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My heart sinks for him. How awful! I’ve never thought about how damaging it could be to feel like you’re truly on your own as a kid. To daydream about being on your own at such a young age has to be just a bit devastating in its own way. I’ve never felt deprived of the love of my parents, though I’ve had friends who felt detached from theirs due to similar reasons. I was always jealous of their perceived independence, but now I realize that they probably just wanted someone to take care of them when they were sick.
“Jesus, what did you do when you were in the woods? Just hang out all day?” I ask.
“We built forts out of tree branches and old towels, caught clams in the stream nearby, and made little campfires even though we were absolutely not supposed to. I wasn’t always a city kid, and I still have dreams about the nights we’d spent outside,” he replies, his voice heavy with nostalgia and a touch of hurt.
“Do you get along with your siblings now?” I reply, mentally visualizing the atmosphere of his childhood in my own mind and realizing how difficult it is for me to imagine. Having little campfires with my siblings sounds fun, but we always had a hot dinner and clean clothes to return to.
He hits the ball toward me, almost hitting me by accident. “Most of them, yes. My youngest brother Abel is a bit of a fuck up, not going to lie. He took the coward’s way out when it came to his involvement in the family and got himself imprisoned for fifteen years on a robbery charge. He could have just asked for money if he needed it, but now he’s fucked. I’ll drop some money in his commissary every once in a while, but the thought of funding any aspect of his life makes my skin crawl now.”
We pause for a moment, both of us becoming exhausted from the heat and intensity of our game. My shirt is beginning to stick to me now, practically translucent under the light of the sun. Matteo’s attention has been drawn to my breasts as my nipples poke against the thin white material.
There’s no speaking for a full two minutes as one takes in the other, a low yearning growing in both of us that cannot be honored, no matter how badly we both want it.
I need to keep my word as a journalist, but right now, none of that feels like it matters.
I want him more than I’ve ever wanted anything, and the need grows insurmountable by the day. I’ve met plenty of men with money in the industry I’m in. Hell, I’ve met men even richer than him. But underneath the stoic, cocky persona, I can see a humility that those men never had.
It’s something that stands out to me about him. He has a sense of duty to his family, to take care of the people around him. He isn’t the kind of man who would lie down and take it when another man talked shit about his woman. He would punch the man’s jaw into two solid pieces and use it as a phone stand in his car.
The more I spend time with him, I can see a man who needs someone to take care of. He needs a partner, and I find myself wondering if I could ever, in a million years, be her.
11
Matteo
Playing tennis with Iris was a lot more fun than I was expecting it to be. Even without the competitive aspect of it, she’s so easy to talk to. The fact that she’s so hellbent on helping me clear my name now that she’s more invested helps me trust her even more than I did before. I know it’ll take a while before she trusts me in the same capacity, but if I were her, I wouldn’t trust me either. I’m a man with money and power, which is an animal with a terrible legacy.
It takes all of my willpower not to grab her in my arms and kiss her deeply on our way back inside from the tennis court. Knowing how sweaty and hot she is under those tiny clothes makes me wonder what her pussy tastes like between her thighs. She takes a lot of showers for some reason, so I know that she’s very clean. However, right now I’d eat her with no preparation.
My dick is getting rock hard again, and I’m starting to realize that this might be a bit of a problem now. At first, I was able to control myself because I knew I had the upper hand, which allowed for some breathing room. Now, my attraction to Iris is beginning to become uncomfortable.
As my cock aches against my shorts, I slide them down far enough to pull it out of my underwear. I’ve been jerking off more often since she got here, if only to keep my head clear, but now it’s starting to become a compulsion. It presses against my pants all day, demanding release inside of her hot, wet pussy.
I can see precum leaking out of the top, far more than I’m used to having. I don’t remember the last time I was this attracted to a woman, possibly not since high school, when I would have fucked anything if it had been microwaved first.
Just as I’m about to jerk off for the third time today, my phone begins to ring.
It’s Leonardo.
I sigh from deep within myself, knowing that a call from him at this time of day is always a bad sign. We hardly ever operate in broad daylight, so something must be going wrong with a shipment that’s on its way from Colombia.
“Hey, what’s up?” I say as I answer, pulling up my pants and tucking my dick away with chagrin.
“Yeah, we have a problem. There was a girl found dead in a motel room last night, and everyone is pointing fingers at you,” he begins.
Fuck.
“No, seriously? Do you know who the girl is?” I ask, my heart racing as it struggles to fight its way into my throat.
“I don’t know her legal name. Nobody does yet, but I guess she was a dancer at Pepper. Her stripper name was Shimmer. Do you know her?”
As soon as I hear the name, my heart drops from my throat onto the floor.
Shimmer was one of my favorite girls at Pepper, a highly exclusive strip club that I’d offered protection to. She was no older than nineteen or twenty, still bright-eyed and excited about the work she did before drug addiction had taken hold of her. The darkness of the club life was so alluring to her as someone who had grown up Mormon. I might have been the only person who knew her legal name: Miriam Baker.
The thought of her lying dead, face-down in some bedbug infested Super 8 makes me sick to my stomach. Not only that, but I’m being blamed for her death. The fact that she’s been seen with me so often at the club doesn’t look good for me, but for now, there’s nothing I can do except contact my lawyer.
I never imagined that growing close with a naïve stripper would cause me so many issues. She wasn’t the most popular girl in the club, but she was the best listener. Of all the girls there, she felt like the most authentic person. I had conversations with her that I never even talked to my closest men about, and she always made me feel validated and important.
