by Rainey Daye
Troy grew angrier and angrier as he imagined the look of censure on Maggie’s face, so to wipe that look out, he rolled over on top of the sleeping Maria and thrust unceremoniously inside her, gripping her hips hard and leaving even more bruises behind from his usual rough handling of her. Maria seemed to like it rough, so neither of them held back when they were fucking, and his conscience didn’t even give so much as a small twinge as he thrust hard, over and over again. Soon, her folds and inner walls began to grow slick and his passage inside her became smoother. He felt her dig those long sharp talons of hers into his back and knew that she would draw more blood in her zeal.
Not wanting to deal with the pain of those scratches, he pulled out and flipped her onto her stomach before he entered her again. He slapped her ass once, hard, when she tried to raise her upper body up, and Maria dutifully flattened herself back down on the bed. He gripped her hips roughly and then proceeded to shake things up by indulging in some of those other acts she had introduced him to.
Two hours later, he was showered and back in his car, munching on a cold Pop-Tart as he headed to Maggie’s campus and her 11:00 a.m. class, which he “audited,” Maria no more than a distant memory to him.
* * * *
Maggie was late to class because her teacher-adviser meeting had run long. She had gone to her adviser to see about adding a minor in psychology and what courses would be necessary so that she could meet this new goal. She also thought some sociology courses would also help her solve her own personal dilemma, thus her forty-five-minute meeting with her adviser had run for an hour and a half.
Slipping in the back door of the auditorium so as not to draw attention to her tardiness, Maggie took a seat in the mostly empty back row. She slid her textbook and a spiral-bound notebook out of her backpack and proceeded to take notes. Looking up when the professor switched to using an overhead projector, Maggie gasped when she recognized a familiar brown buzz cut two rows in front of her. Shaking her head and blinking a few times, she peered closer. It was Troy! She hadn’t been imagining him after all. Her delight in her vindication turned to suspicion. What was he doing here?
Okay, her mom had told her that he had the option of transferring schools his senior year, but Maggie thought that had been contingent on her hooking back up with him. And since she had effectively shot him down before he could make his play, she figured that he had returned to his original college at the end of the summer. Apparently he hadn’t. Why?
Maggie nibbled on the cap of her pen, pondering this new development and paying no more attention to the lecture being delivered by Dr. Robinson. She wondered if her mom would know what Troy was doing here, but knowing her mom, she would think it was terribly romantic that Troy had switched schools to win her back, never mind that he hadn’t contacted her to let her know he was in town. Okay, he didn’t have her phone number, but he did have her e-mail address, so he could have notified her that way. Showing up on her doorstep, unannounced? Nah. He didn’t know where she lived, and it was listed under Alex’s name in the phonebook anyway. Had she told him Alex’s last name? She was pretty sure she had mentioned it, but she hadn’t spelled it, so maybe Troy had been unable to look her up that way. So why hadn’t he at least e-mailed her to let her know he was in town? Maybe he had just gotten here and was in class today to surprise her? No. That was wrong, too. She was now positive that she had spotted him around campus before Halloween, and it was now the middle of November. Plenty of time to say hello. And how did he know she was in this class? He was good with a computer, sure, but she didn’t think he was good enough to hack into the school’s records and print out her class schedule. Coincidence? She had a hard time buying that.
Okay, take a step back. She had had Troy on her mind lately, ever since she thought she had seen him on campus last month. She had been briefly thinking about him last night before she seduced Alex. And now she was projecting his appearance on what was probably a classmate that she saw all the time in class. So what would her psych prof or a good psychiatrist say about all this?
Was it her subconscious telling her that she truly did want Troy? That Alex and Jess were just her way of taking a little vacation from reality and that what she wanted was what she no longer had? He had wanted her back, or at least her mom had her convinced that he did, and that was a very flattering thought. But during her trip back home, she was still in what she was beginning to think of as the honeymoon phase of her relationship with Alex and Jesse, and she had been missing them so much that she couldn’t even contemplate flirting with her ex-boyfriend, let alone consider hooking back up with him.
So had she finally passed out of the phase where she couldn’t get enough of them and everything centered around sex? Was she finally maturing and looking for a stable relationship and that was why she was projecting Troy’s image on innocent men? Was it her id’s way of pointing out what she really wanted?
Maggie closed her eyes and thought long and hard. And then she opened them and bent over her notebook, turning it sideways and delineating three columns and labeling them with each man’s name. She further divided each of those columns into two and labeled them pros and cons. She spent the rest of the lecture listing the positive and negative characteristics of each man on the paper. She was so caught up in her project that she didn’t notice that class was over until people started to stream past her on their way out the back doors. Maggie sighed and closed her notebook and then leaned over to put it and her textbook back in her backpack. When she straightened up, the man who was not Troy was standing up and scanning the students streaming out the doors in the front of the auditorium, the same doors that she normally entered and exited from. And then the man turned and headed up the aisle, and Maggie felt her jaw drop open as she finally positively IDed Troy. He was looking straight ahead and had joined the flow of students, so he didn’t notice her still sitting in the middle of the back row, where she remained sitting long after the last student had left the room.
* * * *
Jess and Alex met in a quiet corner of the quad before the two o’clock class that the three roommates had chosen to take as an elective together that semester. Maggie was in the middle of her 11:00 a.m. class and wouldn’t get out until 12:30 p.m. when the three of them would have lunch together before heading to class.
Jess had been jittery with repressed excitement while they were all maneuvering around each other in the kitchen that morning, and Alex had feared that he’d have an aneurysm in his need to report on his clandestine spying of Troy last night. Fortunately, Maggie had been too groggy from being kept up most of the night by Alex, not to mention the very pleasurable way he had awakened her this morning, to notice Jess other than to brush a quick kiss good morning against his cheek as she passed him on her way to get a second cup of caffeine in her.
“Okay, spill, what’s got you so riled up?” Alex said as he dropped his book bag at his feet and sat down on the bench that Jess was currently bouncing on.
“Troy,” Jess said succinctly.
“Did he do something other than sit in a pine tree last night?” Alex asked, barely disguising the contempt from his voice.
“Oh, I’ll say he did,” Jess smirked.
Alex raised his brow and waited while Jess pulled a piece of paper out of his jeans pocket.
“He gave up and left just before midnight. But he didn’t drive off right away.”
“Oh?”
“No. I saw him pull out his cell phone and make a call. Then he drove to the highway, but instead of heading west toward his motel, he headed south instead.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. You know that neighborhood that borders the city limits to the north? The one where the crime rate is so high?”
“Yeah?” Alex said slowly, growing more intrigued.
“Well, I followed him to an apartment building there. He parked on the street and walked in the door and up to apartment 3G where a small brunette played tonsil hockey with him in the hallw
ay before pulling him inside.”
“A small brunette?”
“Yeah. According to the mailbox in the lobby, her name is M. Washburn.”
“I saw him leave the motel with a small brunette,” Alex said thoughtfully. “About yea high,” Alex said, holding his hand up at about midchest level. “Hair down to her ass. A little pudgy.”
“That sounds like who I saw him with,” Jess confirmed, excited.
“So you think it’s sexual or platonic?” Alex asked, just for the sake of putting the question out there, already knowing it was a stupid question based on Jess’s description of their kiss.
“Well, I gave them about five minutes in case he really had legitimate business with her at that time of night. I know, I know. What else would he be doing going there so late, but still, I figured better be safe and wait,” Jess rambled. “Anyway, after about five minutes I moved down the hall to get the room number and listened at the door for a second, and it sure as hell sounded as if they were already getting down to business.”
“Elucidate,” Alex said succinctly, and Jess burst into laughter.
“Jeez, man, you’re sounding like a lawyer or a police detective or some other fucked-up shit like that.” Jess chortled.
Alex sniffed, disgruntled. “I just want to make sure that what I’m hearing you say is what you really are saying,” he clarified.
“I heard grunting and groaning.” Jess grinned, non-repentant. “Sex sounds. It sounded like they started getting down and dirty as soon as the door closed. In fact, it sounded like he was doing her against the door.”
Alex grunted as he thought this over. Finally, he ventured a thought. “Do you think Troy’s in town because of this woman? Someone he met and followed here?”
Jess gave him a disbelieving stare. “If he’s here for this woman, then what the hell is he doing watching our house from ten feet up a pine tree?”
“Yeah, that is the question,” Alex had to concede. “So who is this woman, what is she to him, and why is he spying on us?”
Jess shrugged, looking unhappy. “We still don’t know shit, do we?”
“We know a hell of a lot more than we did,” Alex pointed out. “That was a good job you did following him and getting that information, by the way. But we still don’t know what Troy’s agenda is.”
“Any clue how we can find out?”
“Without knocking on his motel door and demanding answers point-blank, no, not a fucking clue,” Alex was forced to admit.
Jess sighed and finally deflated. “Think we can scrounge up the money to hire a private dick to put on the case? I don’t know about you, but I’m getting damn tired of sitting in Danny’s car at night, staring at Troy hiding in a tree watching our house.”
Alex looked at Jess, considering for a long moment. “I’m getting tired of this, too. But we can’t afford a private eye, and even if we could, he might find stuff out about us that we really wouldn’t want anyone to know.”
“Yeah, you’re right. We’re going to have to handle this ourselves.” Jess sighed. And then he inflated again. “So I say we go with your plan.”
“What plan was that?” Alex asked, worried.
“The plan where we confront him at his motel,” Jess said.
“Do you really think that’s a good plan?”
“It’s the best one we have,” Jess pointed out to him. “We let him know we’re on to him and demand to know what exactly he’s up to. Or we tell him that we have enough proof against him to file a restraining order. That might very well put his scholarship at risk and give him pause.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Alex admitted. “If we word it that way, it just might work. Plus, if it’s like we thought over the summer, and he does want Maggie back, we can threaten to tell her that he’s been stalking her, and she’ll file the restraining order against him.”
“Great!” Jess cried, bouncing to his feet. “Let’s go do this!”
Alex laughed and put out a restraining hand, pulling his overenthusiastic boyfriend back down onto the bench. “Calm down there, Jess. We’ve got a lunch date with Mags and then class to go to. We also need to think this out very carefully and decide when and how to confront that sorry bastard.”
“Oh,” Jess said, deflating again and becoming lost in thought.
After a couple of minutes of silent pondering, Alex reached for his day planner and started flipping through the pages while Jess watched him hopefully.
“This could work,” Alex said slowly.
“What?”
“Our individual date is coming up this Saturday,” Alex pointed out and watched a smile slowly cross Jess’s face.
“Frankly, I can’t think of anything better I’d rather do on my date with you than to confront Troy and hopefully beat the crap out of him,” Jess told him.
“Then it’s a date?” Alex asked with a grin.
“Damn right it’s a date!” Jess said enthusiastically.
* * * *
Maggie joined her boyfriends for their usual Thursday lunch. If she was oddly quiet, neither man seemed to notice because they were distracted. They then walked companionably together to class, Maggie continually peering around them. She had caught a glimpse of Troy standing outside the window of the café where they had ordered sandwiches, sitting at one of the outside bistro tables, his head buried in a menu.
Walking back to campus and toward class, she pretended to drop a notebook, and when she stopped to pick it up, she peered behind them and saw Troy casually strolling along in the distance. He was talking to two men as they walked, looking every bit as if he were a fellow student. He blended in seamlessly, and Maggie wondered just how long he had been on campus and what he was doing there. The thought of him following her was seriously creeping her out, and she involuntarily shivered.
Jess, mistaking her shiver to be caused by the chill settling in the air, companionably draped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer. Maggie momentarily panicked and very nearly pulled away from him, lest Troy get the wrong idea. But then she forcibly reminded herself that the story she had spread around her hometown was that Jess and Alex acted like two overprotective big brothers toward her, and they had so thoroughly convinced the townsfolk of it that Troy probably wouldn’t think anything about Jess putting his arm around her.
Besides, the three of them were amazingly circumspect on campus. A lot of people who knew them knew that they were roommates and really good friends, but no one suspected the sexual aspect of their relationship. They acted like three good friends without an ounce of sexual attraction or tension between them when on or around campus, and Maggie no longer even had to school herself to act the part. They had been right when they had told her to follow their cues on campus when they had finally told her the truth about themselves and admitted to their mutual attraction toward her. And since they were plenty demonstrative with each other on their dates, Maggie didn’t feel the least bit deprived.
So, okay, if Troy had been watching her as long as she was pretty sure he had, then it was a pretty safe bet that he still believed them to be three platonic roommates. Breathing a sigh of relief, she leaned briefly into Jess in silent acknowledgement of him offering her some of his body heat and continued to class with them.
This classroom was smaller than the auditorium from earlier, and the seating was clustered around library-sized tables, so Maggie really didn’t see how Troy could sneak into this class. She took her accustomed seat at a window table and eyed the door on the off chance that Troy was dumb enough to try to slip inside. But with only thirty or so students in this class, she didn’t see how he could blend in.
As she watched the door, she saw Troy glance inside, his eyes falling unerringly on her table, causing her to shiver further as this confirmed to her that he had been following her long enough to have her campus routine down. And that was why he had been scanning the auditorium when she’d positively IDed him! He knew she usually sat in the fourth row and had
been scanning for her earlier. She smirked a bit as she wondered what he made of her absence from class. Served him right if he was worried or upset at an apparent change in her routine! But he had relocated her at the café and had followed her to this class.
Maggie shuddered as she wondered if he would follow them home. After all, they were done for the day after this class let out. They didn’t always go straight home, but if Troy knew her schedule and had been following her around campus for at least a month, what was to keep him from following them home? Oh, my God! If he knew where they lived, did this mean that he watched the house? Had he followed them when they left it to go on their individual dates? Did he hide in the bushes at night and peer in the windows? Could he have seen her and Alex having sex on the couch last night?
Maggie began to hyperventilate, and the guys immediately turned to her with equal expressions of concern. They both leaned over her, murmuring to her to slow her breaths, to take deep, calming breaths, to stop panicking, things were going to be all right, did anyone have a paper bag, dammit?
The professor entered the room about then and noticed the students clustered around their table, each offering their own advice to Maggie. He shooed everyone away from their table and squatted in front of Maggie.
“Ms. Conner,” Professor Davies said calmly. “Deep breaths. Breathe slowly. Act as if you’re blowing out a candle on a birthday cake. Yes, that’s it. You’re doing good. Yes, deep breaths again, breathe from the belly, that’s good. Ah, yes, that’s very good. Are you feeling better, now?”
