Beyond Repair (Deeper Than Desire)

by Charlotte Stein

  Oh God, he’d used the word crush.

  He couldn’t have made her feel more like a teenager if he’d tried.

  “That isn’t exactly how I would put it.”

  “Then how would you put it? You got all these little collections of actors you have the hots for and then here’s my filmography...”

  “It’s not exactly like that.”

  “Think you could attempt to turn it into words?”

  “It’s already taking a lot of effort just to say these ones.”

  “Try harder then for the love of God,” he said, in a way that panicked her far more than she had ever really thought possible. He sounded so angry and accusatory, as though she really was obsessed and insane. She’d arranged all of this somehow because of her crazed desire for more Holden Stark—like Misery only with pills she’d magically made him eat and almost-kisses she’d persuaded him to give.

  And then she dared to glance up, and felt kind of stupid.

  He didn’t look angry and accusatory.

  He looked intense and desperate. He was smoldering so much his eyes were practically on fire. She would have feared death by immolation if there hadn’t been a bookcase between them, but even then it was a close thing. Somehow the films framing his face seemed to make the moment more charged, not less. They deepened the shadows between them and turned his gaze into molten lava.

  She still didn’t know how to answer, however.

  The best she could manage was okay maybe I do a little bit, but she had to say it fast and frantic and with both fists clenched tightly by her sides. Mainly because of the concept, but also because he was still staring at her in that overwhelming way. In fact, the overwhelming way had gotten worse in the meantime.

  Now it had this faint note of disbelief.

  And a massive note of potentially explosive passion.

  “If you have a crush on me what was all that weirdness in the bathroom about?”

  “I don’t...know what...weirdness you’re referring to.”

  “Hey, I’ve been good. I haven’t brought it up because I didn’t want to scare you. I don’t want to scare you. But you know that I have to bring it up now, right?”

  “You don’t have to. We could just carry on like this.”

  “Even though you maybe have a thing for me?”

  “I don’t have a thing for you. I have a thing for the people you play.”

  “And that’s completely different.”

  “You know it’s different.”

  “So you find the real me repellant?”

  “What? No, God, no, no that’s not...it’s the opposite of that it—”

  “It didn’t seem like the opposite of that when you flung yourself across the bathroom floor just to get away from me.”

  “The flinging wasn’t about...you being repellant! Jesus, I can’t even believe you’re using that word with a straight face. I called you handsome the first day we met.”

  “Accepting general handsomeness and finding someone attractive are not the same thing. Come on—you know that.”

  “Your handsomeness is pretty far from general, Holden.”

  He went very quiet after that. So quiet she wanted to glance at him and check if he was okay. She’d managed to inch her gaze away during this conversation from hell, but really what good did that do her? Without his massively expressive face she could hardly understand a thing.

  She could hardly understand it anyway, but that wasn’t the point.

  The point was that he’d been wondering if she found him gross. All this time she’d been thinking of her massive virgin status and her terror of big men, sure that he must understand. He understood everything else. Yet somehow, he hadn’t understood this in the slightest. He even expressed the sentiment again, just to drive it home.

  “I don’t care if it’s general or not. I only care how you feel about it. How you feel about me as a person,” he said, and oh her heart ached to hear the words.

  It was impossible not to offer him something, after that.

  Even if the something was completely stupid.

  “I feel...nice. I feel really nice,” she said, then did her best not to wince. He couldn’t see because she’d dipped her head behind twelve copies of The Terminator, but it seemed like a good idea to try anyway. If she didn’t, he’d probably hear that discomfort in her voice when she next tried to speak.

  And things were already difficult enough as it was.

  “So what was the problem, then?” he asked, but she couldn’t come out with the right answer. The right answer was hideous and humiliating, so instead she had to shout a false one really loudly.

  “The problem was that I’d just met you!”

  “Are you sure that’s it?”

  “I’m absolutely not sure at all but let’s just go with it.”

  “I don’t think I’m going to be able to go with it. We hadn’t just met when I touched your cheek in the closet, or brushed against your arm on the way out of the kitchen. But you kind of reacted the same when those things happened too.”

  “Okay, well what about if I tell you that I was just afraid?” she tried, because at least that was partially true. She was afraid—but maybe not entirely of the thing she then pointed out. “You’re a big impressive movie star and I once had a crush on you. The whole thing was just a bit too crazy and overwhelming—I mean when it happened to Annie Wilkes she bludgeoned his feet with a mallet.”

  “Is that who you think you look like here?”

  “I’m praying I don’t. That’s why I’m making jokes.”

  “You don’t seem like a crazed fan for fuck’s sake. I wish you seemed more like a crazed fan because good goddamn am I a crazed fan of yours. For once in my life I’m the one who wants to write someone’s name on my fucking pencil case and it’s killing me, it’s absolutely killing me.”

  Dear Lord in heaven, had he really just said that?

  She had to double check, just to be sure.

  “You want to write my name on your pencil case?”

  “I do, I really do,” he said, tone so wistful she could hardly stand to hear it. Every muscle in her body seemed to melt the moment he spoke, and her resistance went with each one. Everything just ran right out of her and all over the floor.

  “Well in that case I do too,” she tried—tentatively.

  But he didn’t make her regret it. Not one little bit.

  “Then why are you still standing over there? Come on over here, honey. Come on and come to me before I die of wanting you to.”

  She tried, she really did. Her heart wanted nothing more than to march to where he was—but then her heart wasn’t really the problem. The fact that his words were starting to sink in was. He’d said pencil case. He’d said come to me before I die of wanting you.

  She simply wasn’t used to things like that. She barely understood what romance entailed, and there he was rolling great waves of it right over her. It was incredible she was still standing, never mind actively moving toward him.

  “I can’t. I can’t. I’m too nervous now.”

  “Sure you can. Here, take my hand. I’ll pull you through like Morten Harket from A-ha in that music video where he takes her out of the real world and into a drawing,” he said, which made it both worse and better all at the same time. Now she was close to swooning, but at least her power to make normal words was back.

  “Good God, I don’t think you could have said anything more perfect if you’d lived to be a thousand.”

  “You like that, huh?”

  “Yes oh yes, I really like it.”

  “I like it too. You pull me through.”

  “Wow I was really wrong about that saying something more perfect thing. It took you all of ten seconds,” she said, though she didn’t realize how true that was until he really did it. He put his hand through the gap, and her heart did a little dance. He was honestly letting her be the Morten Harket. She was the pencil-drawn superhero, and he was the ordinary guy who wanted
to be in her world.

  Everything was so easy, once she put it that way. Suddenly she was clasping his hand with almost no effort at all, and then she was leaning forward, and maybe he was leaning forward too, and none of it had to mean too much because the space between the films was so small. It was possible to believe it couldn’t happen, right up until the point where it actually did.

  The shadows closed around them both, and there it was. His mouth touching hers. Her mouth touching his. Wild, crazy explosions going off inside every inch of her.

  For a second they were so intense she was kind of afraid they were escaping her body. She couldn’t see because her eyes were squeezed shut, but it certainly felt as if fireworks were popping around her head. The heat surrounding her was strong enough to singe her skin, and she was sure she could hear those short, sharp cracks.

  Not that he would have minded—fireworks seemed to be going off for him too. She could tell they were before he’d even pulled away. It was in the tender, near-shivering way he touched her. It was in the sense of him, like something suddenly drawn so taut and tense. And when he finally broke the kiss, he only confirmed this theory.

  He was breathing harder than she was. One of his hands was gripping the shelf above, and it was doing it so tightly she could see the split in his skin between white and red. His eyes were heavy lidded; the blue had fallen down into darkness.

  But the best part was his parted lips. They looked like they’d just kissed someone, even though they’d barely kissed her at all. They looked slick and swollen, and most of all persuasive. Christ, she wanted to kiss those lips again. And he definitely wanted to kiss her lips back.

  “Well...” he said, so breathless it sent a tingle through her. “That was...”

  “Yeah, that was.”

  “Want to do it again?”

  “It’s possible I do.”

  “Maybe without a bookcase in the middle?”

  “I can see how that might be better,” she said, but even as she did so, she could feel her shakes intensifying. In a second, there wouldn’t be anything between them. And he was probably going to expect more than a closed-mouth sort of affair.

  Hell, she was expecting more.

  She wanted more.

  She just wasn’t quite sure on the giving it part. Kissing the back of her hand simply wasn’t the same as trying to do it to an actual man. Actual men did not keep very still unless she moved her arm around a bit to give the whole thing some variety. They moved completely independent of any of her wishes.

  Like right now, holy shit he was doing that right now. She expected him to stay around there until she came to him, but he was coming around to her. He strode around to her. It gave her about ten seconds to straighten her t-shirt and shake the nerves out of the ends of her hands, before he was on her.

  He was on her like men in movies were on women they hadn’t seen for eight thousand years. She actually saw him in slow motion as he rounded the corner—arms swinging heroically, t-shirt pulled taut over his broad chest, long legs eating up the space between them in a single stride.

  Then finally his hands reaching for her face.

  He was going to hold her face in his hands as he kissed her. And she was definitely going to come apart when he did. She knew she was before he’d even clasped her to him. Her lower half had already begun to lose coherency when his lips found hers, and after that it was just dissolving time. Her whole body went so limp she had to hang on to his wrists to keep standing.

  But once she had, the door was open for other things. Terrible things, like using his arms to haul herself closer to him. Though in her defense, he was just so tall and she was too damn short, and if she was going to do this at all she needed the extra leverage. Getting up on tiptoe just wasn’t enough. Grabbing and pulling was required, because Holy Mother of God was kissing an amazing thing.

  Or maybe it was more that kissing him was an amazing thing. His lips were butter-soft. He tasted of peppermint. And he made it so easy, everything was so easy. All she had to do was follow the slow, sliding rhythm he settled into—insinuating her mouth against his in that same manner he’d just used, then sucking just a little on his lower lip. Not enough to really call it sucking if she was being pedantic about it, but enough to give her a strange thrill every time he did it.

  It felt sort of like he’d decided to pull away, but was reluctant to let her lips go. And once he realized he was on the verge of cutting the kiss short, he dived right back in there. He pushed his mouth right up against hers, in a way that should have been too much but instead was never enough.

  Mainly because of the rolling way he went about it, she thought. He didn’t shove his lips against hers. There was no crushing or bashing or storming of her battlements. It was more like being gently rocked through a kiss—which sounded absolutely bonkers but was pretty close to making her pass out.

  She just didn’t know what to do with all this heat pouring through her. Was this much heat normal, over a simple kiss? It seemed completely excessive even to her and her zero experience of these things. In some places it was getting close to pain, and the more he did the closer it got. His hand slid down her back and suddenly the faint pulsing sensation in her lower belly was something else altogether.

  It almost felt like a thudding. Like someone had made a fist inside her and was trying to pound their way out—only not half as terrible as that seemed to suggest. None of this was terrible. If it was pain, it was the sweetest sort she’d ever experienced. And if she was afraid, this fear was some kind of new good type. It had to be, because when he finally decided to slide his hand all the way down and over her ass, terror seized control of her body.

  And in response she made a sound.

  She moaned. She moaned so loud and long even she was shocked, and she was the one doing it. Christ only knew what he thought, to hear her nearly coming in his mouth over an ass grab—because that was definitely what it sounded like. It sounded like she’d had an orgasm. It felt like she’d had an orgasm.

  Could he tell when a woman had an orgasm?

  She prayed that he couldn’t. Or at the very least, she prayed that he wouldn’t comment on it. If he just steered clear of the topic, she would be all right. She could skate through the rest of this, no problems. He would kiss her and she would kiss him and everything would be absolutely fine.

  And then he stroked over her ass, and it was not fine at all.

  What was he thinking? She wasn’t prepared for groping. And especially when the groping was so...so...she didn’t even know. She’d always seen the term grab ass and imagined something brutal and rude. The equivalent in her head was punching someone’s great-aunt with a penis.

  But this was not like that. The entire area suddenly felt incredibly sensitive, in a way she’d never imagined it could be. Then just to cap it off, he seemed aware of this fact. His stroked over her curves with such deliberate, tentative care—almost as though there was a slight barrier between her body and his hand. He didn’t want to disturb it too much. He just wanted to test the limits of it, a little.

  Was it okay for him to go lower? Would he be electrocuted if he squeezed a little?

  The answer was a resounding no for the latter.

  But it was a yes for her. She was electrocuted when he squeezed a little. Her entire body seemed to spasm the second he did it, then again when he moaned at the feel of her. He actually moaned at the feel of her—all desperate and half-dying—and the combined effect was a crackling, fizzing sort of sensation.

  And an insane urge to do the same to him.

  She couldn’t fault herself for it, though. He’d spent the better part of the last few days wandering around in those stupid sweatpants, and she knew he didn’t have any briefs to go on under them. Everything was just bare beneath that flimsy material, including his incredibly firm and impossibly muscular ass. Sometimes it was nearly hypnotic watching him walk or bend over with a backside like that.

  And the less said about
the stuff in front, the better.

  If she said anything about it—if she thought about it for one second—she was going to end up touching him there instead. She could feel the urge rising in her, and not just because of disobedient images in her foolish head. She was also pretty sure she could feel something pressing against her...and it wasn’t his phone.

  He’d kicked his phone under the bed, which left very few other options. His hip bone was a possibility, if his hip bone had maybe been recently dislocated then moved about half a foot down. And it wasn’t so farfetched to imagine this was him in his soft and unthreatening state, if she just lost her mind for a little bit.

  Otherwise, this had to be all him.

  And he was very stiff, and really swollen.

  So much so, in fact, that she couldn’t pretend it was anything else. He had an erection, and though he was doing his best not to rut it against her he wasn’t really succeeding. His hands on her ass just exacerbated the problem—he squeezed her, and suddenly her lower belly was rubbing and rubbing over his obviously hard dick.

  Though maybe suddenly wasn’t quite the right word. Suddenly implied something unexpected and jarring...something entirely devoid of intention. But it didn’t feel like there was no intention here. It felt as though someone was doing something to the other person, and after a while it started to dawn on her. The person doing this something was not really him.

  It was her. She was doing the things. She didn’t want to be doing them, but apparently her body didn’t care whether she wanted it or not. Her body was only interested in the feel of that thick, solid bar between them, and how much she could explore and uncover just by easing her body against his.

  Which was apparently a lot.

  All she had to do was sort of roll her hips a bit and the size of him became really startlingly clear. She couldn’t seem to find the point where it ended, no matter how much she wriggled. He just went on forever—as long as her forearm and as thick as her wrist. Or at least, that was what her terrified mind tried to tell her. It was probably a little out, considering how insane she currently felt.

  And that was before he responded to whatever crazy thing she was doing.