by Toby Neal
Chapter 26
He lies beside me, and returning to awareness of the here and now, I smell the faint, sweet smell of cut pine clinging to his skin and hair, along with the musky scent of us. My hand, indolent and possessive, wanders over his chest while his strums my ribs gently.
To stop touching each other is to know this is over, this precious, forceful, incredible first time. I’m afraid. Afraid he will push me away now that his thirst is slaked. Now that I’ve taken him off guard, broken through his defenses, and had my way with him. Because I know I’m responsible for what has just happened, for bowling him over. I don’t regret it but I’m afraid he’ll suddenly get up and walk away, or just point a finger at the door and tell me to leave.
Connor, my boyfriend, did that at least half the times we were together. He’d screw me, because I’ll never call what we did making love, and sometimes he’d just point his chin at the door afterward, his eyes hooded, and if I was too slow gathering my clothes, he’d even push me to get me moving faster.
I shut my eyes on those humiliating memories, letting myself sink deeper into the mattress, which is surprisingly good quality, deep and supportive but firm. The sheets smell fresh and crisp. I try not to think of his mother making up the bed for his return. I’m afraid of her too.
I keep my eyes closed so I can enjoy the way Magnus’s fingers stroke along my skin, wander up my sternum and finally circle my nipple, pulling it into a tight, sensitized, hard point.
My breath hitches, and I pay him back by doing the same to his nipple. He sucks a breath. His voice is a rumble in the deep chest beside me. “I really need to shower.”
“Me too.” So we get up together, our hands still on each other, and in the narrow stall, under an inadequate stream of warmish water, we explore each other more fully.
He is so wonderfully made, this man with the almost-black eyes. I fill my hands with shampoo and wash his hair. At first he bends his head forward so I can reach it, and I use my thumbs to rub the base of his skull while working the suds into the thick black length with my fingertips as he moans at the good feeling. Finally, he lets me turn him, and straightens up, and I rinse the suds out and slide my hands up and down the hard, brown length of his body, slipping and sliding over the contoured muscles and strange scars there. Some look like cuts, and one near his shoulder is a divot of lighter-colored flesh.
“This is a bullet hole,” I say in shock, tracing it with a fingertip. “Who shot you?”
He doesn’t answer, just captures my questing hand in his and turns me to face the shower wall.
And this time when he presses against me, I feel him want me again, and he bites the back of my neck and it sends a thrill rippling down my spine and my core melts in a heated flush of readiness for him. He doesn’t enter me yet, though. Instead he turns washing me into foreplay, a delicious, torturous exploration with lips and tongue and teeth, and intermittently, soap.
“Open your legs,” he says, and I do, and he works me from behind until I come against the wall of the shower surround, my cries of helpless pleasure drowned in the flow of water and swallowed by his mouth on mine.
Only then does he turn me and lift me, entering me and pumping into me as I slide up and down the wall, my hands on his shoulders, helpless and gasping, overwhelmed with feeling and sensation, tears mixing with the cooling flow of the shower.
He pulls out at the last minute and I feel his deep shudder of release against my side, the water washing it instantly away. I have a weird sense of loss as I breathe in the damp place between his neck and shoulder. I want to have him totally in me, bare and completely mine. All of it, everything. Maybe when I’m on birth control. . .
I can hardly stand after that. He moves my heavy, sated body out of the shower, wraps me in a capacious towel, and carries me back to bed. He gets in with me, and we pull the covers up and fall asleep.
I wake to the feeling of Whiskey’s tongue on my face.
I push him away. “No, boy! Ew.” I sit up, and the covers fall to my waist. Magnus is at the stove, and he turns to me, a spatula in hand. He grins.
“Your hair. Maybe we should have dried it or something.”
“I have a shoot the day after tomorrow, so no worries. The hairdresser will have something to work on.” I push the snarled, damp, frizzing mass of locks back behind my shoulder.
“Eggs? I got home yesterday and haven’t had time to shop. Found some of these out in the coop this morning.”
Got home from where? But I don’t say it. I know he won’t answer, and I don’t want to pop this delicate bubble we’re in.
“Smells great. Yes, thanks.” I draw my knees up under my chin, the sheet modestly draped, and watch him at the stove as Whiskey leans against me from one side of the bed.
I enjoy the quick economy of his movements, the sun shining on his thick tumble of hair and bare torso. He’s pulled on a pair of jeans and that’s all, and I like just looking at him.
He brings me the plate of eggs. They have canned chilies mixed in, and salt and pepper, and as we sit eating in bed, I think I haven’t tasted anything better in my life.
When we’re done, he sets the plates on the floor and Whiskey licks them. He lies back, and tugs my hair so that I lie back too. I pillow my head in the notch between his collarbone and the bulge of his shoulder. Almost idly, his hand plays with my hair.
“You seduced me,” he says meditatively. “I would dare a saint to resist how you got off that bike and shook that hair out over your leathers.”
“I did seduce you. What happened is all on me. And thank you for the compliment, I think.”
“We shouldn’t be together.”
“I’ve never understood why not. You underestimate me.”
“I guess that much is true.” His hand turns my chin toward him, and I look up into his face. His dark eyes hold just as many secrets as before. “Now what are we going to do?”
“Keep having amazing sex as often as possible?” I know I sound too hopeful.
Magnus chuckles, but it’s sad. “I’m afraid not. Because, Pearl, nothing has changed.”
Chapter 27
Pearl
I ride my Harley through the earliest stain of new day. The air is chilly, and cuts across my leathers, finding every seam and the crannies around my neck and wrists, slicing across my tender, heated skin. I would normally have other clothes on underneath, but not this time. All I’m wearing is the tiny bra and panties set I put on yesterday, hoping to seduce Magnus Thorne.
I succeeded. The underwear is a little worse for wear, and now, heading home, there’s nothing much between me and the early-morning cold but one layer of black leather.
There’s little traffic so early on a Sunday morning, so I can flatten out between my handlebars and really put down some speed, weaving in and out of the few cars on the road, the roar of the Superlow’s engine, the absorbing feel of the power between my legs, the beauty of the wide-open bridge over the Charles River into Boston almost enough to distract me from my second broken heart from the same man.
Magnus Thorne.
I wish his name was something ordinary. Ignorable. Like Matt, or Doug maybe. I can’t imagine someone named Doug being able to eviscerate me.
The pain of our breakup feels fatal but distant, like I got my head chopped off but neither my head nor my body has quite gotten the message yet.
I crank on some more gas. Traffic has begun to clog going into the Massachusetts Avenue tunnel, but I don’t slow down.
I need the challenge of trying to weave between the vehicles without slowing, to hold off that pain just a little longer.
I roar under the familiar billboard that marked my modeling debut two years ago. Two years that feels like a lifetime. Two years that have taken me from being a hick teenager from Saint Thomas to international fame as a supermodel. Two years in which I grew up a lot, and took some responsibility, and owned my addiction and faced my past.
Not that any of it made a bit of
difference to Magnus. That fame. That growth. Or that past, either.
A car switches lanes without signaling ahead of me, and I brake.
Too hard.
The bike swerves, cranking to the side, and I’m in danger of laying it down right in front of a Mack truck. I see the driver’s eyes wide and mouth open at what he can’t prevent sliding right up into his grill—but as I’m going down, I hit the gas, just a little, and downshift to first, and the bike pulls out of the slide as the tires catch in acceleration.
But there’s hardly anywhere to go between the vehicles, and I barrel into the tight space between two cars moving parallel. I clip my handlebars on one of the mirrors. That almost spins me out again but I manage to get ahead of both cars and into a lane, moving at a more reasonable speed.
My whole body, amped with adrenaline, bursts out in sweat at the near miss.
We’re still in the Mass Avenue tunnel, and I throw back my head and howl—a wail of anguish and pain, of determination to survive and go on in spite of it. I scream again, and it bounces around in the tunnel and makes children strapped into car seats glance at me with startled eyes.
I don’t care that people are looking. I never have. But now I’m done with my crazy fit of angst. And for just today, I resolve not to use any substances to numb my pain. I can do this.
I’ve just had my heart ripped out by the roots, but it’s my own damn fault. I knew what I was getting into, seducing Magnus Thorne.
I drive more sanely into the Back Bay neighborhood where my sister Ruby and her hunky husband Rafe have a dignified old brownstone he inherited from his blueblood family.
I’m also done hiding my bike as of today. Until now I’ve kept it elsewhere in a locked storage unit. No, today’s a day for revelations, and my sister and her husband can find out I’ve owned and driven a Harley for the last two years.
I turn into the narrow alley between buildings and find the garage I’ve never parked the bike in before. It’s a small garage that only holds two cars. Rafe has a bigger storage facility where he keeps his car collection. Still, the Superlow’s not a huge bike, and I know I can cram it in between the antique Jag Ruby drives and Rafe’s Mercedes.
I park the bike, unlock the garage with my house key, hit the button and roll the bike in between their cars, all the way to the front where there’s an open area.
I take off my helmet and shake out my famous hair.
It’s a waist-length mess of snarls and frizz from the shower Magnus and I took.
Oh, that shower.
The memory of him moving in me, sliding me up and down the wall of the surround, my hands on his shoulders, my legs around his waist as he held me by the ass—it engulfs, arouses and devastates me.
That memory will have to sustain me.
The upshot was that my hair got a whole lot of action it wasn’t used to, and no product, and no styling, and it’s doing what long, naturally-curly hair does when it’s subjected to such indignities.
I have a shoot tomorrow. The hairdresser can deal with it. I hang the helmet off the handlebars of the bike and walk in the back door.
Mrs. Knightly, the housekeeper, something of an auntie to me, jumps in surprise as I enter the house from a different direction than usual.
“Miss Pearl! What is that outfit you’re wearing? Very dashing!”
“Thanks,” I say, without elaboration. “Got any ice cream?”
“Yes, I do. Mr. Rafe brought some home recently. But I thought you were supposed to be counting calories?” she lets her voice trail off delicately, eyeing me over her half glasses.
“It’s an emergency. If anyone calls, I’m not at home. I’ll be up in the bath, with my ice cream.” I brush past her to the big silver Sub-Zero fridge, so yuppie I could puke, and take out the whole pint of designer ice cream, a brand called Ben and Jerry’s. “Cherry Garcia? I’ll take it.”
I head for the great swooping staircase that ascends from the black and white checkered marble entryway. I am intent on first aid for a broken heart: loads of ice cream calories eaten in a hot bath will have to take the place of drinking, drugs, or sex.
In the huge jet-ringed tub, bubbles up to my neck and Cherry Garcia melting on my tongue, I let myself think about Magnus breaking up with me.
I wasn’t brave about it last night, or the first time he did it to me, two years ago. After our second round of lovemaking, in the sweet afterglow, he told me nothing had changed.
“I had good reasons two years ago not to sleep with you. You were a teenager, and just getting clean. Now those reasons aren’t as important, but my work is. I can’t talk about it, I can’t share anything about it, and it requires that I’m randomly gone for extended periods.”
He was playing with my hair as he said this, sifting it between his fingers. It fell from his hand like strands of tinsel, landing softly on my bare breasts. He picked up a handful again, let it sift through his fingers. He brought it to his nose, inhaled.
“I’m okay with that,” I said. “I’ve stopped asking about your work. I know it’s something that requires a gun and its secret, and you’ve been shot and you won’t answer my questions. I get that, and I respect it.” I’m determined not to give him any reason to push me away. “I have work that requires me to travel and be gone random times, too, but as you know it’s very public.”
“Which is another reason why I can’t be with you, Pearl.” He moves out from under my head, rising on an elbow to look down at me as I lie naked on the bed beside him. He strokes the hair he sifted over my breasts, plays with my nipple as if he can’t keep from touching me.
As I can’t keep from touching him. Even in the midst of this terrible conversation, I can’t stop touching him. My hand slides up and down the knotted curve of his bicep. He’s so different from me, dark to my light, rough to my smooth, hard to my soft—but the sum total of us is perfect.
He goes on. “I can’t draw attention to myself. If a paparazzi snaps a photo of us together, if someone decides to write an article about your love life, it will be a problem. You’re famous.”
“Nobody cares about my love life. Besides, I can do something else.” Even as I say this, I know it’s a lie. I’ve got nothing but modeling.
He snorts. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re succeeding in one of the toughest and most competitive careers in the world, and you need to work it as long and hard as you can. Make a ton of money on this body and face while you can.”
He strokes me, and it feels so good, so tender, so gentle. It feels like he loves me. If I shut my eyes, I can pretend he does.
When I open them, I see banked fire in those eyes, dark as the smoky depths of a whiskey barrel. His lashes are so long they’d be feminine if it weren’t for the dark slash of his brows, one of them bisected by a pirate-like scar.
He has another scar on his forehead, a new one, still a raised red line. I trace it gently with my finger. “I haven’t even asked you about this. I won’t ask you. I’ll give you all the space you need. Only please, please don’t do this to us. We both need it. This. What we have.”
He shuts his eyes. I trace the scar again, and feather my fingers into the length of his coarse black ripple of hair. That’s why I don’t think he’s military. If he was, they’d make him cut his hair. Instead of answering, he leans down to kiss me.
The kiss is a compass. It’s like I’ve been wandering in a fog, holding a map, trying to find my way—and suddenly a light has come on, and I see home.
I feel tears fill my eyes as our bodies say what our words cannot, what our words destroy.
This third time his touch on me is gentle, and slow, and filled with tenderness. His mouth brands a row of kisses down my neck. Along my collarbones, finally arriving at my breasts.
He moves to lie over me with a deep sound of satisfaction, as if settling to a task he’s always anticipated, and proceeds to make love to them.
Sucking. Licking. Biting, swirling, his hands and mouth everywhere.
&
nbsp; All of my senses are filled by him: the scent of him. The overwhelming sensations of his hands and mouth. His weight holding me down. The gorgeous visual of his face as he draws my nipple into his mouth. The soft sounds we both make. The smell of us, musky and arousing.
I shut my eyes and give myself over to this moment.
But that’s not the end, oh no, because when I’ve given up dignity and restraint for wanton cries and twitching helplessly, he works his way down my sternum, along the smooth firm dip of my waist, past my hips, to my center, hot and melting.
“So sweet. So good,” he says, and feasts there for a while.
Good. Oh, it is good. I’ve never felt good before, but he makes me so.
I’ve never had this kind of attention giving me so much pleasure. It fragments me, over and over again, exploding, dissipating, re-gathering.
When he’s finally inside me, we make it last and last, and the ending is hard and sweet. I dissolve into tears, which he sips as if they’re precious nectar. I know it’s the end, even though not another word was spoken after my heartfelt plea.
In the cooling bath in my sister’s house, I take another bite of ice cream, get it down in a convulsive swallow, and then let myself cry, great wrenching sobs. I eventually set the Ben and Jerry’s on the edge of the tub and sink beneath the water, just to silence the grief that’s become too loud, too unbearable.
Under the water, curled in a fetal position, I’m feeling my feelings. Unmedicated. Unmanageable. Ugly.
Dr. Rosenfeld, my therapist, would be proud.
I spasm with the stabbing pain of my lungs and burst up out of the water.
“Geez, Pearl, I thought you drowned!” My sister Ruby is standing over me, hands on her hips, green eyes worried. She takes in my swollen, reddened eyes, drops down beside the tub. “Mrs. Knightly said you were upset.”
“Yeah.” I reach for the Cherry Garcia, soft now. I slurp from the side of the carton.