Angels & Whiskey

by Kimberly Knight

  I tugged tighter on his hair while trying not to collapse from the surge of pleasure running all the way through me. I leaned my head into his chest to muffle the moan that escaped my mouth as I climaxed. I tried to stop dancing to enjoy the orgasm, but his hands grasped my ass tighter as he kept me pressed hard against his leg so our bodies continued to sway to the music.

  If he had asked me to go up to his room at that moment, I would have said yes. I had never hooked up with a stranger, let alone in Vegas…at a club. I had never had sex in public, never had an orgasm in public for that matter. I didn’t care.

  At last, we slowly stopped dancing. He was still pulling me hard onto his leg, his eyes locked with mine. He gave me his smile I remembered so well. I was trying to relax and let my heart return to normal, but looking into his eyes only made it race more. I still couldn’t speak—could barely breathe. A few seconds later, the song ended. He bent down, nuzzled my neck and I could feel his warm breath against my cheek as he whispered, “Thank you,” and then walked away.

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  Tattooed Dots

  By Kimberly Knight

  Prologue

  Easton

  The moment I held my beautiful baby girl, Cheyenne, in my arms five years ago, I swore to myself that I would never let anything happen to her. Her mom, Dana, and I married right out of high school. We had no idea what we were getting into, and then before I knew it, she was pregnant with Cheyenne. When Dana held her hand out with the pregnancy test, smiling and jumping for joy, I thought nothing could go wrong in my world. I was doing what I thought we were supposed to do: marriage, babies, forever.

  We were high school sweethearts. Now those high school sweethearts sit at two separate wood tables inside a courtroom, awaiting a judge to tell me how much I owe the bitch who gave me the greatest gift I never realized I wanted or needed.

  We had been sitting in the courtroom for five days straight. We didn’t have much to fight over, but the one thing I wouldn’t budge on was my daughter. Dana was trying to do everything in her power to get full custody. She even went so far as to have her attorney request that the judge order a drug test for me.

  Of course, the drug test came back negative. I hadn’t smoked weed or done anything else but drink since before the bitch was pregnant. Now as the trial was ending, my nerves were running through me, and I wanted to do nothing but roll a fat one and blow the smoke in her cunt face.

  Over the last year of our rocky marriage, Dana acted like an angel and painted me as the bad guy. We used to smoke up after the high school Friday night football games when we would party with the rest of the school. We didn’t stop smoking because it was bad for us; we quit because we were poor and needed all our extra cash to eat, especially since we were kids playing house with an extra mouth to feed in less than nine months.

  The day Dana told me she was pregnant; I answered an ad for a shoot and started my modeling career. I’m not gonna lie and tell you that we are only getting divorced because of Dana and her nagging ways. I’ll tell you the truth: I cheated on her repeatedly with whores. It was so easy when all that the whores saw was a pretty face and a nice body, and Dana stayed home to take care of Cheyenne.

  Part of me regrets the cheating aspect of my marriage, but part of me is relieved. We married so young, and I couldn’t imagine spending my whole life with a nagging, screaming bitch of a wife. Now she sits to the right of me, tapping her French manicured nails on the table, and all I want to do is walk over there and rip them off her fucking fingers.

  I know she is doing it to get under my skin. This is her last slap in my face, because she knows she is not getting full custody of Cheyenne. Hell would freeze over before I’d let some judge rip my heart from my chest and hand it to Dana on a silver platter.

  I looked at the clock as it ticked, second by second, minute by minute, and I heard words spoken, but I wasn’t paying attention. The trial had already dragged on for a week because of all the character witnesses, a vocational job expert testifying and our attorneys building our cases. Dana was playing dirty and so was I. If she wanted to pretend I was doing drugs in front of Cheyenne, then she needed to get a job. No more supporting her ass.

  Of course, Dana didn’t want a job. She wanted to live off my gigs and the work I did for her father at his landscaping business. As soon as the trial was over and the judge issued his order, I was quitting that fucking job. The less she knew about my life, the better. I didn’t need her father bossing me around and then reporting my every action back to her. Plus, it would be less spousal support that I would owe her.

  I made enough modeling to support my baby girl, and that was all I cared about. Dana’s father, Bill, paid too little for me to want to stick around and work for him. If my gigs started to slow down, I would find another backbreaking job.

  “Monday you’re going to need to start preparing something to tell the judge I have less income,” I leaned over and whispered to my attorney as I remembered I was quitting.

  “Why?” she whispered back.

  Yes, I had a female attorney, and she was smokin’, too. I initially hired Allison because I knew Dana would think I was fucking her. Okay, I was fucking her, but we were exchanging services. I gave her multiple mind-blowing orgasms, and she gave me discounted legal advice and representation.

  Alright, alright, we were more than fucking. I would buy her a meal or two so she thought we were dating. Plus, she was a kickass attorney, and I loved watching her toned, lightly tanned legs walk in front of the table in her skirt while she examined a witness or presented evidence to the judge.

  “I’m quitting Parker & Sons,” I replied, leaning closer to smell her perfume that would linger on me after we had sex.

  “You’re what?” she whispered, eyes wide with confusion.

  “I’ll tell you when this shit is over,” I whispered back, looking over her shoulder to see Dana staring at us. Just to dig at her more, I placed my hand on Allison’s thigh, which was in plain view of Dana’s evil eye, and inched it up between Allison’s legs. Allison grabbed my hand, gave me a stern look and nudged her head towards the judge. “What?” I asked with a wicked grin on my face.

  Fuck, I was just trying to make her fantasy come true. One night after a…meeting, she told me that she had always wanted to be laid bare on a table in a courtroom and fucked until she couldn’t walk. I guess that fantasy didn’t include my soon-to-be ex-wife in the same room or an old judge who was on the verge of dying on his bench.

  After an hour of being questioned in front of the courtroom, Dana’s attorney finally released my best friend, Avery, from the hot seat. Of course, he said nothing that would lead anyone to believe that I was the bad father Dana was accusing me of being.

  Avery and I had been friends far longer than Dana and I had been together. We played baseball together from when we were four until our senior year of high school. He went off to college while Dana and I played house. I knew I should have gone with him and used my baseball scholarship to Florida State instead of listening to Dana tell me she couldn’t live without me, but that’s a whole different story that I don’t want to talk about. Let’s just say I wasn’t thinking with the right head.

  Fucking bitch.

  “Do you have any more witnesses?” the judge asked the schmuck of an attorney Dana hired.

  “No, your honor.”

  After the judge said some bullshit I didn’t listen to, we were dismissed, and I walked with Allison out of the courtroom to the parking garage.

  “Do you want to go get a drink?” she asked, running her finger up my hard chest as she gave me the look I had learned in the last six months meant that she was horny as fuck and wanted my cock.

  “I can’t, babe. Cheyenne’s with my parents who flew in from New York, remember?”

  It was my weekend to have Cheyenne, and she hadn’t seen my parents in five months.

  “Can’t we make it fast? I’ve b
een horny ever since your hand ran up my thigh twenty minutes ago.”

  I looked at my dying cell phone and realized the judge had dismissed us thirty minutes before five. “Fine, but you keep the skirt and heels on. You’ve been shaking that ass at me all day.”

  “I’ve been shaking my ass at you all week,” she said as she winked.

  My pants became tight at the memory. “I know, and you remember what I did to you two nights ago because of it?”

  “Yes, and I want you to do it to me now,” she said, pulling her medium-length, chestnut brown hair from her ponytail as she stepped closer to me.

  I grabbed a fistful of her hair, pushing her against the trunk of her silver BMW as her back arched backwards, and began kissing her soft throat.

  “Not here, Easton, my peers will…” Allison giggled and squirmed beneath me as my cock grew harder, thinking about tying her up to her headboard—or in this case, her hands tied above her head and attached to the “oh shit” handle in her backseat where she hangs her suit jacket.

  “I knew you were fucking the help,” said the familiar voice of my past that wouldn’t leave me alone.

  It felt like my dick wanted to run and hide from that voice; it was like nails on a chalkboard to me now. Allison and I broke apart, and she smoothed her black skirt down as I turned to address my baby’s momma.

  “The ‘help’, as you so call her, can go all night and not have to stop after one orgasm,” I said, squaring my shoulders, and then belatedly realized Dana was standing there with her father, Bill.

  Fuck me!

  “Oh God,” Allison murmured under her breath.

  “Fuck you, Easton! Why aren’t you going home to our daughter? It’s so typical of you to pawn her off on your parents.”

  “Dana…” Bill said, trying to pull her towards her car.

  “For your information, I was saying goodbye to my attorney and thanking her for kicking your ass in court.”

  “Enough!” Bill shouted, causing all eyes to turn to him.

  I still feared the man. The first night I met him, when I went to pick Dana up for our first real date, I almost shit my pants. He was very fit for his age after putting in many years of hard physical labor for his landscaping business. When he found out the reason why Dana and I were divorcing, I actually feared for my life.

  “Dana, get your ass in your car and go enjoy your evening. Easton, I’ll see you on Monday.”

  “Yeah, about that…”

  “No, I don’t want to talk to you anymore today. Go enjoy your time with your parents, and tell them I said hello. We’ll talk man-to-man on Monday.”

  I swallowed hard at his words and watched Dana get into my Ford Edge, slamming the door while her father walked to his car. After they both left, I turned back to Allison and said my goodbyes. Even though I wanted to bury my cock into her tight pussy, I wanted to see my daughter more. We made plans for Monday night when Dana would have Cheyenne and my parents would be back in New York.

  After each long-ass day in court, I turned my stereo up, blasting the radio while driving down the freeway to calm my nerves and clear my head, especially before I arrived home to see my baby girl. She had no idea what was going on, other than mommy and daddy didn’t live together anymore.

  I’m not sure when Dana and I planned to tell her that we were no longer married, but it wasn’t now at five going on six-years-old. She would probably figure it out before we told her anyway since statistically, eighty percent or some shit of her age group had divorced parents. There would probably be a clique of the “broken home” kids and the “happily married parents” kids by the time she was in high school instead of the jocks and nerds I grew up with.

  Ten minutes after I pulled out of the garage of the courthouse, Sorry by Buckcherry started to play through my speakers of my Ford F150. Yeah, I was a model, but not some pansy ass that spent all his money on an expensive car to get chicks. Trust me, chicks dig my truck. Hell, Tim McGraw even had a song about it.

  For a split second, as I listened to the words sung by Buckcherry, I wanted to call Dana and tell her that I was sorry. I really was sorry for cheating on her. I wasn’t happy in our marriage; I was young and had hot girls surrounding me all the time. It wasn’t fair to her and it wasn’t fair to Cheyenne. Dana was my first love, and when I asked her to marry me after our high school won the championship game my senior year, I meant every word I said to her that night.

  I did want marriage at that time—the kids and the forever. If I could have seen into the future, I would have waited longer before promising her forever. I would have waited until we grew up and lived a little. Made her come with me to college and then start our forever once we graduated.

  It was my fault that we had a broken home. If I were a better man, things would be different. I’ve done a lot of thinking during our divorce proceedings and I hate that I’ve made her cry. I can’t take any of it back. I’m ashamed of how I treated her and each day, I mask my feelings by being a complete asshole. An asshole to her and an asshole to Cheyenne for not being a better father.

  But, I couldn’t change what happened seven years ago, and now when Buckcherry was turning me into a sap, I dried my misty eyes with my white-collared dress shirt and whispered “sorry” as if she could hear me. I would never say it to Dana’s face, though. Not after the hell she put me through, trying to take Cheyenne away from me. But I needed to make this right. I needed to be a better man, a better father, a better person.

  *

  I pulled into my driveway and didn’t see my peanut’s face that always greeted me, staring at me through the bay window. I knew I was early getting home, but I didn’t think I was that early after being held up by the make-out session with Allison followed by the verbal sparring match with Dana.

  “Easton!” my mother, Jane, exclaimed as she stood up from my couch when I walked in my front door.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, looking at her red, tear-stained face. “Is Chey okay?” I looked around to see only my mother in my living room.

  “Yes, she’s in the backyard with your dad.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. I figured Cheyenne would tell my parents that she customarily waited for me at the window, but she also needed play time with my folks, so she had probably just lost track of time.

  “Okay, well, what’s wrong? Why are you crying?”

  “Bill called.”

  “What a prick!” I said, running my hands through my finger-length, dirty blonde hair. “I know you’re friends…”

  “No, it’s not like that,” my mother sobbed, shaking her head and sitting down on the chocolate brown suede couch.

  “Well, spit it out!” I could feel my blood start to boil as I envisioned my father-in-law calling my parents about what happened in court.

  “It’s Dana…”

  “Of course it is. What the fuck does she want? I just saw her thirty minutes ago. Remember I was in court with her all day?” I gestured, my hands flying in the air to emphasize how angry and irritated Dana made me feel.

  I sat on the couch next to my mom, not wanting to talk about my ex for one more minute of the day.

  “Just shut the fuck up and listen to me!” my mother snapped at me. Tears started to run down her face as she started to speak again. She stood to face me, and my heart stopped. I didn’t understand why she would be crying. “After leaving the courthouse, Dana got into a…car accident…”

  Yes, at that moment, I hated Dana, but she was my daughter’s mother, and even though I had wished her dead thousands of times in my head, I never meant it seriously. Cheyenne needed her mother, and the thought of Dana being in a car accident stunned me.

  “Is she okay?” I whispered, trying to hold back the tears I was on the verge of crying.

  “No,” she whispered back, shaking her head again. “She was airlifted, but it was too late. Dana died before they made it to the hospital.”

  I don’t know why they say grown men don’t cry. That was
the day my daughter lost her mother. That was the day my daughter didn’t get to say good-bye to her mother. That was the day I lost my first love. And that was the day I cried into my mother’s arms, whispering sorry over and over again.

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  Say Anything

  By Audrey Harte

  Chapter One

  The moment I took my seat on the plane that was going to take me to Las Vegas for my best friend’s thirtieth birthday party, I had a sinking feeling in my stomach that the ten-year long relationship I’d had with the man sitting next to me was doomed. You’d think that traveling would be smooth sailing for a couple who had been together for such a long time, but nope, not with us. Every time we went somewhere together, there was bound to be drama.

  Mike, my dear, beloved fiancé, hated to travel. Oh, don’t get me wrong. He loved visiting other places, but he hated the actual act of having to travel to get there. Nine times of out ten, he’d be guaranteed to stand there, looking sullen and cranky; he was always on edge from the moment we stepped foot into the airport until the moment we finally checked into our hotel room. The last time we went back to visit my family, he lost his laptop because he’d gotten antsy after we made it through the TEA security check and didn’t want to stop to put it back in his carry-on. Then he laid it down on a table next to where we were sitting at our gate and promptly forgot all about putting it back in his bag. Needless to say, by the time we checked into our hotel room in Hawaii and I asked where the laptop was, it was long gone.

  This trip, I could sense something was different from all the other times before. This time I was fed up with the bullshit. I’d been traveling since I was a baby, having been born in Hawaii and then living there for the first eleven years of my life before my parents decided to uproot our life and move to Nebraska. Then starting in junior high, I joined my church’s Bible Bowl team (i.e. kind of like college quiz bowl for Jesus Freaks in junior high and high school), which frequently took me all around the Midwest so I could compete in the monthly Round Robins and other tournaments. And finally, just before my eighteenth birthday, I moved to Los Angeles for a boy. Or more correctly, I moved to get the hell out of Nebraska. Consequently, I was a seasoned traveler, comfortable with the whole process, and the thought that I was stuck with someone who made that experience an unenjoyable one saddened me.