Privacy Code (Shatterproof) Read online

  PRIVACY

  CODE

  Shatterproof (vol. 1)

  JORDAN BURKE

  Copyright © 2014 by Jordan Burke

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written consent of the Author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  For K.

  You know why.

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Prologue

  To: Catherine

  From: Watts

  Subj: Confirmation

  You were right. Her breasts were fake. I asked her via message and she admitted it so I called off the date.

  I hope this email finds you enjoying your lunch in the sun, preferably with a view of the cherry blossoms. That is, unless flocks of tourists are in your way, which would be a shame. I’d hate for you to miss out on the wonderful sights. Isn’t Washington beautiful this time of year?

  If your view happens to be obscured, you can spend the rest of your lunch hour writing me back, telling me all the filthy thoughts you’ve had of me since we last exchanged messages.

  I’ll give you a hint as to what I’ve been thinking. It involves one of your nipples, erect from the soft, wet attention paid to it with my tongue. When I pull away, it hardens even more, as if yearning for the return of my mouth.

  A pretty simple idea, but a nice one, I think. The fantasy doesn’t end there for me, but it does end there for you in this email. So sorry.

  Now, tell me what you’ve been thinking about. Or don’t. My loss.

  Watts

  Chapter One – Catherine

  I knew him only as “Watts.” Since we had an entirely email-based relationship, he said he preferred to keep it anonymous.

  Once, when I asked if Watts was his first or last name, he wouldn’t say, and told me he would prefer that I didn’t force the issue. I promised him I wouldn’t ask again, not knowing at the time that I would break that promise and the consequence would be so harsh.

  This was part of his “privacy code.” Actually, it was the most innocent part of his code, which I would eventually find out. For six months our contact was exclusively in the form of the written word. It was safe, which was what I wanted.

  It was also stimulating in a number of ways, which was something I didn’t even know I needed until Watts entered my life.

  His words alone—those seemingly simple black and white letters on a screen, strung together to form ideas—awakened in me something I had no idea even existed. An aspect of my being that at times I thought was better left unexplored.

  When he sent me an email, it always arrived just before noon. It didn’t start that way, but I had mentioned to him in one of my emails that it sure would be nice to have something stimulating to read on my lunch break. I was always reading something and while everything I read spoke to me in some way, nothing struck my core quite like the words Watts wrote.

  Sometimes they were short emails, asking me if I’d read a certain book. He loved to discuss books, especially older ones. It seemed to be one of his two great passions in life, the other being women.

  Being a voracious reader—everything from contemporary to the classics—I was usually able to hold my own in the discussions, even when he tested my knowledge. I’d managed to stump him on two occasions, and as much as I hate to admit it, those were some of the highlights of my days.

  Other times, his emails were laced with what I sometimes referred to as “sexual poison” because of the effect they had on my central nervous system.

  I told him that once, including the phrase I came up with, and he responded by telling me not to worry, that he’d always have the antidote.

  I made the mistake of trying to one-up him with the flirting, having no idea the effect his response would have on me.

  I had written: “An antidote I would never need. You would probably say you’re too much of a man for me, and that I couldn’t handle it, right?”

  Watts had written back: “Your last word makes me very curious. ‘It.’ What exactly do you mean by ‘it’? If by ‘it’ you mean me in general, the fact of being with me, I think you’d have a good shot at handling ‘it.’ If, on the other hand, by ‘it’ you mean my cock specifically, that’s an entirely different question. You may be able to handle ‘it.’ At least with a little practice.”

  I read his email twice, unsure if he was being serious or if he was simply returning the volley I’d lobbed over the net, smacking it right back in my face.

  “Practice? Interesting,” I had written back. “I’ve always been a quick learner, but usually it depends on the quality of the teacher.”

  I’d received his response in less than five minutes: “Excellent, then. A challenge for both of us. I would start off with a sort of competency exam, just to find out what you already know. It would be an interactive exam. No questions. None of this ‘What’s your favorite position?’ elementary bullshit. P.S. When I say there would be no questions, that doesn’t mean there wouldn’t be an oral portion of the exam.”

  He was a tease, pure and simple. A good one, no doubt. And I couldn’t get enough of his words.

  He wrote to me about marathon tantric sex sessions in which he would fuck a woman for hours, both of them having multiple orgasms.

  He sent me accounts of meeting women who wanted to be tied up with scarves and blindfolded while he had his way with them.

  He sent emails about a rendezvous he set up on a train once, and how the woman sat on his lap during rush hour, her skirt hiked up in the back, Watts unzipped, buried inside her.

  There were short emails with little detail, and long emails with more detail than most people would want to know.

  My craving for his words was boundless.

  Honestly, there were times when I thought he was trying to shock me. I even wondered sometimes if he was making up all the details of his sexual escapades. And if that were the case, I would be more than highly impressed with his imagination.

  So far, this may sound like the work of some Internet perv, getting off on sending me dirty emails, but I assure you that’s not what it was.

  I had instigated that kind of talk. Every bit of it.

  I had asked him to tell me about his love life, which branched off into his sex life, and then the story sharing started. It didn’t happen often, which made it all the more interesting when I received an explicit email from him. It was like my own private erotica writer sending me their latest story.

  There was an authenticity about Watts, a certain intriguing and quite different kind of honesty than I’d ever experienced with anyone in my life. Maybe that’s because I keep to myself a lot and have never let anyone get very close to me, but still I knew almost from the start that he was different.

  Fighting off my growing curiosity about him wasn’t easy. Perhaps it was the constant worrier in me. Overanalyzing a situation that came from nowhere and happened to be my chief form of entertainment these days. Overanal
yzing a man who I had never met in person, and likely never would.

  As an extremely experienced nail-biting worrywart, I knew all too well the myriad ways in which appearances can be deceiving, and how people you least expect to hurt you can rip your soul right out of your body and stomp and shred it right before your eyes.

  Perhaps I was making more of this than I should.

  Watts was fun. A distraction. A vicarious romp through Washington, D.C.’s dating world…and all from the perspective of a man who had absolutely zero qualms about sharing it all.

  Our correspondence began on a dating website. I sent the first message when I saw on his profile that he had listed only literature in the “Interests” section. The more we talked, the more it became clear that we were never going to meet. Even after all that he had told me about his sex life, and after I had shared some of my own with him. He had a firm one-and-done policy.

  I’m a reclusive person, so not meeting was fine with me. Early on, anyway. Lately, I’d become more and more curious about him. It was an internal battle of wills.

  I’d had no trouble resisting the temptation to meet other guys on the site, with the exception of one time. Not that there was much of a temptation to begin with, certainly not on the level that Watts provided.

  The lone date I had gone on would best be described as “disastrous.” I’m not even sure why I said yes when he asked if I would like to meet. Maybe it was because he just wanted to meet for coffee, and that was an easy way to make it a quick meeting in case things turned dreadfully horrible. Or maybe it was because he was slightly older, and a lawyer. Intelligence appealed to me. So…why not?

  The guy hadn’t told me prior to our meeting that he liked to fish and hunt. If he had, I likely wouldn’t have met him. I’m not against those things, but I have no interest in doing them, much less listening to someone drone endlessly on and on about them. He didn’t pick up on my disinterest, though, even when my responses to him had dwindled to nothing but quiet “hmmms” and “oh reallys” and “that’s crazy”—three unmistakable signals that should let anyone know they’re not being paid attention to.

  When our date had ended—early, thank God—he had asked if I would like to go to his place for a drink. I had declined, and he smiled and said, “Your place, then?”

  I had told him I really just needed to get home and go to sleep, and used my migraines as an excuse.

  I sound like a cold bitch saying it, but the guy just wasn’t what I had hoped or expected. And in all fairness, I probably wasn’t the person he had been hoping I was, either.

  That’s when I realized that many people were probably on the site with expectations that were higher than they should be.

  All of that was before I sent Watts that first message and we began to chat.

  Watts knew that I was twenty-six and I knew that he was about to turn thirty.

  He knew that I did clerical work, but he didn’t know that I was a civil service employee at the FBI mail sorting and security facility in Washington.

  He told me that he was in sales, but that’s it. He didn’t hint at anything more specific than that, never even came close to slipping up and mentioning what he sold, who he sold it for, or who he sold it to. Whatever “it” was.

  We hadn’t talked about where we were born, where we had gone to school, no family stuff, no raw tales of horrible exes, nothing like that.

  We did discuss some world events, but never at great length. We touched on music a little, and movies, and the horribly wet and cold winter that had just ended, but beyond all of that and the books and sex stuff, there was little else.

  And it was all great. Yes, it was just words on a screen and we didn’t know what each other looked like or sounded like, but none of that mattered. We clicked with just words.

  That’s why I was drawn to him, and it was much more than just receiving interesting emails to read while I ate my lunch.

  . . . . .

  Watts was right about the view he had mentioned in his email. It was a perfect early spring day, the temperature in the low 70s, bright sunshine, and not even the slightest hint of clouds in the sky. A light breeze blew across Washington’s National Mall. A perfect day for lunch outside, and what made it even better was that it was a Thursday so just one more day of work before the weekend.

  I looked around as I ate my salad, people-watching. Some of them moved quickly down the sidewalks as they talked on cellphones. Others moved slowly, strolling, enjoying the open space and the colorful blooms.

  The tourists were easy to spot, decked out in their most comfortable spring clothing and walking shoes, snapping way more pictures than they’d probably ever look at.

  And of course there were the families—parents with strict daily vacation itineraries, hurrying the kids along to see the next thing, siblings arguing with each other, then rolling their eyes when their parents dished out the discipline.

  It looked aggravating. It looked like too much work. It looked like none of them really wanted to be together. I see this all the time, people taking their families for granted, and I wonder why they don’t realize just how lucky they are to have each other, and what it’s like when you have absolutely no family at all.

  As I always do, I had to stop focusing on that and I redirected my attention to the one good thing in my life: the email from Watts.

  As my lunch hour came to a close, I opened the email on my phone once again and tapped out my response to Watts.

  To: Watts

  From: Catherine

  Subj: Re: Confirmation

  I knew it! I think she wore that tight sweater for that pic on purpose. All her clothes can’t be that tight, could they? Seriously. Give her credit, though. She knows what makes guys drool.

  TITS.

  Sorry for your sake they were fake!

  Yes, I am looking at the cherry blossoms. And you’re right about the tourists. I would think they were crazy for coming all this way just to see trees blooming but I guess they are really here to see the monuments and everything else DC has to offer. It is beautiful this time of year, but it’s about to get too hot for sitting outside on my lunch break.

  Sometimes I wonder if you’re nearby. For all I know, you could be right around the corner. Or even right down the sidewalk. There’s a man on a bench not far from me right now. That could be you and I would never know it because once I hit SEND I have to get back to work and I won’t see if he/you picks up his phone to check an email alert.

  I can’t believe I’m typing this because I know it violates our agreement, but do you think we should meet? I’m starting to think we should. I also think I’d like to experience exactly what all these other women are getting when they meet you.

  So, let me know?

  By the way, my tits are real. Just in case you were wondering. You’ve never asked.

  Catherine

  Before I had time to change my mind I hit SEND, and went back to work. I spent the afternoon worrying about what I had emailed him, but eventually talked myself into relaxing, because it was too late to take it back and there were really only two options at this point: 1) I would find myself in the perilous position of taking on more than I had anticipated, or 2) he would simply say no.

  Something told me it would be the first.

  Chapter Two – Watts

  Catherine was different from the start, and that was the problem.

  When I received that first email from her six months ago and checked out her profile before reading what she had written to me, I was hesitant. She hadn’t included a picture on her profile, and I usually like to see who I’m talking to before I invest any time and effort into it.

  I hadn’t posted a picture, either, but that didn’t stop me from viewing it as a deal-breaker when I ran across women’s picture-less profile.

  Call it narrow-minded and selfish. I couldn’t argue with that.

  But I made an exception with Catherine, and here’s why: She had written: “I see you’
re an avid reader of old mysteries. Without cheating, do you know who produced the movie version of Raymond Chandler’s novel The Big Sleep?”

  No cheating necessary. I did know the answer, so I wrote back: “William Faulkner.”

  I read her message twice, thinking…how odd, how original. I had received messages from women on the site who said nothing but “hello,” sent me pre-written ice-breakers provided by the site that read things like “You and I could be a match” or “Wink! Yes, I’m flirting with you,” and sometimes asking me to send a picture.

  She hadn’t asked me for a picture, hadn’t even asked what I looked like. All she wanted to talk about was books at first, and I had no trouble doing that. I figured she had a good reason for searching out someone to discuss literature with.

  Maybe she was lonely. I could relate to that.

  I had not asked her to describe herself. Instead, I imagined her to be a plain woman who wouldn’t make me look twice.

  That kept me from fantasizing about her looks when I thought of how interesting and smart she was. It also helped to prevent me from building up a fantasy about who she might really be as I sent her increasingly graphic emails.

  I’d never written things like that to anyone before, much less someone I didn’t know, but she asked quite pointedly a few times. Once I obliged, there were no boundaries going forward.

  Catherine had quite a way of expressing herself sexually to me. I found her emails to be written in an extremely enticing fashion, as if she’d spent hours picking just the right adjective to describe a particular moment or action.

  Her emails were never about sex with men; they were always about her pleasuring herself. She wanted to share, I was always eager to read, and so that became a semi-regular part of our interaction.

  She obviously wanted this to remain a strictly email relationship and I had no interest in taking it further than that, so it worked perfectly.