by Kaley Colter
She heard Colleen come in through the front door and smiled. Seeing Colleen always cheered her up, and she definitely needed cheering up. She had just made Colleen’s favorite cookies, too, and knew that her friend would burst into an exceptionally chatty and jovial mood the second the smell of Ellie’s oatmeal-toffee-chunk-butterscotch-chip cookies hit her nose.
But when Colleen came walking slowly into the kitchen, Ellie was shocked at the ashen look on her friend’s normally bright, cheerful face. Colleen didn’t even see Ellie as she threw her bag onto the kitchen table and went to grab a bottle of water from the fridge. Her normally slicked-back hair was in disarray, and her eyes looked red and puffy from crying.
Ellie jumped up from her chair and rushed over to Colleen. “Colleen, are you okay? What’s wrong?” she asked worriedly.
Colleen turned to look at Ellie and instantly broke down into tears. Ellie led her friend into the living room and sat down with her on the couch.
“What happened, Colleen?” Ellie asked, grabbing one of her hands and holding it between hers. “Please, talk to me.”
“Oh, Ellie. It’s my dog, Charlie. He has cancer. The vets thought they got it all in the last surgery, but we went in for a checkup today and they told me it came back.”
Ellie squeezed her friend’s hand in sympathy. She knew that Charlie was the only thing Colleen really had in her life. She was single, and her entire family was overseas. Ellie couldn’t even begin to imagine the kind of bond Colleen shared with her beloved dog. “But can’t they perform another surgery? Maybe they can get it for good this time?”
Colleen wiped at her eyes with her hand. “They can. They even told me that there’s a good chance that with a second surgery, he’ll make a full recovery. But I can’t afford the surgery. And I just don’t know what to do.”
Ellie nibbled on her bottom lip, trying to come up with a solution. “Maybe…maybe you could ask Nick to help you with the money? You know he loves you and considers you family. You don’t think he would be glad to help?”
Colleen shook her head sadly. “He paid for the first surgery. And he wouldn’t even let me pay him back. I can’t ask him again. You understand, don’t you?”
Ellie nodded. She most certainly understood where Colleen was coming from. “And you don’t have any savings you could draw from?”
“I have next to nothing in my savings account. It’s completely drained. I send money back to my family in Romania every month, and the extra money I’ve had to spend on Charlie’s medications has left me with even less. I can only cover half of the surgery.”
Ellie closed her eyes and sighed. She knew what she had to do. “How much is the surgery?”
“They told me it would be around one thousand.”
“And you can pay for five hundred?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll loan you the other five hundred.”
Colleen’s eyes widened. She shook her head vehemently. “No, Ellie. I’m not taking money from you. I know you’ve had a hard enough time yourself.”
Ellie squeezed Colleen’s hand. “You’re going to take it, Colleen. It’s your best friend in the whole world we’re talking about. And you can pay me back. So, when you really think about it, I’m not even doing you a favor. Because everything I give you, you’re going to give me back, right?”
Colleen smiled through her tears. “Really? Can you really afford to loan it to me?”
Ellie tried not to let Colleen see how nervous she was. She really couldn’t afford it. The five hundred dollars that she would loan Colleen was all she had left. She wouldn’t be able to meet Banyon’s payment. “Really, Colleen. Take the money and go get Charlie healthy.”
Colleen wrapped her arms around Ellie in a big hug. “Thank you, Ellie. You have no idea what this means to me.”
Ellie smiled, rubbing Colleen’s back as the woman proceeded to squeeze all the air out of her lungs. “You’re welcome, Colleen.”
* * * *
It was the night before her first payment was due. It was late, but Ellie couldn’t sleep. She was curled up on the lounge chair beside her bed, trying to read a book, but failing to take in anything she was reading.
She tried to tell herself not to be so hopeless. She could recall several times when she and Marcus had not been able to make the payments. Marcus had always told her that the interest rate just went up, and that she’d have to take more shifts at the restaurant. Maybe Banyon would do the same thing now. But even though she had that to hope for, she couldn’t help but feel like she was in a very dangerous situation.
She wished Nick had been there that night. Although she would never have told him about her trouble with Banyon, just being near him would have calmed her. But Nick had told her that he would be late coming home that night, since a bid for a new project was due the beginning of next week and everyone had a lot to go over.
A knock at the door jolted her out of her troubled thoughts and she jumped as Nick walked softly into her bedroom.
She smiled. He was here. He would make everything okay.
“Hi, sweetheart,” he said, coming over to her and picking her up into his arms.
“Hi,” she said shakily.
Ellie clung to him tightly as he carried her up the stairs and into his bedroom.
“Why don’t you come to my room at night? I’ve told you time and again that I want you with me when I come home. That I want you lying next to me at night,” he said as he placed her gently on the sofa in his room.
She looked up at him timidly. “I…well I just never know if you’ll change your mind and want to be alone when you come home.”
He grabbed her chin in his hand and looked her in the eye. “I’m never going to change my mind, Ellie. I want you with me. Always. Understand?”
Ellie swallowed and nodded her head.
He sat beside her on the couch and she cuddled into his side, holding him tightly, hoping that he would make everything go away, that he would distract her from what awaited her tomorrow.
“Are you okay, baby?” he asked, running his hand over her hair. “Colleen tells me you’ve been a little preoccupied lately,” he said, turning her face so she would look up at him. “And I can tell from those pretty eyes of yours that you’ve got something on your mind. Something that’s making you upset.”
Ellie’s eyes glazed over with tears. She wanted to tell him. She wanted him to help her sort out the mess she made of her life. But she wouldn’t let herself drag him into her problems.
“No, everything’s fine,” she said, swallowing back her tears.
Nick looked unconvinced. “I don’t believe you,” he said. “Something’s wrong, and I want you to tell me what it is.”
Ellie paused, searching for a way to explain her mood. “I…just have that meeting with Marcus stuck in my head. That’s all. It’s just going to take me a while to get over.”
Nick swept the hair away from her face and caressed her jaw. “There’s no rush, sweetheart. I can’t imagine how difficult it is to deal with what you’ve gone through.”
Ellie looked up at him as he continued stroking her face. She inhaled his deep, woodsy aroma and let herself be soothed by the scent as her eyes travelled up his muscular arms, across his broad shoulders, over the sharp lines of his jaw, and finally settled on his lips. She licked her bottom lip and swallowed. She needed him.
She reached up impulsively to brush her lips over his, shivering as soon as they touched. Nick swept his hand up her back and rested it around her neck, and Ellie could feel something in herself give way when he started to probe at the seam of her lips with his tongue. She wanted to taste him, wanted to become immersed in his taste and his smell and his touch. She opened her lips in surrender, moaning when he plunged his tongue deep inside.
He would make her forget. She would lose herself in his embrace and everything would be okay. Her nipples hardened into painfully stiff peaks as she thrust her breasts against his chest, and she could feel more
and more heat pool between her thighs with every passing second. She climbed onto his lap, whimpering at the friction between their bodies and pressing her pussy hard against his groin. She was building herself up into a frenzy, needing to feel him everywhere, needing for him to take her and lay claim to her in every way possible.
He reached down to unbutton her shirt, fumbling with the buttons before simply ripping them apart and throwing the shirt aside. He grabbed her breasts with his hands, tugging briefly at her engorged nipples and then reaching down to her waist, trying to blindly unbutton her jeans and shove them down her legs. There was no preamble. He wanted her as badly as she wanted him.
She tore her mouth away from his and stood before him, naked from the waist up, lungs heaving for air. She quickly unbuttoned her pants, kicking them down her legs and then stripping off her panties. Then she stilled herself, completely naked, inviting Nick’s gaze on her body.
Nick leaned forward on the couch, a look of pure lust written on his face. “What do you want, Ellie?”
She walked away from the couch and leaned over the bed with her legs apart. “Please,” she whispered. “Please take me in the ass.”
* * * *
Ellie’s blatant need was making Nick unbelievably hard. He got up from the couch and walked over to the bed, smoothing his hand over her ass. She had leaned over the bed with her legs wide apart, all spread out for him to see. Her pussy was glistening with wetness, and her clit was pouting out between her folds, begging to be touched.
He spread her buttocks apart, smiling as she pushed her ass back further into his hands. “Are you sure you want this?” he asked softly, rubbing her back hole with his finger.
Ellie buried her face into the bed. “Yes, I want it,” she answered, her voice a strangled whisper.
“Tell me exactly what you want, Ellie.”
“I want…I want to feel your cock in my ass.”
Nick needed to put his cock inside her. Now. Lying there, desperate and begging, Ellie was pure fucking temptation, and he would sure as hell give her what she needed.
He undressed himself, then reached over to the nightstand, pulled out a bottle of K-Y Jelly and coated his shaft in lube. Ellie remained still. She hadn’t changed her position. She hadn’t even craned her neck to try and see what he was doing. Nick smiled. She was waiting in perfect submission.
After admiring the gorgeous view of her backside, Nick stepped forward and brought his hand down on her ass. Hard. Harder than he ever had before. Ellie screamed, and he recognized it instantly as the same scream that she made when he was fucking her. He looked down at her pussy, and his erection grew all the more rigid when he saw her wetness coating her thighs and dripping down her legs. She loved it. He knew. He brought his hand down again, and again she screamed, digging her hands into the comforter, but remaining still, giving herself over to him in absolute trust.
He was relentless. He smacked her ass again and again, harder each time, until the fleshy mounds were swollen and reddened and her screams were hoarse and raw. And then he stopped to part her buttocks and thrust his finger all the way inside her ass in one firm push. He wasn’t gentle with her this time, and he didn’t go slow. He gave her what she wanted. And from the way she bucked her hips, he knew she wanted even more.
“I need to stretch you so you can take my cock,” he said to her, his voice a deep rumble, as he added a second finger and thrust it inside.
Ellie was sobbing with pleasure. He could see her squeezing her thighs together, and knew that the ache in her pussy must be driving her wild. He pumped his fingers in and out and then he added a third, and when he saw that it only added to her pleasure, he knew that she was ready.
He withdrew his fingers and leaned over her, guiding his rock-hard shaft to her back hole. When he pressed the head of his cock against her, she tensed, and he grabbed her waist in his hands and squeezed reassuringly.
“Try and relax, kitten. Tell me if I’m hurting you, and I promise to stop, okay?” Ellie nodded, and her body visibly relaxed as she expelled a large breath.”That’s it,” he praised, pressing the head of his shaft against her back entrance once more. “Let go, baby. Let me inside your sweet little ass.”
He knew from the way the head of his cock pushed past her tight circle of muscle and into her ass that she was offering absolutely no resistance. He gritted his teeth as her ass squeezed down on him, and it took an extraordinary amount of effort to push the rest of his shaft into her slowly rather than force himself all the way inside with one quick thrust.
He stopped when he heard Ellie cry out into the bed. “Am I hurting you?” he managed to grit out.
“No,” Ellie said, panting in desperation. “No, no, please, don’t stop. I want it all the way in. Please put it all the way in.”
Nick lost all control. He slammed his hips forward until his entire cock was buried deep inside her. Ellie screamed.
He had to close his eyes and will himself to remain still so she could adjust to his cock. Her ass was like a fist around his dick, and it was all he could do to restrain himself from violently pounding into her.
After seeing Ellie’s body settle, he withdrew his cock slightly from her ass and pushed it back inside, swearing softly as pleasure shot through his groin. But she was squirming beneath him, ready for more, so he started thrusting into her more rapidly, pulling out more and slamming forward harder each time. Ellie was crying out softly with each thrust. Her arms were stretched out before her, her hands were tightly gripping the mattress, and her eyes were shut firmly together. He could tell that she was overcome.
“You like my cock in your ass, don’t you, kitten?” he rasped as he pounded his hips into her.
“Yes,” she cried. “Yes, I like it. Please, don’t stop.”
But Nick did stop. He pulled out of her ass, and held her down firmly when she tried to get up from the bed and see what he was doing.
“Stay put,” he commanded, reaching down to capture her clit between his thumb and forefinger and give it a quick pinch. Ellie let out a tortured moan and squeezed her legs together.
He walked over to his nightstand and pulled out a large dildo from one of the drawers. He had turned Ellie’s face in the opposite direction when he had forced her back on the bed, so she was completely oblivious as to what he had retrieved.
“Spread your legs,” he told her, slapping the back of her thighs when he returned to the bed.
Ellie obeyed him instantly. In one quick thrust, he slid his cock back into her ass. And then he rubbed the head of the dildo around her pussy, and let out a low, throaty laugh when he saw her eyes shoot open in surprise. She started to lean up on her elbows to see what was in his hands, but she immediately checked herself and lay back down. Nick smiled. She was becoming a perfect little submissive.
“I’m going to put this dildo in your pussy while I fuck your ass. Would you like that, Ellie?” Nick asked as he pushed the dildo further into her.
Ellie bucked her hips, trying to force herself down on the dildo. “Yes,” she moaned. “Yes, please, I would like it.”
The dildo was big, nearly as big as his cock, and as he rocked his hips into her ass, he slid the dildo deeper and deeper into her pussy. When Ellie started thrashing her body frantically beneath him, he slammed the object forward, pushing it all the way into her pussy at the same moment that he buried his cock all the way in her ass. Ellie let out a strangled cry.
Nick could feel the dildo against his shaft. The only thing separating them was a thin barrier of flesh, and he knew that Ellie must feel stretched, filled to her limit.
He could feel her muscles tensing, clamping down hard in sharp pleasure. He knew that she was close. He left the dildo buried deep in her pussy, and started putting all of his force into his thrusts. He was fucking her ass fast and hard, and he could feel the pressure building up in his groin, knew that his own climax was creeping up on him.
Ellie’s whole body shuddered as she came. She opened her mout
h, but she couldn’t even make a sound. She was consumed by such a penetrating, all-encompassing pleasure that it looked to Nick like she might forget to breathe, and as he watched her bite down hard on her lip and buck her hips through the waves of her orgasm, he spiralled into his own release.
He buried himself to the hilt and jerked his hips as he shot the jets of his release deep inside her ass. Ellie gasped as his hot cum flooded inside her, and Nick had to throw his arms on the bed and lean down over her as the intensity of his climax took the breath out of his lungs.
He closed his eyes and remained still for a few minutes, completely overwhelmed and unable to move. When he came to his senses and leaned up off the bed, he realized he was still buried inside her. He withdrew from her slowly, rubbing his hand over her hips as she began to moan, and then gently removed the dildo from her pussy.
He walked to the bathroom and returned with a washcloth, tenderly wiping her pussy and ass and then collapsing beside her on the bed. He pulled her up to the head of the bed and wrapped his arms around her.
She was still hazy from her orgasm. Her cheeks were flushed, her pupils were dilated, and she was breathing hard between her parted, swollen lips. He traced his fingertips over her cheeks and smiled.
“You’re amazing, sweetheart,” he said quietly. “So giving. So trusting.”
Ellie smiled up at him. “Really?”
“Really.” He paused, letting his eyes linger on her face. “I love you, Ellie.”
Ellie jerked her eyes up to his. She looked surprised, and even a little bit sad. He was worried he might have scared her by telling her, but she had to have known that he loved her. That he had loved her since the moment he laid eyes on her.
Ellie was still staring up at him, her eyes wide, looking a little unsure. But after processing what he had said, she gave him the sweetest smile in the world and curled herself deeper into his chest. “I love you, too,” she whispered.