Single Dad Next Door: A Fake Marriage Romance

by Penelope Bloom

  He’s about to reach my throbbing clitorus with his lips. He lingers, letting the heat of his mouth sink deep into the skin just above my valley. He pulls back and I suck in a breath, anticipating the explosion of pleasure when he finds my waiting heat, but he instead tortures me by kissing my thigh and using his hands to lift my leg so that he can reach all the sensitive skin on the inside of my leg. I press the back of my head into the ground, gritting my teeth. It feels so good. I lift my head to look down at him and feel a fresh surge of excitement. He’s holding my leg with one hand under my ankle and the other beneath my knee. His smoldering eyes regard me with a heart-stopping intensity as he kisses a path down the soft flesh of my leg.

  My breathing comes in heaving gasps and I clench my teeth, feeling such a powerful need that I think it might actually tear me apart. When his lips finally press into my clit, a moan spills from my lips and I press myself back into him, squeezing my eyes shut, reeling from the intensity of it all.

  I’ve been with men before. Sex has never felt like this, even all those years ago with Jesse. I think the fear of giving myself up to him for the first time kept me from fully giving myself over to the moment. Now it has only been a few short seconds of his mouth against my clit and I know with crushing certainty that he just ruined sex with other men. Nothing will ever touch this. Nothing will come close.

  I lose track of time, giving myself over to the waves of blinding ecstasy that are spreading from his tongue as he works not just my clit, but everywhere. He circles my opening, and even plunging it inside me and swirling it in a way that has me gasping his name. Men who have gone down on me before were tentative, like they were reluctant to do anything too dirty, or like they were just going through the motions as a means to an end. Jesse attacks my pussy like it’s the most delicious, precious thing in the world, paying agonizing detail to me and how I respond. I can sense him making adjustments based on my body’s response, expertly becoming more and more zeroed in on how to ramp up my pleasure to obscene levels.

  He’s a fucking sex god.

  I never want it to stop, but I can only hold back the tidal waves for so long. He presses his mouth hard into my clit, working me in a frenzy of delicate and hard, circling presses of his tongue as his fingers glide to my entrance. I spasm with release, cumming so hard that I cry out.

  “Fuck!” I gasp. I’ve never been loud in bed, but he has me moaning and screaming his name and I don’t even care. I dig my hands into his silky hair, squeezing and pressing his mouth into me as I quiver, absolutely floored by the torrent of sensations ripping through me.

  When my orgasm finally subsides, I realize with a mixture of fear and excitement that it’s not over. I’m completely wiped out, but with every passing second I look at his gorgeous face and hard body and the scrumptiously large cock throbbing between his legs… well, I make a quick recovery.

  I reach down and wrap my fingers around his cock, biting my lip and looking into his eyes. “Do you have a condom?” I ask.

  He reaches to his discarded pants and fishes out a metallic wrapper and expertly opens it with one hand and slides it on his cock in seconds. I try not to dwell on why he’s so good at that. It’s not hard to shift my focus when he presses himself against me, straining the walls of my core with his thick cock.

  My eyebrows draw together and my mouth opens in a silent “O”. There’s a brief moment of tension and then he’s inside, filling me so completely that I wonder how I ever lived without it. I wrap my legs around his back, squeezing the hard, corded muscles of his arms as he holds himself up over me and glides himself in and out of me, slowly at first, almost reverently. I get lost watching his face, the way it would almost look like he was frowning if his lips weren’t slightly parted, and if his downcast eyes weren’t taking in their fill of my naked body.

  His pace increases with a relentless certainty, never wavering, always getting just a little faster with each thrust. I become transfixed by it, the precision of it, and the way it creates a suspense, a question of how long he can keep up the increasing pace, like listening to a master singer hit higher and higher notes, knowing it can’t go on forever but reveling in the anticipation.

  He pounds into me, face drawn in a mask of passion. I squeeze his arms, nails digging into his smooth skin. I look up at him, the perfect outline of his body silhouetted against a blanket of stars above us. Being with him feels so primal and so right, like if I could only hold on to this moment, it would breathe the life back into my world, giving everything the tinge of meaning it has been missing since he left.

  His pace reaches a fever pitch and he finally groans, tensing and letting his head fall beside mine as his cock pulses inside me. I feel the warmth of his cum through the condom and I’m shaken by another climax.

  I don’t know what this means for us, whether it was just release or something deeper. I don’t know if Jesse felt the same bond and connection I did, but if I can trust my heart, I know he did. The sensation of something real and tangible linking us together was unmistakable.

  35

  Jesse

  I’m in a dark room. Water drips from the ceiling somewhere. A man’s boots scuff on the ground as he picks up metal implements from a table behind me and sets them back down, humming casually. My body is on fire. My wrists are rubbed raw from where the ropes hold me. The bullet wound in my side feels like it’s festering, and my back is pulsing with agonizing pain from where they whipped me. I spit blood on the floor, forcing myself to straighten and stay strong. If they’re going to kill me, so be it, but I’m going to die like a fucking soldier, head held high and without a trace of fear in my eyes.

  The man steps back in front of me. He’s middle-eastern with dark skin and a thick beard. He has oddly kind eyes for someone in his line of work. They are light brown, soft, like his features. I can picture him sitting on the edge of his children’s bed, reading them a story. But now the only story he wants to hear is where I came from and who I work for.

  “Go fuck yourself,” I say, spitting another mouthful of blood at his feet.

  He regards the blood with disinterest, raising the surgeon’s knife to my face. His accent is thick, but I can understand him well enough. “This knife is sharpened by a special machine. You will not even feel the cut at first. It can slice skin and bone just as easily. I could carve at you for hours before you even lost consciousness.”

  My eyes are drawn to the razor-thin blade and I grit my teeth. “Fuck you,” I say.

  He tsks, “And I thought we were getting along so well.”

  Without preamble or hesitation, he swipes the blade across my thigh. I feel a slight tug, nothing more, nothing less. His lips slowly curve up into a malicious grin as he raises the knife to my face again. It’s smeared in blood now. I try not to, but my eyes fall to my thigh, where I can clearly see a thin black line across my the bare skin. The pain follows seconds later, but he’s right, it’s not much. I watch the blood rise up and spill from the wound. Judging from the bleeding, the cut is fucking deep. I know how little blood it actually takes to bleed out, and I’ve already lost so much. If he thinks he can keep this up for hours, he’s going to be disappointed.

  He taps the knife against my cheek. It’s warm and wet, not cold like it should be.

  I stir, no longer sitting upright, but lying on my back. The pain in my leg fades to memory and my eyes jolt open. My chest is heaving and my body is covered in a sheen of sweat.

  Makayla’s hand rests on my bare chest and she props herself up over me, looking down into my face with so much compassion it hurts.

  “Hey,” she says, voice as soft as an angels. “I’m here. You’re okay.”

  I sit upright, not wanting to give in to the warmth of her touch, not feeling like I deserve to be comforted. Those dark moments are just part of my penance, the price I pay for what I did and what I didn’t do in the war.

  “It’s fine. Just a bad dream.”

  “Your hands are shaking,” she says,
sliding her fingertips down my forearm to steady my hand by clasping it in hers.

  I stand, pulling away from her. I’m still completely naked, and it feels a little strange to be bare-ass naked outdoors in the light of the morning, but I don’t care.

  She stands, apparently feeling the same because she starts to hunt down her panties and bra, sliding them on. I’ve played this scene out so many times before. The morning after, when reality comes crashing back and I realize I want nothing more than to get as far as fucking possible from the woman I just slept with. I keep waiting for the uncontrollable need to get separation and space. It’s part of what really held me back from sleeping with Makayla.

  Something in me is broken, and I’ve known it for a long time. I can’t stick around after I’ve taken what I want from a woman. We talk, drink, flirt, and then fuck. After that, it’s empty. I didn’t want the same thing to happen with Makayla. I worried even the feelings I have for her would be tainted by the darkness that takes me when I fuck, but all I feel is the cold morning air chilling my sweat-soaked body, the lingering surprise that I was able to cum without dominating and forcing her to submit to me. We just had sex. There wasn’t anything dirty or twisted about it. And I came.

  When I turn slightly to look at her as she bends over to pick up her pants, my cock stirs and I think about moving behind her to grip those perfect fucking hips and…

  I still want her. I still want her as bad as the night before, maybe worse. But something else is pulling at my consciousness. Guilt. The sinking, stomach-churning sense that this is more than I deserve. I’m a fucking asshole who doesn’t deserve happiness. It’s not pussy feelings talking or psychobabble left over from my time with the army shrink. It’s a cold fact. I’ve killed and I’ve made mistakes that cost men who trusted me their lives. And now I learn that I made a mistake that led to Liam being tortured, and by the looks of it, he got it worse than I ever did. Fuck. I do not deserve her, but I’m going to take her because I’m a selfish bastard. I want her too badly to let her go again, and I can’t stand the thought of her with another man.

  “We should head back,” I say.

  She bites her lip, looking drop-dead gorgeous in her lacy black panties and white bra with black trim. “Only if you keep those clothes off.”

  I smirk, glancing down at my rock-hard cock and naked body. “That might not be the best way to avoid notice.”

  She steps in closer, hand circling my cock. “I might need to take care of this for you if you plan to fit beneath the steering wheel.”

  I lick my lips, stealing a handful of her perfect ass and kissing her softly on the lips. “As much as I would enjoy that, we really shouldn’t linger here. “Makayla… my dog Makayla, has probably crapped all over the apartment by now.”

  She gives me an amused look. “I’m starting to get a lot less flattered that you named your dog after me.”

  I grab my clothes and start to get dressed. “I told you. The shelter named her that.”

  “Right,” she says.

  I park in the garage across the street from my apartment building. “Stay here,” I say to Makayla. “No running off this time.”

  She glances around the parking garage a little nervously. “I think I’ll take my chances with you.”

  I sniff, looking around and realizing she’s probably right. It will be safer if she’s with me. I can’t be sure how much manpower these people have. If it’s a small operation, there’s no way they would find us here. But if they’re well-funded enough, they could have eyes all over. I pull out my Glock, racking a bullet in the chamber and re-holstering it.

  “You really think you’ll need that?” asks Makayla.

  I motion for her to stop before we step out of the garage and onto the sidewalk, making sure it’s clear. “I don’t know. But they know I’m coming back.”

  I hear her take a deep breath as we cross the street and step into the lobby of my building. There is quite a bit of activity, and I recognize most of the faces, but there are too many tenants for me to know everyone, so I move carefully, always touching Makayla and doing my best to shield her.

  We take the elevator without incident and reach my hallway. My muscles are all tight, ready to engage at a moment’s notice as we cross the distance, stopping outside my door. I unlock all the locks and then draw my gun. “Stay just behind me,” I whisper to Makayla.

  She nods as we creep inside. My hair prickles on the back of my neck when I hear my dog whining from the bedroom. The door was open when I left. She shouldn’t be trapped in there. I close the door behind us and quietly re-lock it. If we’re not alone in here, I don’t want any surprises coming from behind.

  I turn off the lights. The blackout curtains make the apartment almost pitch black without them, despite the rising sun outside. “Stay right here,” I whisper.

  I can barely see the whites of Makayla’s eyes as she nods. My dog whines in the distance, but I don’t hear anything else. I move past the kitchen, stepping silently and sliding a chef’s knife from the block on my way. I hold the knife in my left hand, which is still a little weak from the hold Liam put on me last night, and my Glock in the right. I’m about to reach my bedroom when I hear a sudden rush of movement. I whirl toward the sound just as there’s more movement from behind me, coming from Makayla’s room. One of the assailants bumps into a side-table in the near darkness and I hear him crash into the floor. The other tries to take cover behind my couch. I can’t see much, but when I hear the groan of the couch’s leather armrest, I know exactly where to point and shoot.

  I squeeze off two rounds, catching split-second freeze frames of the room in the bright muzzle flash. I see a black hole ripped into the inside of the couch’s armrest from my first shot. A second hole appears an inch to the right and this time I see a man falling out from behind the couch, clutching his chest. I turn just in time to ram the knife in the other assailant’s stomach.

  He’s holding a taser and a small black club, which both clatter to the floor as I ram the knife into him. Hot blood rushes over my hand and I instinctively pull the knife free, driving it home through his heart, ending him in an instant. I cross the distance to the downed man behind the couch, aiming my gun in his direction as I approach. I kneel, dragging the blade of the knife across his throat to finish the job. Both men wear the golden goat masks.

  I wait outside the door to my bedroom, staining my ears to listen for any sound, but all I can hear are Makayla’s panicked breaths. She’s trying to keep as quiet as possible, but her breathing is too rapid. I hate that she’s here for this, but I hope in the darkness she can’t really see much.

  I open the door and rush in, gun raised. There’s a burst of light and an ear-splitting sound as someone fires a heavy caliber pistol toward the doorway. I roll inside, distracted as my dog rushes toward me, whimpering. I fire three rounds toward where I saw the gunman, but I still hear movement and cursing from behind my bed. I didn’t hit him. I run past my dog, sliding down on the other side of my bed and then lifting the frame and mattress in one quick motion, flipping the whole thing over toward the gunman on the other side.

  He’s forced to run out into the open. I fire once, hitting him in the shoulder. His gun clatters to the ground and he’s jolted backwards, squeezing a hand to the bullet wound. I rush him, pinning him to the wall by the throat. “What the fuck are you here for? What do you want?”

  “You,” he croaks. “We were supposed to capture you and” he gags as my hand tightens. I’m forced to ease up, letting him get enough air to speak. “Boss wanted to make you watch while he fucked your girl. Then he’d kill you.”

  My blood burns like acid in my veins. I grip his throat again, digging my fingers into his flesh until I feel his tendons straining. His eyes bulge and he claws at me. I ease up one more time. “Who is he? Who’s your fucking boss?”

  “The Jackal,” he coughs, voice like sandpaper as he collapses to the ground, retching and trying to crawl away from me.

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nbsp; I aim my Glock at the back of his head and fire, dusting my carpet and walls with his blood. Makayla rushes into the room, eyes wide and mouth open in shock. She stutters to a stop, taking in the violence one piece at a time.

  “Are you…” she mutters, eyes glassy.

  I move to her, taking her shoulders and easing her from the room. I’m probably smearing blood all over her, but I talk in low, soothing tones, trying to calm her. My mind is elsewhere. Liam did this. I let him go because it appeased my guilt and now I’ve put Makayla in danger because of it. And as long as I’m involved with her, she’s never going to be safe. I keep my hand on my holstered gun as we step into the hallway.

  “Come on,” I whisper, slapping my leg to get my dog’s attention. She hurries after me, happily panting and slobbering. “We can’t stay here. Cops are probably already on the way. I should be in the clear because it was a home invasion, but we can’t afford to get tied up with questioning right now. We have to stay on the move and low key. Okay?”

  Makayla’s eyes are still distant, but she nods. “They’re dead, aren’t they?” she asks.

  “Yeah. They’re dead. They can’t hurt you now.” Those men can’t, but whoever else Liam plans to send still can and will. And if I keep selfishly staying involved with you, they aren’t going to stop.

  We take the elevator downstairs. An elderly couple steps inside with us and the woman smiles up at me sweetly.