On the Run (Vagabonds #1) Read online

  So, as Decker’s hands began moving up my back underneath my shirt, I grabbed it and tugged it up. We had to part for me to pull it over my head, but he bore down on me with more vigor than before. But then he followed suit, pulling his shirt over his head, and I touched the skin of his chest with my hands. I was excited, but I noticed that my fingertips were starting to feel a little numb. Damn. I really shouldn’t have drunk that much wine.

  I felt good, though—kind of floaty. So floaty, though, that I lost track of where I was and what I was doing, and before I knew it, Decker and I were both completely naked, lying in bed, with his body on top of mine. My legs were wrapped around him, and he was asking me if I was ready.

  Oh. I could feel his manhood rubbing against me. Hell, yes. I was more than ready. I didn’t think to ask if he had a condom on. All I knew was that I wanted to know what sex felt like and I wanted to lose my virginity. I ground myself against him and whispered yes in his ear. He brought his lips on mine and began to enter me.

  And then it was like I hadn’t had a thing to drink. The discomfort—no, not discomfort; pain!—brought me up front and center into the here and now. The floaty feeling was long past. I swallowed and gasped and, I realized in retrospect, let out a yelp of pain, but more than that, I noticed that my fingers were digging into his shoulders, pushing him down as if I could stop his dick from skewering me just by shoving against him. “Oh, God, does that hurt?”

  There was no lying. “Yeah.”

  He was paused, not pushing or forcing, his dick rock hard but not ripping through me. “I’m not sure what I should do.”

  I sucked down as large a breath as I could with him on top of me. “Just give me a minute.” I had to steel myself somehow, find a way to make it through. This had to happen sometime, and I’d known it would be uncomfortable. After all, my mom had, when she’d given me the birds-and-bees speech, told me I had a hymen, and it would have to be penetrated the first time I had intercourse.

  I was just wishing the wine had taken all the pain away. I held my hands tightly on Decker’s shoulders, squeezing him, begging him with my touch to not move…but I knew I’d have to let go at some point. So I closed my eyes and clenched my teeth and then, through tight lips, said, “Okay, just do it fast.”

  His voice was soft. “You sure?”

  I pursed my lips and nodded as well as I could with my head pressed into the pillow. He consumed my mouth in a kiss—to distract me, I think. Then he drove himself through that barrier down below that was part of the reason, I knew, why this first time was so painful. My fingers dug even harder into his shoulders, and I don’t know that it helped me deal with the ripping sensation, but I was convinced that it did.

  Still…I managed to keep my mouth shut.

  Decker breathed, “You okay?” but, honestly, he was lost to me. Even though he was moving slowly, he was pumping now, the friction inside me building him to crescendo, one I’d witnessed many a time before with this boy. Enough pumping action and he’d feel good in no time.

  I only hoped he went quickly this go round.

  Fortunately, for my poor, aching vagina, he did. I was just as nervous about him pulling out as I’d been about everything leading up to it. But, as his breathing slowed, he kissed my neck and mumbled something before drifting off to sleep, the dead weight of his body crushing my chest.

  I tried waking him up by whispering to him, but no dice. He was out cold. I didn’t know if that meant I should try shoving him off me or just wait.

  I decided to wait.

  And, lying there, sore and unable to take a deep breath, I realized a big part of myself was thrilled that I was no longer a virgin. I just wished I’d been able to enjoy it.

  I knew it would get better. There wouldn’t be many kids born on this planet if it didn’t get better. In fact, I knew it would even go beyond—not only better but maybe even pleasurable. That was what I wanted to experience. I knew that time was ahead, and I was pretty sure my next time wouldn’t hurt—or if it did, it wouldn’t hurt as much.

  Unfortunately, the ache I was feeling now was such that I couldn’t drift asleep like my boyfriend had been able to. I’d heard losing their load made guys sleepy, but this was crazy, and I couldn’t take lying there motionless anymore. I couldn’t really wriggle underneath him, but I started patting him on the back. He didn’t respond, so my patting got a little more aggressive, and the entire time, I was also saying his name, getting a little louder as time went on.

  He finally woke up.

  “Decker, could you get off me, please?”

  “Oh, shit. Sorry.” In just seconds, he rolled off me and withdrew at the same time, but I needn’t have worried about it hurting when he pulled out. His dick was now soft and smaller and, while it caused slight discomfort, it was ultimately a relief. Once on his back, he began fumbling around with the condom and tossed it in the trashcan beside my bed, but I was focused on relaxing.

  Once he was positioned beside me, he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close to his chest. That was a little strange.

  And it hurt to move, so I vowed not to anymore if I could help it.

  He kissed my forehead, his arms wound around me, and fell asleep again within seconds. I decided to try. Now that I could breathe and move, I felt great relief, and I let my head rest on the pillow. I closed my eyes, wondering if Decker had permission to spend the night away from home, but I wasn’t going to worry about it. He was a big boy and, even if he got in trouble, I was sure he’d think it was worth it, judging by the peaceful look on his face.

  But there I was, hurting, a little wistful, and bored out of my fucking mind. I wasn’t used to sharing a bed with anyone else, so that alone made it next to impossible for me to fall asleep. I couldn’t even play any music. I usually had something playing as I drifted off to sleep—not loud enough to bother my parents but enough that I could focus on that instead of the worries that might threaten to keep me up all hours.

  And yet, I fell asleep at some point…but I didn’t dream.

  * * *

  I woke up several hours later to the sound of a woman giggling. No, not just any woman.

  My mother.

  It took me a moment to realize that she was not alone. There was a man with her. In fact, I think he was the reason she was giggling.

  Uh, definitely the reason. I could tell because I would hear a low murmur followed by mom’s tittering. Until that evening, I’d always heard my mother emit a raucous laugh, one that was hearty and full of life. Tonight, she was obviously flirting, and I found that quite disconcerting—not because my mother didn’t deserve happiness, but because I wasn’t used to it. That and I was angry with my parents for not even making an effort to get back together. I found that infuriating and so her inane girlish noises made me angry to the core.

  Decker woke up shortly after I heard my mom’s bedroom door close with a slam. “What’s going on?” he asked. A little too loudly.

  I shushed him and then whispered, “I have no fucking idea. I think that’s my mom.” Hell, no. I knew. But part of me wanted to deny it, wanted to pretend I was hearing things—or that maybe someone broke into the house, someone who was imitating my mother.

  He was quieter this time when he asked, “So what’s going on?”

  “I already told you—I don’t know.” I started to get up so I could move to the door and press my ear to it, but my crotch screamed at me to stay put. Holy shit. I wasn’t feeling any better than I had earlier when I fell asleep.

  I must have gasped or made some other noise that gave me away, because Decker asked, “Are you all right?”

  I swallowed. “Yeah.” I’d be okay, but I felt like such a baby right now.

  It was dark in my room, but there were still two candles lit so that there was a glow, enough that we could see each other. He touched the bottom of my chin with his finger, urging me to lift my face, and he gently touched my lips with his. “Will you be okay if I go? I—”

 
Yeah, I knew his parents weren’t too strict, but I also knew enough about them that they weren’t huge fans of me, and I figured they wouldn’t exactly be thrilled if they knew what we’d just done. I’d figured he wouldn’t be able to stay the night even before we’d even started. “Yeah.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.” I was now more concerned with my mother than my own pain and even my own relationship. It was like she and my dad had been taken over by pod people. Their behavior was way more than anything I could have ever predicted.

  I lifted myself up and sucked in a sharp breath of air as a wave of pain shot through my underside. “Don't get up,” Decker said. “Call you tomorrow?”

  “Yeah.” I didn’t know what else to say. He pulled me close and kissed me once more before standing up and getting dressed. It still hurt to move, but I wasn’t going to just lie there. I gritted my teeth and slid to the edge of the bed. He dressed in silence and, when he was tying his second Converse, I said, “Let me walk you out.”

  “Okay. That’d be nice.”

  I found my tiny blue terrycloth robe and slid it over my shoulders before standing up and taking his hand. Okay, so there was a fresh ache, but it wasn’t so bad. I could tell I was healing, but it would be a day or so before I felt one-hundred percent. If I hadn’t been stressing about my mom, I might have smiled because I was no longer a virgin—which meant I was a woman. That was my thinking at the time, at any rate.

  When we got to my bedroom door, I opened it a crack and peeked out into the hallway. I hadn’t expected anything, but I was feeling a little paranoid after hearing my mom giggle like one of my friends. The hall was empty, though, so we walked out of my room.

  Also uncharacteristic of my mother was the fact that she’d left all the lights on—the hall light, I noticed right away, but then, as we walked down the stairs, I saw the living room lights on. Either mom planned to be back down here right away or…she was a little distracted and didn’t care at the moment. I was betting on the latter.

  But I didn’t say a word as we finished our trek down the stairs, and Decker understood that we needed to be silent. We’d never discussed what would happen after. We’d planned out the details before, making sure we had the time alone, deciding who would do what (for instance, Decker was on condom duty), and even considering alternatives in case our plans fell through. But in all those discussions, we never talked about what to do after.

  That idea was rattling around in my head, and it juxtaposed itself against my parents’ present situation. Even though they had been a spontaneous couple, they’d still planned things out together, from their intimate wedding ceremony to their life on the road, and I knew that, because I’d heard more than once about all the thought and details that had gone behind my mother’s pregnancy and childbirth. But, as Decker and I crossed the living room to the front door, it became painfully clear to me that there was one thing my mother and father hadn’t discussed, hadn’t planned for, hadn’t worked out in excruciating detail: the possibility that they would no longer be together.

  I felt a fresh surge of hate for first my father, because he’d been the catalyst. I didn’t know the details aside from the blowjob comment my mother had made the night dad had left, and I didn’t want to know. I was afraid the tiny brush strokes would fuel the anger and loathing I already couldn’t let go of.

  But I wasn’t happy with my mom, either. If she was doing what I thought she was doing, I felt like she was behaving like a child. She wasn’t concerned about if I could hear her or what ideas I could have. At the time, I didn’t consider that she might have needs (whether wanting sex or companionship or if she had a more complex urge for retribution or a “tit for tat” response); instead, I was merely upset that she had dragged someone to our house instead of fucking him elsewhere.

  Never mind that I’d just done the same myself.

  In all fairness, though, Decker and I had been seeing each other for a while—and I didn’t have impressionable others I was caring for.

  I kissed Decker goodbye and turned off the porch light once I saw his truck lights switch on so he could drive down the street. Even in my angry haze, I wondered in the back of my mind if my mother had noted that Decker was here. Then I pondered if she had even known what vehicle he drove and figured it was a bit of a crap shoot. Mom had been pretty self-absorbed since she’d demanded dad leave…and that was why I hadn’t even talked to her about Decker much.

  She didn’t need to know.

  In spite of all my judgment and my hurt, I walked back up the stairs with two thoughts in mind. The first was an overall consuming one, the one where I felt betrayed by my parents, something I would get over down the road as I realized they were only human.

  The second was that sex was a tool and a weapon. As I lay down on my bed and heard the sounds of my mother reaching climax, I focused on the fact that my mother was using sex to make herself feel better—or, perhaps, to move on. She needed to feel connected to and loved by (even if temporarily) someone else and, thus, sex was a tool to accomplish that. But it was also a weapon. By having sex with another man, she could figuratively stab my father in the heart. She was retaliating—tit for tat, as I’d thought earlier. I knew dad loved mom even though he’d been a shit, and having sex with another man (even though dad cheated too) was going to crush him.

  Yeah…sex was a weapon. I was wrapping my head around that idea as my dreamy brain tossed it around and filed it away for future use.

  Chapter Ten

  DECKER HAD SOME shit going on all weekend long, something out of town with his parents, so I drowned all my thoughts into my guitar. I had some Judas Priest songs I wanted to learn anyway, so his absence gave me the perfect opportunity.

  I’d have to face my mom eventually, though, and I wouldn’t be able to prepare for that conversation, no matter how hard I tried. She seemed unpredictable now, and so I didn’t know what to expect.

  I made a pot of coffee (yes, I’d started young), grabbed a cup, and took it up to my bedroom. I played my guitar unplugged so I could hear the tune but, without the amp, my mom wouldn’t be awakened. About ten o’clock, though, I heard her come out of her room and go to the bathroom. I knew she was sans man, because I’d heard her see him out the door the night before. I’d had a hard time drifting off due to my aches and pains. Today, I felt better physically, but emotionally—parent-wise, at any rate—I was more fucked up than ever.

  So I worked through some riffs and my coffee cup was drained, but no way in hell was I going back out there, away from the shelter of my bedroom. Unfortunately, after about another half hour, there was a light knock on my door. I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t heard it. I sighed before answering. “Yeah?”

  Mom’s voice was soft. “Mind if I come in?”

  What would she have said if I’d told her I did mind? “No.”

  She opened the door, but I didn’t look up. I continued the quiet fingering of strings, working out a complex solo. I kind of wished she would go away, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. So, instead, I decided to let her know I wasn’t too thrilled by giving her the silent treatment. I would be a passive-aggressive bitch and let her do all the talking without acknowledging a word she said.

  She sat next to me on the bed. “What are you playing?”

  So much for not talking. She knew my weaknesses better than I. However, she didn’t count on my inner snatch surfacing. “What’s it sound like?”

  She didn’t miss a beat. “Old school Judas Priest.”

  Impressive, especially because my mother was no metalhead. But I wasn’t going to say that out loud. Instead, I gave one small nod and kept picking at the strings with my right hand.

  When I started playing the same section of song over, though, the jig was up. “Let’s talk, Ky.” I let a breath of air out my nose and closed my eyes. I kept my hands still, though, indicating that I was listening…but she wasn’t having any of it. “Look at me.”

  I couldn’t hel
p myself. And, when I saw her, my mother was the same beautiful woman she’d always been. She didn’t look like that pathetic creature of a couple of weeks earlier nor did she look like some sex-crazed slut. She looked like the lovely mother who’d nurtured and cared for me my entire life.

  And then I felt like the asshole I was.

  The fact that my father had fucked around on her wasn’t her fault (or, if it was, it was something that wasn’t readily apparent to me)…and that she’d loved him so much that his cheating on her had ripped her heart out of her chest only spoke testaments about how deep her love went—and she felt the same way about me…so that I had been a heartless cunt to her for the past half a month rained guilt on me faster than flies land on fresh shit. I felt my lower lip quiver, and I blinked. A sting jabbed at my nose as my eyes filled with water. But no way in hell was I going to let that damn tear fall.

  That was okay. It was enough for my mother to see that I too cared. And she shed some tears for both of us. She brushed a lock of hair away from my face. “Oh, sweetheart. I know it must be confusing for you right now…and I’m sorry.”

  I found my voice and spoke. “Why are you sorry, mom? Dad’s the one who should be sorry. I wanna rip his fucking balls off.”

  Mom recognized that I’d just cursed, and it wasn’t mild, yet she’d never called me on it—part of her free-spirited approach to parenting was letting me be my own person. She blinked at the strong words, though, before answering. “Honey, don’t be angry with your father. He was tempted by some floozy. He’ll be home when he’s ready.”

  I couldn’t help the crack in my voice and had no idea there was even more emotion there until I spoke. I myself felt personally shit on by his actions. “What? You’re planning to take him back?”