Just A Woman (Marina: Part Two: Naughty Nookie Series) (2 page)

The thought has me
shuddering and I withhold a groan as he sinks in, finally filling me. 
It’s both a blessing and a curse to feel so full, almost to the brink of pain.

My breathing is
nothing more than a burst of pants and gasps as he begins to fuck me, roughly
at first as he displays his continued displeasure with me, then slower, deeper
as his anger burns away.  When his hips are flush to my butt, he pauses
and repositions himself.  Between my legs now, he moves so his ankles are
hooked behind each of my knees, dragging me closer to the mattress and
spreading my legs wider. 

I yell, shrieking
at the new depth of his cock inside me and my body flushes as he forges the
path for an extra inch.  That thick fullness is my undoing.  I try to
reach down between my legs, desperate to play with my clit, but he won’t let
me.  He grabs my hands and places them overhead.  With his
prosthetic, he imprisons mine and with his good hand, he grips my ass and uses
it as leverage to fuck me harder.  His hoarse cry tells me he’s done, never
mind the gentle pulsation as his cum slams into my butt. 

When he sinks over
me, his weight is a pleasant if heavy burden, but my body is still in fuck mode
and I’m suffering.  My clit is on fire with the need for release. 
Just one little touch and I’d be with him, slumped into the mattress.

I know he can feel
me wriggling underneath him, but for the moment, he chooses to ignore me.
 

I’m left gasping,
crying out, desperate.  Almost as though the incident in the phone box
didn’t happen at all.  Almost as though I haven’t cum in four months, when
just last night I climaxed
six
times.  Never mind this morning or
evening!

My greedy body
needs release and only my fidgeting brings relief.  Eventually, I know
he’ll move and I’m not wrong.  He launches himself upright so he’s no
longer resting on me and smacks my ass, before pulling out and making me
shudder at the sensation of emptiness.  I stay there, knowing he’ll be mad
if I move again and wait.  Just wait.

My desperation to
cum is pleasurably painful.  But I don’t have to endure the agony of being
denied for long.  The mattress bounces again and I feel him between my
legs.  His hair brushes my inner thighs and I shudder, wishing I could see
him as he laps at my cunt.

To say I stiffen
at that first lick is an understatement.  I pause there, hovering as
tension riddles my body, while he licks and flicks his tongue down through my
cum-soaked pussy lips.  Swallowing his seed is something I always refuse,
but the idea of him tasting himself is heady.  I shudder again at the very
prospect and then grunt as he begins to suck down hard on my clit.  Within
minutes, I’m yelling out, my hands banging the pillows as release surges
through me like an electric shock.  It wings its way around my system,
burning out nerve endings and filling me with such peace that tears fill my
eyes.

It’s always this
way with Nate.  He takes me to the edge, forces me to see past the Marina
I think I know.  He’s rough, mean and playful but I thank God he’s mine
for the moment.  I don’t want to think it, especially when every synapse
in my brain has turned to mush, but I know we’re broaching a precipice.

The dynamic
between us is changing.  I’d have to be blind not to see it.  And
it’s mostly on my part.  I can’t say it’s love, even though I think it
is. 

To love is to be
hurt and I’ve been hurt enough in my life.  The question is do I break it
off?  Release myself from the eventual pain or do I endure what I know
will come, when he realizes the sort of person I am, just to keep him with me
for as long as I’m able?

He pulls away from
me and collapses at my side.   His breathing is deep and I know he’s
on the brink of sleep.  For a second, he just lies there, a few inches of
space separating the pair of us.  I’m too whacked to even move, but I know
he will.  It’s impossible to be in the same bed and not have a part of us
in some way connected. 

With a grunt as
though even this small effort is draining him of every remaining drop of energy
in his body, he tunnels his arm underneath my torso and drags me on to my
side.  He takes a few seconds to arrange me, lifting my leg so it’s riding
his hip and touching his damp cock, moving my arm so it’s hugging his waist and
then tucking my head against his chest, so the thick muscle cushions my
skull. 

That done, I can
sense the change in his body’s rhythms and know he’s no longer awake.  I
take the time to listen to the gentle breaths escaping him, to smell the
delicious essence that permeates my nostrils…  Man, musk, sex, aftershave…
delicious. 

A little snore
bursts out and I grin, but my amusement soon disappears.  I tighten my
hold on him and a sad smile creases my lips as he nuzzles his jaw against my
hair in a subconscious reaction to my touch. 

He sleeps the
slumber of the innocent.  A deep, peaceful rest.  But me?  I
just lie there, wondering when he’ll realize I’m nothing but trouble to the
core.  What awaits me in New York is a nightmare waiting to happen. 
I don’t have to sleep to be assailed with night terrors.  My life is
swirling down the drain and only this man can ground me. 

The distance
between us is getting too much for me.  I want him close; need to feel the
security he gives me here, during our visits, on a constant basis.  But to
be together permanently is to open myself up to his rejection.  Once he
knows the real me, would there even be an
us
?

I’ve lost a lot in
my life, but I’ve struggled on.  Could I survive losing Nate?

No.  I don’t
think I could.

30
^th
August 2013

Northwest Mercy
Hospital, Chicago

I was different
than the others at school.  At Blue Ridge, the family ranch and haven to
people with IQs as large as a muscleman’s body weight, everyone is
different.  Unique. 
We stand alone until we merge as a community
,
is a kind of unwritten lore among the commune.  Our intelligence sets us
apart and always will.

For kids over the
age of twelve, classes are held on site.  But before that age, every child
has to attend the local elementary school.  It’s there we learn how
unusual we really are.  It’s not the nicest way to learn it either. 
Being teased before we even understand the word
bully
, because we can
read, write and do seventh grade math at the age of five.

Uniqueness and the
unfairness of the world is an early life lesson.  And maybe it’s a wise
one.  With our smarts, we are the future of technological, scientific and
industrial developments. 

Under my distant
leadership, the commune has already made Blue Ridge over twenty million dollars
in new patents.  Four million of that was earned this year by new
discoveries, one of which being Nate’s new bionic hand.  

That money is
poured back into the ranch.  Be it the cattle operation or updating the
laboratory equipment, paying for art supplies for the studios or new recording
equipment for the musicians.  Every cent revitalizes the commune, making
it bigger and brighter. 

Success always an
inch away.

With such a head
start, maybe we need to learn that people reject and abuse what they don’t and
can’t understand.  And it’s for that reason, Blue Ridge exists. 
We’re a delicate bunch.  We have a sixty percent suicide risk; people are
touchy,
tetchy
even.  The atmosphere on Blue Ridge is tense and
competitive.  It isn’t Utopia for folks like us, but it’s the nearest
we’ll ever get. 

It wasn’t an easy
start, but then, it prepared me for an uneasy life.

Married at
seventeen, widowed at seventeen.  Living in the Big Apple before I was
legally an adult, founding what could only be called a safe house for abused
prostitutes and then, creating an establishment where they could work free from
the ever-present danger in that line of business: pimps and abusive clients.
 

Then, getting on
the wrong side of the Russian mafia.  Their ire inducing them to torch my
best friend’s apartment building and when that didn’t work and I didn’t give
them what they wanted, they stormed into my hotel room and held my partner,
Nathan, and I hostage until I finally conceded defeat: I handed over my client
list.  But they didn’t stop there.

They shot
Nathan.  They pressed a gun to his belly and fired.

The memory is one
that will never leave me.  I’ll always see it.  It will always be in
my mind’s eye.  Another horror to add to the many I’ve experienced in my
relatively short life.  The sight of the blood... gushing, pouring free
from Nate’s veins.  His essence
seeping out with every lost pint of
the life-giving fluid...   How will that ever leave me?

If it didn’t seem
self-piteous, I’d think I courted trouble.  That destruction followed me,
trailing along behind me as though I were a tropical hurricane.  As is usually
the way with massive storms, the dangers go, leaving the mess behind. 
I’ve done that way too often in my life. 

I abandoned the
ranch as soon as I legally could.  Eight months and six days after Jimmy’s
death, I left all I knew to escape the horrors of being a widow before I left
my teen years. 

When my father
died, I didn’t return to the fold to take over as leader of Blue Ridge, as I
should have done.  It was my duty, yet, I handed it over to Uncle
Sam.  A more incompetent leader you’ll never find but legally able to act
as guardian to the commune thanks to his surname. 

The man might
dream about chemical formulae and he might be one of the foremost members of
his field, but he’s a crappy people-person.

I left the only
place I can call home to wither away under the wrong man’s leadership. 

And the instant
the mafia destroyed Mona’s apartment building, I fled New York. 

The three major
calamities of my past have shown the truth of my nature.  I leave the mess
behind me for others to clean up.   

But I will not
just give up on Nate.  I won’t give up on
us
.  To go, to leave
him so I can wallow in my own self-hatred, my self-disgust at causing
destruction wherever I go...  No.  It isn’t going to happen.  He
means too much to me to simply disappear from his life.

Even if he’s the
next person on the list to be ignoring me.

But hey, ignoring
is better than being dead.

I can stand sulks,
I can withstand his justifiable anger, but I won’t let my own sense of guilt
push us apart.

Rubbing my hands
through my hair, I let my fingers linger at the base of my neck and begin to
massage some of the tension away.  I’m getting to hate my current
view.  The window of Nate’s private ward overlooks the car park. 
Beyond that, glass and concrete monuments to the Gods of Commercialism scrape
the sky, cars pound the tarmac, and their beeps can be heard even from this
subdued ward.  In the distance, between the gray buildings and the bright
blue skies loaded with virginal billowing clouds, the waters of Chicago harbor
beckon.

When I first
landed in the city, I only expected to be here for a week.  Tops.  I
dreaded the need to return to my home in Montana, the ranch that has been the
homestead for many Denisons in its one-hundred and twenty year existence. 
But after coming to terms with the need to return, I guess it’s hard
reconciling myself to still being here.  I want to see Blue Ridge again
and having been sequestered away in this ward for the last four weeks, it’s
merely making me desire
home
all the more. 

That alone is a
miracle, but maybe it’s all part and parcel of me coming to terms with the
Marina of now rather than the child of the past.

I’ve come to
realize after the many hours of solitude in this ward, that I’ve been a child
for most of my life.  I’ve played dress-up, played the role of an
adult.  It’s time for me to grow up, because this kid is dangerous. 
To her, rules are to be bent and if manipulation doesn’t work, then
broken. 

Maybe that’s why
destruction follows me?  Sure, my troublemaker ways weren’t the cause of
Jimmy’s leukemia.  But I
just
had to fall in love with him, didn’t
I?  A boy who was an anomaly of the eugenics experiment that is Blue Ridge
ranch.  The son of genius parents yet with mid-level intelligence. 
He was a good kid, harmless, hard working.  But to my parents, he might as
well have been a drug dealer.  Or a car-jacker.  Being average was
and still is a crime at the IQ Commune.

My love for Jimmy
was the pure, honest love that only two completely different teens can
experience.  I will cherish the memories, but I can’t help but question if
my choice of the boy wasn’t so
pure
.

With a sigh, I
wrap my arms about my waist and grip my elbows.  It’s either too hot or
too cold in this room, the temperature is never comfortable.  I don’t know
if Nate’s messing with the temperature control simply to cause me discomfort or
if it’s just crappy central air, but
it
along with the rest of the ward
is starting to give me a case of cabin fever.  I sleep here, wake up here,
have my take-out meals delivered here, shower in the private bathroom and
don’t
talk to Nate here. 

Is it any wonder
I’ve gone stir-crazy to the point that I’m questioning every aspect of my life?

At the sound of
the door opening, I turn to greet the only friendly faces I see around this
place.  The nurses.  Nate’s face is glued to the television
twenty-four-seven and the guys on staff are the only ones who’ll talk to
me. 

“I’ve good news
for you, Nate.  And you too, Marina.  You must be going crazy in this
ward.”  Betsy Granger is a slim, forty-year old brunette with a son in
college, a daughter at high school and three Maltese dogs called Bitsy, Ella
and Tigs.  I know Jenna is head cheerleader and that Matt is studying Pure
Math at Harvard.  In fact, I can tell you a basic background of nearly
every single nurse on this floor’s roster.

My smile is filled
with the gratitude and pleasure I feel at the sound of another voice.  As
well as the fact she has just picked up on the thoughts running through my
mind.  “You’ve no idea, Betsy.”

Our eyes bridge
and we share a look of complete understanding, before transferring our
attention to the grouch on the bed.  I make no bones about what I think of
Nate’s behavior.  I’m not the only one used to falling on childish ways,
when I’m not happy about something.

I deserve to be
yelled at.  Hated, even.  But ignored?  Sulked with?  How
the hell can we move past this if he won’t even talk to me?

After two days in
ICU, listening to the endless, reassuring beeps that told me Nate was clinging
on to life, as soon as he awoke, if he’d have asked me to jump, I’d have asked
how high.  I scurried about, doing what I could for him.  Topping up
the water in his glass, feeding him when he was too out of it on pain meds to
do it himself.  I’ve shaved and bed-bathed him, brushed his hair.  He
wasn’t an invalid at the start, but he was so high on the cocktail of drugs
they’d been feeding him, he couldn’t really do much for himself.  I cared
for him the best I could, because the Nate I know would detest having a stranger
clean him.  He’s way too proud for that.  And I tried to spare him.

I’ve done what I
could and will continue to do my best, but budging the stubborn bastard out of
his funk is not only getting me down, but it’s looking like a full-time
occupation!

That it’s one I’m
willing to sign up for tells me that what I feel for Nate is as real as I
thought it to be on the night of the shooting.

I’m halfway to
loving Nate.  Maybe more than half.  The idea of a world without the
miserable son of a bitch is like torture to me. 

Betsy shakes her
head at Nate’s disinterest in even her own proclamation of good news.  She
sighs, shoots a sympathetic look my way and murmurs, “Your file is as thick as
my arm, and the doctors have a schedule they want you to keep with your own
clinic, but Nate, you’re due for discharge today.  Just like we
predicted.”

The swift whoosh
of air escaping my lungs is one of relief.  I’d asked Uncle Sam to make
flight plans for this evening to take us back to Montana and it’s nice to know
I didn’t ask him to waste his time.  I can fly us back on the ranch’s
small aircraft ̶ the one Nate used to fly to O’Hare.  Probably
another indignity he’s going to lie at my door. 

He might once have
been a twenty-first century kind of guy, but after four years of being exposed
to Sam, my uncle, he has turned chauvinist.  Not in a derogatory way,
because that would piss me right off.  But Sam was born in an age where a
gentleman did the heavy work and the women stayed at home.  Genius, he might
be but he’s a child of his generation.  And Nate, after years of working
close with Sam, has taken on the same traits.  Opening doors for me,
helping me out of cars, ordering my meal... if I didn’t find it charming, I’d
have decked him.

So my flying him
to the ranch isn’t likely to go down well.

It’s also a reason
as to why this continued silence is a shock.  His rudeness is totally
unlike him and it’s a punishment in itself.

“That’s great
news!  Isn’t it, Nate?”  I turn to look at the man who has changed my
life and see no visual reply.  Just a bland stare at a quiz show. 
The sounds of the buzzers and the whine of the contestants’ voices whirl in my
head, scratching my eardrums like the sound of nails scraping down a
blackboard.

Before I can
explode and let his complete lack of answer urge me into the first explosion of
anger at his childish sulking, Betsy beckons me with a hand and urges me into
the hallway.

“It isn’t too late
for him to see a counselor.  Patients with gunshot wounds aren’t as rare
as I’d like, but in your circle...” She clears her throat.

Yeah, I guess the
average patient with a gunshot wound comes in off the streets and heads to a
charity hospital.  Not one that’s costing the ranch a small fortune. 
This place has a better interior decorator than the hotel Nate and I were
staying in!

“He won’t. 
You know I tried to persuade him.”  My tired sigh is met by a gentle pat
on the shoulder by Betsy.  It’s strange, but she keeps on trying to mother
me.  I guess it’s sweet rather than strange. 

If she’s on shift,
she sneaks in an extra plate of breakfast or lunch or dinner for me.  When
Nate’s blood pressure suddenly bottomed out, Betsy tucked me in a hug after we
got the all clear that he was back on track.  She’s been kind.  More
than.

I’ve arranged for
a bouquet of flowers to be delivered here for her.  It’s the least I can
do.  Hell, it doesn’t feel like enough.

I’m not the most
tactile of people.  As a kid, I learned not to be.  But there have
been times here, where I’ve really missed the easy affection Mona will bestow
upon me, the one-armed hugs that Eddie will give me if we’re sharing a joke or
whatever.  Betsy has filled a hole I hadn’t really noticed existed until
I’ve been separated from my friends.  The women who I’ve always considered
sisters, but who now, I’m only just starting to appreciate.