CHAPTER FOUR
Jake
“Jakey,” the voice shrilled. “Time to go … NOW.” The blonde’s tone was more than a little annoying but I put up with it. After all, Jenna’s hot. She’s in law school, absolutely fucking gorgeous, and any guy would die to be in bed with her.
But I’m the guy who got her, the one who swept her off her feet. Or I should say, she swept me off mine. One day, we were sort-of dating and the next we were engaged, with a ring on her finger and the whole shebang. I still have no idea what the fuck happened. I guess I just went with what was easy and convenient, which has left me up shit creek.
I shook my head again ruefully. My life had been a whirlwind after the IPO party. After that incredible session with Tina, I got up to clean myself off. In the bathroom, I’d slapped some cold water in my face and studied myself in the mirror. Same as always, blue eyes, black hair, muscled chest, but my dick was coated in her female wetness, shiny and glossy with a mix of vag juices and cum.
Fuck! I thought mentally, staring at my deep purple member like it wasn’t mine. Fuck fuck fuck! I hadn’t used protection – with a virgin, no less. I’ve been careless in the past before but still … fuck this shit, diseases were everywhere.
I swore out loud again and got out a pack of condoms, slapping them down next to the sink before jumping in the shower. I was pissed but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to go for round two, or three or four, with the brunette. A hot box is a hot box, and she had one of the steamiest cunts I’d ever tasted … not to mention the fact that she was untouched. I couldn’t wait to sample that wet pink again, and I wanted her to drain me to my last drop, leaving me a destitute man.
But when I stepped back into the bedroom, the bed was empty. The cavernous space was like a giant white jail cell, the walls closing in on me without her warmth, those bouncy brown curls, the way she moaned into my mouth as she came. What the fuck? What woman disappears after a hot lay?
Was it because she was new to this? I could see a few red droplets mixed with dried juices on the sheets but nothing more. Surely Tina wouldn’t have freaked out at the sight of her own blood. Chicks had periods every month where they bled buckets, right?
I was truly stumped. I mean, usually girls hang on way too long, hoping to wheedle something from me, sticking around when they should have beat feet long ago. But I’d been focused on Sterling Pharmaceuticals for so long that I’d forgotten what a real woman could be like. I stumbled back into the party like a dazed man, the noise and crowded sea of bodies disorienting after the mind-blowing sex I’d just had.
There was no trace of the curvy brunette in the room but someone else clearly had her radar on high. That blonde from before, the one shimmying seductively with her friends in the living room came up and “accidentally” brushed against me, grazing me with her tits. I want to say they were soft and jiggly, but that bitch had a boob job and it wasn’t the expensive kind. Her implants were like fucking rocks.
“Heya stranger,” she cooed, flipping that blonde hair over her shoulder. “Care to dance?”
I knew it was all a ruse. The blonde knew exactly who I was and how much I was worth. Plus, it was disgusting and profane to dance with another woman when I’d just been deep in the brunette’s body, but the blonde pulled me to the center and wound her arms around my neck, nuzzling me, cooing with saccharine, dove-like noises. Ugh. Fuck me. At the end of the night, I growled some vague promises to “see her again” and “keep in touch,” my mind still on the amazing fuck session with the brunette.
But lo and behold, early Monday morning there was a message.
“Mr. Sterling, Jenna called,” chirped my secretary.
“Who?” I shook my head mystified. It’d been a long weekend.
“Jenna Walsh, from the party?” parroted Mary Beth. “She said to tell you that she’ll meet you at L’Osseria tonight as planned,” added MB.
Oh fuck. I hazily remembered saying something about getting together but it was a brush-off, the usual thing that you say at the end of the night. How the fuck did this become a concrete dinner date?
But reader, I went to the restaurant that night. I had more free time than I’d had in years and figured I had to eat anyways. Hey, maybe a dinner out would take my mind off the mystery brunette.
But one date with Jenna became two, then three, and pretty soon she was staying over nights, commuting down to her law classes or whatnot in the Valley. On paper, she was perfect. A great student, an environmental activist, sharp as a whip and beautiful to boot. I was roundly slapped on the back after my friends met her, congratulating me on snagging this up and coming beauty with brains.
But it just felt fake you know? For one, I’d been asking around under the table for the brunette, trying to locate her. I’d thought about hiring a private investigator but it seemed too desperate and I was sure that our circle of friends would bring us together again. San Francisco is a small city, we were bound to bump into each other.
But my discreet efforts yielded nothing. Zero. Zip. Zilch. It was like Tina had disappeared into thin air. I even tried asking Jenna in a roundabout way once, only to be met with a stone wall.
“Hey, you remember the night we met?” I began off-handedly, trying to appear casual.
“Oh yeah baby, I remember,” she cooed, toeing my bulge with her feet. Jenna has a bad habit of putting her legs in my lap which I hate because her feet are disgusting-looking, bent and withered like an old crone despite her weekly pedicures. It’s odd how someone so beautiful up above has such ugly appendages down below.
But I charged ahead.
“Did you see a brunette there? Maybe 5’5”, curly hair, plaid shirt, and those eyeglasses that hipsters wear? She looked like she could be a law student.”
“Why?” the blonde asked curiously. “She someone to you?” Jenna queried.
“Nah,” I laughed nonchalantly. “It’s just that Cade met her and thought she was cute, he wanted to get her number,” I lied through my teeth.
“Oh,” said Jenna. “Well, I have no idea who that was,” she waved her hand dismissively. “Sounds like no one. Why would your brother be interested in someone like that, anyways?” she asked. “He’s got mega-bucks to his name, can’t he do better?”
I shrugged, unwilling to say more. “Just thought you might know. I mean, you knew a lot of folks at that party, you and your law school friends. How did you even hear about the event?” I asked casually. There had been a lot of randoms that night.
“Oh you know, word gets out,” said Jenna. “We’re just poor students and when one person gets invited to a rockin’ party in the city, it’s kind of like an invitation to all of us. We drive up en masse and see what we can crash. Worst comes to worst, we’ll just drive back down or find a bar in the City to party at,” she added.
Yeah, these “poor” students. I’d been on campus once to give a guest lecture at the law school, and that place was a palace for rich kids. There was wi-fi in every room, every student had a laptop, and the campus was gorgeous – like a giant country club, if you ask me. Of course, that doesn’t mean that there weren’t people on scholarship but at the same time, I could tell a lot of these kids were headed to lucrative careers as lawyers to companies that can pay … like Sterling Pharma.
I dropped the issue. Jenna could be a jealous bitch and I didn’t want to pique her suspicions with more probing into the whereabouts of my missing brunette. It was sad, but sometimes I lay awake nights thinking back to our explosive coupling, the curvy body, the feel of Tina cushioning me between her virgin flesh. I shouldn’t have left her alone after fucking that delectable body. Damnit, what had I been thinking?
But it was too late to cry over spilled milk. After several more fruitless attempts to identify the brunette, I gave up and now here I was, months later, engaged to be married. The sparkler on Jenna’s finger was a total shocker, for one. I’d seen a charge on my credit card statement from Harry Winston and thought what the fuck? Jenna bought herself a piece of jewelry costing a cool hundred thou? I was going to speak with her about it, but she beat me to the punch. At a dinner party that night, she pulled it out during appetizers, the females oohing and ahhing like a fucking Greek chorus. I’d practically choked when I saw what it was.
“See?” she said proudly, letting the lights bounce off a five-carat diamond, blinding almost everyone in the room. “Isn’t it gorgeous? Jake picked it out, I knew he’d been eyeing it,” she cooed, winking at me.
And I didn’t say a word because it just wasn’t the place or time. The guests fawned over our hostess some more before turning back to the food. I was steaming under the collar but what was I going to do? We were in the middle of a fancy dinner party, and I could hardly stand up and stalk out, leaving a gaggle of gossip in my wake.
Instead, I was an automaton going through the motions, bidding goodnight to my friends as they left, Jenna at my side playing the gracious hostess. I knew it looked right on the outside, the handsome couple with their beautiful San Francisco penthouse, perfectly matched, my dark complementing her light, everything in sync. But I felt oddly hollow. It was just a ruse, I wanted to roar. Everything you see is fake. Look at her tits! This chick has the fakest fake tits, rubbery and heavy, and if you punched her in the face I bet your hand would come glancing back at you, her cheeks and lips are so full of filler.
But I was silent, miserable with no clue how to dig myself out of this hole. It sounds perverse, I know. The CEO, with multitudes of employees at his command, an empire to run, and I couldn’t shake this blonde who dogged me like bad hand.
“Brother,” said Matt, “If you’re not feeling it, just call off the wedding, fuck the deposits, fuck the flowers, who the fuck cares? If it ain’t right, it ain’t right.”
Matt is the marketing whiz of our group, closest to me in age, older brother to Caleb and Cade. After our parents divorced, Matt stayed in the Midwest with Mom and Caleb while Dad moved Cade and I to San Francisco. But the distance was nothing. The four of us were close and worked as a team now, guiding Sterling through the choppy waters of the pharma industry.
“Brother,” repeated Matt. “A bitch is a bitch is a bitch,” he concluded, downing a shot of whisky in a gulp. “Better to lose your money to the markets than to some fucking ho,” he drawled. Growing up in Wyoming, Matt has a country accent and farm boy persona, but buyer beware – Matt’s sharp as a whip, graduating summa from the University of Wyoming and getting a Ph.D. shortly thereafter. Sterling product is popular in the drug industry in part due to his efforts pushing our brand and the money lining my pocket proved it.
“Fuck I know,” I growled, “but the thing is I don’t have a reason to break it off, you know, something concrete.”
“You ain’t gotta have no reason,” drawled Matt. “The bitch ain’t kosher, you don’t buy,” he said with finality. I guess he was right and I needed the kick in the ass. Fuck me. Fuck my life.
“I’m gonna find a way out of this, this is so fucking unbelievable and has gone far beyond what I ever imagined. Fuck me,” I repeated again.
“You do you, brother,” said Matt, downing another shot. “I’ll see you at the family dinner tonight, yeah?” he said. “Dad says he’s bringing his new fiancée, and you’re bringing yours right? Or should I say … your soon to be ex?” he queried, an eyebrow raised.
“Yeah, whatever,” I muttered. “The fucking doll needs to be kicked to the curb, I’m just gonna do it after this dinner is over. I mean, why the fuck should I throw a shadow on Dad’s announcement? He’s been single for so long, it’s a miracle he finally found someone to put up with his ornery ass,” I said.
“Whatevs,” shrugged Matt. “Do it on your own time but that blonde has a way of testing your limits like I’ve never seen,” he said, shaking his head. “I mean, you were the one who was never going to get married, and now some chick’s got your ring on her finger? Damn man, and it’s not even someone you like.”
I didn’t bother to reply, pushing back roughly from the bar.
“Listen, I’ll see you there tonight,” I grunted. “Don’t be late.”
And now here I was, dressed in a suit with Jenna on my arm, looking around for my family. It should be a substantial party. Supposedly Dad was going to introduce us four boys to his fiancée, and then meet her four daughters at a separate dinner. Only at a later date would the two families combine. What a happy Brady Bunch ending, my ass.
“Sir, please follow me,” said the hostess, beckoning us in her wake. Jenna strode forward only to stop short when she reached the designated table. I, too, froze when I saw who was there, turned to stone by the turn of events.
“Mom?” said Jenna. “Tina?”