Mine to Protect

by Sarah J. Brooks

  I stood there in a daze for a moment, pondered the kiss that had just knocked me out of the park. This man could kiss, that was for damn sure. I couldn’t help imagining what else he did well with that tongue of his.

  “Yeah, should we get you some painter’s tape?” I said as the flush red of my face burned to cool down.

  “Yes. Let’s do that. Is it upstairs?” he asked with a playful grin. “Maybe in the bedroom?” He started to take a few steps up the stairs before I grabbed him.

  “Oh no, you don’t. You’re not going up to my bedroom.”

  “Why not? You don’t trust me near your bed?”

  His eyes burned into me, and I couldn’t help licking my lips. They wanted to feel his again, but I resisted. If there was any chance that I could maintain control over this situation, then I couldn’t give in.

  “No. You stay here.”

  I held my hand out to stop him from coming up the stairs while I went to find his tape. I had been painting in my bedroom last, so I quickly grabbed it. I did not want to risk having Marcus anywhere close to my bedroom until I wanted him there.

  “Hey, did you know this chandelier is about to fall?” Marcus asked.

  I looked at it as I walked down the stairs. It looked fine to me. Everything in the house was close to falling apart. It wouldn’t surprise me if the chandelier was close to falling, but I had not even considered that it would.

  “It’s been there for almost one hundred years and sturdy as can be. I’m sure it’s fine.”

  “I can fix it for you if you’d like. Maybe take it down so you can clean it before reattaching it?”

  “Alright,” I said as I handed him the painter’s tape.

  “How old is this house? 1900?”

  “Close, 1910. It was built by my grandparents. One of the first houses in the city.”

  “And you are restoring it? What else do you do with yourself, I mean with your time?” Marcus asked.

  “Oh, nothing, I just stalk my neighbors and sand wood.”

  I cringed at the words when they came out. Why did my mouth work so poorly? Certainly, that sounded really sexy. Yes, I’m your neighbor, and I’m going to stalk you now. Ugh! This was why I couldn’t keep any normal guys around and ended up with quirky guys who worshiped me and didn’t fit into the regular folds of society.

  “You can play with my wood, no stalking necessary.” He winked.

  Geeze what was it with this guy. He seriously could turn anything into sexual innuendo. I rolled my eyes and laughed at his joke. Especially since I’d been thinking the same sort of dirty thoughts.

  “You’re clever with your words. What do you do for a living?” I asked in an effort to get to know a little more about Marcus.

  At this question, he instantly clammed up. The sparkle of desire in his eyes disappeared, and he turned cold. Nothing about him seemed to desire me anymore, and he certainly didn’t want to talk about his life or what he did for work.

  “I’m going to get back to my painting. Have a good night,” he said and then swiftly left my house. He didn’t even try to pretend to answer my question. Marcus very clearly was not interested in sharing that part of his life with me.

  I watched through the window as he made it back inside his home, and I wondered what it was that I had said. I just asked what he did for a living. How was that so bad?

  He was so hot and cold. It was hard for me to figure him out. One minute, he was seductively kissing me, and the next moment, he turned cold as ice and walked out of my house. I had never met anyone that could change their personality so quickly.

  I kept my eye out for Marcus each day as I did yard work or left the house for errands, but I never saw him coming or going for several days. Again, it was like he had disappeared. How was it even possible that he could so easily just vanish like that? I never saw a car outside, but he certainly could have been parking it in his garage or maybe he didn’t own a car? I was almost positive he wasn’t home at all but found myself second guessing and wondering if he was just hiding out inside.

  The old houses in Bain all had detached garages that sat behind our homes, which made it very difficult to see exactly what was going on and nearly impossible to see if someone was home. Unless the person living there was coming in and out the front of their home, you’d have to go behind the house to see if there was a car at all.

  Day after day passed, and again, I didn’t see Marcus. It was baffling to me. What on earth could he do for a living that he could be in Bain anyways? Most of the people who lived in this small town were retired, worked for the local school or were independent like myself. We were over an hour from St. Louis, and there were plenty of nicer small towns within a closer distance.

  I had to stop letting Marcus fill my mind. My photography exhibit was getting close, and I still needed to go through my pictures and choose the final set of photos. I knew there was one last photo I wanted to get out in the woods, but I had to wait for the moon to be at just the right location.

  I made my way to my garage and my darkroom for developing my pictures. I glanced over at Marcus’s house to see if it looked like he was home. No car outside the garage, and no lights on in the house. He certainly did not appear to be home.

  Developing my pictures was one of my favorite parts of photography. There was just something wonderful about doing the developing yourself. Setting the paper into the chemicals. Moving the photo paper from one tub of fluid to the next, I loved it. I ached to get my hands dirty and develop some of the prints for my upcoming show.

  Of course, it was faster and even cheaper, to pay someone else to develop my prints. But it was art to me; even the process of developing had become part of my art. Overexposing and underexposing my photos until they reached the exact look that I wanted.

  I darkened the room in my garage and started in on the long night of developing. My darkroom wasn’t the best, so I was relegated to developing my pictures at night to ensure the least amount of exposure possible.

  Slowly and methodically, I worked through my photos. Soon it was after four o’clock in the morning, and I hadn’t even realized where all the time had gone. That was how passionate I was about my work and my photography.

  Suddenly there was a bright light from Marcus’s house. I quickly blocked the leak of light with a black towel and hoped my pictures would be alright. I closed the black curtain and snuck out the door to my garage quietly.

  I stood quietly next to my garage and tried not to make any noise. It was Marcus. He had pulled up in front of his garage in a black Jeep. He was unloading some very large duffel bags. Each of them looked to be very heavy, and he set them down gently, one at a time.

  My mind raced with thoughts of what could be in those bags. Each of them looked to be about four feet long and was loosely filled with some obscurely shaped objects. The odd shapes poked and pressed the fabric of the duffle bags in weird places.

  I pushed my body back as close to the building as I could. The last thing I wanted was Marcus to see me really stalking him. He left the bags on the ground as he pulled his Jeep into the garage. He quickly came around and grabbed two of the six bags and carried them inside his house. I fought the urge to run over and look inside one of the bags. It was just too risky, so I waited.

  It took him about a minute to bring the first two bags into his house. So when he grabbed the second two bags, I made my way quickly over to the last two and unzipped one. It was dark, and I couldn’t see a thing inside the bag, so I pressed my hand into it. The cold metal of what I thought to be a gun greeted my hand. I quickly pulled away and ran back to the cover of my garage.

  Oh no, I forgot to zip the bag back up! It was too late now; there was no way I could make it back over to the bag and get it zipped up before he was there to grab them. I watched in anticipation for him to return.

  Luckily, the dark of night camouflaged my mistake. He grabbed the bags with ease and headed back into his house.

  Guns! Why was he haul
ing bags full of guns into his house? Maybe I had not felt right, maybe they weren’t really guns? I couldn’t be one hundred percent sure, but my stomach was in knots.

  This gorgeous guy comes to my small town and starts making out with me, and sure enough, he turns out to be some sort of gun dealer or something. He didn’t seem like the type of guy who would be part of such an illegal line of work. Granted, I didn’t really know what type of guy he was, but he seemed more honest than a gun dealer would be.

  Chapter 5

  My mind swirled with thoughts of Marcus; I wasn’t afraid of him at all. Shouldn’t a person be afraid of a man who had a house full of guns? There was just something about him when he was there next to me; I could feel he was not some evil monster. His energy was all positive, and even the fact that I knew he had just hauled six large bags of guns into his house didn’t make me think anything bad about him.

  Certainly, I could be wrong. There was that man in the bar when I was out with my friends. I thought he seemed like a totally nice guy. Then before the night was over, I watched as he punched and choked another man until the police were called and took him away to jail. So maybe I wasn’t that good at telling a good guy from a bad one.

  My body said he was a good guy for sure … my mind was trying to talk me out of it. But throughout my life, I had been pretty good at reading men. It was something I prided myself on. Actually, I could read both men and women. There was a way people carried themselves, how they made eye contact, what they did with their hands. All of it came together to give me a gut feeling about the person.

  I watched out my bedroom window as the lights in Marcus’s house turned on and then off again. He seemed to have moved the bags into the second bedroom and had the light on in there for a good twenty minutes before he turned it off.

  I then watched as the light in his kitchen came on, and his face appeared at the kitchen sink. He was doing dishes. I was basically a creepy stalker standing and watching my neighbor’s every move. It struck me as odd that a man who just unloaded what were probably six bags of guns into his house was now domestically washing his dishes.

  Laughing to myself, I finally lay down. My sleep schedule had been off for weeks. Really, it had been off since that night out drinking with Willow and friends. Now I was up until three or four in the morning almost every night and sleeping until noon during the day. I didn’t mind the schedule very much, but it just made me feel a bit lazy.

  Tomorrow, I would again have to stay up late because I needed to hike into the woods to get my final photograph for my show. I had scoped out the perfect spot at the top of a steep hill. If I lay just right on the hill, I would be able to see the Milky Way set of stars, a huge fir tree, and a half moon. I was hoping the moon would have a ring of red around it like the forecast I followed had suggested. But there was no way to confirm that for sure. I would just have to see if the weather worked in my favor.

  I slept in the next day and waited until after ten at night to hike into the woods. Throughout the day, I had looked for Marcus, but he was nowhere to be found. I decided against stopping by his house. The thought of all those guns inside was freaking me out a bit.

  When Stanley knocked on my door toward the end of the afternoon, I couldn’t help being relieved that he had come over. I needed something to get my mind off of Marcus. I couldn’t wait to have a fun afternoon of sex with Stanley.

  “Stanley, how the heck are you?” I asked as he stood at my door.

  “I’m hard as a rock and been thinking of you all day at work. I need to be inside you,” he said bluntly.

  “Then let’s get our butts upstairs,” I said as I shut the door behind him.

  Stanley and I were comfortable with each other. There was no worrying about what he thought of my hair or my body. I didn’t have to do my makeup or even wash the stains off my hands. This was one of the reasons that our relationship worked so well.

  We clearly enjoyed each other; there was no doubt about that. I had an orgasm every single time Stanley and I were together. I felt free to relax, and he was a genuinely nice guy. Sometimes I wondered why we still continued with our love affair, but then I thought about not having him in my life, and I didn’t like that thought at all. Stanley made me happy. It was a different sort of attraction than I had for Marcus, but I really did enjoy having him around.

  “I want to be on top,” I told him as we started to strip our clothes off.

  “Sounds good to me. I love watching you fuck me.”

  “I’m already wet; lay your ass down, and I’m climbing on,” I said eagerly.

  I grabbed a condom and rolled it over his erect body before straddling him. His throbbing member pressed deep into me and took me a moment to adjust to, but I loved how he filled me up. Slowly I started rocking on top of him and sliding my clit against him.

  The thing about having a sexual relationship with a friend like Stanley was that I could orgasm so quickly that I’d become addicted to it. Stanley let me move on top of him at my own pace. He grabbed my hips and helped me as I thrust on him, but he predominately let me be in charge.

  “You look so good moving on me like that,” he said.

  “I love how comfortable we are together. I feel like we could do this forever. Are you sure you don’t want to move in with me again?”

  We were still in the midst of having sex, but I had been wondering about him moving in again. It was easier for us if we just lived together. I knew he wanted the ideal world and was looking for a wife, but he kept coming back to me, so maybe he’d changed his mind.

  “I’m thinking about it,” he groaned as I felt him starting to thrust harder and harder.

  “Have you seen my new neighbor? I’m thinking of bedding him,” I said through a bit of a moan as my body started to give in to our movements.

  “Yeah, he’s hot. I bet he won’t be okay with us, though.”

  That was a very true statement. Marcus didn’t strike me as the sort of guy who would value my affinity for having multiple men in my life. Although, I would really have loved to keep him around if he did like that.

  We ended up coming together as our thrusts increased, and he watched for me to start to release. We had been having sex for enough months that he knew the warning signs of when my orgasm was coming.

  It was a beautiful stress releasing afternoon and exactly what I needed before heading into the woods to get the picture of my dreams.

  Chapter 6

  As I walked to the wooded area, I couldn’t help looking up at the stars, they were beautiful and there was not a cloud in the sky. The moon was perfect also. It had the red ring around it, and I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect picture to end my show with.

  I moved slowly and deliberately up the wooded hill. It seemed much steeper at night than it had been during the day. Without being able to see each step I was taking, it made me extremely uncomfortable.

  I let my foot settle into each step, ensuring that my boots had a firm grip on the land before moving. It was hard to see if something was loose or if I was about to run into a branch or anything like that. I kept my arms out to ensure I didn’t run right into something.

  The higher I got up the hill, the more light from the moon that shone down on me. I could see my way much easier when I got near the top.

  Finally, I stood and enjoyed my perfect view. I took a couple pictures standing and then lay in the spot I had thought was going to be perfect. I took more and more pictures trying to find that feeling. I wanted the feeling that I had my perfect picture, but it eluded me.

  I repositioned myself to the side of the hill that I had climbed up, hoping that my perfect picture would be there. More and more pictures I took. Nothing!

  None of them looked like I wanted. I tried to reposition myself again, but as I moved my foot, I slipped on a rock, and I went tumbling down the side of the hill. Head over feet I tumbled at least three times before my leg struck a tree and stopped my momentum. The shock of the moment had m
e screaming out in pain.

  My screams filled the emptiness of the night, and I was sure I had woken up the entire town with the terror of my screams. I took in a few deep breaths as I tried to calm myself. I’d never felt pain like I was feeling at that moment.

  As I calmed myself, I started to realize I wasn’t actually in horrendous pain, and perhaps the excitement and fear of pain was really what I’d felt in those moments. I inventoried my body from my head to my toes. I had a gash on my forehead that seemed to be bleeding pretty good, but most everything seemed to be working alright. My ankle was probably broken, as it hurt horribly when I tried to wiggle it. All in all, I wasn’t in that bad shape.

  I felt around for my camera, and it was still strapped around my neck. Then I looked up at the moon. This was the perfect picture; I held the camera up and snapped a couple frames. I had to fall halfway down the hill, but I finally had my magical moment and clicked a ton of photos to make sure I had just the right one.

  “Are you alright?” I heard a voice yell from the bottom of the hill.

  “Yes!” I yelled back. “I’m just taking pictures, and I slipped. I think I broke my ankle.”

  “Isabella?”

  “Yes,” I said tentatively.

  Within a minute, Marcus was standing there. It amazed me at how fast he was able to climb up that hill. I had taken at least twenty minutes, and he just moved swiftly and with precision. Not second guessing anything, just fast quick steps up the hillside and straight to me.

  “What are you doing up here in the middle of the night,” Marcus scolded me. “Do you have a death wish or something? You could have been seriously hurt. Look at this blood.”

  “I had to get a photo.”

  “I hope it was worth it; you look like you almost died.”

  He took off his shirt and pressed it up against my head. Again with the shirtless body, it was an immediate distraction. Even in my state of pain, I could still appreciate the defined muscles of his body.