Random Acts of Fantasy Read online

  Trevor

  Liam’s arms went super tight, like he was ready to punch something. I moved back, tensing up, worried about the way he looked at Darla. My own heart was slamming in my chest after Darla’s really fucked-up way of getting our attention. The fastest way to get a man to go into shock was to tell him he had fathered a baby he hadn’t intended to.

  Something was off in the way Liam was reacting to Darla, and it kept me on guard. I nudged Liam’s knee with my toe as I said, “Hey. What’s up? She was joking.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw Darla run a hand through her bushy waves, blond hair nestled against her neck, that curve of skin crying out for my mouth. Even Liam’s anger couldn’t tear me away from that sight.

  “Bad joke.” His words came out clipped and strained, but Liam took a deep breath and slowly unfurled his fists. I didn’t think he’d actually hit Darla—that was certain death by pummeling from me. Hell, Joe really would climb through the tablet screen and beat the shit out of him if he so much as put one feather touch on Darla.

  Stand down, I thought, watching Liam relax as if listening to my silent command.

  Too bad the world didn’t work that way. Things would be far less fucked up if people just did what I recommended.

  Joe was having a sputtering shit fit on the tablet, going on about the whole thing being a scam, while Darla tried to calm his over-drugged self down. Caffeine alone didn’t account for his state. Not even his insane concoction of Mountain Dew, Red Bull, and dried coffee. Crazy motherfucker.

  Snorted Adderall, on the other hand…and I had no doubt he knew exactly how to find it, too. Joe was probably dealing it, making bargains with an enterprising third grader for his stash.

  I paused to take in my own invitation. A private island resort. All expenses paid. $10,000. I could use the money (who couldn’t?) and it would be a blast to spend some time with Darla and the band down there.

  But my own questions seeped in, making me frown as I stood, leaving Liam alone on the ground. I began to pace. Who saw us and invited us? What kind of resort was this? What had we done to be offered $10,000 each for a single performance? All the songs we’d written and performed rushed through my mind like a fast-moving ribbon attached at the end of a kite, carried off by the winds of chance.

  I mean, we knew we were awesome and that the rest of the world just needed to catch up and realize our glory.

  Had it? Had someone figured out that we were the next big thing?

  The next big thing with a fucking awesome deal to test the waters, have fun, and come home with fat bank accounts.

  Joe didn’t need the money. Sam sure as fuck did, and Liam was cut off by his old man. Darla…I smiled at her, our eyes catching, her righteous indignation flashing in those ocean-green eyes until she let me steady her with eye contact that deepened.

  And then she granted me such a wonderful grin it blinded me.

  Love. It makes you do stupid shit, like not saying “I love you” because the power of the feeling is so much greater than the meaning of the words. “I love you” wasn’t just a commitment—which I could handle. It wasn’t just an expression—which was easy enough.

  It was inadequate.

  In her eyes I saw love. Oceans and meadows of pure, unadulterated joy. In her throat I heard the melody of my name whispered in furtive moments where we claimed each other. That voice was like a luscious stroke up my spine, rendering me dumbstruck. And moments with her and Joe, the three of us united, were like inventing a whole new world and then shaking its axis, as if we were the universe itself.

  How in the hell do you shrink all of that emotion into three little words?

  It’s easier to say nothing at all.

  “Let’s settle this by calling the number,” Liam rumbled, standing. He wore old jeans that were probably from high school, a ripped Scott Pilgrim vs. the World t-shirt I’d given him for Christmas last year, and an expression of disdain for all of us that was louder than his words.

  “No shit!” Joe shouted through the tinny speakers on my tablet. “I’ve been saying that for the past five minutes while you all run around in your little circle jerk.”

  “So eloquent,” Amy snapped, turning away from Sam. She barged over to the screen, that long, brown hair fluttering over her face, eyes angry and mouth twisted into a snarl. “Penn has really brought out the gentleman in you.”

  “Don’t you have a book to dust off and shelve somewhere, Amy? The grown-ups are talking now,” Joe replied, pretending to be bored.

  We were all waaaay over the top.

  “Hey,” Sam growled. Nothing like ending a fight with your girlfriend by taking on a common enemy. “This shit was old back in high school, but it’s really fucking stupid now, Joe.”

  “What are you going to do? Put your thumb on the camera and block me from sight? Turn off the tablet? Oooooooooh. Sam’s going all caveman on me to protect his librarian.”

  Darla and Liam sighed with tones of shared disgust, looked at each other, and smiled ruefully.

  I grabbed my phone and dialed, pressing the screen against my ear, one finger held out to them all in a gesture of silence.

  Miraculously, they complied.

  “May I help you, Mr. Connor?” a pleasant man’s voice answered, tinged with a European accent I couldn’t place.

  The phone might as well have been a copperhead. I snatched it away from my ear and looked at it like it was about to bite.

  “What the fuck?” I couldn’t help it. How did he know my name? This had gone from awesome to creepy in two seconds. Someone was playing a very elaborate practical joke on us.

  “Did you drop acid in my coffee pot?” I asked Liam.

  “Huh? Why would I do that?”

  “Because what the fuck? How does this guy know my name?” I turned on speakerphone and held out my screen to everyone, like it was some ancient relic possessed by a demon.

  “Mr. Connor?” the voice asked from an echoey distance. “You have set up your caller ID.”

  The room erupted into snickers. Good. Let them all be united in making fun of me. Which meant the chicken jokes would be next…

  “And I was expecting your call,” he added as I pulled the phone back to me. Darla winked and shook her head slowly, while the others stopped laughing and leaned in, curious.

  “I assume you have questions. Are any of the band members with you? And Ms. Jennings and Ms. Smithson?”

  These motherfuckers I called friends got the same WTF look on their faces, making me grin. Good. Feel the discomfort. Hah.

  “We’re all here,” Joe announced. “So what are the terms of this contract?” He pulled out his invitation. “No one is signing on without seeing the actual performance contract.”

  “The island’s owner assumed that your astute legal nature would emerge,” the man told Joe. Oh, man. I needed a shovel. This guy was laying it on thick.

  And Joe was eating it up. Metaphorically speaking.

  “Yes,” was all Joe could choke out, his eyebrows raised, mouth turned in a frown of impressed approval.

  “Please refer to your personal email account, Mr. Ross, and you will find a copy of the proposed contract. In fact, Misters McCarthy, Hinton, and Connor will find the same, and Ms. Jennings’ contract is quite different.”

  All of them checked their phones, then squinted, reading quietly. I couldn’t because I’d lose my connection, and Amy surveyed the room, looking awkward.

  “Ms. Smithson,” the voice said soothingly, “I assure you we have included you and you are most welcome as Mr. Hinton’s guest.”

  A shy smile was all she could muster as Darla avoided eye contact with her. Bad blood between them would be wicked awful. They weren’t exactly best friends, but they got along well, and it made being in the band easier. Chicks complicated everything. Chicks in a fight with each other made life a living hell.

  Especially band girlfriends.

  Sam reached out and squeezed Amy’s hand gently, though his eyes never left
the phone. Funny how a big break like this invitation—and realizing it was real—could cut short all the negativity and invoke wonder.

  “I trust you would like to have your band’s lawyer look this over,” the voice said.

  Band’s lawyer? We didn’t even have a band pencil case, much less a lawyer. Most of our performances had contracts made of handshakes and promises of free beer and a percentage of the cash taken at the door.

  “We will have our counsel review it,” Joe said, smooth as freshly cleaned ice at the Winter Olympics.

  “Very well. May I mark your group as a tentative ‘yes’? It will make travel arrangements easier to initiate.”

  Six sets of eyes—if you included Joe’s on screen—looked back and forth among the crowd, like a really fucked-up version of The Brady Bunch. You know, the opening scene where they’re in that nine-square box and look at each other?

  If the issue weren’t so serious I’d have burst into laughter. Darla put her hand on my knee and I could feel her shaking. The gravity of being handed our big break was so strong, so weighty, I could taste it in my throat, threatening to choke me. We were an eclectic bunch, a ragtag bundle of people with different worldviews, financial woes, traumas and joys, and we had one thing in common:

  This was one badass invitation to start the rest of our life.

  “Yes,” we said in unison.

  Darla

  “Very well, then,” said the man who sounded like Jeeves the Butler, or the guy from that old sitcom Mama liked to watch. Mr. Belvedere. Only the man on the phone sounded like what I imagined was the European version of Christian Grey. I could close my eyes and conjure up the cashmere suit, tailored just so. The fine leather shoes. Cuff links that cost more than my trailer. Hell, more than Uncle Mike’s semi.

  You could hear money in his voice. What was that like, to live in such luxury? To sound like you had crisp hundred-dollar bills coming through your pipes? Must be nice.

  I looked down at my invitation. Five grand. That would buy a lot of diabetes testing strips and some nice pipes of a very different kind for Mama.

  A quick glance at Sam told me he was thinking his own version of my thoughts. We were a pair, similar in some ways. Nobody had beaten my body like poor Sam had been crushed by his preacher dad, but I knew a little something—a lot something—about scraping by to make it through the day fed and not broken.

  His face was alive in a way I only saw when he looked at Amy.

  “You will each receive a new envelope within the next few days.” AHN-vuh-lope was how he said the word. It made my pulse race just from the feel of how cultured and nuanced that word was, like how Trevor said RAH-ther (rhymes with father) and AWWWnt (rhymes with font) and not rather (rhymes with lather) and aunt (rhymes with ant).

  Like you could think yourself into a higher level of sophistication by speaking a certain way.

  Then again, I could think myself into all sorts of layers of being by saying certain words, like leaning into Trevor and whispering softly: “All this talk about islands and money is making me horny. You interested in fucking a woman who’s been invited to manage this amazing, breakout rock band? I hear she’s one awesome lay.”

  Sam whispered something in Amy’s ear and I got the distinct impression that Trevor wasn’t the only guy in the room whose pole was about to be encased.

  “Mr. Connor, would you please change the telephone settings from speakerphone so I may finish this call with you?” the voice asked, and Trevor gave me a jaunty grin, his hand taking mine and putting it on his rock-hard erection. His naked cock still looked like a piece of carved marble, but now I knew its intricacies well, and there was this sweet spot that I stroked just the right way and that made him....

  Gasp. He stood quickly. Liam’s eyes darted to us, then to Sam and Amy, who were now kissing, and he rolled his eyes. Picking up the tablet, he said to Joe, “Everyone’s pairing off, so that leaves you and me. Let me go find that pussy pocket attachment and you can give me a blowjob.”

  “Just turn the camera on yourself and you can blow yourself. Give me Darla now.”

  Trevor finished up with the island dude while Joe’s face softened as I took the tablet from Liam, who waved without effect as he slipped out of the apartment, clutching his envelope.

  Joe’s eyebrows lifted with a look of tentative joy on his beleaguered face, like a kid with the stomach flu on Christmas morning. You’re puking your guts out, but hey! Santa still came!

  “I have this damn paper to finish,” he said with a regretful sigh. “Or I’d—”

  “Or you’d get your ass on a train back here so me and Trevor can playact that scene with you.”

  “What scene?’ His eyes went smoky and confused.

  “The one in my head.” My wink made his mouth stretch into that pulse-tripping grin that always made me wet.

  This was no different. A light touch on my hip from Trevor told me that nothing would go to waste. My own fingers and the plethora of sex toys that seemed to reproduce in mine and Trevor’s bedside table drawers (helped out by Mama and her crazy winnings) would have to wait.

  Right now? It was all about the flesh.

  Joe sighed. “Yeah. My paper.”

  “Tomorrow!” I said with great enunciation. “One more day.” Trevor’s palm now ate my ass like it was a cheeseburger. He did it out of Joe’s view, which was kind of him, but when his fingers snaked up my inner thigh and began teasing the seam of my jeans, which happened to rest right against my clit, I wettened and reddened at once.

  “I—”

  Joe stopped himself, and my heart stopped right with his words. Was he about to say…?

  “I’ll see you tomorrow.” He kissed his fingers, pressed them against the glass, and smiled.

  Trevor grabbed the tablet and planted a big old sloppy kiss on Joe’s face. Tongue and all.

  “Ewwww,” me and Joe said in unison.

  Click. Trevor shut off the machine just as we turned each other on. The absence of Joe sucked, but you know what sucked even more?

  Me. On Trevor. And his mouth was…

  “Get a room!” Sam barked. Trev’s hands were unbuttoning my jeans as his fingers rubbed my hot spot, and I was so caught up in the dizzying scent of him and the smell of money and fame (that, apparently, my mind manufactured because neither were in the room right now) that I forgot about Amy and Sam, who looked at us from across the room with twin expressions of disgust.

  “Like you’re not about to do the same thing,” Trevor growled, picking me up in his arms. That’s no small feat. His biceps bulged obligingly and he walked with steady strides to his bedroom, his heart thumping in my ear in time to my clit.

  All four of us laughed, a soundtrack of happiness to what we’d just experienced, but none of that mattered. The brush of Trevor’s tongue against mine, the parting of our lips to connect, the wet, smooth, luscious taste of him as he set me down on the bed was what mattered.

  And Joe. Joe mattered. But right now Joe wasn’t here, so it was Trevor I would take, inside and out, because we were enough. We weren’t complete.

  But we were enough.

  You spend six months with someone, fucking on a regular basis and making love half as many times over (yes, there is a difference), spending the night at their place and them at yours, and you get a feel for their rhythms. Their deeper core. Who they are and what they like and how a sigh means yes and a growl means hell yes!

  When we pulled away from the first kiss, Trevor’s thick wall of muscle nestled in against my softer form; it was like we were meant to be like this—not because we were hot for each other but because we’d found each other.

  The finding is the hardest part. You spend so much of your time seeking that you forget the in-between parts matter.

  Or do they?

  Because I didn’t need an invitation to some island resort to be happy.

  Everything I needed was kissing my neck right now, stroking my wet clit under my open jeans and pantie
s, and finishing up the last paper for the law school semester.

  Both of them were everything I needed.

  But, by God, right now I was so swollen and excited and filled with lust for Trevor that I was about to go all praying mantis on him and eat him after I fucked him silly.

  The glide of his smooth fingers over my sensitive folds made a mad rush of warmth pulse through my body and brain. Needing to touch him, I reached down to find him erect and throbbing, the veins I’d memorized thick and at the ready. His sweatpants slid off easily, freeing him, and my hand closed around his shaft. My touch made him gasp.

  There was no better sound on earth than the husky rasp of a man responding to your touch. Yours and yours alone.

  He ripped my jeans and panties off in a motion so controlled and yet swift that I’d have thought he did that for a living. Stripped women down bare so they could be ravaged. Ravished. At this point I didn’t care much which one he did to me, as long as his hands and mouth and cock touched me somewhere.

  Our eyes met as he kissed his way down from my collarbone, mouth teasing my rosebud nipples that went tight nearly at just the sight of him, now stripped down bare, our shirts a torn afterthought. What had I done to deserve this?

  And how could I do it again? If God had given me Trevor and Joe for some past blessed behavior, I wanted a manual to follow in my future lifetimes so I could know nothing but this throughout all eternity.

  And then an infinite set of nerve endings all began to sing at the very end of Trevor’s fingertips and tongue, his eyes heavy and lidded, turning down and breaking away, fingers parting my wet folds to come home to the very part of me that cried out his name in supplication and pure pleasure.

  That tongue should win a Grammy (of course). An Academy Award. A Golden Globe. Especially a People’s Choice Award. Someone needed to create a category for Tongue Most Likely to Be…and I’d nominate Trevor every year for the rest of my life.

  My hands never knew what to do when he was turning me inside out, making me twist and gasp his name like it would keep me grounded as he licked and stroked me high into the heavens, making my arms ache, my neck tight with pent-up release, my belly taut with a deeper, core orgasm that wanted him in me so he could touch every second of it as it unfurled.