Black Lies

“Rich f**k.” He shoved me off his lap as he stood, my body falling from the couch, a hand catching me as I flipped up my head and glared at Lee. He paced to the window, hands on his hips, the pose accentuating every cut of his bare upper half. “I swear Lana, you better hope I don’t ever run into him… you send me down here like some f**king pool boy while he f**ks you up there in that mansion—”

“You hate the main house. That’s why we come down here.”

“Has he f**ked you down here?” He turned abruptly, the light dimming in the house as the sun moved lower. Stared at me with eyes full of hatred and hurt.

“Please stop saying f**k,” I whispered.

“Has he f**ked your sweet little cunt in this house?” He stepped closer, emphasizing every word, his voice a snarl as it finished, his hands dragging me to my feet and lifting hard on my waist, his grip so hard it hurt, the lift carrying me to the granite island counter, where he deposited me, his hands pushing open my legs, his body taking its place between them.

“No.” His hand captured my face when my answer came out, gripping me hard, his mouth following suit, crashing down on my lips with a neediness that ached.

“Promise me.” His other hand came hard on my ass, dragging me forward, to the edge of the counter ‘til he held me fully against him, the soft material of his shorts doing nothing to disguise his arousal. I hated the way he could do this. His need instantly turned me into a raw cavern of want.

“He hasn’t,” I gasped. “Please, I need…” I clawed at him, wrapped my legs around him, pulling at his neck to bring his mouth back to mine.

“Tell me.”

My hands fumbled at the top of his shorts. Reached inside and gripped him, his hold tightening on me the moment I had him fully in my hand. “This.”

“You know what I think you need?” He pushed into my hand. “Is to be bad.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

I swallowed a mouthful of lust. “Then make me bad.”

“I’ll make you worse.”

Then he f**ked me. Right there on the counter. And I screamed my orgasm against the waves and the gulls and the wind. And forty-two stories above us, the colossal mansion on the cliff was silent and empty.

Chapter 50

Living together changes a relationship. Brant and I didn’t have the normal relationship issues. There were no dirty dishes to argue over. No laundry left on unswept floors. No, the traditional sources of strife were handled by our over-attentive staff of seven. But even without fights, our relationship changed, improved as a result of our addresses merging.

If I had any doubt of my love, it disappeared with every morning I woke up next to this man. His focus best in the morning, when he woke me with gentle swipes of his fingers through my hair, soft kisses placed on the surface of my skin. I’d roll into his arms, and there we’d spend an extra hour in bed, blinking the sleep from our eyes as the warmth of coffee flooded our veins. Sometimes he read, my body curling into his as I fell back asleep on his shoulder. Sometimes we f**ked, his hard-on impossible to ignore between us, playful kisses turned into much more by his hands. Mostly we talked. About his day or mine. About HYA events or BSX projects. About our future and whether we would have two kids or four. Private or public schooling. Stanford or Peace Corps.

In the evenings, on the nights he came home, we cooked. Christine, the chef, acted as instructor, our skill growing with each dinner. My skill was implementation, Brant’s prep. We put on music; Christine kicked us off with general instruction, and then let us fail horribly.

Sometimes he’d get home too late. I’d save him a plate of her creation and sit with him on the upper porch. Listen to the crash of the ocean and talk while I sipped wine and he ate like a teenager. His appetite was huge. I never knew that before we lived together. Never knew that he snacked constantly then ate large, as if he was burning a thousand calories a day, his taste in cuisine as varied as my own.

He also worked impossible hours. Couldn’t recall half of his days when we sat down to talk. Lost track of time when steaks were on the grill. Loved, above all else, the sound of my orgasm. Wanted, above all else, to spend the rest of his life with me.

The closer we grew, the more I wanted to really talk. About the secrets that lay between us. There was a way for us to have a real future. I knew it. Fuck Jillian and the things she had told me. I believed our love could carry us through it. I believed I could be the glue that held him together when his world fell apart.

I wanted to kick at the support beams of all that he knew. Expose the truth behind all of this. Tell him everything. And see if he survived. See if he stayed.

I risked losing him.

I risked destroying his life.

I risked saving our love. Our future.

Chapter 51

Brant

I am not a simple man. I know that. We all discovered that the summer of my eleventh year. The summer it snowed in San Francisco. The summer the three girls disappeared. The summer my parents bought a computer, and I stopped playing outside. That summer, everything as I knew it changed.

The simple Apple II processor, set up in my father’s office, unlocked an entire world for me. The introduction to advanced technology took my childhood obsession with calculators and small appliances to an entirely new level. A switch turned on in my mind, and I opened the door wider, letting a pent up sea of ‘what if’ thought processes loose. I dismantled the expensive new purchase, its guts stretching out across my father’s desk, and learned its language in days. My parents were furious, then confused, then saw the genius, and moved me and the computer down to the basement. Gave me a workspace, tools, and freedom.

I learned at a furious pace. Visited the library, checked out every book on technology I could get my hands on. My interest became an obsession, my passion a madness. The more I learned, the more I unlocked different pieces of my mind and learned of their potential, the further I pushed my intellectual limits. Chaos began to reign in my mind, a complicated race of intellectual competition, as one thought process competed with another, all in an attempt to fight to the front of my subconscious first.

I worked harder. Didn’t eat. Barely slept. Ignored my parents, became irritable. Spent every spare moment in the basement. It was as if technology spoke the only language that my newfound madness understood. And inside those basement walls the chaos—for one brief moment—stopped. Focus came. Everything else disappeared. I worked in my new home, and my parents called specialists. Discussed me in hushed tones as if I was sick.