Page 4 of Free Fall

He brought Jesse along to the haunted house a few weeks ago, but it was becoming clearer that wasn’t distraction enough. He saw me and my puppet. Connected the dots. Henry hadn’t, too wrapped up in whoever he’d been buried in.

Little shit.

Zelda hadn’t reappeared after dipping away to change, instead grabbing some leftovers to take to her room while we were packing up. I heard Delilah, Henry’s wife, mention she wasn’t coming back down. She was upstairs, was she waiting for me? I imagined her ripe with anticipation, the memory of what we’d done running through her mind as she squeezed her thighs together.

The fucking bitch knew, had known for two weeks, had planned to tell everyone. She wanted to toy with me, to flirt with my son and hand the ring to my wife with a sad confession. She spent most of the night watching me beneath those thick eyelashes. The lust I’d mistaken for curiosity now clear. There was something different about her now. Like being fucked into the mattress by an older man in a mask had awoken her. Even in her quiet, I’d seen it. Even in how she ignored me, remained stiff and stilted, I wanted to rip her open.

My cock thickened just thinking about it. Thinking about her curled up beneath her sheets, vulnerable and mine for the taking. I hadn’t asked Henry why she’d been absent from the house for the last two weeks, and he'd told me nothing. Busy with college, I assumed. But no, she was avoiding me. Healing.

“What the hell was up earlier?” he asked, settling into the couch with an action film on mute on the TV. The house had fallen into silence, everyone else in their bedrooms, and we finally had a moment to talk in private. “What did Cole do this time that had you all protective like that? You almost beat the shit out of him.”

“He pissed me off,” I grunted. “Zelda didn’t look happy.”

“Well, they’ve bickered like that since they were kids.” Henry swigged his beer. “But there’s definitely something going on there. Do you think…”

We both grimaced at the thought of our children hooking up. It was one thing being in the same building as my sons when we all had sex on the brain, but another to actually think about it.

"We'll have to keep an eye on it when we're on vacation in January," Henry added. "Or, you know, listen as Ali and Delilah study their every interaction."

I winced, the vacation had slipped my mind until now. We did it every year, a long week away after Christmas, somewhere hot while work was still slow.

Henry didn't push me for more on my outburst at Cole, letting it go as we got lost in the explosions and gun fights flashing over the TV screen.

It only took him twenty-five more minutes to pass out, his head lolling on the backrest, and the beer he was drinking seconds from spilling over his slack hand.

I could leave him here, sneak up now and have my way with his daughter, but then he’d get a crick in his neck and be pissed all day tomorrow. I told my cock to calm down and turned the TV off.

“Come on, dickhead,” I said, giving Henry a shake.

He grouched some bullshit out about staying where he was, but he suffered a bitch if he didn’t get to his bed. Delilah would be waiting for him, unwilling to help and huffy, and the man didn’t need that kind of shit in his life either. He’d felt beholden to her since creating Zelda. They’d been too young, just eighteen, and he never stopped apologizing to her for the broken condom.

“Fucking hell, get up.” I elbowed him and he woke with a start. “Bed.”

“Ugh,” he groaned as I took the beer from him and he rubbed his eyes.

I yanked him to his feet and together we moved through the shadowy house toward the master bedroom. He thumped his way up the stairs. No attempt at quiet, likely waking up both his daughters as we passed their rooms. Good. I hoped Zelda was waiting for me with anticipation. She had to know I’d be coming.

As predicted, Delilah was sitting up in the bed, the door ajar and a frown on her face. She’d scraped all her hair back, and with no makeup and just a ratty t-shirt, she looked so young. So like her daughter. It made me pause for a moment.

Delilah said nothing as I deposited her half-asleep spouse on the bed in silence, but I heard the murmurs of their conversation as I shut the door behind me. This was a common dance with us. Delilah kept clean sheets in the basement for me, and I got her husband safely to her side when he drank too much. We hadn’t spoken about what happened earlier by the pool, but from the look in her eye, it was another conversation to come if she was unsatisfied with Henry’s answers.

Turning and leaning on the door, the hallway yawned ahead. The basement. That’s where I should go. Or shit, home even. I wasn’t drunk, but my blood was heated, my decision-making skills a bit shitty… which was why I found myself standing outside Zelda’s door. Her name in purple wooden letters mocked me, told me of the girl I’d known, watched as a child and considered a niece. She was gone now.

I ripped the childish sign from the door and let it clank to the floor. Her door creaked open when I turned the handle. Unlocked. I stepped into her space, shut the door, and clicked the lock over as I took in the shapes in the darkness.

Piles of clothes draped over her desk and chair under her window, a stack of textbooks on the floor by her double bed… the cloud lights she'd begged me to fit for her when she was ten and wanted a cool room. I soaked her in, her things, her smell.

I could see the lump under the sheets that belonged to her — she hadn’t waited up for me like I half expected. Interesting. Taking quiet steps, I approached and pulled back the sheet for a clearer view of her. Her light brown hair, which I remembered as purple from that night, was splayed out on the pillow, her lips parted as she snoozed.

Fuck, she was beautiful. And I’d ruined her down to her bones. Filled her up beyond comprehension, pushed her over any reasonable limit and abandoned her in the destruction. With her face relaxed, her eyelashes fluttering and her breaths gentle, I wanted to do it again. In her room, tucked away from the rest of the house, I could forget about the existence of the other occupants.

I ran my thumb over her bottom lip, and when she failed to react, I repeated the motion.

Henry had told me once that she struggled to sleep and took sleeping pills. She didn’t like taking them when she was in the dorms on campus, because she felt unsafe, and would come home specifically for a good night’s sleep, drugging herself up. She wouldn’t stir until the afternoon the following day, and wouldn’t need to do it again for a week or so. Home made her feel safe. But there was something unsafe with a key to get in.

My cock was firming up against my zipper as I tugged down her sheet further, revealing her almost naked body. She wore a crop top and a pair of tiny, baggy shorts, which had rolled right up her thighs, hanging open just a bit to show the beginning rise of her pussy. One leg was bent to the side, but on her back, I could see all of her. The tension in her nipples through the thin fabric, the stretch marks across her thighs and the slight curve of her stomach. So fucking beautiful. Ripe for me to fill her. I hadn’t noticed her turn into this feminine creature, but now it was all I could think about.

Her breath left her a little heavier when my thumb, dampened by her mouth, brushed over her nipple through her top. I teased it over the fabric, toyed with it and pinched it harder than was sane in this situation. But she reacted. She arched her back and widened her legs, eyes still shut, face remaining slack. It spurred me on.

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