Dodging Trains (13 page)

“I can’t believe you. How can you change so fast? We
raced
to get here so you could get into my panties, and now this? ‘Reconnect’ my ass.”

It’s easy to be hurtful when you’re hurt, but Keyon didn’t buy into it. Instead, he hoisted me up on his lap against the headboard, and held me tight until I calmed down.

“Ready to listen?” he finally said, and I grunted in partial agreement. Strong fingers raked through my hair and pulled my head back so I leaned against his shoulder. I still shot a sideways glare at him, which made him snort. “You’re unbelievable. I’m trying to be a good guy here, and you pay me back with an attitude?”

“Good guy? Ha, good guys don’t leave a girl hanging.”

“Paislee,” he said, ignoring my comment. “You’re not just some Rubina from a party, someone to fuck senseless and move on from.”

Deep down, I heard him, but his meaning didn’t compute—men didn’t say no to me. The confidence I’d hoarded from years’ worth of trysts was seeping out, and the ground under me was shaking. “Seemed you had no problem ‘fucking me senseless’ a few days ago,” I muttered.

“Are you hearing me?” His arm gave a tug around me, reeling me back in. “I want to know
you
, Paislee, my brave, fearless friend.”

“And my body means nothing to you?” I bit my lip, because his words
sort of
made sense and my retort
kind of
sounded twisted. Keyon, my friend, my first love, was saying that he wanted more than sex with me. Wasn’t he?

“Your body, baby, will be the death of me. Do you not feel me below you?”

Now that he said it, I did. He was still hard, his member disagreeing with his whole, noble plan as much as I did. A quiet snicker escaped me, and Keyon joined in.

“Minx,” he hissed, playful. “Siren. Temptation incarnate.”

“That’s me,” I replied, feeling a little bit better. “Nothing more to learn here. Let’s get down to business.”

I turn my head on the pillow. I’ve slept well in this bed next to him. He’s oblivious in sleep, light bursts of air blasting over plump lips. I reach out and touch him. Let a finger run over a cheekbone that’s scratchy with stubble. Caress the delicate skin at the corner of his eye. There’s a wrinkle there. It makes me smile, because it’s one of those wrinkles that indicate laughter.

Suddenly, my fingertips are being pressed against his lips, and he kisses them one by one. Those beautiful, golden eyes of his slide open, showing me morning Keyon. He’s a content man. Only partly awake.

“Hey, you,” he grates, and the sound is enough for my nipples to harden. He lets go of my hand and shifts to stroke two fingers over my face. I shut my eyes at the sensation. It’s not often that I wake up in the same bed as a man. When I do, they’re definitely not beaming at me after
not
having sex.

“Hey, yourself.” I smile, and his smile broadens at mine. I
hear
his smile. It’s a creak at the corner of his mouth that makes me smile even wider.

“You’re even prettier when you’re happy.”

“Someone’s conceited,” I tease. It’s odd to feel lighthearted. I could get used to it, to this urge to be playful. “Why would I be happy here with you? You didn’t even give me what I came for.”

“No?”

“No. Ass.”

His eyes glitter. There’s mischief in there. “Ass, huh?” he says.

I bob my head, smirking.

“In that case…” He’s on top of me so fast it sucks the air out of me. “I’ve had it with your complaints, woman,” he says. Bites his lip, then mine. “I guess the only way to shut you up is to give you one for the books.”

He gives me a lap dance. Not kidding. Keyon is freaking straddling my hips and rolling his body to a suggestive, non-existent beat. He’s all naked, hard muscle, symmetrical ripples of abs rolling down into a black happy trail—

“Oh Lord.” I laugh and moan at once. “Lose your sheet, prude.” I eye the sliver of fabric covering his privatest thingy. He does as I say and leans down, biceps jumping when he supports himself on the mattress.

He works over me, fake-loving me and letting out little groans of pleasure. Holy hell, he’s unbelievable, funny, sexy— “Are you gonna come on your own and forget about poor me?” I reach down to find smooth hardness. He stills when I’ve got a hold on him. I pump once, twice, and his groan becomes real.

“Geez. Well, seems I’m not.”

“Can I have a taste?” I purr out. Keyon instantly understands. At lightning speed, he crawls up over me and glides his cock over my face. I let out a small pant, heart hammering in my chest, and open my mouth in a silent welcome.

He slides into my mouth. I suck. Close my eyes and let him thrust into me. “Oh my fucking—” he starts. “This what you wanted?”

I try for a nod and a
uh-huh
, and again I seem to have made myself understood.

“Brace yourself,” he whispers. “I’m going deep.” And then he does. Deeper than anyone ever has. I’m gagging on him, swallowing, trying to breathe in between his thrusts. I’m scared again—I don’t know why he’s so over the top.

I can take this.

I’m not going to stop him. It’s just another test of my limits, the bull by the horns again, always the bull’s horns. I’m spitting around him.

“Shit, you look gorgeous right now. Paislee—I’m about to…”

Men have come down my throat before. I’ve done just about everything. Except I haven’t been gagged by someone’s penis. He’s so engorged, so ready to let go. Oh but I need to breathe!

I’m wary. Pull away and gulp in too little oxygen before he rams back into my mouth. “It’s coming. Take it all, baby!” he roars, and then he ejaculates like it’s a competition and he’s going for the win.

I swallow salty cream, but not fast enough. I cough, sputter. Wipe my face just as he bends down and invades my mouth with his tongue too. “Keyon,” I manage. “You’re crazy, you know that? You have to take it easy on people.”

He rolls us around, a sated smile on his face. Strokes hair out of my face as if he didn’t just obstruct my airway for as long as he deemed necessary.

“Shhh. Are you okay? Ah I’ll do you right in a minute.” He puts a hand into my panties and reaches my butt crack. Probes carefully before he moves on down to my entrance. My heart is still racing from the oral invasion. I did it. Even that I managed without a panic attack.

He’s alive under me, undulating and pressing me close. His fingers play with me, pulling moisture and lubing me up. I’m starting to feel good.

When a pant escapes me, he whispers, “It’s time Paislee gets what she really wants.”

He grabs a condom and puts it on beneath me. My pulse jacks up high; I’m thinking of our last time, what he did to me, and how much—how
long
—I felt him afterward. My guess is he won’t hold back this time either.

“Want to play dirty?” he husks as he enters me. I moan. Bob my head. Who am I to say no to anything he asks? “There’s no stopping once we start,” he warns as if he hears my thoughts.

I’m curious. Worried. I want this bad, but—

“You want to tap out, Paislee? Say it and you’re out.”

I roll out from under him. Head over to the dainty little bureau that’s not made for burly fighters like the one on the bed. It’s a vanity with an oval mirror set atop. The flushed face and glassy eyes meeting me there are mine. My lips are big and swollen and red. I have a milky droplet at the corner of my mouth. I dry it off while he comes up behind me and studies us in the mirror too.

We look so different. Me, small, curvy—skinny arms and narrow shoulders. Him the opposite in every way. Hard angles and broad shoulders. A thick neck and a sure chin. My eyes are round and green, his golden, narrowed on me. My skin is pale, too pale, compared to his natural bronze.

But something in his expression reminds me of
me
. There’s a hunger there. A harnessed panic. I see longing, and for some reason I think it’s about more than sex. I swallow heavily.

Keyon cups my breasts and lifts them up toward the mirror. He doesn’t speak, just stares at them with lust swimming in his eyes. His member pokes my back. I jut my bottom out in a silent invitation, and Keyon instantly accepts.

We shake in front of that mirror as he drives me into submission. I’m bent deeper, down on my elbows, knees wide and allowing him to rage into me. His desire ignites mine. I hate and love what he does to me. It’s like being on a rollercoaster in the dark, not knowing if you’ll derail or if you’re about to hit a wall.

He lasts so long too—I come once, but he spreads me wider and keeps driving into me. Moves me to a recliner across from the bed for better access.

Sex is war, and he’s the warlord. He’s winning, always winning—there is no other option, and when he finally slumps over me, roaring out his victory, I spasm around him again too, unable to remain detached from his show.

Afterward, he takes me to the shower. He’s attentive in there, kissing me gently. I roll my fingers through his hair, flicking long strands while his skin glides soapy against mine. I’m happy. Concerned. Because there is something deeply wrong with my friend.

KEYON

W
ith my groupies,
I don’t care what they do after an all-nighter, whether they come back or if the one night is it. Not that I don’t do seconds and thirds. I’m just not sentimental over good sex.

I told myself I was playing with Rubina. I figured it’d be funny to slap up a few posters and see if they scored me another “date.”

But maybe I’d already recognized Paislee—I see no other explanation. It was a pain in the ass to get the posters made on such short notice, and no one hung them up for me. I fucking took time out of my workday to trot around town and ask permission to plaster them up, and not even I would go through that for shits and giggles.

I find myself staring at dudes in checkout lines and wondering if they’ve had her. And I find myself annoyed, even a tad hostile with them.

It’s natural. This is Paislee we’re talking about. My friend, my first crush, my little savior of sanity.

Paislee and I had lunch together today. Then I followed her back to her workplace. Thankfully, it wasn’t the assembly line setting I’d envisioned. Win’s Hall of Mirrors is more of a robust arts studio, and I feel better about her working there now.

With Dawson, I push myself harder than usual. I’m fiercer yet less focused. Paislee has full-throttled into my present, I guess, eyes round with hard-lived emotion. My head is full of her. My chest is tight with her. My dick is constantly hard—and I’m counting down to when Dawson and I leave.

Dawson already misses his wife, who flew back to Tampa last night. I’m afraid I’ll follow his example and miss Paislee when we leave in a day and a half, which isn’t a development I’m prepared for.

I snort out air and press a few hundred pounds of iron toward the ceiling with Dawson spotting me.

It’s late before she’s done with work. Even later before I’m done with my last session. With my parents deserting the mansion on some City Hall thing and Dawson retreating to his rooms, the house is ours when she arrives for dinner.

Checkered marble ticks beneath her heels while she helps me in the kitchen. I’m no chef, but I do pull off a pretty good pasta with lobster sauce, what I’m making now. She’s beautiful tonight, face glowing, makeup applied like she’s in a play. Her eyes are so green it’s bizarre with all the black around them.

“It’s like you’re still wearing a mask,” I say, handing her the bottle opener.

She rolls her eyes. “Masks and makeup are two different things, Keyon.”

“Well, seems to me you’ve gone through the stages, from makeup mask, via actual mask, and now to makeup that’s so black it’s almost a mask.”

She chuckles, and it’s such a cute trickle of a sound. “That’s ridiculous. ‘Stages’ would be if they went in order, starting at one extreme and ending up on the other.”

“Yeah, why didn’t you do that?” I ask, smirking.

She snorts. “You and your sense of humor.”

I smile. I like her playful. She’s so serious most of the time. To know I’m the one making her snort out loud has me feeling proud.

I go in close behind her back so I can watch her open the wine from over her shoulder. “You need help?”

“Pfff, no. I’m perfectly capable of opening a—”
Crack.

“That was a
crack
not a
pop
,” I explain while we both stare at the remnants of the cork stuck halfway down the bottleneck. She lifts the opener and waves it my way. Cork crumbles hit the floor in small bounces.

“Because you make me nervous.” She half turns, biting down on her smile. “You gotta stop staring at people when they open wine.”

“Got it. Am I allowed to cop a feel while people open wine?” I ask and turn her fully. Her butt hits the counter, and my hands have a hard time remaining in the friendly zone at her waist. There is too much lush swelling going on a few inches above it. Below for that matter.

“No, not while the pasta water is exploding out of the pot.”

Hmm, I hadn’t noticed.

“What about after it’s finished exploding?”

“One step at a time,” she purrs, and God knows I should be a better man and not enjoy the Vixen as much as I do. The Vixen goes straight to my cock and makes it hurt in an awesome way. “Food first. We’ll negotiate further details later.” She finishes her half-promise with long lashes half-lowered.

I sauté pieces of lobster over high heat in a frying pan. It’s loud and lets off enough steam to make me turn on the fan. We’re both quiet as I work, sipping wine from Ma’s generously sized wineglasses, each alone with our thoughts.

When she told me about her incident, I got this strange recap of being sixteen, a weakling of a boy who couldn’t stand up for himself.

Her story struck me harder than expected. It’s been a long time since Paislee and I shared anything, and yet, when she went into detail, the unease in my chest stirred hard.

I lower the fan and turn to her again. Open my arms for her to come to me. She doesn’t hesitate. “You know how you don’t like train stations because of what happened to you?”

“Mm-hmm?” She takes another sip of her pinot grigio, button nose tipping inside the glass at the good pull. Then her gaze climbs to me and waits.

“I hate them too. And I have no reason to hate them. Maybe it’s an unconscious solidarity thing with you, even though I didn’t know what you’d been through.”

Her head rocks back in a quiet giggle. “That, my dear, is the dorkiest thing you’ve said since I re-met you.”

“What?” I drop her and hold my hands up in mock defense.

“Yeah, like, paranormal romance dorky.”

Whoosh. Over my head.

“No-no,” she adds, sounding like a schoolteacher. Or a librarian, if they speak? She should use small reading glasses with black rims—no, red—and then I’d remove the rest of her clothes. She could put her hair up in a bun, and I’d—

“If you hate train stations, then it’s associated to something. After your dad canceled your membership to that martial arts place and you started sneaking out to take classes, did you ever take the train to get there?”

“No,” I say, adjusting myself. “I used to go there on my bike, remember?”

“Yeah.” Her eyebrows bunch adorably, like she’s putting a lot of effort into figuring out this puzzle. I grab a long lock of silky hair and smooth it between my fingers.

“But you’re right; I like trains even less.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You were about to. I can read your mind.”

She shakes her head, smiling. “You’re goofy, Keyon. Are you goofy in the ring too?”

“Not really.” I shrug. Then I grab her by the shoulders and clear my throat until she meets my gaze. I give her the Stare-Down, the one promising destruction and absolute domination. When I launch it full effect in the cage, I’ve had sparring partners joke about me doling out brain hemorrhages. With Paislee, of course, I only shoot her a mild version and stop as soon as her eyes widen with stress.

“Geez,” she murmurs, pliable in my arms. “Guess not.”

“Anyway.” I nudge her close again. “I did go by train once, with you and Cugs to your grandparents’, remember? I returned without you a day early, for one of Ma’s charity events.”

The beeper does its thing, alerting me to the pasta being ready. She helps me with place mats and forks while I stir the sauce into the fettuccini and start scooping it into our bowls. The memory of that trip doesn’t leave me though. It was short. Fifteen minutes was all it took from Faydale to Rigita.

“Yeah, that was one unpleasant ride,” I say as we sit down.

“Why? It’s not even that far,” she echoes my thoughts.

“True. But I went to take a piss in the bathroom, I forgot to lock the door, and some dude forced it open and tried to fondle me. Gross as shit.”

“Oh my God. You never told me. What if it was the guy from the Sherrelwood Train Station?”

“Four years later? That would be crazy. Anyway, to me it wasn’t a big deal. I just cursed him out and got the hell outta there. Was only half done peeing though.” I snicker at the memory. “Wish I’d rained a few punches over him.”

“Can you imagine if that had happened today? You’d just stare at him and he’d sob like a baby.” She nods, chewing. “That was… what? Five, six months before you moved?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “Ha, now I understand why you suddenly started sneaking off to do your martial arts thing again.”

I shake my head. “Naw, it had nothing to do with that. I’d have gone back anyway. Martial arts is me. It was only a matter of time before I’d rob my own piggy bank and get back to training.”

“True. When did you start up again?”

The girl is prodding, and this isn’t a comfortable, pre
coital dinner conversation. To be honest, I hardly even remembered the guy on the train—it’s not one of my things to walk around wallowing in crappy memories. “No idea. More wine?”

She nods absently and lifts her glass for me. The crystal sings as I pour. “Oh I know when it was.”

I’m done with this conversation. “Cheers for finally meeting up again after all this time,” I say, tipping my drink toward her. She angles hers my way, a smile touching her lips as we clink.

“Cheers. You weren’t at school for a couple of days that week.”

“Damn, woman, you have the memory of an elephant. Then again, I guess that’s a female thing, especially when it comes to what a guy’s done wrong. Wait, was it wrong of me to ditch school?” I joke.

“Never. Ditching school was the smartest thing you could’ve done. No, I remember because in biology, the teacher lined half the class up by size to prove some point about diversity and genetics. He looked around for you, the shortest guy in the class, and even mentioned how disappointed he was that you weren’t in class to complete his lineup.

“Aaron stood all the way to the left, everyone else in between, girls and boys mixed according to height, and then you were supposed be next to Mischa all the way to the right. I remember being relieved you weren’t there.”

“That teacher was a shitheel,” I say.

“Yes, maybe you should go to his house and beat him up.” She grins wide at first, playful Paislee again, then starts moving her head from side to side mouthing
no
when I act like I think she’s on to something.

“So you coming down south anytime soon?” I ask, diverting her from the original subject while we tidy up in the kitchen. She doesn’t bite.

“You came back on Friday after having been gone for most of the week. You acted angry, even at me, and you know what I think?”

“Do I want to know?”

“That you were upset about that guy on the train. Sure, it’s no big deal now, but what he tried to do’s got to have rattled you hardcore.”

“Paislee. I’m done with this. Let’s move on, shall we?” I sound sterner than I am. Or maybe not. Maybe I sound exactly as stern as I feel.

She turns from the dishwasher she was loading and runs soft fingertips along my jawline. “I’m sorry, Keyon. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

I shut my eyes. Her touch feels so much better than expected. They’re just fingers for Christ’s sake.

“Bah, I don’t work myself up over that stuff. It’s fine.”

“I only said it because that Saturday, you were already a bit happier. You said you’d start kicking and stuff again, that you’d called the martial arts place—the gym—and they’d take you back.”

“I’d start ‘kicking and stuff?’” I feel the corner of my mouth tilt upward.

She nibbles on her lip and shrugs. “What you do, right? Kick the shit out of people? Or wait… ‘deliver a beautiful elbow.’”

I start laughing. “That’s CPC’s commentator, isn’t it? He does like his ‘beautiful elbows.’”

“Apparently. Once he even said, super-happy, ‘a beautiful,
lethal
elbow.’”

“This one,” I say, raising my arm, showing her my elbow. I pat it like it’s a dog then jam it into the air.

Her gaze travels up to my forearm and rests on my bicep. Most girls have a thing for biceps, which is handy. I flex it under the white shirt I pulled over my head before she arrived and give it a passionate lip-smack.

“Oh my god. So lame,” she mumbles, but her cheeks are red. She looks really good with red cheeks. I scrunch the sleeve up slowly while humming a strip-club-worthy soundtrack.

“Stop it,” she says, giggling. Of course I take it as a
please continue
. I add a rhythmic wiggle of my hips into the equation, which makes her suck in a sharp breath. I’m liking the turn of events.

I move in closer. Grab the counter on both sides of her as I rock my body to the beat. There is no music apart from my own and the occasional choked sound from Paislee. Does she know she’s making them?

I’m getting horny myself. Dude, I should be a stripper. Fighter-turned-stripper must have mad potential with the chicks. I’d be up to my ears in pu—

“What are you doing?” Her hand glides up my hip, feeling it move, and settles on my waist.

“Dancing with you.” What an excellent idea. Thanks to Ma’s Dominican roots, dancing is in my blood, and now I slide my arms around Paislee’s back and yank her to me.

“Keyon.” She says my name in that breathless way. It’s how every man wants his name said by a woman. Oh this is good.