All I can hear is the wet smacking of Bellamy in my mouth. Strands of spit loop between my chin and him. I redouble my pace, stroking and sucking with fervor.
Still, Garret looms in my imagination. Being so close to shit and filth makes it that much more important, that much more transcendent for me to fantasize about something beautiful.
I look up and see Garret looking down at me. It is his cock in my mouth. Something gushes between my legs and a soft whimper floats between my lips. I run a hand along a thigh, plunge it down the waist of my pants and feel myself, soaking wet. I am blowing Garret Lyons.
My eyelids snap open; Garret vanishes. The sunlight through Bellamy’s blinds stabs straight into my vision. Above me, I can feel Bellamy tensing. His hands flex on the back of my head, urging me harder, faster, deeper.
“That’s right, you thick girl, keep sucking. Keep sucking,” he moans. I give him what he wants.
Suck, stroke, lick, and then with a finality, the tension in his hands breaks and he orgasms explosively, cumming in my mouth with a protracted train of grunts. I endure it, swallow, and lean back, running a hand across my lips to wipe off the spit.
He leans over on his hands and knees, drawing deep breaths for what seems like forever. I sit back in my chair, wide-eyed, post-traumatic. Just like I did in the aftermath of the last encounter, I feel violated.
My thoughts are running wild with rationalizations. You needed it. You couldn’t say no. You were in no position to refuse. I know my intellect is right, but I can feel my gut churning with disgust nonetheless.
The figures in my head are swimming in and out of each other, merging and separating and joining together again. Bellamy and Mother are fused together in a vile amalgam of abuse and sadistic sneers. His black suit and her black dress are the same amorphous garment. I can’t distinguish between them.
Standing across from that two-headed monster is Garret, always Garret, always grinning, always radiating that heady scent of cocky sweat and subtle, tugging charm. What had I been imagining? Did I want him that badly? My mind flashes back to the image of him, naked before me, cock in my mouth. I feel another wave churn between my legs. I can’t do this right now; I force myself to focus.
Willing myself back to reality, I beg Bellamy to keep this under wraps. “Please, just don’t tell anyone. That’s all that I ask,” I say.
His response is the same as last time: a smirk, “Our little secret.” I can’t tell whose voice came out of his mouth, his or Mother’s. In the corner of my eye, I see Garret – just a flash of him, a brief apparition. He disappears as soon as I look that way. I needed to fantasize about something beautiful.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I walk out of Bellamy’s office, wiping a drop of his cum from the corner of my mouth. Turbulent emotions surge in my stomach, but I bite my lip and force them to quiet. I refuse to let myself think about what just occurred in the office behind me, about what I just did. I can’t think about it. I won’t. As far as I am concerned, from this point on, it didn’t happen.
I step forward, and with each stride, I shove the grotesque physical memories of the encounter further and further down inside me. I clamp down on them with every ounce of my willpower. They sink like rocks to the bottom of my consciousness.
I float through the rest of my day in a haze. When I walk into class after work and my professor pauses mid-lecture to ask me why I am late, I turn to face her numbly. The class falls silent and stares at me with dead eyes.
“No reason,” I mumble. “Sorry.” The words don’t feel like they are mine. I sit down at a desk. An hour later, when she dismisses us, I think back and can’t remember a word she said. The class zips away all their belongings and files out in a herd, clomping down the hallway. I stay behind and savor the silence left in their wake.
My agenda book is lying on the table in front of me. I idly flip the pages and let my mind wander with the passing dates. They conjure a mess of memories and emotions as I leaf through.
August. Heat, struggle, the grating chirp of the bar code scanner at the grocery store.
September. Textbooks weighing down the bills on my desk. A conversation with Mother that rattled me for days. The very first time I ever made eye contact with Bellamy.
October. The magazine in his office. That first touch of his fingers against my wrist. And the first time I heard the name Garret Lyons.
November. The show. The show, the show, the show, the conversation afterwards, the reeling emotions that had warped and continue to steal my concentration away to somewhere else, to another frequency.
Garret. The little voice inside my head loves to say his name over and over again until it lost all its meaning, like a CD player stuck on repeat of the same haunting chorus.
Garret, Garret, Garret. It has quietly morphed into a poisonous fixation, one that consumes all my time.
My mind is split. There is the soft murmuring undercurrent that loves to roll the syllables of his name between my lips in quiet moments on the subway, the half of me that, when I close my eyes, can summon the exact contour of his jaw when he sings, a perfect recollection. This hemisphere is seductive. It whispers to me and catches me off-guard. I can be gazing into the depths of my computer screen and suddenly hear the faint ghost of his voice in my ear. When I whirl around, though, I am inevitably faced with an empty room.
The other side, the realistic one, the one that pays my bills and takes my exams, isn’t nearly as coy. It is harsh, imposing, verging on abusive with the strength of its conviction. You can’t afford to even be near him, it counsels. Stay away if you know what’s good for you, if you want to keep your head above water. That latter voice booms through the murky miasma of the former when I find myself too deep in thoughts of the lanky rock star. It sounds like a foghorn and drags me begrudgingly back to the task at hand.
Like now. Focus, it commands. I turn the next page of the schedule to the current week. A rainbow of colors greets me, blaring from the page with obnoxious brightness. Threads of red for homework weave from day to day, interlaced with neon blue for my work shifts and a nasty streak of green when bills are due.
Something snags my eye, though, a brief phrase in stark black. The letters are bold and carefully drawn. I read, marked in a heavy handwriting under Friday night – tomorrow night – the name of an event that has been lurking in the back of my mind all week – “Garret’s Show.”
The familiarity is almost offensive. Garret’s Show, like he and I are best friends, like going to his concert is a casual commitment, like I might just decide to stay in and watch a movie by myself instead because it is just so fucking inconsequential.
Garret’s Show.
As if I hadn’t already carefully picked my clothing and planned every streak of make-up to be daubed.
As if I hadn’t already begged off of work on Saturday morning.
As if I hadn’t been obsessing over everything it could mean since the moment he told me to come.
As if.
I hurriedly close the agenda and toss it in my backpack before leaving.
***
Friday passes in a blur. Class, errands, even walking down the street all seem to take place at a hyper speed. Objects hurtle past me like trees on the side of the highway.
The second the sun sets, though, everything grinds to a creeping pace. Now, as I unlock my door and step inside to start getting ready for the night, time is a thick putty that grabs me and keeps me from moving forward at anything faster than a crawl. Every line of make-up stretches a mile from start to finish. Every zipper lasts years.
I clamber around my apartment in various states of undress, listening to the radio as it blasts out garbage pop tunes to clog the air. I am fooling around with different outfits, though the one I know I will wear is already laid out neatly on the bed. I pretend I don’t yet see it.
The two halves of my mind are waging a silent war. I won’t allow either one to speak. Any moment that his name sneaks into my thoughts �
� Garret, a hushed whisper, a vocal beckon – I crank the music louder to drown it out.
Skirts and tops come on and off, heels are buckled and strapped and promptly removed. I know I am being silly but I refuse to acknowledge it. The only thing I want to hear is the tinny, sugar-coated whine of the pop stars blasting out of the crackling speakers.
At one point, I stop and stand in front of the mirror. Black lace lingerie hugs my hips deliciously. My breasts are erupting from the matching bra that surrounds them. The tiny mounds of my nipples peak against the soft fabric.
I turn down the volume. One thought crosses my mind – Would he like me like this? I wonder. Would he fuck me? And if he did, what would it be like?
I shouldn’t have let myself consider that. The thought of smooth bodies and tangled sheets take shape in my mind, my knees weaken and I fall to the ground.
I wonder if he would fuck me like Bellamy would – like I’m an object, a centerfold in a magazine, bound, gagged, desperate. I see the harsh glimmer that lurks on the edge of Garret’s eyes sometimes. It scares me - it looks so similar to the way Bellamy glares.
I wonder if Garret could love me – if he would love me. I think of that girl who had approached us on the couch that night and remember the way her husky breath slithered over Garret’s neck. How could I compete?
I want him to fuck me, not like Bellamy, but like music – the way he was talking about that night. I want him to move with me and through me. I want him to play me, to pluck me so that the sensitive strings that bind me together hum and murmur in harmony.
One hand steals over the curve of my breasts, detours across my hip, and slithers underneath the hem of my underwear. With bated breath, I extend a trembling fingertip and stroke my engorged clit.
Rainbows arc outwards down the highways of my nerves. The tiniest of pressures sends sparks racing over every inch of skin. I want to cum only seconds after I have started to touch myself.
Catching my breath, I yank my hand away. You can’t be doing this. You can’t be feeling this way, the foghorn voice blares. I agree, temporarily. I quickly dress in the outfit I had chosen days before and scamper out the door. On my way out, I glance at the mirror. As I do, I could almost swear that, in the uppermost corner, I see Garret smiling. I shudder, turn out the lights, and slam the door shut behind me.
***
I see Sarah on the corner a block away, making exaggerated hand motions as she talks to a couple of guys in skinny jeans and white button-ups. She spies me walking up and shrieks, running over to give me a tight embrace and kiss on the cheek. She tells me I look fabulous.
“You really outdid yourself this time, Jodie! Your dress is amazing!” she yelps. I smile and thank her.
If possible, I look even skankier than last time. A new black dress is hiked up my thighs, with razor-thin straps criss-crossing over my back and perilously restraining the bulk of my cleavage. A pair of crimson heels adds four inches to my height. The quiet undercurrent to my thoughts effuses satisfaction, though the foghorn maintains a grim silence.
We enter the building, make our way to the bar, and grab drinks before starting to wander in the direction of the stage. Sarah is holding forth with her usual stream of consciousness babble. Vaguely familiar names – friends of friends of friends, their cousins and ex-boyfriends and bandmates – are studded throughout the conversation. I note them with a minimal degree of interest.
I scan the room while she talks, pretending to not look for the person for whom I am obviously looking. No sign of his tangled locks, though my heart throbs when a skinny model with a blond shoulder-length crop strides across my field of vision. False alarm, though – she doesn’t quite have Garret’s muscle tone. I chuckle at the mistake but inwardly cringe at my uncontrollable fervor. I hope it is not as obvious as it feels.
Sarah and I reach the edge of the crowd and submerge ourselves. We drift through crooked elbows and fat purses as we squeeze towards the front, drinks in hand. Finding a space at a reasonable distance, we settle in as the lights dim.
Garret strolls out from the right side of the stage. He saunters to the microphone stand, grinning the whole time, that insatiable devil’s grin, like a boy who has been mischievous but knows that no one would ever dream of punishing him. The walk, the smile, the dramatic swoop of his v-neck – all of it is part of the show and yet intrinsically bound up into his ethos. I think silently that he is a natural born rock star and then immediately admonish myself for sounding so foolish.
He banters with the crowd, lounging effortlessly on a stool as he laughs and cajoles. The mood is beginning to coalesce. I am hyper aware of the transition from a gathering of individuals into a unified being. It is alchemy, chemistry, and Garret knows just when to nudge the temperature upwards.
He stands and stomps again, just like he did last time. Every time his booted foot strikes the stage, the tension ratchets a notch higher. He is tightening his grip over our wrists and urging us to join the frenzy building in his chest. I can feel it. I am there. I am with him.
The curtain whips away and the bassline begins a hungry growl. A soft pattering on the high hat, gentle brushstrokes like rain on the highest leaves of a tree, joins along. The guitar whimpers. The sounds of every instrument are melding together into a backdrop, into a body of water that flows contentedly but every now and then leaps out at you, just as you had stooped down lower to get a better look at your reflection.
Over this surface, Garret draws a deep breath and unleashes his voice. It arcs unexpectedly upwards, then crashes down, dipping in and out of the music like a bird preying on fish below. Everything about him exudes a focused nonchalance. I am completely sucked in, as if he had me in his talons and my stomach was plunging with every sudden descent.
The rest of the show plays on in a soaring, shattering mood. Garret recedes to the background and leaps to the forefront over and over again, tumultuously, flawlessly. As far as I can tell, I am alone with him, no one else near. We are alone together.
***
I draw in a huge breath as soon as I emerge outside. The cold spikes into my lungs but it feels refreshing after the cramped heat of so many people sweating and breathing alongside each other. My ankles and hips ache with equal parts exhaustion and emotion.
I let Sarah tug me into a taxi that whisks us a few short blocks away, to a smaller, dimmer establishment, where the oaken bar sashays around a bend and the rickety stools are placed the tiniest bit closer together. A bartender in a slick black suit clinks glasses together. The crew, Sarah and I included, scatters throughout the room. We sink into plush leather couches jammed into a corner.
I close my eyes and let the conversation wash over me. There are no thoughts behind my eyelids, just the placid post-show buzz. Sarah interrupts me with a laconic whisper and tap on the elbow. I glance at her through barely raised eyes.
“Yes?”
“It’s him,” she beams. “Aren’t you gonna say hello?”
I look up. Garret is standing outside the ring of couches. He looks freshly showered, his hair slicked back. A new silver stud is piercing one ear. He arches an eyebrow at me.
Sarah speaks up to the group. “Let’s all go grab drinks, yeah?” she says. They all murmur their assent and slouch away in the direction of the bar. Garret fills the vacant spot next to me.
I straighten my posture and stare down at my hands folded neatly in my lap. “Great show,” I offer. I steal a fleeting look at his face. I love the way his lips meet, whispers one voice. Bills, school, work, Bellamy… says the other. I ignore them both.
“Thanks,” he replies. His green eyes are locked on mine. “I really appreciate you coming, ya know.”
“Oh, of course! It’s nothing. You guys are great.”
“I wanted to make sure I thanked you especially,” he says.
I ask, “Why’s that?”
He grins sheepishly. “I was a little worried that I scared you away last time we talked. I got real serious, real quick,”
he laughs.
I demure, “No, no, don’t be silly. I loved it.”
He replies, “Well, okay. I’m sure you’re just being polite but I’ll take it all the same.” He flashes me a toothy smile.
I watch his eyes sparkle and wonder just what those dancing lights mean. Is it the same shine as Bellamy? Or is it something different, something softer, warmer, more musical? I stare closely but I can’t quite decide.
Garret is saying, “…it’s great to have a real supporter. A true fan. Anyways, I didn’t really feel like coming out tonight, but I saw you in the crowd and I figured that if you were nice enough to come to the show, I should be nice enough to find you afterwards and thank you.”
I blush, smile, and demure again.
“So here we are,” he says. “This is me thanking you.”
His eyes flare again with something foreign, something I can’t read. I feel the brush of his fingers against the back of my neck – I hadn’t even realized his arm had been encircling me since he sat down. One finger entwines in an errant curl. Another hand lays to rest gently against the outer edge of my bare thigh. His gaze is focused, pupil to pupil with mine.
Devil's Angels Boxed Set: Bikers and Alpha Bad Boy Erotic Romance Page 40
