Till It Hurts by Cora Brent
Tori
Now
Rolling to my back, I blink at the ceiling. I can hear snoring coming from the corner of the room and when I lift up on one elbow, I see a happily slumbering McClane has made a bed for himself on a throw blanket. Jace must have let him out of the bedroom at some point. I wonder if that means Jace was out here last night. The thought of him prowling around while I slept doesn’t make me feel as violated as it did yesterday, but I’m not thrilled either.
McClane lifts his head. One ear flops forward. If I give him a sign he’ll gladly jump right up here.
“Shhh,” I tell him. He yawns and drops his head back to his paws. Seconds later he’s snoring again.
The wall clock shows it’s not quite seven a.m. Other than the sound of canine dreams, the house is completely silent. I crane my neck to see that Jace’s bedroom door is still safely shut.
I’m hoping it stays that way for a little while. Beneath the covers, my right hand goes exploring. I touch the smooth skin of my belly and allow my fingers to slide lower, tugging down my flannel pajama pants. My back arches and my body pleads.
I want to get off in the worst way.
It’s been ages since I’ve had sex with someone other than my imagination and I have the process down to a science. While I could go in the bathroom and stand under the hot shower, I don’t want to wait. I can do this fast and without making a sound.
My panties slide down and my fingers discover the slippery heat between my legs. I bite back a curse of pleasure as I pretend there’s the weight of man on top on me. He’s teasing me, my invented lover, and the pressure of my fingers becomes the broad tip of his cock while he growls out filthy words of lust and possession. He owns me right now and he knows it. This is exactly what I want. I’ve wanted it since I saw him again. No, long before then. I’ve never stopped wanting him, not after all these years, not even in the moments when I told myself I hated him.
There’s no longer any doubt about my fantasy lover. My fingers aren’t inside of me. Jace is inside of me. And I’m coming so hard that I see stars while my eyes are squeezed shut and my teeth crush my lower lip. My hips move and I shatter as feelings of lust and anger and regret collide.
No one has ever made me feel the way he does. No one ever will.
“Should have warned me that you enjoy masturbating in public.”
I bolt upright with a shriek.
Jace is ten feet away in the kitchen, calmly measuring out a scoop of something that looks like sawdust into a blender. I’m still covered by sheets and blankets but he knows what he saw.
He saw me simulating a dick ride on my own hand.
He saw me make myself come.
FUCK!
And then…
So what?
Yeah, so what if Jace Zielinski knows that I need to have an orgasm now and then?
It’s not like I’m going to share the fact that he played a starring role in my private X-rated movie.
Scraping together the shredded remains of my pride, I awkwardly feel around inside the covers for my panties, give up and just yank my flannel pants on.
“We’re not exactly in public, Jace.”
The instant I begin to speak, he presses the blender button. He watches the contents swirl around for a good twenty seconds before releasing the button. As the noise dies down, he looks at me as if he’s just noticed that I still exist.
“Sorry, did you say something?”
“I said, we’re not in public!”
The blender resumes at an even higher speed.
You asshole.
I’m mortified that a minute earlier I was pretending to screw him.
With a hiss of irritation, I fling back the covers. In the process, my misplaced panties are dislodged. I watch in slow motion horror as they sail across the room and land on the breakfast counter.
Jace turns off the blender. He throws an unimpressed look at my discarded panties. “If that’s an invitation, I’ll give it a hard pass.”
I snatch my panties off the counter. Naturally, instead something sexy like a black lace thong I’d been wearing tan colored hip huggers. I’m not sure anything screams ‘Dull! Unsexy!’ quite like boxy beige underwear.
McClane has decided we must be playing a game. He makes a grab for my panties. When he fails to seize them, he sits down and holds out his paw like he’s begging for a treat.
“Go look for a biscuit,” I mutter and stuff the panties into the pocket of my pajama pants. For the second day in a row, Jace has ensured that my morning begins badly.
Evidently, he isn’t finished. He pours the contents of the blender into a glass, drains half of it and then wipes his mouth. “You’re going to need to aim for a little more self control, okay? I mean, I’m used to women throwing themselves at me, but show some dignity for crying out loud.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” While Jace complains, McClane decides to console himself with the prize of my sneaker. Gently, I pry it from his meaty jaws. “I didn’t throw myself at you in any sense. Don’t involve me in your fantasies.”
“I don’t. Now maybe you could stop dragging me into yours.”
“You’re full of shit,” I grumble, noticing McClane has discovered my other sneaker. Because it’s my only pair of sneakers, I’m forced to chase after him while my panicked brain considers whether Jace has acquired the power to read minds.
No, he hasn’t become a mind reader. But he can hear words that were spoken out loud.
Jace is enjoying himself. “You were moaning my name,” he declares just as McClane runs right into the corner of the kitchen. The dog wags his tail as he playfully waits for me to extract my shoe from his mouth.
“I did not!” I yell at Jace.
But I did.
Yes, I think I did.
At the end, in the seconds after I dove off the cliff into ecstasy while the fictional Jace inside my head pumped harder and harder, I did it. I said his name.
McClane cheerfully relinquishes my shoe.
Jace finishes his blender drink.
I pray for a sinkhole to open up in the kitchen beneath his bare feet.
Jace reaches over to turn on the faucet. When his position changes I notice something that he was able to conceal before. The boy is sporting a boner the size of Jupiter in his gray sweatpants.
I cluck my tongue. “You know, it’s possible that your likeability issues would be resolved if your own sexual frustrations were being met.”
Jace glances down at his crotch and shrugs. “The details of my sex life are not for your ears. Especially not right now. Because I’d like to eat breakfast and if I have to watch you getting turned on enough to rub one out again I’ll lose my appetite.”
With my teeth grinding together, I stomp back to the living room to fold up the bed. “Fuck you, Jace.”
He laughs. “Not if you had the last set of tits in Texas, Victoria.”
I keep myself busy folding up the quilt so that I don’t murder him instead. “Mr. Personality strikes again. You really are a piece of work.”
He yawns. “So I’ve been told.”
“It must take some skill to be considerably less mature than you were in high school.”
“Yup, it sure does.”
Anger gets the better of me and I say something that I know will hurt him, that will penetrate this obnoxious armor of his.
“Your grandmother would be ashamed to see what you’ve become.”
His expression shutters and his eyes dim. Immediately I wish I hadn’t said it. I’m being unfair, not just to him but to Gloria. Jace was the light of her life. I have no right to belittle her devotion to him just to win a petty argument. And I need to apologize. No matter what he’s said, Jace doesn’t deserve that. Neither does she.
“Jace, I-“
“You’re nothing to me.” He says this with icy finality and his words steal my breath, not only for their cruelty but because they are familiar.
I said the same thing once.
To him.
“Nothing,” he repeats with ominous ferocity.
My vision blurs with a rush of sudden tears.
We are awful to each other. So very awful.
I keep my head down and can barely see as I rummage through my bag in search of clothes. With all my might I try to smother the sob of anguish that bubbles out of my throat but I’m not quite successful before I run into the bathroom and slam the door.
I’m sure Jace knows that I’m crying. I’m sure that he’s glad.
The shower spray blends with my tears and I gulp in deep breaths. Eventually my hands quit shaking and the tide of misery that threatens to engulf me subsides. My legs are weak with exhaustion and I lean my forehead against the cool shower tiles while trying to gather my wits.
For months I’ve been walking a tightrope, one false step away from tumbling into the abyss of a breakdown. Jace might succeed in pushing me over the edge. He doesn’t know that. But even if he did, would he care? Or would he just smile with triumph and deliver the final shove?
I’m afraid of the answer.
I’m afraid of him.
I’m even more afraid of myself.
When I can manage to inhale without gasping, I get around to shampooing my hair and using the citrus scented shower gel that lifts my spirits just a little. I’m already feeling better by the time I towel off and get dressed. After all, I get to go see my little sister today. Despair is impossible when Carrie is in the room.
McClane is waiting for me when I crack open the door to the bathroom and he won’t let me pass until I crouch down on the floor for a moment. I’ve never had a dog of my own. My mother hated anything with fur so despite pleading from both me and Colt, she refused to let us have a pet bigger than a goldfish. And even after I got my own place, I always lived alone in an apartment with no outdoor space and worked long hours.
I’m keeping a wary eye on the hallway in search of Jace while lavishing affection on his dog but there’s no sign of him. Maybe he left, or at least shut himself in his room. There’s nothing else I want to say to him and I don’t have the energy to listen to whatever else he wants to say to me. My one wish right now is to escape for the day without spending an additional minute in Jace’s miserable company. I’m hungry but I don’t even want to stay long enough to eat. I’ll grab a muffin or some beef jerky at the gas station.
With this mission in mind, I pet McClane one final time and tiptoe past Jace’s bedroom door. All I need to do is pick up my purse, my shoes, and the bag containing Carrie’s gifts. I’ll be gone in less than a minute.
But I freeze when I see Jace.
He’s sitting on the couch and he’s still wearing nothing but his sweatpants. If I had to guess, I’d say he stayed right here the whole time I was in the shower. His head is bent and his forehead rests on his knuckles, elbows on his knees. It’s the pose of a man in distress, or at least a man who is very unhappy. McClane takes a seat at Jace’s feet and throws me a worried look that is surprisingly sophisticated for a dog.
Jace doesn’t move until I make some accidental noise while searching through my suitcase. Then he slowly raises his head and looks at me. His dark eyes, which have been nothing but cold and mocking since he arrived, are now red and tormented. It’s the first real glimpse of the boy he used to be and my legs nearly buckle. If I have to speak to him right now, I’ll break. Instead, I look away and get what I need from my bag. Seconds later I’m opening the front door. Sunlight pours into the room and my back is still to Jace.
“Tori,” he says and all his earlier contempt is gone. His voice cracks. The way he says my name now sounds like the way he used to say my name.
But I don’t turn around.
I can’t bear to.
At the moment I can’t deal with anything more harrowing than walking out the door.