by Hazel Parker
Katelyn fell asleep with goosebumps covering her body.
*****
Katelyn opened her eyes after having taken a small nap; the vodka and tequila were beginning to wear off after the workout she just had. She looked around the room and over the sweaty, muscular bodies of the two men that littered across her bed. She didn’t see any water bottles that were in the room, so she very slowly and gently stood up, making sure to not wake the two men. However, as she took a step away from the bed, Steven opened his eyes and turned his head to watch her.
“Hey, I love the view, but where are you going?” Katelyn felt herself blush as she attempted to cover her naked body. They both laughed quietly and Katelyn grabbed the silk nightgown that was folded up on the dresser. She pulled it over her head and the silk fell loosely over her body, stimulating her nipples slightly. Steven raised up out of bed and walked across the room to her. Their lips met and Katelyn felt her body beginning to melt in his arms as his hands began to massage her neck. “Whatever it is, I can get it for you.”
“Oh, it’s just water, I’m sure that I can—” Steven raised his hand to her lips and cut her off.
“I’ll just be a second. John is waking up.” Katelyn turned around and saw that John was shifting in bed so that he was sitting up slightly against the pillows. Steven left the room and John threw off the covers, revealing his naked body to her. She slithered into bed with him and they started to kiss, her hands delicately outlining his muscles as they made their way towards his cock once again.
Just then, Katelyn heard a car pull into the driveway. Thinking nothing of it, assuming that it would Meredith to check in on her, she continued to play with John, her hand gently beginning to roll his balls, his own hand working its way inside her shirt. However, as the door opened she heard something she wasn’t expecting.
“Steven, what the hell are you doing here?” Katelyn bolted upright as did John when they heard the voice. They both listened intently as Steven questioned why Sarah was there as well. The two of them argued for a few moments and immediately cut off. The arguing was replaced by the sound of feet on the stairs. In an instant Steven, Sarah, and Dale all barged into the room, demanding an explanation.
“Katelyn, how could you do this to me,” shouted Dale, obviously still completely unaware that she knew all about his own affair.
“Katelyn, I’m sorry, I tried to stop them,” pleaded Steven, still the gentleman even through all of this.
“My brothers? Both of them? That’s a low blow.” As Sarah said this, Katelyn audibly laughed, causing everyone to stop talking. She continued to laugh as she got out of bed, tossing off the blanket to reveal that in fact, John was naked. Dale and Sarah began to shout again, but both Steven and John simply shrugged it off. Katelyn turned towards Dale.
“Weren’t you wondering why your little hookup didn’t respond today, Dale?” Dale frantically searched for his phone and pulled it out, scrolling through the messages. He swore under his breath when he realized what he had done. “Yes, that’s the reaction you should be having.” Dale looked back up at her, the anger gone from his face.
“Honey, we can work through this,” he said. Katelyn laughed and shook her head.
“There is no ‘we,’ Dale. There is only ‘me’ now.” She looked over at Steven and John, who were now standing together against the wall, collecting their clothes off the floor. “I take what I want, when I want it. And I want them.” Both of them looked up and smiled, fist bumping each other.
“You can’t possibly be serious?” Sarah said exasperated. Katelyn walked over to her and gently caressed her face in an almost motherly way.
“How long has it been since you started fucking my husband?” Sarah staggered over her words, clearly flustered. “So, don’t ask me if I’m serious, because I most assuredly am.” Katelyn then turned towards Dale again. “I hope Sarah has a nice apartment, because you won’t be staying here tonight. The three of us are going to be using the whole house.”
Dale awkwardly started to back out of the room and took Sarah’s hand as he did so. They turned and quietly walked out of the house as Katelyn saw them out. She closed the door to the room and turned around to face Steven and John, who were nearly dressed. Katelyn laughed and started to walk towards them.
“Who told you to get dressed? We still have some things to do.”
THE END
Riding a Bad Boy
Emily stared into the bottom of her purse, scraping together enough change to make a long distance call and wondering how this day had gone so wrong. This wasn’t exactly what she had in mind when she shut the door on her old life, locking it with a finality that she felt all the way down to her bones. In her mind, this trip would have gone smoothly, would have been the prefect transition from old to new. But life rarely goes according to plan. Or smoothly. All that she cared about now was getting to her sister’s place.
Her sister would understand. She had long ago broken free from their father. And despite his claims to the contrary, she managed to create a life for herself without him. Emily kept hidden the fact that she still talked to Marin. It was only a couple times a year, and only a brief call when she could sneak away, but Emily held onto that connection to her sister with a white-knuckle grip. She knew full well that doing so defied her father and Shane. It was the one thing she allowed herself to disobey and she couldn’t find it in herself to be sorry about it. She was thankful for that stubborn streak they could never train out of her, because Marin was her lifeline right now.
She had spent the better part of her drive today trying to go back and figure out when things started to go wrong between her and Shane, until she was going back trying to figure out when things had ever been right between them. And why things had to go so far before she realized that.
She could live with him telling her what to do. What to wear. How to act. She could even live with him talking to her father behind her back as if she were a child in need of constant direction. But when he hit her, it was like the dam broke.
All of those things she told herself she could live with tumbled down around her until she was standing amongst the ruins of the life she thought she was creating. The humiliation was debilitating, but she took that first hit like a punishment for all the lies she let herself believe. That one hit she could deal with because it was what she needed to finally see what loving him was costing her.
Standing at the kitchen sink just that morning, facing another day of washing his laundry, cooking his meals, and taking his insults seemed too much to bear. Leaving while she had the nerve, and while she still wore the reminder of why she was doing it plainly on her left cheek, seemed like a good idea.
It all made so much sense at the time. Leaving him. Leaving her father, her duties. She had no job; Shane didn’t allow her to work outside of the house. No friends that weren’t Shane’s friends first. There was no love between her and Shane anymore, if there ever had been to begin with, so no heartbreak to contend with. She allowed herself to be only a little sad that after all these years, she had so little to leave behind. She tried to think of it as a blessing that made leaving so easy.
But now, sitting at the scarred up counter of a greasy spoon only one state and not even 400 miles from home, she was beginning to lose confidence in her plan. She should have taken Shane’s car—a brand-new, turbocharged BMW—but instead she wanted to prove a point. She wanted to make her break on her own, so she had taken her old beater of a car. It had more rust than paint, but it was hers. Well, if she was looking to prove a point then that hunk of junk that barely limped its way to the truck stop was it. Point taken, universe.
Her fingers dug through her purse again, pausing at her wallet. One quick swipe of her credit card and it would be problem solved. Except it wasn’t really her credit card. Nothing was really hers anymore. Plus, Shane would be able to track her down if she used it.
She had no idea if Shane would actually come looking for her, but she didn’t want to
chance it. She wasn’t even sure if he would notice she was gone.
No, she thought, he would notice.
As soon as he walked in the door and couldn’t smell his supper cooking, he would be hollering for her. She glanced at the clock hanging above the special’s board. It would be 8:00 in Colorado. Yep, he’d be looking.
Emily imagined him walking through the house, looking for her. What would he do when he realized she wasn’t there? Call her father? Call her? It would do him no good because she left her phone on the counter before she left. Would he decide she was too big of a hassle to track down and instead try to figure out how to cook his own supper? Emily smiled to herself as she pictured Shane mashing the buttons on the microwave. Getting food poisoning, perhaps.
“What’s so funny over there?”
Emily looked up and to her left, to a couple stools over where the counter wrapped around to the wall. She hadn’t realized someone was that close to her, or that they had been watching her. Just like Shane never let anyone but him be the center of her attention.
She looked at the man that had spoken to her, the one who had most definitely been watching her.
“Nothing, really,” she said, shaking her head and resuming her search for coins.
“Seemed like something.” His blue eyes were no longer on her; he was adding cream to his cup of coffee, stirring it.
She could have just left things like that, rebuffed the stranger trying to strike up a conversation with her. And it had been so long since she had talked to anyone without Shane stepping in that she had sort of forgotten how. Not to mention that this man was all kinds of good looking. Thick lashes shaded his blue eyes, regarding the cup he cradled in his hands. His dark hair was tied back at his nape and he was so wildly different from Shane.
Her mouth opened and words spilled out before her brain knew what it was doing.
“If it was, it wouldn’t be funny to anyone else. Funny in that warped kind of way, you know?”
The smile that slid onto his face should have been illegal.
“Who says I don’t like warped?”
Although his attitude, all confidence and attraction, sent a zip of appreciation through her, she wasn’t in the mood or the position to flirt. Not about this. She had wanted him to look at her again, to talk to her. Not talk about herself. She wished that she would have just let him drink his coffee and she could have sat and stewed by herself.
“Trust me, it’s not what you have in mind.”
“Try me,” he persisted.
“Okay,” she said, turning towards him. “Ever hear the one about the girl who left her abusive boyfriend only to have her crappy car die and nothing but his credit card to get her through until she found a bank?”
There, she thought, he won’t want to touch this situation. He’ll politely go back to drinking his coffee and leave me alone.
The muscle in his jaw tightened, as did the ones in his arms. She couldn’t help but let her eyes wander down to the smooth, ink-covered sinew. Her brows dipped, thinking back to when she once told Shane she wanted to get a tattoo. It was years ago, but his disgust still rang loudly. He told her she was never to mark her body in that disgusting way. That sure didn’t stop him from marking her with his hand.
“What are you going to do?”
Her eyes snapped back up to the man across from her, the concern in his voice contradicting his rough look. She shrugged.
“Call my sister, I guess. See if she can get me a bus ticket.”
He seemed to think about this for a minute, his eyes sweeping over her in a way she’d never experienced. She wasn’t familiar with his kind of attention, a casual curiosity. He wasn’t obliged to care, nor was there any advantage to be taken, yet he sipped at his coffee and wrinkled his forehead at her problem.
“There’s no bus station here.”
“Oh.” She hadn’t really thought it through, yet again. “I guess I’ll think of something else.”
“Can your sister come and get you?”
“Maybe.” His forehead dipped again at her answer, so she added, “Probably. I was just going to call her now.”
Emily slipped from her stool and made her way to the back of the diner. She picked up the phone, plugged in her change, and dialed. While it rang she took a peek over her shoulder to where the man’s stool was now empty.
And when a few minutes later, after she left a voicemail message for Marin and was walking across the parking lot to her car, she was glad to not have to explain her lack of a way out of here. She already knew she was in a predicament; she didn’t need him making it more obvious than it already was, no matter how good natured he was being.
The sun was setting over the truck stop, but the Texas heat had yet to ease up. Emily unlocked her car and tossed in her purse, but the heat radiating out from the inside had her shutting the door and leaning against it. It was all up to her to figure out how to get to her sister’s place. No one was going to make the decision for her. And it wasn’t like she had a ton of practice making decisions on her own. She could only imagine what Shane would say right now.
She didn’t wish she had Shane there to figure things out, just that she had done a better job of planning her escape. If she had been smart about things and waited a few days to get things in order, this probably wouldn’t have happened.
“Your sister coming?”
Her head snapped up at the sound. Emily looked up into the gaze of the stranger from the diner.
“Um, no,” she said, even though it was sure to earn another disapproving stare from him.
He had kind eyes that didn’t care to hide what he was thinking, but there was something dark about him. Something that she didn’t want to mess with, and her inability to figure her shit out seemed to be messing with him. He moved beside her and leaned against the old car, like it was the most natural thing in the world to do. Like a person accustomed to people letting him do whatever suited him.
“So what are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know yet,” she said, starting to get irritated with his questions.
“You have no plan?”
“What is wrong with you? You don’t even know me, yet you have to follow me around judging my actions. No, I don’t have a plan.” She was waving her arms around, like a lunatic, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care. “This entire situation wasn’t planned. But you telling me that this wasn’t my smartest idea isn’t helping.”
“Hey, cool it. Being alone in a piece of shit, broken down car at a road-side truck stop at night isn’t the safest place to be.” He blew out a breath and ran a hand through his shoulder length hair. “Listen, I didn’t mean to make you mad. It’s just that we’re pulling out soon and I was watching you from the window.” He pointed over his shoulder to a bus painted black and silver, the words “Thorn Crest” painted on it. “I couldn’t drive off with you just standing here, you know, stranded.”
“You were watching me?” she asked, surprised that he really genuinely cared about what happened to her.
“I told you a truck stop at night wasn’t a safe place.” The grin that pulled at the corner of his lips was sinful. It caught her off guard, made her smile back in spite of herself.
“Sorry I freaked out at you. I’m a little out of my depth here. Having that pointed out hit a sore spot.”
“Understood. Which way are you headed?” he asked.
Emily pointed out across the southbound interstate, roughly in the direction of Marin’s.
“Us too,” he said. His hand scrubbed across his stubble, his eyes fixed in the direction she had pointed. “Want a lift?” he said after a moment.
“A ride? With you?”
“What are your other options?”
Emily held up her fingers and counted them off for him.
“One, locking myself in my car until I can get a hold of my sister. Two, not getting murdered.”
“I get it. It was just an idea.” He shrugged before pushin
g himself off of her car. “I’m not a murderer, and you wouldn’t be alone. If that helps. I’ve been on the road for hours. Months, actually. Having some company for a few hours might do both of us some good.”
She looked at him, at the concern around the edges of his eyes. It would have been easy to assume because of his hulking presence, the dark ink line creeping up his neck, his big black boots, that he was one of the people he was warning her about. But she couldn’t make herself believe that. It was hard to disguise the worry in his eyes, just like Shane could never disguise the monster in his.
He wasn’t pushing her to go with him. He wasn’t forcing her to make a choice. And maybe that’s why she wanted to go with him. Or maybe she wanted to make a decision that Shane would never have approved. Whatever the reason was, though, she did.
“Do you have room for my stuff?” she asked, pointing to the duffle bag that she had thrown her things into.
He lifted an eyebrow before smiling down at her. “Yeah, I think we can manage all that luggage.”
He grabbed her bag and Emily locked the car up before they headed across the parking lot. Under the glowing orange lights, she looked up at him, his hair brushing against his perfect jaw. He was an interesting man from what little she knew about him. So many contradictions in such short time.
“I’m Emily, in case you’re interested in knowing.”
“I’m Dylan.”
He didn’t seem to want to supply anything else, but curiosity got the best of her as usual.
“So where are you heading?”
“Houston, I think.”
“You think?”
“Yeah. I’m pretty sure, then New Orleans tomorrow.”