A week went by, and then another. The weather got colder, my classes got harder, but my goals were the same. I had to do a good job in my classes. I needed to graduate. I needed to prove to my mother’s memory that I could do it, that I could accomplish something. I didn’t want all of my mom’s sacrifices to be for nothing.
I definitely didn’t want to finish out the semester with poor grades, especially due to the fact that my mind was totally preoccupied with Mr. Locke.
He was an enigma. Each time I thought I was getting closer to figuring him out, something happened that proved me wrong. I would come see him every Saturday, and the story was always the same. He’d have me look up information online and compile it in different databases for him. It was wildly boring, but it wasn’t hard, and I wondered why he was having me do it.
Before I left, we always did something sexual together. He spanked me, or I blew him, or he went down on me until I had an orgasm right there in his office. It was wildly impossible. It was wild all around.
I’d never been with anyone who made me feel like that. Not the way Locke did. I was getting more and more attached, I knew. I was getting addicted to him. That was going to be a problem at some point. I was sure of it. Locke wasn’t dating me. He wasn’t interested in dating me. As far as I knew, he hadn’t dated in a long while: not since his sister died.
Before her death, he had been very happy, and he’d been quite the playboy. He still had that reputation, but I’d done a lot of online digging about Mr. Locke, and everything I’d found seemed to indicate that he hadn’t dated since she died.
What we were doing definitely didn’t “count.”
It was playing around, pure and simple, but I didn’t mind one bit. I owed him, after all, but he owed me, too. The knowledge of who my father was rested on the understanding that I would continue to serve Locke until he was ready to tell me. We both knew I’d paid off the “debt” I owed him from donating his pocket money. That was all that had been to hi, anyway. It had been loose change. It had been nothing to him.
A man like Locke had everything he wanted.
Well, a man like him had everything he could possibly buy.
Locke was after something else, though, and I couldn’t figure out what it was. The research he was having me do was monotonous. It didn’t seem like anything important. He would give me a list of names, and I’d cross reference different articles and websites to find things like their past addresses or other names they’d used. I’d find pictures and save them in different folders for him. Sometimes he wanted to get quotes from different people, but they all seemed really minor.
It all just seemed...
Simple.
Unimportant.
It wasn’t at all like what was happening between me and Locke. What was happening between us was wild and crazy and hot. It was like fire and ice. It was unbearably wonderful, and I hated how much I was loving it.
I never left the office without having at least one orgasm, and ever since the day when I’d first sucked his dick, he didn’t leave without one, either. We were helping each other out, in a way. In a certain sense, we were getting each other wound up.
There was a kind of trade-off in that sort of relationship. The things we were doing weren’t wrong, really, but they weren’t exactly acceptable in good society. I got that. I might have grown up in the trailer park, but that didn’t mean I didn’t know things. I didn’t live in a trailer park anymore. I knew a lot about the world.
And I knew that falling in love with a guy like Locke was a great way to get myself hurt. Not that he’d ever think twice about a girl like me. I might be pretty enough for him to sleep with, but that was all there was to our relationship.
Then again, we hadn’t actually slept together.
And I didn’t know why.
It had been almost a month of Saturdays when everything changed again. I knocked on the office door, but no one answered. Nobody called out. Maybe he was on the phone. Curious, I turned the knob and was surprised to find the door unlocked. I walked into the office expecting to see him sitting at his desk or staring out of the window, but he wasn’t there at all.
Where the hell had he gone?
“Mr. Locke?” I called out.
Nothing.
Silence.
There was no coffee on his desk. There were no keys. There was nothing at all to demonstrate that he’d even been into the office at all that day. How very strange. In all of the time that I’d known him, Locke had never been so much as a minute late.
The fact that he wasn’t where he was supposed to be – in his office –was very strange, and to be honest, a little concerning. What if something had happened to him? I felt nervous, all of a sudden, and I pictured him in some sort of terrible car crash on his way to the office.
That was when I realized that I didn’t know where Locke lived. I didn’t know what his house looked like, and I didn’t even know what kind of car he drove. Maybe he didn’t even live in Ruby City. Maybe he commuted from someplace nearby. I had no way of knowing. There was nothing I could do to find out, either.
“Nathan?” I called out.
If he was nearby, that would get his attention. He hated being called by his first name, at least by me. At least, I assumed that he did. I’d never called him anything but Locke or Mr. Locke. Considering the fact that we were all but sleeping together, perhaps it was strange or a little informal.