Page 14 of Edge of Control

I crouched down and let Luke nuzzle into my face. I gave my cat a kiss on the head, right between his ears. He was a tabby cat, fur a dusky brown with black stripes and a bright white chin. He was missing an eye and had a bite taken out of his left ear, and he was the most perfect soul to have ever walked this planet. He was the balm to my anxiety, and I used him liberally. His purrs were an antidote. I’d protect him with my own life if I needed to.

My panic attack began to subside. My emotions still weren’t settled, but my thoughts were becoming less clouded. I rose from the floor and turned on the lights. My apartment had been professionally decorated and designed by an interior designer I had found online. There were pieces from Italy and France—a coffee table worth two thousand dollars, a cloudlike couch worth triple that—with original art that took up the tall brick walls and blankets that were hand stitched and bright pillows that popped with different accent colors. None of it felt like mine.

I went to my bedroom, leaving the light off as I sat at my desk. The glow of the screen filled the room. I squinted until my eyes adjusted.

I had shit to do. I wanted to start my hunt for the next person who I’d make pay.

But that could wait. I instead opened up Google and searched for the agency where I knew the detective worked.

Stonewall Investigations.

They had multiple branches open. I clicked on the two they had in New York City. Each site had a list of detectives. It took me seconds to find Jace and his last name: Holloway.

I opened another window and searched his full name. I found an old LinkedIn account that hadn’t been updated in years, but it must have been his. He was in the same location and had listed his education as only having a high school diploma. There was an email linked to the account. I grabbed the first part of the email and plugged that into social media.

Bingo. I found his Instagram. It was pretty barren, with a few sepia-drenched photos of random furniture and coffee cups. But there were a handful of photos showing Jace. Smiling. Handsome. One of him during a hike, his shorts high, sweat beading across his forehead. His backpack straps were tight around his shoulders. His shirt had a sweat stain underneath his pecs.

I pulled off my pants. I wasn’t wearing any underwear. My cock was already hard, but I ignored it. I clicked to another photo showing Jace sitting on a bench at Central Park. He leaned back, relaxed, an arm thrown over the seat. I wondered who took these photos. A boyfriend? Girlfriend? Sister?

Another photo had Jace in just a bathing suit, walking out from the clear blue waters of somewhere in the Caribbean. A happy trail disappeared down underneath the light blue shorts. His complexion was slightly more sun-kissed, less pale.

My cock throbbed. I fisted it. Squeezed. His body looked even better in the sunlight. I could picture the heavy balls that were just underneath that thin layer of fabric. Balls he had unloaded inside me only hours earlier.

He didn’t even know me. Didn’t know I was currently jerking off to his pictures. He likely had no idea I’d even be able to find him.

I needed lube.

Instead of spit, I reached between my legs and pushed my fingers inside my still-tender hole. Cum coated my two fingers as I pulled them out. I tilted my head back and gripped my cock. Stroked. I enlarged the photo of Jace at the beach. I envisioned the way he’d feel underneath me, my knees braced in the sand as he teased my hole with the head of his thick cock. Earlier in the night, he’d been gentle at first. But I didn’t like gentle. I wanted it rough. Wanted him to use my body like a toy. Wanted him to find his pleasure in the absence of mine.

A guttural moan rose from my chest. The slick sounds of cum and skin rubbing on skin filled the room. I squeezed my balls. I’d already come three times today, twice before heading to the bathhouse.

I yelled out, keeping my eyes on Jace’s as my fourth orgasm struck me like lightning. I leaned forward. My body crumpled into itself. My toes curled into the floor as cum shot across my stomach, dribbling down my cock and balls onto my office chair. It mixed with Jace’s cum.

God. That release was a waste.

I wanted to reach through the screen and yank Jace into my room by the throat. I wanted him here, licking meclean. I wanted him getting hard again so he could plow me into the bed frame using his own seed as lube, same as I had.

“Oh, Jace Holloway,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “What have you started?”

And, more importantly, how would it all end?

Chapter 6

Jace Holloway

The photographer livedin an apartment near Chinatown, not far from where I lived. Getting an interview with him was a simple affair. He answered my email in a matter of minutes and set up a time to meet the next day. I didn’t tell him exactly why I wanted to meet with him. I found that sometimes catching people off guard led to some interesting finds.

I hopped out of the Uber, thanking the driver, even though he had put me through an entire ride of grating country songs about drinking beer and rolling around in hay or some shit. I tuned most of it out—at least tried to. I knew I should have taken the train but decided it’d be simpler to order a ride.

Lesson learned.

I walked past a busy tattoo shop and reached the photographer’s building, a run-down shoe store underneath the apartments. The keypad was scratched up, and a dickhad been graffitied into the glass door. He answered after a couple of rings and buzzed me in.

The cramped staircase smelled like musty cheese and damp carpet. It reminded me a little of the apartment complex I’d been raised in. My parents had a home for my early childhood but lost it after my mom was fired from her job and began to secretly funnel the mortgage money into her alcohol addiction. When my father found out about it, it was already too late. The bank was knocking on our door. Foreclosure followed soon after.

That should have been the end of my parents, but my dad always had a good heart. He loved my mom to death and tried everything in his power to save the marriage.

So much for that. I sometimes thought we would have been better off if he’d just left her. I was too young to really understand any of it, but I certainly internalized the yelling and the crying. My cartoons and my video games couldn’t drown it out, no matter how loud I made them. It had scarred my psyche. By the time I entered high school and the hormones were really kicking in, the depression followed suit. It started like a subtle shadow at first before it started to consume me. It became hard to focus in school—hard to even care about it. My dad could tell something was wrong, but he was too busy trying to keep us both afloat to really help me fix it.

---