have been your fault.”

  When I stop in front of him, his hands immediately come under the skirt and stroke across the backs of my thighs until one of his hands finds my bare ass. A grunt leaves him, followed by his mouth finding the skin on my neck.

  “You look so fucking hot right now. I knew you would.”

  A wild thrill surges through me. The kick of looking, feeling, being exactly what he expected. Maybe more. With his hands on my skin, I only see one thing happening in the next few minutes. A scenario involving the back of the door again, or maybe the floor.

  The key chain jangles in one hand and the one on my ass lands a smack there. “Let’s go. I’ve got a plan.”

  I lean back from him and point toward the door. “ ‘Let’s go’? As in let’s go outside?”

  Jake opens the door and stands there, making an ushering gesture with his arm to urge me forward. I shake my head. “I cannot go outside dressed like this. It’s winter. I’m twenty-nine years old. People will think I’ve lost my mind.”

  Grabbing a knee-length coat from the closet, Jake laughs and tosses it at me, then starts down the sidewalk. “This is me nudging you out of your comfort zone, Shoelace. Have I ever done that without it paying off in the end?”

  I consider the question. But when Jake turns back and grins, I know the answer. Dammit.

  Slipping the coat on, I take a quick scan of the neighborhood and flick the porch light off, cursing the full moon and cloudless sky for casting more light than necessary right now.

  As the frigid air stings against my bare legs, I can’t process much beyond getting in the car and slamming the door shut as Jake starts the engine. What am I doing? Have I lost my mind? Has my automaton nature with Jake finally hit a crescendo? Because this crap is nuts. The man has sufficiently reprogrammed my brain with his antics. That’s the only good reason to explain what’s going on right now.

  Jake drives a few miles north, following Main Street to the outskirts of town. Before we even arrive, I know the destination, the same way I did when he coaxed me into Kate’s truck the night after he came back. I really need to stop letting him cajole me into cars with his grins and charms. I inevitably end up woozy and improperly dressed.

  This abandoned canning factory has been here since the early fifties; the production line shut down about twenty years ago, but no one has had the heart to knock down the staid redbrick building. Instead, it’s slowly sagged into a heap of worn masonry and become merely a historical reminder of days gone by.

  Pulling in behind the building, Jake stops the car and leans behind the front seat, dragging out an old Coleman lantern he must have found in my shed when he was here last. Jake twists a small knob on the bottom, it hisses to life, and he adjusts the light down so it softens a bit. A playful raise of his brows and he’s leaning over to draw his hand up the inside of my thigh, so high his palm brushes the space where he’s sure to notice how much my body likes the insanity of whatever this is.

  “Follow me.”

  Inside, I follow Jake and the lantern light down a darkened hallway, tracing my fingers along the dirty walls, and know instinctively when we’ve found the room we always met up in when we were kids. Jake leads the way, finding a low-slung worktable to set the lantern on, and then turns to me, crooking his finger to encourage me forward. A lascivious little grin covers his face, and the hissing sound coming from the lantern, combined with that expression, makes me feel a little like a field mouse about to be devoured by a bull snake.

  “Over here. I want to see you.” He pats the worktable with one hand. “Pro
perly spread wide for me, with this little skirt shoved up.”

  I drop the coat I put on into a heap on the floor, an unexpected whimper leaving my mouth the moment I cross the room and Jake’s hands start to grip and grab, his thick fingers nudging between my legs, teasing the damp space with a flick and a stroke. Once his hands are there, I can’t fight the desire anymore: my mouth crashes into his as my hands fight to release the button and zipper on his jeans. Jake turns rough immediately, shoving us back to bump against the table, and the lantern rocks under the impact, but stays upright. Jerking up my top, Jake bends and begins to lick and suck across my nipples, bare for him as he requested, and the pebbled skin aches under the intensity of his mouth there, not a bit of sweetness in any touch, only demanding bites and tugs with his teeth. Once his pants are loose enough, I find his length and push his boxers down to grip him in my hands, then thrust my body close enough that his cock can rub against the bare skin under my skirt, across my belly and hip.

  Jake releases me and goes to shove his coat off, jerky movements as he tries to watch where my hands stroke his length. Coat off, he takes it and spreads it out on the worktable. Once he has it arranged, he lifts and drops me on top of it. My legs are spread already, but Jake shoves my knees a bit wider and then pushes the skirt up so his fingers can play there, but only for a few strokes. When his hand leaves again, I roll my hips forward and moan quietly, eyes drooping closed.

  I can only imagine how I look at this moment. Drugged by this touch, drowning in an ache I can’t control. When I open my eyes, Jake has his length in his hand, tugging so slowly I suddenly want to show him how his beautiful cock deserves to be handled, by swatting his hand away and giving him my mouth.

  “Lie back.” He gives a little nudge of his chin and slips his hands along the bare skin of my thighs. That move, his rough hands on my thighs again, sends my mind back to the night we reconnected, the way I wanted exactly this: to lie back across the bench seat in the truck and let him take me. Then I wouldn’t. Or couldn’t. But now I can.

  Rolling back, I spread my legs wider and drag my skirt completely up at the same time, leaving myself fully exposed, ready. I close my eyes and wait, resisting the urge to grab at him.

  “Fuck.” Instead of the voice he uses when uttering that word in satisfaction, this sounds like a sincere curse. Then, rapid fire, it comes again. “Fuckity, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  The sound of him getting pissed prompts me to lift my head a few inches. Jake has both hands patting around his pockets, front and back, finally dropping them and closing his eyes with a groan.

  “You wouldn’t by chance have had the presence of mind to grab a condom and tuck it somewhere in that sexy little outfit, would you?”

  My head thuds back to the tabletop. “Um, no.”

  Another groan and a long sigh. Jake comes to cover my body and lifts the bottom hem of my top up so my breasts are bare and he rubs across them with his T-shirt. Grabbing my hand, he brings it to his cock and wraps my fingers tight in his, then moves our joined hands up and down his length.

  “We’ll just have to use our hands and mouths, then. Not exactly what I wanted, but I’m so hard right now, I won’t be able to walk unless we finish this.”

  I let him kiss my neck and continue to work our hands on his cock, but I’m disappointed enough that it’s distracting. I was ready for more, hard and fast and rough, against this ancient worktable, in the cold, dank darkness of a slightly forbidden place. I wanted all of him, not just certain parts of us trying to ease the ache. There would be no fantasy fulfilled in that, just a replay of things already done in this room.

  “You could . . .” I pause and wait for Jake to acknowledge me. His head cranes back until he can see me. I look away for a second, and then find his gaze. “I’m on the pill. We can, if you want to.”

  Nothing crosses his expression for a moment, just him staring intently yet blankly at me. Finally, he lets out a labored little panting groan. “You’re sure about this, Lace? Because I want that. So bad. I want to feel you like that. I’ve always wanted it that way.”

  With those words, I would swear his cock grows harder in my hands. When I nod, a gleam flickers across his eyes.

  “I’m sure, if you’re sure.”

  No reply, other than him rising up from my body and then yanking behind my knees until my ass is nearly hanging off the table edge. I half expect him to just ram forward and into me, but instead he holds himself and lets the tip slick along my opening, a few long, slow, torturous passes that force me to clamp my teeth into my bottom lip and barely stifle a responding moan.

  I try to urge him, force him almost, by jerking my hips up and begging him with my body language to just do it already.

  “Jake. Fuck me. Please.”

  He chuckles, low enough to sound sinister. “Such a filthy little mouth on you when you get hot. Does your coach know you’re about to get fucked in this little skirt? Hmm? Do you mind that my dirty hands are mussing it up? Will you give it up this time, or are you planning to be a little cock tease again?”

  I’m sure I should resent being called a cock tease. But when it’s Jake saying these things, it never rings hateful. No matter how filthy, no matter how many times he praises my dirty mouth or tells me to prove how slutty I can be for him, or calls on me to beg for it, I never hear anything but an unrestrained craving tumbling from his mouth. He never lets the words be more than him finding another way to say he wants me.

  Before my hand has a chance to grasp him, he is thrusting inside me. Fast, merciless in every move, but saved from any discomfort because I’m so wet nothing could slow this down. Beyond the haze in my head, brought on by waiting and wanting, I can register only two specific things.

  One, the sound of Jake muttering and grunting. “Holy shit, holy shit.” All of it sounds more charged than ever, ringing of the tenor he uses when he is close to the edge, even though we’re only a few moments into this. Despite that, he doesn’t slow down or let up the pace even a small bit: he just maintains a punishing rhythm, in and out, in and out.

  Two, the second he thrusts to the hilt inside me, I get loud. Like, really loud. Groaning and moaning, yelping and grunting as femininely as is possible when a man has you on the precipice of what may be the single wildest orgasm of your life. No matter that we’re trespassing in this building, or that if an officer of the law—who may also be my ex—decided to do a drive-by, all he would have to do is crack his car window to hear me. But maybe that’s what makes this all so good: the pull of knowing we’re doing something a little wrong, the tease of letting our bodies take what we always denied ourselves in this room so long ago.

  Only a minute into all of it, I lose myself and settle in for the ride. Quickly, his hands leave my breasts, slipping up my back and along my shoulder blades, so he can curl his hands on the tops of my shoulders for leverage on every long, punishing pound of his body to mine. Then I really start to lose it, words mixed with wild noises, begging for harder and more as I wrap my legs around his waist as tightly as I possibly can. His thrusts turn shallow, faster. Only a little more, that’s all I need and I’ll be in the throes of the swiftest release I’ve ever experienced. So close, so close. So close I can feel the hum of a damn life-affirming climax start to muddle my mind in all the right ways.

  Then Jake starts to apologize.

  A growling, breathless chant of regrets strung together between groans.

  “Fuck, fuck, sorry . . . oh God . . . shit, sorry.”

  Confusion plagues my addled mind for a second, right up until he stops grunting about being sorry and goes entirely silent, still trying to thrust but losing the perfect pace that was about to send me over the edge.

  And then he’s done.

  And so am I.

  The apologies start in again. Quieter now, but rife with even more angst now that he’s crumpled on top of me, his warm breath cover
ing my neck. When he finds the strength to push up, he kisses across my face and sighs.

  “Christ. Sorry. I didn’t mean for this to be such a vivid walk down memory lane. Including me finishing in two seconds like I’m seventeen again.”

  When I whisper that it’s fine, tell him not to worry about it, I’m only lying a little. Only a teeny, tiny bit of me honestly still wants to strangle him under the lunacy of being denied that orgasm. Not just any orgasm, that one. Because he suddenly sounds so entirely disappointed with himself, I can’t hold on to my frustration quite as harshly as I was.

  Jake shakes his head, eyes clenched shut. “I’ll make it up to you all night. Scout’s honor, you’ll be begging me to stop after a while. I just—fuck, you felt so good. I was gone before I could remember to think about fat lunch ladies.”

  Laughing, I wrap my arms around his neck and pull him tighter. Even though he’s starting to soften inside me a bit, he’s still hard enough that the fullness combined with my laughter feels unbelievably good. “That’s what you think about to hold back?”

  “Yup. Fat lunch lady imagery usually does the trick. Those creepy hairnets, the mystery meats, the wrinkly arms.”

  He rises up and starts to pull out. We both let out a sighing moan at the same time, right as his slips out completely. The room is so cold now, and almost dark, the hiss of the lantern growing weaker as it runs out of propane. Jake goes to push his length back into his pants, then pauses, bringing both hands to draw across my legs until his thumbs are nestled and slipping along the insides of my thighs. I close my eyes and try to decide what I want. Let him tease me a little? Or make him finish me off? All I have to do is ask, I know that—if I just ask for what I want, this man will give it to me.