She claws his hair – his wonderfully thick dark hair, which is highlighted with golden. Her pu**y clenches with need. It has been such an awful week, and they haven’t f**ked since the ice-cream parlor incident. She realizes how much she wants him. She needs him inside her – so much it’s actually a physical craving. A dependency.
That’s dangerous. She’s scared.
You can’t get too close to a man like this.
Still, their bodies are close as close can be defined. He rolls off her and reaches for his jeans to take out a condom. He tears the foil with his teeth and hands it to her.
“Go on,” he says softly, “put it on me.”
She takes it. His body is poised above hers and his c**k is ramrod straight. She gingerly slides the moist rubber over his crown.
Now ready, he parts her thighs.
“How would you like it tonight? Slow . . . or . . . ?”
He lets it trail. His eyes hold an emotion she has rarely seen since this whole episode began – uncertainty. Her stomach writhes. But he has done nothing wrong. She knows this now. Something about the whole Adele Jankovic business raises her hackles, and she’s going to get to the bottom of it. For his sake and hers.
Because she loves him.
She says, “I want it rough tonight, Brian. Fuck me . . . hard.”
“Are you sure?”
She strokes his cheek. “Yes.”
She senses he needs to overcome a hurdle in his own mind. A validation of sorts that he hasn’t turned into a monster overnight.
“You’re beautiful,” she says to him, and her emotion is heartfelt. “You will always be beautiful.”
He smiles tenderly at her. “You’re beautiful too.”
He raises his hips to straddle hers. He penetrates her slowly at first, taking his time to fill her snug, warm tube. She pushes her head back into the pillow – ohhhhhh. How she loves the silky feel of his sheathed rod against her moist walls. Her creams are flowing copiously now, lubricating him. He pushes himself into her until he can go no more – the way she likes it. His body is warm against hers. They are chest to chest, belly to belly.
He lowers his mouth to hers again and kisses her passionately as he starts to move his hips. His thrusts are gentle at first, and then he grows bolder, more confident – because she responds so wonderfully to him by moaning against his mouth and arching her back.
She lifts her hips up to meet his. His movements escalate. He kisses her periodically. Deep, searching, wet, open-mouthed kisses that send a thrilling heat into the base of her skull. The pleasure of his strokes stimulates her every fiber down there – her every recess, her every fold. She can drown in the ecstasy of it all, especially in the sweetness and glory and warmth of his mouth.
No.
She doesn’t believe for one second that this man could ever rape another person.
Her oral encouragement spurs him on, and soon, he is humping and pounding her with as much confidence and tenacity as before. His breathing grows labored, and he grunts with each thrust. Through her own moans, she watches his face – his closed eyes, his raptured expression. He is seemingly transported to another place . . . and that place is inside her.
Her climax builds despite her attempts to stave it off – so that she can watch him for a while longer. But the friction of his c**k against her G-spot becomes erotically unbearable. His kisses become similarly overheated. Her muscles clench and her vagina closes around his organ like a fist. And she comes – explosively, mind-blowingly, satisfyingly – and screams out his name against the roaring of blood within her ears.
He allows himself to come too. His sweat-beaded body rolls off hers. He pants, his glistening chest rising and falling. He reaches down to peel off his cum-filled condom.
They lie in each other’s arms that night, thinking their disparate thoughts as their respective troubles returns after the pleasurable but brief respite.
“What’s going to happen to us, Brian?” she asks sadly.
He kisses the top of her head. “We’ll take it one step at a time.”
21
“So how much do you think I can get for it?” Brian asks.
The realtor – a short middle-aged man in a business suit – scans the lounge of Brian’s penthouse, now nicely put back in place. The glass fragments have been cleaned up and thrown away. The lampstand and table have been replaced. The curtain has been neatly hung.
“I’ll be honest with you, Mr. Morton. The market is soft right now. Once folks find out who you are, they’re going to try to take advantage of your current situation.”
“I know. But I’ll have to ultimately sell anyway.”
Brian has made an inventory of things that have to go, including his expensive Italian furniture, his modern art and his collections of rare magazines, rare pens, and Jaegar LeCoultre Reverso watches. He figures he might be able to actually get a profit out of them.
Then there’s always that pair of diamond earrings he had bought for Sam, tucked away in its little velvet box snugly in his safe.
No. He doesn’t want to sell those.
He knows he hasn’t been exactly honest with Sam. He didn’t exactly have the money to fund her new gym. The amount required is considerable. There is space to rent. Equipment to buy. Lots of fixtures to put in. He would have to liquidate something to generate the cash flow.
The only asset he has is his apartment.
But he would have to downgrade anyway to reflect his current status. The party is over – at least for now.
“All right then. I’ll float it out. See what we can get,” says the realtor.
“Oh yeah, and see if you can get me a service apartment . . . to rent. Not a penthouse.”
“Price range?”
Brian sighs inwardly. He raises his eyes to the ceiling. “About a quarter of what this place would cost.”
Already, he is experiencing possession withdrawal. It leaves a draining, hollow feeling like no other.
He is lightheaded and he would soon have to lie down.
But it’s for a good cause, he assures himself. He’d be damned if he’s going to sit by and let Sam lose everything she has worked for.
He would have done the same for Caleb.
He finds it amusing that he now considers a woman – who also happens to be a f**k buddy, someone he is hanging out with – to be one of his closest friends. One that he would absolutely, unfailingly do anything for.
22
The manicure parlor is bright, cheery, filled with as many colors as OPI would allow. Sam purposefully makes her way to an empty armchair beside the pretty redheaded woman who is flipping the pages of a magazine while a Vietnamese man applies meticulous paint strokes onto her toenails.