Chapter 5: Ella

Author’s note: I’m very sorry for the long delayed posting. Life happens, I suppose. I’ll be updating much more frequently for the foreseeable future.

Also, this chapter is shorter than normal and could be construed to be nonconsensual in some ways, so be advised. The companion to this chapter will be up in the next 48 hours.

One of the reasons Ian and I have worked so well together as roommates is that I’m a really sound sleeper. The guy has night owl hours, to put it nicely.

But when you hear a woman scream in your apartment at one AM in the goddamn morning, well, there are limits, y’know? When I came out of my stupor and heard another, lower scream, followed by repeated pounding, I realized exactly what was going on and sighed. At least one of us was getting lucky.

Right up until he wasn’t. Suddenly I heard raised voices, followed by “... ASSHOLE!...” and rapid footsteps out in the hall towards the bathroom. I couldn’t help myself. Ian had never mistreated a partner (to my knowledge, at least) and I was concerned. I cracked my door open to see a very shapely, very feminine form stalking from his room. Christ, I was not going to miss watching Ian land smoking hot women right in front of me.

I heard the toilet flush and stomping headed back in his direction. This time I intentionally eavesdropped, catching the words “Uber”, “I’ll cover it”, and “I’m sorry”, all in Ian’s baritone.

The female response was sharp, annoyed, and sounded high maintenance. Risks of being casual, I guess. But she was talking to him, and not leaving his room, so whatever it was that ended the festivities clearly wasn’t that catastrophic. A short while later I heard the apartment door close (at least she wasn’t a big enough bitch to slam it at nearly two AM in the morning, thank goodness) and I settled back down to sleep.

Only ... I couldn’t. I was worried about Ian, and I’d been thinking about him a lot in the past few days. I knew he was going to miss me; hell, I was going to miss him, and for more than just the freaking friendship, when I could bring myself to be honest about it. So I resorted to my usual strategy for when oblivion eluded me and slipped my hands inside my boyshorts, and started teasing my folds open.

At first I didn’t really have a goal; it was almost automatic, just masturbation for the sake of physical release. But thanks to working from home, I’d been watching even more porn than normal lately, and found I needed more stimulation than just my fingers. I didn’t feel like getting up to grab my laptop or get Richard back out (he was still banished under the bed), and just thinking about the latest video clips wasn’t cutting it. So I did something that I knew was a bad idea; I started fantasizing about Ian again, which I hadn’t done in a while, and had consciously avoided since deciding to move out.

The thought of all those muscles, of him towering over me, of him playing with me and using his body to make me squeal like that other woman immediately got things going along nicely. My subconscious hadn’t missed the fact that his date tonight was no taller than I was without the heels, or that her hair was roughly the same length. My traitorous mind kept filling in details, imagining him slamming me into the bed and blasting me with his orgasm until my very real release claimed me and I caught oblivion and dove into it headfirst.

My alarm blasted me awake at 5:45 AM. On a Saturday. Fuck, there were times I hated the fact that the company had agreed to pay me a stupid amount of money, mostly because it came with obscene hours.

I dragged myself off the mattress and checked the algorithm. I had left it running at about ten thirty last night, and it looked to be populating data sets nicely. Today would be conclusions day, where I started making defendable observations from the assorted information and what the client could do with it. The biggest one, and the one that would be worth some of the money getting thrown around, was that the client absolutely needed to get faster to market. They made a killing during times when their competitor hadn’t yet delivered, and their competition’s product was definitely iterative and inferior, but it was also a helluva lot cheaper. If the client could widen the gap somehow, they’d be able to protect their margin and maybe even release a new product wave before the competition got their first response out the door.

After I typed that up and linked it to several tables backing up the claims, I wandered out to the kitchen to quietly make some breakfast. Nothing fancy, just some orange juice and a toasted bagel. I don’t eat a lot in the mornings, it just doesn’t agree with me.