Page 36 of Better Run
“Too bad lemon drop.” I pull the blanket off her. “You’re joining me downstairs. I’m going to teach you how to whittle.”
She’s in nothing but a tank top and some thin black panties, and she snatches the sheet to try and cover herself. My dick immediately hardens. I flash back to how wet her pussy got for me, the sounds she made, the sweet victory of catching her. I nearly groan.
She glares at me and hops out of bed, snatching up a pair of sweatpants on the chair.
“You’re gambling a lot that I won’t cut your balls off and stuff them down your throat and up your ass.”
I grin at her. “I’d love to see you try. It’s hot when you get violent like that.” I turn to go downstairs. “Come.”
I hear her pause. Probably deciding if she’s going to obey. It brings another grin to my face. She makes a decision because I hear her follow.
I flip on the lights in my old room. She stills, just outside my doorway. My room has a desk, an old twin bed opposite the door, and a bean bag from when I was a teen. There are old posters on the wood-paneled walls. I grab my old shoebox of items and sit on the bed.
She eyes me warily. I pat the bed beside me. “I don’t bite. That’s all Jayden.”
She crosses her arms while I get out my supplies. I rummage through a bunch of figures that I’ve carved over the years. There are only a few of the pieces I’ve made in here. Most end up in the fire when I’m done because what am I going to do with them? I’ve gotten better as time goes on, getting the small details refined. There’s something therapeutic for me in keeping my hands busy with my knife. I grab a small wood scrap that hasn’t been used.
“Here.” I flip my knife out of my pocket and hold it out. It’s the pearl-handled one she took from me. The one I usually use. My mom gave it to me when I was a kid. She probably stole it from someone, but I’ve kept it all the same.
She takes it and then sits on the bean bag, as far away from me as she can get. I toss her a scrap of wood.
“What kinds of things do you like?”
“What?” she asks.
“What do you like?” I get another knife from the box and grab a scrap for myself. “I think of things I like, and they just emerge for me. Mostly horses, sometimes other animals, houses, people.”
“Horses?”
“Yeah. Always liked them.”
She’s showing no interest in starting yet so I get to work on my own piece. She’s silent for a while until she asks, “Did you ever have one?”
“What, a horse? Nah.” I shave the pieces right onto the floor. I’ll sweep them up later. “We were white trash. Hardly money for my mom’s habit, let alone food,” I chuckle.
When she doesn’t make a sound, I look up. Fuck. I forgot some people don’t have a sense of humor about that kind of stuff. She stares, then drops her head and mutters something.
“What?”
She clears her throat, “Food.”
I raise an eyebrow.
“What I like. Food.”
I smile and point at her block of wood. “Exactly, food.” I start explaining the basics of carving, going over things I’ve learned over the years. She watches quietly. A few times I can tell she’s thinking of stabbing me and it makes my dick hard. But she keeps quiet and to herself, and soon starts on her block.
I watch her use my knife out of the corner of my eye. I think about how I used that knife to cut her pants off. My dick is so hard it’s painful. I’ve beat myself off to that memory many times. I want to use it to cut her skin. Watch the pretty red blood bead up against her pale skin.
We work in loaded silence, the snick and scrape of the knives the only sounds.
I break the silence. “You know, Sage was obsessed with you when they were together.”
I feel her gaze snap to me. “Who?”
I ignore her. “She’d watch all your videos and make your recipes, talking his ear off about you.”
She digests that information. I can almost hear her brain churning.
