Chapter Four

THEY PULLED UP to the curb in front her house, and Parker was so loath for their time together to end. Last night had been amazing, Kristina was kind of amazing, and the more time Parker spent with her, the more she let herself relax and enjoy this.

“What’s on your mind, sweetheart?”

Kristina’s dark eyes were on her across the console. She had a slightly smug smile on her beautiful mouth.

“Looks like you already know.”

Parker was able to hold her eyes now. They had found something last night between the sheets, watching the sun rise together over the ocean this morning. This is going to work for me.

“I’m glad you enjoyed yourself. I did too.”

She nodded, hovering awkwardly, one hand on the door handle, not quite ready to leave the car.

“How did you get into this?”

She hadn’t meant to ask right then, but she did want to know.

Kristina gave her an enigmatic smile. She tore her eyes away, licking her lips.

“After I went through the agency and completed a program with another Domme, I realized this was who I wanted to be.”

“Wait…” Kristina used to be someone’s sub?

“Call me, sweetheart. We still have to sign the papers. Nothing serious—just NDAs for us both, and you should plan a visit to the clinic.”

Parker recognized the deflection but let it pass.

“Okay.”

This was it, time for her to go. Should I lean over and kiss her? Would Kristina want that?

Kristina was laughing.

“What?” Parker couldn’t help but laugh with her.

“Do you want something, Parker?”

God, that voice. She had come to know it last night, intimately, rich and dark and full of a million promises. The effect it had on her body, still sore from the previous night, was embarrassing.

“I’d like to kiss you goodbye.”

Her eyes found the floorboard, the request quiet. Kristina tipped her chin with her fingers until she was holding Parker’s gaze.

“Then ask me.”

She swallowed, part of her aware they were parked right in front of her house in the middle of the street, yet whatever magic Kristina had still sucked her in, swallowed her.

“May I kiss you goodbye, Mistress?”

A smile broke on Kristina’s face.

“You may.”

She sat still in her seat, her dark eyes daring Parker. Biting her lip, fighting a smile, Parker leaned over the console slowly, watching Kristina’s eyes until her own fell closed.

Even with a quarter of an inch between them, Kristina didn’t move. She was really going to make Parker kiss her. Closing the gap, Parker pressed her lips over Kristina’s soft ones, sucking lightly on her bottom one, tasting it with her tongue, pleased when they parted for her.

Kristina was quiet against her, soft and responsive, and it was so easy to lose herself in kissing her, tracing the curve of her jaw, feeling the fine hair at the base of her neck.

Their tongues moved together, and Parker wished desperately for the console to melt so she could be pressed against her, on top of her, inside of her. A dog barked and she came back to herself. With one last quick kiss, she pulled away, a blush growing on her cheeks.

She was pleased to see Kristina was just as breathless as she felt.

“Like that?”

I did. She could maybe see now why Kristina liked being on top so much.

“Yes, Mistress.”

She was rewarded for using the title with another beautiful smile.

“Off you go, Professor. If you stay any longer I’m going to end up shirking all my responsibilities and taking you home to have my wicked way with you, again.”

Something in her stomach clenched at the thought. Forcing herself to get a hold of herself, Parker swung open the door and clambered up and out of the car.

“You’re working today?”

Kristina nodded, something dark still in her eyes.

“Come here.”

Parker rolled her eyes playfully, but dutifully dropped her purse on the curb and moved to the driver side of the car.

“All the way.”

Kristina beckoned her to lean down with a crook of her index fingers.

“Next time you roll your eyes at me, I’m going to spank you. Do you understand?”

Parker’s heart raced. She couldn’t find the gumption to look contrite when she was actually excited at the prospect.

“No, sweetheart, it won’t be for your pleasure. Not until you’ve repented for your sins anyway.”

Kristina caught the collar of her shirt and pulled her back in for a rough kiss. By the time she was released, Parker was gripping the shiny door of the car for support, embarrassingly hot, a mess between her legs, again.

“I enjoyed last night, a lot, and this morning.” Kristina offered the words with a salacious smile. “Call me, okay?”

Parker promised she would, reluctantly stepping away and picking up her purse. She watched as the car pulled away from the curb with a roar, until it had disappeared out of sight.

Wow.

She was still floating on cloud nine while she dug through her purse for her cell, and hit Marion’s speed dial.

“You’re alive!”

She took a deep breath. She felt light. She felt young and free, and happy in a way she hadn’t been in so long.

“I’m alive, and the reviews were true, all of them. It’s amazing, and she’s sort of amazing.”

“Oh my God, you did it! I’m old and married. Give me details!”

Marion was half shrieking, and Parker heard LiLing laughing in the background. Parker started up the path, still digging in her purse for her keys while she held the phone against her ear with her shoulder.

“Well, she took me to bed, tied me to the headboard, and gave me the best orgasm of my life, and then gave me about four more that were just as good. We drank champagne at midnight and watched the sun rise in the morning. That was between rounds two and three… I just…”

She was smiling. She dumped her keys in the bowl on the side table.

“It was good, M. So good.”

Marion was squealing. All the giddy joy Parker had shared with her best friend a second before turned to ice in her stomach.

A loud thud sounded upstairs.

“M… Marion…” She hissed down the phone, frozen behind the front door. “There’s someone in the house. I just got home…”

A high, long note sounded above her, almost like singing.

“…rker, just leave… Call the cops.”

“I’m going up… It sounds like… People talking, I don’t know.”

She was already padding up the stairs, heels kicked off in the hall. She heard Marion down the line telling LiLing to go. The thought that LiLing would be here soon offered some comfort. What the hell is going on?

As she stepped into the upstairs hall, her heart was in her throat, fear prickling across her forearms, leaving goose bumps in its wake.

Marion was yelling her name down the phone, over and over, but it stayed held loose in her fist at her side.

A long moan sounded and she felt sick.

The door to her bedroom was ajar, and she pushed it open. The ice in her veins shattered.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

The words were vicious, snarled, feral, and anger exploded in her chest. Was the universe seriously not done with her? Hadn’t it taunted her enough?

“Shit, Parker…”

Amanda shoved Emily off her, Emily scrabbling to cover herself with Parker’s comforter, which only infuriated her more.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” She roared the words, angry to the point of tears, because of course, of course things couldn’t be good and easy and mending. Amanda had to fuck it all up, again.

“You need to calm down.” Amanda was on her feet, that stupid, reasonable doctor mask on her face, hands out as if to soothe her.

Fuck her.

“Calm down? Calm fucking down? You’re in my house, in my bed, fucking the woman you broke up our marriage for, and you’re asking me to calm down?”

Amanda ran her hands through her hair, her eyes wide like Parker was the crazy one in all this.

“Jesus… Parker, you were supposed to be at the coffee shop this morning doing your grading for the weekend, as usual.”

She isn’t even sorry, only sorry she’s been caught.

“My schedule changed.” She grit out the words.

Behind Amanda, Emily was tugging on her clothes in a hurry.

“Look, I just came to get the last of my stuff.”

Is she for fucking real?

“Oh, this stuff?”

Parker stormed down the hall, not waiting for either of them to follow. She threw open the window in the spare bedroom where she had shoved what little remained of Amanda’s things.

She tore open a box and it felt good. She smashed three vinyl albums over her knee, and it felt better.

“Here’s your motherfucking stuff, Amanda!”

God, I needed this.

Broken vinyl littered the yard below like paper. More followed.

A hand grabbed her arm. Amanda was dressed now, and Parker had never seen her like this. Perhaps before she really hadn’t felt anything for her at all, because now, her blue eyes burned, and Parker wondered if she was going to hit her. Part of her wanted her to.

“Take your hands off her. The cops are already on their way, Amanda.”

LiLing was standing in the doorway, breathless, Emily held back behind her arm.

Parker shrugged the hand off her bicep, hard.

“That’s right, Amanda, take your hands off me, and go back to your perfect little life with your perfect little slut.” She spat the words before lifting the entire box of records and chucking it out of the window.

“You crazy bitch!” Amanda was wringing her hands, running her fingers through her hair. LiLing was talking quietly into her cell, and Parker just couldn’t stop. She lost herself in the routine: lift, turn, toss it out of the window.

When the last box hit the yard below with a satisfying smash, she turned back to the room, her voice raw.

“There’s your fucking stuff. Now get the fuck out of my house.”

 

IN HINDSIGHT, SHE could have handled things better.

She was sitting on Marion’s sofa, still wearing the same shirt Kristina had peeled off her last night. That felt so long ago now. What was I doing?

Her phone buzzed beside her.

“Want me to check it?”

She nodded, grateful for Marion, for LiLing who she could hear in the kitchen entertaining Roland while they once again dealt with the fallout from her shitty life.

“Okay, it’s a reply from the lawyer…” Marion was silent as she read, and Parker just let her head fall into her hands.

“When you settled, the house and all property in it became yours… So she can’t go after you for the vinyl and her other shit. Legal speak, legal speak… In the event that you wish to press charges for trespassing, it would be an airtight case given there’s already a police report detailing her presence on the property. It would also not be hard to prove breaking and entering… Parker?”

Marion was waiting for a response, but Parker couldn’t even bring herself to lift her head. What the hell was I doing? She wasn’t the person who just flipped out and started tossing things out of the window.

Then again, she never thought she’d be the person to come home from being casually dominated by a woman almost half her age to find her wife—ex-wife—having sex with the woman she’d left her for, in the bed that was once theirs.

“Parker… It’s fine. She was just blowing hot air. No one is getting sued unless you decide to go after her.”

The couch dipped beside her, and a hand settled on her knee.

“Are you going to go after her? God knows she deserves it.”

She let the heels of her hands dig into her eyes, scrubbing hard, searching for clarity that never came.

“I don’t know… I just…”

She knew the tears were audible in her voice. Marion’s tone was soft as she spoke to her.

“Sweetie… Come on. You were doing so well.”

Was I?

“What am I doing, Marion? All this…just… It isn’t like me. I don’t even know who me is anymore.”

Her best friend’s eyes searched her face as she finally lifted her head. Parker wondered what she saw there.

“It’s going to take time. You know that, right?”

She nodded pitifully.

“You were so happy on the phone. Do you want to talk about that some more?”

She shook her head. She couldn’t think about Kristina, not after all this. Everything was spinning out of control, and she realized she had been stupid to ever think it could be so simple.

“Do you want to talk more about the bitch?”

“She was my wife for fourteen years, M.”

She didn’t even know why she was defending her now. Marion was totally right. Amanda was a bitch. Maybe it had just become habit after dealing with her bad behavior for so long.

She could physically feel the effort it took for Marion to bite her lip. A beat passed and she wanted to apologize, but somehow she couldn’t find her voice.

“Do you want me to come back to the house with you and help sterilize your bed, or we could burn it? Lily’s really gotten into pyrotechnics since we built the fire pit.”

She squeezed out a smile. Marion was trying so hard, and she didn’t deserve any of it. Parker just wanted things to be better; she wanted to be put together, and less messy, less broken. Next to Marion she was always flawed, always the best friend who got the raw deal while the other got her happily ever after.

“I don’t want to interrupt your weekend with your family.”

She swallowed the lump in her throat. Marion scoffed, turning to call out of the room.

“Lily, honey, can you and Roland get your shoes on? We’re going to Parker’s.”

When Marion turned back to her, fierce love burned in her eyes, and as lost and drifting as Parker felt, somehow it still reached her.

“Parker, you are our family. Now get your shoes on too.”