Chapter 9 Luke #2
I’ve been trying really, really hard not to think about what happened at the wedding, it clearly meant something completely different to me than it did to him, since he doesn’t even have the decency to remember a damn thing about it.
It’s hard not to think about it though. I’ve spent years replaying it in my mind.
I remember everything about it. The way the air felt stagnant and humid one minute and electric the next.
I remember the soft glow of the fairy lights in the acacia tree winking behind the leaves as a soft breeze picked up.
I remember the sounds of the wedding, a low, happy murmur broken now and again by my aunt’s piercing laughter.
I remember the song that was playing. It was the first time I didn’t just hear music, I felt it.
Most of all, I remember Jessie standing beside me.
He was close. So close, I could feel his body heat against my arm.
It made the hair on my arm stand on end.
Not just on my arm, on my back and my side, too.
I looked into his eyes and I swear, it was like looking into flames.
I knew what was going to happen a full second before it happened.
I had time to prepare, though it didn’t help.
I was still wholly unprepared. I was frozen.
I couldn’t move. I’d never been so excited. Or terrified.
I was in awe of him then. I probably still am.
He’s so different from me. He’s different from everyone I know.
He stands out and I don’t think he only stands out to me because I’m infatuated with him.
I think he factually stands out. He’s different from most people.
Dark of spirit. Broody as hell. Always skulking on the perimeter, looking in.
When he’s around, everything seems to be on a knife-edge.
I’m acutely aware that I’m living and breathing when he’s close by.
Shit seems real, like someone flicked the switch changing things from a game to playing for keeps.
I don’t know if he casts his presence so wide on purpose, or if he can’t help it. I only know he does it.
I’m sure he affects lots of people, but I’m willing to bet he doesn’t affect anyone as much as he affects me.
There’s no way he could. The second I met him, I felt it; an uncanny sureness, a knowing, an irrefutable feeling; a feeling that I know him.
We couldn’t be more different if we tried and I don’t know how or why I feel the way I do, all I know is I know things about Jessie I have no business knowing and more than that, I get him.
We’re connected. I thought it came from both of us, but now I’m not so sure.
Maybe I imagined it came from him too because I want it so much.
From my side, at least, I feel like there’s something between us.
Something strong and right. Something I’ve never felt before.
He doesn’t know this about me. He probably has no clue whatsoever.
That’s what’s been messing with me more than anything since he got here.
I know him. I understand him. I look into his eyes and I swear I can feel what he’s thinking.
I feel his gaze on my body, I see the judgement in his snarl and the subtle shift in the way he moves his hips when he approaches me.
Every single thing about what I see and what I feel tells me he wants me.
He wants me now like he wanted me then, I’m so sure of it I’d stake my life on it.
That’s why I can’t understand why he’s being this way.
Messing with me at night and cutting me dead when I try to talk to him, making his eyes pitch black and closed off, turning his back on me when I smile, snapping little pieces of me off and crushing them to dust in the palm of his hand.
How can he not remember the wedding? Why does he talk to me the way he talks through the wall and then act like he doesn’t know me?
It’s making me feel insane. Certifiable.
Half the time, when the sun comes up, I don’t know if it really happened or if I dreamed the whole thing.
I’m second guessing everything. The Jessie he is in the day is so different from the Jessie who torments my nights it’s giving me whiplash.
My life has this weird duality now. Above the surface everything’s normal, we eat and swim and talk to each other or I talk to him, and he pretends not to listen to what I say.
Beneath the surface, the tide crashes into rocks, swirling, smashing them into pieces, grinding them down.
Why do I let him do it?
Okay, I guess this one’s not rocket science.
I do it because the way his voice caresses me while I stroke my dick is the single greatest pleasure I’ve ever felt.
It feels so much better than what I do when I’m on my own and that’s saying something because believe me, I’m something of a masturbation enthusiast. It’s not just the way his voice sounds, though God knows his hoarse voice is sexy as hell, it’s what he says, too.
He’s mean to me. He makes me hurt and then he makes me feel good.
I like the way he makes me feel good but to my surprise, I like the way it feels when he’s mean just as much.
I’ve never considered myself a spoiled brat.
I try hard not to be and I’ve never thought of myself as someone who’d ever want something from someone that they don’t want to give, but I’m telling you, if Jessie doesn’t lay his hands on me sometime in the very near future, there’s no telling what I might do.
Every night that he’s spoken to me through the wall I’ve found it harder and harder to stay in my bed.
The urge to get up and go next door is so strong I can taste it.
I can almost feel the smooth timber floor under my bare feet.
I’ve counted the number of steps it would take to get to his door.
Eighteen. It would take eighteen steps. He sleeps with his door closed.
I normally do too but since he got here I’ve been leaving mine open in a pathetic attempt to send him the message that he’s welcome to come in.
All I’d have to do is reach out, put my hand on the cool wrought iron door handle and twist it down.
I’ve done it before. I did it when he and his dad went out together the other day.
I opened his door and went in. I’d been in his room lots of times before he got here.
I helped my mom choose the decor for his room.
The space feels different now with his things in it.
His chucks were strewn on the floor along with an inside out pair of socks.
His kindle and laptop were on his desk and the sketch pad we left on the desk had been put away.
There was a photograph of him and his mom in the bookshelf that wasn’t there before, and the comic my mom framed for him had been placed face down on one of the top shelves.
Snooping is not something I normally do.
I felt really bad about being in his room uninvited.
I also felt horny. The whole place felt like him, like it had absorbed his energy or something, and his energy is intoxicating to me.
I knew I was being a shit when I put my hand in my pants.
I felt awful about it, but that only made it hotter.
I was quick and I used his tissues to clean up.
“You’re quiet.” The sound of his voice makes me jump two or three inches off my seat.
“Thought that’s what you wanted,” I say when I’ve recovered.
He eyes me for a while. He quirks the left side of his cheek thoughtfully. Other people would think he was smiling. They’d be wrong. “I guess.”
I want to scream at him. Your words and thoughts don’t match up, you ass!
I hear your words, but I can feel your thoughts.
Irritation swells in my chest and I’m starkly reminded that I didn’t get to act on the rage I felt at the beach.
It’s still inside me. It’s been pushed down by well-worn pajama pants and dark, careless hair, but it hasn’t been pushed down far enough.
I roll angrily onto my side on the sofa, pulling the throw blanket over myself and beating the pillow under my head till it’s comfortable.
Then in a moment of sheer madness, I kick my legs out so one foot is pressed against his outer thigh and the other foot is on his lap.
Your move, Jessie, I tell him with my eyes.
He either ignores the message or he can’t read me the way I read him, because he doesn’t show any sign that he feels my feet touching him.
I don’t move for a long time. The leg that’s on him starts to feel too heavy and my knee starts taking strain from the awkward angle it’s in.
The rage from before bubbles to the surface again.
It emboldens me to the point of recklessness.
Foolishness. I bend my knee slightly, curling my foot closer to his body, so close I can feel his dick against the sole of my foot.
What you gonna do about it? I ask with my eyes.
He doesn’t answer.
My nerve starts to fail me. I start to panic. What the hell am I doing? I can’t touch someone like this without their consent. It’s gross and wrong. What’s wrong with me? I feel shaky and scared and for once it’s not just from being close to Jessie. I feel scared of who I am right now.
I move my foot quickly, planning to curl myself into a ball, leaving a large, safe margin of space between us.
He moves quickly too. He catches my ankle in his hand and circles it tightly.
I manage to stifle the surprised squeak that tried to come out, but I have no such luck when it comes to the sharp intake of breath that fills my lungs so fast, if I was upright, I’d have a head rush.
He holds my ankle for a while. A full minute or more.
My heart pounds like I have a knife at my throat.
Anticipation and longing flow through my veins.
He looks at me, dappled light from the TV outlines his face; raven hair, impossibly high cheekbones, ancient pain in his eyes.
He smiles at me. It is a smile this time, but not one that’s pretty. It’s dangerous and dark.
He got my message.
He moves my foot back where it was before, nestled in his lap up against him. He keeps holding my ankle. He holds it hard. Almost too hard. Long, elegant fingers dig into my skin.
He sends me a message of his own. A hard one.
Neither of us move. I feel denim and a zipper and the sinewy hardness of him pressing into the ball of my foot.
Thank God I’m lying down because there’s no way I could bear my own weight right now.
My face is hot and even though I’m trying to control it, my breathing is coming in great, uneven gasps.
His hand moves, so lightly that at first I think it’s my imagination.
He does it again, softly tracing the curve of my ankle bone with the pad of his thumb, sending a shock wave up my leg straight to my groin.
Anticipation and longing burn through my cells.
I try desperately to think what I can do to make sure he doesn’t stop.
To make him give me more. I can’t think, though.
My brain is clouded, and my thoughts come slowly like a word I know well but suddenly can’t remember, a word that’s on the tip of my tongue but remains frustratingly elusive.
His hand moves again. His skin is warm against mine.
He draws a line from my ankle across the arch of my foot and then back again.
Electricity tingles up the back of my legs and all the way up my spine.
The next time he moves he uses his whole hand, wrapping his fingers around my foot so his fingertips are digging into the fleshy sole of my foot.
I groan the only word I can remember.
“Jessie.”
He flinches and gives my leg a curt little pat and then moves my foot off him firmly.
“I’m going to turn in,” he says, getting up off the sofa. He sucks a small piece of his bottom lip into his mouth and looks down at me with a faraway look in his eyes. It’s a new look. One I find totally unreadable.
Regret?
Malice?
Mirth?
I can’t tell and I don’t want to care, but I do. I care more than I’ve ever cared about anything. I’m simmering with frustration and paralyzed by arousal.
Eventually, I get up and clean my teeth and take a cold shower.
It does less than nothing to help. I haven’t jerked off for two days because I’ve been trying to force his hand and make him choose between Izzy and me.
I’m starting to feel like if I don’t get a release soon there’s a real possibility of something bad happening.
Really bad. Something rare, a medical marvel, like an aneurysm that’s accompanied by an eruption of semen out of both ears.
Fuck this shit.
I’m going to bed and I’m going to jack off. It’s my fucking house too.