The brunette is running, streaked with blood, her shirt ripped half off so one cup of her white bra can show off her bouncing breast. She looks over her shoulder, panting, running. Nothing is behind her but skeletal trees and darkness. The camera changes shots to behind her, the lights of a house visible past her cutoff jeans. Her legs are long and bright red with blood. The wings of her feathered hair flap around her terrified face as she staggers up the porch and pounds on the peeling paint of the door with the flat of her hand, huffing out incoherent noises that might eventually resolve into pleas for help. Motion behind the yellowed curtains shows someone on their way to the door who will open it, give her safety. The camera cuts back to her as hinges creak and light shifts across her face. Her mouth stiffens halfway to a smile of relief, then drops open in a gritty, terrified.
A knock on the door behind me makes me jump in my nest of pillows. I've seen this movie a dozen times, it rarely makes me so jumpy. Feeling foolish, I jump over the couch to the door and open it.
The boy on the other side of the door is a full head taller than me and I have to take a step back to see his face in the dim dormitory lights. I've seen him around the building before, either with a drunk giggling girl around his arm way after schedule or with a group of freshmeats clowning around in the lounge room in between (and during) class hour. We've exchanged nothing more than a few quick "hi"'s in passing and, on one occasion, caught each other looking back which only prompted me to plod away faster than any Olympian race walker.
Yeah, I thought he was cute, but now standing little less than two feet away from him, I don't think a noun can embody this sight. There is an easy elegance to his limbs that makes me think of a soccer player. His boyish hair is flipped on the ends, long and wavy like what you hope mousse is going to do to your hair when you're staring at the bottle in the drugstore. Is…is that a Wu-Tang Clan t-shirt he has on under his down jacket? I planned on leaning one arm against the door frame and tilting my head winsomely but I'm so shocked by the pout of his lower lip against the hard line of his jaw that my sexy lean turns out to be more of an unsteady thump. He looks surprised, too, probably by the fact that I am an incredible dork.
"Uh, hi," he smiles before clearing his throat. "Is Andrea in? Came to drop something by per request." He lifts a paper bag with a Wong Wok logo printed on it.
"Chinese?" I inquire.
"Beef with broccoli. From that new joint downtown? I headed over there earlier and she begged me to get her her favorite. And, like any other good boy, I deliver."
A wave of heat spreads across my face at his last words. "Well, more than she knows, beef with broccoli is my favorite, too. And since she currently isn't in right now, I would gladly take that from you, Mister Delivery Boy…?" I smile and shake his hand, my social training taking over for my frozen brain so I'm talking to him like I would a new student's dad. I realize too late that he wasn't reaching for a handshake, he was handing me the bag.
"Jahar," he shakes, my hand, confused but rolling with it. "Just Jahar."
His eyes are laughing. I am too ridiculous right now to judge accurately, but I think it's a kind laugh. "Well, please to meet you, Just Jahar. I'm Erica."
He gives me a modest smile. "Well, Erica, I guess-Woah." He blurts out, arching an eyebrow as he looks pass me towards the T.V.. On the screen, a group of teenagers in tight jeans are drinking beer and laughing obnoxiously in an old barn, oblivious to the desiccated corpse crucified in the hayloft above them.
"Oh, I must not have paused it. That's Scream Bloody Death, another of my favorites."
"Scream Bloody Death?" He nods, giving me a side long look. "I mean, it is a classic. That's cool. I've never met a girl who liked a real splatterfest before."
Holy shit. He thinks I'm cool. Somehow, I got him to round me up to being cool.
"Can I get you a beer?"
He digs his teeth into his bottom lip and turns to me with lowered lids, perfecting the apologetic-hot-boy face to a t. "I would say yes, but I kinda have a few things to take care of…"
I think about my mini fridge. I have the worst beer. High Life, if I'm lucky. If I'm not, it's the single weird Czechoslovakian tallboy someone left in the back the last time I had a party. "Beer's overrated. There's definitely some vodka in the freezer."
He laughs. Not the self-aware, suave laugh that makes my knees weak, but a full one with an ugly snort tucked inside its rolling folds. "It's been fun, Erica Beef-with-Broccoli, but I really do have to go. Maybe later…"
Damn. I return to my lean against the door jamb with more confidence, my flirty, wistful look a real one. I have nothing to lose now, since I have nothing but a few short minutes with a hot guy. "That's too bad, Jahar. Just Jahar."
"Double-oh-eight," he says over his shoulder as he starts down the hall, "license to lo mein."
I don't know how I expected this to go. My apartment is still ringing with his laughter, drowning out the screams and frenetic Bible-quoting and chopping sounds coming from my TV. At least I got a good look at his ass. He's definitely a hottie.
I settle back onto the couch. I'm going to have to start the movie all over again.
—–
Smart girl Jamie, who didn't think the time was right to lose her virginity to her boyfriend on their weekend camping out at the old farm, is hiding, crouched in a cupboard. Through the crack between the closed doors, she watches Cotton Matherson, psychopathic backwoods preacher, take his nail gun down off the gore-speckled wall of tools. Her stoner friend, Paul, is tied down to the dining room table, spread-eagle. They're the only teens left alive.
"God gave you his precious Word," the madman yells, brandishing the nail gun in one hand and a Bible in the other. "He gave you salvation and you used it for rolling papers!" His pupils are tiny dots in the pale pools of his eyes. Paul is sobbing. "It's time someone made you learn to respect these pages!"
Cotton sets the Bible down next to Paul's shoulder, opens it, and tears out a single page. He smooths it down across Paul's chest and positions the nail gun over the top of it. "In the beginning…"
He pulls the trigger. Paul screams.
I almost miss the knock on the door because Paul is noisily working out how he feels about Biblical literalism on my TV. This time, I remember to pause the movie so I can answer without missing anything. "Hello?"
"Hey, it's Just-Jahar, from before?" He says outside the door. "This is going to sound crazy, but I was, um, wondering if you maybe wanted some company to watch-"
"I'll be right there." I feverishly pull my hair out of its braid so it floats across my shoulders in exaggerated waves and adjust my tank top to show a little more cleavage. When I open the door for him a few minutes later, he already taking off his coat. I was wrong before, it's not a Wu Tang Clan shirt, it's the Fugees. I honestly think about just blowing him in the hallway because he's so perfect. At least then I'll know exactly what to do with my mouth.
"I, uh, I hope you don't mind. I thought I might come by and see if the offer for that beer was still good." I glance over at the coffee table where my picked-over food containers and the empty beer bottle sit, accusing me of having no fun on a Friday night.
"I…think I may have mentioned before that there's vodka?"
"That sounds just fine." He steps closer. I hope it's to make good on the tease of his lips against mine before, but he hands me a white plastic bag, cold to the touch. "It's strawberry ice cream," he says with some pride, looking at me expectantly.
"Oh. That's great, I like strawberry." I motion him in. Sweet. Random, but sweet.
"And what's Scream Bloody Death without strawberry ice cream?" He raises his eyebrows with a sexy sparkle in his eyes.
"Oh!" The realization hits me and I laugh out loud. "Oh my God. They used strawberry ice cream for that scene with the brains."
"Exactly," he walks into the dorm with me. "Unless you're all Scream Bloody Death-ed out."
"No, no," I set the ice cream down on my writing desk. "I was actually only partway through. I don't mind just restarting it from the beginning so we can watch the whole thing." Two hours on the couch with Jahar and the way his group t stretches across his lean arms instead of the twenty minutes or so left from where I'd stopped? Yes, please.
"No, that's okay," he's looking at the display of postcards hung on my side of the wall. "I wouldn't want to make you watch it again on my account. We can watch something else, if you want."
"So… you're from here?" I ask, grateful to have some kind of out.
"From Boston. First year here. Still learning my way around." He opens up my fridge and finds a can of High Life I'd missed on the door, hiding behind the mustard. "I'd be a disaster without GPS."
"And when you're not doing delivery?" I smile and perch myself on top my desk, lapping at a big curl of red-flecked pink ice cream from my spoon.
"Play FIFA?" He opens the can and takes a long drink.
"And when you're not delivering and kicking virtual balls?" I continue, going along with his teasing game.
A shadow passes through his expression, a flicker of disappointment so fast I would have missed it melting into his half smile if I wasn't staring at his face and thinking about his kissing him. "I can't believe I did this."
"What?"
"Barged into your dorm because I knew where it was." He looks around, as if he needs the door but has forgotten where it is. "This was a mistake, I'm sorry."
He's going to leave. He's going to leave if I don't do something, and my feet are as rooted in place as one of the girls in my horror movies while I'm yelling at them to get out of the basement.
"No, don't," I step in front of him before he can move away from the fridge. I don't have a plan for what to say or what to do. I just can't imagine letting him leave, leave bad like this. His eyes are very dark, almost black. "I already scooped two bowls of ice cream."
He smiles before I push forward to kiss him, like something from a better movie than the one I've been watching. Our lips slot tentatively together, shift, contact again. His hand is on the small of my back. I softly suck his lower lip into my mouth and run my tongue across it, graze it with my teeth. He tries my mouth with darting pushes of his tongue and I answer with mine. I'm glad he's a good kisser. I'm elated he doesn't taste like sesame chicken.
Jahar tilts my chin up with his cheek and kisses down my throat, across to the side of my neck. He sucks gently at the skin where my neck meets my shoulder, then moves back up to tease my ear with his tongue. I slide my hand up his chest to touch his hair. Jesus H. Christ, it is exactly as soft as it looks, winnowed between my fingers. I hear him set his beer down on the table beside us to free up his other hand. It's cold, sliding up my arm from my elbow to hook a thumb under the strap of my tank top. He strokes the satin shoulder strap of my bra. He presses his forehead against mine.
"Do you have any idea how much I thought about this black bra of yours coming up these goddamn flight of stairs?"
I can feel him press against me, just over the drawstring knot in my plaid flannel pajama pants. If I don't slow this down, I'm going to be bent over the desk in ten minutes. I wouldn't mind that at all, but not just yet. I kiss him and cover his hand with mine to stop it from following the line of my bra strap any lower. "Our ice cream is melting."
He takes my cue to put on the brakes and goes to retrieve his beer. "We'd better eat it, then." We sit on the couch and I re-start Scream Bloody Death from the beginning, even though Jahar insists we can watch something else. The strawberry ice cream is already soft and a little gloopy, so we eat it quickly before he puts one long arm around my shoulders.
The brunette is running, streaked with blood. Nothing is behind her. The lights of a house are visible. She staggers up the porch and pounds on the door. Motion behind the yellowed curtains. The hinges creak. Her mouth drops open in a scream. A rough, twisted plow blade. Scream. Bloody. Death.
Jahar nudges my hair off my shoulder with his nose and peppers my neck with kisses, not looking at the screen.
The silhouetted figure pulls the dismembered body inside. He heaves the girl's body onto the table in the middle of the room and hangs the plow blade back on the wall. "Swords into plowshares. Plowshares into swords."
I feel him flinch against me when the violins shriek. I feel him jump a few times, when the movie hit its well-worn shocks.
Smart girl Jamie is hiding, crouched in a cupboard. Through the crack between the closed doors, she watches Cotton Matherson take his nail gun down.
"God gave you his precious Word. He gave you salvation and you used it for rolling papers! It's time someone made you learn to respect these pages!"
Jahar is kissing my neck again, each hot exhalation sending a jolt straight down into my panties.
"In the beginning…"
"Jahar?"
"Mmmm?"
"You're…hiding your eyes during the scary parts, aren't you?" His face is still pressed into the wide blonde waves of my hair.
"Mmmmaybe?"
I grab the remote and stop the movie, sitting back so I can look at him.
"Jahar?"
"Yes?" He looks sheepish. Caught.
"You've never actually seen Scream Bloody Death before, have you?"
He confesses with a sigh. "I'm not really a big fan of horror movies."
"So, the strawberry ice cream…?"
"The wonders of Wikipedia. I just wanted an excuse to come inside."
"You ridiculously beautiful boy," I scoot over to kiss him. Tension in his shoulders flows out under my hands. "You're lucky I didn't club you over the head and drag you into the dorm to have my way with you when I first saw you. You could have told me before I made you sit through that terrible movie."
"It wasn't all bad," his hands roaming up and down my sides, "I got to hold you when you were scared."
"When I was scared?" I tease.
"When you were apprehensive," he corrects. Jahar repositions on the couch, removing his Timberlands before pressing me into a reclining position. I toss some excess pillows off to make it easier for us both to fit, stretched out.
"Oh, right. When I was apprehensive about scary scenes in a movie I've seen two dozen times." His weight feels good on me and his hair is a black cloud of curls around our faces.
"I think this part's my favorite, though."
His lips and tongue are everywhere I need them to be against my mouth. He cups and gently squeezes one of my breasts over my tank top. I push my fingers under his t-shirt and scrape my nails lightly against his ribs. He moves his kisses and bites to my neck and throat, his chest thrumming with satisfied noises when I squirm against him. I'm so hot between my legs that I wonder if he can feel it through his jeans when I grind up into his waist.
He kisses down my throat to my sternum, hooks his fingers under the edge of my top and one of the cups of my bra and pulls down until my whole breast is exposed. He immediately peppers wet kisses around my areola and liquid lust just pours down from his mouth along my spine and up to my clit. He sucks my skin gently, testing it between his teeth. I'm being stitched all over with needles forged from pleasure. He shifts his weight so I'm still on my back and he's on his hip beside me, pulling at the drawstring on my pants.
"Can I touch you?" he slides his hand along my lower belly to the edge of my panties. "Can I feel how wet you are for me?"
"Please," I beg, arching my back. His fingers slip easily into my black lace panties and cup my sex, heat against heat.
"No landscape, huh?" he whispers, wiggling the tip of his middle finger in the tight crease of my outer lips. "Were you hoping for company?"
"Against all odds," I sigh as he strokes through my inner lips. "The security down stairs, though. They make it hard to…to…" He pushes one finger all the way inside me. I can't do anything but breathe and feel my walls close around him.
"Hard to have one-time delivery guys drop by on the off chance you'd like to give them more than a generous tip?" He moves his finger in small circles inside me, feeling my interior walls before focusing on stroking the spot along the front that makes my whole pelvis feel full and tight.
"Two fingers," I moan. "Please…"
He works a second finger inside me and continues rubbing my spot. He's not trying to get me locked into climax yet, only building excitement for now. He pulls his fingers halfway out of me and scissors them against each other to push and stretch my inner lips. He thrusts his fingers back in up to his knuckles and brushes my clit with his thumb. My temperature shoots up. I don't know why he can't see I'm boiling under my skin, the heat tingling in every follicle of every hair. My spine curls back on itself like a leaf before the flame and I arch harder into him as his fingers stoke and build the pressure inside my body until I'm surprised my lungs are still able to push any air in and out at all.
He rubs his cheek against mine, then pulls back only a few inches. "Come for me."
I pant while he presses harder inside me, his thumb working furiously over my nub. I finally feel the fluttering edge of the unbearable tension and rush down the slope of release, my legs shaking and toes clenched. The wave of pleasure peaks inside me and washes down to his fingers, soaking my thighs. The contractions inside me are so strong he has to fight to keep his fingers there, no longer bearing down on my triggered G-spot but slowly massaging through my pulsing spasms.
"Keep going," I moan. "I do multiples. I'll come for you again if you keep going."
"I definitely want to see that," I feel him smirk against me, keeping his rhythm inside me in long, slow strokes. Removing any barriers, I grab at my waistband and lift my hips, expecting him to pull his hand away, but he penetrates me deeply with his fingers and holds them there while I kick my pants off my legs. I reach down to where his erection is digging into my hip and squeeze.
"Fuck," he sighs, then bites my shoulder. "I'm hard enough to hammer nails right now just from seeing you come."
"You're real close to seeing it again." I efficiently flick his leather belt free of its buckle, unzipping his fly and slipping my hand inside his pants. I don't have to search for his cock, it springs into my palm. His shaft isn't much longer than my closed fist with the head poking out over the top of my fingers, but he's so thick I can't close my hand around him. His fingers continue, his rhythm like a resting heart rate. I kiss him, teasing my tongue deep into his mouth. His slick precum coats my fingers.
He increases the tempo and force of his strokes until his knuckles connect with my spread lips in solid, wet, smacks on each time he drives his fingers into me. He looks up at me, his black hair trailing across the palest part of my chest.
"Harder" I demand.
"Alright," he grins up at me, "but don't wake the neighbors." He opens my right leg wider, then removes his fingers completely from inside me to replace them with all three, tucked together into a long, elegant wedge. I grab the edge of a blanket draped over the couch and bite down hard on the edge to muffle my ecstatic screams as his fingers fill me. Jahar watches my face carefully for signs he's going too far, but, to his credit, takes me at my word for what I want. He drags his thumb slowly back and forth across my clit while building to fucking me so hard and fast with his fingers that I can feel flecks of my wetness showering my thighs. Burning with the need to come again, I push my tank top and bra away from my breasts and squeeze them as I bear down on his invading, stretching fingers.
I'm glad I thought to stick that blanket in my mouth! Otherwise I probably would have woken up everyone on the four floors below us when I scream and come for him again. Jahar pushes his fingers into me but holds them steady, letting me ride out the clenching spasms of my orgasm so he can feel it happen. He gives me a smokey look, then moves his fingers inside me again.
"No," I pant out. "No more right now." My whole body is still tingling and I feel hollow for a second when his fingers leave me.
"You're flushed bright pink," he smiles and pushes his hair out of his eyes where it's flopped forward and lays his palm against my mound. "It looks good on you."
"Mmmm," I respond, which is what passes for banter after an orgasm like that.
"I wouldn't have thought you liked it so rough, nice girl like you." I listen to break the code of his tone, the same way I have every time I've ever let a man give me what I really want. Turns out a lot of men love finding out a nice girl likes hard sex until they think she likes it harder than they do; I've had enough of enthusiastic third dates who stayed the night but got too busy for a fourth or fifth. Jahar's words aren't coated in that familiar afterglow disbelief that curdles into contempt before the month is out.
"Nice girls don't?" I prod.
"Just surprised. Pleasantly surprised. " He sits back on his heels and I can see his neglected hard-on straining against his jeans. He shakes his head, staring at me. I'm about to ask if he sees something he likes when I remember I'm only wearing a shirt. I pull it off and unhook my bra, enjoying Jahar enjoying me.
"I think you're wearing too many clothes," I say, feeling that hunger to be filled roaring back into my sex.
"And I think everything about you is working overtime to make me hard." Jahar pulls his t-shirt off over his head. His chest and stomach are lean and rippled. His skin is poreless and smooth, the color of really fine parchment paper, something you'd see made into a fancy invitation. I sit forward and wrap my fingers around his belt and stroke my thumbs down along the sides of his shaft through his pants.
"I'm so fucking ready."
"Overtime," he mutters, closing his eye and tilting his head back. He leans forward and kisses me while I tease him. "Please tell me you have condoms."
Yes! I have condoms! I'm a responsible adult who has sex, and I keep them in the nightstand next to my bed. I know, because in October I…used the last goddamn one on a guy who told me he didn't have any time to see me until "after Thanksgiving" and never texted again. Fuck. At least I had the one in my bag, the one for sexy emergencies. That was…the one that somehow fell out of my bag in front of the dean at lunch two weeks ago. I dropped a paper napkin over it before he could really notice what it was and had to toss it in the trash when I bussed my tray because the dean was still talking to me.
I flop forward like a rag doll until my forehead touches his chest. "Goddammit," I mutter, "I forgot to get another box. You don't have one?"
"I wasn't planning on getting that lucky." He tilts my chin up with one hand and kisses me while using the other to remove my hand from his erection. "Maybe I need to rethink how sexy this whole 'Chinese food delivery guy' thing is." He sits up, straddling my hips, looking like an Athenian beauty from Ancient Greece from this vantage point.
"What you need to rethink," I say, sitting up underneath him and pressing my chest against his stomach as I rub down between his legs, "is wearing these pants." I kiss his neck, his hairless chest, one light brown areola. "I may not be able to feel you filling me up completely tonight, but at least I can taste you." I wrap my arms around him tightly as if against any resistance.
He pecks my nose tenderly. "I think some things are worth the wait."
"Just like some things are worth watching crappy horror-cult movies for?"
"Just like that."
"Are you busy tomorrow?" I'm already thinking about a night full of making Jahar come with my hands, my lips, maybe pressed between my breasts or even rubbing between my cheeks, anything I can do without him being inside me. I'm thinking about how handsome he'd look waking up next to me, his messy curls even messier, his long limbs stretching into a morning yawn.
"All day. I'll be out of town."
"The day after?" He makes an inarticulate noise of mild disgust.
"Same."
I rub my cheek against his shoulder. The heat of his skin sends new waves of throbs through my breasts and stomach, through my pelvis. I have the same feeling I had before, when he almost left the apartment. No, it's the feeling I had after he left the first time, like I got this single, short shot of what I wanted and it was slipping away, not because of something I did or didn't do but just from the tidal pull of circumstance. Before I can think too much about what that premonition means, my mouth takes over.
"I'm trying to think of a way to talk you into staying the night, but it sounds like it might be a bad idea."
It hangs in the air between us, neither of us saying anything for a few of his deep breaths. It's the first time I feel naked all night, aware of every inch of my skin stuck to his in the jungle heat of the radiator.
He kisses me tenderly on the lips and stands up, looking around for his discarded clothes. "I'll make you a deal, though. I'll being coming back earlier this weekend. Will you be around?"
"Yes." I wrap one of the blankets from the couch around me like a cloak and watch him zip up his fly while he hunts for his other shoe.
"Good. How about I bring over some of Chinese food and a movie and we give this another shot."
"With condoms?" I ask. His shy smile is even more attractive because I know he can probably still taste me on that irresistible full curve of his bottom lip.
"I'd like that."
"Me, too." He skims into his t-shirt nearly as fast as he took them off. My throat tightens when I see how his black hair hangs when he bends over to lace up his high-tops.
"Good. I have one condition, though," he says.
"What?"
"I get to pick the movie this time."
I walk him to the door without bothering to wear anything but the blue blanket from the couch, wrapped around my chest and trailing along the floor like an impromptu ball gown. Here we are again, him in the hallway, me leaning against the door frame. Things are still vibrant and cozy and mine behind me and the start of ugliness and uncertainty a staircase away. Jahar gives me a lingering look before trekking down the hall.
"Goodbye, Jahar, Just Jahar," I call out as he disappears.
"Goodbye, Erica Beef-With-Broccoli."