Kyle also began to spend less time with us, at least as a sex partner. Without Kyle milling around or joining in, the sex began to feel more intimate than ever before. In fact, it became almost unbearable subterfuge, to play the affectionate girlfriend in public where it was all a lie, and then later, in the deepest, most honest moments of intimacy, pretend I didn't care about him at all.
Pretend. I pretended. I acted. It was all a total lie. I was in love with Jeremy Gray. But I pretended I wasn't, and he pretended I wasn't. Anyway, I kept reminding myself that one day it was going to end.
We left Portugal the next to last week of December to spend the holidays with Jeremy's family in the mountains of North Carolina. Jeremy got mad when I tried to beg off, when I asked to stay in the villa until he returned. He wouldn't even consider it.
"You stay with me," he said. "That's what I pay you for."
But I didn't know how I would handle this meeting. I didn't want to handle it. While Jeremy drove us to his parents' house, I tried to ferret out more information about how I should act, what to expect, but he was in a terrible mood.
It was late, we were both tired, and we drove on a winding road that made my stomach turn. We climbed and climbed in the dark until my ears popped and I thought his parents must live at the crest of a mountain. He'd rented a car with a manual transmission, and now I saw why. I could never have maneuvered these hills and slopes.
Something about watching him drive aroused me. He drove like he made love, recklessly but with breathtaking skill. I couldn't stop watching him shift gears as he coaxed the car up and down the steep hills. But of course, Jeremy Gray could do anything and everything well. That was the appeal.
"Jeremy," I finally asked. "Do your parents know?"
"Know?"
"Know what I am to you?"
He frowned. The muscles in his forearm bunched as he downshifted around a tight corner.
"They think you're my girlfriend, and that's how you'll act. And they'll practically smother you with excitement and affection in hopes that finally I've met a girl who'll make me settle down." He looked over at me in my conservative, girl-next-door cardigan. "They'll go wild for you. You're the least Hollywood girl I've ever brought home."
"So you bring all your girls home?" I made no effort to disguise the sarcasm in my voice.
"I spend every Christmas here in the mountains, so yes, I've brought a few. And you should know"-he looked, for the first time I could remember, deeply embarrassed-"my parents are very old-fashioned and religious, so you'll have to sleep in your own room the next couple of nights."
I burst out laughing. I couldn't help it. Jeremy Gray, the product of a conservative and religious home.
"What's so funny?" He shifted with a little more force than necessary.
"It's just funny. How do you not find it funny?"
"Because it's my fucking life."
"Yeah, well, we all have fucked-up lives," I said. "I just can't believe you ever set foot in a church, much less were raised by religious people."
"What? I'm not that evil. No more so than you."
I snorted. "Whatever."
"Don't make me pull the car over. It's really late."
I snorted again, which in hindsight was a mistake. He pulled over and yanked me out. He bent me over the trunk of the car so my feet dangled at least two feet above the road.
"What if a car comes?" I asked as he unbuttoned my jeans and pulled them down to my knees, along with my panties.
"I guess they'll see me beating your ass." He tugged the belt from his pants and doubled it over. "Don't bother to count. I'll stop when I feel like it."
"Are you mad, Jeremy? Because you always say you don't want to hurt me in anger-Ouch!"
"I'm not mad," he said. "I'm irritated, and you're acting like a brat."
"Ouch. Ouch! I won't even be able to sit down at your parents' house!"
"Yes, that's what I hope for."
The chilled metal of the car against my skin froze my front while my backside was absolutely red-hot. I counted up to twenty in my head before I gave up and started to beg.
"Please, please, stop. I'm sorry! My ass is on fire!"
"I said I would stop when I felt like it."
I buried my face in my arms, trying with all my strength not to reach back and shield myself, or jump off the trunk of the car and run. I'd probably go tumbling down the side of the mountain and be found frozen in a heap at the bottom with my red, bruised ass exposed. Of all the appropriate ways to die...
"Jeremy, you're killing me!" He finally stopped when I started to cry, but he didn't let me down, just put his hand on my lower back and held me still while he undid himself.
"You may find my life funny," he said, thrusting deep inside me, "but you of all people are in no position to judge."
"I was joking, Jeremy." I sniffled. "Why have you been so mad all day?"
"Because I get tired of the lies. Of living this farce."
"Then why don't you stop lying?" I could barely get the words out as he pummeled me with forceful thrusts.
I grunted as he pulled out of me and pressed his cock against my ass. He entered me all the time this way now, with only the lube from my pussy. I clenched against the pain, then willed myself to subdue the protective impulse. He slapped me lightly.
"Open. I want to fuck your ass."
"Yes, Jeremy."
He eased the head of his cock in, then waited for me to relax before thrusting the rest of the way inside. I moaned. I couldn't help it. It was a little painful, as always, but one hundred percent better than the pain of his belt.
"Jeremy." I gasped to the rhythm of his fucking. "If you're tired of the lying, why don't you just stop?"
"Hush. Let me fuck you. And don't you come, you little fuck slut. I don't want you to come."
Jesus, I'd really ticked him off.
"Yes, Jeremy."
Yes yes yes, whatever you say.
Not only did he not let me come, but I had to ride the rest of the way up the mountain with my pants around my knees, my bare, sore ass on the scratchy rental-car seat.
Chapter Sixteen.
Lies *
Nervous, sore, ass-fucked, horny.
It gave me great pleasure to introduce her to my parents that way. It would have been better to have harnessed her under her jeans with dildos in her pussy and her ass, but I hadn't thought that far ahead.
If I had to lie, if I had to lie about everything, let me lie about her too. Let me make her base and dirty instead of the beautiful, intelligent girl she truly was.
As they greeted her with hugs and exclamations, I wanted to yell, She's just my whore. I'm too worthless and sick to deserve anything more of her. But I didn't. I just hugged and exclaimed too. All the other girls had been painfully out of place here, but she was so perfect, it hurt.
It hurt. Nell shifted on the sofa as my mother brought tea and cookies. I watched her. I'd made her hurt.
Lately I wanted to hurt her all the time. Hurt her the way that she hurt me. Hurt her so she would turn on me and I wouldn't ache anymore over how perfect she was. How much would it take to drive her away from me, far away from me, where she ought to be? Nothing so far had worked, but to take things further, to really hurt her to the point she would leave...it was too difficult. It was a game of chicken I couldn't and wouldn't play.
At least not yet.
My hand went to the pocket of my jacket, to the small box there, the box I'd been carrying since a week ago when I'd come up with a ridiculously stupid idea. It had been such a ridiculously stupid idea that I'd called Martin to run my stupidity past him first.
"Martin, about the stalker. Do you think...? I mean... I wonder how it might affect her if I were to get engaged to someone?"
"Engaged? Like, to be married?"
I could already tell by the tone in his voice that he thought it was as ridiculous as I did.
"I mean, it might put her off, don't you think?"
"Or make her even angrier at Nell," Martin said. "Leslie Gray thinks she's your wife."
"I know, I know. But maybe getting engaged to someone else would make her reconsider that."
Martin was silent a long time.
"So, you mean...get engaged to Nell."
"Yes," I said, my voice tight.
"Well, do you... I mean...are you talking about really getting engaged to Nell, or...?"
"I mean, we would really get engaged. I got a ring."
"Jeremy, what I'm asking is, would you be getting engaged for appearances, or do you...? Are you...? Do you really intend to make her your wife?"
I snorted. "Do I have to think that far ahead? She probably wouldn't have me anyway, so no. I mean, you know. I just want to give her a ring. Let her wear it for a while."
Martin sighed. "Are you sure she would understand a gesture like that? Because I'm not sure it makes sense to me. You have to tread very carefully with things like engagement rings and proposals. You have to honestly explain-"
"Explain what? She works for me. She plays my girlfriend. Now she can play my wife."
"You mean your fiancee."
"Right. My fiancee. Whatever."
He sighed again. I wished I hadn't said anything to him at all.
"Listen, Jeremy, you need to think this through. Playing a girlfriend is one thing. Wearing someone's ring is something else altogether. Especially when..."
"When what?"
"When you're both so emotionally involved already as it is."
"I'm not... We're not emotionally involved. I mean, we've been keeping things professional."
"Have you?"
Fucker.
"Yes," I said. "Actually we have. Anyway, I just thought it might get this crazy stalker lady off my back."
"I don't know. I think it might inflame her more. We should talk to the case worker at the police department first, get his opinion. He would probably know better what might play out from a situation like this. You certainly don't want to endanger Nell even further-"
"No, of course I don't want to fucking endanger Nell!"
He fell silent. Now I was the one who sighed. Martin cleared his throat.
"Jeremy. Listen. I've known you for a long time. I've known a lot of your girls. I'm not exactly sure where you're taking this. I can't tell where your mind's at. Perhaps worse, I'm not sure you know where your mind's at. So until you know, I'm advising you not to do anything extreme. Don't do anything without thinking things through and without being brutally honest with yourself first. If you don't know why you're doing this, or what outcome you want, it would be better to just-"
"God, it was just an idea. Don't flip out and go all mental-health counselor on me."
Fuck Martin anyway, and fuck the little fuck at the police department who called me a couple of days later to insist it was a very bad idea.
If I wanted to propose to my fake girlfriend on Christmas morning in front of my whole family, then I fucking would. Hell, my parents would be beside themselves with happiness. Even now they were both beaming at her like she was the Madonna herself. I guess since she was the first girl I'd ever brought home who might remotely be considered wife material.
Wife material. I really didn't want her for my wife. I just thought it might be a good idea for the stalker thing. And anyway, it would be fun to pretend to be engaged to her.
My parents were grilling her about her hometown, her parents, her career.
"I'm a personal assistant," she said with a straight face over her plate of cookies. She didn't eat one of them. "I like to help people, I guess."
"She's helped me on this trip, that's for sure," I chimed in with a subtle wink that had her blushing and glaring at me.
"And were you raised with a religion, dear?" my mother asked with a hopeful note in her voice.
"Nell studies mythology," I said. "She's too polite to tell you this, but she actually believes the Bible is just another book of myths."