Chapter 8
J ohn tucked Lillian into the luxury rental car and fastened the seatbelt around her. The streetlights were a brilliant blur as they sped away from Seattle. The drizzle sent a glare from the streetlights on the asphalt.
“Are you all right?” Her voice cut through the darkness. His face was in shadow, but when she took his hand, she felt the vibration of his anxiety.
The tires on the wet roadway sounded like tape placed on a surface and torn off again. The noise grated on her. “We don’t have to continue this journey. We could go home.” She thought of the library of their Virginia home, a cozy fire on the grate and her head in his lap as he read aloud to her.
“No,” he said. “I want this. And I promised to show you a fabulous time on the next leg of our journey. Please forgive me for the past few days, Lily.”
She fidgeted beneath his level gaze. “It’s nothing of your doing. Let’s not speak of it. Why don’t I sing for you?”
He straightened with a nod. She fiddled with the radio until she landed upon some Rogers and Hammerstein she knew from years past.
As the car streaked through the night, Lillian sang. She tried not to stare at the way the bluish lights of the dashboard turned John’s hands into something distorted and frightening. The eerie glimmer streaked up his forearms and disappeared into shadow.
A flash of blond hair rippled past her vision. Her voice faltered. She blinked.
The scent of leather was in her nose, the taste of scalding black coffee on her tongue, and agitation burned her chest—an emotion which was not her own. “John, stop the car.”
He tore his gaze from the road. “What’s wrong, Lily?”
“Stop, John. Here. Anywhere.” Her fingernails dug into her knees, snagging her pantyhose. She squeezed her eyes against the inky blue lightning bolts sparking behind her eyes. Their trace imprinted on her brain and she saw the white-hot negative of them.
Oh, God, please stop.
“Honey, tell me what’s going on,” John demanded.
She grabbed the wheel and jerked it, sending the Cadillac careening toward the guard rail.
“Lily! What has come over you?” He whipped the vehicle onto the roadway before it struck. She’d almost welcome the shriek of steel-on-steel if it obliterated the rasp of his breath in her ears.
She saw the blond man’s full lips, quirked up at the corner and bracketed by a line. Her hands shook as if she’d experienced an electrical shock. Struggling to breathe beneath the assault of these hallucinations, she dropped her head into her hands. Black spots revolved before her eyes, but she looked through them to the long blond sweep of hair concealing his eyes.
John’s hand clamped over hers. “Hold on. Here’s a place to stop.”
The quivering traveled down her arms to her chest, rattling her ribs, vibrating her stomach. She folded around it. A scorching tendril of desire wove through her lower belly to clasp her pussy. She compressed her knees and held onto the sensation.
“John,” she said through her clamped jaw. “I need you. Now.”
The tires screeched to a stop. John jammed the gearshift into park. Lillian tore off her seatbelt and threw herself at him. They slammed against the driver’s door, her hands frantic, fumbling with his belt, button, zip. She straddled his hips, her skirt ruching up about her waist. He opened his mouth to protest, but she plunged her tongue between his lips, tasting the only man she had touched in over sixty years.
She guided his palms upward to cup her breasts, which she’d bared with one scrabbling hand. She swallowed his groan with her demanding kiss and sent one back into him.
“Lily, let me pull into the hotel parking lot.”
She groped with their clothing. “No, I need you. Now!” She joined their bodies in one slippery movement. His closeness was pounding, loading her veins.
“Oh, baby, I can’t stand this goddamned itch,” he muttered between dizzying kisses. He gripped her waist and thrust hard, the engorged head of his cock pressing against the place she most wanted it.
Her head fell back and he sucked the tender spot behind her ear, making her writhe. The window behind his head began to fog. Rain fell in long, snaking streaks, and beyond that, the QuikMart’s lights blazed. In her mind’s eye, the pale light of dusk shimmered off the blond man’s immortal skin.
A wave of release struck her, and her pussy fastened hard on John’s cock, holding him deep inside her. The searing heat pulsed through her body. Her muscles tightened. When his thumb pushed against her hard nub, grinding it in a circle, she screamed. A gush of juices burst from her, drenching his cock. She clung to John’s shoulders as she rode out the mind-bending release.
Still quaking, each nudge of his cock brought her close to the brink once again. Suddenly, he cupped her ass, stiffened and fucked her hard and fast. “I’m gonna fucking explode!” He sucked her tongue between his lips.
She felt him spurt, bathing her with his cum. The wave they rode curled and broke, lifting them anew on the turbulent water.
They were nowhere near finished.
John met her eyes.
“More,” she breathed.
“Yes, but not here.” He moved her enough to shift the car into drive and guided them to the adjoining hotel parking lot. In minutes he had checked them in and was at her door, drawing her into his arms.
As she placed her mouth against his rain-damp skin, she didn’t taste his salty, musky flavor. She tasted coffee and the brimstone of lightning tattoos. She tasted twilight and desperate passion. She tasted another man.
Tears sparked in her eyes even as her body reacted to the tang in her soul of her dream man. John was like coming home, and Robert a tender recollection, but he… he was all consuming.
* * *
Lillian smoothed the crisp white sheet over her nude torso and watched John’s chest rise and fall. His head was canted hard to the side, and his black coloring was a sharp contrast against the pillowcase. With the lovemaking, her tremors had been lessened, but she still felt the deep inner quake. It maddened her, made her want to scream, like a ticklish itch she couldn’t reach.
Beneath the North Star, her blond man had trembled and wept. She folded her fists around the urge to sweep away the pale hair mixed with moonbeams and violet shadows, and instead slipped her hand under the sheet. Her thighs were slick with the fluids of John’s passion, but her own flowed anew.
She trailed her fingers through the moisture and let her thighs fall apart. Her pussy was swollen and needy again, a rhythmic throb guiding her fingers between the slippery folds. Her outer lips were plump and round and bare. She cupped her mound, her short fingernails sinking into the soft inner lips.
Fighting to control her breathing and movement, so as not to awaken John, she plunged two fingers into her soaking slit. Her nipples pinched into hard knots, and she circled the right one lightly.
Her fingers worked the heated slit of her pussy, stroking her g-spot and sending a flood of juices over her hand. She lost herself in the sensation, teasing the bud of her nipple and sinking into the Visions of her dream man. His mouth was at her collarbone, soft hair on her breasts, but his jaw was hard and rough and unshaven.
A bolt of excitement lashed her to the bed. Her thumb wiggled her engorged clit. His tongue darted downward. One big hand kneaded her breast, and he captured the nipple between his lips, flicking it with his tongue. She strummed her nipple harder, mirroring the action of her fantasy.
His hands explored her, brushing the undersides of her breasts, down her ribs, tracing a path around her navel before threading into the dark curls that graced her mound. She released her breast to rub these now, her breath quickening as she envisioned his blond beard scraping the length of her body, following the wake of his hands.
She prodded her clit with one fingernail, feeling his razor-sharp jaw against it. And then his mouth opened wide and closed over her pussy, sending waves of delight through her. She fingered her pussy with both hands, circling, grinding, pinching her clit between her fingers.
Two fingers thrust into her tight opening, and she gave herself up to the dream sensation of his mouth and tongue and rough beard. She felt his blond hair on her inner thighs and his broad hands spreading her further, shoving her knees up so he could better access her pussy.
He licked it wildly from clit to hole, fucked her with the point of his tongue, and slipped back up to her hard nub. He sucked it into his mouth, pulled his head back, stretching her big clit, and let it release. Again and again he sucked her, drawing her hips off the bed as she sought to meet him.
Her hands repeated his actions, rolling her clit between her fingers, tugging it outward and releasing. A deep burn gripped her, held, swelled, and without warning, she burst. Her entire body stiffened. Her pussy contracted around her fingers, and she fucked it until she grew too sensitive to continue.
Controlling her gasps, she pinched her nipples hard as her dream man licked at her juices in her mind.
John shifted and his breathing changed. Lillian let her head fall to the side to look into his open eyes.
“Good morning, gorgeous.” His voice was gritty.
She felt the blush crawl over her cheeks. Never in all these years with John had she touched herself with such abandon, or experienced the ecstasy that followed. John brought her off in this way, but she had never achieved it alone.
Yet she hadn’t been alone, had she?
John flipped on top of her and groaned at the wetness he felt. “God, baby, you’re ready for me already.” His thick cock poised at her entrance.
She spread her legs automatically for him even as he found her mouth. And as he fucked her slowly and thoroughly, tears stung her eyes. Something deep inside her had broken open, and she felt as though she betrayed her blond man, her dream man, the man to whom part of her soul was irrevocably bound.
* * *
The Cadillac geared down and rolled to a stop overlooking an expanse of sand. Lillian squinted through the windshield into the blinding sun. Across the baking sands, the ocean shore glittered, and a black outcropping of rock writhed.
“What is that?” she asked without removing her gaze from the view.
“Come and see.” John leaped from the car, his step lively as he came around to open Lillian’s door. He drew her hand into his and led her to the edge of the beach, where she removed her high heels and looped them in her index finger. The breeze brought the sound of barking.
“Seals!” She stopped dead. He flashed a grin and towed her faster.
The rock appeared to squirm as the elephant seals crawled over the surface. Sometimes a young one would be shoved into the water with a little splash. John removed his jacket and flattened it on the ground for Lillian to sit. She curled up, ankles crossed and her knees to her chest. John sank cross-legged next to her and she leaned into his side.
“Are you warm enough?” He rubbed her upper arm where she had slung a sweater in the old-fashioned way—without her arms through the sleeves and buttoned at the throat.
She had always adored his manners and consideration for her welfare, but now irritation bubbled up her throat. She swallowed it. “Yes, I’m fine.”
The wind caught her hair, sending wispy tendrils dancing around her face. How long had it been since she truly relaxed or escaped the fear plaguing her mind? She tilted her face up to the sun, letting the golden beams sink into her pores and burn away all thought. Time slowed. Her breathing deepened to match the waves breaking over the rocks. Her mind cleared of pain and confusion and her muscles relaxed.
When the tide sizzled up the sand and swallowed her toes, she jumped up with a cry, and John laughed, wondering aloud how she hadn’t noticed the surf rolling in.
“Do you want to move or shall we go?”
“That depends.”
“On?”
“Where we’re going next.” She knew her fragile psyche couldn’t withstand another trip to a cemetery or memorial at the moment.
“Dinner?” He tipped his head back, judging the time by the sun. She nodded and silently threaded her hand through his arm to wander back up the beach.
Minutes later, seated across from her mate in a five-star restaurant, the chaos of Lillian’s last few days took control once more. She avoided John’s steady gaze and forced her mind away from her dream man, though it continually wandered to the strangely realistic release he had forced on her that morning.
To make matters worse, the blond-haired waiter showed her undo attention, which made her squirm. She could not stop staring at his hands, at the golden sprinkle of hair on his knuckles, comparing the beefy palms and thick fingers to her dream man’s long, tapered ones. Flushed and concealing her twisting hands in her lap, she met John’s gaze. His eyebrow lifted like a small, pointed blade.
“It’s nothing,” she said after the waiter had moved away. “He was looking at me so closely it embarrassed me.”
John’s full lips spread into a smile. His eyes crinkled at the corners. “He seems quite smitten.”
“And he’s what—nineteen?”
“Probably. But you don’t look anywhere near ninety.”
She rapped him smartly with her menu. “Thank you, but a gentleman never mentions a lady’s age.”
“Actually, you’re closer to his age than mine,” he said, staring at his fingernails. “You were frozen at twenty-two.”
“I like my men older,” she said, stretching across the candlelit table.
“How old?”
“Like centuries,” she said firmly, biting her lip.
And then the waiter appeared with a bottle of exquisite red wine, which he displayed for John’s approval. While their glasses were filled with the clear ruby liquid, John tapped the invisible keys of a piano.
Lillian felt the waiter’s eyes searching her face. John cleared his throat and the waiter moved away. Once they were alone, she placed her fingers over John’s.
“You haven’t played in too long.”
He tossed a glance across the restaurant to the parquet floor where two couples rotated in their tiny, modern circles. “And you haven’t danced in too long.” He offered her a hand. Just then, the quartet struck a familiar lively tune.
Lillian did an elaborate spin into John’s waiting arms. Excitement rushed through her veins. She’d forgotten the heady feeling that dancing gave her. How long had it been? Ten years? Twelve? Yet at one time, she and John had danced their way through every night.
The other couples abandoned their efforts and stood back to watch. As she and John utilized the entire dance floor, he grinned. “It never ceases to amaze me, this,” he said. “You could be on Broadway.”
“What happens when people realize I don’t age?” She did some tricky, heel-toe tapping footwork.
He spun her out and watched her with gleaming eyes. A cheer rose from the restaurant.
“Besides,” Lillian said a little breathlessly, “it’s not my heart’s desire to perform onstage.”
He reeled her in and dipped her low, hovering over her with his lips inches away.
“What is your heart’s desire?” He crushed his mouth against hers.
He tasted sweet and true—pure John. She forgot her uneasiness and reveled in his touch.
The music ended and they rose from their embrace to loud applause. The wine was kept flowing long into the night. As immortals, they enjoyed the delicious high of the wine and the loss of inhibitions without a trace of a hangover. And when John finally lifted her to her feet, the heat plummeted instantly between her thighs.
“What’s on tap for tomorrow?” Her slurred voice was unrecognizable to her own ears.
He gave her a dark look. “A secret. I told you that this portion of the journey will be to your liking. And I always keep my promises.” As she slipped into the coat he held for her, his knuckles brushed the sides of her breasts. She slumped against him, desire pulsing through her veins.
But with it came the flicker of lightning bolt tattoos.
“Hurry, John.” She said curled a hand about the back of his neck. “Find us a bed.”