by Mona Cox
Anything to have the upper hand with her. It seems to happen so rarely when I'm around her, I have to take the advantage whenever I can find it.
“Well, I can’t wait to be surprised,” she says softly.
She’s quiet the rest of the way. Sure, she’s talking and smiling, but I can tell she’s thinking about something. She’s tossing the thought around in her head, but not mentioning it for the rest of the ride.
She keeps it quiet even while we sit down to dinner.
It’s partway through dinner before the experimental drug comes up again. “How many other people are taking it?” Gisele asks as we dig into the Kumamoto Bay Oysters.
“I’m not sure, to be honest,” I say. “I know my doctor is overseeing at least three more patients who are taking it, but I don’t know how many other doctors have patients under their supervision. I tried to break my drug and alcohol addiction so many times over the years, and just couldn’t kick it no matter what rehab clinic I enrolled in or what psychologist I saw. This drug, as bizarre as some of its side effects are, has truly changed my life around.”
“Does it bother you that I’m drinking wine?” she asks, holding up her glass of blush wine.
“No, although I’ll tell you now, bourbon is still hard for me to smell. That was always my alcohol of choice, although in the depths of my worst addiction, I’d drink anything you'd hand me. I don’t remember a lot of it, but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that I was drinking cough syrup or cooking wine.”
“Oh yikes,” she says, wrinkling her nose at me. “That’s nasty.”
“Addicts usually are!” I say cheerfully. I’m not ashamed of my past—it’s made me who I am, even if I have no desire to repeat those years.
Once we finish with our meal, I pull her out onto the dance floor, moving with her to the crooning of the jazz singer and band. She feels right in my arms—more right, more real, than anything I’ve ever had before.
I dip her in my arms, and I hear light applause around us. I look up and realize that we’ve gathered a bit of an audience. I straighten, pulling Gisele upright, and she waves, blushing, as I take her off the dance floor.
We leave the restaurant, out into the crisp night air, and I’m wondering how I can convince her to come back to my place, when she asks, “Want to come back to my apartment?”
“Yes,” I breathe. I want that more than anything.
14
Gisele
As we walk into my apartment, my knees are knocking together. I haven’t been this nervous since George asked me out on a date in seventh grade. I want Stone to fuck me, and this time, I want him to remember me. I have been watching him all evening, and he isn’t high on the experimental drug, at least not that I can see. His eyes are focused, even if they seem to spend most of their time focusing on my tits, and he seems completely aware of his surroundings.
Finally, I’m going to have my night with Stone – not in a bathroom stall, not in a nameless hotel room, but in my apartment, in my bed. I pull him into the house, slamming the door closed behind him, and began pulling at his tux, wanting to rip it off him with my teeth. Stone in a tux is sexier than ten James Bonds put together.
But, he stops me, his hand on my shoulder. Why is he stopping me? I blink, staring up at his face through a haze of red desire.
“Tonight, I finally get to remember you. Tonight, I get to make you mine.”
I nod, trying to keep my mind focused on his words and where he could possibly be going with this, and not focused on getting his cock into my mouth, but I’ll be honest, this was much harder than my Honors English final in 12th grade, and I’d thought that was going to kill me off.
“I want to do this the old-fashioned way.”
That clears a little more of the fog out. That sounds…decidedly un-fun.
“Old fashioned?” I repeat. I’m hoping this doesn’t mean he presses a kiss to my forehead and walks out. Please oh please oh please…
“No penetration tonight. Just you and I, mouths on each other, pleasuring each other. Let’s take it slow.”
Ohhhhhh…this means I do get to put my mouth around that delicious cock of his.
“Deal!” I say and start dragging him towards the bedroom.
Oh yeah, this time around, you’re not following me inside. Not yet. Let me try him out and see how he fucks sober.
Don’t worry, Stone will probably start talking to you right as soon as he wakes up…
15
Stone
I wake up, my arm under Gisele's head, the pins and needles throbbing up and down my arm from it having gone to sleep long ago. I slide my arm out from underneath her, shaking it to get the tingling sensation out, and then grab my phone off the nightstand. I’m awake now; it’s time to see what the world has done without me over the past 12 hours.
I thumbprint my way into my phone and then start flicking through it.
Hold on …
Google Alerts has gone crazy on me. I usually get a few each day, although after my cock-waving move last week, I've certainly gotten a lot more. But this morning …
Well, I’m not going to say that it’s as much as it was last week, but I also don’t know if it’s much less.
Tell-All Blush Magazine Article…
The Internet Goes Crazy With New Revelations…
Is This For Real? Or is Gisele Taylor Trying To Sell Us a Bill of Goods?
My chest hurts, and I think for a moment that I might hyperventilate, but staring at these headlines…
Surely not. Surely this isn’t what I think it is.
It can’t be. Gisele, lying next to me, each breath an adorable little snore; Gisele, dancing in my arms last night; Gisele, cumming in my arms…
Hands trembling, I click on an article at random and start skimming it.
Oh Gisele, how could you?
There, she talks about how I’m taking this experimental drug and how I’m high half the day and how I don’t remember doing things and she’s interviewing doctors about the drug and she’s…
She’s betraying my trust. Every word, every syllable on the page is a betrayal.
I vault out of bed, shoving my feet into my shoes before realizing that I have to put on my socks first, and okay, maybe my boxer briefs and my pants and then my shoes would be helpful and I’m throwing the clothing on, not even caring, just wanting to get out of there, away from the person I had trusted, the one person in the world that I’d told, and who’d broken that trust, who’d taken it and smashed it into smithereens, all to get a story, a headline that no one else could get—Exclusive! Why Stone Slayer Pulled a Slayer (And the Truth on Whether It’ll Happen Again)—and using me, oh God, so calculating and cold. I’m used to people wanting to be close to me because of what they think they can get from me. I’m used to people conniving to be around me so they can get what they want and fuck the rest, but I’d trusted Gisele and I don’t know why.
Magnetism?
Stupid Stone. Stupid, stupid Stone. Trusting a reporter. The most rookie mistake in the book.
And as I’m fleeing the room, I can hear Gisele calling out to me, asking me what’s going on. I must’ve woken her up somewhere along the way, but I don’t stop. I can’t stop. I have to run and I can’t go back.
My better-than-cocaine Gisele has turned out to be the most destructive force of all.
16
Gisele
Tears are dripping off the end of my nose, which officially makes me the most pathetic Gisele who's ever walked the face of the planet. Here I am with Apollo and Ashley—who I’ve taken to calling Ashlo in my mind because they’re never more than three inches from each other’s sides—and Kathy. We’re at one of the hottest bars in NYC—the Pink Elephant—and I should be laughing and drinking and having a grand ol’ time.
Instead, I’m a mess. Like, a mess.
Have I mentioned that I have tears dripping endlessly off the end of my nose? I think my bourbon is half bourbon, half tears at this point, but
I can’t seem to stop.
“What were you thinking?” Kathy asks, unsympathetically. And, not for the first time. She’s asked me some variation on this question three times already. I'll admit that so far, I’ve just been shrugging and bawling harder as my “answer,” so I suppose I deserve this endless string of questioning.
“I thought I was helping!” I wail. A passing waitress pats me on the shoulder consolingly before moving away to serve another customer.
Even complete strangers are trying to make me feel better.
Have I mentioned the endless tears yet? Like those recycling fountains that never run out of water, my tears are just streaming down my face.
I'm not a pretty crier—let’s not kid ourselves on that topic.
“How?” Kathy asks, perplexed.
I want to throw something at her head—how dare she take his side?—but a small part of me (a tiny, eensy-weensy part of me) admits that she’s right.
God, I hate that.
“Everyone was so judgmental of him after he pulled a Slayer at that concert, I thought that by telling the world what was really going on, they’d stop judging him so harshly.”
“You mean, telling the world that he’s not in control of his own body and will do what anyone else wants him to while he’s high on drugs every day, that he’s somehow a more sympathetic character?”
I slump in my chair. I'll admit that my plan had some fatal flaws in it that I hadn’t exactly foreseen. I’d thought that Stone was just too noble, too good a person to tell the world the truth, and so I’d stand up for him. I’d tell everyone that he hadn’t meant to streak on stage, that he hadn’t meant to break about 50 obscenity laws, that it was all because he was trying so hard to kick his drug habit.
In retrospect, I should’ve realized that the mean-spirited denizens of the world would latch onto the part where he can’t control, or even remember his actions afterward, and roast him publicly for it. Of course that's obvious now.
Seven days ago? Not so much.
“I kind of feel like this is Blush’s fault,” the “lo” part of Ashlo rumbles. His voice is so deep; I swear to God, our table vibrates when he talks. “I hadn’t realized that you’d grown so close to him, and would care so much about how this article affected him.” Although he’d turned the everyday management of the magazine over to Ash, I also know that Ash runs almost everything by him, just to get his input and thoughts on topics.
Have I mentioned how sickening these two are together? That could’ve been Stone and I, dammit!
The water cycle speeds up.
“Why don’t we help you with your grand gesture?” Ash says.
“Grand gesture?” I repeat numbly.
“Yeah, in all of the Kindle books, there’s always a grand gesture at the end. Usually, it’s the guy doing it to get the girl back, but…” she shrugs. Yeah, no reason to finish that sentence. It's true; there’s not a damn thing that Stone needs to beg my forgiveness for. This is one story where the girl is going to have to play the part of the love-struck idiot, begging for forgiveness.
Kathy jumps in. “I want to help!” she says firmly. “What can I do?”
I forgive her for her harsh questioning earlier. I may have deserved every minute of it, but it was still hard to take. But when it counts, Kathy always has my back.
“I think I know…” Lo says.
17
Stone
I head into the lobby of the W and over to the elevators. Jamming my thumb into the elevator button, I curse under my breath. Another day of trying to convince people that I’m not under the influence of some godawful drug, another day of people giving me sidelong glances, wondering if I’m going to whip out my cock and start shaking it at them.
I jab at the elevator button again, impatient. Where is the fucking elevator? I just want to get up to my room and hide for a while. Pretend like Gisele Taylor doesn’t exist and I’ve never pulled a Slayer and the whole world doesn’t think I’m a freak show and—
Some mornings, I wake up
I roll over and I see
A gorgeous man lying next to me
I whip around and stare. There’s Gisele, strumming a guitar, wearing the same dress and boots as that one perfect night out on the town, that one night when I thought I’d conquered the world, and she’s singing.
Really, really bad singing.
Really, really bad guitar playing.
To be completely honest, I’m not sure which is worse—her singing or her strumming.
My hand falls away from the elevator button and I stare at her in shock.
I love the way his hair smells
I love its gorgeous length
Stone, you give me strength…
It’s my song. It’s the song I sang to her that night in the bar, but she’s changed the words, just like I’d changed them for her.
I want to tell her to fuck off, to go destroy someone else’s life … but I can’t.
A crowd is growing in the lobby, watching and singing along as Gisele sings her little heart out. When she hits a particularly awful note, I cringe and everyone laughs. But she keeps going. Despite her flushed red face, she doesn’t stop.
When she hits the final notes, blessedly dying away, the crowd whoops and whistles, and then men in suits begin “encouraging” people to move along.
Gisele walks up to me, setting the guitar up against the elevator doors. “Ashlo helped me,” she says out of nowhere.
“Rewrite my song?” I ask.
“Oh no, I butchered that all on my own,” she admits unrepentantly. “I’d hate to blame that on someone else. No, Ashlo contacted the management for the W and convinced them to block off the elevators for me. And to hire men to get people moving after I sang to you.”
“And who is this Ashlo person?” I ask, jealousy flaring up inside of me. Which is stupid, because I shouldn’t care. Gisele tried to destroy my life, and very nearly did. I shouldn’t care who Ashlo is.
But I do.
“Ashley and Apollo,” she says cheerfully. “I need to introduce you to them sometime. They’re sickeningly in love with each other. It’ll make you puke a little in your mouth every time you see them."
“But Stone,” and she’s growing more serious now, “I need to tell you…” She drags me over behind some potted trees to give us a little more privacy from the passersby. “I thought I was helping you when I wrote that article. I know that sounds stupid, and in retrospect, it really is. I was really naive when I wrote that article. I thought the world would be impressed by the lengths you go to, to control your addiction. You have been willing to give up so much—chunks of your life—in order to beat this addiction. I’ve never met anyone willing to do that before. I thought if the world knew that, they’d applaud you for it.
“Like I did.” She looks up into my eyes, serious. Tense. Willing me to believe her. I can feel the tension vibrating through her. “I was stupid and I was wrong, but I wasn’t malicious. Please, Stone, forgive me. I should’ve asked you. I should’ve run it past you. I thought it was going to be this wonderful surprise and instead, it was the worst mistake of my life. It should’ve occurred to me that you didn’t tell anyone because it wasn’t a good idea to. I’m sorry I didn’t think before I submitted it. It wasn’t my secret to reveal.”
I close my eyes against the pleading, the begging, and realize that I finally have my answer of why. For the last ten days, that’s all I’ve wanted to know was why she would betray me. I’ve woken up from dreams where I’d screamed that at her, shaking with anger.
She was right, it wasn’t her secret to share. She should’ve asked me. But at least I get it now.
“I made a fool out of myself today because I figured it was the least I could do, after I’d made a fool out of you. If you want me to go onto national television and sing that song again, I will. I’ll—”
“Please don’t,” I say before I can stop myself. “Really, you don’t have to sing that song again. Ever
again.”
She grins crookedly at me. “Say you forgive me and I’ll show you how much I appreciate it by never singing to you again. Not even Happy Birthday.”
I can’t help it. I pull her into my arms, feeling her amazing curves against my body, and whisper, “Deal. Not even Happy Birthday.” I stroke my arms over her body, hungry to feel her against me. My body drinks in the feel of her, like a cool drink under the burning noon sun, and I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to pull away from her again. Not touching her seems … impossible.
“I haven’t taken the pill since I read that article,” I say, my arms stroking down her body, trying to memorize the feel of her against me. My cock is so hard, I’m surprised I haven’t busted through my zipper.
“Not one?” she asks, muffled against my chest, but I don’t care. I don’t let her pull away.
“Nope, not one,” I say. “And I haven’t had a drink since. And if I was going to have a reason to drink, these last ten days have given them to me in spades. I just don’t want it anymore.”
“Does this mean that if I fuck you right now, you’ll remember it?”
My cock gets harder and I swear to God, I think my zipper is creaking under the strain.
“Every moment of it,” I promise.
She pulls far enough away from me to see my face. “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s get this party started.”
I scoop her up into my arms and this time, the elevator door opens as soon as I push on the button.
Thank you, Ashlo. Thank you for helping me become a Gisone.
And as we ride in the elevator, I show Gisele just how much I enjoy being one-half of Gisone - hmm, we may have to work on the name.
18
Gisele
Stone's fingers slide under my dress before the elevator doors can even shut. The cool air touching my skin is quickly replaced with the heat of his hand. He squeezes my ass cheek.