by Hazel Kelly
“James?”
“Work’s fine,” I said. “Just landed a big account last week.”
“That’s my boy.”
A stifling feeling spread through my chest. “How’s house hunting?”
“Mixed, to be honest,” he said. “It’s like Fifty Shades of Retirement Communities out here.”
I made a noise to let him know I was listening.
“I’d say eighty percent of the places we’ve toured have felt too old, while the rest are trying too hard to seem young.”
Something moved in my peripheral vision, and I turned towards the house in time to see Brie disappearing into the kitchen.
“Still need to find that perfect place that’s just normal middle-class people seeking a healthy balance of privacy and community.”
You mean normal born-agains who can’t be trusted near a mini bar or a deck of cards? “Hang in there,” I said, concerned I’d wrongly assumed Brie was home for the night. “I’m sure you’ll find what you’re looking for eventually.”
“Wait till I tell you about the Bible study places we went to in Miami.”
“Maybe another time, Dad,” I said, taking long strides towards the driveway. “I have a work call coming through.”
“Oh. Okay, well—”
I hung up, shoved my phone in my back pocket, and came around the corner as Brie was throwing a leg over her bike. “Hey.”
The pink of her cheeks deepened as she rolled my way. “Hey yourself.”
“You’re not avoiding me, are you?”
“Would I have stopped my bike if I was?”
I smiled and dropped my eyes to her lips long enough to let her catch me admiring them.
“I’m late for an appointment.”
“Yeah,” I said, my eyes finding hers. “With me.”
She licked her lips and glanced at mine, making my insides boil.
“We should talk,” I said. “About what happened the other day.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I thought you were sick of talking?”
“I am,” I said, resting a hand on the metal between her handlebars. “But if I tell you what I really want to do, I’m afraid you won’t agree.”
Her eyes sparkled. “Try me.”
I lowered my cheek to hers, letting her jasmine-scented hair intoxicate me as my breath warmed her neck. “Later,” I whispered. “I’ll tell you everything.”
She inhaled with a sharpness that brought my lower body to life, and the sound was like music to my ears, music I hoped to hear again very soon.
T W E N T Y S I X
- Brie -
The lampposts in front of the literature building were out when I arrived, but nightfall was still a few minutes from campus. I locked my bike to the empty rack at the foot of the stairs and double checked that my light was working since I’d need it to get home.
As I climbed the steps, I took a deep breath and reminded myself not to take Professor Herstall’s feedback too personally, even though it was a promise so futile I almost laughed out loud.
When I reached his office, I knocked on the wooden door with the back of my knuckles, feigning an assertiveness I didn’t feel.
“Come in.” His voice sounded warm and inviting, and I was glad to be out of the hall, which felt eerie and jaundiced without more students around. Then again, it was thirsty Thursday. Not that it was booze my body was thirsty for…though James was a satisfying cocktail of sin and surprise. “Hi,” I said, leaving the door ajar.
Professor Herstall had an ankle draped over one knee and was reclining back in his chair like a gorilla might lie in his favorite nest. “Would you close the door?” he asked, waving his hand in the air like he’d do it with his thoughts if he could. “I can’t stand those haunted hallways at night.”
“Sure.”
“That and my monkey brain gets too easily distracted by footsteps in the hall.”
I closed the door and took a deep breath before releasing the knob. When I turned around, he was sitting up straighter and had rolled towards the nearest corner of his desk. “Have a seat,” he said, pointing a roll of papers at the chair closest to him. “I have some news.”
“Good news?” I asked, dropping my bag on one seat as I sank into the other.
The wrinkles around his steel-grey eyes deepened.
It was a struggle not to squirm under his heavy gaze.
“Chapter Nine was a gamechanger, Brie.”
My chest lifted with relief.
He nodded. “You’ve really got something here.”
My heart beat against the inside of my ribcage.
“And you’ve taken my instruction so well.”
I sucked my lips in and listened for more nuggets of wisdom that might improve my writing.
“Here, for example.” He rolled back a foot and summoned me with his hand before slipping the paperclip from my manuscript and opening it to a page he’d put a sticky tab in.
I stood and stepped around the corner of his desk.
“The tension in this scene,” he said, angling towards me as he ran a finger down the page. “Here.” He tutted and leaned back, leaving his finger on the paragraph where Rose decides to turn her back on her family.
My eyes scanned each sentence, one of which I’d labored over for forty-five minutes.
“This is the kind of work I wouldn’t hesitate to give a reference for.”
“Really?” I asked, glancing at him before studying the page again, anxious to look ahead at how much red pen he’d left in the margins.
“If you can finish this to the standard you started it, I’m confident we can get you published.”
I heard the words, but they sounded like they’d been spoken underwater. Like I was underwater. Drowning. From the moment I felt his hand on me.
“I don’t know what our exact strategy should be yet, but…”
Why was he still talking? Why was the palm of his hand cupped around my ass? Beneath my sweater? Why couldn’t I move? The sound of his voice was just noise now, and all I could hear was alarm bells ringing in my ears. All I could feel was the slip of his thumb between my legs, pressing my underwear up inside me.
“What are you doing?” I blurted, spinning away from his wandering hand.
“Brie.” He was on his feet, only a step away from me. “Relax.”
“What the hell was that!” I didn’t take my eyes off him as I backed away, forgetting all about my bag until it was beside him. “My bag,” I said, pointing at it.
He picked it up. “This bag?”
I thrust my hand towards it. “I’d like to leave now.”
“I need you to calm down, Brie. I’ll give you your stuff and let you go in a second.”
Was I being stupid? Should I just run for it? Leave my housekeys with this whackjob? And my new phone? “What were you thinking?” I lunged for my bag, but he held it out of reach, a frightening amusement lighting his eyes.
I reached behind me for the doorknob, but he was on me in a second, his towering frame dwarfing mine.
“I was thinking you might want to thank me for going out of my way for you.” His thin fingers swept my hair from my face.
“What?!” He was so close I considered trying to headbutt him, but I was frozen. Instead, I turned my face, terrified that he might try to kiss me. “You did no such thing.”
He leaned into my exposed neck and pried my hand from the door, my delicate fingers like pipe cleaners compared to his iron grip. “You’re forgetting the time I’ve put into reading your work. The differences my references could make.”
I grabbed for my bag again and tried to yank it from him, but when I pulled it towards me, his hand came with it. Before I knew what was happening, he’d grabbed my mound and crushed me against the wall.
“Brie.” My name was an exasperated grunt on his lips. As if he were stinking drunk.
“Let me go,” I whimpered, afraid to move with his fingers so close to violating me further.
He p
ressed his groin against my thigh, making sure I could feel every inch of his swollen girth through my leggings. “I have more feedback to give you.”
I screamed as loud as I could, but his hand was over my mouth as soon as I started, his hold on me so strong it squeezed tears from my eyes.
And for an eternity, he just watched me, as if he was aroused by the way it felt to threaten me with his body until I trembled with fear. “I’m going to let you go,” he said finally. “But only if you promise not to scream again.”
I tried to nod, suddenly aware of how hard the door behind my head was.
“You also have to promise you won’t tell a soul about this.”
I nodded again, praying he’d believe me and ready to agree to anything if he’d just let me go.
“Or I’ll have to hold a grudge, too, and you can forget about getting a reference from me or anyone else in this department.”
I stared at him, hoping he would look in my eyes and see what a monster he was.
“What a shame,” he said, his fingers curling as he dragged them from between my legs. “I thought we had chemistry.”
He was sick, but I had more important things to do than tell him that. I needed to survive. To escape. To figure out why this happened and whether he ever believed in my writing in the first place.
And I needed to shower.
For months.
T W E N T Y S E V E N
- James -
Brie was in the shower when I got home from the gym. And when she was still in the shower a half hour later, I started to worry.
I listened at the bathroom door for a moment before knocking. “Brie?”
There was a long pause before she answered. “What?”
Shit. She’d never bother me in the shower. What if she was…“Are you okay?”
“Fine.”
“Think I can get in there sometime tonight?”
“Go away!”
The desperation in her voice startled me. “Have you been crying?” I took a half step away from the door, my sweat-soaked shirt feeling clammy and unbearable against my back. I peeled it off and threw it on the floor outside the linen closet, everything in my body telling me not to go away. “Open the door,” I said, worried that I couldn’t smell steam or soap, worried that she wasn’t humming to herself like she normally would. “Right now, Brie. I mean it.”
“Fuck off!”
Was she still crying? I took a deep breath and rocked a shoulder lightly against the door, trying it on for size. “Only if you give me a sign that you’re okay.” I closed my eyes and listened for her voice. But all I heard was the lock on the door.
My eyes popped wide, and I stared at the knob. “I’m coming in,” I said, pausing in case she objected before I reached for it. Then I twisted the knob and pushed the door open slowly, keeping my eyes down on the thick white bathmat until they came to a pair of soaked socks. My eyes traveled upwards, finding a fully clothed, shivering Brie, her cheeks striped with mascara that ran down to her purple lips. “Jesus.” I grabbed her shoulders and realized she was ice cold. “What the hell are you trying to do?”
I reached in the shower and flicked the temperature knob the other way, frantically shaking my palm under the water. As soon as it turned warm, I led her back into the shower and set her under the stream.
She blinked a few times and then closed her eyes, like maybe she was beginning to thaw.
“Say something!” I said, wiping the black streaks from her cheeks.
She lifted her arms, and I pulled her oversized sweater off and dropped it on the shower floor behind me. When I turned back around, she was hugging herself in a black tank top.
I dropped to one knee and asked for her foot. “Come on,” I said. “Put a hand on my shoulder.”
She did as I asked, lifting one foot at a time so I could slip her thick wool socks off.
I added them to the sweater pile and stood up, relief washing through me when I saw the color returning to her lips. But the pain in her eyes hadn’t dissipated. She still looked lost. Like she’d wandered off and couldn’t find her way back. “Your appointment didn’t go well?”
She shook her head, and as soon as her bottom lip quivered, I pulled her into my arms, knowing it was the right thing as soon as I felt how cold she still was.
“You want to tell me about it?”
She shook her head against my chest.
I regretted not showering at the gym. Would it have killed me to swipe some soap through my pits?
“Do you think I’m a tease?”
A lump clogged my throat. “What?”
She leaned back to look at me. “Am I a tease?” she asked. “Do I give people the wrong impression?”
“What happened?”
“Answer the question.”
I shook my head. “You’re not a tease.”
“Tell me what you were going to tell me.”
My brow furrowed as my basketball shorts grew heavy with water. “What?”
“When you said you wanted to talk.”
“Now’s not the time,” I said, reaching for the shower door. “You’re not okay.”
She wrapped a hand around my wrist. “Please.”
I searched her pleading eyes.
“I need to feel something else.”
My jaw hardened.
“I’m begging you.” She dragged my basketball shorts down from my hipbones. They might have sagged further if her touch hadn’t made me hard.
“This isn’t what you want,” I said, ignoring the fact that it was very much what I wanted.
“It’s the only thing it’s safe to want,” she said, peeling her tank top off and dropping it at her feet, her pink nipples straining beneath the thin fabric of her white cotton bra.
I closed my fists and fought the urge to reach for her. “There’s nothing safe about this, Brie.”
She stepped up to me, the bulge beneath my slippery shorts meeting her belly as she tilted her face towards mine. “Take me anyway.”
Her mouth was so close I could taste the memory of her kisses, and I ached to be inside her.
“I won’t ask you to stop,” she said, reaching in my shorts.
The air left my lungs as she tugged at me, stroking me until I was rock hard.
When she stopped to peel her leggings off, I fought for breath, shoved my shorts down, and kicked them away from my feet.
She looked up from the ground at my need before looking past it at me, her lips parted and her eyes full of want. Then she kissed the head of my dick gently and rose to her feet.
“Brie.”
Her heavy eyelids blinked at me. “If you fucked me half as much as you said my name…”
I pulled her close, one hand around her lower back as I brought my dick between her legs. She wrapped her arms around me and slid a thigh up my hip in invitation. I stared at her and brought the tip of my cock to her wet slit, expecting the dream to end there. But she kissed me then, her tongue tossing mine as I slid inside her. And as her tight warmth choked its way down my shaft, she emptied a stream of hot breath against my lips.
“Fuck me,” she whispered.
“I will,” I said, dropping my forehead against hers. “Just give me a second.”
She laughed and her shallow breath mingled with mine as I throbbed inside her, the hot shower raining down on our slick skin.
“I felt that,” I said, leaning back to look at her. “Your laugh.”
Her sparkling eyes smiled.
“I always do.”
T W E N T Y E I G H T
- Brie -
No one had ever filled me like that, and with each new depth James reached inside me, I unraveled further.
Our wet kisses drifted across each other’s slippery faces, his length pinning me against the shower wall as his lips found my eyelids, his fingers my bra straps. I was high off his hunger for me, and my insides were ablaze.
I pulled away to catch my breath, dropping my head against the coo
l tiles behind me as steam rose around us, our joined bodies disappearing into a cloud. And I could feel a tsunami of pleasure approaching, could feel it building with every thrust of his hips.
I grabbed James’s shoulders and looked in his eyes for something I could hold on to. Something that wouldn’t move.
His brows furrowed, and he slowed his pace, watching my lips like he was reading my breath. “Come for me,” he commanded.
I curled forward as if wings had sprung from my back and clawed at his hot skin, my lower body melting instantly.
James cried out and pressed me against the wall, groaning into my neck, a thread of anger in his tone as his hips jerked. “Fuck,” he growled.
I held him with all the strength I had left, the toes of my cocked leg dangling towards the ground.
His voice dropped to a whisper. “Please tell me you’re on the pill.”
“Your timing is legendary, you know that?”
He leaned back. “Brie.”
“I can’t feel my legs.”
“Because you’re probably all prune by now.” He bent his legs to lower me to the ground and kept sinking towards the floor. “Are you even sure you still have legs?”
My ribs tightened around my pounding heart when I looked down and saw him crouching in the steam in front of me.
He wrapped his hands around my legs, just above my knees. “Great news,” he said, sliding his hands up my thighs. “Your legs have never looked better.” He leaned forward and kissed the soft part of my stomach below my belly button, holding his lips against my red skin as water streamed down his strong back. Then he dragged a finger through my silk, showing me how sensitive he’d made me, as if to remind me that he could be gentle, too.
I looked up at him after he rose to his feet. “Now what?”
“Might as well shower since I’m in here.”
I laughed and watched his eyes fall to my lips, my collarbone, the drops of water clinging to my nipples.
He reached out and circled one with the pad of his thumb. “I can never unsee you like this.”
“Would you want to?” I asked, wishing the nerves in my voice weren’t so apparent.
