Love Hacked

by Penny Reid

  “There is boring. There is sensational. There is mediocre. There is lazy. There is good. There is evil. People do implausible things all the time, and they run the gamut of moderately weird to truly extraordinary. But there is no normal. The world is an unbelievable place full of unbelievable people doing unbelievable things.”

  As my mini-tirade came to an end, I realized that I’d lifted my voice to a near shout. The silence afterward was deafening in its completeness. He studied me, and I allowed him to do so without giving him anything further.

  Belatedly he asked, his expression still carefully cool, “Why did you stop? If the money was so good, why stop?”

  I sighed, glanced at the wall behind his head. “It was interesting, but I never enjoyed it. And, well, I was fired actually. I came across individuals who were truly troubled, and they distressed me, so I tried to counsel them. I tried to encourage them to seek the help they needed, and my boss didn’t like my improvisation. Nevertheless, I guess you could say one of the main reasons I became a psychiatrist was because I recognized I had a knack for helping people simply by talking to them.”

  “Why not an adult psychiatrist? Why children?”

  I moved my attention back to the figs and goat cheese on my plate and pushed it away before meeting his gaze. “Because I want to help before it’s too late. I wanted to make a difference early rather than later.”

  He frowned, his expression somber. “Do you think it’s too late when people reach adulthood?”

  “No. But it is more difficult, because you have to have the money to pay for good treatment, and you have to want to change. Therefore, most people don’t seek the help they need.”

  He nodded absentmindedly. Then, unexpectedly, a ghost of a smile curved his lips. “I still can’t believe you were a phone sex operator.”

  I pinched my lips to keep from returning his smile. “Well, you asked and I answered.”

  “You did.” He frowned. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Alex surveyed me for a long moment, and I was at a complete loss as to what he was thinking.

  Under the unwavering weight of his gaze, I felt tired and a little sad. Our games, fun though they were, had taken a toll. I’d missed him. And now that he was here, I still missed him. I wanted to touch him and crawl into his warmth. I wanted to curl up with him in my bed wearing my Wake me in two days T-shirt.

  But he was acting strange.

  I accepted my failure to seduce the man and gathered a bit of resolve as I stood from the table. My mind had switched gears, and I was making a mental list of all the things I needed to do before I could go home, starting with the dishes and likely ending with my Wookie costume of rejection.

  I pushed my shoulder length hair out of my face, tucked it behind my ear, and stacked the plates to clear them.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, still sitting, just like a man.

  I shrugged, didn’t look at him. “I’m clearing the table. I need to get these dishes done before we leave.”

  I heard the scrape of his chair as he stood at the same time I reached for my flatware. But, before I could add it to the pile I’d already made, his hand gripped my wrist; he used it as leverage to spin me toward him and against his chest. My fork and knife clattered to the table.

  I released a little yelp at the suddenness of the movement, but it was quickly swallowed by his mouth.

  His mouth on mine.

  His mouth mouthlesting me.

  At first, I melted into the kiss, which was very easy to do given the fact that his hands were hot and moving all over my body, and I’d been aching for him. He was squeezing, caressing me through the thin fabric of the red dress. But when his hands skimmed the hem with unequivocal intent to lift my skirt, I pushed away and stumbled backward, my hand raised between us to ward him off.

  Well, ward him off until I had satisfactory answers. Then, hopefully, I’d be warding him on.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “What do you think I’m doing?” He stalked toward me, a single eyebrow raised.

  “I don’t know. If I knew I wouldn’t be asking.”

  Despite my hand between us, he pushed his chest against it, forced me to walk backwards until my bottom connected with the wall behind me. He also stopped, glanced down at my hand, then brought my palm to his lips and kissed it. Then he kissed the inside of my wrist. Then he licked the sensitive skin with the tip of his tongue.

  My knees shook.

  “Whoa…seriously, what are you doing?”

  Just his eyes lifted, and he peered at me from underneath his eyebrows, his tongue still on my wrist. “I’m taking what I want.”

  “Which is?” I’m not ashamed to admit, my voice was unsteady like a wooden lean-to during an earthquake.

  “You.” Alex stepped forward again, crowding me. I had to lift my chin to maintain eye contact.

  “I want you. I’m taking you.”

  What? Since when?

  He lowered his face, his intentions clear as a Texas summer sky, and I turned my head the split second before his mouth seized mine. This was all happening too fast.

  He recovered easily and left wet kisses on my cheek, jaw, neck. Then his tongue was in my ear. He was an expert ear-tonguer; likely a fast learner too.

  “Alex, wait, wait—ah!” My hands fluttered around his shoulders like I was fanning the air, then finally they succumbed to pushing…his jacket off his shoulders, which was the opposite of pushing him away….

  …Which had been my intent, because we hadn’t talked about anything of consequence, and I hadn’t seen him in days. Because I still didn’t know anything. Because all his very valid reasons from weeks ago were still very valid.

  The jacket fell, discarded and forgotten, in a pile behind him.

  “Oh, Alex. Wait. Please wait. Oh, God, Alex….”

  His hands returned to the hem of my dress, teased the bared skin above my thigh-high stockings, and continued northward.

  “No more waiting.” I wondered if he was speaking to me or to himself.

  “Alex.” His name was a whispered plea on my lips.

  He must’ve heard the helplessness and edge to my voice, because he lifted his head from my neck to meet my eyes, though his hands continued their assault.

  “I missed you. I missed you so much.” He kissed my cheek and pressed his body against mine, and I shuddered—wicked, wicked man. “Tell me you need me,” he growl-hummed.

  “I need you….”

  Gah! Not exactly what I meant to say, but a good—albeit misleading—start.

  I shut my eyes tight, grabbed fistfuls of his shirt, pressed my legs together, and said, “I need you to tell me the truth! Because you’re scaring me, and I don’t want you to regret anything tomorrow.”

  His hands slowed but didn’t stop. Instead, they reached into the tops of my stockings. “Don’t be scared. I’ll have no regrets,” he whispered.

  “I can’t help it. I’m scared because I’m obsessed with someone I know nothing about.”

  “Obsessed?” He kissed my collarbone, neck, jaw, like he couldn’t help himself, and he hummed, “I like how that sounds.”

  “It’s not healthy.”

  His response was fierce. “I don’t care. I love you.”

  Uh….

  Um….

  WHAT?!

  I tensed, and this time I did push him away. “Alex, stop. Stop and explain yourself.”

  He didn’t exactly stop. Instead, he brought me with him, away from the wall, by wrapping his arms around my back and legs and lifting me from the ground like I weighed less than nothing.

  Must not zing at caveman display.

  Must Not Zing At Caveman Display.

  Must. Not. Zing. At. Caveman. Display.

  ZING!

  And then, to top it all off, he said as he carried me to the bedroom, “Sandra, I love you. I’m completely and hopelessly in love with you. And I’m not waiting anymore for wh
at I want, for what’s mine.” And he kissed me all over, over and over.

  When he broke the kiss, I interjected, “Alex, you don’t….”

  He ignored me and lay me on the bed, pulling his shirttail out of his pants and unbuttoning it. “I love you, I’m in love with you, and you’re in love with me.”

  “No.” I shook my head frantically even though my eyes devoured every inch of skin as he exposed it. My words were a rush. “This is just your penis having the feels for my vagina. You’re penis is making prank calls! And every single time your penis makes a prank call, my vagina answers the phone. And then you hang up. Or your penis claims wrong number or misdial or no hablo Ingles. It’s infuriating, and it’s called genital call me maybe.”

  “You’re so wrong.”

  “What do you know about love?”

  He hesitated. Thankfully, he was standing at the edge of the bed with his shirt open, so I was allowed a giant eyeful while he considered my question. And—oh my dear heavenly hot body—this man was beyond all my dirty dreams. Heck yeah, I was staring. Heck yeah, I was storing this image for later. Heck yeah, I might ask him if I could take a picture.

  And then he said, “Nothing.”

  Something about his sudden answer made me flinch. It pulled me from my indecent perusal of his form. He’d spoken it with such finality, as though he were answering more than the question I asked, as though he were imparting something of great import with one word. I paused, gathered a deep breath, and studied him.

  “You don’t know love?”

  “No.”

  “But you’re so certain that this is it, that what we have—what we’re doing—that this is us in love?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s what love should be.”

  “What…who…how…when…what…?” I stumbled, stuttered, sputtered, and finally managed, as I scrambled backward on the bed away from him, to demand, “Explain yourself!”

  He began crawling toward me on his hands and knees, and gripped my ankle. “I dream of you, and not just you naked, beneath me, submitting, sighing….”

  “Gah!” I held my hands up to stop his progress, but he yanked me by the ankle and pulled me toward him as I said, “If this is another prank call to my vagina, I will tie you up and tweeze your chest hair!”

  He batted my hands away as though they were nothing and hovered above me planting kisses on my skin between loving words. “I dream of your voice, daydream about it. I spend a good part of my day thinking up ways to make you laugh, counting the hours before I can hold you—just hold you—to feel you breathe, feel your heartbeat. I’ve memorized your walk. I even look forward to your butchering of the German language and discovering which T-shirt you’ll wear. I want to tell everyone about you, how brilliant you are, how generous and kind and amazing you are, and I will keep you safe.”

  It was at this point I had difficulty drawing breath, and he’d stopped kissing me. He looked as if he wanted to take a part of me and keep it with him. I could lift my gaze no higher than the scar on his chin. His eyes were too disconcerting—too knowing, searching, seeing.

  He continued. “I want to know everything about you so I can be what you need—give you what you need.”

  His words succeeded in knocking the wind from my lungs, so. I assembled what wits I had left and decided to defend myself with righteous indignation. “What I need? You want to give me what I need, but you won’t even let me know who you are.”

  “Sandra, look at me.” He waited until I did, then he kissed my lips very gently and whispered against them. “Do you think knowing about my childhood is going to make you want me more or less?”

  I gritted my teeth, my temper flaring. “You’re asking the wrong question. How am I supposed to love you if I don’t even know who you are?”

  “You do love me.”

  “But I don’t know how you became the person you are.”

  “And then what?” He kept his voice gentle as he lay beside me, turning my body toward him, rubbing my hip and inching his hand up my skirt. “And then you find out about all the ways I’m broken? All the ways you need to fix me?”

  “It wouldn’t be like that.”

  “It would be exactly like that.” An edge entered his voice and I knew my half-assed attempts to force him to see reason were starting to work. “You fix people. It’s what you do, it’s how you make a living, it’s your talent, your gift. You can’t turn it off.”

  I had to bite the inside of my lip to keep from responding. He might have been right, but I wanted to tell him he was wrong. I wasn’t sure, so I said nothing.

  “And even though you think you want a free pass to walk inside my brain and fix me, you’re wrong. I am exactly what you need because I’m not going to give you that pass. All my broken pieces are going to love you, just as I am now, without ever being fixed.”

  “What is so terrible that you can’t tell me? What is this big secret?”

  “It’s not one thing. It’s not one terrible thing. It’s a series of messes that you’re better off knowing nothing about.”

  “But….” I choked, swallowed, and tried again. “Alex, you…you can’t…I don’t expect you to change who you are….”

  “Yes you do. You would, if you knew.” He threaded his hands through my hair, pushed it away from my face with devotion, kissed me again. “You would insist on it. And I’m….”…” Alex looked away, searching without seeing. “I’ve got a lot of missing pieces, parts that were never there to begin with. There is no fixing that, and I can’t fight against the futility of never being complete. I can’t do that anymore. I just want to be.”

  I sighed, closed my eyes against my frustration and his stubbornness. We were at the same impasse as before, except this time, he was the one pushing, and I didn’t think I had the resolve to turn him away.

  When he spoke next, his voice was closer, against my neck, and it sent lovely shivers down my spine. His fingers moved under the hem of my dress. “Let me make love to you.”

  I swallowed, uncertain. “Why now? What’s changed?”

  “Everything.” He sighed, kissed my chest. “I just want to be…with you.”

  “I don’t know if I can be happy with that.”

  “Happy with what?”

  “Just being. I want more. I want….” I searched my brain for the scariest thing I could say and settled on, “I want a family. I want kids.”

  “Then I’ll give them to you.” His tongue dipped between my cleavage.

  I was giving in. In fact, my body had already said yes and was behaving accordingly, reaching for the button of his pants. “I want monogamy, partnership, ’til death.”

  “Sounds great. Sign me up.”

  “Alex, you’re asking me to take a giant, almost unfathomable leap of faith here.”

  “Sandra, I’m asking you to take the same leap that I’ve already taken, and believe me, I took that leap and plunged in, and it was so worth it. I’m better for it.”

  The sound of my fingers unzipping his pants surprised me. But I didn’t stop. “You propose to push me off this cliff kicking and screaming.”

  His hand hiked my dress higher, his fingers reaching and caressing my bare bottom. I bucked against him, the movement instinctual.

  “Yes. But you’ll be screaming my name.”

  “Not likely, virgin.” I said the words, but they were breathless and lacked conviction.

  “I’m going to enjoy proving you wrong.”

  I hoped he did. Alex was nothing if not surprising.

  CHAPTER 23

  OUR MOUTHS FUSED together, his tongue stroking me higher, tighter, and his center rocked against mine, the delicious pressure a promise. Layers of his clothes still separated us, and I struggled to remove them.

  My hands were in his pants, specifically on his very nice ass, and currently sidetracked from my original goal of pushing them off his hips. No one would blame me. It was the first time I’d been
allowed to touch it, so touch it I must.

  Alex shifted to one side, most of his weight supported on his right, his left hand free to explore—except he wasn’t exploring.

  And that left my body rioting for his touch. Police cars were tipped over, fires started, small businesses raided. I moaned my disapproval as one of my hands slipped around to the front of his boxers.

  Then, it happened. Praise all earthly creatures, oceans below, heavens above, and nebulas beyond—I was finally, finally touching the steel pipe he’d been carrying around in his pants. But then I panicked a little.

  It was ginormous.

  My eyes bulged and I gasped into Alex’s mouth.

  No. Do not want. Please un-supersize my order.

  Alex tore his mouth from mine and his attention followed; he cursed and sat back on the bed. It became obvious that he was trying to extract something from his pants pocket.

  I watched him, wide-eyed; then my attention shifted to the monster between his legs, and I gasped again.

  This was his first time. However, a three-year dry spell paired with the turgid and proud Cyclops bobbing and weaving before me—like a boxer making ready to ram through all obstacles in its path—and it might as well have been my first time too.

  “Oh my God,” I whispered, my hands clutched to my chest.

  Alex, oblivious, fished out the object he’d been searching for and three more followed, spilling on the bed. Condoms. He ripped the one in his hand open with his teeth, and I died a little at the sight, because it was damn sexy.

  He focused on his task, and I lay mesmerized beneath him. He extracted the latex sheath, grabbed himself with his other hand. I automatically pressed my knees together at the sight of his impressive fingers gripping his even more impressive manhood.

  Alex fit the circle atop the head of his penis and began rolling it down, but then, the unthinkable happened. The condom was too small. It didn’t fit.