Quills and Daggers - A Second Chance at Love Romance: The Collective - Season 1, Episode 5

by Chris Genovese

  “James hasn’t left,” I promised. “He’s just adapted. He’s put on a coat of armor.”

  Nikki pulled free from my hands and backed up the steps to her apartment.

  “That’s okay,” she said. “I don’t deserve James anyway, and Ivory isn’t the man for me.”

  “You’re just gonna walk away from me like that?”

  “We’re not good together,” she said. “That’s never gonna change.”

  She opened the door and closed it behind her, leaving me standing on the sidewalk, grasping for words that would make something make sense. Her words didn’t. Why would we never be good together? What had I done? What had she done? In the back of my mind, I knew that once again, it all boiled down to Mrs. Rebecca and our fucked up childhood.

  Good guys never win. Good guys get fucked over in the end.

  What had gotten broken between us? This question had plagued me for years. Was it the fact that I’d removed my pants when Mrs. Rebecca told me to? I shouldn’t have done that. This will sound stupid but in all honesty, I hadn’t understood what was going on. I was told to remove my pants so I did. But I was a lousy friend. It was clear Nikki hadn’t wanted to do whatever Mrs. Rebecca was making her do, and I hadn’t helped. Instead of backing her up, I’d quietly followed orders.

  For a moment, I considered running up the steps and banging on her door. If she came down to answer it and I did one of those dramatic romantic comedy scenes where I wrap my arms around her and kiss her hard on the lips, then maybe whatever barrier she’d built would come crumbling down.

  Nikki wasn’t that girl. She wasn’t the damsel in distress. She wasn’t the type to go upstairs and jot down our night in her diary. No, if anything, she’d probably put on headphones and blast a Metallica tune. She had a hardened heart and only shared glimpses of the warm core from time to time. Those were the moments I cherished most, when her smile was real and cut through my skin. When her cheeks blushed rosy red. When her tears were those of laughter instead of sadness. But those moments were few and far between.

  The reality was, I had another girl, one who I hoped wanted to see me again. Valerie wasn’t the whore Nikki thought she was. Her only fault was she wasn’t Nikki. This could be a blessing as much as a curse, as it seemed I’d be getting nowhere with Nikki…ever. She’d shut me down my entire life. Now, when things could have possibly worked out between us, she was doing it again. I refused to try so hard anymore. It wasn’t fair. I deserved to be happy too.

  I expected to see Kevin when I arrived at home. Jane lived closer than Nikki did so he should have reached our apartment a long time before I did. Yet, our place was empty. No note to explain his absence. He wouldn’t be coming home. I hoped he’d gotten luckier than I had and was somewhere in the process of winning Jane’s heart. Somehow I knew that wasn’t it at all. Where he really was, I had no idea, but it was probably the same place he’d gone every other night until the early morning hours.

  Kevin’s behavior earlier had bothered me a lot. He’d lied to me. I knew he had. So I went to his room and, unlike any other time in history, I invaded his privacy. His room was immaculate, as always. Just like Kevin’s booth at the shop, his bedroom was in pristine condition. Not a single speck of dust or piece of lint would be found, even if I’d donned white gloves and ran them above the one framed picture he had, an old 80s movie poster for the movie Short Circuit that read “Number five is alive.” It had been his favorite movie when we were kids. For a whole year he’d mimicked the robot because somehow he didn’t stutter when he spoke all mechanical like that. He sounded ridiculous, but he didn’t stutter.

  Not only was his room extremely clean but it was also stripped of the average clutter most rooms possessed. He had a twin size bed with his sheet and blanket made to military specifications. He’d never served in the military but had somehow learned boot camp like organizational skills. Three pairs of shoes were lined up perfectly beneath his bed. Dress shoes, flip flops, and work boots. Why he had them all, I had no idea, since he rarely wore anything other than his sneakers.

  His clothes were folded neatly inside of his dresser and his TV was wiped clean of any dust or debris. The only other item in the room was a small desk with nothing on it except for a notebook and a box of pencils and pens. I picked up the notebook and flipped through it to find nothing but random sketches, mostly 3D style mockups for tattoos. On one page, I found the recipe for pumpkin pie, which, in anyone else’s notebook, might seem weird, but Kevin was obsessed with the dessert.

  Eventually, I hit a blank page and knew I’d come to the end of my search. I lifted the notebook and shook it as I held it by the spine, seeing if anything would fall out but doubting anything would. As the pages swung freely in front of me, I noticed some writing on a page deep within the middle of the book. I flipped open the page and there, written hundreds of times, enough times to fill the entire page, was the name: Mrs. Rebecca. A heart was drawn around each one.

  I heard the key in the front door and quickly set the notebook down on the desk the way it had been before I disturbed it. A fast scan of the room told me I’d done a good job of not disturbing anything else. I moved silently out of his room and into mine before stepping back out into the living room to confront him. I needed to see if I could get him to cop to his strange behavior and odd fascination with our old foster mom.

  “Kev,” I said as I rounded the corner into the living room.

  It was Valerie. She stood in front of the front door, wearing a tiny black dress, one of those loose belts that dangle down ever so slightly at the waist. Her hair was up the way she’d had it when I’d woken up from my nap earlier that day. A thin gold pendant dangled over her chest and I loved the way the chain added a sparkle to her tan neck.

  “Not Kev,” she said.

  “Valerie.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I knocked softly. And then I used the key…still have your car keys remember?”

  “You fell for the bait,” I joked.

  “Or you did.”

  She walked over to me and wrapped her arms around my neck. We’d never kissed. We weren’t dating. We’d made no commitment and other than her seeing me naked and napping next to me while I recovered, we hadn’t even flirted on a serious level. Yet, feeling her arms around my neck felt so right. This was what I’d wanted from Nikki. It’s the acceptance I longed for. I’d fucked enough girls in the past to get that out of my system. I’d broken up with enough of them to be done with the mind games Nikki seemed so fond of. But what I hadn’t had was the warmth of a serious relationship, the cute and cuddly stuff that comes along with having a girlfriend, the wanting I’d had earlier when my cock had been hard against her knee and she hadn’t climbed on top of me. These are the things a man needs in his life.

  Yes, a fuck comes and goes. A fuck can be easily replaced. A fuck can come in so many different packages and while each one might feel different, they all end the same. But a real woman can make a man feel complete.

  The gentle calm of Valerie’s head against my chest was nice. She breathed in and moaned.

  “You smell good,” she said.

  I tried to lean down to see her better but it hurt and I winced in pain. I might’ve doubled over if the pain didn’t cause me to stand up straight.

  “My god,” she said. “You okay?”

  “Not sure,” I admitted.

  “I was going to say you seem so much better already. You want to go to your bed?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I think that would be good.”

  She took my hand and as she led me into the bedroom she said, “If this is just an attempt to get me into your bed again…well played.”

  “If I’d known all I needed to do was get hit in the face with a pipe and get the shit kicked out of me, I would have done that the first night I met you,” I said.

  “But instead you kicked their asses,” she reminded me.

  “You don’t have to work tonight?” I asked.

&nbs
p; “No, I’ve got the night off,” she said. “So I got my baby girl into bed and rushed over to see you.”

  As she led me into my room and over to my bed, she reached around from behind and unbuttoned my pants. She stayed in this position for a minute. Her tits pressed against my back while her right hand reached into my jeans, resting inside the waistband of my briefs. The feel of her cool hand against the warmth beneath my stomach felt good. The pain in my side sent a wave of agony through my body. I tried my best to concentrate on Valerie, whose lips were at my arm, kissing the bicep beneath my shirt sleeve.

  Our lips had never met and yet I felt as if I’d kissed hers for years. The way she nibbled at my arm made me want to scoop her up off the floor and pin her against the mattress, but my damaged body wasn’t going to allow me to play the aggressor in tonight’s games. This was all her. She’d be the one to decide how far this would go.

  All playfulness aside, Valerie had a way about her that was more comforting than any girl I’d ever been with before. Maybe it was being a mother, that ability to nurture and care for someone other than herself, that made her so naturally soothing. Before I could object, she hooked her thumbs around the waist of my jeans and briefs and tugged them both down. She pulled the fabric free of my cock and shimmied them down my legs to drop them at my ankles. Then she ordered me to lift my arms so she could help me get out of my T-shirt.

  She pulled the comforter back from my bed, stripping the tidy tucked in appearance she’d fixed for me earlier that day, and helped me lie back. There, on my back, I lay completely naked except for my socks and my watch.

  “Just a second,” she said, as she locked my bedroom door and then went into the bathroom.

  “Afraid someone’s gonna interrupt us?” I asked.

  “I have a six year old,” she reminded me. “The only true privacy is when the door is locked. Besides, you don’t live alone so yeah, I’m afraid someone’s going to interrupt us.”

  She returned with a warm rag and sat down next to me. Her face was gorgeous. Her nose was cute, sort of button like, and her lips were full, luscious. She pursed them in concentration as she removed my socks and began wiping my legs down with the warm cloth. It felt great, and my cock stiffened completely as she worked her way up my thighs. The pain was immense, but feeling her so close to my balls made me automatically lift my ass a little off the mattress. She giggled and pulled away from me.

  “What…” I began to protest but she was gone quickly and rewetting the cloth with warm water.

  She returned and this time skipped right over my midsection and started at my shoulders, wiping the rag down my arms and over my knuckles.

  “You’re such a tease,” I said.

  “What are you expecting?” she asked, with a devilish grin that told me it was a rhetorical question.

  As the rag scraped my arms, I felt goose bumps rise up on my legs, and my cock jerked in place. She saw it and laughed.

  “I’ll get to you in a minute,” she promised.

  “Can you look at me for a second,” I asked.

  She looked up at me and a few strands hung down from her slightly unraveling bun. I wished I could pause time, hire a sketch artist to capture the moment, then frame it up on the wall like Kevin’s movie poster. Her look was unbelievably attractive. The most endearing thing about it was the way she was caught in mid-clean, wiping me down, caring for me like some nurse with great bedside manner. She wasn’t trying to look sexy, or at least she wasn’t posing or anything like that, but she was incredible.

  As she looked into my eyes, my gaze dropped a little and I could see down her dress, at the cleavage beneath. I was so fucking horny.

  She moved the cloth over to my cock and wiped down my shaft. I reached for her and put my hand behind her head, pulling her up toward my face. She balanced on one arm as the other worked my cock. What had started as gentle cleaning had turned to a slightly more vigorous stroking. Her eyes didn’t leave mine as her face approached and she moved within an inch of my face. When I kissed her, I thought I might pass out. My side lit up from trying to lean too far forward, but the pain somehow intensified the moment instead of ruining it.

  She opened her mouth and welcomed my tongue. Then her lips were opening and closing in a rhythmic pattern that was perfect and matched my own. We were in sync, my lips cushioning hers and her jaw reacting to mine. The wetness of her mouth satiated my thirst. Her breathing picked up, so did mine, until we were breathing together, hyperventilating in our kiss.

  “I’m…afraid…I’ll…hurt you,” she said.

  “Don’t…wor…ry…about…me,” I said.

  She pulled away from my mouth and lifted her own dress up over her head. She wasn’t wearing a bra and I wondered when she’d taken it off. Maybe in the bathroom? It didn’t matter. Her tits were big, full, real…the tits of a mother who’d breastfed and hadn’t had the time or the money to pay for enhancements. I was glad. I wanted to touch them, to feel them, to taste them.

  Her stomach was soft, again…real. Everything about her was real woman. I gestured for her to come up and meet me but she grinned and shook her head. Yes, she was definitely calling the shots. She climbed over me so that she was to the side of me, making a “T” with our bodies. She was too far away for me to touch, but the side view was amazing. I watched her tits hang down and felt her nipples scrape against my thigh as she looked at me once more while hovering over my cock.

  Her lips settled at the tip of my cock and she grinned again before opening her mouth. I watched as my cock disappeared, her red lips sliding down my shaft, as she stretched her mouth around me and sucked hard, pulling me upward and into her throat. My eyes rolled back and for a second I couldn’t watch her. I could only feel the warmth, the wetness of her mouth rising and falling over my cock. When a woman knows how to give head, there’s no better feeling in the world.

  My eyes shot open wide as she gripped my balls and squeezed on her way down. Then she pulled upward again and sucked, letting her teeth scrape me enough to damn near make me pass out. I lifted my head to watch her and the pain forced me back down again. I reached for her, wanting so badly to at least feel her body. I needed to touch her, to stroke her arm, or massage her leg…anything. I wanted my hands on her.

  She sped up, sucking my cock so good my toes curled.

  “Ohhhh fuck,” I said.

  “Shh,” she warned. “You’re gonna make me get a big head.”

  She grinned again. Then her face got serious as she drove down onto my cock again and squeezed my balls. Her teeth bit in harder this time, scraping the base of my cock, where she stayed for a moment, digging in, letting me feel the pain.

  “Shit, Valerie….fuck…I need you,” I said.

  I slapped the mattress and reached for her. She finally gave in and turned ever so slightly, enough so I could reach her ankle. I petted her there, feeling like a fucking idiot, knowing it gave her no pleasure at all. I needed to touch more of her. I pulled on her ankle, fighting through the pain at my side, as I urged her backward. She finally gave in and slid back a little, lifting her ass up in the air so I could get a nice view of her pussy lips. They were so fucking wet and swollen. She was quite possibly hornier than I was. I needed to do something about that.

  Fighting through the pain, I stretched and I touched a finger between her pussy lips. It came away wet. She sighed over my cock before lowering herself onto me again. I slid my finger between her lips until I found her opening, wetting my finger good, but I wasn’t close enough to fully insert it. The tip of my finger was inside her and she began to rock back so my finger could go in a little more than an inch.

  All I needed her to do was lift one leg over me and slide back and we’d be in sixty-nine position, but apparently she wanted me to beg for it.

  “Valerie,” I said. “I need to taste you. Sit on my face.”

  “I might hurt you,” she said.

  “I don’t care.”

  “I do.”

 
“Trust me. It’ll hurt me more if you don’t. Please. Straddle me and slide back.”

  She sucked my cock harder as if this might be her last chance. I felt myself close to coming and fought back the urge.

  “Mmm,” she moaned and I wondered if she’d tasted pre-cum.

  Finally, she gave in and lifted a leg over me, putting her ass right in my face. I couldn’t wait to taste her. I’m not kidding when I say the excitement was almost overwhelming. I wanted this girl so fucking bad. I hadn’t had a girl tease me like this in so damn long. She was careful not to put too much weight down on my chest and sides. She lifted her ass up and sat her pussy down on my face. I reached up from under her and gripped her ass cheeks in my hands, using them as handle bars while I dug in with my tongue, seeking out that warm, wet spot I desired.

  Her pussy dripped down my chin as I steadied her and found what I wanted. I licked out at her clit and tickled it a bit, teasing it with quick flicks of my tongue.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  I slid my tongue from her clit through her folds and up to her taint, teasing that I might go all the way to her ass, but stopping short of it. I lowered my tongue again and dipped back between her lips and over to her clit. Then I couldn’t resist anymore. My side was throbbing and my taste buds were begging for her. So I pulled her into my mouth while gripping her ass and stretching her cheeks open.

  My chin pushed against her pelvic bone as my tongue dug deep into her pussy, licking her inside, and making her yelp. She loved it. Her hips bucked as she tried desperately to fuck my face. When it seemed she found her rhythm, I interrupted it on purpose, pinning her clit down between my teeth and licking her clit vigorously. Her legs trembled and her arms quivered as I shook my face and punished her pussy for all the teasing she’d done.

  “Ahhhh!” she cried out. “Oh….oh….ahhhhhh!”

  Suddenly she yanked her pussy off my face and climbed off me. At first I thought I’d made her mad or had fucked up or had disappointed her. I wasn’t sure what she was doing. Then she straddled me again, this time facing me, and lowered her pussy down onto my cock. I had no time to deny her. She was already there. Her pussy was so soaking wet that my cock slid into her with ease. Her pussy was tight inside though and wrapped around my cock, squeezing it as she lowered herself all the way down onto me.