“I don't fucking understand me, either.” Going up on her tiptoes, she tilted back her head and kissed my mouth.
It was gentle and sweet—a tender gesture when I'd done nothing to earn such a thing.
I had just threatened her in the crudest way, and she could still be tender with me?
It made me feel ashamed.
And I didn't know how to manage that. I didn't need shame, I didn't need guilt—I’d had enough of both to last me all my days. Nor did I want any of the softer feelings of caring or protectiveness or even amusement that this stray seemed to inspire in me.
Fuck all the sloppy emotions that were swamping and confusing me. I was bad, a suspected killer. Who the hell was this girl who was making my head spin?
Nope, I couldn't deal.
So I did what I always do—I covered it all with anger.
I pushed her away.
“You know what? You don't know dick about me. So take your smartass questions and your touches and your kisses and your—your limits
,
and get the fuck out of my place.”
Grabbing my pants, I stalked into my bedroom and slammed the door.
Rory
Okay, I’d messed that up, big time.
The truth was now painfully obvious.
Painful because there was an ache to the south of my belly that wouldn’t go away.
Was he really going to kick me out this time?
I mean, he was certainly strong enough. He could lift me up and fling me out his door. Why hadn’t he done that already? Maybe he secretly hoped I wouldn’t leave? Maybe he even liked me a little?
Yeah, right, and if he did I was rapidly blowing any chance with him that I might’ve had.
Why did I even want a chance with him? Yeah he was gorgeous, but let’s face it he wasn’t my type.
Shit. My thoughts were flying all over the place. I’m supposed to be rational, logical, sensible. Well, maybe not sensible. My mom always reminds me that just because I have brains doesn’t mean I have sense.
I was used to being surrounded by geeks. I understood them. I’d always been one of them. I’d taken pride in that fact. But now I was out of my depth. It was like mixing with a different species or something.
Most of the guys I hung with didn’t look anything like this tall, muscular ancient god of buffness whose blue eyes and sensual mouth were turning me into a big puddle of goo.
To say nothing of that lovely sculpted hard dick. I had no trouble imagining how great it would feel to have
that
sliding into me.
But hot dudes like him usually weren't interested in me. Not that way.
I’d never learned how to flirt or flutter my eyelashes or lead with my boobs or my hips that way other girls did. They seemed to know instinctively how to do that come-on shit. Maybe I was never meant to pass on my genes, though, because I sure didn’t have the basic instinct for seduction.
But I was here, and no other chick was, so there was that forced proximity thing going for me. A guy like him wasn't gonna turn down free sex if he got the opportunity. He was letting me stay in his place. He must be expecting to get something out of that besides a home-cooked dinner. Didn’t mean he would so much as look at me once he gotten his rocks off.
OK. I could live with that. I’d use him, he’d use me. I didn’t get anywhere near the amount of sexual relief a woman of my age needed. So here was my chance. It would feel good, it would be fun, and there’d be no complications.
I shouldn’t be scared just because I suspected he was into the kinky stuff. That was normal these days, right?
I’d watched a couple of his porn vids. Bondage and spanking, mostly. Nothing too weird. I’d watched stuff like that a few times myself. I’d never done it, but I could see myself trying it. I was willing to experiment.
But I wouldn’t want to do anything dangerous. Certainly nothing that could kill me if my partner messed up. Was that what had happened to Hadley? It was possible, I knew. People did occasionally die while messing with risky sex play.
People’s fetishes were powerful—I knew that. When they fixed their mind on something that could give them a mind-blowing orgasm, they’d probably seek out the same experience over and over even if it was dangerous.
One of my mother’s male friends had accidentally killed himself a couple of years back during some solitary autoerotic asphyxiation scenario. The mainstream press had tried to cover it up as suicide—which was somehow more respectable—how weird is that, but that tabloids had dug out the police report. The poor dude had been jerking off with a rope tied around his neck, and he’d accidentally hanged himself.
Griff had just tried to scare me away.
I wondered why he’d done that.
Maybe he really wanted me gone.
Scaring me had worked, too. Sort of. But I’d still been hot for him even when he was threatening me—how messed up was that?
My head had begun to hurt in that way it did when I was tense and anxious.
I think too much.
Maybe I should just leave.
He didn’t want me here. Maybe if he got good and sick of me, he’d lose his cool and snuff me out like Hadley.
But…no. He didn't kill her.
Fuck it. Sometimes you just have to take a leap of faith.
Griff
Well, of course, Rory didn't leave. I thought about heaving her out and nailing the door and windows shut, but it started pouring again, and I couldn't do it. How anybody in town could think me a murderer when I couldn’t even throw a stray out into the rain, I cannot fathom.
I didn't know how to handle my feelings for this girl. They were all over the place. She wasn't anything like I was used to, female-wise. I'd never covered myself with glory where women were concerned. Maybe because in high school I'd been tall and, according to one chick, “Black Irish handsome,” and on a winning football team, I'd never had trouble getting hooked up. Or maybe because when Sean had left for his deployments, he'd given me his Harley.
Girls came around, and I accepted what they offered. But I didn't make nice with any of them, and for some weird reason, this seemed to intrigue them.
Hadley used to claim I was spoiled rotten because I could get what I wanted with women without having to earn it. She said I thought of nothing but getting my dick into some girl, and that once I was finished, I had no compunction about walking away. Never even glancing over my shoulder to see what kind of mess I'd left behind.
She thought it was amusing, though, because she treated sex in much the same way. She didn't get all emotionally involved. “I get hungry, I eat. I get thirsty, I drink. I get horny, I fuck.” That was Hadley's view of her appetites. Ironically, it had been our laughter about how casual we both felt about sex that had brought us closer.
According to Hadley, I was also a selfish insensitive clod, sex-wise. I was rough. I cared more about my own satisfaction than my partner's. I never had much to say when I was doing it, and what I did say was sexist and vulgar. I liked to control my partners, and I especially liked it when they were just a little awed and intimidated by me. Not that Hadley ever was.
“If I'm such an asshole lover, why do you keep showing up in my bedroom?” I'd asked.
“I like your anger. Your edge. I like that you know what you want and take it. I like the way you'll suddenly do something crude or unexpected. It freaking turns me on. Besides,” she'd laughed, “with me you're getting better about the selfish asshole thing. You've learned what kind of shit I'll give you if you don't make me come.”
It was true that she'd taught me a lot about sex, including some stuff I didn't want to know about, like her asphyxiation fetish. What I'd done out there—grabbing Rory by the throat and deliberately scaring her—was something I'd probably never have tried before Hadley. She'd brought out the dark in me, and I'd learned to like it.
It wasn't that I wanted to hurt or frighten women. I didn't get the same intense kick from cruelty that Hadley did. But I did like the power and control that comes with domination and submission. With Hadley to tutor me, I’d learned to be a pretty good Dom. Maybe not as extreme a sadist as Hadley would have liked, but I could do some raw and hard-edged stuff.
With Rory, though, despite her saying that some kink was all right, I wasn’t sure that was the way to go. I mean, I wouldn't mind putting a collar on her, binding her arms behind her back—elbows together to make her tits jut out—and playing with them roughly while I made her suck my dick. Or putting her on her knees doggie style and flogging her for a while before I rammed my cock up her probably-virgin ass.
But ever since I'd met her, I'd been having these weird protective feelings. I wanted to ram her, all right, in every hole, but I also wanted her to love it. To squirm and cry out and weep with juices until she came hard, screaming and clenching my cock with her pussy muscles until I found my own release.
I wanted mutual pleasure for us, and not just because Hadley had drilled it into my head that no woman would rate me a good lover if I didn’t make her pussy ripple. I wanted it because I fucking
liked
Rory and wanted to please her in bed.
I didn’t even know why I liked her. I mean, so far, she’d been annoying as hell.
Maybe it was because Rory was the first girl I'd ever spent any time with who came from an even worse background than me. Hadley had been rich, and the high school girls I'd met at Meadows Regional High had mostly come from the upscale side of the tracks as well.
In fact, it was freaky how often I attracted those types. They were slumming. At least, that's the way I tended to see it. Hadley used to laugh at me and say I was seeing inequalities that didn't exist. I could do anything, be anything. I just had to get over myself.
And maybe she'd been right. As far as I could tell, Rory didn't feel sorry for herself. She didn't fret about where she'd come from, and she wasn't ashamed that her friend LaVerle was a sex worker. She'd proved that she could rise above her background. It gave me a ragged hope that maybe I could, too.
* * *
I'd been stewing in my bedroom for about twenty minutes when I heard a gentle knock on my door. It opened before I said anything. I guess I'd forgotten to lock it.
She was standing on the threshold, wearing an oversized sweatshirt that came down almost to her knees. Her feet were bare, as usual. So were her legs from just above the knees down. I tried not to stare at her legs, or the rest of her, for that matter.
“I just wanted to tell you I'm sorry. That wasn't a good moment to keep pestering you about your girlfriend.”
In truth, I knew her question had been reasonable. It had showed she cared about herself in a way that I'd often feared that Hadley hadn't. Hadley's risk-taking behavior had probably gotten her killed.
Even so, I lounged on the bed and glared at Rory. I was still pissed. I wasn't gonna kill her during sex, and I was tired of people assuming that I might.
She was standing there fiddling with the sweatshirt, pulling at it on one side as if it was itching. But I think she was just nervous. When she wasn't actually handling a computer, she tended to get antsy.
She looked cute as hell, though, and I wanted to fuck her so bad my balls hurt.
I knew I should apologize. But I really didn't feel like it. Saying I was sorry wasn't something I was good at.
“My
ex-
girlfriend,” I said, because I figured I should say something.
She seemed to brighten up a little at this. “Right. Your ex. And I was being thickheaded. I mean, if you're gonna strangle someone, you don't need to Google it first. Every idiot knows if you cut off someone's air long enough, they die. You must have researched it because you didn't want to kill her by accident.”
I sighed. Rory wasn't a puppy; she was a fierce mastiff who'd catch hold of something and tear it to shreds to get every last juicy bite. “She was into a lot of weird sexual shit.”
She hesitated a couple seconds before asking, “So you were just trying to get her off?”
“Yeah, but that breath play stuff is too dangerous. I knew she was going to try it with somebody else, so I was hoping to reassure myself that she wouldn't get herself killed.”
She looked surprised. “Hadley was cheating on you?”
I wasn't eager to discuss this, but I needed to clear the air. I wasn't into the wildest stuff Hadley had wanted to experiment with, but there were a few risky things I’d found hot. Some I wouldn't mind doing again, if I ever had a partner who trusted me enough.
Rory seemed to trust me, God only knew why.
My body had gone into erotic alert mode as soon as she'd crossed the threshold. Things had progressed to the point that I got erections every time I looked at her. The girl was sleeping in my apartment. She was hot and she was willing, if that panty-dropping remark had been accurate. Not to mention the kiss.
If calming her worries about how much of a deviant I was was all it would take to get her under me, legs spread wide while I slid my aching cock into her pussy, then calm her I would.
“She was seeing other people, yeah. We weren't exclusive. It's not like we were planning a life together.”
She considered this. “On the day she disappeared the two of you had a fight in a restaurant that several people witnessed. Was it about this other guy she was seeing? The breath play guy?”
“It wasn't a guy. It was a woman.”
“Whoa.”
“Shocked?”
She made a “Who, me?” noise, then said, “So you thought this chick might be doing something unsafe with Hadley?”
I nodded. “She wasn’t the only one. There was at least one other dude as well. They weren't just into BDSM; they were into the hard stuff.”
She looked confused. “Drugs, you mean?”
“No, not drugs, although I wouldn't be surprised. Risky sexual stuff. Not just breath play but all sorts of other edge play.”
She frowned.
“C'mon, you're tight with sex workers. You've never heard of edge play?”
“Enlighten me.”