Look Closer: No Safe Words Here 1-4 out of 5. Boxed Set (9 page)

There stood a naked Tom Sherwood, pinning an also naked Marcus Wilkes to the hood of his shiny blue BMW.

My jaw dropped and I watched mesmerized as Mr. Sherwood pounded what looked to be a log of firewood up into Marcus’ rather willing ass.

As it was tonight, the sight of them together had been a double edged sword.  I couldn’t look away, and I didn’t want to.  I’d dreamt of seeing Marcus naked for years.  And it was so freaking hot to see him getting his bottom pounded by the older, well endowed man.  And shit if old Tom fucking Sherwood wasn’t a hot fucking asshole.  From his neatly groomed full head of hair, to his bulging…well, his bulging everything, he was a prime specimen of the male anatomy.

But what the fuck was a forty-year-old Mayor and litigator doing boning an eighteen-year-old high school senior?   Not that it was illegal—though Mr. Sherwood was committing adultery in the eyes of the law.  But it certainly seemed tainted and immoral.

That’s when I’d decided I would win Marcus’ heart away from the lecherous Tom Sherwood, if it was the last thing I ever did.

But so far all I’d accomplished was wacking off to their ill timed rutting.  But it was a good show.

I crumpled to my bedroom floor, sweating, spent, and dripping cum from my right hand.  I reached up and pulled the digital video camera from the ledge of my window sill and pointed it down at my face.  That’s the fifth time I’ve watched those two fucking…and it just isn’t getting old…”

Of course, it wasn’t making me feel any better about myself either.

I hit the stop button and the display screen went black.

End of No Safe Words Part 2

Chapter Twelve

Lila

It turned out that Jake Thurogood knew more than a little about guns.  In fact, he owned ten different guns.  Everything from hand guns to riffles to a twelve gage shotgun.  I told him that my husband had a Smith and Wesson .45 locked in a safe in our bedroom.  After he sang the gun maker’s praises, and then told me the downsides to operating such a weapon, I decided his knowledge of firearms was more than sufficient for my needs.

“I’d like you to work on the roof tomorrow,” I said, popping the last bite of chicken salad sandwich into my mouth.  “What I’d really appreciate would be if you would teach me how to shoot a gun today.”

Jake choked on what was left of his sandwich, and tried to wash the offending hunk of bread and chicken down with the rest of his lemonade.  

“Ma’am…I mean, Lila.  You aren’t serious, are you?”

I looked down at my hands as they trembled ever so slightly, and asked myself the same question: was I serious?

The memory of my husband nakedly groping the ass of our neighbor’s nineteen year-old son made my resolve galvanize in an instant.

“You bet your ass I am!” I snapped, and then immediately apologized.  “I’m sorry.  It’s that I really need to learn…to learn to defend myself.”  There, that didn’t hurt much.  Lying wasn’t all that hard at all.  “And I’ll pay you an extra three hundred dollars for you time and effort.”

Jake’s eyes shot open and I realized that three hundred dollars was a veritable fortune to him—especially if you stacked it on top of the two hundred he’d get tomorrow for fixing the roof.  But there was a questioning lingering in his eyes.

“You’re not looking to hurt anyone, are you Lila?”

Okay, here it was.  This was a biggy.  A bold faced lie about a cardinal sin, the breaking of a freaking commandment!  But was I up for it?

“Of course not,” I chortled, waving his question off with a relaxed gesture of my hand.  “It’s just that there’s been some break-in’s in the neighborhood as of late…and since Tom already has the gun upstairs for our protection, it only  makes sense for me to learn how to use it.”

Jake looked off to the side and nodded his head in agreement.

“And I’d rather learn from someone I know and trust than some stranger.”

“But you hardly know me,” he said.

I shook my head.  “I’ve found out more about you in the last couple hours than I know about some of the women on this block after more than a decade of being neighbors.”  I looked him straight in the eye and appealed to his sense of pride.  “And do you really think I’d find a better instructor in the phone book or in some fly-by-night shooting range employee?”

He rolled his eyes knowingly and gave me a grudging smile.  “No, Lila Sherwood.  I don’t believe you’d find anyone that would be able to teach you gun handling and maintenance with a fraction of the knowledge base I have to offer.” 

I smiled victoriously.

That’s when he frowned.  “But I’m only doing this because I know you’ll just go out and do it anyways, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let you learn from some phony and get yourself injured or killed later on.”

I reached over and touched the dark though sparse hairs growing on his strong forearm.  I let out a little gasp of air at the frissiony feeling touching him sent through my nervous system.

“You see?” I said, pulling my hand away and rubbing at the little electrical shocks that lingered.  “You know me well already.”

*****

The shooting range was on the other side of the city.  Jake drove us in his late nineties pickup truck.  It was spotless inside and out, the paint a little sun faded, but not a speck of dust anywhere. 

The building housing the shooting range was pretty much a large square box made out of bricks.  The only windows I could see were in the front.  It boasted a small private parking lot you needed an electronic pass key to get through the gate with. 

Jake had a large metal chest welded in the back of his truck’s cab, a smaller version of the one that rested in the truck’s bed.  He produced a key from his key chain and unlocked the lid.  He had all sorts of contractor paraphernalia in there, and some extra clothes.  He pulled the bundle of clothes out to reveal another, crude steel box.  It had a classic “safe” combination lock.  I averted my eyes politely as he made fast work of the lock and then pulled a small gym bag from within.  I heard metal clank together.

He looked at me hard.  “You sure you’re up for this?”

I nodded.  “Yes, I’m sure.”

He smiled broadly and slammed the safe and then the metal locker shut.  We exited the truck and walked towards the Spartan façade of the firing range.

“You know,” he drawled, “I’ve never been able to get a woman I was dating to ever come here.”

I smiled and looked off to the side, almost uncomfortable, but not quite.  I hadn’t really thought too hard about the gruff though handsome handyman…at least not as a romantic possibility. 

I’m married after all…

You’re married to a man who won’t touch you…but touches the neighbor’s son who’s half his age…

So was I married or not?

Jake cleared his throat nervously.  “I didn’t mean to…I wasn’t meaning that this was…”

I held up my hand to stop him.  It wasn’t his fault that I was messed up and probably sending off all sorts of crazy signals.  And I’d asked him to bring me here, not the other way around.

“It’s okay, I understood.  You’ve never had a woman accompany you here.  Must be kind of strange.”

The tension faded from his features, but his usual light hearted smile didn’t return.  Instead sad shadows passed over his face.  I’d inadvertently touched on a bad subject.

“Let’s just say it’s been a while.”  He turned away from me and started walking toward the building again, gym bag full of firearms in hand.

Desperate to change the subject I said, “I still don’t know why I couldn’t have brought my own gun?”

“You said it was your husband’s gun.”  It wasn’t a question.  “So the permit for it is in his name.”

“Is that important?”

Jake pushed in the buzzer by the door with a thick, oil stained finger.  “Yes.”  A moment later another, higher pitched buzzing signaled for him to open the door.  He held it open for me.

I passed by him, coming as physically close to him as I’d ever been.  He smelled of grease and saw dust, not a bad mixture on a man.  But most of all, he smelled of Jake.  I felt my heart flutter a little, and something low inside me tightened.

I shook it off and walked into the dimly lit building.

“If you took that gun out of your house, and only his name was on the registration and permit, you could get arrested.  If I was with you, I could be arrested too.  And since I can’t afford a good lawyer, I’d probably end up doing time for it.”

I gasped.  I wouldn’t want that…but…  “But why wouldn’t I go to jail too?”

He looked at me like I’d sprouted a Christmas tree from my head.  “Because you can afford a good lawyer, you live in an affluent suburb…and your husband’s the mayor.”

My jaw dropped.  It wasn’t like Jake had come crawling out from under a rock to fix my air conditioning.  I should have known he’d recognize my last name at the very least.

He stopped at the front desk.  The lobby was a small, cramped room with an orange vinyl couch and a small side table with a scattering of gun enthusiast magazines strewn across it.   The front desk was a five by four rectangle that had been cut into the far brick wall, and was covered in what I assumed was bullet proof glass.  The attendant, a short, thin man in his early thirties, spoke through an intercom that squawked from the bottom of the glass.

“Hi, Jake…you have a guest to sign in?”

“Sure do, Hal.”  I smiled.  I’d never met a Hal before.  I wondered if it was short for Harold. “This is Lila…” he didn’t give my last name.  “I’d like to show her some basic safety standards, and maybe shoot a few rounds.”

“Sure, sure…you need any ammo?”

“Not for my forty-five, but I’m gonna start her out on my Browning, and I only have a couple rounds for it.  So can I buy a box of twenty-two’s?  Remington’s if you have them.”

He nodded and stepped away, disappearing through a doorway to a back room.

“You should let me by those,” I said. 

“You can’t.  Unless you’ve got a gun license on file here and are a member.”

“Oh…” I mumbled, but then I pulled myself together again.  “I’ll add it onto your payment for today.”

He didn’t look at me, just leaned back on his heels and smiled with bemusement.  “You do that.”

I amused him…

After he paid for the box of bullets, we passed though another buzzing door into a small room that held an assortment of black plastic earmuffs hanging from the walls.  Jake took a set off the wall that was bundled together by a plastic tie.  He undid the tie and handed a set to me. 

“Put these on.”

They looked silly, but I did as he said.  He put his set on and then reached over toward my head. 

I flinched away.  “What are you doing?”

He smiled and pointed to his set of earmuffs and his lips moved. 

“I can’t hear you,” I said before the absurdity of it hit me.  We wouldn’t be able to hear each other at all with these things on.

Jake held up a finger, signaling me to wait for a moment, and then he reached out to me again and flicked on something on the earmuffs.  There was a low buzzing, and then I heard him say, “Can you hear me now?”

I smiled.  That was rather ingenious.  I nodded and then said, “Now I can.” 

On him the earmuffs looked okay.  But I was sure that on me they looked absolutely ridiculous.

“So why do we need these?”

In answer he opened the next door.  It didn’t need a buzzer, it seemed, but it must have been soundproof, for the moment it opened I heard muffled roars of guns being shot.  And even through the earmuffs they were loud enough that it was a struggle to hear Jake’s voice.  Of course, the two way headsets made his voice sound even more gravely than it already did.

“Because you can injure your hearing in a place like this without them.  Follow me.”

We entered a long, well lit hallway with doorways cut into them, but no doors.  The sounds of shots got louder, but they weren’t deafening.  I guess the silly earmuffs
were
necessary.

Today we’ll go over some basics,” Jake said pulling a large, black hand gun from his gym bag.  I didn’t catch the name of the gun, but I did take note of how he removed the clip and showed me that it was loaded with bullets. 

“They’re smaller than I expected,” I said.

“As I said, this is a forty-five caliber.  There bigger out there, but this…” he pulled a bullet from the clip and held it up to me.  “This is big enough to put any man down.”

I gulped.  Something so small could put
any man down…
Did that mean kill them?  I stared at the little piece of metal and felt a shiver run up my spine.  This was enough to put Tom down…maybe for good.

I felt cold just thinking the thought.  Killing my husband had never even entered my mind before.  Killing anyone had never entered my mind before…so what the hell did it mean that I kept thinking about killing him?

That I was losing my mind?