by Shayne Ford
My eyes go up, locking with his, my mouth wrapping wet heat around his throbbing erection.
He rocks his hips, gently, not harsh, while I move my head–– his fist still latched on my hair.
Slowly, he nods as I take him deeper, flicking my tongue, rolling my lips, mouthwatering around his cock.
My eyes close as I move my head, imagining him on me.
Fucking me.
His grip tenses, pulling my hair harder, making me open my eyes.
His grin is gone, his eyes now unfocused, his chest rising and falling fast, pressing hard against his shirt, his hips rocking harder telling me that he’s nearing that point as well.
“That’s fucking it,” he growls, cuffing my neck and bringing me up.
He locks my mouth ferociously while he sheds his clothes.
Shirt, pants, shoes, and socks, fall on the floor along with his boxer shorts.
“My boots...” I mutter in a rush as he wraps his arms around me.
“Forget about them,” he breathes into me, crashing with me on the bed.
With one motion, he rolls me under him, face down, spreads my legs open and sets himself between my thighs, the thick crown of his cock against my entrance, his hand cuffed around my neck, his lips rolling on my earlobe.
“Now, you need to do a lot of begging, Ms. Porter,” he says, amused.
I move my hips.
He pins me with his weight.
“Nice try.”
I growl with frustration.
“You must be wanting it just as much,” I say trying something different.
“Of course, I do. Because it’s mine,” he says, a smile lining his voice.
He starts planting kisses on my neck, his tongue rolling, his hips rocking slightly, just enough to push the tip of his erection past my entrance.
I’m throbbing. Clenching.
“You’re cruel,” I mutter, grinning as well.
“I can say the same thing about you.”
“And I lived to regret it.”
“You sure did.”
“I am sorry.”
“Too late for that,” he says sucking on my neck, marking me with his teeth.
His free hand slides under my hips, his fingers tracing my slit.
“You feel good,” he murmurs, stroking my pulsing clit, making me clench and squeeze his cock.
His hard flesh stirs between my legs.
“More...” I mumble. “I want more.”
He keeps stroking my clit but doesn’t enter me. My center tightens around him even more, the pleasure heightening.
“It feels good...” I say, distracted.
His grip on my neck hardens, his cock sliding into me a little more.
I’m dying under him.
“I want all of it,” I say.
“Say it again.”
“I want it, Ed.”
“And again.”
“Ed...”
The last time I call his name, my voice comes out broken, giving him a final clue.
In one motion, he pulls back and enters me all the way, making me feel him in the deepest of my depths, making me shudder and clench around him, making me scream his name against the sheets while my hands claw at the pillows.
He rocks his hips while he unties my wrists, freeing my hands. I grip the pillow and the sheets, facing the sinful hell he unleashes on me.
His strokes come harsh and hard as he enters me repeatedly. Primal, raw, unstoppable. He doesn’t slow down. He pounds me and plunges into me, making me lose my breath under him, and cry out his name, making me forget about the pain as the pleasure reaches an unimaginable level, and I climb and climb ready to explode.
His breaths shorten, now heavier than before, his body hard and hot moving at my back as his full, thick cock slams against my walls.
He fucks all the doubts and fears out of me, minutes of exquisite pleasure undeniably proving that I am his with all I have.
10
EDWARD
It’s a nice neighborhood with big homes, large lawns, and pools that look like gigantic blue eyes tucked in the backyards. I drive slowly, paying attention to the street names, looking for the address.
My rented ride is average looking, nothing screaming for attention.
Slowly, I take a turn and pull to a stop in front of a luminous house on a dead end street. Sunlight tumbles over the grass and driveway, over the tall, large windows and the roof.
The lawn is trimmed to perfection, the voices of children playing in the backyard traveling through the air.
I turn off the engine and step out of the car.
I double check the address again on my cell phone before I sweep my thumb across the screen, turn it off, and slip it into my pocket.
A few steps later, I ring the doorbell.
It takes a few more moments before the door opens, and a woman that remotely resembles my mother opens the door. A floral dress hugs her toned body, accentuating the slight curves, rings of hair, rolling down her back.
A small girl’s hand links to hers.
As I glance over her shoulder, I spot a cloud of confetti and balloons littering the backyard, small children playing on the grass, layered cakes on the wooden tables, and a few adults chatting–– a birthday party clearly underway.
Our eyes connect briefly before I let my gaze hover over her face, taking an inventory of her coral painted lips and beautifully arched eyebrows.
“Yes?”
She looks at me intrigued as she takes in my face and casual clothes–– a pair of brushed wool trousers and a soft cashmere top.
“I’m looking for Brandon Larson.”
My voice comes out tense–– official, making her drop her smile in a second.
“What is this in regards to?”
“A family matter.”
Inadvertently, I slide my gaze over her shoulder again, taking in the nice interior, the patio open to the backyard, the guests––children and adults, and the tables filled with drinks, food, and desserts.
“Someone’s birthday?” I toss with a softer voice.
She gives me a wry smile, breathing sheer discomfort as she utters that it’s her niece’s birthday.
A moment slips by before she instructs the little girl to look for her mom and she turns to me one more time.
“And who should I tell him that is looking for him?”
“His son.”
The blood draws from the woman’s face, emotion flickering in her eyes as she starts to blink fast.
“Please come inside,” she says, opening the door all the way and showing me to a small hallway
I wait for a few minutes before she comes back.
The woman apologizes for making me wait and leads me to a different side of the house where she opens the door to a room that looks like a home office.
Courteously, she invites me to take a seat and offers me a drink that I politely refuse.
“He’ll be with you in a moment. He just finished taking photographs of the children, and all the guests want to see the snapshots.”
“Sure. No problem.”
I lean back in my chair while the woman walks out of the room, leaving the door open.
The sound of cheers and laughter rings out in the backyard while my eyes hover aimlessly over the walls and ceiling, the small desk, and bookcase.
As the moments pass by, I inherently think about my life, and how it would’ve looked like had I grown with my parents.
How much impact I would have had on my mother’s life had I grown up with her, and how her story would’ve been different. She would’ve been alive today, perhaps married, hopefully not to this man.
As hard as it is to admit it, money would’ve made a difference too. Had she had any money she shouldn't have had to put up with the abuse. She wouldn’t have needed him to raise me. She wouldn’t have been forced to give me away.
A lump forms in my throat as my hands curl up into fists when I think about it.
; And then, had he been a different kind of man, none of that hardship would’ve happened. Money or not, he would’ve done anything in his power to protect her and me, to make a life for all of us. He would’ve learned how to make money like so many other men do.
Instead, he chose the coward’s way out. He chose violence over kindness. Incompetence over responsibility. Carelessness over thoughtfulness.
And he never reconsidered it.
By the time, I hear the sound of footsteps on the hallway, nearing the door, my body is tense, hard feelings barreling through me.
A thirst of vengeance flows through me as I get ready to confront the man who broke my mother’s heart and made her go away too soon.
The silhouette of a man fills the doorway, what I see is so far from what I imagined. A medium tall man with a round face, glasses and a receding hairline enters the room, his belly sticking out.
I recognize him from the pictures my private investigator produced for me but nothing else. There almost no physical resemblance between us, no connection of any kind.
He is a complete stranger to me.
I can tell the man wrestles with the same thought as he walks to the middle of the room and swings his eyes to me.
His lips part in surprise, his eyebrows arching as he pushes his frameless glasses up on the bridge of his nose.
I rise to my feet, the difference between us even more evident.
He studies me with curious eyes.
“Edward Preston,” I say with a cold voice, stretching my hand out.
We shake hands before he closes the door, discreetly running his hand onto the back of his neck, wiping away sweat.
He wears a pair of beige khaki and a T-shirt with blue stripes.
“Please excuse me for making you wait. We are celebrating a six-year-old girl’s birthday, and things are a little fluid right now,” he says with a lighter tone.
He sounds a bit awkward given the circumstances, but he probably struggles to conceal his nerves.
He spins around and looks at me as I slide back into my chair. He seems hesitant, unsure how we are going to go about this.
“Would you like something to drink?” he finally says as he heads to a small wall table in the corner.
“No, thank you.”
He pours himself a drink, rounds the desk and takes a seat across from me.
“Sometimes I work from home,” he says, volunteering the information, trying somehow to break the ice.
“I see.”
He gulps his drink under my scrutinizing eyes.
As I look at him I realize how different he is than what I envisioned, and my hate and animosity toward him begin to falter somewhat.
He sets the glass on his desk, takes off his eyeglasses and starts to clean them with a piece of cloth–– a clever way to buy some time, I gather, and organize his thoughts, perhaps.
He tips his gaze down and squints, trying to adjust his vision.
“It was quite a surprise when my wife told me,’ he mutters monotonously, no emotion woven in his words. “How did you, um... find me?”
He checks his glasses holding them against the light before he sets them back on his nose and shifts his gaze in my direction, taking a better look at me.
“I hired a private investigator a few weeks back,” I say, holding his gaze.
He searches my eyes for a few good moments, trying to figure out what exactly I am here for. His self-preservation comes first evidently, no paternal instinct in him from what I can see. I can’t detect any interest in me as his son.
The feeling is mutual.
“Initially I was interested in finding information about my mother,” I say coldly. “But the information led me to you,” I say with the voice of someone who couldn’t care less about meeting him.
Pallor sets on his face when he realizes that while I’m not here to hold him accountable for what happened in the past, I’m not harboring warm feelings toward him either.
“I didn’t want to come here, but I thought that you might’ve kept some of my mother belongings. I have nothing from her except the photo my PI provided.”
Life comes in the man’s eyes as if he suddenly found a way to redeem himself.
The moment of awkwardness seems to be slipping away from as he pushes to his feet, excuses himself and walks into a different room.
A door opens and closes before he saunters back into his office with a small box in his hand.
“That’s all I have,” he says.
For the first time, I sense regret in his voice.
He rounds his desk–– pacing himself the way people much older than him do, before he slumps into his chair, his stare pinned on the box.
He flips the lid off, and one by one, he takes out a stash of photographs, a notebook with hardcovers, a velvet teddy bear with beaded eyes, a few locks of long brown hair, and two colorful ribbons––one red, the other pink.
He sets everything in front of him.
For a moment, my gaze sweeps the desk, taking in every memory that survived the passing of time.
The man sets his hand on the notebook first.
“This...” he says with a slow, heavy voice. “This is her diary... A journal of sorts. She was never disciplined enough to write consistently, but I don’t think that was her intention anyway. She started writing while she was pregnant and continued after she gave birth.”
I sense his effort to compartmentalize, to assign the story a small space in his mind, to detach himself from it and consider it a thing of the past.
I can see how he couldn’t or wasn’t willing to consider himself my father with all the responsibilities that come with it.
Even now, after all these years... Even with me all grown up, present in front of him, he doesn’t speak about the past–– our past, with the voice of someone who was part of my mother’s journey in bringing me into this world.
I try to fight my disappointment back, doing my best not to judge him. I made peace with the fact that there was nothing I could change about my past a long time back.
He taps the cover of the notebook with his index finger.
“She stopped writing a few days before the accident.”
As the words flow from his mouth, I sense his hesitation. He must know the same way I do that her death was not an accident.
“You will not find anything good about me in her writings,” he says, his voice shaking this time.
A sigh rolls out of his chest, a bitter smile crumpling his lips.
“Everything she wrote was true,” he says without looking at me.
It sounds like a confession he’s dreaded to make for some time.
“What made you keep her journal?” I ask, curious to hear his explanation.
“I found the notebook when I liquidated the place. Just before I moved away. At that time, I had no idea how much pain I inflicted on her. It was different then... I was different,” he says, aware that the moment of apologies is long gone. “Back then, I was too young to understand life and people. I was too scared. I came from a troubled past as well.”
He lifts his gaze, meeting the sharp edge of my gaze.
Slowly, he shakes his head.
“I’m not saying it to justify myself. I was responsible for everything that happened to her. All I want is to give you a context, to understand why it happened, and if there is anything to learn from it to use it in your life, perhaps, so you never do the things I’d done. It took me a long time to realize what a horrible mistake I made, and I never wanted to repeat it. That’s why I never wanted another child. But you probably know that already,” he says, looking down at my mom’s notebook.
He pauses for a couple of moments before he continues.
“The day I had enough courage to read it from start to finish was the day I began to see the things for what they were and to accept responsibility for them. That’s not to say that it came to me right away. My initial reaction was to throw her diary away or burn it, never read it
again, but something stopped me. And then it dawned on me that there was something to learn from it and that I needed to hold myself accountable, although I knew that there was nothing I could do about the past.”
“You haven’t even tried to find me,” I say the first thing that comes to my mind.
He tips his gaze down again, his stare vacant as he trains it on his desk.
“It wasn’t that easy. For a very long time, I wasn’t able to face that part of me that was weak and ugly. I did my best to conceal it from everybody else but particularly from myself. It was one thing to admit the things I’d done to myself and quite the other to face the reality of a botched past. Besides, I knew you were in good hands, and have a good life, and I thought that in the end, that was the silver lining of this story. I also knew that your life was so much better without me. Was I wrong?”
He tips his gaze at me and searches my eyes, looking for a confirmation.
I click my tongue.
“No, you weren’t,” I say emotionless.
He spends a few more moments observing me before he moves his gaze back to the box.
“What are you doing for a living, Edward?”
“I run a multi-billion dollar corporation.”
His gaze flicks up promptly although there’s not much surprise in his eyes as if he expected to hear something akin to that.
“That sounds good,” he says with the voice of someone who lost his right to be proud of his son’s achievements a long time ago when he chose not to be part of his life in any shape or form.
“Married?” he asks, his gaze hovering over my fingers.
“Nope. I’m not in a rush to do it. It’s not always what it’s meant to be.”
I’m not really taking a stab at him, but rather voicing my reservations that now I realize I’ve always had.
“I can’t advise either way,” he says, avoiding my eyes. “It’s part of life, I guess... Like anything else,” he mutters with a monotone voice.
Sunk in his thoughts, he sets the notebook back in the box.
“This was your favorite toy,” he says, picking the small teddy bear from the table and setting it in the box as well. “ That’s why your mother kept it.”
