While Mercedes wasn’t an especial priority, he supposed this was a good a time as any to start making things as right as he could. Only, where to begin? “So, did you have a good break?” There ya go, champ—nothing like chit-chat to make up for letting a girl get publicly molested at one of your floor programs, or ripping off her towel and titty-fucking her in the hallway because she was making noise with her hair dryer at 8am.
“It wasn’t too bad. Stuck around here, got caught up on shit. Binged a shit-ton of Netflix. You?”
“Went home, had some good times. Some Netflix.”
“Cool, cool. Want me to tell Brittney you were lookin’ for her when she gets in?”
“I’ll just text her.” He glanced over her shoulder at what she was busy working on. “What’s this—some dick of a professor assign a paper over Thanksgiving weekend?”
“One of them did, actually, but I finished that yesterday. Just doing some journaling.” She soured slightly at seeing him looking at it, but naturally had no more capacity to restrict his view of her thoughts than she did to restrict his view of her body.
“Oh, neat.”
She eyed him. “You sound surprised.”
“No, no. Not at all.” Ugh, that sounded even more surprised. He had been, actually. Mercedes had always struck him as rather superficial, and “uncomplicated,” to put it politely.
She frowned. “What, like it’s Mercedes, so what could she probably have to process? Like I don’t have feelings?”
“I was just surprised—I knew Brittney did, but I didn’t know it was your thing, too.”
She softened a little. “Yeah, she was the one who got me started. She’s clacking away at hers all the time, and she said it helped. Mostly helps her lose sleep, probably, but that’s just ’cause she always waits until like 11:00 to start and types like six words a minute.”
“Yeah, she said once that…” Wait, what? “Hang on—you said she types it?”
Mercedes nodded. “More like hunts and pecks, but yeah.”
“I thought she hand-wrote it… You’re sure?”
“Yeah, definitely. Why, something wrong with that?”
“No, not at all. I’m just… huh.”
She types it. But he’d found a hand-written journal under her bed—was she re-typing it after? Or was something weird going on? He looked over at her desk; there was her laptop, folded neatly.
Calling to him.
To her credit, it took him and Mercedes almost half an hour to guess her password. He’d enlisted her help, figuring her best friend would know things like birthdays, mother’s maiden name, pets, that kind of thing. It had ultimately been g0w1ldcats—the wildcats having been the girls’ high school mascot, and Brittney had had the same computer and likely the same password since then.
“Thanks, Mercedes.”
“Yeah—just let me know whenever you need my help invading my best friend’s privacy,” she said a little bitterly.
“Hey, before I… well, invade your best friend’s privacy, can… can we talk?”
“Sure. Last thing I need is another punishment.”
“No—no more punishments. I’m done with that.”
“It’s fine—you just did what you thought was right.” She didn’t sound convincing in the least, but of course, she couldn’t just come out and tell him that.
“No, I didn’t. I abused my… position,” he corrected quickly, not ready to proclaim to those who’d not yet picked up on it that he had a power, “and I took it out on a lot of people around here for no good reason.”
“It’s cool, no worries.”
Argh, these apologies weren’t going to be easy if nobody would accept them. “No, it wasn’t cool. Mercedes, I fucked your tits in the middle of the hallway.”
“Yep, I remember all right. I stopped using my blow dryer early in the morning, too. Sorry about that.”
“No, don’t apologize to me—I don’t want you to apologize!”
“Oh—are you gonna fuck my tits again?” She made a mildly displeased face, but then removed her shirt hastily to reveal those prom-queen-winning tits in a sexy leopard-print bra.
“Mercedes, I don’t wanna fuck your tits.”
She made an even more displeased face. “Why the hell not?”
“It’s not… look, they’re great. Amazing. I’m just trying to say you don’t have to let me fool around with you any more.”
Now she looked at him like he was an idiot. “Um, ya I do. Jesus, what kind of fucking bitch do you think I am? That’s a real dick thing to say to somebody, you know—and I’m gonna prove you wrong. Come on, let’s do this.” She slid down to her knees, deftly undoing the clasp on her bra to unleash those shapely tits of hers.
“Mercedes, no—I didn’t come in for this. This is basically the exact opposite of what I came in here for. I’m not going to be fooling around with you any more, period.”
“Oh, but you’ll still fuck Brittney, is that it?”
Could she seriously be offended right now? What the hell was going on! “I mean, maybe, I don’t know…”
“So she’s cool, but I’m some bigot who’s too bitchy to you to mess with? Bullshit—drop ’em, DJ.” She reached for his pants and started undoing them.
“It’s not a reflection on you—”
“Of course it is—is this because I got embarrassed at the floor program? Look, I’m sorry if I was rude. I didn’t mean to be.”
“Stop apologizing! You don’t have to titty-fuck me! I know you’d normally never do this.” How could this be happening?!
The girl got his pants down around his knees and gave his cock a long, sensual lick. “Of course I do. What else would I do, say no? I’m not that kind of girl.”
Her tongue was making his willpower a good deal harder to maintain, making him re-examine all kinds of notions about whether there was any sin in privately indulging imself. There she was on her knees, more or less begging for it. She wouldn’t mind. It wouldn’t embarrass her, or damage her reputation, or in any way harm her.
And her tits were spectacular…
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get this over with, DJ.”
That sealed it. “No, Mercedes, really—I believe you, and I know you would. Some other time, maybe, OK?”
She gave him another little glare but at last desisted, sullenly slipping back into her bra and t-shirt. “Fine. No pleasing some people.”
“You’re plenty pleasing. Any guy would be insanely lucky to be with a girl like you. Seriously. I think you almost gave Zack a heart attack at the Thanksgiving program just by being allowed to touch you, much less how loudly you… you know.”
“Yeah, that was pretty fucked up all right.” She grinned, coloring slightly.
“Why are you smiling? I thought you were really pissed off.”
“Well not at you—just at circumstances. But… look, don’t you fucking dare tell anyone, but Zack and I have been kinda messing around since then.”
He gaped “You…! I thought you wouldn’t be into a guy…” He wanted to say “that heavy,” but instead managed the slightly more tactful, “… like that.”
“Eh, it’s just a little Dad bod. Besides, he’s like the Kobe Bryant of eating pussy. Except he’s not an asshole. It’s not like we’re ‘dating’ or anything—just having a little fun.”
“Well, I’m… glad it worked out, I guess. And sorry I… never mind. Look, I’m just gonna… real quick…” He eyed Brittney’s laptop.
“Violate Brittney’s privacy, gotcha,” she said, chuckling a little. “Go for it, I guess.”
He didn’t see the journal right off—not in her documents folder, nor on her desktop, nor in her recent files. Finally, he just got smart and searched for files containing the word “DJ” but that turned up scores of results containing words like “readjust” or “adjoin” and so forth. Then he tried searching for “Brianne,” banking on her having mentioned that experience.