Marcus (Heartbreakers & Troublemakers Book 5) Read online

  I wanted to see her, one of my positive coping mechanisms. The thing with frustration was you could fuck it out of you. The house had couches, right? There was definitely a floor at least. It was five in the evening—too early to try to pick someone up at a bar. I still felt like I was making up for all the pussy I couldn’t get when I was locked up.

  I had been asking her to let me come over for weeks. She just had to make sure there were no nanny cams first. She was about ninety percent sure that we were good. I could come over. It was over in Morningside Heights, near her campus. I knew where it was; I had picked her up from there a couple of times, but I’d never been inside.

  “Hey, babe,” she said as she opened the door. I walked in and kissed her. I looked around the house. So this was it, huh? I wasn’t really expecting to see anything in particular when I got in. I was just expecting the place to look more… momish. The lady who lived there was a single mom, apparently. Jessie called her mom-boss. It was a nice place. Pretty spacious for New York, so you knew the rent was two thousand plus.

  More than one bedroom, real clean and pretty like. You could definitely tell it was a woman who lived there. On the floor in front of the television was a bunch of toys on a blanket which made it look like there was a kid who lived there.

  “How long will she be gone?” I asked walking around. One of the bedroom doors was closed—that was probably where the kid was. I opened the other door. There was nothing on the inside. There was a room, but it was empty. There was a dresser, but the walls were bare, and there was no other furniture in there.

  “She didn’t say, but she did say she’d be out late,” she said. I wondered for a second what Jessie did when she was alone here and the kid was asleep.

  Jessie seemed like the kind of girl who would have rolled with Manson back in the day. She loved music, and drugs and was down for anything. Fuck knows how she got a gig babysitting. She had been working for this woman for about a month now. The kid was a baby still, like fresh out of the oven; couldn’t walk, talk or anything. Just cry and shit itself.

  “Where’s the kid?” I asked.

  “I just put him down for bed,” she said seductively. She leaned up and kissed me. I cupped her ass and pulled her body into mine.

  “Does that mean we have to be quiet?” I asked.

  “Just not too loud,” she said. I paused.

  “Did you cook?” I asked, walking away from her into the kitchen.

  “No, mom-boss cooked. She said I could eat whatever I want. She’s a chef, and she tests recipes here sometimes.”

  There was one of those dishes my mom had used to make casseroles in on the counter except it didn’t have casserole in it. It had salmon in it. These thick salmon steaks—was it still called steak if it was fish?

  “What is that?” I asked. I wasn’t hungry, but I could eat. It smelled fucking great. I pulled the drawers open looking for a fork. The pieces of fish had this crust or something on them. I cut a piece off and ate it. “Damn, this is great. Have you had some?” I asked, eating another mouthful.

  “Marc, I didn’t tell you to come here so you could eat all my boss’s food,” she said.

  “It’s really good. You should try it,” I said to her. She tilted her head a little and then pulled her top off right over her head. I watched her reach behind her and take her bra off.

  “I’m more interested in dessert,” she said. She walked over to me and started unbuttoning my pants. I put the fork down and turned so my back was against the counter. She sank to her knees in front of me and got my cock out, jerking it in one hand.

  She kept jerking it at the base as she sucked on the head. Her hand wrapped around my balls, and she cupped them as she swallowed my cock down her throat. I held her head steady, fucking her mouth. She was a champ. She could suck dick in her sleep. She sucked dick like she got paid to do it.

  Sex. Not even sex, just someone with an open mouth and enthusiasm; you learned to miss things like that when you were locked up. You could get anything in prison, but not pussy. Yeah, there were female correctional officers, but you couldn’t fuck them.

  I sped up, seeing if she could take it. I was close.

  “Jessica?”

  I turned my head to where the voice had come from because there was no way Jess could have said it with my cock in her throat. She must have done the same thing because she wasn’t on the floor anymore suddenly. She was scrambling for her clothes, trying to cover herself up.

  There was a woman in the kitchen with us. Whenever Jess called the woman she babysat for mom-boss, I always pictured someone who looked more mom-like. Or at least like she had given birth.

  Mom-boss was a MILF. I was expecting some lady who frowned a lot who I wouldn’t want to fuck. She hardly looked older than Jess, and she was definitely younger than me. She looked like she was coming home from a date. She had makeup on, and this dress that was more than a little low cut; her cleavage was out. They were a pretty good size, and they were round. Sexy. She was sexy.

  “Jessica?” she said again.

  “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I thought…”

  “You thought I’d take longer to get back home?” she asked. “Wait for me in the living room. You,” she said, referring to me, “need to leave. Jessica isn’t supposed to have… guests.”

  I was going to put my cock back in my pants and pull them up, but I stopped. She wasn’t looking at my face. Her eyes were on my cock, staring at it. My still hard cock, which, maybe it was just because she was the only one in the room besides me, but was staying hard because I imagined her dropping to her knees and finishing what Jessie started. I wrapped my hand around my shaft and jerked it.

  “I would leave but you sort of interrupted Jessie before she could sort this out,” I said. “You could at least let her finish, or… help me finish.”

  Her cheeks turned as red as her lipstick, and her mouth dropped open.

  “A little wider than that, babe. What’s the matter, bigger than you’re used to?”

  “Out! Get out right now before I call the cops,” she said. She stomped out of the room, leaving me alone in the kitchen.

  Well, guess she really was someone’s mother. I zipped my pants up and found her paying Jess in the living room. I wasn’t paying attention to what they were saying. Jess might have been getting fired just then, but I didn’t hear it. All I saw was the woman.

  Her kid was on her hip. I was never one of those guys who watched porn with pregnant women in it. I just never thought to look for it. It wasn’t obvious, like big tits, or anal. She wasn’t pregnant. She was holding her kid, but it was just one of those things that I never thought I’d find beautiful. As soon as I realized how beautiful I thought she looked with her baby, I wondered whether it was wrong to think that way.

  “Marcus?” I looked at Jessica at the door. “We need to leave.” I looked at… I didn’t even know her name. She was standing there patting her baby’s back.

  “Jaden’s father will be taking him for the weekend. I have work Sunday, but I won’t need you then. I’ll call you Sunday night and we can… talk,” she said to Jessie. She wrapped an arm around her baby protectively as I walked past her.

  “The salmon was delicious by the way,” I said. She gave me a tight-lipped smile before closing the door.

  We used the stairs on the way back down to the car. I had parked in the parking garage. Jessie used the trains, and she walked up to my car, climbing into the passenger seat before I could stop her.

  “Sorry she walked in on us,” she said, leaning back in her seat.

  “What? Oh, don’t worry about it. Did she fire you?”

  “I don’t know. She said she would call me. Fuck,” she said. “I’m so fucking fired.”

  “So that’s mom-boss, huh?”

  “Yeah. Her name’s Adina. She’s really cool, but I don’t know whether I can come back from this.”

  “Do you want me to talk to her?”

  “To say what?”
>
  Good question. Nothing really. Nothing about Jessie anyway. I just wanted to talk to her.

  “How fast can she find another sitter? You said she was single?”

  “Yeah, why?” she asked.

  “No reason.”

  “Oh my god, were you checking out mom-boss?”

  “You didn’t tell me she was that hot,” I said. “What’s her deal?”

  “She and the kid’s dad broke up. I’ve never met him, but he takes Jaden over the weekends. They’re totally still banging.”

  “Oh yeah? How do you know?”

  “She and I talk. She definitely wants to get back together with him. Every Thursday she goes to couples’ therapy with him. It’s serious.”

  Serious, huh? It couldn’t be that serious if she was living alone. The way she had her eyes on my cock, I’d say she probably hadn’t been getting any. That and she wanted some. I wasn’t a stranger to guys leaving their women when they were pregnant or had had a baby. I had seen it so many times, one of those times with my own father, but I still didn’t get it.

  What was her name? Adina? She was gorgeous. If her baby daddy had left, all that told me was that he was an idiot, and it was a good thing he was out of her life.

  “Do you want to come to my apartment?” she asked. She put her hand on my thigh. Oh yeah, we were supposed to fuck. I didn’t really want to anymore. Or maybe I didn’t really want to fuck her anymore. How many more questions could I ask her about Adina without being creepy?

  “Can’t. I have to go home. Jonny’s moving in soon. I should probably call my probation officer today too,” I said. Anything legal was a solid excuse even if it wasn’t all the way true. I wasn’t going to call my probation officer. It was nighttime; Jonas, my PO would skin me alive for calling him during his off hours. Jessie didn’t know that though.

  “Why? What happened?”

  “I didn’t get the job.”

  “Shit. What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “You said she was going to fire you, right? She’ll need a new sitter,” I said, only half joking.

  “Oh please. She’d hire a homeless man off the street before she hired you,” she said. Maybe true but my youngest brother had been born when I was fourteen. He was practically my kid. I could change a diaper; it wasn’t hard. I wasn’t going to try asking for Jessie’s job but shit, if push came to shove and I had to choose between shitty diapers and Rikers, the choice was pretty obvious.

  “If she doesn’t fire me, I might be able to talk to her,” she said.

  “About what?”

  “About you. She works at a catering company. They’re always looking for cater waiters. How steady are your hands?”

  A cater waiter. That sounded like hospitality and customer service, the two things nobody seemed to want to let me do. It also sounded like a job. I lost the ability to be picky about this shit the day I caught my first felony. For my ass, I hoped Jessie didn’t get fired.

  3

  Adina

  Dr. Menendez’s office had a love seat in front of her desk rather than two separate chairs for her patient—or in our case patients—to sit on. If you were alone, you’d be tempted to stretch out, but when you were there with someone, depending on who it was, you were tempted to try sliding yourself into the space where the side of the seat and the seat cushion met like change or the lost TV remote.

  It was probably that way on purpose—you know, what they said about body language in couples and all that. I didn’t have a doctorate in family and marriage studies like Dr. Menendez, but anyone with two eyes that worked could tell by looking at Jared and me on that seat that there were so many other places we would rather be.

  Our legs were touching, but that was just because his were spread so far apart. His arms were crossed across his chest, and he was slumped against the back of the seat like he was so bored and wanted to leave.

  I imagined we were likely Dr. Menendez’s worst patients. We would fight a lot, even on that love seat with her there. Our story was so trashy. I was pregnant when we had split up, but I hadn’t known till later. The reason why we broke up was because he had had sex with somebody who was not me. With her.

  In my version of events, he had cheated, but in his, he had just made a mistake. We had tried again because we had a baby coming but couldn’t make it work. We were off till Jaden was born when we were briefly on again. Little babies are magic; we forgot everything that had happened up to that point until we remembered and we went on our break officially. We were still on that break, but we were working it out.

  I wished Dr. Menendez could just say a spell or something and snap her fingers and fix us, but therapy didn’t work that way.

  “You couldn’t make it during the week, Jared?” she asked instead of saying hi.

  “Yeah, I was tied up,” he said vaguely.

  “Where were you?” I asked. I saw him shoot me a dirty look.

  “Adina and I were here together for almost forty minutes. She was under the impression that you were coming. That tells me you didn’t tell her where you were or that you wouldn’t be able to make it.”

  “Honest mistake. I forgot.”

  “Why?” I asked, unable to keep the annoyance out of my voice.

  “I was… I just couldn’t make it. I had to be somewhere, and I fucking forgot. I’m sorry. She’s going to make me feel guilty about this the way she does about everything.”

  “Where were you?” she asked.

  “I was with Janice,” he said. “My girlfriend.”

  The word cut through me like glass. His girlfriend. She, Janice had been part of the story for over a year now. She had been his acquaintance, his friend, his one-night stand at one point, but never his girlfriend. This was a new development and one that made me want to throw up. A mistake, a onetime thing was what Jared had called the night he had spent with her. He had said there were no feelings; it was purely physical. I shifted in my seat, uncrossing then crossing my legs again. I knew it.

  “She’s your girlfriend? This is the first time you’ve called her that,” Dr. Menendez said. Calming breaths—I tried to take a few because I didn’t feel like crying right then. I was angry, but this was just the beginning of the conversation. If I cried, Jared would probably say I was doing it to make the doctor feel sorry for me or something.

  Ultimately, I wanted to be able to recognize Jared as the man I had been with for five years, with whom I had a beautiful baby boy. Sitting there, hearing him say he was with his girlfriend and that was why he didn’t come to the therapy session he had committed to come to with me made me feel like an idiot.

  “We’re getting serious,” he said shrugging.

  “Where do you see Adina in your future if you are getting serious with Janice?”

  “She’s Jaden’s mom,” he said flippantly.

  “You’re not even trying,” I snapped looking at him. “Are you two living together now? Because if you are; why are we here?”

  “I want a relationship with you, Adina. I feel like you won’t let me be with you without reminding me what I did. I fucked up, I know that, but you won’t let me forget it.”

  “You want Adina to forgive you,” she said rather than asked.

  “She’s pushing me away. I feel like a suspect with her, like I’m always on trial.” I sat still at his side because we were in therapy; he needed to talk to someone about this. It couldn’t just have been me, though, it had to be two-fifty an hour with a professional.

  “Did you know Jared felt like this Adina?”

  “No,” I admitted. “He’s never told me any of this.”

  “I can’t take how jealous she is,” he said.

  You weren’t supposed to lie to your therapist. I had never lied to Dr. Menendez, but I had left some things out. Like the jealousy. Jared and I had talked when we were together. He knew what I didn’t want him doing with other women, but he never gave a fuck. He always pushed it. He always pushed me and got mad when I confronted
him about it.

  “What you’re asking for is trust?”

  “Yeah. If she’s going to be the same as she was the last time with me now, then what the hell is the use?”

  “You can’t ask her to trust you when you won’t respect her boundaries,” Dr. Menendez said.

  “We’re on a break; why does she still have boundaries?”

  “You can’t push her away when you’re trying to reconcile. You have to make time to be together, to talk about what you both want and feel. I want the two of you to talk. Before I see you again, I want you to spend twenty minutes together, without the baby, talking about your relationship. Not what happened in the past, but what you want in the future. Together.”

  Dr. Menendez let us go after our time had run out. We could never talk immediately after therapy. We didn’t really talk at all, unless we were yelling at each other, or talking about Jaden. I hated being like that with him. We had been together for years. I thought we were friends, even when we were fighting as a couple. I didn’t want him to hate me. I wanted him to love me again. I wanted to be married, raising our son together but that would obviously take some time.

  We had driven there separately, so he just followed me home in his car. He was going to collect Jaden and take him until the next day. Since we had the session with Dr. Menendez, it didn’t make sense for me to drop him off first. Jaden was at home with my friend Sophie. I would have called Jessica, but technically I had told her already that she had the weekend off. Jessica. Yes. The one who I found in my kitchen, topless, giving her boyfriend a blowjob.

  Jessica was still a great babysitter. She was still a great babysitter. She had impressed me in the interview and had up until that point been a great addition to mine and Jaden’s lives. I didn’t want to let her go but fuck. I couldn’t have her stay any longer. She had brought a man to my house.

  She had brought a strange man around Jaden. They were in my kitchen, eating my food and she was… his thing was out, and she was… God. When did I become thirteen years old again? Penis. His penis was out, and she had been orally servicing him. Ew, could I make it sound any more clinical? How long had it been since I had seen a dick… like in real life?