11. Chapter 11
11
HER
D espite how relaxed the various substances I’d ingested had me feeling, I couldn’t help the growing knot of anxiety in my stomach and the tingling at the back of my neck as I watched Milagros down her last swallow of wine, put out the burning end of the joint, and rise from her deck chair. There was about to be no turning back, and as much as I wanted it, wanted him, wanted us in every single way we had coming to us, the idea of how things might change still scared me a little. It scared me like the beginning of a journey into a strange, savage, and beautiful wilderness, one I’d waited my entire life to take. I wasn’t a virgin, technically, but I sure did feel like one.
Erica, meanwhile, was almost disturbingly businesslike as she went inside, pointing us toward the spare bedroom, which was across from the bathroom. “Everything you need should be in the cupboard there,” she said with absolutely no trace of embarrassment, even though everyone knew she wasn’t talking about towels.
“Thank you,” we said, almost in unison, though our gratitude was beyond anything worth trying to articulate.
Erica just smiled and went to bed.
And then we were alone, sitting across from each other in the chairs the other two had just abandoned, the vintage jazz record he had put on Erica’s equally vintage turntable, the torches burning low.
I took a frantic gulp of wine, twisting the stem of my glass.
“Well,” he said matter-of-factly.
I looked up in a way I wished hadn’t been so obviously startled.
“I guess the only thing left now is for you to get naked.”
“What? Me ?” I sputtered, all my awkwardness replaced by outrage. “Why don’t you ?”
He shrugged. “Okay.” He grabbed his shirt and started to lift it over his head.
“Wait, wait, wait!” I said. “What are you doing?”
He looked genuinely confused. “What you just asked me to do.”
“I know , but why are you so eager to take your clothes off?”
“Well,” he began, “A, in my life, I’ve found that trying to preserve my modesty has not generally been a good use of my time. And B, as you’ve probably noticed, being naked generally makes it easier to have sex. Next question?”
“Damn,” I said. “In that case, if we hadn’t been so afraid of getting caught, I would have asked you to undress ages ago.” I looked behind me again, confirming we were alone out here. As if there weren’t zero chance that our hosts didn’t know exactly what was going on and had vacated the pool area exactly for that reason. “That being said, I suggest we do it at the same time.”
“Count of three, then?”
I nodded, although I waited until his shirt was over his head—wanting no false starts—before grabbing the bottom of my tank top and peeling it off, then unhooking my black lace bra, heart already racing. My fingers fumbled on the hooks, trying not to look as clumsy as I felt as I removed it by a strap and dropped it on the nearby chair.
Neither one of us had been wearing many layers of clothing to begin with, so it didn’t take long to strip off the rest. And after a month of caution and anxiety and clock-watching and cold showers and half-clothed longing, there we both stood, bare in the (lack of) moonlight, lit only by the glow of the torches and the wavering turquoise light coming up from the bottom of the pool next to us.
And suddenly, inexplicably shy, I directed my eyes everywhere but where it seemed most obvious to look.
And hadn’t I just been thinking he looked good in clothes?
The complete body in front of me— his body, revealed to me and for me—was so much more than the sum of the parts I had seen. So much more beautiful than my imagination alone could have ever supplied. I didn’t know what to allow my eyes to drink in first: the broad mass of his square shoulders, the toned abs rippling under the skin of the narrow torso, the line of light, baby-fine hair that formed a trail down to the end of the inverse triangle, in an exercise—he’d be pleased to know—in classic Euclidean geometry. And below that , well. I’d felt the weight of his hard cock before, my finger muscles having memorized its dizzying mass and density, but in its natural state, it was stunning in a different way. Baser, rawer, more elemental.
And then. I’d seen the scars on his chest—seen the scars just about everywhere. But here, all at once, it too was pure and raw and unrefined, a reminder of who he was and what he was. That I could claim his body, and he could claim mine, but there were other claims that would always, always come first. And they’d carved their initials into him long ago, with blood.
Well, fuck. He’d just caught on to where my attention had turned. My eyes must have been like dinner plates.
“It’s official,” he said, tearing his gaze away from me to glance down at himself. “You’re prettier.”
“Well, yeah,” I said. “But you’re not far behind.” In case there was any chance he actually thought that any of the scars made him any less beautiful in my eyes. That had never crossed my mind for a second.
“I must not be,” he said, “given how hard you’re blushing right now.”
Mortified, I covered my face. If only I hadn’t also been inflamed everywhere else. “Oh, yeah? Well, you’re blushing, too!” Actually, he was, but there was no chance he was even half as red as I felt. Though the desert night wasn’t all that warm, I could feel my temperature rising even as I spoke.
“Well, whatever you do, don’t smile. Smiling while naked is not allowed.”
Obviously, it was too late. I was laughing. And so was he.
“You’re still glowing red, young lady,” he said. Hell yes, I was. Not only could I feel myself blushing, I could feel my pupils dilating, my breath quickening, my body preparing. The entire beautiful and complex machine of my body was shifting into overdrive for him. “In fact, I think you’re in danger of overheating. We’re gonna have to do something about that.”
“And just what would—oh, shit.” I should have seen it coming. And I’d seen no better evidence of his reflexes and strength than the way he, all in one swift motion, snatched me up and tossed me into the tiny, frigid pool like releasing a handful of flower petals. I shrieked as the icy surface of the water shattered like broken glass all over the goose bumps already covering my skin. I came up gasping and shivering.
“Shhh. You’ll wake up Erica,” he scolded me, standing at the edge of the pool with his arms casually folded and a smirk engineered to infuriate me. He wasn’t even wet . “And if she has to come out here, given what I’ve seen of her, I have a feeling you won’t be coming back up for air.”
“Fuck you,” I said, flipping my hair back in one smooth motion, my limp curls falling in ropes down my back. I made a desperate grab for his leg but didn’t even come close. “Now get in here and help me warm up again.”
“Nah. Not until you say it.”
“Say what?”
He only had to raise an eyebrow.
“Oh, for—fine,” I ground out. “I’m overheated. I’m glowing red. I’m on fucking fire .”
“And why might that be?” He gestured lazily.
“Uh, because you’re standing over me naked and I’m not blind?”
“And?” His infuriating smirk had graduated to a full-on grin.
“And also because your cock is the single most beautiful organ I’ve ever seen and I want to climb it like a flagpole?” I mumbled, my cheeks on fire. “Satisfied?”
“Hey, I just wanted you to tell me you think I’m cute,” he said, shaking his head with a sigh. “You always have to take it too far.” He plunged in with hardly a splash. In fact, the cold didn’t seem to bother him at all. He’d grown up above the 50th parallel, after all. “But yes, I’m satisfied. Or, at least,” he added with a tilt of his still-dry head, “I will be soon.”
I growled and directed as large a wall of water at him as my two hands could manage.
“That’s pathetic,” he said, grabbing me and dunking me under the water again. I responded with another shriek—Erica or no Erica. The second time I surfaced, though, instead of retaliating, I stopped. Stopped just to look at him in the blue light. Now, at last, the splashback had sent water streaming down his broad shoulders in rivulets and his thick strands of hair adhered haphazardly to his face. And that blue light shot up from some untraceable place below, turning his entire body a shimmering silver-blue. Quite honestly, so far, I was aware of no light that had ever touched him that didn’t seem to adore him. If only the rest of the world would catch on.
He managed to shake some of the strands out of his eyes and pulled me toward him to keep me from floating away, while I wrapped my legs around his waist tightly, our girl and boy parts jammed right up against each other, noses nearly touching, chests heaving up and down in perfect rhythm as the droplets rained down. Enveloped in all the heat and strength of those gorgeous, sleek muscles now in relief, I was convinced there was no way I could ever feel the cold again.
“Up close, am I still prettier?” I teased.
“Even prettier than I imagined the first time I saw you,” he whispered.
“Thank you. And now just why were you imagining me naked the first time you saw me?”
He gazed at me with no trace of irony. “Because my imagination was the only place I thought I’d ever see it.”
“Oh.” This conversation about hardcore nudity had just become unexpectedly touching.
“And to tell you the truth,” he added, “it was even before I saw you.”
“The intercom,” I said, not quite ready to admit that our brief conversation had caused me to wake up the next morning to a throbbing, gushing river between my thighs. The very thighs that were currently anchored right up against his hipbones, the ones that seemed to pulse electrically in response to the memory.
“Your voice was so sexy,” he said. “I had it in my head all the next day.”
“I threatened to have you whipped!”
He laughed. “Yeah, but even then I knew you’d never do it. And as usual, you’re proving me right. So far, anyway.”
“But why did you think I wouldn’t do it?” I pressed. I knew he was really thinking about it.
“Because I could tell you had a good soul,” he finally said. “There. Happy? I said the S-word.”
“But you—” I couldn’t help it. I glanced down at his body again.
He sighed. “Do you remember giving me any of these scars?”
I shook my head.
“Because I sure don’t. In fact, I even remember a few times when you could have but chose not to.”
“But my whole life, I’ve seen so much that was wrong,” I whispered. “And I never questioned it. I never said a thing.”
“How could you have said a thing?” he said, squeezing my fingers gently, stilling them where they landed. “You were a kid. You didn’t have a choice, any more than I did. You think radical ex-fugitive bomber Erica Muller would let you darken her door if she thought you were part of the problem?”
I shook my head, though unconvinced.
“You have your whole life to do good in the world,” he said. “You’ve already started.”
“I have? How?”
“By helping me find Maeve, of course. And by going to Erica’s meetings. And if you want to,” he murmured, “you can kiss me. Right here.” He guided my hand down to brush against the long, deep, pinkish scar slicing across his midsection and poking its soft, tentative edge out of the surface of the water. His oldest one. The goose. Like it had a name or something.
“Not because you have anything to apologize for. But because you’ve never made me feel anything less than amazing. So by all means, continue.”
This time, he didn’t need to tell me twice. I pressed my lips over the damaged tissue, my tongue cutting through the cold water to his skin, his nipple hardening beautifully beneath my lips as I trailed my warm tongue up his shoulder to where his scar disappeared.
I sped up, suddenly hungry to make this boy who had seen and felt so much pain quiver and melt with pleasure beneath my lips.
It seemed to work. Speechless, he reached up to take my chin in his powerful hand, mashing his lips into mine, raw and unapologetic, exploring my mouth the way he’d done in the kitchen earlier that afternoon. The way he’d done the moment he realized he was going to get another chance to do it. The moment I realized how much I still wanted him to.
Only this time, I felt his erection pressing urgently up against my side.
“See what you’re doing to me?” he whispered as it dawned on my face what it was.
“So it isn’t just your newfound liking for poetry,” I whispered with a smile.
“Not just that,” he whispered back between kisses, guiding my hand underneath the water to cup it, nearly weightless, my thumb tracing luxuriously over the hard cleft as he continued to nip and nibble, and my collarbone hardened and flexed to meet his lips.
Seeming determined now, he lifted me away from him, propelling my whole body smoothly, weightlessly through the water, setting me on the narrow stone steps leading out of the pool so that only the lower two-thirds of my body was submerged.
And there it was again—that serious expression he gave me in moments like this as if I were some eternal riddle, some divine puzzle, one he would spend all night—or the rest of his life—finding the solution to. Rivulets of silvery water dripped down from his hair and onto my breasts. He palmed one of them with his large hand, exquisitely sculpted and elegantly marred. My nipple had already heightened just above the surface, trembling bashfully under his thumb. My own fingers slipped along his shoulder and back to his nape, squeezing locks of sodden dark golden hair beneath my fists.
His tongue swirled on my nipple, sending the water lapping lazily over my skin, flicking his eyes up again and again as if he couldn’t stand to completely look away from my face. I lay my head back on the cement, my insides turning to liquid at the thought of what would come next, my heart already hammering as his hand slid up my thigh, gently coaxing my legs open. Automatically, I slid up one step so I was sitting on the rim of the pool, giving him the kind of up-close view I knew he wanted. All at once, my entire body was exposed to the night air, but I still couldn’t feel the cold, not for a second, with him there.
“Still pretty?” I cooed.
“God,” he said, like someone on the brink of starvation who had been invited to a feast. “That hardly begins to cover it. Do you know how many times I imagined this?”
“I—I did too.”
“When?” His eyes had brightened into the kind of innocent yet vulgar curiosity I knew well, his lips parted in shameless hunger. God forbid anyone ever made him choose between sex and science.
“When you were tutoring me,” I admitted. I supposed I should have been embarrassed, but I wasn’t. I was so obviously turning him on. “And—and later. In bed.”
“Yeah?” he said, his arousal evident everywhere I could see and many places I couldn’t, his body a hard mass of rigid, throbbing proof. His hand traced the length of my core, making me moan. “That’s so—”
“Yes?” I said huskily, leaning closer, my thighs quivering with need.
“What did you imagine? Tell me.” His voice was lower now, darker.
“Y-you,” I hesitated. “Touching me. With your fingers, your lips, your—everything. Everywhere,” I said, almost hesitant to choke out the words, remembering acutely those cold, quiet nights upstairs, awake, alive with the knowledge that the young man starring in all my dirtiest dreams spent every night in the basement of the same house, in a room with an automatic lock on the door. Almost as if someone had seen this moment coming and tried to prevent it. And really, really fucked it up.
“How did you touch yourself, Lou? Show me,” he requested, eyes already fixated on where he longed to see my own hand go.
“Just like this.” I knew it from muscle memory, from all those soundless, lonely nights, my fingers sliding down my inner thigh, brushing against my swollen lips, massaging my clit gently, just exploring, then more than exploring—then moaning, then stifling screams. All those nights. My legs and hips curled and contracted at the touch, wanting more of him there.
“And what else did you think about?” he whispered.
“I thought about—you,” I said. “Touching yourself. Thinking about me.”
“I did, you know,” he said.
“Show me?”
Now he was gripping his cock under the water, which hardened further still under his stroke, even as I watched. I could see better what I’d done to him, that hard, full length under his palm, working up and down the shaft, his eyes glassy and feverish with desire for me.
And for the first time, I thought about what it might feel like. Inside.
“In my mind, I so badly wanted it to be you there, looking just like you are now,” he said, leaning over me as I splayed across the pool deck. “Every gorgeous inch of you.”
“Such a naughty boy,” I said, releasing a sharp moan even at the image of him wanting me that way. “You know, somebody should really whip you for that.”
“Well, if it has to happen, I hope it’s you.”
“I couldn’t.”
“I know,” he said. “That’s why. And I promise I did try. Not to, I mean. Because I knew it could never happen. Shouldn’t ever happen.” He was dead serious, I realized. He had really tried. He’d tried to be a good slave instead of a bad one.
“In this complicated modern world, who’s to say what should and shouldn’t happen?” I whispered, half-delirious.
“How morally relativist of you.”
“See what you’re doing to me?” I asked. “Anyway, you know what else I imagined? Your tongue—tasting me. Here.” I curled and uncurled my fingers shyly.
“Do you want me to taste you now?”
I nodded since my voice was no more than a whimper. But that was all he needed. His hands rounded my thighs, pulling them apart. I lay back, gasping as his tongue rimmed the outer lips of my pussy, followed by a swift motion in a straight line up to my clit, knowing exactly where he was going. But then, he always had, hadn’t he?
All I could see, still, was the hand, its wrist chained in servitude, gripping his cock, secretly and guiltily, in some private corner of the basement, liquid trailing out with every stroke, then exploding at the mental picture of me. Me , Louisa as I’d been, at the desk, pencil in hand, my camisoles and pajama pants and wild hair and graphite-stained fingers, my haughtiness and clumsy compassion. Little knowing that upstairs, I’d been shattering myself for him as he’d been, arms and abs, shredded and carved under cast-off T-shirts, the wit, the bold insolence, the absolute refusal to fail, or allow me to. Of us, then so ordinary and so inviolable.
And now.
I drew in a desperate gasp at the thought. Stretched back on the bare concrete pool deck, I buried my fingers in his golden strands, inhaling ecstatically at every staccato dip of his mouth as he played me like the virtuoso he was, in so many ways.
“Can you taste it?” I murmured. “Oh, can you taste just how much I want you?”
His response was not much more than a deeply satisfied hum of his own.
But the truth was, I wanted him deeper. I wanted to open up completely for him, to give him a space where he didn’t have to hide his desire, to let him take me like a man deserves to take a woman, wholly, bodily, completely unbowed and unashamed. Something I suspected he had never had.
Yes, in that way, even he was a virgin.
“And I want—”
He raised his head suddenly, his eyes liquid gold in the light of the torch behind me, his rosy mouth blushing beautifully in the torchlight. “What do you want? Tell me, Lou.”
“I want to feel you inside me,” I burst out. “All of you.” My hands snaked desperately up over his shoulders as if I could take in all his massive maleness into me in one breath.
“Knackeg,” he said.
“What the hell did you just call me?” I asked with a shocked giggle.
“It’s Luxembourgish,” he said.
His French always turned me on, but hearing him speak his native language was different—startlingly intimate as if I were gazing into a keyhole at his childhood.
“It means, um—crispy.”
“ Crispy ?” I exclaimed in horror.
“I swear to God, it’s a compliment,” he said. “In the sexiest language there is, M?i léift .”
“And what was that ?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Bedroom?”
A month ago, if I had been asked to imagine the room where we’d go all the way—after overcoming the pearl-clutching horror of imagining it at all—I wouldn’t have imagined anything close to this . I wouldn’t have imagined a quaint pink patchwork quilt over a queen mattress, a round gold mirror above the headboard, a vintage hat rack in the corner, or two shelves over the bed lined entirely with ferns, their fronds trailing lazily down the walls.
But a month ago, I wouldn’t have imagined a lot of things.
Like seeing his cock. Like touching his cock. Or like settling myself dreamily on that pink-and-white quilt, watching his immense erection drift toward me from the doorway like some fantastical dream, still slick with silvery water, cradled in my line of sight by nothing but his slim, strong, masculine hips and that summery, sandy patch of hair it nestled in.
“Was that all me that did that?” I asked, sucking in a breath.
“You know it was.”
And I had never imagined his broad hand now curled around his shaft, stroking, turning it to steel, nor the way my body was already responding to how his utterly intoxicated eyes drank me in as my entire form unfolded itself across the bed for him—legs spread, pussy drenched, insides and outsides moaning and clenching with anticipation at what perhaps he had, just like me, hoped and prayed—prayed? Okay, prayed—to get the chance to do.
I squirmed, suddenly thinking about the bathroom cabinet. But there was no need. The condom, far from being out of reach, was already somehow in his hand and half unwrapped. Because of course. But just as he was about to roll it on, he paused. “Hey, do you think she knew ahead of time? Because, well, you wouldn’t think they would need—”
“Don’t overthink it,” I said.
“You know me,” he said. “Hard not to, but I’ll try.” He turned to me. “You ready for this?”
“Why do you always ask me that?” I said with a giggle.
“Because I want to be sure,” he said, unrolling the condom the rest of the way, and confidently slid himself into a comfortable position over me, the bedsprings reacting predictably to the addition of his mass, his damp golden locks tumbling dreamily over his eyes as I stroked it back playfully to reveal them again. “If you want, we could—”
“Yes,” I said, nestling my head deeper into the pillow and briefly closing my eyes. Searching for fear, for anxiety, for doubt in body or in mind—and finding, for the first time, none.
I opened them. And still found none. “I’m ready.”
“All right, then. Remember to breathe.” And he penetrated me. I gasped, but it was true: I was soaked to the bone and totally ready, in every way, to receive him.
“ Ngh ,” was all I could manage at first, nails digging into the flaxen sheets as he pushed with his thickness, stretching me to my limits, every ridge and vein of him caressing my walls as he bottomed out, locking our hips together.
It took a minute of pure animal instinct before I could finally settle into his rhythm. His movements were gentle and slow, giving me time, easing me into the motions, letting my hands run all over the muscles of his chest and back and shoulders, all the cruel souvenirs of a world determined to leave him broken.
But it wasn’t them I held. Instead, my imagination had supplied, for my pleasure, the perfect, unmarred body nature had intended him to have if everything hadn’t gotten so fucked along the way, and I took a second to hold that body, to hold that man—the one that in some other universe I might have known wholly and completely.
But that didn’t last because that boy wasn’t mine. My boy was this one, and the scars, too, made him who he was. And now, they rose up unchecked beneath my fingers, insisting on themselves, and his body flexed and unflexed under the pressure of each of my fingertips as though even the touch of me, as light as it was, was unbearably intense. His eyelashes fluttered.
“Need to breathe, too,” he reminded himself with a labored gasp, and we both laughed.
“Is this everything you thought about?” I whispered.
“It’s everything I dreamed about,” he replied, even as he bent down to nuzzle his beautiful face against mine, his voice somehow coming from far away now, a place of wonder. “You’re my dream come to life, Lou.”
There’d been shocks and revelations that night, but none more than that his shoulders were shaking, that powerful body now aching and vulnerable, his voice shot through with the kind of emotion I didn’t expect to hear from him or any man, on this night or any night. His rhythm continued slow, deep, languid, musical. I was silent for a moment, my breathing in time with his breathing, my body expanding and contracting in time with each thrust as I sipped from the cup of this moment, of this limited yet timeless present.
“God, do you have any idea how good you’re making me feel right now?” he half-murmured, half-moaned. “The way you’re taking me like you were made for me.”
“Maybe I was.”
He paused as if he couldn’t believe that a maker, even one he didn’t believe in, would make me for him, but like a lot of things tonight, he was willing to go with it.
“You’re good at this, you know, Lou. You really are. How do you do it?”
“When I met you, I was starting to think I wasn’t good at anything,” I whispered. “Anything that mattered, anyway.”
“You’re so wrong, Lou,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re so wrong. If I could only give you one thing in this life, it would be to give you the chance to see yourself the way I see you. Now and always.”
I blinked, a screen of mist across my eyes.
“You’re good at the only things that matter. So much more than numbers and formulas. Things I can’t comprehend. Maybe I never will. Maybe I can’t .”
“If I can get o-chem …” I trailed off.
“What you’re good at is harder, Lou,” he said with a sigh. “So much harder. For me, anyway.”
“I know it is,” I said, my hands loosely gripping his arms, sliding down to where his hands balanced on the mattress on either side of my body. “But you’re smarter than I am.”
“Let’s call it even,” he said with a smile. “How does this feel? Because I’m going to speed up. Unless—”
“It feels wonderful,” I said, arching my back as if I might accept even more of him, as if this image, this scene, hadn’t been somewhere in the back of my mind from the very moment I saw him—from the very moment I heard him. “Do it.”
I wanted it. I wasn’t afraid anymore. Of anything. Of darkness, of abandonment, of punishment, of pain. Tomorrow would bring what tomorrow would, but in this moment, at least, it was all conquered already. And after he arched down and kissed me again, there was nothing left to do but take his advice and keep breathing; through the hammering of his hips and the incredible noises he was making, through the frantic increase in his tempo, through his pinning me down against the bed with the incredible strength of all his wanting, through his coming with a quiver, one that seemed to squeeze his body from the inside out, then let him go.
Withdrawing, he bent to kiss me but hovered over me, just for a second, just to look. Damp strands of golden hair brushed my face. I reached up to push them away from his forehead as I had earlier. He’d leaned into it then, but now he just closed his eyes, collapsing into my touch and my lips.
He removed the condom and returned immediately to me, tiredly reaching for my curls, bunching them together in his hand, then letting them fall gently over my breast. A boy running his hand down the snowy, heaving flank of a unicorn. Something he still couldn’t believe was real.
“What do you want, Lou?” he whispered. “What can I do to get you to come for me?”
“Just kiss me,” I breathed. “And touch me. You know that’s all you ever have to do.”
And he did, his lips and tongue featherlight and gentle on my lips, neck, and ear. He knew all the places. After only a few weeks, they belonged to him. I belonged to him, in all the same ways that he belonged to me.
His kisses and his fingers sweeping over my clit were enough for me to yield again and forever. I moaned softly, ready for it; nothing needed in my mind but the wonder on his face moments ago, feeling exactly how a man should feel. Exactly how I’d wanted to make him feel. You’re my dream come to life. And it took a few more seconds only before I was up, up, floating far above the earth, far above the cruel ruin men had made of it, and then I came like falling, like snowflakes drifting down to cover it all in white.