Crossing the Line

by Lauren Landish

  There's motion in the doorway, and I look up, seeing Dane holding Shawn in his arms, the now nearly eighteen-month-old boy as beautiful as he looked on a video screen. “Yes, buddy, that's your godmother,” Dane says as Shawn waves his arm shyly. “Come on, let's get them inside. We've got space for everyone ready and the place to ourselves for the afternoon.”

  We all go inside, Abby barely able to contain her happiness as she kneels in front of my children. “They're beautiful. What are their names?”

  “Abigail and Mikey,” Rafe says, picking up Mikey and handing him to Abby.

  Abby takes Mikey carefully in her arms while I hand Abigail to Dane. I pick up Shawn, my godson, where he promptly nestles in and looks up at me with his bright blue eyes. He's adorable, and I'm glad that I was able to return the honor to Abby that she gave to me by naming Shawn after me.

  We go inside, where I see Dane and Rafe size each other up before they reach that peaceful coexistence that seems to be a totally guy thing, Dane taking Rafe toward the big wing of the house where, if I remember right, the family room is. Knowing them, they’re probably going to bond over a football game or something.

  Abby watches, then puts an arm around my shoulder. “So, what is this big secret that you’ve been wanting to tell me? When I told Dane, he said that he’ll keep Rafe entertained as long as we need. And by the way, Happy Thanksgiving.”

  “Thanks, sister. Well to start, let me show you my wings,” I say, leading Abby to her old room. It takes me nearly two and a half hours to tell her my story, with lots of pauses for tears, but also more laughter than I thought there’d be as I tell her about some of the things that we’ve been able to do since getting married. When it’s done, Abby traces my wings with her finger wonderingly. “So . . . he’s my Master. Although we understand that in public, or around people who won’t quite get it, we use our normal names.”

  “Angel . . . it’s a beautiful name for you. And is anyone else allowed to call you that?” Abby asks.

  “Nobody has so far. But if my family wanted to, I’d let them.”

  Abby nods, then hugs me, holding me tightly. “Then, Angel, I’m glad that you found your Master. We’ll keep it as Rafe though, until I can explain it all to Dane. I love you.”

  We go downstairs, and I see that Dane’s prediction of having the house totally to ourselves is a bit off as Abby’s father and stepmother have joined us. The nine of us all pile into the big family room that does feel like a sense of home, the adults more or less relaxed while the three small children all sort of look at each other uncertainly. Brittany, Abby’s stepmom, is going gaga already. “Shawnie, they’re so beautiful, and so big already! How can they be walking so young?”

  “Good DNA, I guess,” I say with a shrug as Rafe tries not to laugh. He looks at me, seeing the look that I exchange with Abby, and he understands. “So thanks for letting us girl talk for a while. Dane, it’s good to really see you again.”

  “It's good to see you too. So what can you guys tell us, you know, about the project and stuff?” Dane asks.

  “It was warm, and we got to do what we love,” I tell Dane. “In a few years, you might even get a chance to see the thing fly. In the meantime, we're doing well, and we're making it. I guess in the end, that’s all we can say.”

  “Aren’t we all?” Dane asks. “Please at least tell me that you don’t have to rush back right away.”

  I smile, reaching out to take Rafe’s hand. “Oh, no, we’re staying at least through Saturday, then we’ll jump over to South Carolina to see my family. There’s no way I’m not going to be spending as much time as I can with my sister from another mister.”

  Abby laughs at the old title and nods. “Good. So does that mean y'all get to stay for dinner, too?”

  Rafe laughs and nods. “Of course. And if you can take a little time to teach me the proper use of the word y'all, I'd appreciate it. Still can't quite get that down so far.”

  “Don't worry about it, Rafe,” Dane says, laughing. “I don't think I'm ever going to get it fully down, and I'm planning on spending the rest of my life here.”

  “Sounds good,” I tell Dane. We settle down to watch the Cowboys and Redskins get ready for kickoff, and I relax. I’m loved, I’m a new mother . . . and I’m superior.

  What else do I need?

  Excerpt: Dirty Talk

  by Lauren Landish

  He makes dirty sound so good. So right.

  The moment I heard his velvety voice growl that I’m his ‘Kitty Kat’, I knew I was in trouble.

  Derrick ‘The Love Whisperer’ King gives out relationship and sex advice on the radio to everyone, but he’s giving me something a bit more personal. Nobody’s ever talked to me the way he does. Daring, Demanding, Sexy… and oh so Dirty.

  Maybe we started this whole thing a little backwards. Sex first and getting to know each other after. But as we get closer, he’s healing the cracks in my untrusting heart and making me believe that maybe fairy tales do come true.

  I feel beautiful and hopeful when he worships my body. I feel dirty and naughty when he whispers filthy things in my ear.

  But is it real? Can something so bad really be good for me?

  And more importantly, against all odds, can it last… forever?

  Katrina

  “Checkmate, bitch,” I exclaim as I do a victory dance that’s comprised of fist pumps and ass wiggles in my chair while my best friend Elise laughs at me. I turn in my seat and start doing a little half-stepping Rockettes dance. “Can-can, I just kicked some can-can, I so am the wo-man, and I rule this place!”

  Elise does a little finger dance herself, cheering along with me. “You go, girl. Winner, winner, chicken dinner. Now let’s eat!”

  I laugh with her, joyful in celebrating my new promotion at work, regardless of the dirty looks the snooty ladies at the next table are shooting our way. I get their looks. I mean, we are in the best restaurant in the city. While East Robinsville isn’t New York or Miami, we’re more of a Northeastern suburb of . . . well, everything in between. This just isn’t the sort of restaurant where five-foot-two-inch women in work clothes go shaking their ass while chanting something akin to a high school cheer.

  But right now, I give exactly zero fucks. “Damn right, we can eat! I’m the youngest person in the company to ever be promoted to Senior Developer and the first woman at that level. Glass ceiling? Boom, busting through! Boys’ club? Infiltrated.” I mime like I’m sneaking in, shoulders hunched and hands pressed tightly in front of me before splaying my arms wide with a huge grin. “Before they know it, I’m gonna have that boys’ club watching chick flicks and the whole damn office is going to be painted pink!”

  Elise snorts, shaking her head again. “I still don’t have a fucking clue what you actually do, but even I understand the words promotion and raise. So huge congrats, honey.”

  She’s right, no one really understands when I talk about my job. My brain has a tendency to talk in streams of binary zeroes and ones that make perfect sense to me, but not so much to the average person. When I was in high school, I even dreamed in Java.

  And even I don’t really understand what my promotion means. Senior Developer? Other than the fact that I get updated business cards with my fancy new title next week, I’m not sure what’s changed. I’m still doing my own coding and my own work, just with a slightly higher pay grade. And when I say slightly, I mean barely a bump after taxes. Just enough for a bonus cocktail at a swanky club on Friday maybe. Maybe more at year end, they’d said. Ah, well, I’m excited anyway. It’s a first step and an acknowledgement of my work.

  The part people do get is when my company turns my strings of code into apps that go viral. After my last app went number one, they were forced to give me a promotion or risk losing my skills to another development company. They might not understand the zeroes and ones, but everyone can grasp dollars and cents, and that’s what my apps bring in.

  I might be young at only twenty-six, and female
, as evidenced by my long honey-blonde hair and curvy figure, but as much as I don’t fit the stereotypical profile of a computer nerd, they had to respect that my brain creates things that no one else does. I think it’s my female point of view that really helps. While a chunk of the other people in the programming field fit the stereotype of being slightly repressed geeks who are more comfortable watching animated ‘girlfriends’ than talking to an actual woman, I’m different. I understand that merely slapping a pink font on things or adding sparkly shit and giving more pre-loaded shopping options doesn’t make technology more ‘female-friendly.’

  It’s insulting, honestly. But it gives me an edge in that I know how to actually create apps that women like and want to use. Not just women, either, based on sales. I’m getting a lot of men downloading my apps too, especially men who aren’t into tech-geeking out every damn thing they own.

  And so I celebrate with Elise, holding up our glasses of wine and clinking them together in a toast. Elise sips her wine and nods in appreciation, making me glad we went with the waiter’s recommendation. “So you’re killing it on the job front. What else is going on? How are things with you and Kevin?”

  Elise has been my best friend since we met at a college recruiting event. She’s all knockout looks and sass, and I’m short, nervous, and shy in professional situations, but we clicked. She knows I’ve been through the wringer with some previous boyfriends, and even though Kevin is fine—well-mannered, ambitious, and treats me right—she just doesn’t care for him for some reason. So my joyful buzz is instantly dulled, knowing that she doesn’t like Kevin.

  “He’s fine,” I reply, knowing it’s not a great answer, but I also know she’s going to roast me anyway. “He’s been working a lot of hours so I haven’t even seen him in a few days, but he texts me every morning and night. We’re supposed to go out for dinner this weekend to celebrate.”

  Elise sighs, giving me that look that makes her normally very cute face look sort of like a sarcastic basset hound. “I’m glad, I guess. Not to beat a dead horse,” —too late— “but you really can do better. Kevin is just so . . . meh. There’s no spark, no fire between you two. It’s like you’re friends who fuck.”

  I duck my chin, not wanting her to read on my face the woeful lack of fucking that has been happening, but I’m too transparent.

  “Wait . . . you two do fuck, right?” Elise asks, flabbergasted. “I figured that was why you were staying with him. I was sure he must be great in the sack or you’d have dumped his boring ass a long time ago.”

  I bite my lip, not wanting to get into this with her . . . again. But one of Elise’s greatest strengths is also one of her most annoying traits as well. She’s like a dog with a bone and isn’t going to let this go.

  “Look, he’s fine,” I finally reply, trying to figure out how much I need to feed Elise before she gives me a measure of peace. “He’s handsome, treats me well, and when we have sex, it’s good . . . I guess. I don’t believe in some Prince Charming who is going to sweep me off my feet to a castle where we’ll have romantic candlelit dinners, brilliant conversation, and bed-breaking sexcapades. I just want someone to share the good and bad times with, some companionship.”

  Elise holds back as long as she can before she explodes, her snort and guffaw of derision getting even more looks in our direction. “Then get a fucking Golden Retriever and a rabbit. The buzzing kind that uses rechargeable batteries.”

  One of the ladies at the next table huffs, seemingly aghast at Elise’s outburst, and they stand to move toward the bar on the other side of the restaurant, far away from us. “Well, if this is the sort of trash that passes for dinner conversation,” the older one says as she sticks her nose far enough into the air I wonder if it’s going to be clipped by the ceiling fans, “no wonder the country’s going to hell under these Millennials!”

  She storms off before Elise or I can respond, but the second lady pauses slightly and talks out of the side of her mouth. “Sweetie, you do deserve more than fine.”

  With a wink, she scurries off after her friend, leaving behind a grinning Elise. “See? Even snooty old biddies know that you deserve more than meh.”

  “I know. We’ve had this conversation on more than one occasion, so can we drop it?” I plead between clenched teeth before calming slightly. “I want to celebrate and catch up, not argue about my love life.”

  Always needing the last word, Elise drops her voice, muttering under her breath. “What love life?”

  “That’s low.”

  Elise holds her hands up, and I know I’ve at least gotten a temporary reprieve. “Okay then, if we’re sticking to work, I got a new scoop that I’m running with. I’m writing a piece about a certain famous someone who got caught sending dick pics to a social media princess. Don’t ask me who because I can’t divulge that yet. But it’ll be all there in black and white by next week’s column.”

  Elise is an investigative journalist, a rather fantastic one whose talents are largely being wasted on celebrity news gossip for the tabloid paper she writes for. I can’t even call it a paper, really. With the downfall of actual print news, most of her stuff ends up in cyberspace, where it’s digested, Tweeted, hashtagged, and churned out for the two-minute attention span types to gloat over for a moment before they move on to . . . well, whatever the next sound bite happens to be.

  Every once in awhile, she’ll get to do something much more newsworthy, but mostly it’s fact-checking and ass-covering before the paper publishes stories celebrities would rather see disappear. I know what burns her ass even more is when she has to cover the stories where some downward-trending celebrity manufactures a scandal just to get some social media buzz going before their latest attempt at rejuvenating a career that peaked about five years ago.

  This one at least sounds halfway interesting, and frankly, better than my love life, so I laugh. “Why would he send a dick pic to someone on social media? Wouldn’t he assume she’d post it? What a dumbass!”

  “No, it’s usually close-ups and they’re posted anonymously,” Elise says with a snort. “Of course, she knows because she sees the user name on their direct message, but she cuts it out so that it’s posted to her page as an anonymous flash of flesh. Look.”

  She pulls out her phone, clicking around to open an app, one I didn’t design but damn sure wish I had. It’s got one hell of a sweet interface, and Elise is using it to organize her web pages better than anything the normal apps have. It takes Elise only a moment to find the page she wants.

  “See?” she says, showing me her phone. “People send her messages with dick pics, tit pics, whatever. If she deems them sexy enough, she posts them with little blurbs and people can comment. She also does Q-and-As with followers, shows faceless pics of herself, and gives little shows sometimes. Kinda like porn but more ‘real people’ instead of silicone-stuffed, pump-sucked, fake moan scenes.”

  She scrolls through, showing me one image after another of body part close-ups. Some of them . . . well damn, I gotta say that while they might not be professionals or anything, it’s a hell of a lot hotter than anything I’m getting right now. “Wow. That’s uhh . . . quite something. I don’t get it, but I guess lots of folks are into it. Wait.”

  She stops scrolling at my near-shout, smirking. “What? See something you like?”

  My mouth feels dry and my voice papery. “Go back up a couple.”

  She scrolls back up and I read the blurb above a collage of pics. Little titty fuck with my new boy toy today. Look at my hungry tits and his thick cock. After this, things got a little deeper, if you know what I mean. Sorry, no pics of that, but I’ll just say that he was insatiable and I definitely had a very good morning. ;)

  The pictures show a close-up of her full cleavage, a guy’s dick from above, and then a few pictures of him stroking in and out of her pressed-together breasts. I’m not afraid to say the girl’s got a nice rack that would probably have most of my co-workers drooling and the blood rushing fro
m their brains to their dicks, but that’s not what’s causing my stomach to drop through the floor.

  I know that dick.

  It’s the same, thick with a little curve to the right, and I can even see a sort of donut-shaped mole high on the man’s thigh, right above the shaved area above the base of his cock.

  Yes, that mole seals it.

  That’s Kevin.

  His cock with another woman, fucking her for social media, thinking I’d probably never even know. He has barely touched me lately, but he’s willing to do it almost publicly with some social media slut?

  I realize Elise is staring at me, her previous good-natured look long gone to be replaced by an expression of concern. “Kat, are you okay? You look pale.”

  I point at her phone, trying my best to keep my voice level. “That post? The one right there?”

  “Oh, Titty Fuck Girl?” Elise asks. “She’s on here at least once a month with a new set of pics. Apparently, she loves her rack. I still think they’re fake. Why?”

  “She’s talking about Kevin. That’s him.”

  She gasps, turning the phone to look closer. “Holy shit, honey. Are you sure?”

  I nod, tears already pooling in my eyes. “I’m sure.”

  She puts her phone down on the table and comes around the table to hug me. “Shit. Shit. Shit. I am so sorry. I told you that douchebag doesn’t deserve someone like you. You’re too fucking good for him.”

  I sniffle, nodding, but deep inside, I know that this is always how it goes. Every single boyfriend I’ve ever had ended up cheating on me. I’ve tried playing hard to get. I’ve tried being the good little go-along girlfriend. I’ve even tried being myself, which seems to be somewhere in between, once I figured out who I actually was.

  It’s even worse in bed, where I’ve tried being vanilla, being aggressive, and being submissive. And again, being myself, somewhere in the middle, when I figured out what I enjoyed from the experimentation.