Touch (The Pagano Family Book 2)

by Susan Fanetti

  She didn’t fucking know.

  With that thought, her gears started to slip. “You know what? I can’t do this. I don’t know what it is, but I can’t do it.” She raked her hands through her hair, pulling sharply, which held off the crazy a little. “I’m starting to freak out. I want you to go.”

  Again, he held his hands out in front of his chest. “Hey, easy. I’m sorry. I’m not trying to lie to you. But you’re asking questions I’m not sure I know how to answer.”

  “Are you fucking girls?! That’s yes or no! How do you not know the answer?! You’re fucking lying! You are!” Shit. She was losing it. And so fast. This sucked. “GET OUT!”

  She stormed past him into the kitchen and took a clean glass off the drainer. After pouring herself some juice, she grabbed her Xanax bottle from her encyclopedic drug cabinet and took a dose. She drank all the juice and then stood there, her eyes closed, leaning against the counter, counting backwards from five hundred.

  At four hundred thirteen, she heard Luca say, “Manny.”

  She opened her eyes; he was standing in the kitchen doorway. The Xanax bottle was still in her hand, so she threw it at him. He caught it one-handed, sweeping his arm through the air.

  “I told you to get out.”

  He walked into her kitchen and right up to her, setting the pills on the counter. He was maybe two inches away, but he didn’t touch her. She looked up at him. He was gorgeous, in a rough, he-man way that she really dug. He looked concerned. Maybe sorry. Not pissed or confused. “I want to talk. Straight up.”

  Now that her gears had meshed again and the Xanax was just starting to leech into her blood, she didn’t think she wanted him to go, not if he would be straight with her. “No bullshit?”

  “No bullshit. Straight talk.”

  “Okay.” She set her glass in the sink and walked around him, back out into her living room. Sitting on one end of her sofa, she watched him follow her into the room. “Okay. Let’s talk.”

  He sat down in the middle of the sofa, where he’d sat when they’d fucked. He was too close, but he didn’t try to touch her, so she made herself small and let him stay where he was.

  Her head was down, and he dipped his own so he could meet her eyes. “You asked if I was fucking a lot of girls. I have. The past few months, not as much, but I’ve been seeing three women—not regular, but often enough. Not serious—just fun. If you saw me with somebody yesterday, that was Lynne. We grew up together. We hook up when she’s not with anybody serious. Yesterday, we met up for an early surf. We’d made that plan before I brought you and your brother home the other night.”

  He stopped and just looked at her, and Manny realized that he was waiting for her to say something. She didn’t know what he expected her to say. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to say. It made her head feel fractured, this confusion. It was different, deeper, than the kind of confusion she normally felt in unfamiliar social situations. She actually felt nauseated.

  “I know I’m not supposed to feel bad about that. My mom says you didn’t do anything wrong.”

  He laughed, and she narrowed her eyes, trying to understand if he was mocking her. “Since we’re doing straight talk, I have to tell you—it freaks me out that you talked to your mom about me.”

  That gave her something to latch onto, and she felt her shoulders loosen a little. She sat back and considered him. “Why?”

  “Two reasons. One, telling the parents is not something that usually happens after the first date. I think that’s something that happens when things get serious. And two, I’m not really the kind of guy parents are thrilled their daughter is seeing. And it sounds like your mom already hates me.”

  “I don’t think that’s true. My mom doesn’t hate people. And my dad wants to meet you.”

  “Fuck, Manny. You told your dad, too? Christ!”

  He’d snapped at her, and she shrank even smaller, unable to adapt to his sudden change of tone. “Don’t yell! And I didn’t tell him. Dottie did. And don’t yell!”

  “Sorry. Sorry.” He took a breath. “Why did you talk to your folks?”

  “Because you confuse me, and they help me sort things out in my head. I told you. I don’t do that very well.”

  “Why do I confuse you? I’m trying to be as straight as I can be.”

  “I saw you with that girl, and I didn’t like how it made me feel. I’ve never done this, so I didn’t know if I was having a normal feeling or one of my crazy ones. So I asked my mom.”

  “You’ve never done what?”

  “Had a date.”

  He gaped at her. “That was your first date?”

  “Luca, come on. You think dating is something I would do? I feel like I’m lost in some kind of wilderness here. You know how I told you I have mental flashcards?” He nodded. “Well, none of them seem to apply.”

  “You weren’t…” He swallowed. “A virgin?”

  “No! I popped my cherry when I was sixteen, the last time I was in the funhouse. I have sex. But I just tell the guy I want to fuck, and then we fuck. That’s not a date. That’s just fucking.”

  “I have honestly never met a woman anything at all like you before.” He laughed and wiped his hands over his face. “Damn, little bit. I’d’ve done it up better if I’d known it was your first date ever.”

  “I think that’s a lie. I think you wouldn’t’ve asked at all.”

  “You don’t know that. I don’t know that. That’s you jumping to conclusions again. For somebody who needs so much honesty, you’re quick to judge on short evidence.”

  “I have lots of evidence that people lie.”

  “But I don’t lie, Manny. Not without damn good reason. And I don’t like being judged with the crowd.”

  “Sorry.” She wasn’t feeling all that sorry, but she knew that was what she was supposed to say. What she was feeling was a strong desire for this conversation to be over so she could decree her experiment in romance a failure and get on about finding a home for the funky little blown-glass dolphin that was her treasure among her new treasures. “And anyway, you lied about passing by.”

  “That wasn’t a lie. The truth doesn’t have an answer, so that was as close as I could get. The truth is that I don’t know why I was here. I just found myself here. I was thinking about you while I was riding, and I just ended up in front of your place.”

  “Oh. You were thinking about me?”

  “Yeah. And I guess you’ve been thinking about me.”

  “Yeah.”

  His hand moved toward her thigh, but he stopped and dropped it back on his own thigh. Then he crossed his arms over his chest. “When you saw me with Lynne, what were you feeling?”

  “I was jealous. Which is stupid, I know that. We just fucked once. Nothing to be jealous about if you fucked somebody else right after.”

  “I didn’t fuck her.”

  Manny bit back the accusation on her tongue that he was lying again. Instead, she said, “No? But…why not?”

  “I was going to. She wanted to. But I couldn’t get it done. I was still thinking about watching you bounce on my lap the night before, and I couldn’t get interested in what was there in front of me at the time. First time in my life my johnson wasn’t ready to play, and that’s a damn fact. She’s pissed, too, so for all I know, all of the Cove knows that Luca Pagano had a dead eel in his wetsuit.”

  Manny laughed, and once she started, she found that she couldn’t stop. The image of a dead eel in Luca’s wetsuit had come over in her oddly-wired head in literal terms, with a mouth, a lolling tongue, and little Xs for eyes.

  But he did not share her humor. He was scowling, and that was quite obviously anger. “It’s the opposite of funny, bit.”

  Her laughter dried up, and this time, when she said, “Sorry,” she meant it. She was quiet a minute, trying to sort her thoughts. They wouldn’t sort. Not enough cubbies, not enough flash cards. “I’m still confused, Luca.”

  “Sugar, you and me both. That’s why
you have to give me some leash. I’ll be honest with you, I promise, but sometimes I’m just guessing at the answer. A guess isn’t a lie.”

  “Why does it matter? Why make me a promise?”

  “I’m thinking about you. You’re thinking about me. Maybe there’s something here.”

  “But I’m crazy. And I have no fucking idea what I’d be like in a…something. I don’t even know if I can handle it at all. Early reports aren’t encouraging.”

  “Well. I’m pretty stable. And tough. Got a couple of good shoulders. And you know what? I don’t think we’re that far apart with this stuff. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, either. I never had a girlfriend.”

  “What? But that’s…you’re in your thirties! At least I have an excuse! That kind of makes you a loser, doesn’t it?” Oh, fuck. That was a shitty thing to say.

  And he made a face. But then he chuckled. “Ow, little bit. You could turn down the brutality on that honesty, if you wanted.”

  “Sorry. My mouth runs away.”

  “I know. Not the first time it’s come after me.”

  She felt her cheeks heat up, and she dropped her head, staring down at her hands. “What just happened here, Luca?”

  For second after second, he was quiet. When Manny looked back up, Luca was watching her, his face…still. She didn’t know what it meant. Then he smiled a little, one corner of his mouth tucking back. “I don’t know. I think we decided to try to be together.”

  “Why do you want that? To be with me?”

  He shifted on the sofa so he has facing her. “I’m not ducking the question, but let’s turn it around first. Why do you want to be with me?”

  “I…” She couldn’t look at him and think of the answer at the same time, so she turned to the table at the side of the sofa and picked up a little Hummel figurine of a girl playing a concertina and looked at that instead, rubbing her thumb over its smooth face. The black polish on her thumbnail was half worn away. “I like you. I like the way you talk to me. I think you’re honest, and that makes you easier to read than most people. And you’re hot. Plus, it’s not like applicants are lined up. Nobody’s ever asked before.”

  He laughed. “You sure know how to keep a guy humble.”

  She didn’t catch his meaning, but when she cocked her head, ready to say so, he took the Hummel away from her. His thumb grazed hers, and she pulled back, just a little, before she caught the reaction and made herself settle. But he’d noticed, she could tell. Without touching her again, he leaned over her to set the figurine on the table, in the place it had been, and then sat back.

  Then he answered the question. “My answer’s pretty much the same. I think that’s probably a normal reason to want to spend time with somebody—you like they way they look, and you like talking to them.”

  “So we’re only fucking each other? Nobody else?”

  “Well, I guess it would be more than just fucking. But yeah. Just each other. You good with that?”

  “Are you? Even with my thing about touching?”

  “Straight up, Manny, I hope that changes. I want to touch you so bad it feels like my hands are gonna come through my skin. But I can wait. I wish I understood it better, but I can wait.”

  She thought she had a way to help him understand. It had worked on the few other people she’d bothered to explain it to. More importantly, it was the way she thought about it herself. She had lots of visual metaphors for the ways her mind worked. “How do you feel about spiders?”

  “Please?”

  “Spiders. Arachnids. How do you feel about them?”

  His forehead creased again, but he answered. “Uh, I guess…not great. I mean, I’m not a girl about ‘em, but I’d rather not have ‘em crawling on me. That threw me a curve.” He looked up. “I got one dangling over my head or something?”

  She laughed—he, in fact, looked a little scared to her as he scanned the ceiling. “No, but that’s how touch feels to me. When somebody touches me, even if I’m ready for it, my body does that thing when a spider is crawling on you. When I’m not ready, it’s like the spider’s feet are electrified.”

  Shock was what she saw on his face now. “Damn, little bit. That’s fucking awful. Even when I ate you out, it felt like that?”

  “At first, yeah. But then what you were doing felt too intense for me to feel anything but that. But you can’t constantly be making me come—and I can’t do, like, foreplay, because it’s all spiders at first, and it gets in my way so I can’t get to the coming. It worked the other night because I could watch you and be ready, and also because you just went for it. With your mouth, and not your hands.”

  His eyebrows went up. “So I could do that again.”

  “Like that, where I can see everything, yeah. Probably. But I have to be ready, and I have to see, and that still doesn’t mean I’ll ever be good with other touches. Even my folks can’t touch me. Only Dimi has ever been able to touch me without the creepies. So I don’t know if it’ll ever be good for me for you to touch me. But I can get better about dealing with it.”

  “Fuck. That’s…that’s not what I want. I don’t want you gritting your teeth so I can touch you. I want you to want it.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t promise that.” She smiled and put her hand on his chest. He was wearing a black button-down shirt instead of a t-shirt. He looked nice. The top buttons were undone, and she hooked her fingers into the open space, scratching lightly. The hair on his chest tickled her fingers, in a good way. “But I can touch you. I like touching you.”

  The light in his eyes changed. The green in them was like the green of the lamb’s ears plants in Dottie’s garden. “I like that, too. I like watching you fuck me. I really do. But I’m gonna hold out hope that you’ll want me to touch you someday.”

  Manny didn’t share that hope, and she wondered if it mattered more than Luca seemed to realize, but she could no longer sustain this conversation. Her brain was worn out. “You want to fuck now?”

  “I do.” His grin was wide, and his eyes were intense, and, reading desire in the way he stared at her, Manny relaxed at last.

  She asked with a smirk, “Is your eel alive?”

  He laughed and gestured at his crotch. “Grab hold and see for yourself.”

  She did, and it most certainly was.

  She stood up and smiled down at him, toeing off her sneakers and grabbing the bottom of her t-shirt.

  “Leave the stockings on,” he murmured as she pulled her shirt over her head. When she was clear of the fabric, she saw him watching, his eyes half-lidded.

  “Okay.” As she dropped her skirt and underwear, he dug a condom out of his jeans and then stripped without bothering to get up from the sofa.

  As before, she knelt between his legs, and he dropped the condom packet to the sofa cushion and spread his arms across the backrest, gripping a corner in each hand. The position made the muscles in his neck, shoulders, and chest bunch in a way that gave her good tingles in low places. Most of the guys she knew were thin, pasty punks and hipsters, and all of the guys she’d been with before had been of that type. Luca was as big as three of those guys. His body was like something out of an anatomy textbook, with every conceivable muscle in evidence, including the ones on his hips, which were thick enough that she could grab hold of them if she wanted. His skin was olive, and suntanned to boot, and it made his eyes sort of glow.

  Especially when he was looking at her like he was now.

  His cock was wicked huge. Like somebody-call-Guinness huge. And he’d filled her and stretched her and reached places in her that had never been reached before. But he hadn’t hurt her—quite the contrary. She supposed it was stupid to have been afraid of it. The female body was built for that same place to squeeze out a whole person—not that she’d ever do that.

  She felt bad that she couldn’t let him touch her the way he wanted, so she tried to make it up to him in the only way she could think of—to touch him as much as possible, so he could fe
el her that way. With her hands on his ankles, kneeling before him, she worked her way up his legs, kneading and caressing as she went. His legs were as thick and muscular as everything else. He was a fucking perfect male specimen. In her eyes, at least.

  She lingered over his scarred knee, fascinated by the raised ropes of hardened skin. Without thinking much about it, she kissed it, running her studded tongue over the scars. He moaned and dropped his head back. Because he hadn’t flinched, she decided that he liked it, so she kissed her way up the inside of his right thigh, her hand kneading the path her mouth had blazed. Then she repeated the journey on his left leg. By the time she got to the top, the muscles in his legs were rigid with tension, and his chest was rising and falling in a deep, heavy rhythm.