by Alexa Davis
We made our excuses for not going out and celebrating with everyone else, and I let Jackson drive us home after picking up my costume from the locked office the convention officials had lent to me after the break in. I still didn’t know what had happened to Lacey, but with my part in the convention over, and another big win under my belt, it was hard to care too much about her bad choices.
I searched for local take out joints that Jackson would like on my phone, and once we had a hit, we went through a drive through for carne asada, fries and flour tortillas, and the biggest foam cup I’d ever seen, filled with creamy, fragrant horchata. When we got home, I fed Stiles an extra dish of food, and Jackson built burritos from the fries and steak. One look at the enormous burritos and I was already full, but he promised they would be amazing if I tried them.
I got out of my borrowed clothes and into some cutoff shorts and a tank top so thin I could see the dark outlines of my nipples through the fabric. When I rejoined Jackson in the kitchen to grab my plate, he noticed too. When he finally let me pull my shirt down and eat, the food was like ice. I took a bite anyway, and he was right. Even cold, the damn thing was good. I warmed it up in the microwave, and it was almost like I hadn’t been subjected to ten minutes of nuzzling and a make-out session on the kitchen counter before I could eat.
I wanted Jackson to get me naked, but I was bone-tired and achy from my hair to the soles of my feet. He had pulled out the bed for me again, and we huddled on the blankets with our burritos and a tall glass each of the cinnamon flavored rice milk, and stared at the television without speaking until the food was gone, and my feet were numb from being tucked under me for so long.
“I’m really glad you were there today,” I finally said as he took our plates to the sink. “It was good knowing that you had my back.”
He nodded and refilled my horchata, then emptied the last of it down his throat in one long swallow. “I’m glad I was there too. I knew you would win your competition, and that you would look great on your interview, and that you would be the most amazing and original costume there today. But, seeing you do it, was a whole ‘nother story.
I sighed and set my glass to one side so I could put my head in his lap. I wanted to tell him how I felt, that I would always be there for him, and that he had made me want to be a different kind of person, just to be the one he wanted. He kissed my temple and stroked my hair, which hurt from being forced in a direction it wasn’t used to. The more he ran his fingers through my hair, and gently rubbed my neck, the hard it was to stay awake and alert, and Jackson played me like a children’s toy. Tomorrow, we’d hide from the world. What would follow though, was the question on my mind. I couldn’t afford to stay off-stream for much longer, but I didn’t want to leave Jackson all alone until he faded out of my life for good.
For now, I let him make me feel safe and warm, and watched the video he’d taken with his phone so I could see the rest of the convention. He apologized when I realized almost every frame of his convention hangouts was of me, and laughed when I saw he’d inadvertently got a shot of Lacey being led from the convention in handcuffs. I asked him to save it for when my eyes didn’t burn so much, and I’d be able to see better what was going on in the background of the video.
My eyelids drooped, and I snuggled deeper into his lap. I turned on my side and held the hand he put in front of me. There were so many things I wanted to tell him, but the words wouldn’t come, and finally, understanding that not saying dangerous things like, “I love you,” was better for us until Jackson knew what he wanted, and where he wanted to be. So, I bit my tongue, and set aside my desperate declarations of love and loyalty. I held the knee under my head like a pillow, and asked sleepily if we could stay in and hide from the world for one day together. He promised me a day all to myself, to do with him whatever I wanted. I smiled up at him and kissed him when he bent down kiss me, and let him stroke my hair until I fell asleep.
28. Jackson
I let C.J. sleep until my legs fell asleep and the pins and needles got too painful to stay still any longer. I moved her gently to the side, but the bed springs squeak roused her. I heard a giggle as I shook my legs out by the side of the bed, and saw her squinting at me.
“How you doing, there, Big Boy?” she snickered as I tried to shake the tingling sensation out of my limbs.
“I’m okay. You hungry? I’m a little freaked out by today. I could use a beer or two.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand what’s wrong. I thought you’d be happy to get such important clients.”
“Are they clients, C.J.? I don’t know about that.” I backed down on the edge of the bed and ran my hand over Stiles’ silky side as he laid stretched out between us. “You heard them cll me a ‘black hat.’ Do you know what that is?”
“Yeah, they’re malevolent hackers. They steal credit card numbers, shut down city transit systems, hack into government servers, the works. But, you said they were wrong to call you a black hat.”
“Well, there’s also white hat hackers, who are usually found on cyber squads, protecting consumers and helping to catch bad guys. Then there are the grey hats, like me. We don’t steal, but we usually operate outside the socially accepted rules. Like that guy from Anonymous. He uncovered a huge cover-up of a rape, but he got time for hacking the system that was being used to transfer the information between the conspirators. So, grey hats? We tend to keep a low profile.”
“And when I made my little announcement, I outed you.” She made it a statement not a question, and sighed, covering her face with a pillow.
“No. No, I don’t think you did. I did something when I was at school. I covered my tracks, the bad guys got caught, and I was real proud of myself. So much so, that I got cocky. The next thing I knew, there were grumpy old men in suits at my dorm, flashing their badges and asking me a whole lot of in-depth questions about the ‘incident.’” I exhaled deeply enough that it sounded like a sigh before I continued. “I was tailed for the rest of the school year.” I rubbed my hands through my hair. “There were people watching me everywhere I went. I got paranoid enough that for a little while I was even sweeping daily for bugs at the ranch after school ended.”
“Jesus Christ. Did the government follow you to LA?” C.J. sat up in the bed and gripped her pillow to her chest, her face flushed and excited. I wished I could’ve felt the same way about my life being sliced onto a slide and put under an FBI microscope.
“I can’t imagine that they would’ve. Yes, I broke into a bank. No, I didn’t steal anything. So, my older brother suggested that the tail was to make sure I didn’t go any further, with a side order of ‘Scare the stupid kid hacker straight.’ It worked, if you were wondering.” She glanced around, eyes wide and round as plates. “When you made your announcement, it created an opening to approach me, to see if I was still walking the straight and narrow, ya know? What better way to catch someone, than to pretend you’re hiring them, then arrest them when they do exactly what you ask them to?”
C.J. jumped up off the bed and grabbed us each a beer from the fridge. “So, you are definitely, positively, not taking the job?”
“I most certainly am. I’ll sneak a peek at what’s going on, and find out for myself if there’s even a real issue with their security. I’ll find the mole. I won’t tell them who it is until I’m out and my digital trail deleted, so no one has to be the wiser about me breaking in.”
“Unless my apartment’s bugged, at which point, we’re both screwed because you told me all of this.”
I laughed and drank my beer, letting the crisp, bitter amber ale slide down my throat. “I’ll check for listening devices after this beer,” I promised, with a laugh.
In reply, she took the beer out of my hand and motioned for me to get to work. “You know what, I’m just going to wander on down to the front desk and ask if any new maintenance people have been up to my apartment since we took my security system off the front door a couple of days ago. You go ahe
ad and look around up here.”
I shrugged and complied. It was too much effort to tell her not to bother, when she had that determined glint in her eyes.
The apartment was clean, as much as I could tell looking by hand. Building management told C.J. that no one had been to her apartment with their permission, but at her request, they promised to call her if anyone so much as asked about her at the front desk. It sounded like they were used to those kinds of demands, and it made me wonder what other celebrities and influencers I might bump into in the elevator.
“It’s scary, isn’t it?” she asked me while she watched me checking the light fixtures. She followed me into her sound booth, where I took apart her computer towers and checked her sound equipment.
“Scary and a frustratingly futile,” I admitted as I finished up my search in the dressing room portion of her “office.” “There’s always the chance that they if I stepped over the line, they’d decide I was worth spending the time and money on for real surveillance, using my own technology against me. We live in a time when people can sit in a van and train a long-rang microphone on your house, and hear everything you say. When they can mirror your cell phone and see everything you do, and they don’t have to tell you they’re watching you, or invading your privacy.”
“Huh. And they say that you’re a bad guy for using that technology to help people.”
I pulled her into my lap and she laid against my chest. “We’re surrounded by technology that lets us peek into the most private corners of people’s lives, any given minute of the day. It is too much power to trust that it won’t be abused. But, who’s to say the people with the power are the ones who are righteous enough to use it properly?” I kissed her temple and she sighed.
“I don’t know enough about computers to ever tap into that kind of control over others. I just play video games for hours, and work out for hours, so I don’t look like I play video games all day,” she grumbled.
I slid my hand down the front of her tank top and palmed one smooth breast, making her gasp as I ran my thumb over the soft skin around her nipple. It puckered and hardened in my hand, and I felt things low in my body do the same in answer.
“God, you are amazing to touch,” I whispered into her hair, as she shifted in my arms to give me access to more of her. “Way more fun than video games.” She tilted her head back and kissed my neck, and rubbed her butt up against me. She hummed her pleasure as I slid the tank top up and ran my hands over the smooth skin of her stomach and back up over both breasts. She pressed one hand harder against her, and I watched as she slid her other hand down the front of her little shorts, rubbing her mound under the thin fabric.
I pulled her ear between my teeth and gently bit as I watched her hand work under the shorts, mesmerized by the way her hips bucked as she rubbed her ass over my erection. I picked her up and turned her and she straddled me. We laid on the bed in that position and she fell over me, with her hands on either side of my head, rocking her hips and rubbing herself on me. I yanked the tank top over her arms and head and she pulled it off and tossed it to one side, never breaking her rhythm as she ground herself on me.
My erection was so full and hard that I stuck out of the waist band of my basketball shorts, and I desperately tried to slide her off me to get rid of the damnable material that kept me from being inside her, but she laughed and clung to me with her legs as I tried to buck her off.
With a growl, I flipped us both and dropped her on her back, hard enough that she bounced on the mattress and her eyes widened. I tore at her shorts, yanking them down her legs and off before shoving her knees apart and diving between her legs, attacking her with my tongue and teeth until she screamed my name and came with a rush of hot fluid on my mouth and chin.
She collapsed on the bed, limbs liquid, breathing in short pants as she trembled and clutched at me with her fingertips. I licked her clean while her moans made my cock jump and throb, and I wiped my face with the mangled little shorts I’d finally managed to rip off her body. I stood next to the bed, and she reached for me, her arm still trembling and weak from the orgasm I’d wrenched from her sweet cleft with my tongue.
I watched her face as I pulled my shorts down and let them fall to the floor, freeing my erection. Her eyes widened and she licked her lips and swallowed hard, her breasts bouncing with each trembling breath. Her hand was still open, lying on the edge of the bed, and I moved in close enough for her to touch me. Her long, slender fingers closed around me and she ran her thumb over the head in the ghost of a touch that made my pulse jump and my mouth go dry. She tugged gently, drawing me to her without words, and I knelt over her with my knees between hers. She released me and reached up to embrace me, and I pulled her up to a sitting position kissing her full, soft lips and pressing every inch of her body tight against mine.
We turned as one, so that I was sitting on the bed, with her in my lap. I held her hair back from her face and delved into her sweet mouth with my tongue, until she moaned her pleasure into me. She lifted her hips and slid onto me with a smooth, velvet motion that made my hips thrust automatically in response. She rocked in my lap, her arms around my body, and kissed me while I threaded my fingers through her hair and held her. When I finally pulled away, the soft light of dusk shining in through the window lit on her bare skin and made it glow. She threw her head back and increased the tempo, and I gave over to her lead.
Her ankles were locked behind my back, and as she crested the wave of her orgasm, she squeezed me so tight it pulled a laugh from my throat. I lifted us up and bent over so she was under me, and took over thrusting hard and deep as she clung to my shoulders and stayed wrapped around me, holding me inside her until long after I had come and was lying on top of her, kissing her neck between heavy, panting breaths. I rolled to the side, so only one of her legs was pinned, and she played with my hair while I rested my head on her breasts.
“It’s nice that you’re so tall. Thanks for that,” I muttered while she giggled, jiggling her soft milky breasts against my cheek. I rubbed her with my stubble and she shrieked, which only made them bounce more, to my pleasure. “Perfect breasts, too. Good job getting those right.” She scoffed, and I continued. “Those long legs of yours are just about the exact right length for the best sex, too. Even better than when they reach all the way down from those tiny skirts you like to wear.
“Mmm,” she sighed. “I appreciate your approval. Do you think you’ll still like me a couple of weeks from now?” Her voice was softly matter-of fact, but I felt fear along the words like a razor’s edge. She played down my shoulder with her fingers while she waited for my reply, tension singing through her muscles.
“I don’t always like you now,” I offered, trying to lighten the mood. For my efforts, she pinched me hard, leaving a red half-moon welt where her fingernails bit into my skin. “I don’t know what you want me to say. That I think I’m falling in love with you? That I might have been in love with you before I even came out to see you? What do I have to do to show you I’m serious about being here with you?” She disentangled herself from me and turned away, hugging the edge of the bed like a life raft, while I floundered in the middle of the bed alone.
29. Carina
I was an idiot for saying anything, and as usual had ruined a good moment by asking for what no man was ever willing to give me. Jackson had told me he loved me, possibly, but the way he’d spat the words out like they had to be wrenched out of him made me feel worse than ever.
I moved as far away from him as I could and gave him the space I was sure he needed after my clinging to him like a high school stalker. If only he understood what it had been like, being harassed and assaulted on every side by men and boys alike who saw me as some sort of orgasm-producing object, only worth having if I was sexy or silent. God forbid I break wind or eat a meal that consisted of something other than lettuce.
For years, I was the “playmate girlfriend” or the “model” to the men I slept with. I was a fucking
check mark on somebody’s bucket list that had nothing to do with how I felt, or what I deserved. Jackson liked the gamer. He seemed ready to compete with the beer-drinker, and he seemed to love the cosplayer most of all. What he liked best about me, were the parts that had narrowed my world to a few trusted fellow-geeks when Donatella, Dior, and Victoria’s Secret had turned their backs on me.
I rolled over and watched him, lying on his back with his eyes closed, Stiles perched on his stomach demanding attention. I poked at the cat until he glared balefully at me and sulked off to wait by his food bowl in the kitchen.
“I wonder where he learned to be such a damned attention whore,” I scoffed.
Jackson let out a startled laugh and opened an eye to peer at me. “I can’t imagine. He drawled. His eye closed, and we laid there, side by side, as the sky darkened, lengthening the shadows that fell across the bed.
“Are you hungry?” I inched closer. My heart was breaking itself against my ribcage, threatening to escape with every beat. I reached out and touched his shoulder, and he placed his hand over mine. I stiffened, waited for him to push me away, but he simply held my hand against his skin until his shoulder was warm from my touch.
“Are any of the groceries you bought still good, do you think?”
I considered the items I’d purchased days ago, with the intention of giving him a home-cooked meal. “The meat might be good, but I have stuff in the freezer too.” I replied. “Are you ready to try my cooking?”
“I just want to stay away from other people for the night. Just me and you, before I walk into the storm, and you get back to your lucrative business playing video games while men make spank-bank deposits as they watch you.”
“That is so gross. I’m totally going to use it. You’ve been warned.” I snuggled in to his side. “Which reminds me, I get a lot of emails from men, including wealthy, important, business-types, asking me to go away with them, sometimes asking for naked pictures…” He flinched, but didn’t respond. “I hope you understand that I finally have the opportunity to respond the way I’ve always wanted to. I’m going to be taking a lot of pictures of your naked ass.”