The twisted vines comple.., p.39
The Twisted Vines Complete Boxset, page 39
“Were your profiles men?”
“Yep. Easy to do. Really. It only took a couple of weeks of regular usage, and I got targeted. We caught him. Or rather, the FBI arrested him. They have a division that focuses on cybercrime. We sent over the guys ‘I,’ or the fake me in reality, were talking with, and the FBI narrowed it down further to some hacker in Paramus, New Jersey, who got greedy. They raided his place and found a ton of incriminating evidence, including his conversations with the fake me. He was arrested, the dirty secrets were locked in evidence, and our client’s extramarital affairs remained a secret.”
“So, that’s like catfishing, right?”
“Yes. It is. But catfishing usually targets women. I’d be lying if I said I don’t get a perverse pleasure targeting some of these scumbag men who are after our clients.”
“And you’re secretive because of the kinds of cases you take? The clients you have and the people you go after online?”
“Yes.”
There’s a heaviness to her answer, like there is more she’s not telling me. I can’t see those eyes behind her sunglasses, but I sense sadness. I reach down and link our fingers. The path narrows, and I let her hand go as I fall in line behind her.
“We’ve been apart, for what? Ten years?” A decade.
“Yeah,” she answers. I hear the caution in the drawn-out way she answers, keeping her head and body directed forward. We’ll walk down this row, and reach a path between rows, and turn up.
“Tell me about London.”
“It’s a great city. I was particularly broke when I lived there. It’s expensive. More expensive than San Francisco, if that tells you anything.” I can hear the smile in her words.
“Did you date any other women?” She stumbles, and I add, “Or men?”
She huffs. My pace matches hers, step by step, directly behind her.
“I went out on a couple of dates in London. Nothing that mattered. I didn’t expect Lara. If you’re asking these questions because you’re wondering if I wanted to date women when we broke up, the answer is no. In retrospect, sure, I might have found women to be attractive. But I thought it was normal. I didn’t think much of it.” She stops, and I halt, almost smacking her back. “Are you going to be able to get past this? You keep bringing it up. I am bisexual.”
There’s an undertone of anger. Defiance.
“You said I was the only man you’d been with. But we’ve been apart from each other a long time. I didn’t know.” The sun reflects on her sunglasses, and I can’t see her eyes, but I’d bet she’s squinting, trying to figure me out.
“You assume because I’m bisexual, I must be promiscuous?” She jabs me. And grins. “It’s okay, David. You’re not the only one. And maybe some are. But I never was.”
I’m a heel for asking. She’s right. I need to let it go. “I’m just trying to fill in the blanks.”
She spins around and resumes hiking up the trail. “Who all did you date?”
I am not even sure I could answer her without inadvertently leaving someone out. I might have tried to fuck her out of my head.
“I dated.” It’s an honest statement. I didn’t date anyone I loved. Of the two of us, she’s the one who went off and fell in love with someone else.
“You dated.” I can hear the tease in her question. “Is that code for something? Were you the resident slut?”
I reach out and pinch her butt cheek, and she squeals.
“Slut?” Yes, men can be sluts. It’s a fair question. “Maybe. For a bit.”
“Really?” She turns and walks backward, with a huge, wide grin. This idea amuses her. Of course it does. If the roles were reversed, I’d be on the verge of ripping out one of these decades-old vines. “So, Dr. James got around.”
I try. I try hard to contain my smirk. But I can’t. “Turn back around. You’re going to trip and fall,” I warn.
“Tell me. Of all these women…wait. They were all women, right?”
“Yes.”
She laughs hard. Yes, only one of us crossed boundaries. “And of these women, did you find a favorite body type?”
She rotates. She’s grinning. This amuses her to no end, and I step right up to her, loving her possessive claim as her hand roams my chest. Just beyond us is the path that will lead us higher up the mountain, and there’s an old oak tree offering shade, and probably the reason for the end of this row of vines.
“Now that you’ve sampled a variety, what’s your favorite? Small breasts? Large breasts? The perfect C cup? Do you like curves, or do you prefer lean…youthful and thin? And what about pussies?” Her nose tickles my throat, as does her warm breath as she teases. “Do you like them bare or with a thick bush?”
I grip her ass and pull her up against me, letting the picnic basket fall to the ground with a thud. “What do you prefer?”
“No…I want to hear about your adventures, Dr. James.”
“You are sick. You really want—” She giggles as I shake my head at her. “Tell me yours, and I’ll tell you mine.”
“Really? Okay. Well, I’ll tell you.” She loops her arms around my neck and beams up at me. You’d think she was sharing her favorite song or poem. “Unlike you, Dr. James, I don’t have much experience. Other than, you know, porn.”
“You watch lesbian porn?” This is interesting.
“I do. Sometimes. Lara, she had small breasts.” For some reason, it doesn’t bother me hearing about Lara. I find it…intriguing. “And I loved her. And her breasts turned me on. But I find I like breasts of all shapes and sizes. It’s rare for me to see breasts I don’t like.” Kairi and I are similar in that regard, but I will not be sharing that with her.
“And pussy?” I ask as I squeeze the curve of her ass.
“Oh, bare. Definitely bare.” On that, I’m not as particular, but again, not something I wish to share. “Now, you.” She’s smirking, and I lay a kiss on her, because I can’t not.
“What I like? Or no, what I love most? That’s the question, right?”
She nods, and her teeth sink into her lower lip. I lift her, answering her as I bring us into the shade.
“Why don’t I show you?”
“And how would you do that?”
“Hhmmm. Let’s see.” She shimmies between my legs, giggling. Her nipples harden beneath the thin fabric, and I take one in my mouth, dress and all. She squeals. I take in the telltale wet circle, dark from my mouth. “That is one of my favorite nipples. Maybe we should take this dress off for a closer look? A better taste?”
“Outside? It’s almost noon!”
I raise the hem of her dress. She’s wearing a thong, and I thought only her legs were pale. “This ass is untouched by the sun…isn’t it?”
She backs her resplendent derrière into my crotch and rubs. I trace the lines of her thong across her hip, to her belly, and finagle my fingers inside, where I discover she is wet. So wet.
We both moan, and she clasps a post, using it to brace herself.
“You know it’s seen the sun before. Remember when we went skinny dipping? And our camping trips?” Those are times I’ve been with her.
“All that time in Europe, no nude sunbathing?” I drive another finger and work on her clit as the curve of her ass creates delightful pressure against my very hard erection.
“No,” she gasps. “No.”
“You know what else is my favorite?” She shakes her head as I knead her breast in the same tempo that I finger-fuck her. “This pussy. I don’t care if it’s bare, or prickly with fresh growth, or a full-on bush, like our first time. I still dream of that full bush you had in high school.”
“You liked that?”
She breathes out her words. She’s close, on the verge. Quivering.
“David?”
“Yes?”
“I need you.”
“Yes, I think you do.”
I let her go, and she sags forward, both arms gripping the pole, back flat, ass in the air. Her dress hangs to the ground from her waist. I love her curves. Her ass, her hips, her long thighs. I even love how her calves taper to narrow, bony ankles. I release myself. My shorts and boxers fall to my ankles. With my hand, I stroke, rough and hard.
This wasn’t in my plan, but as she stands there, presenting me with her perfect ass, bracing herself on a wooden beam, I tell her, “Hold on. You hear me?”
“Mmhhmm.”
I pull on her thong, tugging it far to the side, position myself at her dripping wet entrance, and drive in.
“This. Fuuuuck.” I moan. “My favorite pussy in the world.” She raises on her toes, and I bend my knees, ensuring the best connection. She is tight and wet, and she thrusts back into each of my thrusts.
Birds chirp. A plane flies high overhead. And the sound of our skin slapping fills the vineyard.
“Harder. Fuck, I love this,” she chants.
I push her dress higher and fondle her breasts, teasing the nipples, and I reach around to work her mound. She tightens and flexes around me, and her head tilts back. This right here. It’s perfection. I fall over onto her back, both of us still standing. Me still rock hard, so close.
The contents of the picnic basket spill onto the ground, and I grab the blanket. She’s still holding on to the pole, her head down, and her narrow back expands and contracts with her breathing. I pull my shorts back up, buttoning only the top button, and loop an arm around her waist and trail kisses along her back and through her hair.
“Come with me.” We’re close to the shade of the oak, and together we climb the remainder of the hill.
She smiles. It’s her happy smile. God, I love her. I spread the blanket out on the ground, lift her dress, and toss it. She wantonly lowers the thong straps over her hips, and the fabric falls to her ankles. I let my shorts drop and step out of them and remove my shirt.
She crawls over the picnic blanket and bares herself to me. No matter how old I live to be, I will never forget this moment. Her long golden hair falls behind her back, and she’s resting on her forearms, her perky breasts exposed. Her brown eyes sparkle, as does her smile.
“Yes, you are my favorite,” I tell her, falling to my knees and crawling over her. “You are my everything. No matter how hard I tried to forget you, I couldn’t.” And all the gods know I tried.
She’s still wet, and this time when I slide in, our eyes connect. I watch her face, her expression. I listen intently to every breath, every groan, every pant.
“I love the way your body hugs me,” I tell her. She pulls me down and rewards me with a searing kiss. I lift her leg and kiss along her calf.
“I love how deep you get.” She’s timid. I see it and hear it. I’m balls-deep inside of her, but she’s opening up to me, taking me in, holding me, and letting me into her most sacred of spaces. It’s not her pussy, but god knows I love that. It’s her heart. And for all that is worthy in my world, I will protect her, treasure her, and I’ll never, ever let her go again.
And when I come inside her, I chant. I share. I tell her everything. How much I love her. How she is everything. My favorite. My world. My future. And I mean every single word of it.
SEVENTEEN
BANG
Kairi
We cuddle together, naked for the world to see, relaxing in complete bliss. Well, not complete bliss. There’s a crisp, cool breeze, and goose bumps light across our skin. The fall sun rays offer inadequate defense.
With a groan, David presses his lips to my temple and stands. He pulls his shorts up around his waist, locates the bag he packed, and pulls out a light flannel throw. I pull on the sundress from David’s closet.
“Do you remember the treehouse?” I ask.
He grins. “We at least got the floor built.”
“The floor?” I ask, mouth open, half-laughing.
“Well, a few boards. It was a lot harder than it looked. And Max was zero help. Where is that tree?”
“It’s over closer to the Willow rental, near the property line. We wanted it to be as far away from my house as possible, remember?”
He takes my fingers and lightly tugs, situating me between his legs, my back to his front. I rest against him. Yes, that had been our brainchild the summer before ninth grade. Our friendship had progressed to the kissing stage, but I had no breasts and therefore no desire to take our relationship further.
“Max printed out a photo of a killer treehouse. And we thought we could build something similar with a hammer and nails.” The treehouse from the magazine had featured rooms, furniture, and electricity. Little window boxes filled with plants sat below glass-paned windows.
“Well, the crazy part of that was him trying to build it over here. He made it out to help, what, twice that summer?” Max Rossi lives about a thirty-minute drive away. And his family’s vineyard is enormous. It dwarfs my mom’s small patch of land. He spent his summers working hard. “How is Max these days?”
“Good. I told you he said hello, right?” He reaches for a blade of grass. “You should come out with me one night. He’d love to see you.”
“I saw him at his grandfather’s birthday bash.”
“That’s right. How was that? Did you see many old friends?”
“Some.” That hadn’t been the most comfortable event for me. One, I’d been shocked to see David with another woman. I shouldn’t have been, but the brain doesn’t always follow the should path. Case in point, here I am, spending time with David now.
“No desire to reconnect with old high school friends?” he asks.
“That feels like a lifetime ago. I’m a different person now.”
“Are you?”
“In some ways.” I know myself better than I did back then. My head lolls back against his chest. A few thin, white clouds travel slowly across the stretch of blue. That day, I’d seen a few randoms looking my way. I wondered if they were talking about me, then berated myself for being so egotistical. “Is Max the only one you’ve reconnected with?”
“Max, his sister Celeste, and then Chloe.”
“Are you still dating her?”
He locks me in his arms in a tight hold. “Seriously, Kairi?” His teeth graze my earlobe, and I squirm, giggling.
“I did tell you to go on that date with her. And you were at Grandpa Rossi’s thing with her.”
“It was never going anywhere.” His lips smack loudly against my cheek. “No, I haven’t reconnected with many of our old friends. Most of our crew back in high school moved away.”
“I’ve enjoyed getting to know Vivi.” Vivi is the youngest of the Rossi siblings, and Erik’s girlfriend. “She comes over to the house quite a bit, or we meet them out.”
“Did anyone give you a hard time?”
I reposition myself so I can see David’s face. I’m still leaning against him, but I slide down, head resting more on his arm than his chest. “A hard time?” I ask for clarification.
“I told you what it was like for me when you made your announcement. But I never asked how it was for you. Was that hard to do?”
“Well, I’d had a bit to drink, and it was a post, so no, not hard.” He squeezes me. “No, really, most people were incredibly supportive. My mom told me she loved me no matter who I loved. It’s more the glances or the whispers, like at the Rossi party. In my head I can imagine our classmates saying things like…‘Kairi Morrigan is back home. You heard she’s gay, right?’” I pause and reach for a stick and pinch it between my fingers. “No, it wasn’t hard. And yes, it is hard. But only because I don’t think they should talk about me, period. My sexuality is none of their business.”
“Well, I’m glad your mom was supportive. That sounds like a really good thing to say.”
“My mom is awesome.” She’s always been supportive. “And she’s never cared what other people around here thought.” She didn’t try to join any of the area country clubs. Probably a good thing, because if she had, I probably would have spent most of my free time at the club pool, or playing tennis or what have you, and not getting to know my neighbor down the street.
“She doesn’t have any plans to move back here, does she?”
“She’s living in the south of France. Why would she move back here?” She’s living the life, really.
“Do you remember the wall calendar your mom bought you? You started counting down the days until you could move away sophomore year. And you had photos of all your dream cities. Your list.” I smile. I had a printed list and an electronic list. I updated it regularly. Followed travel blogs and Facebook accounts around the world. “How many cities remain on your list?”
I haven’t thought about that list in years. “I’m not sure I could find that list.”
“I’d think it would be in your suitcase. Or in a scrapbook.”
“Ah, my scrapbooks are long gone.”
“You threw them away?”
“When you move around a lot…have you not noticed all I wear is pretty much jeans and tees? I left behind a completely different wardrobe. You wouldn’t recognize me. Suits, heels. Fancy shit.” Lara and I wore similar sizes. Although we had slightly different styles, the basics allowed for an extensive wardrobe.
“That’s what I imagined. You going to nightclubs in London. Living it up in tiny dresses and stilettos.” His chest vibrates. “God, you really blew me away when you chose Minnesota for college. You had photos of NYU up on your wall. All those city photos.”
“And I followed you to Minnesota.” I smile at the memory. He didn’t pressure me at all. He’d been so quiet about it that I’d been nervous to tell him. But he’d been thrilled when I finally told him. He picked me up and twirled me around. He looked so happy. “Your parents were not pleased.”
“No, they were not.” He never told me all they said to him. I hadn’t really cared. “That’s really why I ended things. We finished college, and there you were, once again willing to follow me to another location that wasn’t on your list.”
“Baltimore would have been fine.” I’d done research. It was still a city.
