TWO DAYS LATER
ETHAN
I saw the car slow next to me as I ran down the street.
I knew who it was. How could I not when he’d called almost three dozen times in the last two days?
He apparently didn’t get it.
Running faster, I missed my turn toward the house, running instead around the block once more, the wind pushing through to me, filling my lungs with the air that smelled like coffee and bagels. My heart pounded against my chest, out of synch with the sounds around me: people rising from their beds, throwing out the trash, talking on their phones. I preferred swimming for this reason. I didn’t want to hear anyone. I didn’t want to smell anything. I sure as hell didn’t want the goddamn mayor tailing me.
Stopping, I took another deep breath, checking my watch before walking into the local corner deli. The old man behind the counter glanced up from his tablet, tilting his head down to look over his small framed glasses. Realizing it was me, he nodded and picked up his tablet, heading toward the back.
“Kitty, you know where the damn newspaper app is on this thing?” he yelled out as he went. A few seconds later power lights beside the camera switched from green to red.
Grabbing a basket, I went to the fridge with the milk in it. No sooner did I move that the bell chimed behind me.
“Two percent or whole?” I asked him, staring at the milks.
“Wife usually says two, but I’m a whole kind of man,” his deep voice said, and I reached for the two.
“Can’t be going against the wives, now can we, Takahashi?” I looked at the gray-haired man who stood beside me with dark eyes, almost eye level with me. “How is Kyoko?”
“Good. She’s taken up pottery,” he said.
“Pottery,” I repeated, moving to see the cereals and he, of course, followed. “Interesting hobby.”
“It’s the only thing that relaxes her now…now that…”
“Your son has died.” I finished for him, taking the cornflakes and placing it in the basket. “Well, that’s good for her.”
“She took up arts. I took up the job of protecting the people of Boston. To make sure no one else would lose their child to drugs—”
“Spare me the speech, Mayor,” I cut him off, looking between the chicken and chunky tomato soups. “I already voted for you…I mean, I got the votes for you. Chunky tomato or chicken?”
He didn’t reply or even bother looking at the cans.
“To hell with it. I’ll live a little and get them both,” I answered, throwing them into the basket also.
“And in return for that vote I’ve made sure your business has run smoothly in and out of the city,” he shot back. I paused in the middle of the aisle. “However, whatever is going on is starting to cause the bodies to pile up far too quickly.”
“Mayor.” I did my best to keep calm. “You were brought into the fold to spread the usual bullshit, not for you to start eating it too.”
“This new drug, Ethan, it—”
“IT IS MR. CALLAHAN!” I snapped, turning back to him. “Everyone has forgotten their place, Mayor, and I will take the blame for that. I’ve allowed you all to take credit for my achievements, my family’s achievements, for so long you’ve all begun to believe they are yours. Before me you were nothing but a detective, so in debt you would roll over and play dead for a few grand, with an unfaithful manic-depressive wife and a junkie for a son. I picked you out of the gutter, I dusted you off, I gave you that shiny pedestal you now stand so proudly on. You didn’t allow my business to do anything, it supersedes you! Whatever happens here, you are to do as you are told—”
“I will not let people die—”
Dropping the cart, I grabbed him by the neck, shoving him up against the glass doors and squeezing.
“Never interrupt me, Mr. Takahashi. I’m up to my neck in disrespect and I won’t take it from you too. You will go back to your office, you will sit in that nice big chair of yours, you will remember who bought you that chair, and you will wait as patiently as I am being with you until you get your orders. Am I being clear?” I squeezed tighter, forcing his chin up. “Am. I. Being. Clear?”
“Y...es…”
Letting go, he coughed and gasped for air, bending to the side as I moved back to my cart. “People like your son will always die. You didn’t lose your child to drugs. Yoshiro lost to himself. People like you always come around, always saying they will clean up the cities and will choke the drug supply, forgetting that it is the very same people in those cities who are letting the filth get in. Why?” I asked, bending down to reach for the jelly. “Because they cannot cope. Whether the pain is physical or mental it doesn’t matter. They want to escape so badly they’ll take anything. You cannot stop drugs from coming in until you stop the pain. And pain never stops. I thought you understood that. I thought you understood that we supply the safest poison and therefore respected your role. But I thought wrong. You, too, think that the evil begins and ends with the Callahans. So watch well and see how this city, the city I gave you, changes when I’m not the gatekeeper.”
I walked to the front counter, placing my basket on the counter and ringing the bell. I turned back when I heard him walking toward the door, adjusting his neck tie. “When this is over I just might have to get a ring so you can kneel down to kiss it out of gratitude.”
Pushing the door open, he said, “Have a good day, Mr. Callahan.”
“I always do.”
He turned back to me once more before getting inside the town car, the black door closing behind him.
“The moment I heard you were in town I sent Kitty and the girls to my sister’s in Florida.”
“You mean she’s not in the back helping you find the newspaper app?” I replied, turning back around to him as he shuffled in behind the back of the counter.
“Thankfully not. I told them, look, if the Ceann na Conairte is coming here himself, that means some people are going to lose their heads, and I don’t need them in the crosshairs. No, sir.” He chuckled, ringing up the items in the basket. “It’s $41.97.”
“$41.97? You’re killing me, McNardy.”
“Girls, three of them, Callahan, do you know how much tuition costs nowadays? And of course they all got to go to the expensive ones.” He groaned, lifting a thick purse and placing it on the table, sliding it to me.
“I think you mean Ivy League,” I said, opening it to count the cash quickly before pulling out a few twenties and placing them on the counter.
“I mean bloody expensive. Couldn’t one of them have the decency to only care about makeup and boys like everyone else?” he grumbled, giving me change, and I just threw it back into the purse, sliding it back to him.
“Keep it and anything else trickling. Spread it among the boys too. Things will be slow for a while. I’m sure it will help with your girls too.”
He smiled like he’d been resurrected from the dead. “You’re too kind, Callahan.”
“Aren’t I!” I agreed, moving to the doors. “If everyone thought like you I would still be in Chicago, blissfully ignorant to the ridiculously high cost of jelly.”
“I got it from the Amish. Everyone loves that stuff. Can’t get it anywhere but McNardy’s.”
“I’ll let you know, then, if it was worth it.” I stepped back into the light breeze, tossing the bag over my shoulder as I walked back.
IVY
“Oh my God, what is this?” I said, taking a bite of the bagel in front of me, reaching over to get more of the jelly.
“Amish gold, apparently,” he replied, reading through the messages on his phone, lying almost naked, nothing but a towel around his waist, beside me on the bed. He’d come in with breakfast for me before taking a quick shower only a few minutes ago. “Give me some.”
He titled his head to me, and I broke off a piece of the bagel to put in his mouth. Watching as he chewed, I waited for a reaction, but all he did was nod. “Good, but still not worth the price.”
“Shh.” I gasped, putting my hands over the jelly. “It will hear you.”
He finally glanced up at me and then at my hands before snickering. He tossed his phone on the bedside table, sitting up, and grabbed the knife to spread the jelly onto my lips before licking them off with his tongue.
“Now it’s too good for me,” he whispered. His lips, however, hovered over mine as his fingers brought down the small strap of my nightgown until it no longer covered my right breast. Taking the knife and the jelly, he smeared it over my nipple, causing me to jump slightly when the blade touched my skin. Dropping the knife back on the tray, he grabbed my breast tightly, squeezing it before his head dropped down and licked the jelly from my nipple. My mouth parted as I took hold of his hair, closing my eyes, leaning in more to him as he kissed and sucked and bit my nipple and breast.
He kissed and sucked up my chest, to my neck. “Oh…” I moaned, licking my lips. He kissed all the way up to my lips and only broke away to rest his forehead on mine.
“Now it’s priceless,” he whispered, bringing his hand up to stroke my cheek.
“I want it priceless for me too,” I whispered back, undoing his towel, reaching in to stroke his cock, feeling as it got hard and stood proud in my hands.
“Umm….” He closed his eyes and took the very same knife, dipped it in the same jelly and slowly ran it up the length of him, and then once more over the thick vein, begging for me to run my tongue across it, and who was I to deny it. Bending down, I licked him like he was ice cream on my spoon, candy made only for me. I sucked so forcefully on the side of his dick, he cried out, placing his fingers in my hair.
“Ethan, you…you taste so good.” I licked the tip of his cock before taking him into my mouth. My body bent over as I took as much of him into my mouth as I could.
“Fuck…ahh…Ivy…” He hissed.
I smiled. I loved when he lost his composure like this. Lifting my head back up, I licked the tip of him once more and said, “Yes, baby?”
His eyes snapped open, lust shining through. He didn’t say anything. Instead, he reached for my leg and pulled it and me over, lying on his chest…backward.
“I didn’t realize you were as hungry as me…baby,” he said, lying back on the bed, my ass and pussy completely exposed to him. He gripped my thigh with one hand and used two of his fingers to spread the lips of pussy for him to eat—
“Oh…my…Ethan. Ahh!” I gasped, my body trembled as his tongue tickled my clit. Unable to stop myself, I rocked my hips into his mouth, my eyelids feeling heavier as my body temp rose.
“Eat, baby,” he said, and feeling his lips vibrate against me as he spoke was almost too much for me.
“Yes.” Was all I could say before taking him back into my mouth, my hands caressing his balls, both of us moaning against each other.
Yes!
God, yes!
More!
I wanted more of him.
I wanted all of him.
I never wanted this to end.
ETHAN
Fuck. Why was she so damn beautiful?
Her moans were intoxicating.
The way she looked while being fucked, a thin layer of sweat on her white skin causing her blond hair to stick to her body, was divine.
I wanted to lose track of time kissing every part of her body. I wanted to see how many ways I could make her legs weak.
“Ethan...ah…please…oh…” she cried out, her palms so sweaty she was starting to slide on the kitchen floor…
The kitchen? Why are we in the kitchen?
Right. We’d come to get more food, but she had to tempt me with that cute small robe of hers. Which didn’t cover her ass when she bent over to get something from the fridge. Which led to this. Her on all fours and trying to stay that way as I rammed myself into her ass. Sweat rolled down my face, off my chin and onto her back with each thrust forward.
“I can’t—” Her hands slid and she went down, her breasts on the tiled floor, but I couldn’t stop. No, I needed her to scream out more. I wanted to be in her more, much more. So I sat up on my knees more and pulled her hips to me, holding them in place with my arm as I leaned on top of her, chest on her back.
“Ethan.” She drooled, lost in her sexual daze. “So good.” She kissed my chin, until her mouth got to my lips, and from there, our tongues roamed each other’s mouth.
“You are mine,” I said when we broke away, my hands wrapping around her neck. “Always…say it.”
“I’m…” She tried to close her eyes, trembling as I slammed into her ass.
“Say it.”
“I’m…yours…”
I pulled out slightly, trembling with her before thrusting back in, swallowing the saliva in my mouth to ask her, “For…how long? For how long are you mine?”
“Always,” she muttered.
“Louder!”
“I’m yours always!”
“Whose?” My grip tightened on her, my pace quickening.
“YOURS!” she screamed out and once she screamed she gave into the pleasure, the lust, the wildness in herself and kept screaming. “I’m yours! I’m yours, Ethan Callahan! Oh, fuck…yes...baby, yes! OH! ETHAN!”
She cried as she came forcefully, her legs bucking, taking me with her as she collapsed. Bracing myself onto my elbows, I kissed the side of her sweaty cheek.
“Never forget that,” I whispered into her, slowly calming down as I too was at my limit. “Never forget you belong to me and me alone. I’ve waited for only you, Ivy, dreamed only of you, and now that I have you, I’m going to fuck you like this until…ugh…until I figure what the hell you’ve done to me. UH!” I grunted, gripping her waist as I came deep inside her.
I held myself up on my hands on either side of her.
I closed my eyes, trying to both breathe and calm myself down.
I don’t know how long we both stayed like that, naked, sweaty, pressed together, breathing heavily, and I didn’t care.
It was only when I found the will and the strength to move again did I slowly push myself up and gently pulled out of her, both of us covered in each other. On my feet, the world felt like it was spinning for a moment, before I felt upright. Moving to the open fridge I’d pulled her from, I reached for the milk and drank it from the bottle, bracing myself against the kitchen counter when I was done.
“Ethan.”
Her voice was so soft I thought I’d imagined it.
Turning to face her, she’d rolled over onto her back, her hand over her eyes, and I didn’t realize why until she spoke. “Ummm…fuck…I mean…I…whatever I did…whatever I’ve done…don’t figure it out.”
She was crying.
Not sobbing.
Just tears flowing out of her eyes.
“Why are you covering your face?”
“Because my eyes are leaking and they shouldn’t be!” she shouted in frustration. “I should cry when I’m sad. Now this wasn’t sad…this was the best…I’ve never felt like that before.”
Putting the milk down, I walked back over to her and even when I picked her up into my arms she wouldn’t let me see her face, even though I could feel her tears on my chest.
“Say it,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Say you’ll never try to find out why me?”
“I’ll never question why I fell for you.”