"GRIT"

Grit

Donna M.

Angie could never explain to her husband Brent her attraction to older men, especially since her husband was more than nine years younger than she was. However, she ‘told’ him every time she commented on how handsome an older man looked. He wasn’t the type to be jealous of a simple comment from his wife; after all, she had him, didn’t she? What he didn’t know was that at thirty-four, the thrill of having a virile, younger husband had worn off. Now she was simply tired of his immaturity, predominantly his penchant for daydreaming and gambling. Brent still thought and fucked like a teenager, but Angie reached a point in life where she needed an adult companion much more than a stallion. His gambling was bringing them down as well as tearing them apart. And now he owed money to the wrong people. Angie always had a thing for older men, now she needed help from the man who made her that way.

“Hello, Ben. Do you know who this is?” she asked after he answered her call.

No matter the passing of years, Benjamin Nicholas Adams would always know that voice. “Yes, Angie. It’s been a long time.” He thought of all that the two of them shared years ago, painfully burned into his memory. “What’s it been? Ten, twelve years?”

“Sixteen, but who’s counting.” Angie went on to explain about her husband and why she called Ben. Since ex-cop Ben was now a private detective, she asked if he could help get her husband out of trouble. “Can we meet, maybe for a drink, and I’ll explain everything? I miss you, Big Ben,” she said, and Ben heard the ache, or maybe it was just his male ego.

He said, “Where are you now? Close to Boston?” She told him that she was in Cohasset. Not too far away. “The beach house, I take it?” he said.

“Yes. I’ll fill in all the gaps when I see you. Where are we meeting?” He gave her the address of his favorite bar, not telling her that he lived upstairs. That would seem too pathetic.

When she walked in, Ben’s heart skipped several beats. Angie recognized him right away and walked toward him with a big smile. He did the math: she was thirty-four now, and although she had some worry lines around the eyes she looked as gorgeous as she did at eighteen. She’d obviously dyed her hair to a deeper cinnamon color than the strawberry blond he remembered. Red was the new blond, he mused. It accentuated her eyes and overall beauty. The hot body was mostly still there, he noticed too.

To her, he hadn’t aged a bit, and the old tingles were there. Ben had been her first crush. Back when she was a kid, this friend of the family had been the fantasy of her burgeoning sexuality. Then there was the night in the sleeping bag…

“You still drinking the girly martinis?” Ben asked after she kissed his cheek and sat opposite him in the corner booth. Her perfume rich yet understated. Seductive.

“I guess not. I’ve progressed beyond Cosmopolitans. I will have a martini, though…twist. I see you’re still a dark beer man.”

“Some things never change.”

As he signaled the waitress, she said, wistfully, “You’re right, some things don’t.” They drank as she explained her husband’s bad choices and the trouble he was in because of them. She gulped the first martini, and the second went down quickly as well. Ben wondered about it but ordered her a third anyway. “I’ll pay whatever your usual fee is,” she said. “I’m not looking for a freebie.”

Given their history, that’s exactly what Ben figured she was looking for. He asked the question he didn’t want to ask: “Why call me?”

“You’re the only man I thought of. Your no-nonsense approaches to things mean you won’t fall for Brent’s charming bullshit. You’re tough enough to help him out if he needs it.”

“I’m not going to be his bodyguard,” Ben said. “I agree to talk some sense into him and maybe mediate between him and the goons he owes money to. I‘ll protect his ass up to a point, but anything beyond isn’t in my mission statement. When do you want me to go to Cohasset and see him?”

She signaled for a fourth drink and her voice betrayed the fact. She slurred, “He’s in Providence.”

“You’re not together?”

“Not in several months,” she answered avoiding eye contact. “Since Mom let me have the beach house, I’ve been living there.”

The beach house.

Ben had no problem remembering that weekend so many years ago. He was single and an old friend of Angie’s mom. As the unattached male among the couples staying over, he agreed to sleep out on the deck in his sleeping bag and a mosquito net. Angie was all over the house like a skinny tornado; all arms and legs and strawberry braids. Although he didn’t really believe in such things, he could have thought she was sent by the devil to tempt and torment him. Ben fought his demons daily and didn’t need this additional stress. He wondered if she sensed something, as for an unfathomable reason the ten-year-old latched onto Ben and peppered him with questions:

—What was the Army like?

—Why did he want to be a cop?

—Had he ever shot anybody?

—Why didn’t he have a girlfriend?

And on and on.

Her mother tried to pry the girl away but Ben told her it was okay. He tried not to let her presence bother him, although her energy, her inquisitiveness, her youthful candor fueled the forbidden fires within him.

And then there was the other thing. During his second night there, he awoke to a warm, naked body sliding into the bag next to him. Disoriented, he placed his hand on the visitor’s chest and felt the nearly nonexistent, marble-sized breast. “You…you can’t be here,” he told her in a panic. Instead of answering him, she placed her lips on his and her hand elsewhere. For a few moments he let himself go, growing erect as he kissed and fondled her. She mewled like a kitten and that woke him up. “No, Angie. This is wrong. You can’t be here with me. Not like this,” he said as he pushed her away, eventually forcing her out of the sleeping bag. With one last tug on his erection, the naked girl said, “Someday.” The next day she gave no sign that anything had happened. She didn’t avoid him as he thought she would. Nothing was said; as if nothing had happened at all.

She broke his present reverie by saying, “You were thinking of that first time, weren’t you?”

“That wasn’t a ‘first time.’ You were only ten.”

She giggled and said, much louder than she should have, “For me it was. When you touched me I had my first orgasm. I was all wet and you didn’t even know it.”

Ben cringed as he noticed a few bar patrons looking their way, obviously overhearing Angie. She wanted another drink and Ben cringed again. She was drunk enough already and he wasn’t sure he wanted to handle the aftermath. “Angie, you’ve got take it easy, you’re pretty loaded.”

Her anger flared, an anger he was well aware of. “Don’t lecture me, Big Ben. I’m a big girl and I can do what I want,” she slurred.

Ben thought, what exactly did she want from me? He remembered the call he’d gotten sixteen years ago. Out of the blue Angie called him and said “You know what yesterday was, don’t you?” He frankly couldn’t so after his hesitation she said “I’m eighteen, and legal.” She invited him to the beach house, failing to tell him that she was there alone. When he showed up late on Friday afternoon, she met him at the door in a hot-pink bikini that immediately demonstrated she wasn’t the gawky ten-year-old girl anymore. He hadn’t brought a bathing suit, so she managed to find a pair of trunks that fit him. They went swimming in the cold ocean water, and then went back into the beach cottage where she led him to a bedroom and slipped off the bikini. “You can pretend I’m still ten,” she’d said coyly as she watched his reaction to her filled out, eighteen-year-old body; the growing bulge in his swim shorts decidedly noticeable. He’d responded, “Not with that body.” If only she’d known.

She slipped to her knees in front of him and lowered the swim trunks. His cock sprang up when freed. She spent a lot of time playing with his engorged member, alternately stroking, sucking and otherwise studying it. “Do you have condoms?” he asked, and she gave him an angry do-I-look-like-an idiot stare. She rolled on the condom so seductively he almost came then and there. He thought of cunnilingus, but she was already so aroused and dripping wet that it wouldn’t have mattered. She pulled him between her spread and upraised legs, and as he entered her she gasped. He knew why. He’d felt it. “Christ, you’re still a virgin!” he’d proclaimed, and she smiled and responded “Not anymore.” They spent the weekend fucking. When the condom supply ran out he fucked her anyway; playing Russian roulette with his cock by pulling out before he came. There were a couple of close calls. By the end of the weekend, she was too sore and he was too tired.

Angie pulled him back to the present, saying “I’m leaving. Call and let me know when you will see Brent. I’ll text you his address.” She tried to stand, but wobbled and fell back into the booth.

“You’re certainly not driving in your condition,” he said. He paid the tab and helped her to her feet.

The remaining bar patrons tried hard not to look at the obviously older man helping the pretty, drunk, younger woman up the stairwell. He knew what a few were thinking: date rape drug. Some faces spoke envy, some disgust. Ben managed to get her to his door and unlocking it. No sooner were they inside she threw up all over him and the floor. How she managed not getting any on herself was a puzzler.

“Okay…what do I clean up first?” Ben muttered to himself.

The smell coming from her and his clothing provided the answer. He guided Angie toward the shower, not happy with the situation. He clumsily undressed her as she remained barely conscious and mostly upright. Down to her bra and panties, he started the shower spray, checking and adjusting its temperature to be closer to cold than hot. Knowing her lustiness and their past history, he wasn’t surprised to see how wet her panties were. Ben knew that if she hadn’t puked he’d be smelling her powerful musk by now and unsure of what to do. She always had that effect.

Except for shoes and socks, he didn’t bother removing his vomit-stained clothes, instead urging her under the shower’s spray as he followed her into the stall. The water had its effect. She gasped, and realizing her state of undress punched Ben in the chest and then pushed away from him.

“What…where am I…what are you doing?” she muttered as she tried to make sense of things in her inebriated mind.

“You’re drunk. You puked all over me and my apartment. You smell like a sewer. Why else would I be in the shower with you with my clothes still on?”

Angie giggled and said, “You could’ve taken them off, Big Ben. You are, you know…big…really big…bigger than Brent. I like big.”

“You’re drunk. Remember, Brent’s the reason you’re here. Or is he?”

“Yes…you’ve gotta help him, but I need…help too.” She unfastened her soaked bra and let it fall to her feet. Her panties were next. To Ben’s eyes, she was perfect. At eighteen she was the hottest woman he’d ever bedded, and she still had it. He considered that with Angie you counted on four things: curves, heat, firmness and moisture. She turned slowly, letting the water splash every inch of her until she was facing him, saying “Get out of those ridiculously wet clothes and take me to bed.”

“I’ve got to clean up the mess you made,” Ben said, almost adding “first” to his sentence, which would have made it sound like a promise. “You have a habit of fucking with my mind even when you’re not fucking my body. No matter how hot you are, I don’t need this now.” She didn’t answer him, resigned to letting him usher her from the shower and drying her somewhat—not doing a great job of toweling her off as he worked too hard on avoiding her erogenous zones.

Angie stumbled to his bed and held her arms out to him, her legs slightly and seductively parted. She muttered, “Please” before promptly passing out. Ben shook his head while he looked at her laying there. She does it to me every time, he thought, realizing he’d had an erection throughout the shower and he hadn’t wilted. He left his bedroom and stripped out of his wet clothes, thinking that at least they didn’t smell anymore like his entryway floor did. Naked but finally no longer tumescent, he got some cleaning supplies and cleaned up her vomit mess. What he did with her would require much more work.

He slept on the sofa, thinking about that weekend so many years ago. Besides the marathon sex, Angie had revealed to him the raw side of herself. Over the subsequent years he wondered if she was bipolar; she could be sweet one minute and slug you the next over some perceived slight. She’d kept in touch over the years but never again did they have sex. On many occasions she unashamedly begged him to marry her. He once told her she was ‘a good fuck’ and that comment raised her ire to incendiary levels, yet she didn’t stop pestering him. Eventually she gave up, he surmised, and then Brent Camara entered her life. And now because of Brent she was back in his life whether he liked it or not.

Ben was in the midst of a dream where a small, nebulous creature was swallowing his dick whole when he awoke and found that the ‘creature’ was Angie, and she was indeed devouring him. Like he did more than twenty years ago, he pushed her away. “No, Angie, no,” he muttered.

She removed his swollen member from her talented throat and said, “Jesus, Ben, I’m a long way from being ten. Let me fuck you.”

He couldn’t deny her logic or his tumescence, so he let her do just that. She straddled him and took his cock deep into her wet vagina. She started slow but that pace didn’t last long; soon she was slamming down on him so hard it hurt, and Ben wondered if she wasn’t hurting herself in the bargain. Several times she made an “oomph” sound as if she’d taken his length so deep he’d struck her cervix. The “oomph” sounds were soon replaced by a keening wail. Angie was cumming, and cumming hard.

Ben groaned and whispered, “I…hope…you’re…on…the…pill,” while he unloaded what to both of them felt like the output of a fire hose.

When Angie finally pulled herself from his cock and saw what dripped from her, she said, “For an old man, you can still cum bucketfuls.” Little did she know how long it had been for him.

They hobbled to the bed where they slept until dawn. Ben insisted that there’d be no more sex. Angie pouted but complied. He managed to cadge together enough victuals for a decent breakfast, which they ate while discussing the best way for Ben to approach Brent. Angie explained that her husband knew of Ben’s existence but only knew him as an old family friend. Ben would make up the rest.

Angie lingered at his doorway before leaving. After a kiss, she said, “I never asked you this question, but how close did you come to fucking me in your sleeping bag that night?”

“Closer than you knew at the time,” Ben replied, knowing the truth about his demons.

“I wonder how my life would’ve been different if you’d taken my virginity at ten instead of eighteen,” Angie murmured as she gazed inward, deep into her memories.

“No use thinking of that now,” Ben said. Actually he’d wondered about that same thing many times in the years since. If he’d succumbed to the devil’s temptation then would his life have been over?

His wondering days were behind him now. It was time to plan his move on Brent, and that was all.

Angie required no moves.

One of the many private detective tasks Ben excelled at was the stakeout. For a man who was impatient most of the time, on the job he had patience to spare. He located Brent Camara easily enough. The man didn’t go out often, so Ben didn’t have to do much tailing, just sitting in his car and watching. And watching…

Even when a man has patience to spare the well eventually runs dry. Ben left his car and had no problem getting inside since the outer security door no longer had any security associated with it. Angie had given him the apartment number so he climbed stairs to the second floor and knocked on the door. His answer was a face peering out over the taut security chain.

“Hi Brent,” Ben said in as friendly a tone as he could muster.

“Who’re you?” the man replied, sounding to Ben more afraid than annoyed. Maybe my tone wasn’t nearly friendly enough Ben thought.

“It doesn’t matter who I am. Let me in and I’ll explain. I’m not here to hurt you.”

Brent’s fearful expression didn’t change. “Did Frank or Carlos send you?”

Ben said, “Look, idiot, I’m not from the people you owe money to. I have no idea who those guys are.” Then after a heavy sigh that summed up his impatience perfectly, “Actually it was your wife who sent me.”

“Angie sent you? Why?”

“You know, you’re worse than an idiot. Bad enough that you’ve gotten yourself mixed up with the wrong people but dumping Angie too, now that’s idiotic.” Brent tried to close the door but Ben had his foot in the gap. “By the looks of that chain I could kick this door in with minimal effort. Of course with you standing right there on the other side, it’d probably break a few bones so just open the damn door and spare us both the aggravation.” He pulled his shoe from the door jamb and waited. Brent closed the door and then nothing. About the time Ben prepared to kick the door, he heard the chain rattle loose and the door opened again.

“See, having me around is making you smarter already,” Ben said as he slowly and carefully opened the door, unsure if Brent was stupid enough to have a weapon on the other side. If bad men showed up at his door, Ben imagined, shooting it out with them wouldn’t prolong his life very much, if at all.

“Who are you?” Brent asked while still backing away from the door.

“My name is Ben Adams. I’m the private detective your wife hired to see if I can keep you out of trouble.”

“I don’t need help.”

“Considering how scared you were to let me in, I’d say that you do.”

Brent cocked his head to the side and the said, “You’re him, aren’t you?”

“Him who?”

“You’re the guy she’s been fucking in her dreams as long as I’ve know her. The old dude she wanted to fuck when she was a girl. Hired you, my ass…probably serviced you…’paid’ you while on her back.”

“All irrelevant,” Ben said, trying to keep his cool, “so let’s cut to the chase and figure out how to save your ass. First off, how much do you owe?” Brent reluctantly recited a figure and Ben whistled. “You’re the fucked one now. What’s your plan? To turtle? Hide out here and hope for the best?”

“Fuck you. I’m not afraid.”

“You could’ve fooled me…the way you cowered behind the door.”

“Go away and tell Angie I hope you two are happy.”

Ben laughed. “You don’t get it. Your wife hired me to save your ass. Does that sound like she doesn’t care about you? Now, tell me what you plan to do.”

Brent explained how he had a friend who would lend him some money but not enough to fully pay off his debt. “I was hoping it would buy me some time.”

“And then what?”

“By then I’d think of something else.”

“Fat chance.”

“So, what are you gonna do to protect me?”

“I’m going to visit your bookie muscle and negotiate away a broken arm or leg, that’s if you know you really can get that down payment…from your friend,” Ben said, knowing all too well the ‘friend’ was most likely a low-life loan shark just as dangerous to owe as the bookie. He got a name and a usual hang-out for the bookmaker from Brent, and warned him again to keep his nose clean and not bet anymore. Probably wasted breath he thought.

Heading to the door, Ben checked his phone. He had one text message waiting: BEACH HOUSE.

Brent caught his arm and said, just above a whisper, “You never answered me. You’ve fucked her, haven’t you?” Then he shook his head, already knowing the answer, “She’s never been married to me, not really,” he said, defeated.

“I never talk about a lady like that,” Ben said as he turned and walked out of the apartment.

There wasn’t a clear-cut, as-the-crow-flies easy route from Providence to Cohasset, Massachusetts. As Ben drove I-95 north toward Boston, he thought of nothing but Angie. Only for her did he have an eidetic memory. So many years later all he had to do is close his eyes and he could see her immature body in the moonlight after he pushed her out of the sleeping bag. There were just as many angles as there were curves in her ten-year-old body.

“Someday…” she had said.

It wasn’t all sight memory either. He also remembered like yesterday the feel of her, the small nubs of her soon to be developing breasts, the heat radiating from her. She told him she’d been wet that night. His original question was never answered over the years—how could a prepubescent girl be that aroused? He couldn’t think of her as a nymphomaniac. From all appearances she wasn’t a slut, fucking any man she could bed. Instead, for some reason it was him she chased. After all these years she still came looking for him. Perhaps for the first time he questioned her mental health, maybe all the way back to her youth. Had she been abused as a child? Was that the cause of her older man obsession, a coping mechanism sustained by repressed memories? Ben knew the family well, so playing this game of what if—her uncle? Her estranged father?—was a losing proposition. He had to assume she was simply wired this way from birth.

Like he was wired.

Through the incessant glut of traffic that characterized what Boston traffic reporters called “The Braintree Split,” Ben drove on to route 3A, now heading south. His memory flashed back to that night in the sleeping bag. What if he’d succumbed to her ten-year-old libido? His mind drifted forward to the beach house weekend when he received the gift of her virginity he so vehemently and agonizingly refused years earlier. She’d been insatiable and he was happy to go along for the ride. What man wouldn’t be happy to enjoy the unbridled passion of an eighteen-year-old beauty?

“The beach house,” Ben murmured. Going there to see Angie felt like he was gladly walking into a trap. When he arrived, he saw that the trap had been sufficiently baited. Angie greeted him in a bikini. Sixteen years later she still looked sensational in the stringed-together pieces of strategically placed textile.

“Let’s go swimming and you can tell me all about your meeting with Brent,” she said.

The day was strange déjà vu. She tossed him a pair of swim shorts. He put them on as she watched. They walked down to the beach and waded some, not really swimming, just getting wet. By the time they were back into the cottage she’d lost her top and proceeded to get him out of his wet swimsuit. For Ben, the years melted away and he was hard before she could go to her knees and put him in her mouth. He sensed her earnestness before he felt the tingle in his balls. She wanted his cum, and deep in her throat it would end up. Part of him didn’t want to let go. He tried to think of anything else but Angie, however one look down at her bobbing head and her taut nipples, not to mention her free hand in her bikini bottoms, unseen yet working as furiously as her mouth, and it was too much.

“I’m cumming,” he groaned.

All that came from Angie was a gurgling sound resonating from deep in her throat.

She slowly let him fall from her mouth, gazed up at him, and with dabs of semen at the corners of her lips she smiled. “Am I getting better at it?”

“Brent must like the uptick in your oral skills.” The smile faded. Ben continued, “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought Brent was the reason I’m here.”

She reminded him of the other side of that weekend spent here. Anger flared her cheeks red. “You can’t even relax and enjoy a good blow job, can you?”

“I thought that’s exactly what I did,” he said while using a thumb to wipe a trickle of semen from her lips. She pulled away.

“I’m taking a shower—alone,” she said and briskly walked away, her bottoms untied and hitting the floor long before she was out of his sight. Ben tried hard to get the sight of that tight ass out of his mind. “It’s about Brent” he murmured but that wasn’t convincing his cock.

He pulled a beer from the fridge and opened it. A long draught from the cold bottle only postponed the inevitable. He opened one for her and sat on the sofa and waited. She came into the room holding the towel yet making no attempt to cover up her nakedness.

“I suppose we should talk about my husband,” she said as she sat in a chair opposite Ben.

Ben recounted their meeting and explained his plan. His concentration was challenged because while he spoke she was staring at his crotch and lazily rubbing her pussy. Ben was old-school on most every subject, and women’s practice of shaving their pubic zones was one of those subjects. Having a little hair, trimmed nicely of course, to his way of thinking added to a woman’s allure. And then there was the other reason—the real reason. The bald look only made women look like underage girls, and maybe that was the point. His unholy weakness; his demons. In Angie’s case maybe the ONLY point she wanted to make. It worked, though. With him it always worked. He watched her spread her legs wider and her fingers slowly trace around and between her hairless labia, and all he imagined was what she looked like at ten.

She interrupted him with, “You try to be all business, but that fantastic cock of yours speaks louder than words.” Like a signpost showing the way, she slid her middle finger as deeply as it would go into her vagina without breaking eye contact with him.

“All I want is one question answered, that’s all,” he said, trying not be mesmerized by that finger, moving a little faster and obviously moist. “Was calling me ever about Brent, or was it all about this? Me? Here?

“Oh Ben, you sweet man.” Her finger plunged and withdrew. “Ever since I was a girl it’s always been about you.” Her eyes were on his cock, solid and thick. Her breath caught, sounding like a muted hiccup. He watched her hips move forward a little and knew what was next. “I’m…gonna…cum…and it’s…only…the…first…act,” she cried out before throwing her head back and wailing; her finger now stationary but her fingertip certainly stroking her G-spot.

For the umpteenth time in his life he acknowledged that he’d never been with a woman whose orgasms were as intense as Angie’s. He didn’t understand what “first act” meant until she sprang to her feet, dashed to the sofa and impaled herself on his erection. He never had to move. She mashed her tits into his chest, sucked on his neck and fucked him in rapid up-and-down motions. As she approached climax she whispered in his ear, “It’s always been about you…”

Her vagina contracted so many times it felt to Ben as if she had an endless orgasm. Uncharacteristically she didn’t make much noise, only some squeaking sounds like a newborn kitten might make. When he came, Ben didn’t make noise either. He figured silence to match hers was the right move.

When she finally got off him, she went back to the chair and sat, and talked. “I’m paying you to save Brent’s ass. But as far as the marriage goes, it’s over. Maybe it never was. I don’t know. My life was fucked when I was ten and you chose not to fuck me. Isn’t that every man’s dream, goddammit, to take a willing pre-teen’s virginity? By not fucking me you ruined my life. This is my last chance. Tell me you’ll marry me as soon as Brent’s out of my life.”

Too many thoughts and emotions swirled within Ben’s mind. “Or you’ll what?” he finally said.

“Huh?”

“You said to tell you I would marry you. Or what? What if I don’t marry you? Or what if someone hurts Brent? What happens then?”

“There is no what if. No one will hurt my husband because you’ll protect him.”

Ben sighed and then said, “Do you realize how ironic hiring me was? If Brent really was in mortal danger from his gambling debt then you shouldn’t have hired me. The bad guys would take care of things for you and you’d be available again.”

“How can I love you and hate you at the same time? Do you really think I’m as cold-hearted as you make me sound, and what do you mean by ‘if’ Brent is in danger?”

“No, you’re far from cold-hearted, though I think you have a problem. You should see someone, professionally, talk over the issues in your life, like me. And I wasn’t implying the threat isn’t real. I was just saying…”

“Yeah, I know what you’re saying. You think I’m nuts, but that doesn’t stop you from having sex with me.”

Ben said, “My bad. No more sex, okay? We’ll be friends.”

“Fuck you. I’ve given myself to you so many times and you don’t give a shit about me. Please go.”

Ben retrieved his clothes and dressed. On the way out the door he reminded Angie that the job of helping Brent was still his regardless of how she felt. The CD he listened to on the drive home was an older one. In one song the lyrics were: “Don't you see it's like tryin' to climb out of your skin; you're like a butterfly fighting the wind.” He thought, isn’t that Angie—a butterfly fighting the wind? Never happy in her own ‘skin’—her life, her decisions? As he did twice in the past he once more concluded that encouraging Angie only brought unhappiness for both of them. Besides, he had his own demons to repel.

***

“Can you get the money from your…friend?” Ben asked as soon as Brent let him into his apartment.

“Yes, but only so much.”

Brent gave him the figure and Ben calculated the odds (and thought about the irony of thinking in terms of odds in this situation) of it keeping him from broken bones. Ben knew that, contrary to the movies, enforcers just wanted their money and would rather not injure a deadbeat if it kept him from coming up with said money, except if the deadbeat was a loudmouth and needed to be made an example. Pain was something else, so he had to be careful.

“I think it will fly,” Ben said, trying to sound optimistic so Brent would go along with his plan. “Let’s go see your friend first.”

The ‘friend’ didn’t like seeing Ben accompanying Brent but gave him the money anyway. Ben didn’t hear all their whispered conversation yet sensed that this friend wasn’t a friend that he would care to have. Brent directed Ben to a bar in Cranston. Upon entering, the men were escorted into a back room where the “other” business was handled.

“What’s the big guy for?” a man said to Brent, Your guardian angel?” He then said, “You got my money or not?”

“I’ve got money, Frank,” Brent answered.

Before Brent said any more, Ben introduced himself and said he was there as a friend only. Ben stepped aside to let Brent explain his payment and plan for the balance owed. Frank didn’t look as pissed off as Ben thought he might be, though he had to play his expected part with blustery complaint. “How in hell am I supposed to trust you for the rest now? You haven’t exactly been Mr. Reliable.”

“I’ll be good for it, Frank,” Brent said. To Ben’s ear it sounded like a whine, causing him to glare at Brent, thinking that the man was doomed in the long run and not worthy of Angie. Brent would gamble again with, in effect, someone else’s money.

Frank’s less-than-pissed demeanor proved false, for he must have set off a hidden signal, bringing two goons into the room. “Seein’ it’s not the full amount, we need to do something to prove we mean business.”

Ben said in a soft yet somehow menacing voice, one he used often as a cop, “No, you don’t have to do something.”

Frank looked at Ben and said, “Suddenly you’re gonna tell me how to run my business?”

“Only in this matter,” he answered. One of the goons went for Ben and before the guy knew what hit him, he was on the floor and hurting. The second guy ended up on top of the first. Frank went for a gun and Ben swatted it out of his hand. “Now, that’s poor business conduct where I come from. The man said he’d pay and he will. I’ll vouch for him.” Frank decided he didn’t want to challenge Ben’s vouch-ability, or on who was telling whom how to run a business. Ben tossed one of his business cards toward Frank and headed to the door. Irate Brent followed Ben outside.

“Why did you do that? Now they’re gonna beat the shit out of me just to get even with you.”

Ben sighed and then said, “No, you dipshit, they’re going to come after me. Why do you think I left my card? To them you’re potential money, I’m revenge.” He took Brent home and didn’t leave until he lectured him again about gambling and paying off the rest of what he owed. Only after Brent exited the car did Ben check the text message he’d received while driving. NEED U…CUM 2 BCH HOUSE…SLPNG BAG.

Aw shit, sleeping bag?

***

He didn’t need to be a genius to intuit what Angie was up to. Every fiber of his being shouted at him not to go, yet Ben had an obligation to let the drama play out. The ever present images played like a porn video in his mind. Twenty-four years ago—his hand on her preteen, still undeveloped breast, and her prophetic word, “Someday.” Fast-forward to eight years later—the miniscule pink bikini that couldn’t hide the young woman she’d become, and which hadn’t remained on her for very long. The ‘someday’ had arrived. He still vividly remembered his pleasant surprise when he broke her hymen, a deflowering in essence eight years in the making (or taking, as it were). His memory replayed the scenes—every time he fucked her since then, every throbbing orgasm, every cry of release. By the time he pulled his car up to the Cohasset beach house he was hard in spite of the feeling of grim resignation.

When Angie greeted him and only asked questions about her husband, Ben was a bit surprised. They went for a swim. No sexual hints, only a quick dip in the ocean. After they were dry and back inside she got Ben a beer and fixed herself a cocktail, and then he told her more about what had transpired at the Cranston bar. He downplayed the business card part but Angie was astute enough to see the risk he’d put on himself.

“Do you think Brent is safe?” she asked.

“If he keeps his nose clean and smartens up I think he’s okay.”

“That was a brave thing you did.”

“It’s what you paid me to do. Besides, I think guys like that are more bark than bite…you know…small potatoes. I didn’t smell heavy mob, though if my sense of smell is off I may be in for a whole lot of hurting.”

She leaned closer, giving him the 100-watt seduction look he knew all too well. “Ben, will you spend the night? Maybe one last time, please?”

“Does the sleeping bag play a part in this production?”

“It’s not the same one, but it’s bigger—and warmer—than the old one you used to use.”

Despite himself, Ben smiled. “You invite me to spend the night and then you have me sleep outside like the family pet?”

“Well, you’re my special…” she hesitated, and if she said pet Ben was going to blow, but she ended her sentence with “friend” so she was off the hook.

Resignation to his fate would not be acceptance, and perhaps she knew it since she didn’t press him any further. Day turned to early late-season dusk. Ben started a fire in the beach-side fire pit, and Angie giddily toasted marshmallows. She’d changed into shorts and a boy-band t-shirt that was like something a teen would wear. He wasn’t sure if his eyes were playing tricks on him but her breasts didn’t fill the shirt like they should have. Was she wearing something underneath to constrict them? This regression, if that’s what it was, would lead back to her preteen fantasy and a long-ago moment in a sleeping bag. For Ben however, the fantasy was so much more, and so much more dangerous.

For the rest of the evening they tiptoed around each other, nobody commenting on what both knew was to come. As the fire slowly died, Angie drank too much and Ben worried she’d get sick like the day at his place. He held her and told her she needed to slow the drinking, “So everything will work out.” Angie made a show of going off to bed. Out on the deck, Ben quickly stripped under moonlight and dove into the sleeping bag to get warm. While waiting for Angie Ben thought he had no chance of falling asleep, but he did.

He came awake with a twenty-four-year-old feeling of déjà-vu when she climbed into the sleeping bag with him, wearing the ridiculously tight t-shirt and nothing more. In an uncanny little girl’s voice that didn’t come close to how she sounded back then, Angie said, “Big Ben…will you make love to me?”

Ben didn’t respond, instead he reached down between her thighs and felt the immense wetness of arousal. How wet had she actually been that fateful night when their fate was sealed? He moved a bit to position himself as she touched his cock, which was stiffening in spite of how he felt about this play-acting.

“Put it in me,” she whispered in the exaggerated girl voice.”

He did, slowly at first, allowing her to mimic the pain and shock of virgin penetration. “It’s going to hurt at first, you know,” he whispered, playing the dream role of preteen deflowerer.

“I know,” she whispered back.

She played her part well, crying out and mewling like an injured kitten until her needs overtook them both and she rammed her hips back in time with his thrusts as he did her from behind. As she climaxed, Ben whispered in her ear, “Are you still an anal virgin? Why don’t I take that cherry too?”

He took silence (silence except for the moaning of orgasm that is) as assent. He pulled out of her vagina, and realizing how wet the head and shaft of his cock already were didn’t hesitate in plunging into her anus. She yelped, cried “no” a few times but that didn’t stop Ben. Closing his eyes as he thrust, the tightness fed his demons like nothing else in this situation could. He attacked her anus and rectum until he knew he couldn’t hold back his ejaculation any longer. His quickly approaching orgasm caused him not to hear the change in her voice. Instead, he felt the orgasmic contractions vibrate and constrict her anal sphincter around his shaft. They came together as lovers should.

She eventually whispered, “Why there?”

He said, “Why not? You either never realized, or you refused to acknowledge how much I would have hurt you if I had fucked you at that age. Anal sex now doesn’t come close to that pain.” She began to sob, and without saying anything more clambered out of the sleeping bag and went into the cottage. If she wanted Ben to follow her she wasn’t going to have that wish fulfilled. His actions were spur of the moment ones, unplanned but not unthinkable.

In the morning she avoided him as he showered and dressed. She didn’t offer him any coffee or breakfast. When he said goodbye, she responded, “Bye Big Ben. Thanks for helping my husband, and watch out for those bad guys. I hope you’re right that they won’t do anything mean to Brent. I still love him, you know.”

Leaving was awkward. Ben didn’t want to say anything that might start another fire within her, truly wishing that this goodbye was the real thing. At the door, Angie kissed him on the cheek and said, “It’s difficult for me to say this, Big Ben, but you were right all those years ago. I never should have—”

He placed a finger at her lips to stop her. “Everything that happened between us, from the time you were ten to that weekend after your eighteenth birthday was fate or whatever you call it. It—we—were meant to be, however it has to end now. If you still love him you need to get Brent here, away from his temptations, and make a fresh go of your marriage.”

“Okay, but I’ll always love you too, Ben, no matter what happens.”

“It’s not really love, and you know it. You’ve always been able to draw me back and that should tell you how I care about you. Now it’s Brent’s turn. Maybe he’ll like the sleeping bag,” Ben said with a grin.

Angie’s eyes flashed with anger. “That wasn’t funny. What I wanted back then was real, even if I was too young and naïve to realize the consequences.”

Ben said, “I’m sorry. Call Brent. Get on with your life. Save him and you save yourself too. I’m not your savior and never was. I hope you know that now.”

“I know. Take care, Big Ben.”

Ben drove away from the beach house pondering his own terrors, in many ways paralleling Angie’s. As with Angie’s attraction to older men, Ben could also trace his life back to the origin of his forbidden lust. His began in childhood. Most pubescent boys at some time or another enjoy playing “doctor” with a young girl. Ben’s fascination never went away. He did some things as a teen he wasn’t proud of. He never thought about the girls, only his own twisted needs.

He managed to hold those needs in check until he served so many years ago in the Gulf. The Army didn’t care what he did with little Saudi girls he showered with gifts, unless he got caught. He never did. AA had its 12 Steps, but all he had was his own strong will to overcome the demonic urges. The Army wouldn’t help someone like him.

The genesis of his life’s misery was indelibly etched in his mind, for he saw more than he even admitted to himself that night as Angie climbed from the sleeping bag in the light of the full moon; the vision of her coltish legs, the sight of her hairless vulva (yes, he had known all along that she was wet—he saw the trickle of moisture glistening in the moonlight), her tight little dimpled ass and its girly tan lines, and most of all her flat chest with only a hint of bumps. The feel of one of those nascent breasts lived forever in his memories. In the intervening years he’d slept with women but never lusted after them. His strong will and sense of right and wrong kept him from succumbing to that wicked lust—and kept him single and alone. From that weekend on, when they celebrated Angie’s eighteenth she wasn’t the only one fantasizing. He therefore derived no real pleasure from this past night’s role-playing agony, so close to thoughts that would make him fall off his own proverbial wagon. He’d come close a few times, once with a niece. He was strong then but could he always count on being strong? What if denying his desires eventually made them too strong to counteract?

Right now he didn’t feel strong at all. Like the butterfly, how much longer could he fight the wind? How much longer could he resist temptation? He said to himself, “I think I’ll head to Cranston and look for Frank and his goons. I need a good fight…to kick some righteous ass.”

As Ben drove toward Route 3 he passed a neighborhood and saw two young girls walking down the sidewalk. They both wore the shortest of shorts, revealing long, thin legs, plus camisole tops that loudly declared ‘no bra necessary.’ His stomach fluttered in an anticipated way. On the pretense of being lost he pulled over next to the girls and struck up a conversation. Their directions were predictably confusing but that was of no consequence to Ben. He mentioned that he was hungry and asked where the nearest McDonald’s was. They knew that answer.

“I’ll buy you both a burger and Coke if you show me where it is.”

One girl didn’t want to get into the car but the other said, “C’mon, he won’t hurt us. I’m hungry…let’s go.”

His stomach fluttered like he swallowed a covey of quail while a roar like rushing water assaulted his sense of hearing. As they climbed into his car he realized how achingly erect he was, and he knew he was doomed. Unlike men he’d served with in the Army, his ailments were invisible yet they would just as surely be his demise.

Donna M.

You can e-mail me at [email protected]

All feedback is welcome!

Click here to return to my story site