Above and Beyond

by Riley Morgan

  It was after dinner and Lena still hadn’t talked to Ramon. She had some freedom to move around the house, and did not spend the entire day locked into her room as she had feared that she might. Without Ramon, though, she wouldn’t be happy anywhere.

  From time to time she looked out the window to see him working. She wished that there was something she could do, but Ramon was right. She needed to act like nothing had changed, and if she went around looking like she was up to something, it wouldn’t exactly be inconspicuous.

  She sat on the couch, not paying attention to whatever was on the TV. She started to wonder what she could do to make a difference. There was a clatter in the kitchen and she remembered that she still had two allies in the house besides Ramon. She stretched her legs and got off the couch to go see Tia and Michaela.

  Michaela was hunched over low to the ground running in circles around the big island in the middle of the kitchen. She nearly bowled Lena over, not seeing her standing in the middle of the aisle.

  “There’s a mouse!” she shouted. “Help me kill it!”

  “No! Don’t you dare hurt it you evil old witch!”

  Lena hadn’t noticed Tia. She was on her hands and knees under a table with a big plastic bowl. She was sitting stock still, apparently hoping that the mouse would run to her and she would be able to trap it humanely.

  “You always put them in the woods and they always come back!” Michaela shouted as she pushed Lena aside and continued to scurry after the mouse that she claimed was there. Lena did not see it. The two old women went back and forth, shouting at each other, calling names and casting rodent based aspersions. Michaela continued to clamber around while Tia didn’t move a muscle. If it weren’t for her eyes darting around the darkened corners of the kitchen and her mouth moving at a million miles a minute, she would have looked as though she was frozen in time.

  There was a strange tickling feeling that ran up the back of Lena’s leg. She was too scared to move at first, and when the sensation moved up to her shoulder, she slowly turned her head, terrified at what she knew she would see. When she finally locked eyes on a tiny little creature about the size of her thumb, she didn’t see how she could be afraid of it. It had little black eyes that seemed to stare into hers and beg for salvation. Its tiny chest puffed and heaved and Lena thought that its little heart might explode right there. Tia and Michaela did not notice that their prey had escaped, and Lena crept silently out of the kitchen to the pool. The mouse stayed on her shoulder the whole time until she held out her hand for it. The little creature scampered into her hand and waited patiently while Lena lifted it to a crawling vine that spilled over the top of the compound wall.

  Lena stood, watching, as the mouse looked at the vine, then back at her. Seeming to make up its mind, it clambered up the vine, over the wall, and into the swamp.

  When she went back to the kitchen, Tia and Michaela had retired for the night. She sighed, hoping that she’d have a chance to talk to them later. She looked around for Ramon, but could not find him. Crestfallen, she walked up to her room with a hung head and a heavy heart.

  She lit up when she saw Ramon sitting outside her door, one foot crossed over his knee, a newspaper held out in front of him.

  “I didn’t know you could read,” she teased.

  “Good evening, Ms. Buldova. I see that you’ve managed to ignore your curfew.”

  Their interaction stopped at that. Both of them knew that it had to. Both of them knew that any more risked both of their safety and could spoil their chance at changing Lena’s fate. Ramon opened the bedroom door for her, key in hand, ready to lock it behind her and shut her out from the only things in the house that she cared about.

  She met his gaze as she stepped through the open door. That was all that it took. Their resolved crumbled. Ramon glanced both ways down the hallway and nodded. Lena grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him into the room, closing the door and locking it behind them.

  Ramon

  This time, Ramon did not hesitate and did not resist. Any fear that he had of Zeus was now gone. Any fear that he might be taking advantage of Lena was gone too. He saw her now. She was strong, and Ramon wanted nothing more than to be with her.

  He leaned in and met her kiss with tender passion. They lingered, drawing breath as one. He felt Lena as though she was an extension of his own body. He held her head in his hands, stroking her cheeks with his thumbs and pulling her close as they kissed.

  Her hands moved quickly to free him of his pants, then worked up from the bottom button of his shirt to the top and then pulled it from his shoulders down to the floor. He tugged the hem of her tank top and pulled it over her head and felt the tips of her breasts brush against his chest and fill him with insatiable hunger. He pulled her shorts down and ran his finger along the lips he had tasted just the day before. He wanted to do so much more than that to them now.

  Their bodies fit together beautifully, their skin shared a common buzz and their hands moved all around, joining them to each other. They kissed deeply and Ramon found himself lost in Lena’s embrace. He moved by instinct now, pushing his leg between Lena’s and spreading them apart so that he was pressed up against her.

  She opened her mouth to breath or moan or cry out, it was impossible to say. Ramon pushed her down onto the bed and climbed on top of her,

  Lena

  Lena had fucked many times, but she had never made love before.

  From the first time that night that Ramon had touched her skin, love was all she felt. His fingers seemed to know exactly where she needed them. He felt his way across her body and filled her with pleasure that she did not know a man could bring her. In the last week, her only apprehension about sleeping with Ramon had been her fear that it would be like it had been with Damien. But this, this could not have been any further from that.

  She found mind going quiet and then disappearing all together. When she moved, it was though her body was moving according to somebody else’s command. Someone who knew what they were doing. But it was her all along. She followed pleasure and found it at ever turn, Ramon giving it to her in any way that he could.

  When he climbed on top of her and she felt his cock brush between her thighs and come to rest pressed against her mound, she knew that she was ready, she knew that she wanted it.

  She reached down and found him, hard but soft at the same time. Her fingers wrapped around his cock and she pushed his head down so that it met her entrance. There was a second’s pause as Ramon pushed against her, and then slipped inside.

  Lena cried out in ecstatic pleasure.She never wanted this to stop. She never wanted to let Ramon go. She wrapped her legs around his waist and pulled him into her, moaning his name and uttering mindless obscenities that Ramon repeated back to her in kind.

  The bed creaked as they rocked back and forth in lover’s unison. If somebody had been walking down the hall lending a careful ear, they would have heard the quiet squeaking, the sounds of flesh slapping against flesh, and a steady low thump of Lena’s headboard bumping against the walls. They might have heard a moan or two, but they would not have been able to make out the sweet and dirty things that the lovers whispered in each others’ ears.

  Lena, as happy as she was with what Ramon was doing to her, wanted to do something to him. She rolled her hips and pushed him onto his side, then climbed on top of him with a grin. She sat up high on her knees so that Ramon could see her long and lean body, straddling his cock, and her sweet face, smiling down at him.

  She lowered her hips as she guided his cock into her. She did not stop until she sat flush on Ramon’s lap and he was completely inside her. Then she began to move. What began as an unsteady, irregular motion became gradually more fluid until Ramon and Lena were like clockwork. She gasped for air, from exertion and because her chest had grown tight with the rest of her body. A heat rose from between her legs and consumed her. She felt her chest burn and then her cheeks. She held her breath. She pushed her legs harder. S
he felt it again. That low, almost undetectable shaking that gave way to an earthquake.

  When the world came back into focus, she was laying on top of Ramon’s chest, clutching him, rogue quakes still rocking her body from time to time. His arms were wrapped around her and she was warm from the heat of his body. He smiled at her, and she was happy.

  Ramon

  Ramon could have stayed there with her all night. He never wanted to leave her arms, and Lena would have been perfectly happy to keep him.

  But he had no choice. He would steal out into the night. Their love had to be a secret. They had already taken too great a risk going this far. If somebody had noticed that he was gone, if someone had thought to open the door and look for him here. There would be no saving either of them.

  He sat up and looked down at Lena. She had a radiance that lit even the darkest corners of her bedroom so that to Ramon it seemed to be daytime. Her chest rose and fell in soft, slight puffs and her sweet breath mixed with the scent of sweat and earth. Just standing up out of bed broke Ramon’s heart. He leaned back down and he kissed her on the forehead.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “Sleep well, I will see you tomorrow.”

  “Sweet dreams.”

  They kissed a final time and Ramon went to the door. On the other side, there were footsteps.

  He turned on his heel and went for the balcony door. It was locked. The key as up in his room. He turned to Lena, panicking. She pointed to the closet door and Ramon dove inside, closing the accordion door behind him as best he could. He slid to the ground and managed to sit amid a collection of shoes and stuffed animals, Lena’s dresses and blouses hanging above his head. Through the slits of the door, he could make out shapes and shadows, but little more. He held his breath, hoping that the footsteps would merely pass and fade away.

  But if things had gone his way lately, he wouldn’t be here, hiding in a fucking closet. Naturally, the footsteps grew louder and he heard a knock on the door. Maybe it was Tia, or Michael. That might actually be a good thing. They could really use their help right now.

  He watched Lena’s shadow move across the floorboard, creaking. Realizing that she couldn’t open the locked door, he fished the key out of his trouser pockets and slid it across the floor. The shadow grew momentarily closer, stopped, shrank, and stood back up before returning across the bedroom and going to the door. There was another knock, more impatient, and the sound of Lena unlocking the door. The silence that followed seemed to last forever.

  The bedroom door creaked open.

  Lena (TW - Rape)

  Lena opened her eyes to see Ramon looking back into them. Those big brown eyes. So sweet and soulful. She could have looked into them forever but she knew that he had to leave. She kissed him and watched as he got out of bed and walked around her bedroom picking up scattered pieces of his outfit. He moved like a jungle cat, his muscles flexing, putting on a spectacular show that kept Lena absolutely hypnotized.

  She wasn’t sure how, but he had become even more beautiful to her as each day went by. She couldn’t fathom how she’d seem him as a stupid lunk just days before. Not now that she understood the depth of his character and the contents of his soul.

  Sadly, he finished dressing himself. It came with with the consolation prize of a kiss goodnight and sweet whispers. He went to the door with a casual stroll, then stopped stiff. He turned around, looked at the balcony door. He ran across the bedroom and struggled with it, but it was locked and he didn’t seem to have the key.

  Someone must have been in the hallway. Lena pointed to her closet door. It was packed full, and she wasn’t 100% sure that a man as big as Ramon could fit. It wasn’t going to be comfortable, but he couldn’t exactly hide under her bed, and he’d be a little more than inconspicuous behind the curtains.

  By some miracle, he managed to get himself in the closet and close the door. Lena tried to fix her hair. She scrambled to kick her own clothes under the bed and put on a nightgown that hung from the corner of her four poster bed, preparing for the worst case scenario that somebody would stop at her door.

  Sure enough, there were three short knocks. She got out of bed and started to the door, but realized that it was locked and that she didn’t have the key. As if he was reading her mind, the key slid out from under the closet, halfway across the wooden floor to her feet. Another knock. She went to the door and opened it.

  Earlier, when she had thought of the worst case scenario, she had lacked imagination.

  “Hello, beautiful.”

  “Get the fuck out or I’m calling my dad.”

  “Who do you think let me in, sweet thing,” Damien said.

  “I’ll call my bodyguard. Remember him?”

  The momentary look of panicked fear on Damien’s face suggested that he had not forgotten about his encounter with Ramon the other night.

  “You’d do that to your fiance?”

  “I’d do it to an asshole home invader who isn’t welcome here.”

  “I wouldn’t do that babe. Not if your bodyguard wants to keep his job.”

  She bit her tongue. She knew that all she had to do was scream for help. It would mean that she’d have to explain why Ramon had been hiding in her closet, which was bound to go poorly. It would have been worth it to see Damien’s stupid fucking face when his new friend burst out of her closet with blood in his eyes.

  Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.

  “Your face is looking good. How many stitches did that take?”

  She managed to score another sour face from Damien.

  “Sixteen,” he lied. In truth, it had only taken four and a series of butterfly bandages. After the fourth stitch Damien had started screaming and flailing so much that the nurse who had the poor luck of tending to him had to result to medical glue and bandages. But for his entire life when he showed off the scar, he’d say it had taken sixteen stitches He’d also say that it was the result of a ‘small cut’ that he’d sustained when rescuing a little girl from a burning building. None of that would have surprised Lena then.

  “How are your ribs?”

  Damien pretended not to know what she meant, but he was still sporting a giant purple and yellow mark under his expensive clothes.

  “How’s your virginity? he came back. It was a poor choice on his part. When Lena talked with her girlfriends about losing her virginity to him, the story was always a comedy, with most of the humor taking part at Damien’s expense.

  “Awful,” she sighed. “I gave it to some pathetic boy who played with it for thirty seconds and then threw it away. We all make mistakes, you know.”

  Lena knew that it was unwise to push like this. Damien had a temper. But in truth, it did not matter what she did. He’d come here for exactly one thing, and it was going to take drastic measures to stop him.

  “You know, I was thinking about letting that slip. I know you must be worked up, pre wedding nerves and all. But my wife has got to know how to respect her man. I’m going to have to teach you, and I might as well give you your first lesson now.”

  “It’s really a fucking shame that I don’t have any more glassware to give to you,” Lena said.

  She backed towards her desk, to the scissors that she knew were there. Ramon had given her a crash course in using them, and she was beginning to think that those skills might be getting put to the test tonight.

  “I don’t appreciate your tone of voice,” Damien said as he began to follow after her. Lena bumped against the desk and fumbled around behind her. Her fingers moved over the shears and she took them up in her hand the way Ramon had showed her and hid them behind her back.

  Damien closed in on her. Close enough that when she brought her knee up into his balls, he didn’t have any chance at defending himself. She slipped out to the side and made a break for the door but he grabbed her by the hair and swung her back into the room, shuffling to stand between her and the door.

  “You’re goi
ng to regret that, bitch.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Tears were in Damien’s eyes as he tried and failed to stand up straight.

  “You know, I honestly didn’t know if that was going to do anything to you or not. I’m surprised, really. I’d guessed not.”

  “Don’t pretend like you don’t know what I’ve got,” he said, regaining his composure. “Or should I reacquaint you with San Pedro and the Banditos.” He actually grabbed his crotch in emphasis, wincing as he did.

  Lena laughed and it sparked rage in his eyes. He started to take a step towards her and she held out the shears in a completely functional knife fighter’s grip.

  “Do it and I cut them off.”

  Damien spat at her and and smirked. “So it’s going to be like that, huh? We’re going to play rough?”

  “You have no fucking idea,” she said. “This time, I’ll bite it off.”

  “And I’ll knock your teeth down your throat.”

  “They make dentures. Do they make fake cocks?” She was going to suggest that if they did, he could finally have a big one, but Damien had heard enough. He lunged across the room at her. Lena jabbed with the scissors but the tip caught on his shirt, tearing it open but robbing it of any real stopping power. He grabbed her arms and twisted her wrist. She dropped the shears and cried out. They stood face to face for a moment beside the bed and she saw all of the rage and evil in Damien’s eyes that she’d seen the last time he had been in her bedroom.

  “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” he whispered.

  He pushed her to the side, onto the bed, and scrambled on top of her, pinning her arms to the side.

  “Actually, no. We do this the hard way.”

  Lena twisted an arm free and swung up at his face, catching him just under the right eye, not too far from where she’d hit him with the glass. He hit her back, grabbed her by the shoulder, and forced her onto her stomach, holding her down to the bed with one hand while he undid his pants.