Revenge 2

by JJ Knight

  My nostrils flare as I inhale deeply. He’s got coffee brewing near us, and I’ve been smelling that, but now there’s something else. The musky scent of his skin reaches my nose and fills me. I inhale him, the sensation divine.

  Curious, I push my hand further down, reaching into the waistband of his pants. My palm connects with something. Hot flesh. Is that…?

  I jerk my hand away quickly. A whoosh of heat floods up into my face from my neck.

  A nervous giggle escapes my throat.

  I know what men look like, but I’ve never had any experience. The outline is there in his sweatpants, but I hadn’t realized he was completely hard, just from us kissing. My palm landed right on the top of his dick, and I’m so embarrassed now.

  He grabs my hand and uses his other hand to tilt up my chin. We lock eyes.

  His face gets closer to mine, and I think he’s going to kiss me again, but he holds back.

  With his hand on my wrist, he guides my hand back to where it was. In his pants. My hand is down, where it’s hot, inside his loose waistband. He guides my fingers, wrapping my hand around him.

  I’m frozen now. He’s right in my hand. It’s hard. Harder than I thought it would be. He’s like steel under a cloak of velvet.

  Now what do I do? My mind goes blank. Am I even breathing?

  His dark eyes glitter, daring me to look away from his face. I can’t turn my head. I’m captive.

  I give him a gentle squeeze, just to see what will happen.

  He lets out a soft groan that sends electricity through my whole body. His hips tilt, and he thrusts into my hand. My fingertips slip deeper into his pants, still around his hard shaft. He thrusts again, smooth in my hand.

  His eyes are so dark, and they get darker. His pupils expand, turning his brown eyes to black. His jaw line is dotted with speckles of hair, his morning shadow.

  Something strange is happening in my body. I feel like my nipples are being pinched, shockwaves running all through me. He’s not even touching my breasts. But I want him to.

  He groans again, and his hands aren’t guiding my hand anymore. This is all me. His hands travel up the sides of my legs and stop on my buttocks.

  His eyes are too intense, and I finally look away. I turn my head to the side and focus on the stone speckles of the counter’s surface.

  Down inside his sweatpants, I loosen my grip, slipping my hand up and down on the velvet smooth skin.

  He’s so hot and hard. My body arches forward, like I’m trying to burst out of my clothes.

  He squeezes my buttocks and slides me toward him. My body jerks forward, my chest touching his.

  There’s a rattling sound, and then the door to the washroom opens. The girls are laughing and talking about all the toothbrushes.

  A strangled sound escapes my throat. I jerk my hand out of his pants quickly, and scramble to move backward on the counter.

  With a quick smirk at me, he turns quickly so his back is to us girls.

  “Excuse me, ladies,” he says, his voice low and thick-sounding. “My clothes are upstairs, so I’ll just get up there and make myself decent.”

  “You look decent enough to me,” says one of the girls.

  She’s got a flirty tone, and I turn around to look at her. I must look like I’m going to rip her face off, because she stops giggling right away.

  Dylan disappears upstairs, using a set of spiral stairs that I hadn’t noticed before.

  I stay seated on the counter, because I feel too dizzy to stand.

  That was really intense.

  Part of me wants to gush to the girls and tell them all the confusing feelings I’m having, but I hardly know them. And Dylan’s right upstairs. He’s probably having a good laugh at me for acting like a total virgin.

  The girls are quiet, like they’re waiting for something.

  I give them a friendly smile. “Hey, want some coffee?” I ask. “Cups are over there. Help yourself.”

  They relax and start poking around.

  We talk a little about the food Dylan has laid out for us. There’s eggs and toast and a dozen kinds of jam.

  I try to be nice, but I don’t want to be nice. I want these two girls to get the hell out of here.

  Chapter 12

  Breakfast is uncomfortable.

  I keep waiting for the redheads to take a hint and leave, but they’re in no rush to leave Dylan’s place.

  We do introductions again, along with plenty of jokes about the three of us having “slept together.”

  After finishing the eggs and toast, I expect them to get going, but they don’t.

  The shy one, Bianca, gets comfortable on one of the leather chairs, still picking at toast on a plate.

  The cool, outgoing one, Marley, grabs Dylan’s guitar without asking and starts playing songs. She plays a few classics, and the girls get Dylan to sing along with them.

  I sit cross-legged on the couch and try to enjoy the concert.

  If I’m dating a musician, I guess this is part of the whole package.

  Dylan is wearing more clothes than this morning. He’s looking hot as usual, in a striped T-shirt and jeans. The shirt looks gray at a distance, but actually has narrow black and white stripes.

  Marley teases him about the shirt, saying, “You look like you’re French. That shirt totally says Paris to me.”

  He’s been pacing around, not sitting, and now he crosses over to where I am. He drops heavily onto the couch next to me and drapes his arm across my shoulders.

  I swoon on the inside, but play it cool. My emotions are mixed up. I’m glad he’s next to me, with his arm around me, but I wish he wasn’t so interested in Marley and Bianca.

  They keep saying things about music, and he nods and agrees with them, like every dumb thing they utter is the deepest thing he’s ever heard.

  “Old guitars have more life force,” Marley says, strumming Dylan’s guitar. “You can hear the soul in the notes.”

  I roll my eyes. She’s standing with the guitar, and she puts her bare foot up onto the coffee table, her crotch pointing right at us. Okay. Now I want to slap her.

  Bianca looks like she’s nodding off again.

  Marley swivels on one foot and taps her sister on the knee with her bare toes.

  “Play Freebird,” Bianca says sleepily. The three of them laugh.

  Dylan turns to me. “That’s a little musician humor. I don’t know why, exactly, but people always yell it out at concerts.”

  I frown at him. Does he think I’m stupid? “Yeah, I know. It’s a Lynryd Skynryd song. People yell it as a joke. Sometimes to be rude and throw off a performer, but sometimes just to lighten the mood.”

  Marley starts playing a melody on the guitar, paying no attention to the conversation. Her eyes are green like the weathered sea glass people find on the beach. I’ve never been to the beach before, but I’ll go soon. I wish my boring brown eyes were half as pretty as hers.

  Dylan leans over and kisses me on the forehead. “Look at you, little music intern. You’re the trivia master.”

  I squirm, feeling warm now. I don’t know if he’s complimenting me or teasing me.

  Over in the other chair, Bianca gets out her phone and takes a picture of us.

  I hold my hand up. “No pictures! I look like crap. I’ve probably got waterproof mascara smudged under my eyes like black circles.”

  Dylan gives me a quick look. “You look perfect. You look natural. Naturally perfect.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I think I see Marley make a gagging face, but I can’t be sure.

  Bianca passes her phone over to Dylan. “That’s you, right?”

  It’s the video from a week ago, of when I got robbed and he chased down the mugger. The video hasn’t gone totally viral yet, but the views are way up. Tons more people have commented.

  I press play and watch the video. It’s the first time I’ve watched it with Dylan, and I feel like I’m seeing it in a new light.

  “Do you know
those people?” he asks, pointing at the older couple standing near me in the video. Their faces are cropped out in all the footage, but I recognize them by their matching green hoodie sweatshirts. They were nice enough, and the hoodies made me think they were tourists.

  “Nope. Remember, I just moved here a week ago. I barely know anyone. Why?”

  He scrolls back to the beginning of the video and plays it again, zooming in. The video is a blend of footage from two angles, one of them apparently from the gentleman in the green hoodie. I can see him holding his phone up in the wide shot, and then I can see the edge of my shoulder in the other shot.

  “It’s just odd,” Dylan says, studying the screen. “I think I’ve seen them around at a few places. Hmm.”

  I look up at Marley and Bianca. They’re humming a song together, ignoring us.

  I don’t want to let it slip to them that Dylan’s video was all a setup, but I’m curious.

  Careful about my word choice, I ask, “How many of the people in this video do you know?”

  “Just him.” He points to the guy who grabs my wallet. I’ve seen this footage bunch of times, but it still feels like a punch in the gut every time. “And another guy, the one taking some of the footage. He’s standing back from the crowd. Oh, and there’s the girl who was supposed to… you know.”

  On the footage, a brunette girl joins in at the side. She looks like a regular girl you wouldn’t look twice at. Like me. She’s holding a bright red purse that’s hard to miss. She’s a much more obvious target than me, but the guy must have gotten confused when he grabbed me. Or maybe he thought it would be better if the robbery was real.

  Dylan stops the video.

  He says, “Uh-oh, is that the time?”

  I look around the room for a clock, finding a digital readout on some electronics under the TV.

  “It’s ten,” I say. “Are we interrupting something? Just say the word and we’ll get lost.”

  I blink up at him. Say the word and I’ll leave with the girls and sneak back in after ten minutes.

  Dylan digs into his jeans pocket and pulls out keys.

  “Take my car,” he says. “Drive the girls home. I’ve got some business to take care of.”

  “Then I’ll have your car.”

  His delicious lips curl up, and his dark eyes sparkle. “How about you return my car around eight o’clock?”

  I take the keys from him. “Sure.”

  He jumps up from the couch and takes the guitar from Marley. She grumbles and he apologizes, but he doesn’t stop shooing us all out the door.

  We get on our shoes and stumble out into the bright sunshine.

  Marley and Bianca both start squealing about the sun and needing sunscreen.

  I roll my eyes and lead them to Dylan’s black car, parked right in front of the old brick building.

  Driving Dylan’s car makes me smile. I’ve got a special privilege. He’s already treating me like a girlfriend, and we haven’t even gone on a date, unless I count last night.

  The girls give me their address. They don’t have an official home in LA, but they’re staying with a family in exchange for some nanny work. The family has twin boys, four years old.

  They tell me all about it while I use the app on my phone to figure out how to get to our destination.

  The family probably wouldn’t have hired musicians, but they got Marley and Bianca as a two-for-one deal, plus the mother loved the idea of having another set of twins around for the boys.

  “I always wanted a twin,” I tell the girls.

  We’re driving down a pretty, tree-lined street.

  The trees here are so different from what I’m used to. The palm trees are so tropical and alien. I could be on another planet.

  “Do you have brothers and sisters?” Marley asks.

  “I have… relatives. There’s someone, but I wouldn’t call her a sister. It’s complicated.”

  “We have six more brothers and sisters,” Marley says. “We’ll try to get them out some day.”

  “Out?”

  Bianca reaches her arm between us from the back set. “That house. With the boys running around on the lawn.”

  I pull over and let them out.

  They run up onto the grassy lawn and immediately start playing tag with the two little boys. A man standing with them turns and frowns at me in the car.

  The way he’s looking at me makes me feel guilty, like I’ve done something terrible. Then I remember the windows of Dylan’s car are tinted dark and he can’t see me. He probably thinks I’m Dylan.

  Just thinking about Dylan gives me a thrill. I squeeze my arms against my sides and squeal. I can’t really say I feel like I’m sixteen again, because I never got this excited about a guy when I was sixteen.

  There were a few cute guys at my high school, but most of them I’d known my whole life. In a small town, there’s no mystery. If someone goes away for the whole summer and then comes back, that’s about as close to mystery as you get.

  When I went to the community college, I met guys from out of town. But they all looked down on the girls who were from the town. They called us “townies” and acted like we were second class.

  For most of my time at the college, I had a stupid crush on a guy my friends called Mr. Jock. He was all about sports and drinking, but he was nice enough. He’d come up to me sometimes at parties, and we’d just talk about nothing.

  Right before I graduated, he came and sat beside me in the library one day. He told me he wished he’d asked me out. My heart did a triple flip, and I thought he was finally going to make a move. Then he kept talking, telling me he messed up and now his whole life was over.

  I sat there with my books spread out in front of me, and said nothing. Was he ill or something? He had dark bags under his eyes. He was still cute, though. He was blonde and had a big, square jaw. He looked like the jock quarterback in every single college movie.

  The reason I never gave up my virginity to the other random guys who tried over the previous year or two was because I hoped that maybe, just maybe, I would get it on with Mr. Jock. He was my chosen guy, even though he didn’t know.

  “Do you want to go get some pizza?” I asked him. “You can tell me more about why your life is over.”

  He shrugged and said, “Can’t. I’m getting married.”

  My stomach felt like he’d just punched me in the guts. He explained a little more, saying that he’d been seeing a girl on and off, but now she was pregnant and he was going to “do the right thing.”

  I tried to play it cool. “That’s the right thing to do. You’ll be a good dad, and a good husband.” I’d never felt so old and so young at the same time.

  He gave me a sexy look and quirked up one eyebrow. “The thing is, I’m allowed one more month to be single. Until graduation.”

  The look he gave me was about ten times more intense than any of the looks he’d given me before. My jaw probably dropped right open in shock.

  “Maybe I should take you out tonight,” Mr. Jock said. “You could use a break from studying. Let’s go back to my place and play XBox.”

  I looked down at my books and tried to think. The words on the pages spun all around. Did I want to hook up with my crush, Mr. Jock, for a month? This wasn’t what I wanted, but it wasn’t the worst idea.

  Right about then, while I was thinking about the whole thing, my best friend came into the library.

  “Hey, Jess,” he said, sitting down next to me with a sigh. “My paper is not going well. Not well at all. Let’s go get redeyes.”

  Redeyes were our new addiction. You get a brewed cup of coffee with a shot of espresso poured in. We’d doctor them up with these ridiculous cans of sweetened, condensed milk. It was amazing we slept at all.

  Mr. Jock looked over at my best friend, then back at me.

  “Shit,” he said. “I forgot you had a boyfriend.”

  That was when I figured out why guys didn’t ask me out. They thought my best friend
was my boyfriend.

  Mr. Jock pushed back his chair, gave me one last heavy look, and left the library.

  We never spoke again. I heard he got married in June, right after graduation. The girl was a townie, like me, and she moved away with him. She escaped, and I stayed behind.

  I had my degree, but there were no great jobs locally, so I started working at the coffee shop where we’d been getting our redeyes. And that’s where I was working until this month, when I got this opportunity at Morris Music.

  Now I’m driving a sexy black car with tinted windows through LA.

  My friends would agree this situation is pretty swish.

  For a while, I used to wonder what would have happened that day in the library if my best friend hadn’t come in.

  Would I have gone over to Mr. Jock’s house? Would I have played XBox for a few hours and then had sex with him? He was really hot. He would have broken my heart for sure, but then I would have gotten that first love and heartbreak out of the way. Then the next guy could be the keeper.

  I park the car in front of my house and look at the side of the house where Dylan snuck into the back yard last night.

  The memory makes me smile.

  I’m happy about all the things that have happened so far in my life, because everything has brought me here.

  Being right here, right now, is fun.

  I just wish my heart didn’t feel so vulnerable.

  I wish I had some experience.

  Something tells me I’m going to get a lot of experience tonight, when I go back over to Dylan’s house.

  I step out of the car, feeling lightheaded and still woozy from last night.

  A white van rolls past me and parks up the street.

  The door pops open and out steps a guy wearing black from head to toe.

  What’s Nick doing here at my house on a Saturday?

  Chapter 13

  Nick waves as he walks over to me. He’s got a strange wave, where his whole body is stiff, and his shoulder doesn’t move. He just bends his arm at the elbow, like a robot.

  “Were you spying on me?” I ask. He has those cameras set up at Dylan’s place, so he probably knew I just left and was coming home.