by Amy Faye
"Please, don't make me wait," she whined, staring him in the eyes. His expression was an intense one.
"What about condoms?"
The idea hadn't even occurred to her, she realized. The first time she'd been close to calling the whole thing off without one, and now it hadn't even occurred to her.
"Do you have one?"
He pressed a kiss against her lips, and then disentangled himself from her legs and stood up. His cock was stiff now, she saw. Impossibly stiff, and as much as she ought to have had a very good working sense of its size she couldn't understand why it seemed so massive.
She wasn't about to fetch a ruler but as she watched him walk away she mused that he must have been eight inches, at least, and perhaps five inches around. If it were going to fit inside of her, she wasn't exactly sure how. But she'd managed to fit it into her mouth, so she'd figure it out somehow. One thing was certain, she wasn't going to let another day go by without having him.
He reappeared a moment later, still nude; now, he carried a shiny foil wrapper in one hand and tore it as she watched. "You want to put it on for me, babe?"
He offered the wrapper to her and she looked up at him. "You don't mind?"
He smiled wolfishly. "You'll come around eventually. Until then, I'm not going to try to force you into anything. What kind of guy do you think I am?"
She raised an eyebrow and he shrugged. "What can I say?"
She snapped up the foil from his outstretched hand and pulled the condom out, rolled up flat, and as she looked at it Caroline suddenly realized that she'd never done this before. Never even seen it done. Nobody in porn used them, and if they did then they'd usually have them put on off-screen.
Shannen seemed to sense her doubt and started helping her hand, guiding her. Once he'd helped her roll it on a couple of inches, she finished it off. Her eyes were hungry, looking at that cock. She wanted it, she realized, more than anything. More than breathing.
He pushed her back gently. She let him, enjoying the expression on his face as she laid back. She helped him spread her hips, held her legs stiff and open and her hips cocked up as he lined his hardness up to thrust into her. He shifted his weight uncertainly for a moment, winced in pain and shifted it again to take the weight off his bad side.
Then, suddenly, he pushed into her, and all of the anticipation proved to be more than she'd realized it would be. More than she'd expected. She let out a gasp that felt as if she were taking her first lungful of air after holding her breath for too long.
She felt full inside, felt his cock stretching her out to the limit. Her mind felt like it had been wiped blank except for the feeling of the man moving inside her.
He growled something low, something that sounded like 'fucking tight.' She felt tight. Too tight, maybe. She'd never done any of this before, but the one thing that she could say for certain was that she had been missing out.
"Give me a second," she gasped out. Her entire body felt like it was on fire, and the feeling of his cock inside her hurt. She tried to relax. Took deep breaths. Her mind wouldn't focus.
"You okay?" Caroline wondered dimly if this was how it was for everyone. If this was how Shannen acted with every woman, or if she was a special case.
She nodded absently, not sure if she was ready. Then he pulled out of her again, inch by inch, until she thought he was going to slip all the way out entirely. Her lungs filled with air slowly, her body starting to relax all on its own. And then he moved again, and the air was driven out of her. Her eyes snapped open wide, and she let out a moan that she was instantly ashamed to have made and could have done nothing to stop.
He moved inside her again, and she could feel an orgasm approaching already. His movements were sharp, quick. He hit her inside and moved again, and her eyes started to roll. Again. Again. Again. Her voice came out, low and hoarse, and her body started to move on its own, trying to scramble to pull him in closer, to get him deeper inside, even as he hit her as deep as she could imagine anything ever reaching.
She could feel him starting to quicken, could feel his rhythm starting to lose itself in the heat of their movements together. Finally he let out a hoarse gasp and stiffened. The feeling of his cock insider her, twitching as he spent himself, sent her spiraling into another orgasm.
Her body started to relax. Her mind started to drift. The last thing she knew, before sleep finally came to claim her, was the feeling of Shannen pulling the sheets aside for her, and then he left. She closed her eyes and let the tiredness overtake her. Just as it finally did, she could feel a weight pressing down on the bed beside her. She laid her arm out over him and then she wasn't thinking about anything any more, and everything felt like it might just end up okay.
31
There was a distinct feeling the next morning that something was off, when she awoke. It wasn't until she saw the indentation in the pillows beside her, next to the empty bed, that she realized precisely what it was that was wrong.
She'd fallen asleep beside someone. Beside Shannen, if she could believe it. And now, in spite of that, he was gone. She pressed herself out of bed, not bothering to dress, and padded out into the front room. If there was a time for modesty, it was probably before she let him fuck her brains out.
"Shannen?"
There was no answer. Nothing moved in the house, and as small as it was, if he were there then she would have heard it. She frowned. She'd been in his room before, when it was her room, and not his at all, but since he'd moved in, it was his space. He hadn't said it in so many words but she knew that he didn't want her in there, and she didn't want to betray that trust.
But this was a little bit of a strange situation, and with the unpleasant feeling rising in her gut she decided that she could allow herself just a peek, if it would help her to feel any better.
The door was unlocked. She'd had a lock installed, but she'd never checked to see if he used it, and apparently at least this time he hadn't bothered. There was nobody inside.
In fact, more than that, the room was practically unchanged. He had a gym bag in the corner, and there was a sock hanging out of one of the dresser drawers to tell her that he'd packed his clothes somewhere and wasn't just living out of a suitcase, but otherwise there was no change at all.
Considering that she'd cleaned out the room entirely, except for basic furniture, that seemed more than a little bit odd. Even, perhaps, a little bit discomfiting. She frowned. The bathroom door hung open, but she peered inside anyways, as if he might have been hiding as some sort of prank.
As she walked forward again, her skin starting to prickle at the coolness in the air, she knew with a certainty that whatever he was doing, it wasn't inside the house.
Caroline hesitated a moment, there. The easiest answer was to look out front, and see if the car was there. If it was, then there was really no problem, and she could relax. It was only a half-mile to the grocery store, for example, and on that block were a half-dozen other stores. A half-mile the other direction, and a whole new area of commercial property. So there really was nothing to worry about, she reminded herself. She'd gone for plenty of walks, both before and after she'd found herself a tenant.
But that feeling in her stomach continued to twist up, and she continued to feel that vague sense of panic building inside her. In spite of herself she chewed her lip. She ought to dress before she looked out, but the question nagged at her. Someone could easily see her if she opened the blinds, even just to take a peek.
It would only take a second to step back into the bedroom and put some clothing on. Something, anything, just enough to make her modest. The question scratched and clawed at her, though, and she knew without having to think about it that she was going to go check because she needed to scratch that itch before it took her over completely.
She stepped over to the door and put her eye up to the peep-hole. There was the street, and the tree out front, but there was no little black coupe. She must have missed it. Gathering herself up in one han
d, hoping to cover as much as she could, she forced herself toward the window, pushed the blinds aside, and…
Son of a bitch, she thought, her jaw tightening up. Wherever he'd gone, he shouldn't have done it. Especially since her gut told her that wherever it was that he'd gone, it wasn't just out to work. She took a deep breath and forced herself to calm down, forced herself to dress, and waited.
She waited a long time. Maybe an hour, maybe two. Long enough that hunger started to gnaw at her stomach. Long enough that the same hunger apparently decided that she was serious about not eating, and left her to her own devices in spite of herself.
The sound of the car pulling up did nothing to salve her worry. Nor did the sound of the door opening. When he came in, she soured. When she saw the trail of caked-on blood coming down from his scalp, saw the newly-busted lip, saw the wicked torn-open knuckles…
Her lips twisted into a snarl. "You idiot!"
He looked at her with a flat expression. His leg moved wrong when he took a step, but at least this time he was able to walk all the way to the door, she told herself. It did little to fix her foul mood.
"You should see the other guy," he offered. He dropped onto the couch beside her, seemingly oblivious to the blood that he was no doubt going to get on it.
"You fucking idiot! Shirt off, right now!"
Caroline could hear herself, dimly, far away as if it were someone else doing the talking. She sounded like a bitch. She felt like a bitch. But if he was going to get himself hurt, what else was she supposed to do?
He peeled the shirt off dutifully, his movements slow and jerky. There was a second line of blood, most of it dried, down his side. It was smudged where the shirt had rubbed against it.
"What do you think you were doing?"
"Can you fix me up, doc?"
She looked at him, her nostrils starting to flare. "You should have stayed in. You know that Coogan's goons were looking for you. Is it just that you want to get yourself killed? Is that it? Some kind of death wish?"
He grinned, and even in that expression she could see his exhaustion, the way that his body fought against him. "Who says they came looking for me?"
She stared at him, her eyes wide. "You didn't."
"Didn't what?" His expression was a dare to keep pushing, and she accepted the dare in spite of herself.
"You went looking for a fight with him, didn't you?"
He raised his eyebrows in a defiant gesture, one that said that he wouldn't be questioned on it. She felt like smacking him in his head, but he'd already busted it wide open and it would only make things worse. It would only give him what he apparently seemed to want.
"Of course not," he said. There was no deceit in his face, though. No lie to be found. Because the truth was that he expected her not to believe it, and he didn't much care what she thought. She grit her teeth together and stared at him for a long time. "Can you take a look at my head? I don't feel very good."
The son of a bitch didn't understand one bit what she was worried about, she realized. And as she stared at him, Caroline realized sourly that in spite of the night that they'd shared, she didn't know why she was worried, either.
After all, this was who he was. He was a fighter, and he was going to get into fights. He was going to get himself hurt. He was good at plenty of things. He intended to keep her safe, she believed that. But he didn't care one bit about how he was going to do it, and that was something else entirely. She bit her lip, looked at him a long time, and moved towards the bathroom.
The first-aid kit was in there, and she was going to need it for him. And then, once she was done getting him patched up, she might just be able to avoid the need to use it a second time.
32
Shannen's expression didn't do anything to make her feel better. In fact, if anything, he was just making her feel worse. When the phone rang, it was practically a godsend. At least now, finally, she'd have some sort of excuse to leave. It felt like the right thing to do.
She didn't look at the caller ID until she'd already stepped out the door. The name felt as if it should have been familiar, but she slid the answer button over and put the phone to her head not sure who she was going to be speaking to, precisely. "Hello?"
The woman on the other end of the line had a husky voice, one that Caroline guessed would have been appealing to a man. "Caroline Rice? I got your number from Sarah, this is Charlotte Edwards, from the hospital?"
"Oh, right. We've met, haven't we? You were my Dad's nurse. Right?"
She was an older woman, with hips that made it less than a surprise to learn that she had no less than three children at home, watched most of the time by her work-from-home husband.
"That's right," Carolotte confirmed.
"Is there something the matter? Do I need to come in for work, or…"
"It's not about work," the woman said. "But I thought you should know. Mr. Rice, he's not looking great. I didn't know whether or not I should go through any official channels on this, so I just called from my personal number, but if you were to come in, I don't think you would regret it."
"How bad is it?" Her heart pounded in her chest, the problem child inside temporarily forgotten. "Should I be worried?"
She slid easily into the seat of the Toyota and the engine came to life easily at the turn of her key. It seemed to sense that she didn't want any of its nonsense today.
"Worried…? I don't know. I'm not you. Maybe it's nothing, but I wouldn't want to risk it."
"Thanks. I'm about to be on the road, so… thanks. Maybe I'll see you when I get there?"
"I'm sure you will," the woman answered.
"Thank you again," Caroline repeated.
"It's no trouble. I know that when my father went, I would have wanted to know if there was even a little bit of risk."
"You're right. So again, thank you. I'll be there in twenty minutes."
She pressed the button to hang up and dropped the phone in her passenger seat, and stepped on the gas. It was a twenty minute drive, on most days, if she were taking anything close to a reasonable route there. The ride home, she noted, usually took at least thirty, when it was Shannen driving.
She didn't have any confusion over why that might be. One only needed to notice his attempts to surreptitiously glance over at her to figure out what precisely was on his mind. She couldn't help smiling at the thought.
The smile faded as she drove. She couldn't afford the distraction. Her foot got heavier and the car got louder as she drove, a whine coming from the engine that she'd been ignoring for months and was planning to continue ignoring indefinitely into the future in the hopes that it might go away all on its own.
If there was one thing that Caroline was thankful for, out of everything, it was the hospital. It felt strange to think of it that way, but as she drove up, the stark familiarity of it was almost grounding. There could be a thousand things going wrong. Inside the hospital, if her experience was any indicator, she knew there were probably more than that just in those tall concrete walls.
Hundreds of people were having days worse than hers. Months worse than hers. People who had no warning, crying over their Mom who just had a stroke out of the blue. Healthy and young and there was no reason that they should be taken away, but they were.
The mood that Caroline was in found that almost to be a comfort. She at least had some warning, however small. Too many people don't get any warning at all, just a dinnertime phone call that somewhere on the other side of the country, a simple appendectomy didn't go right and now you've got to make new plans for holiday break.
She took a deep breath in and closed her eyes. There was nothing to worry about. She was going to be fine. Dad was going to be fine. Charlotte had been over-cautious. The words repeated in her head until she stopped arguing with them. She forced them over and over.
Everything would be fine. Everything was going to be figured out, and there was absolutely no reason to be worried. If something happened to come up, so
me reason that she should worry, then she'd reevaluate when the time came. But it hadn't arrived yet.
She closed her eyes, the elevator going up. The sound of the elevator creaking pulled her out of the bubble of forced positivity for a moment, but only a moment. Then she pushed herself back in and just stared. Her breath came in, deep and slow. Everything was fine. Everything was going to be fine. She held it there for as long as she could, and then the doors to the elevator opened slowly and she let the breath out and forced herself to move mechanically.
There had been a long time to worry about Dad. There was no reason that she should be any more worried now than she had been when he was first diagnosed. Nothing to worry about at all, really. She blinked. Deep breath, straight back, eyes forward. Chin up. She put on a smile like it was liquid eyeliner, heavy and obvious and if it was too much then that was the right way to go.
Then she took her step inside, breathed deeply, and took care to use her least worried voice. "Hey, dude."
Dad looked up at her mildly. He seemed tired. As tired as she'd ever seen him, worn down by the pills and the surgery and whatever else had been happening to him behind the scenes. Whatever he hadn't been telling her, and apparently neither had any of his doctors.
"You look good."
"You look good yourself," Caroline answered, silently cursing that she wasn't the first one to say it. The carefully-balanced false sense of serenity inside her threatened to explode into a thousand pieces, like an old corelle plate. It would have felt good to break down, to scream and cry and throw a temper tantrum.
But she didn't, because it wouldn't have helped. So instead, she sat down beside him, pulled out her phone to set it on the bedside table, and smiled at her father.
"You didn't have to come early, you know," he said. "I can keep. I'm not like milk, about to curdle if you leave it for a second."
He sounded bad, she thought. The control wavered again. Less, this time. She was learning to hold it together better, bit by bit. His eyes sparkled at her.
