“No,” I choked out, bucking my back, the bed quiet as I struggled. I can smell my sweat, my arms stretched and cuffed above my head, to the frame. My legs spread slightly, attached to the footboard bars.
“Don’t lie, Kitten,” he warned. “Lies will only make this last longer. I am a handsome man, no?”
I don’t respond, closing my eyes against his face, burying my head to the right, the damp skin cool against my nose.
“I have been told that I am handsome, that I know how to please a woman.” I twisted, thrashed as his fingers dragged down my side, my stomach, fingers turning into palms, one of those palms gripping my hip and holding me down.
I begged, my words soft then loud, then screams into the concrete room, a hundred no’s uttered as he rubbed soft circles into the wet mat of hair between my legs.
“I will stay here, I will touch you, until you come for me, Kitten. It is inevitable, let it happen. I need to see it.”
When it finally happened, every thread in my body failing in fighting it, a cry mixed with tears ripping out, a piece of me inside broke.
I rolled over when the bathroom door opened, flooding the room with light for a brief moment before Brett flipped the switch. Even in the dark, there was illumination from the water, a full moon reflecting over a thousand miles of ocean. Brett’s bedroom faced the ocean, a wall of windows giving a million-dollar view of the night waves. He reached out a hand, hit a button on the wall, and a hum sounded, curtains pulling over the view.
“Can you leave them open? I like seeing the waves.”
“Sure.” He hit another button and the hum stopped. “Just don’t blame me when the sunrise wakes you up at five AM.” He sat on the edge of the bed and picked up a remote. Pressed a few buttons. I ran a hand over the lines of his back, his skin bare and warm beneath my palm. He carried so much tension there, the muscles underneath my fingers tight and coiled. It was such a beautiful back, so strong and wide. He lay back, interrupting my view and flung out an arm, inviting me in. I curled into his side. “You like it here?”
“It’s beautiful.” And it was. The city, the neighborhood, his home. Everything the best money could buy. I didn’t voice the issues. That it didn’t feel like home. That, suddenly, in this zip code, we felt out of sync. I couldn’t put my finger on it, just felt, for the first time in our relationship, like I was out of the loop on something. “Who were those guys? In your office? They left before I could meet them.”
“Some guys I work with. Friends. I’m sorry… I should have introduced you. I just felt bad about working while you were here.”
“It’s okay—”
“No. I should have introduced you. I didn’t even think … I’m sorry Riley.”
“It’s not that big of a deal.” But it had felt like a big deal to me. Why? What had felt so… suspicious about the whole thing? And, in that moment, my finger found what it had been trying to land on. I felt suspicious.
Of Brett.
The man I’d already given my heart to.
“Why don’t we have a cookout tomorrow? I’ll invite the guys over, have them bring the girls.” Brett was still talking, his voice unnaturally bright.
“The girls?”
“Their girlfriends. You’d love them.”
I tried to imagine the girlfriends of those hard men, and the combination we’d make on Brett’s pool deck. “It’s okay.” I ran my hand down his flat stomach, dipping my hand under the silk of his boxer briefs. “I’d rather spend the day with you.”
“You sure?” His voice caught when I slid my hand lower, running my fingers over the length of his cock. He tightened his arm around me, pulling me on top of him. “I want to make you happy, Riley.”
“You do.” I whispered, lowering my mouth to his neck and kissing the scruff there.
He raised his hips and moaned my name as I tightened my hand around his shaft. And, for the next half hour, I lost any thoughts of suspicion.
tight (tīt)
(adj.) well-sealed against intrusion
Somehow, despite my assurances to the contrary, Brett felt the need to invite his friends back over. This time, they brought their girlfriends; all eight individuals apparently had no other plans on a Sunday afternoon. I sat in the shade of an umbrella, nursing a Corona and glanced at the group behind the privacy of my sunglasses.
The men’s names were a fog: a Justin, Frank and… I couldn’t remember the others. Names had never been my forte. With the women, I made more of an effort. Amy, the brunette by the grill, was dating Justin. She seemed nice, if not a little quiet. Kelly sat next to me, quietly sipping on a margarita, and was married to the man flipping steaks. They had two kids and had been together for four years. I had asked about her children, but she had, with a quiet glance at her husband, stated that they were ‘with friends.’ Margo and Stacy were in the pool and hadn’t said five words to their partners, their main focus on tan development. Now they floated, eyes closed, on recliners in the pool.
“How long have you guys been friends with Brett?” I turned to Kelly with a friendly smile. Her eyes darted from my face to her drink, a shuttered look crossing her face, like I had just asked a deeply personal question.
“A few years,” she finally said, her eyes flipping to the outdoor kitchen, where Brett raised his beer to us, a wide smile crossing his face.
I smiled and waved *we’re happy over here* and turned back to Kelly, curiosity winning any competition with tact. “Have you met any of Brett’s other girlfriends?”
“He hasn’t had any,” she said quickly, tipping back her glass.
I watched Brett, his eyes skipping between the two of us, his smile dropping slightly. Then he leaned into the man next to him, a telephone-like game occurring, one whisper passing to another, Amy receiving the secret message and heading toward us, her strides quick and confident, her smile breezy when she flopped down in the chair across from me. “What’d I miss?” she asked. “Anything exciting?”
Kelly looked away, and I leaned forward. “I was just asking about Brett’s exes. How much I had to compete with.” I grinned as if I didn’t care about the answer, as if I wasn’t pumping strangers for intel like a crazy, insecure woman.
Her smile fell, then rose again, as if it was programmed to reset. “Well, that’s easy,” she recovered. “He hasn’t had any. At least not as long as I’ve known him. What do you do in Quincy, Riley?”