Lavish Didi Stories - Seven Nights with a Jerk - Chapter 2

Author’s note: All my characters are consenting adults (18+). All acts depicted are consensual between the adult characters.

Chapter 2

I woke up alone in the king bed with the shape of him still in the mattress.

The storm had burned itself out. The balcony doors were a washed-out gray. The air conditioner had won again. My face was on his pillow. The case smelled like sleep and that body wash he used like a weapon and the faint metal of the chain he never took off.

He was gone.

Seven a.m. workout. He’d said it like a threat the night before. I lay there too long with my hand on the place where his chest had been and told myself I was checking that the heat had left. It hadn’t. The sheet on his side was still warm in a way that made me feel stupid.

I got up. The bathroom still had his towel on the floor, damp, heavy. The dog tags sat on the counter in a little coil of gold, two cheap plates that hadn’t seen a war. He’d taken the chain off to shower and forgotten it. I didn’t touch it. I looked at it long enough to hate myself and then I brushed my teeth.

Breakfast was on the terrace of the buffet.

My mother had a plate of fruit she wasn’t eating. Adam had already started on work email. The ocean looked fake after the night it had put us through. I sat down and tried to look like a person who had slept.

Aaron came from the gym path in the red Mets hat, white shirt stuck to him, black shorts, wet hair on his chest where he’d left the first three buttons open. He was sweating like the air-conditioning in the gym had been a suggestion. Stubble darker than yesterday. Mustache sharp. That left arm inked to the wrist, flexing when he pulled a chair out with two fingers.

He didn’t look at me.

“Morning,” Adam said.

“Yeah.” Aaron dropped into the chair across from me. He smelled like iron and skin. He reached for the coffee like the table belonged to him. “Kitchen’s slow. I already ate a protein thing. I’m good.”

“You slept through the storm?” my mother asked, bright. “I thought the whole floor was coming down.”

Aaron smiled at her. It was the smile he gave the girl at the cabana. It had nothing to do with his eyes.

“Slept fine,” he said. “Diego too. Boy’s out the second his head hits the pillow.”

Boy… he was lying.

I looked at my plate.

“You two are surviving the room?” Adam said, not really asking.

“It’s a bed, not a volcano.” Aaron said. “We’re adults.”

He still hadn’t looked at me. His knee bounced under the table. The gold bracelet on his right wrist kept catching the sun. When he lifted the cup the sleeve of tattoos moved — skull, lettering, the whole loud map of a guy who needed his body to say things his mouth wouldn’t.

My mother asked about the spa. She was not being the secretary that week. Adam asked about a contractor. Aaron answered both like a son who had decided to perform. I drank orange juice and tasted last night. His chest under my mouth. The order to breathe. The fact of him against my hip and the way he’d said it’s nothing.

He stood before the plates were cleared.

“Gym again later. Don’t wait.”

He walked off down the terrace with the hat low and his back wide enough to make the waiter step aside. I watched him go because I didn’t know how not to. He knew. He always knew.

I found him in the hallway outside our room twenty minutes later, scrolling, one shoulder on the wall, still damp at the collar.

“Don’t,” he said, without looking up.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You’re about to.” He locked the phone. Pale eyes. Not kind. Up close the mustache made his mouth look meaner. “You slept. I slept. That’s the story. You start looking at me at breakfast like I did something, my dad’s going to ask a question I don’t feel like answering. We clear.”

“We’re clear.”

“Say it like you mean it, Diego.”

Same line as the first night. Same joke of my name.

“We’re clear, Aaron.”

He nodded once, small win, and went into the room to change. He left the door open. I stood in the hall like a coward and listened to the chain hit the dresser.

The day was a long, hot performance.

He took the beach, I took the beach, like a dog following his owner. He swam. I sat under the umbrella with Arctic Monkeys on my hears. He came out of the water with the shorts glued to his thighs and the trail of hair down his stomach dark with salt and the dog tags flashing like a punchline. A blonde said something. He laughed with his whole face. Then he found me in the shade and the laugh died on the way over.

He didn’t stop this time. He just walked past close enough that water hit my foot.

“You should wear a shirt, skinny.”

I put it on. Ashamed.

He laughed under his breath and kept going.

I told myself I hated him. It was still easier than the other sentence.

By late afternoon Aaron was already in the room with a beer, shirt off, hat on backward, ankle on the balcony rail, talking to somebody on speaker about a job site. His voice changed when it was work. Lower. Sure. The voice of a guy who should have been somebody in another state and had come home to be his father’s employee with a wrecked joint he wouldn’t name.

When he hung up he looked at me in the doorway.

“You’re hovering.”

“I’m standing in my hotel room.”

“Our room. Unfortunately.” He tipped the bottle. “You going to sit in here all night like a haunted house.”

“I was going to read.”

“Jesus Christ.” He stood. The chain slid. He was bigger when he decided to use the height. “Put real clothes on. We’re going to the beach bar. You’re twenty-one. You drink tonight. I’m not spending another evening in this box listening to you think.”

“I didn’t ask you to babysit me. You can go alone.”

“Good. I’m not. I’m bored and you’re the only person on this island I’m allowed to be an asshole to without starting a scene. Move.”

I moved after dressing a nice shirt.

The beach bar was string lights and wet wood and a speaker doing a bad job with Bad Bunny. Aaron took a high-top like he’d reserved it. Dark open shirt over the bare chest, left that way on purpose. Gold on gold. Hair still damp at the curls over his forehead. He ordered a beer for himself and looked at me.

“What do you drink. Don’t say water.”

“Beer is fine.”

“Two,” he told the girl, and then, because he couldn’t help it, smiled at her. She smiled back. When she left he was already done with her.

“You always do that,” I said.

“Do what.”

“Turn it on. Then off.”

He looked at me over the bottle. Something almost like interest.

“You watching how I talk to women now. That’s a hobby.”

“I’m sitting three feet from you.”

“Then look at the ocean.”

I didn’t. He was hotter than the Caribbean Sea.

We drank. The first beer sat in my chest the way the storm had. Aaron drank faster. He talked about the company without love in it. Crews. His father wanting him to run teams. The knee, finally, half a sentence — it wasn’t the knee, it was everything after — and then he shut that door and asked me what I even did besides sit.

“I work,” I said. “I go to school.”

“And you look at guys.” He said it flat. Not a question. “That’s the rest of the personality.”

“You don’t know me.”

“I slept with you on me for four hours. I know enough.”

The table got small.

“We weren’t supposed to talk about that.”

“We’re not.” He took a pull. “I’m talking about logistics. You shook. I held you so I could sleep. That’s weather. This—” he tipped the bottle at the space between us “—this is a drink. Don’t mix the two.”

“You’re the one who brought it up, Aaron.”

“Yeah. Well.” He scratched his chest through the open shirt, slow, the same way he had that first night. The hair there was trimmed close and still obvious. Sweat in the hollow of his throat. 

“Alcohol. Don’t get excited, dude.”

A guy at the next high-top had been looking since we sat down. Not the polite kind. The kind that inventory. Mid-thirties, linen shirt, wedding ring he didn’t care about. His eyes went to my mouth, my throat, the way I sat too close to Aaron without touching him.

Aaron saw it the way he saw everything.

The guy didn’t look away. He smiled at me. Small. Sure.

Aaron set the bottle down very carefully.

“The fuck are you looking at.”

The guy lifted his glass. “Relax, man. Just appreciating the view.”

“Appreciate it somewhere else.”

“He’s not wearing a collar.” The guy’s eyes came back to me. “You with this one, or you just sitting near him?”

I opened my mouth. Aaron was already off the stool.

It wasn’t a movie swing. It was a construction-site body moving like the bar was a job site and the guy was in the way. Aaron got a fist in the linen, yanked him half off the seat, and put him into the post hard enough that the glasses jumped. The chain swung. The hat stayed on. His forearm was across the guy’s chest, pinning, and his face was close enough that I saw the mustache from the side — mean, flushed, not performing anymore.

“He’s with me,” Aaron said, quiet, which was worse than loud. “You look at him again I take that ring and feed it to you. We clear?”

The guy’s hands were up. “Jesus — I didn’t—”

“Are we fucking clear?”

“Yeah. Yeah. We’re clear. Sorry, man. So sorry.”

Aaron held him another second, like he was deciding whether the night was going to get expensive, then shoved him back onto the stool. The guy grabbed his drink and left without finishing it. The bartender had started over and stopped. Aaron stood there breathing through his nose, shoulders still loaded, the open shirt stuck to him.

He didn’t look at the room. He looked at me.

“Let’s go.”

I followed him off the deck, down the path that ran between the palms and the building. He didn’t wait. At the corner of the wall, out of the lights, he turned and put me against the stucco with one hand flat on my chest. Not a shove for show. A hold. Not violent. Just strong. His body came in after it — heat, beer, gym, the leftover fight still in his arms — and the wall bit my shoulder blades.

“You don’t talk to him,” he said. Close. Not kissing-close. Fight-close. “You don’t smile at him. You don’t sit there looking available while I’m three feet away. You understand me?”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You exist.” His jaw was tight. The pale eyes were blown. “That’s enough for guys like that. He was a married perv. That’s enough for me.”

“You don’t even like me.”

“I don’t.” His hand fisted in the front of my shirt and pulled, just enough that I came off the wall and hit it again. The chain tapped my collarbone. “I don’t like that my father put an intern in my room. I don’t like the king bed. I don’t like that you look at me like I’m a problem you’re trying to solve with your mouth. I especially don’t like that last night I—” He stopped. The mustache made the pause look worse. “Forget it.”

“You what?”

“I said forget it, Diego.”

The beer said I didn’t have to.

“You were hard.”

He laughed once. No humor. The same laugh from the lobby when they gave us the king.

“You climb on a guy in the dark, shit happens. I told you. Reaction. You want a speech, write it yourself.”

“You didn’t move away.”

“I wanted to sleep.”

“You still didn’t, I know that.”

He leaned in. The almost. Heat off his chest, beer on his breath, the cheap-cologne-ruined-by-sweat smell that had been in the pillow. His thigh slotted between mine without asking, a heavy, accidental-on-purpose press that made my whole body go stupid. I felt him through the shorts. He felt me. Neither of us named it.

“You keep pushing this and I’m going to start being honest,” he said, quiet. “You won’t like honest. Honest is I noticed you at the office. Honest is I walked into that joint and knew what you were in two seconds and it pissed me off because I don’t need that in my father’s company. Honest is last night was the first time in a year somebody was on me who wasn’t trying to impress me, first time

in a long time someone was gentle with me without second intentions. That last part is the part that makes me want to put you on the floor. You understand?”

I understood enough that my hands had found his sides. I hadn’t meant to. His stomach jumped under my fingers.

He looked down at that like I’d crossed a line he’d drawn in wet cement.

“Don’t,” he said. And didn’t step back.

We stood there with the ocean doing the talking and his thigh still between mine and the fight not finished in his shoulders. I could have leaned. He could have. The wall was the only thing keeping it a fight instead of a kiss.

He dropped the handful of shirt. Swore at himself. Walked.

I had to remember how legs worked.

The room was dark except for the balcony. He didn’t turn on the lamp. He dropped the hat on the chair, toed off his shoes, and fell onto his side of the bed still dressed — shirt open, pants on, chain on, the whole loud body of him taking more than half the mattress without asking. He put an arm over his eyes.

“You take a shower, take it quiet.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re staring again.”

I sat on my edge and took my shoes off and didn’t lie down because lying down felt like asking. The air conditioner hummed. Somewhere down the hall a door shut. Aaron’s breathing didn’t go to sleep. It stayed too even. Fake.

“Diego.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re going to sit there all night.”

“I’m taking my shoes off.”

“You’ve been taking your shoes off for ten years.” He moved the arm. In the leftover light from the balcony I got the mustache, the stubble, the pale eyes half-lidded and annoyed and not done with me. “Come here.”

Same words as the storm. Different weather.

“You’re drunk. You don’t mean it.”

“I’m tired, three beers don’t get me drunk. Same difference tonight. Come here.”

I didn’t move.

He reached across the bed the way he had when the thunder had me, got a handful of my hair this time — not hard, not gentle, just done — and pulled. I went because the king bed didn’t give me a third option. He put my head on his chest like he was setting down a bag. Open shirt. Hot skin. The trimmed hair scraping my cheek. The dog tags cold for a second before they warmed. His heart under my ear, faster than he wanted it to be.

This wasn’t the storm hold. The storm hold had been logistics. This one had the bar in it. The wall. The guy in the linen shirt. His arm came around my back heavier, possessive without permission, and when I settled my hips tried to find a place that wasn’t against him and failed. He was still tense from the fight or the walk or the fact that he hates me. The pants were a border. The border was doing a bad job.

“Stay,” he said.

Not I want you. Not please. The drunk version of an order.

“Aaron—”

“Don’t talk. Don’t make it a thing. Don’t take your pants off. Don’t take mine off. You sleep here. I sleep. In the morning I go to the gym and you don’t look at me over your fruit plate.”

His hand stayed in my hair a second longer than the order needed, then flattened on the back of my neck, thumb at the edge of my collar. 

My hand had a mind of its own. I dragged my fingers along the hard line of his jaw first — stubble scraping, the bone underneath like it had been built to take a hit — and then up into the mustache. Coarse. Warm. His mouth twitched like I’d touched a live wire. I didn’t stop. I went down the column of his throat, over the chain, into the trimmed hair on his chest, mapping the muscle the way I’d been banned from doing with my eyes all day. The pec jumped under my palm. Lower. The ridge of his abs, tight even lying down, a wall he’d spent a career making and a year being angry at. He caught my wrist. Didn’t pull it off.

“I’m not a kennel dog,” he said, rough, into my hair. “I don’t sit around waiting for pets.”

He didn’t take the hand away.

I kept going. Slower. The side of his neck where the pulse was cheating. The thick cap of his shoulder. Down the tattooed arm, vein and ink and heat, all the way to the bracelet. He breathed through his nose like he was benching the moment. His hips ticked once against mine and he locked them down again, furious at the tell. The almost sat between us, dressed and stupid and so loud I could hear it in his chest.

He breathed in. I felt his chest rise under my mouth. He breathed out against my hair and the exhale was not as clean as he wanted it.

I could have shifted my thigh and ended the lie. I didn’t. He could have rolled me under him and ended it the other way. He didn’t. We hung there in the almost, dressed, glued, his cock a thick fact against my hip that he was refusing to name and I was refusing to chase.

His thumb moved once along the side of my neck, slow, like he was checking a pulse, and stopped. Corrected. Stayed anyway, a warm weight that said mine in a language he would deny at breakfast.

“You’re too skinny,” he muttered, already half gone. “It’s like hugging a sack of bones.”

“You can let go.”

He didn’t let go.

His hips ticked once — small, involuntary, the same failure as the storm — and he swore into my hair, quiet, pissed at his own body. He didn’t pull back. He locked it down. The chain ticked when he swallowed.

“Five more nights,” he said into the dark, to the ceiling, to himself. “That’s it. Then I go home and you go back to your desk and this is a stupid week in a resort room.”

“Okay.”

“I told you to stop saying it like that.”

I said nothing.

His heart slowed by inches. Outside, the island was quiet the way islands are quiet after they try to kill you with storms. I lay there dressed, glued to a man who had spent the whole day performing hate and then almost broken a stranger’s jaw for looking at me, with my mouth on the same chest I’d slept on through the thunder.

Nothing else was allowed to happen.

He was still straight, still arrogant, still mean, still the son of the company boss who thought I was a stain on a jersey.

His hand was still on my neck.

I slept anyway, like I was in heaven. A really hot heaven that could be mistaken for hell.