by Sam Mariano
I follow after her, stepping inside the shower and pulling the glass door shut behind us. She brings her hands together and reaches up toward the spray, collecting the water in the well of her hands like it’s holy water. I take advantage of the position to move up behind her and slide my arms around her waist, tugging her back against me. I nuzzle my face into her neck, one hand locked around her waist, the other roving up to caress her breast.
For just a split second, I wish I’d met her some other way. I wish the first time I ever touched her was like this. It should have been.
Whatever the reason though, she seems willing to let me off the hook. Her hand rises and she reaches back, running her fingers through my hair as I kiss her neck.
A flash of a memory assaults me, Beth’s sharp blue eyes, her sly smile, her long dark hair covering her breasts as she stands in this same shower.
It’s enough to pull me out of the present moment. My arms fall to my sides. I’m aggravated by the heaviness in my chest, but I shake it off and reach for Mia’s coconut shampoo. Beth’s shampoo smelled like shit, but she put so many other products in her hair once she was out of the shower, it didn’t much matter. I told her to change it once and she told me it would throw off the “chemistry.” I doubt Beth ever cracked open a chemistry book in her life, but her hair care routine was not flexible.
“What’s wrong?”
My gaze snaps to Mia. “Hm? Nothing.”
Apparently unconvinced, her smooth brow furrows and she takes a step closer, looking up at me like she’s taking a reading. “You look sad.”
I offer a faintly skeptical smile. “I look sad?”
She nods her head. “You have this look sometimes, this solemn look like the world is so lonely and disappointing, you don’t even want to be part of it. You had that look just now. Am I poor shower company?”
“No,” I assure her, handing her the shampoo. “You’re a lot of things, but never poor company.”
Inexplicably, she winds her arms around my neck and presses her body against mine, gazing up at me with determined blue eyes. “No reason to be lonely with me right here.”
“Very true,” I agree, bending to kiss her lips. I can’t imagine my facial expression really gave away the moment I spent with Beth’s memory—I’m an expert at schooling that—but whatever instinct she has about it, she feels it strongly enough that she feels the need to make up for it. She wants to comfort me, so she brings a hand up to caress my face as she kisses me. Electricity courses through the feeling of thickness Beth inspired a moment ago, breaking it all up and filling me up with Mia’s affection.
My arm tightens around her waist and I spin her around, backing her up against the shower wall. My lips don’t leave hers, not even when the shampoo slips out of her hands. I brace my hands under her ass as it hits the tiled floor, pulling her pelvis close, rubbing her against my cock. I need to be inside her. Her legs are wrapped around my waist so they’re already spread. Her head drifts back against the wall when I push inside her. With the column of her neck just begging for my attention, I can’t resist kissing her neck as I piston my hips and drive my cock inside her. She moans, keeping her head back, her eyes closed. I could get more out of her right now if I felt like it. If she thinks I’m sad, she’ll work to fix it. I don’t know why, but I know she will. My instincts tell me to pounce, to cash in, but I keep myself reined in. I’m getting enough; I don’t need to take it all at once. I’m going to keep her, so I have time.
“Mateo,” she cries, sending desire through my veins. I’m already fucking her, I’m already buried deep in her warm wetness, I already have her, yet it’s not enough. I still crave her.
I want her to come. I’m not getting full satisfaction because she doesn’t want a fucking orgasm, and I want one for her.
I shift her weight, pressing her harder against the shower wall to free up one of my hands. My hand drops to her pussy and I push a thumb inside her, rubbing her clit while I fuck her. She cries out more desperately, clutching my shoulders as I pound into her.
“Please,” she says, a bit mindlessly. “Please.”
Please what? Please yes, or please no? I need a more specific please.
Just in case it’s please no, I ease up on her clit, watching her face for signs of relief.
Goddammit. Irritation courses through me over this no orgasm bullshit. The anger makes me a little rougher. I grab a fistful of her hair and pull my cock out of her without warning. She stumbles to keep up and I spin her around, grabbing one of her wrists and planting her palm against the wall of the shower. She plants the other one herself, freeing up my hand to position her ass and spread her legs the way I want them.
Giving her hair a good yank, I drive my cock back inside her. She cries out, bracing her weight on the wall, but my thrusts are brutal and she can’t quite keep up. I think about her coming, recall the feeling of her pussy convulsing around me when I made her come in Vince’s bed. The desperate noises she makes. I close my own eyes, using her body now, but reliving the pleasantness of that night. I should’ve chased the little asshole off to Joey’s more often and just kept fucking her like that—at least then she’d come for me without a potential breakdown.
Her pussy may not convulse around me now, but she’s tight as fuck and her wet heat welcomes every thrust like my cock has finally found its home. Mia’s cries grow more desperate and I fuck her harder, punishing her. Trying to punish her, anyway. I can’t see her face so I can’t tell what kind of cries these are—pleasure or displeasure. Approaching satisfaction, or soreness because I’ve used her too roughly too many times before.
To be honest, I don’t care right now. I’m pissed off that she’s holding back, holding onto some tether to Vince, refusing the give herself over to me in every way. I don’t care that she doesn’t know I want it—I do, and she isn’t giving it.
I bury myself deep, hissing and drawing her head back as I empty myself inside her sweet little cunt. Aw, fuck, yes.
She remains bent over while I brace a plant a hand on the shower wall, bracing my weight. Little white explosions are making it too hard to focus on anything. Fuck, her pussy is like a magical wonderland built specifically for my dick.
Now that I’m starting to come back around, I should probably assess the damage. If I’m going to keep her, we need to blow past this no orgasm shit. I don’t like that at all. I want to latch my mouth onto her pussy and eat her until she comes so hard, she nearly cries. Part of the fun of using her body is toying with her to give her pleasure, not just to use her as a fucking cum receptacle.
I expect her to be a little shaken, like last time I took a sharp turn toward aggression mid-fuck, but when she finally straightens and turns back to face me, she doesn’t look alarmed. A little breathless—her chest heaves as she tries to catch her breath—but she’s not looking at me like I betrayed her, luring her in with tenderness and then fucking her like a raging beast. She’s watchful, wary of my mood, but when she sees I’m not in a rage, she offers a tentative smile.
Don’t know what she has to smile about; the damn girl won’t let me give her any orgasms.
Then she says the damndest thing. “Feel better?”
I roll my eyes at her. “I told you, I felt fine to begin with.”
“Mm hmm,” she murmurs, sliding me a decidedly unconvinced look before bending to retrieve her dropped shampoo bottle. “Your fronts are no good with me, Mateo Morelli. I see right through them.”
“You’re the most naïve person I’ve ever met; you can’t see through a pane glass window.”
She straightens and scowls at me. “Hey!”
“Truth hurts,” I tell her.
She shakes her head, opening the lid of her shampoo bottle and squeezing a dollop into the palm of her hand. “You’re so mean sometimes,” she states.
“Just being honest. You’re delusional if you think you see through me.”
Mia is decidedly unimpressed. She ducks under my arm to step under t
he spray as she lathers the shampoo in her hands and prepares to massage it through her scalp. “I’m sorry if it offends you so greatly that I see you feeling sad and want to cheer you up.”
“Well, for future reference, giving me your pussy is a great way to cheer me up, so file that away in the good idea folder.”
“If I don’t give it to you, you’ll just take it anyway,” she mutters.
My eyebrows rise at how casually she says that. “That’s true.”
She rolls her eyes at me, then turns back around and proceeds to wash her hair.
---
My day off passes too quickly. Maria brings up lunch and we finally take a little break from the bedroom, heading to my sitting room so we can eat on the couch. I don’t eat on couches, but Mia regales me with a story about her little brother spilling macaroni and cheese down inside the couch at their old house. It’s an incredibly stupid story—I don’t know why you would even allow a small child to eat macaroni and cheese on a couch to begin with—but her face is so animated as she tells it, her eyes sparkling at the memory, that I can’t help enjoying her delivery.
As casually as she can, while stabbing a bite of salad with her fork, she asks, “Do you think I could go see them soon?”
I spear a piece of steak from my own salad and feed it to her. She’s adequately surprised—and distracted. “Good, isn’t it?”
“Mm.” She nods her head, covering her mouth. “Yes, you’re right, that’s good dressing.”
I nod my head and go back to eating my food. She waits to see if I’ll answer her question, but when I don’t, she moves on to the next bit of inane chatter. Frankly, I just like the sound of her voice; I don’t care what she’s talking about.
Once we finish lunch I gather up the damn dishes myself and set them outside my bedroom door for Maria. No point in giving her another chance to come in and ruin our afternoon with more of her reality.
Mia’s fine in my bubble. I’m never going to let her leave.
Well, okay, never is quite the commitment, but for a long time, at least.
Afternoon fades, but it’s not quite evening. The day is still going by much too quickly. Now that I’ve come to the decision to keep her instead of testing her, I’m settling into it, though. I texted Adrian while Mia dried her hair after our shower and told him to call off my cops. I’ll need to eventually prepare her, just in case anyone should ever try to talk to her, but I have no trouble that I know of now. Still, someday I’ll need to prep her. Right now she would get tripped up, but I don’t think she’d talk on purpose. Maybe I just prefer to think that, but it’s a chance I’m willing to take. I’ll be more diligent than I was with Beth. At the first signs of her wavering on me, I’ll…
I don’t know. I’m not sure what I could have done differently with Beth. I don’t know what I did wrong to begin with. I was only being myself—and a toned down version, to be fucking frank.
Still, it was too much.
Now I have Mia—younger, less experienced in every way, in no way prepared for me… but here she sits next to me on my bed, days after I unleashed myself on her, inspecting her nail polish like it’s normal to be having a lazy day with her sometimes-rapist.
“I should do my nails.” Mia looks over at me now, as if she can feel my gaze on her. “Maria brought my nail polish in. Wasn’t that nice of her?”
“It was,” I agree, eyes drifting back to my laptop.
“Maria’s a keeper.”
I smile faintly. “I know.”
“I should probably go do my nails in the bathroom.”
I click save on my proposal and pop over to email to upload the document. “Just do them here in the bed.”
“The polish smells really strong,” she warns me.
“I don’t mind.”
“Really?” She flashes me a bright smile. “Cool. I should still do it in the bathroom though. I’ve never spilled before, but I’m sure this would be the time.”
“Remember the maid I was just talking about? She could easily change the bedding.”
“Yeah, but nail polish does not wash out. One time I got dressed too soon after doing my nails and my pants smudged it. Two years later when I finally threw them out, they still had the nail polish on them.”
At that, I forget what I’m doing and look over at her. “You kept a stained pair of pants for two years?”
“They were really comfortable,” she explains.
I raise my eyebrows in disbelief.
“I didn’t wear them out, just to bum around the house,” she says, trying again to convince me.
I raise my eyebrows even higher.
Giving up, Mia rolls her eyes and throws back the blankets. “You know what, Daddy Warbucks, we don’t all have lucrative criminal empires. Some of us have to keep pants with nail polish stains on the thigh. That’s life.”
I’m still vaguely disturbed at her uttering “daddy” at me. Luckily, her back is to me as she heads for the dresser to retrieve her basket of nail polishes, so she doesn’t see the revulsion that flits across my face.
Unaware of my brief discomfort, she climbs back up on the bed, curling her legs beneath her. There’s a constant click-click as she moves her nail polishes, trying to decide on a color. Eventually she narrows it down to three and she moves the basket back so she can pick one.
“Hm,” she murmurs to herself, rotating a tacky, sparkly polish that I don’t like at all. There’s a silver one I also don’t like. I’m going to throw them away when she falls asleep. Saving her the trouble of picking, I reach over and grab the only suitable choice—a classy red.
She seems surprised I was even paying attention as she takes it from me. “Classic red, huh?” Without argument, she tucks the ugly nail polishes away in her basket and puts them over on her nightstand. Before uncapping the red, she glances my way and gives me one last chance. “You’re sure you’re okay with me doing this on the bed? You probably have like $300 worth of bedding here. I’ll feel awful if I ruin it.”
Just the comforter was $400, but I obviously don’t say that. I do find it amusing that she plucked a “big number” out of her head and came up with $300. I should bite back the faint smile I feel coming on, but I don’t. Surely she’s figured out by now that I’m fucked up.
“I do believe I ruined the sheets just a couple of days ago. Seems like your turn.”
Her eyebrows rise and she cuts me a look of faint surprise that I’m mentioning it so casually. If she expects shame, she’s going to be disappointed. It seems like she’s already realized that, though. I think I’m already starting to break her out of her boxes. Whatever naivety she possesses, Mia seems to catch on quickly and follow my lead without balking.
I turn my attention back to my laptop. She lets it go and hunkers down, spreading red paint across her toe nail.
“So, you know how last night before you came to bed, you said you were reading your daughter a bedtime story?”
I frown at her question, but keep my gaze on the email I’m typing. “Yes, I recall that.”
“Am I gonna get to meet her?”
My fingers freeze on the keys. I lose all track of my thoughts—the ones I was trying to type, as well as the segmented “respond to Mia” thoughts I keep stored separately so she doesn’t think I’m ignoring her while I work. Everything goes blank for a moment, like a computer after a power surge.
“I’m really good with kids,” she goes on. “As you may have noticed from my stories and such. I have lots of experience there. I’m sure she’ll like me.” When I still don’t respond, she adds, “Not that I’m in a rush or anything. I just thought, whatever it is we’re doing here, maybe that’s part of the package.”
That’s a reasonable thought. I have this girl living in my room, I spend every spare moment I can with her, and I fuck her (without a condom) at least twice every day. She could, even now, be growing a second child of mine inside her; stands to reason she deserves to meet the first.
So why do
es it still make me sweat? Visions spring to mind of claustrophobic green sweaters in a fake-ass family photo with a woman who doesn’t love me. A woman I love, but who stopped feeling it back. It’s the loneliest feeling in the world, loving someone who doesn’t love you back. It’s the last feeling on the spectrum of human emotions I ever want to experience again.
Isabella’s fucking mother.
I’ve never introduced another woman to Isabella. I realize, now that Mia is asking about her, I never intended to. After Beth, I wasn’t even interested in sharing my life with anyone else. What a fucking disaster that turned out to be. Isabella was small, she didn’t feel the loss as keenly, but I guess Beth made me realize no woman would last with me. They become easily enchanted to begin with, but they can’t weather me. If I had just one issue or another, maybe one with a lot of patience and fortitude could power through, but I have a whole library. Not the least of which: I’m a fucking asshole.
I can’t introduce Isabella to Mia. She’s five now, she would like Mia, she would grow attached, and then when I wear Mia out, we both have to lose someone.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I finally tell her.
“Okay,” she says, easily enough. “I understand. I just wasn’t sure because we obviously live in the same house, so I thought maybe it was weirder if we didn’t meet. Plus, I don’t know if my being in here has interrupted your time with her, but I wouldn’t want that. I just thought… but that’s fine, no problem.”
I stifle the urge to make a joke about when I kill her. I want to, but not in good humor. I vaguely want to give her a shove away from me since it seems like she’s trying to pull closer. My own personal ghost still haunts me, and the possibility of creating another one is the least appealing thing in the universe.
“Do you want children?” I ask her, turning my head to watch her response.
Her eyes widen, caught somewhere between alarm and surprise. I’ve just told her I don’t want her to meet my existing child, and I’m asking about her desire for kids of her own. “Yes,” she answers, nodding her head.