That evening, I sat again in my apartment and tried to compose, but once again I couldn’t concentrate. Before, I’d been distracted by thoughts of Connor’s body, of his hands on me. Now, I couldn’t stop thinking about how he’d opened up to me. I was starting to see his cocky, confident persona in a whole new light.
Did the girls he dated—or maybe dated was the wrong word, given the time his relationships seemed to last. The girls he slept with—did they ever get to see the real him? Or did he keep up the pretence the whole time, convincing them that he didn’t care about anything—not his grades, not his future—nothing except the next party? And if that was the case….
If he’d concealed his insecurities for all these years, was it possible that he was concealing other things, too? Like an ability to actually care about someone, instead of just having a series of one night stands?
I caught myself. This was ridiculous—I was like a schoolgirl with a crush, seeing things that weren’t there. Connor had a reputation for a reason. Okay, maybe he wasn’t quite as arrogant as he seemed, once you got to know him, but he still wasn’t someone it would be smart to get involved with. Not that I’d want to get involved with him anyway…right?
My cell phone rang, and the screen showed Natasha’s smiling face. Normally, I’d have begrudged the interruption, but that night I practically snatched up the phone to answer.
“Nat!” I said warmly, unable to stop myself grinning. She was exactly what I needed to take my mind off Connor and the recital.
And then everything twisted around and I closed my eyes in guilt. She was crying.
Chapter 9
Natasha was standing in the doorway of her apartment, waiting for me. She led me straight through the lounge and down the hall to the bathroom.
Scattered on the tiles were several razor blades, some dressings and alcohol wipes and the vintage cigarette case she kept them all in. Her old cutting kit.
I could feel a yawning chasm open up beneath me. I was so ridiculously out of my depth it was untrue. This was a job for Clarissa, with her cool, calm efficiency. Or Jasmine, with her worldliness. But me?! I was the geeky one, the inexperienced one. What the hell did I know about this stuff?
Natasha was standing frozen in the doorway, looking like she might throw up at any moment. I had to do something.
Get it out of sight, I thought, and started picking everything up and tidying it away. I considered dumping the whole lot in the bin, but I knew it wasn’t that simple. When it was gone, Natasha seemed to relax a little. I led her by the hand into the lounge.
“Start at the beginning,” I told her. That seemed like a safe thing to say.
She shook her head in disbelief. “I haven’t cut since we got together,” she told me. “Months and months. But….”
I forced myself to shut up and wait.
“He hasn’t been sleeping. Every night, he has these nightmares. He lies there awake and he thinks I don’t know….”
I remembered Darrell at the party, sitting down in the workshop. “Have you talked to him?”
She shook her head.
“Nat, you have to. I mean, I don’t know much about relationships, but—”
She shook her head again. “I think—If I try to change things….” She sighed. “It’s like—Look, when we got together, that felt like a chance in a million. We were right for each other, and it was magical, and it all worked and—Now it feels like it’s a house of cards. They all fell into place by sheer fluke, and it’s horribly, horribly fragile. If we even breathe wrong, it’s all going to collapse.”
I bit my lip. “But that means you can’t talk about stuff. And you’re worried about him….”
She nodded.
“And you’re getting more and more stressed about it, and that’s why you cut?”
She nodded, tears welling up in her eyes. “Just once,” she said in a tiny voice. “It didn’t even make me feel better, it made me feel worse. But now he’ll see it, and he’ll worry, and I don’t want to worry him again, and—”
She descended into tears and I shushed her and hugged her close. What would Clarissa do? I thought desperately. I’d just have to fill in as best I could. “Look,” I said. “I don’t know if I’m the best one to give advice, but….”
Natasha looked at me, tears in her eyes, hanging on my every word, and I felt sick with fear. What if I tell her the wrong thing, and they break up and it’s all my fault?
“First of all, I think you two need to talk. You two are the only ones who can fix things.” That was safe enough, right? It was the sort of advice I read in women’s magazines, and it was less likely to wreak havoc than if I got directly involved myself.
Natasha shook her head. “But…I don’t know what to say. It feels like we need something, like—new ways of coping. And I’ve got no idea what they should be.”
I so desperately wanted to help her, but I was the least knowledgeable person in the world when it came to men. Whatever I told her would be wrong. “Have you thought about the two of you going for therapy?”
She shook her head firmly. “He’s not ready, and I know I’m not. He’s the only person I’ve told everything to. I haven’t even told Clarissa everything.” She looked up at me guiltily. “I haven’t even told you.”
I nodded. “That’s fine. I understand.” I took a deep breath. My mind was racing with ideas, things I could suggest…and I didn’t dare voice a single one of them.
“Just talk to him,” I told her at last. “You’ll figure it out.”
She sniffed and nodded, and the fact she’d accepted my non-advice just made me more uneasy. I felt like I’d stepped back when I should have stepped up.
Natasha took a deep, shuddering breath and wiped her eyes. “I’m okay,” she said.
It sounded like she was trying to reassure herself as much as me. Neither of us was convinced.
***
We sat on the couch for a half hour, steering the conversation steadily further and further from dangerous waters. We passed through relationships, then Fenbrook, then Flicker, then our favorite movie-themed drinks, and from there it was an easy jump onto the safe dry land that was movies. We decided to make a night of it, and Natasha started browsing Netflix while I went to order pizza.
Searching around the hallways of Natasha’s apartment for cell service, I saw the glow of a laptop screen through the half-open door of Clarissa’s room. Ordering online seemed radically more sensible than spelling out the address to a harassed pizza shop worker over a bad connection, and Clarissa wouldn’t mind. I ducked into her room and sat down at the desk.
I fired up a browser and Googled for pizza. Address. Crust. Toppings. “Nat,” I called, “What do you want on the pizza?”
“Umm….” I could tell from the way she drew it out that her brain was buried deep in Netflix. “Give me a minute….”
I sighed and sat there patiently…for about five seconds. I’ve never been good at waiting. On the other hand, I didn’t want to hassle Natasha when she was in such a fragile state.
There was something else running on Clarissa’s laptop. A media player, minimized to the taskbar. I clicked on it, curious as to what movie she’d been watching.
It popped up to full screen, and I drew in my breath as I saw it was porn. A blonde-haired woman lay on her back, her long legs wrapped around the long-haired man who lay atop her. Both were completely naked, their faces turned away from the camera.
I let a little smirk creep over my face. Not that it was all that weird, Clarissa watching porn, but—
Wait.
Clarissa’s room was dark, apart from the glowing laptop screen, so I hadn’t really taken a good look at it. But the bed in the movie looked very familiar….
I switched on the desk lamp and looked at the bed, just a few feet from me. Same covers. Same wall behind it. I looked at the couple on the screen and bit my lip in shock.
I hit Play without thinking and Clarissa’s loud gasp exploded around t
he room. I scrambled for the volume control and muted it.
“What was that?” called Natasha from the lounge.
“I saw the pizza prices!” I shouted back. “Hurry up and decide what you want!”
On screen, Neil was thrusting hard into Clarissa, laying kisses along her cheek and then taking possession of her open, gasping mouth. She was wearing a necklace I’d never seen before, a beautiful silver chain with delicate crystalline shards hanging from it.
This is wrong, I thought. This is twisted. They’re my friends.
Neil took hold of Clarissa’s legs and pushed them back, folding her, knees to her chest. For the first time, I got a good look at his cock. Dear God, he was enormous! I felt the heat rise in my face as I watched it sink into her. God, wouldn’t it hurt, being…spread like that? In my mind, even though I knew it was wrong, it was me lying on the bed, me crushed under his weight, me whose nipples his mouth was slathering, hard buds shining in the dim light….
I hit the Play button again to pause it and quickly swapped back to the browser. I was almost panting, my eyes wide. I wasn’t sure which shocked me more: them making the video, or me watching it.
I need to leave, I thought. Just leave. Then I won’t be tempted to watch any more.
“Nat!” I called in a strangled voice. “I need to order. What do you want?”
“OK, sorry. Give me two secs.”
I stared fixedly at the pizza order. I didn’t even look at the video controls, so tempting and clickable and—
No one will ever know.
I clicked “Play,” and then drew my breath in as I saw that there was another half hour of the video to go. Surely they didn’t…God, solidly? For a half hour? I jumped forward—
Neil on his back with Clarissa on top, her breasts bouncing and swaying as she rode him. I clicked forward again—
Clarissa on her knees, her mouth tightly closed around Neil’s cock. I stabbed clumsily for the button, feeling drunk, my face hot—
Clarissa bent forward on the bed, just as I’d been in my fantasy after the party, her breasts grazing the covers as Neil thrust into her from behind—
The door opened behind me. I killed the movie window with a split-second to spare.
“Let’s go for good old-fashioned pepperoni,” Natasha told me. Then, looking at my reddened face, “What?”
“Nothing,” I squeaked. Then, because that didn’t sound very convincing, “A porn site popped up.”
“Oh, Karen.” She kissed the top of my head. “Bless your innocence.”
***
A week went by. Connor and I started to rehearse every day, at his place and—with a lot of persuasion—in the practice rooms at Fenbrook. I got used to the rooftop, after the first few times. I’d bring coffee from Starbucks and we’d sit there alternating playing with warming our hands on the cardboard cups. Once you got over the shock, playing outdoors looking over the city was sort of…liberating. We practiced the first two sections—mine and his—until they shone, and we started to sound good. The way Connor would change the odd note here and there each time drove me nuts, and I had to beg and plead with him before he gave me a written score, but I started to get a very tentative feeling that just maybe we could pull it off.
I asked him every time I saw him how his classes were going. We each had a big essay on Stravinsky to complete, and whenever I asked him about it he got sullen and evasive. Eventually, I had to stop badgering him for fear of making him give up completely.
It was four days before I could speak to Clarissa without going beet-red, and it was lucky that I didn’t run into Neil during that time. Every time his name was mentioned, I could see his tan body against her paler one, his muscled ass tight as he thrust into her from behind. My guilt of having invaded their privacy by watching it was nothing compared to my guilt over how it had made me feel. It wasn’t them, as such—I wasn’t turned on by Neil, or Clarissa, or even the two of them together. It was the raw, hot nature of it, the realness of it. I couldn’t stop thinking about how it would feel to be taken like that.
And that thought brought me back to Connor and the fact that, despite still not being sure if I even liked him, he haunted my every waking thought.
Not just my waking thoughts, either. Midway through the week, I had the dream.
Chapter 10
Interlude – Karen’s Dream
Shafts of summer sunlight were lancing down from the windows, catching dust motes that betrayed the servants’ laziness. Under my dress, my corset held me tighter than any lover, forcing me to focus on every shallow breath.
As I fanned myself against the heat, there was a commotion at the door. A man in strange, tight blue trousers and a shining black jacket burst in.
“My apologies, Lady Karen,” panted my butler, clutching the arm he’d injured in the war. “I couldn’t stop him.”
“That’s perfectly alright, Daniel,” I told him, making a mental note to fire him. “I’m sure you did your best. Sir! Explain yourself!”
He walked closer, swaggering in his heavy black boots. Perhaps he was one of the workmen repairing the roof in the east wing. My heart fluttered as I remembered how some of the brutes had attempted to catch glimpses of me undressing through my bedroom window.
He was still coming. “Sir! I must protest!” I said, noting the muddy boot prints he was leaving across the marble. The poor maid would be on her knees for hours.
He didn’t stop, and there was a dark gleam in his eyes now. Fourteen generations of good breeding gave me the strength to stand my ground. “Sir! Please!”
He stopped only when he stood so close to me that I could feel the heat radiating from his body. With one finger, he lifted my chin and stared down at me with blazing eyes that sent a strange ripple through my body.
I opened my mouth to say, “Sir!” again, but suddenly his lips were upon me, and to my horror his tongue was demanding entrance to my mouth. My fists beat weakly against his back for a moment, but then I felt myself go limp in his arms. He caught me easily as I swooned, hoisting me up in his arms.
“Will there be anything else, Lady Karen?” my butler asked as the man carried me up the stairs.
I hung there limply, eyes half-closed and arms thrown out over my head. “No…” I managed.
In my room, he threw me on the bed, duck down pillows bouncing onto the floor. He stripped my dress from my helpless body as I writhed, caught between passion and protest, his boots dirtying the sheets. He lay kisses on me as he worked, and by the time he had me twisting and thrashing in just my corset and underthings, I was quite beside myself. “Sir!” I gasped as his lips found my heaving bosom, “I am not that sort of woman! You mistake me for Lady Natasha, or Lady Clarissa, or Jasmine, the town harlot!”
He spoke, at last, and his accent seemed very far from England. “Karen,” he growled. “Karen!”
With deft hands, he loosened the laces of my corset and stripped it off, my naked breasts throbbing in the cool air. He feasted on them, his tongue finding my nipples as I gasped and trembled beneath him. He stripped me of my undergarments and I threw one hand over my eyes to shut out the sight of my coming ravishment. But I could not deny the way my traitorous body was reacting to his expert touch, and a second later I lifted my hands to gaze up at him.
He was already naked, and I gasped anew at the sight of him, his manhood like that of a proud stallion. “But Sir!” I told him. “I am a—”
No. I could not bring myself to tell him. He must not know that he was about to plunder my maidenhood. He was no doubt used to far more worldly women.
And then he was running his palms over my pale, trembling thighs and I realized even his hands were filthy, marring my noble body forever. But I didn’t care, the spiraling energy that coursed through my body with his every touch robbing me of any sense. His hands slid up to cup my breasts and I groaned, arching my body towards him like some cheap whore.
He was already hard, I saw. Hard and throbbing and ready to
rob me of that which I had kept for so long. “Sir!” I begged, “Be gentle!” But a part of me didn’t want that, didn’t want the delicate touch of a gentleman, and I spread my thighs wantonly for his entry.
He thrust inside me and I threw back my head and groaned. His weight settled between my open legs as he began to move, each inch a tight, silken delight…and I could protest no longer. “Sir!” I gasped, head thrashing on the pillows, “Sir! Take me! Take me!”
“Yes,” said Connor.
***
I sat bolt upright with a gasp that sucked in half the air in the room. My darkened bedroom was cool, but my body was damp with sweat, the t-shirt I’d been sleeping in stuck to my heaving bosom—
Heaving breasts, I corrected.
I slid from the bed and found my legs were shaking. When I reached down, my lips were puffy and slick.
I staggered through to the bedroom and turned on the light. The sight of own disbelieving, panting face in the mirror was enough to bring it home to me.
I couldn’t deny it any longer. I was firmly in lust with Connor Locke.
Chapter 11
He wasn’t there.
I sat in the lecture theater looking at his empty seat, one finger swirling round and round on the touchpad of my laptop. There were a million reasons why he might not have shown up for Geisler’s class: he might be off auditioning for some bar gig, he might be sleeping off a hangover, or he might have talked some actress into a torrid liaison and still be in her bed. That last one made my mind begin to wander. Probably they’d been at it all night and they were still dozing, him spooning her from behind, his strong arms wrapped protectively around her—
I pushed the image away. There was another reason why he might have chosen not to show up, and it was the one that worried me most.
Geisler called an end to the lecture and asked us to pick up our essays as we left. I packed away my things at the slowest pace I possibly could, eventually resorting to dropping my pen three times to ensure I was the last one to leave. He handed me my essay as I left, a red A circled in the top corner.
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