“You are so fucking beautiful,” he murmured and before I could cringe away from the compliment, his fingers found me, over the silk of my underwear. He was so sure, so fast. His touch so heavy and so right that all I could do was gasp and spread my legs.
Slouched in the corner of the couch, I let him touch me. His fingers all over me. Pushing past the thick seam of my pussy until he had the wet silk of my underwear pushed up against my clit.
“Is this how you like it?” he asked and the question was so oddly kind. So…chivalrous when I expected him to go full Neanderthal on me that I shook my head. Honesty getting the best of me.
“Inside,” I breathed.
And his fingers slipped under the silk, over my belly and speared, right into the heart of me.
I cried out, bowing off the couch, my hand holding his hand against me. “Yes,” I cried and then, like he was a tool for me to use, I ground myself against him.
Blood was rushing in my ears and I watched as Amber on the bed started to coil up and jerk against Matt’s mouth. And I realized in some crazy half-present part of my brain that I was going to come at the same time as this woman I was watching have sex.
How. Was. This. Possible?
“Come on.” Jesse’s breath against my shoulder was hot and damp and I wanted his breath on my whole body. I wanted to throw myself up to every dark and depraved experience I could get in this room.
“Charlotte?” Like I had lost all will, he said my name and I looked at him. And kept looking at him, aware of his smile. Of his hand. Of my body. The air and the world.
And when I came—the great wild shattering thrill of it tore me apart. Scattered me around the room. Left me broken on that couch. His hand between my legs. My eyes still locked on his. I was crying out. Gasping.
“Jesse!” I cried and he touched me again, making my body jerk over and over until I could take no more. Until I pushed him away.
My brain was wiped clean. All that shit I worried about, that kept me locked down. That kept me scared. Alone. It was gone. The relief of that, of this moment of total freedom from the reality of being…me, made me laugh.
Made me want to cry.
And then, as I watched, as it seemed like every bit of pleasure and feeling had been wrung out of my body, he lifted his hand, the hand that had been between my legs, and licked his fingers.
And I was ready to go again. It was like I hadn’t just come. Like I had never come.
I wanted to fuck everybody.
On the bed, Amber was coming, I recognized her screams from the ones I heard earlier through my wall, and when she lay replete on the bed, Matt stood up, his cock unaffected by gravity.
“Fuck,” he groaned. He touched himself and looked my way. “You want to?”
“No,” I said, at the same time Jesse said, “No.”
I glanced over at him and found him watching me. “I’m not sharing you. You want to come again, it’ll be me doing it.”
That should not excite me. It should horrify me. But everything was upside down and inside out right now, and those words were the sexiest thing any man had ever said to me. By miles.
Amber, looking like she’d run a marathon, mascara running down her face, sat up from the bed. “Me,” she murmured to Matt. “I’ll take care of you.”
Matt stepped up to her and like they’d done this a thousand times, like it was old hat, she opened her mouth and took him inside. Amber was weak and boneless and he held her head, easing himself in and out of her—using her until he came. Swearing and jerking and clutching her to him.
And it should have seemed ugly. Or strange. But somehow it was tender. It was that graceful surrender on both their parts.
And then… it was over.
And we were just a bunch of strangers breathing hard in a room that smelled like sex.
At some point in the last lifetime the music had stopped.
I felt sticky and damp.
Hungover now, more than drunk.
I wanted a shower. Some water.
All my boldness was gone and I pushed my shirt down as we all sat there, strangers having done a strange thing. Well, they might not be strangers, but I was. And this whole thing was beyond surreal. It was like an out-of-body experience.
I got to my feet. “I have to go,” I stammered, not looking at anyone. Particularly not Jesse beside me.
“I’ll walk you,” Jesse said as I headed for the door.
“You don’t have to.” I didn’t want him to. I wanted to go back to my apartment and recalibrate.
“Goodbye, Charlotte,” Matt said, waving at me as he put on his underwear. Amber toodled her fingers at me, silent on the bed.
“Be gone when I get back,” Jesse said to the two, who nodded without offense, like this was standard.
I practically raced out of there, snagging my keys from the corner of the counter where I’d left them before walking back into that room and changing my entire life.
Jesse’s door was partially open—I’d forgotten to shut it when I came in, and I cringed thinking about who might have seen or heard me like that. I cringed about all of it. Buyer’s remorse setting in hard.
“Hey,” Jesse said, catching up with me at my door as my fingers fumbled with my key and lock. I was shaking. Adrenaline maybe, the desire and lust still in my body. I had no idea. I felt like I could run a marathon or fall on the floor and cry.
Or most likely, get in some kind of yelling match with Jesse.
“Charlotte,” he said, putting his hand on my hand and I nearly smacked him away. “Let me.”
“Don’t—”
“You’re shaking.”
“I’m fine.”
He was behind me. His arm stretched out along mine. I could feel him. Hot and big, standing behind me, and I closed my eyes in surrender as he took the keys from me. Slowly, he unlocked my door, pushing it open with my hand and I charged through with all the grace of an elephant.
I took great care to hang my keys up on their little hook. That really mattered right now, making sure my keys were over that hook. Just so. Just…right.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Great!” I cried in a painful Tony the Tiger Frosted Flakes voice. Internally, I winced. Internally, I wanted to die.
“Charlotte,” he sighed and then he was behind me. My hands pressed to the wall, my eyes on that key and his body behind me.
He wore underwear, or shorts and nothing else. His bare chest, still damp from sweat, pressed into my back, making the shirt I wore wet.
My breath shuddered in and then stopped. My body shaking and hot and trembling and wretched and awful.
And ready. So ready for him. I was hollow again and only he could fill me.
“You want more.” His breath ruffled my hair, burned across the back of my neck.
I did. I did want more.
“Let me give it to you.” His hands cupped my waist, one sliding down my body to my hip, the other up to cup my breast, loose under the shirt.
“I knew it,” he breathed. “I knew you’d be so fucking soft.”
My head fell back, balanced resting against his shoulder, and for a moment it felt like he pressed a kiss to my ear. My cheek. Soft things, so unlike him. But then I stopped feeling anything but his hand between my legs, petting me over the damp ruined silk of my underwear. Petting me until I pushed into him.
He sighed at my eagerness, a rough low growl in the back of his throat like I had pleased him with that tame shift of my hips. And the need, the sudden fire deep in my womb to do exactly that—to please him—was lit. A tiny flame, but it was there. A need I couldn’t wish away.
I would like to please him.
“I couldn’t believe it when you walked into my room,” he was saying, his long callused finger running over me, over and over again. “And you stayed. Did you like it?”
I couldn’t answer, or rather didn’t, and he stopped touching me, forcing me to whimper low in my throat.
“Answer me,” he said.
“Yes. I liked it.”
“What did you like the best?” He was stroking me again. His hand under my panties now, his fingers inside me and I shuddered against him. “Charlotte,” he breathed. “Answer me or I’ll stop.”
“You,” I cried out. “I like you the best. When you told them what to do and made me come. I liked you the best.”
“Fuck.” He tilted his head, finding the bare skin of my shoulder where my shirt had slipped out of place and he sucked my skin hard into his mouth. Hard enough that I thought he was biting me. Hard enough I didn’t want him to stop.
Hard enough that I fell apart in his hands. Shaking and crying. My legs giving out so completely he pushed me up against the wall, holding me there with his body.
His cock was hard against my ass and I pushed back against him. An animal kind of welcome. An awkward overture.
But instead of lifting my shirt and plowing into me he turned me around to face him. Oh, his face, so bruised, it broke me and I moaned.
His fingers touched the mark he left on my shoulder. Half hickey, half bite.
“I like that on you,” he murmured. “My mark.”
“That’s…I’m…”
He grinned at me and I stopped trying to make words, content to just stand against the wall, my inner thighs slick with my own come, my body a broken set of pieces, barely functioning as a whole.
I couldn’t have predicted it but he slowly, carefully leaned forward and pressed his ruined lips to mine. So tender. So soft. I felt the split in the corner. His fat bottom lip was chapped and he breathed against me, tasting of mint and something musky.
My come. From when he licked his fingers.
I should have been revolted. I should have jerked back and pushed him away. But I didn’t. I leaned back against my wall, the key hook digging into my hair and I let him kiss me. I let his breath wash over me the same way I let him put his mark on me.
A willing victim.
“My favorite part was you,” he said against my lips, as if putting the words into my mouth so I could have them to live on. To feed me when I was hungry.
And then he was gone.
Chapter Nine
Jesse
In the seconds between waking up and opening my eyes, I had the vague sensation of being…happy. I think it was happy. Happy was so long ago in my life, such a faraway thing, that I wasn’t sure if I recognized it right.
Like looking at a shoe and thinking it was chair.
I was supposed to go running. Meet David down in the basement. Call Sal and make plans for the next fight. I had shit to do. But I didn’t get up to do any of it.
Instead, I lay there and just let myself feel like I had something to look forward to, like there was something good waiting for me when I opened my eyes. God, when was the last time I felt like this? Those first months of school before everything went to shit? When I was a kid? In the house on Burl?
I didn’t even know. I couldn’t find this feeling in my past. This heavy contentment in my body with the wild soaring emptiness of my brain. Thoughts clicked over and over, memories from last night. Like in a movie.
Charlotte.
Fucking Charlotte.
Last night was real. It wasn’t one of my fever dreams after listening to her putter around her apartment all day straining my ears so I could hear her hum.
It happened.
And I couldn’t take it away.
And just like that—the second I put her name to this feeling, it was like I poisoned it.
Stop man, I told myself. You didn’t do anything wrong. You haven’t fucked anything up.
But it was too late. I tried to keep the dread away, the worry, but it was a cancer in my life, something I carried with me everywhere I went. Because I ruined shit. Things came to me—pristine and perfect—and I smeared them with my grubby careless hands.
I scrubbed my hand over my face and wondered how I was going to fix this. Because it couldn’t happen again. She had no business getting this close to the shit I did in the basement. Not only was it dangerous, it was pretty fucking illegal. And if she had any sense at all she would have gotten the clue after that kiss in my apartment after the fight. Of course, if I had any sense at all I would have told her to leave last night. But she’d shown up like some kind of fucking horny good girl, bent on turning my world upside down.
And I couldn’t resist her. Which, according to my brother, had always been my problem. All the discipline in the world when it came to fighting and wrestling—none at all when it came to the good girls I shouldn’t touch.
Jesus.
She’d come so sweet. So fine. And we’d barely even started. I’d barely even touched her.
Under the sheets my cock twitched and got hard. Harder still. As I tried not to think about her on that couch beside me, watching Amber and Matt, telling them what to do. Watching her watch them, watching her get over being so scared, I’d never seen anything so hot. So powerful.
And I felt—a little—like I gave it to her. Like I was happy not just that I got to see it, but that I got to have it happen for her.
In a million years I never would have expected her to do that. Or again, in her apartment after, so agitated, so torn up, so ready to come once I touched her…
I could spend the next year making that woman come and it wouldn’t be enough.
And I shouldn’t do it again.
Next door, Charlotte’s alarm clock buzzed and I ignored my dick and opened my eyes. She would hit snooze three times before actually turning it off, and I liked imagining her burying her head under the pillow, one hand sneaking out of the sheets to bang that alarm clock until it stopped buzzing. And this morning I felt like sleeping in with her, separated by that shitty wall.
So, I forced myself to get up. It was a gray South San Fransisco day, I could tell by the milky light coming in through my sheet.
Charlotte was right, I probably should change the curtains. But changing that was like admitting that this was my home. That I wasn’t going to be leaving anytime soon.
That I had nowhere else to go.
Despite the years I’d been here, I was clinging to the fact that this wouldn’t be my life…forever.
I needed a few more wins like last week’s. A few more purses like that and I’d be out of this place. Out of this life. All debts paid.
And then what?
What happens when you get out of the hole you live in?
I flipped the blankets off and got to my feet. Kicking the sheets I’d torn off the bed last night after coming back to my apartment from Charlotte’s, into the corner. I needed to do laundry. I checked in with my body. My ribs. My hands. The pressure in my nose. Behind my eyes. Everything still hurt, but it was time to get back at it. Training waited for no man. Right now my next opponent was probably running takedowns in a gym somewhere.
Thunder cracked outside and the world got a little darker as a storm roared in. Running in the rain used to make me feel like Rocky. Like some crazy man on a mission.
Now it just made me feel wet and cold, like a dog left outside too long.
I pulled on my shorts and walked into my kitchen, wondering if I had any coffee. It had been a long night and I was pretty much fucked out of any energy.
“Well, look who finally decided to get out of bed!”
I jumped and yelled and bashed into the door of my bedroom I was so fucking startled.
“Sorry,” said the guy sitting on my living room couch. Sitting there like he had the fucking right. And for a second, the sleeping part of my brain, the boy I’d been, the little brother I still was—that part of me was so fucking happy.
I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t change it. I had to let the happiness run through me like an electric current, followed almost immediately by the grief.
Maybe this was the dread I’d been feeling. Maybe my brain knew he was near, picked up on his menace. His fucking cloud of doom.
“Jesus,�
�� I muttered, “how the fuck did you get in?”
The man on my couch shrugged and got to his feet. I stepped back out of habit. Out of self-preservation. He’d handed down beatings in my life that made last week look like a party.
“How do you think?” he asked.
I didn’t even have to look at my door to know he’d broken in. A habit he’d picked up when we were kids, and he’d honed it in the last few years.
“What are you doing here, Jack?” I asked, not wanting to think about when we were kids.
“Guy can’t visit his brother?”
“You can visit anytime. You just don’t.”
Jack looked at me with Mom’s eyes, blue as the fucking sky. And sad like Mom’s eyes, too.
“Don’t,” I said.
“Don’t what?”
“Look at me like you miss me.”
I missed him like I missed my parents. Like I missed the life I was supposed to have. But two years ago that asshole walked away, and when I tried to follow he shut the door in my face.
So no. He didn’t get to miss me.
He blinked and the sadness was gone. I remembered when Dad died, the two of us standing next to his grave as they lowered the cheap pine box into the ground. On the far edge of the cemetery had been the guys in the black coats, smoking cigarettes and watching us. Like vultures, waiting for our weakness to be revealed so they could gobble us up.
Don’t show them anything, Jack had said in my ear. Not now. Not ever.
He’d gotten real good at not showing anyone anything.
I noticed for a guy who should be as broke as I was, he was dressed up pretty nice. He had a slick leather jacket and boots that looked like they cost as much as my rent.
He could have been any kind of guy standing there—college kid, actor, a guy who worked down on the wharf. Anyone. Dark jeans. Gray shirt. Leather coat.
But the tattoos gave him away. I could only see the ones on his hands, but that was plenty. His arms were covered, sleeves of ink. He liked Biblical shit, no doubt from a childhood spent on his knees begging for forgiveness at St. Pat’s on the corner of our old block. So his arms were like stained glass windows in church. Lots of blood and swords and lions and men casting brutal judgement and weeping women clutching babies to their chests.
Bad Neighbor Page 8
