Tough Sell

by Trixie More

  “Pull it out,” he gasped.

  She giggled.

  “The drawer damn it.” And she laughed outright, leaning over to tug at the handle, pulling a packet out.

  “You know, I never had these in my stand before.” She put the packet between her teeth and tore it open. “I bought my first box the day I came to your house in my Mets jersey.”

  “And that tiny skirt.” He lifted his hips and bumped his cock into her pussy.

  She reached down and felt her own wetness on him as she lifted his dick.

  “I want to watch you put it on yourself,” she said, feeling emboldened by the intensity of his expression. He yanked the condom out of her hand and rolled it down, his abs flexing as he lifted his head to see what he was doing.

  She wriggled her clit against him as he lay back down.

  “Stop playing around and get me in there, Dorothy.”

  She lifted up and positioned him. The head of his cock slipped back and forth against her clit.

  “God, Dorothy. Sit on me.” His jaw was clenched and one of his hands had left her hip. He shoved his thumb down her cleft and began rubbing her juices over her clit. She shoved down, as hard as she could, and his hips slammed up into her. They both groaned and then his hands were back on her hips helping her ride him.

  “Rub yourself, woman. Finger yourself for me.” The words were dirty and intense; she shoved her hand down between her legs, pressing back with her other palm so that she stayed upright enough for him to watch.

  Muscles rippled along his abs as he curled upward and she let go briefly to shove a pillow behind his head and then she was lost to the feeling of their lovemaking and the sight of their joining, concentrating on her building orgasm and the fierce look on her lover’s face.

  His face tensed, jaw tight, brows drawn down as if he was in pain.

  “Do it,” he panted.

  He let go of her hip for a minute, raising his hand toward her chest but she faltered and he scrambled to steady her, his biceps flexing as he shoved her hips back and forth.

  She heard him again tell her to do it but she was too focused on trying to go over, she was just on the edge but she couldn’t quite reach it.

  “God. Twist your nipples, Dorothy.”

  The guttural need in his voice and his words alone were enough … her orgasm rose through her and in the position she was in, she couldn’t stiffen herself against it. She had both hands on Ed’s chest and he shoved his hand between them, rubbing and rubbing at her as he shuddered into her. Her orgasm crested and it was too much, she reached down and pulled his hand away as he pumped against her a few more times and finally slowed. She melted down onto him and his arms came around her, squeezing her to him and rolling them both to their sides.

  “Ahhhhg.” Her brain was mush.

  “Um … fuck,” he agreed.

  They lay there just stroking each other until he found the strength to pull off the condom and dispose of it. She watched his ass flex as he walked away, enjoyed the swing of his cock as he came back to her bed. Then he was beside her, reaching down and pulling a blanket over them both. Together they let sleep set them both free.

  Chapter 20

  The light on the dresser was still on and the woman in his arms was beautiful and warm. Her face was soft and relaxed, the makeup around her eyes smudged. Her hair was tangled and she look wonderful, like a woman who’d been well fucked. His woman, he supposed, for the time being. She had told him she loved him, as if it was a fait accompli. He supposed that it was, at this moment. But time was short. The thumb drive sat in the pocket of his dirty jeans. It was time to get it out and get this over with.

  He rubbed his fingers over her shoulder. Their loving this evening had been a gift really. He’d expected to be alone with her, to get to her apartment, show her the video and be done. But like everything else that had happened since they’d met, his plans became meaningless. The meal, the friendly conversation and the sheer simplicity of allowing her to hold him, he hadn’t known a way to say no.

  Edward ran his hand over his face. He had to get this over with. Every moment he spent with her was another moment he was lying to her, and after her declaration, he didn’t think he could keep it up. He loved her. He’d known it since the first time they’d made love. The moment she’d declared she wanted to save him, he’d been toast. There had been no going back from that.

  He thought about their fight. It certainly seemed she had told him the truth about not looking him up on the Internet. That just made him feel worse about sleeping with her when he knew he should have been confessing. And Derrick. Hadn’t she said that he’d told her not to search the information out? That meant the man he had dinner with tonight had known about the rape. Edward grunted. It amazed him that he couldn’t tell from the man’s actions. He hadn’t seemed to pity Ed, or despise him. It had almost been like it didn’t matter. He rolled his shoulders a little and eased his forearm out from beneath Dorothy’s head.

  “Dorothy, honey, you have to wake up.”

  Her blue-green eyes opened and found his face. She smiled and turned her back to him, rubbing her round bottom against his crotch. He put his arms around her and squeezed. She’d been forward tonight, taking the lead in their love making. And for a minute there, he’d thought he couldn’t go through with it, sometimes not being in control was too much like the rape. Normally, he felt comfortable only if he was the initiator. And certainly, when she had tried to remove his pants, he’d pulled back, but he’d overcome that. So maybe there was hope for him.

  That hope was too late for the two of them though. When she saw the video, that would be the end of them. He couldn’t stand her pity, couldn’t stand not being the man she thought she saw in him. After all, she’d told him the first time they were together that she wanted a wrecking ball. A normal man, he supposed.

  “Dorothy, I’m serious. We need to talk and I have something I have to show you.” There, now that it was said, he couldn’t escape. Already she was rolling over.

  “OK. This is what you came over for, right?” She was alert, peering into his eyes. “Do you want to do this here or go into the kitchen?”

  “God. Not in the kitchen. But I need a computer. Where’s your laptop?”

  She gestured to a bag on her chair and he retrieved it, and perhaps his hands trembled as he pulled the thumb drive out of his pocket. He couldn’t be so lucky as to have it fail, could he?

  “Is this about the court case?”

  He looked at her. “I thought you said you didn’t search for me on the Internet.”

  “I didn’t. Allie did. She found a court case and then Derrick basically told us both to stop. So we did.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, yeah, but it wasn’t as easy as all that you know.” She sat up in bed and pulled the blanket up higher but not before he saw the outline of her breast beneath the sheet. “I get pretty curious.”

  “I don’t know if I should sit near you or stand over here,” he said.

  She patted the bed. “You should definitely sit right here, under the covers with me.” She was already arranging the pillows so that they could sit up together, like some kind of married couple, just watching TV in bed. The surge of emotion that came through him at the idea, of nights not spent alone, that yearning was almost too much for him. How would he stand it when she let him go?

  He handed her the laptop with the video ready to go and settled himself in the bed. On the screen was the end of everything, the blue sky showing, the fat triangle of the play button overlaying the scene of the party. The familiar defensive anger welled up. It made him want to be obnoxious to her, now before she watched it, to quit on the relationship before she quit on him.

  Today in the subway he’d stopped in his tracks. He’d been hell-bent on just racing over here, showing her the video and then storming out. Done. He would be done with them all, them both, Gunnar and Dorothy and the business. Even now, thinking that thought brought back fl
ickers of the amazing nothingness that had followed. His life was so narrow that if he lost those relationships, his future vanished before his eyes. He’d been in the moment, seeing and smelling and hearing and the future that occupied so much of his thinking was nothing but a blank screen as white and meaningless as the tiles on the subway wall. The future didn’t exist. The truth of that was in his bones now. And if the future could become nonexistent between one breath and the next, then what about the past? He had stood there, trying to find the past somewhere outside his own thoughts and instead he found only the warm, stale air of the subway and the sound of the trains rumbling.

  His anger was gone. What was there to be angry about if this moment right now was an isolated pearl on a string of moments? In his mind he saw a thread slipping through the center of a white iridescent sphere as it dropped away. Ahead, another bead rolled toward him. He climbed into bed next to the gift that was his Dorothy.

  She looked at him. “What am I going to see, Ed?”

  “You’re going to see me. You’re Baby Dot and I’m … I’m the guy they call the Pool Boy.” He waited for her reaction, but there was none. She shook her head a bit.

  “Is it bad?” The question hung in the room. He felt strangely distant from it.

  He nodded. “To me, it is.”

  “Is it porn?”

  “Not for me.”

  “For anyone?”

  “I don’t know, Dorothy. Just watch it. I didn’t want it to happen and I sure as hell don’t want to talk about it.”

  She closed the lid of the laptop and turned herself toward him.

  “There’s a big part of me that doesn’t want to watch this.” His heart fell and the part of his brain that observed noticed the irony of that. What a fuckin’ mess he was.

  She cupped his cheek and kissed him. “I love you as you are, right now. Whatever you are about to show me, hurt you. I don’t want to see you hurt.” She ran her tongue across his lower lip and he opened to her, let her come into him, to move her tongue over his, to press her warm, moist lips to his. He followed her as she withdrew but she avoided his mouth. “Whatever is on here, made you who you are today.” She moved her hand down to his shoulder. “You understand, right? The man I love is you, after what I’m about to see.”

  An impulsive hope roared through him, breaking the spell he’d been under, the distance he’d felt. He had to turn away, ducking his face to the side. And still, in his mind, was the idea that she wanted something different, someone more, manly, if he was honest. He had to get this over with. That much was clear to him now.

  “Dorothy, I … this has to be done now. I need you to see this. I need to know where we go after this. I need us both to understand what we’re in for if we continue.”

  So brave. Her cheeks washed with color and her mouth straightened. She turned back to the computer and opened the lid briskly and touched the play symbol on the screen. The camera began to swing, the tattooed leg came into view and he thought he saw her eyes narrow a bit, furrows between her brows as she concentrated. She pressed pause.

  “What are you doing?”

  She restarted the video. “I want to see that part again.”

  He felt goose bumps raise up on his arms. “Why? Did you recognize something?” He held his breath and watched her stare at the screen intently. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. The tattooed leg went by again but she didn’t seem to notice it especially. He exhaled, and on the screen the young him appeared and walked toward the camera. Ed saw her eyes widen. She glanced at him.

  “That’s you, isn’t it?” She looked back to the screen. “Oh, you were so young!” She shot another look at his face before turning back again. “And beautiful. You were beautiful.” She sounded bemused. “Your hair was so short.” On the screen the drug was added to his beer. “What was that?” She hit the pause button.

  “They called it G. GHB.”

  “The date rape drug?”

  His throat was dry and he just nodded. “Let’s get this done.”

  She searched his face a moment, and something flickered in her eyes. She pressed play, sitting silent and stiff for the rest of the video. Six minutes and thirty eight seconds of hell. He was glad he’d just spent two days watching it, because he was desensitized to it now, he realized. He watched as his younger self went to clean the beer from his leg. Then he focused on Dorothy. She was scowling now, watching as the younger version of the man beside her sucked another man’s cock like he was born to it. She rolled her pretty lips together until he could barely see them. On the screen, sperm splattered his face.

  Dorothy eyes widened and her nose reddened. The video flickered over a badly done splice and there he was, leaning over the dingy patio table. She sniffed. Edward watched as her chest froze. She was holding her breath. Of course she was. She couldn’t have guessed before but she surely guessed what was next. His younger self was pressed to the table and the perspective widened. There was no mistaking what was coming now, all the participants were in the picture. Tattoo leg was the man behind him. The guy that had been passed out on the lawn chaise had to be the one filming. On the screen, the pool boy was squeezing his eyes shut, clawing at the table and then, his mouth opened in that voiceless scream that was worse than if they had added sound. Dorothy’s face blanched and then finally, blessedly, it was over. The video returned to blue sky.

  Like a shot, her hand flashed out and slammed the laptop shut.

  “Bastard!” She sent the computer spinning across the bedspread, off the end of the bed, where it lay tilted, the lid parted like a clam shell, nothing but blue sky on the screen. “Bastard.” She sat silently, looking straight ahead, pale and tense.

  “Dorothy …” he began. He didn’t know what to say. She was angry. At them? At him? At having the idea of the two of them together destroyed? He couldn’t tell.

  She held her hand out to him, palm facing him like a traffic cop and now he was angry. Of all the reactions, this wasn’t one he’d expected. What the hell?

  “No,” she said, looking straight ahead. “I feel you over there, getting mad. Just wait. Just hold it there.” Her hand was still raised but some color was returning to her face. “There’s some of my own stuff going on here and I don’t want to bring that to you right now. I only want this to be about you.”

  His first inclination was to just leave, he really didn’t need this and he didn’t need to stand around and let her reject him. He certainly didn’t need her to be angry with him. But as he was swinging his legs out of bed, he realized that wasn’t all she had said. She said she needed to deal with things of her own that were coming up. She wanted this to be about him. So what did that mean? Did that mean that she just needed a minute to get herself together? There was a rational part of his mind that agreed, said yes, of course she needed a minute. He’d had years to get over this issue, after all. How long had Dorothy had to process it?

  So she needed a minute. He could give her that. He could give her ages if she needed it. After all, there really wasn’t a future waiting for him anymore, so what was he in a hurry for? He got up out of bed and he pulled on his pajama bottoms, his motions short and choppy as the adrenaline flowed out of him.

  Behind him she cursed, her voice high and shrill. Then she was out of the bed, nude, beautiful and angry as hell. She grabbed his bicep and turned him toward her even as she pushed him backward. He went easily, coming up against the wall with a thump. Confusion washed over him. He got it if she was disgusted with him. Disappointed? Yes, he understood. He’d hoped for forgiveness, if he was honest, but this? This wasn’t even in the playbook.

  She pressed herself close to him, breasts smashing into his chest. “Oh, no you don’t, mister!”

  “Oh, no you don’t, mister,” Dorothy said. “You’re not running out on me again. I’ve had five minutes to get my head around this and you’re going to wait right here until I understand, till I’m ready to deal with this, with you.” She could feel her body trembl
ing against his, she was so angry. What she had seen on that video made her furious and she was beyond aggravated to think he was walking out again. His eyes opened wider and he went very still. To Dorothy, he looked stunned. A part of her knew this couldn’t have been what he expected out of her. Somewhere there were women who were kind, and soft, and responded to things like this with words of encouragement, and soft touches to their partner’s face. Women who shed tears, felt pity and who could help heal a wound like this, but those women weren’t her.

  “You’re not leaving me,” she said. She practically growled at him. No, she really wasn’t going to be the kind and patient lover, if that was what he needed. She was too angry at the people who had done, that, to him. Too angry at the fact that this was now a situation that they needed to deal with, and way too angry about what she was beginning to suspect.

  Wow. She pushed him against the wall again. He fell back so easily, she knew he wasn’t resisting her. She felt him let himself slump against the wall. Her Jesus fell from over her bed and bounced on the blue covers.

  “You don’t get to leave me here! You are going to stay right here for as long as it takes for me to get through this, and for you to get through this.” She pressed her hands flat against his chest. “You are not leaving.”

  She watched as a flush flew across his face, painting his emotions boldly before her. In the next moment, he grabbed at her and crushed himself down onto her, kissing her so hard her lips smashed into her teeth. It wasn’t comfortable, it wasn’t kind and it wasn’t erotic, but it was desperate. He struggled to get his left arm behind her, to wedge it around her waist and force her backward over his arm. His flannel clad knee pressed between her thighs. The kissing was hard, and hurtful, and the intensity of his response called to her. She grabbed his hair with both hands and pulled him over further. His mouth slid away from hers.

  “Oh, fuck,” he said.

  She realized the direction they were headed and she pushed against his chest, pushed him back again. “No,” she said. “We are going to deal with something for once, God damn it.” He leaned back against the wall, his chest heaving. Her heart was thundering. “You’re not leaving.”