Drapetomania, noun
An overwhelming urge to run away.
I decided I was going to hate him.
I didn’t deal well with guys who didn’t want me, and I hated the way he’d treated me the previous night. I spent hours and hours tossing and turning in my bed, unable to catch a wink of sleep.
Once I finally got out of bed, I kept my curtains firmly closed. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of seeing me ever again.
A look at my phone told me I had no messages, and that upset me even more. I wanted him to apologize, to find an excuse for not wanting to see me in person. God, I wanted him to find a fucking reason to speak to me. But he didn’t, and that made me want him even more.
I got up and took a hot shower to get my mind out of the gutter. By the time I came out, Arden was sitting at the bar in my kitchen, groceries laid out all over the counter.
“You could have told me you were coming over,” I said as I towel-dried my hair.
I walked to the window, and on an impulse, pulled the curtains open.
I didn’t pause to see if he was looking.
“You never lock your door,” she shrugged. “And I wanted to talk to you.”
I wrapped my hair in a turban and leaned down to give her a fleeting kiss on the cheek. She smiled.
“What did you bring?” I asked.
“Donuts,” she said, and I squealed with excitement.
This used to be our thing. Mine, Posy’s, and Arden’s. We’d all meet up at my apartment after a wild night out, and Posy and I would binge on the donuts Arden brought from our favorite bakery down town.
Arden never ate.
Or if she did, she threw it all up when she got back home.
She was starting to get better when we lost Posy, but now she was right back to her old ways. I never said anything about it, and neither did she. It was too painful to talk about, and I had no right to scold her when I was doing shitty things as well.
“How did last night go?” Arden asked me, and I shrugged.
I didn’t want to tell her yet. A part of me wanted to keep my stranger to myself. I got possessive quite often, but not like this, with an intensity that made me zip my mouth shut and pretend nothing happened.
“I fucked that club guy,” I said carelessly.
“Anders?” she asked, and I gave her a blank stare. “His name was Anders, Bebe. I thought you would remember.”
The old me would have been embarrassed. The new me just grinned at her and took a bite of the salted caramel donut that had made my fingers all sticky and sugary.
“How was he?” Arden raised an eyebrow at me.
“Good,” I replied, keeping it vague on purpose. “Did you fuck Nick?”
She looked down at her perfectly manicured fingernails and I gasped.
“You did, didn’t you?” I squealed. “You freaking fucked him! Oh my God, you’re finally not a virgin anymore!”
“Shut up!” She was blushing fiercely. “It doesn’t matter. It wasn’t that good, anyway.”
“Of course it wasn’t,” I rolled my eyes, grabbing another donut. “The first time never is. Anyway, how come you did it? I thought you guys were just friends?”
“He came over to watch a movie,” she said. “And we just… I don’t know, it just happened. And I guess he was sweet. And nice. He made me drink a smoothie.”
I gave her a long look and she returned my gaze, which was a good sign. It meant she didn’t spend the whole night bent over the toilet, throwing up the food her new boy-toy had made her eat.
“I can’t believe you’ve joined the slut club,” I grinned at her.
It was what Posy and I used to call ourselves. The slut club, and Arden, the innocent one, was forever our wing woman. But not anymore.
It hurt to think of what Posy would have to say about this, so I just shut the thoughts out, packed them up in a tight little box in a dark corner of my mind.
“So now you can finally fuck someone else,” I said. “He was your practice cock. Now you can have another one!”
“I…” She was blushing. “I don’t really want to.”
“What?” I gave her an incredulous look. “Oh god-fucking-damnit, don’t tell me you have feelings for Nick. For real?”
“I might,” she said defensively. “You know, he’s a nice guy. A great guy. The kind you take home to meet your parents.”
“Yeah, exactly,” I rolled my eyes. “God, Arden, when did you become so traditional?”
She sulked quietly and I picked up my phone that had just pinged with a message.
“What is it?” Arden asked me as I read it. “You’ve gone pale. Is everything okay?”
No, everything was not okay.
I glanced towards the window and squinted against the sunlight, seeing a figure against the window across the street.
Dare you to drop your clothes in front of your friend, the text read.
“As if,” I muttered to myself, just when another message arrived on my phone.
A picture.
His fucking cock, his tattooed knuckles holding it up for me, a vein throbbing on his shaft and enticing me. It was covered in cum.
I walked to the window and shook my hair out, dropping the towel holding my hair up to the floor. Arden was chatting to me from behind, but I could barely hear her. My attention was on the phantom figure across the street.
I untied the towel around my tits and let it drop to the floor slowly. I smiled to his silhouette and turned towards Arden again, flashing him a view of my toned ass.
Arden didn’t take any notice, apart from glancing at me quickly. We’d been naked in front of each other before, it was no big deal. And she was too involved in her boring Nick story to notice what I was doing anyway.
I walked back to the counter and grabbed a jug of milk from the fridge. I drank it sloppily, droplets of milk running down my chin, over my neck and dribbling over my tits.
“Why do you have to be so messy?” Arden asked me once I set it down, and I grinned at the sight of a new message on my phone.
Make her lick you fucking clean.
I walked over to her, pushing my tits in her face. Arden groaned and glared at me.
“Why don’t you help me with that?” I asked her, winking.
“Come on, Bee,” she said with a sigh. “I thought those days were behind us.”
Memories filled my mind. Memories of three bodies twisted together, getting off, licking, sucking, fucking, until each one of us had our first orgasm. Mine came from Arden, and I still remembered it so fucking well. And now she wasn’t a virgin anymore, and Posy was no longer with us. Life fucking sucked balls sometimes.
“Lick me,” I asked her in a soft, sweet voice.
She looked up at me, her eyes once again showing me the vulnerable girl I’d met when we were both seventeen. We’d come a long way since then.
I thought of Miles, and turned my head to the side to look through the window. I couldn’t see that well with the bright sunlight, but I could tell he was standing by the window, watching us. And I wanted him to.
Arden didn’t move, so I grabbed the back of her neck and forced her mouth against my hot skin.
“Lick,” I said gently.
Her tongue shot out and she licked the drops of milk off my chest. I moaned when she did, so many memories coming back to me, flooding me with things we’d never do again.
“That’s enough,” she finally said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and glaring at me. “You’re bad, Bebe. We aren’t supposed to be doing that anymore.”
“Because of Posy?” I asked her roughly. “We aren’t supposed to be doing a lot of things, but it’s not stopping either of us, is it?”
She looked away guiltily.
“When was the last time you ate, Arden? Not the smoothie. Before that,” I said, my voice soft.
“It doesn’t matter,” she mumbled in reply.
I reached for her, my fingers tangling in her long honey-blonde hair.
“Tell me,” I urged her, and she finally looked back up at me, her eyes filled with pain.
It was right there. The hole between us. Yet we had never, not once, talked about it.
“The day before yesterday,” she said softly.
I just stared at her. I never knew what to do when she got like this. Posy was the glue that held us together. She was the girl who made sure both Arden and I were alright. But now she was fucking gone and I had no idea how to fix this, any of it.
“You have to eat,” I told Arden. “Does Nick know about this?”
“He knows a bit,” she said miserably, and I shook my head.
I wanted to fix her, I wanted to fix both of us. But without Posy, it wasn’t possible. We needed each other, and with one missing link, the whole friendship had fallen apart.
I grabbed my robe from the back of a chair, shrugging the plum silk over my shoulders. It felt nice and cool against my skin, but I left it open in the front. Partly because I wanted to tease Miles, and partly because I was hoping he’d just fucking lose his cool and come knocking on my door.
I didn’t check my phone again.
“Are you going out tonight?” I asked Arden.
She shook her head no. “I’m spending the evening at Nick’s.”
“Good,” I said with a smile. “Make sure he makes you some food again.”
I had a feeling this new relationship was going to be good for Arden. She’d get better with his help, and he’d do things for her that I wasn’t capable of. Arden needed stability, and I was the last person she could turn to for that.
“Do you want to come along?” she asked me hopefully. “He has some friends you could meet, or you could bring that guy from the club with you…”
“No,” I shot her down, giving her a chilly look. “Maybe you don’t want to have fun, but I do.”
“Bee…” she gave me a worried glance. “I know you took something last night.”
“So?” I snapped. “You don’t get to tell me what I can or can’t do, you know.”
“I know,” she said, her voice trembling. “But I thought because of what happened with Posy, you’d maybe…”
“Maybe what?” I spat out. “Stop living my fucking life? Well, I won’t. And neither should you. Now please get the fuck out so I can finish getting ready.”
She got off her chair and didn’t even look at me again as she walked out. The front door slammed after her, and the second she was gone, I felt fucking miserable.
Instead of letting myself think about it, I picked up my phone again.
A new text was waiting.
Call me once she leaves.
I didn’t want to, but there was a part of me that couldn’t resist. I slid behind the counter, in a spot where he couldn’t see me at all, so he wouldn’t know there were tears streaming down my cheeks. I called his number.
“Bebe,” he said in that deep voice that sent shivers down my spine.
“Miles,” I replied, keeping my voice as level as I could possibly manage. “Why did you want me to call you?”
“What are you doing tonight?” he asked me.
His voice was fucking divine. All dark roughness and rugged need. God, I wanted him so bad.
“Probably going out,” I said. “Why, you want to come?”
A long pause followed and my heartbeat quickened at the thought of him somewhere outside with me, touching me as we danced to a heavy bass. I’d come for him right there on the dancefloor if he let me.
“How about you watch a little show instead?” he asked me with a dark chuckle.
He sent my blood pumping through my veins.
I thought of Arden, her implied warning that I should sort my life out.
I thought of going out, having mindless sex with a faceless stranger once again.
I thought of Miles.
“What kind of show?” I asked him, feeling my pussy clench under the silk of my robe.
“A peep show, of course,” he laughed, sending chills through my body.