ROMANCE: His Reluctant Heart (Historical Western Victorian Romance) (Historical Mail Order Bride Romance Fantasy Short Stories) (75 page)
Authors: Jane Prescott
She screamed out as a monster climax knifed through her sex, her whole body trembling with the intensity. Lance continued to fuck her hard, pinning her down with his teeth on her shoulder until she felt his seed exploding deep inside her. He then pulled his cock out and began stroking her. Anita felt as if all of her strength had left her, but he carried her out of the tub and to the bedroom, placing her into the sheets and getting in next to her. Too exhausted to think, she drifted off to sleep.
A few hours later Anita woke up agitated with a fever and chills. Her heart was racing as she looked over at the gorgeous man asleep at her side. She felt tingling vibrations at her finger tips and had an urge to jump out of the window and run wildly into the woods. What’s happening to me? Anita thought as she walked towards the mirror on the wall. She turned on the floor lamp beside the mirror and gazed at herself and gasped in disbelief. Her clear blue eyes had changed to a fiery amber color and her gaze was piercing. In a trance-like state, Anita turned the lamp off and went back into bed. She felt claw-like nails start to grow from her finger tips as she ran her hand down the back of the senator.
THE END
Jen wasn't the kind of woman to seek out bad boys, but they always seemed to find her. Lately they weren't the stereotypical kind of thugs, which she had to admit to herself was a nice change. She thought about it as she worked her ass on the step machine at her gym. Most of the thug type of bad boys she'd met had been a bad idea from the very start, with almost no redeeming qualities save for sex and danger; and both of those things, she was learning, could be offered to her by almost anyone. She wasn't sure what did it for her when it came to boys being rebels, maybe it had something to do with how her first boyfriend had broke her heart while wearing a leather jacket—he'd slipped his hand up her best friend's skirt during a home football game. That had been the end of it, or so Jen had thought, but now it seemed like the entire affair kept coming back to haunt her.
The stair step machine was stet on a high intensity work out, and as it ramped up Jen had to step faster and faster. It wasn't something that she didn't mind because it allowed her mind to work independently form her body, something that not many of the other machines accomplished very well. All of the rest of them, to include the treadmill, didn't really allow her to escape herself via her own thoughts when she was using them. She'd tried everything, even jogging outside, but the only thing that really pulled her mind out of herself was the stair step machine. So as she stepped she kept thinking about her first love, and how everything had been so right for a few weeks before going so wrong. She wondered how he'd been able to haunt her all these years, popping up again and again in the form of other boys just like him.
Maybe there was more to it, and she was just trying to simplify it in order to make it less of a big deal in her mind. Jen considered this, and it sounded like it was a very real possibility. She thought about her last boyfriend and how things had gone. His name had been Brad, and he hadn't been such a bad guy, when he was sober. But Brad was only sober when he wanted to be, and that meant most of the time when their relationship started. But as time went on and he became more secure and settled in the relationship, she realized that the drunk Brad who she hated so much was a very real part of her life. She'd begged Brad to quit drinking when he'd first shown his true colors as an alcoholic, but that hadn't done too much good. He'd only started to hide it, and he could only hide it until he was drunk. By the time he was drunk any pretense of Brad being anything but smashed out of his mind went entirely out the window.
As Jen worked her quads on the stair step machine she thought back to the night it had all fallen apart between her and Brad. She'd taken them out to a nice restaurant and they'd eaten a delicious meal. She'd been loving every second of it, especially how well behaved Brad was being—it wasn't everyday that she could get him to act right. But then she'd had to take a call from work; one of her clients that was a bit of a celebrity was worried about how secure the massage parlor she worked at was. She'd assured the client that everything would be all right, that the parlor had never had any problem in the past keeping clients happy with their privacy, and she didn't think that was going to happen anytime in the near future. And that had been that. A conversation of maybe six minutes, and for sure not much more than that. Maybe another minute onto the total talk time if she counted the walk out of the restaurant and the walk back in; she didn't like to speak with clients in restaurants because of the way that people listened in and gossiped like anyone cared what they thought.
When she walked back to her table she found it empty. Jen knew right away what had happened, but she tried not to look at the bar. She knew what she was going to find if she looked. She already knew. But she looked anyway, and there he was, sitting at the bar hunched over, staring down into his drink like he'd find whatever answers that alluded him at the bottom. How many drinks had he had already? And would he be able to stop? Those were two things that she needed to find out, and right then. So she walked over to the far end of the bar and acted like she was ordering a drink. When the bartender walked over she told him that she was the girlfriend of the guy at the other end of the bar and she just wanted to know how many he'd had before she approached him.
“He's had about eight so far,” the bartender said. “And he told me that you'd pay for it. Listen, I'm sorry if I shouldn't be serving him. I had no idea that this would be a problem.”
“It's not a problem,” Jen said. “Yet, anyway. Let me see how he is.”
Jen had approached him like he was some kind of bomb, ready to go off at any moment. She knew that acting as such wasn't the fairest she could be to Brad, but then again it wasn't very fair to her that after she left to take a quick work call he'd sprinted over to the bar and immediately started downing drinks.
“Hey sweetheart,” Jen said as she approached. “How are you?”
“How am I?” Brad had asked. “Well isn't that a hell of a question? You just come up to me and ask me how I am? Well, let me tell you something, I'm not well. I haven't been well in a very long time. And I've been trying to tell you that, but every time I bring it up you just start hassling me about drinking again, like I haven't heard it enough! I know I shouldn't be drinking! Don't you think that I know that? It isn't the drinking all by itself. It's a lot of things. Things I can't escape or forget.”
Brad always became very vague whenever he got drunk. He liked to talk about a history he had that he'd never talked to her before when he was sober. When everything had just started to unravel she'd been intrigued by this supposed back story that she wasn't privy to, but since things had gone on this way for awhile now she was starting to wonder if Brad just wasn't full of shit. Jen never got the chance to find out. She left him that night. Stormed out of the restaurant after throwing some money down on the table. She never spoke with Brad again, and she was glad for that. That had been a few months ago, but she hadn't gone on a date or even slept with anyone else since then.
As she dismounted the stair step machine she saw a broad shouldered man peeking at her every time he did a sit up. It struck her as cute that such a handsome man would feel the need to hide his attraction to her, as if she would scold him just for casting a glance her direction. She stretched out near him and pretended not to notice his attention, but it wasn't until she started throwing glances back that she realized she hadn't thought about Brad since she'd noticed the handsome man in the black shorts and Nike running shoes. Jen decided to talk to the man.
“Hey, my name is Jen,” she said. “What's yours?”
“I'm Rick,” he said. “It's a pleasure to meet you. Listen, I'm really sorry if you caught me looking at you. I do my best to not get caught, you know what I mean? But it's hard! So, listen, I'm really sorry, and it won't happen again.”
Jen was taken aback for a moment. Why would this man act like she was going to bite his head off? Well, maybe it stood to figure that he'd done similar in the past and someone bit his head off. Many women were like that these days, it seemed, so strangely eager to hammer someone for something as small as a glance in their general direction. Of course Jen wasn't like this, not that she wasn't able to speak up for herself when the time came, but she just wasn't the kind of person that went around trying to get everyone to act the way she wanted.
“No, no,” Jen said hastily. “I'm not coming over here to break your balls about getting caught looking at me. I don't care if you look at me.”
Jen chuckled and so did Rick.
“Well, that's good!” Rick said. “Because every time a woman comes over and yells at me for staring at them I'm not sure what to do! I mean, I don't intentionally get caught! Sure, I look on purpose, but not even that is intentional at first! You know how it is; I'm doing a bunch of sit ups and I look over and see a beautiful woman on the step machine and I just happen to take you in. Then all of a sudden you come over here and start to stretch out all close to me and I'm like, 'Fuck! Another one is going to chew my ass just for looking!'”
“Do you get in trouble for looking often?” Jen asked.
Rick smiled and nodded sheepishly.
“I don't now what else to say but yes,” he said. “I don't mean to look, like I said, but it just happens. And then, no matter how much I say I'm sorry, people still lose their minds about it! I know it's not something that people should just turn a blind eye toward, that many people are harassed on the daily about stuff like their appearance, but at the same time I just hate feeling like I'm back in high school PE getting scolded for looking at girls.”
Jen could tell that the man was being sincere. There was something about him that she really liked, but she had a hard time putting her finger on it. Rick was built like a spark plug, with short black hair and all sorts of tattoos all over him. None of them were below his wrist or on his neck, though, something she appreciated because it let her know that he wasn't the kind of person that got a bunch of permanent stuff done to his body without putting any thought into it. Jen was already warming up to Rick, and she knew it. She always got this way with guys that she was attracted to: She'd dance around the obvious for as long as she could before asking for their number, or hopefully giving her's to them after they'd ask.
The two of them made small talk, chatting about everything from the politics of the small town of Des Moines they lived in, and sometimes even talking about the harder subjects like faith and religion. It turned out that Rick wasn't the kind of guy that was easily worked up about things that no one could change, or even understand. He didn't want to know every last detail about the afterlife from the Bible, but at the same time he was hesitant to say that there was nothing after someone died. Jen could appreciate a person who refused to be backed into a corner by their own words. It was something she was working on in herself, mostly due to her therapist pointing out how often she said something that she later regretted a great deal.
Before they parted ways Jen gave him her number with a big smile on her lips. She had hoped that he would ask for it. And deep down she'd known that he would. It was hard for guys to resist her, and she knew it. But she also knew that if talked enough most guys got tired of listening to it. Not that she didn't give them a chance to speak, it was just that many men had to dominate the entire conversation or they just weren't interested. But it didn't seem so with Rick. He'd listened the whole time and never batted an eye when Jen offered up complex and multifaceted opinions on hot button issues. By the time she pulled into the parking lot of her apartment complex she was already hoping for a text from him. When she looked at her phone, she found it.
Jen decided that it would be best to text Rick for awhile before going on a date with him. Although he'd never specifically mentioned going out with her, she knew that was what was on his mind. Not that Jen was stuck up or full of herself, but she knew how the world worked. Rick wouldn't even be speaking to her if he didn't want to taker her out. So they started conversing back and forth. Rick was in waste management, Jen learned. When she inquired what all that entailed he told her that it meant he was in charge of all the trash pick ups in the city where they lived, and a bunch of other stuff that sounded really complicated. His job had him working odd hours, so sometimes he wasn't available to text back and forth. Also, she found, Rick more or less hated talking on the phone. He'd speak with her on the phone only rarely, and he explained this as his aversion to how his voice sounded while being recorded; not that he thought that Jen was recording him, he went on to explain, but he just couldn't shake the sound of his own voice the few times he'd recorded it himself just to see what it would be like.
Jen found herself becoming more and more intrigued with Rick. He seemed like a nice, intelligent guy who was just trying to make a living. She knew that he was making quite a bit of money, but wasn't sure how much. Not that Jen cared about stuff like that, she was well enough off without needing anyone to help her along. Rick and her talked about all kinds of things, from films they'd both seen and liked, and didn't like, to music and literature. He was a very well read man, and also enjoyed all kinds of music. Politically she could tell that at one point he'd been very active in the community, but that it had burned him out and he just didn't have it in him anymore to get all fired up about politicians that were so phony they might as well have been a three dollar bill. He was a down to earth guy, Jen could tell, and she really liked that about him. She had a special disdain for people that walked around with their head in the clouds, or up their own asses, as was more often the case.
After a week or so of texting back and forth, and a few scant phone calls, she decided that it might be time to go on a date with him. He hadn't asked yet, though, hadn't even hinted that he wanted to spend time with her in real life. But he had talked about his schedule a little bit, and how even though he was busy he could always break away to hang out with someone special. Jen guessed that was a heavy handed hint that he was down to spend some time with her, so one day she asked. It was over text, so there was no way for her to know if he'd really received it or not. Of course it's easy to assume that someone receives the text, and her smart phone showed her that indeed he had, and even read it. But Jen tried not to put too much stock in what her smart phone told her, it just messed up too many times a day for her to get mad at Rick if he didn't shoot her a text back right away.