Escalation Clause (9 page)

“I’m looking out for you Maureen, goddamn it. Brandis is….”

“Brandis is my boyfriend, Jack. Deal with it.”

“You do know he’s leaving for Colorado, right?”

“Of course I do. We are…working through that.”

She sensed his frustration and anger through the phone lines. “Mo, listen, I truly want you to be happy. I just don’t think he is the guy to do it. Go to college this fall. Find a guy in class, at the Union, at a party. But let Brandis go.”

“I’m going now, Jack. And I will be with Brandis. All weekend.” She hung up then, not even really sure why she said that. But her hands shook so uncontrollably she had to clench them in her lap to get it under control. His words — “you are another notch in his bedpost”—burned a hole in her psyche. She had heard the two of them banter for so many years about girls, about their utter disdain for how quickly women yielded to the one-two punch of the Jack-Brandis tag team in high school and beyond. A sudden rise of panic at her own stupid behavior over the last few weeks made her rush to the bathroom where she stopped and stared at herself in the mirror. Her long black hair fell in waves over her tanned shoulders; her deep blue eyes sparkled with something she knew damn good and well was pure lust.

She needed this. Needed him. She would not let her stupid over-protective brother convince her otherwise. She heard the phone ring again, but let her mind wander and her body follow, and the slow buzz of sweet anticipation made her smile.

“Mo!” Dr. Taylor hollered up the stairwell. “Phone for you. It’s Brandis.”

“Hey,” she answered, still smiling.

“Hey uh, listen, something’s come up.”

She blinked, trying to process what he was telling her.

“Mo, I’m sorry. I…can’t get away this weekend.”

“But,” anger replaced the slow coiling desire in her brain. “We…I mean, um…,” words failed her as she started pacing the bedroom.

“I know, baby.” There was something in his voice she couldn’t place. Something at once familiar and strange. “You know, I just have a lot going on right now and…,”

“Hold on a second.” She stopped dead in her tracks. “You’re doing more than cancelling our weekend aren’t you?”

The silence was deadly. She dropped into the conversational hole and let the fury that had been building speak first. “Jack was right,” she spit out. “You are nothing but a player, a bedpost notcher, and an asshole.” She slammed the phone down and let the tears that threatened run down her hot face. “Damn you,” she whispered, as she clutched her shaking hands together. “Damn you both.”

Curling up on the bed and crying seemed like a very good idea and before she knew she’d fallen into a restless sleep. Her eyes jerked open when she heard the Taylors yell up the stairwell that they were leaving for a faculty dinner party. A bright flare of anger spurred her to action. She called Jack first. The distinct sounds of a party were behind him. She glanced at her watch. “Stay the hell out of my business, Jack,” she yelled twice before he responded. The party sounds died down. She pictured him out on the back porch of the Church Street house, phone cord stretching from the kitchen.

“Listen to me, Mo. If you could see him right now, you would know I’m right.”

Her eyes burned but she kept going. “You do not get to decide what is best for us.”

“He is not good for you, Mo, don’t you get that? Jesus, he’s the one who planned this damn party. Here, now, where he has just gone upstairs with not one but two girls?”

“God will you just stop it?” She winced at herself yelling. “You put him up to this. You guilted him out of taking me away for the weekend I know you did. Don’t deny it.”

“Well, we did talk. And he made the right choice. Now you should just let him go. I mean it.”

“You are a controlling jerk, you know that?”

“When it comes to you, I may be. But so help me I’m only looking out for your best interests.”

She hung up without saying another word. Lying back on the bed, cradling the phone to her chest she made a decision. She would not let Jack do this to her. She loved Brandis, he loved her, and she was not going to put up with her brother’s interference.

Brandis stared at the tits bouncing in front of him. Another girl’s hand snaked around his neck, tweaked the large dark nipples making the first girl moan and grind down harder on his lap. He swallowed, his eyes and brain bleary, trying to rally but there was nothing more finite than a half-hearted hard-on to remind him that this was the last place on the planet he wanted to be right now. The girls had double-teamed him while they danced then pulled him upstairs and into one of his roommates’ bedrooms.

“C’mon, baby,” the first girl with the admittedly incredible rack whispered. He flinched at the sensation of her tongue stuck in his ear. “Show me what you’ve got.”

He kissed her then pushed her off his lap onto his bed. “Tell you what,” he said, running his hand over his hair. “You two show me instead.” The girls laughed and fell back, running hands and lips all over each other.

“Now that is quite a show,” he jumped at the sound of Jack’s deep voice. His friend leaned in the doorway, holding a beer. After handing it to Brandis, he took a seat between the girls and ran his hand along one smooth hip, then down a thigh, and back up. Brandis sat and watched as Jack let the girls unbutton his belt and slip his jeans down and his shirt off.

“Have fun, kids,” he mumbled, closing the door behind him to the sound of kissing, and other distinct noises of pleasure. He slid to the floor, drank the beer in a couple of gulps and tried to get a handle on what a shit he had been to Maureen. Her bright blue eyes accused him, memory of her amazing responsive body taunted him when he closed his eyes. So he opened them, and found another girl beckoning from the stairwell.

“Let’s dance, Brandis. I’ll make you smile, I promise.” She crooked a manicured finger at him and sashayed down.

Brandis got to his feet with some effort and followed her, already calculating how soon he could sneak out and go over to his parent’s house and be with her, once and for all, but the party had picked up steam. Girls were draped all over every surface, others danced on tables with his roommates in ratios of three or four to one, just like he’d planned it. He watched the sweat bead up on his dance partner’s bare shoulders, and the sudden compulsion to lick it, to taste her, made his cock slam against the back of his zipper. He grabbed her, kissed her, maneuvered her onto an empty couch. “Oh, baby, somebody sure is happy to see me,” She whispered, cupping his crotch.

“Don’t talk, just…. Oh, yeah.” He was blind to her, but had his hands all over her. She was Mo and she wasn’t. She didn’t look, feel or taste like Mo but he pretended she did. Maybe this would get his head straight—a nice hard, to-the-point fuck without the burden of anyone’s virginity, or her disapproving brother, in the damn way. And at that moment he knew that if he did not have this girl right then he would implode.

He yanked her to her feet, pulled her back into the small first floor bedroom and slammed the door, spinning her around and yanking her skirt up in one motion. His jeans were down around his ankles and his cock buried deep inside her in minutes. He pounded into her, making her squeal and grab the back of the door but she kept arching back, meeting him halfway. He grabbed one hip and reached around to press his finger against her clit. She shuddered, yelled his name and gripped his shaft so tight it hurt. The climax lit a fire in him, burst into his brain and down his spine in seconds. He pumped into her for what felt like hours then draped himself over her sweaty, still clothed back.

“God, I’m sorry,” he groaned as he pulled out, noting he’d committed the cardinal sin of going bareback. “Oh, shit, I am really, really sorry.”

“What for sweetie?” The girl purred, readjusting her panties that he had not even bothered to remove. “That was fabulous. Let’s dance some more then give it another go, hmm?”

“Uh, no.” He wiped his face, zipped up and planted a brief kiss on her lips avoiding her attempts to make it more meaningful. “I need some air.” He walked out, immediate need sated but his brain burning for something more. For the woman he really wanted—Maureen.

After about an hour on the back porch, nursing a beer and contemplating reality versus fantasy, he wandered back in, ignoring everything and everyone around him. It was well past midnight by now, and he had no real hope of sneaking out to see her.
Tomorrow
, he promised himself. Tomorrow they would talk and he would tell her once and for all that they couldn’t be together. Jack was right. The whole thing was bad on many levels, not the least of which was the fact that he was already mind-numbingly jealous about all the boys she’d be encountering once she started school. He groaned, sank onto the couch and put his hand over his eyes. He would put an end to it. Before he left for Colorado, and before it killed him.

He drank another beer, flirted some, watched the group dissipate either back outside or into the various bedrooms. Noting Jack had still not emerged from his bedroom with the female tag team, Brandis got to his feet, wobbled a little and remembered he hadn’t eaten much that day. He focused in on his watch, saw it was nearly three in the morning, and decided to call it. His chest ached with the realization of where he could be right now, what he could likely be doing at that moment had things gone to plan.

The concept that Mo was practically begging him to take her virginity made him uncomfortable, that was true. But the connection they’d made during the summer had done something to him, ignited lusty need, yes, but something more. But that something he had resisted, out of respect for Jack. And for Mo. She was smart, amazing, beautiful and incredible. She deserved more than just a bang and a disappearance, which was all he was currently offering. He had exactly ten days before he left for Colorado, had been so fucking psyched to finally fly—to get that much closer to his dream of being an officer in the Air Force. But, now…he shook his head. Now he wanted to stay where he was, be with her; never leave her side. That was just not going to happen.

Jack was sauntering down the stairs as Brandis headed up, one of the girls on his back, the other following close behind. “My man,” his friend grinned at him. Brandis forced a smile, suddenly exhausted beyond belief.

“I’m calling it, Jack. I’ll help clean tomorrow.”

“You okay?” Jack stopped, and the girl slid off his back. He sent her on her way with a slap on her ass.

“Yeah, tired. It’s all good.”

Jack put a hand on his shoulder. “Listen, I didn’t mean to come off like such a dick over the Maureen thing.”

Brandis shook his head, unwilling to talk about it anymore. “It’s fine. I didn’t go. I’m here. Now, I’m going to bed.” He turned, before the anger he felt towards his friend’s attitude got the best of him.

His door was shut, which was odd, but he brushed his teeth, washed his face in the hall bathroom and opened it without really thinking too much about it. It was dark, but for a single candle. “Shit,” he grunted, tripping over his jeans as he shed them before leaning over the dresser to blow it out hoping whomever had used his room had not left a mess on his bed.

“Brandis.” He whirled around, his heart pounding, and saw her. Mo sitting, naked best he could tell, but for one of his ROTC uniform shirts. He gulped, and slammed the door before Jack came back upstairs.

“What the hell are you doing here?” He whispered, furious, but horny all over again at the sight of her sleek black curtain of hair falling over one tanned shoulder. And those deep blue eyes that had made him crush for years, then finally give in this summer. “I mean it Mo. How did you get in without him seeing you,” he gestured to the door, unable to even speak the guy’s name, praying Jack would not burst in on them.

“Who cares? I’m here and I have every intention of going through with our plan for the weekend.” She rose to her full height, slipped the shirt off her shoulders, and he got his first glimpse of what he had only been groping and messing around with for the last few months in his old bedroom.

“Dear Lord,” he whispered as she moved closer, the candle throwing light and dark against her smooth skin. She tossed her hair back, stood right in front of him. He was frozen, slack jawed like an idiot at her magnificence. “Mo,” his voice cracked. “You need to leave.” He stumbled backwards, needing distance before he lost it.

“No, I need you to make love to me Brandis. Like you promised. Like you’ve been promising all god damn summer.” She stepped close, lifted his T-shirt over his head, unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans. He let her, frozen, still somehow unbelieving. His cock hurt it was so hard by the time she’d tugged his underwear down and off. He put a hand on hers recalling with disgust what he’d done earlier.

“Wait,” He insisted. “Let me clean up some.” After grabbing a towel and ducking out into the bathroom, he washed up glaring at himself in the small mirror.
What is more important to you Taylor—your friendship with Jack, or what you feel for his sister? The girl, in your room right now, waiting for you to pop her damn cherry.
“Oh, God,” he groaned, but his cock had its own ideas. He glared at it as if it were the reason he was in this mess in the first place.

He knew the physical connection was only a small part of how he felt about Mo. He’d told her as much. She’d responded in kind. They were going to be together, Jack be damned. He took a breath and a step out into the hall which was still deserted. Less raucous yet still robust party noises floated up the steps; he slipped back into his room and shut the door. She was on the bed now, on her side, her glorious naked body backlit from the sputtering candle. He leaned on the door, tried to catch his breath.

He had to go slow. She deserved at least that. “Shit,” Before he knew it she’d launched herself up off the bed and grabbed his towel, tossed it aside and was kissing him, her sweet tongue tangled up with his, her breasts pressed to his chest. “Slow down, baby. Please.”

“No, goddamn it. I need this. You promised me. You…,” a tear slipped down her cheek. He wiped it away, ran his thumb over her lips. “Please.” Her soft whisper was all it took. He walked her backward, eased her back down on the bed, kissing her gently at first, then with purpose, running his hands over the now-familiar terrain of her lush, responsive flesh. His brain buzzed, he could barely hear for the low hum in his ears. She pulled him on top of her right away, but he stopped and stood.