Cherry Surprise!
by Tuesday Taboo
Copyright 2014 Tuesday Taboo
All Rights Reserved
Cherry Surprise!
Book design by Tuesday Taboo
Cover Images Copyright 2014 by Tuesday Taboo
WARNING! - The subject matter in this story is incredibly TABOO!
All of the characters are over the age of 18 and none of them are blood relatives.
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I don’t know how any of this happened. The police want me to try and explain it and so I will, but that doesn’t mean that I understand any of it. And of course, I have to be careful to leave out the part about my step-dad. I don’t think the cops would like that, not one little bit!
He hasn’t been in the family long. I mean, I don’t even know why he wants me. I only know that he does.
My Mom calls him Jace. Everyone does. I don’t even know if that’s his real name or just a biker nickname, but it’s always been Jace to us.
My boyfriend and I had just graduated college, and we were driving through the Southwest. My Mom lives in Phoenix with her new husband, so I asked Michael if we could visit…
That was when the argument began. Michael didn’t like my step-dad. He said Jace was always making eyes at me, which I thought was bullshit. I mean, if I’d waited this long to love a guy, to really love him, why would I obsess over my own Dad?
I told Michael I was a virgin, that I was saving myself for him, but he didn’t look like he was so sure about that anymore.
Maybe that was because he knew that every time I closed my eyes I saw Jace’s big shoulders, his narrow hips, his cocky grin or the bulge in his jeans. Just thinking about the things he did to my Mom made me wet. I know a lot of people would think it’s gross, but I wanted my first time to be special, and I knew from the noises that came out of their bedroom whenever I slept over that Jace could really make it a night to remember.
I suppose I should be sorry for what happened, but I’m not…
But maybe I’m getting ahead of myself.
Like I said, I’d had a fight with Michael. It wasn’t the first of our fights, but I didn’t know at the time that it would be our last. He’d always wanted to wander around the Southwest in a little rented car. It was his dream, I guess, but until I’d actually made all the sacrifices and worked a second job on the weekends to make it happen for him, I didn’t know that it definitely wasn’t one I shared with him. I’d busted my ass most of last year to try and scrimp and save to help his dream come true, but on the day of our last fight Michael finally let slip that things were way more different than I thought they were.
For a start, he hadn’t been saving. He’d been gambling. The money that I was breaking my back for had been finding its way into the pockets of bookies all over Chicago. I hadn’t known that when we started the trip a week before, of course, but if I’m honest with myself things had never really added up and I’d been suspicious for a while.
I wish I could say the fight was over money, though. We’d fought about money before, and if things had been different we probably would have again.
But we fought about Tracy. Tracy worked with Michael at the pizza place he managed, and until then I’d just assumed it was a work crush, a bit of harmless flirting, some teasing back and forth, the sort of silly thing that some girls and most guys get up to when their partner is away. Nothing sinister in it, I’d told myself, when I’d caught him texting her instead of spending time with me. Everyone needs a way of coping with life, and if Michael’s was to pretend that some little pizza flipping bimbo wanted to fuck him when she clearly didn’t, what harm was there in that?
Except, of course, she was doing exactly that. She and he fucked all over that stupid restaurant. That was one of the little details he made sure I knew, just to hurt me.
I don’t know exactly when he and Tracy started banging each other, how long before they went from flirtation to workplace affair, but they did. And it kept on keeping on. Once the truth came out in sunny Utah, of all places, Michael had been so relieved to have it out in the open that he’d told me everything, confided in my like I was still the best friend he thought I was and not the girl he’d just betrayed, trading me in for a slut that gave him blowjobs while he was taking pizza orders on the phone.
They were in love, he said. Not lust. Nothing temporary, for these two. Love. They were ready to commit, and he spoke about these things like he wanted my blessing. He was actually surprised by how angry I was, and when I didn’t fall to my knees right there in the hotel room and thank him sincerely for his “honesty”, I could tell by the way he was looking at me that he was wondering what was wrong with me.
“What did you expect?” I asked him, throwing my stuff, so recently unpacked, back into my suitcase. “Gratitude?”
He shrugged, with meant that I was on the right track. Maybe he hadn’t wanted me to actually be thankful, but that asshole thought he was doing the right thing. “I thought you’d be happy,” he said, confirming my thoughts. “Better for me to come out and tell you, right? This way you don’t have to wonder, and you don’t have to have me sneaking around behind your back…”
“Listen to yourself,” I growled. “The King of Confessions, aren’t you, all of a sudden? You didn’t mean to tell me, you idiot, you just got lazy and stupid and accidentally called me by that bitch’s name!”
“But-”
“And don’t you dare,” I interrupted, “convince yourself that dropping this on me out here, five hundred miles from anything I can even pretend is relevant to my actual life, is you doing me some sort of favor. My God, Michael. You think I haven’t already been wondering? Did you assume that I’d just forget all the late night shifts that were suddenly cropping up, or the fact that you weren’t pressuring me for sex the way you used to? Didn’t you think that any of that would ring alarm bells for me?”
He shrugged again, and that was when I decided that whatever was in the suitcase was all that I’d be taking, because if I had to look at this little jerk’s confused, somehow still smug face for a moment longer I was going to wring his skinny little neck and then go to jail for the privilege.
I went into the bathroom and locked the door behind me. I called my Mom, but she didn’t answer. I wanted to leave a voice message, but what was I going to say? I hung up instead and bit my lip, finally deciding that I’d call Jace.
No answer.
“Hi,” I said when the recording stopped. Somehow it was easier to leave a message with him than my Mom. “It’s me. I’m in Phoenix, at some crappy little motel called the Desert Gateway. Doesn’t matter, because I’m not staying here with Michael anymore. I’m going to try and get home to you guys, but if you get this maybe you could…”
I paused. Maybe he could what? I knew the answer to that, but there was no way that was ever going to happen.
“Maybe you could come and help me out,” I said, and then ended the call and left the bathroom, my tears already starting to dry.
Michael was there, his ear practically rammed against the door. “Who were you talking to?”
“I’m done,” I told him, ignoring his question and heading for the door.
I suppose, if I’m being honest, that part of me wanted him to call me back. I’d like to say I would have ignored him, just kept walking. Maybe I’d have picked up a bottle of water or the lamp near the door and hurled it at his head. But, there’s always the possibility that it would have
worked, too. Perhaps whatever he’d say would have unlocked my heart once more.
After all, it wasn’t as if this were a total shock. It was the timing, more than the events or the actual facts. I’d worked hard to make his dream come true, and one week in he’d decided it was time to bare his soul.
He did say something. My hand was on the doorknob when he said, “Wait, Rachel. Please.”
“What?”
“It’s dark out there…”
He was right, of course. We’d spent most of the day driving, and hadn’t pulled into the motel until almost nine at night. “So?”
“So it’s dangerous to walk around at night.”
“I’m not walking anywhere,” I told him. “I’m taking the damn car! You can rent another one in the morning, and when you do you can decide if you want to continue your little wanderlust vacation on your own or fly yourself back to Tracy.”
He shrugged again, a weak-willed gesture I’d never liked and I found that I was actively coming to despise. “Why wouldn’t I just fly Tracy out here, and continue the vacation with her?”
I admit that I’d have murdered him there, if I had the energy. Instead, I simply yanked open the door, pushed my suitcase out ahead of me, and slammed it behind me. The car was a red little Suzuki Something, and I was so pissed off with what I’d let that guy do to my heart that it wasn’t until I actually grabbed the door handle and tried to get in that I realized that the keys were back inside the hotel room.
I could see them clearly, in my mind’s eye. It had been my turn to drive last, and when we’d come in to the hotel room I’d set them on the sink. That had been before my shower, which had been before I tried to give Michael a holiday blowjob, which had been before he’d moaned that whore’s name when my mouth covered his prick.
Fuck. I left the suitcase by the car and stormed back to the hotel room, only to find that the jerk had locked that, too.
Great. I don’t know what I should have done. I mean, I know what I did do, but I don’t know if I’d do the same thing again. I’m not unhappy with how things turned out, mind you, but I can’t say for certain that if I were clearer headed or had the benefit of hindsight or whatever that I wouldn’t have just tried to go to the hotel manager and explain the situation, or called the police, or raised such a ruckus by banging on that hotel door that someone else did me the favor of calling the cops on my behalf.
Any of those things seems like a reasonable choice, right? But the one I made felt equally reasonable, and it had the extra benefit of putting immediate distance between me and Michael and his smug little shrugs and his lust for Tracy and his foolish expectations of the confession.
I went to my suitcase, grabbed it by the handle, and rolled it along behind me. And I started walking. Past the room, where I could tell that he’d already turned the TV on by the blue-gray glow behind the flimsy curtains. Past the other rooms, down the motel’s driveway and to the freeway, where I promptly faced south and headed off into the night.
Stupid? Yes? Fateful? Also yes.
Michael had been right about one thing, it was certainly dark outside. Night falls quickly in the desert, with the suddenness of a shut door, and sunset had been a couple of hours before. Once I got past the lights of the motel, there wasn’t anything to show me the way other than the soft illumination the moon provided. It wasn’t much, but it was more than enough for me to see where the side of the road ended, and it let me walk around instead of through the various debris that scattered the side of the road so near to town, half-full McDonald’s bags from God knows when, torn up truck tires from a big rig that hadn’t seen the need to haul their garbage away. That sort of thing.
More than walking, though, I was fuming. I absolutely stalked down that highway, hauling the suitcase behind me like a prisoner drags a ball and chain they’ve grown used to and don’t even feel anymore. I stormed away from Michael and the life we’d wanted to build, and I am proud to admit that I didn’t look back, not even once.
Not even when I heard the noises from the desert. I’m sure they were just coyotes or something, and I truly believe that they would have been more afraid of me than I was of them. Especially that night. After being treated the way I had, and the fact that Michael had just let me walked into the desert on my own without so much as getting in the car and asking me to come back, to take the car, to go home and have some time to myself. Well, after that particular episode of my life, anything that came out of the desert for me, be it beast or serial killer, they were going to regret their choice of prey.
But nothing happened. Whatever I’d disturbed thought better of bothering me, and I kept right on going. I’d taken my watch off and put it beside the keys on the sink, and now I realized that I’d left my phone behind too!
Fine. Whatever. He could have them all. I didn’t care what time it was. I didn’t care that my Mom had given me the watch, that it had once been my Grandmother’s, because the daughter I was supposed to have with Michael to pass it down to was never going to happen now, anyway.
So I walked.
There weren’t any cars, and when I heard the motorcycle engine coming up behind me, I didn’t really pay much attention. When the sweep of the headlight played across me I dutifully stepped further on to the side of the road, since getting run down on an otherwise deserted road I the middle of the night would be just my luck. Especially that night. I could see it, Michael hearing the news that I was dead, a freak accident. He’d call Tracy right away, of course, tell her everything in his smug shrug confession way, convince her that it was fate, that their love was meant to be.
Or maybe she’d convince him. Michael wasn’t capable of convincing anyone of anything, not really. Tracy would be wearing the pants, that much was for sure.
The bike got closer, and when it did I pushed even farther off the road, hoping that whoever it was wouldn’t see me, or that if they did they’d respect the fact that a girl walking angrily down a desert road dragging a suitcase behind her was not in the mood for any form of conversation, no matter how helpful the person thought they were being.
My stomach did a crazy flip flop, though, when I heard the distinct noise of the engine slowing down, the steady rev going to a rough coughing throaty rumble as whoever was riding hit the brakes and pulled in behind me. The headlight was bright, but I didn’t bother to turn around. It threw my shadow out in front of me, and I looked up at it as if it were the very picture of my future, long and dark and plodding through the distance totally on her own.
“Hey,” a voice I recognized called out, one that I found hard to ignore. I did anyway, but it carried the kind of tone that’s used to being obeyed, and it was pretty hard not to respond to it.
Instead to put my head down against the sudden chill of the desert at night and keep right on keepin’ on.
“Stop,” my Mom’s new husband called. Of course Jace would drop everything and ride out here as fast as he could. That was the way a man should treat a woman! I felt my stomach muscles quiver as I thought about what it would feel like to climb up onto his motorcycle with him.
The engine got louder. He’s leaving, I thought to myself. He’s going! I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad one, but it turned out not to really matter because I was wrong. All my new Dad did was goose the Harley’s throaty engine and cruise up beside me, letting the momentum and some skillful balance keep pace with me as he spoke. “Where are you going, Rachel?”
“I don’t know or care, right this second,” I blurted. I wasn’t mad at him, but I was embarrassed to have been found like this, scared and hurt and alone.
“It’s dark,” he said.
“So I keep being told!” I pretty much shouted, looking over at this genius of Meteorology and feeling my heart go from hardened lump of pumice to hot and pulsing organ of desire. Beside me, almost near enough to reach out and touch, Jace sat astride his bike in a puddle of moonlight that showed me exactly how dream-like this picture of gorgeous man candy rea
lly was. How had my Mom scored him?
He was rough around the edges, yes, but those eyes! The white flash of his teeth beneath his stubble smile! His biceps rippled in the light, and the motorcycle vest he had on was practically littered with patches. I was no expert, still aren’t, but I’d seen Sons of Anarchy and watched my share (and probably yours) of documentaries about Motorcycle Clubs, and I recognized a 1%er patch when I saw one.
One Percenter. An acknowledgment that 99% of bikers were good guys, men who rode for the love of it or the convenience of it, who kept to the law and to themselves. The One Percenters were different; rough men who threw down in bars and carried weapons they were more than willing to use. They prided themselves on their fierce independence and took pleasure in the injuries they’d caused and the number of times they’d broken the law.
Dad hadn’t worn the vest in front of me before, and he watched me taking all of this in, still facing forward. Maybe he knew that, when he turned his head and focused those blue eyes on me, my heart would skip a couple of beats and I’d walk faster and more angrily to compensate for his effect on me. Because that’s exactly what I did, when he finally turned and looked at me.
“He ain’t worth it,” he said, but it wasn’t the flippant comment that you hear in your head when you hear those words, or when someone in your life has said them to you. No, he meant it, sincerely, deep down and to the bottoms of his thick motorcycle boots. He’d sized me up in his own way, the same way I’d been sizing him up, and he came back with the wisest words anyone had ever said to me.
And he kept on going.
“And if you say he is, you’re a fucking liar.” Dad’s eyes practically blazed blue at me, but his mouth turned up in a smile that took the sting out of his words just the same. “Won’t be the first time somebody lied to me, Rachel, so go right ahead if you want. But I’d rather you didn’t. Watching a beautiful girl lie to herself out here in the cold of the night’s ‘bout all I can stand. Truth’d be better, if you’ve got some.”
Cherry Surprise! (TABOO Forbidden Lust) Page 1