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Drawing on the Dark Side of the Brain

25
A Thief in the Night

“JETT? Could you run me back to the dorm? It’s getting late and I should have left when Eva did,” Mary said.

“You can stay if you want to, Mary.”

“Yeah. I know. Thank you. I’m… not really ready for that.”

“You know, we’ll never push you to do something you don’t want to do.”

“It’s not about wanting. In fact, it is about wanting. This has been a bit of a stressful day. You know?”

“If you want to talk about it, we can talk in the car.”

Mary said goodbye to everyone and slipped her sweater back on before her jacket. She didn’t get up close to any of the girls, though, and we went out the back to my car.

“Sorry I didn’t want to play,” she said as we pulled out and headed to campus. “I was fine as long as I was drawing or was with just one of your girlfriends. When everyone got together for dinner, I started getting anxious. It was just too much to have everyone so… close.”

“I’ll tell you that all five girls really like you,” I said. “And so do I. But we don’t want to put you in a stressful position.”

“I know that and it’s what makes me want to come back again.” We rode in silence almost to her dorm with her head leaning back against the seat before she spoke again. “I’d like to make love with you, Jett. I experimented with a girlfriend in high school and I know I’m at least a little bi, so I’d like to mess around with your girlfriends, too. Especially Ariel. I could smell her arousal when we went off and I sketched her. I’m sure she could smell me, too. I just am not at a point where I could feel comfortable with all of them and I want to. I really want to.”

We pulled up in front of the dorm and just sat there for a minute.

“I can’t invite you up to my room because I know my roommate is in tonight and she’s even more backward with boys than I am,” Mary sighed. “Would you… Can I… Maybe we could have a goodnight kiss?”

“I’d love to kiss you, Mary. I think you’ve got very sweet lips.”

I leaned over the seat and kissed her with my lips. I wasn’t trying to push her into anything but after a few seconds, she opened her lips to me and the kiss deepened. When she put her arms around me, I took that as a sign that I could wrap her in a light embrace. She pulled away slightly and I thought I’d gone too far. She caught my hand before I pulled it away.

“You know what it means when I wear a skirt or shorts over my bodystocking?” she whispered.

“Are you telling me it’s crotchless?”

“You could explore a little and find out,” she whispered. She put my hand on her leg and I let it drift up under her skirt. Not only was the bodystocking crotchless, she wasn’t wearing anything else over it. “I had a thong on most of the day,” she whispered. “I took it off just before we left.”

I found her pussy and began gently rubbing it. She was leaking and after a few strokes, my fingers slid between her wet folds.

“Yeah!” she sighed. She reached over to rub my cock through my jeans. “I saw how hard you got when you were playing with Eva. You didn’t get soft while you were painting. I thought it was just because you were handling her boobs and her… crotch. But when you painted the helmet on her face and hair, you were harder than when you were sucking her nipple. Can I unfasten these?” She was already tugging at my snap and I helped, letting her open them fully and extract my cock from my painted briefs.

I sighed.

Having her stroking me while I dipped my fingers in her pussy was heaven.

“This won’t take long if you keep doing that.”

“If you put your fingers in me while you are playing with my clit, it won’t take me long, either.”

We went back to kissing and even when she stiffened, she didn’t let up on my cock and I soon shot over her hand. We panted and moaned into each other’s mouths and the sensation was just more intense.

“I’ll try not to make you wait too long to put that in me,” she whispered. “I’ll see you Tuesday.” She got out of the car and ran to the dorm.

EVERYONE HAD GONE to bed when I got home. Kelly, Jas, Charmaine, and I all had to work Sunday morning. I went up to my room to get undressed before I went to the bathroom and found Sarah Lynn waiting for me. Before I could get undressed, she grabbed my hand and pulled it to her face.

“Ah, yes,” she sighed. She cleaned my fingers with her tongue. “Give me some of what she got?” She helped me strip and found my wet, sticky cock. She immediately dropped to her knees to lick me and then stood up. “It isn’t her juice on you.”

“She kind of jacked me off while I did her,” I said.

“Well, I’m not fond of the taste, but you can put it in me. Please, put it in me.” I did and Sarah Lynn welcomed me home. “You know we won’t push her, right, Jett? But I’d really like to lick her. I’d like her to make love to me. Ariel and Char couldn’t wait. They were already fingering each other before your car had pulled away. Jas took Kelly to the other room and everyone could hear them when they came. It didn’t take long. We’re all hot for her and want to undress her and eat her.”

“It might take a bit, Sarah Lynn. She gets overwhelmed when we’re all around her.”

“I’ll wait. There isn’t one of us who doesn’t think she’s worth waiting for.”

As hot as we both were over Mary, it didn’t take long to forget her as we made love and I came deep inside Sarah Lynn.

THE NEXT WEEK was pretty calm as we moved into October and cooler weather. I think Eva must have wrapped herself in tissue paper at night because she still had paint on her when I saw her Tuesday after class.

“Next time we use the permanent paints,” she said. “I wanted to live in this skin as long as possible.”

“It’s looking a little tattered. This paint should really be washed off.”

“I know.” She opened her jacket to show that she had no shirt beneath it. “I’ve been showing it to everyone who would look but my nipples have worn through. You could come wash me now. I’m not as afraid of losing the Virgin Goddess anymore.”

“Bad timing. I have papers for both 2D Design and Foundations this week. For some reason I didn’t get any work on them done this weekend at all. I spent most of Sunday and Monday after work fine-tuning the canvas and putting the digital files together for Merck. Kelly’s trying to teach me the video editing software.”

“I know what you mean. I didn’t get anything done all weekend either. I spent Sunday with my girlfriend. We found interesting places to pose and she took pictures of me.”

“Nudes?”

“No. I was painted.”

“Where?”

“Um… A few places around campus. The Lake. The steps of the Capitol.”

“I hope you’ll share them,” I laughed. “And I do wish I could wash you. Please don’t start thinking that I suddenly don’t want to soap up your body with my hands and make sure every little nook and cranny is cleaned.”

“Okay, bastard. I’m going to go take a shower and masturbate. Maybe I’ll see you this weekend.”

MARY AND I were getting along… comfortably. There was never a mention of our play beneath her skirt, her adventures with my girlfriends, or where our relationship might go. We just let it float along. It seemed that neither of us had any difficulty casually touching each other, most commonly hand to hand. If I saw her beginning to tremble, I offered my hand. Sometimes she took it and sometimes she didn’t. I didn’t try to grab her.

After Thursday’s class, we stopped to chat for a few minutes and her hand slipped easily into mine.

“Is it too much like being steady dates to ask you to a movie again this Sunday?” she asked.

“I’ve got a great idea! Can we see something that makes me think something ridiculous and then ask you if that’s why you wanted me to see it?” I said with fake enthusiasm.

“It wasn’t that ridiculous,” Mary sighed. “I completely understand how you’d think that. I wonder… If I had proven to be…”

“Instead of fingering you to an orgasm, I’d have jacked you,” I said firmly. “Really, Mary. By the time we got to that point, I was already your friend and already committed to… I don’t want to say help or something but I was committed to you as your friend. Even if I’d discovered I wasn’t that enthused about it, I’d still have done it.”

“Did you tell your girlfriends that?”

I nodded.

“I’ll bet you got fucked half to death.”

“Three-quarters.”

“Sometime, I’ll collect the other quarter.”

“You don’t have to, Mary. I mean… I’m looking forward to being intimate with you, but it isn’t a requirement in order for you to be my friend.”

“Jett, I know that. It’s all new stuff, you know? We’re in college. We became friends. You reached out to me and I appreciate that, but I’m not thankful enough to fuck you. If I fuck you it will be because we’re both having fun and want to do it. Okay?”

“More than okay. What’s playing Sunday?”

“Araby.”

“Middle Eastern?”

“Brazilian.”

“I’ll pick you up at two-thirty.”

FRIDAY, I moved from the feedlot to the carcass hangers. We had to compare feedlot grading to carcass grading. Grading on the feedlot focuses on the value on the hoof. It’s like trying to guess your Christmas present from the shape of the package. Only you get the shape, the weight, and even the texture when you push on the side of the steer. Grading the carcass focuses on actually seeing the thickness of the layer of fat, the marbling of the meat, and even the size of the prime rib. Grading for the whole carcass is done based on the prime rib muscle.

What surprised us all was how accurate the feedlot grading was. These guys had the whole thing down to a well-practiced science in which they could objectively look at a steer on the hoof and project what the carcass would look like.

A lot of people assume—as I did—that there is someone from the USDA stationed at every slaughterhouse in the country who grades all the beef. The reality is that in order to be considered a USDA certified slaughterhouse, you have to get somebody trained on your staff and certified by the USDA to certify the meat. Yes, government inspectors spot-check the houses to make sure everything is being done according to spec, but the meat inspector is just another employee of the slaughterhouse who has had special training. We were shown a machine they were testing that electronically grades the meat. It’s a hefty investment, but as long as the machine is certified, your meat gets certified.

ALL I WANTED when I got home was a shower and a nap. I’d be happy to move to the studio and paint after that. I’d try to be human enough that my girlfriends would want to spend time with me before we all fell asleep.

What I found was a wreck of a girlfriend sobbing on the sofa in the living room.

“You’ve got to talk to Char,” Ariel said when I came in through the kitchen door from the garage. “I can’t get her to tell me what’s wrong but she looks and sounds miserable. Please, Jett. Please help her.” Tears were running down Ariel’s cheeks and I wondered if any of the others were here crying as well.

I sat on the edge of the sofa next to Char and tentatively touched her shoulder. She looked up at me and burst into even more tears. She did move, though, and threw her arms around me as she sobbed against my chest.

“Hey, sweetie. It will be okay. Tell me all about it,” I said.

“I’ll have to leave,” she sobbed. “All I can do is go back to my bastard father. What else can I do?”

“Whoa! Why would you ever have to leave or go back to that man? We’re here for you, Char. Tell me what’s happening?”

“I… I was going to transfer the funds for my rent this month. My… my bank account… it’s empty! I don’t have any money.”

“Oh, fuck! How did that happen? You’ve been depositing your pay each week, haven’t you?” I asked. Char didn’t make a huge amount, but I knew she and Jas made a weekly trip to the bank to deposit their paychecks and tips. I was pretty sure Char was barely making it on what she was earning.

“Of course I have!” she snapped at me. “I needed every penny to transfer to the co-op for my rent. It’s gone! Everything is gone!”

That started another barrage of tears. I felt, more than heard, our other roommates come home. Dinner was beginning to smell great as Ariel cooked. Someone brought us a cup of tea. It seemed like it took forever to tease the story out of Char and she didn’t want anyone else around her when she told me. Fortunately, I eat stir-fry one-handed with chopsticks. Char didn’t let go of my left hand and scarcely pushed her food around on her plate with a fork. Finally, I took her to bed and closed the door behind us.

“I DON’T WANT them to hate me,” Char said. “I set all this up and was supposed to be the most financially responsible one among us. I’m supposed to be an accountant. How could I let this happen?”

“Char, I still don’t understand what happened. Please tell me so I can help you.”

“My mother… I wrote to her and told her I’d broken away and was living with my friends. She wrote back and sent me a check for five thousand dollars. Jett, five thousand! That would let me pay my rent and food here for six months while I built up more money from my earnings. I was so happy! Then I went online to my bank account this morning to transfer my monthly rent and there was nothing there.”

“The bank must have some information. Money doesn’t just disappear.”

“My father,” Char said weakly.

“How could your father get access to your account? He’s not a signer is he?” I asked. She shook her head.

“I… When I turned sixteen I got my own bank account so my father wouldn’t have to keep handing me money. He deposited fifty dollars a month in it and that’s all the money I was allowed to have. Over the next two years it increased to a hundred dollars a month. The money was just transferred from his account to mine each month. Of course, when I left on graduation day, he stopped payments to me. I never realized that his transferring money meant that he had my password and I never changed it. As soon as he found out my mother had made a big deposit for me, he stripped out the account,” Char said. “Now I can’t pay and I’ll have to leave. It’s what he planned all along.”

I was seething. Mr. Gupta had been pressuring Char to come back home so he could arrange her marriage. He called her at least once a week and harangued her about staying a virgin so he could get a decent price. She’d only told him that she was living with her girlfriends and never mentioned that I lived here, too. It would be just like him to make her penniless so she’d have to accept his offer.

And I was mad at Char, too. How the fuck do you have an online bank account and not change your password for two and a half years? Or forget that your father has the password? One thing was for damned sure, I was going to cross-check my bank accounts and encourage all the rest of us to do the same. I didn’t think my parents would ever be as mean as Charmaine’s father, but what would happen if they decided they wanted me to do something and wouldn’t take no for an answer? What kind of hold did they have on me that they could twist until I obeyed?

But none of my anger was going to help the destroyed girl still whimpering in my arms.

“Honey, we’re going to get through this. First of all, he stole money from you. You need to press charges against him. I’m sure there is some kind of fraud line you can call and the bank will back you up. I’ll ask Granddad about getting a lawyer if you need one.”

“But I need to pay…”

“Hush. You haven’t told anyone else what happened, have you?” She shook her head. “God knows it took me long enough to get it out of you. So as far as anyone else is concerned, you were upset because your father has been harassing you again. I’ll transfer the money for your payment.”

“You can’t do that, Jett! I can’t let you pay my way.”

“You’ll pay me back when we get the money back from your father. I still have three more months rent-free because of the initial deposits, so I’ve been building up enough to pay my dues each month without actually paying out anything. At least until the end of the year, we’re covered. You should tell your mother what happened, too, in case your father pulls something like telling the bank the money was intended for him to keep safe.”

“That’s just like something he’d do. I’m so embarrassed to tell my mother this.”

“I know, but we’ll work it out. How have you been doing with your job? Are you making enough to put aside rent?” I asked.

“I… was. This summer, I earned enough to make my way and save a little. Since school started and hours have been cut back, I wouldn’t have made it without the money my mother sent.”

“Maybe you should look for a different job,” I suggested. “I know the waitressing gig sounded good when you started, but you’ve got some other skills you could use. For example, I’m going to suggest that our co-op pay you fifty dollars a month for keeping our books, paying the bills, and making sure everyone pays their rent. I’ll bet that with your current classes and experience, you could find a part time bookkeeping job.”

“I could do that,” she said. A hard fierceness crossed her face.

“The very first thing, though, is to change your passwords.”

We finally settled down and cuddled up for sleep. This wasn’t exactly how I planned to spend my Friday. I hadn’t gotten a nap, a shower, or any painting done. But I had this precious woman in my arms and I felt insanely protective of her.

“Jett,” she whispered into the darkness. “You can make love to me. I mean really. I’m willing to give myself to you. Not just my ass.”

“No,” I said. Maybe that was a little too abrupt for her as she pulled away and rolled to face me. “Char, I won’t make love to you when you are doing it out of a sense of obligation to me. What we’ve arranged comes with no strings attached. I won’t be the kind of bastard your father is.”

She looked hard at me and I thought she was going to argue but she nodded her head and pulled herself tight to me without saying anything. That’s how we fell asleep.

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