Serial Volume Three (2 page)

Jude

She wouldn’t stop talking; I needed her to stop talking. I needed to process this new information and I needed silence.

I’d never realized how busy a woman could be when they weren’t tied down or dying.

I suppose I’d never really spent much quality time among the living, and it overwhelmed me at times how talkative Pet was.

She was in constant motion.

Even now on my bed after an indulgent afternoon of fucking, I could feel her leg vibrating next to me as she tried desperately to keep her mouth shut.

What she didn’t understand was that this wasn’t a game. I wasn’t being coy or playful when I told her to keep quiet so I could read.

I meant for her to shut the fuck up. I was too weary to shove my cock in her mouth to silence her, I just wanted a moment beside the woman I loved without cringing every time she sighed dramatically or made a bird-like twitching movement beside me.

“Why don’t you go make us some lunch?” I finally ordered in as polite a fashion as possible.

She lit up, eager to please me.

“What would you like?” she asked, her beautiful eyes shining with the desire to make me happy. Why wasn’t I happy? Why couldn’t I ever just be fucking happy?

Because I was flawed, deeply flawed I’d come to realize in the days since first revealing to Pet who I was.

It was as though every cell in my body was aligned against my happiness, my quest to be normal. Every cell’s polarity reversed, my North where my South should be and vice versa.

“Why don’t you surprise me, my love?”

She positively beamed at me, jumped from the bed and dragged a silk robe onto her tall, sensual body.

If only she didn’t talk, she’d be perfect.

“Wait right here,” she said, “I’ll make us something amazing.”

I smiled and enjoyed the sashaying motion of her ass as she left. Her tight, round ass, the same ass I enjoyed gripping as I pounded her perfect cunt from behind.

She didn’t talk while I fucked her.

I believe that added to my libido, an extra added bonus to an already pleasurable act.

I went back to my newspaper and checked the markets. I know it was quaint, using the paper instead of the minute by minute updates on my phone, but it felt much more solid somehow to see the numbers in print.

It was a deep connection, somewhere in my brain an image was triggered that firmly rooted me in the past and kept me from feeling so adrift.

My father had checked his markets every morning on the veranda while our day staff had served freshly squeezed Florida orange juice and egg white omelets.

Me sitting at his knee, talking and twitching and looking up to him much like Pet looks up to me.

Always needing, always craving more from him. More attention, more words, more love.

He needed to be a bastard for business, my mother always used to tell me, so I shouldn’t take it personally.

I was a child though, how could I not take it personally? The feel of the cane across my naked, tender flesh, his quick temper, sure to rise at the oddest moments when I least expected it.

I learned to be a mouse in my big, lonely house long before kindergarten. I would creep about, never raising my voice and never making my presence known in case I raised his ire or attracted his attention.

I snapped the paper flat and scanned the business articles.

One headline caught my eye and I inwardly groaned as I read it.

“Grey Megacorp Dissolves Overnight.”

It went on to describe how the company had ended up completely bankrupt, and creditors were already on site at the offices and private residences of the CEO, seizing any assets they could get their hands on.

There was a photograph of a very haggard looking young man with a woman holding a baby next to him. They were standing on the curb in front of a residential tower, suitcases on the curb next to them. Beside them stood my father’s heart surgeon looking more than distraught. The man I was supposed to help, and the one I’d apparently failed.

I’d completely forgotten about dear old dad’s little favor, I’d forgotten about the shitty little tech company I was supposed to bail out so dad could look like a superstar to his country club pals. I’d forgotten about his surgeon buddy with all his millions tied up in the future of said tech company.

I folded the paper closed, folded it in half again and made sure the edges lined up. I placed it on the side table, grabbed a thick, feathered pillow, shoved my face into it and screamed, “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!”

When I was done, when I’d released some of the anxiety that was rising in me, I put the pillow back; vaguely noticing the mouth shaped wet spot my saliva had left behind.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed and sat there motionless for a moment.

I knew I had to go to him, face him and stare him down as he raged against me.

I wasn’t a child anymore, I wasn’t afraid of him and he couldn’t do anything to me. It’s not like he could strip me down in front of the house staff and beat me so hard it took days for the lashes to heal.

It’s not like I would have to sleep on my belly, letting the day maid from the Philippines sneak in and tend to my festering wounds.

She’d done well though, after all the beatings I’d endured, I had no visible scarring. I never knew what she’d applied to my sores, but whatever village remedy it had been really did the trick.

I could still feel ropy strands of thickened tissue just under the skin if I pressed my hand against the skin and only because I knew where to feel.

I don’t think Pet noticed a thing every time she was raking her nails down my back.

I grabbed absentmindedly at my cock, started to stroke it and think of her, my little defiant girl, standing up to me when nobody would.

I heard her singing to herself in the kitchen, plates and utensils clattering every once in a while, and I felt a small surge of something.

I don’t know if it was exactly happiness, but I do know it was linked to my rock hard cock and I had to have her.

I stood and walked to the kitchen, caught her from behind, slid her robe up and plunged into her before she could say a word.

My hand on her mouth muffled her screams of pleasure as I filled her cunt with my frustration and anxiety. Let it all out, my final release allowing me to let go of the nervous energy that had been building since reading the headline.

I stayed inside of her for a moment, kept my hand on her mouth, and relished the silence. The calm flowing out of me must have settled Pet as well, she didn’t move to speak or try to bend herself to look at me.

My cock softened and I pulled out, stepped back, smacked her ass and said, “I’m going to have a shower. I’ll eat when I’m done.”

She stood straight, pulled the robe down and turned to face me. “No problem,” she said with a smile that seemed artificially stretched over her teeth. She seemed to be hiding something deeper, but in an instant it flitted from her face and she was my Pet again. “I’m making tuna salad, I hope you don’t mind.”

“I love it,” I told her and leaned to reward her with a kiss, “you’re too good to me.”

I walked away and felt the strangest sensation roll through my body.

Happy, I’m sure that’s what I was feeling.

I whistled all the way to the shower and washed the last of her cunt off me while imagining how I would tear into her later that day.

Life was good. I couldn’t deny it.

***

“Mr. Hollister,” Thomas’s voice cut through the silence of my office. He sounded a million miles away on the intercom even though he was just out front. “It’s your father, he’s coming–”

His voice was cut off and I heard a scuffle in front of my office door. I bolted back to my chair from the window where I’d been standing, surveying the city below me.

I took on a position of casual indifference and didn’t stand when my father barged past Thomas like a raging bull.

“I asked you for one favor, one fucking favor and you fucked it up!” he bellowed. Thomas shrank and cringed behind him, I waved him out and motioned for him to close the door.

I was similar in appearance to my father, he was a tall, muscular, very handsome man, but that’s where the similarities ended.

Where he reacted with animalistic rage, I’d learned to keep everything inside and let it out in small, controlled burns.

He razed the countryside, I was more of a grass fire in a field, deliberate and beneficial to the fresh vegetation that would appear when I was done.

He was an embarrassment when he lost his temper and I reminded myself that he no longer frightened me.

I grabbed a stress ball from my desk and squeezed it rhythmically and appraised him with cold eyes.

“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” he screamed and pounded my desk with his fist.

“The board decided it wasn’t a financially viable option for us,” I replied and stared directly into his eyes.

He stood, poised to attack, and stared back. His nostrils were flared and the vein in his temple was throbbing, I could see it from here.

“Sit down, Dad,” I said, “Mom will kill me if you have another cardiac episode in my office. If you’re going to work yourself into another heart attack, have the decency to do it at home.”

He glared at me but sat down, hunched over and scanned my face angrily. “What are you?” he asked after a moment.

“I am your son, your creation, and the head of this company. I will not lose us money just to boost your ‘street cred’ at the country club. If you want to help your doctor friend, you will have to do it out of your own accounts.”

“After everything I’ve done for you, everything I’ve put up with since you were young enough to piss your pants and quake in your shoes every time I looked at you.”

I didn’t react. I never reacted. I hadn’t for years now. “Like I said, I am a product of your own creation.”

“You have been such a disappointment since the day you were born. You wouldn’t stop crying, you know, even with the night nurse and nannies by your side, you wouldn’t stop mewling like a little injured animal.”

“I can’t speak to that time in my life,” I replied, “but I assure you I am not a crier now. Nor am I going to be swayed to lose our company millions of dollars to save some lagging tech firm in Seattle. Tech is dead, green is dead, you should know that by now. You haven’t been out of the biz that long.”

His face was red, but the vein was calming down.

“You know, there was a time I wanted to send you away, to military school. But your mother was too soft on you, every time I disciplined you, you’d go crying to mommy and crawl up under her skirts. No wonder you’re such a failure in your personal life, you’ve got mommy issues.”

I felt a small twitch in the corner of my eye, but did not react to his taunt. He couldn’t hurt me any longer. I was better than him. I was Mr. Hollister two point oh…the new, improved release. Where he was sloppy, I was controlled, where he was raging, I was precise in my executions of emotion.

“I don’t call living with my girlfriend exactly a failure,” I said and squeezed the stress ball tight, “but then again, you wouldn’t know much about being a success in the bedroom, would you?”

I had been taking a shot in the dark with that one, but the slight flinch he gave as the words left my mouth let me know I’d hit my mark.

“Girlfriend?” he asked with a smirk, “are you sure it’s a girl? I’ve had my doubts about you, son.”

“Yes,” I replied and knew I’d retained the upper hand, “she made me lunch and sucked my cock just this morning. I’m quite certain she’s a girl. Aren’t you delighted at the prospect of grandchildren?”

“As long as they don’t take after their father, I’m quite delighted,” he replied.

“Their mother would be perfectly lovely, I’m sure they’d be fine.”

“You should hope so, or else you’ll spend as much time as I did covering up your…misdeeds as a child.”

“Yes, Dad, you did an excellent job shaping me into the fine young man you see before you today.” I gave him a quick, sardonic grin and watched him fidget until he finally stood.

“Well, I’m expected at the club. I can’t emphasize how much this has disappointed me, but if it was in the best interest of the company, then I have no other choice than to trust your decision.” He held out his hand in a gesture of defeat.

I dropped the stress ball, stood and reached for it. We shook hands, stared at each other, and finally he clasped mine and said, “Bring your girl around this weekend. Your mother would love to meet her.”

Our hands stopped moving, his grip tightened and I could see a smug twitch at the corner of his mouth. He still didn’t believe me. I would have to whip Pet into shape in the next few days, but I couldn’t back down from him right then.

“Will do, Sunday brunch?”

“Sounds excellent. I can’t wait to see her.”

We dropped back away from each other and he left my office. I exhaled and picked up the stress ball, squeezed it a few times and thought about what I would have to do to prepare her.