Random Acts of Hope

by Julia Kent

  If God liked handcuffs.

  Her fingers slid through my hair, making me grin, and then she pulled up to sitting, ass slipping away from me.

  “What’s the rush?” she gasped.

  “Have you tasted you? The rush is that you’re like an ice cream cone begging to be licked,” I insisted, bending down for more.

  “How about these?” Black handcuffs, the cuffs encased in something soft, dangled from her fingertip.

  “You are joking, right?” I said, tipping my head up, looking at her from the glorious view between her legs. Ah, Charlotte was a fucking vision from some spiritual place where magic was filled with her musk, those wide, tempting eyes, and tits that poured out of her like whipped cream with a cherry center.

  My stomach growled. When did I eat last?

  “Handcuff me, officer. I’ve been bad.”

  I stopped cold.

  “That’s what my mom said to me at the bachelor party,” I whined.

  She laughed so hard she twisted in place, then nearly fell off the bed. I moved fast, handcuffs at the ready.

  Click.

  That made her stop laughing.

  “No!” she shrieked again. “Oh, no! You can’t do that—”

  Click.

  Both hands secured to her headboard. Nice four-poster bed, even if it looked like something from a 1920s summer camp on the Cape.

  “Liam!” she shouted.

  “You wanted me to—”

  Charlotte’s phone began to ring.

  “That might be my mom!”

  “You can call her back later,” I said as I let my tongue take a long trip from her collarbone down to one perfect, ripe nipple.

  She arched her back and gasped. “You weren’t supposed to chain both my hands to the bed!”

  “You have two sets of handcuffs.”

  “But…oh, God,” she moaned.

  Bzzzzzzz.

  Her phone again.

  “Can we turn that thing off?” I groused, mouth vibrating against her other nipple now, my fingers seeking warm heat below. Sinking into that wetness, thumb playing with her clit, made her moan.

  “You can’t!” she wailed.

  “You’re not on duty,” I murmured against her hard nip.

  “Let me go!” she called out.

  Bang bang bang.

  The sound of fist on wood was so strong it shot me up in the air, then down on the bed, landing hard on her leg.

  “What the fuck!” I bellowed, unable to be quiet. Charlotte kicked her legs out just as I fell on her and I slid off the bed into a tumble of naked surprise. I used my hands to cover my head as I fell crown first, and my palms slid into my eyes, popping both contact lenses out of place.

  “FUCK!” I screamed as the pain seared through my eyes.

  “Charlotte! It’s Maggie and Jordan! Are you okay?”

  “Unlock me!” Charlotte hissed.

  “I can’t!” I growled. “My eyes! My eyes!”

  Charlotte

  “Charlotte!” Maggie called out from behind the front door to my apartment. “We tried calling you, and Jordan is on duty. She said she heard you screaming for help. Are you okay?”

  Jordan? Overeager, supercilious Jordan the RA? Oh, shit. Sure, I’m okay, chained to my own bed in a Merry Widow costume, juices up and down my thighs, with a naked rock star on the floor moaning something about his eyes.

  “I’m fine! You can go now!” I called back.

  “Fuck, it hurts!” Liam bellowed.

  “What hurts?” Jordan shouted in a high, reedy voice. “Charlotte, procedure says we announce that we have the authority to key into your room and to assess the situation.”

  WHAT?

  “Liam, get the fucking key right now.” I fought against the handcuffs, tightening my wrist, knowing it was futile. A six-foot-tall woman with a plus-size figure doesn’t have dainty wrists that slip out of sexcuffs. The people who design these suckers do a better job than the ones used on maximum security federal prisoners.

  Doms know how to forge shit that subs can’t get out of.

  “Can’t see anything,” he groaned. I was tied to the bed, so I couldn’t even look at him. A portion of his knee was in my sight, then the curve of one butt cheek, then his sac.

  “You need to get the keys NOW! They’re on the nightstand,” I hissed.

  He rose slowly, rubbing his eyes with desperation, but nothing compared to the full-on assault of adrenaline coursing through my veins.

  “We’re not keying in,” I heard Maggie explain calmly to Jordan. “Charlotte has a perfectly reasonable explanation for why she—”

  Crash!

  Liam’s hands, fumbling in the dark, knocked over my bowl full of condoms and various lubes I’d organized so neatly for tonight. I heard the sickening sound of shattered glass, and then:

  “Owww! Oh, fuck. I’m BLEEDING!” he screamed.

  Panicked, I closed my legs and eyes tight, knowing what was coming next.

  And it wouldn’t be me. Or Liam.

  Bang bang bang.

  “By policy,” Maggie said in a slow, resigned voice, like an executioner reading the charges, reluctant to do her job but determined anyhow, “Charlotte, I have to key into your apartment because you’re screaming, it sounds like someone’s in pain, and you’re not answering the door.” Her words were so robotic. It was obvious she did not want to key in, but… “In the interest of your safety, we—”

  “WE?” I screamed. “NO WE! There is no WE!”

  Liam was hopping up and down on one foot, one hand nursing a cut under his pinky toe, the other rubbing his eyes as he babbled something unintelligible.

  Indistinct voices, and then:

  “I, then. I am coming in.”

  Maggie opened my front door just enough for me to see a flash of green hair, the probing face of Jordan, and then the blissful closing and locking of my front door.

  The way my bed is arranged, I can see my own front door but all they could see are feet. In the seconds Maggie cracked the door, Liam happened to roam, blindly, away from the line of sight.

  Maggie walked right into the bedroom with the confidence of someone prepared to face damn near anything and, I knew, with a security team on the other side of the door in case this incident needed assistance.

  “I…wow…so not what I expected. Um…” Her head bobbed up and down as Liam jumped, his cock like a hot potato bouncing in place. Blood dripped from his foot and his eyes were pools of red with tears streaming down his face.

  “Fucking contacts! Stupid monthlies. I think one’s lodged in my eyeball and the other fell out near the glass!” he moaned.

  “Stop jumping, Liam! Just sit on the bed!” I begged, turning my face away from Maggie.

  “There is no residence life training for this one,” Maggie deadpanned. “How the hell do I describe this in my duty report?”

  “I’ll kill you,” I muttered, rattling my cuffs.

  “You and what fishnet army?” she said, eyes filled with amusement.

  “I’ll force your hair back to its natural color.”

  “You wouldn’t dare!” she said, recoiling in mock horror. Her eyes went back to Liam, who was naked and rubbing his eyes, the wounded foot dripping horribly.

  “You have a thing for blood and sex,” she said drolly.

  “You told her about before?” Liam asked. He mumbled something about monthly contacts being four months old and how he was too old for this shit, his fingers rubbing his eye in strange contortions designed to find the missing contact lens.

  “We talked.”

  “You talk about our sex life with other people?”

  “I bragged about your nine-inch cock,” I said with great sarcasm that flew right over his head.

  “Cool.”

  “I see you lied,” Maggie said.

  “Hey!” Liam protested, looking down. “It’s cold! I’m bleeding!”

  I turned my attention to Maggie, somehow making it clear I was talking to h
er without making one second of eye contact. “Could you stop talking about Liam’s penis and uncuff me?”

  “I don’t know. What did you do? If the charges were bad enough, maybe I should leave you—”

  “Maggie!” I shouted.

  Bang bang bang.

  “Fuck!” I added.

  Jordan’s voice drifted in. “I can key in too! Did the intruder get you, Maggie! Shout the safeword if he did!”

  “Safeword?” I gave Maggie a withering look, finally making eye contact.

  Maggie lifted one shoulder. “It kept her from barging in here and getting the res life story of a generation. Snake boy naked with a trussed-up BDSM Residence Director. Holy hell, Charlotte, if this gets out…”

  I shook my wrists. “Find the damn keys and it won’t!”

  “Where are they?”

  “Where Liam just broke my glass bowl.”

  She peered over the side of the bed and gasped. “I’m not sticking my hand in that. All that glass and blood and—” She turned on the light, the harsh brightness making my skin go gooseflesh with embarrassment.

  “You have to get me out,” I pleaded. “Please. Campus safety cannot key in. They can’t!”

  “Ha ha!” Liam shouted. “Motherfucker! I got you.” He was holding a long, blade-like piece of clear glass, streaked with blood.

  Bang bang bang.

  “Charlotte!” Jordan called again. The ominous rattle of keys made me start to cry. She couldn’t see me like this. What had started out as harmless fun with some product samples had just turned into the kind of incident that meant I would be lucky to be the house mother to a chicken coop if word got out.

  Maggie raced to the door, opened and shut it, and then I heard her firm voice issuing commands. A minute passed by, Liam limping to my bathroom, the rush of water, all of it making me cry more.

  Then Maggie was back, with a giant pair of bolt cutters.

  Sweet relief. “Where did you find those?”

  “In my closet.”

  Liam’s silhouette, naked and haloed, appeared in the doorway as Maggie centered the sharp blade, and snip! Off came one cuff.

  “You keep bolt cutters in your closet?” he asked in an admiring tone.

  “Never know when you need them.” Snip.

  Free! I was free! I raced to my dresser, grabbed pajamas, and without one ounce of modesty slipped out of the leather and into the fleece.

  Maggie grinned at us both. “Go show your face at the door,” she said to me, then turned to Liam and frowned. “But not you. You we need to keep hidden.” Her eyes took him in slowly, making me do a double-stop, ready to snap at her.

  But Jordan needed attention.

  “I’m fine! Fine!” I gasped, red-faced, at the door, opening it an inch.

  With an expression of eager officiousness, she peered behind me. “Is something wrong? Do you have an intruder? You were screaming, and I was on rounds, and I took my job very seriously to make sure you’re safe.” Her eyes glittered with something a little unhinged.

  “I’m fine,” I said sternly.

  “What were you doing? I mean, to make all those weird—”

  “Thank you for your concern,” I said with as much coldness as I could muster. Imagining my mom as Dolores Umbridge helped. I think I even added a British accent. “But your concern is no longer needed.”

  And I shut the door.

  Maggie appeared, all giggles, twirling the bolt cutters. She held up the blade and blew on them, pretending to tuck them into a holster.

  “All in a day’s work,” she said.

  “Thank you.”

  She got to the door, opened it a few inches, then closed it.

  “Charlotte?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Next time—”

  “There won’t be a next time!”

  Liam’s groan of disappointment was duly noted.

  “Then,” she said, opening my door again, “can I have your product samples?”

  “My glasses!” Liam cried out from the bathroom. “They’re in my glove compartment of my car.”

  Maggie walked back into the apartment, slung an arm around Esme 2.0, and shoved her out the window, turning to me with a finger pressed to her lips in a Shhhhh gesture. Then she returned to my front door and called out, “I’ll get them.”

  “Keys are in my pants. Thank you!” Liam said hoarsely.

  Maggie winked at me and within five minutes was back, keys and Liam’s glasses in hand.

  I slammed the door on her scrawny ass and marched into my bedroom to find my first-aid kit and take care of my so-called Dom.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Liam

  “We’re going to have sex that doesn’t involve blood loss,” I told Charlotte as she stretched up for a kiss. Deliciously naked and sweetly soft, she was under me, the friction between our sweat-covered naked bodies turning my entire being into one big erogenous zone.

  Her hand reached down and made a slow inventory of my shaft. “Is that where all the blood went?”

  We’d already done it twice. A small routine asserted itself these days: I worked a gig and drove straight to her place. She opened her window and I performed the part of a criminal, breaking in (legally). We showered, fucked like barnyard animals, she pulled out some ice cream, and we watched whatever documentary looked good on Netflix.

  And then we were ready for Round Two.

  Round One was like when you’re starving and you start cooking a really amazing meal, but your stomach makes sounds like a T-rex in heat, so you feed it junk food to get it to be quiet while you wait for the good feast.

  Tonight, though, we were at my apartment. Charlotte wanted to come into Boston and had taken the train in, so she also got to see my little shithole before I moved into Amy’s place. If you’re going to bare your soul, might as well show your apartment.

  I used my tongue to demonstrate how delightful Round Two could be as Charlotte squirmed under me, her nipple between my teeth, trapped. I could glance up, just enough, and without my contacts my vision was razor sharp. One advantage to severe near-sightedness: you get to see everything as your face is shoved up against the pink rosebud when you visit the lush valley of the Y.

  Inches from her breast, her nipple rolling between my teeth, the stark relief of her pale body hair across the curve of her mounds made me fall a little deeper in love with her, so strikingly different from her onyx waves. The glow of candlelight made her skin a canvas, a road map, a treasured scroll. Something divine.

  Her hand stroked me, then moved to cup my balls, sneaking between my thighs and shyly experimenting—there. Oh, yeah.

  That made me hard as a rock, and then her hand slid down, a condom unfurling, her voice sure and steady.

  “You. Inside. Now.”

  Feisty, insistent Charlotte was fucking sweet. “Yes, ma’am,” I said, sinking into her divine warmth without further ado, my eyes drinking in her face. With closed eyes, lashes long and dark against porcelain skin, she looked like a saint.

  I was defiling a saint.

  And I was going to do it very, very well.

  The moment you make the slow, deep entrance into a woman is indescribable. People joke that it’s like warm apple pie, or soft butter, and companies have developed a million pussy simulators to try to get poor stiffs their version of a girlfriend you can conjure with a flick of a wrist and $99.99 plus shipping.

  But this? No. Nothing could replicate it. Not the butterfly touch of her fingers on my back, tracing lines down either side of my spine, giving my ass a special squeeze at just the right moment to make my balls fill and my mind shatter.

  No plastic could ever be able to wiggle and shift, finding that perfect touch for that one spot, that maddening spot on the underside of my shaft that magnetically sought out that little stretch of pink perfection inside her, and when the two joined it was like creating a whole new religion.

  “Oh, God!” we cried out in unison, bodies clenching, muscles releasi
ng and tightening in movement like the best, most-coordinated Patriots play ever.

  It was that good.

  As we came down from our sex high, I realized that men think of sex as this great, mind-blowing moment where our little brain gets to be all happy and anticipate this big, fireworks-like moment. Then it happens, the cocooning by the woman we love, and we spurt and we’re done.

  And then we want to do it again.

  And again.

  And again.

  I don’t think women view sex the same way, but the cuddling is supposed to be the least-favorite part for guys, right?

  Then other guys are idiots, because having your satisfied, sighing girlfriend slide her wet thigh—that you just soaked—up your leg, to rest where your limp, grateful dick is hanging out is one of the best moments ever.

  As I pulled out of her, ready to get that cuddling, something felt wrong. Off.

  Loose.

  And it wasn’t Charlotte. A slippery sensation that was both completely bizarre and tantalizingly familiar made the hair on the back of my neck stand up, because—holy shit.

  This was something sexual I’d never experienced, and I’ve not only been around the block, I’ve circled it so often I’ve left a deep groove in the pavement.

  A broken condom.

  “What are you doing down there, Liam? That feels really—” She sat upright as I pulled the ring of rubber, still on the base of my cock, and held it in place, the shredded slips of latex coming out like a broken balloon, slick with my semen and her juices.

  It was unsettling, to say the least, but Charlotte’s reaction was a blood-curdling scream that made me so glad—so fucking glad—we were in my apartment and not hers.

  “THE CONDOM BROKE?” she shrieked, jumping to her feet. Those luscious breasts bobbed in the moonlight, mesmerizing me, making me sit there like a complete dork as she freaked out.

  “Yep.”

  “I am not on the pill! I can’t get pregnant! Oh my God, get dressed. Quick! Now!”

  “Why?” What on earth was her rush? We couldn’t do anything now, anyhow, and besides—what, exactly, would we do? Run out and buy her a douche kit? Not that it would work.