by Meli Raine
“Ahem,” Jane says pointedly. Shadows behind my closed eyes make it clear they're joining us.
Lily breaks the kiss and laughs.
I like making her laugh.
I like making her moan even more.
Her hand goes to my thigh, resting there with a casual possession that grounds me. Jane takes a drink from her wine glass, Silas empty-handed as he leans back, closes his eyes, and relaxes, shoulders in the water.
We just are.
Four people connected by danger–personalities diverse, life experiences so different–are sitting in this hot tub under the stars, surrounded by bubbles and steam, relaxing into normalcy.
Normal people have fun.
Normal people have weekends.
Normal people don't live their jobs.
Normal people don't scan the world for threats.
For the first time in my life, I want to be a little normal.
But only a little.
“I need water,” Lily declares, climbing out of the hot tub, giving me a gorgeous view of her ass. Working with Rhonda has restored her balance, and she's putting on muscle. As water drips down her sweet curves, I find myself hard again.
Silas chooses that exact moment to open his eyes, look right at me, and say, “Gone to any good concerts lately?”
I laugh.
He doesn't.
He's serious.
“I haven't gone to a concert since high school.”
“Lily loves music. Celtic rock, I think,” Jane says with a half grin, like she's mulling it over. “You'll have to ask her.”
“I'll do that.”
“What do you do for fun, Duff?” Jane asks.
“I work.”
No one laughs.
A sinking feeling hits me in the gut. I'm not uncomfortable. Having this realization with friends is probably good. It gives me a safe place to feel whatever this is. There's an old saying that you have to let go of your old life if you want a new one. My old life was nothing but work. Being a robot. Finding Wyatt. Lying to get there.
What does a new life feel like?
Pretty sure it feels like this.
“Sean?” I look up to find Lily holding two bottles of water, wearing her cover-up, a huge beach towel slung over one arm. “Want to go for a walk?”
Saved by Ms. Chipper.
“Sure.” I climb out, splashing Silas in the process. He splashes me back.
I engage.
Ten seconds later, poor Jane is caught in the crossfire, laughing hysterically as I follow Lily down the steps, half running to escape Silas.
“What about dinner? The food's coming any minute now!” Silas yells down the stairs.
“Pretty sure Lily is his dinner!” Jane shouts, her words following me down the path as I begin my chase. Behind me, I hear Silas say something to Jane, then splashing followed by silence.
Then good, old-fashioned laughter.
Swifter on her feet than I realize, Lily takes off, pounding the stairs until she's on the sand, running towards the surf. I'm not an accomplished beach runner, the thick grasses poking at my soles, her legs illuminated by the pale moon. She reaches the surf and dances in a few inches of water, ankles buried in white foam that thins quickly, so fast that it's as if it were never there.
I have her in my arms in seconds, lips crashing like waves on the sand, tongues tangling until she spins me up, up, up into the stars, her body luscious and hot in my hands. Lily is seafoam and moonlight, driftwood and stars. She's everything and nothing at the same time, as hard to catch in my hands as a feather in the wind, but as sure to hold as a sequoia to the north, so grounded and ancient she makes time itself seem trivial.
Her kiss is an infinite loop of love and lust.
Scooping one arm under the backs of her knees, I have her in my arms, a cluster of four cabanas to our right. She whoops and laughs, but that soon stops as I lower her onto the soft padding, my mouth too needy to wait. Her fingers grip my arms like this is our one chance, the urgency vibrating through her body.
Oh, no, babe, I want to tell her.
This is just the beginning.
Her breasts are firm and sweet in my hands, the cover-up easy to pull off. The swish of the fabric is like a sigh of gratitude, and one is also coming from my own mouth. She looks up at me, trusting and hot, wanting this as much as I do.
So I give it to her.
She gives it back, too.
Soft flesh at her neckline is salty, the natural scent heightened by the ocean. My mouth makes a trail to her nipple and I suck fast and hard, her back arching up into me. What I thought would stretch out for hours of unhurried lovemaking suddenly feels uncontrolled, untamed.
And I don't mean me.
“Now,” she whispers, hips moving against my cock, pushing up to a rhythm. Her belly curves in and I realize, almost too late, that she's about to come. Already.
“Oh, no,” I murmur, “not yet,” pulling fast on her bikini bottoms, unveiling more of her, my mouth finding what I want, her body and moans telling me we want the same.
We want this.
“Oh, God,” she whispers, her fingers in my hair, her body taking and taking with a beautiful intensity that makes me want her even more. Lily is all real, no artifice, no inhibitions. She wants what she wants and as my tongue finds the perfect spot to drive her wild, she gets what she wants.
Over and over and over, her soft flesh yields to me, my own urgency building. I want to go slow, but Lily's faster, until she explodes. Knowing I'm giving her this pleasure, that she trusts me enough to fall to pieces, is the biggest turn-on of all.
“Sean,” she whispers, pulling me up for a kiss, her hand moving to grasp me, the friction too much. Control is my mantra, but right now, it's nothing more than a word.
Twisting, she pulls something out of a pocket on her cover-up.
A condom.
“You brought one?” I realize I didn't.
“The minute we walked down those steps, I was a sure thing.”
I kiss her, hot and wet, our bodies pushing against each other, my fingers in her hair, skimming down her back, my thigh pushing against her swollen clit as she groans, then reaches between us to roll the condom on.
I'm in her in seconds.
How did I live without being in her?
Forehead to forehead, I pause, kissing her deeply as I let the feeling settle into my skin, my pores, my bones.
My heart.
It speeds up, racing to catch us. All the pieces of me that feel out of sync in daily life decide to work together, her body and attachment a kind of glue, a force that works to align. We breathe together, moving against one another, the press of her breasts against my chest so soothing yet exhilarating at the same time, the mixture of emotion turning into something unique.
A state I want to share only with her.
My hips move, slowly elongating my stroke, moving within her with a grace that comes from respect. Honoring her body is as important as honoring her heart, but when she grabs my ass and kisses me so hard that I taste the tang of blood from broken flesh, I rise up, going harder.
It thrills her.
“Yes,” she says in a voice that shoots electricity through me, my abs clapping against her soft, curved belly, the scent and taste of her mixing with the ocean. We are salt, we are air, we are blood, and we are nothing but flesh as she bites my shoulder and screams my name with an abandon that makes me want her even more.
And then I come, exploding with more emotion than I knew possible. We cling to each other, draining what we can from this joining of energy. Lily is wet and open to me, begging for pleasure, offering me mine, and we meet each other in the center.
Over and over, until I collapse on her, panting so hard, as if my lungs need to breathe in the disintegrated pieces of her as they collect themselves, returning home.
“That was...” she says, her tongue tickling my collarbone as she takes a light nip.
“Terrible. We have to tr
y again. And again. And maybe a few hundred more times to get it right.”
Her laugh pushes me out of her, almost. I move my hips so I'm back in place, not wanting the cold reality of being in space that isn't her.
“You're right,” she jokes. “We're terrible at sex.” She yawns and nudges me. I'm crushing her. Quickly, I roll to the side, grabbing her discarded top and tossing it over us.
“Horrible. The worst.” I tweak her nipple.
She tweaks mine.
Somehow, we fall asleep, the ocean whispering the same words we've heard so many times this last month:
“Took you two long enough.”
Chapter 18
Lily
My foot sinks into the warm, squishy slick of a newly-dead brain.
Eye closed, I will myself to stay in the dark, my fingertips inundated with the prickly press of needles shoving themselves in. If I open my eyes, who will I see?
Or what?
Sulfur, stinky and nauseating, builds inside my nose like a mushroom cloud after a nuclear bomb. The flapping of bats turns into an 8mm film projector, the celluloid dreams of a million fans coming to a grinding, burning halt as the bats stop their motion, wings freezing at the same time, all the black creatures falling at once on top of me.
Splat!
And into the field of brain matter scattered as far as the eye can see.
How do I know?
Because I open my eyes at the pain of having my skeleton ripped out of my body. Romeo's standing before me, holding it, the skull in one hand, his other on my ribs. My pelvis is still inside me, leg bones, too, so I can't run.
My heart beats harder and harder, faster and faster, as if it's trying to be my legs for me. Trying to run away.
“Sean!” I whisper, the sound a scream that can't cut through the pain.
“That's right, Lily,” Romeo says as he tugs, pulling more of my bones out of me, making it harder and harder to stay upright. Once he yanks for the last time, I turn into a puddle on the floor.
I mix in with the brains.
I become one of them. Dead. Nothing more than a surface.
“That's right,” he says again. “Call for him. We want him to come. We want to know what he knows so we can kill him, too. The dead do not speak. The dead do not betray. In death, we are the best soldiers.”
And then he lifts his hands up, pulling like taffy, until I fall into an abyss, never reaching bottom.
“Sean!” I scream.
* * *
I awaken to a dark purple sky. It's the color of emerald and ash mixed together and for a moment, I wonder if I'm still alive.
Buh-BUM! Buh-BUM!
My ear is on Sean's naked chest, the wiry feel of his hair against my cheek a gentle reminder that yes, I'm alive. He is, too.
But the world feels like a fairy tale.
At some point, after making love here in this cabana, we fell asleep. I shiver, the nighttime chill resting on my skin like dew. As if he knows, a sound-asleep Sean tightens his hold on me, my warm-blooded man pulling me closer, heating me up.
My toes touch the sand, relieved to find nothing but the cold delight of so many grains and not the warm horror of my dream.
Nightmare.
I tug on my cover-up and pull it over my head, the tip of my tongue poking out of my mouth, brushing against his chest.
Salt.
Sean tastes like the ocean.
It's fitting, right? We played in it. I danced in it. He kissed me in it, full and free, his mouth wet and welcoming.
And then we made love, the water's rhythms pushing us slowly, then faster and faster until I reached ecstasy.
My legs are restless. I stand, stretching, enjoying the drag of the fabric against my bare nipples. Sean moves in his sleep, turning on his side, face slack with relaxation. The moonlight lets me see, although not clearly. Like a little kid, he's sweet in sleep, so handsome. So alluring.
So... mine.
Hearts need time to adjust. Even happiness is change, and all change means our systems need to recalibrate. Mine, in particular, takes longer to adjust. Regulation of the nervous system involves the very precious commodity of time.
The water calls to me, like birdsong, like woodsmoke, like sandalwood. It's every forest and hummingbird rolled into one, evocative and ever present. People die, but the ocean stays, stalwart and anchored.
The water tickles my toes, laughing at me. I close my eyes, spread my arms wide, and just breathe.
And breathe.
And breathe.
Because I can.
Here, I can melt into the water. I am an object but not a surface. Like the shells beneath my feet, the sand between my toes, the salt that layers on my skin, the clouds that streak across the sky like dark cotton, I am one of millions of objects.
There is safety in numbers.
I feel Sean behind me before he clears his throat, the air changing with his presence. It's subtle. It's distinct. There is a connection between us I cannot explain. That night in the sex club, I felt it, intuiting his presence like a new organ formed inside me solely to track him.
His hands are warm as they touch my shoulders, the wall of muscle that comprises him inviting me to lean back. To be supported.
To be held.
“Hey there, luscious,” he whispers in my ear with lips that did unspeakably divine things to me a few hours ago. Turning to kiss him, those same lips make promises without words. Our kiss is the best awakening I could ever experience. I melt into the richness of him.
Of Sean.
We would never have met if it weren't for Jane. We would never have forged a bond if I hadn't been shot. Would we have flirted? Dated? Ever found a connection like this if it weren't for the trauma I experienced?
We experienced? His decency and sense of honor made him feel guilty for not preventing the shooting in the flower shop. That's what made him stick with me and help my parents through the long, dark journey of my fourteen-month coma.
Sean is a good man. A great man. Quiet and steadfast, quick and unassuming, he is a rock that oceans seek to wear down.
Like the shoreline, he takes it. That's his job. To face whatever is thrown his way, and to fight to the end to be immutable.
“You taste like you're thinking too much,” he says, gently tugging a lock of my hair with an impish look on his face. “My kisses are that boring?”
“Nothing is boring about your mouth.”
His eyebrows shoot up. “Oh, ho! Is that a request you're making, Ms. Thornton?”
I pat the tops of my thighs. “I haven't quite recovered yet.” The nightmare lingers inside my head, as if it's skimming the dura, embedding itself in my cells. That's okay, though. Memory tries to last forever, etching itself into our bodies.
Good memories can over-write the bad.
His smug grin makes me laugh. Sean's shoulders broaden, chest swelling, eyes filled with dark, sensual contracts that stretch out into the years before us.
“Fine.” He kisses my earlobe, then bites it just as one hand cups my breast. “Let's go back to the house. To a proper bed where you can rest a little before I use this perfect mouth on your perfect body again.”
I yawn.
Concern fills his face, a casual sense that we're paired, and he's caretaking. “Can you walk? Should I carry you?”
“You didn't make it so I can't walk, Sean. The sex wasn't that athletic.”
“Then I have a new goal for next time.”
His arm goes around my waist, but we part to pick up the towel. I tuck the condom wrapper in my pocket to be discarded at the house–discreetly. The moon casts an ethereal, dull light over the sea and sand as we walk back up the sets of stairs to the beach house. Two guys in suits flank the house, on duty.
Always on duty.
I point to one and ask, “You know him?”
“Yes. Jodi. He's not Stateless.”
“How did you know I was about to ask?”
He answers me with
a kiss. “Because I would have.”
“We share a mind now?”
“We shared our bodies. Why not our minds?”
I stop, one step above him, like that day in his apartment building long ago. We're the same height here, and I put my hands on his shoulders, eye to eye.
Before I can say the words, he beats me to it.
“I love you, Lily.”
All of the space in the world condenses to the inches between us.
I lean forward and kiss him, a slow, simple kiss that is enough as it is.
“I love you, too, Sean.”
And then he yawns.
“My kisses are that boring?” I tease as he holds me in his arms, our hug fierce.
“I'll need a few million of them before I can determine that.”
“Pretty sure a million kisses qualifies as some form of physical therapy.”
“If it helps you heal, then all the better.”
“You, too.”
“Me? What do you mean?”
“A million kisses would heal you, too, Sean.”
He kisses me once.
“There. Nine hundred ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine to go.”
“You're going to count?”
“I'll count them all, Lily. Every damn one.”
Duff
The woods stare back at me.
It's daytime, but it feels like the witching hour. The paradox confuses me, turning my mind into thin ribbons of flesh churning in a typhoon, swept up by water that pushes me into a hard wall. I'm trapped, lungs pressed until they're thin pancakes, my existence nothing but panic.
Suddenly, I breathe.
Inhaling forever, my feet lift up, losing touch with the ground, going higher and higher until the sickening dizziness of too much height turns to horror. Terror seizes me, the drop too far. If I fall, my legs will snap. My back will break. I'll flatten to nothingness, but the fall will be horrid.
I retch. I freeze.
And then I'm engulfed by flames.
Rain pours out of the sky as if a witch's spell conjures it, my skin sizzling, steam rising off my limbs like a mother's arms, soothing and holding me in love. I'm on the ground, resting on soft moss, my body naked as the green gives me a place to rest. The sky is an ominous swirl of dark magic, but down here, I'm safer.