The sickening feeling in my gut grew and tangled sharply. Through my rib cage and around my lungs in a painful twist.
“Friends,” I muttered harshly.
“Bran, I don’t know what to say,” she replied in a fragile voice.
The anger I’d felt earlier, the rejection and the shame, began to heat my blood once again. “I think you’re saying a lot right now, Sophie.”
I heard a shaky breath through the phone line, a slight sniffle. And I felt a strange sense of achievement that this was hurting her.
Because, quite honestly, she was killing me.
“Brannon, please don’t,” she whispered at long last. “Don’t be mad.”
Don’t be mad? Fucking hell, I sort of wanted to put my head through a wall at the moment. To beat the shit out of something or someone.
“Talk to me,” she pleaded with a quiet sob.
“This phone thing is shit, Sophie,” I said. “Are you home? I’ll stop by.”
“I am, but,” she hesitated, “I’m supposed to meet my parents for dinner at the Uptown in a little bit.”
Her parents, I thought. Great. That’s what she needed… more time with them.
“Maybe after?” she asked. “I could come by your place as soon as I’m done.”
I clenched my jaw, trying to keep myself calm. “What time?” I asked.
“I’m supposed to meet them at five-thirty,” she answered, “so maybe seven-thirty? Eight o’clock?”
Part of me wanted to tell her I wouldn’t be home. That I’d be out with the guys, getting drunk and getting laid.
Forgetting her.
But I couldn’t. I just… couldn’t.
“I’ll be home,” I said softly and ended the call.
I sat in my living room and watched the clock until six-twenty-five. It was pure torture. I couldn’t wait anymore.
The scene at her apartment kept churning through my head, replaying her reactions, her words in the hallway. And suddenly, like a bolt of lightning, it hit me.
She needed me to fight for her. For us.
She couldn’t stand up to her parents alone, and I’d completely let her down with the way I reacted. I had gotten pissed at her for being scared. Of course she was terrified. Why wouldn’t she be? She’d never been alone before. She’d never had to take care of herself.
With a burst of chivalry, I came to a rash decision. I’d go down to the Uptown. I’d confront her parents. I’d tell them, and I’d tell Sophie, how much I loved her. How much I needed her with me. They could accept me or not, but she had to know how I felt. She had to know that this wasn’t just some flash in the pan. That I wasn’t going to lose interest.
That I was in this for the long haul.
I jumped in my pickup and made the twenty-minute drive to Butte in fifteen minutes. Once I got to town, I somehow hit every green light. The gods were in my favor or some shit, because there was even a parking space just down from the front door, and I flew out of my truck before the engine had even totally shut down.
The little fucking pansy-ass maître d at the front door tried to stop me. He said something about me needing a reservation or some shit, and I just pushed him aside and made my way into the dining area.
And I stopped dead.
Because there she was. Sophie. Sitting there, lovely as ever.
But her parents were nowhere to be seen. She was with her dickhead ex. And that fucker had a ring.
She was listening to him as he spoke, her head tipped towards him to hear his hushed voice. She looked down at the ring, then back up to him. He said something else, and she reached for it, holding it between her thumb and forefinger, studying it in the dimly lit restaurant.
And then I saw red as she slipped the ring onto her finger.
It felt like it was all happening in slow motion. All my life, I’d thought myself an emotionless bastard, but right then swore I heard my heart crack wide open, exploding through my chest. I felt the heated rise of blood rush to my face, and my whole body just… reacted.
In a second, I had crossed the room and pulled that fucker from his chair.
“Oh, God,” he groaned, “not you again.”
I saw Richard’s surprise turn into a flash of fear as I pushed him backwards across the room. He stumbled into another table and fell to the ground. I heard Sophie scream my name, felt her hand gripping my arm, as she pleaded with me to stop.
She was telling me to go.
“What the fuck is going on, Sophie?”
“Nothing,” she cried.
“Nothing? Are you fucking kidding me?” I grabbed her hand, the hand that now bore a sparkling little diamond ring. “What the fuck is this then?”
“Brannon, please,” she began, her voice filled with sheer panic, “it’s not what you think.”
“Not what I think? Sophie, I just watched this motherfucker give you a ring!” I roared.
I felt arms pulling me back, the hushed voice of a waiter telling me to leave before they called the authorities.
“Brannon, you need to get out of here,” Sophie begged, almost hysterical with a frantic urgency. “I’ll come to your apartment as soon as I’m done here. I’ll come explain, but, please… I don’t want you to get in trouble. They’re going to call the police.”
“You want me to fucking go?!” I bellowed, completely shocked that she was going to stay here with the dickhead. “I don’t fucking believe this, Sophie.”
“Brannon, please—”
“Don’t bother,” I snarled, and jerked my arm away from her desperate grasp. “Just fucking stay here with the dick, Sophie. I don’t fucking care anymore.”
I rounded quickly, and the waiter shrunk back from my murderous glare. I heard him behind me, murmuring something about calling the cops.
“Please don’t,” I heard Sophie say. “I’ll pay for the damages, just don’t. Please…”
“Sophie,” the dickhead groaned, and I quickly glanced back at the wreckage behind me. Sophie saw me turn, and started to walk towards me, but Richard reached for her arm. “Where are you going?”
“Just a second, Richard,” she said, placing her hand on his chest. “Please, just stay here for a second. I’ll be right back.”
That cut into me. Seeing her touch him gently. That familiarity. It severed the last shred of hope in my heart. The last thought that she had ever planned to be with me.
She’d been fucking playing me all along, making herself out to be the bored little rich girl. I’d been a distraction. A diversion from the mundane perfection of her life.
I fucking loved her, and she was planning to marry that cocksucker. She wore the ring to prove it.
I furiously stormed from the dining room and out the front door. I heard her rushing after me, the sharp alarm in her voice.
“Brannon, wait,” she cried.
I whirled around, catching her shoulders in a crushing grip and pushing her hard up against the building. “For what, Sophie? What the fuck could you possibly say that could make any of this okay?”
“You don’t understand—”
“You’re fucking right, I don’t.” Reaching down for her left hand, I yanked it up into the light between us. “You’re fucking wearing his ring!”
“It’s not—”
“Bullshit, Sophie,” I roared, shaking with the blood-red fury that raged through me. “I saw the fucker give it to you. I saw you slip it on your motherfucking finger!”
“Bran—”
“And all this shit, all this about how you’ll pay for the damages? You’re just like your fucking parents, using money and influence to sweep trash like me under the rug.”
“Brannon, stop,” she begged, tears running down her cheeks, “you don’t understand.”
“I understand that you’re just a bored little rich girl who played me like a fucking violin. So you finally chose the money, huh? It was only a matter of time.”
“No—” she whispered, shaking her head back and forth. “No,
Brannon—”
“Don’t fucking call me. Don’t come to my fucking place. You’re just another piece of ass, and I’ve got a lot more where you came from.”
“You don’t mean that.” Her voice was small and tight, raspy with emotion.
“You were a good fuck, Sophie,” I snarled, “but you weren’t that good.”
I pushed her firmly against the wall again, holding her steady, and then let go and backed away, off into the dark night.
She didn’t call.
She didn’t come to my place.
True to form, Sophie did exactly as she was told.
The days following the scene at the Uptown were bleak. Empty.
I was angry and, if I was honest with myself, I was hurt. Although I sure as fuck didn’t admit that to anyone. Because heartless fuckers like me don’t get hurt.
My sister came by my apartment after I stopped taking her calls. Anyone’s calls. I lay there drunk and brooding in my bedroom with the curtains drawn, wallowing in the darkness and the fury I still felt every time I closed my eyes to see Sophie slip that ring on her finger.
That vision was accompanied by a brutal, cruel torment, twisting through my guts at how easily I’d believed her lies.
Poor little rich girl. All alone. She had said she liked me because I was different. That she didn’t want her world, she wanted to be in mine.
But it was all about her naughty bucket list. I was just a fucking amusement park to her, taking her on one hell of a ride, all the while thinking that she might actually choose me in the end.
I didn’t answer the door when Mira knocked. I didn’t know it was her, but I wouldn’t have answered even if I had. Unfortunately, then I heard a key in the lock.
Fuck.
“Brannon?” her voice sounded in my living room.
I lay there quietly, barely breathing with my blankets pulled up over my head, hoping she’d think I wasn’t home and would just go away.
“Brannon?” This time, she spoke from my bedroom doorway, looking in at the mound of blankets I was hiding under. I heard her step closer, then felt the weight of her sitting on my bed. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Mira,” I flatly replied. “I just want to be alone.”
“What happened?” she asked, ignoring my request.
“I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to be alone.”
“Cody called me. He’s worried about you. Said you haven’t been into the shop. Said none of the guys have heard from you in days.”
“I don’t want to see anyone right now.”
“Can I do something?” I didn’t respond, and Mira was quiet for a moment. “Have you eaten?”
I finally flipped the blanket down to glare at her.
“You’re a real pain in the ass, you know that?” I growled.
Her worried frown kicked into high gear as she studied me closely. I must have looked like complete shit. I’d done nothing, nothing at all, in days. I’d not been to work. I’d not showered. I’d not eaten.
All I had done was lay in the quiet darkness of my room with a couple bottles of Jameson and let the anger and pain fester until I felt like I was going to explode.
“You’re my baby brother. I’m worried about you.” Her voice was small and cautious. “You’ve never… Grampa’s shop. It’s everything to you.”
I turned away, closing my eyes and pinching the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger.
“I don’t know what happened, Bran. I don’t know what she did to you. She’s not worth this, though,” Mira softy said. “And there are people who miss you. People who need you.”
Just not Sophie, I thought.
After a lot of prodding, endless nagging, and swirling guilt for making her worry about me, Mira managed to get me to leave the cave of my bitter dejection. She managed to get me to eat something and made me promise to come to dinner that night. I sort of felt like I needed a night with her family like I needed a hole in the head. Seeing her and her husband together, happily ever after, was going to sting a little. And the decibels that were sure to come from her rambunctious boys were likely to do me in for good.
But, instead, it was oddly comforting, something to remind me that I was still alive. Something to kick me in the ass so I could move on past Sophie and her manipulative deceit.
I was Brannon fucking Forrester. This shit didn’t happen to guys like me.
Over the next couple days, I tried to get back to who I was. Before Sophie.
B.S.
It seemed fitting to refer to it as that because it was totally bullshit, the idea that I could forget her. But, fuck, I tried. I drank until I puked. I smoked weed like a motherfucker. I started an all-out brawl in the Copperline when someone bumped into me and spilled my drink.
After a few weeks of that, of trying to live in a stupor that would dull the anguish, shit hit the fan at the Mofos’ place. The house boomed with the usual revelry that followed a show. I’d been hitting the scotch steadily since about noon, and all the happy-fucking-go-lucky bastards around me were really pissing me off.
How dare all those fuckers have fun while I was miserable?
I was drunk as a skunk and looking for a fight. At one point, I got more than a little mouthy, and Justin told me to go get laid so I’d quit acting like a little bitch. I just about put him through the fucking wall. Then Denny went all girl on me and asked me if I was okay.
It was in that moment that I realized I had to take that one last step. The one I’d been dreading. I had to move on. I had to find someone who was soft and sweet and willing to fuck Sophie right out of my system.
A hand touched my arm. Small and petite, slender fingers with perfectly polished nails. I closed my eyes for a minute and prayed like a motherfucker that I’d open them to see Sophie.
But the eyes that looked up at me weren’t the brilliant crystal blue-green. The hair didn’t fall in blonde waves around her shoulders.
It wasn’t Sophie, but Vivienne.
“You need to relieve a little stress, honey,” she whispered. “Let me help you.”
I was drunk. Beyond drunk, really, barely able to stand. I stumbled along behind her as she pulled me back to the equipment room. She nudged me inside and closed the door.
Then she pushed me to sit on the couch and pulled her tight little dress off, revealing nothing underneath. Kneeling on the floor before me, she loosened my jeans, and started sucking my dick.
I watched all this as though it was happening to someone else. Viv was talented. I’ll give her that. She knew how to work her tongue. She knew how to moan just so, in a way that the vibrations from her throat would ripple so deliciously along the head. She stroked and sucked and licked. She’d been after me for a long time, and it seemed like she wasn’t going to waste the opportunity.
But even though she could have probably sucked the bacon out of a pig, she wasn’t Sophie. My eyes drifted closed to see Sophie’s face. Sophie’s eyes. In my mind, it was Sophie’s lips on my cock. I could almost pretend. As drunk as I was, I could almost believe.
The familiar tide of release began to rise. The swelling of my balls and the blood rushing through my veins. A deep ragged moan emanated from my throat and echoed through the quiet room.
“Fuck,” I groaned in a delirious whisper, “that’s it, baby. That’s it, Soph.”
The motion on my dick stopped for a second, just a moment, as the mouth lifted. “I’ll take it,” I heard a strange, distant voice say. “I’ll be Sophie for you tonight, honey.”
And she was. In that moment, my mind refused to believe anything else. I shut out all the sounds around me. I completely ignored everything else in the world but those lips that expertly brought Sophie’s ghost back to me.
Then, all hell broke loose. The door flew open, slamming against the wall with a crash.
And Sophie stood there.
The real flesh and blood Sophie, not an apparition. She was silhouetted by the lights of the hallway beh
ind her, horrified at what she saw before her.
“Oh, God.”
Sophie’s quiet whisper could barely be heard. Just a gasp, hardly even a sound.
“Sophie,” my voice grated harsh with surprise, thick with lust. I was on the verge of my first orgasm in weeks, so close to shooting my wad down Vivienne’s throat, and the agony of having that stopped about killed me. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
Vivienne lifted her head and turned to see Sophie standing in the open door. She deliberately licked her lips and smiled, doing nothing to hide her nudity.
Sophie’s look of shock shifted to a mixture of anger and shame. She didn’t say another word, just looked accusingly at me as my gut began to twist with a dreadful regret.
Denny just kind of stared at me for a minute, like he was trying to figure out just what to say. He had his arm around Sophie’s waist, frozen in the act of trying to pull her back into the hallway, to get her out of there.
“Well, if it isn’t our little Sophie, huh, Brannon,” Vivienne murmured with a husky intonation. “Do you want to join us, sweetheart? I’m willing to share, just like I was before.”
Sophie just stared at me, her attention riveted to my face. Her eyes stormy with accusation.
How dare she be upset with me? I thought. She had played me. She had lied to me and used me. And now she was upset?
Vivienne smiled as she rose from her knees and settled her naked body on my lap, pressing her naked tits against my cheek. She wrapped one arm around my shoulders and skated her fingers down my chest and abs. Then she closed them tightly around my dick. I hissed a sharp gasp as she began to stroke it, unashamed and unabashed.
“He’s got such a beautiful cock, doesn’t he? And it tastes so fucking good,” she taunted, and a quiet sob broke through Sophie’s stricken features. “We could suck him together, you and I. Or I could eat your pussy while he fucks me from behind.”
Sophie closed her eyes and turned towards Denny. The slight movement jolted him into action and he pulled her back into the hallway and shut the door behind them.
Vivienne looked back at me, and shrugged nonchalantly. “I guess it’s just you and me, Brannon.” She lowered her head and began to kiss me, kneading my dick in an attempt to draw me back into her web. She reached into the purse she’d tossed on the couch, and pulled out a condom. Spreading her legs to straddle me, she tore open the package and grabbed a hold of my dick to sheathe me.
Post Breakup Sex Page 18