Now Leaving Sugartown Read online

  Too soon though, that feeling is gone.

  Too soon the words and the hurt are back.

  Too soon I’m brought back down to earth.

  I glance at my reflection, hating the girl I see. Hating and revelling in the fact that I have to open my skin and spill my blood in order to feel something other than me. I pat my leg with a folded square of paper towel. It burns. I wince, and then I breathe into the sensation.

  I take another mouthful of rum, relishing the scalding in my throat and stomach, and then I pick up the blade and make another two cuts directly above the previous one. I lose myself in that heady euphoria again as I press the razor into my skin and I slice my fourth incision.

  The bedroom door opens and Sammy startles me. I flinch, unprepared for the accusation I know I’ll see in his gaze, though when I lift my gaze, I find his eyes are wide with terror.

  Warmth spreads between my legs.

  “Little, drop the blade,” he says. My hands feel odd, tacky, as if I slipped them in a vat of blood. I glance down and see I’m not half wrong. There’s too much blood. I gasp and my fingers release the razor. The light bounces off it as it tumbles to the floor. And then Sam is all around me. He’s so close that I reach out and run weak fingers over his lips. They’re covered in blood, and leave a bright red stain against his gorgeous golden skin. I frown and try to wipe it off but I miss and only serve to smear his shirt with it. Sam yanks off his T-shirt and begins wrapping my thigh. It hurts and I want to tell him to stop, but the words escape me.

  “Why, baby? Why would you do this?” he pleads with me.

  “I tried to show you. At Luke’s when I lifted my dress.” I want to tell him I wasn’t trying to kill myself. I just wanted to feel something other, but what comes out is a mumbled sentence about being released that even I can’t fully comprehend. Sam’s phone magically appears in his hand, or maybe it was there before and I just didn’t see. He’s talking to someone on the other end, a triple-zero operator, I think. But I don’t need a hospital. I just need to lie down. He yells into the receiver. “Hurry,” I think he says, and then his eyes lock with mine. His face crumples as he takes one hand and cups the side of my cheek with it. I think the other is on my leg because a disembodied voice talks calmly to him from on top of my duvet, so he must have set the phone down.

  “Pepper,” he gently slaps my cheek. “Stay with me. Help is coming.”

  “Lie with me, Sammy … Just once. Just lie—”

  “Shh, don’t talk. Just sit still. I got you. I’m right here.” The tourniquet he made around my leg hurts. He applies pressure to it, I assume to stop any more bleeding, but his hands are coloured in red. Some part of me is aware that he’s touching my inner thigh, he’s just inches from my lady parts and I’m wearing nothing but panties and a T-shirt. That part of my brain laughs, and tells my hands to grab at his and hold the makeshift bandage in place; the other part wants to scream at him for not touching me there sooner.

  “Sam?” I ask, though my words are just a whisper.

  I glance up at Sammy. His face is contorted with fear, but still he tries to soothe me. “Shh, I got you, Pepper. I’m right beside you. Right where I’ve always been.” He squeezes my hand and presses a fragile shaking kiss to my temple as he holds me upright and the world ceases to spin.

  I GLARE at the bitch cat preening her fur on the kitchen bench. Cats have always kinda freaked me out, but Sam’s cat is a whole new level of creep factor. She quits licking her paws and glares at me. I hiss, she hisses back, and then we both go back to ignoring one another as I turn my attention to the TV, and flick through channel after channel of infomercials and crappy Hollywood drama. Sam’s been out like a light for at least an hour.

  All day he’s been at me about my meds, about the counter—which I feel really, really bad about, and have offered to replace, just as soon as I get enough money from the shifts I’ve picked up at Belle’s Pies. I’d told him I was fine. I was very much not fine, and I suspect he knew it, but for once he didn’t push. He had told me that Olivia wasn’t a thing, though. He’d just come right out and said it while we ate our pizza dinner on the couch. As if I’d asked. As if I’d been wondering all day why his date had ended here instead of back at her place. And yeah, okay, I may have been wondering that, and I may have rejoiced a little inside when he had said those words, but what the hell was I supposed to do with that? It didn’t change anything between us.

  Now I’m buzzed, wide awake and bored shitless. I’m kinda horny, too. Okay maybe I’m a lot horny and now that I’ve lowered my dosage of meds, my already overactive sex drive is in all-out whore mode. I have this insane desire to hop into Sam’s bed, tie his arms to the headboard and ride him like a cowgirl. No wait, that desire has always been there.

  I hit the button at the bottom of the remote, thinking I’ll watch whatever DVD Sammy had in last and the TV switches to Blu-ray. The sounds of feminine cries of ecstasy fill the room and the screen lights up with an old James Deen porno. I actually know this one. It’s a sweet little film about his girlfriend suffering from PMS, and Deen steps in to save the day with a box of PMS Ease and a few well-timed orgasms. Please, as if that shit actually existed. If PMS Ease existed, Jack’s life would have been a hell of a lot easier, since his wifey, daughter and cousin’s cycles all fell into sync most every month and he had to listen to all three of us bitch and moan for a week straight before Aunt Flow left the fucking building.

  So Sammy gets off on sweet porn, huh? I watch the video until it ends, torn between wanting to take matters into my own hands and not wanting to risk waking Sammy. The scene ends and I think that’s all the excitement I’m going to get for one night when another video begins. This must be some kind of bootleg DVD, because I’ve seen half of these films on Porn Hub, at least twice. I watch another two movies, all very vanilla sex, until one with a tattooed blonde wielding a rabbit and two very large hot cocks appears on the plasma. Oddly, there’s something very familiar about her face.

  The premise is ridiculous: the bimbo runs a bubble bath but her pipes aren’t working properly, so she calls in not one, but two handymen to fix the problem. And therein lies the problem: between the rabbit in her vag, the cock in her arse and one forced so far down her throat she’s gagging on it, the stupid whore forgets all about her bubble bath. I know most of these videos are made for dudes who can’t get a date, let alone get a woman to choke down their cock, but this shit is just offensive. I mean, okay great, have your cock and eat it too, but Christ, woman, don’t forget the fucking bubble bath.

  The next video is much of the same: dumb whore, ’roid-raging cocks, in one hole and out the other, but I notice it’s the same woman who was in the last video, and that thing about her face looking familiar? She’s me. Only … not me, because I’ve never done porn—and if I had it would sure be better than this poorly acted shit—but she looks exactly like me. Sure, the hair is different—hers falls down her back in platinum waves and mine is pink, usually with large barrel curls at the end, if I can be bothered to brush it. But her face is eerily similar. I watch a little longer, and then I’m so weirded out I think I’ll just fast forward to the next, but the following clip stars this chick too, and so does the next, and the one after that. I can’t work out whether I’m completely freaked the fuck out, or if I’m insanely turned on. A mental panty check confirms the latter because my pussy is soaking wet and aching to be touched.

  I lie back on the futon and slide my hand south. Separating my soft, swollen labia, I sweep my fingertips around my clit and tug on the hood piercing. An involuntary moan escapes my mouth. I hold completely still for a second, worried that I might have woken Sammy because he’s not shaking the walls with his snoring anymore, but his breathing returns to normal so I continue my stroking until my breathing comes in heavy laboured breaths and my body is humming with the threat of release.

  I moan again and open my eyes, and my orgasm that was just seconds away from sluicing through me comes to an
abrupt screeching halt. Sam is standing in front of me, his mouth slightly open, his chest heaving, and his bright blue eyes smouldering with lust.

  “What are you doing?” I ask, and my voice is as thin and high pitched as you’d imagine.

  “Don’t stop,” he demands in a sleep-husky growl. His cock is rock hard and straining against the thin cotton sleep pants. He slides a hand over it. Grasping the head through the fabric, he squeezes. Hard. “Touch yourself.”

  “Sam …”

  “Let me taste you.”

  “What? No!”

  “Just once. Just let me taste you, Little. I won’t take it further than that, but I need your taste on my tongue, I need your legs wrapped around my shoulders, and your sweet cunt coming against my mouth.”

  I can’t think past all the images he just mentioned. I don’t say yes, but I don’t say no, either, and Sam uses my indecision to his advantage. He slides onto the floor and pulls my body around to face him, then he spreads my legs apart and leans in. He does nothing but breathe on my slick pussy. It feels amazing. And I’ve had a number of partners who got off on causing me pain and making me squirm because of it, but nothing hurts worse than when a man breathes on your aching cock socket and doesn’t touch you. At all.

  “Sam,” I whisper, sliding my fingers into his hair and attempting to guide his head closer. He shrugs off my hold and pulls out of my reach. His eyes meet mine and they’re so full of cunning that it hurts.

  He trails his fingers down the inside of my thighs, scraping my flesh with his short, blunt nails. I suck in a sharp breath and let my head fall back on the futon. Sam traces the bold lines of my ink, all the way from my thigh, across my hip and over to the top of my pussy. He doesn’t touch me there, though. Instead, he takes hold of my ankle, forcing my leg up in the air as he bends his head to lick the bow inked on the back of my thigh. I twist out of his grasp because it tickles, but mostly because I need to feel that tongue of his licking and sucking in other places.

  “Sam,” I warn.

  “Quiet, Little.”

  “Sam, if you don’t touch me, suck me or fuck me right this second, I’m going to junk punch you.”

  He chuckles quietly and then lowers his head to my pussy, spreading my lips apart with his long-fingered hands and sucking my clit into his mouth. Hard. I’m so sensitive that it takes all of about two seconds for the blood to rush from the soles of my feet to my swollen, aching pussy. Another second of that delicious stroking and my legs quake uncontrollably, my heart races, my breath seesaws in and out of my lungs, my skin flushes with desire and my body clenches. Everything is suspended, held in place by only a fine, tiny tether until his teeth grasp my piercing and the tether snaps. I come apart. And god damn, is it glorious. I drive my fingers into his hair and tug at the golden strands as the spasms rock through me.

  He might have been my first, but I’ve not met a man since that ate pussy the way Sam does. It’s as though he throws his whole body into it. Or at the very least, his whole face. Forget fame, millionaires, good looks, or winning Oscars, Sammy Belle wins the entire fucking universe for the way he eats pussy. My muscles give a final jerk beneath his mouth and I throw my head back against the futon, revelling in the afterglow. Content. Satiated.

  Sam, however, is not. He covers my lower abdomen with his big hands and pushes my hips into the mattress to keep me from moving.

  “I came. You can let me up now.”

  He licks at my clit, and suckles my labium into his mouth.

  “Oh.” I moan, sliding my fingers into his hair again. “Or you could just keep doing that.”

  He doesn’t respond; he just buries his face in my pussy, and thrusts his tongue inside as deep as it will go. I cry out, arching into his touch, but he pushes my hips back into the bed, letting me know that he’s in control. He controls my orgasm. He controls how soon, how hard, how fast, and when I get to finally fall over the edge of that precipice, and god damn it if I don’t want to just hand him the reins and say ‘yes, master’. I know one thing, though—if he doesn’t make me come again soon, Mr Boss Man or not, I’m gonna kick him in the face.

  “Sam, please?” I beg.

  “Please what, Little?”

  “Make me come,” I moan, as he slides one hand underneath my T-shirt and pinches my nipple. “I need you, please?”

  “You need me?” he teases, his eyes are dark and glittering and his grin just about breaks my heart.

  “Fuck you,” I say, and I mean it in more ways than one.

  “You wish.”

  “Yes, I do,” I pant, as he bows his head and licks at me again. “Fuck me.”

  “No.” Sam uses a finger to stroke the diamond jewellery above my clit. His touch is so gentle it hurts. He plunges two fingers inside me, hard, and fast. That hurts too, but I like it, a little too much, because when he does it a second time, my orgasm sucker punches me in the face.

  He releases my hips, and I immediately try bucking them upward, so he’ll get the hint and put his mouth on me again and make me come a third time, but he edges away. He leans back on his heels, wipes the evidence of my arousal from his chin, and then stands. His cock is level with my face. It’s rock hard, and jutting against the soft fabric of his sleep pants, and seeping pre-come. Oh god, how I want to lick it off. I want to take his cock in my mouth and suck him harder than a Hoover vacuum until he comes down the back of my throat. I lick my lips and reach out to stroke him. Sam closes his eyes while I run the tips of my fingers over the length of him, and then the bastard pulls away.

  “Where are you going?” I demand, and I’m left watching after him with wide disbelieving eyes as he disappears behind the screen separating his bed from the futon. “Sam!”

  “To jack off. I told you I wouldn’t take it further. I meant it.”

  “And if I wanted you to?”

  “You wouldn’t mean it.” The bed springs squeak as they take his weight. “You’d regret it in the morning.”

  “Uh no, as long as I get thoroughly fucked now, I don’t give a crap what happens in the morning.” And yeah, I feel as desperate and whorish as that sounds.

  “Stop whining and talk dirty to me.”

  I scoot to the other side of the futon, laying down so our heads are closer, though they’re still divided by a screen and several metres of negative space surrounding us. “Are you fucking kidding me? I’m still mad at you for leaving me hanging.”

  “You had two orgasms.”

  “Yeah, and now I need another.”

  “Then take matters into your own hands.” He chuckles. “And, Pepper, be loud about it.”

  I laugh. “Oh, you want loud, Sammy?”

  “Mmmm.”

  I spread my legs and slap my clit hard, careful not to stifle my intake of breath when I do. I repeat the action. This time it’s followed by a loud, “oh”.

  “Oh fuck,” he growls. “What are you doing out there?”

  “Smacking my clit,” I respond, in a sugary, teasing tone of voice.

  “Jesus Christ, that’s hot.”

  “Can I ask you something, Sammy?”

  “Yeah,” he says, and I can tell his stroking has increased because his breathing is laboured.

  “Did my pussy taste as sweet as you remembered?”

  “Sweeter,” he groans. “So. Much. Fucking. Sweeter.”

  I slip two fingers inside my slick flesh. It’s a poor imitation for Sam, but then my entire body is thrumming with electricity and the need to come again, so I’m pretty sure my Hello Kitty could paint the room right now in Va Jay Jay juice regardless.

  I moan, circling my clit with the pad of my thumb. “Oh god.”

  “Are you close?”

  “Mmm, so close.”

  “Fuck. Me. Too,” he pants.

  My orgasm builds until I can’t hold back any more and I unravel. Beyond the sounds of my cries, the sensations, and the heady smell of sex, Sam chases his own release, and falls over the edge with an, “Oh fuck.”
<
br />   I giggle. Yes, you read that right. I fucking giggle. Three stellar orgasms and suddenly I’m giggling like a stupid bimbo bitch from one of Sam’s videos.

  “Oh god, that was fucking amazing,” I mutter.

  “Mmhmm,” Sam groans from behind the safety of his screen.

  I allow my breathing to return to normal and for a moment I just float, and then when the euphoria wears away, silence settles into the space around us, so heavy and raw, like the ache in my muscles. I don’t want it to be weird between us now. Oh, who am I kidding? It’s always weird between us. Only now, we can’t pretend anymore. He tasted me, and he wouldn’t let me touch him in return. He wouldn’t take me, and I don’t know if it was to protect me, or to protect him.

  “Sam?” I ask softly, certain he’s not asleep because he’s not the quietest of sleepers.

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you want some ice cream?”

  He chuckles. “Fuck yes. I’m starving.”

  “Race you to the kitchen?” Still dressed in Sam’s T-shirt, I jump up from the futon and head for the refrigerator. Sam comes tearing out from behind the partition in his jammies, knocking it to the ground as he goes. I leap for the island, but I’m hauled up in an embrace that I try kicking and shrieking my way out of. Sam carries me a few feet, then drops me and makes a beeline for the freezer.

  “Cunt-fuck!” I scream at him, darting into the kitchen and attempting to snatch the ice cream from his hands. He already has a spoon scooped into the firm carton. He pulls it out and smacks me on the forehead with it. “Ouch. Give me my ice cream, you douche.”

  He holds my head in his grasp and licks the residue off of my forehead.