by Amy Faye
"You promise?"
"I promise."
I tried to calm the response that was surging in my gut, a voice that told me I had to get the hell out of there, and I had to do it now.
"How are you holding up now?"
"I'm scared," I say again.
"Are you keeping it together, though?"
"I can try," I say. There's a sound of something slapping together, somewhere else in the room. I think immediately about what he's trying to test it for. It sounds like a leather strap.
I have bruises lining my ribs, where Kyle decided that I hadn't been totally upfront with him. I don't want anyone to see them, but there's no hiding it. Not any more. And if he touched one of them, it would hurt so bad that I couldn't stop myself from crying.
I start to shake in fear, not knowing what's going to come next. Afraid and unsure. Then I feel the touch of fingers between my breasts. They trace a line down my chest, down to my stomach. Around my belly button, and tracing back up.
"You're hurt," he says.
"It's nothing," I lie.
"It's not nothing," he growls. "Not nothing at all."
"Please, just… it's nothing, okay?"
"If you don't want to talk about it, then we won't talk about it. I don't need you to do much talking, anyways."
His finger traces the same line down, past my bell button, but this time he goes lower. His fingers are gentle. And then he dips lower still, and lower still, until he's brushing against the downy curls above my entrance. Then up again.
And down again, and this time he doesn't tease me. He finds my moist entrance, slick with arousal, the fear amplifying the feeling in my body. He knows. He must have known from the beginning.
He starts to move slowly, gently. His hand, caught in my panties. I didn't feel as if he were being gentle. I felt like I was going to go insane. Then there was another noise, one that I halfway-recognized even through the relaxing haze of pleasure.
Something humming. Buzzing. Vibrating.
I only had a moment to understand what was happening before he pulled his hand away from me, and the head of the toy pressed against my crotch. The reaction was immediate, and it was well-rehearsed. I'd used a similar toy on myself before, and I knew what it was supposed to feel like.
In the dark, unable to move, unable to react at all except to cry out, it was completely different.
"Ah! Too much! Gentle, gentle!"
He must have heard me. I made no effort to be quiet. But he didn't react. He rubbed up and down, the vibrations triggering pleasure that I had absolutely no control over.
"You like that?"
I nod. I can't lie, not when I'm practically a writhing mess on this chest.
"You want more?"
I nod again. The pitch of the buzz gets higher and the vibrations get more intense. I can feel my body tightening again, but I can't generate any force. I pull against the ropes as hard as I can and they don't budge a fraction of a millimeter.
My body tries to pull away from it, tries to force him to stop, but he ignores it. He's got me tied, and there's not going to be any way for me to stop him.
I feel an orgasm wash over me, powerful, tightening up my whole body. I pull in vain with every muscle to try to curl up in a ball, and I stay spread out as much as when I'd started.
"Oh, fuck, fuck, I'm done," I say. He's still pressing it against me. It's starting to build to something again, starting to turn into pleasure that I can't possibly deny. Pleasure so powerful that it feels like pain. I'm over-sensitive, and he's not stopping.
"I'm not done," He says. "So neither are you."
The pleasure starts to build again. A second time. Even stronger, now. And as my muscles bunch up in an attempt to get myself away from the pleasure, to get back to relaxing, I let out a loud moan.
"Fuck! I need you to stop, I'm going to lose my fucking… fuck! I'm going to lose my god damn mind!"
He pinches a nipple and I let out another moan, like a whore.
"That's the whole point, Meg."
7
The next morning was better than the last one. Maybe because there's a little part of me that thinks things could turn around. I opened my eyes and looked around. The room was still unfamiliar, but it was a good sort of unfamiliar. It was the same kind of unfamiliar I'd felt when I moved in with Kyle, when I thought he was a tough, independent guy who basically knew what he was doing, rather than an absolute maniac.
I took a deep breath and let it out. I didn't know Seth. I'd barely met him. I don't know what that says about me, that I've slept with a man who I barely know twice. But I did it already; the ship has sailed, and I'm on it, whether I like it or not.
There's noise coming from the rest of the house. I think there's someone there, but I couldn't begin to say who it is, because it's clearly more than just Seth.
So I did what I always do when I have a bad idea: I got curious. I wasn't going to go searching through the whole place in the nude. So I cover myself, basically, but I am past worrying about someone seeing a little bit of skin. My relationship with Kyle isn't the kind where I'm allowed to feel embarrassed by my body. If he wants to show it off, it really doesn't matter much whether or not it makes me feel bad.
So I got over it. It's in the past. No big deal. I pull on my shirt and a pair of panties and start creeping around. The benefits of moving around the house mostly nude outweigh the benefits, once, you stop feeling weird about it.
For one thing, I can be a lot quieter without so much clothing. No buckles to slap against your buttons or whatever, and make a bunch of noise. No loose fabric to catch and pull on something unexpectedly. And of course, no shoes to worry about, and no socks to make me lose my grip on the ground. It's almost like we were built as a species not to cover up so much.
As I got closer, I could make a few more pronouncements. First, there were only three people here: me, Seth, and a third man. I hadn't gotten to the point yet where I could just look around the corner at the man, but I was still working my way across the house, desperate to avoid any place where I might make noise on the wooden floors.
Second, the reason they were making so much noise is that they were having a conversation.
Third, the conversation wasn't a friendly one.
His voice came again, mocking. "You think you're so big? Going to stand behind your daddy's legs?"
Seth's voice was low and hard and too quiet to hear.
I had to guess what he said from what the other man said. "Oh yeah? What are you going to do, big man?"
Seth said nothing. Or he said something too quiet for me to hear. I waited in the silence, and then a noise of flesh on flesh. I was familiar with that noise. It was tied intricately with my knowledge of Seth.
He liked punching, I guess. He liked a lot of things, and he managed to keep me from being involved in the punching, at least. But he liked to get into fist fights, and he'd proven it by beating holy hell out of Kyle.
So when I peeked around the corner and saw Seth standing over the other man, breathing hard, and then saw the other man getting up, my first instinct wasn't panic. Maybe it should have been. When things went sideways, they tended to go hard and fast, and the only way to get by without getting hurt was to remember that discretion was the better part of valor.
But I wasn't worried, because Seth knew his way around a fist fight, and he knew his limits. If he had any, at least.
"You're going to regret that," the guy on the ground says. I silently retort "I doubt it."
Seth's response nearly echoes mine: "We'll see." Then he wheels his foot back and starts to kick when there's a massive 'boom' and 'crack' that comes at the exact same instant that something smashes through the big wall of the house.
Then, as if there was no transition at all, the whole place was on fire. I could almost feel the heat licking at my flesh from the first instant, but my first reaction wasn't to think that I could die in the fire.
It was the thought that I could
die even if I made it out. I'm barely wearing any clothing. Good luck staying warm when I'm in a state like this. Good luck avoiding freezing to death. And of course, there's no place that I have to go at this point.
So I started to run, back towards the bedroom. Away from the flames as well, I note. The whole house isn't on fire yet, but it's spreading, and it's spreading fast. In ways I can't explain or understand, but it is spreading fast.
Then I hit the bedroom, grabbed what few parts of my clothing I could, making sure to grab my jeans and my shoes, and a heavy blanket from the bed. Then I wrapped it all around my shoulders, and forced myself to run back forward. Back into the heat.
It was only a hundred feet or so. It was never a massive house. But running through the flames made me feel like I was going to be sick. It was a real force of effort to avoid laying right there and retching as the flames consumed me. It was so fucking hot. And then I broke out into the cold, clear night air, made it another fifteen feet or so, and then laid myself down in the grass and was sick.
8
I wasn't allowed to lay there by my filth very long. Sadly. I felt pretty good there. My life had gotten very simple. On one side of me was a pile of vomit; on the other side was excruciating heat. I was in the middle, and both were slowly expanding towards me. Eventually, one day, I might have to deal with them. But not right at that moment.
Until Seth grabbed me, pulled me up to my feet, and started me moving. He didn't seem particularly bothered by the fact that I didn't want to be moved. He had things to do. Things like getting me up from the ground and pulling me further away. I clutched at my things and hoped and prayed. It had never worked in the past, but this time, surely.
There was another loud boom, another loud crack, and the house sagged a little. Whatever hopes I had that they might save the place before it fell down started to slip. I fished my keys out of my jeans, got into the car, and pulled out into the street and watched the place burn, the engine idling.
A knock came at the car window. I rolled it down and Seth leaned in.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," I say, distantly. "It was just hot in there."
"I can imagine."
"Yeah," I say. Distantly and uncertain of myself.
"But you're okay. You're not hurt."
"No, I'm not hurt. You want to tell me what that fight was about?"
Seth grimaced, and it occurred to me for perhaps the first time that I might not like the answer if I got one at all.
"It's not a big deal, not yet anyways. But I'm in a little bit of trouble, is all."
"A little bit of trouble?"
"It's nothing," he says again. "I'm going to deal with it. No problem."
"I don't really know what you're into, here, so you know. Take this for what it's worth. But I'm tired of problems."
"It's nothing. I pissed off some guys. Trust me, it'll all blow over in the end. Like nothing ever happened at all."
"I hear you," I said to him. I did hear him, sort of. But at the same time, I'd had enough of 'nothing' and 'pissed some guys off.' It's all I've had a steady diet of for the past twenty years, and maybe it's time that I have the good sense to say that it's worth more to me to avoid trouble than it is for me to have things like great sex.
"Are you upset?"
"I'm not upset," I tell him. It's basically true. "I just want to go."
He takes a deep breath. "Yeah. I guess I get that. Maybe I'll get in touch with you once this blows over."
"If you want," I said. Maybe I should have told him to fuck off, or maybe I should have been more encouraging. I don't know. I knew the sex was great. But there were probably thousands of guys out there who could have great sex with me.
Thousands who didn't like hitting women, and didn't deal drugs. Thousands of them who weren't going to suddenly go off the deep end and start getting into fist fights with strange men and then have their houses explode.
"Promise me one thing," he says. Like he's in any position to ask for promises of any kind.
"What?"
"Don't go back to Kyle."
I had considered it. I can't lie and say that the idea hadn't crossed my mind, not even for a moment. But if I'm walking away from Seth, then it's for the same reasons I'd walk away from Kyle. There's no reason to ditch one and not the other. Hell, Seth is more reliable even with an exploding house problem.
"No," I agreed. "That would be a mistake."
He allows himself almost a hint of a smile. "Yeah. Good. Good girl." I hated the little glimmer of pleasure I felt at hearing those words. It was a trained response, at this point, but I reacted the way that I'd been trained to react. I blushed.
"You bet," I said, trying to pretend that I wasn't flushed with pride.
"Take care of yourself."
I pulled away in my junk-heap. It wasn't much, and it sure wasn't as comfortable as Seth's car. But it was something, at least, and that was as much as I could hope for at that point. At least my house hadn't just burned down.
Then I got on the phone. The list of people I could call was short. Unmercifully short. Pitifully short. But it wasn't zero people. I wasn't stuck. Just limited.
The voice on the other end of the line was sleepy. I'd woken him up, but at least he answered.
"Meg?"
I stared at the streaks of light crossing the sky as the sun just started to cross the horizon.
"Hey, Brian."
"Why are you calling this late?"
I took a deep breath. "I need a place to stay for a little while. Until I get a place of my own."
"So you're not staying with that douche bag guy?"
"No," I told him. It didn't matter which douche bag guy he meant. "I left Kyle, and the other douche bag guy turned out to be a bust."
I heard another voice murmur on the other end of the line. "Yeah, I get you," Brian says. "I'll grab a cup of coffee and get the door open for you. Couldn't you have come to this conclusion a few hours from now? Like, maybe ten or eleven?"
"You're a saint," I said. I meant every word of it. He was a living saint. We said our goodbyes and I hung up the phone and then drove in silence. The car made a 'clunk' noise when it went around corners, one that scared the shit out of me. I didn't have the money to fix it, though so I did what I did best, and what I'd been doing for the past week: I ignored it.
And true to his word, Brian was waiting outside his apartment for me in a pair of skinny jeans and a wife beater, a steaming cup of coffee in his hands and a frustrated expression on his face.
"You're not upset, are you?"
"Not upset, but you catch me this early, and you take what you get, you feel me?"
"I feel you," I said. I hope that he appreciated the apologetic expression that I was trying to wear. "Is Nick in there, too?"
He nods and takes another drink of coffee.
I let out a long breath. "He's not going to love this."
"No, he's not," Brian agreed. "But it's my place, and Nick's going to have to get over it."
9
I rubbed my eyes and tried to think happy thoughts as the morning began. I don't know where Nick is, at this point. Probably sitting in the room that he shares with Brian and sulking about me still sleeping well into the morning. It's what he does most mornings, and I can't say that I blame him.
Three weeks is a long time, and at some point, I was going to have to find a new place to go. But I didn't make enough money to act all flippant and just find someplace right off the bat. Unlike my boss, I didn't have a "room-mate" to pay half my rent, either.
So I stayed, because I sure as hell didn't have any place else to go. I make sure to make plenty of noise now that I'm up. Noise to alert Nick to the fact that he was 'allowed' to come out of his room now, and he could glare at me from the corner, rather than glaring at me through the walls and the doors.
It wasn't an ideal situation, but I wasn't trying to claim that it was. By the time that I got out he'd moved over to the computer in the
corner of their living room, and was browsing Facebook.
That was his morning routine, as far as I could tell. Then gain, I assumed that my presence interrupted his real morning routine. This was probably something he did to make himself look normal, or something. A way to hide what he did, even though I already knew. I had known since I found out that Brian batted for the other team.
I rubbed a towel across my face. There's work that I could be doing, and I was going to get to it, in a few minutes. Once I'd changed into the cleanest of my three shirts and gotten into fresh underwear. The jeans were dirty, but they could stand some dirt. Not like the rest of my clothing.
I was pulling on a pair of jeans when there was a knock at the door. For an instant I froze, expecting Nick to get it. But I knew better than that. He had his headphones on by now, and he wasn't going to hear anything short of a bomb going off. That would earn him taking one ear off and turning until he saw me, and then saying, 'what's up?'
So I held my shirt together with one hand and went to get it. I wasn't sure what I expected. It was still a few hours early for the mail to be arriving. It was hours too late for it to be Brian, coming home from a night out and locked his keys in the car.
So I opened the door, prepared to be confronted by someone trying to sell me aluminum siding, or a bible, and found myself face to face with… no one at all. The other side of the door was empty. I peeked my head out. Nobody to either side, either.
A half-mile down the road, a car pulled across from one side-street to another, but there was nobody who could have knocked. At least, not anyone in sight.
I looked down. There's a dozen roses, scarlet red, and on top of it, a light blue card. It's folded over, but on top are three letters: 'MEG.'
I guess that meant it was for me. So I picked them up and stepped back from the door looking down at the flowers. Looking down at the card. I tried to decide what to do with it when Nick walked up with a frown on his face and a crease between his eyebrows.
