“IS ANYTHING WRONG?” SONYA ASKED.
Same old sweet, warm office, but now all I got was a cold shoulder. My fingers were laced together on her desk, my don’t-fuck-with-me face on full display. Luna was outside, playing with Sydney. Sonya had sent her away, and I knew exactly why. Luna and I had gone through the motions of another futile session—but that was to be expected—and I’d even told Sonya about the sign language class we’d gone to and how we’d learned practical signals, like I’m hungry, I want to go home, and I’m uncomfortable, which Luna had already used a few times and I was able to read—albeit fucking slowly.
The only thing that didn’t sit right with Sonya was the fact I hadn’t called her in a couple of weeks. My sexual appetite wasn’t satisfied. Not by a fucking long shot. In fact, I’d never suffered from such an extreme case of blue balls. But what could I possibly tell my child’s therapist? That I didn’t want to tap her ass anymore because I was too busy eating and fingering someone almost half my age, who’d recently added to her collection of stolen items my ancient cell phone, my iPad, and every piece of crap document I’d kept in my glove compartment?
“Nothing’s wrong,” I hissed.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Luna has responded pretty well to the sign language class, and she is spending more time with the work chick.” Sonya knew about Edie. Knew that the girl who’d caught us fucking was making friends with Luna. Sonya was cautiously in favor of the relationship, liking the idea of Luna enjoying the company of someone else, but worried that Edie wouldn’t understand the consequences of suddenly pulling away and ignoring Luna when she went off to college, got a new boyfriend, or fuck knows what. Fortunately, I’d blocked the boyfriend issue. She wasn’t going to date anytime soon.
Sonya leaned back in her chair and pursed her lips, oozing bad vibes. “You haven’t invited me over in a while.”
She could file this complaint alongside Amanda, who hadn’t had a phone call recently, either. As with everything I did, it wasn’t personal. It was just that there was only one person I wanted to roll between my sheets right now.
“Things have changed.” I snapped my gum, my gaze hard and bored.
“How so?”
“I’m seeing someone.” Blunt lie, but hey, lies were what kept this world running. I wasn’t seeing Edie. I was merely watching her lust-drunk face as I ate her out and fingered her sweet, tight ass. At the same time, Sonya was no longer needed by me and I had to let her go. Our no-strings-attached relationship had reached its expiration date. It was time to move on.
“Oh.” The therapist perked up in her seat, her eyebrows shooting so high up her hairline, they almost disappeared. “Do I know her?”
“Why would you?” I bit out. Fine. Maybe I was a little defensive because Edie was barely legal and the idea of being a cradle snatcher rubbed me the wrong way. I bit the inside of my cheek thinking about how illicit we were, felt, looked. The tan, ripped man and the petite blonde teenager.
“Come on, Trent. You hardly get out of the house. And I bet you anything in my savings account you don’t have the Tinder app. How did you meet?”
“Work.”
“She’s in finance?”
Not even close. I cocked my head sideways. “Something like that. I trust this doesn’t change your commitment to Luna?” I tried to sound courteous and keep the edge off my voice.
Sonya frowned at this, reaching across her cluttered desk to tap my hand. “Absolutely not. I am one hundred percent committed to your daughter, and about eighty percent happy for you.”
“Eighty?” I quirked a brow.
“The other twenty is mostly jealous and bitter.” She laughed. I almost smiled at that.
After the session, I put Luna in her car seat and drove aimlessly for a while. It was too early to go back home and start our bedtime routine, and Luna liked small places, where she could watch, but not be seen. I didn’t know what it was about Edie that infuriated me. Maybe it was the fact that our introduction had started off with her trying to steal from my mother. Maybe because her dad was a racist, and I thought—hoped, even, because that would make things so much easier—that perhaps she was one, too. Or was it the fact that I knew she was after me—after my shit, after my secrets, after my neck?
Well, things had gotten out of hand.
And I hadn’t stopped them.
I should have, but I hadn’t.
She was eighteen. That was good. She was legal.
That was also bad. She was still too young to understand what all this meant.
If my daughter met a man twice her age and decided to be with him, I’d be losing my shit and going Gran Torino on his ass without so much as a blink.
Luckily for me, Edie didn’t have a loving father. She had Jordan Van Der Zee.
Luna kicked my seat, and I snapped my eyes to the rearview window, frowning.
“What’s up?”
She pointed at something outside the window. I shifted my gaze to see what she wanted. “Ice cream shop? Yeah, not happening.”
Two kicks. Then one more for the road.
“No junk food, kid. You know the drill.”
I was good at the technical stuff. I fed her a nutritious, well-balanced diet, made sure she got plenty of sleep, and the appropriate kind of intellectual stimulation. It was the personal stuff I was hopeless with.
Luna waved her tiny hands like she was screaming, making her point, and it occurred to me that she’d never tried to communicate with me like this before. Actively. A bullet of thrill shot to my stomach. It may have not looked like a breakthrough, but it felt like one. I found myself tapping my fingers on my steering wheel, trying to contain my excitement. The smile I was biting down was slipping out.
“Are you hungry, or just in the mood for something sweet?” I asked, my eyes glued to the rearview mirror. She huffed and threw one hand in the air, looking at me like I was an idiot.
“Sweet tooth, then. If you were hungry, you’d have kicked until you broke my back.”
Her smile was slight, but it was there. It was intoxicating.
I wanted to write her something. Something good. Something that would make Sonya proud.
Luna, Luna, Luna.
My tangled maze.
Show me the way to your beginning and your end.
To the exit point.
To your pure little soul.
“I’m going to make a suggestion, if I may.” I sniffed, rubbing my face with my hand to hide my stupid grin.
She shook her head, smirking. This time, I couldn’t help it. I laughed. My daughter had a fucking sense of humor, and it was lit.
“Little brat. It was a figure of speech. I wasn’t really asking. There’s a churro stand by our building. They also sell cinnamon pretzels. You’ve never had a churro, have you?”
She shook her head again.
“Well, we need to rectify that before social services takes you away from me for denying you everything good in this world. But—if you have a churro today, you don’t get any junk food until next week. That includes Sunday with Edie, and I don’t know what she’s got planned for us.”
Her eyes. Her fucking eyes. They looked like mine and they ignited like fireflies at night. They looked like the eyes of any four-year-old kid. Hopeful. She kicked steady, fast, eager kicks to my seat.
“Is this about the churro or about Edie?”
One kick.
“Kick once if it’s the churro, two if it’s Edie.”
Kick, kick. I sat back, brushing the steering wheel, feeling calm for the first time in years.
“Yeah, she’s going to come over on Sunday and spend some time with us. Hey, why does she call you Germs?”
I knew why, but wanted to try to get her to talk to me.
Luna looked perplexed. I’d stopped asking her questions which required her to talk or elaborate long ago. My mother said I was killing her with kindness by letting her not speak. I usually retorted that she had enough shit getting asked and poked by other people for me to nag her, too. I saw the wheels in Luna’s head turning. She was trying to figure out how to communicate to me. Usually she’d ignore me and move on. But for the first time ever, she wanted to tell me. Someone honked their horn behind us. I’d been too deep in the moment and had missed the green light. I didn’t give a fuck. The car lurched forward and swerved around us just as Luna opened her palms and waved them around.
“You…danced?”
She shook her head, looking annoyed. She put her hands near her face and made a disgusted sound.
“You’re dirty?” I tried, pretending like Edie hadn’t told me the night she’d babysat.
Talk, Luna. Talk. I’ll take anything, not just words. Not just gestures. Any. Fucking. Thing. Then maybe we both wouldn’t be so fucking lonely in that big penthouse.
“You met her when you were dirty? You had something on your hands? She helped you get it cleaned?”
She shook her head violently, her eyebrows diving down. She pointed at her open palm, then pinched her nose in a bad-smell gesture, her wide eyes begging me to get it.
Say it.
“She stinks? You stink? You had something on your hand? She gave you something smelly?”
The worst part of my week was the moment I saw Luna giving up on our conversation. Her shoulders slumped and she sighed, crossing her arms and looking out the window. Ignoring me.
We didn’t communicate for the rest of the drive until we got home and I asked her if she still wanted that churro. She ignored me for the millionth time that day, just as she did every day.
Nothing had changed.
Sunday couldn’t come fast enough.
Edie Van Der Zee was probably the whitest person I’d ever met. Fact.
I pondered this thought as she sat beside me, cooing over a dog who licked his balls while we were having a picnic in an Anaheim park, which was the last place anyone we knew would be. It was also where Disneyland was, where we’d taken Luna.
Luna was wearing Minnie Mouse ears that were too big and eating the sandwich Edie had made before we got out of the house. Peanut butter, jelly, and a slice of cheddar cheese in-between.
“Are you enjoying the view with your meal?” I snarled, sitting at the edge of our picnic table and not touching any of the food. I wasn’t particularly hungry, and not only because Miss Van Der Zee had invented the grossest sandwich known to man. I was also being a jealous asshole because Edie had managed to squeeze reactions and facial expressions I hadn’t known existed out of my daughter.
The girls ignored me, their huddled heads almost touching as Edie explained to Luna something about how the crust of the bread is obscenely underrated, and how she likes to toast it and nibble on it like a breadstick.
“Trent, are you a crust-eater?” Edie asked me, snapping her head up. I scratched at my stubbled jaw, avoiding a gross sexual innuendo in front of my daughter. Edie had behaved like the perfect nanny all through Disneyland. She’d basically ignored my ass, held Luna’s hand the whole time, and hadn’t even blinked when two young mothers hit on me while I’d bought us slushies.
“I don’t eat bread.”
“Why?”
“Don’t like it.”
“Who doesn’t like bread?”
“Someone who likes their six-pack.” Spoken like the true conceited bastard I was. Luna’s eyes flew to Edie in alarm, and she put her hand on my daughter’s shoulder.
“It’s okay, Luna. We don’t need a six-pack. Life is too short to deny yourself a peanut butter, jelly, and cheddar cheese party.”
It was one thing to be a jerk to Edie—an outsider, but I couldn’t do it to Luna. I bent down, tapping Luna’s Minnie Mouse ears. “Hey. Care to give your old man a bite?” The apology to her was in my voice.
She handed me her sandwich, and I took a small bite, watching her face melt into a smile. So fucking worth it.
By the time we got home, it was six. By the time Luna was bathed, fed, and I’d read her a story—Edie took the opportunity to gingerly make a beeline to one of the bathrooms and take a shower—it was after eight.
Then it was just us. Edie, me, and our sinister thoughts.
I figured walking into the bathroom while she showered was too creepy, especially considering I’d already indulged my stalking tendencies to borderline restraining order territory when it came to her.
Reluctantly, I waited for her on the couch, staring at an action movie without really watching it, wondering what the fuck I was doing.
I knew she was still coming after me.
Yet I couldn’t. Fucking. Stop.
Did I have feelings toward her? I didn’t think so. But I liked having her around. Liked how she put a smile on my daughter’s face. How her fuckable ass and lean surfer’s body felt against mine. How she responded to my touch the same way you respond to your first kiss. With uncontained rawness. She was clay. I could do whatever the fuck I wanted with her. And I wanted to do everything. Down to the last, sordid fantasy that sat dormant in my head.
To validate my point, Edie padded out to the living room barefoot, her long yellow hair still wet and in knots. She was back in the clothes she’d worn to Disneyland—a pair of turquoise shorts and a rainbow-colored Rip Curl tank top. She looked like a gift waiting to be unwrapped, and I forgave myself for not confronting her about the stolen phone, trying to remind myself it shouldn’t matter. The only thing with compromising information on Jordan was my flash drive, and she would never get her hands on that. It was currently in my safe, locked away from her sticky fingers.
She could only get her hands on useless things, and we were just messing around, so no harm done. Neither of us had lied about our intentions. It wasn’t as though she’d backstabbed me.
Sprawled on the sofa, I tapped my thigh, dropping my head to the heap of fluffy pillows behind me. “C’mere.”
She peered from under her wet lashes, looking shy for the briefest moment. I wondered if it was because of what we were going to do, or what she thought was going to happen. Bane had said she wasn’t vanilla, but what he really meant was she wasn’t vanilla for him. Me, I was different. A dark, deprived animal lived inside me. Whenever I let it out—and I always let it out in bed—it bloomed. Freedom gave the savage inside me a good buzz, which was why I sometimes got a little carried away.
I couldn’t lose control with Edie. Not with her.
Edie walked over and straddled me like she was a stripper on her first day and wasn’t sure what to do. It was awkward because we weren’t a couple. We weren’t intimate. We weren’t even friendly. I didn’t comment on this, because familiarity was off the fucking table with everyone, but with her specifically.
Instead, I dragged my hands up her thighs to the curve of her ass, and we both watched, her fair skin under the dusk of mine. Lust didn’t have color. But it did have a face and it looked at me, blinking rapidly to the rhythm of her hammering heart.
“I like Luna,” she said quietly, wrapping her arms around my neck, her fingers trying to grasp at my very short hair. For a second there, I wanted to kiss her, just for saying that.
Instead, I squeezed her ass, slamming her body into my erection, my denim and her shorts brushing together.
“She likes you, too,” I retorted.
“Yet, I don’t like you,” she continued, grinding against my cock deliberately, and since when was I doing third base on a regular basis? I’d had multiple chances to fuck Edie, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. To take this girl—so different from my usual mature, curvy type—and do grown-up things to her.
I wanted to bite her lip and watch her bleed on me.
Instead, instead, in-fucking-stead, I locked my jaw, feeling my Adam’s apple bobbing with a swallow. One hand still on her ass, I reached with the other one to the coffee table by the couch, opening the child-proof drawer and retrieving a joint. I tucked it between my lips and cupped the tip with my hand, lighting it.
“I don’t like you, too,” I answered casually, clicking shut my Zippo and placing it back on the stainless steel table.
“But I like how you make me feel.” She rode me through our clothes. The aching need for her escalated torturously slowly, reminding me why sex as a teenager was so much more fun than it was in your thirties. The anticipation made my dick twitch. “You make me feel wild. Fearless. Like I’m someone. Someone strong.” Her lips dragged along my neck, hot and soft.
I exhaled a ribbon of smoke upward, leaning and sweeping my lips against the side of her neck. “What’s your fascination with power?” I ran my hand up her arm, thumbing the hem of her shirt. I wanted it gone. Her nipples were erect under her top, begging to be licked and sucked and bitten. Her tits were so small—so fucking tiny—the idea of kneading them in my big hands made my balls tighten, knowing there wasn’t enough of them, that I’d be left hungry for more of her.
“It’s less of a power thing, more of a strength issue. Why wouldn’t I want to be strong? Isn’t that what everyone’s after?” She tilted her head, slipping her fingers to clasp my joint and take a hit. I let her. I let the eighteen-year-old on my lap, rubbing her wet pussy all over my Diesel denim, smoke with me. It’d been years since I’d given a woman the time of day, and I’d never, ever done anything illegal with a chick who straddled the line between barely legal and hot-as-shit-and-worth-the-self-loathing.
But Edie wasn’t a chick.
Edie was the fucking end of me.
She exhaled the smoke straight into my face, and I took the opportunity to pluck the joint from her hand and place it in an ashtray. I yanked her top off and threw it on the floor, admiring her bare tits for the very first time. Her nipples were two pink coins. She shuddered with pleasure when I cupped one of them, rolling the plump skin beneath my fingers and staring at her like a hungry hound.
“If you want to be strong, be,” I hissed.
“Easy for you to say.” She thrust her tits into my face, losing every ounce of control over her self-restraint. I held her back, my fingers feathering, skimming on her ribs as I took one of her nipples into my mouth, sucking on it ravenously before biting the tip and feeling her pull her breasts away but grind into my dick harder. I stopped when I felt the goose bumps around her nipple and sucked the pain away, and she moaned louder.
That’s it, baby. Pain and pleasure. Playing together, but not nicely.
“Oh yeah, I’m a lucky bastard,” I snorted, brushing my thumb over her blushing nipple. “Going to high school with the richest kids in the state when I couldn’t even afford football gear. Working two fucking jobs after school just so I could buy supplies for my next school year. Being the playboy, the good, casual fuck no one would ever date seriously in this town—because I’m half black, because I’m poor, because I’m the stereotype people want as a friend but never as family. You’re right. I don’t know hardship.” I slapped her tit, not too hard, but not softly, either. She winced and grabbed my head, pulling me into her. We melted into each other and it was dangerous, doing whatever the fuck we were doing in the living room, where Luna could easily walk in. I took one last pull of the joint before putting it out, then tucking both it and the lighter into my pocket to kill every evidence that it was ever there. I grabbed Edie by the ass and carried her to my room, my lips and teeth on her other nipple. Kissing, caressing, licking, making her skin blossom. I didn’t bite her. Not when she was expecting it. Half the fun was not expecting the spank and the bite. She was going to learn. I was going to teach her.
My cock was so hard I thought I was going to shoot my load in my pants like a goddamn teenager.
“Mine,” I said, my lips running from her tits to her ribcage, all the way up to her neck. Everything was soft and tan and baked by the sun. I kicked the door to my bedroom open and laid her on the dark oak platform king-sized bed. Her legs spread for me willingly, but her heart wouldn’t, and maybe that’s why she was the girl to make my dick extra hard and forget about all the others.
“Every inch of you is mine. Your breath is mine.” I squeezed her throat, sliding on top of her, my tongue exploring the space between her breasts, just above her lungs. My mouth moved like a straight arrow down to her belly button. “Your mind is mine.” I tugged at her hair without even looking up from her flat stomach, hearing her moan. She used both hands pushing my head down, her poise snapping like the flying buttons of a ripped shirt.
“Your body is definitely mine.” I shoved my hand into her panties and squeezed her pussy hard. “Admit it, Edie. You’re drowning in me, fast. You’re way past wet.” I let the word roll on my tongue as I slipped two fingers into her, playing with her arousal, and she was so soaking, and I was so fucking her tonight—yes—even if it meant it would put me straight on God’s shit list. “You’re mine, and you hate it. You’re mine, and I’m not a wave you can ride. I’m the fucking ocean. And every single day when you pull shit like stealing my iPad or my old phone or the fucking trash I keep in my glove compartment, you’re falling deeper. Tell me, Van Der Zee, do I make it hard for you to breathe?”
My mouth was near her panties. Her shorts were on my floor. I looked up to her, and she looked like she wanted to cry. How beautiful would that be? Her tears running down her perfect porcelain face. A broken doll. My broken doll.
“You do.” She inhaled sharply, watching me slide her underwear down her thighs. My heart stuttered unevenly at seeing her naked—completely naked—for the first time. Not in a compromising position against the printer, or in someone’s back seat with her top still on, but completely bare. I was still fully dressed, but somehow it didn’t make me feel less exposed. It made me uncomfortable, but not enough to stop what we were doing. “I can’t breathe when I think about the things I want to do to you, and I breathe too fast when I think about the things I want you to do to me,” Edie admitted.
“Tell me,” I whispered into the crook between her thigh and pussy, watching her whole body quiver under me before I’d even touched her. “What do you want me to do to you?”
“Everything,” she whispered. “I want you to do everything to me.”
I licked her inner thighs, her pussy, inside and out—every drop of her lust for me—then got up and reached for my nightstand, pulling out a condom. She peeled my shirt off in a hurry while I worked my jeans, the condom between my teeth.
“One thing, Edie. Whatever we do, we take this to our graves.”
“To our graves,” she echoed. “My father will take everything I care about if he finds out.”
Same goes for me, I thought bitterly. Only difference was, I was going to fight the motherfucker to the ground. She couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. Same difference.
I rolled the condom on, feeling the familiar appreciative twitch of my cock. I stood on my knees, between her legs, then slapped and stroked my sheathed cock while fingering her. She moaned, watching me.
“I liked it when you bit my nipple hard,” she said. I ignored her, pulling my fingers out and coating her pussy with her arousal.
“You make me feel deranged with need,” she whimpered, just as I slapped her pussy for the first time. It made her body stutter and stir, and she let out a little yelp I stifled by shoving my wet fingers into her mouth.
“Shhh,” I said. “You said you like it. Show me how much.”
She sucked my fingers clean, and I cupped the back of her head, pulling her closer as I slid into her without warning. No different than any other woman I’d slept with before. Just the same, I convinced myself. Just the fucking same.
So fucking wet.
I thrust once, twice, three times, without asking whether it felt okay or any consideration, like I’d done with other women.
But hell if she felt like any other woman.
Edie moved underneath me, slow at the beginning, catching up with my pace. She grunted every time I entered her, scratching my back as I slid one of her calves against my shoulder and slammed deeper into her. She was tight and small, but the smile she gave showed me she enjoyed this agony the way I did.
Every time I felt this surge in my chest, I thrust harder, faster, more violently, trying to shake off the feeling that accompanied my tingling balls and tight muscles. She, in return, scratched harder, drawing blood from me, screaming my name into a pillow she flung over her face.
I rode her.
But she rode me, too.
“I’m close, I’m close, I’m close,” she chanted, and this was my cue to flip her onto her stomach, enter her from behind, and press her head against the pillow.
“I want to hurt you,” I said, because that’s what I always said, because that’s what I always felt. But I didn’t feel it now. I was on autopilot. Like people say they’re hungry at noon sharp just to get the fuck out of the office and take their lunch break.
“Then do,” she moaned into the pillow, completely pliable, and she fucking came, clutching my dick and shuddering like she was having a seizure. “Hurt me, Trent. I love your wrath on my skin.”
I wrapped her long hair around my fist and pulled hard, making her arch her back when she was on all fours. Her ass was round and white against her obvious tan lines. I slapped it.
At first cautiously, getting the feel of it, and when she moaned and clenched around me, barely making it possible for me to slide out and then back in, I slapped harder.
But I wasn’t feeling it. The need to inflict pain on her.
“Harder,” she groaned.
I slapped her ass harder, and the thwack! hung in the air. A red mark formed around her right cheek. I loved it. I hated that I loved it. What the fuck was wrong with me?
“Harder,” she yelped.
And I did, hating that my dick was so swollen and ready to explode to the pained sounds she was making. She confused me. I’d never felt guilty about the things I wanted. I did now.
“Harder.”
“No.”
“Trent.”
“No.”
“I need it.”
“You’ve had enough for one day, Edie. Your cum is all over my dick. I can eat you out if you want another orgasm.” Was I bargaining with her mid-fuck? That was a first. And a last. This chick wasn’t running the show, no matter how hard I wanted her tight pink pussy to milk my cock.
“If you won’t, Bane will.” I heard the smile in her voice but couldn’t see it. Fuck it. She’d asked for it.
Thwack!
We came together like a storm. Her grip on my cock tightened as my thrusts became erratic, jerking before I found my release. I swear I came enough to fill up a bucket in that condom. Shit, it felt good.
I pulled out immediately, rolling off of her and sauntering to the bathroom to dispose of the condom. I didn’t look back to see her when I washed the cum from my dick, watching it shrinking tiredly above the sink. I let her have my back, knowing if she caught my expression through the bathroom mirror, she’d flash a victory grin.
I made a note to never take the flash drive from my safe.
She was starting to feel a lot like an addiction. Couple more fucks like this, and I didn’t trust my fucked-up self not to hand it over willingly.