I walked past the alley where I’d been sick. I sauntered past the newsstand where I’d had my run-in with Richard. I thought at that moment if he showed up I’d clock him. Maybe I’d find all my rage and power in that one instant and just deck his ass the way he deserved.
The Double E was up on a small hill by itself. I had to fight the wind to even get to the top of the pavement. The door was ripped free of my hand with a gust and then I was wrapped in a rich warm darkness that only comes from stepping out of a brilliant day into a dimly lit place.
“There she is, finally!” my sister yelled and I waved. Blinking a few more times, I made my way back to the far-left booths. The air was full of bacon and beef and cheese with fried onions. Good stuff. The self-starving part of me cringed with fear. The rest of me listened to my stomach rumble.
“What held you up?” She sipped a huge iced tea with lemon. “I got you one.” Cat nodded to mine.
“Hey, thanks.” Half of a natural sweetener packet and two lemons and I was good to go.
“So…what held you up? When we spoke you were on your way.”
I shrugged. “A lover.”
She froze then grinned. Why not be honest, right? She was my sister after all.
“Do tell. The man or the woman?”
“The woman. Things got…interesting last night. She was checking in on me. Making sure I wasn’t mad at her.”
“Are you mad at her?”
“No,” I said. “I’m confused.”
“Well, two lovers—one man, one woman—and all after years of being this section of the city’s resident hermit…no wonder!”
“I’m not a hermit,” I said.
She caught my hand and squeezed it. “Come on, Clara, tell me I’m wrong. Tell me for true that I’m wrong.”
I looked into her sea-blue-green eyes, so much like mine, and blew out a sigh. “Fine. I was a bit hermit-like.”
She snorted. “Okay, we’ll call it that.”
“Hermitish?”
“You were damn near a shut-in,” she hissed and I sat back fast. “Sorry.”
“You’re very upset.”
“I’ve been very upset. He broke you. It’s nice to see you unfuckingbreaking.”
Her eyes shone like she’d cry and when the waitress appeared to take our orders I welcomed the intrusion.
“BLT with extra bacon, extra mayo and two dill pickles,” Cat said. She grinned. “I had no breakfast. I could eat the whole damn pig if someone let me.”
The waitress turned to me and smiled. “And you, ma’am?”
My brain stalled. My old standby had been a fruit plate and cottage cheese. The fruit was usually underripe so I had a good excuse to pick at it. The cottage cheese was nice and malleable so it could be pushed around. But my sister was staring at me and from the inside, the new Clara—the bolder Clara—was waiting to see what I’d do.
“I’ll take the crazy chicken sandwich with sweet potato fries and two pickles also.”
Callie took my menu. “Our pickles are pretty famous. You know Duke, the original owner, invented that recipe. Passed down through the family. Now his grandson owns the place and we serve things like pâté on certain days but we still have the original pickles.”
I laughed. “I’ll pass on the pâté. Just give me good old-fashioned diner food.”
“Crazy chicken sandwich?” my sister asked.
I shrugged. “It looked good. Chicken burger on a potato roll with mayo, romaine and fresh cranberry sauce.”
“Wow. Sounds awful,” she laughed.
I pointed. “Which means it’s probably good as hell.”
“Probably,” Cat said and then she burst into tears.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Oh my God. What? What’s wrong?” I leaned over the table and took her hands in mine.
“Are you going to eat that?”
I blinked. “Well, I really do think it’s going to be good despite the way it sounds.”
Cat threw her hands up and sighed, still crying. “Not that, Clara! Are you going to eat that thing?”
People were looking at us now, concerned. Let them look. I didn’t care anymore.
“Well, yes. My God, should I not?”
I was utterly confused until she buried her head in her hands and hiccup-sobbed. “G-g-good!”
Then I got it.
“Oh, honey,” I sighed, leaning closer and touching her.
“You don’t know,” she said, waving a finger at me. “You. Don’t. Know.”
I knew what was coming but she was right. I didn’t know. It’s hard to know when you’re on the fucked-up inside looking out.
“I know. I’m sorry.” I was sorry. I was sorry for what this had done to my sister. To the few and cherished who loved me.
“He broke you, Clara. I mean broke. Not dented or dinged or banged-up slightly. He broke you. There were times I could see your veins through your skin. You looked like you were being held together with rice paper. You were fucking transparent. And you looked s-s-sick!” Another sob. The waitress started our way, caught the scene and backtracked.
“I’m sorry.”
“He should be sorry,” she hissed. “And if there is any justice in the world he’ll come back as a dung beetle or a cockroach or a…fly. Something, anything, that eats shit.”
A bark of laughter burst out of me and then she was laughing too. “I’m healing, Cat,” I said.
“I know.” She whispered it. Threading her fingers through mine, she said, “Does he have anything to do with this?”
She meant Matt.
“I think so.” I had to be honest.
“Good. Then I want to meet him.”
“She does too,” I said, meaning Nadia.
“Then I want to meet her too,” my sister said. “I have an open mind. I’ve even had a girl crush or two.”
“Do tell!” I teased. But then the waitress got brave and our food arrived. We regarded our super-packed plates.
“Really going to eat that?”
I looked at it. “I’m sure as shit going to try,” I said.
“Good.” She grinned at me and then looked at my burger. “But…gross.”
The burger was awesome.
* * * * *
I bypassed the urge to visit Matt. I didn’t answer my phone. I simply walked home slowly. Thinking about how much the whole Richard thing had affected my sister and I hadn’t even realized it. She was my closest family and one of my best friends. I had one friend—Marie from high school—who now lived way up north and we only really kept in touch via email. On rare occasions she came down to visit. But overall, barring a few other primarily email-connected friends, I was running pretty low in the close family-and-friends area.
Inside my house it was darker than the day outside. It was cool because unless I was there to nudge the heat up, it dipped to sixty-five degrees. I pushed the thermostat up with a shaking finger and went to put on tea.
Feeling foolish but also sort of sneaky, I peeked around the ruffled edge of my white kitchen curtain to steal a look at Matt if he was there. He was. His head was bent over his drawing table, hand pressed to his forehead. If he’d had any amount of hair, his hand would be buried in it. As it stood he simply cradled his closely shorn scalp and worked. His shoulders broad, bunching off and on with the force of his strokes.
I wondered what he was drawing. I wondered if he’d known I was gone or if I was back. I also wondered if he’d thought of last night the way I had. His strong arm around me as he held me, all the while me getting off with trembling fingers. That seemed more intimate to me than any of the other things we’d done, with or without Nadia. That memory was the most intimate of all.
I focused on my breathing as the water started to hiss in the pot. It was cold outside, getting warm inside and I was staring at a handsome man who had no idea I was watching him. My heart felt fluttery, my breath restricted.
The tea was too hot to drink. I clicked on the TV to find
something mindless. I would log some work later. For now, I was too wrapped up in all the confusion in my head to focus on the rare geometry question I was semi-capable of helping with, or science fair aid for middle grade students.
My sofa is big and lush. A dark-maroon, crushed-velvet monstrosity that had been my grandmother’s. When I bought my Baltimore row house my mother had immediately deemed it the perfect home for ‘the sofa,’ as my sister and I called it. I was horrified…until we moved it in. Something about the narrow, deep room and the high ceilings highlighted and spotlighted Nana’s sofa in the perfect way. It looked like a showpiece. And I had to admit it was comfortable as hell.
So comfortable that when I snuggled in and pulled a throw over my feet to keep me warm, I felt my body grow sleepy and placid.
I was going to fall asleep. No amount of denial would change that.
A few sips of tea and I was done. Asleep. Down the rabbit hole like Alice.
“You know you want it,” she says. She says it in that tone that says she knows she’s right. One hundred and fifty percent right. I look around, disoriented at first. Pretty Nadia with her warm skin and her dark, dark hair is straddling me. Nothing but a pair of white-and-red-striped socks on her luscious body. She wiggles side to side ever so gently, her sex hot and moist against my pubic bone. I can feel her desire and I can see by her face that it feels good—what she’s doing.
Her fingers reach, reach, reach for me and she plucks my nipples until they stand up like tart ripe berries against my skin. Then she leans over—still wiggling to get herself off I guess—and sucks one hard peak at a time.
Warmth and want rush through me. The door opens and Matt’s walking in, stripping off his navy-blue t-shirt, unbuttoning his jeans.
This is what she means. This is what she thinks I want. Not him. Not her. But this time them together, and she’s right.
I have no words to offer them as he pushes down his jeans and then does the same with his boxer briefs. He’s there, he’s hard, he’s watching us like he’s never seen anything quite like us before.
Maybe he hasn’t.
“Clara,” he says and I reach out to him. My movements slow and lazy, almost on delay, so I know it’s a dream.
He takes my hand, drops to the bed, kisses me even as Nadia is still sucking my nipples. Even as she’s still rocking back and forth, back and forth across my pubic bone. While I return his kiss, his mouth sweet and soft on mine, I push my finger between my body and Nadia’s and find the hard bump of her clit with my fingers. I press and rub and her writhing grows more demanding. When Matt breaks free to kiss my throat, to work his way down the side of my neck so I shiver, she comes, a hard and fast peak that has her shaking over me.
She slithers down my body and finds me with her mouth. I arch up into the wet receptacle of her lips and damn near come undone as Matt straddles me just below my breasts.
I can’t see her, but I can feel her. And my head is full of him. The dark eyes that watch me, the smell of musk and man, the sound of his breath.
He moves up a tiny bit more and I nod, getting it, reading his face. “Yes, yes,” I say, making small motions with my hands.
He moves up higher, an inch at a time, giving me the chance to back out if I want to. When he’s straddling my elbows and my arms are pinned a serene kind of joy settles over me. It’s augmented by the feel of Nadia’s mouth on me. Licking and sucking and tonguing me so that I can hardly think. Her pussy is pressed to my thigh as she does this. I can feel the sweet, hot suction of her sex on my leg.
Though I can’t see it, in my mind I can picture it, they are back-to-back. Her mouth on me. Him seeking my mouth.
Matt moves a bit higher and I part my lips, hungry for him before he even gets close enough. Finally he’s straddling my shoulders and I am utterly immobile. And I see how much I trust him right then. I trust him more than I could have comprehended even mere days ago.
He runs the head of his cock along my lower lip and I dart my tongue out to come in contact with him. I’m rewarded with a sweet and salty dot of pre-come. He shakes his head, mouth tight, face dark. “God, Clara,” he says, his voice utterly vulnerable.
It’s then that I realize that the impossible has happened. I have fallen in love with Matt Millen. I don’t just trust him with my body. I’m, somewhere in me, willing to trust him with my soul.
Nadia sucks hard and I am swept under by the pressure on my pussy. I come hard, my mouth working—opening and closing urgently—but still seeking out the hard hot flesh of Matt’s cock.
He groans again. “You’re going to kill me.”
“I just want to suck you,” I answer.
He hangs his head, pushes the tip of himself to my mouth and I suck him in. Savoring the silken flesh and the hard warmth and the feel of him filling me and cutting off my air. I relish the feel of trusting him so fully.
He’s moving in and out and I’m moving up to take him. I don’t want to give him a blowjob. I want him to take my mouth. Nadia is draped over the side of the bed now, to watch us. It turns me on even more, her there, watching.
Matt takes my head in his hands and starts to drive into my mouth harder. Pushing past the slick plumpness of my tongue, penetrating my throat. He’s torn, his focus on my face to try and read me to make sure I’m okay, but somewhat lost in the pleasure he must feel.
I suck in great greedy bits of air through my nose and feel Nadia’s fingers tickling and sliding lazily over my thighs, my belly, my mons.
Matt’s thrusts grow faster and my jaw aches. There is a tiny bit of panic by how much he’s filling me. By how little air I feel I’m getting, but I embrace it. Cling to it. Treasure it. And just when I feel buzzy and lightheaded he moves off me, rolling to his back, clutching at me. Taking me with him. We end up with me astride him and Nadia kissing my shoulder.
I turn to kiss her and her lips taste musky and sweet. The taste of my own juices.
She shivers and smiles and winks. “See, I knew you wanted it.”
Matt says nothing. He’s just watching. His fingers tangle in my hair and he pulls me in to take my mouth with his. His tongue is so much bigger than hers. It bullies mine and I feel a tremble in my fingers and my legs. I am shaking from how much I want him in me. How much I want to be right here—present—where I am.
He turns to Nadia, breaking our kiss. There is a fleeting but fierce moment of jealousy until he says to her, “Put me in her.”
And then I’m floating. Melting into that heartbeat of time where her cool fingers are manipulating me a bit so I open like a flower. She runs the tip of his cock along the soaking wet split of my sex and I sigh into his mouth. She moves it up to run the glans over my clitoris and I tremble. Back down she goes, past my entrance to my back hole and then laughing softly when Matt groans, she slides him back up and slides the head of him into me.
We all grow still and he kisses my jawline. “You move when you want to, Clara.”
So I sink down on him slowly, savoring every inch I take in. Nadia’s fingers, wet with my juices, play at my ass. She pushes a finger into the tight opening and then withdraws it. There is that bite of pressure and then the absence of it. If she keeps doing that, I’m going to come too soon. Sooner than I want.
But I like her doing it.
She pushes a finger in me and pulls free. In again, only to pull free. My motion is chaotic as I ride Matt. My body tries to race ahead when my soul wants to linger. I force myself to go slower, digging my fingers into the bedding. He cranes his head to suck my nipples one at a time. His teeth find the swell of my breast and he rakes them down over the sensitive flesh.
I gasp because Nadia has simultaneously pushed two fingers into my back hole.
“You know you want it,” she croons.
My head hangs down, my hair brushing Matt’s face and shoulders. He braces me with big hands clamped tight to my rib cage. When I move, it forces my breasts up high. They bounce and he groans, capturing one nipple between his f
ingertips, squeezing. When he moves his hand up from my ribs to my breast, my skin ripples with goose bumps and I chew my lip to keep from crying out.
Nadia’s fingers are sliding in and out of me. A mesmerizing penetration that has me tossing my head to try and focus.
“She’s going to come all over you. All over you…” Nadia is singing. Her fingers filling me so. I feel tight and stretched and utterly stuffed with them.
I’m sobbing and trying not to come and I am failing. Matt drives up under me, his body rocking up in short brutal bursts until he’s prodded my G-spot into giving up a rush of warm pleasure. Nadia slips her fingers deeper, brushing them against the slim film of flesh that separates her fingers from his cock.
I shudder in his arms and come, my breath rushing out of me in a hoarse cry.
Matt’s touching my hair. He hasn’t come. He’s hard as ever and I try to move. He keeps me trapped tight with his strong hands.
“Please,” I say and he lets me move.
I slide down his body, trailing my lips along his warm salty skin. It’s easy as pie to take his cock into my mouth. Licking the tip of him so his hips lift up off the bed like he can’t help but move.
And Nadia’s back with her strap-on. I feel it. Pressing to my ass like it did that first time. Cool, that faux flesh, but an extension of her nevertheless. “Do it,” I say as I swallow him down. I swallow him and swallow him and lick him until he’s bucking. Nadia is filling me over and over again with her magical phallus and when I come, because she’s reached under me to add her fingers to the fray by fucking my cunt, I puff hot air onto Matt. Hot air and surrendering cries. And he comes. His hands find my hair and he’s tugging me brutally hard.
And I like it. I come again.
When I woke it was to the phone ringing. Pulling me out of my warm muzzy dream, it sounded like someone screaming. I answered, my voice groggy and unused.
“You okay?”
Matt.
“Yes, yes,” I said.
“You sure?”
“I am. I just…”
He waited and when I didn’t speak or finish my thought, Matt said, “Clara? You just what?”
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