Collection: A Submission Series Story Collection

by Reiss, CD

  You’re being menacing. She’s going to run...she’s going to—

  She snapped the car keys from my hand.

  “Give me those.” I grabbed for them, but my balance was off, and I was slow.

  She ran.

  I ran after her, but the images got foggy and indistinct.

  I was in the driveway, looking for my car.

  I was in the house, searching through coat pockets.

  I was driving in a shitstorm of rain.

  How? What did I miss?

  I felt a pain in my shoulder.

  I was in the driver’s side of the car. It was too dark to make out much more than the outline of the keys. They seemed to stand up sideways in the ignition, defying gravity. My vision swam. Then the keys rotated on the ring, pointing toward the ceiling. Odd.

  Creak.

  Crunch.

  I was on the ground. I heard the beep of the warning signal and saw the beam of a single headlight, but all I saw was a car on its side, ready to fall into the whirling floods of the Pacific Ocean.

  It rolled and fell. There was no splash. When I scrambled up to the edge of the cliff, a car was floated in the foaming waters.

  I heard her scream.

  Rachel.

  It had to be. She must have been belted into the passenger side?

  But how?

  “Rachel!” I yelled. What a ridiculous thing to do. I could barely hear myself.

  I dove into the water.

  Cold.

  I became aware of the viola again, just as I gulped water and felt a stabbing pain in my lungs. The real me, the me at my engagement party, the twenty three-year old who had control of his life, gasped real air and felt water. I was coming out of it.

  But the sixteen year-old me woke up to grass tickling my nose. The world swam as if I was riding the teacups at Disney. I opened my eyes. Just in front of me, so close I had no context but a few blades of grass, the dark of the rainy night, and my own nausea, was Rachel’s face. She, too had her cheek to the grass. Her eyes glazed over. Her mouth hung open. Her hair stuck to her face in the rain. She blinked, and a tear fell over the bridge of her nose.

  Rachel, Rachel, I am sorry.

  * * *

  The sound of the full quartet sounded like a philharmonic, and I knew I was out of the hypnosis a second before I bolted straight in my chair. Jessica sat on the edge of the chaise in an ecru dress. The orchid in her hand matched the one in her blonde hair. She must have gotten it for my lapel on the way back from the manicurist. She always thought of everything.

  “Jon,” she said, taking my hand. “What happened?”

  “You have to meet me halfway,” grumbled David Mesmer.

  “Jonathan,” Theresa said. “Let me get you a drink, my God.”

  The other sister’s voices broke into my consciousness. Jessica and I just looked at each other, barely hearing.

  “You look worse.”

  “We really need to try the crystal cleansing lady.”

  “Have the guy with the wine come this way.”

  “Christ, I think half of Stanford just showed up.”

  Jessica slipped her hand between mine and tugged. I got up. I pulled her away to a quiet corner between two chest-high planters.

  “Are you all right?” she whispered.

  “I don’t believe in hypnosis,” I said.

  “Of course not.” She pressed the orchid to my lapel and wove a three inch straight pin through it, fastening it to my jacket. Her eyes gazed at me suspiciously and with no little concern. “But you look like you just saw a ghost.”

  “I remembered that night. Things I hadn’t remembered before.”

  “That night? Jon, really. Which night?”

  “The night Rachel died.”

  She touched my cheek, and I brought my arm around her waist. “Tell me,” she said.

  I put my lips close to her ear. “She’s alive.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “I remember. I woke up in the grass, and she was next to me. Her eyes were open. She blinked.”

  Nothing about Jessica’s expression changed for the first second, and I watched her closely. I needed her to tell me something. Maybe comfort me, or tell me I was wrong. Maybe I’d missed a shred of evidence that proved what we’d always known. That Rachel was dead and buried and the family tracks covered with six feet of dirt.

  She put her hand on my lapel. “You know, this isn’t a reliable memory, right?”

  “Yes. But I also know it’s right. Sure as we’re standing here.”

  “Well then, there’s only one way to know for sure.” She squeezed my hand and put her lips to my ear. “We’ll have to find her.”

  A streamer floated down from a tree and landed between us, while the sound of the quartet drew my attention back to my engagement party and waiting guests.

  First Morning

  A short (super short) ditty from Jonathan’s POV the morning after their first night together. For the life of me I can’t remember why I wrote it. I think a blog requested it and I was young and energetic, so I figured what the hell?

  This has never been included in any bundle, so it may be a fresh bunch of Jonathan for you.

  Morning

  JONATHAN

  She stared up at me with my dick at her cheek, smiling. I propped my hand under my head so I could watch her. She licked me with the flattest part of her tongue. When she got to the top, she slid the entire length of it down her throat. It felt endless.

  She took my breath away.

  “Where did you learn to do that?” I asked.

  “Los Angeles High School of Performing Arts,” she said. “They taught me how to open my throat to sing. Then Kevin Wainwright taught me how to put his dick down it.”

  She was perfectly within her rights to mention another man in passing. We were in the middle of exactly nothing. Our encounter would be forgotten in a week or a month. Yet, I didn’t care for it. Not at all.

  “I’d like to thank LA Unified and Kevin Whatever for this moment.” I said.

  A little laugh escaped her lips. “I like you, Jonathan.”

  Lots of women had told me lots of things over the years, and many of them meant it so ardently I had to walk out of the room before they mistook another ounce of physical contact as agreement. But no other woman had made something so simple and non-committal sound so sincere.

  “Feeling’s mutual Monica,” I replied with the same sincerity. I did like her. She was fun and smart, two traits that rarely kept company with beauty. “Put your hands behind your back.”

  She did it without comment or complaint, and when I pushed her head slowly down onto my cock, she moved with me. Perfect. I gathered her hair in my fist and moved her. She gave me control like she was returning my wallet with the money still in it; as if it had always been mine.

  I wanted to taste her, and did. I licked her. Then I fucked her slowly, then quickly, then slowly again. She was so easy to read, with her shuddering cunt and articulations melting into throaty gasps. I pulled her away, until she begged me for release, then I took her halfway, watching her lose herself in pleasure.

  “Please,” she gasped. “I need to come.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “May I? Please?”

  I wanted to watch her fall apart, break into pleading. A few more strokes and I’d have her. I never in my life wanted a woman to shudder under the intensity of pleasure more than this one. And if she begged with the same words she’d used the first time, all the better.

  “Jonathan,” she said. “Please let me come. I can’t…I’m going to lose it. Please do it so I come.”

  “Do what?”

  “Fuck me hard. Please. I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll suck anywhere you want. I’ll be yours. It’s all I have, but please fuck me so I come.”

  Her sincerity, her realness, the depth of her pleading could not be denied.

  “Come then.”

  I went faster and harder. Sh
e clenched around me, arching, crying out. I bit her neck. I wouldn’t normally play with pain the first time, but I had to hurt her. I had to break the velvet texture of her pleasure. It was a craving, like running across the smooth sand of the beach just to put your footprints on it, or getting the first knife mark into the jar of peanut butter, breaking the flawless swirl with a slash. But never the first time. Unless I was dealing with a trained sub, I always waited until the second time to introduce a little pain. I didn’t seem to be able to wait with this one.

  I thought she’d push me off, or squeal, but she groaned and pushed herself toward me. A beautiful, smart, funny, masochist.

  Almost immediately, I started thinking of ways to see her more than three times while keeping my heart open for Jessica.

  * * *

  I woke to the sound of the water pipes humming. The house had been expensive, but it was still old, and even new pipes didn’t keep a whoosh from being heard in the bedroom whenever a faucet was turned. I can’t say I minded knowing what was going on in another corner of the house.

  I found her at the kitchen sink, back to me, hair slung over one shoulder so I could see her neck and the little red mark where I’d bitten her. It would be gone by noon, but I wanted to make more, to stamp my feet in new snow, and feel her buckle under my teeth. I offered her breakfast to get her to stay, but my mind was on that neck and the curve of it.

  “How about another go?” I asked. It would count for the first time, and I could see her twice more without her getting attached. As a matter of fact, if I could get her to stay the morning, it would still count for the first time.

  “The sun is up,” she teased. I slipped the dress’s zipper down. “You need to beg again. You’re good at it.” I kissed her back, sliding the dress off her shoulders, feeling her skin under it.

  “Your phone rang,” she said.

  “It’s always ringing.”

  She threw her head back and her chest out, like a kitten under my touch. I’d have her on the counter, maybe. Or I’d throw her on the floor. Condoms were upstairs. Fuck. I’d have to drag her up there by the hair, or carry her like a gentleman. Whichever made her squirm more.

  The phone buzzed.

  I did work. I didn’t have to, but I enjoyed building things and not being a waste of life like my sister, Fiona. I cared about what I did. So when the phone buzzed, I glanced at it even though I had an erection pressed against a beautiful young woman’s ass.

  Jessica.

  “I think I need to take this,” I said, zipping her back up.

  “Sure,” she whispered. “My shoes are upstairs.”

  I popped the phone from the charger and went outside.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  “Jon.” Her voice, so collected and in control.

  “Is this about the Eclipse show?”

  “I need to know if you’re going.”

  I sat on the patio couch, rubbing my eyes. I was tired again. Drained.

  “You have a career now, Jess. You don’t need me at every event.”

  I could hear the pout and look of discontent transmitted over fiber optic cables.

  “You know how important this is. You know that you’re seen as a major collector. If you don’t go, it will look like you only supported me because we were married.”

  “No, it’ll look like I had other plans.”

  “I need you to go.”

  “And I need to be left alone, Jessica. I don’t need to spend my time looking at you with Erik.” I was getting pissed thinking about it. “Do you enjoy that it upsets me? Does it get you off?”

  “You know it doesn’t.”

  “I’m not going. The end. Get your kicks elsewhere.”

  I hung up.

  That was a first. I’d never told her to fuck off before. It felt kind of good. I’d have to do it again some time. I leaned back in my chair staring out at the pool, the surface still in the late summer heat.

  My phone buzzed, and I looked over it. A text from Jessica.

  —I’ll tell Erik to stay home—

  I realized I didn’t want her to acquiesce. Erik pissed me off, but her friends whispering that I liked to fuck like a violent offender were worse.

  Which reminded me of the night before.

  The singer. One more go.

  Yes!

  I went inside.

  “Monica?” I cursed the size of the house. I heard the rumble of a car starting out front. By the time I got out to the porch, she’d pulled into the street.

  We’d have another go when I got back from my trip. I was sure of it.

  A valentine

  A Valentine was released in 2014 as a Valentine’s Day special for the SubClub. Nina Grinstead could get me to do just about anything (and that hasn’t changed).

  The story takes place about six weeks after Jonathan’s transplant. I tried to stick it in the timeline where it goes, and it didn’t work. Then I tried to stick it in as a memory, and that didn’t work either, so here it is…

  Chapter 1

  JONATHAN

  I’d taken just about everything in my life for granted. Money, intelligence, women, family, but mostly my health. I protected it easily, worked through the bumps in the road, and exercised when I felt like it. I ate what I wanted, when I wanted, unless it was spicy. Then I just avoided it.

  “You have a heart biopsy today,” my wife mumbled, her face buried in her pillow.

  I brushed her hair behind her ear. I was sitting up in bed, and I had been for a few hours. I didn’t inherit my heart from a sleeper apparently, so I still stayed up half the night. I was used to that. What I wasn’t used to was being so weak I couldn’t be out of bed for more than a few hours at a time.

  I hated spicy food I’d loved before. I had a strange urge to run, as if the road called to me. I couldn’t drink enough juice. All that was supposedly normal, as a rogue group of cells were peeling off the heart and sticking to my organs, but I felt way past the age when I should be discovering things about myself.

  “I’m not going,” I said.

  “Like hell.”

  “I feel fine. I’m only supposed to get the biopsies if they think I’m rejecting.”

  She got up on her elbows. “Jonathan, let’s not do this again.”

  I could see the tops of her breasts as they fell into her white tank. We hadn’t made love since I’d gotten out of the hospital. We were afraid, both of us. I didn’t even know who we were sometimes.

  “Let’s not then,” I said.

  She rolled onto her back. The February chill always managed to get through the old windows, and the result was hard nipples pushing through her tank. She was still, as always, magnificent, and I felt a forgotten stirring.

  “I’ll go with you,” she said. “Then we can get something to eat, and you’ll be back for a nap.”

  “You’re in the studio today.”

  “I’ll cut out. Eddie can reschedule.”

  My hand, as if it had a mind of its own, brushed her nipple with the backs of my fingers. It bent under my fingers four times, then my thumb stayed, rolling it. Her eyes closed, and her mouth opened. She was the same, sensitive as a raw nerve ending, but she wouldn’t let me touch her until recently. I’d satisfied her twice since then, but we couldn’t do more together because of the nagging, overwhelming fear.

  “You are not to reschedule again or ever,” I said, pinching the nipple.

  “You have to go for the biopsy.” She groaned.

  I was hard. Very hard. “No, I don’t.” I yanked at her panties. “Take these off.”

  She looked at me for a second, her brown eyes big as coffee cups. She grabbed at the sides of her underwear and wiggled out of them. She’d started gaining weight back, and though the sickly gauntness was gone, her hip bones still jutted out too far under her skin, and the space between her thighs was too apparent. Getting something to eat probably wasn’t a bad idea, except I wasn’t getting another fucking biopsy.

  She w
as still on her back, all hard nipples and hidden cunt. I didn’t know if I could. Physically, I had been cleared for fucking, but I still didn’t feel right. “Legs spread, knees up. Come on. Let me see.”

  She did as she was told, as always, and I slid my hand down her belly, past her triangle, to her waiting lips. She gasped.

  “You’re fucking soaked. I never met a woman who needed to fuck so bad.”

  “Get the biopsy. God, please.” Her head was thrown back. “I’ll suck your cock right now.”

  “You’re not using sex to bribe me are you?”

  “I am, I am.”

  Good, great God she needed a spanking. Six months ago, I would have welted her for doing what she was doing, but I didn’t think I could take any kind of intensity. I knew my heart wouldn’t pound since the vagus nerve had been cut, but having her clit under my fingers without feeling a racing heart as accompaniment to my desire was disconcerting. I felt dead at the same time as I felt on the precipice of life.

  I took my fingers from her and glossed her lips with her juice. She opened her mouth and sucked on my fingers. I was about to spontaneously combust, but I couldn’t. Not yet. I was still not myself, still afraid, like a child. I was ashamed of my fear but not ashamed enough to conquer it.

  I put my hand between her legs again, sliding inside her, up to her clit, and back. Her hand stroked between my thighs. I squeezed her clit, and she arched her back, then I touched the tip of it.

  She gasped. “Let me suck you. Please. I’ll go slow.”

  “No.” I flattened my fingers against her, pushed two into her cunt, and moved her clit with my palm. I pulled my fingers out again and back. “Look at me.”

  She opened her eyes, and I leaned down to kiss her. Her mouth tasted like cunt, and her tongue tasted like morning.

  “Say my name.”

  “Jonathan.”

  I put three fingers in her and drew them out. She squeaked.

  “Jonathan.”