Chapter Five
~Foreign~
The temperature outside was brutal, compared to the warmth of my one-bedroom apartment. Every inch of my flesh that wasn’t covered by clothes and my bubble coat were like pins and needles along my skin. I shivered as I stepped foot into the abrupt temperature change. Flipping the foyer’s light on and booty-bumping the door closed behind me, I stepped from the sparsely decorated front room into the little kitchen on my left. I paused at the two-chair table. It was the permanent home to my laptop, small enough to set at the entryway without blocking a path to the small fridge and double sinks enveloped by four oak cabinets.
I dropped my things all over the dented and nicked dark wood of the table. With my back to the wall, I sat, retrieved the CD from my purse, inserting it in the side of the laptop then held my breath. Suddenly nauseous, and before my courage took flight, I clicked play. The overview of a moonlit room emerged. Ceiling to floor, undressed windows built into the corners of the wall opposite Christian’s bedroom door. From the angle of the camera, it was mounted in a corner right below the vaulted, high ceiling bearing massive blades of a fan. From that far up, it would be hard to identify faces though the picture quality was in HD. Thank God for that.
I had some room to wiggle out of the shitstorm that had beat the blizzard to town. Relief rose up like a tidal wave within, then froze mid-climb when the camera panned in on the pathway between the bed and the closed door. Suddenly, I could see the color of the carpet even with the thick layer of darkness blanketing the floor. Well, shit! I couldn’t have been more alarmed if the video had started with me slapping flesh with Christian. Except, I wasn’t seeing anything but dark furniture, its brown and black accessories, tan walls, and framed nature scenes over his headboard. The bed was made up, no bodies anywhere. Yet, this video was already the equivalent of a train wreck. I knew what was coming and couldn’t look away.
As if on cue, the door opened. Christian walked into view then pivoted one-hundred-eighty degrees, putting his back to the bed. And then, there I was. When his hand cupped my head, the relief whooshed out of me because it no longer belonged. I was wrong; he had me dead to rights. There was a closeup of our lips twining and battling as I kept pace with him while quickly stripping him of his clothes, couldn’t get him out of them fast enough. Should’ve left his gorgeous, treacherous ass in them.
And what a gorgeous, treacherous ass it was.
Like a punch to the gut, I felt the same rush of hunger to be one with him clawing at my insides that hadn’t been recorded as we undressed. There wasn’t much for him to take off me. Just a halter-neck, fitted dress that reached my knees, a pair of panties, and heels I stepped out of myself. After he toed his shoes off, the camera scaled back. The kiss ended. I was lifted into his arms, both of us stark naked, and my trip to the bed began. The camera angle changed abruptly again, following us. It was disturbing how the device that was just doing its job tracked us. Who had home security system that could do that?
“I swear to God if there was a hidden cameraman, two people are meeting their maker,” I promised to the tension-filled kitchen.
Christian laid me down gently on the mattress, my legs bent over the edge. He spread them wide then knelt before me on the hardwood floor. I didn’t need to see anymore to know what happened after that. In real time, my eyes drifted closed, and I envisioned all that came next on the disc, couldn’t forget it if I tried. Hadn’t wanted to… until now when his head was dipping in the middle of my thighs. My hands should be flying to my breasts right… about… now, searching for an anchor as he ripped the damn ground from beneath me with just his mouth. Real life me knew desire was slashing through my body like scorching hot machetes on camera. And off.
Be quiet dammit.
A catastrophic orgasm was going to tear through me any second now on the video, which would be proceeded by me screaming his name as my thighs scissored around his neck. I started timing my actions on tape, but no sound from the laptop broke the silence in my apartment though. That was weird, as if the CD had stopped right there. Would be nice if it had.
Since I wasn’t feeling like my luck was running that well, my eyes popped open. On the monitor, the camera had zoomed in on my face. My mouth mimed an ‘o’, head thrown back. I looked like I was in complete ecstasy, and I was. Not a quiet lover either, so I was certainly saying something as I came for him but was muted. I knew why. It was illegal to record someone with audio without their permission but perfectly lawful to record them in silent compromising positions in a lot of the states. California and Colorado were two. Christian had covered his ass but definitely not mine as he turned me over on the bed. The camera angle zoomed out some, probably to catch our every movement as he pushed me up on my knees to taste me from that position too.
I fidgeted in my chair, crossing my arms over my nipples to stop the lace of my bra from rubbing against the hardened peaks. I wasn’t supposed to be enjoying the show. A part of me was though, the parts that knew what I felt every second I spent in Christian’s house. The parts that amounted to every inch of me. Ironically, I was in heaven on the recording, in hell in my seat. Moisture had soaked through my panties. Heat bloomed in my veins until my body felt hot enough to leave a foggy butt print on my seat’s wood surface.
His tongue snaked out. The picture moved, zeroing in on his movement then adjusted as his thick palate glided over every inch of my flesh tilted in the air. Including the backs of my thighs. Well, we knew he didn’t care about the dimples I hated. When he lapped at the outer lips of my womanhood, I moaned out loud just as I would have on the film if there was a soundtrack. One wasn’t needed; the visuals were more than effective.
Once he wrangled another mind-scrambling orgasm from me, he flipped me over on my back again. I was boneless, easily maneuverable, and couldn’t find the breath to protest while he gathered my legs on top of his shoulders one at a time. Then, he spun me around on the bed, so my greatest treasure was exposed to the camera… or maybe so he had more room to access that treasure, probably both. Right after he kneeled over me, the picture drew into the sculptured globes of his ass, my thighs resting on top of his. He spread his even more; therefore, mine parted wider. Between the V-shape of our limbs, his hand appeared then guided the tip of ten inches of massive erection to my saturated entrance, then disappeared inside me in one lunge.
The camera didn’t catch my ‘Oh God, yes!’ or his whisper of, ‘You’re mine now, Foreign.’ I wouldn’t have heard it anyway; a phantom mimicking of his body driving inside my body planted in the chair had me sitting up straighter than an arrow, hollering out, “What the fuck!”
It was as if he was penetrating me over again. Just as beautifully devastating as the first time, only he wasn’t here. Well, he was in theory, my mind and laptop his conduit. Perfect recall had drudged up the exact sensations I felt when we first connected on a carnal level then gutted me. I shut my eyes tight for a second to clear out every emotion giving him dominion over me in the digital world and the real one. When I opened them again, movie stars Christian and Foreign were rolling sideways while locked at the lips and body. With me on top, and without missing a beat, our hips drove slowly toward one another at the same rate of speed like we were magnetized. That was only just the beginning.
There were four hours total of us making love, exploring each other’s body with hands and mouths, then resting while still locked in each other’s sweaty arms, only to do it all over again twice that night. At one point, I found myself retracting a plastic fork from my mouth with one hand, with the other hauling the straw in a cup towards me. Mindlessly consuming the goods from work and hadn’t even noticed it. Needless to say, I was caught up in… no, this wasn’t amateur porn. More like polished professionals making an award-worthy flick for the sex industry. Hell, we even changed positions smoothly as if we practiced it or knew what the other wanted beforehand like we had been doing it for years.
Even actors, with the help of a director and the background scenery to set the mood for the audience, didn’t seem this in sync in sex scenes. No, I didn’t regularly view porn. Most shows with the TV-MA rating could be called the same thing these days. Christian was wrong; we weren’t good together, we were great, but I knew that already. It showed clearly in every facial expression, soundless gasp, and thrust of our bodies. Yep, I was thrusting too, when I wasn’t holding onto his neck for dear life after he had set a breakneck pace that I quickly gave up trying to keep up with. In top form like him, I was not.
At one point, I wondered if we were trying to beat each other into submission. It was either that, or we were trying to outrun the sensations that sometimes got to be too much. It was like my life depended on it, instead of my orgasms. He was giving me those all by himself like he knew what pushed me over the edge. I was simply contributing to the dragging of his shaft through my body, massaging me from the inside out, conquering all the erogenous places I knew I had and some I didn’t.
That was the first time I had been subjected to the kind of sex where I didn’t need a climax to get satisfaction during the act. Dropping me off an imaginary cliff only to be pummeled by bliss on the way down actually felt like overkill with Christian, who I begged several times to not make me come. Of course, he didn’t listen, didn’t know his far-reaching pole filling me from root to stem felt fantastic on its own. It was too bad for him that he wouldn’t ever know how amazing his penis felt inside his body. I loved and hated that I did know because I couldn’t forget it and was about to be blackmailed for it.
As I sat watching to the bittersweet end, growing more agitated with each rise in my arousal, my double on the monitor was about to sneak from the bed with a troubled look on her face. I had gotten a hell of a lot more than I bargained for with Christian; he had sponsored a surplus of electrifying sensations within me, the likes of which I’d never known. They still lingered as he slept. They were why I never slept or left his embrace. I was off balance, didn’t know why, but his touch grounded me. I needed that from him just as much as I didn’t want to need it.
So, there I laid until the rays of morning light brightened the room, outlining his sleeping form in a brilliant glow that highlighted the tribal tattoo of bold, black lines that swooped and arched over his right shoulder, down to his elbow. Only then could I drag myself away from him, when I couldn’t hide what I was feeling behind the cover of darkness. The camera panned in again as I eased off the bed, crept around the room, gathering my clothes to book it out of there before he woke, caught me, no, her in the walk of shame, or asked her to stay. She would have. I knew better.
Now, what was I going to do about Christian being here?
‘Run his ass out of town on a rail’ came quickly to mind, hoping he would forget about me and—I quote—how good we were together. Common sense was telling me it wasn’t going to be that easy, not if he came all this way to make his point, resurrecting old feelings. They’re not exactly old though, are they?
Shit! Shit! Shit!
The laptop’s screen went black finally. My head flopped back, resting on the ladder-back of my chair. I covered my eyes with my wrists, then pressed as if pushing my eyeballs further back in my head would make this all go away. I’d shove my peepers all the way to the back of my skull if I thought it would help, especially with the too many to name emotions flitting through me. The only one I acknowledged was the rampant dread. What I wanted to avoid like the plague was happening right before my eyes; my life changing at the insistence of someone else who had me gripped by the lips, the southbound ones. And by that thing in your chest.
Be quiet, conscience, goddamnit!
But it was too late to tell my inner voice to put the shut to the up. It had confessed my sins; Christian was a viable threat not just to my way of life but to that thing in my chest that gets hurts easily. The thing that I don’t let anyone in. The thing in danger around only Christian, who was the reason why I left California so fast for a second time. That state hated me.
Arriving at the airport hours before my return trip home was scheduled allowed me to get home before anyone expected me, to find peace and quiet for concentrating solely on shoring up my defenses against my feelings, against him, while trying to forget what he made me feel. He would make me feel something again if I didn’t get rid of him. Could that possibly be why he was here? God, I hoped not… or I had lost before this game had even begun.
Turning sideways in my chair permitted me to drop my elbows on my knees. Head in my hands, I got more comfortable to wallow in my misery, allowing myself ten minutes to do so because being miserable didn’t help anything either. I needed results. How did one permanently eliminate someone who wouldn’t stop until they got what they wanted without killing them, and without going through the hell Nevaeh just traveled? Like her, I wasn’t above tossing canned goods and tools out the window at someone climbing a ladder in hopes of getting to me before I put foot in his stomach to kick his ass out said window and stop him for good.
However, Christian didn’t strike me as psychotic and violent like Nevaeh’s ex, but he was methodical and smart enough to not put himself in a position where his target could fight back.
“Call me, Foreign,” Christian demanded next to me, killing the silence loaded with my thoughts and scaring my ass witless.
I yelped, “What the hell?”, then sat up, only to look right in his face on my laptop’s screen.
He was sitting on the very bed my bad deeds were committed on, smirking, criminally gorgeous in black slacks and a dress shirt with the top two buttons opened. “I figured I’d need to repeat that, or you’d carry on like we never met. Well, we did. We happened. Right here where you imprinted on me… and I suspect I imprinted on you.”
Imprinted on me? Who did he think he was, Jacob from the Twilight movies? Was he speaking in real time by hacking into my webcam, or replacing the rolling credits of the movie?
He leaned forward, his intensity bearing down on me through the screen. “And now I’m throwing down the gauntlet, Foreign, daring you to see if we started something that could last a lifetime. So…”
So, nothing! I wanted a lifetime with no one.
He had paused to scoot back. “…call me in twenty-four hours starting now and yes, I know exactly when you played the disc. Knowing what you’re doing on your side of the screen is what I do for a living, remember? In case you don’t, I track cyber terrorism and create security measures for it with software like the kind that downloaded to your computer from the disc. It tracked your keystrokes and mouse clicks then alerted me the second you played the disc. Want the software off, wipe your computer. Don’t know how to, I could do it for—” Hell no, he’d done enough for me.
Black fury stole my breath as I slammed the two-timing computer shut. It had opened a digital gateway and gave Christian access to me just like how others’ electronics had allowed me into their world without consent. Oh man, Karma was a ripe bitch and adding an extra layer of punishment; he didn’t have to make an appearance to stalk me since my computer was bugged. This was surreal. He was so much worse than I thought, could enter not just my world but follow in my digital footprints whenever he wanted to. Wasn’t making me feel something enough for him? Apparently not.
Wiping my computer wasn’t an option. I didn’t have a USB stick to save precious files for my classes on, and who was to say something wouldn’t scrub off my hard drive that I won’t need until I can’t find it?
Feeling pinned down, I railed at the world, “Oh God! What the hell am I going to do now?”
Maybe I could stall for time until I came up with something. Or maybe just do as you’re told just this once and see if he gives you the way out of this mess.
I cringed at the idea alone of ‘do as told’, liking ‘even swap, no swindle, or fuck you’ better. Wasn’t going to jump to his command either. If he knew when I played the movie, he knew how long it ran too. Deciding to make him wait, hopefully fret and sweat like I was doing, I laid on my bed, fully dressed, waiting for the clock on my shabby nightstand to strike twelve. Technically, I’d have made him wait until the next day, and that was good enough for me. If he didn’t answer, he couldn’t say I didn’t call, and there would be no second hitting him up.
Time moved leisurely into the past until the right digits displayed on the clock’s face. With shaking hands, I got up, picked up his business card and my cell from the dining room table.
After dialing out, the line rung once before he answered, “Foreign.”
His deep, gravelly tone reduced my insides to liquid goo. Being sexually affected by him was highly irritating since I was pissed to the highest point of pisstivity with the bastard.
With my tongue stuck to the roof of my dry mouth, my panties drenched in moisture needed elsewhere, I asked hoarsely, “First question: was there a cameraman? If there was, and you lie, I’ll find out, and you both will pay. Dearly.”
“No cameraman, just the camera, you, and me.” He came across as honest, not hesitating to come up with a plausible lie.
Still, I didn’t trust him, couldn’t after the stunt he had pulled. “How did you do it then?”
“Do what?”
“Get the camera to follow us while we had sex?”
“I prefer to call it making love, and each camera is attached to motion sensors activated when we stood outside my bedroom door. It’s programmed to zoom in and out on the strongest activity, and its shots can be manipulated from my control room. Would you like a tour of my home someday?”
I didn’t know what love was, so certainly not the difference between casual sex and making love, and hell no, I wasn’t ever going to his home again. “No thanks to the tour. I’ve gotten myself in enough trouble because of willingly walking inside your castle.”
“You’re never in trouble with me, Foreign.”
“Oh yeah? Thought we were about to discuss terms for your blackmail scheme, or was that some other man threatening me with a sextape if I didn’t play ball?”
“You could tell me and my ball to go to hell,” he mentioned casually, as if that was a choice.
Because it wasn’t, it infuriated me. “I may have been born at night, Christian, but it wasn’t last night. You hold my character’s standing in your damn hands, and you know it, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Second question: how do I get rid of you?”
“It’s simple; do as I ask.”
Told ya.
He wasn’t exactly asking, was he?
“Do what specifically?” I queried warily.
“Everything I ask.”
That could be a multitude of things… things I wouldn’t agree to like making another sextape, reputation be damned.
“And if I don’t do everything you ask?” I swallowed hard, hoping his answer wasn’t what I knew it was going to be, but I don’t assume when I can get the facts.
“Then, I guess I’ll have to release the movie to the world.”
There were more copies as I suspected. “You bastard.”
“Normally, I’m not a bastard, but you’re a hard nut to crack, and I knew you would be after doing business with your father, so I pulled out the big guns. You were his favorite topic by the way.”
I just bet I was Terrence’s favorite topic and hard to crack. I wanted it that way, but Christian was the nut whose trap I walked right into when I went home with him. Stupid but lucky you. He fucked you six ways from Sunday and imprinted on you. I guess that makes you Jacob.
Hush dammit!
“Why the big guns? You don’t know me and I’m not in your league, can’t add anything to your life.” Thank God for that too.
I wanted nothing that made me look enticing to the people that moved in my parents’ world. Looks like being broke and struggling isn’t working out for you either.
I’d had it up to here with my backtalking inner voice constantly moonlighting as Captain Obvious.
Christian chuckled softly into the phone. “It’s the other way around, Foreign. You don’t know me and I’m not in your league. My world has been lacking something all my life. That’s you. I knew this right after meeting you, and I know a few key things about you and your family as well, mostly through your father. You’re fiercely independent, even more because your culture allows your parents to tie a man around your neck, which your folks were rather damn determined to do, sadly.”
Exactly my opinion on the matter, shocking to hear him co-signing, which made me even more curious about him. No, not about him but the situation he was instigating.
“Christian, let’s just cut to the nitty gritty. What do you really want from me, because right now you seem like you want to be the man tied around my neck?” That was where this was headed for sure.
I may just have to be okay with having my bedroom antics exposed to the whole planet, shaming not only me but my family. Of course, I was only worried about how everything was going to come down on me, but you can bet your sweet ass the tape’s existence would reach my mother in record time. So be it. I wasn’t marrying any damn body, especially under duress.
“Hanging like dead weight around your neck is the last thing I want to be to you, sweetheart, but you’ve already tarred me with the same brush as ever other guy that you met through your parents. Despite what you must believe about me after your mother introduced us, meeting you wasn’t the reason why I was at your father’s funeral. He and I did business together, but he was a friend that I respected. Before you ask, yes, I’d been invited to his home to meet you a few years before you moved out. I refused, because I don’t need an imitation dating service to meet women. But now, I’ve met you, and just want for you to get to know me on your terms.”
“That’s it? Getting me to know you is all you want?” Nuh uh, that was too simple an explanation to be believable and didn’t require a sextape to accomplish… I think. I could be rather pig-headed when I chose to be. At least you know your faults.
I threw my conscience an image of my bird finger before focusing on Christian, I meant the call. “How do you expect me to get to know you when I’m sure just being near you is bad for my image, the recorded one? And we’re certainly not sleeping together again. Once recorded, twice shy over here. And these are not my terms, they’re yours.”
He snickered quietly. “We spend time together, fully-clothed at all times whenever our schedules don’t conflict, and you don’t have to worry about anymore compromising positions.” That was a relief, and he was a businessman, so his schedule probably clashed with the weather.
At least when it was messing with internet signals, so I had something working in my favor. “You’ve just described dating, Christian, which I don’t do, but you know this already, don’t you?” That was probably the first thing my father mentioned behind my damn back.
“Yes, I know you don’t, and that makes you a tough nut to crack.” And why he needed the big guns.
I slumped in my chair, a lot pissed off with myself for being gullible enough to spring a trap he set, furious with myself because I wasn’t screaming my head off at him for doing this to me. I should at least be totally turned off by the idea of seeing him from time to time. Now just why in the hell wasn’t I disgusted? Because I sure as hell wanted to be. He hasn’t made demands you can’t live with, although he could, which makes him even more tempting and mysterious to you.
Yeah, but ‘tempting’ had my ass in a bind, so I think it was best to let him keep his mystery.
“You can probably have any woman that you want. Why me?” I inquired, sulking like a petulant child.
“Obviously, I can’t have any woman I want, and why you indeed?”
“I asked you first. Now quit dodging my questions. Give me straight answers.”
He sighed softly, the sound pulling at the core of me where I felt things. I flinched. Normally, with much practice, I could turn my feelings on and off like a light switch around men so nothing about them affected certain parts of me. That didn’t work around Christian, and that was how I knew if he ever got his hooks into me, I would sink. Rather swim alone.
“You’re not ready for straight, Foreign. You got up too many walls. Bulldozing them will only make you retreat and put up even more barriers in the distance while I work my way around the first ones.” So, he was going to make me open up to him.
Oddly, the steady thumping that had developed in another set of barriers ensconced between my thighs as I watched us together on the laptop was ratcheting up a notch. His persistence was… Turning you on, well, some more anyway.
Oh, my damn, I was that girl who liked bad boys willing to do whatever it took to get her. He was the first guy willing to do the dirty work himself of getting close to me… by manipulating me nonetheless. I can’t forget that. But you are forgetting that your daddy was the first to try manipulation; a roof over your head for your obedience. Ha! You got daddy and mommy issues, but he’s dead, so you can’t find peace by asking him why he and your mother treated you like shit and tried to pawn you off on any man who’d have you. Group therapy, here you come, Foreign.
Did I need peace? I hadn’t thought I did, but I was positive that I was being laughed at by my own self. By the part of me that knew I felt things even when I didn’t want to. Who laughed at themselves in a predicament like this?
Who has issues that they don’t at least recognize? That would be you who focused so much on avoiding your people, so they don’t push a guy in your life that you’re not prepared to block, you totally buried what your daddy had done to you. And still, a guy you met through Ma-ling got through your defenses anyway. That’s what you call priceless!
Yep, I needed a psychiatrist alright, because talking things out with myself, who was amused by my failings and pointing fingers, was not going to work. I needed a sympathizer, someone to tell me things I wanted to hear and make me feel better, not worse. First, I needed to get the lay of the land with my blackmailer, so I knew what topic to bring up in my therapy sessions.
“Christian, how long is this attempt at dating going to last? Be warned that I’m not what you want. A self-proclaimed bad girl who’s no good at dating because I don’t want to be. Don’t want to do it, and on everything that is holy and rude, you’re going to regret making me date you and messing with my money.” And making me curious about him, which also showed that I had feelings for him, whether I wanted to or not.