Chapter Eight All The Love We Missed
Another seventy years. I’d be a hundred. That’s so far to think about. This is all happening so fast.
And it feels so good.
Johnny’s touch is warm and pulsing, like being licked everywhere he touches. His fingers are slow and sure, stroking around my pussy, not just plunging in.
But I want him inside of me.
And that’s... That’s weird and scary. My back and legs used to hurt so bad, to say nothing of the endless nausea caused by the blurred vision and headaches. Sex was the most unpleasant thing to think about.
Since Johnny landed in my life, and since I’ve found this new sort of slow-moving peace in Pine Ridge, my desires have come back. Come back to the point I’m making myself come in the shower every night, thinking about him.
Imagining his hands exactly where they are.
Johnny eases down next to me, ghostly gray, but solid. His hand stays on my pussy, just massaging. Slow. Unhurried.
Turning me into a puddle.
“You’re supposed to get all relaxed and sleepy,” he whispers reproachfully. His tone is still playful, though. “Am I messing this up?”
“I can’t get sleepy when it feels so good,” I confess. “But you are very overdressed. Sometimes I see you go outside and you have a Hellcats jacket on. Mostly it’s just jeans and a T-shirt. Can ghosts ever undress?” I ask.
“If we think hard enough about it.”
I roll to my side and kiss him greedily. “Let me encourage your thinking,” I murmur.
The next thing I know, I have a smoky quartz boy toy in my bed. Lean. Muscles. A T of chest hair and a tattooed heart on one shoulder with a ring of flame around it. “You have a tattoo?”
“Don’t tell my Ma. She’ll kill me. My dad knows. I got it when I was seventeen and running with the Hellcats. We all got them. Mine was tame.”
“I still like it. I think I might like a tattooed bad boy ghost boyfriend,” I moan before I can stop to think what it means if I call the live-in ghost a “boyfriend.”
“I hear they call us ‘greasers.’ Because we like our hair to stay in place and because we’re always working on our engines. A beautiful woman is like an engine. A lot of parts that purr if you treat ‘em right.”
“That’s either the corniest thing or the best thing I’ve ever heard,” I giggle.
“Well, let’s see if I can deliver, and then you can decide which.”
Johnny’s magical, ethereal, wired-as-fuck fingers slide across my clit—and press past the surface of my skin. He lets his hand go non-corporeal, keeping its shape, but moving through me easily, like that warm, liquid rush that makes me feel like I’m going to come on the spot.
He does it slowly, over and over, moving in a steady stroke as we both fight not to moan too loud in the other’s face, but God, I want to scream.
It’s so good. So much. It’s like he’s touching all the nerves from the inside, with the perfect pressure, the tingling, licking sensation that makes my head spin and my thighs clench.
“You’re so warm here. Warm and wet. And when I brush through you, my whole body vibrates.”
“Mine, too,” I admit, done trying to hold it. “I’m going to come soon,” I admit.
“I’m not done yet, babe,” he protests softly, kissing my neck and letting his fingers turn solid.
He presses them slowly, gently inside of me and starts massaging with those same deep, pulling strokes he used on my other muscles.
“I don’t want you to rush, Amber. You gotta let out all the stress. That’s what the video said.”
“I just wanted you to watch the video so the nice, polite massages would turn into sexy massages,” I confess, holding his wrist. “Whenever you touch me, it’s not like a human touching me.
It’s like... It’s like everything massages and vibrates, my nerves on fire in the best way, and I want you. I just... I want you.”
Johnny nods, and doesn’t have to be told twice. “I want you, sweetheart. I want you like I never wanted anything. Touching you does the same thing for me. But it’s not just that you set me on fire, baby. You wake me up. Make me feel alive again. And I know one day you’re gonna need the real thing—”
“Who gets to decide what’s real?” I hiss, pulling him tight to my chest, letting out a cry of ecstasy when his chest presses mine, and my whole body seems to ignite.
“I know you’re my dream girl, Amber. But here you are. Does that count?” he pants, kissing my neck. His fingers speed up inside of me, unspooling nerves and tension and fear.
Sex isn’t hurting my back. My head feels brand new. My legs... My legs feel like I could run a mile.
And let’s talk about the erogenous zones.
“I want you inside me, Johnny. I didn’t know what I was looking for, or dreaming of, but I think it’s you.” My hand works down to a thick, ghostly gray cock. It’s not huge, not intimidating.
But when I wrap my hand around it, it throbs and sends waves of warm, gooey bliss through my skin on contact. “This is fucking incredible,” I whisper.
“Aw, now, Amber. I’m gonna think you only want me for my body, kid,” he teases.
“Don’t call me kid. It’s sweetheart,” I pout.
“Mm. My sweetheart. If I can find a ghostly tattoo artist around here, I’m gonna have ‘em put your name in the heart,” Johnny chuckles.
“You’re the guy in charge of your appearance. Add it in there yourself,” I tease back.
“Maybe I will. If you want that.”
Johnny follows my lead, and his cock presses inside of me.
I hope I get used to this, because at first, it’s overwhelming.
I’ve never done drugs, but I’m imagining this is what a psychedelic trip would feel like.
Where your body is connected to heat, and light, and vibration, and you never knew pleasure was like this—and it is.
And your partner isn’t alive, but he’s more present than any other man you’ve ever met, and he’s kissing you, looking at you like you’re the only thing worth staying on earth for, and pounding into you as hard as he can. Giving you everything.
Making you feel everything.
“Love you.”
The words pop free.
I’m so scared that I’ve ruined it all. For a second, even tidal waves of pleasure are reduced to a puddle.
Men hate it if you do that too early.
Hell, women hate if you do that too early.
I hate it. I never said it to anyone, not to Devon, not to my high school crush, not to the first guy I slept with, my college boyfriend...
All those matches were probably the kind it’s okay to say “I love you” to. We had months or years together.
We were both alive. And from the same decade.
One of us wasn’t going to suddenly get swept up in a blinding light.
One of us didn’t throw the other one out in a rainstorm.
“Do you?” Johnny stills. Cups my face. “Well, ain’t that swell,” he whispers, eyes shining.
Say it back.
No, don’t say it back.
I don’t know. I bite my lip and feel the way his body presses against mine, semi-solid, firm but squishy, the perfect hug. The perfect comfort.
If comfort made your entire body throb and want to have a sex marathon.
“You sure you want to say that? Because no one’s ever said that to me before. Not like that.”
“I never said it before. It kinda... Sprung out of me.”
“You didn’t mean it, huh?”
“No! I did. That’s the scary part. I did—I do.” As I say it, it hits me. Somewhere in the weirdness of it all, my heart got really attached and really comfortable with this strange ghostly greaser from another time. “I know it breaks all the rules—”
“Nah. I’m a rule breaker. This don’t break a thing,” Johnny whispers, moving inside of me again. “My girl loves me, which is natural, because I’m nuts about her. Crazy for her.” He kisses me in silence, pace picking up.
“Johnny. Oh, Johnny, it’s so good. You can’t... I’m gonna...”
“You’re gonna come for me, princess. Sweetheart. You wanna come on my cock? Does it make you feel all better?” he purrs, nipping my neck, my earlobe, and grinding inside of me, making my entire pussy buzz.
“I feel so good with you.” I squeeze down hard, and it causes that “sinking into each other” sensation that sends me careening over the edge.
“That’s good. Because I love my girl. And if she likes this... I wanna do it every night.”
He loves me.
I’m his girl.
I was sure I’d scream when I came, but instead, I’m shaking, silent, gasping. Johnny’s so beautiful above me, head thrown back, all his muscles tight.
His warmth is suddenly a wet burst inside of me, and he’s not solid anymore. He’s a shimmering, silvery outline.
“That takes a lot of energy. Takes a lot of energy to stay solid,” he pants.
I almost tease him about stamina, but I don’t. It was his first time making love as a ghost. And my first time with a ghost. And I still haven’t made any intelligible words since I started to hit the peak.
“But don’t worry. I have other things I can do. Things I’ve been wanting to try but never got a chance to,” his voice is a whisper.
He’s a whisper, and a shimmer, and he’s left me a breathless, deliciously shattered mess.
And now he’s slipping like silk around my legs, pushing against me like a current of soft but strong air, parting my thighs and dipping his head between them.
“They didn’t do this as much when I was alive.
The girls you wouldn’t take home to your mother might do it.
The good guys didn’t want it done. But I’ve been reading some of those books of yours.
Seems like this little pussy likes kisses. ”
“Absolutely. And there were lots of rules back then that didn’t make sense. We...” I pause for a minute, ugly truth in my mouth, “we would have been a scandal. Black woman. White man. 1950s?”
“I wouldn’t have cared. Broke all the rules, anyway, so what’s a little scandal?
I would have wrecked any rule in the books that would have kept me from being with you, Amber.
We’re breaking a rule now, I’m sure. Pretty sure the dead aren’t supposed to date the living.
” Johnny looks up at me, dark eyes in a wispy face that’s slowly solidifying again. “But I don’t care.”
My hands find his head. His hair. Mussing it up, gripping it as tight as I can. He lets his mouth slowly travel across my pussy, his eyes never leaving my face.
“Mm. Pure, undiluted Amber,” he sighs after the first taste.
His jaw moves, lips open and close, soft touches on my soaking center that make a slurping sound, a sound I’m not sure that comes from his mouth or my pussy, or a combination of both.
“See, I like this,” he sighs, and stretches out, an arm draping lazily over my torso.
“All of you is beautiful. And sexy. But this part, no one else gets to see. And this part makes you feel so good. I don’t even know all the names for these parts.
Like a sexy flower. A delicious flower.”
“Well, I could find a video that—” I never get to finish. Johnny swirls his tongue over my clit and my eyes go to static. A human’s tongue applied to that zone will make your toes curl.
A ghostly tongue that’s made of ethereal vibrations and warm, gel-like sensations?
It’ll try to knock your soul out of your chest.
“Don’t want videos. Want Amber. I want this.
God, you taste so good. You know, I can’t eat food?
But this? This I can taste.” Johnny looks up at me again, this time with a devilish smirk that just makes him even handsomer.
“I hope you don’t mind being dessert, baby.
Because I’ve finally found what ghosts live on. ”
“I don’t mind,” I whimper as he dives back in, viciously sucking my clit, lapping at my center, making my eyes roll back in a chaotic burst of Johnny-the-Rule-Breaker energy.
“I’m hard again,” he confesses between licks. “Can we...?”
“I don’t mind at all,” I sigh, hands back in his hair and legs over his shoulders. “I’m all yours.”