The Rest of Forever

by Kitty Berry

  Jordan’s laughter, a pitch that resonated between my legs, filled my ears as she placed a hand on my arm and gently squeezed while throwing her long auburn hair over one shoulder. As I caught a whiff of her fruity scent, I flexed my muscles then inhaled her scent. I was forced to shift the erection, I knew was useless to attempt to hide, in my pants.

  Her brother caught on and tried to scare me off with a raise of his eyebrow, but it didn’t stop me. I smirked back at Joey and adjusted myself once more.

  “Black,” Joey growled. “Don’t you have work to finish up for Morgan?”

  “Morgan?” Jordan had asked, looking at me for a clue as to how I knew her brother. “Are you in business, too?”

  That had me throwing my head back, my Adam’s apple more predominate and laughing from the pit of my belly. “No, baby,” I said using a term of endearment. “Ex-military turned rogue. Computer whiz and long-time geek. Numbers, to me, have always been more about coding than math,” I admitted.

  “Oh,” Jordan purred like a sweet baby kitten in heat.

  “I’m going to head home,” Courtney said as she turned to Jordan and me. “Jordan, Cal can bring you home, okay?”

  As a wide ear-to-ear smile planted itself on Jordan’s face, she said, “Perfect.”

  I couldn’t help my own smile that turned into a shit-eating grin like the cat that just ate the canary when my eyes met Joey’s. Yes, I could be an asshole. Yes, Jordan had been wearing canary yellow. And yes, I had already been formulating a plan to eat her.

  I took Jordan home from the restaurant that night, and I wish I could say that I had gotten laid. I hadn’t. Well, it was a technicality, really. Jordan insists that we didn’t have sex the night we met because technically, it was the following day. Semantics.

  And it wasn’t from my lack of trying. I tried my best for a few hours, but Jordan insisted that she wasn’t the kind of girl to fuck after only knowing someone for ten minutes. I tried pointing out that we had spent close to two hours together in the restaurant, then the drive to the apartment where I was crashing with her sister had added at least another fifteen minutes.

  She’d laughed as if I were joking.

  I wasn’t, so I scrunched up my face in a confused expression as we entered the apartment in Stone Towers where we were both staying.

  And then it was as if my mind eased back into the peripheral of my being, second to my lust and, dare I think it, possibly even third behind my heart.

  I backed her up against the wall in the hall leading to the extra bedroom where she was going to sleep while visiting her sister and I used my knees to spread her thighs apart as she gasped and tried her best to even her breathing before I noticed the effect I was having on her.

  With a knowing smirk spreading across my symmetrical features, I grabbed her wrists and held them, one-handed, above her head as I backed her into her room.

  “Wha-What are you doing?” she asked in a panting tone.

  I brushed her hair from her face with my free hand, then lifted her chin with it until her eyes met mine. “I’m going to fucking kiss you the way you’ve wished every other guy had done.”

  My blood heated, and I couldn’t recall ever desiring anything or anyone more than I wanted Jordan Collins at that moment.

  I leaned in closely and waited for her eyes to flutter closed. I lowered my head to her and brushed my lips against hers before I could no longer hold myself back and I devoured her lips with mine.

  Jordan moaned and the sound shot straight to my aching cock, fighting to escape the confines of my jeans. My tongue found hers. I never broke the kiss, but when she needed air and she had, I pulled back and smirked before hurling her soft body into the hard planes of mine with a strangled groan.

  Then she’d ended the night by pushing me and my hard-on out of her room.

  Feeling my cock swell at the memory of her creeping into my bed during the middle of the night and finally succumbing to my charms by morning, I snap myself back to reality, and ask, “Your date not putting out tonight?”

  “Nah, I mean,” he puffs out his chest like a hairy gorilla in the Congo, “I can tap that if I wanted, she’s just playing hard to get.”

  Not okay with the fact he sounds like a man that doesn’t understand the word no, I make a mental note to text Ace and Elliot the minute I’m in the Uber and tell them to keep their eyes on this asshole. Not that Jordan couldn’t handle herself. After her attack a while back, she’d been scared to death to be alone and had finally asked to learn how to defend herself if ever in that situation again. After my training, I’m confident that she can handle anything Tony throws her way.

  Unless she does want to handle it. Maybe she wants his advances and would welcome them instead of fighting them off.

  I arrive back at my apartment for the time being, above Colleen’s saltwater taffy shop and decide to get myself a sweet treat as the reward I deserve for my time spent in Elliot’s attic. Sweets are my weakness.

  I open the door and heft in a deep gulp of the sugary scent filling the air.

  “Hey, Ian,” Colleen greets me with my fake name, and a twinge of something I’ve been taught is guilt hits me. She’s a sweet lady and a lot of fun to hang out with. I feel bad lying to her, but I have no other option.

  “Oh, hey,” I return her greeting. “What’s going on in here?” I ask as I look around at the shelves that are being stripped bare of my favorite confections.

  “The shop’s getting a facelift much like the one I’m going to need in about twenty years.”

  I wave off her self-deprecating joke and ask where the treats are going as the bell above the door dings and in walks Carl DeMato, Amanda’s stalker and the reason I’m in Falls Village undercover.

  Colleen chuckles then screams at her favorite basketball team playing on the TV behind the counter. “Jesus, fucking Teyler isn’t doing shit tonight! What the hell is wrong with him?”

  I study the screen for a moment, then answer in the only way that seems right. “He’s shooting twenty percent from the field and he’s oh for four from three with five turn overs. Oh, and he’s old.”

  Colleen laughs, I don’t believe at me, but I’m never sure in these interactions. “Well, you’re not wrong, just…not…it was a rhetorical question, Ian. And he’s only a few months older than me, so watch it.”

  “Hey, Ian,” Carl says sliding up next to me.

  “Hey,” I return. “What are you doing here?”

  “You’re not the only one in town with a sweet tooth. I heard the store was shutting down for a few weeks to remodel so I thought I’d stock up on my favorites.”

  Panic sets in. Colleen’s store has become part of my new routine in Falls Village, and I know I can’t handle another drastic change to it.

  “What?” I ask then turn to Colleen regarding my original question. “About the sweets…” I change the topic back to what I want to talk about, the important matter.

  “Which would you like? They’re on the house today. You look like you could use some sugar or…something.”

  “Thanks. It’s been a rough twenty-four hours. You can’t close the store though.”

  “Mm-hmm,” Colleen hums. “Looks like a girl has gotten into your head. And relax, I’ll still give you your daily fix.”

  “More like he’s not getting into her panties or his daily sex fix,” Carl quips and I roll my eyes at the douche.

  But before I can verbally respond, the basketball player that Colleen is usually screaming at through the television, falls to the ground on the court and she covers her mouth with her hand.

  I watch as her face expresses changing emotions that I’ve learned to spot. First there was concern, then pity for the man she appears to be harboring an infatuation for.

  “Hey.” I try to get her attention. “I’m sure they have someone else they can use while they check him out.”

  “This isn’t the first time he’s blown out that knee.”

  I look at her curiously,
because where I never played the sport, it’s always been one of my interests. I know every player’s stats and I don’t forget a thing. I have no recollection of Teyler Walker ever blowing out his left knee.

  Colleen enters Carl’s items into the register as he complains that only I’m getting my order for free, then she accepts his credit card. My eyes stare at the plastic. It’s an item I’ve been waiting for, one he’s never used and rightfully so.

  Carl waves at Colleen and me as he exits the shop. She absentmindedly hands me the bag she’d been filling with sweets when Teyler had gone down before her eyes and waves off my continued questioning of when he blew out his knee the first time and how she knew a fact about basketball that I didn’t.

  Figuring I wasn’t going to talk the near hysterical female into an answer, I accept the bag of treats and head above the store to my apartment to wait until she locks up for the night.

  That comes sooner than usual. Maybe because of the remodel, there was no one else in the store but Carl and me. Or maybe because Colleen was too upset over Teyler Walker’s injury to continue working. Either way, it worked out better for me.

  It was just starting to get dark when I picked the lock of the door that connects Colleen’s shop to the stairwell leading to my temporary living quarters. I use the flashlight mechanism on my phone to illuminate the floor where I step and make my way over to the cash register.

  Three minutes is all it takes for me to obtain what I need and make a mental note to fix Colleen’s shabby security before I leave Falls Village.

  I return to my apartment and open my laptop to do a quick search. Carl DeMato was either a crook using someone else’s credit card to buy candy, or his real name is Brian Edwards. I log into the government’s data base system that Mac and his employees have access to. Even if we didn’t, getting into that system hadn’t been difficult for me at seven, I highly doubt it’d be a problem for me now. But Mac has spoken to me numerous times about going in using the proper channels even though it’s more fun to hack my way in, so I follow his orders.

  I enter the name Brian Edwards and watch my choices pop up on the screen. Seeing Carl, or Brian’s face, I click and open his profile.

  Bingo! And we have our motive.

  Brian, or Carl as I know him, met Amanda not long after she graduated from college from what I can decipher. Knowing Elliot and his history with her, I can safely assume he was probably her rebound guy after Todd left her for London. Amanda and Todd had been hot and heavy in college before he broke her heart and left her for the wild corporate life over the pond before passing away.

  Brian and Amanda must have met and had a whirlwind romance because if these records are right, they were living together with their money comingling within three months. Not long after that, there is legal documentation about their marriage and the purchase of a home. Brian either came from money or had one hell of a job because the house they bought wasn’t cheap.

  I look further into his education. He did well in high school, graduating at the top of his class. He was a spider. The University of Richmond, with a current acceptance rate of thirty percent. He did well there too, graduating with a degree in Business. He then attended Northeastern for his MBA after being denied from what appears to have been his first choice, Wharton.

  He’s worked in the Boston area from the onset of his career with a few blips of time unaccounted for. I’ll look further into those later. For now, I pull his bank records to see the funds he’s currently sitting on. With the money he has, he might truly be trying to buy up land in Falls Village as an investment. Opening a night club here is smart, but it’s much too convenient for my liking and if that were the case, why the fake name?

  I click into another site and search police and court records. Other than his marriage and divorce, there’s nothing to speak of. A few business transactions that make sense and some loans aren’t helping me out. But I hit the jackpot when I maneuver my way into his social media accounts. I find him under his legal name, his alias has accounts that he stupidly attached to his real one, so it wasn’t hard to match Brian to Carl and vice versa.

  I meander around his profile page on Facebook and find a few interesting comments. Things like, He’s going to get what’s coming to him, and Let’s see how he likes it, fill his page. I hop over and easily find and hack into his Twitter followed by his Snapchat then his Instagram accounts. After reading through each, I know I’m going to need to wake my best friend up the morning after his wedding, with disturbing news.

  Brian Edwards wants revenge on the men who slept with his wife. Well, one of them anyway, because Elliot is the only one still alive. Brian had made an inappropriate comment a few years back, probably not long after Todd’s passing, about the world being a better place, rid of an adulterer. His more recent posts talk about an eye for an eye, punishment, and payback.

  I try my best to sleep, but with my discovery of Carl’s true identity, I know this case is almost over, and for the first time in days, I feel excitement and hope. Once I’m done here, I can focus on getting Jordan back. So, it’s thoughts of her that keep me from sleep. Or wake me from it, as it was.

  Because I had fallen asleep. I know that I must be dreaming, because Jordan is next to me in my bed. I smell the sweet scent of her shampoo, her hair covering my chest and shoulder is close to my face. In my dream, it wakes me, and I look down so I can see her. Her long, brown hair begs me to run my fingers through it and when I do, I groan at the silkiness, having missed how comforting it is to feel. My eyes then travel farther down her body to discover she’s wearing a lingerie set in black—bra, garter belt, stockings, the makings of a wet dream.

  She stirs when she feels my body stiffen next to hers with a sly smirk on her face. “Hey, Cal, your dick is so big and hard. Let me make you come.”

  I nod and readjust our bodies so that I’m on my back and she’s to my side, giving her full access to my cock, now standing at attention for her.

  Jordan wraps her delicate hand around my shaft and grips me tightly. I emit a soft groan as my cock throbs in her hand. Her other lowers and cups me and I thrust myself farther into her grasp and moan aloud at the pressure of her squeeze. “They’re so heavy, Callan. They must really hurt you, baby. Let me make it all better,” she says as she shifts on the bed and takes me into her mouth.

  I feel the warm moisture surround me as I sink my fingers into her hair once again. “So fucking good. Can’t last,” I warn her as a feeling overtakes me. It’s like I’m entering another realm, perhaps one of awareness. I feel waves of warm energy radiating from my chest, gentle waves of water flowing over me in a caressing manner, and I momentarily question that possibility.

  Then I roll my body over, but Jordan is still there, my cock somehow still encapsulated between the tight suction of her lips. My body enters a sort of trance, I feel slightly heavier, or it’s my weighted blanket. Either way, I feel like it’s adding more weight than ever before, and somehow the air in the room is denser, making my breathing ragged.

  I begin to thrust my hips, my cock sinking deeper into her throat than she’s ever been able to take me before. When I push farther still and she doesn’t choke, I smile and give her another inch.

  I’m out of my mind with pleasure shooting at me from all angles, my balls are tight, and with each swing, they ache while my cock is warm and tingles. Then, as this awesome feeling runs through my body, I feel the quickening of my heartbeat. The sensations stemming from my throbbing cock are as if I’m on the verge of orgasming.

  “I’m going to fucking come in your mouth. Swallow it all, Jordan,” I demand as I roar out at the onslaught of my climax.

  And then I suddenly wake up. I’m face down, humping the bed, my sheets now coated in a quart of come. After not having an orgasm for as long as I have gone without, it was to be expected. I’d been ignoring my heavy balls for days.

  Realizing Jordan isn’t here, and I am alone with the aftermath of a wet dream, drags a sigh fro
m me. The cleanup and disappointment both suck and reality begins to set in as I turn on the shower.

  For a moment, I smile at the absurdity of my body, at my age, climaxing from a few dry humps into a mattress. A wet dream is thought to be one’s most pure orgasm. It’s involuntary, you don’t seek it or take action to make it happen, it’s very innocent and guilt free. Not that I feel guilt over jerking off any longer. I might have at twelve, but at my stage in life, I know I’m a grown man who requires pleasure.

  As I towel off and throw on new clothes, I remember that I have a job to do, and I need to push the reason why my body did what it had aside. I know it’s my own way of telling myself that I fucked up and that I need Jordan. But first, I need to handle the responsibilities of this job before I can make things right with her, so I reach for my phone and enter in the familiar digits of my best friend.

  “What’s up? You make it back to the house okay?” Elliot says in greeting.

  “Yeah. I found something on him,” I report, using the pronoun for Brian Edwards instead of his name in case either of our phones are tapped. “It affects you. He’s the ex, man.”

  “It affects me?” Elliot asks. “Why the fuck would her ex affect me?”

  I wait silently for understanding to sink in. It doesn’t take more than a minute because Elliot is a smart guy. Not as smart as I am, obviously, but still intelligent enough that he’ll work it out in his own time. He’s probably fighting sex brain from his wedding night.

  “Fuck” he whispers under his breath.

  “Yeah,” I say. “We need to meet to talk.”

  I take an Uber and meet Elliot a town over at a small diner where we shouldn’t see anyone we know from Falls Village.

  We’re seated quickly, not many people are here this early on a Sunday morning and the waitress takes our order as we settle in, not asking if we need time to decide. Luckily, I always order the same thing.

  “I’m sorry that I had to call you like this right after the wedding. Was Courtney pissed?” I’ve learned to think about other’s feelings since developing my relationships with my best friends.