Tarnished Love

by Carter Steele

  He just… well, he just seemed like he knew who he was and what he wanted. I didn’t want to admit out loud what he wanted for fear of acting presumptuous, but…

  “OK, let’s get started!” I said, trying to refocus myself. “Remember, always be mindful of your breathing, take a break if you have to, and go just a little bit past comfort, but not to the point of pain.”

  Advice I should probably listen to myself.

  This is certainly going to be a unique class.

  3

  Petey

  I had to speak to the old ladies for one reason and one reason only.

  Anna had aroused me so much with her looks and smile that I realized the one downside to wearing shorts—it was going to reveal the excitement with the bulge in my pants. Unlike with jeans, which were thick enough to protect against visible signs of arousal, gym shorts had so much give that I might as well have been naked. Anna could probably figure out my size and excitement just by looking in her peripheral vision.

  The old ladies did the trick, but there was just one problem. I still had to take the class with Anna.

  It was really something of an impromptu decision. After the graffiti incident on Sunday, I had called Brock back in. We had decided that we would pay for the damage to make sure that our name remained good in the town, but we hadn’t even needed to do that. The sheriff said he’d “open an investigation” and aside from a brief blurb in the town paper, no one seemed to mind much about it—at least, much that I saw.

  But I knew how things like this had a way of festering. It wasn’t the first incident that would cause people to riot in the streets and come after us. It wasn’t the second incident that would spark public protests. It was the ones that followed, but one couldn’t have the protests without first having the resentment and concerned looks. I advised Brock and Sheriff Jones that we needed to stay alert, and for the next few days, we conducted patrols of the city.

  Fortunately, nothing had really happened. But it did mean that I was exhausted by the time I woke up Thursday, and frankly, I needed to treat myself. I had no intentions of turning this into a date with Anna—I just wanted to look at a beautiful, athletic woman while I got exercise in for an hour or so. If anything more came of it, great, but “anything more” was likely to be nothing more than playful conversation. Maybe, maybe, maybe, if it really got far, we’d fool around physically, but it wouldn’t lead to anything else.

  I was pretty sure of that, at least.

  “OK, let’s get started!” Anna said, and just like that, I was excited. “Remember, always be mindful of your breathing, take a break if you have to, and go just a little bit past comfort, but not to the point of pain.”

  Easy to say. Let’s see if I try and impress her.

  And, wouldn’t you know it, even at 36 years old, I still pushed myself too far trying to impress women. Even with my past, even with the reason that I was single, even knowing I didn’t have a genuine interest in anything serious with Anna, I still acted like a teenage boy who tried to act a fool to get the girl. Some things just never change.

  For the next hour, I put myself in all sorts of awkward positions in an attempt to look good. I contorted my body, stretched muscles that probably hadn’t been used in a decade and a half, and strained to just get halfway to the flexibility that Anna was at. I tried to minimize my glances at her, because honestly, looking at her was like looking at perfection, and it was incredibly hard to, well, not get hard thinking about the various angles and positions she could get into.

  By the time the free class had ended, I was feeling aroused of a different way. Yeah, I knew I didn’t really need to be doing this, and I knew what I had said to myself. I knew that pursuing this was probably not the best option for me. But seeing her in that outfit, and knowing how long it had been since I’d had anyone outside the club…

  I approached her at the end of class with a proposition.

  “You know that free class you promised me? Let’s do that tonight. Eight o’clock.”

  And if all goes well, then maybe we can go to the club party. And if that goes well…

  “My, Petey, you sure?” Anna said with a light-hearted laugh. “Most people would require some downtime so that their bodies can recover after such an intense class.”

  I turned around, looked at the crowd of grandmas, and turned back to Anna.

  “Are you telling me that I’m not in better shape than a bunch of ladies a few years ahead of going to a retirement home?”

  “What? No!” Anna said with a guilty laugh.

  “Uh huh,” I said. “Can you do eight tonight?”

  “I could…”

  “Then I’ll see you there,” I said, again touching her arm.

  I was being so bad. This was not good. I did not need to drag myself into romantic games any further. Brock had lucked out with Heather, but it had also come with a lot of roller coaster moments and up and downs. If I went through with this…

  It’s been too long. Just have a little fun. You have some downtime, the club is relatively inactive, and she’s the town’s hottest woman.

  What’s the worst that could happen?

  I parked my bike in the parking lot, noticing the still-broken windows to the barbershop. It was something of a stark reminder that the effects of the Anarchists didn’t just stop when they had done their violence; it extended into the days and weeks ahead. The business would need time.

  It was a bit of a sobering moment. But it was also a short lived one, because when I walked into the studio, Anna had her back to me with only a sports bra on and her leggings. She was in the process of putting on a skin-tight top over it, but the whole sight was like walking in on the hottest girl at school changing.

  I was being so bad. Let’s just hope this works.

  “Oh, you’re here!” she said in surprise when she turned around. She didn’t seem flustered by my presence, though. In fact, she seemed quite happy about it. “Shall we get started?”

  “Let’s,” I said. “Do you give out free lessons to anyone who walks in?”

  “Well, yes and no,” she said with a guilty laugh. “I offer lessons to people whom I know are locals and who I think would benefit from this.”

  “Oh that’s—hey!”

  She just laughed her little cherubic, guilty laugh. It was so freaking cute—like the rest of her body. Old Petey, for someone who keeps thinking about how he’s walking into danger, you sure seem awfully interested in continuing to run straight to it.

  “We’ll get started with a slight warmup, just follow my lead.”

  I nodded, but I had no interest in having her guide me all the way.

  “You know, I’ve lived in Romara for many years,” I said. “I thought that I knew just about everyone who lived in this town. And yet, you’re new. Or have I just been blind to you for the last decade and a half?”

  “No, you’re not wrong,” she said. “I’ve been in and out of here. I grew up here. Mom and Dad still live here, actually. But…”

  She paused briefly as she got on the ground to help me into a new position. She called it “cobra”—which entailed her lying on her stomach before raising her upper torso. It provided me a great view of her body, and as she shimmied side to side, I swore she was playing it up for effect.

  “Well, I just came back here permanently a few months ago.”

  “You came back?” I said.

  “Uh huh,” she said. “Now, let’s go into the downward dog, stretch out those calves…”

  “What did you come back from?”

  She looked at me, smiled, and shrugged.

  “It’s not important.”

  Well, goddamnit, color me curious.

  “Besides, are you here for a yoga session, or to get to know me?”

  “Why can’t it be both?”

  She blushed, her cheeks turning red. She was so fucking cute, I swore.

  We stretched and chatted for the next ten minutes before moving into the core of the
workout. I may have had some rather erotic ideas of how this would go, but Anna seemed very much intent on putting me through a real workout. I was grateful for it, but it was definitely a hell of a lot harder than I would have guessed.

  “So,” I said as we came to the end of our time, one that saw plenty of flirting, casual remarks, and playful banter—but nothing quite as straightforward as an actual request for a date. “You going to tell me what brought you back here from before?”

  “You really want to know, huh?” she said. “I usually don’t talk about my personal life with my clients.”

  “Oh, come on now,” I said. “Think of me less as a client and more as someone in the community. We did discuss the vandalism, after all. So we didn’t exactly start that way.”

  “True,” she said with a shrug.

  She motioned for me to follow her back to her desk. I sat across from her, which wasn’t ideal for touching, but at least we were keeping the talk going past the hour of working out.

  “I was actually once married,” she said. “But things didn’t really work out for a variety of reasons.”

  She said “variety of reasons” with a sigh, as if she had so much she wanted to say but couldn’t without trusting me.

  “Well, if it makes you feel better, I was once married too.”

  “Oh?” she said in surprise. “Divorce?”

  “It’s a long story, now,” I said, raising my voice before she could say anything. “You were so scared to tell that, and yet it wasn’t so bad, now was it?”

  Anna laughed, her cheeks getting redder than ever. It was like she had just told a big secret that she wasn’t supposed to tell, and now that she had…

  “Would you like to know some secrets of mine?”

  “Oh, is this truth or dare?” she said, raising her eyebrows with a smirk.

  “We could turn it into one,” I said, seizing upon the momentum of our banter. “You first.”

  “OK, truth,” she said. “Are you going to sign up for my class?”

  “Hmm.”

  At first, I thought that she had just roped me in to signing up; I thought her flirting had less to do about getting close with me and more about signing up someone else.

  But then, I saw it for what it could have been.

  Opportunity.

  “I’ll tell you what,” I said. “I’ll sign up for your class if you go out with me a drink.”

  “Oh, is that so?” she said. “You know, I swore to myself that I wouldn’t date for a bit after the divorce. It only finalized a few months ago.”

  She cleared her throat.

  “However, I do suppose at some point I need to go out and just put myself out there. I have been a shut in for the most part—”

  “Despite half the town hitting on you?”

  She chuckled knowingly, but refused to answer fully.

  “There’s a party tonight, you—”

  My phone rang. I looked down. It was Brock. Shit.

  “Hold on one sec,” I said. “Yeah?”

  “Petey. We need you back at the club house. They’ve attacked again.”

  Fuck me.

  “So no party, I take it.”

  “Nope. Meet us back here as soon as you can.”

  “Got it.”

  I hung up my phone and looked at Anna with an annoyed, weary face.

  “Rain check?” I said.

  “Sure, but—”

  “Great,” I said, hurrying up out of my seat. When the club called, it didn’t matter what else was happening. I could have been mid-coitus, but it wouldn’t have mattered. The club was the first priority. “Then see you around.”

  Anna looked at me absolutely befuddled. But I couldn’t stick around.

  And I couldn’t help but wonder, given my own craziness with my life and with Anna’s emotional fallout from her divorce, if the Anarchists hadn’t actually just done me a favor. Maybe, just maybe, by sobering me up from the erotic tension, they had let me find someone who…

  Or, well, maybe they’d saved me from more heartache.

  4

  Anna

  What in the world just happened?

  As I watched Petey walk out of the studio, I couldn’t help but wonder if I had said or done something that had caused him to take off so quickly. He had definitely had a real conversation on the phone—I could hear him talking to someone on the other line—but still, he hadn’t even expressed sorrow to leave. It had just… happened.

  But you know what else had just “happened?” My flirting with him. My playful banter with him.

  The excitement that I felt in the pit of my stomach as I talked to him, something that I hadn’t felt since the early days of my ex-husband, Jason, and I. That was a relationship that had grown stale and mostly just fizzled out, and while there was no way to know if this interaction with Petey would turn into anything other than casual chats, we certainly had the kind of chemistry that reminded me of the good old days.

  It wasn’t just the chemistry that made me laugh and made me smile. It was kind of the chemistry that erotically excited me, that gave me sexual energy.

  Honestly, I mostly tried to keep that energy in check. I had enough people staring at me when I walked around Romara, and though it wasn’t something that I wanted to relish and indulge in, it was also impossible to ignore the number of people who would just gawk at me. It forced me to dress conservatively, act conservatively, and avoid provoking men’s sexual interest, even when I had something of an attraction to them.

  And yet, Petey had just blown right past that.

  He’d made me flirt with him a little. He’d given me that spark of energy. He’d made me feel like a woman again, like someone worth desiring and having. He made me feel fucking good.

  And I didn’t swear much, so if I said he made me feel fucking good…

  I was pent up. I was excited. I was also alone.

  I went over to the front door and made sure it was locked. I shut off all of the lights. I sat back down in the chair. I closed my eyes.

  And I slid my eyes down my pants.

  I thought of Petey, but instead of imagining him remaining on the far side of the desk, I imagined him crossing over to me. I imagined him walking over the desk, placing his hands on my body, and lifting me up. I imagined him kissing me and placing me on the desk.

  Soon, we weren’t just kissing. Our hands weren’t just on each other’s torsos. They were all over his body. I went for his shorts, removing them and then stroking his hard cock. I wrapped my lips around it, sucking him as I felt it stiffen.

  But Petey wasn’t having it. He pushed me back, ripped my pants off, and bent me forward. He inserted himself inside of me, pounding me with the kind of sex that I hadn’t experienced since my twenties. I screamed his name as all of the papers and supplies on the desk flew off, the collateral damage from the mind-numbing sex.

  And then, between my legs, in my sex, I felt the tension build and build. I started gasping, pressing my lips together to avoid making too much noise.

  And then, it reached a crescendo. The orgasm released all over my body as my hips and body quivered in that chair. I swore more than I had in the previous six months combined. Only when I came down from the orgasm did I slowly start to gather myself and realize what I had done.

  I had just masturbated to the thought of a man that I had only met about three times and hadn’t even touched yet.

  That was either a sign that I was in desperate need of a good date or a warning that I was putting too much stock into one man, especially one man who was already established as being part of the Savage Kings. Did I really want to date a man who associated himself with, well, questionable men? Sure, it would have been a far more exciting romantic life than what I had with Jason, but did I have to go at the other end of the spectrum?

  If I wanted to, I could have just ignored Petey and pretended that this was a brief period of time where I lost my mind and had just barely pulled myself back from doing something stup
id. I could have gone about with my studio, waiting until someone more normal in Romara came to me, and gone from there.

  But there was just one problem.

  The first thing I saw when I started to pull my desk back together was the waiver that Petey had signed when he took my free class. It included, among other things, his phone number.

  Something told me that if I wasn’t able to resist touching myself while thinking about Petey, I wasn’t going to be able to resist texting him or calling him at some point.

  I managed to be good that night and all of Saturday. I told myself that he had to deal with his matters at the club, and any attempts to get involved would probably just cause headaches for everyone.

  But when Sunday rolled around and I was reminded of how we had even become entangled in the first place, the question of texting Petey became a little more prominent and annoying in my head. I couldn’t shake the thought of how he was playful but not desperate; handsome but not obsessively hot; and kind but firm. We had only met a few times, but he’d done enough to convince me he was far from like any other man.

  But I really had just finished my divorce. Did I really want this to start a pattern of jumping from man to man? Did I really want to go for the first good man in my life since the divorce so quickly? Sure, I’d ignored people just looking at me, but that was easy. They looked. They didn’t try and touch.

  Petey not only touched, he made me feel damn good when he did it. He made me feel like… like I was young again.

  I couldn’t help myself.

  Just before the start of class, when I had the chance to detach and not have to check my phone like a little kid, I pulled up Petey’s number from the form and started writing him.

  “Hey Petey! Had fun with you Friday at our private session. Would love to have you back in some time to sign up!”

  But I didn’t hit send. I had written my standard marketing message as a cop out for messaging him, but I knew the second that Petey saw that, he would think that I had just wanted to get into his wallet. There was no way that he was going to actually embrace the message.