Pretty Little Mess

by Rhodes, Carmel

  “So, what? Fuck me, then?”

  “No, but I can’t be that girl who depends on a man for survival. I’m not built like that.”

  “Then I guess we’re done.” He brushes past me, not bothering to spare a parting glance.

  My back hits the glass and I slide down the wall of the conference room, wondering if I just made the biggest mistake of my life.

  The car rolls to a stop on the tarmac. In a few short hours, my entire world shifted on its axis leaving me with nothing. No job. No girl. No legacy. I do have one thing, though. I peek down at the little ball of fur on my lap—Rosie, her little black eyes searching for something, rather someone. She barks, her head swiveling as she spies the airplane. “Just you and me this time, Rosie.” She barks again and a frown tugs at her little mouth. “I asked her to come and she said no.” Growling, she hops off my lap and trots into her kennel. “Great, you’re mad at me too,” I sigh, latching her inside.

  I lug her out of the car. The flight attendant greets me as I make my way up the stairs. “Mr. Anderson.” She smiles brightly. Her brown hair is slicked back into a bun, and the name on her plastic tits reads, Daphne. My dick doesn’t even notice. Fucking Ellie broke me in more ways than one today. “Your travel companion has already arrived,” Daphne says. “We’ll be taking off shortly.”

  I stare at her like she’s grown a second head. My heart rate accelerates. If this is Karen or Winston trying to jab the knife a little deeper into my back, I’m going to lose my shit. Pausing, I weigh the pros and cons of sending Jalen a text telling him to have bail money ready, when I remember I don’t have a phone. It’s probably for the best. A text would mean my killing them was premeditated.

  Bracing myself for a fight, I make my way onto the jet. My body lurches forward as swollen ash eyes find mine and Ellie stands. She’s still wearing the same blouse and skirt combo she wore to work this morning. Her hair is down though. The wild mane cascades down her back and frames her face. Her hands shake. Her body shakes. Her usually bright aura, her Ellie-ness is off. “I…I hope this is okay,” she stutters.

  I stalk closer to her. The bright cabin lights highlight her splotchy features. “What are you doing here? I thought you had to work?”

  “I was scared, Max. I didn’t know what to do. I never know what you’re thinking or how much longer you’re going to want this.” Her hand gestures between us. Physically, no more than a few inches separate us, but emotionally the distance might as well be miles. “You are Preston Maxwell Anderson III. You will land on your pile of money. I’m just Ellie Chase, a normal girl who the world thinks is a victim. I didn’t want to be that person. I don’t need you to take care of me.”

  My jaw ticks. “You could capitalize off it. Hell, write a book. You’re so desperate for money, right?” It’s a dick thing to say. The growl coming from Rosie’s kennel confirms it, but I’m a dick with hurt fucking feelings. I trusted her. I took her at her word and she, yet again, picked Winston over me.

  She shakes her head. “Why can’t we just talk like two adults. Why is your default setting, asshole?”

  “Because you chose wrong,” I bite back.

  “But I didn’t.” She steps forward, not letting my tone or my body language deter her. One of her hands grips the seat, the other tugs at the lapel of my wool coat, erasing those few inches. “I’m here, aren’t I?” Her eyes implore me to understand, to forgive, but I stare blankly at her, ignoring the heat zapping through my body. Ignoring the way her touch, her mere fucking presence, provides comfort.

  “Let’s see how long you stay this time,” I growl and brush past her. I strap Rosie into a row with four seats, two chairs on either side, facing each other, before removing my coat and tossing it overhead. Then I sit, cross one leg over the other, and check my watch. I can feel Ellie staring down at me, but I don’t meet her gaze. Instead, my eyes trace the Anderson “A” etched into the peanut butter leather.

  Daphne, the flight attendant, reappears. I stare at her boobs just to piss Ellie off. It must work, because I can feel the heat emanating from her body. “Ma’am, if you’ll take your seat, we’ll begin taxiing just as soon as we get the doors sealed.”

  Ellie exhales. “This was a mistake.” She turns to the woman. “Please don’t seal the doors just yet. I need to get off this plane.”

  She takes one step forward and my hand wraps around her wrist like ivy on a tree. “Sit,” I growl.

  The flight attendant looks between us, unsure of what to do. “Ma’am?”

  Ellie looks at me and I tip my chin to the chair across from me. “Sit.” She does as she’s told, and Rosie woofs a bark of relief. Once the attendant is gone, I stand and lean forward, my hands resting on the arms of her chair. “I’m fucking pissed at you.”

  “I’m sorry,” she says gently pressing her lips to mine.

  I suck her bottom lip into my mouth and bite down. “You will be,” I promise, then settle into my seat. “As soon as we reach cruising altitude, I’m going to take you back to the bed and fuck you until you can’t walk straight.” I jerk my thumb behind me, where the lone bedroom is located.

  She nods and straps in without further argument. The fight is still there, still simmering behind her gray gaze. After a few minutes of silence, the plane begins to move. Once the flight attendant completes her cross check, she disappears again, leaving Ellie, Rosie, and me alone.

  “Show me your cunt,” I demand, nudging her feet apart with the tip of my shoe.

  “Max,” she hisses, and her eyes dart over her shoulder.

  “It’s just us, now let me see your goddamn cunt.” I’m still pissed, but Ellie is my girl. Mine. She’s the only person in the world who can make me feel this much anger and this much peace at the same damn time. There’s a constant war raging inside of me. She’s the best and worst part of my day. The best, because she is who she is—funny and kind and caring. The worst because she wields the power to destroy me. Today was proof of that, yet I’m the fool who would gladly give up everything just to have her near me.

  “Why should I?” She crosses one leg over the other, taunting me, defying me, testing my goddamn patience. Slowly, bit by bit, the fire in her eyes burns brighter. “You aren’t being very nice to me.”

  “You left me bleeding in a room full of vultures. I am angry, but I’m also in love with you, so the urge to forgive you is competing with the urge to make you feel as shitty as you made me feel.” I brush an imaginary piece of lint off my knee, then shrug. “So, I’m going to split the difference.”

  “You’re in love with me?” She blinks, trying to keep her tone neutral, but emotions crack through.

  “Yeah,” I say, steepling two fingers over my lips, “but I’m about to fuck you like I hate you.” My words hit their target, and she uncrosses her legs. “Show me, I won’t ask again.”

  She grins, then frowns, then acquiesces, parting her legs slightly.

  “Slide your panties off then put your feet on the edge of the seat.” Ellie flips her flats off, then rises just enough to push the soft yellow cotton down her legs, toeing off the fabric. The plane picks up speed and soon we are racing down the runway. “Now feet up, knees apart.” Again, she complies. Shame colors the apples of her cheeks as slick need seeps from her center.

  “Good girl. Push your middle finger inside as deep as you can then pull it back out.”

  “Preston,” she grits. The roar of the engines drowns out her protest.

  “You owe me this,” I shout. “I would never leave you to face what I’m about to face alone. I would never put anything over you and you did both of those things today.” Faster and faster we move until we are lifted into the air. Up off the ground away from New York, and shitty fathers and capitalist bitches.

  Ellie stares at me, and I stare at her pussy. The plane slowly ascends to the heavens and still, we are in a quiet standoff. Ellie wants to push. She needs words, but I need actions. That’s how we communicate best, with our bodies, with our mou
ths and our tongues and our hearts.

  “Have you ever seen The Hills?” she asks breaking the silence.

  Her legs are still up and her knees still parted, so I give her a crumb. “Why the fuck would I ever watch The Hills?”

  “There was an episode early on, first season, I think. LC, the main girl, gets offered an internship in Paris. It’s like her dream come true, but she turns it down to spend the summer with her boyfriend, and you know what happened at the end of the summer?” Her voice is small but fierce.

  “What?” I ask though I’m not sure where this is going.

  “They break up—”

  “Because she didn’t ride her fingers when he asked?” I deadpan.

  “No, fucker, and the why isn’t the point.”

  “Oh, so there is one?”

  She pins me with a gaze so intense it makes me shift in my seat, melting a little of my bravado. “She gives up her dream and they break up anyway. I’m sorry I didn’t come running when you asked, but sometimes I don’t know where I stand with you, what this is, and I didn’t want to be the girl who gave up Paris for a boy.”

  “Are we really going to do this?”

  She wiggles her fingers at me. “Do you want me to do that?”

  I swallow. I guess we’re talking.

  “I’ve been to Brooklyn more times since we’ve met than I’ve been in my entire life. I’ve given you the codes to my apartment. Offered you a twenty-thousand-dollar-a-year raise—which you threw in my face. I eat MSG and deep-fried bullshit all the time now because you like it and you don’t know where you stand with me? I get that this is scary. I get that we haven’t known each other very long, but I set my entire goddamn world ablaze over your pussy, the least you could do was give up Paris.” I shake the anger off, cross my arms over my chest, and repeat my earlier command. “Put your finger inside your fucking cunt.”

  She raises her middle finger flipping me off before inserting the digit between her parted thighs. “Now, pull it out and show me how slippery it is.” She does as she’s told and I’m pleased to discover the evidence of her arousal coating her skin. “Good girl. Now, taste yourself.”

  Her tongue darts out and swirls around her fingers as she licks it clean. “What’s it taste like?” I ask, leaning forward in my seat.

  “Salty and a little bit sweet,” she moans. She’s putting on a show for me. She’s being a good girl for me.

  “Do you like it?” I push my sleeves up my forearm. Ellie tracks my motion, licking up the last of her essence from her hand.

  “I like the way you taste better.” There she is. The fire and grit I saw that first day in the elevator.

  “If you’re a good girl and do what Daddy says, maybe I’ll let you have a taste,” I say palming the growing bulge in my slacks.

  She pushes back inside her warm wet opening. Her tongue moistens her fat bottom lip just before she speaks. “I wonder what we would taste like…you know… combined.” Images of me coming deep inside her cunt then shoving my soaked dick past her lips flood my mind. The pilot’s disjointed voice blares through the speakers. “You’re now free to move about the cabin.”

  We both disengage our seatbelts and race to the back of the plane. I kick the door shut behind us and rip her shirt from her body. “Hey!” she yelps as I push her onto the bed and penetrate her in one harsh thrust. “Max!” she gasps, her nails dig into my flesh and the sting soothes some of the stress of my day. The way she clenches around me. The coconut scent wafting from her hair—makes the tension and stress of the day manageable. She’s like my very own stress ball, built for me to squeeze and fuck and use however I see fit.

  Her heels dig into my ass and I thrust harder. Pre-cum leaks from the tip of my dick and I force myself to focus so I don’t bust like a fucking virgin. I focus on the curve of her neck. The supple tan skin that lives there. The swell of her breast. The taut brown nipples furled into tiny diamond peaks beneath her sheer bra. “You like it when I’m rough, don’t you baby?” I ask licking and biting my way down from behind her ear to the base of her neck. My aim is to mark her, subtly, with cock and cum, and not subtly with mouth, bruising every inch of visible flesh.

  My hand finds hers and I pin them above her head. Eye to eye. Nose to nose. We fuck like animals on the back of the private jet. “Why do you insist on fighting this?” I murmur, tugging at her skin with my teeth. I lean back, sitting on my knees so that only the tip of my dick connects us.

  “I’m not fighting it. I’m just cautious.”

  I tsk, lifting her leg, pressing a kiss onto the arch of her foot, then spreading her wide. I repeat the action with her other leg until they are both in the air and she’s bared to me. Her pussy pulses. I push back inside her, dipping in as deep as I can before pulling out to the tip. The sight of my dick coated in her cream does something to the most primal parts of me. I was born into the one percent. I’ve spent my entire life thinking I was better than most, but here on the back of my father’s private jet, with a broke girl from Brooklyn, I am just a man satiating his most basic needs. In and out I push, deep then shallow, as she pulses around me, painting my dick more and more. “Your body’s all in, but your head still has reservations.”

  “You’re wrong,” she pants, her hands tangling in the sheets, her back arching. “It isn’t my head that I’m worried about, it’s my heart.”

  “Your heart?” I let go of one of her legs and press my thumb to her clit. My dick massages her from the inside. I can feel her tremble beneath me, her shaking legs tell me she’s close.

  “I don’t…I don’t trust you…with it.”

  I press harder, rubbing and fucking her with everything that I am until I hear her cry out. Her body shakes, her pussy squeezes me, milking my cock until I come harder than I’ve ever come in my life. I collapse on top of her, our skin slick with sweat. I brush a few stray curls from her face and say the first thing that comes to my head. “You shouldn’t trust me with it, but that won’t stop me from taking it anyway.”

  We land in Chicago a little before nine. Stars twinkle in the onyx sky, another reminder that we were no longer in the New York city limits. I stretch my sore limbs as Max gathers Rosie and our bags. “I’m glad you’re here,” he says, pressing a kiss to my mouth.

  “Me too.”

  There’s an SUV waiting for us as soon as we deplane. The wind whips and roars, blowing my hair in every direction. Max hands our bags to the driver and ushers me into the waiting SUV. “Let me borrow your phone,” he says once we’re tucked inside.

  “What’s wrong with yours?”

  “I threw it out the goddamn window in front of the NBC building.” His jaw ticks with annoyance and I giggle, then unzip my coat and slide my phone out of the pocket of my hoodie.

  The driver gets in and confirms our destination as Max rolls his eyes at my cracked screen. “I’m going to have to get a fucking tetanus shot, just to use this thing.”

  “Then maybe next time you won’t act like a two-year-old,” I chastise, feeling a little smug that I have something Max doesn’t. He, on the other hand, looks disgusted by the cracked relic I call a phone. “You can give it back, if it isn’t up to your standards, Mr. Anderson.”

  He rolls his eyes and dials a number. “Hey, Mom.” Not what I was expecting. I watch him from the corner of my eye as he listens to his mother talk, replying every so often. Max speaks in a tone reserved solely for her. It’s soft, almost reverent, and cute as fuck. P-Three is a momma’s boy. I press my thighs together because although we just had very pornographic sex on the back of the jet, seeing Max’s soft side makes me want to join the car equivalent of the mile-high club. “Yeah, we just landed…Ellie’s with me.” His hand rests on my knee. He squeezes and mouths, behave before continuing with his mom. “I didn’t want to leave her in the city to deal with this shit alone…I don’t know…perfect…we’ll see you in the morning.”

  He hangs up and stares off into the night. It’s a look I know well. He’s
about to drift a million miles away and probably do or say something to piss me off.

  Unbuckling my seatbelt, I shuck off my coat and climb into his lap. It’s the only thing I can think of to salvage his mood. “Everything okay?” I ask running my fingers through his gloriously thick hair.

  He gives me a look that says, my company is in shambles and the whole world thinks I took advantage of you, what the fuck do you think? I ignore the sarcastic mime and add, “With your mother, how’s she dealing with the news?”

  “Better than I expected, but it could just be her putting on a brave face. I’ll be able to get a better read on her when we see her tomorrow.”

  I tug his head back, forcing him to meet my eye. “We?”

  “Yeah. We—me and you and Rosie. Get used to it, okay. It will make your life a lot easier.” Rosie barks her agreement from her kennel and I laugh despite myself. These two bulldozed their way into my life, and now that I think about it, there wasn’t anything I could do to stop them. P-Three is the type of person who always gets what he wants. Yes, he might be down now, but Max is, was, and will always be a wolf. Strong, with killer instincts, and an insatiable thirst for more—more power, more money, more freedom.

  “Because you love me?” I grin, hoping to lighten the mood.

  His head lulls to the left and his face twists in mock annoyance. “Why did I open my big mouth?”

  “Because you love me,” I repeat, and this time break out into a full-on laugh. I am a psycho. There’s no other explanation for it. My dad has called me no less than forty-seven times, I don’t have my job at Anderson Capital, I’m pretty sure Woody is going to suspend me for missing this weekend, and despite all that I’m giddy because the boy I like likes me back. Strike that—he loves me.

  Max’s lips twitch, but he won’t give me the handsome prince smile I’m looking for. Instead, he scowls, his eyes trailing down my hoodie-clad torso over the cartoon rendering of The Black Panther. “I thought you were the fashion twin?”