Arousing Her

by Tia Siren

  They moved out just as the summer in Kosnovia began.

  My father and mother were allowed to take their personal possessions, and to keep the family’s financial holdings that were not related to Kosnovian land or property.

  They walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars that had been building in various bank accounts for over a hundred years.

  The centuries’ worth of antique furnishings and priceless works of art were immediately taken into the government’s possession. As were several dozen automobiles, two yachts, and three private planes.

  My father took it better than I thought he would (wouldn’t you if you had a hundred million dollars?). He would always hold the title and the crown, but it would be worn on an island in Greece rather than in the royal palace in Kosnovia.

  “There are far worse places to live out your golden years than an expensive Greek villa next to George Clooney,” I said as my father and I sat on the patio sipping iced coffee and watching the sun creep across the western sky.

  “I suppose you are right,” he said, mopping the sweat from his forehead with a napkin. My father looked like he was aging in reverse. The sun had baked his once pale skin to a golden brown. His eyes had a sparkle to them again. His walk had purpose.

  He held up his glass. “I’ll take the summer sun and the warm waters of the Greek Isles over the grey and cold of Kosnovia any day.”

  “I’m glad to hear you say that,” I said with a smile. “How is mother taking the change?”

  He waved a hand at me. “Your mother hated Kosnovia and never let me forget it. Sometimes I wished that I had taken a less-vocal bride all those years ago. Your grandmother was the same way. Yap, yap, yap.”

  “That’s what happens when you kidnap and marry a woman you don’t know,” I said, glancing at him from over the top of my sunglasses.

  He chuckled. “I suppose you’re right. She loves it here, so all is well. How are things with your lovely bride?”

  “Ask her for yourself,” I said with a smile.

  Rebecca came out of the villa wearing a one-piece red bathing suit that hugged her round belly and plump breasts. We had married in the spring in a small ceremony in the royal palace.

  There was little fanfare and no paparazzi involved. It was a perfect, intimate wedding between two people who had quickly and intensely fallen in love.

  My son was growing inside of her now. The little prince would arrive sometime around the end of summer. Rebecca wanted to call him Carl. I said that was something we’d have to discuss.

  She came to stand beside me and took my hand.

  “What are you two up to?” she asked, leaning down to give me a kiss.

  “We were just talking about the weather,” I said with a smile. “And happy endings. Right, father?”

  “That’s right, my dear.” He held up his glass and smiled at my beautiful, pregnant wife. “Here’s to happy endings.”

  “To happy endings,” I added. “All around.”

  “To happy endings,” Rebecca said with a smile.

  She rubbed her belly and gave me a warm smile.

  “And to little miracles that do come true.”

  ***

  END OF FOURTH STORY

  Big Bad Baller: A Baby Older Brother’s Friend Romance

  Now that Jesse’s home, he’s even more off limits than ever before…

  MARY TAFT:

  Jesse Valen – the star quarter back of the Jets - is coming home. I always wanted him so bad, but I knew he just thought of me as a kid. I used to love it when he’d let me rub down his muscles in the hot tub after practice. If it were now, I would rub my hands over more than just his biceps, and pecs, and abs, and way down…well you get the idea.

  But I can only dream. I’m off limits, you see.

  He’s my brother’s best friend… or at least he was until the accident.

  JESSE VALEN:

  Some things never change.

  My home town looks the same and the girls still throw their panties at me just like when I was the high school football star.

  And some things do.

  Bill hates me now. I don’t blame him. Hell, I can hardly live with myself.

  But what’s changed the most is Mary, Bill’s kid sister. Only she’s no kid no more. Yep. I’m gonna f*ck her as much as I can before I go back to New York.

  But if I do, it’ll be just another reason for Bill to hate me even more...

  ***

  Chapter 1

  After a painful, long, and frustrating day, my waitressing shift ended. I stumbled home, relishing the sweet release of untying my apron and kicking off my scuffed and soup-stained no-slip shoes. My apartment was dark and lonesome when I arrived, but I knew better than to think it was empty.

  “Hey, Bill!” I called as I walked in.

  There was no answer, only the turning up of the volume on the television. I assumed that, as per usual, he did not want my voice to intrude on his video games. Sighing and wincing, I collapsed into a chair by the kitchen table, pulled out my phone, and began browsing. It was then that I noticed the heap of dishes piled in the sink.

  “Goddamn it, Bill!” I called to him. “I thought I asked you to do the dishes.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he hollered back and then spiked the volume again. I took a deep breath, rose from my seat, and washed them anyway. The soap was harsh on my blistered, tired hands, but I pushed through.

  That was what I did, and I did it for my family.

  Once I was done and finally able to rest, I joined my brother, Bill, in the living room and plopped down in the armchair beside him. He had his feet up, and his gaze hyper-focused on the TV screen as the controller in his hands dictated whom to decapitate next. Surrounding him like the court around a king’s throne, were the detritus of a long day spent on the couch. I ignored the candy wrappers and empty soda cans and reached for one of the many open bags of chips.

  “How was your day?” I asked him, sneaking a small handful of goods into my mouth.

  “Lousy,” he grumbled back, without taking his eyes off the TV screen. “Some asshole in freaking China or something is dominating the game, making it impossible for anyone else to win. Goddamn it!” He slammed the controller against his knee. Then, remembering to be polite, he asked, “How about yours?”

  “Oh, it was all right,” I said, pulling out my phone and losing myself in its glowing addiction. “I made decent tips, though of course, Mr. Davis continues to hit on me.”

  Mr. Davis was a lecherous—though harmless—old man, who owned the restaurant where I worked.

  “You want me to beat him up for you?” Bill offered and, as per usual, I sighed. He had made that offer plenty of times before, and the answer was always the same.

  “No, Bill. We need this job. Rent is due in a week, and my student loans are coming up. How about you? Any luck with the janitorial position?”

  Bill reached down, seized a paper cup of soda, sucked its straw for a moment, and then released it with the same “pop” he used to say his words: “Nope! I’m sure the bloody idiot took one look at my record and turned me right down. You know how it is. No one wants to give me a chance.”

  I exhaled and shook my head without even bothering to ask Bill if he had called to check the status of his application, or if his resume was free of cheese puff stains. I already knew the answers to both of those questions.

  Feeling glum, I returned my attention to my cell phone and flipped through friends’ statuses and news of the day. I was not actually paying attention, I just enjoyed watching the zoom of colors and words flow past, filling up the empty, exhausted chamber of my mind. Just as I was about to click off my phone and pull out some of my homework, an article caught my eye.

  Local Celebrity Returning Home!

  Come to the Westcross train station tonight if you want to see THE Jesse Valen, star of the New York Jets, returning to our little town to visit family and friends!

  Further down the article wa
s a list of his prestigious awards and accomplishments, from his glory-filled college days at Notre Dame to his drafting by the Jets and his impressive stats in the professional league. A highlighted picture across from the words depicted his grinning, cocky face, confident brows, and shoulders so broad they looked like baby dolphins on either side of his V-shaped chest.

  I breathed in and out, remembering the scent of him. He always smelled of football leather and freshly cut grass—the smells of sport and training.

  Beneath that cheerful article, was a second and much less positive article linked. It read:

  Unnamed New York Jets Team Member Face Accusations of Sexual Assault.

  Who was involved? Why is it being covered up? Read on to find out more!

  I read the headline and scowled. It couldn’t be Jesse, I was sure of it. He had been the most trustworthy guy I knew back in high school.

  Except, of course, for what happened to my brother.

  “Hey, Bill,” I said, interrupting his game. “Guess who’s going to be back in town? Your old friend, Jesse Valen.”

  Bill paused his game and slowly turned his gaze to me. As far as I knew, there was very little that would break his concentration while playing, and I was surprised to see that Jesse’s name did the trick.

  “Jesse Valen,” he said, “is no friend of mine.”

  For some reason, his words stung me. “But in high school you guys used to—”

  “I don’t care what we used to do. You know how I feel about that prick. Why would you bring him up?”

  His voice grew louder, more menacing and he put his controller aside. A bad sign.

  “I just thought that—”

  “You thought wrong,” he growled. “Who the hell do you think you are, coming in here and bothering me all the time? You know what happened. You know what I’ve been through, how hard…”

  My brother’s outburst lit a match in my heart and, like gunpowder, I exploded.

  “You have it hard?” I demanded, leaping to my feet. “I work twelve-hour freaking shifts to put food on the table, pay the rent and my tuition, while all you do is laze around doing nothing!”

  My verbal assault was useless. It broke upon him like a stiff breeze on a stone wall. Bill bent, picked up his video game controller, and resumed playing his game.

  “Then leave,” he grunted, simply and irrevocably.

  It was this, of all things, that made me break into tears. I tried to hold them back so he wouldn’t see me cry, but I couldn’t do it. Eventually, he paused his game again and turned toward me.

  “Look,” Bill said, his voice as hard and cold as stone, “no one’s keeping you here. You can go around feeling sorry for yourself, like I’m making you work so hard, but I’m not. You don’t like it? Then get the hell out of here.”

  He didn’t yell. He intoned as if each word were a hammer blow upon nails that sank into my heart. Unable to contain myself, I fled to my room and dissolved into tears on my bed. My day had been so long—a twelve-hour shift long—and then I had to come home to this.

  As I cried, I remembered my brother how he used to be. Smart. Confident. Strong. Unstoppable. With his whole future lined up ahead of him. Then, that fateful night happened.

  For a moment, I wondered if we would have been better off had the cops shot him that night instead of just arresting him. My parents would have been devastated, of course, but considering that they died in a car crash two years later, they wouldn’t have suffered long anyways. As for me, I would be crying my eyes out right now, that was for sure.

  However, things were as they were and, for the past five years, I had kept the promise I made to my mother’s grave and looked after Bill.

  But now, it was killing me.

  Half-ashamed and half-defiant, I pulled out my phone from my pocket and gazed at the little picture of Jesse Valen on the screen until I fell asleep. He was a man central to the whole mess my life had become and still, even though that tiny picture, his smile made me feel warm inside.

  He was also a man who, for a little while anyway, just might come back into our lives.

  Chapter 2

  The next morning, thank God, was my one day off. I needed to use it to clean the house and go shopping. So, at eight in the morning, I threw my hair into a messy bun and began to scrub.

  By eleven, I had done everything except vacuum, but that, unfortunately, would have to wait. Bill was still sleeping, and I knew very well how angry he would be if I woke him up—especially considering all the beer bottles I threw into the recycling bin. I left Bill a note requesting him to do it, but I knew better than to expect anything of it. For the sake of my parents and my promise, I’d just have to do it when I returned.

  Still dressed in an old gray T-shirt and a pair of runner’s shorts, I clambered into our old 1999 Tercel and made my way to the shop. Since I generally ate at the restaurant, the food in the house was almost exclusively for Bill to eat or ignore. Despite my knowledge of my brother’s eating habits, I did my best to buy healthy snacks, rather than the crap he brought home on his rare ventures out of the house. I filled my cart with apples, grapes, celery sticks, and hoped they wouldn’t go bad and uneaten. I knew that the health-loving, muscle-flexing athlete that had once been my brother was still in there somewhere.

  Please, please let him be in there somewhere.

  After carefully choosing and paying for my groceries, I hauled the shopping cart out to my car and got busy unloading its contents into the trunk. After the first several bags, the heat and exhaustion started getting to me. I pressed my forehead against the hatch of my trunk and took several deep, steadying breaths. Finally calm and a little steadier, I groped behind me for my cart to continue unloading it, but my hand only met air.

  “Oh, shit!” I cried and leaped back to see the darn thing trundling away from me, back down toward the parking lot. In horror, I watched as it careened not toward the bushes or some beat-up, piece-of-junk car, but toward a brand new, sapphire-blue Mustang convertible.

  That’s when the injustice of life suddenly struck me.

  Not caring that I was dressed like a hobo, I sprinted to catch up. My breasts bounced. My lungs heaved. But still, I could not catch it in time.

  Smash! I winced as its heavy metal grate collided with the stunning new car. Glistening with sweat and embarrassment, I rushed to retrieve it and spurted apologies to the owner, who was sitting inside.

  As the man got out, I was nervous and expecting that he’d yell, holler, call the cops, or even be super nice and condescending about it which would only make me feel worse. Instead, something even more terrible happened.

  “Uh … hello, Jesse,” I stuttered. “Sorry about your car.

  Jesse Valen, star quarterback of the Jets, long-time friend and then enemy of my brother, and eternal crush of my childhood rose out of that snazzy new convertible like the six-and-a-half-foot giant he was. He blinked at me for a moment, as if confused.

  “I’m so, so sorry,” I stammered again. “I can pay… actually, I can’t. I can apologize for any damage. I didn’t realize my cart was getting away from me and…” I petered out beneath his unchanging, gable-browed gaze.

  After at least thirty seconds, he exclaimed, “Mary? Mary Taft, is that you?”

  Painfully conscious of my messy, lopsided bun and the film of sweat on my forehead, I mumbled an embarrassed, “Yes.”

  “Holy cow!” he cried, scooping me up in a powerful embrace and twirling me around. “It’s great to see you. You look…wow, you look amazing.”

  I sensed his eyes resting momentarily on my large bust, which was clearly outlined underneath my clingy gray T-shirt. This made part of me feel amazing while the other part felt tremendously ashamed.

  “How’s your brother? I haven’t seen him in ages,” he continued, still gazing openly at me.

  I winced at the mention of my brother.

  “He’s well,” I lied. “You know how it is. He has a lot to be getting along with.”
<
br />   “I bet, I bet,” he agreed.

  As he leaned close to me, I detected the tiniest hint of alcohol coming off his breath. I looked past him and saw the O’Reilly’s Pub sign glowing next to the grocery store. Through the large window, I saw that the bartender was, at that very moment, cleaning several glasses of beer off his bar.

  Suddenly, I felt a little less pathetic.

  “I’m sorry about your car,” I said, glancing at where my cart had struck it. I grimaced as I saw two tiny scratches—really, they were no bigger than fingernail marks—marring its perfect paint.

  “Aw, don’t worry about it,” he replied, shrugging. “It’s a rental, and trust me, I can afford it.”

  I bit my lip and wondered what he meant by that. Was he trying to make me feel bad about my and Bill’s abysmal financial state?

  But then, I saw his smile and stopped worrying.

  “So,” I started, “I saw the article in the newspaper. Congrats on making the whole town lose their marbles over your arrival. Did everybody show up to greet you when you got off the train?”

  He chuckled. “Not everybody, but it was close. Mrs. Azelia was there, with a bunch of flowers and about five different cameras. Do you remember her? She used to come to all of my games with her face painted and that stupid cowbell?”

  I laughed. “Yes,” I said. “Then she’d sing, ‘home, home on the range,’ whenever we won.”

  “Yes, yes! Like: hoooome, home on the raaaannnnnnge!” he sang, doing an impressive—if slightly cruel—impression of the drunken, besotted woman.

  I could not help but giggle. Soon, I found myself leaning against his car beside him until our shoulders nearly touched.

  We stood there for quite a while, reminiscing about past games and exploits, my groceries totally forgotten for the moment. As we chatted, I found myself remembering the old days, before Bill’s arrest and when my parents were still alive.

  We had a huge, amazing house with a yard, a hot tub, and everything. Jesse used to come over at least once a week, sometimes to play catch or video games with my brother, other times to bask in the hot tub, moaning about his sore, over-worked muscles. Once, after a particularly grueling practice, he had asked me to climb into the hot tub with him and give him a massage.