by Anthology
Bang.
Squeal.
THUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP.
“Noooo.” Covering my face with my hands, I slide over to the edge of the bed. I can’t handle this... this going on next door. I just can’t.
Raising a fist, I briefly contemplate knocking on the wall... not loudly enough to be rude, although clearly they’ve thrown that convention out the window. No, just loudly enough to point out that maybe, possibly, some of their neighbours are trying to sleep.
Instead, I let my hand fall back into my lap, but no matter what I do, I can’t block out the sounds. The sex sounds.
It shouldn’t be such a big deal—shouldn’t bother me so much. I shouldn’t be straining, trying to overhear. I should just buy some earplugs and go back to sleep.
I can’t. And it’s not logical to lie to myself, so I admit—within the confines of my own skull—that I’m actually fascinated because I’ve never been this close to... to such shenanigans before.
The thumping stops momentarily, and I breathe a sigh of relief. Surely this can’t continue forever. This is my third night in my new apartment, and I’ve endured the nocturnal party each evening. But surely my new neighbours aren’t that... avid. Right? It’s not possible to have that kind of stamina. Surely there would be fatigue involved at some point. Possibly some chafing.
I chose this apartment building after extensive research because it was clean, in a new neighbourhood, and represented the ideals that I wished to embody as I embarked on my career. It wasn’t cheap, but I had a substantial amount in my bank account. The funds deposited by my mother before she’d deemed me an adult and sent me out into the world were largely untouched, since I’d received full funding for school. And now, at twenty years of age, a doctorate in each hand, I had numerous lucrative paths to pursue.
Point being, I do not find it acceptable to have to listen to the cat-like yowls of my neighbors fornicating at three in the morning, every morning. A human needs seven hours of sleep to perform at maximum capacity.
As if they have a direct line to my thoughts, the thumping starts up again. At first it’s just a few soft bumps that could possibly be construed as the bed settling under the weight of their inhabitants.
But then the thumping starts again. And the yowls.
“Hold on to the headboard. If you move your hands, I’ll spank your ass.” The male voice is so clear, it could be right there in the room with me, and my mouth falls open with disbelief.
Did he really just threaten to spank her? Is she in trouble? Should I call for help?
But within moments her mewls of pleasure answer my question. She’s not in trouble. Not even a little.
A sense of melancholy descends into my chest, and at the same time an ache appears between my thighs. Surely it’s just a primal response to the sounds of mating. That’s what my intellect tells me.
My body says something entirely different. If a twenty year old virgin body is to be trusted.
Virgin. Yes, I’m twenty years old, and have never been touched. And when I say never, I do mean never. I’ve never had sex, never been kissed, never even held hands or gone a date with a boy. Starting college at fifteen hinders one’s opportunities, after all. Plus, I’ve never deluded myself—my purpose in this world is in the ranks of academia. Not in the pleasures of the flesh.
But listening to grunts and groans of ecstasy... it’s more than I can handle.
I’ll go knock on the door. I’ll just request that they keep their... ahh... amour to a quieter level.
Just a few deep breaths to calm myself first. I would never survive if my new neighbours knew that my body had grown aroused from listening to them make love.
Wiping damp palms on the thighs of my pajamas, I slide my glasses onto my nose and make my way across the hall. The ruckus is even louder out here, and I feel blood rushing into my cheeks.
What must it be like, to not care who knows that you’re doing... that?
None of my business. Steeling myself, I walk the few steps to the next door, and knock. If anything, the sex noises just get louder. Starting to become irritated, I knock again, harder. Still nothing.
Finally I give in, in a way that I never do, and pound on the door with my fist. It feels good, slamming my hand into the wood, frustration dissipating with every smack.
The noises stop, replaced by heavy footsteps. I school my face into a polite smile, ready to be a friendly little neighbour, even though that’s not at all what I feel like. I feel tired, irritated, and aroused.
But if we all went around acting on unrestrained emotions, we’d be no better than a bunch of monkeys. And in my current circumstances, the word monkey makes me think of a slang term I once came across—monkey sex.
Hot, sweaty monkey sex.
Dear God, my brain is broken.
“Do you know what time it is?” The door before me swings open, revealing...
Oh. My. God.
Revealing a greying man, probably in his later forties, given his physical appearance. He’s decently attractive, if you ignore the thirty some year age difference between us.
He’s also sweaty and absolutely, completely naked. And absolutely, completely aroused.
I have doctorates in astrophysics and medicine. I have an IQ of 182. But I have absolutely no idea how to deal with the sight in front of me.
The man grins as my eyes stray to his throbbing member, then snap back up to his face. His own eyes rake over me, lingering in the area of my breasts, causing my hands to clutch at the lapels of my pajama top.
“Cute.” The man smirks at my sleepwear. I feel a steel rod snap into place in my spine.
Get a grip, Mari. Surely that big brain of yours can find a connection to your tongue!
“What the fuck’s going on?” A sulky female voice emanates from the apartment behind the man, and then a woman is peering around him. She’s naked too, though I’m saved from that visual by the sheet that’s clutched to her breasts.
Her hair is long and blonde, and in quite the disarray. Slumberous blue cat eyes regard me thoughtfully, lips twisting into a smirk, and I will myself to hold still.
“Oh, it’s you. The brain trust.” Her smirk widens.
“I... yes.” I’m surprised she—Jenny—recognized me. I taught two of her freshman classes, despite the fact that she’s a couple of years older than I am, but she skipped half of them, and was more interested in the boys sitting around her than my lectures when she was there. And even then, it had been hard not to notice that the boys were interested in her right back.
Blonde, popular, sexy—Jenny was all the things that I was not. And now I’d seen her naked.
Awkward.
“What do you want?” As if just realizing that her man is naked in front of me, she shoves the sheet in front of him, which only causes her perky breasts to be revealed. I roll my eyes skyward, trying not to look at either of them.
“I... I’m wondering if perhaps you would mind keeping it down.” I swallow thickly when silence greets my request. A silence that drags on until I can’t help but look back down.
“What, you have a hot date tomorrow?” Jenny looks like she’s channeling Regina George, her face is so mean. “Need your beauty sleep?”
“No.” What does that have to do with anything? “But a human woman my age needs an average of seven hours of sleep to maintain her health and mental well-being.”
“What?” The man stares at me, incredulous, before turning to Jenny. “Did she really just say that?”
“Yeah she did.” Jenny turns to her lover with an eye roll directed at me. Looking down his body, she fastens her gaze on his erection and runs her tongue suggestively over her lips. “Come on. Let’s go take care of that little problem for you.”
“But she’s so sweet. It’s adorable.” The two of them examine me as though I’m a kitten, the man with something I surmise must be lust, Jenny with more than a hint of aggression.
And then the door slams in my face. I
could knock again, demand that they honor my request...
This encounter has told me that I’m not likely to get very far. I have no choice but to turn back to my apartment and, given the late hour, return to bed.
Alone.
Always alone.
If my mother was still in my life, she would have reminded me that people who spend their nights fornicating are little more than animals and that I am far above them. I have a loftier purpose.
But she wouldn’t have said it with love, just her belief that the genes she selected for me—hers and the ones belonging to a carefully chosen, anonymous sperm donor—were superior.
Right this moment, I can find no comfort in that. I should be celebrating, with my doctorates in hand and life before me.
But I’m not. Right this moment, I want to be normal. I want to a fornicating animal. I don’t want to be the girl that the neighbours look at like a freak.
Intellect can’t push my emotions aside as I stiffly return to my bedroom. I’m straightening the sheets when I again hear voices on the other side of the wall.
“Why’d you slam the door?” It’s the man’s voice, a low rumble through the drywall. “She was cute. I wanted to ask her to join us.”
“Do you have a nerd fetish now? I’m into role playing, but I’m not wearing those horrible pajamas for you.” I can see Jenny’s shudder in my mind’s eye, and I stand, suddenly cold, frozen in place. “Besides, she wouldn’t have a clue what to do with you.”
“Maybe a little innocence isn’t a bad thing.” I’d have to be deaf to miss the note in the man’s voice, the fact that he’s goading her. Jenny, however, does, or else simply chooses to ignore it, secure in her own plentiful charms.
“She has no friends, she dresses like a grandma, and unless she’s talking about astrology, she can’t hold a conversation.”
“Astrology?”
“Yeah. You know. The stars and shit.”
“I think you mean astronomy.”
“Whatever.”
I’m slightly incredulous at the lack of brainpower of my one time student. Do men really prize breasts enough to overlook this?
“My point is, she’s like a doctor or something, and she’s still, like, a teenager. She’s a freak. And probably a virgin, too.”
A virgin. According to Jenny Paul, age twenty two, being a virgin is a fate worse than freakdom.
I’m not entirely sure that she’s wrong.
“So she’s like Doogie Hauser.” The man sounds more intrigued by my lack of experience than anything, but I know that can’t be right. No man in his right man wants a girl my age who can name the parts of penis but has no idea what to do with one.
“Who?”
“Doogie Hauser, MD. This old show about a sixteen year old doctor... never mind.” He breaks off with a laugh. “You’re too young to know.”
“I am young.” The promise is rich in Jenny’s voice. “Young. Supple. And don’t forget kinky.”
“How could I forget kinky?” The man growls, and Jenny squeals. “Come to daddy. You’ve been a bad girl. You need a spanking.”
Thump.
Bang.
This is book two of the A Virgin, A Billionaire and a Marriage series. It is a category length novel that stands alone- no cliffhangers!
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About the author
Lauren Hawkeye/ Lauren Jameson never imagined that she'd wind up telling stories for a living... though when she looks back, it's easy to see that she's the only one who is surprised. Always "the kid who read all the time", Lauren made up stories about her favorite characters once she'd finished a book... and once spent an entire year narrating her own life internally. No, really. But where she was just plain odd before publication, now she can at least claim to have an artistic temperament.
Lauren lives in the Rocky Mountains of Alberta, Canada with her husband, toddler, pit bull and idiot cat, though they do not live in an igloo, nor do they drive a dogsled. In her nonexistent spare time Lauren can be found knitting (her husband claims that her snobby yarn collection is exorbitant), reading anything she can get her hands on, or sweating her way through spin class. She loves to hear from her readers!
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TAINTED
The Blood Lily Chronicles, Book 1
By Julie Kenner
Website ~ Facebook ~ Newsletter
When Lily Carlyle set out to kill a child molester, she never expected to die and be resurrected as an assassin. Especially not as an assassin charged with fighting the forces of darkness in the ultimate battle of good against evil. It’s the key into heaven, she’s told. And in light of her sins, without that key, she’s doomed to an eternity of suffering.
But even in the demon world it’s sometimes hard to tell your ally from your enemy.
And when Lily finds out the truth . . . well, there really will be hell to pay.
PROLOGUE
. . . And by her hand that which would be open may be closed . . .
—The Prophecy of the Orb
Can I just say that dying sucks? All that bullshit about seeing the light and having this final moment of inner peace, blah, blah, blah. It’s crap.
Dying is messy and terrifying and it hurts like hell.
I ought to know. After all, I was the one on that basement floor in a puddle of my own blood and bile. And there was no peace, no light, no anything. Nothing except the ice-cold knowledge that the sins I’d racked up in the last twelve or so hours were more than sufficient to push me through the gates of hell.
Forget everything else I’d done in my twenty-six years on this earth, good and bad. You go out planning to kill a man—even a man as vile as Lucas Johnson—and your fate is pretty much sealed.
From a practical standpoint, the moment of death is a little bit late to start getting all profound and reflective. As they say, what’s done is done. But that doesn’t matter, because even if you’re the least introspective person on the planet, you still go through the whole Psych 101 rigmarole. You tell yourself that maybe you should have said your bedtime prayers once in a while. You wonder if all those torture-porn horror movies you watched while your boyfriend copped a feel weren’t actually a sneak peek into what hell had to offer.
In other words, you get scared.
When you’re living, you might tell God to take a flying leap for putting your mother six feet under when you were only fourteen. For leaving you with a stepfather who decided to cuddle up with Jack Daniel’s because he no longer had a loving wife in his bed. For leaving you in charge of a pigtailed little half sister who thought you hung the moon.
And for making you arrogant enough to swear that you’d protect that precious kid no matter what, even though that wasn’t a promise you could keep. Not when there are monsters like Lucas Johnson trolling the earth. Monsters who suck the life from little girls.
For all those reasons, you might turn your back on God, and think you’re oh-so-righteous for doing it. But you’d be wrong.
Trust me. I know.
I know, because even as my life faded, the fires of hell nipped at my toes.
In the end, I got lucky. But then again, luck is all a matter of perspective, isn’t it?
CHAPTER ONE
I woke up in total darkness, so out of sorts that I was convinced I’d pulled on the wrong skin along with my blue jeans. Couple that with the fact that anvils were about to split my head wide open, and I think it’s fair to say that I wasn’t having a good time. I tried to roll over and get my bearings, but even the tiniest movement kicked the hammers in my head to triple-time, and I abandoned the effort before I even got started.
&
nbsp; “Fucking A,” I said, and immediately wished I hadn’t. I’m no American Idol contestant, but my voice doesn’t usually inflict extreme pain. Today, it did.
Today? Like I even knew what day it was. Or where I was. Or, for that matter, why I was.
I’d died, after all.
Hadn’t I?
Disoriented, I lurched up, only to be halted before I’d barely moved.
I tried again, and realized my wrists and ankles were firmly tied down. What the—?
My heart pounded against my rib cage, but I told myself I wasn’t afraid. A big hairy lie, but it was worth a try. I mean, I lied to myself all the time, right? Sometimes I even believed my own shit.
Not this time. I might have dropped out of high school, but I know when to be scared, and tied up in the dark is definitely one of those times. There was no nice, cozy explanation for my current sitch. Instead, my mind filled with high-def NC-17 images of a long, thin blade and a twisted expression of cruel delight painted on a face I knew only too well. Lucas Johnson.
Because this had to be about revenge. Payback for what I’d tried to do. And now I was going to die at the hand of the man I’d gone out to kill.
No, no, no.
No way was I dying. Not now. Not when I’d survived this far.
I didn’t have a clue why I was still alive—I remembered the knife; I remembered the blood. But here I was, living and breathing and, yeah, I was a little immobile at the moment, but I was alive. And I intended to stay that way.
No way was I leaving my little sister to the mercy of the son of a bitch who’d raped and brutalized her. Who’d sent her black roses and mailed erotic postcards. All anonymous. All scary as hell. She would see him in stores, lurking around corners, and by the time she screamed for help, he was gone.
The cops had nailed his sorry ass, but when the system had tossed him on a technicality, I watched Rose come close to losing it every single day. I couldn’t stand the thought that the system had kicked the monster free when he should have been in a cage, locked away so he couldn’t hurt any more little girls. So he couldn’t hurt Rose.