by Vivian Ward
The sooner I realize that things don’t always go as you plan, the better off I’ll be but damn, he sounded so broken, so lost, so damaged.
Eventually, I drift to sleep and wake to an empty bed.
I decide that since it’s Friday, I’m going to take the day off from looking for a job and go home to spend the afternoon with my father.
When I arrive home, the house is quiet, and he’s nowhere to be found. Curious, I call his cell phone to see where he is, and that’s when I learn he’s with his friends at a local coffee shop they like to congregate.
Looking around the house, I see that it’s in dire need of a deep cleaning. With nothing else to do, I decide (for some unknown reason) that’s what I’m going to do. I’ll clean the house and surprise my dad.
I walk over to the Smart TV to find the app that plays music and crank it up before I get elbow deep in dust and pledge.
I’m almost finished cleaning the living room, about to make my way to the hallway bathroom, when someone begins pounding on the door.
It sounds like a bookie collecting money with the way the door’s rattling in the frame. I look through the peephole and see two men wearing designer suits with black sunglasses standing in front of the door.
“Can I help you?” I yell through the door.
The deadbolt is already locked, but I slide the chain across and lock the doorknob for extra measures.
“Are you Joline Walker?” he glares into the peephole.
Holy shit. How does he know my name?
“We need to talk to you,” he says.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know—I mean, I don’t feel comfortable and—,” he starts pounding on the door again.
“Open the damned door, or we’ll break it down. Right now all we want to do is talk; we need to give you a message. If you don’t open the door, we’ll do a lot more than use our words.”
I’m scared that if I open the door, they’re going to ambush me but if I don’t, they’re for sure going to do it.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
They’re kicking and beating the door, and they’re not giving up.
“Okay, stop! Please, stop!” I yell as I begin unlocking the door so I can open it.
“Excuse us,” they push right past me and make their way inside of the house. “Your neighbors were beginning to stare.”
“Who are you and what do you want? Why are you here?”
“We were sent to deliver a message to Zack Richardson. I’m sure you know who he is,” the shorter one says.
Shorter, but not short by any means. These men are both giants. I’d say the tallest one is at least 6’7” and the ‘shorter’ one is about 6’4," and their necks are the same size as my thigh.
“What about Zack? Is he in trouble?”
“Let’s just say our boss caught on that he’s running a crew,” the taller one says. “Now, we—my partner and I—both know that you’re part of that team, and can you guess what we do to people who rip off our boss and all of his friends?”
The shorter one grabs me in a bear hug with one arm and puts a knife to my throat with his free hand, and begins snaking the knife gently across my neck and up the side of my cheek.
“We can make a beautiful girl like you look real ugly, Joline.”
“What do you want?”
I’m trying to will myself to breathe, but I’m scared if I do, the knife will dig deeper into my skin and cut me. I don’t dare move a muscle.
“We want your friend, and all of the money he’s ripped off from our casino,” the taller one says. “And you’re going to help us get him and the money. Aren’t you?”
It’s not a question. He’s telling me.
“What do you want me to do?”
“You’re going to deliver him to us, and we want him by tomorrow night at 8 PM.”
“Where?” I ask, trying to remain perfectly still.
“We’ll text you the address.”
My face gives away my thoughts as I wonder how they’re going to do that.
“Don’t worry; we have your number. We know everything there is to know about you, even how you’re fucking his brother. We sure wouldn’t want any accidents to happen with him, now would we?”
Shit. They do know everything; they weren’t making that part up.
I swallow. Hard.
“Okay, I’ll do it.”
“We thought you would,” the one facing me smiles. “Go ahead,” he looks at his partner.
He thrusts me out of his arms, spins me around and smacks the shit out of my face, making my head turn from the force.
I can feel the warm blood trickle from my nose, and I can taste pennies in my mouth; the copper taste makes my upper lip curl in disgust.
“That’s the only warning you get. Next time, it’ll be worse.”
Chapter 18
Frantic, I keep trying to reach Zack as I drive over to his apartment and hope that he’ll talk to me once I get there.
Before I exit the car, I take a look at my face in the mirror and clean the dried blood off my face. Not only did they bust my nose, but they also bloodied my lip when it caught on the man’s massive ring that the guy was wearing.
Continuing to call, I ride up the elevator to his apartment, but he’s still ignoring me. I just hope that he answers the door when he sees me standing there.
Knocking on his door isn’t getting me a response, either. Unsure as to whether or not he’s home, I call him again as I continue knocking to see if I can hear his phone ring.
It works. His phone begins ringing, and it sounds like it might be on his coffee table, so I knock harder.
“Zack, I know you’re home. Answer the damn door,” I redial his number to make his phone start ringing again.
“Shit! Okay, okay! Hold on a minute,” he yells. I can hear his feet against the floor as he makes his way to the door and opens it, covering his frontal area with a t-shirt.
He’s standing before me buck naked, and his chest is rising and falling as though he just ran a marathon. My eyes are drawn to the tattoo on his chest, diagonal to his heart.
It’s a hand of face cards, fanned out with a thorny rose behind them with an overhead angel to watch out for him. I hope that angel is watching out for him—for us—now because we’re all in deep trouble.
Suddenly, I get the feeling that I interrupted something, but I don’t care. I can’t care right now. Right now I have to push whatever he’s doing in the back of my mind because if I don’t, I won’t be able to focus.
“Joline? What are you doing here?”
“I, um, I, uh, came here to tell you something.”
His eyes protrude out of his head, enlarging the whites of his eyes as he cranes his neck, waiting for an answer.
“These men came to me and told—,” a girl appears from out of nowhere.
She’s wrapped in his bed sheet, clutching it to cover her breasts.
“Babe? What’s going on?” she asks him.
His head drops against the door as he tries to cover himself with the t-shirt.
“Go back into the bedroom,” he sounds annoyed. “Go!” he yells at her when she doesn’t immediately follow his orders. “And put your damn clothes on.”
“What men?” he turns his attention to me once she leaves.
“I can come back later,” I say, turning around to leave his apartment. “This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have—,” he grabs my arm and stops me, dropping the t-shirt.
I shouldn’t look, but I can’t help myself. He’s not a “grower” like his brother; he’s definitely a “shower.” Scrambling for the t-shirt, he pulls it back in front of himself and drags me into his apartment.
“She’ll be gone in a minute. I promise,” he says, planting me firmly on his leather couch.
There’s so much going on that my head is spinning and I can’t even begin to wrap my mind around what’s happening. How did I get mixed up into all of this?
“Call me later?” the woman ask
s as she grabs her purse from the kitchen counter.
“Bye,” he says, opening the door for her.
She’s gone, and now I feel like I can breathe a little, but I want to cry. I want to break down and let it all out. There’s too much going on. The men, his brother, him, the girl, it’s all too much.
I can feel the waterworks about to come on, but I keep telling myself not to do it. Don’t let it happen.
Tears are stinging my eyes, and I can’t help it. I’ve held back as long as I can. As much as I want to pretend that everything’s okay and I’m good with his brother, I can’t help the fact that a part of me wants to be with Zack.
Shame, guilt, anger, and sadness are all on the brink of being released.
“Hey,” he slips on a pair of sweatpants and sits next to me. “It’s okay. Whatever’s going on, we can fix it.” He looks at my face and sees some of the dried blood that I missed in the car before I made my way to his apartment.
“Shit, Joline, what happened to you? Tell me what’s going on.”
The warmth of his hand rubs my back and cascades around me as he embraces me and holds me tight.
“These two men, they came to the house to give you a message,” I begin.
“What? What men?”
A look of concern grows across his face. He knows he’s been caught; they’re on to him.
“They didn’t tell me their names, but they want me to bring you to them. Tomorrow night. What are we going to do?”
“Shit,” he gets up from the couch and begins pacing the room. “Okay, we’ll go. I’ll meet them.”
I didn’t have to tell him all the things the two men said; he already had an idea of how the conversation went.
“You can’ t do that. They might kill you, Zack.”
He looks at my face and wipes away pieces of the dried blood that are still present on my face.
“Don’t worry about me. Look at what they did to you. Are you okay?”
I nod, biting my lip. My face is still sore where he’s holding it, but I’m not going to tell him that. It feels tender, and a bit swollen.
It almost feels like what I’d imagine a steak feels like after you pulverize it with a meat tenderizer, even though my face didn’t take that kind of beating. The monster’s hands were gigantic and strong as hell.
“I'm all right,” I push his hand away. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”
“Here,” he walks to the freezer and gets a bag of frozen peas. “Put this on your face.”
I’m not sure why but I find it whimsical that he—a single man—has a bag of frozen peas, and start laughing as I hold it up to my face.
“What? What’s so funny?”
“This,” I hold the bag up to him. “You don’t strike me as the frozen vegetable type.”
“I’m not,” he rolls his eyes. “I hired a maid once, about a year ago, and sent her to do grocery shopping and she brought them back.”
“Oh,” I laugh. “Why’d you get rid of her?”
“Do you see this place? I’m never home to make a mess.”
He has a point.
Suddenly, it doesn’t matter that there was another woman in his apartment just moments ago. I don’t care who she is or why she was here. All that matters is that I’m here with him now.
“I’m sorry about everything,” he says to me. “It was wrong of me to call you and say all of those things, and I was out of line for what happened the other night,” his eyes gaze down at the couch.
I know what he’s referring to, in particular by the way he cast his eyes downward. He’s talking about the night when he was on top of me. Right here, on this couch.
“Don’t,” I stop him. “Don’t apologize. I’m not worried about it.”
“Joline, do me a favor, please. Don’t shut me out of your life? I didn’t mean it. That girl that was just here, I don’t even know her. I found her online and had her come over. She doesn’t mean anything to me. Only you mean something to me.”
“I don’t want to—,” he shuts me up by kissing me.
A deep, long, passionate kiss.
I don’t even try to pull away from him. Instead, I go with it, and I’m kissing him back.
After a moment, my phone rings, interrupting our kiss. It’s his brother, Trent.
“Hey, babe,” I say, looking at Zack. “What are you doing?”
“I was wondering if you’d join me for dinner tonight and maybe let me lick the dessert off of you in the bedroom.”
“Um,” I try to think fast. “I’m with one of my friends right now that I ran into earlier so can I call you later and let you know then?”
“If you have plans, I don’t mind tagging along and being the third wheel.”
Oh, but I think you would.
“I don’t know; we’ll see. I’ll text you later, but right now it looks like we’re planning on having a girl’s night to do some catching up.”
Why is lying becoming so easy for me to do now?
Zack picks up my hand and begins kissing my fingertips, sucking them into his mouth.
“Okay,” he sounds a bit down. “Let me know, and Joline? I love you.”
“Talk to you later,” I blurt out. Before I can fully register what he even said to me, I hang up the phone, but it’s too late now.
He probably thinks I blew him off. Fuck.
“Everything okay?” Zack says to me as he leans in and begins kissing along my neck.
His scent is to die for; it’s so masculine and sexy. With kisses trailing along my collar bone, I can feel myself heating up from the center of my core and that familiar wetness returns to my middle.
“Yeah.”
I feel myself slipping farther away from reality and find myself not caring. When did I become this woman?
His hand begins to skate up my shirt, and his light touch makes my body tingle. I get lost in the sensation as he pulls my bra to the side and begins gently squeezing my nipples.
Looking into his sea-green eyes, I get lost in the waves that are crashing against me, rocking this boat that I’m on. This teetering weathered boat that’s trying to rough the storm and make it home safely. Except this ship doesn’t know where it’s supposed to be right now.
I know that if I let this happen, this sex with Zack, that it will taint my relationship with Trent forever. Things will never be the same, and I will have broken the trust he’s given me.
But if I don’t do this, I might not ever have another shot. I’ll never know, and there will always be that ‘what if’ in the back of my mind, eating away at me. This is something that I’ve dreamt about more than once or twice, but it doesn’t make me feel any less guilty.
His kisses are trailing down the center of my cleavage, and I moan. Pulling his head up because I need to feel his lips on mine once again. Kissing him again ignites something deep inside of me, and I can’t go without him inside me for another minute.
Reaching down, I grab him inside his pants and feel his length in my hand; it’s so hard that I can literally feel it throbbing.
We break our kiss for a moment and study each other’s face as we let the reality of what we’re about to do sink in.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” he flexes his dick in my hand.
“Are you sure you want to?” I counter.
“Let me see your tits,” he says. “I’ve been dying to see them forever.”
Slowly, I lift my shirt above my head and let it land on the floor beside me before I unclasp my bra, allowing my breasts to spill out of the cups. The cold air in the room causes goose pimples to raise around my areolas and my nipples turn into hardened pebbles.
Enveloping his hands around my breasts, he firmly grips them and squeezes them.
“Fuck. You have the nicest rack I’ve ever seen.”
Leaning forward, he takes my nipple into his mouth and begins sucking on it while his hands continues squeezing both of my breasts. Slowly, he pulls my nipple out of his mouth, making it longer
and harder than I’ve ever seen one of my nipples become.
“Stand up and take your pants off.”
I don’t question him; I just do as I’m told. Standing before him, I slide my pants off and begin to push my panties down.
“Turn around. Let me see your ass.”
Completely nude, I turn around and show him my ass. His warm hands firmly grip each cheek.
“Damn, Joline. You have the thickest, nicest ass I’ve ever fucking grabbed.”
His hands feel more like hooks as he grabs a thick piece of meat off each side and slowly pinches it, pulling it and stretching it.
My sex heats up and becomes wetter with the thought of his hands being so close to it. A few more inches and he could feel my wetness (again) if he wants to.
Standing up behind me, he presses his hard cock against my ass as his hands find a secure resting spot on my hips and he pulls me into him. Rocking his hips, he thrusts into me over and over. The only thing that’s preventing him from penetrating me is the thin material from his sweat pants that’s separating us.
“I can’t wait anymore,” he grabs my hand and leads me to his bedroom. “I want to fuck you right now.”
Fucking. That’s exactly what we’ll be doing. He doesn’t love me; not like his brother does.
Raw, passionate, carnal fucking.
“Lean over the edge of the bed and show me your pussy,” he orders.
Obeying him, I do exactly as he says. It’s like he’s the one working the voodoo now.
He reaches out and touches me, feeling my arousal.
“So fucking wet. I like how your body responds to me, Joline.”
Moaning at his touch, I push my ass out, hoping he’ll slip a finger inside of me. I want him inside me so fucking much. He doesn’t take the bait, at least not yet.
“Are you still sure? Once we do this, there’s no going back,” he reminds me.
“Yes.”
He flips me onto my back so that I’m laying spread-eagle across his bed, diagonally. Grabbing my legs, he leans forward before he slides himself into me and puts my ankles on his shoulders.
“You want it hard?” he asks.
I nod.
“Whatever you want, but yes, I’d like it hard.”