AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Everything I had to give, she wanted. The darkest, most depraved fantasies. Then she begged for more. And in the end, it wasn’t enough.
Obsession wasn’t pretty. It was an ugly, all-consuming thing. The drive to create a world that only held two people, to escape reality, to blot out the rest of life.
When I came back to the States, I swore my obsessions were in the past. That energy went to working out. Studying. Researching. Counting the weeks until I graduated.
But desire snaked through the cracks, coiling in the corners, climbing the walls.
I needed boundaries so I’d never lose myself in someone else again.
Then I saw Christina.
Her hair — dark and alive, curling up in the humid party air, showing its kinks.
Her hands — busy with her tight shirt as it rode up her stomach, smoothing her leggings over her round hips, plucking at that low neckline like she was torn about showing such tempting cleavage.
Her body — restless, active, all muscle under the softness. A mass of potential energy, crushed and hidden. A bomb waiting to go off.
She was grinding tamely with her friends, wriggling and laughing when one of them tried to kiss her, putting on a display for everyone else’s benefit while acknowledging none of her own desires.
I was projecting. I’d spent too much time alone.
Then she looked at me.
The eye contact held much longer than I expected. She fought to maintain it, her cheeks flushed, her eyes coffee-dark, her excitement broadcasting loud and clear across the room. This was a girl who always tried so hard. This was a girl who put other people first. But she wasn’t nice at all underneath.
I wanted to take her home. I wanted to fuck the living daylights out of her, screwing her from behind, running possessive hands over her skin, slapping the sexy squish of her curves while she cursed me out and her whole body reddened with shame and excitement. It didn’t occur to me put boundaries on the encounter with money or anything else. It probably would have been a disaster.
When her lizard boyfriend and her “best friend” interrupted us, Dexter was a lot happier ignoring the truth. And when Christina eyed me furtively as I scribbled a message on a napkin, she didn’t catch her “friend” running a finger inside her boyfriend’s collar, over his skin.
But what I saw were three people who were lying to themselves and each other.
*****
“Hey, Caruthers! What's the story with your girl?” Chase yelled over the music.
My eyes pulled away from his beer. Didn’t even realize I was staring at it.
“My girl?”
“Ramirez.”
“Nothing.” I shrugged.
He sipped from his bottle. “She's over, like, every other night. That's a lot of nothing.”
Rufus snorted and gulped his beer.
“Yeah?” Parker perked up.
“Every Monday and Wednesday,” Chase announced. “I hear she comes Fridays, too.”
A leggy redhead brushed past me, smelling of men’s cologne.
On the last day I saw her, Livia had come home soaked in another man’s scent. A game — I knew that now. I was getting too soft with her, too loving. She didn’t want my tenderness, or even my fidelity. She’d brought other women home so she could see her tiger, her exotic pet, unleashed on her willing friends. Like a fool, I’d lived out every fantasy, never thinking of the cost, until I said I wanted only her.
So she fucked another man to provoke me to be harsher. Crueler. Go further with her than I was willing to go.
I couldn’t remember what happened during those last ten minutes in her apartment. One of her expensive chairs lay in pieces on the floor, surrounded by a shattered vase. A huge mirror was cracked. I didn’t lay a hand on her; I could say that much. I left, desperate to gain control of myself, and came back to find the locks changed on that gorgeous cage.
