Page 129 of Corrupting Ivy

Ivy’s mussy hair splayedacross the pillow, skin flush, her breaths rapid against my clothed chest.

“What’s gotten into you?” she said.

I kissed her faint scars along her shoulders, down to the one on her palm as I hovered above her.

Who got to me is the question?She had.

Ivy infected me; heart, body, and soul, and I liked it.

“There’s something I need to take care of today, so I wanted to leave you with something to remember me by before I left.”

She glanced towards the clock on the nightstand. “It’s three in the morning.” She reached up and locked her hands around my neck. “Besides, it’s your birthday. What’s so important you need to do it today?”

“It’s important. Do you trust me?”

“Of course I do.”

I bent down and took her nipple in my mouth, sucking and biting until her whimpers had me questioning hopping on that plane.

“I’ll be back this afternoon.”

Just in time for the surprise birthday party Ivy and Liz planned. She’s adorable for thinking she could hide something like that. In fact, I’m positive Liz told her as much.

I bound off the bed, dressed in a black t-shirt and matching slacks, leaving her naked stretching body on our bed, barely covered in the crumpled sheets.

And that’s how I left her, her seductive body seared into my mind, making my four-hour plane ride torturous.

“Happy Birthday, sir,” the pilot said as I stepped off my plane. The early morning rays barely broke the horizon as they raced towards me with not a lick of humidity in the air.

I was officially thirty-seven today, and although I’d rather celebrate with Ivy beneath me, beside me, and with me, there was something that took precedence over that.

Or more like someone.

I’d been putting this off for, well, months now, and I couldn’t think of a better day to do so than today. It had a poetic element to it in certain ways.

“Wait for me, this won’t take long,” I said to my pilot Stevenson, who I’d known since buying this Learjet.

“Yes, sir.”

I climbed into my rental and took a short drive to her home. After today, I’d never have to think of her again. I’d never get phone calls, she’d be out of my life and the life of others. I’d be at peace, as Ivy calls it.

I’ve never known such a feeling, but it was coming more into the realm of possibility the more Ivy stuck around.

Ivy’s presence drowned out the chaos running rampant inside of me, her light consuming my darkness. When I first saw her, I never expected her to be the key to changing me. I still wasn’t sure if I enjoyed the changes, feeling things I’d longed to keep locked away, but I’d endure a thousand excruciating deaths for her, so long as she was by my side.

I boarded a plane in the dead of night, leaving behind my glimpse of serenity so I could properly put my past behind me.

Driving up the long driveway, passing rusted vehicles and the hay barn, the one I’d spent my childhood stacking up neatly until I parked in front of her vehicle. Her yard hadn’t changed in all these years, so I didn’t expect it to be different in four months, and it wasn’t.

I stepped out of my truck to the sound of chickens clucking as they laid their eggs and the rooster crowing as he greeted the morning sun. I took a deep breath as I straightened my spine. The scent of cow manure hung in the air from the Jersey’s and Long Horns in the distance. I walked up the rotted wood steps and opened the door.

Ma sat in her recliner with a multicolored cat I’d never seen before in her nightdress covered lap. She ran her hand over the top of the kitten’s ears and down its spine, its back arching into the air, into her touch. Her fingers wrapped around the tip of the kitten’s tail, then started back over again at the head. She did this as her eyes stuck glued to the TV, watching the news. They were still going on about Coen. “How could such a tight-knit community not see what he was doing?” said a random person on the street with a microphone stuck in their face.

Everyone thought they were experts while sitting on the sidelines.

“Hi, Ma,” I said, interrupting her odd moment.

She whipped her head around and, when she caught sight of me, her eyes widened. She jumped from her chair, sending the kitten scrambling down the hall.

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