Holiday Hobo -- pt. 2
I could feel Jake's eyes on me again. He had taken to watching me sleep when he woke early in the morning. I imagined he used the time to wonder about the answers to all those questions in his eyes. He never asked the questions. I didn't ask the questions. We had fallen in love without first developing those basic relationship things like trust or context or agreeing on a life together because we were afraid of what would happen if our descriptions of that life didn't match. We were both being complete pussies about it. It was a mess. We both just avoided the questions by staying high on sex endorphins, binging on carbs, and pretending the holidays would never come to an end.
I kept my eyes closed and snuggled in tighter to his chest and he pulled the blankets higher over me, chuckling. "We can't spend all day in bed again, can we?" I asked, my voice muffled by his chest.
"Sounds good to me, but I think we need to do some more shopping today," he murmured into my hair.
"What? Nuh uh!" I protested, lifting my head with crazy red sleep hair off his arm. "We just sent everything out! We're done! We stalked the social media of all your nieces and nephews and got them extremely weird, but personal, Christmas presents. They are never going to stop talking about it. We can't possibly need to buy more stuff!"
"You still need some things," Jake clarified.
"Look, I know that you're a guy with that hard-wired 'protect and provide' thing going on and I respect it, but I don't need things." Ever since we had started sleeping together, Jake had gradually done more and more to take care of me. It made me uneasy. He had reasons to distrust women, to think they were mercenary creatures that would use and discard him. If I disappointed him, which I was almost certain to do at some point, all that baggage could poison his heart at a moment's notice... and I loved his heart.
"Your last pair of underwear is in three pieces after last night," Jake pointed out, his eyes darting to a ripped piece of cloth dangling from the ceiling fan.
He made a good point. I hated it when he made good points. Still, that never stopped me from arguing with him. "When did you get so conservative? I'll go commando or sew them back together," I explained, stubbornly.
"I'm pretty sure Baby ate the gusset..." he pointed out, nodding toward the 120lb rottweiler taking up half the bed next to us. Apparently, Baby was as much of a pervert as his daddy was, but since they were both so cute, I didn't usually mind.
"Not a problem. We just wait a day or two and--"
Jaked leaned down and his lips gave mine something better to do for a long, dizzying moment. "Stop trying to prove you're not Janell," he murmured. I blinked and bit my lips, tears suddenly filling my eyes. She had hurt him so much. I felt an irresistible urge to take a frying pan to his workplace and flatten the face of the stunning woman that ruthlessly used his wonderful heart and instinct to provide, leaving him hurting and questioning everything. Jake brushed the tears on my cheeks away with his thumb. "I know you're not Janell. I knew it that first night when I watched you dance around with Baby through the security cameras," he said, a smile playing around his lips.
"Um, wait a minute... was that when all my clothes were in the washer?"
"Well, how else do you think I found the perfect shade of nude for your dress?" he asked.
"You see a woman dancing around naked in your house to 'Fat Bottomed Girls' and instead of calling the police, you have a dress made for her? You're weird," I laughed.
"You needed something to wear..." he said, shrugging with deadpan logic. "Oh, that reminds me," he said, leaning over and taking something out of the nightstand. "Hold still, now." He had something small in his hand and reached behind my neck with it. Soon, I felt the diamond-encrusted chainwork around my neck go slack. He slipped it out from around my neck and placed it on the nightstand.
My eyes went wide as my fingers explored where the necklace used to be. Since the day I awoke to find him watching me from a nearby chair, I had felt the weighty links and what they represented around my neck. I couldn't get the ridiculously expensive thing off, and if I disappeared with it without his permission, it would be a felony. He had effectively trapped me, keeping me from running away like I usually did when I got caught squatting in people's houses. I had accepted the situation because I had to, at the time. Now, there was no threat of imprisonment hanging over my head. Jake was no longer my captor. If I stayed now, it was only because I wanted to be with him. I swallowed, feeling my heart start racing instead of relaxing. Somehow, knowing that if I ran away now it would only be our hearts that bore the consequences... damn, if the man hadn't just tied me to him even tighter than ever before.
I smiled, leaned up and kissed him. What else was there to do? My options were either that or start crying again, which was just as likely to happen anyway. I always got so weepy at Christmas. Seeing the inevitable flood of my tears, Jake met my lips with tenderness and rolled on top of me, covering and protecting me with his body. I held his face in my hands as our lips met again and again.
After what felt like two seconds, his phone chimed with an incoming text, alerting us to the fact that hours had passed. What is it about kissing that made time disappear without a trace? We were just getting to the good part! "Damn..." Jake said, frowning at his phone as he, rolled off me and headed to the shower.
"What happened?" I asked, nearly tripping over Baby in my attempt to follow him.
"New CRM system at work didn't update correctly. Rich wants me to manually enter all my client contacts and events again. He's reaching for any reason to make me look bad, so I have to do it asap... we'll have to shop another time," he said, jumping into the shower and turning on the water. I frowned at this news. I didn't care about the shopping, but I didn't like hearing that they wanted all his client information. I remembered overhearing Janell and another woman talking about the likelihood that Jake would be fired because of the awkwardness of his ex-fiancee now being engaged to his boss Rich. Jake had cultivated the company's international clients, developed relationships with them, and was solely responsible for the company's success in several regions. I didn't like hearing that suddenly Rich wanted all of Jake's client contact data, because wouldn't that be a first step toward stealing the clients out from under him before they let him go? Even worse, I hadn't told Jake about what I'd overheard. He had been through so much that I just didn't have the heart to.
I hopped into the shower with Jake once the water was warm and cuddled up to his back, "Um, so they just need a bunch of data entered?" I asked. Jake wiped the dripping shampoo back from his face and nodded. There was lather making a slippery trail down his neck and chest and I watched the bubbles slide down his body... for scientific purposes. Hydrodynamics, and all that. I stopped the lather from reaching his cock with my hand. "I... I could... I could do that..." I said, sliding my hand along his length in the spray, smooth and warm.
"You could do that..." Jake said, his face going slack as I rubbed my thumb around the mushroom tip. "Do... do what, now?" he asked, blinking and shaking his head.
