Switch. Megan Hart
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Austin nods against my neck. It seems stupid to be angry with him now, or to worry about if he cheated on me while he was gone. I know he did, once or twice, when we were in high school. Hell. I cheated on him, too, if you want to count the times he thought we were on and I thought we were off and vice versa. But not since graduating, not since we both got full-time jobs and a full-time relationship.
He fumbles for the rubbers I keep in the box in my nightstand and puts one on. I could help him, but I’d rather watch just now. He rolls it on over his cock, his teeth clamped onto his lower lip in concentration. Then he moves up my body and centers himself before pushing inside me.
I groan; I can’t help it. I fucking love this, the sex. His weight. His prick so hard and thick and long inside me, so long it hurts sometimes when he fucks me, but I like that, too. He’s got muscles in his arms from all the heavy lifting and I grab one as he thrusts inside me.
I lift my hips to meet him and his belly presses my clit every time we move together. Orgasm doesn’t build, it tears me down. I’m coming again when he starts to move harder and faster, and I know Austin’s coming, too.
It doesn’t always happen that way, that we finish together, so it’s sort of magical and leaves me sleepy and contented and cuddly, after. He loops an arm around me when he’s thrown away the condom. We lay on my bed, spooning, and his breath ruffles my hair.
“Paige,”Austin says. “I want to ask you something important.”
And then we’re on the ocean, in a boat that’s going down.
As the cold, dark sea closed over my head, the sound of the alarm bells ripped into my ears. I took a deep breath, even though I was underwater. I kicked, the tight clutch of the waves around my ankles becoming the tangled grasp of sheets around my feet as I opened my eyes and fumbled, without seeing, for the phone.
“What?” At this hour I couldn’t be expected to be polite, could I?
“Paige?”
I blinked, not wanting to look at my bedside clock’s numbers. It was way too fucking early to be up. “Arty. What’s the matter? Where’s Mama?”
“Mama’s still sleeping. And Leo’s at work,” he added, though I hadn’t asked. “I’m hungry.”
“Make yourself some cereal.” I stifled a yawn and pondered giving in to a hangover that wouldn’t have bothered me with just a few more hours’ sleep.
“There isn’t any.”
“No Cheerios? No Raisin Bran?”
My little brother, the only other sibling I’d ever actually lived with, made a familiar noise of disgust. “I don’t like those kind.”
“Then I guess you must not be that hungry.” I was hungry, but didn’t feel like getting out of bed at the butt-crack of dawn to fix toast. “Arty, it’s too early to call me. What did I tell you about that?”
“Can’t you come over and make me some pancakes?” His little-boy voice sounded very far away. I pictured him in his Spider-Man pajamas, bare feet swinging because his legs weren’t long enough to reach the floor. “Please?”
Maybe if I kept my eyes closed I’d fall back to sleep. I snuggled deeper under my soft blankets. “Buddy, I don’t live there anymore. I told you that. I told you I couldn’t just come over whenever you called.”
Silence.
“But I miss you,” Arthur said in a tiny voice.
I sighed. “I miss you, too, buddy. How about I come down and take you to the movies sometime soon?”
“When?” At nearly seven, the kid had been reading since he was four and could tell time on an analogue clock, a skill that sometimes stumped me. There wasn’t much that slipped past him. “Today?”
“Not today, no. Maybe later this week.”
“When? When?”
I couldn’t think straight and just tossed out a day. “Wednesday?”
“Saturday. Sunday. Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. That’s a week!”
He sounded so dismayed I hated to laugh. Laughing, in fact, hurt my head. “Not quite. Five days.”
“That’s too long!” Arthur’s voice pitched high enough to drill my tender ears.
“You’ve got gymnastics on Tuesday, and Monday I’ve got an appointment in the evening. Sorry, buddy. You have to wait until Wednesday. Besides,” I said, offering an incentive against despair, “the new Power Heroes movie comes out on Wednesday. How about that?”
“Okay.” He didn’t sound convinced, only resigned. “But I’m hungry now, Paige.”
“Cereal. Or have a snack from the drawer.”
“Mama says no snacks from the drawer until after breakfast.”
“Aren’t there any cereal bars in the drawer?” I bit back another yawn. If I didn’t get back to sleep in the next ten minutes I was not going to be a happy camper.
“Yesss…” Even Arthur knew where I was going with this, but he sounded like it might be too good to be true.
“Have one of those. They’re cereal, right?”
“Can I tell Mama you said it was okay?”
“Sure.” It wouldn’t be the first time she’d holler at me for giving the kid permission to do something she’d have refused. On the other hand, this was the woman who’d allowed me to go to school in a pair of hand-me-down, slip-on Candie’s shoes in the sixth grade and bought me my first package of rubbers in the tenth. She was a different sort of mother to Arthur than she’d been to me. “Now let me go back to sleep, okay?”
“Okay. Bye, Paige.”
“Bye.”
“I love you,” my little brother said before I could hang up.
It wasn’t the first time he’d ever said it, but suddenly the memory of how he’d smelled as a baby washed over me with enough force to push my eyelids open like snapped-open blinds. How his hair had been so soft against my lips when I kissed his little baby head, and how the heavy weight of him had filled my arms and lap. How I used to hold him while I watched hour after hour of bad TV, just because he was so small and sweet. Just because he loved me.
“I love you, too, buddy. I’ll see you on Wednesday.”
He had a seven-year-old’s social graces and didn’t say goodbye again, just hung up. I put the phone back in the cradle of its receiver and my head back in the cradle of my pillow, but sleep had vanished and there was no getting it back.
With a groan, I looked at the clock. Almost eight. And I’d gone to sleep, what, just before six this morning? God. I was so going to pay that kid back one day, maybe when he was a teenager and prone to sleeping as late as he could…yeah. I’d wake him up.
Unfortunately, my revenge was far-flung and I was still awake. I stretched and sat up, waiting for the rush and boil of acid stomach or the pound of a headache, but aside from a gnawing hunger, I felt all right. At least until I heard the muted beep from my cell phone, which I’d left abandoned in my sparkly purse under the pile of my discarded clothes. I had to dig past my Steve Madden pumps to reach it.
Five missed calls.
Five? Crap. I thumbed the keypad to check out the numbers. I had voice mails, too, though without dialing in I couldn’t tell how many. Kira had called me around 4:00 a.m. but hadn’t left a message. That could be good or bad, depending. One was an old call from my mother I hadn’t deleted. The other three were from Austin.
Triple crap.