by M. S. Parker
Fifteen minutes later, clad in flannel pajamas, with a cup of tea next to my elbow, I cracked open the top book on the stack waiting on the table.
It wasn’t as good as lying back and fantasizing about some tall, dark, and sexy stranger, but if all that was going to do was end up with me frustrated, I’d rather study.
At least I’d feel like I accomplished something.
Four
Kane
A hand smoothed down my thigh, and judging by the way things felt, that hand was attached to a naked woman lying between my legs. A mouth kissed the head of my cock, and I shuddered at the sensation.
“You’re awake,” a familiar voice said. And those words were followed by a giggle.
Calie.
I opened my eyes and craned my head upward to see her sprawled between my legs. She grinned up at me and took my cock into her mouth before dragging her head up, then down.
Blearily, I looked around, and it was pathetic that part of me could still focus on logical shit while she was giving me a blowjob, but the fact of the matter was…I could.
And it wasn’t that she wasn’t good at it.
I just wasn’t…invested in anything but the outcome.
If I closed my eyes, it made it easier to get to the end goal, too. Closing my eyes made it easier to think about the hot, wet mouth as it slid down my cock, taking me deep, all the way to the back of her throat in a practiced glide before sliding back up and holding the tip of my penis between her lips for a teasing moment before starting it all over again.
She kept that pace up for several minutes before shifting away to close her mouth over my sac, and I arched up with a grunt as she fisted her hand over my dick and began to pump.
Calie moved up, taking the head of my cock once more, and I could feel her head bobbing up and down. I needed to stop thinking about Calie, because every time I did, the interest waned a little…and wasn’t that a bitch when the woman had my dick in her mouth?
I deliberately blanked my mind and focused on the sensation, reaching down to fist a hand in Calie’s hair. It came as something of a surprise when I found myself wishing the chin length strands of reddish brown were a brighter shade of red…and a lot shorter.
The cute girl from last night.
My dick stirred, and the waning interest wasn’t waning anymore.
Calie purred, the sound vibrating down my shaft, but I shoved out thoughts of her. It was the rudest damn thing to do, but deflating while she was giving me head wasn’t very polite either, I figured.
I didn’t entirely let myself fantasize about another woman while I was there in bed with a different woman, but every few moments, the girl from last night made an appearance.
It was frustrating, and I tightened my hand in Calie’s hair, half-thinking to pull her off. She gasped a little and said, “More.”
Hell.
I let her finish me off, and when she curled up next to me, I laid there with my eyes closed, feeling like a bigger asshole than normal. But I hadn’t asked her to stay the night. My head had been full of the cute redhead for hours, so I was almost positive I wouldn’t have asked her to stay the night – I never did.
Calie arched against me, and I felt the slick glide of her cunt grinding against my thigh. “I’m kinda hungry over here,” she said in a little girl voice that was no doubt meant to turn me on. It didn’t.
Climbing out of bed, I grabbed a pair of jeans from the foot and shot her a look. “It’s morning. Why are you here?”
“Because you didn’t kick me out?” She giggled and sat up, sitting with her legs crisscrossed, showing off the pink, wet folds between her thighs.
I kept my gaze focused on her face. “You know the rules. I don’t like it when people spend the night.”
Her lashes drooped over her eyes, and she lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “You didn’t seem to mind just now.”
“I rarely mind it when a woman decides to give me a blowjob,” I said bluntly. “That doesn’t mean you can break the rules we established when we first hooked up. We talked about them, remember? I don’t stay the night at your place, you don’t stay the night at mine. Remember that talk? We’ve had it a couple of times now actually.”
Her lids flickered, and her full mouth tightened with annoyance for the briefest moment, but I didn’t let it get to me. I never made any pretenses about who or what I was, and she knew it.
She rolled onto her hands and knees in the next moment and started to crawl toward me. “Why are you so afraid of a commitment, Kane?” she asked, her voice soft, almost gentle. “It was just one night. We both had fun. It shouldn’t be such a big deal after how long we’ve been together.”
I almost laughed but told myself it wasn’t going to help anything.
Grabbing a t-shirt, I hauled it on, ignoring the small pains in my back that let me know she wasn’t lying when she said we’d had fun. She’d scratched the hell out of me. I could feel it.
“I’m not afraid of commitment, Calie,” I pointed out. “I just don’t want it.” Especially not from her. She was…clingy. And it was dawning on me lately, how manipulative she was. I didn’t care to have anybody pulling my strings, but nobody was going to do it using sex and slow, sultry smiles. I’d stopped letting my dick make decisions for me a long time ago, and I wasn’t about to go back down that road. “As to us being together…we’re not. We fuck. This isn’t exclusive.”
Something hot flashed in her eyes.
Aw, hell.
Cocking my head, I studied her face. “You do remember that I told you from the beginning this wasn’t exclusive, right? We can see other people, fuck other people, we don’t spend the night with each other, and we use protection, period.
When she didn’t answer, I turned on my heel and strode into the small bathroom attached to my bedroom.
I breathed out a sigh of relief when I found two used rubbers in the garbage can. When I came out, she was sitting in the middle of the bed, a pillow clutched to her middle. “You gloved up,” she said peevishly. “I told you that you didn’t have to. I’m clean, and it’s not that time of the month.”
“I’ve been with two other girls in the past month. For all you know, I’m not clean.” I was – I got checked every month. A friend of mine from the joint had managed to go his entire time there without getting sick with HIV, hepatitis, or any of the other shit that could grab guys like us, but then a month after he got out, he hooked up with a girl from before his time inside, and voila. He ended up with HIV. It made me nervous. I always gloved up, and I got tested regularly.
Her eyes widened, but I didn’t know if it was because of the not clean comment or because I told her that I’d been with girls other than her. “I made it clear that this wasn’t exclusive,” I said again, grinding the message in.
She stood up on the bed, glaring at me. “Why you gotta be so mean to me? Don’t you know how I feel about you?”
“Whatever you think you feel…” I shook my head. “You might want to stop feeling it. I’m not ever going to feel the same way, Calie. It’s time for you to go.”
She blinked back furious tears, although I had no idea if they were real or not. I couldn’t say it mattered much to me either. She was working me on some level, and I wasn’t going to have it.
Especially not after that crack claiming she’d told me I didn’t have to wear a rubber.
That had been rule number one, and if I’d been drunk enough last night not to remember her coming home with me, then I’d been way too drunk for her to go planting her ass at my side and inviting herself over for a sleepover she knew I wouldn’t agree to if I was sober.
It pissed me the hell off.
“It was just one night!” she shouted at me as she jumped off the bed. “What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is I don’t do one nights – at all.” I glared at her as she went to swing the pillow at me. “And I already pointed out that it’s time for you to go. I’ve got stuff to do, and I need to
get to it. I’ve got plans for dinner with my family later.”
Immediately, her face changed, softening. A smile curled her lips. “You should have said so. Now I know why you’re so grumpy. You always get uptight when you have things going on. Why don’t you let me help you?” She bit her lip, an attempt at shyness that just didn’t do it for me.
I knew her. She wasn’t shy.
Another flicker flashed through my mind – the redhead from Times Square.
The nervous glint in her eyes, how she wouldn’t look straight at me for the first few seconds.
“Maybe I could even come with you,” Calie was saying. “I’ve never even met your family. You hardly ever talk about them.”
“No.” I held up a hand, cutting off anything else she might say. “I don’t talk about my family for the same reason I don’t spend the night, Calie. I’m private. My bed is mine, my home is mine, my family is mine.”
Her face tightened, the chill coming back to her eyes. She turned on her heel and took a few steps to where her clothes lay in a pile. “Well, fine. Be an asshole, Kane!”
I rolled my eyes as she continued to shout and mutter at me, and once I’d shut the door behind her ten minutes later, I wondered if maybe it was time to just stop seeing her altogether. The sex was fine, but it wasn’t good enough to merit the headache that was starting to accompany it.
Five
Raye
Warm hands cupped my breasts.
Big warm hands.
A warm mouth covered mine.
I had my hands buried in a head of thick hair, and without even looking, I knew it would be shaggy and dark. Black? Brown? I had no idea, and I didn’t care. I cared about the fact that he’d kissed me again, and this time, I’d had the courage to kiss him back.
Where were we?
Music flowed around us, and a familiar voice echoed in my ear.
Pulling back from the stranger, I looked over my shoulder and saw my manager from my job.
Okay.
This had to be a dream.
She smiled at me, then nodded at him. “Now that is what I call a keeper. But I bet he can’t pick out lingerie worth a damn.”
In the next moment, she was gone, swept up in a dance by some guy in a mask. I looked back at the stranger, and then we were dancing. “Is this a dance?” I asked, confused.
“It’s whatever you want it to be. Do you want it to be a dance?”
I shook my head, but my feet were moving along with his, moving in time to the music floating in the air like a dream. We floated in the air, weaving our way through tables and mannequins dressed in elegant lingerie and masks – and the mannequins were dancing, too.
“I don’t think this dream is what I want it to be,” I said faintly, staring at the mannequin I’d decked out in a lace bra and thong set, along with a sash that read SALE in glitter. She had a mask made of glitter and was dancing with one of the guys who worked at the Asian place just down the street. He always made my drinks good and strong and winked at me.
“What do you want this dream to be then?”
Whipping my head around, I looked up at the stranger who’d kissed me.
“I want to be back on the street where we met.”
In a blink, we were.
And the street was empty. There wasn’t a soul around us.
“What now?” He studied me with intense, dark eyes as he stroked his hands down my arms.
“Would you kiss me again?”
“The last time I kissed you, I got slapped,” he pointed out.
“This is my dream. It won’t hurt you if I slap you,” I told him.
“Do you want to get slapped? Even if it’s in somebody else’s dream?”
That was some logic I didn’t want to ponder. So, I didn’t. It was my dream. It could be whatever I wanted it to be. I rose up onto my toes and pushed my fingers into his hair. Right now, this could be a dream about kissing him. This could be a dream where I was brave enough to do all the things I wanted.
It could be a dream where I was whole instead of broken inside.
I was still trapped in that place between dreams and wakefulness when my phone started to ring. Reaching out, I smacked around on the nightstand for it. I didn’t know if I planned to answer it or silence it. The dream still lived large in my mind, and the thought of talking to anybody would shatter the pleasant haze.
But before I knew it, my mother’s voice was filling the room.
Okay, I wasn’t dreaming that. “Mom?”
“Hi, baby!” she chirped, her voice overly bright and cheerful, and not just because it was…
I blinked and looked around. What time was it? Way too early for the chore it could be talking to my mother, that was for certain.
“Honey?”
I frowned in the direction of her voice. She had to be up to something. The honeys and the babys never came this early otherwise. Dragging myself upright, I tried to force my brain to work, but it was a difficult task. A quick look at the clock told me why. It was barely after ten.
It had been somewhere between three and four before I fell asleep, so that put me at about six hours of sleep. That normally wouldn’t be a big issue, but I’d been up since nine the previous day.
“It’s awful early, Mom.” Rubbing at my eyes, I wondered if I could put whatever this was off until my brain was more equipped to handle a call from her, but it wasn’t very likely.
“It’s not that early in New York…why, I’m wide awake, and I’m three hours behind you!” She laughed brightly, and the sound of it made my head hurt even more.
“I was up late, Mom. I didn’t get off work until close to midnight.”
“Then I bet you were out partying.” She giggled next, and that sound wasn’t any better. “I know how you are.”
My belly churned. She sure as hell didn’t know how I was.
“I’m juggling a heavy class load and a job, Mom. I don’t have time to party. I barely have time to sleep,” I pointed out.
“Oh, I know…you’re such a busy thing. You never have time to call me.” The syrup in her voice thickened as she added, “But I’m so proud of you.”
Uh-huh. I didn’t say that out loud.
“What did you need, Mama?” I asked, keeping my tone free of the skepticism I felt.
“Oh, I just wanted to call and wish you Happy New Year’s, Raye. That’s all.” She paused a moment, then added, “You know, I’ve been going through some stuff up in the attic. Some of your old school things and the like.”
“That’s nice, Mom.”
“You could sound more enthusiastic…you’re never going to believe what I found.”
Knowing my mother, it could be anything from the medal I got in the third-grade spelling bee to an article clipping from the time I’d like to forget. There was just no telling.
“What did you find?” I asked dutifully as I dragged myself upright and crossed my legs.
“It was the craziest thing, baby…I saw it lying there in the box and I just…well, I couldn’t believe it. I know I’ve seen it before, but it never really connected. Staring at it, I was thinking, how could this be here all this time and me never really notice? It was just one of those things, ya know?” She huffed out a breath as she finally came to a pause.
“What was it you found, Mama?”
“A picture!” she replied brightly. “Raye, I found a picture of your daddy.”
My heart squeezed.
I didn’t know my dad. Not his name or even what he looked like. I was the product of an affair between my mother and some married guy. Mom told me he didn’t want anything to do with me, so if that was what he wanted, I didn’t want anything to do with him either. What little I did know was that he and Mom hooked up while he was married. She got pregnant, but he was out of the picture by the time Mom knew. She kept me and raised me all without ever saying much of anything about him.
Oh, it wasn’t like I didn’t ask. When you’re five years old, and all the oth
er kids talk about their dads, it’s only natural to ask about your own. But when I did, she always brushed me off, and when that didn’t work…she yelled. Or she cried.
It wasn’t until I was a teenager that she finally admitted to the affair and told me a few scant details about him, including the fact that he didn’t want a relationship with me.
“Why are you telling me this now?” I asked slowly. “I’m twenty-one, Mama. Well past the age when I need a daddy in my life. He’s married and didn’t want anything to do with me, remember?”
Maybe he changed his mind, a soft voice whispered.
It didn’t matter, though. Even if I was maybe a little curious, I didn’t want to be the reason some guy and his wife had some trouble. That just rubbed me wrong, even if I was the innocent party in all of this. Well, me and the wife.
“Honey…I didn’t tell you who else was in the picture. There’s a little boy. I think you’ve got a brother!”
It was a good thing I was sitting down because those words would have put me back on my ass.
“What?”
“Listen, I’ll text you a shot of the picture…just hold on…” Her voice got fainter, and I sat there, my heart pounding in my ears. A moment later, she came back on the phone. “You should have it any second.”
Another few seconds passed, and a faint ping sounded in my ear to let me know I had a text.
I lowered the phone and let my thumb hover over the button.
“Do you see, honey? Your eyes…look at how similar your eyes are…oh, you’re both so beautiful!”
Mom’s voice came to me distantly, and I finally hit the button and swiped the screen. As the image downloaded, I closed my eyes.
Mom said something, but the words made no sense, and I finally lifted the phone again, forced my eyes to open so I could look at the picture.
It was of a man who probably had been in his early thirties, give or take, when the picture was taken. There was a boy standing next to him. Maybe there was a resemblance. Mom had loved to go through my old picture albums, so I had a good idea of what I’d looked like as a kid. There could be a resemblance. His hair stood up in spikes on the back of his head, a pale blond compared to the reddish-gold mine had been. My mom was a natural redhead.