Girl In Pieces

  GIRL IN PIECES

  The Curvy Submissive #2

  Copyright © 2014 Jordan Bell

  All Rights Reserved

  Sweet Stories Press

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  This book contains material not suitable for readers 17 and under.

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  ONE

  Josh was awake.

  I could see his bedroom light on from my window, which had never made me feel so much like a stalker until this morning.

  It was comforting, though, to know he was as awake at the wrong end of the day as I was.

  The digital on my bedside table read 4:49 a.m. Below Josh’s bedroom window the South River Bar sat quiet and dark. Someone had parked in front of the fire hydrant again and behind that was a pale pink convertible LeSabre with a cream top and white leather seats. You could always tell what kind of night South River had by how many cars were still parked on the street after last call.

  I settled my hands against the cool glass and marveled at the bracelet of bruises he’d left across my wrists, blues almost too faded to make out in the dim light. His big hands had fit perfectly around mine when he’d held me down and held me still. If I closed my eyes, I could still feel his breath on my neck and his weight and his…

  I shivered and pressed my fingertips into my eyes until lights sparkled across my vision. Sleep was out of the question, no matter how tired and heavy my body felt. Instead there was only pacing and thinking and watching his window for a sign.

  It was inevitable really. Katrina Koile, stalker. I was one pair of binoculars shy of a misdemeanor.

  Josh Murcek, my brother’s best friend and owner of the South River Bar, was my second unofficial brother by choice. We grew up together, even though he was five years older. Pop Murcek taught me to waltz when I was sixteen and Josh tutored me in algebra at a booth in the back by the stage. He taught me to tie cherry stems with my tongue, do tequila shots without wanting to die, and defended me to Brian when Brian got into one of his anti-Kat moods.

  Josh…he’d always been my friend.

  My apartment sat diagonal to the bar and he lived in the apartment above it. We had these rituals - Sunday mornings he’d make pancakes and when I saw the vodka sign turn on in the window it was my signal to head over. If I left the bar late I was to turn my bedroom light on as soon as I made it home safely so he’d know.

  He’d been my friend for so long I’d never thought of him as anything more. At least…not serious thoughts. I flirted with him playfully when I wanted free drinks, but he never overstepped into something inappropriate.

  Well, maybe not never. There was one night when things went in a very different direction. Just a little. Just a toe over the line, but enough for me to think about his mouth late at night for months after.

  It was the night of a very bad breakup. We were days into moving Kyle’s shit into my apartment when he decided things were moving too fast and I came home to find all his stuff gone and a note asking me to delete his number from my cell phone. Josh stayed up with me into the wee hours of the morning, unwilling to let me go home and cry myself to sleep. He dumped dozens of quarters into the jukebox and we spent the night inventing new drinks named after the faults of our past lovers.

  Comes Too Fast - Aftershock and Rumplemintz with a maraschino cherry floating in the middle.

  Texts Every Six Minutes - Low calorie skinny Raspberry Vodka, a splash of pineapple juice, Sprite and an orange wedge skewered onto a bendy straw.

  Comments on the Size of My Thighs - Espresso, chocolate syrup, Frangelica, and as much whip cream as can fit in the glass. Topped with chocolate shavings and a maraschino cherry. Or two.

  Expects Dinner but Doesn’t Do Take-out – Goldschlagger and Crown Royal, chased with a shot of the cheapest Vodka in the bar.

  It had been incredibly cathartic even though I’d suffered one of the worst hangovers of my life the next day. I still had a rumpled copy of our drink recipes stuck to my fridge.

  The memory of that night hit me bright and loud and I couldn’t help but smile. Green Day rocked out on the jukebox and whenever the tears threatened to start again Josh would feed me a steady stream of cherries soaked in amaretto to quiet them. I was sitting on the bar, my legs dangling over the edge and somehow he’d pushed his way between them so that we were incredibly close. Too close, but we’d had enough shots by that point that it didn’t even occur to me to blush.

  He settled his hand on the outside of my thigh and I could remember feeling the weight of it through my ripped jeans and, despite my tipsy haze, I’d felt my body’s reaction to it. Later I was embarrassed by the memory of my actions, but at the time I’d stared right into his eyes and opened my knees wider so he could climb closer and he had without hesitation. His hand had traveled higher, dangerously close to the rounded bottom edge of my ass. I’d felt his fingertips dig into my thigh as he gripped me in one hand.

  Josh brought the cherry to my mouth. Touched it against my lips. A drop of amaretto splashed my bottom lip and he ran his fingertip along my lip to capture it. I watched him suck the liquor from the pad of his thumb slowly, our gaze unblinking, barely breathing. My heart had gone stratospheric.

  Somehow in those few heartbeats we’d leaned into each other, our mouths close enough to share the same air. One of his hands gripped my thigh and the other slid up along my jawline into my hair and…

  My cell phone went off. The spell broke.

  It was only Julie making sure I wasn’t setting the apartment on fire but he fled to the other end of the bar, the moment forgotten, a new song fed into the jukebox.

  I’d been sure at the moment that his unabashed, intimate reaction had been a symptom of too many shots. Now I was sure it had been something more.

  Because last night I’d submitted to him, on my knees, begging for him to touch me. Mine he’d growled, his rough heavy breath punctuating the possessiveness behind that single, fascinating word.

  I closed my eyes and leaned my hot forehead against the glass and tried to calm my breathing. We hadn’t had sex. The thought struck me as funny now that I stood alone in my apartment, in my pajamas, stalking him. We’d done everything else, but not that.

  Almost everything. We hadn’t kissed. That would have been too intimate. Too far. I’d succumbed entirely like a little girl too quick to love, but he’d played it smart and held back the most important parts. The parts that couldn’t be undone in the morning.

  Regardless, things were different. I could feel it in my chest, could feel it in my guilt over watching his apartment like this when I’d checked to see if he was up a thousand mornings before without feeling like a crazy ex-girlfriend stalker.

  Obsessive Friend After Benefits - Parfait d’amour, Grenadine, Amaretto, Sprite. Served in a completely inappropriate wedding champagne flute.

  Things were different.

  I paced.

  Now I knew his secret. Easy going, handsome, slightly unkempt Josh masqueraded as a respected Dom in the BDSM community. I didn’t even know we had a BDSM community until I Googled the damn thing. Josh was traine
d in rope bondage and, in his own words, liked to dominate the young women he slept with.

  Young women like me.

  I closed my eyes and imagined him, broad and tall, his big hands holding me still as he tied me up in front of a room full of strangers. I imagined his racing pulse, his panting breath, his prominent erection. I could almost remember what it felt like when he held me against his chest to calm my erratic breathing.

  I’d been more powerful and more vulnerable in that one moment when I’d turned Josh from brother to lover than I had been in my entire life.

  When I opened my eyes, my hands were shaking. That settled it. Certainly he must have been as worked up over what had happened last night as I was and neither of us were going to get any sleep until we knew we were ok. Until we knew that the sun would rise and life would go on and we would still have each other no matter what happened.

  Because he’d promised. He’d promised I’d never have to know what it would be like without him.

  He promised.

  I grabbed my hoodie and headed out into the quiet street. Until midnight South River Boulevard was noisy with cars and music, voices and high heels on concrete. The morning hours belonged to the rest of us, so quiet and so still the buildings could have been fake Hollywood props – doors and windows leading nowhere.

  I slipped around the pink convertible, dug out my key and let myself into the building. Steps led up to the second floor where Josh’s office and apartment lived.

  Tan and brown patterned carpet muffled my footsteps up the two flights of stairs. The fluorescents did little against the dark, fake wood paneled walls. It still smelled faintly of the 70s, musty and green. Frosted glass hid the dark interior of his office and though he was the only apartment in the whole building, he’d stenciled his apartment number outside the door beneath a faint, swampy hall light. More than once I’d pretended Josh was a detective in a hardboiled crime noir and I was some damsel with a missing lover and a suitcase full of secrets.

  Beneath the apartment number was a paper decoration, the Superman logo, but instead of an S it was a J. I touched the faded construction paper, rough beneath my fingertips, and smiled. Brian had the poor judgment to let me decorate Josh’s twenty-fifth birthday party so I’d thrown him a superhero party, complete with paper masks and capes. Two years and he still had this thing hanging up. Something in my chest stirred - how could I bring the two different memories of Josh together? The guy who’d helped me grow up or the guy whose name I came screaming last night?

  With a deep breath, I knocked on the door.

  It took an excruciating few minutes before I heard noise on the other side. His voice, his footsteps on the hardwood floor, a light switch flicking on in the hallway. I knew his apartment as well as I knew my own. I felt him on the other side of the door, his weight creaking the wood, his presence too near, too big, too warm. I touched the smooth lacquer beneath the peep hole and imagined him doing the same.

  The chain slid out of place, the dead bolt knocked back, and finally he opened the door.

  Josh met my gaze and all my rehearsed words turned to gibberish. God, he was so handsome. I’d always known but I’d never known. Never felt it in my chest or between my legs. Standing there wearing nothing but his loose jeans and I felt the enormity of my attraction to him hit me right beneath the breastbone. Shirtless, his skin took on a golden hue beneath the hall light, long shadows marking out all the best places I wanted to kiss and touch him. Like a treasure map.

  This had been a mistake. We weren’t ready to face each other yet. What had I been thinking?

  I flicked my gaze from his naked stomach back up to his blue eyes.

  Whatever he was thinking, whatever emotions he might have been feeling were completely shuttered to me. I might as well have been a stranger selling Girl Scout cookies at five in the morning. I knew in that one clouded look that he was going to break my heart all over his doorstep. A clean break down the middle then shattered beneath his boot.

  We stood still and quiet gazing at each other, motionless, wordless. If he said anything I’d come apart in a million different pieces no one would ever be able to put back together again. His approval meant the world to me and for the first time in my life I realized I didn’t have it.

  Even if he didn’t want me want me, I needed him to take my hand and pull me into his kitchen and start chocolate chip pancakes or Saturday morning cartoons. Something normal and so us that we could cling to even if everything else had become such a mess.

  “Hey Josh,” I said, softer than I’d meant, as fragile as my heart felt. His lips parted and I watched a shiver run down the length of his biceps until he hid his trembling hands in the pockets of his jeans.

  Before he could answer, a soft, feminine voice echoed back to me from inside.

  “I’m ready. Sir.”

  He closed his eyes.

  For a thousand million billion seconds I didn’t breathe or blink and my heart didn’t beat. I gazed past his naked chest through the sliver of doorway he didn’t protect to the shape of a girl standing in his living room archway. Her ginger hair fell long and very straight down her bare shoulders to her elbows, as soft and fine as silk. She was tiny, a slip of a woman and so unfairly pretty. While her hips were nothing at all, her breasts more than made up for her tiny frame. She in her jeans and lacy, ribboned bra, one arm tucked obediently behind the small of her back, the other gripping a white silk cami she’s clearly just taken off. She was perfect. Fuck. Of course she was.

  Her eyes widened a fraction as she saw me seeing her.

  For an awful moment the three of us stood frozen.

  Thisisn’thappening. Thisisn’thappening. Thisisn’thappening.

  There was nothing either of us needed to say. No explanation or excuse or reason that would make any of this better for any of us.

  I turned and went back home alone.

  TWO

  It’s better this way.

  This was what I told myself when I drove away from the lake house. This was what I told myself when I paced my apartment watching for her bedroom light to go on to let me know she’d gotten home safely. Alone.

  This was what I told myself when her lingering scent on my skin and on my clothes turned me into the worst sort of coward.

  Seeing my little Kat standing in front of me in her pink jacket, hair mussed, eyes crinkled with anxiety, I knew our one transgression had changed everything. I couldn’t look at her there, red cheeks and sleepy eyes and not want to pick her up, cradle her against my chest, and carry her to my bed.

  But I couldn’t do that because we weren’t alone.

  And now she knew it.

  It’s better this way was what I told myself as she walked away, tears already spilling traitorously over her cheeks. She wiped ineffectually at them with the cuff of her jacket before shoving the stairwell door open.

  I took two steps into the hallway after her, but the door slammed and I knew it wouldn’t matter if I caught her or not.

  Kat was never coming back. Not now.

  The downstairs door banged shut and the roaring, pervasive quiet that echoed behind it rang with such finality. There was no time to grieve or make excuses or think up pretty lies that would calm her. It was done. That was that.

  The Kat shaped part of my life had come to an end with four words.

  It’s better this way.

  What a fucking lie.

  * * *

  I retreated back into the apartment when I couldn’t stand staring at the door at the end of the hall a second longer, hating myself for hoping she would come running back so I could at least have the chance to make her hurt better. To wipe away her tears. That was my role in her world, not the one who caused them in the first place. What a piece of shit I was turning out to be. Brian made her cry. The assholes who took advantage of her, they made her cry. I was the one who was supposed to tell her how amazing she was, remind her how beautiful and worthy and clever.

  I was supp
osed to protect her from assholes like me.

  Michelle stood, arms crossed, tapping her bare toe impatiently on the carpet. She was a beautiful girl, of course, but different from Kat. She was hard to impress, confident and controlled even when she played at being the submissive pet. She performed flawlessly, like a dancer. Slight. Fit. Easy to take through the motions for hours without wearing her out. We played together often enough, but we’d never bothered to date. Kat had never met her and Brian only a handful of times.

  We drifted apart eight months earlier when Brian and Kat’s dad got sick and I ended up covering the bar most nights when he had to be at the hospital. Ending our arrangement had been easy and painless. An afterthought. It made calling her for nights like these easier, though tonight it didn’t hold the tantalizing sheen it usually did.

  It was never love, but we got along well. She anticipated me, gave in gracefully or fought back with just enough desperation to almost feel sincere. Michelle was an actress. A player of parts. I had no idea who the real Michelle was. I’d never really wanted to know. Her submission was party perfect, but only skin deep and that was enough for me.

  You were just killing time until you could be with the person you actually cared about. Kelli had said those words hours ago and they’d plagued me even as I called Michelle to prove her wrong.

  She was right, of course. I knew it as soon as I hung up the phone I was making the worst mistake of my life.

  There were crucial pieces missing from mine and Michelle’s chemistry. Emotion, for one. We did not share any genuine longing, which was typical of arrangements like ours. Playmates and nothing more. Barely even friends.

  The one thing that also kept driving us apart – surprise. We could not astonish each other and we had no desire to try. There was no discovery between us, no adventure, no complication, nothing hard or painful about our match.