Welcome to Sugartown

by Carmen Jenner

  I finish dusting the popcorn with icing sugar while Elijah fishes out two beers for himself and Jack. “You want one?”

  “No thanks, could you grab me a Stoli though?”

  “Uh-oh. You better tell me now if you’re planning on getting so shitfaced you have to be carried to your room.” He waggles his brows at me. “I’ll go easy on the beer so I don’t drop you.”

  “Very funny.”

  I grab the bowl of popcorn and head for the lounge. I’m halfway there when Holly yells, “Can you bring the chocolate milk, pretty please?”

  I swing back and run smack bang into Elijah, who clearly wasn’t watching where he was going because I’m pretty sure his eyes were firmly fixed on my bum.

  “Shit. Sorry.” He rights the bowl of popcorn before it falls from my hands, but not before several pieces fall and find a new home in my cleavage, which of course turns him into a drooling boob of a man—pun intended. “You’ve got popcorn … uh.”

  I fish the pieces from my bra and pop them in my mouth, then I push him back a step before heading over to the refrigerator. “Geez, Elijah, it’s like you’ve never seen boobs before.”

  “I never seen boobs as perfect as that.” He points to my chest with his stubbie and then takes a long pull while openly ogling my breasts.

  I shake my head and retrieve Holly’s milk from the fridge. I almost make it out of the kitchen before she yells, “Bring a glass too, Jackson drank from mine and I think he has cooties.”

  “You ever feel like we’re running a hotel here?”

  I let out a sigh. “With those two? Ha! More like we’re running a daycare.”

  “You know that’s actually a pretty apt description.”

  “Oh, like you can talk, Mr I-Go-Gaga-for-Boobies.”

  He shrugs. “They’re nice boobies.”

  I roll my eyes and follow him into the lounge room. Holly and Jack are hunkering down on the couch. Despite sitting at opposite sides from one another, their legs stretch out in the middle of the couch, leaving no room for anyone else. Elijah plonks himself down on the recliner and I shoot all three of them dirty looks.

  “Where the heck do I sit?”

  “Jackson, get up,” Holly commands.

  “I’m not getting up, you get up,” Jack says, and shoves her foot with his.

  “I’m pregnant! Besides, Ana’s a woman. You’re supposed to give up your seat to women and the elderly; it’s the gentlemanly thing to do.”

  “Gentlemanly? Since when do you care about gentlemen?”

  “It’s fine, I’ll just sit on the floor.”

  “Sit with me,” Elijah ventures.

  “I’m not sitting with you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re … big, you hardly fit on that thing as it is.”

  “Fuck, you two are worse than a couple of tweeniebopper virgins trying to figure out where the condom goes. Just sit on him already and be done with it.”

  “Jackson!” I chide.

  At the same time Holly pouts at him and says, “Hey, that’s my line.”

  I’m thinking I might just forget this whole movie night thing and go to bed, but Elijah’s looking all too sure of his ability to ruffle my feathers so I smile snidely and say in my most seductive voice, “Where do you want me?”

  The cunning in his gaze is immediately replaced by desire, and I bite down hard on my lip. I shouldn’t be flirting with him. It’s cruel and wretched, and yet I can’t seem to make myself stop. I don’t want to stop. From the looks of it, Elijah doesn’t want me to stop either, because the challenge is back in his eyes, the one that says he doesn’t think I’ll do it.

  “Right here,” he says and—surprise, surprise—he pats his lap.

  It’s just sitting on his lap for goodness sake, it’s not like I haven’t done it before, I think, and then that evil voice in my head helpfully supplies, Only the last time we were completely without clothes and trying to get as close to one another as possible.

  Ignoring that judgemental bitch in my head, I casually stroll over and lower myself onto his lap. I’m only resting half my weight on him and the rest is on my knees and feet as I push them against the floorboards in an effort to ground me. Elijah’s not happy with this arrangement, though. He wraps his arm around my waist and pulls me into the hollow created by his open legs. Before I can get my wits about me enough to move away, he pulls the lever for the footrest and I’m flung back against him in a reclining position.

  The first thing I notice is his hard body pressing against my back. The heat and delicious all-male scent of him blurs my senses, forcing me to momentarily lose my mind and fall prey to how good it feels to be in his arms again.

  The second thing I notice is that he’s rock hard … everywhere. I try shifting away but he presses his large hand to my abdomen to secure me against him. I squirm in my seat, my breath becomes laboured and my knickers are soaking wet.

  Elijah tilts his head so that his lips are pressed against my lobe. “Unless you want me to blow my load, baby girl, stop squirming and watch the movie,” his words are low and hushed, but the authority in his tone causes goose bumps to break out all over my skin. They also cause a streaking bolt of alarm to shoot through me. Until now, I wasn’t aware the movie had started, but Paris Hilton’s plastic-fantastic face is plastered all over the screen and her friends have just made a gruesome discovery in the woods.

  I glance around. The lights are off, Holly’s eyes are growing heavy just a few minutes in, the popcorn’s been demolished and Jackson’s madly typing away on his phone.

  I’m hyper aware of Elijah behind me, around me. It’s intoxicating and frightening, all at once. I also don’t think I’ve ever been this turned on—which, given that all my past sexual experiences, bar one, had included this man, is really saying something. Elijah knows exactly how to seduce me and he’s certainly not pulling any punches. One hand is grasping the back of my neck with only the barest hint of pressure, just the way I like it. The other is splayed against my lower abdomen, his pinkie and ring fingers resting against my pubic bone and causing pleasure to arc between the gentle press of his hand and my core.

  I hear him inhale and then whisper, “You smell so fucking edible, baby girl. I’m gonna die if I don’t get to taste that sweet pussy of yours soon.”

  My breath leaves me in a rush that sounds an awful lot like a whimper. I hate that I can’t control myself around him, that even as I sit here I’ve been turned into a whimpering ball of need and longing and he knows it. He knows just how to slink past all my defences and twist the knife deeper into my heart. It’s the night outside the Sugartown Hotel all over again, only this time I’m the only one he’s screwing over. And he’s enjoying every second of it.

  “Would you like that? My mouth on your beautiful cunt? Licking and sucking until you come, screaming my name?”

  Before I can think about the ramifications of what I’m doing I rock back into him and nod my head. I shouldn’t have done that, I think. I shouldn’t be leading him on when this can go nowhere. This man ripped my heart out a few short months ago. He broke me completely, he pissed on everything we had by keeping his dirty little secrets and tore whatever we had left apart by fucking another woman in front of me.

  “Do you still love me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Lies, lies, lies.

  All of it.

  If anything, our time apart has made me love him more, but I can’t give myself over to him again. I let him take my heart once, but I won’t let him take what’s left of me.

  “Jesus, babe, you’re wound so tight,” he murmurs against my neck and slides his hand inside my skirt. “Fuck me! And so wet, too. I’m gonna take care of this, baby girl, and then you and I are going to talk about this shit between us. Cause I’m not going another day without possessing you completely.”

  A quiet moan escapes my mouth as he teasingly strokes his fingers around my clit, careful not to actually touch it. I w
ant to scream my frustration at him to stop playing games and make me come already but I don’t, because the anticipation of being touched is just as good as the sensations produced when his hands actually connect with my flesh.

  When they finally do make contact it’s the sweetest kind of torture. It’s been months since I’ve been touched like this, touched by him. His fingers feel like they’re burning me as one slides inside, knuckle deep, while his thumb grazes back and forth across my clit. The pressure of his erection digs into my arse and I rock back into it until Elijah’s hips are moving with mine. His fingers maintain their steady assault as we rock into one another, both chasing the release that the other is so willing to provide.

  Elijah shifts his hand so that his palm is cupping my clit and his fingers are now touching the front wall of my vagina. He wiggles them back and forth and I practically come apart in his hands. I can feel my orgasm building, but all my previous experiences with the big ‘O’ have never felt like this. His fingers aren’t gentle as they push back and forth, but I couldn’t care less. I’m not thinking about the room around me or the fact that I shouldn’t be using him like this. In fact, I’m so far gone I’m not thinking anything at all, apart from the fact that I never want this to stop.

  I rock my hips back and forth in time with his fingers and hear him groan in my ear, “So fucking sweet, baby. I want you coming all over my hand.” And no less than a second after he says this, I do. I come hard and fast, and it’s more intense than any orgasm I’ve ever felt before. It’s wetter, too. So wet that my knickers and Elijah’s hand are drenched. He doesn’t seem to notice though, because he’s busy losing himself in his own release. His free hand slides up my side and squeezes my breast, as his own orgasm rocks through him.

  For a second I just lay back against him, exhaling loudly, breathing the same air as one another and luxuriating in the feel of his arms and the saccharine sent of sex on the air. And then he eases his fingers out of me and I get a sense of just how wet we are.

  I am beyond mortified. He just gave me the best orgasm of my life and I returned the favour by peeing on him. The mortification amps up a notch when I turn and see him licking his fingers clean of me.

  “I’m so sorry,” I blurt.

  “I’m not. That was the hottest fucking thing I’ve ever experienced.”

  “I just peed on you.” Elijah guffaws and I glance around, wondering where our roommates got to, though I don’t really blame them for leaving. “Why is that funny? Where did Holly and Jack go?”

  He gives me the smug smile, like he’s over the freaking moon hearing me admit I was so distracted with him that I didn’t notice our flatmates leaving. “They left about the time you started moaning. And that wasn’t pee.” He laughs again. “Fuck, baby, that was some of the hottest shit I’ve ever seen. I don’t think I’ve ever been this hot for a woman after watching her come.”

  I’m completely confused and I’m probably staring at him like he’s some fetishist freak who enjoys golden showers because he smiles like I’m a goddamn piglet that’s so bloody endearing you can’t help but want to pinch and coo to it. “That was your G spot, Ana. Oh, the things you have to learn about your body. Lucky for you, I’m a very hands-on teacher.”

  I haven’t the foggiest idea of how to respond to that, so I push the lever on the side of the couch and the chair comes lurching upright. My heart is racing, and now that the afterglow is wearing off I realise what a colossal mistake I’ve just made. This could obliterate all the progress we’ve made toward being regular flatmates. To my piece of mind. To the fact that we’ve both tried our hardest to be civil and adult about living together and pretending like we’re fine when our hearts are breaking. And, with ten minutes of touching, we’ve managed to destroy any hope we had at a normal friendship.

  After the rape I stopped thinking about my wants and desires. I forgot that I was a young woman who needed to be loved, to be touched, just as I had been before. I focused on my family and my friends and began lovingly taping band-aids over their problems because they seemed so much bigger than mine when the reality was that my bandages had come undone, ripping and tearing off my skin, and I hadn’t even noticed.

  And now? Now, I noticed. I just had no idea had put them in place again.

  I unseat myself from his lap and head for the bathroom.

  “Hey, where are you going?”

  “I have to take a shower.”

  “I thought we were going to talk about this?”

  “No. You said we were going to talk, I don’t remember agreeing to anything.”

  “Like you didn’t agree to coming just now?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “What the fuck, Ana? Why are you fighting this so god damned hard?” he shouts and I spin around, stung by the harshness in his voice. “I can see how much you want me. I can feel it. Fuck me! I can’t stand in the same room as you without feeling the longing seeping out of your pores, and you’re still refusing to acknowledge the fact that you’re still in love with me.” The surprise I feel at that last confession must be written all over my face because Elijah comes closer, until he’s staring right down into my eyes and says, “Yeah, you can drop the fucking act, baby girl. I know how you feel about me, the question is, why don’t you?”

  “You need to stop pushing this. Stop pushing me!” I shout. “Yes, I still love you, but you tore my heart out, Elijah! You left me broken in a million fucking pieces! You don’t get to be the one to put me back together.”

  I storm into the bathroom. Slamming the door behind me, I quickly undress and slip underneath the hot spray. I’m too numb to cry and, despite seeing myself shake like a leaf, I don’t feel a thing, not the sting and burn of the water against my flesh and not the fresh wound gaping in my chest.

  I let it go too far. I let him in again, I think, as I lean my head against the tile. My chest hurts, my head hurts. I feel like I’m made up of millions of tiny exposed nerves, all trembling and clamouring at once with the aftershock of being prodded by sharp implements. I feel raw. There’s no other way to describe it. How many times can we do this to each other before we realise we’re completely broken with no chance of ever being put back together?

  I don’t know how long I stand there, letting the water soak me to the bone, but sometime before it turns cold I hear the shower door open behind me. I whirl around and find Elijah there in the cubical with me, the spray soaking his clothes.

  “Get out!”

  “No.”

  “Fine then, I’ll get out.”

  “No. You won’t,” he says as he pushes me back against the tile. “You’re not making this decision for us.”

  “Jesus Christ, Elijah, how many times do I have to push you away before you get a fucking clue? How many more times can you stomach hearing that I don’t want you, that there is no more us?”

  “Bullshit! The only reason we aren’t together right now is because you’re too fucking stubborn to admit how you feel, because it might mean being hurt again. Well guess what, baby girl, life is all about hurt. From the day we’re born to the day we die, we fucking hurt and we cry and we pick ourselves up and, if we’re really lucky, we have people to help us pick up the fucking pieces.”

  “You think I don’t know this shit? You’re not the only one who knows hurt, Elijah, so quit with your fucking world weary patronising.”

  “You know hurt, huh? Then why the hell are you putting us through more of the shit?”

  I shove him up against the glass and then clench my hands into fists to keep from scratching and clawing at him until there’s nothing left. “You did this to us! Not me. I’m just trying to deal the best way I can. I’m trying to save myself from you, because if I give you what’s left I’ll have nothing leftover to pick up when you leave again.”

  A sob tears free from my throat, and then there’s a whole torrent of tears and my hands are thumping at his chest while he holds me to him. “I hate you!”

  “Don’t hate me
, Ana,” he coos in my ear, and his voice is so soft and so full of hurt that it only makes me cry harder. “I love you. I’d go to fucking ground for you. I can’t deal with this shit any more. For six months I waited for you in that hellhole and you never once came to visit, and then the day I’m released you show up like some fucking miracle, an angel who wants to give me a home and care for me like a stray puppy. But the funny thing about angels is you can’t touch them, just like I’m not allowed to touch you, though I know you want me too as badly as I do. I need you, Ana. I’m fucking dying without you, baby.”

  “I don’t have anything left!” I shout. “I gave you everything I had and you tore it all up. I can’t allow you to do that again. I wouldn’t be the girl you love if I let you destroy me again.”

  I try to push him away but he won’t let up, and so he ends up clutching me to him in a vice grip while I cry and scream until all the hurt and tears and heartbreak just dissolve around us. We stay that way until the water runs cold, with him fully clothed and me stripped bare before him, and then I slide his arms from around my waist and pull him down to kiss his lips before I push open the shower door.

  “You need to find somewhere else to live.” My throat hurts from crying, my heart hurts from squeezing out those words, but it had to be said. We can’t live like this anymore. Some things are just too broken to fix. “I’m sorry, but this is just too hard.”

  I wrap the towel around my chest and walk out, wishing it hadn’t just felt like I left a piece of myself in that bathroom.

  Chapter Thirty Eight

  Elijah

  I’ve decided I’m going to have to kill Jackson in his sleep. After spending all day on the couch versing one another on Xbox he’s killed me thirty-seven times in some random fighting game and nine times in Race Pro. There’s only so much of a beating a man can take before his masculinity feels threatened. And therefore, Jackson Rowe must die.