#cjroberts

It's WIP Wednesday!!! Yesterday I asked:

If you invite a guy to YOUR HOUSE PARTY and spend hours talking (foreplay). Unable to resist, you blow him in your bathroom for privacy. Afterward, you ask him to return the favor and before any of your clothes are removed, he makes a face like he’s grossed out, swears it’s not you, and asks for a rain check on seeing you again. What do you do?

Give the guy a pass or toss his ass?

98% said - Get to steppin'!!! So I wrote it out. What follows is the aftermath (Click here to read the smexy times that precede this scene).

Set in college just before holiday break. Warnings for language and no sex (I know).

I would love to hear what you think about this scene because I'm still in the character building phase and any input you offer will be very useful to me and provide you with a better reading experience later (shameless plug).

What do you think about these two as a couple?

COMMITMENT by CJ Roberts Plagiarizers will be disemboweled. Notes & shares encouraged.

She's out of the art show.

Maya has to sit down. Right now. Her ass hits the concrete step with a gritty thud and before she knows it, she’s wiping at her tears and gently rocking. It will be obvious to anyone happening by that she’s sad, but its late afternoon and the odds are slim so she takes her much needed moment.

No sooner has she made the assessment than a familiar voice inquires, “You okay?” and Maya’s tenuous hold on her emotions slips away. She needs to be seen crying by this damn guy as much as New Orleans needs more tourists jamming up the quarter.

“I’m fine,” she snaps. “Please go away.” She doesn’t bother to look away from her artfully frayed jeans as she pulls at the threads. Damon thinks she’s a whore and just now… she’s allowed herself to feel like one and his presence is too much. She’s so… humiliated! She dips her head lower, forehead nearly to her knees and quickly sniffs to keep her nose from running.

“I… came to see you,” he says, sounding contrite. Maya doesn’t really care how sorry this dick is and he can take whatever misguided and plebeian apology he’s about to make and just shove it up his ass! She’s so sick of people. Sick of them!

“Well I don’t want to see you. Fuck off,” she mutters. The longer he continues to stand in her peripheral vision the more vulnerable she becomes. She’d stand up and dart away if she could do so without allowing him to see her blotchy and tear strained face. She’s had to endure enough disgrace for one day.

Damon sighs heavily and kicks at the ground. “I was pretty much ready for you to say that. Listen… um… I know I acted like a real douchebag last night. You were really… nice to me and you didn’t deserve what you got… or… didn’t get.”

His words serve as a vivid reminder of their time together and they’re as unwelcome as the man speaking. “Please, Damon,” she begs, knowing she’s seconds away from sobbing, “Go away. It happened. Whatever. We never have to see each other again.” All day she’s been having flashbacks of his disgust over going down on her and shockingly, over his own come in her mouth. It angers her to feel even a moment of added degradation over something she took such joy in doing at the outset.

“That’s exactly why I had to come find you. I don’t like that idea.” He sits down, an insistent and warm pressure along Maya’s side. “Be mad at me, punch me, but don’t tell me I can never see you again, that’s messed up.”

That’s it! Maya sobs and abruptly pushes herself to her feet so she can run away. “I have to go.” She’s quickly caught up in a strong, unyielding embrace the moment she hits the sidewalk.

“Maya, come on,” he says and the pleading tone does strange things to her stomach. “I’m really sorry. What do you want me to say? I just never met anyone like you and I didn’t know what to do.”

She struggles out of his grasp to deliver her scathing rebuttal in the form of an open hand slap to his cleanly shaven face. “You never met anyone like me, but I’ve known lots of people like you and I don’t need your pity or your apologies.” For a moment, she’s taken aback by the genuine hurt just under the surface of Damon’s furious and surprised gaze. Then she squares her shoulders and prepares for the fallout.

“People like me?” He says, incensed and holding his cheek, “What the hell are you talking about?”

“You got what you wanted and then acted like a little bitch.” Damon visibly flinches before he can stop himself and Maya is deeply pleased at having bruised his ego, even if it pales in comparison to her own bruises.

“Yeah…well….” Damon’s fists clench at his side.

Go ahead, asshole. Say it. She’s braced for more of his narrow-minded vitriol, craves it really, can’t wait to shove this guy’s dick in the dirt with nothing more than her words.

Damon deflates. “I’m sorry anyway.” He shakes his head like he’s clearing it and turns away. “I won’t bother you anymore.”

Maya stares at this back as he walks away. She feels…. “Damon! Wait!” She trots over to him quickly, wiping tears off her face. “I don’t mean that… about you being, you know. It’s just that,” she throws her hands up in the air in frustration, “Dr. Dacus removed me from the art show and I was hoping to impress the gallery rep. I really thought…, but now I’m not in the show and Dr. Dacus called me common and ostentatious, and then he said my parents should be embarrassed of me, and then… and then,” more tears are running down her face, “You! I don’t know what the hell I was thinking even attempting to… and I could just die right now. Just die. So please, go away and pretend you never met me and don’t… don’t think about what I said.”

She half expects to look up and find herself alone on the sidewalk. Instead, Damon is standing in front of her. His expression is guarded, but his eyes are curious and empathetic. He’s taking his sweet time deciding what he’d like to happen next and for a few seconds she regrets exposing herself to this man so he can wound her pride all over again with his rejection. But then he kisses his teeth and shakes his head as if to say: I know I’m going to regret this and a tiny tendril of something resembling relief takes up residence where shame momentarily took root.

“Guess today’s not a good day to ask you out then, is it?” He smiles. “Shame too, cause I was gonna take you out in my car, class it up a bit.”

Maya sobs out a laugh. “That’s me. Classy.”

Damon steps up to her and wipes at her cheeks with his thumbs. “Definitely too sophisticated for the likes of a farmer’s son like me.” He places a soft kiss on her lips before she can apologize again for behaving like the privileged brat she’s been raised to be. Her insides quake. She reaches up to touch her tingling lips. “Come on. I’ll walk you wherever you’re going.”

Since banishing him from her bathroom, Maya has thought of little more than Damon and being discovered by Mina Wallace of the Venustas Gallery, but mostly the former if she’s honest. She’s closed her eyes and tried to think of the exact color of his eyes, forest green, emerald, ocean…jade? She took the time to curse herself for not asking to paint him, lamenting the loss on behalf of her artist even as his laughter echoed in her ears. Did he only laugh at my jokes so I’d have sex with him? And his revulsion, she’s analyzed it, sketched it, and stared at it for an hour before she finally closed her eyes for four hours. Paint him tomorrow…that sketch…no justice…hazel? Jerk. One minute they were having a great time and the next he acted like she had syphilis.

”I thought you were leaving for Texas today?” she sniffles and turns toward the steps to retrieve her project from the building. She’d like to burn it after all. There’s an artist in there somewhere who need not rely upon the perversely ostentatious to be noticed. That artist within her cringes. Dr. Dacus is a good man, critical but fair, and Maya realizes she has once again stuck her foot in it.

“Was gonna, but I didn’t want to leave things like they were.” He places a hesitant hand between Maya’s shoulders and rubs for a moment before he withdraws his touch. She can make out a telltale pink rising on his cheeks. “Stayed up all night playing WoW just to keep from thinkin’ ‘bout ya.” He smiles. “Didn’t really work though, kept thinkin’ you’d make a hot elf.”

She can’t help giggling. “What the hell is wow?”

“It’s an online roleplaying game called World of Warcraft. There’re these two factions engaged in epic battle and you can choose which race you’d like to be. I play an Alliance Human Mage, but you’d be smoking hot as a Horde Blood Elf or an Alliance Night Elf.” Damon hasn’t been this animated in front of her before and his exuberance has an infectious effect on Maya’s dour mood.

She grins wide, exposing the perfect teeth her daddy spent so much money on. “You really are a nerd, aren’t you?” It’s endearing, she thinks. She’s used to dating other creative types: artists, musicians, dancers, actors, and once, a writer—but she quickly decided his brooding wasn’t as sexy as the movies make it out to be. Maybe she’s been missing out on something.

“Not a nerd,” he chuckles, “nerds get their underwear pulled over their heads and join math clubs. I’m a geek.” He winks and opens the door to the building, holding it open so Maya has to pass under his arm to go inside. His hand is firm on the small of her back as she complies.

“There’s a difference?” She loops her arm around his before he can move away and rests her head on his strong upper arm. This man is kindling something inside her, something cute, playful, and perhaps even innocent. And stupid, don’t forget stupid. She frowns. People don’t typically apologize to her. Her father would never apologize to anyone, no matter the circumstance. He could be wrong, was often wrong when it came to emotional matters, but he never apologized.

“Yeah,” Damon says, “there’s a joke about it. What’s the difference between a nerd and a geek?” His other hand slyly rests on Maya’s to keep her holding his arm.

“I’ll humor you,” she says in a girlish southern twitter that makes her want to step outside her own body and smack herself silly, “What’s the difference?”

Damon smirks. “About a hundred grand.”

Maya laughs much longer than is believable as genuine but it’s more than the joke. She’s relieved to have someone sooth her. She put herself out on the edge of an emotional cliff for her Subjugation exhibit and now she’s hurtling toward an unforgiving future, no Venustas Gallery, she doubts Dr. Dacus will take her seriously ever again, her grade is likely to suffer, and on top of it all Kyle refused to come to her house for the holidays which means there will be no buffer between her and her family. But despite her anxiety she can’t help but be pleased by how irresistibly sweet Damon can be. It doesn't hurt that he's handsome, if not tall. She’s had a perfectly horrible day but suddenly it doesn’t seem so bad, thanks to this delightfully naïve guy and his horrible attempt at humor. “Thanks,” she sighs, “I needed that.” They pause outside the studio doors.

“Sorry about your project,” Damon whispers.

Maya shrugs and blinks repeatedly. Dr. Dacus is never going to respect her after this and it’ll be two weeks before she can properly apologize to the man. She threatened to go to the department head! The desire to find a deep dark hole to throw herself into is appealing. “Not a big deal. Probably better this way.”

“Yeah maybe, but I know you worked hard on it,” he pushes out awkwardly.

Gaze focused downward, Maya is charmed by Damon’s shuffling sneakered feet. She did work hard on it. Obviously her idea was awful and her execution probably left a lot to be desired but it had all seemed so sexy and important in her mind. She expected to be demeaned, humiliated, pushed beyond moral limits, but she expected all those things to happen inside that hotel room where she could take the experience and shape it into her own kind of power. She wanted to prove—she’s not even sure what she was trying to prove anymore. That men have no problem with defiling a stranger? That she can suck three guys off in a single night? That Maya Anderson is just as plebeian as any other twenty-one-year-old college girl with low self-esteem? What the fuck had she been trying to prove!

“Maya?”

“Let me grab my stuff. Everyone’s prepping for the show tonight and I don’t want anyone else getting their hands on it.” She turns away from Damon without making eye contact and quickly disengages her thumb drive from the audio/visual equipment. “Shit,” she mumbles. “I can’t leave all this meat here.” She glances up at Damon ruefully. “Maybe you should just go. This is messy and it could take a while.” She’s not quite prepared for the increase in her heart rate when he reminds her he came to spend time with her.

“’Sides,” he says, “Me, farm boy, remember? It’s not my first time handling… cow parts?” He chuckles as he shakes his head. “Back home we’d call this devil worship.”

“Hmm,” Maya cannot resist smiling. “According to Oscar Wilde, we’re all our own devils.” Mine’s a horny little devil and she wants to be worshipped. You do owe me.

“I read that, I think, but I can’t remember where. I’m more into action movies than books.” He licks his lips nervously, all the more endearing to Maya, and picks up one of the hearts with his bare hands. “Where do you want this?”

It takes them nearly an hour to finish cleaning up her project. The meat goes out to the dumpster and the rest of the exhibit gets packed up into Maya’s car. Damon follows Maya back to her place to unload it all, commenting on the remarkable cleanliness of her home less than twenty-four hours after her party.

“Maids,” she imparts. “I try not to take advantage of Daddy’s money, but I also feel like someone my age is still entitled to her parents love and generosity. At least until I graduate. I clean up myself usually.” Maya feels the heat of her blush creep up her neck and warm her cheeks. Damon is staring.

“You’re blushing,” he says in mild, amused shock. He steps closer to Maya and places a cool hand on her hot cheek. “I wouldn’t expect that.”

Maya inhales sharply at the tender touch, memories of Damon’s heavy cock in her mouth assisting in her death-by-blush. She brings her own hand up and curls her ebony fingers over his pale ones to bring them back down. Stepping away under the guise of getting something to drink, she jests, “Didn’t know black girls can blush?”

Now it’s his turn. “Naw, I’m not that ignorant. I just have a hard time believing anything embarrasses you.” He accepts the beer silently offered to him, twists off the cap and drinks.

“Guess you would think that,” she says with practiced ease. Men have almost always been threatened by her. But there’s something about Damon that makes her wish, not for the first time in her life, that she were more like other women, other people. As much as being called common hurt her pride there is a real part of her that has always hoped to be part of the collective. Instead, she’s helplessly trapped between believing she’s extraordinary and equally knowing she’s less than adequate. “Why aren’t you on your way to Texas?”

“Hey,” he whispers and tilts her chin up. He’s a nice height. His lips aren’t far. “I don’t know what you’re thinkin’ but… I like you. I think you’re brave, and mad as one of them English cows, but… I like you.” He gently places another of those sweet, chaste kisses Maya is quickly growing addicted to on her lips. “I’m sorry about last night. I stayed another day to tell you so.”

Maya licks the taste of him, salt and NOLA Blond, from her gently chapped bottom lip. She has a tendency to gnaw her lips due to Mrs. Anderson’s distaste for chewing gum. “Makes it difficult not to forgive you when you keep kissin’ me like that,” she says softly, smiling. It’s almost like being back in the hotel room, the undercurrent of fear, lust, and indistinguishable longing hiding beneath her veneer of healthy confidence. “You wanna watch a movie or you just come to say sorry?”

Damon makes another face, one less cryptic than Maya is used to from him and she knows he’s confused by the change in topic and absence of more kisses. She has no interest in making it easy for him to worm his way into her life or bed. The man is handsome, polite, and has a dick she’d write home about if she weren’t going home for Christmas, but Maya isn’t known for making the same mistakes twice. To his credit, he recovers swiftly and replies, “I’ll watch something with you. I, uh, got my stuff packed in the car so I can leave early in the morning so, I mean, I can’t stay up too late.”

Maya chuckles on her way to the coffee table where she has a few movies Kyle wanted her to return to the video store for him. “You tryin’ to turn this into a slumber party?”

“No,” he says, artificially mortified, “I’m just sayin’ I’m prepared is all. In case you want me to return that favor I owe you.” His face is calm, composed, and bright red. Damon snatches the DVD’s from Maya’s hands before she can make fun of him. “Now whataya got in here? Matrix Reloaded, saw it.” He tosses the box back on the coffee table. “The Girl with the Pearl Earring? Sounds boring.” Toss. “Here we go, The Last Samurai.” He holds the DVD up triumphantly and waggles his eyebrows, “Something for everyone.”

She shakes her head, decidedly amused. “What’s in it for me?” Damon rears back with a ridiculously perplexed expression. “I dunno, don’t chicks dig Tom Cruise?”

“Oh, no, not this chick. This woman,” she grins, “only deals in grown ass men. Poor Nicole, ten years of not wearing heels to boost that egotistical scum’s inflated sense of self and then he up and leaves. Hell no, I don’t wanna watch his movies. And please, Tom Cruise is the only white man in all of Japan who can preserve the way of the Samurai?”

Damon holds up both hands. “Okay, okay, not a fan of Tom Cruise. Or shorter guys," he mumbles the last. "Why’d you rent it?”

“Kyle rented it, and the one about Cyber-Jesus too.”

“Ha,” Damon barks, “Cyber-Jesus, I like it.” Maya beams.

“Kill Bill Vol. 1 is in the player. I didn’t hate it,” she shrugs. She knows they’re most likely going to end up sitting on the couch and talking… or making out… or both.

“Ladies choice it is, but we’re gonna have to order some food or somethin’ cause I skipped breakfast looking for you this morning and I missed lunch after I found you.”

They order a plain extra cheese for Maya, a meat lover’s for Damon, and settle in on the couch to watch the movie with a roll of napkins and a couple of beers. He makes fun of her for buying fancy beer but refusing to use plates. She informs him the beer is locally brewed and that she has better things to do than wash dishes. Damon appreciates Uma Thurman as a badass. Maya is a fan of the vibrant story-telling and the use of various artistic styles. They argue over whether the director and writer, Quentin Tarantino, is sexualizing his female lead as a form of empowerment for women by implying they can be both sexy and strong, or to titillate men who wouldn’t otherwise watch a moving about a sword-wielding woman out of vengeance.

By the time the movie is over, they’ve fallen asleep on the couch. After Maya’s party and the sleepless night that followed for the both of them, a lazy nap after beer and pizza is more than satisfying – it’s perfect.

When Maya wakes up early the next morning, she’s alone, and there is a sloppily written note on her coffee table thanking her for dinner and offering to return the favor after he comes home from break.

Maya belts Feelin’ Good by Nina Simone in the shower.

It’s going to be great day.

COMMITMENT by CJ Roberts Coming 2015