by Ranae Rose
“I mean it,” he said, continuing to tease her pussy lips in a way that made her want to stay up all night with him. “Don’t let me fuck up your day. I can keep my hands to myself; all you have to do is say the word. I’ll need a long, cold shower though. Hope your water bill is included in your rent.”
He slipped a finger inside her, slowly dragging it up and down her inner wall. It touched just the right place, causing her desire to deepen. The stimulation made her realize how much more of him she wanted to have inside her, and how badly she wanted to come.
He pushed her until she was almost there, then withdrew his touch, placing his hands on her breasts instead. He followed with his mouth, closing it around one of her nipples while she straddled him. His cock pressed against her thigh, inspiring fantasies about feeling it thrust into her.
Her nipples were bright pink and swollen by the time he relented, and her gaze was drawn irresistibly downward, to the hard rod standing tall in his lap. With her body tingling and burning from his touch, she wanted to make him feel the same way. No, even better. She wanted to give him more pleasure than he could stand. If tonight was going to be like the night before, she’d only be taking the edge off his lust.
If that was even possible.
The blunt head of his cock felt good against her lips, and even better in her mouth. She knelt in front of him, her hands on his thighs. She could feel his muscles tensing beneath her palms, and by the time she’d taken half of him into her mouth, his hands were sliding over her shoulders.
He grabbed thick handfuls of her hair, swore, and guided her down.
She placed a hand at the base of his cock and stroked the hard flesh she couldn’t fit into her mouth.
He groaned, and she looked up to see his head tilted back, eyes closed.
His grip on her hair tightened as she continued, caressing the crown of his cock with her tongue, then running it down the underside of his shaft, listening to the way his breathing changed. Her heart was beating fast when he rocked his hips, sliding gently into her mouth, then back again. She knew he was close, could taste a hint of saltiness that intensified the ache in her core.
He came hard, saying her name. The rush of heat filled her mouth, and she stroked him harder, caressed him with her tongue as he groaned and pushed deeper into her. A surge of exhilaration swept through her as her name, spoken in his voice, echoed in her mind.
When it was over and she raised her head from his lap, her heart was racing and she could feel a flush of excitement creeping across her chest.
Her gaze was drawn to where her mouth had just been: Dylan’s hard, wet cock. How long would it be before he wanted to come again?
He surprised her by kissing her. Placing his hands in her hair again, he guided her mouth to his and crushed his lips against hers. She placed a hand on his chest, and could feel his heart pounding.
“That was so damn good,” he said afterward.
She smiled.
“Lie back,” he said, placing his hands on her thighs.
She knew what he was planning to do – her whole body knew. Tingling and tightening from head to toe, she laid back on the pillows, ready for a repeat of that morning.
She got it. His mouth was heaven against her pussy, and it didn’t take her long to reach a climax. Afterward, he lay on the pillows with her, stretching his long, muscular body beside hers. The ink spilled across his arms and chest was multicolored and rich, a rainbow of ink forming designs that bled and swirled into one another.
She fell asleep trying to count his tattoos again.
* * * * *
Dylan tried to move through the apartment like a ghost. A 5’11”, 180 pound, very solid ghost.
It didn’t work. The floor creaked a little under one of his feet as he stepped out into the hall, and dread swept over him as he glanced at Emily’s bedroom door. The last thing he wanted was to wake her up early. Crystal needed to get some sleep, and it was his fault she was deprived in the first place.
He’d realized how truly exhausted she was when she’d fallen asleep the night before, after he’d finished going down on her. She’d woken up half an hour later. He’d felt bad for depriving her of sleep, and she’d been embarrassed about it.
Truthfully, it’d worked out fine. It’d given him a little time to recover after coming in her mouth. As good as that’d been, he’d still craved being inside her pussy. He hadn’t wanted to pressure her, but she’d insisted she wanted it too, and had been very persuasive…
This morning, he’d woken up just past the ass crack of dawn. Finding himself in bed next to her had been a huge turn-on, but he hadn’t laid a finger on her, rising and creeping carefully out into the hall instead.
He made it to the kitchen without hearing any noise from either Crystal or Emily’s bedrooms. Once there, he breathed a little easier and went to retrieve the overnight bag he’d left in the living room.
Seven am sunlight made the kitchen window glow, though it was dulled by the blinds. He opened them and saw the sun hanging low in the sky, on its way upward. That was his cue to fish his pill bottles out of his bag and get a glass of water.
He shook three different pills into the palm of his hand, then placed the round, white one on his tongue. The other two weren’t as important – just vitamin supplements his doctor had recommended that he take. He’d figured what the hell – effective or not, they were nothing compared to the other things he’d tried. As he raised the glass to his lips, a creaking sound came from behind him.
A familiar creaking sound. He swallowed the pill, turned and saw Crystal standing at the end of the hall in a thin cotton robe that clung to all her curves, hiding nothing. Her hair was mussed – sex hair, although at the moment, the sight didn’t give him the surge of pleasure it normally would have.
“Are you okay?” she asked, keeping her voice low as she entered the kitchen.
Dread settled into his stomach like a millstone. He’d been caught.
“Fine.”
A crease formed between her eyes as she stared at the pill bottles. “Are you sick?”
“No.” He wasn’t – at least, not in the way she was thinking.
He felt her questions closing in on him like collapsing walls, and tried not to acknowledge the way his dread was expanding, filling all of him. He didn’t want to have this conversation, but what choice did he have now? He didn’t want to lie to Crystal, either.
If the truth bothered her, though, he’d be crushed.
He’d planned on telling her after they dated for a little while, when things started to get serious. She’d blindsided him by asking him to stay the night before last though, and this wasn’t the kind of news you could throw out there just to have it out of the way as you rolled on a condom.
She stood there, waiting for an explanation, her silence so profound it was almost its own type of noise.
CHAPTER 12
“I have type two bipolar disorder,” Dylan said.
Several more quiet seconds were marked by his beating heart – he could almost hear it – and the weight in the pit of his stomach got heavier.
“Type two? You mean there’s more than one type?”
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t realize that. What’s type two mean?”
He turned to face her fully, two of the pills still in his hand. He tried to gauge her expression, but couldn’t. Whether that was because she had a good poker face or he was just nervous, he didn’t know.
“Well, type one has really high highs, and really low lows. Type two is mostly lows, and the highs aren’t as high.”
“You’re talking about moods, right?”
“Yeah.” He still couldn’t gauge her expression – not that he was overeager to look her in the eye, at the moment.
He was fully aware that whenever he told someone he was bipolar, their mind went immediately to whatever vague impressions of mania they had. Not that they called it that – to the average person, ‘crazy’ was the only wo
rd they needed to describe something much more complex.
Having type two, he didn’t actually experience mania.
“With type two, you don’t lose touch with reality during the highs,” he added, figuring that was about the only silver lining he had to throw at her.
“Do other people?”
“What, with type one? They can. The main difference between type one and two is the severity of the highs. With type two you get something called hypomania, but never full-blown mania.”
She nodded. “Okay, so… What’s it like? Not to sound dumb, but I don’t have a clue.”
He shrugged, but it didn’t rid him of the heavy, itching feeling between his shoulder blades. He didn’t want to be telling Crystal any of this – it felt like digging his own grave.
“They say it’s different for everyone. For me it’s too much energy, too many fast thoughts. It’s hard to sleep and impossible to relax. Sometimes I say dumb shit I wish I could take back later. I get a hell of a lot done when I’m like that, though.”
It was true – he rarely felt more driven with his art, or worked out harder than when he drifted into hypomanic territory.
Mostly because he had to be productive in order to avoid being destructive, or just plain freaking out on energy overload. When he was hypomanic, doing nothing was never an option.
“So, lots of energy…” She tipped her head, and her eyes locked with his. “Does that extend to sex?”
He’d wanted to leave that part out, which was idiotic, considering the way they’d been going at it.
“It can.”
One side of her mouth curved in a wry smile. “Damn it. Guess this means I can’t credit your incredible sex drive to my irresistibility.”
“The hell you can’t. I felt fine until I met you.”
She frowned. “So this is bad?”
“I was just teasing,” he said, guilt slicing through him. “And it’s not that bad if I can stay busy and out of trouble. Usually, I hit the gym a lot and focus on my tattoo designs.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Do I have the right to remain silent?” Her arched eyebrow made him grin, though his gut was churning. “I just told you I’m bipolar. I don’t want to layer tales of the dumbass mistakes I’ve made on top of that revelation. Especially since you haven’t kicked me out of your apartment yet.”
She laughed. “I’m not going to kick you out. In fact, if you sit down, I’ll make you breakfast.”
She went to the stove and pulled a frying pan out of a drawer.
“You made me dinner the last two nights in a row.” He went to her and gently took the pan from her hand. “Let me make breakfast. I can handle cooking eggs.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. Just sit down and I’ll take care of it. Or go back to bed – I thought for sure you’d want to sleep in today.”
She shrugged. “When I wake up, I’m up.”
“I’m the same way.” With Crystal’s help, he located a carton of eggs and some butter.
She started the coffee maker.
The eggs dropped bright and yellow into the pan, and for a while the only sounds were him scrambling them and the coffee maker brewing.
They ate breakfast together while he tried and failed not to stare at the way her nipples pressed against the front of her summer robe, obviously hard. When Emily woke up and Crystal had to get ready for work, he grabbed his overnight bag, preparing to head back to Hot Ink and take a cold shower before running the same route he had the day before.
“Will I see you soon?” Crystal asked, standing by the door with Emily on her hip.
“Do you want to?” Doubt flooded him – he couldn’t stop it. He hadn’t pegged Crystal as the type to turn her nose up at someone over a diagnosis, but she meant enough to him that any chance that he might lose her over this was significant.
And if she decided that she didn’t want to get any closer to him because of this, she wouldn’t be the first.
“Of course.” Her lips curled in a wicked smile. “I can’t believe you asked that after these past couple nights. I can cook dinner again today if you’re interested in coming over.”
His speeding heart slowed just a little. “That sounds great.”
* * * * *
The August sun crept higher by the second, and by nine-thirty am, Dylan was drenched in sweat. He’d located a gym just a few blocks from Hot Ink during his run the day before, and had briefly considered joining to use a treadmill. He’d ultimately decided to tough it out though, preferring the view and variety of running outside, despite the heat. The standard gym view of other sweaty people and TV screens bored the hell out of him, especially considering how long it took him to run off his excess energy.
Running to tire himself out was something he’d been doing for years, but it was a double-edged sword – the more he did it, the better his endurance became, and the longer it took him to reach exhaustion.
He could’ve run longer this morning, but needed to be showered and ready to work by eleven.
He was back in the apartment above the studio by nine forty-five. He’d been up for so long that it felt later, almost like that morning at Crystal’s apartment had happened yesterday, or even longer ago. Maybe that feeling was just a manifestation of how much he was looking forward to seeing her again.
He couldn’t believe how smoothly things had gone after she’d caught him taking his pills. He was starting to think that she was literally the least judgmental person he’d ever known.
Damn, he’d lucked out with her.
Tired of being drenched in sweat, he pulled the band that held his iPod off his arm and yanked his sweaty shirt over his head. He was so overheated that a cold shower actually sounded good, and not just because he was still flashing back to that morning. He’d just turned the water on when his phone rang.
He didn’t get many calls early in the day. It occurred to him that it might be Crystal, and so he abandoned the running water and went to fetch his phone from the bedroom.
He’d missed the call by the time he located it. The number was unfamiliar, with a Newark area code, and he had half a dozen missed calls from the same number. He was debating whether to call back when the phone rang again.
“Hey,” he said, bracing himself for something weird, and probably downright bad. Why else would his phone be ringing off the hook with calls from an unknown number from home, unless something was wrong?
“Dylan Blair?”
“Yeah.”
“This is Griff Anderson, from Anderson’s Custom Auto Body.”
It took a second for it to click – it was where Dylan’s brother Ben worked, painting cars. As soon as the realization hit, he felt the uncomfortable weight in his chest dragging him down again.
Shit. Had something happened to Ben?
The calming effects of his run evaporated instantly, and his racing thoughts provided a barrage of shitty possibilities. Ben might be in the hospital, or dead. There could’ve been an accident at work. Or maybe he needed someone to bail him out of jail. That’d explain why Dylan had received the call instead of their parents, even though he and Ben weren’t extremely close.
“You’re Ben’s emergency contact,” Griff said.
That was news to Dylan.
“What’s the problem?” He could hear the edge to his own voice, the tension that was rising inside him, making his head ache.
“Hell if I know, but something’s not right. He hasn’t come in to work in three days.”
“That’s it?”
“He never skips out like this. He would’ve called. And it’s not just that – he’d been acting weird for days before he went AWOL.”
“Weird how?”
“A week ago, he wouldn’t go home when it was time to close up shop. When I tried to get him to quit working, he freaked out. I let him stay and he painted ‘till damn near dawn. He was like that for days – painting the hell out of everything, refusing to take a
break. He even modified a paint job in ways a client didn’t ask for without clearing it with me, or the client, first.”
Dylan’s gut twisted.
“When I confronted him about it, he just said it looked better that way, then walked out. I haven’t seen him since.”
“Did you try getting in touch with him?”
“I called. I even went by his place. No answer. His car was there, though.”
Shit. Dylan bit his tongue.
“I considered calling the police to have them check up on him, but if he won’t answer the door for me, I figure he damn sure won’t answer it for the police. You need to check on him. If I were you, I’d do it now rather than later – I probably don’t need to tell you, but this isn’t like him.”
“I’m in Pittsburgh. It’s a six hour drive across PA to Newark.”
“Shit. I thought you were local.”
“I am. I’m just doing some work out of town. I’ll hit the road to Newark, but I won’t be getting in ‘till around four. If you hear from him before then, call me.”
“There anyone else you want me to call? Maybe someone who could check in on him while you’re on your way. Family or something.”
“No.”
Dylan tried Ben’s number immediately after ending the call with Griff, but got no answer. He left a message anyway, telling Ben to call him back.
His excess energy came in handy as he showered and stuffed himself into a clean pair of jeans and a t-shirt, moving at the speed of light. It was ten after ten by the time he walked out the door, and the summer sun was blinding as he hurried to his car, already sweating again.
* * * * *
Dylan had driven six hours straight, but he was still wired. Wired with nervous energy that stirred the dread sitting in his gut. He parked his car beside Ben’s Mustang and climbed the stairs to apartment 230.
He knocked hard on the door. “Ben! Ben open up, it’s Dylan.”
