Beautiful Villain

by Sophie Stern

  Yeah, in case she hadn’t noticed my raging boner before, she sure as hell sees it now. Well, that’s the effect that a girl like Finley has on a guy like me.

  “Yeah,” I say, and I look at Finley again. Fuck, if she’s not the prettiest damn thing I’ve ever seen. We were never particularly close in high school. She was always kind of a nerd and I…

  Well, apparently, I didn’t make the best choices when it came to who my friends were. Now I’m holding Finley in my arms and looking at her like she’s a tasty treat because she fucking is and…

  She kisses me.

  She leans up into me and brings her lips to mine, and it’s the most wonderful thing I’ve ever experienced in my damn life.

  She kisses me like it’s the most important thing in the world to her, like it’s vital that she convey this special information to me. She kisses me like it’s magical, like I’m special to her, and then she pulls away. She reaches for her lips and just touches them, staring at me, but I don’t see any sort of repulsion on her face.

  Instead, I see…

  Amazement.

  How is this possible?

  “Finley,” I say, but she shakes her head.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I didn’t even ask permission.”

  “What?” I ask, suddenly confused.

  Permission?

  “You know,” she says quietly. “I didn’t get your consent before I kissed you. I’m really sorry,” she blushes. “I should have asked.”

  Okay, apparently things have changed a little bit since I was put away.

  “Finley,” I growl, stepping back toward her. “You have my full permission to do whatever the fuck you want to me.”

  I mean it, too.

  Then I kiss her.

  This time, the kiss isn’t sweet or soft or gentle. This time, the kiss is wild and fierce and naughty. I dominate her mouth, teasing her tongue with mine, and when I finally pull away, my cock is even harder than it was before.

  “Wow,” she whispers. “I never knew…I’ve never been kissed like that before,” she says, and then she giggles, and it seems to be the sweetest sound I think I’ve ever heard before in my life.

  “We need to talk,” I finally say. I have a lot to tell her, and the night isn’t getting any younger.

  “Yeah,” she whispers. “I guess we do.”

  She gestures to the chair where I was sitting before, and I plop down onto it. She sits across from me on the couch, and Echo reappears, meowing.

  “I forgot to feed him,” she suddenly says. “Hang on.” She jumps up and runs to the kitchen. I don’t bother following her because I don’t want her to feel crowded. She left her bag and phone in here, but even if she didn’t, I don’t get the impression she’s much of a snitch. I don’t think Finley is going to be calling anyone to tell them that the big bad arrived at her house.

  Not me.

  Not today.

  I hear her whispering in the other room, speaking to her kitten in hushed tones. As though it understands her, little Echo meows in reply. Cute. I shouldn’t think something like that is totally adorable, yet I do.

  Fuck me silly.

  When she finally returns, she’s carrying two bottles of soda.

  “Is that glass bottle Coke?” I ask, raising an eyebrow. Is it horrible that my mouth starts to water a little?

  “Yeah,” she says. “I don’t know if you still like Coke, but I…you know, I just always keep some around.”

  “Thank you. I’d love one.”

  She pops the tops off with a bottle opener I didn’t see her holding, and then she hands me one. I take a sip and damn, if that’s not the best thing I’ve ever had. Before I know it, the bottle is gone, and she’s laughing at me.

  “Sorry,” I’m suddenly embarrassed. I don’t like to admit that it’s a little weird just how much I’ve missed out on.

  “It’s totally okay,” she says, and she reaches for my empty bottle. She sets it on the end table beside her and then she just sort of looks at me.

  Again, it’s not with any sort of judgment, and I totally love that about her.

  “So,” she says.

  “So.”

  “Why are you here, Neil?”

  “You don’t seem surprised to see me.”

  “I’m very surprised. It’s not every day your convicted pen pal shows up inside of your house,” she looks at me pointedly.

  “Sorry about that. I figured it would be in bad form to wait on the porch. I didn’t want your neighbors to see me and freak out.”

  “You mean you didn’t want them to call the cops.”

  “That too.”

  She looks at me carefully, like she’s not quite buying what I’m selling, and I don’t blame her. She doesn’t need to know that I’ve come back for revenge or that it’s my goal to right the wrongs that have been done to me. I wasted five years of my life sitting in a cell, but I made the most of them. I worked out, I made connections, and I kept my damn head down.

  I also learned that when you know the right people, sometimes it can help you find the information you’ve been craving.

  “You need a place to stay,” she finally says, and her voice softens.

  Shit.

  If I don’t feel like a stray cat she dragged in off the street. Yes. I need a place to stay. I have nowhere else to go. I have no one to turn to. I don’t want to tell Finley exactly what her letters meant to me. Sometimes they were the only thing that kept me going.

  Sometimes they were the only reason I didn’t try to kill myself while I was locked away.

  Prison is an entirely different world. It’s easy to think that when you’re locked away, you’re isolated from everything else. In some ways, you are, but you’re never isolated from the reality that people don’t really care about you as much as you think they do.

  I have no friends left over from high school. Nobody cared to hear my side of the story. Nobody bothered to take my side when everything went down. I was an easy scapegoat. I was easy to pin the blame on.

  “Yeah,” I finally say. I may have been locked away, and I may be labeled a felon for the rest of my life, but damn if it’s hard to admit that I need some help.

  “Do you like cats?”

  “What?”

  “Do you like cats?”

  “I…”

  “Because Echo stays,” she says. “So if you want to stay, too, then you have to like cats. I mean, he was here first. It’s only fair,” she winks. Then she gets up and walks away.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Don’t you want to see the guest room?” She asks with a smile. “Come on, then.”

  Chapter Three

  Finley

  Neil Coleman is in my house and he’s staying with me!

  He’s in my house.

  There’s a tall, dangerous, deadly felon in my house and he’s staying with me. He’s going to be sleeping in my guest room for awhile. Who knows how long? Maybe he’ll sleep naked. Definitely naked. Shit. I shouldn’t be thinking about him like that.

  I mean, it’s bad enough that I kissed him. I didn’t even find out if he actually wanted it, and what does that say about my own understanding and acceptance of the idea of consent? It’s messed up, really. I don’t want him to think I’m trying to take advantage of him because I’m not, but…

  But oh, it’s going to be hard not to take advantage of him.

  I lead him upstairs to the bedrooms. We walk silently because I’m so scared that if I open my mouth to speak, I’m just going to grab him and start kissing him again. That’s definitely not something I need in my life.

  Nope.

  Don’t it.

  Not at all.

  The staircase is just a normal sized one, but it seems to drag on forever as we move upwards. We reach the top. There are three doors.

  “My room,” I point to the left. “Bathroom,” I point straight ahead. “Your room.” I point to the right.

  “Cozy,” he says.
<
br />   I push the door open to the guest room and we walk inside. There’s a big wrought-iron bed in the center of the room.

  “This is your guest room?” He asks, raising a brow. “It’s beautiful. What’s the other bedroom look like? I’m intrigued.”

  Before I can stop him, he pushes past me to my own bedroom and opens the door. He walks inside to see a matching bed frame. This one is literally an exact copy of the other one. The bedspread is the same, too, but that’s where the similarities end.

  I’ve been busy – like, really busy – and I haven’t exactly been cleaning my bedroom. This means that there are clothes on the floor and panties on the bed and…

  A vibrator.

  Yep.

  There it sits in all its glory: right in the middle of my bed. It’s the tiny blue one that fits in my pocket and there is literally no chance that Neil didn’t just see it. My suspicions are confirmed when he turns around with a devilish grin on his face.

  “Why, Finley,” he says in that devilishly-charming voice. “I’m surprised. A good girl like you?” He raises an eyebrow, and I blush. Then he steps toward me and reaches for my cheek. He strokes it softly and smiles at me.

  Is my face turning red?

  Because it kind of feels like I’m blushing.

  “It’s not mine,” I blurt out quickly, and Neil looks surprised at first, but then he just shakes his head.

  “No.”

  “What?”

  “No.”

  “I…”

  “Finley, I may like to tease you, but I’m never going to shame you for touching yourself, and nobody else should, either. You are a damn lovely woman, and you deserve to feel good about yourself. You deserve to make yourself feel good.”

  Well, now I don’t exactly know what the hell to say to that. If someone told me last week that Neil would be in my house and talking about me masturbating, I would have laughed in their face.

  “But I’m here now,” he says, “and I want to make you feel good. Will you let me do that for you?”

  I want to point out the fact that he basically just asked for consent. Score one for feminism. He’s a fast learner: I’ll give him that. I don’t want to ruin the moment, though. Besides, an orgasm? Provided by someone that’s not my little blue toy?

  I could go for that.

  “Yes,” I whisper, and he cups my neck and pulls my mouth to his. Neil’s a good kisser. I knew that from before, when I kissed him, but now it’s even better. Now I have the distinct understanding that this thing between us is going somewhere, and I know that place is somewhere really, really good.

  And I want more.

  “Please,” I whisper. I don’t like begging. I never intended to beg him, but Neil makes good on his promise not to shame or embarrass me, and he leads me to the bed. It’s a little messy, and sort-of made. He pushes my laundry to the floor, grabs the vibrator, and then takes my hand. Together, we lie down on the bed and then we make out there like a couple of sneaky teenagers.

  And it feels good.

  For the first time in a very long time, I’m not worried about making the right choice or the good choice. I’m just going with what feels good, and what feels incredible is being kissed by this man. His hands start to roam: first my breasts, and then my tummy, but I refuse to feel self-conscious or embarrassed by this.

  “You’re fucking gorgeous,” he groans against my lips, and he kisses me harder, deeper, and then I hear the vibrator flick on.

  He doesn’t take my clothes off.

  He doesn’t reach under my shirt or slide his hand down my pants.

  I desperately want him to, but Neil is either the world’s biggest tease or the world’s biggest genius because he seems to be completely happy taking his time. He runs the vibrator up my leg. I can feel it buzzing against my skin. Then he reaches the edge of my skirt, and he starts to slowly slide his hand up there.

  Instantly, my pussy clenches, wanting more.

  Fuck, I want so much more.

  My body seems to suddenly be dying of thirst and Neil is like a cold glass of sun tea on a warm summer day.

  Please.

  When he reaches my panties, he presses the vibrator right to my clit and starts moving it in little circles. He stays on top of my underwear, and I can’t decide whether I love it or hate it, but either way, the heat inside of me starts to grow.

  “That’s it, pretty girl,” he murmurs. “Come for me.”

  It doesn’t take much. Apparently, I’m right on the edge because everything hits me at once like some sort of explosion, and it feels like I’m on fire and frozen in ice at the same time. I come silently, wanting to cry out but not being brave enough, and he seems to understand because after he just kisses me over and over and over.

  When I finally come to my senses, I look up at him, and he’s smiling at me.

  “So,” he says with a little smirk. “Do you still want me to sleep in the guest room?”

  Chapter Four

  Neil

  I’m running.

  I don’t know how long I’ve been running or how fast, but the world seems to speed by me in a colorful blur as my legs carry me deeper and deeper into the woods.

  “Don’t go,” a voice calls, but I ignore it and keep going. I need to. I have to find answers. I have to find out what happened. I have to find Kevin.

  No matter how far I run, I can never seem to reach the point that I need to. I can never seem to get exactly where I need to go. Kevin is lost, and he’s in trouble, and I need to find him before the bad man does.

  But my legs just can’t carry me quickly enough.

  I run, faster and faster. The woods are thick, and branches scratch me as I move through the underbrush, but I ignore the cuts and the pain as I move.

  “Kevin!” I scream, but I already know that I’m too late. Once again, I’ve failed to reach him in time. Once again, the sound of a gunshot fires, and the screams start.

  “Neil!”

  I’m so close to him. I need to keep moving. Maybe if I get there soon enough, I can stop the bleeding.

  “Neil!”

  A pressure starts to mount on my shoulders. The weight of the world, maybe? I don’t know. I keep moving, but then it comes again. This time, I open my eyes.

  “Neil!”

  It’s Finley.

  She’s straddling me, shaking my shoulders, looking at me with a horrified expression on her face. It’s now that I realize I was dreaming again. The nightmare that has plagued me for five years has resurfaced: this time with a vengeance.

  “Sorry,” I mutter, and I try to push her off of me, but she’s tougher than she looks, and stronger. She doesn’t budge.

  “You had a nightmare.”

  “I’m fine. Thanks for waking me up.”

  “You are so far from fine that you don’t even know what fine is,” she tells me.

  “Finley, leave it alone,” I say. I shouldn’t be abrupt with her. After all, she’s giving me a place to stay. She’s keeping me safe when nobody else could. I owe her for that, but I’m still irritated that I had a nightmare.

  The dream used to come every day. Every roommate I ever had in prison fucking hated my guts for them. They hated that I’d wake up screaming or crying like a little bitch. Soon I learned to suck that shit down and bury it deep. If I could wear myself out during the day – pushups, sit-ups, running – then I wouldn’t dream. I’d be too tired to dream.

  For years, that’s been my method of coping.

  Nobody wants to be a little bitch in prison. Crying in your sleep? That’s a fast way to get your ass kicked. I stopped that shit real fast, but apparently, I’ve let my guard down around Finley. Either that, or being back in this town is fucking with my head.

  Neither one of these is a good sign.

  “I’m fine,” I say again, looking up at her. Somehow, I really believe that if I just say this enough, she’ll believe it. She’ll agree with me and then she’ll let this go because I really, really want her to le
t this go.

  She just looks at me, waiting for me to say something else. I don’t know what to say, though. I didn’t expect to have a nightmare here and I definitely don’t want ot talk about it.

  “You were dreaming about that night,” she says. “Does this happen to you a lot?”

  She’s not judging me. I don’t know how she managed to guess what the dream was about – maybe she’s just smarter than I give her credit for – and I definitely don’t know how she’s looking at me with curiosity and compassion: not disgust.

  I realize that I could lie to her and push her away, but I don’t really want to. For the first time, really, I suddenly want to actually talk to her about this. I want to tell her exactly what’s happening. Maybe she’ll be able to offer me some advice or maybe she won’t, but either way, I want to reach out to her all of a sudden.

  “Not a lot,” I finally say.

  “How often?”

  “It hasn’t happened in a few years.”

  “You had nightmares when you got to prison.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did anyone find out?”

  “My roommates.”

  “Ouch. Did they hurt you?”

  Her voice is so full of compassion that it kind of hurts a little.

  “I made it clear that they didn’t need to mess with me,” I say. That’s all I’m going to tell her about that. I also managed to stop my nightmares long enough that most of the people I encountered never had any idea what I was going through.

  Most of them never needed to know what my problem was.

  “It must have been very hard carrying this burden alone.”

  It was.

  Her letters helped more than she’ll ever know. It was nice to have something to look forward to. Getting a letter from Finley was like getting a glass of ice water on a hot summer day. She always managed to make me smile, and once I figured out who she was, it made the letters even more special.

  She never gave me her address, so I never wrote back, but I wanted to so many times. I didn’t know what her situation was – maybe she had a boyfriend or a husband – and I didn’t want to do anything that might cause her trouble.

  Now I’m kind of regretting that just a little bit.