LIKED - A Dark Romance Novel (Story of Dangerous Obsession and Lust) (5 page)

Gia stifled a smile. She had an idea of what “movies” he was referring
to. She used her elbows to push her breasts together and wrapped them around
him. He wasn’t long enough to get to her mouth like Don was. She spit down
between her breasts when she started feeling the friction. She started to feel
guilty about what she was doing, then she started thinking about half pay in PayPal
and the feelings of guilt melted into something more naughty and secretive. She
couldn’t come up with a word for the mix of emotions inside her. She thought
about the phrase “soul friction,” but she didn’t know where it had come from.

His voice shook as he finally said, “Okay. Okay. Get up on the bed. On
the bed.”

He was exuding excitement and a boyish glee at getting laid more than he
was giving off the vibe of the mysterious stranger. Gia was wet, so it was
working for her whatever it was. As good as cotton heart panties, she thought.

He climbed up on top of her. His knee went into her thigh and she hissed.
He widened his legs and mumbled behind the mask. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” Gia said. “Just fuck me.”

He shifted around and she felt the head of his cock sliding around her.
He couldn’t see inside the mask. She reached down and guided him in. He gave a
shuddering breath and turned his masked face to the side as his body shook.

“Do you want me to wear a condom?” His voice came small again – out of
character.

“You are already in. We can stop, if you want, but I’ve wanted to be good
and fucked for some time.”

He started pumping into her. His braided belt from his open pants jingled
in a way that made her think about Christmas. He was clothed and she was naked
which made her feel naughty and exposed even if she ignored the strange mask. More
soul friction. “How do you spit on a soul?” She wondered. His pace increased.

“Get up on your hands and knees.” The sharp voice behind the mask was
back. “Do it now.”

He slid out and she flipped over like he had ordered and flared her ass
for him. He worked his manhood around blindly again and she reached back
between her legs to help him, but he found the spot and slid all the way in. He
grabbed her hips and started slapping into her from behind. She began backing
into him and his rhythm went off pattern.

She wondered if he would cum inside her or on her. She was curious to
see. It had been enjoyable, but she hadn’t cum. The entire thing was
exhilarating at first, but the actual sex had been rather vanilla.

He pulled out and she thought he had chosen to cum on her ass. He must
have watched enough porn and was getting his chance to cum on a willing woman
for real just like in the “movies.”

Jack turned to the side and stroked himself as thick strings of ejaculate
shook off the end of his cock onto her carpet. She stared over her shoulder
with her bare ass still up in the air toward him. She wasn’t sure why it
bothered her to see that happen aside from the fact that a stranger in an owl
mask jerking off on her floor was inherently disturbing anyway. Gia thought that
him cumming on her wasn’t exactly better than the carpet except that she
already had so much trouble keeping her apartment clean.

She rolled to her side naked on her bed and curled up facing him as he
finished up and shook off the last bit from his shrinking cock. He coughed
twice inside the mask and started zipping up. He refastened the braided belt
with practiced expertise. “Sorry … Sorry, I can clean that up before I go.”

“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. Did you have fun?”

He coughed again and pulled up the mask onto his sweaty hair. “Jesus, I
almost passed out in there. That was intense.”

She smiled and then frowned. He wasn’t looking at her, so she figured he
wouldn’t be insulted by the expression. It was a decent quickie with some odd
props. They would have to practice, if they wanted to get more comfortable with
their roles or maybe try something different. She furrowed her brow and
thought, am I thinking about doing this again? Really? She wondered not for the
first time whether Don might be fucking other girls at his house on the beach
while he wasn’t calling her and only paying half of what he owed. She couldn’t
imagine that he was refusing all blowjobs.

Jesus, what the hell did I just do? Gia licked her lips and shook her
head at the thought. She suddenly wanted a hot shower.

Jack cleared his throat and continued to stare down on the spot on the
floor where his cum stood out on the carpet in irregular designs. “What do you
see?” She thought. “Tell me about your mother.”

Jack said, “Um, I really need to go. I’ll call … I mean, message you some
time.”

“If you saw it on my page, would you like it, Jack?”

He blinked and looked up toward the open window. “What? What do you
mean?”

“It was a joke,” she said.

He nodded. “Right. I get it. If it’s okay, I’m going to use the door to
leave.”

She laughed. “Yeah, you can use the door. Sorry if I made things weird.”

“No, it was fine.” He turned away and opened the door to the bedroom.

“Ignore the mess,” she said.

He stopped and looked back at the spot on the floor. “What?”

“I meant my mess in the apartment on your way out.”

“Oh. Right. No problem.”

He stepped out of the bedroom.

She sat up on the bed and called. “Wait.”

Jack stopped with his back to her and she could see his every muscle
tense up. She had managed to be the first starlet to break and disturb her
stalker. He cleared his throat again and said, “Yes?”

“Can you do something for me before you go?”

“Yes. Okay.”

“Will you call my phone before you go? I can’t find it.”

Jack paused for a moment longer and then started fishing through the
pocket of his jeans with his back still toward her. “What’s your number?”

***

Another New Game

As she rode along in Susan’s Prius along the beach front road, Gia
deleted more messages from Jack. Giving him her number to help find her phone
was obviously a mistake. She wasn’t even reading the messages anymore and had
blocked him from calling from three phones already.

He must have taken a break from calling and texting because she hadn’t
heard from him once she took Uber up toward Don’s house. She deleted messages
without reading them.

She stopped on the last one. It read, “I just want to see you again, Gia.
You are important to me and we are good together. Please, let me be with you
again. I can make you happy. I know I can.”

Gia sighed and typed back, “I need you to leave me alone. These games are
over. We both need to move on. Stop contacting me, please.”

Gia sent the message and blocked yet another number. She knew it would do
no good. It would put a kink in her professional communications, but she would
probably need to get another number. Jack might get that too. He would probably
publish the texts. Don would see them just as Gia was trying to work things out
with him.

It wouldn’t be hard to paint Jack the Liker as a crazy stalker. Someone
probably knew how to authenticate texts, but she had sent no pictures, so she
might be able to go on denying it. Jack would probably lose it. She shouldn’t
have taken it to that level with him, she thought.

He knew where she lived and had been there once before. Even if she put
another lock on the window, the damn thing was made of glass and she knew her
neighbors saw nothing and heard nothing. She was going to have to move too it
seemed. She wouldn’t miss Onion Town, but still.

Don was taking her ring shopping today. Maybe she could talk him into
letting her move in too. She wouldn’t even bring up the other half of the movie
money he owed her.

Gia sighed and put her phone away. She was wearing jeans and a black tee
shirt and a ponytail just like Susan next to her. They could be old friends, if
they weren’t basically strangers. Don would probably complain that Gia should
have dressed better because there would be photographers.

“You seem popular,” Susan said.

Gia blinked. “What?”

“You deleted like a thousand messages. Someone likes you.”

Gia sniffed. “Yeah, a little too much, I think.”

Susan shrugged. “You haven’t made it in LA until someone is obsessed with
you.”

“Lucky me.” Gia shook her head. “I hope I’m not putting you out driving
this far.”

“I’m an Uber driver,” Susan said. “This is what I do. My day was wide
open, so I’m glad a call came in. When I saw it was you, I started to think
maybe you were my stalker.”

Gia laughed. “You finally made it, Susan.”

“Do you need me to take you anywhere else after we get to this house? I’m
open right now,” Susan said.

“No, Don has a car.”

Susan shook her head and squinted. Her ponytail whipped from side to
side. “Not that I’m trying to talk myself out of work, but why are you using
Uber, if he’s going to drive you around after you get there.”

Gia frowned and looked out her window away from the ocean. “Men are a
mystery, Susan, and Don Blackheart is chief among them.”

Susan hummed and then said, “Women are supposed to be the mystery. You
should make him chase you … just like whoever sent you all those messages.”

Gia sniffed. “Don will never be obsessed with me like that.”

“Not for nothing,” Susan said, “but you don’t have to settle for a guy
that doesn’t make you feel special. You don’t have to have him in your life …
not him specifically.”

Gia wiped at her eyes and gritted her teeth. She cleared her throat a
couple times as her nose burned with the threat of tears. Gia finally said,
“Thanks, but I’m kind of used to my way of making mistakes.”

They rode in silence until Susan pulled up to the curb in front of Don’s
gate. A fence around a beach house always seemed like a bit much to Gia. The
lawn inside the fence was a ridiculous shade of green that didn’t look remotely
natural. If he had that color of grass in one of his movies, Don would be
screaming at art direction. He had had his lawn painted to cover over the dead
grass from the drought and water restrictions. It was just one more fake thing
in their lives.

“Do you want me to wait?” Susan asked.

“No.” Gia opened the car door. “I’m good.”

“You just seemed unsure. If you want me to wait a while for you just in
case, I don’t mind.”

Gia smiled. “No. Really. I’m good. Thanks.”

***

She stepped out and closed the door. She walked around the back of
Susan’s car and punched in the code at the gate. Out of the corner of her eye,
Gia saw that Susan seemed to be waiting anyway. The only person that cared
about her well-being was an Uber driver that she barely knew.

When Gia pulled the gate, it came open with no resistance. The magnet
lock had not even been engaged. She looked back with the gate in her hand and
saw the Prius was gone. Those things were particularly sneaky cars. Gia
wondered why they weren’t used more in horror movies for that reason. Maybe a
psycho villain driving a Prius was a hard sell.

Gia stepped in and let the gate bang closed with a harsh rattle. It
bounced a couple times as the magnet would still not engage.

“A gate and lock don’t do you much good, if they don’t work,” Gia said to
the weirdly green lawn.

She wondered if any of his neighbors had reported Don to the police for
watering. Or if they might have called the police because his lawn looked like
the after effects on an alien attack.

As Gia walked up the winding path through the islands of tropical plants,
she said, “Officer, the entire yard is covered in alien blood. Send everyone.
Quick!”

Her phone beeped as she reached the front stoop. The door to the house
was sitting ajar. Gia frowned. Maybe Don had seen her and opened it to let her
in and disabled the gate lock too?

Her phone beeped again.

Gia took it out and saw two messages from an unknown number. She was
going to put her phone away, but then opened them. The first read: “I hope you
like what I did for you.”

Gia sighed and shook her head. “Fucking Jack. How many phones do you
have?”

She swallowed and looked up at the door wondering if Don could have heard
her. She looked back down and opened the second message: “I’m the ONLY one for
you. – Jack the Liker.”

Gia erased the messages and blocked the number without responding.

She climbed the stairs with the phone still in her hand and pushed open
the door. The door thumped against the table behind it in the foyer and shards
of broken mirror dumped onto the floor at her feet.

Gia screamed.

She shook her hands in the air and said, “Oh, Jesus, Don, I’m sorry. I
don’t know how that happened.”

The frame of the mirror still hung on the wall empty except for the
cardboard backing. The table was pulled out at an angle which was why the door
had hit it when she pushed it open. A vase was broken on the floor in the open
space behind the table. Water, flowers, and marbles lay washed out on the
hardwood. Shards from the rest of the mirror laid on top of the table.

Gia walked inside a few more steps with her shoes splashing in the foyer.
“Don?”

The leather couch was carved open and stuffing was spread white across
the room. The wide screen TV was smashed and torn off the wall.

Two of the glass back doors leading to the patio overlooking the beach
were shattered. One was broken with the glass on the floor on the inside; the
other was shattered outward. Gia could see and hear people walking and playing
on the beach and in the ocean beyond like nothing had happened. They weren’t
even looking at the house.

People would report their neighbors watering their lawns, but didn’t
notice a break in.

Gia took a couple more steps inside past the foyer. She said, “Why would
they break one door to get in and then smash their way out a different one to
leave?”

This is not a movie set, Gia thought to herself, get the hell out of
here. Now!

She saw blood in the glass from both doors and she took another step. Gia
looked into the kitchen. There were cabinets opened and plates smashed on the
tile. The blood was thick through the kitchen and looked like it had been
painted on the floor from counter to counter and from stove to refrigerator. It
was smeared on the broken pieces of plate too.

She thought, Don never cooked in here anyway.

Gia saw multiple handprints and shoe tracks through the blood. A set of
bloody tracks led out from the kitchen toward the stairs which led up to the
bedroom.

Gia snapped back into herself and a scream escaped her throat. She wasn’t
using her diaphragm to support it, so it left her throat feeling scratchy.

She turned and ran back through the foyer. Her foot rolled on a marble in
the water. Gia dropped her phone in the water and broken mirror, but kept her
feet under her. She ran outside and back up the winding path.

“Help! Help me, someone. Susan! Help.”

She stopped as soon as she could see the gate and empty street beyond.
There was no one there to help. She needed to call the police.

“My phone.”

She turned and looked back toward the house. She saw her own dark, wet
foot prints leading up the winding path to where she stood. The shoeprints
slowly evaporating in the sun.

“It’s too bright for a murder scene,” she whispered. “It looks like we’re
shooting a tampon commercial.”

She swallowed and thought, I have to go get my phone and call the police.
There’s no one else around to help. His neighbors are less available than the
ones in my trashy apartment. They won’t even answer the gate, if I buzz asking
for help. The people on the beach won’t have phones. Maybe. I have to go back
and get my phone …

“That’s how they get you,” Gia said aloud.

The bag dropped over her head plunging her into darkness. As she was
pulled backward and felt her shoes sliding through Don’s weird grass, she
looked up still seeing the sun through the gridded material of the bag over her
head.

She screamed until her throat burned and her voice gave out.

Her feet were on concrete again and she tumbled over a metal bumper onto
the ribbed, metal floor of a van or truck. She reached for the bag, but then
gloved hands grabbed her wrists and pulled them behind her back. Her shoulder
and one of her elbows crackled at the joints and she felt shots of pain up
through her arms. She heard the rip of tape from a roll.

As the sticky tape wrapped her wrists behind her back and she couldn’t
see or feel the sun anymore, she thought, it doesn’t look like a tampon
commercial now.

***