Thirteen
“I thought I told you what to do?”
I looked up from my computer to see Amanda standing in the doorway to my darkened office. Only a bit of moonlight streaming through the open window made it evident that it was her – a face I hadn’t seen in two or three years.
“Amanda!” I jumped up from my seat, excitement coursing through me at the sight of my friend. I started to round the desk, intending to get to her and pull her into a hug, but then she moved.
Something about it wasn’t right.
As she made her way towards my desk, her movements were sluggish, but jerky at the same, like she was half asleep, or like… like she wasn’t in control. My own movements stalled, leaving me frozen to the spot as my brain struggled to make sense of what I was seeing. And then, she shifted her head, and I saw it – a jagged hole, right through her forehead, framed perfectly by her hair.
A scream built, then stuck in my throat, refusing to break free, even as Amanda reached the front of my desk. She put her hands down, leaning over the desk to speak as a trickle of blood spilled from the open wound in her head.
“You were given instructions. You disobeyed. So now you pay.”
That scream finally came.
I closed my eyes, trying to shut out the horror of what was in front of me, screaming my throat raw in hopes that someone would hear me. And save me.
“Monica! Monica!”
Hands wrapped around my arms, gripping me tight, and I immediately went into defense mode, swinging my fists at whatever I could connect to.
“Monica!”
The hands gripped harder, moving to my wrists to keep me still. I tried to move my legs, to kick, run, anything, but something had them confined. So I did the only thing I could do – I channeled Naomi Prescott, remembering what she’d told me to do in class.
I tucked my chin, and then thrust the top of my head toward whatever the hell the thing was that had me hostage. I didn’t have the leverage to put a ton of power behind it, but it was enough that the hold on my hands went away.
“Did you just headbutt me?! Open your goddamn eyes, Monica!”
Huh?
When I opened my eyes, I was no longer in my office, in the clutches of undead-Amanda. I was… in bed, tucked under the warm confines of the covers. Wick was sitting at the side of the bed, scowling at me as he put a hand to his nose to check for blood.
“What the fuck was that about?” he asked, and I cringed.
“Sorry,” I said, untangling my legs from the sheets to crawl to where he was sitting so I could see where I’d hit him. “Are you okay?”
He scoffed. “I’m fine. Are you okay? You were screaming your head off. I thought somebody had gotten into the house or something.”
I sat back on my knees, embarrassed. “Oh. Uh… no, not exactly. I had a nightmare, I guess. It was super vivid. Felt real.”
“Okay, so that’s why you tried to smash my face in with your head,” he chuckled. “Just so you know, you need a little more power behind it if you want to stun, or do real damage.”
“I gave it all I could in the moment. That thing had my hands.”
“You mean I had your hands,” he corrected. “You got me with a pretty nice left hook before that though. You may have been having a dream, but you were kicking real-life ass.”
I cringed. “Sorry.”
“No need to be. Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “I’m fine.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“No,” was my immediate answer. “Not at all. I want to forget it as soon as I possibly can.”
“Understandable.”
He gave me a nod, and then stood, picking up a gun he had to have brought in with him from the bedside table. It was then that I realized he wasn’t wearing anything but his boxer briefs. I had to bite down on my bottom lip to keep my mouth from dropping open.
Lawd.
I’d seen that body at least a hundred times, but always from a screen. A screen that, apparently, had never done him justice, because my eyes were glued to him like it was brand new to me. In his clothes, Wick was handsome. Without them, he was other-worldly – meticulously chiseled, coated in polished mahogany skin. From a side view, the boxer-briefs left nothing to the imagination – a tight, perfect ass, ample bulge in the front, powerful thighs.
It took everything in me not to audibly groan before I turned away, burying myself underneath the covers again to hide how hard my nipples had gotten through the thin fabric of my nightgown.
“I’m gonna let you get back to it, if you’re good then. Try to get some sleep… if you can, after that.”
I nodded. “Yeah. I’ll try.”
“Lights off or on?” he asked, from beside the light switch at the door, even though he’d shown me controls beside the bed earlier.
“On. Please.”
There was clear sympathy in his eyes before he bowed his head to acknowledge my request, and dropped his free hand away from the switch. “Good night.”
“Good night,” I called after him, even though come back was what I really wanted to say.
Even before the nightmare, I’d been iffy about being in the dark. What had formerly served as solace now held unseen danger – intruders lurking in places just out of my reach, waiting to attack me. I didn’t want to be alone in the dark – or hell, the light either. But I felt childish enough wanting the lights on. It would be the definition of “doing too much” to ask him to stay.
I re-situated the pillows and then laid back to close my eyes. As soon as I did, the first thing I saw on the backs of my eyelids was that bleeding wound in Amanda’s head.
My eyes popped open and I sat up, shaking my head before I decided to just get my laptop, and get some work done. It didn’t look like sleep was in the cards for me tonight.
Hmph.
Sleep is overrated anyway.
I couldn’t seem to let it go.
After being up most of the night with it in my head, and then spending most of the morning with it, I couldn’t shake that horrible image of Amanda from my head. I rarely, if ever, had nightmares, and when I did, it was never anything like this.
What the hell did it mean?
As I sat at the desk in the guest room, my failed attempts at focusing on work kept leading me back to that image. It had to mean something, right?
Frustrated, I snapped my laptop closed and picked up my cell phone. I didn’t even blink when I found myself in the contact list, navigating to Amanda’s number, and hitting the call button.
It’s not going to ring.
I braced myself, waiting to finally hear the little message telling me that the number was no longer in service. But, like always, it rang. It rang, and rang, with no answer, until the voice mail message picked up – Amanda’s chipper voice asking the caller not to leave a message she wasn’t going to listen to, and to text her instead.
“Why the fuck won’t you answer?” I asked the phone, after disconnecting the call. It didn’t make sense for it to always just ring. Did she have my number blocked?
No.
Why would she have my number blocked?
Shaking my head, I unlocked the phone again, navigating to a different contact – this time, Amanda’s aunt. She was the one who’d raised Amanda, the one who came to help her move into the dorm room we shared, the one who yelled for her at graduation. Parentage had always been a touchy subject for Amanda – something I could relate to, though we had different reasons. I always thought she had it good though – at least she had somebody in that role, to love and support her.
I couldn’t say the same.
In any case, as the phone rang, I wondered how Sheila would react to hearing from me. She’d always treated me kindly, but we hadn’t spoken in a long time – even before Amanda’s disappearance. After, I never felt quite comfortable calling her out of the blue – what if I had inadvertently done something to Amanda that pissed her off so bad she just didn’t want to speak to me? How awkward would that conversation be?
So I let it go.
But now, after that dream… I couldn’t. As close as Sheila and Amanda had been, surely she would be able to at least assure me that Amanda’s brain was intact, and that she was not, in fact, rocking a bullet-sized hole in her head.
Or at least, that’s what I hoped.
In reality, Sheila broke down crying as soon as I explained who I was.
“I haven’t seen her in years,” she explained in broken words, her voice laden with emotion. “The last time I talked to her, she called me so excited. She was going to move in with Asher – they were looking for homes together. And then she was just… gone.”
I frowned. “Wait a minute… moving in with Asher? She never told me that, and neither did he. It was never mentioned.”
“She definitely told me that. After not hearing from her for a week, which was unusual, I went to her place, and used my key to get in. The place was completely empty. All her furniture, everything, gone. I managed to get in touch with her landlord, and she told me that Amanda had sent in a legal document relinquishing her lease, with a check big enough to pay it out. She even sent me a copy, but that signature… it wasn’t Amanda. But that woman didn’t care, as long as she had her money.”
My frown deepened as I sat back in my chair, processing Sheila’s words. “Why would Amanda do that, though? It doesn’t make sense. I know she moved to Denver to be with Asher before… do you know where they were thinking of buying?”
“Further east. Up there with you, and Kellen. And… oh, Monica. I’m so sorry to hear about what happened to him. You two always looked so happy together, and that’s so—”
“I’m fine, Ms. Sheila,” I interrupted, not wanting to go down that road. “I mean… thank you, but… I’ll be okay. I’m just a little concerned about this thing with Amanda. It’s not like her to just… disappear like this. Do you know anyone else who might know?”
Instead of the “no” I was expecting, there was a long silence on the other end of the line, before Sheila pushed out a sigh.
“I called her mother. And that… woman … had the nerve to ask me why I was calling her about it. As if Amanda isn’t her flesh and blood. The best decision I’ve ever made was handing that thing to you the moment it was born. Can you believe she actually said that to me? About her own child?”
Yes.
Yes, I could.
Amanda had drank a little too much more than once, getting loose enough at the lips to tell me things she wouldn’t dare when she was sober. Horrible things her mother said whenever she was around, the deep insecurities Amanda felt about the woman’s obvious abhorrence of her.
Those were the moments that kept me grounded, instead of envious, of the relationship Amanda had with her aunt, who doted on her. Flawed as my mother may have been, she’d never hated me, at least not in that way. Amanda may have had a bomb auntie in her life, a role I could’ve used myself, but at least I didn’t have a mother who loathed my very existence.
“That’s really sad,” I agreed with Sheila. “And I’m going to take it to mean she hadn’t heard from her either.”
“If she had, she didn’t tell me.”
I pushed out a sigh. “Okay. This whole thing is nuts. How does somebody just disappear, and no one who knows her has any idea what happened?”
“Oh I have an idea of what happened. That boy happened, and he did something to her!”
I frowned. “What boy? Are you talking about Asher?!”
“I sure as hell am. I always knew something wasn’t right about him, but I couldn’t pinpoint it, and Amanda didn’t want to see it. I believe he did something to her. He killed her!”
My heart dropped. “Ms. Sheila, no. I’ve known Asher about as long as I’ve known Amanda, and I know he would never hurt her. He loved her.”
“Sure, as long as she was playing the little role he wanted, and following his orders!”
“Wait a minute – what?” I asked, sitting forward. “What does that even mean?”
“Nothing. Nothing,” she said. “Never mind. I have to go.”
“Wait, Ms. Shei—”
“Don’t call here again pretending like you were really Amanda’s friend.”
“Pretending?!” I gasped. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” Sheila hissed. “You think I don’t read on the blogs that you and your husband were having problems? And every time you start having problems with Kellen, Amanda started having a problem with Asher, sneaking off on long trips, for days at a time.”
“What the hell are you implying?”
“I just find it funny that your husband drops you for a younger version and my Amanda disappears at the same time. Like someone needed her out of the way, like they thought you and your husband were splitting.”
As offended as I was by the absolute bullshit she was insinuating, I couldn’t help noticing the increasing drag on her words, as if she couldn’t open her mouth completely. My heart sank a little as I remembered, just before she was gone, Amanda telling me about Sheila’s increasing dependence on painkillers, after an accident at work.
Maybe that’s why she’s talking crazy.
“Ms. Sheila, I have no idea where this is coming from, but I assure you – there has never been anything except friendship between me and Asher or Amanda. I had nothing to do with any problems they were having, and I don’t know anything about whatever it is you’re trying to say.”
Sheila chuckled, but it came through as muffled, like she was laying with the phone against her face. “You might now. But they knew. I knew. Your little secret. I know.”
“What secret?”
“I… know it. You can’t hide it forever. Folks… always trying to hide babies. Giving babies away. Paying people off and…. Sending them away.”
Those words made me swallow hard. “What? What are you talking about?”
No answer ever came.
Whatever pills she had taken consumed her, and all I could hear on the other end of the line was her faint snores. I pushed out a sigh, then hung up the phone.
Part of me regretted calling. Questions without answers were becoming a running theme that only served to add to my perpetual frustration. Amanda was missing, Kim was in the hospital, Kellen was dead, and I was in someone else’s home, recovering there from being attacked in my office because I couldn’t go to my own.
I was tired.
That exhaustion was what led me out of my seat and down the hall to Wick’s office. I peeked in when I didn’t get a response to my knock on the door, but he wasn’t there.
I found him down in the kitchen, sitting at the counter with a plate of food. He’d asked me earlier if I was hungry, and at the time I’d turned him down. Now though, the smell of Thai basil and the sight of those noodles had my stomach growling – which reminded me I’d turned down breakfast too.
“Hey,” he said, looking up when I stepped in. “You changed your mind about lunch? Grab a plate, there’s plenty.”
I gave him a sheepish smile. “Well, that’s not exactly why I came looking for you, but um… are those drunken noodles?”
“Our favorite,” he replied with a grin. “Yes, they are.”
Following his urging, I sat down across from his place at the counter while he stood, grabbing a plate and fork for me. A few minutes later, I was digging into the spicy sweet goodness, unconcerned with how it might look.
I was hungry.
“So why were you looking for me?” he asked, once he’d handed me a glass of water and returned to his own plate. “Everything okay?”
I nodded, swallowing a mouthful of food before I spoke. “Yes, everything is fine. I just… I called Amanda’s aunt, hoping that maybe she’d heard from her, but I ended up with more questions than answers. It was such an odd conversation… about halfway through, she completely switched up on me.”
Wick stopped eating to look at me. “What kind of questions?”
I thought about it for a few moments first, as I twirled a forkful of noodles on my plate. “Questions like… why didn’t she tell me that she and Asher were planning to move here, before she disappeared? Especially since according to Asher, they were broken up. Or, why does her aunt think that I had something to do with problems between Amanda and Asher?”
He scoffed. “Well, you already know my answer to that.”
“Yeah, I do,” I told him, rolling my eyes over his insistence that Asher was secretly in love with me. “And you already know my thoughts about that.” I was quiet for a few seconds before I continued. “She thinks Asher… did something to Amanda. Something to get rid of her, I guess so he could be with me. But there was never anything romantic between us. We went to college together, he was my husband’s best friend. And, he’s my friend. Even if I could buy that Asher secretly had a thing for me… murder? Really?”
Wick shrugged. “Well… maybe it’s not as much of a stretch as you think?”
“You’re only saying that because you didn’t like him coming to see me at the hospital.”
“No, I’m saying that because I didn’t like him coming to see you at the hospital, and because Kim’s “boyfriend” has the same initials as him, and the shit is suspicious.”
“You think everything is suspicious.”
“Because it is. Including that Kim.”
I huffed. “Right, you thought she was guilty of something too.”
“She is though,” he countered, putting his fork completely down. “I know you don’t want to believe that she would betray you, but I have proof – somebody from Canvas has been paying Kim a lot of money. Kim has full access to your office… to your computer… you see where I’m going with this?”
I shook my head. “Hell no, I don’t. Not only are you accusing Kim, you’re accusing a company that helped pioneer the black beauty industry of what… trying to take me down? In this manner? Why?!”
“I don’t know why, Monica, but I do know what. I know you want to believe Canvas is above reproach – you probably grew up using their brands, and maybe you still do. Maybe you admire the way they built and grew their business. Maybe you want to think they’re just flat out better than this. But numbers don’t lie.”
“But they can damn sure misrepresent the facts! About a year ago, Kim tried a new lipstick from them. A test product. It broke her face out really badly, and she wanted to put them on blast, but I talked her into just emailing someone at the company, to see what recourse she had. She followed my advice, and now I see that she got paid for her discretion. Good for her.”
Wick sat back from his plate, smirking at me. “So… she used a sample product from a popular company, and had a breakout, huh?”
“Yes, she did.”
“Just like all those influencers who used those test products for your company, and had those breakouts? Quite the coincidence, isn’t it?”
I frowned, confused. “Wait a minute… what are you saying?”
“I’m saying that she played you, and has been working this shit for a while, if this was a year ago. She was testing you – gauging your reaction. I bet you she didn’t suggest that you should just pay those women off to “be discreet” about it when your shit was breaking people out.”
“I never got any emails. They just went straight to bashing me online!”
He shook his head. “Oh, but you did. See, Kim intercepts all of your Vivid Vixen emails – she deleted them before you ever saw them, and said nothing. Luckily for you, the web service you use keeps backups, and they were kind enough to send them to me. Monica, Vivid Vixen started as an indie brand – some of those influencers had been fans of yours from day one. You really think they wouldn’t try to contact you first to find out what was going on?”
I blinked, hard. “Wait…no. Kim said that… no, this can’t be true.”
“I’m sorry. But it is. I don’t know what they have on her, how much she’s supposed to be getting, if they’re threatening her to make her do it, or… I don’t know what. But I do know that Kim is not on your team. Did you ever actually see this supposed breakout?”
I had to swallow the lump in my throat before I could answer. “I… no. She… she worked remotely for the whole week. Said she was too embarrassed to leave the house.”
Wick nodded. “Yeah. Probably more like… she couldn’t look you in the face knowing what she was doing.”
Yeah.
Probably that.
Absently, I shook my head as I pushed away my plate, suddenly disinterested in the noodles.
“Hey,” Wick said, reaching across the counter to grab my hand. “I know it’s hard, but… try not to let it consume you. We’re going to figure this out.”
I scoffed. “Will we? Because… here I am again. More and more questions, not nearly enough answers.”
“Yes, we will. Kim is going to wake up, sooner or later, and she’s going to tell us what she knows.”
“What if she knows nothing? What if she can’t even remember? What then?”
“Then we follow a different lead.”
“Like what?”
He shrugged. “At this point… anything. It doesn’t have to be today, but at some point, we’re going to have to sit down and have a real conversation about your enemies.”
“I don’t have enemies,” I insisted, throwing up my hands. “I don’t fuck with anybody, specifically to prevent anybody from fucking with me! I run my business and I mind my business.”
“That may be true, but somewhere along the day, some feathers got ruffled, and—”
“You’d better not say a damn thing about chickens coming home to roost.”
Wick grinned. “I mean, I wasn’t planning on it, but… it’s accurate.”
“It’s cliché.”
“Doesn’t make it any less valid.”
I sighed. “Yeah, I guess. Hey… can you hack into something for me?”
“One of the few things in this life I can guarantee, gorgeous. What is it?”
“It’s Amanda… Amanda Gordon. Can you find out who pays her phone bill?”
He raised an eyebrow at me. “Uh… yeah. Give me a second,” he said, then pulled his laptop in front of him. I chewed at the inside of my lip as his fingers flew over the keys, and several minutes later, he stopped to read something on the screen. The corners of his mouth curved into a triumphant smile that he suppressed as soon as our eyes met.
That was all the answer I needed, really.
But I asked anyway.
“Who?”
“Asher.”
Hearing the answer out loud still made me cringe, even though I’d expected it. Instead of responding verbally, I nodded, then climbed down from my stool.
“Monica…”
“I’m fine,” I lied, keeping my face averted toward the stairs. “I’m just… tired, from last night. I’m going to lay down.”
I was relieved when he said nothing – giving me a pass to continue on my way. As quickly as he’d given me that, I had no doubt that, with time, he would figure this out, and give me all the answers I needed.
I just hoped my view of the people I cared about wouldn’t get destroyed in the process.
As usual, sleep eluded me.
But what did I expect really, with the lights on full blast because my grown ass had found a sudden fear of the dark?
I tried to reason with myself that it made sense, that I shouldn’t feel bad about what had to be just a temporary aversion, but I kept coming back to the same conclusion – that trying to sleep with the lights on was just silly.
So I turned them off.
And then laid there in the dark, terrified, and painfully awake.
I’d drank the chamomile tea, squeezed drops of lavender oil into my long, relaxing bath. Lavender candles, lavender-vanilla body butter, lavender pillow spray.
That lavender shit didn’t work.
So I took the pill – the “guaranteed sleep” that had always been hit or miss for me, and tonight only served as another miss. So not only was I wide awake, and afraid, I was also pissed. I had no grand ambitions to cure cancer or end world hunger. I just wanted to sleep.
Why was that so goddamned hard?
I turned onto my stomach and buried my face in my pillow, wondering if suffocating myself just enough to pass out was a possibility. Turning my face to the side, so I could breathe, I laughed out loud at my own ridiculousness. Tentatively, I closed my eyes, hoping that simple darkness was all I would see.
Thank goodness.
I pushed out a sigh of relief.
Instead of thinking about how bad I wanted to sleep, and my frustrations that I couldn’t, I focused instead on clearing my mind of everything. My breathing slowed as I sank further into the mattress, cocooning myself in those luxurious sheets. After a few minutes, my eyelids grew heavy on their own, staying closed with no effort on my behalf.
And then they popped open, in unison with a booming knock of bass.
The music only lasted a few seconds, not even long enough for me to recognize the song. It was, however, long enough to snatch sleep from my grasp as I sat up.
Once again, I was wide awake.
I turned my legs out of the bed, but hesitated for a moment once my bare feet sank into the lush fibers of the carpet. It probably wasn’t a good idea to go poking around Wick’s house at night, but he’d told me to make myself at home. Since sleep was obviously not on my agenda, those noodles from earlier could certainly take its place.
As soon as I stepped out of the guest room, I was bathed in darkness. Briefly, I wondered if it was some sort of security measure for the house to be so black, but then I realized the real problem – my eyes hadn’t yet adjusted to the light.
More specifically, hadn’t adjusted to the pale blue light streaming under the door to Wick’s office, which made the rest of the house seem even blacker in contrast.
What is he doing up?
As soon as that question crossed my mind, my destination changed, and I was padding down to his office on bare feet. I wavered at the door, but then swallowed that little bit of uncertainty before I grabbed the knob and turned, pushing the door open.
Knock, Monica. You should have knocked first!
But, the door was already open now, and there he was, laptop open on the desk, leaning back in his chair with his forearm draped across his face. I didn’t even have to see his eyes to read the exhaustion that laid heavily across his shoulders, reminding me of the shared ailment – chronic insomnia – that was the reason our paths had crossed in the first place.
I started to just back out. He hadn’t moved, or looked up, so obviously he didn’t even realize I was there. But then my eyes fell on the desk again, and I couldn’t help the gasp I let out – a sound that got his attention immediately. He sat up, dropping his arm from his face to reach for his weapon. Before he pointed it, he recognized me, and opened his mouth to speak – probably to ask why I was there.
But my question was going to come first.
“Why is there a liquor bottle on the desk?” I asked, stepping forward. “Did you—”
“No. It’s not open,” he explained, looking me right in the eyes.
“Okay, but why is it here at all? I mean, this is your house, and you don’t owe me any explanations, not really, but… after that whole “precarious relationship with alcohol” thing, I didn’t think…”
I let my words trail off, not really sure how to finish the statement. And from the look on his face, Wick seemed as lost for words as I was.
“It’s… hard to explain,” he said, reaching forward to pluck the bottle from the desktop to cradle in his hands.
I crossed the room quickly, coming around to his side of the desk where I took the bottle from him, and then perched myself on top of the desk. The bottle went on the other side of me, out of sight, and out of reach.
“Try anyway.”
He chuckled, leaning back in his chair again to scrutinize me. His eyes landed on my breasts just long enough for me to realize I’d neglected to pull on a robe over my thin nightgown, then came respectfully back to my face.
“What, are you a counselor or something now? Always trying to get me to talk about my feelings.”
I shrugged. “It’s not like you didn’t play that role for me long enough. I should return the favor, right?”
“What if it doesn’t feel like a favor?”
“What if it is, even though it may not feel like it right now?”
He grunted, then propped his hands behind his head. “Am I talking to Monica, or Sandy?”
“Same girl. Stop stalling. What’s with the liquor bottle? What is it that’s driving you to want to drink?”
“It’s not that simple,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t… want to drink. I mean… I do. It relaxes me, mellows me out, sometimes helps me sleep, sometimes helps me think. And I just enjoy a good glass of Mauve. Sue me. I want to have a drink. Just one. But I don’t want the consequences. And so… I just look at it.”
I frowned, confused, as I tried to absorb what he was saying. “But… why?”
“I…” he sighed. “I can’t give you the neat explanation you’re probably looking for. What I told you is what I have.”
“No,” I shook my head. “I get that part, I’m saying… why now? What’s going on?”
His eyes went wide. “Are you seriously asking me that? I’ve got you in my house for protection because somebody has decided to wreak havoc in your life. And I… I’m missing something. I can’t figure out how to fix this for you, and it’s fucking with me.”
“So you want to drink because of me?”
“No! No. That is not what I’m saying, not blaming anything on you. You asked what was going on – that’s what’s going on. But it just… is what it is.”
I scoffed. “What it is, is that my mess is spilling over onto you – exactly what you were concerned about.”
“No,” he corrected me, with an extra layer of bass to his tone that sent a little shiver up my spine. “What it is, is that I am a man with a certain weakness that has absolutely nothing to do with you. So don’t put it on your shoulders.”
“I’m not—”
“Yes, you are. Just like you used to wear your husband’s infidelity like it was your burden to bear. It wasn’t. It was his. This is mine. Not yours.”
“But you just said—”
“No, I didn’t,” he said, then smirked at the frustrated growl I let out. “Stop trying to make this about you, when it isn’t. And I’m managing, by the way. This bottle is about five years old. Purchased right around the time Kay turned 16, and wanted to start dating. I pulled it out again when that little motherfucker broke her heart, because I need a distraction to keep me from killing him. And I just looked at it. Pulled it out again when she stayed out past curfew the night of her prom, and was brought home by the police, drunk as a sailor. And I needed a distraction from killing her. And then again when she spent her first two years of college at a school across the country, that had an amazing dance program that she just had to attend. Then, I needed a distraction to keep the worry from killing me. I always just looked at it. I’m never gonna open that bottle, Monica. It’s… symbolic.”
I stared at him for a long moment, trying to figure out… something. Anything about this man. “Symbolic of what? What does it represent?”
He grinned. “When I can properly articulate a direct answer to that, you will be the first to know.”
“I’ll take the indirect answer for now.”
“God, you are persistent, aren’t you?”
I shrugged. “You gonna tell me, or not?”
“Yeah, I guess,” he chuckled. “I guess it’s like… looking at this liquor, I know the possible consequences, right? Maybe I have that drink, and it’s fine. But maybe it’s not. Maybe I have that one, and it’s like trying to eat just one chip. Not possible. I don’t want to take that chance, don’t want to spiral. And so, for these few minutes, or few hours, I can look at it. Maybe even hold it. But I can’t indulge. I have to put it away. You following me?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. So… my anger at this kid that broke my baby’s heart, right? Spreading rumors about her at school, harassing her and shit. I’m pissed. Livid. But I know the possible consequences. Maybe I just go talk to him, and he listens respectfully, and it’s fine. Or maybe, he pops off at the mouth, and I pop off with my fist, but he’s a kid, and you can’t hit kids, so now my ass is in jail for something I should have handled differently in the first place. I don’t want to take that chance. I can think about it. Maybe even dream about it. But I can’t indulge that anger. Gotta put it away. Can’t indulge the fear. Gotta put it away. Can’t indulge the worry. Gotta put it away. And it’s not even about… suppressing your emotions, never facing it, not like that. Just about facing the possibility of what might happen if you indulge that weak ass humanity, and give in to doing things that only bring negative consequences. The bottle is… a reminder. And a distraction. Distract myself from doing something like finding Asher and snatching him up and kicking his ass until he tells me everything I want to know. Because I remember that he’s definitely the type of motherfucker that would press charges, and it would be stupid to bring that on myself.”
“Wow.”
He tipped his head to the side. “Wow?”
“Yes, wow. That is… quite a way to think… but I get it. I think.”
“I think you do, and you just want to give me a hard time. What are you doing up, snooping around anyway?”
I rolled my eyes. “Well, somebody decided to crank their music up loud as hell, right when I was finally about to drift off to sleep.”
“Oh, damn, you heard that? My bad. My headphones disconnected for a second, and I tried to shut it off. I hoped it didn’t disturb you.”
“No such luck,” I said. “So, I got up to go looking for those noodles from earlier, saw your light on. Decided to…”
“Be nosy?”
I grinned. “If you want to call it that. What are you doing up anyway?”
“The same thing as you. Can’t sleep. Nothing helping. The usual.”
Our eyes met, and I raised an eyebrow at him. “You know… it’s been a while, but… if you think back, you might remember that there used to be something that helped both of us with our… shared problem.”
“Oh yeah? What’s that?” he asked, keeping his gaze locked on mine.
For about five seconds, I just stared at him, reconsidering what I’d started. But then, I pushed his laptop aside so that I could position myself right in front of him on the desk, propping my feet up on the arms of his chair.
He stayed where he was, reclined with his arms behind his head as he watched me. I leaned back, using one arm for leverage as I hiked up the hem of my gown and opened my legs.
I wasn’t nervous.
I’d shown myself to him already, time after time. The only difference now was that he was close enough to touch… only he didn’t.
I did.
Without pulling my panties aside, I ran my fingers over the sensitive bud of my clit. With his eyes on me, all it took was a barely-there touch to make myself tremble, and for a little gasp to escape my lips.
“Is this ringing a bell?” I asked, switching gears to push my hand inside my panties to touch myself with no barrier between. I was already soaking wet, aching for him to be the one touching me, but I still didn’t push my underwear aside to let him see.
“Not yet,” he told me, in the deeper, lust-filled tone I recognized from all those late-night video calls. “Keep playing.”
I did what I was told.
I played.
I teased and stroked and rubbed until my thighs were shaking so hard I could barely keep my feet planted on the arms of the chair. So, Wick did it for me, grabbing my ankles to keep me steady as he stood up, stepping between my legs.
“Don’t stop,” he told me before he hooked my legs around his waist to free his hands. Before I could respond, his hands were buried in my hair as he lowered his mouth to mine.
I didn’t stop.
Even as he kissed my breath away, my fingers kept working. Even as his tongue sunk into my mouth, stroking deep, my fingers kept working. Even as his teeth nipped at my bottom lip, my fingers kept working. As his fingers grazed my scalp, lighting even those nerves on fire, as he groaned into my mouth, as I got wetter and wetter, as that firmly twisted spring of pleasure wound tighter, and tighter, and tighter… my fingers kept working.
Until they couldn’t.
Until I couldn’t move, paralyzed by the sudden, overwhelming impact of the orgasm I’d been waiting on far too long. I wanted to scream – tried – to scream, but Wick swallowed it in the kind of kiss I didn’t know I craved until it was happening to me – long, slow licks and sharp nibbles and soothing suckles that I felt all the way down between my legs.
But it wasn’t enough.
I needed more of him.
My hands went to the waistband of his sweats, intending to tug it down, but he immediately caught my wrists.
“What are you doing?” he asked, a question that made me frown, because I thought it was obvious. My face must’ve given him a sufficient answer, because he smirked, then stepped in closer. Close enough that now I could feel the gift I’d been trying to unwrap right between my legs, hot and heavy and making me throb, even with the layers of close between us.
His one-handed grip on my hair tightened, just enough to tug my head back a little, so that I was looking up at him in the pale blue illumination from his computer. “Monica… I have… fantasized about having you. Smelling you. Not your perfume. You. Not just seeing this skin. Touching it. Tasting it. Tasting you,” he said, bringing the hand I’d used to play up to his mouth. “If you think,” – he stopped to lick my index finger – “I’m going to let you,” – then ring finger – “rush me…” – then middle – “You couldn’t be more incorrect.” He closed his mouth over all three fingers, licking away any traces of… me … that remained. After that, he brought his mouth back to mine, to murmur, “I have every intention of taking my fucking time,” against my lips.
And then he kissed me again.
Harder this time, in an urgently, brutally passionate way that contradicted what he’d just said, but had me squirming on the desktop, ready for more. His hands drifted to my shoulders, down my back, to my waist, then hips before he tucked them underneath me, grabbing my ass to lift me up in a fluid motion that he made seem effortless. He never broke the kiss as he moved us from his office to his room. It wasn’t until he’d lowered me to the bed that he separated his lips from mine.
Both my mind and heart were racing as he flipped on the lamp beside the bed, then pulled me right to the edge, in front of him. He reached underneath my flimsy nightgown to hook his fingers in the sides of my panties, and then slowly dragged them down my legs before he dropped them to the floor.
And then he just… stared. Raked his eyes over me, in a slow, meticulous perusal from my toes to the top of my head.
“What?” I asked finally, suddenly feeling self-conscious about everything from my hair, which had to be all over my head, to the softness of my body, to the simple cotton nightie and panties that were a far cry from the extravagant Scantalilly I’d fantasized about seducing him in.
The way he grinned at my question caught me off guard – it wasn’t a sexy smirk, it was outright… giddy. He laughed a little, then ran his tongue over his lips before he leaned down, planting his hands on either side of me on the bed as he brought himself to eye level with me.
“Told you so.”
My eyes narrowed. “Uh… what?”
“I said, told you so. All those times on the phone, I called you beautiful, and your response was always, boy stop, how you know?” he teased, mocking my voice.
“Whatever, I don’t sound like that.”
He grinned again. “Maybe not. But still. I was right. This whole time… I was right as hell. You are so goddamned beautiful.”
I… shit.
That caught me so off guard that my eyes watered with emotion before I could even catch myself, but Wick was too busy kissing me again to notice. And I was too busy kissing him back to dwell on self-deprecating thoughts about how silly it was to get emotional over something as simple as being called beautiful, but it was… it was more than that.
More, that I would have to pinpoint and interrogate at a different time, because it was hard to be introspective when large, hot hands were gripping your ass, lifting you up to move you backward across a big, California-King sized bed. Even harder when the owner of those hands stopped kissing your lips to kiss and suck your neck, then tug the top of your nightgown down to lavish your nipples with the kind of attention they’d been sorely lacking for years. Completely impractical when he stopped to just yank the gown over your head, and trail kisses from your breasts to your belly-button, unfazed by the rolls or dimples or stretchmarks and kissing those too, until he made his way down to where you’ve only been touched by yourself and your gyno for years.
And when he spread your legs, leaned in and inhaled, let out a deep, satisfied groan, then looked up at you with the smirk of a man who’d just hit the lottery before he dove face first, tongue out… well… it was just fucking impossible to focus on anything else.
In next to no time, my hands were tangled in his sheets, gripping for something, anything as my back arched away from the bed. I tried to push back, but he caught me, arms locked around my thighs as he buried his face between my legs, licking and biting and sucking and “ohmygodwhatthefuckpleasedon’tstop! Please! Please!” I screamed, damn near biting a hole in my lip as he did some type of… something with his tongue that made me feel like I was about to turn inside out.
He had his whole mouth on my clit when the dam burst, and I climaxed, hard. He kept me locked exactly where I was, bucking against his mouth as my orgasm hit me in waves that seemed to keep going on, and on, and on, with every rasp of his tongue.
When that storm finally calmed, and he released me to the bed, I felt thoroughly wrung out. I kept my eyes closed, with every intention of riding that wave of bliss straight into sleep, but the distinctive sound of a condom wrapper opening let me know Wick’s intentions were different.
As they should be.
My eyes fluttered open when I felt his hands on me again, and as soon as he lowered his body over mine, I was wide awake, and ready. I raised my hands, cupping his head to bring his mouth down to mine for a long, sex-laced kiss that I wouldn’t have minded indulging for much longer than he did. For some reason, he pulled back, and met my gaze with an expression I couldn’t read.
“What?” I asked, and he blinked, then shook his head.
“Nothing, gorgeous,” he replied, even though there was definitely, definitely something. But then, he sank into me, slowly, deftly, gliding through my wetness in one long, deep stroke that we both moaned loudly at the end of. He stayed there for a moment, dipping his head to kiss me again as my body opened and adjusted for him, and then… it was on.
My mouth dropped open and stayed that way as he pulled back and then plunged again, and then again, and then again, coming after me with deep, languid strokes that made it hard to catch a breath. He hooked my legs around his waist, pressing into me with his body flush against mine in a way that created a delicious friction against both my clit and my nipples.
It was… magnificent.
“Wick,” I breathed into his ear as I locked my arms around his neck, burying my face in the space between. “I…shit you feel so good,” I whined, digging my nails into his back. That little compliment seemed to spur him on, because he adjusted a little bit, and then he was somehow blissfully deeper, stretching me, grinding against a spot that made me dig in harder.
“Nah,” he grunted at me, pulling my head back so that we were face to face. “That’s all you.”
He kissed me again – an unhurried, skillful perusal of my mouth with his tongue that I quickly realized he was using as a distraction. The next thing I knew, my legs were hooked over his shoulders and he was so far in me I felt it in the depths of my stomach. Those long, deep plunges started getting deeper, and faster, and harder, until my little whimpers and moans of pleasure became a steady refrain of “ah, ah, ah, ah, yes, ah, ah, yes, ah, yes!” and then devolved into an incoherent, open-mouthed hum.
When he finally pulled back from that, settling into a slower rhythm, I somehow found enough breath to tease, “I thought you said you were taking your time?”
He grinned, pushing my knees into my chest as he lowered himself down so our lips could meet. “That was before I’d been inside you, gorgeous.”
I tried to smile back, but ended up biting my lip as he started moving again, so deep now that every stroke brought his hips flush with mine. I closed my eyes, letting pleasure take over as he drove into me, kissing me at the same time, in a delicious sort of harmony that sent me rocketing into the middle of yet another orgasm.
And then, I really was done for.
I could barely feel my legs as Wick plunged into me one last time, with an animalistic grunt that sent a pleasurable thrill up my spine, adding to the euphoria I was already feeling. We didn’t even untangle from each other – I just closed my eyes, enjoying the pleasant weight of his body covering me.
Sometime later, I felt him move away, and then move me. I started to protest, thinking for some reason that he was taking me back to the guest room, but then I felt the warmth of the sheets covering me before he climbed in behind me, closing me up in his arms.
And then, I gave in to one last thing my body had been craving, for the longest time.
Sleep.