“Do you have anymore pie?”

“There’s a slice or two I put back in the fridge…” she said, as if she wasn’t sure.

“Would you mind getting me a piece of pie?” I asked. I wanted to see if she’d do it. And if she’d hand it to me again with that look in her eyes. I needed that look right now. I sensed some changes inside, the wiring coming loose and needing a good cauterizing. My thoughts were get-ting lost.

She tried to look annoyed but she failed at it big time. Cuz she still got out of her chair and walked over to the fridge. She opened the door and had to bend over in front of me to get a bottle of milk. My God she had one hell of an ass. Not too big that your dick would get lost but just big enough to get a good, meaty hold of and squeeze and smack and come until the cows came home.

I must have been pretty obvious in my leering. Wasn’t I trying to impress her, not creep her out?

“Were you staring at my ass?” she said. She sounded surprised but she was glaring at me, so I had no idea what the fuck she was thinking. Did she like the idea? Was she going to tell her mafia uncle to pour cement in my shoes and chuck me out in the Pacific?

“Yes,” I told her. Why lie? I’d put on the cement shoes if I had to. I’ve done worse for a woman.

She made some exasperated sound and shook her head. But she still came back with a piece of pie. She was beet red now and avoiding my eyes. Maybe she liked my attention after all.

“Obviously, I’ll need a napkin too,” I told her. Pushing buttons, pushing buttons.

“Obviously,” she muttered and she tossed one to me. I took it with all the grace of a dandy and folded it in my shirt pocket. I was a gentleman over everything. An ass-appreciating gentleman. We are the finest kind of man. I should open my own ass-appreciating gentleman’s club one day.

I shoved the pie in my face (pie-appreciating gentleman that I am) and noticed she wasn’t having any. To think of it, she hadn’t had any earlier either. That’s probably why I thought she baked it for me…she certainly didn’t bake the desert for herself.

Oh no, don’t tell me she’s one of those self-conscious girls who have absolutely no reason to be self-conscious. I eyed her full breasts and couldn’t fathom why she’d want to diet.

“You’re not having anything?” I asked, pointing my fork at her in an accusatory fashion, hoping she’d prove me wrong.

“I don’t like pie,” was her stupid answer.

I laughed and a piece of pie shot out. “You don’t like pie? What kind of person doesn’t like pie?”

I poked her with the fork to make sure she was still real. “You can’t be trusted.”

She took a swipe at the fork, looking annoyed. “You’re the one with the fork.”

Without thinking, I reached over for her hand and opened it, soft and warm. I placed the fork in it and gently closed her fingers over it.

“Now you have the fork,” I said softly and sat back in my chair. She stared down at the fork, thinking. I stared down at the paper. Thinking. Sometimes you came across women who had every-thing going for them…looks, personality, smarts, and they had NO fucking idea what they were worth. How amazing and beautiful, they were, how they oozed sex and secrets. Then you had those women who knew they had what you wanted and used it. Repeatedly. Just to get what they wanted. It was an unbalanced universe.

Now I could see that Perry was the former. She did look self-conscious and unsure of herself at every turn. She was always pulling down her shirt or tugging up her jeans, or keeping her chin as far away from her neck as possible. She’d cover up her breasts with heavy jackets and boxy shirts, like they were something to be hidden. The girl was fucking nuts and for all the wrong reasons. It made me feel strangely helpless.

“I just want you to enjoy all the pies in life, Perry,” I said, gazing at her, trying to get her shy eyes to meet mine. “That’s all.”

I wondered if she’d let me try.

BIG DUMB SEX

It was nearly five in the morning when I finally pulled the car into the garage. I had been so close to taking out a few trees and road signs on the drive up from Portland that I started blaring shitty pop music with the windows down, just so the disgust and cold would keep me awake.

It worked. I didn’t crash the car though as I staggered over to the elevator with my duffel bag in tow, I kinda wished I had. I had Rebecca Black in my head, a fate worse than death.

My plan was to enter the apartment as quietly as possible. If luck was on my side I’d be able to sneak inside without waking up Jenn and I could put off facing her until a reasonable hour, until I had ten cups of black coffee and a few sneaked cigarettes.

Lady Luck, that saucy bitch, was not on my side. As soon as my keys started to jangle in the hole, the door flung open and there she was. And, as I thought, she was ready to kill me.

Yeah, the thing is even though I spoke to her earlier in the day when I was at Perry’s uncle’s and told her I’d be coming home in the morning, even though she said she didn’t care and that she was going out with her bimbo posse anyway, I knew she’d be mad. I just knew it. And I was right. I was always fucking right.

“Hey babe,” I said quietly, trying to flash her a smile she once thought was charming.

She narrowed her eyes and didn’t let me in.

“It’s the middle of the night,” she hissed.

“I can see that,” I said and blinked at her hair. It was in a wild fro on top of her head, her face was without a lick of makeup. She did look gorgeous but she also looked evil. It was the heat seething from her eyes. “Are you going to let me in or shall I sleep out in the hall? There’s a cozy spot in the stairwell, I discovered that the last time you –“

“Last time I what?” she asked carefully. She raised her chin and eyed me down.

Last time you got totally jealous because I was hanging around some girl. Even though it was Rebecca. Even though she’s a lesbian.

“Las time we had disagreements,” I said. I put my hand up on the door and pushed it in a few inches. “Please. Babe. I’ve had a rough day.”

“Where the hell have you been?” she asked though she stepped away and let me in.

I walked in and tossed my bag on the couch.

“I told you earlier. You called me, remember?”

She folded her arms across her chest and tried to stifle a yawn. “I thought you’d wait until morning. Maybe have some respect for my beauty sleep. It’s Wine Babes, not Wine Hags, you know.”

Boy, did I ever.

“Perry had to get home, she works in the morning,” I explained, my voice hesitating only slightly. I watched her reaction and wondered what ground I was treading on tonight.

Her eyes flashed like lightening, almost too quick to see. Then the mask of indifference slid on her features and she looked at me with a perfectly blank expression.

“Who is Perry?”

She wasn’t fooling anyone but I let her play her game.

“You know, the girl with the lighthouse.” As if Perry wasn’t the sole reason Jenn had called me earlier.

“Girl?”

I shrugged. “Yeah, girl. She’s like twenty or something.”

White heat erupted from her gaze. I’d forgotten that the younger another woman was, the worse things got.

For me.

I sighed and turned away from my glowering girlfriend, ready for bed, ready to turn off my brain. I had bigger things to worry about than Jenn. I mean, fuck, the lighthouse actually fucking exploded. It exploded! I had nearly died tonight. We both nearly did and it would have been on my conscious if anything had happened to Perry. I spent the whole drive home trying not to think about it, trying not to think about what I thought I saw. What I couldn’t have seen.

“Dex?” Jenn asked, her voice breaking into my thoughts before they foundered. I felt her hand on my shoulder, her grip firm and warm. “Are you OK?”

I turned my head slightly and spied her out of the corner of my eye.

“I’m just tired. It’s nothing. I’m hitting the sack.”

I started to step forward when her grip tightened on my shoulder and held me back.

“Dex,” she said again, using my name in a deliberate way. There was warmth to it, enough to make me realize she was…what was this? Concern about me? My heart lurched around in my chest. Tricky little bastard.

I turned to face her and her hands immediately went to my waist. With hooded eyes she took her delicate, long fingers and started stroking back and forth along the waistband, teasing my skin.

I knew those moves all too well. Did she care or did she just want to get laid?

Fuck, why did I even bother thinking? I didn’t care either.

The fear I felt turned to flames. The night turned to need. I needed to be distracted, from Perry, from ghosts, from death. As usual, this would do.

Oh, this would do all right.

With one hand she popped the button on my pants. She dropped to her knees. I got hard instantly, knowing what was coming next.

Me.

Out of all the women I’d been with, Jenn knew her blessed way around a cock. Sometimes I wondered if she’d been a man herself in a past lifetime. Not that I liked to think that when she was unzipping my fly with her teeth, but there was no question she was a woman who knew exactly what you needed and wanted and was never ashamed to give it to you.

Sexually, anyway.

The minute my cock came free of my pants, heavy and twitching with anticipation, I grabbed the back of her head with both my hands, making a tight fist in her hair and yanked her toward me. She gave a little moan from the pain and took all of me in her mouth, and then some. She expertly gripped me in a squeezing motion with one hand, and let her fingers play with my balls with the other.

In seconds, I didn’t have a thought in my head, except that I wanted it harder, faster, more, more, more. Part of me wanted to come now and hard, the other part wanted to prolong the pleasure as long as possible. As selfish as it was, I didn’t really care if she got off or not. This was about me, my need to forget, my need to only feel this dirty high. Jenn didn’t really care either, she could always take care of herself. There were no tallies with us, we both always got what we wanted in the end.

She started to twirl her tongue along, rubbing it hard along the ridge. Fuck, I was going to lose it quickly if she kept that up.

Then she pulled away and wiped her mouth before grinning at me. If my mind wasn’t so clouded by lust, I could have sworn she looked positively fake.

“How about you take me from behind?” she purred. Without waiting for me to respond, she slipped off her short shorts, her thin top, and she was bare ass naked. She flung herself down on the couch and arched her back invitingly.

Fuck me. I could never ever say no to that.

I guided myself in, grabbed her around the small of her itty, bitty waist and pushed in hard. She moaned some more, loudly…too loudly.

“Yes, fuck me harder Dex,” she yelled.

I almost laughed. Fuck me harder Dex? Was she kidding? Now Jenn was always delightfully nasty and vocal at times, but it sounded like she was trying a little too hard. It sounded scripted.