I was surprised when the line clicked and I heard, ‘Clover, honey, is that you?’
‘Gram? Oh, Gram!’ I said and then damn if I didn’t burst into tears.
‘Clover! Are you hurt? Is everything OK? Where are you?’
I turned to make sure Dorian was still in the restaurant. I swallowed hard and tried to calm down some. ‘I’m fine, Gram. I’m still at the Rotunda. I just … I guess I’m emotional.’
I heard Brani in the background and my grandmother snapped at her. ‘Hold your horses, Bran.’
I knew she was upset if she snapped at my aunt. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m fine.’
‘Well, Brani wants to know if you’re still with that good-looking rich man.’
‘I am.’ My voice warbled as the tears wanted to come again. ‘We’re here. We’re safe.’
‘Good, good. So why in the devil are you crying, girl? You gave me a heart palpitation.’
I smiled. She had nothing wrong with her heart. It was what she said when I pissed her off. ‘I’m sorry. We tried several times last night and I couldn’t get you. I guess I was relieved.’
It was worth a shot. But she called me on it.
‘Bull crap. Now tell me the truth.’
I dropped down onto the wooden stool and curled myself around the phone receiver. ‘I … I like this man. I know I shouldn’t and I know it’s only temporary and it’s probably due to the stressful situation –’
‘But?’ my grandmother interjected.
‘But I do.’
‘And does he like you?’
In the background Brani started making noise. My grandmother covered the receiver and said something to make her stop.
‘I think so. Yes.’
‘I take it something has happened to make you think that.’
I blushed, nodded, realised she couldn’t see me. ‘Yeah, Gram.’
‘Well, I won’t ask you any embarrassing questions but I will say trust your heart, Clover. You don’t trust easily. You don’t take to people easily. And it’s understandable. But if you take to him, if something in you reacts to something in him, then don’t ignore it. Life’s too short to play games with your heart.’
More tears. I brushed them away fast. ‘He’s very out of my league, Gram.’
‘Bull crap again,’ she said. ‘No one is out of your league. You’re you. You’re worthy of any damn man you choose.’
‘Cussing. I really got you hot,’ I said, laughing.
‘Well, you scared me … Not good scaring an old woman like that.’ In the background Brani snorted. ‘Oh, hush up, Brani,’ my grandmother said with a chuckle. ‘I am an old woman. That’s not an exaggeration.’
I talked to her long enough to confirm they were both home and safe and still had power. Then told her what Dorian had told me about the storm. Then I hung up feeling a little better and a lot hungry.
I rushed back. ‘Sorry! I actually got her and I’m sure by now I’ve missed –’
‘Nope,’ Dorian said pulling a tray from the warming oven. ‘When I realised you must have gotten through I assembled the contents into a killer breakfast sandwich and kept them to warm. I’m a man of many talents.’
I had a vision of him staring down at me, moving over me. Filling me and kissing me and making me come. ‘Yes, you are,’ I said, smiling.
‘Hungry?’
‘Starved.’ I took a seat and sipped my now tepid coffee.
‘Better now?’ he asked, touching my hand. He reached up and wiped a stray tear away.
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I guess I just … in the moment I got a little emotional.’
‘Understandable,’ he said and leaned in to kiss me. ‘Now, Clover?’
‘What?’ I asked a little breathless from the kiss.
‘Let’s eat before I faint from malnutrition. I’m a delicate creature!’ He grinned, his green eyes merry, and I couldn’t help but laugh. The laughing part felt better than the crying part.
Chapter Fourteen
Ed’s office didn’t just have a shower. Ed’s office had large windows that showed me the storm blowing through my town down below. Literally. I watched lawn furniture blow down King’s Road as easily as cars usually rolled past. And speaking of cars, I didn’t see a single one. An ambulance, yes. A police car, a fire truck, a big official Humvee marked EMS. But no civilian cars.
I leaned on the wide windowsill and pressed my forehead to the cool glass. Wind bent the trees and then, finicky and cavalier, tossed them in the opposite direction. The rain slanted gently against the glass one moment and when the wind changed direction it began to pound.
‘No wonder they don’t want anyone on the road,’ I said. ‘I worry about my grandmother in this.’
‘She was fine when you spoke?’
Dorian moved up close behind me, his body pressing against mine. He wrapped his arms around my middle, his fingers resting on and occasionally stroking my ribcage. I leaned back against him, relishing the contact. There probably wasn’t much more of this in my future. Might as well enjoy it.
‘Yeah, she was fine. They were kind of driving each other nuts but that happens when they’re cooped up together,’ I said, laughing.
He kissed the back of my neck. The breath froze in my lungs.
A tree, in a thicket that bordered the Rotunda, gave up its fight and bent low, then snapped. It was a young tree, small and thin, but from our vantage point it looked as if an invisible giant had lost its patience with it and simply broken it in half.
‘Crazy,’ he said, kissing the back of my neck again.
‘That drives me nuts,’ I confessed. My voice so husky, I didn’t sound like me. To cover it, I laughed softly.
‘Does it now? How about this?’ He pulled the Nantucket sweatshirt to the side and kissed my shoulder. His tongue streaked heat where the kiss had just been laid. My nipples pebbled tight with pleasure inside the huge sweatshirt. Dorian moved his hands higher on my ribcage and finally cupped my breasts through the thick black fabric. I wished heartily that he’d move so his hands were underneath, touching my bare skin, nothing between us.
He made my wish come true in a way by whisking the sweatshirt over my head, sending my hair flying and making me gasp.
‘What if –’
‘People see us? Who’s looking up here to see anything? People are fully grappling with this storm. We’re up here. Alone. Looking down on our city under storm siege and I want you, Clover.’
I want you, Clover … Those words were magical. They made me forget everything else. Even the melancholy of knowing that, when real life intruded on us, I’d be nothing more than a memory to Dorian Martin as he moved on.
I hung my head and let his mouth awaken every nerve ending on my skin. He started a row of fires down my spine, his lips branching off every few seconds to kiss my shoulder, my side, the small of my back. But he’d always return to the path of my spine, his fingers stroking my skin, his breath steady and even. When he unbuttoned my jeans and tugged them down, groaning to find me bare beneath once again, he knelt and kissed the swell of one buttock, then did the same to the other. His finger slid gently down the cleft of my ass.
‘Turn around for me,’ he said. His voice was rough, intense. It really left no room for argument. Not that I had planned to argue.
I turned so my bottom pressed the wide edge of the windowsill and watched his big hands push gently at my thighs.
‘Open your legs for me, sweetheart.’
I didn’t have enough air in my lungs to make a sound, so I simply nodded. My breath was a thin and wispy thing. He parted me with his finger, breathed heat onto my clit and then sucked it into his mouth to soothe it. I gripped the wooden sill so hard I feared I’d shatter my fingernails. I tried so hard not to move, to just let him do what he willed, but when his tongue stroked over me again I went mindless. My hips moved up, my voice came back, I moaned softly and pushed myself against his soft, wet tongue.
�
�Good girl,’ he said, chuckling. ‘I don’t think you realise how much it gets me off to know I’m getting you off.’
Eyes still shut, I blindly shook my head. No. I didn’t know. And, to be honest, it had never occurred to me. I didn’t have a ton of experience, but what I did have was the knowledge that no intense connection had ever been made like this one. No man had ever talked sweet and dirty to me when we were together. No man had ever inspired me to move and cry out or bond like this one did. The immensity of it was frightening. And we’d known each other for roughly twenty-four hours.
Dorian’s fingers slipped inside me. He drove them up easily, thrusting gently before nudging my G spot with his strong fingers. ‘Where’d you go, Clover?’
‘What?’ I shook my head, eyes still closed. I focused on the place where we were coupled. Where his body entered my body. Where we were joined. ‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Yes, you did. You floated off and left me. And me here doing nice things for you. For me …’ He sucked my clitoris again and I gasped. He soothed it with his tongue and I felt the first tightening deep inside me. The first hint that a release was headed my way. ‘Don’t leave me,’ he went on. ‘I want you to open your eyes and watch me.’
His mouth was gone. Cool absence replaced hot invasion.
I opened my eyes, blinking as if coming out of a deep sleep.
He smiled up at me, still on his knees. His fingers were in me but simply filling me. He was utterly motionless. ‘Now keep your eyes on me. Open. Keep your mind on me.’ He chuckled. ‘Also open.’
I nodded, feeling suddenly nervous. Our physical connection had progressed to well beyond just flesh touching flesh. With our eyes locked this way, as his tongue parted my nether lips and his mouth worked over my pussy, I felt as if he could look right into my soul. It was a frightening feeling. And it was wonderful.
I watched him as requested. Watched every single flick of his tongue. Every time he changed tactics and flattened it to lap at me with firm, even drags. I studied his surreal green eyes as he sucked my clit and then opened his mouth to cover all of my pussy and suck that way too. His strong jaw grew taut and when I was panting, literally gripping the windowsill, the first rush of pleasure assaulted me and I said, ‘Dorian’.
His eyes were the ones to drift shut in pleasure. When that happened, I gripped his hair instead of the sill and came. My voice a wild free thing set loose in the big empty office.
He stood up quickly and growled, ‘Turn around, Clover.’
The tone set me alight, punched a hole in my almost drunken happiness. The fine hairs along my arms and neck stood on end. My scalp prickled. Before I could turn as ordered, he seized the back of my head, his other hand curling against my throat, almost but not quite cutting my air off. I gasped and, when he plunged his tongue into my mouth and thrust it against mine, my body briefly spasmed, a short, sweet aftershock of my orgasm heating my pussy.
‘God, I want you,’ he said, lips against my hair now. Then he turned me before I could obey on my own.
He planted my hands on the sill and knocked my feet wide apart. All the while my heart beat desperately, like a fist inside my chest pounding to get free. I hung my head, my long hair touching the sill, my forehead pressed to the cold glass.
I heard his zipper and held my breath. Heard the rustle of his clothes and prayed for him to hurry. I watched the wind-tossed watercolour city down below. And when he put his hand on the small of my back, pressed me forward just a touch, I whimpered with a need I’d never felt before. An urge to give him anything he wanted. Whenever he wanted it.
He ran his cock along my drenched split, teased me by pushing into me just enough for me to feel the stretch of our union. Then pulled back. I realised he liked it when I needed him. Liked it when I begged.
I could do that. I could beg. I wanted him so it was really no stretch at all to say: ‘Please, Dorian. Please …’
Another growl and he thrust deep, sliding into me almost too fast. Filling me almost too much. But it wasn’t too much, not really. It was perfect. Our bodies fitted together as if designed for such a thing. Slow and easy union, fast and rough coupling – it didn’t matter. It worked on levels no other physical relationship ever had before.
The tip of him bumped insistently against the swollen, tender places deep inside me. Another orgasm was rushing towards me and, in a moment of wonder, I bowed my body lower, almost pressing my head to the windowsill. It forced my body back more, drove me against him, and got him deeper. His voice wasn’t human any more, it seemed. The noises that came from him were more like those of a mammal than a man.
I sobbed with pleasure as he found my clit with his big finger. When he swirled circles over me it was with a pressure and a rhythm I’d never used. It was startling and beautiful and within moments I was biting my lip to keep from coming.
He leaned over me, teeth at the back of my neck, scraping inexorably down towards my shoulder. ‘I like when you’re under me. Like when you’re mine.’ The emphasis on ‘mine’, in conjunction with the sharp abuse from his teeth, had me groaning. I couldn’t stop it. It all happened too fast.
‘Coming. I’m coming,’ I sobbed and pushed back once more so that he was fully seated inside me when I did.
Tears doubled then tripled my vision and I let go with the intensity of it. My face wet, my body prostrated before him. His fingers bit into the meat of my hips, his body slamming against mine.
‘Jesus, Clover,’ he gasped. ‘Fuck.’
And then he was coming too. His fingers never letting up as he held my skin. Gripped me tight. Made me his.
* * *
We showered together for the second time. This time just touching. This time just soaping. Lots of kissing. And an ache in my heart – a melancholy wound – that this would end. It was going to end and the closer we got to the inevitable, the more my chest hurt. The more my heart cramped.
He touched my forehead, smoothed my wet hair. We were both clean then, just standing under the spray as an excuse to stay naked and close. I had to restrain myself from gripping him too tight. Holding on like a drowning person clutching a life preserver.
‘Hey, what’s going on in there? I didn’t hurt you, did I?’
‘With your mad caveman love skills,’ I teased. I wanted to feel fun and playful. Instead, I felt as if I had to pick and choose every word very carefully so that I didn’t give away the sadness inside me.
‘Yes, you know, you Clover, me Dorian.’ He beat his chest.
‘That’s Tarzan not caveman,’ I snickered.
‘Whatever. Potato, po-tah-toe.’
I shook my head and laughed again. It was a little forced but still felt good.
Dorian tilted my chin up so I had to look at him. ‘Hey, really, what’s going on in there?’
‘Nothing.’ Then I laughed outright. ‘What’s new, right? Nothing going on inside my head. Empty up there.’
He frowned. The water began to go tepid. In a moment it would be downright cold. He cut the flow and then it was suddenly chilly in the big tile box that served as an executive shower. ‘Hey, now, that’s a girl I’m pretty fond of you’re talking about.’
My cheeks grew hot and I looked away. Searching for a towel, a rip cord, an escape hatch. Anything that would allow me not to look directly at him as we had this conversation. ‘Oh. Sorry. I was just kidding.’
‘Clover, did I do something?’
‘No.’
‘Are you angry with me?’
‘No.’ I shook my head. I felt so fucking stupid. How many girls were instantly wooed by him? Why should I be any different? He was charming and self-deprecating, chivalrous and funny. He’d made being trapped in a big scary mall seem almost fun.
He’d chased away my nightmares and my fear …
I shook my head again and took a huge, deep breath. ‘I am fine. I think I’m just worried about Gram and –’
‘But the storm is ending soon,’ he said, smiling. He looked relieved
. He leaned in and kissed me. First on the lips, then on the head. He smoothed my hair and patted my ass as if we’d been lovers for months, not just hours. ‘And all will be well. We’ll get out of here and get on with our lives. We can get T-shirts that say we survived the super-storm.’
I tried on a smile. It made my face hurt. ‘Yep, we can get out of here,’ I echoed. Wishing that it didn’t make me want to hang my head and cry.
* * *
By three the rain had ended. By four the wind had died. By seven we could leave.
‘Are you sure I can’t drive you home?’
I smiled at him, touched his chest through his shirt. The roads now held traffic again. The sky was no longer clogged with clouds.
‘I’m sure. I can’t leave my car and I need to check on my grandmother. I’m not really going to feel better until I see for myself that she’s OK. Brani, too.’
He smiled at me before reaching out to stroke my jaw. ‘You’re such a good person,’ he said.
I looked away. ‘Just a normal person,’ I said.
‘Not to me.’ He kissed me. I felt myself stiffen initially, but then I figured, screw it. Might as well enjoy that last fairy-tale kiss. Might as well soak up that last instant of magic. We’d spent hours putting the mall back the way we’d found it. The restaurant, the bed, the café. And then we’d walked to the top ramp by the theatre and looked out over the streets below at the rain and debris.
‘Thank you,’ I said. I finally managed to pull back. If I stayed too close to Dorian, fell too deeply into that kiss, I’d never manage to extricate myself.
‘Are you angry with me?’ he asked.
Just being realistic, is all.
‘No. Why?’
Concern was in his eyes but he smiled at me. Took my hand and squeezed it. ‘No reason, I guess. You just seem … off.’
‘Just anxious, I guess.’
He smiled. I loved that smile. ‘Well, go on. See your Gram. Give her my love. Tell her I’m glad they’re OK.’
‘I will.’
‘Can I call you, Clover? See you again?’
‘Sure.’
He didn’t really mean it. That was OK. I was sure he had no idea that he’d never call.
Lost in You Page 9