Love and Gravity Read online

  She imagined him pressing her warm, naked body against the shower wall and feeling his erection against her thighs, imagined him forcing his way into her. It was too much to resist. She started cumming.

  She could feel the hard uncontrollable contractions inside her and a glorious heat fizzling from her pussy out to the rest of her body. A single small yelping sound made its way past her lips. In that single moment she didn’t care if Jack heard.

  She hadn’t expected to play with herself; it had been a need she felt come on by surprise. Now that she felt sated she was a little embarrassed at having used Jack in her fantasies. After all, she barely knew the man. The last two days had been so overwhelming; she didn’t know what had overcome her. She decided it was probably just a necessary distraction, and promised herself to try being a little less free-spirited regarding this man who was really a stranger to her.

  The mirror was fogged over when Margot stepped in front of it again so she wiped it down with the towel she had dried off with. She was beginning to feel so much better. The last two days were beginning to seem like they were merely a horrible dream. The face she saw now looked years younger than the face she’d seen only twenty minutes before. She bent down took her new clothes and toothbrush out of the bag she’d brought in with her. She put on the black leggings and the grey sweatshirt and brushed her teeth with some peppermint toothpaste. She took down her hair from the towel and squeezed it dry. She felt tingly all over.

  Being that she was clean, her mind turned to the pizza Jack had ordered. She couldn’t wait to eat. Before she left the bathroom she collected her dirty cocktail dress and the rest of her old outfit from the floor. She threw it all in the small trashcan beside the toilet. She never wanted to look at those clothes again.

  She opened the door to the bathroom and saw Jack sitting on the bed. He was shirtless and tanned. All her thoughts about modesty and decency fell away. He was trying to clean the bullet wound on his arm with some cotton pads he’d wet with whiskey. The grimace on his face said it was painful.

  Margot was taken aback seeing him this way, especially after what she’d just done in the shower. The wound itself was shocking, but so was his body. There was a trail of dark, dried blood down his right arm from a cut straight across his triceps. It didn’t look too deep, but it looked deep enough. Beyond that, she couldn’t help notice that he was more muscular than she’d suspected. The suit he wore had spoken little of what lay beneath it. His chest was smooth and tan, his abs were chiseled, and he had a thin trail of hair on his stomach that dove suggestively beneath his belt.

  Margot took in this wonderful view for a few seconds before clearing her throat.

  “How is your arm feeling,” she asked?

  Jack looked up from the bed and met Margot’s eyes. He smiled.

  “It’s manageable. I need to wrap it in a bandage though. Could you help? It’s impossible to do with just one hand.”

  “Of course,” Margot said.

  She was relieved by the chance to help him with it after all he’d done to help her. She walked over to him on the bed and sat beside him. He had an elastic bandage lying out on the duvet that she picked up.

  He looked at her eyes. All of her makeup was gone now, and her slightly damp hair was draped over her shoulders on top of her grey sweater. She looked comfortable and clean and charming. She smiled like flowers and mint. She looked much happier than he’d seen her before.

  When she lifted his arm up to begin wrapping it he noticed how warm her hands were against his skin. It felt really good when she touched him. He looked down to the floor, a little embarrassed that he was thinking about it. He’d had a couple of slugs from the whiskey bottle while she was in the shower to help with the pain in his arm and he was feeling the effects of the alcohol settling in on him.

  Margot began wrapping the bandage around his arm. She could feel how strong he was as she lifted his arm, how thick his muscles were. She wrapped his arm firmly and hooked two small silver clasps into the bandage to keep it together. As he lowered his arm down she noticed a long scar just above his wrist.

  “What’s that from,” she asked?

  “Oh that.” His eyes warmed as he looked at the old scar.

  “When I was a kid, maybe eight or nine, I was riding my bike through the neighborhood with my sister, Chelsea. We reached the top of the biggest hill around. I wanted to show off so I told Chelsea to watch me and I started flying down it. But the hill ended in a cul-de-sac and I was going so fast I couldn’t stop in time. The next thing I know I’m flying over the handlebars into a big bush that was in someone’s front yard. I cut my arm. It was gushing blood everywhere. I was terrified. Chelsea took me home on her bike and wrapped it up for me.”

  “Sounds like you have a good sister,” Margot said, smiling.

  “Yeah, she was,” Jack said. His face darkened. “I lost her years ago, though. She was murdered.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” Margot said.

  “It’s why I’m a detective in Gravity. It’s why I want to get Pop. She was killed in the crossfire of a shooting he ordered. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. One day she’s riding bikes with me, eating ice cream and being a kid, and the next day she’s just...gone.

  “My father was on the force then, and he knew Pop was behind the shooting, but they couldn’t prove it in court so Pop walked away. My father died a few years later from a heart attack. The stress of it was too much for him. He never got to see justice for Chelsea.”

  Margot thought about her own father. She knew what it was like to have someone you cared about suddenly and unexpectedly ripped from your life. She knew how the emptiness they left behind could be filled with an immense and omnipresent sadness. She could see it killing someone. She suddenly felt overwhelmed by grief and fear.

  “Jack, I’m so afraid.”

  She wanted to bury her head in his chest and sob. She wanted to let him comfort her. She was afraid that she would burden him unduly with her sadness. She wanted to offer him something better than that.

  “I know Margot, it makes sense. But it’s going to be okay. Frankie’s a really good guy and the Feds have a lot of fire-power behind them. Pop is strong in Gravity, but he’s not as strong as the Feds. Once they get to us they’re going to protect you. And in the meantime,” he paused, becoming quieter, “in the meantime, I’m going to protect you.”

  Margot looked at Jack. His eyes were searching hers for her reaction to his affirmation.

  “Do you trust me,” he asked her?

  “Yes,” Margot said meaningfully. It would have seemed impossible to her to imagine feeling such an allegiance and gratitude to someone on Gravity’s police force not even 48 hours ago. But now it seemed impossible to feel anything less to him. He’d already saved her life and forsaken everything to keep her safe. His willingness to sacrifice so much for someone he didn’t even know was deeply endearing to her.

  They looked at each other silently for a moment, each lost in their own thoughts. Margot suddenly became very aware of sitting on the bed together. She thought she noticed Jack lean towards her slightly.

  Just then they heard a hard knock at the door.

  Chapter 6 -

  The pizza had arrived in the middle of what felt like a very intimate moment to Margot. A part of her was disappointed, but another part felt relieved. Fantasizing about Jack in the shower was one thing, but taking it from fantasy to reality right now seemed like it might be a bad idea. So much was happening, and she couldn’t let herself forget that they were still in danger. With Jack it was difficult not to feel safer than she really was.

  She felt more grounded after they started eating. The pizza was probably about as high quality as the hotel room, but she hadn’t eaten anything substantial in days and Margot wanted to inhale the whole thing by herself. They were sitting together, cross legged on the bed with the open pizza box sprawled out between them. Jack was fully dressed now, since they had finished b
andaging his arm.

  “I hope you like pepperoni,” Jack said.

  “Actually, I’m a vegetarian. But it’s okay, I’ll just give my pepperoni to you.”

  “Oh I’m sorry, I should have asked.”

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s not that I’m grossed out by it, it’s just an ideological thing. I don’t like to kill things to live when I don’t need to. I would probably kill an animal to live if I needed to, but when I have the luxury of making a different choice,” Margot shrugged, “I do.”

  Jack looked at her again. She was continually surprising him. He’d never met an addict or dealer that cared about the people around them, let alone the animals. He felt like he couldn’t stop himself from asking her about her past anymore. It had been eating at him the whole day.

  “So Margot, I hope you don’t mind my asking,” Jack paused hesitantly, “and you don’t have to answer if you do, but…”

  “It’s okay, you can ask. What?”

  “Why did you have all that cocaine with you 5 years ago?”

  Margot stopped eating. She should have seen this question coming. A part of her really was angry that he was asking. She was angry at Jack the cop, not Jack the man. But she’d already begun to trust Jack more than she’d trusted anyone in a very long time. Who can you trust, she thought, if not a man who risks his life for you when he doesn’t even know who you are? He was risking his life to save her and she thought that gave him the right to know her.

  “I’m sorry, I’ve offended you haven’t I?” Jack looked at her abashedly.

  “No, it’s okay. I’ll tell you.” Margot braced herself to go back to an old place she didn’t like going.

  “My father was an officer in the Army and we moved around constantly. He didn’t have a choice; he had to support me alone. My mother died when I was being born.” Margot paused and sighed heavily. She was beginning to feel tired again.

  “I loved my dad, I mean we were really close. But as I got older I started resenting him for moving us so often. I felt isolated. I was always the new kid, getting picked on. I never had time to make any friends. Until I met this one guy. His name was Alex and he was really popular at this new school I was going to. He noticed me, and treated me like I was special. He introduced me to his friends and suddenly I was popular. It was the first school I went where I wasn’t the outcast.

  “So I started falling madly in love with Alex for all the wrong reasons. My father hated him. He could see that he was a deadbeat, but that just made me cling to Alex harder. One day I was driving Alex to a get a bite to eat. We’d been dating about four months then. I got pulled over for a broken brake light. This cop takes one look at Alex and tells us to get out of the car. He and Alex obviously had some kind of history. He starts searching my car and finds this brick of cocaine in the glove box. I had no idea it was there. I still don’t know how Alex got it in there without me seeing.

  “So the cop takes us in and puts us in different interrogation rooms. They start pressuring me to give them information about Alex’s dealing, like who sold to him and who he sold to. I didn’t even know he did that, he never told me. The cops offered me a walk if I ratted on him. I didn’t have any information to give them though. They thought I was just being obstinate and uncooperative. They said they were going to teach me a lesson. I was seventeen when they arrested me, so they charged me as an adult with ‘possession with intent to sell’ and threw me in prison for three years. They didn’t have a case against Alex, so they argued that the drugs were mine, found in my car, etc…”

  “So how did you end up working for Pop then,” Jack asked?

  “While I was in jail my father was killed in a car accident. I didn’t even get to attend his funeral. When they let me out I had just turned twenty. I’d gotten my G.E.D. while I was incarcerated but even with that I wasn’t able to get a good job anywhere because of my record. I moved around a lot trying to find a better situation for myself. I didn’t have any family left or any idea of what to do next. That’s when I landed in Gravity and Pop saw me living on the street. He offered me a job tending bar. It was the first job I’d been offered that didn’t involve stripping, or hooking, or practically no pay.”

  Jack realized then how close she must have come to losing herself these last few years. He had an awful image of Margot working the street corner, the same street corner with all those girls Pop had killed. Pop had already killed far too many girls. He snapped himself out of this depressing reverie by focusing intently on Margot, on her still youthful, flushed, freshly showered face. She looked delicate, and thoroughly alive.

  “So I took the job he offered me. I worked for him there the last two years. I could see that he was a bad guy the longer I worked for him, but he gave me free room and board and pretty fair pay. Let me keep my tips. He never asked me to do anything illegal. My plan was to save as much money as I could to get out of there. Maybe save enough for rent while I went back to school for something else. Anyway, it doesn’t matter now.”

  Margot felt dark while telling him about this part of her past. It was something she normally dealt with by not thinking about it. But she felt it was only right to answer him. She grabbed a plastic cup full of water off the corner table and took a long sip.

  “That’s quite a history. I had no idea. I can see it’s hard for you to talk about. Thank you for telling me.”

  “Thank you for all of your help. I probably wouldn’t be able to talk to anyone ever again if it weren’t for you.”

  “I needed a vacation from Gravity anyway,” he said smiling.

  Margot smiled too, feeling a bit lighter. She was comforted by his humor. It made her feel more like things were normal and less like they could be shot at any second.

  “Well, we should think about turning in,” Jack said. “It’s getting late and I want to be back on the road by morning. Think you can get some sleep?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  Margot knew they would be sleeping together in the same bed and ordinarily this would have made her question just how much sleep she would be able to get. This night though, she was too tired to resist unconsciousness.

  “Alright,” Jack said. He took the pizza box off the bed.

  Margot got under the covers. The bed felt like it was made of cardboard, but Margot could feel the siren call of sleep beckoning her before her head even touched the pillow.

  Jack was still fully clothed as he got under the covers. He wanted to be ready in case anything happened. He was willing to let himself sleep because he was a light sleeper, but he kept his gun ready beside him on the table. He turned off the light after getting beneath the sheets. He could feel Margot shifting in the bed in the dark, trying to get comfortable. When she stopped moving and silence pervaded the room he could hear her gently breathing. He followed the sound of her light, rhythmic breaths into the thick fog of sleep.

  Margot woke to feel a hand shaking her shoulder in the darkness.

  “Margot, wake up,” Jack whispered, insistently but quietly into her ear.

  She came back into her body, back into the bed, back into the hotel room, and a terrible fear followed her there. She could hear a scratching at the door as someone jiggled the handle.

  “We have to go out the bathroom window. There’s someone at the door. Don’t touch the lights.” Jack got out of the bed, grabbing his gun and walking towards the bathroom.

  Margot followed him there, feeling around in her shopping bag by the bathroom door until she grabbed her boots and purse. She put the boots on her feet hurriedly while Jack opened the small window above the toilet for them to escape from.

  Jack shut the toilet lid after opening the window.

  “Step up and crawl through,” he told her.

  She did as she was told. The window was small and it was a tight squeeze as she wriggled through it. When she’d gotten her waist through she grabbed at the grass outside and pulled herself the rest of the way out by it. She moved to the side and let Jac
k through the window behind her. He quickly got to his feet and grabbed her arm.

  “We’ve got to get a different car,” he said.

  The parking lot was on the other side of the building, with whoever was trying to break into their room. They couldn’t go that way. In front of them was an empty grass lot that faded into darkness away from the hotel lights. Jack knew they didn’t have any other choice and began leading Margot off into the darkness.

  Once they were away from the hotel Jack’s eyes began to adjust to the dark. It was still hard to see, but not impossible. Away in the distance he could see more street lamps. It looked like a residential area. He kept pulling Margot along as fast as he could. The darkness would help cover them from sight, but they still needed to hurry.

  Eventually they got to the street lights, hovering above a street full of parked cars. Jack looked for one that didn’t have an obvious alarm system. He found a beat up Volkswagen Beetle that had the windows rolled down. He opened the door and started hotwiring it. Margot got into the passenger’s seat as the car coughed itself back to life and Jack put it in drive. Jack could see there was no way off the street that didn’t take them back past the hotel.

  “Margot, you need to keep your head down, okay?”

  “Okay,” Margot said, hunkering down as far as she could in her seat. She could feel her stomach cramping with anxiety. She looked over to see Jack with one hand on the wheel and another still holding his gun. He was looking hawkishly over the dashboard and speeding the Beetle up as quickly as it would allow.

  Jack rounded a corner and reached the straight road that would take them past the hotel parking lot and back onto the highway north. As he began to pass the parking lot he could see two guys with guns in hand, arguing animatedly under the parking lot lights. He continued picking up speed. He almost began to think they wouldn’t see him, until he began to drive past them. One of the men stopped arguing, his head craning around to follow the Beetle. Jack saw him hit the other guy on the shoulder and point to their car. He knew they were made.