by Amy Brent
But it seems our pelvises are ahead of our hands. They start dry humping each other, shoving our eager hands away. My pussy just wants the feel of that dick and doesn’t care in what capacity. Already, his bulge is gloriously visible through his suede pants. As our pelvises mime out how this will end, our lips tug at each other hungrily.
“Oh yes,” I moan as he rips up the skirt of my dress.
“Oh yes is fucking right,” Clayton growls, yanking down my panties.
He shoves himself into me with one slick thrust. My body aches and pounds with it. I’m so perfectly filled. Oh yes.
Our bodies grind his dick into me deeper, in and in and in. Then, slowly, painstakingly, he peels himself out. He repeats the motion a few times, in farther before pulling himself out all the way.
“You’re going to like this,” Clayton declares assuredly as he positions me on all fours like a dog.
Before I can think to protest, he slides himself into me again. This insertion almost makes my pelvis collapse in shocked pleasure. Fan-fucking-tastic. That’s how this feels. The new position sends tremors ratcheting through me.
Clayton reaches around and grasps my breasts under my dress. He massages and holds them as he pumps into me. In and out, deep and deeper.
He continues until a scream I can’t control dribbles out of my throat, until my pelvis collapses definitively, shaking and trembling.
When I come to, he’s still pumping into me, his grunts more heated with every thrust.
“Fucking right.”
He slaps my ass and pumps me harder than ever, reawakening my pussy from the afterglow. Newfound pleasure explodes in me as a second release bowls me down. Oh, yes! He empties himself into me as my orgasm runs its course.
Afterward, we lie in a tangle of limbs.
“I can’t believe you were a virgin,” Clayton says, his gaze resting on me admiringly.
“Do we have to talk about it?” I ask, looking away uncomfortably.
“Sorry.” Silence. Then: “But seriously. Sex with you is pretty much better than—”
“Clayton!”
His affectionate hug softens me only slightly. I can’t seem to relax now.
“Whoa, okay,” he says coolly.
Guilt scrapes through me. What’s my problem?
I direct my gaze to the tinted glass window.
Maybe it has to do with that. Right now, everything is tinted by the deception that’s only been growing the more time I spend with Clayton. Maybe I shouldn’t have gotten into this at the start. But I did. I did and now there’s something really big I have to tell Clayton about who I am and how I’m related to Winston.
The way he’s wrapped me up in his arms and the way he’s resting his chin on my shoulder is only making it worse. All this time, I rested easy in the knowledge that this was just a meaningless fling to him. But what if it’s more than that? What if Clayton not only doesn’t fire me but keeps me around? What if he keeps wanting to see me like this?
Could I do that? Could I do it when this looming lie is stifling the enjoyment I have, every feeling I have?
“There’s something I have to tell you,” I say slowly.
Clayton doesn’t sense the looming danger.
“Is it that you’re still a virgin?” he asks with a mischievous grin that stretches to his eyes.
Cracking up, I flick him in the chest. “No, you goof.”
He only smiles at me. I wonder how long that smile will last when I say what I’m about to.
“I mean it though.” I disengage myself so I don’t have to feel him do so when I tell him. “About the ad…”
“I know. How lucky are we? Four stars to nannies.com!”
“I haven’t been completely honest with you.”
That shuts him up. His mouth draws together in an unforgiving line.
“I found the ad. I responded to it because…” I trail off, exhaling in exasperation. “Winston is my nephew. Helena is my sister.”
The most terrifying of silences spreads throughout the limo.
As if in some horror movie, Clayton’s head gradually twists my way.
“No.”
The single word is part request, part plea, part demand. It indicates what I know already: I’m completely and utterly screwed.
Chapter 7: Clayton
“I know she ran out,” Stevie says gently, “and that she was probably as crazy to you as she was to me and my parents. But I wanted to know Winston for myself. I wanted to…”
I shrink back into the seat. All my limbs are leaden. Even the frosty look she levels at me seems robotic.
“She put you up to this, didn’t she?” My voice is a low accusation. When it comes, hers is a high shrill:
“No, Clayton. Just listen to me…”
I don’t catch the rest. I’m too busy throwing my clothes on and thrusting out hers.
“Get out.”
I spit the words at her, and she recoils as if she’s been slapped.
I glare at the leather seat ahead of me. I can’t even bear to look at Stevie.
Only once I hear the slam of the limo door does thought return to me.
Of fucking course. Am I really surprised that Helena is involved? This has her crazy ass written all over it. The first really great thing in my life since Winston, and it’s all a lie. A big, fat, powerful pile of bullshit. Stevie probably isn’t even a real virgin, or wasn’t. Whatever.
And here I thought I was finally free of Helena. That the crazy midnight phone calls finally petered out. That she stopped showing up at the house, drunk and belligerent, demanding to see her son, who she forgot at the zoo the last time I let her see him against my better judgement. No, Helena destroys everything she touches, so it should be no surprise that Stevie, or whoever she is, is destroyed by Helena too.
The rest of the day, I go through the motions on autopilot. I let my driver take me home. I tuck Winston into bed and dodge questions about Stevie. I say a quick good night to my mom without telling her just how horribly right she was.
Then I collapse in bed. It takes me a while to get to sleep, but I know it will come—just how feeling better will. It won’t happen today, and it certainly won’t happen tomorrow. But one day, like the morning I woke up and didn’t curse that I ever knew Helena, this will ebb away too. I will forget Stevie and the crooked way she smiles, how she looks at me just after she comes with those round, grateful eyes. Yes. Right now this hurts like hell, but it won’t always. Right?
Despite this, a small part of me wonders if Stevie was telling the truth back in the limo. A small part of me hopes with everything I have that she was. But a big part of me knows better by now.
--
I awake to ringing. Groaning, I blindly punch buttons on my phone until it quiets before rolling to the other side of my bed. Guess this is the price I pay for having my own business—and leaving my phone on at night. A few seconds later, the phone rings again. Shit. It might be something important.
I pick it up to hear high-pitched laughter.
“How fucking classic. I should’ve guessed,” Helena says.
My fingers instinctively clench around the phone. No fucking way. If it isn’t my ex-girlfriend herself.
“What do you want?” I snap.
“Just for you to know that I know all about you fucking my sister,” she says. “She didn’t tell me, but she didn’t have to. I’ve had a friend of mine keeping tabs on your house, and as soon as you got a new little nanny, I knew. It took me just a few more days to get the details. I’m going to use this in the next custody battle.”
At the sound of a drink being poured, a scowl contorts my face.
“Stop playing stupid with me, Helena. I’m not in the mood. I know you sent Stevie to fuck with me.”
“Fuck you, Clayton. Why am I not surprised you’re pinning this on me? You fucking bastard! I just wanted you to know that I’m not having my son stay in a house with a fucking bastard and a whore!”
She tops i
t all off by hanging up.
I hold the phone for another minute or so, staring at the wall dully. My midnight mind can’t make sense of things. Was Helena actually saying what I think she was? My dear psycho ex is a lot of things, but an adept drunken liar is not one of them. During our call, she was drinking. That much was obvious. But it sounded like she was pissed about me being with Stevie, not gloating in victory. Could I have totally misinterpreted the situation with Stevie?
I sink back into my bed, my mind helpfully supplying a reel of moments with Stevie: the tender, distraught way she could barely look at me in the limo when she admitted the truth, the love that radiated off her in waves whenever she was in Winston’s presence. If it didn’t seem like she was putting on an act, maybe it’s because she wasn’t. Maybe she really did just want to meet her nephew and didn’t mean for any of this attraction stuff with me to happen.
That leaves one question, the only thing that matters now: What am I going to do about it?
There’s a web of thoughts, wants, and experiences so thick that I can’t find the end of it. What I should do is obvious. I should take this as an opportunity to end things like I should’ve done in the first place. Let things be. Maybe message Stevie in a few days to apologize for everything but not invite her back. Or, if I can’t do that, just let things be.
I nod to myself. Yes, I should just let things be.
The next second, my finger is dialing a now-familiar number. But instead of ringing, I’m met with a female electronic voice: “This number is no longer in service.”
Ripping the phone away from my ear, I check the number I just dialed. It’s Stevie’s.
Jamming off the call with my thumb, I dial the number again. Once again, before any sort of ring, I get the female electronic bitch telling me, “This number is no longer in service.”
Shit, shit, shit.
And yet there’s relief in my panic too. This makes the choice easy. But that consideration has a lifetime of five seconds before I’m dialing my mom’s number.
Minutes later, she shows up at my door, curlers on her head and an irritated, suspicious glare behind her thick purple glasses.
“Clayton, what’s this about?”
“I don’t have time, Mom. I’m sorry. I’ll be back in a few hours. Everything’s fine. I’ll explain later.”
I throw myself out of the house before she can ask me anything more. I have no fucking clue what I’m doing. I’m just heedlessly racing down the highway based on some sense, some instinct, that I’m losing something. I don’t have time to waste in thinking it over when Stevie is inching further and further out of reach.
All I know is: Why would she turn off her phone unless she’s going somewhere? Somewhere like Australia?
I almost ran off to Australia it got so bad, she said nonchalantly with a little giggle that first time she came over.
I almost ran off to Australia…Australia…Australia…
A groan rips through me. She wouldn’t be so impulsive as to just run off and do that, would she?
It seems my hands think she would, because they hang a left at the exit to the airport.
Inside, the place isn’t exactly brimming with people. Only those who have no other choice or are big suckers for cheap flights would be here at—I check the time—two in the morning. My head roves around to see if there are any sleepy twenty-something-year-olds who might be her. But my tired eyes come up with a big fat nothing. Wherever she is, it’s not here.
A quick glance at the big electronic screen tells me there’s only one flight via Delta Airlines leaving for Australia in…ten minutes. Shit.
Uncertainties and questions itch at the edge of my mind as I run toward the Delta desk. I shove them away. There’s no time to think this through or give it any logical consideration right now.
I don’t know why, I don’t know how, but I have to find Stevie.
The flight attendant at the gray Delta Airlines desk is crisp and efficient with me: “I’m afraid we can’t give out any passenger information.”
I’m about to argue when I catch a familiar face at another Delta desk two rows over.
“Harold,” I say, rushing over there, grinning wide.
How fucking lucky am I? Harold, my buddy from Psych 101 in university, is sitting happily at his desk.
“So, this is going to sound crazy,” I say.
He gives me a deadpan look. “Clayton,” he says, “you are crazy.”
I let myself laugh for half a second before I switch gears.
“So, there’s this girl, and I’m pretty sure she’s leaving on a flight tonight that she is no business leaving on. I need to see her—just to say my piece and then I’ll go. No funny business.”
A pause.
“You realize that this is the definition of funny business?” Harold says, wiggling his black brows. I press the flats of my palms to the linoleum counter.
“Okay. Maybe it is. All I know is that you have to let me on that flight. Please.”
“I don’t have to,” Harold says, leaning his hairy elbow on the desk and putting his head on his hand, “but when you snuck me that paper with what positive and negative reinforcement were, it saved my ass. I probably wouldn’t be in this job if it weren’t for you. Hang on a sec.”
A minute or so later, he’s back with a boarding pass.
“I’ll probably be suspended for this, but you can thank me later,” he says. I’m running off when he calls after me. “If you actually use it and go to Australia, though, I’ll kill you.”
I wave my hand good-bye in response. Jogging down the wide store-lined hallway, I swivel my head left and right like a windshield wiper.
I need gate A5. A5…A5…
The gate is completely empty, probably because the flight is set to leave in...shit. I have three minutes. Sprinting full tilt, I barrel past the attendant.
People are yelling behind me, but luckily, I’ve kept up my running regiment since high school. Down in the basement on my corner-bound Phillips treadmill, I do thirty minutes each and every day. Thank God.
As I race through the connecting tunnel to the plane, it occurs to me that I’m going to incur incredible fees and probably penalties for this, which is based only on a stupid whim—some gut feeling that could be completely and extremely wrong.
Could be, but isn’t. It can’t be. As I race onto the flight, I glance every which way. I don’t have much time, but it’s enough time to see that she isn’t here. I was wrong.
My slamming feet take me all the way to the end of the small plane to confirm what my ringing head knows already. I fucked up, big time. Wherever Stevie went, it’s not here.
Chapter 8: Stevie
“Clayton?”
On my way back from the bathroom, I see the back of a man who can’t be who I think he is. Once again, I’m hoping so hard that my mind has mistaken someone else for someone I’d like them to be. But when he hears his name, his head swivels, and I realize I’ve made no mistake.
It’s him, Clayton, red-faced and out of breath and ogling me like he’s almost as surprised to see me as I am him.
My spaghetti legs dump my body into the chair closest to me. My voice comes out as a weak croak.
“What are you doing in here?”
He eyes me uncertainly for a minute, as if this is the first time he’s asked himself this, and now that he’s thinking about it, he’s not so sure he should be here at all.
“You can’t leave,” he says finally. “You can’t leave before I’ve said what I have to say.”
I stare at him dully, my mind dutifully reminding me that I should say something, anything.
But Clayton forges on without me saying a word.
“I screwed up back there in the limo. I jumped to conclusions based on how psycho Helena was when we were together—which was only about a month, but long enough for her to have a kid with me and then run off. She came back just in time to deliver the kid and then ran off again. Anyway, I thought an
y sister of hers had to be like her, and anything…anyone like you had to be a setup.”
He says all this in a tone that indicates part of him still believes it. But if he did, he wouldn’t be standing here now, flagging me down on a plane that’s about to leave.
“And?” I ask.
“And I was wrong,” he says simply. “Helena called me last night, gloating and yelling. Claims she’s going to try to take Winston back based on her evidence of us being together, but I know she’s full of shit. It’s been the same old story every year of poor Winston’s life. But that’s not why I’m here. I’m here because I realize I made a mistake regarding you. I don’t know where this, us, is going to lead. I know it’s early, that I could be totally misconstruing things or misreading things or blowing things out of proportion. This could be my biggest mistake yet.”
He heaves a deep breath.
“But I know that the biggest mistake of all would be to let you leave on this plane without talking to you.”
All I can do is nod at this point. His words haven’t even begun to sink in. A few minutes ago, I was set to go to Australia with George, who’d found the round-trip flight last minute and was going to meet me a day later. But now?
Clayton settles into the seat next to me. He tucks a stray strand of hair behind my ear, his hand slipping to give my scrunchy a good squeeze.
“I love these things, you know.”
As if suddenly remembering why he’s here, he adds, “So will you stay?”
“I don’t know,” I say uncertainly. “I’m supposed to meet George in Australia. I can’t have her go all alone.”
Clayton thinks about this for a minute. Then he says, “Did I ever tell you I have a jet?”
“What exactly are you saying?” I ask, too nervous to even believe it could be true.
“What I’m saying,” Clayton says, his jaw setting with his decision, “is that I don’t know what this is between you and me, if what I’m feeling for you right now is just because of everything that’s happened between us so fast. All I know is that when I spend time with you, I want to spend longer with you. And you’re great with Winston. I want to see where this leads. I don’t want to be denied the chance to explore what I have with the first woman I’ve found remarkable in as long as I can remember. So”—he takes both my hands in his—“Stevie, will you accept my offer to fly you and your friend, along with me, my mom, and Winston, to Australia tomorrow, once we’ve had a chance to pack our bags?”
