by Lilah May
“It’s OK, Ava. You’re right. He is a cheating fucking bastard.”
“I’m just happy you finally stood up for yourself, for once in your life. I’m really proud of you.” She gives me a hug and I have to wonder who the mom was in our relationship.
“Thanks, Ava.” I never realized what kind of effect I would have on Ava, always smiling and trying to keep the peace in our very dysfunctional family.
I ended up almost teaching her how not to be a strong woman. Good thing she still grew up so strong. And so smart.
I could learn more from her than she could from me. I couldn’t believe I was even considering earlier taking Donald back, to work on our marriage. What kind of example would that set for Ava?
“Don’t worry about me, mom. I’ll be fine. Everyone gets divorces these days. All my friends go through it and they’re fine. In fact, they kinda love it cause they get a bunch of stuff. Speaking of which, when am I getting my own car?”
“You’re thirteen. What’re you gonna do with a car?”
“Fine. How about a new phone?”
“Mmmm…that we can definitely do for you.”
“Come on! Next Top Model’s on soon.” That’s our thing. We don’t have many of them left now that she’s growing up so quick right before my eyes.
I curl up next to her on the couch, happy for the one consistent thing in my life. My daughter. But even she seems like she’s slipping from my fingers. And I couldn’t hold onto her forever. She needs to grow up, get a life of her own, and end up leaving her old mom behind.
CHAPTER 9
BOBBY
I love Lisa Howard.
I always have loved her and I always will love her. My earliest memory wasn’t of my parents or of my toys. It was of her, her beautiful bright eyes looking down at me, sparkling in the sunlight.
I wake up every morning to her, of that same comforting image. The sweet smiling face, glowing with kindness, like an angel’s. I would imagine her warmth tenderly caressing me until my cold lonely reality hit me in the face.
I was four when they first moved in. Lisa and Donald Howard. The angel and the devil. She had such a free spirit, a soaring optimism that couldn’t be extinguished by her pessimistic, cynical husband even after fifteen years.
That’s why I fell for her in the first place. It’s also why she stayed with that drunk excuse for a husband. The double edged sword of kindness.
Honestly, I could have taken her whenever I wanted and sometimes I would almost give into that dark voice that said to go to her, comfort her. I knew she wouldn’t refuse me, a drowning woman doesn’t refuse a helping hand.
But I knew it would destroy her to be the cheater, be the one to do harm and break up her family. It would eat her up inside like burning, boiling acid. So I couldn’t touch her and I didn’t.
Until today.
I believe you only get one love in your life, you only have that one person. The one. So romantic, huh? Not really. While so many people worry that love is passing them by, love is constantly slapping me in the face, just tantalizingly out of reach.
And finally, when the opportunity came, I bungled it famously.
The moment I saw her, I couldn’t tear my eyes away.
I really was trying to help her, but when she started to shove those tits in my face and flash her thighs, I couldn’t resist. I had to take her right then and there. Only in the last moment was I able to stop myself from fucking her.
When I finally get back to my apartment, I can’t get her out of my head, those luscious curves, the way her lips parted when she was close to cumming.
Fuck, she almost had me spraying my load all over the inside of my pants.
Having her so close and so aroused, ready and willing, made me rock-hard and the whole drive home, my cock stayed rigid, uncomfortably straining in my pants.
I knew I couldn’t take her yet, I knew she needed time, but it took all my strength to hold back. Now, I’m paying for it.
I groan, bucking my hips, imagining her hot pussy, the same one she straddled my leg with, grinding against it. I fantasize it slamming down on my thick cock as I release my third handful of cum, just as much and just as thick as the first.
Goddamn. She turned something on inside of me that I couldn’t satisfy that insatiable hunger that devoured and destroyed all those temporary girls. That desire buried deep within me that longs for her and only her.
After building for years, it roared to life with no clean conclusion in sight.
I had to release all the pent up cum in my balls and masturbating wasn’t cutting it. I think of calling Chloe for a brief second, but I’m committed to Lisa, now. The die has been cast and she’s done with Donald, so I have to be done with Chloe as well. Unless I want to be the same shitheel Donald is.
***
Goddamnit. Who the fuck is calling me so late?
Through the haze of sleep, I finally spot my phone. I groan. It’s Ava, my 13 year old neighbor who thinks she’s in love with me.
“What?” I grumble into the phone.
“Your sleepy voice sounds so sexy and deep.” She moans into the phone. This precocious little kid. I really need to block her number. The only thing stopping me is her mom, Lisa.
“I’m hanging up.” I would be nicer because of the whole impending divorce thing, but she sounds like nothing’s wrong. Tough kid.
“Wait! Wait! I need to tell you something.”
“Get on with it. You need to go to sleep for the ninth grade.” I stress the part about ninth grade, hoping she gets the hint.
“Hey, my boobs are now a C cup! I’m basically an adult!” she protests. She got the hint.
“Not if you still say boobs.”
“How about my bountiful breasts or my buxom bosoms or my busty tits?” She makes an attempt at a sultry seductive voice.
“You sound like a whining chihuahua. If you just wanted to update me on your bra size, I’m going back to sleep.”
“OK, fine. You’re no fun. Are you free this weekend?”
“No, Ava. I’m not going on a date with you.”
“You’re so mean!” I’m used to girls calling me mean. “But it’s not for me. It’s for my mom.” I bolt upright. Lisa wants to know if I’m free? “You know that camping trip both our families used to go on?”
“Yea, what about it? We haven’t gone in like seven years.”
“Well, after everything with my dad, your parents have been pestering her to go, thinking it would be good for her. Well, she’s always refused but suddenly, tonight, she finally agreed to go.”
This is it. This is what I’ve been waiting for. She seems to have recovered from the split and this camping trip is the perfect opportunity. I will make her mine.
“Hello? Are you still there?”
“Yea. Yea, I’m here.”
“So? Can you come?”
“Of course!” I don’t want to sound too eager. “I mean, I think I can push some things around in my schedule.”
“Mmmm, your schedule. You sound so official. It’s hot.”
“Goodbye, Ava.” I hang up. Nothing good ever comes of staying on the phone with her too long.
The last month has just been a blur. With Lisa so close to being mine, the thought of finally taking her consumed every second of my day. I neglected business, school, and even my barely existent social life. Not even Alex ripping me a new one was enough to bring me out of the daze.
But suddenly, with this one phone call, my mind is clear. It always had worked best when there’s clear action to be taken. And the path to Lisa couldn’t be any more crystal.
I close my eyes and think of Lisa, imagining she’s waiting for me. She never did call me for that date. Surprising, because that’s never happened to me before. Every girl ends up calling.
Does she still remember that night a month ago as vividly as I remember it? I can’t get that red dress out of my mind, her legs spreading open for me enticing me, the way her drenched pussy
soaked my legs and stained my pants. I look down and groan, my cock standing at attention yet again and I wrap my hands around it, pumping the hard length like I’ve been doing for what seemed like five times a day, every day for the past month. She’s been all I thought about the whole time that I feel as though all I’ve been doing is masturbating. But it hasn’t been enough.
If I see her again, I don’t know if I could hold myself back like last time.
Just as I’m about to cum for the umpteenth time, Alex crashes through the door with crazy eyes.
“Do you ever knock, Alex?” But he ignores my question and he doesn’t even notice the obvious tent in the sheets.
That’s how I know whatever’s troubling him is pretty damn serious.
He’s been claiming for the past month that someone was out to get us. Every investment company he’s been to denied him a meeting, sometimes even a return phone call. Which after the relations that we’ve built, seemed strange but I waved it off as just a price fixing strategy. But day by day no offers came through and Alex got crazier and crazier, especially because he wanted to get me the proper deal for Lisa’s app.
“There’s someone. I know it now. They won’t tell me who but one of my sources told me someone’s shutting down the offers. And it has to be a big name if they hold that much power.” He sounds like a paranoid lunatic with a handful of conspiracy theories. But I had to agree, the app is solid and there’s no reason for such underhanded behavior on their part.
“It has to be a negotiation tactic.” I try to reassure him.
“No, it’s not. You pissed someone off. Someone important. Think about it.” And immediately, I think of that guy in the gym. The one with the white blonde hair and ice blue eyes. Could it be him? IT had to be. But I had no idea who the fuck he is.
There’s only one way to find out.
“I’ll get Liv on it. We’ll find out who it is. The only reason he’s cockblocking us is because he wants the fucking app for himself.” I’m pissed. He thinks he could fuck with me. He’ll learn who he’s fucking with.
Alex finally breathes a sigh of relief, but then he’s promptly on to the next order of business. “Oh and the test trial for the bar app, Carlos agreed to give it a try so you gotta go down to his bar and install it.”
“Alright, I’ve got a fight at nine, though.”
“Oh, yea. Forgot that was tonight. I really should enjoy two sweaty men going at it but for some reason the violence doesn’t sit well with me.”
“Well, only one person’s getting hurt tonight.”
“Just go before, he’s there from six onwards.”
“The one in Franklin?”
“Yea, The Soggy Dog.” I grimace when he says it.
“What a horrible name.”
“Tell me about it. I can just picture the type of people that go there. Fat, sweaty, perpetually drunk.” The realization clicks for me. “Oh, they’re the soggy dogs.”
“Yup. Sometimes I feel like I’m just your assistant not your partner.”
“Well, you do do most of the work.”
“Shut up. By work you mean leg work. You have the ideas. You make the apps.”
“If you want me to give you less of a cut, I’d be happy —”
“No, no, no. It’s OK. Forget I said anything. In fact, I think I’m due for a raise. Without me, I don’t know if you’d even get out of bed. Speaking of which, you should wash those sheets, it smells like cum and sweat all the way down the hall.” He winks, knowing the state I’ve been in without Lisa, without a girl and laughs as he goes to leave. “Don’t forget — The Soggy Dog.”
I call Liv right away. Whoever’s blocking the offers is stalling, probably trying to reverse engineer something that could do anything close to what our app could.
And the fact that I know exactly who it was but didn’t know his name pissed me off even more. He came to the gym looking for me, to get a read on me, knowing who I am and that I had built that app.
Then after meeting me, he decides that I’m not a threat? Fuck no.
He sure as hell’s going to regret that decision.
Liv picks up on the first ring as a good spy should. As soon as I describe the guy, she knows exactly who it is.
James King of King Investments.
Now, she just needs to find out what the hell he’s trying to do with the app.
CHAPTER 10
LISA
“Hey, you single?” The bar is empty except for a group of dirty drunk regulars in the corner. It’s Tuesday and here I am alone in the slinkiest black dress I own, which hugs my abundant curves just the right way, and five empty shot glasses in front of me, wondering why I’m here in the first place. And now, the leader of that group of dirty drunk regulars has finally grown the balls to hit on me, after thirty minutes of being egged on by his cohort. “Hey, I asked if you’re single.”
“I’m married.” Why am I telling him that?
“I’m married, too. But vows and churches have no place with what I want to do to you … and that body.” His perverted leer makes my skin crawl. He’s fat, old, balding, and stinks of sweat and alcohol. Yet, for a second, I’m considering letting him have his way with me.
How did I get to this point?
It all started from that night a month ago. In the back of the grocery store with that MAN. Why didn’t I just call him? I could’ve avoided all of this.
That night, he flipped a switch and illuminated something in me that’s always been kept in the shadows. And then he disappeared. Or more like, I never called him back. I couldn’t. I knew I wouldn’t be able to control myself. His animal magnetism just drew me in, his dominating aura so darkly alluring.
I couldn’t forget it, that thrill, when he took me and slammed me against the wall, manipulating every part of my body like a master artisan, submitting me under his absolute control. He had branded me with his body, turning me into something luridly unrecognizable even by my own eyes.
Ever since then, I can’t keep that part of me silent. I followed that urge building inside of me and tumbled head first down that dubious distorted twisting rabbit hole. I read book after book of questionable romance, like menage or BDSM, crashed through the Fifty Shades of Grey types, and went straight for the rougher ones, the ones that don’t ask before taking you, just like that MAN did.
I couldn’t stop reading, watching things I could never mention to anyone, dreaming of the filthiest situations. Like this one. Alone in a bar with five dirty perverts eyeing me and one of them refusing to take a no. What did he do to me? What did he turn me into?
“There’s a motel down the road.” As if that’s supposed to convince me.
“And I’m sure the motel is just as vile as you.” I’m not sure if I’m trying to piss him off or make him take me right here on the sticky bar floor, but I’m sure as hell not going to make it easy for him. That makes me think of how easily that MAN took me, swallowed me up without a scrap of resistance.
That’s the difference between those two. Aside from the fact that this one looks like he drinks a thirty pack of beer and smells like he never brushed his teeth once in his life.
“Oh ho. She’s a feisty one, eh?” He cackles, his foul breath hitting me like a train.
“Please, I just want to drink by myself.”
“Come on, babydoll. A lonely lady dressed like that in a bar like this? You know what you’re here for.” He grabs my bare arm with one of his grubby paws.
“Please. Leave me alone.” I try to shake him off, but his grip grows stronger.
“Don’t worry. I’ll show you a good time.” He takes his other arm and puts it around my shoulder. The stink of his armpit wafts upwards, making me gag.
“Let go of me!” But he just laughs and his wretched group cackling along with him like grotesque sheep. Isn’t there anyone else here? Where’s the bartender?
“You little slut. Tempting everyone with that dress. What did you think was going to happen?” This is exactly
what I thought would happen. God, I am a slut. One hot encounter with that MAN had turned me into a slut.
I deserve this. There’s no one who cares about me anyway, now that my family’s all broken. When I’m alone, all I can think of is him. And I’ve been alone a lot, this past month.
“Stop making this harder than it has to be.” His crooked yellowed teeth and cracked lips concoct a depraved grin. I feel his hand on my back, sliding lower to my waist. I wait for it to drift to my butt. I tell myself this is what I want. This is what I want. This is what I want.
No. Fuck no.
This isn’t what I want.
This isn’t what I want at all. This is all wrong. What the hell am I thinking? I’m so caught up in my fantasy, I didn’t realize I had confusedly twisted my own desires. I don’t want this from just anyone. I want him.
Not him. He gives my butt a good squeeze.
Oh, hell no.
And I let fly, aiming for his face.
But I’m drunk and the punch is slow. He catches my wrist easily, holding my arm high above my head. Leaning in close, he takes a deep breath...of my armpit. “Mmmm. You smell good. Like an overripe melon. Just as a mature woman should.”
“You fucking weirdo.” I spit at him, a glob of saliva hitting him square in the eye.
“You fucking bitch, you’re gonna pay for that!” He raises his hand, preparing to slap me, and I close my eyes, bracing for impact.
But it doesn’t come. I open my eyes, feeling his grip come off of me and find him yelping in pain, his hand being crushed inside an even larger fist.
“That’s no way to treat a lady.” A deep voice booms behind me. I look up to find violent dark brown eyes roiling with anger staring down at the drunk. It’s him.
“Fuck. That hurts. Get off me, you asshole!”
“I’m the asshole? Did you listen to her when she told you to let go?” HE growls, his huge fist squeezing tighter, crushing the drunk’s hand.
“The little slut was asking for it,” the drunk yelps, still protesting weakly.
“Then, you’re asking for this.” And with that, his fist lashes out like a hammer, blurring past my face and straight into the nose of slobbering drunk.
