'M' is For: [Ch13] Lover's Folly - Part 1

It felt odd to be back in the familiar confines of my house, still cluttered with the ephemera of my childhood, and to feel so different. All around the house, Mom had already started to decorate for Christmas, swapping out the pillows, hand towels, and throw-blankets and festooning every conceivable surface, just as she had since I could remember. But so much had happened since the last time I’d been back. I’d started a new job. I’d met Missy and Thomas. I’d tried things I’d never imagined were possible. I was coming into a new awareness of myself, one that was still relatively new and uncertain, but shaping up into something that I felt pretty okay with. But here in this house, and my room in particular, were the vestiges of who I’d been. All the things here belonged to a different, younger Mallory.

“So is this where you grew up?”

I turned to see Thomas entering the room. I couldn’t help but smile at how small he made the room look with his height. He ducked as he stepped through the door frame.

“Yep. Born and raised.” I sat down at the bed and watched him as he slowly examined the room. He paused in front of a photo of me at six years old with huge wire-rimmed glasses pushed up on a snub little nose holding a pen and a notebook. I was pudgy as hell in the photo, with fat little arm rolls and a round belly that stretched the floral cotton tee and matching leggings I was wearing.

Thomas glanced at me, a wide grin breaking across his face. “You were adorable.”

“I know,” I agreed with a rueful grin of my own. “How was the tour of the house?”

“It was good. Your parents are really nice.”

“They seem to like you. Did they show you to your room?”

“Yeah.”

“Great. Well, let me know if there’s anything you need.” I winced a little as I said that. I sounded just like my mom.

“Yeah, thanks.”

We lapsed into silence, me sitting on the bed, Thomas standing a few feet away. I couldn’t get over the fact that Thomas was here, in my childhood bedroom. It felt bizarre, like some dream I’d made up. I only hoped it would turn out to be a good dream.

After a long minute, Thomas cleared his throat. “I should probably leave you be. I’m sure it’s been a long day.”

“Oh, yeah.” I wasn’t sure whether to be disappointed or relieved. I pushed myself off the bed without thinking, which turned out to be a mistake. I was close, too close to him. I could feel the heat emanating from his body, beckoning me to reach out and grasp him. I took a discreet step back. “Goodnight.”

“Night.”

After Thomas left, I slowly closed the door.

❖❖❖

Jenny got to the house around 11 the next morning. Thomas and I were already up and grabbing a quick breakfast in the kitchen when I heard the sound of the doorbell followed by Mom’s quick footsteps down the hallway.

“Jenny! Max. Come on in,” I could hear my mom say. “They’re just finishing up breakfast.”

I met Thomas’s eyes over the kitchen table. Swallowing my mouthful of food, I took a drink of orange juice. Thomas pushed back his chair and rose just as Jenny and Max entered the kitchen.

“Mallory!” Jenny cried, and we exchanged hugs.

“This is my friend, Thomas,” I said to Jenny and Max, who pulled me into a casual one-armed hug. Jenny had been dating Max since high school, and we were all sure that it was just a matter of time before they got married. Max had an amiable, slightly ruffled appearance, with bleached blonde hair that liked to stick up at odd angles. Beside Jenny’s petite stature and little button nose, they made one of the cutest couples I knew.

“Hey, nice to meet you,” Thomas said. Watching him, I was bemused to see that he looked a little shy as he shook their hands.

“Likewise.” Jenny glanced over her shoulder at me. “I have lots of questions…”

I winced. I hadn’t exactly managed to give Jenny the same heads-up that I had my parents, having honestly forgotten that this might be something that she would care about. By the time I’d remembered earlier that morning, it was too late. I’d typed out a hasty message over text, knowing that I’d catch hell for it from her later.

Jenny and Max joined us at the kitchen table as we wrapped up breakfast. It didn’t take long; we were eating scrambled eggs my parents had cooked earlier. I did find half a lime in the fridge, and remembering Kiara’s taste for them, couldn’t resist slicing them and dousing them in processed sugar. When Jenny saw what I had done, she excoriated me for making the “grossest thing I’ve ever seen,” but Max and Thomas each tried a slice. I felt Jenny’s eyes on Thomas and me as Thomas refilled my glass of orange juice and I passed him the hot sauce.

We ended up settling on a hike afterward. We invited Mom and Dad, but they politely declined, leaving just us kids to pile into Max’s battered Volvo. Jenny rode in the passenger seat while Thomas and I sat in the back. Jenny and Max quizzed Thomas on what he did, and Thomas gamely answered their questions. I noticed Thomas downplayed the modeling. Eventually he and Max got to talking about video games, and I had to marvel at Thomas’s familiarity with the latest team-based shooters. With all his other commitments, not the least of which was Missy, when did that guy possibly find time to game?

The state park was about forty minutes away from my parents’ place by car. We used to go there with my brother Will and my dad all the time when we were younger. It seemed that Jenny and Max still went regularly because they knew the route from memory. After navigating first the state highway and then a couple winding local roads, they pulled into the trailhead parking. There were only two other cars in the lot.

Jenny rolled her eyes when I insisted we consult the trail map. The others waited while I refreshed my memory of the main loop and its branching trails, scanning the bulletin board for any emergency notices or temporary closures. Once I was satisfied that we had all the information we needed to know, we set off up the trail.

The going was pretty rocky and steep. I was glad that I’d made the effort to get back into physical shape the last few months so that I didn’t slow down the group, which moved at a brisk clip. The weather was cool, though not yet at the freezing temperatures we would get by the month’s end. Nevertheless, after hiking for twenty or thirty minutes, I’d worked up a decent sweat—enough so that I stripped off my hoodie and knotted it around my waist.

At some point along the ascent, I found myself hiking alongside Jenny. The two guys had pulled ahead some twenty feet, leaving us to bring up the rear. Jenny took advantage of this to pull in close to me.

“Okay, Mal…what’s the deal with you and Thomas?” Jenny demanded.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Don’t try to fool me with that innocent tone of voice. ‘Just a friend?’ Really?”

“Well, yeah.”

Jenny narrowed her eyes at me. “Mal, I can see the way you two look at each other. That boy is mad for you. And it’s not like you to just bring whoever home.”

Jenny had mastered the art of the hard stare at an early age. Despite being the older sister, I’d never been particularly good at holding out, and this time was no exception.

“I won’t say that I don’t, like, find him insanely attractive,” I admitted. “But honestly, we’re just friends. I don’t know what you think you’re seeing, but he already has a girlfriend, who happens to be one of my closest friends now.”

“Does he?” Jenny looked out over at Thomas, and I sincerely hoped that he was out of earshot from our conversation. “Mal, what have you gotten yourself into?”

A fair question. Instead, I forced myself to laugh. “It’s fine, really. I just wanted to bring him for the weekend. He’d never gotten the chance to visit upstate New York before.”

Jenny shook her head. After a moment, she said, “I just hope you find someone who makes you happy. Who recognizes what an amazing person you are, inside and out.”

I felt my lips tug into a grin at her old-soul seriousness. “Well, thanks, Sis. Glad you have my back.”

“Always,” said Jenny.

It took about two hours all-in to get to the summit. Most of the trail was a steady incline, but the last part was a scramble. I picked my way across the boulders carefully. Thomas kept just ahead of me, ready to give me a helping hand whenever I needed it. I was touched by his attentiveness, and I tried to keep Jenny’s voice from intruding on my thoughts. Together, we made it up to the top, a couple thousand feet above sea level.

I never got tired of the view. From the summit, the trees that had obscured the sky fell away beneath us, and we could see out interrupted for miles.

We sat for a while, catching our breaths and drinking some water. Jenny insisted on a picture of the four of us, and we obliged, crowding into the frame while Jenny snapped the selfie. Finally, our little group was ready to head back down. Adjusting my baseball cap over my hair, I followed the others back down.

It happened nearly an hour and a half from the summit. We’d left the worst of the terrain far behind us. My thoughts had drifted away from our hike, and in that moment of inattention, I put my foot down on a wayward tree root. My foot rolled beneath my ankle and I pitched forward, propelled by momentum and the steep grade of the trail. Thomas, turning, managed to catch me in his arms. Our bodies collided, a sharp pain to counter the dull throb of my ankle. Gingerly, I recovered my footing.

“You okay?” Jenny asked at once, eyes widening in alarm as she stopped up ahead.

Thomas gripped me by the shoulders, his face filled with concern. “Do you need to sit down?”

“Y-yeah,” I said a little shakily. “Thanks.” To Jenny and Max, who had started toward me, I called out, “It’s nothing. Just a little stumble.”

“You two go on,” Thomas said to them. “I’ve got her.”

Jenny and Max traded looks. “We’re just a mile from the lot,” said Jenny. “We’ll go to see if we can get a signal to let Mom and Dad know we’ll be late.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said. When Jenny hesitated, I flapped a hand at her. “I promise! I’ll be fine.”

With one last worried backwards glance at me, Jenny and Max turned and set down the trail, walking a lot more quickly than they had before.

Experimentally, I rolled my ankle and winced at the telltale flare of pain.

“Trust me to sprain my ankle wearing sneakers,” I joked up at Thomas, who stood over me. “I really thought it would be the heels that would do me in.”

Thomas shook his head, lips quirking. “Can’t let you anywhere, can I? I take it,” he added drily as I unzipped my backpack and pulled out a small bottle of tablets, a tube of ointment, and an ankle brace, “that this has happened before?”

“A few times,” I agreed, popping a tablet as I pulled off my sneaker. I cocked my head at him. “Is this ruining my dominatrix vibe? I thought I was doing so well.”

“If you were a real domme, you’d let me dress it for you,” Thomas said, deadpan. Immediately, my cheeks turned bright pink.

“I can’t tell if you’re joking,” I said.

Thomas shook his head, and I couldn’t tell if it was at me or some other thought he had. “Here, hand it over.”

I obeyed, handing over the brace and the ointment. Gently, he tugged off my sock and set it neatly in my discarded shoe. I watched, mesmerized despite myself, as he squeezed a little bit of the ointment out into the palm of his hand and began to rub my ankle.

“Is this okay?” he asked me.

My ankle was tender and just beginning to throb. But his touch on the sprain was gentle. His palm followed the circumference of my ankle, the rough calluses of his skin sliding smoothly across my skin. I bit my lip. I was wetter than I’d been all week. What the hell was wrong with me?

Exhaling slowly, I dropped my head onto his shoulder. “This is me not kissing you,” I said in a low voice. “Just so you know.”

Thomas stilled. “Mal…”

I forced myself to raise my head to look at him. To my shock, I saw my naked need reflected in his face. Every other thought—where we were, who we were with—left my brain at once. All I could think was how near his face was to mine, how my lips knew the taste of his and hungered for more. With a groan, he threw down the ointment and reached for me.

The throbbing of my ankle was forgotten as I felt my body ignite into a blinding beacon of lust. His mouth pressed down on mine, his tongue hungry and insistent. I breathed in his scent, a mixture of soap and sweat from our hike. With a mind of their own, my hands found his torso. They traced the hard ridges of his ribs and found the tough expanse of muscle that surrounded his navel. With one hand, I bunched the fabric of his shirt, drawing it back to expose where his hip bones dipped into the waist of his pants. I pressed the heel of my free hand against his crotch…and felt something hard and distinctly metal press back.

“Is that…?”

I unzipped the fly of Thomas’s pants, pulling them down just far enough to expose a steel cock cage. The device fit his cock snugly, gleaming wickedly against his skin. A small lock, barely larger than the size of my thumbnail, held the cage securely closed.

Two bright spots burned in Thomas’s cheeks. “Missy’s sense of humor,” he managed, his voice sounding strangled.

“Oh.”

“Just think of it as part of the package,” Thomas said, his lips twisting. His hands were still on my cheeks, our faces inches apart. But as I remembered Missy, reason returned. Jenny and Max were waiting for us. I had sworn to myself that I would not do what apparently I was so very terrible at doing: staying away from Thomas. Reluctantly, I pulled myself away out of Thomas’s reach.

“We should probably get going.”

“I…Mal,” Thomas licked his lips. I waited in tense anticipation, but he didn’t complete his thought—just shook his head and helped me finish putting on the ankle brace. Having done as much as we could, he pulled me to my feet. I tried to shove all other thoughts, and the tingling greed that lingered, out of my head. Or at least keep them at bay until I had the opportunity to examine them later.

With Thomas’s support, I made my way back to the trail. The sprain wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t put any weight on that ankle, but it did mean that I went a lot more slowly and cautiously than I would have otherwise. The last quarter mile, we ran into Max, who had doubled back from the parking lot to find us. He gave a sigh of relief when he saw us walking together, and the three of us went back to the car, where Jenny was waiting.

This time, on the drive back to the house, Jenny would not let me forget that I had hurt myself on a hike that I’d done a million times before. “I swear, Mal, you’re so careless sometimes,” she said for the millionth time while I groaned in the backseat.

Still, with Thomas sitting close enough for me to reach out my hand and touch him, I was distracted and restless. I replayed the way his fingers had lingered along my jaw, firm and knowing. I had the sneaking suspicion that I was being toyed with, but even knowing that, I couldn’t help but yearn for the prize that Missy dangled so temptingly in front of me. I had managed to stitch together enough self-control to walk away once today, but given another opportunity, I didn’t know if I would be able to do it again.