by J. L. Monro
“So what’s going on between you and Jace?” For one of the few times in my life, Lana looked genuinely concerned and wanted to know what she could do to help.
“Where do I even start?”
“Start with sex. Stories are always better when they start with sex.” Lana was clapping her hands together in excitement. I wondered about that girl sometimes.
“I know you had sex. I can practically smell it on you.”
“Ewwwwwwwww.” Dana and Tara jumped back away from me in disgust.
“We did not just have sex so there’s no need to behave like I’ve got the plague.”
I didn’t really know where to start. I thought at the beginning might be best and maybe I could try to understand it all myself. I described the first day I had met Jace and how forward he was. I skirted around the subject of us sleeping together enough for them to get the gist without any dirty details, much to Lana’s dismay.
“Why are you doing this to yourself? You clearly have strong feelings for him, so why play the martyr and sacrifice your happiness when there’s no need?” I turned to Dana who had just spoken and refrained from telling her to sip some advice from her own cup. I thought about what she said and suddenly it all slipped into place. For so long, I had thought I didn’t want to let anyone in for fear I would lose someone else close to me if it didn’t work out, but it wasn’t that.
“It’s you.” I looked at them all and they looked at me back in confusion. “Jace comes with so much additional baggage that I don’t think I can take on because I’m always clearing up behind your shit. I’d be another support crutch for someone and I can’t do it anymore. I’d be another tool for someone else with issues. His dad isn’t going to go anywhere; I can’t be that crutch for the rest of my life.” I felt selfish to my core for saying it but that was how I felt.
“That’s not true, Mara. You can’t blame us for you not living your life.” Lana genuinely looked affronted, but she and the rest of my sisters needed to hear this.
“It is true. All of you are so wrapped up in the dramas and little trivial incidences that happen in your lives, you never see the bigger picture. It’s been like this since we were kids. At first, I did it because I thought that was what a good older sister was supposed to do, but now it’s just all got out of hand.” I took a deep breath and off-loaded things I’d wanted to say to them for years.
“Lana you’re so caught up in being the center of the party you never notice the negative effects it has on others. Remember when you took Grandma’s car to some house party with your friends the night before the school fashion trip to Paris? She specifically told you that if you got in trouble one more time that week you wouldn’t be able to go, but even that didn’t make you hesitate.
“Not only did you take the car, somehow, you managed to scratch the whole side of the car on God only knows what. You were completely shitting yourself, but not once did you question why you never got in trouble for it.” Realization dawned on her face, but I wanted to make sure she knew.
“I took the blame for it and paid for the damage with the money I would have used to go on the girl’s holiday back when I actually had friends. You all stood there saying that it was because I was just so unsociable and I never went anywhere. No, it was because of you. You were able to go on the trip of a lifetime, where you probably learned many of the skills that make you so good at your job now, and I slowly fell out of touch with my friends and became the loner you always thought I was.
“I would love to say that was the worse stunt you ever pulled, but it wasn’t. There were the late night ridiculous phone calls because you’d dumped your boyfriend or your boyfriend had dumped you, so I would have to come out late in the middle of the night to come and get you or listen to your drunk ramblings when I should have been at home studying or catching up on sleep because I had an exam or work in the morning.” Her mouth snapped shut, and that’s when I knew she’d accepted that I was right. Lana used to tease me rotten as kids and still does but when she was caught up in her shit, she always called me to come and save her ass. I knew that most of these issues were things I should have let go a long time ago but I hadn’t and now it had made me bitter.
“Then we’ve got Tara. I’m not going to comment on the shit you do in the evenings. If it makes you happy and you’re safe so be it, but let’s face it, your little hobby did not start out that way.” Tara averted my gaze, but I didn’t care. If she was ashamed of what she was doing then maybe she shouldn’t be doing it. “But you know what the main thing with you is? Growing up you were so focused on getting your top scores, you roped me in every time to be your study buddy. You completely ignored the fact that we didn’t study the same topics and I needed to spend just as much time on my classes.
“You still fucking do it, knowing I work long hours in the office and don’t get much time to myself. You just naturally assume I don’t want me time to just relax and chill the fuck out. It never once occurred to you to think that maybe you should find someone else because I might have my own workload. Then you had the audacity to say that you couldn’t understand why I never had any work/life balance.
“Last but not least, we have Dana, who decides to do the royal fuck up.” I cringed a little inside when I saw her flinch, but I was on a roll and this needed to be said. “Dana, I love you, but dear God you did a brilliant one. I love my nephew beyond words, but maybe when you’re giggling along with tweedle-dumb and tweedle-dumber over there, you’d like to remember who sacrificed nights out with her few remaining friends.
“I babysat him so that he didn’t wear out our grandparents and you could study for your exams and enjoy the last remnants of your teenage years. That’s right; it was me.
So when Jacob is moaning about spending time with me because I’m boring, maybe you want to remember that I’m just a little more structured around him because his father is a psycho bastard and our grandfather is retired. He doesn’t have that many male role models around him to give a good work ethic, so I try to show him what I do to instill some of that inside him.” I slumped back in the chair. It felt so good to get that off my chest. I think I’d resented my sisters for a long time for all of the things I’d sacrificed for them even though they weren’t aware of it.
Dana, the more levelheaded of us, spoke first. “I’m sorry, Mara. You’re right. We’ve all been selfish. However, you’re a Grade-A idiot yourself. You should have spoken up about how you felt instead of letting it brew inside of you like that for all these years. We can mull over what you’ve said about us later and hug it out some more, but we weren’t the reason you were just crying. You’ve told us the basics with the Jace situation but what’s the real issue.”
“Not only does he come with a huge case of unknown. As in I have no idea where things would end up with us but . . . and I know I’m going to sound like a bitch for saying this . . . and what I’m about to say must not leave this room . . . his dad is an angry alcoholic in a wheelchair. I’m just not sure, with the shit I deal with from you guys, I can take on anything else on my shoulders. As far as I can tell, relationships are hard work on their own. I don’t think I’ve got anything left in me to be the supportive girlfriend.”
The “ohhhhhhhh” was in unison. I think they actually understood what I was saying because there were no clever one-liners from anyone. Tara leapt up off the sofa and ran toward the kitchen, promptly coming back with wine glasses and a bottle of wine under her arm.
“I think we’re going to need this to get us started on a plan of action for you.”
“An action plan? This isn’t some kind of practical exam that you can apply logic to in the hope of coming up with the correct answer.”
“Well, you can’t just sit here and hope things will fall into place and work themselves out.” Okay. True.
Once the bottle of wine was finished, Tara went back into the kitchen and came back with cocktail glasses and various bottles of alcohol and mixers. The best plan my sisters cou
ld come up with was taking Jace up on his offer and going with him to the race in France. The plan including having sex until one of us passed out. On the other hand, we could go back to his place right now and have sex until one of us passed out. They were so much help!
I do have to confess that by the time we were all ready to go home, I hadn’t laughed so much in years. Even though I was still no wiser about my Jace problem, I felt that by talking and sharing with my sisters, I had removed a huge weight from my shoulders, and I was closer to them than I ever had been.
CALL ME A glutton for emotional punishment. I went to the damn race. I had Lana pack my wardrobe for the weekend again and didn’t even grumble at all the fancy lingerie she crammed in there. It was almost worth it to see her sweating, bouncing on the case in a feeble attempt to get it to close.
This time, I had promised myself that I was going to enjoy the time with Jace. I wasn’t going to resist. In Tara’s terms, I was going to use it as an experiment to see what being in a relationship with him might actually be like.
Much to Jace’s annoyance, he agreed to let me meet him at the train station. We were taking the Eurostar, and I was little excited about since I had only ever travelled to France by plane before.
When I arrived at the station, he was already waiting. I don’t know what was wrong with me. I suddenly felt so shy and awkwardly waved at him with an even stiffer “Hi.”
Amused by my action, Jace walked up to me, grasped my face with both hands, and kissed me with such a force that I couldn’t react. I just stood there with my arms held out awkwardly at my sides.
When he released me, I couldn’t speak. What was I supposed to say? Luckily, he wasn’t stuck for words. “All right, BonBon. I am glad you’re here; I was wondering if I was going to have to come and get you.”
“I told you I would be here. I just had to finish off in the office.” ” I grabbed his hand. “ Come on. Let’s go get on the train.” He grinned at me and followed.
Jace had booked Business Premier Seats, which were bliss. We enjoyed a three-course meal and snuggled the whole way there. In between the kisses, caresses, and some heavy petting that probably shouldn’t have been happening on a public vehicle, I’d completely forgotten where we were. It was just Jace and me together.
“BonBon, I’ve got something to admit.” He was still smiling, but he had an adorable guilty look on his face. “There’s no race.”
“What?”
“I kinda lied about me having to do a race. I thought if I asked you to come with me to France just to be with me, that you wouldn’t come. You know, because every time I suggest we do anything that might make us look like a couple, you run.”
My jaw slackened and my mouth was agape. A little part of me was pissed because he lied, but it was such a small part that it was insignificant. What had surprised me was that he had wanted to spend time with me that much. A piece of me still believed that I was some sort of conquest, and maybe I really needed to put that to rest.
“So you’re telling me that I’ve got you all to myself for a whole weekend?”
The guilt melted away from his face and left a look of total lust and, as Lana would put it, downright filth!
“We need to get to our hotel room. Now.”
I couldn’t help but giggle and I had to agree. Right now, all I wanted to do was to be locked in a room with Jace for a few hours or days or weeks or . . . heck . . . at least until one of us passed out from too much sex!
When we arrived at the hotel, it became clear that Jace had a thing for beautiful hotels. We were staying at Le Royal Monceau Raffles Paris. Even the bedroom ceiling was beautiful, and I say that because as I soon as I stepped into the room that was pretty much the first thing I saw. Jace scooped me into his arms and tossed me unceremoniously onto the bed before I had finished gasping at the opulence.
I had worn wraparound cotton dress on that I’d worn straight from the office underneath a thick woolen coat. He carefully removed it to reveal the matching black lace underwear set. Jace’s eyes took on a much darker shade, and I suddenly felt very exposed.
“Are you attached to these?”
“No. Wh . . .” I didn’t get to finish my question before he had torn them in two. He caught my left leg under the knee and gently placed my leg over his shoulder before he dipped his mouth between my already soaking wet folds.
My back arched off the bed with each stroke of his tongue. He used his other arm to pin my hips to the bed so I couldn’t escape him. Every time I bucked when he suckled on my clit, he held me tighter. I gripped the sheets so hard my knuckles turned white as the orgasm kept building to the point that I had to squeeze my eyes shut as wave after wave of pure pleasure washed over me.
I was totally exhausted from the bliss he had given me. My body felt boneless and there was no way I could have moved even if I’d wanted to. That’s probably why I didn’t notice when Jace slipped from the bed and definitely why I didn’t notice something being shackled around my wrists and the click that ensured that I knew I’d been restrained.
Panic seared through my body and my eyes shot open to find Jace sat over my body with a smug grin on his face.
“Calm down, BonBon.”
“Jace, what are you doing?” I tried to sit up, but the only thing that wasn’t restrained were my legs and Jace sat on them so I couldn’t kick at him.
“You promised me that you were going to give us a chance. Considering all the times you’ve tried to run out on me . . . successfully, I might add. I just wanted to make sure that you couldn’t go anywhere. I don’t think I’ve gotten over your bathroom escape.”
The panic hadn’t subsided one bit. “Now, here is what is going to happen. I am going to make love to you over and over again until you can’t scream my name anymore. When I am sure that you’re going to give us a chance, I’ll let you go and maybe we can reverse the role.”
“Jace, let me go.” I was completely at his mercy. Naked and spread before him like an open buffet.
“I realized something, BonBon, and I’m going to say it.” He put his fingers gently over my lips, so I couldn’t interrupt. “I don’t know how you’ve managed it, but I am completely and utterly in love with you.” My eyes shot wide open. He loved me. I was thankful that his fingers were still over my lips because I had no idea what I was going to say to him. “I want to make you mine in every way, but I need you to catch up with me. I need you to let go of your issues with control and give in to me. Because, BonBon, I can’t let you go.”
When he finished, his head dipped and suckled my nipple, which reacted instantly. I didn’t want to moan, but I did. While his mouth concentrated on my right nipple, he used his other hand to pinch, roll, and flick the other.
At some point, I stopped struggling. It may have been when his right moved between my folds and began to stroke my clit. His mouth moved to my other nipple, and his hand never once paused in what it was doing to my clit. His fingers dipped in and out. Fast then slow and fast again. I couldn’t keep up with all the sensations. My body had begun to writhe out of control and within moments, I was screaming his name.
After he made me come two more times, he stripped and paused between my legs. “Do you want me, Mara?” I refused to give him the satisfaction. I was not going to beg for him.
He cocked his eyebrow as though I had issued a challenge.
“Have it your way. I want to hear you say you want me. I want you and I won’t let you come again until you tell me you want me.”
I was sure there was no physical way I could orgasm again even if I wanted to, so he was going to be out of luck. What I didn’t count on was his head quickly dipping between my thighs. Each lick and stroke had me reaching higher and higher. The pressure within quickly returned and just as I was about to combust, he stopped.
“Bastard.” He just grinned.
“Tell me what I want to hear, and I’ll let you finish.” I wasn’t listening. I refused to give in. I tried my best to brin
g my thighs together so that I could rub one out, but he realized what I was trying to do and pried my legs apart.
“Tut tut tut. Just say it it.”
“Never.”
He chuckled. The bastard was laughing at my torment. Over and over again, he brought me to the brink and when I wouldn’t cave, he stopped and waited for the pressure to fade.
Only when he’d been still a moment, did I realize his hand was on my face. He was using his thumb to wipe a tear that had escaped my eye.
“BonBon, why are you crying?”
I looked up at him, saw concern in his eyes, and . . . love.
“I want you.”
He smiled and leaned down slowly to press his lips to mine. He didn’t kiss me at first and I savored the closeness.
He whispered against my lips. “Where do you want me, BonBon?”
“Everywhere. Inside and out.”
Then he kissed me. Fueled full of passion, love, and lust. There wasn’t enough of him. And I still couldn’t fucking touch him. He sensed my frustration and released my wrists. My hands went straight for the hair I loved to touch and tangled it around my fingers.
I could feel Jace’s cock pressing at my entrance but he wouldn’t put it where it needed to go.
“Jace. Please, I need you.”
“Mara, look at me.” I looked up at him and saw the seriousness in his face. “There is no other but you. There will be no other but you. I want you to know what you mean to me. I never want you to doubt what I feel for you.” He didn’t wait for an answer before he slammed home, and once again, I screamed his name.
THE FIRST TWO days in France were unbelievable. Jace was so attentive and romantic; I couldn’t believe he was the same man I had kneed in the family jewels.
We went to see the local sights in Paris. While I was busy taking pictures of the monuments, Jace was busy taking pictures of me. I had never been one for selfies but Jace made us take several together.