Just Come Over

by James, Rosalind

  With every beat of wood on whalebone, the jade whale tail at his throat resonated all the way down his body, through his arm, his hand, and into Zora’s. Her pulse, he could swear, was beating with his, and with the music, like they were somewhere out of time. Or in another one.

  He’d competed with his brother for her. He’d fought her parents for her. And he’d won. She’d turned toward him on the seat again, and he could see the rise and fall of her breasts, the luminous skin above her neckline, and the shine that was the choker of his pearls at the base of her throat. The music kept on, rising, falling, fading out and returning, all he was touching was Zora’s hand, and he knew that all she could see was him.

  In his driveway at last, the white lights reversing, a glow of red flashing briefly, then retreating as he walked with Zora to his front door, got it open, set the bag with the food on the narrow table under the mirror and his shoes on the low shelf on the opposite wall, and tried to think of something to say.

  She’d never got the chance to tell him what she was wearing under her dress, or how he’d made her feel from the moment he’d first looked at her tonight, and had let her know that he liked what he was seeing. The strength of his hand around hers, too, in the car, and what she’d felt from him then, like he needed her in his arms, and he was barely holding back.

  Finally, though, the door had swung shut behind him in the tiled entryway with its single light shining on the two of them. The pale curve of the staircase floated down beyond it into the darkness, like they were on a raft floating on the sea, the only two people in their world. He was breathing hard, she could see it in the rise and fall of his chest under the black shirt, but he hadn’t grabbed her. He’d taken off his shoes, and she hadn’t.

  They hung there, alone on their raft, for a long moment, and then she reached up, put a hand behind his neck, pulled his head down, and kissed his mouth.

  She kept it gentle, trying to say with the touch of her lips everything that had been so hard to explain. She had her fingers splayed over his jaw, exploring the roughness of stubble, the indentation that was the dimple in his chin. He had an arm around her at last, his hand going not to her waist, but straight to her backside, tracing over the curve of it like he couldn’t get enough, and then his hand was under the hem of her dress, moving up the back of her thigh, sending shocks all the way up her body as he traced his way over the sensitive flesh. The insistent throb she’d been feeling for hours now gave a hard pulse, and her hand was in his hair, pulling him down to her. And somehow, she was kissing him deeper.

  His hand on her thigh, and the other one on her bare back, tracing down the vee of her dress and dipping beneath it, and still, he hadn’t said anything. He found the zip, lowered it a centimeter at a time, and when he’d done it, brushed one spaghetti strap off her shoulder, then the other, and the dress fell to the floor with a whisper of fabric.

  He said, “Step out.” Low and nearly rough, the first words he’d spoken to her in half an hour. She did it, one heel, then another, and he kept his arm around her and steadied her through it. Her eyes weren’t closed, and neither were his. He was drinking her in like she was all he wanted to see, and his hand was at the back clasp of her black satin strapless bra, the bottom curve of the cups outlined with tiny dots of pearl. The bottom hook opened, and then the top one, under his deft fingers, and the bra joined the dress on the floor.

  All she was wearing was his pearls, her black heels, and a black lace thong that was more like a G-string. She wanted him to touch her there, and he didn’t. His hands were on her breasts, his thumbs tracing over nipples that had long since gone hard. He said, “I want to suck these,” she got another of those hard, fierce shudders, and he stood there and watched her do it.

  She should be doing something, she realized fuzzily. Her hands went to his jacket, and he took a wrist in each hand and said, “No. Not right now,” and then turned her around. Slowly. She stumbled a little in her heels, and he held her upright, then ran his hands up her arms, and then, slowly, over her sides, until he was holding her breasts again, her nipples caught between his big fingers. And he hauled in his breath.

  He’d meant to be romantic. But when she’d pulled his head down and kissed him like she couldn’t wait another second, when he’d got his hand under her dress—how could he have done anything but take it off? And when she’d been heaving her breath from all the way up her body, he’d needed her bra gone, too.

  Now, he was looking at exactly what he’d imagined for so long, and it was everything he’d dreamed of. Dark hair falling in a tangled cloud to just above her shoulders. A back like the gorgeously smooth, generous curves of a cello, flaring out again into rounded hips and thighs. A lush bottom covered by a single strip of black lace down the center, and that was all.

  He ran his hand down the string of pearls once, then again, and she shuddered all the way down, swayed toward the wall, and put her palms flat against it.

  Holy shit.

  He could hear his breath in his ears, and he could see the tremble in her as he ran his hand down her spine, pulled the hair up from her neck with the other, bent down, and kissed her there, at her nape, then moved on to the side of her neck, his lips gentle, exploring.

  “Rhys.” It was barely an exhalation.

  He kissed his way to her ear, explored it with his tongue, then took the lobe in his teeth. No earring there. Nothing but nakedness. He bit gently, rested his elbow against the wall, shoving her a little farther forward, and got his other hand around her breast again. Round and full, the nipple hardening under his fingers the same way, he suspected, that it had all night.

  “I need to be . . . soft,” he said into her ear. “I know I do. And all I want is to fuck you against the wall.” Not exactly the kind of declaration he’d been planning, and he couldn’t help it. He squeezed her nipple some more, getting some rhythm into it, and she started breathing harder, rocking in the heels.

  “I’m . . . not . . . tall enough,” she got out. “Oh, that feels good. I’m going to . . . come. Please. Touch me.”

  He laughed, a huff of breath. “I told you, I’m here to take care of you.” His lips were still at her neck, his hand still at her breast, but finally, his other hand was tracing down her side, moving on down, and he’d swear she was holding her breath.

  He didn’t go straight inside her thong. He touched her outside it, because he’d been exactly right. It was the tiniest vee of black lace, and it was soaked.

  He said, “You were practically coming in front of your parents,” then rubbed the rough-edged fabric into her, and she squirmed under his hand, called out, and rested her forehead against the wall.

  The flames licked all the way up his body. And they burned.

  “Y-yes,” she managed to say. She was rocking now. “Oh. Do that. Do that. Please.”

  He kept it up, drove her up a little higher, and then, when she was making some noises that she couldn’t help a bit, he slipped his hand under there, painted her with her own slickness while she shifted and moaned, got his fingers on either side of that nub, and started to squeeze in time with his other hand, the one that was on her nipple.

  She was twisting. Trying to turn. Making some more noise. The pearls down her back swayed from side to side, her head was buried against her hands, and her entire body went taut. And just like that, she went off like a firecracker, jerking against his hand, crying out as the shudders took her and rolled her hard.

  He worked her through it while she shook and gasped, tried to say his name, and couldn’t get the word out. Then he picked her up by the hips, lifted her, knocked the shoes off the top of the low shelf against the wall with a single kick, yanked it out with his heel, and put her on top of it. And she bent over, put her palms on the white wall, her legs shaking, and waited.

  He didn’t even have to take off the thong, so he didn’t. He undid his zip, shoved the lace fabric of the thong aside, then had to put a finger inside her, just because there she was, so wa
rm and wet, needing him so much. She closed around him, put the crown of her head against the wall, writhed some, and said, “Rhys.”

  He wasn’t going to last nearly as long as he wanted to, once he was inside her. And he froze a second away from heaven. “Condom.”

  “I don’t care. Do it now.”

  He groaned. He’d been hard for so long, he ached, and all he wanted was to bury himself to the hilt in her. What he wanted from her was something savage, and he couldn’t care. “Birth control,” he got out. “I’m clean. I’m . . . I’ve been waiting. But . . .”

  “I want you to get me pregnant,” she said, and his breath caught in his throat, the darkness surged, and he was holding her hips, parting her, shoving his way slowly inside. “I want you to fill me up,” she said, and it was nearly a sob. “Come inside me. Do it now.”

  He did it. He couldn’t have done anything else. And she stood there in her heels and her pearls, braced herself against the wall, and took it.

  And when the sound of his breath was ragged in his ears, when he had one hand pulling her hips back into him, the other one inside the front of her thong again, and felt her going up with him? He said, “Say my name. Tell me who I am.” His voice was ragged, torn to pieces, and so was everything inside him.

  “Rhys.” It was barely a breath. “Rhys. I love you. I need you so much. Please. Do it now.”

  After that, she didn’t say anything at all. She shook, she shuddered, and she took him in, so deep and so hard, until he was piercing to the heart of her.

  A shade of red so dark, it was nearly black. Pleasure so sharp, it was nearly pain. An explosion so strong, he could hardly stand. And Zora underneath him, twisting, calling out with the force of it.

  Nothing but sin.

  They made it to bed eventually, but only because he carried her. He’d stripped off his clothes, finally, in the foyer, and when he put her on the bed, she was still in her shoes, her thong, and her pearls. She had her hand at the back of his neck, though, was pulling him down again, opening her mouth and welcoming the invasion of his tongue, the press of his big body over hers.

  He levered himself off her at last, dropped a gentle kiss between her breasts, then was all the way down her body, slipping off first one black heel, then the other, and holding her feet in his hands.

  “Red nail varnish,” he said, tracing his thumbs over her toes, making her shiver. “My favorite, but even darker. Even better.”

  “Crimson,” she said. “I saw at the Chanel counter when I was buying my dress. I bought it for you. It’s called ‘Dragon.’”

  His hands stilled. “You’re joking.”

  “No. It cost too much. I bought it anyway.”

  He grasped her left foot in one hand and pulled gently on each toe in turn. “Could hurt here. You aren’t used to a heel that high. Calves, too. Could have some cramp, eh.”

  “Mm.” She sighed. “Feels so good. Do that some more.”

  She could hear the smile in his voice, and his thumb was digging into the arch, making her moan with pleasure. “Seems to me you’ve said that to me before. I had a plan for tonight. I forgot it.”

  “And you don’t do that.” She had her other foot on his shoulder, pushing off there, arching her back with the relief of it as he rubbed his way up her calf and set in to massage the tight muscle.

  “No,” he said. “As soon as you kissed me, all I wanted was to be inside you.” He leaned forward, taking her leg with him, kissed her belly, then headed slowly on down, and she shuddered again. “I think you could come again right now.”

  “Depends how good the . . . massage is,” she said. “Do the other foot. Please.”

  Now, the amusement was right there on his dragon’s face. “Just because I love to please you,” he said, and set to work. Her toes, her arch, and her calf, taking his slow, sweet time, before he got his fingers under the skinny strap of the black lace thong and drew it down. He sighed, stroked his way down her thighs along with it, and said, “This was nice. This was what I wanted to see. I didn’t use a condom, though. I’m trying to be upset about that, and I can’t manage it. I don’t do that anymore, either. I reckon you’re going to have to take care of it, because I don’t seem to have enough control.”

  “You think I didn’t mean it,” she said. He was kissing her inner thighs, the rasp of stubble on his jaw and the dark silk of his hair thrillingly alien against her skin. “But I did. I meant it.”

  He came up on his elbows and stared at her, all his intensity back, before he pushed his way up her body, took her head in his hands, and said, “Tell me.”

  “I can’t . . .” She tried to look away, but he was still holding her head. “I wanted everything. I can’t even explain.” She tried to laugh, and couldn’t do that, either. “You’re not even just in my heart. You’re in my belly.” She put a hand over it. “Like a Maori, eh. My feelings for you are all the way inside my body. Belly deep. And I want all of you in me. I know it’s too reckless. I know it would be all wrong, make everything too complicated again, and too hard. It’s mad, and I can’t help it. I want it anyway.”

  He kissed her, slow and deep, then brushed his lips over one cheek, then the other, and said, “First time we made love, here in this bed, and I was still inside you, afterwards, I thought, You need to get out of her, mate, or you’ll get her pregnant, and I got this . . .” He sighed, then gave her one more gentle kiss. “This rush. Nearly out of control.”

  “And you don’t do that anymore.” Her hands were stroking over his shoulders, down his arms, wanting to touch all of him.

  “No. Nothing close. I thought it could be about Dylan.” His green-gold eyes looked into hers, troubled as the mountain air before the storm. “That it could be competition again. Some kind of claim I wanted to put on you. Some kind of stamp. That I want to put my baby in your belly for everybody to see. For you to see. For you to know. Like you said. Belly deep.”

  The thrill she got from that resonated all the way through her, exactly the way she’d told him. “Maybe it is,” she said, “and maybe it’s more than that. Maybe it’s got nothing to do with Dylan. Maybe it has to do with you and me. Maybe it has to do with riding your bike down that longest hill, lifting your hands into the air, and letting gravity take you over.”

  “Roller coaster.”

  “No,” she said. “That was how I felt with Dylan. Like I was carried away, almost . . . despite myself. This is different. This is right. This is us. I’ve got my hands in the air, but my legs and my belly are still working, and they’ve got me balanced. It’s too much of a thrill, it’s almost too much to take, but it’s right. It’s . . . inevitable. That’s how I feel.”

  He stared at her for a long moment, then kissed her again and said, “Yeh. That’s it. Bathsheba. Like there’s no choice. But all the same . . .”

  “Birth control,” she said, and sighed. “I know you’re right.”

  “I was going to say,” he said, with the faintest of smiles showing around his eyes, “that I want to marry you first. Or during. Or now.”

  What did you say to that? He was still over her, his hands in her hair, the energy all but pulsing out of his big frame.

  And the tension, too. Just because you were used to putting your body and your heart on the line, digging deep for every bit of strength you possessed when everything inside you wanted to shut down—that didn’t make it easy.

  If it were easy, everybody would have this kind of mana.

  She said, “I love you.” It seemed like a pretty good starting place. It also seemed like what he most needed to hear right now. What he most needed to know.

  She was right. Some of the tension left him, and he lowered his head, gently touched his forehead and nose to hers, and left it there for a long couple seconds, both of them inhaling together in a hongi.

  There was nothing he could have done, nothing he could have said, that could have made her feel more seen, or more respected. When he pulled back, she said, knowing her
voice wasn’t steady and deciding it didn’t matter, “Thank you.”

  “Not an answer.” He wasn’t going anywhere, either.

  “I should say it’s mad,” she said. “I can see . . . issues. To say the least.”

  “Maybe one of them is that the fella’s meant to do it better than that, and it doesn’t suggest that I’ll be brilliant going forward. It came out because I’ve had it there in my mind for weeks now, though that’s not much of an excuse. When I bought you these . . .” His hand traced over the pearls at her throat. “They were what I wanted to buy you, and they weren’t it at all. This feels sudden to you, maybe, but to me, it feels like a mountain I’ve been climbing forever. I’ve been going downhill almost as much as I’ve been going up, with no idea if I’d ever make it. Now, I’ve got to the top, and I want to do something about it. I’m hoping you’ll forgive me that I didn’t do it right. You’ve forgiven more than that.”

  She said, “I don’t care whether you do it right.” And she didn’t. She’d had the big gesture. She wanted the small ones.

  It was like he hadn’t heard her, because he was definitely looking worried. “I’ll give you everything. I promise. And I realize you’ve heard promises before, too. And I . . .” He rolled off her, onto his back. “I know my track record for keeping them isn’t what it should have been.”