THIRTEEN
~MIA~
Jace certainly knew how to wake a girl up.
I smiled, thinking back to the memory of this morning as I looked through his walk-in pantry, wanting to give him something in return for the pleasure he’d given me this morning. My body warmed as the memory swam through my mind like a scene from a dirty movie:
I cried out, waking up to find Jace’s head between my thighs, the feel of his tongue stroking me entrance perfectly. I shivered, moving my hands to his head, falling victim to the pleasure he so willingly gave. I arched my head back, marveling at just how lucky I was to have a man who would wake me up like this.
“You awake now?” he said, continuing to lap at me even harder.
“I am now,” I said, my voice husky with pleasure.
“Good,” he smirked. “Now I won’t be so gentle.”
I gasped he returned to his “job” with that much more intensity. His fingers joined with his tongue, working me simultaneously and I couldn’t hold on any longer. I fell back against the pillows, arching upward as my body came alive. I screamed out as my orgasm rocketed through me, wave after wave of pleasure wracking my body.
“Jace, I need you inside me! Please,” I panted.
He nodded, moving off me and headed to grab a condom. I took his hand, squeezing gently to stop him.
“Jace, it’s fine,” I said. “I’m on the pill.”
“Are you sure?” he looked over, his face filled with pleasure at my request.
“I want this,” I smiled. “You’ll be my first without any…”
“Thank you, Mia,” he said, leaning down and capturing my lips in his.
Within seconds, he was filling me to the hilt. I panted, loving the feel of him inside me, with nothing between us. It felt so much more intimate and I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling him back into another passionate kiss. He began to buck inside me, his cock hitting me perfectly as he did.
“Oh wow,” he panted. “It feels so good, Mia.”
“It really does,” I shivered. “I’m already close!”
“Do it! Come for me,” he groaned. “I’m close too!”
As he increased the tempo, a second orgasm crashed through me and I arched back, gasping at how strong this orgasm was. At the same time, Jace had arched back, groaning at his own release as he began to flood me deep. I moaned, loving the feel of him inside me. I felt that much closer to him and as we both finished together, I fell back, Jace falling beside me.
“Wow,” he panted. “That was incredible.”
“It felt different,” I smiled warmly. “I can see why people complain about condoms.”
He smirked, leaning forward and kissed my forehead. I snuggled closer, knowing he’d be leaving soon. While I knew he wasn’t going to be gone for long, a part of me suddenly felt afraid. I didn’t want him to leave all of a sudden.
I cleared my thoughts at that, still unsure where that sudden emotion had come from earlier. I hadn’t brought it up to Jace, not wanting to seem like a burden and deciding that it was just a residual thought from our earlier separation. Going back to my task, I continued to look through the pantry.
“Get it together, Mia,” I whispered to myself.
I looked up at the sound of my phone ringing and stepped out of the pantry, looking around for my phone. When I found it, I saw that it was Candy and quickly picked it up, hitting the “accept” icon.
“Little early for you to be awake, isn’t it?” I teased.
“Is that how you talk to your best friend ever?” Candy’s voice replied with mock-hurt.
“I guess so,” I said, maintaining the playful back-and-forth.
“Hmm,” she resigned without words, then asked, “So you two okay then?”
“We are, yeah,” I said with a smiled. “Thanks… you know, for everything.”
“Uh-huh,” she hummed, sounding cocky. “Tol’ya it wasn’t forever, didn’t I?”
“You did,” I admitted.
“So you want me to come over?” she asked. “Day’s open—like my door, thanks to your lover-boy—and I was thinking you could treat me to a movie in that private theater you get to call a living room.”
I laughed at that. “Anything to ogle Jace’s place some more, right?” I asked.
“Well, that… and I bet you he has some real good booze hidden there,” Candy laughed.
I remembered the wine from the night before and laughed again. “He does, I can confirm,” I told her. “But it’s not the sort of stuff I can start freely pouring out. Not unless you got ten-grand lying around.”
“Ten-grand?” she scoffed, sounding disbelieving. “You’re shittin’ me, right?”
I told her what Jace and I had been drinking less than twelve hours earlier.
The phone went quiet.
Then she screamed.
“Bitch! I am coming over. Like, right now! I mean, no, we ain’t hittin’ that boy’s top-shelf—he’d probably gut me and drain me just to get it back—but I’m thinking somewhere in the middle.”
I laughed again, decided I liked the idea of not being alone, and agreed.
“Alright, cool!” she said. “Gimme, like, an hour-or-so, kay? Bus schedule’s shit—I’m sure you can remember from way-back-when—an’ it ain’t like I got a pretty biker boy to drive me everywhere. Don’t even got Danny here. Seriously, I been reduced to a fag-hag, and I ain’t even got a fag to hag? Can you believe that?”
“The struggle is real,” I offered with another chuckle.
“Tellin’ me,” she grumbled. “Anyway, I’ll be there soon… ish. Just have a movie and a bottle ready.”
“Kay,” I said, grinning at how easily the word came to me when I was talking to her.
And then the phone was silent.
Smiling, feeling refreshed, I went back to planning out a nice dinner for Jace. Starting to decide on a meal, I realized a few things were missing and pulled out my phone again, typing a message to Jace:
Hey! Could you pick
up some salad mix and
Italian bread pls?
I want to make something
special for you tonight.
Love you :-*
Finished, I set the phone on the sideboard next to me as I went about getting things set up. Outside it had started raining, and the sound, distant and muted through the walls of the condo, was a soft hum that faded off and was easily forgotten. The only real hint of the storm was the lack of natural lighting that I was used to around this time of day. This, however, was what electricity and indoor lighting was made for. Turning on a few more lights and reveling in the sudden safety that a few extra bulbs seemed to provide, I went about working on a sauce for the spaghetti I planned to make.
A moment later, my phone buzzed. I smiled, thinking of how lucky I was that, even with all his work, Jace was so quick to respond to such an unimportant message.
Then I frowned, staring for far longer than the two-word message deserved:
FROM: UNKNOWN NUMBER
knock knock
I was looking around the room before I realized I had no reason to do so. My breathing was coming in jagged bursts, and I worked to get that under control.
Calm down, Mia. Rationalize this!
It was a threat, sure, and I didn’t need to be a genius to figure out who it was. But there was nothing Mack could do over the phone—Just the phone! Just the phone! That’s all he has: just the phone!—and nothing he could do so long as I was here in Jace’s…
Lightning clapped outside, making me jump and scream.
Then, certain I’d feel better if I said this one thing—Just this one thing!—I began typing:
I told you to leave
me alone!
The response came before I’d even had a chance to steady my breathing again:
Shuldv cum wen I sed.
Warned U, dint I?
I was shaking. I was afraid. I was furious for those first two facts. My fingers flew across the digital keyboard of my phone:
Text me again and
I’ll call the cops!
I mean it!!
I pounded the “SEND” key and threw my phone down on the couch. Four rounds of pacing back-and-forth through the living room had my head somewhere in the right place. In the time it had taken me to do that, there’d been no more buzzing; no more messages. I was beginning to feel like the threat might have gotten through to my brother. As I thought this, it was followed by the through that, whenever anybody in books or movies thought such a thing, it was always at that moment that the phone buzzed again or…
Or worse.
A full minute passed in silence, save for the dull-yet-constant hum of the rain outside.
But still nothing happened.
Two minutes.
Three.
Or had it all only been a few seconds?
Time moved slowly when you were holding your breath.
But still nothing happened.
Thunder bubbled outside; every now and again the already brightly-lit condo was made white and blinding with the flash of lightning.
But still nothing…
I decided that I should call Jace.
This, of course, was only a half-truth—one told to myself for the sake of my sanity more than out of hope—as I just as much needed to hear his voice at that moment. Masking it as the right thing to do, the honest thing to do, made me feel a little less pathetic for the effort; it lent a sense of input over the dire need to be looked after.
I started for the couch, for my phone, and turned the little mental mantras into a haphazard muttering of, “Calm down, just a phone, one thing; calm down just a phone one thing…”
I scooped up the phone. It looked like such a simple, trivial thing in that instant. So unbefitting of so much worry.
“Calm… a phone… thing,” I muttered, not even thinking about the words coming out of my mouth anymore. “Calm… phone… thing…”
It took a few tries to get the power button to work right. I blamed the phone, but secretly knew my fingers weren’t working right; they didn’t have the strength or dexterity I’d come to expect from them.
“Calm, phone, thing,” I whimpered.
The glare of the awakening phone was blinding, and I wondered if it had always been that bright. A nightmarish thought that, while my back had been turned, somebody—Mack—had been in here—in this very room with me—and altered the settings just to…
“Calm phone thing,” I muttered, finding peace in the strange noise I’d begun making. “Camphon’ing.”
The pad of my thumb, shaky but mine, worked with trembling awkwardness to the tauntingly calm icon of an old-timey phone set against a green square. The white silhouette of a rotary phone seemed to mock me with all that it promised.
“Compho’ing,” I whispered, and, as though I were perched on a rotting ledge and had but one chance to leap to safety, I threw everything I had into pressing the spot on a screen that light and faith told me was a button—a bridge to Jace’s voice.
The contacts list came to replace the screen I’d come to loathe so much, and I heard myself cry out and was instantly embarrassed by it.
Mack…
My son-of-a-bitch brother had me so terrified I was working my brain into a lather over…
Over a fucking phone call?
“M-M-M…” I stammered.
I’d meant to say “Mia, you twit, get a hold of yourself and make the damn call!”
But then a clap of thunder crashed down, earning another scream—this one stifled to some degree—and all I managed was another “Compho’ing.”
Miraculously, I found Jace’s number—easy enough; it rested atop all the others in the “RECENTLY DIALED” list—and, with another hopeful press to an imaginary button, I was soon rewarded with the beautiful chime of ringing…
B-B-B-B-Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-rinngggggg…
Breathe in… breathe out…
“Compho’ing.”
B-B-B-B-Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-rinngggggg…
Breathe in… breathe out…
“Compho’ing.”
B-B-B-B-Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-rinngggggg…
Breathe in… breathe out…
“Compho’ing.”
B-B-B-B-Br-r-r-r—
“Hey there,” Jace’s voice sang out, and I loosed a noise that perched between a sobbing cry and a barking laugh.
“Jace, oh thank go—”
“I can’t get to the phone right now. You know what to do.”
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEP
In my mind—a mind haunted by a vast, dark forest occupied by a monster named Depression and, somewhere beyond its seemingly infinite depths, a well-read and even college-educated catalogue of knowledge and deductive prowess—I thought of a myriad of things to say to Jace’s voicemail. In my mind I was clever and witty. In my mind I hadn’t even let it get this far.
My mind was somewhere far from me now.
I said “Compho’ing” one more time.
Then a floorboard creaked in the other room, and I was screaming.
Lightning caught the scene like a snapshot—I imagined something from a horror movie; perhaps one of the vampire flicks I loved so much, this time starring me as the unsuspecting damsel about to be beset upon by a bloodthirsty monster—and the clap of thunder roared down at the very same instant.
And the lights, all the lights—the lights that I’d come to see as a sense of security; the lights that kept that safe, secluded condo from near total blackness—went out.
The storm’s right on top of me, I thought, and a numb part of me from beyond that dark forest told the rest of me I wasn’t talking about the weather.
The next creak was much closer this time, and I made a mousy sound.
Numb fingers piloted by blind eyes worked to get my phone back on. Suddenly that too-bright screen seemed like a miraculous thing to me.
Creak.
I felt hot wetness running down my cheeks, but I refused to believe I was crying.
Get it together, Mia, I chastised myself. This is in your head. It’s only in your head. It’s always in your head. Just in your head! Your stupid, worthless, broken head! Just get it together, get your damn phone working, and you’ll see—YOU’LL SEE!—that it’s all… in… your…
My phone’s screen bit threw the darkness like something a divine being willed. Nothing had ever been so bright and so beautiful.
Mack, only two feet in front of me now, was smiling his awful smile.
“I told you it’d be this way, sis, but you’ve always had a bit of a listening problem,” he said as he jabbed me with something long…
and sharp…
and…
sleepy…