Book 6: Mouse Trapped
Chapter 4
<8 Good Times
"Fuck you."
"Fuck you, too."
"Michael, that's not fair."
"Life isn't fair, Mouse."
"I want to go for sushi."
"I told you, it's a two hour drive. I'm not driving for two hours just so a spoiled brat can have her fancy cosmopolitan food."
"I told you, you'll like it."
"I'll try it when I visit Chicago."
"I want it now."
"No."
"Please."
"Not today."
"Fuck you."
"Fuck you, too."
Mouse picked up a ceramic cat, arching her arm as if to throw it. Her eyes blazed at Michael's, who stood unmoving, glaring straight back at her.
Mouse put the cat down and stormed out of the room.
"Prick."
* * *
It was a stupid movie, but that hardly mattered. Mouse took the last of the popcorn, and that didn't matter, either. He just liked having her there, under his arm, feeling her warmth, smelling her perfume and her hair, just being so beautifully feminine, and so clearly his.
They didn't spend enough time like this. They had so little time together, living apart, that they crammed too damned busy much into the days and hours. It wasn't that there was too much sex. He did have his limits, of course, but if he could, if it were humanly possible, there'd be more.
It was just that there were too many nights out, and not enough evenings in.
Michael wondered what it would be like to just live with Mouse, to just be with her, day in and day out, doing ordinary, day to day things. He was willing to bet that they'd stop fighting so much. He was sure that they would find that middle ground, that spot between annoyance and acceptance, between trust and control, that would let them feel like they were both getting what they wanted, living how they wanted, while still giving something, too.
He kissed the top of her head, letting his lips linger a moment in contact with her soft hair.
He stopped thinking about it before the thoughts went any further. It was good enough just to be with her now, like this.
* * *
"I want to leave now."
"I want to stay."
"I'm bored."
"You're just antsy."
"You're just dull and lazy."
"Show just five minutes of patience for a change."
"Show some zest for life for a change, Dork. I'm bored. Tired and bored."
"Mouse, I'm not leaving yet."
"Good God," Melanie interrupted. "Please, go, I can't take this anymore."
She said it with a huge smile on her face.
"What's your problem?" Mouse asked.
Melanie stayed silent, but smiling.
"Yes, please, tell us what the fuck you are grinning at," Michael added.
"You two. Just like kids. Just like you've always been, even now. You pretend you're so grown up, and doing wicked things no adult would ever do..."
Melanie leaned over to the door, peering out, scanning the far room conspiratorially, just confirming, needlessly but ever careful, that her children weren't around to overhear her, before settling back in her seat at the kitchen table to continue. She reached over to add another teaspoon of sugar to her coffee.
"You've fought your entire lives, and you still do. I have no idea why you purposely spend time with each other."
They both glared at her.
"I'm not saying you shouldn't. I'm just saying I don't understand."
Melanie raised her cup to her mouth, blowing on it to cool it, then getting one last shocking word in before taking a long, mindful sip.
"Take Mouse home and fuck her, Michael. She won't say it, but it's what she wants."
* * *
He sat like a lump on the couch, mindlessly flipping channels. It shouldn't have bugged her. The poor guy was exhausted. He was working all day, and servicing her all night, with intricate, energetic fantasies that took far more effort than sex and romance should take.
He "got caught" peeking and fucked her in the shower, with hot water cascading over their bodies.
She sucked his cock, just behind the car, with the garage door open wide.
They took a walk down the old worn path through the woods to the high school they had each attended, a decade apart. It was late night, and it had been raining for days. The soft smell of damp leaves wafted through the night air in the dark, hinting that civilization was far away, instead of just beyond the thin tree line. Walking that path, to school, had often felt that way, like a lonely nether road that took one between two completely different worlds.
He'd fucked her smoothly and quietly under the moonlight on the bridge along the path, where it crossed the small, flowing brook near the field behind the school, just beyond the lights of the nearby homes.
They parked in the wide, empty lot behind the old abandoned strip mall and fucked in the car, like all the teenagers did in Mouse's youth.
Against his own interest and nature, he'd finally surrendered to Mouse's wishes and play acted, just for her, raping her in the basement of the house, with two hands tightly constricting her neck as he fucked her hard in the darkness against the cold, damp concrete wall. She struggled to breath throughout the ordeal, strangled as she was, although not nearly to the point of asphyxia that he so feared. It almost made it, and him, more precious, the way he so carefully worried about her even as his barbarically strong, hairy hands made her take his ruthless cock seemingly against her will.
He fucked her wickedly on the floor of the upstairs hallway, as the answering machine picked up, playing and recording the voice of their father checking in, and hoping to catch them at home. Mouse came repeatedly, just from that, from the sound of her father talking politely and happily about thier vacation while her brother slid her along the carpet with the intense thrusts of his cock. His children acted out their too long inhibited lust for each other right there in their childhood home, with his voice droning on in the background.
But now Michael sat, doing nothing. This was Mouse's big vacation. The sex was good, and was the long planned focal point of the two weeks, but she wanted to do something else. She wanted to go somewhere, to do something.
It wasn't like there was a lot to do. Sleepy, backwater, bedroom towns like theirs were not vacation hot spots.
But she wanted to do something, go for a drive, go hiking, have some sort of adventure.
And there he sat.
"Michael..."
"I said no. I'm exhausted. Look, go by yourself. You don't need me with you every moment."
"Yes, actually, I do."
Michael looked at her, but not with kindness, or gratitude at the compliment. He glared.
"Nice try. No you don't. You live most of your life hundreds of miles away, without me. You can survive a few hours here on your own."
"You're a shit."
"I'm just tired."
"No, you're not, you're not that tired. You're just being a shit."
Michael turned back to the TV, mindlessly flipping from commercial to commercial to tired old movie to inconsequential sporting event and on and on and on.
"Fine, I'll find better company," Mouse said, racing over to grab her purse and stomping to the door, trying to give Michael just enough time to change his mind, but just enough panic to do it without thinking.
Once outside, alone, without Michael having even flinched, Mouse felt like crying.
* * *
Mouse sat longways on the couch, back against the side arm, knees up, sketch pad resting on her thighs, colored pencil scratching away. Normally, she loved this part of fashion, just thinking, planning, designing, and making it appear on paper without having to do any of the more arduous parts.
Working with fabric was fun, too. Actually making it real, and three dimensional, full size, tactile and useful and wearable, that was all fun. But sketching was just so easy. It had fewer rules. You could do impractical, impossible things, if you wished. That was more her style.
But what was best about this particular effort, today, was that Michael was watching her. He thought she didn't notice, pretending to be absorbed in a book. She never once looked his way to betray her own awareness, but he was watching.
Mouse arched her back and shoulders, reaching behind herself as if working out a kink, thrusting her breasts up and out. When Michael shifted position in his chair in response, she almost smiled. Relaxing again, she reached up with one hand to twirl her hair around a finger, while pretending to thoughtfully consider her work, then pushed her entire long mane back, exposing the flesh of her neck to him.
She felt so beautiful with him watching her. Just that was a marvelous feeling. She'd never been able to really appreciate it before they were lovers. When she had teased him before, when he would covertly watch her then, she'd always been so focused on getting him excited, and worrying about whether or not he actually noticed, that she didn't completely enjoy it. There were so many times that she had never known if she'd succeeded or not.
Mouse stretched one bare leg out straight, the outer one that Michael could most clearly see. She was glad she'd worn her shorter, if baggy, walking shorts, the ones with several small velcro pockets all the way down the sides. They helped to expose her naked legs far up the thigh.
She liked showing off her legs. She thought they were the most attractive part of her body, too short, perhaps, but long enough on her petite frame, and very well sculpted by her love of dance, with smooth skin stretched over strong muscles making fine curves that tapered into thin knees and ankles.
Her toe nails were painted scarlet red, decorated with bright orange flower petals. She wiggled them, to make sure he noticed. Then she tipped her head back, closing her eyes, as if struggling to think of ideas, when in fact she was relaxing, while wallowing in the simple knowledge that she had Michael's complete and total attention on her.
With her eyes closed, he would stare blatantly. She could, she knew, open her eyes and turn, quickly, to catch him staring, if she wished. There was no need. She absolutely knew that he sat there, adoring her. She didn't need confirmation. She knew, she totally knew, what she was to him right now.
"You're so beautiful," he said, as if on cue, his baritone voice soft but uncompromisingly certain.
Mouse smiled. He really didn't have to say it. She knew. But the fact that he had said it was intoxicating. He had absolutely no idea how much pleasure it brought her.
* * *
"Did you kiss her?"
Mouse nuzzled into his chest as she said it. Michael had been completely absorbed in the movie, an old one he'd surprisingly never seen. He was pleasantly and unexpectedly involved in the story, an intricate intrigue of romance, of all things, but now he was hooked.
The unwanted distraction disturbed him. He didn't really register what she'd asked.
