“Are you on your period?”
The way he asked the question infuriated her for no reason she could articulate.
“No. I just woke up in a pool of blood…my blood…I-I think. Maybe my dream was real. Maybe the neighbor really did stab us both to death.”
“Are you serious?”
“No, I’m not serious. Do I sound like I’m dead?” Sarah shot back in an irritated tone. She couldn’t explain why she was so annoyed with him today.
“Do you need me to pick you up some…um…some feminine products on the way home?”
“No, I’ve got plenty of tampons at home. Thanks. Next time answer the fucking phone.” She hung up and sat down hard on the bed. She knew that she was wrong for lashing out at Josh but she also knew that in minutes he’d be so wrapped up in his work, laughing and joking with his customers, that he would have forgotten all about it. He was good that way. It was one of the things about him that annoyed the shit out of her.
CHAPTER NINE
They had just come upstairs after washing the dinner dishes. Tonight, Sarah had cooked dinner. She’d made Josh’s favorite, a big, fat, juicy porterhouse from Omaha Steaks with cracked pepper pounded into it and blue cheese on top. It was her way of apologizing for acting like an asshole earlier.
Sarah sat on the edge of the bed reading a book. The light on the nightstand and the TV were on. Josh was lying beside her with a pillow over his head, trying to block out the light and noise.
“Will you please go to sleep? Are you still tripping about that dream?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know. I just can’t sleep.”
Conan O’Brien was making fun of the audience for not laughing at his jokes. It was an odd sort of comedy that Sarah couldn’t get into. She switched the channel to Spike TV and began watching an old replay of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Matt Hughes was getting his ass kicked by an out-of-shape B.J. Penn. Sarah usually loved that type of blood sport but tonight she just wasn’t in the mood. She turned to Comedy Central, then lay back on the bed as the gang from South Park pranced across the screen.
She opened her book, a novel about zombies on an old battleship written by a relatively new author named Brian Keene. Normally she loved a good horror novel, and Brian Keene was one of her favorites, but it was just too gory for her tonight. She looked at an Edward Lee novel that sat unopened on her nightstand with a picture of a winged devil on the cover. No way, she thought. Instead, she picked up a book about the people you meet in heaven after you die. After only a few pages, she fell asleep with the television still on, Cartman and Stan singing about Christmas poo in the background.
Sarah slept fitfully, horrible images of knives and blood dashed through her mind, of Josh screaming in pain, herself being raped, mutilated, and abused. She woke up twice, exhausted and drenched in sweat. When she woke up in the morning she was convinced that there was more to these dreams than just her subconscious overreacting to a creepy neighbor.
“Josh? Wake up, Josh.”
“Is it time for work?”
“No. I just need to talk to you…about these dreams I keep having. They’re really starting to freak me out.”
“You had another one? Like last night?”
“I think so. I can’t really remember. But I think it was bad. Really bad.”
“Do you want to see a psychiatrist or something?”
“No, Josh. I think something is really going on. I want to go to the cops.”
“You can’t call the cops because of a dream.”
There were tears in Sarah’s eyes when she looked over at Josh.
“But what if it isn’t a dream? What if he’s really doing things to me in my sleep?”
Josh turned over and faced Sarah. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and gave Sarah his full attention. He stared into her eyes for a long moment before he spoke, reading her expression as if he were trying to solve a complex equation.
“Then you wouldn’t need to call the cops because I’d kill him myself.”
Sarah smiled halfheartedly and hugged her husband tight.
“What time do you go to work today?”
“I work the swing shift today, four to midnight.”
“I don’t want to be here alone tonight.”
“I made some extra money in tips last night. Some dot-com millionaire younger than my little brother tipped me three hundred dollars before he started losing. Why don’t I take you to buy a gun? With the way the neighborhood is changing it’s probably not a bad idea anyway.”
“Are you serious?” Sarah lit up at the idea. “What kind?”
She swiped the tears from her eyes with the backs of her hands and sat up in bed.
Josh looked at her with a bemused expression on his face. He reached out and brushed the hair from her face.
“You really aren’t like other women. You know that?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Most women would object to the idea of having a gun in the house but you can’t wait to buy one. You’re too eager, in fact. Should I be afraid here? You’re not going to use it on me, are you?”
“Not as long as you keep fucking me when I want to be fucked.”
She kissed him on his lips, then rubbed her hands over his shoulders and down his arms. His biceps were still hard and muscular despite the layer of fat he’d put on since moving to Vegas. He’d had less time to exercise and spent too much time at the buffets. She ran her hand over his belly, which had expanded quite a bit in the last few years. It jiggled as she rubbed it. She ran her hand back up to his chest. His pecs were still big and hard like a bodybuilder’s. They were even bigger than they’d been in college. Josh had begun powerlifting the last few years because it was quicker. He’d pile as much weight onto the bar as he could, do two or three reps, do that for three or four sets and then he was done. His entire routine took him less than twenty minutes a day. It was all he had time for.
He may not have had one of those ripped-up bodies full of cuts and striations with veins popping out everywhere like Arnold Schwarzenegger, but these days neither did Arnold. Josh was still a big, strong man despite his growing paunch. Sarah ran her hands over his belly, then down between his legs where he was already hard. Josh was not a small man in any regard. She hated to admit that the size of his cock had been one of the things she’d first fallen in love with. She knew that women weren’t supposed to care about the physical, especially when it came to what a man was packing. It was supposed to be all about being treated right and cared for and Josh was good at all of that too. He was patient and supportive and attentive and treated Sarah like a queen. But being hung like a porn star certainly didn’t hurt.
“Mmmmm. Is that for me?”
She crawled beneath the covers and swirled her tongue around the head of his cock, licking up and down and flicking the head with her tongue as he squirmed and moaned. She continued teasing his cock with her tongue until he couldn’t take it anymore and reached down and grabbed her by the hair, forcing his cock down her throat. She loved it when he did that. Josh wasn’t a rough lover. He was sweet and loving, preferring to make love even when she was in the mood for a good hard fuck. But she had her ways of awakening the beast in him.
Josh aggressively fucked her throat and Sarah tried her best to ignore it whenever he felt like he’d shoved his cock too far down her throat and paused to ask if she was okay. Sometimes he was so nice it almost killed the mood. Josh may have had a huge cock but no man had made her gag since she was a teenager. It was no secret that she hadn’t exactly been a virgin when they met, but Josh still treated her like she was made of china. It was usually pretty sweet but right now it was annoying. She grabbed his ass cheeks and forced his cock all the way down her throat past her tonsils; then she squirmed a finger up his ass to massage his prostate.