by Gabi Moore
“I don’t remember how the dream ended, though,” she whispered.
“You don’t? Are you sure?” I said, gently taking her lower lip between my teeth.
“But I think it was a happy ending.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
I tightened my hips and drove even deeper into her, as far I could, relishing how good it felt to disappear inside her, so deep, and so tight. She let out a little whimper. The look on her face told me everything I need to know.
“I think he must have filled me up with cum,” she mumbled, inching closer to her orgasm, her voice wavering.
“Really? How naughty of you. You liked it though, didn’t you? Having his cock all the way in your ass? And putting his cum all the way up inside you?”
I adored the effect this had on her.
“I loved it,” she peeped.
“What’s that you say?”
“I …I said I …”
“Speak up, Sophia, I can’t hear you.”
“I fucking loved it!” she cried and her face contorted in the most beautiful expression of tortured pleasure.
“Fuck, yes,” I growled.
“I wanted every last drop, I wanted it all.”
“Every last drop?”
“Every …last …”
It was my turn to lose control. I could feel her enthusiastic body roll and clench over me, pushing me clean over the edge and into an orgasm so full I felt my skin flash out in goosebumps.
“Oh fuck…” I cried and pulled her entire body onto me. The sensations hit me hard.
She followed. Locked hard into one another, we had no choice but to convulse and quiver inwards. With each spurt of my cock I felt her jolt and come herself, her pelvis tilting and squeezing against me, milking me even further. I sent glob after sticky glob deep up into her grateful body and she cried out, clinging to me, her moans getting lost somewhere on my lips…
By the time we had both calmed down and, with great effort, I had carefully slid out of her, we were soaked in sweat and completely exhausted. Down went her pretty legs. I pulled her close, and she disappeared a little under the blankets, snuggling against my chest and going back to sleep. I kissed the top of her head and watched the sunlight still trying to make its way into the bedroom.
We didn’t do this kind of thing often. It took a lot out of her. But it was like a hard reset for her body. After a good, thorough fucking, right where she was too bashful to say out loud, she’d be all sweet and goofy, and in a dazed-out mood for the rest of whole day. After she had snoozed for a while, I kissed her again and tried to shake her awake.
“You haven’t forgotten what today is, have you?” I said. She shot me the same sleepy eyes.
“Of course I haven’t!”
We got up, had a quick shower together, and chatted about the day ahead as we got dressed, suddenly realizing that our morning rendezvous had actually taken much longer than we thought. I could already hear the cartoons blaring loudly downstairs and the activity and playful banter happening downstairs in the kitchen. It would be a busy day.
When Sophia and I finally sauntered downstairs, Naomi gave us a knowing look and a smile.
“I got everyone started with some breakfast,” she said, and raised a spoonful of cereal at us.
“Daddy!”
I was rugby-tackled around my legs as little Josh came careening over to me and wrestled my legs. “You’re up now! So can I open my presents yet? Where are they?” he said and beamed up at me. I scooped him and hoisted him onto my hip, laughing.
“Presents? Ah, shoot, is today your birthday or something?”
“Dad!”
“Just kidding! You can open all your presents this afternoon when everyone comes over, remember? That’s the deal.”
Josh pouted and fussed, but finally agreed to eat up his cereal and then bounded off to watch TV.
“That child must have inherited his stubbornness from you,” I said to Sophia as I poured her a bowl of cereal.
“That child is adopted,” she said.
“Yeah I know, but that’s how it works with stubbornness genes. They just do what they want, you know, even if it’s not technically supposed to work,” I teased.
She pulled her tongue out at me.
It was true, though. None of this was technically supposed to work. If I had told a younger, more desperate version of myself that I would one day be living in Costa Rica with my beautiful wife and a whole army of ‘adoptees’ I wouldn’t have believed it was possible. But we were all a family. The one thing we all had in common was that we had lost our first families, somewhere along the line. But Sophia and I had found each other, and then we had found Josh, and somehow after that, we just kept on finding people.
The first was Naomi. After Sophia gave up her massage studio and decided to work for an NGO that helped victims of trafficking, we soon found more like us. People who were trying to escape from the past, running so hard that they didn’t even care where they landed up. But they landed up with us, in our crooked little house in our avocado tree-lined street with our cats and dogs and a parakeet Bingo, also an orphan.
Naomi had acted as our Ukrainian translator for a few years, but her role had extended to include everything from impromptu godmother, housekeeper, PA for Sophia and fundraiser. Soon, more girls came. Leah opened the door on a trafficking ring that bought us so much attention and funding that we decided to ramp up operations and open an official halfway house. She was the one who encouraged us to help the girls find work, new homes, purpose.
And so that’s what we did.
The newest members found a household of women who’d escaped years ago and knew the ropes. We learnt about the law, about the extent of the trafficking problem in Eastern Europe and the rest of the world. Leah started getting licensed to practice law in this country, and quickly became an integral part of everything. Nita had only been with us for a few months, but had our kitchens up and running like a five-star hotel’s.
There were some days when we had upwards of 25 women and girls staying with us. It wasn’t always easy. Some brought painful drug habits with them. Some had dangerous partners, some had children, some were sick. But we became their family, no matter what their past was. We were the ones that took them in when the police were not an option. When their support system had abandoned them, when they were lost to the world and completely alone. Whatever state they came to us in, when they left, they were different people.
And they all loved Josh to death.
I would laugh and tell Sophia that one day we could tease him about the fact that more than half of the people who came to his fifth birthday party were gorgeous ex-strippers and sex workers from Russia. I didn’t care, though. Josh had been showered with more love and doting in his first five years of life than had taken me a lifetime to accumulate. And I liked it that way.
“Oh, by the way, I spoke to that new girl on the phone last night. Remember her? Ksenia?”
Naomi said, and started to help Sophia clear away dishes.
“You did?”
“Yeah. She’s at the CPP center in town and they told me they’d have someone send her over in the morning. From what I understand she’s in pretty rough shape. Her English isn’t great. Do we have anything in the account for a montage this weekend?”
It was an old in-joke of ours.
The first two girls that landed up with us had lost all their personal belongings along the way, and so we had to take them shopping and literally buy it all back again. Clothing, toiletries, shoes. Sophia had taken charge of all that, but she had quipped that the whole day felt like the shopping montage scene from Pretty Woman, and the nickname had stuck. Now, the ‘montage’ was something of an initiation rite around here. Shopping made me want to pull my hair out, but there was something about watching Sophia fuss over a timid new girl that put a lump in my throat.
“We should be fine, go for it,” I said. “When’s she arriving?”
I put down my coffee cup.
“Invite her to the party,” I said.
“Leo, baby, she’s probably exhausted, she won’t want to come to a kid’s birthday party,” Sophia said from the sink.
I shrugged. Sophia knew best about these things. She just had a knack. I was good at taking care of the practical stuff, sure, but it was really Sophia who was the beating heart of this house. Of everything here. The more we took on, the more she seemed to shine. She was so competent she made me look bad, honestly, but I didn’t care. It was me who took her to bed every night. Me that knew what she liked, and how. Me who could do things to her that nobody else could… so as far as I was concerned I was constantly getting the better deal.
The afternoon rolled around and everyone fussed over little Josh, running around to hang up the decorations and laying out the snacks and treats on the table. Josh dashed underfoot and stuck his fingers in the cupcakes and asked roughly every four seconds whether he could open his presents yet. I didn’t mind.
Not so many years ago, he was found crying and locked in a wardrobe after his mother put him there and decided to go to Vegas and never come back. I don’t know yet what I’ll tell him when he asks about his past. For now, I just want to make the present as good as I can.
What else can I tell you? News that Vito had passed away in prison reached us a few years after we found our new place and moved over. It may sound strange, but I mourned him a little. As far as I can tell, his cronies and hangers-on all seeped back into civilian life and the days of seeing Vito’s ugly mug in the papers kind of drifted away, like the era of Al Capone – something people can only vaguely remember, and don’t even want to in any case.
Ordinary, gentle life seemed to fold over the hole he had left, and soon the wound was covered up in the soft new growth of my life with Sophia. We married soon after we bought the new house, and it was just the two of us, the two cats and a moody day that turned into a heavy storm later that night.
For a long time we spoke often about all the crazy things that had happened to us, about Vito, about that night we crawled through the bushes together. We replayed all the moments again and again, until we couldn’t hold onto them anymore and they drifted off into memory, and then even the memories grew stale after a while, and that part of our life together became nothing more than an old sepia photograph – we knew it had happened, but it all seemed inconsequential after a time. I had spent the first half of my life running away from my past, and the second half …well, these days I often woke up buzzing with anticipation about the future instead…
“Daydreaming, baby?”
I snapped my attention to Sophia standing in front of me, a giant bowl of pink and white marshmallows in her hands.
“Yeah! Just …thinking,” I said and leaned over to kiss her, then swipe a marshmallow.
“Hey! Those are for later,” she said and pulled the bowl back. “OK, give me one.”
I smiled, picked up a pink one and gently placed it between my teeth, then hovered in front of her, wiggling my eyebrows so she knew to come and get it. She laughed, moved forward to catch it with her own teeth and just as she did, I snatched it out of the way so her incoming lips landed square on mine. We both burst out laughing.
“Oldest trick in the book,” I said, stuffing the marshmallow into my own mouth and giving her a devilish grin.
“Asshole,” she giggled, and made a half-hearted attempt to bite me instead.
“Dad! Dad! Everyone’s here now so I can get my presents!”
Josh came skidding into the room with the triumph that only a child who knows he can’t officially be put off any longer can muster up.
“Ok, buddy, let’s go,” I said, and we all went to the patio. Everyone was there. Naomi, about a million of Josh’s friends from pre-school and their parents… they all stood talking loudly and laughing, kids and dogs weaving lines between the adults, our two patio tables laden with party food.
Sophia sat him down in front of his cake and everyone sang happy birthday. I stood a little ways off and watched them, a strange, warm feeling swelling inside me. Sophia never had a mother, but damn was she a good one herself. She didn’t know I was watching her. Her graceful movements, her patience with the kids, her warm, easy smile. A body so curvy it could make a grown man weep. Eyes, one blue and brown, like mine. A little dark, a little light, but still a pair, even if it was an unusual pair.
Josh blew out the candles and Naomi got to work cutting everyone a slice of cake.
“OK, moment of truth, buddy. Here’s your present,” I said, and reached up to the top of a tall cupboard to pull down a brightly wrapped gift.
I had handled many boxes like this as a child. Boxes with unspeakable things inside them. Bad boxes. Boxes that were small yet big enough to carry a whole lifetime of guilt. But this one? This one was covered in blue and red tractors.
… And it was light.
- THE END -
Heart Of Darkness
Blurb
Nobody has ever cared about my past before.
Until now.
Meeting Madeleine felt like being brought back from the dead. She reminded me of things I thought I’d forgotten, things that I had long ago taught myself to forget.
I’ve never wanted anything as badly as I wanted her, but she doesn’t know what she’s getting herself into.
And now I have to make the most difficult decision of my life...
Can I open my heart to her, completely - no matter how dark that heart is?
Prologue - Zack
It had all started out as a joke.
The base commanders were still stalling on setting up proper bank accounts for the guys, still struggling to keep morale up when the soldiers were flat broke, still trying to pass off those piece of shit ready meals as all part of the master plan.
We had been fired on twice already, and sustained losses from carelessness alone. The casual killing and destruction had already gone sour inside me, the images curdling into a strange cartoon in my mind, replaying again and again in lurid, mocking detail, and I had already gone numb, so numb that when she raised an eyebrow at me and suggested we do it, it was all just a joketuio
at first.
A dare.
I knew what people said about her. I knew what soldiers like her did on down time to keep those last shreds of morale going. But you have to understand – with that much darkness every single day, even the most twisted things can start to look like light. Like relief.
Even though it was all highly illegal, she said, “I can show you a place in town where we can get some real goddamn food,” and when she said it, she got this hollow look in her eyes and her lower lip opened just a little. Just the tiniest bit.
Fuck, I didn’t need to be asked twice. So we snuck off base that night into that piece of shit town and giggled like kids playing hooky. She handed a few crumpled notes to a withered looking street food vendor, and he looked at our uniforms as though it cost him every last stitch of willpower not to spit in the little parcel of chicken and fries he handed over to us.
We mock-saluted, she muttered the little Arabic she knew and we ran off giggling.
In the alley it was dark enough that I couldn’t make out much of her face except the shine in her eyes as she blinked. But I could tell the exact moment it all stopped being a joke.
She cleared her throat, then crumpled the oily wrapper and tossed it aside. When I kissed her, her lips tasted like fear and loneliness and chicken grease.
A BBC guy had come a month ago to do a documentary on the secret sex lives of Iraqi soldiers, but his piece of shit project never took off. He had probably fucked her too. Probably right here.
“Wow, you must have been hungry,” she said, voice silky in the darkness.
“It’s been a while,” I said and pulled her in close. She laughed a little. They’re all still women, under the fatigues, blunt manners and rough talk. And under m
ine, I was still a man.
“I can see that,” she said and ground her hips against my cock.
I buried my fist in the hair at the nape of her neck and yanked her head up towards me, kissing her hard. I was protein deprived, horny as hell, and feeling a little… nihilistic. Home was a universe away. Honor an abstract concept. Death was closer to me now, always skulking on the edges.
I undid her belt buckle and roughly pulled her trousers down, revealing two hot, tight thighs underneath and a neatly trimmed triangle of fur.
“You don’t have to be gentle, Zack… I’m a big girl, I can take it. Just go for it.” Still standing, she spread her legs a little and kissed me again.
Somewhere at the edge of my consciousness, a dark, heavy haze began to descend on me. It filled me up like a dust storm fills ups the sky and blurs the horizon. The haze blanked out my mind. Tightened my fists. Throbbed into my cock.
I grasped her waist and spun her around, flinging her against the rough brick wall so her pert ass was facing me. She arched her back as I groped urgent handfuls of her ass, her thighs, her hips, kissing savagely along her back, then unzipping myself.
“You’re going to regret saying that,” I breathed, and pulled out an angry cock. All at once I rammed into her little slit, and she bit down hard on her own hand to muffle her cry.
The haze thickened over me. I slammed my eyes shut and saw only death. Torn bodies. Twisted faces. Dribbles of blood in sand. I groaned and opened my eyes again, hoping the nightmare outside was better than the one inside.
Her body writhed and curled around mine like a snake. I whimpered and let go, the haze blurring over her now, erasing the soft features of her face, her shape. In the haze, she became a piece of meat. And so did I. And if our bodies were just going to be blasted to chunks in this godforsaken place then we might as well fuck for all we’re worth while we could, right?