I distracted myself by adopting more chickens. A guy in Mapleford had five who needed a home. I was going to go and pick them up next week. He nearly talked me into taking a peacock too, but Dad intervened in the nick of time and reminded me that I’m afraid of peacocks—shifty eyes, weird screams. After that, Dad made me promise to check with him before I added any more members to la casa du Mike.
(Failed Spanish.)
On Thursday I finished a late shift at Levitate, sweaty, tired, and bored as fuck. It had been a sweltering day, totally random for this time of year. There was no one interesting to talk to at home, and there hadn’t been anyone good at the café either. Aroha was mad at me because she was friends with Oz and refused to admit that he was a massive dick blister. Dad wasn’t working today. Tanz said she was too busy with Lou and the kids to come and help me kill time during my shift. I was bored, bored, fucking bored.
At home, there was no one either. As mentioned.
I peeled off my clothes and stepped under the hot spray. Turning the water up so hot, it felt like little needles peppering the tight muscles of my neck and traps. Free acupuncture, baby. I breathed in the steam and tried to chill out. Looking around, I thought for the millionth time that Lyssa was wrong about my house being weird colors. I’d bought this place as is from an old couple who were moving into assisted living and didn’t want their kids to have the bother of selling everything individually. I’d gotten a good price and didn’t have to furnish it, which was great. At the time, I’d barely noticed all the rooms were color coded. Lyssa was always pointing it out, but I didn’t understand her problem. You couldn’t get lost. Orange? I was in the bathroom. Blue? Kitchen. Efficient.
No matter the color of the room, Lyssa had spread her stuff around it.
The thought made me smile.
Thinking of her, I couldn’t help reaching for a bottle and uncapping it for a sniff. The sharp, sweet smell of peaches wafted up my nose. This was the smell of her hair. I uncapped another. This was a fresh, cucumber kind of smell. This was how the skin at her neck smelled. I squeezed too hard and some of it spilled over the top of the bottle.
“Shit, fuck.”
I didn’t want to be wasteful, so I collected it up. It lathered quickly, and look, what else was I to do? I worked the suds up and wrapped my hand around my cock, jacking it with Lyssa’s bodywash. I pumped hard and low, careful not to get the product somewhere that would cause me problems. Fuuuuuck it was good. Using her scent like this to fuck my hand was second best to sliding my cock where I really wanted it.
Being here in the bathroom conjured the memory of sitting beside her in my tub—that whole scene was easy fantasy fodder. I imagined lifting her out of the bath while her body was still soft and languid from her first ever orgasm. She’d look at me with relaxed, grateful eyes, and I’d waste no time coaxing her onto this dick that she’d been teasing, taunting since the day she arrived in Woodville. I’d slide right into her heat, my passage eased by her recent release, but she’d still be tight and tremble around me.
I stroked faster, bracing one hand on the wall as I imagined her moaning, begging me for more of my cock like she’d begged me in the bath. I’d show her that while her fingers could do the job, it was nothing like what my cock could do for her. I’d work her until she was dripping down me, until each bounce up on my cock showed her juices mixed with mine, easing her slide back down. Then I’d grab her hips and fuck, fuck as hard as I could, fuck until neither of us could remember her name, fuck, fuck, fuck, until every fool idea of her getting off this dick and leaving was fucked right out of her head. I imagined her head lolling and her body trembling as she came, and with that, I tumbled over the edge, tugging my cock with one last hard squeeze and shooting my load all over the wall and some of the products she had on the floor. Oops.
My heart thudded in my ears as I struggled to get my breathing under control.
I fought against the urge to leave my little soldiers exactly where they’d fallen, but dried cum on her stuff probably wasn’t a great message, so when I could breathe and move again, I rinsed everything. Down the drain it all went, taking with it my shame and not-so-secret-anymore crush.
Now I could go back to being Mike the Man, unbothered and unaffected.
Tomorrow.
Maybe.
CHAPTER 18
LYSSA
This afternoon I had an interview! Finally! It was for an online retailer that needed a stylist for product shoots. It wasn’t my dream job by any stretch—this place loved minimalism and their colorways were boring—but I wasn’t in a position to be fussy.
The first challenge was finding a plain outfit.
I had a white T-shirt, but the front said elongate your eggs, with an embroidered egg with spindly limbs doing a barre class. I put it on backwards. They would never know.
I didn’t have any boring skirts, but in an online interview, they wouldn’t see my red shorts and sunshine yellow clogs. I did however paint a pair of my press-ons a boring chocolate brown, (with a mental apology to my nail artist,) and take off all my jewelry.
The hiring manager let me into the online call. She was a crisply dressed white woman with makeup that looked simple but was so seamless, it would have taken ages. Her name was Lauren. We swapped small talk while she waited for her colleague. Ten minutes into the half-hour interview, we were joined by a middle-aged white man wearing a T-shirt for an unrelated brand, his hair pulled into a low bun. His name was Julian. He didn’t say what he did at the company, but I got the definite impression it wasn’t something tangible.
Julian and Lauren asked me all the usual questions, and I gave the answers I’d practiced in the shower this morning.
“Lyssa, I see you used to work at Bossi,” Lauren said. “Being a Bossi girl is the dream for a lot of fashion grads. Why?—”
“Why did you leave?” Julian interrupted to ask the same thing.
I gave the answer I’d rehearsed about wanting to explore new opportunities and work for a fashion retailer. It was a lie, but no one ever answered this question honestly in interviews, right?
“So that’s why I’m excited by the possibility of joining your team!” I finished, beaming like I was Miss America.
“Really?” Julian leaned back in his chair. The lazy gesture instilled a sense of foreboding, immediately confirmed by his next words. “Did you work for Paul Barker at Bossi? He’s a very good friend of mine.”
