by L. A. Rose
“We’re almost there.”
I drive through the wooded back roads. It’s not too far from Adrian’s house, actually. I pull into the longest driveway and park, noting with relief the ‘For Sale’ sign on the front lawn. I won’t have to worry about anyone bothering us.
I lead a blindfolded Sex King toward the back yard.
“Cleo, I take it back. You’re not so bad at—ow!”
“Sorry!” I walk him around the tree branch I accidentally steered him into.
“I think you’re beautiful and perfect, but I’m taking off the blindfold before you take off my head.” Adrian tugs off the piece of cloth, blinking as his eyes adjust to the moonlight. Then he realizes where we are.
He raises an eyebrow. “High school reunion party?”
“I wanted to tell you something,” I say. “And it seemed appropriate to do it here.”
All of a sudden, it seems a lot less appropriate and a lot more stupid. But Adrian just waits. Twenty feet away, the wind dusts itself over the cliff.
“I just wanted to say,” I start, “that I—I mean you—I mean…”
“I’m listening,” he says.
“I wanted to tell you that if you ever have the urge to do anything like that ever again, or even if you just feel sad at all, you call me,” I say in a rush. “Like, maybe not the sad you get when you make toast in the morning and you realize you’re out of peanut butter, you don’t need to call me every time that happens. But if you ever feel sad the way you did back then, promise you’ll call me? I’ll always answer.”
He reaches out and strokes my face. “I really appreciate that. You don’t know how much. But it’s not necessary. I’m fine now. Completely.”
“Only I don’t think that’s true,” I say.
He stops. “That so?”
“I get this energy from you, like you’re trying to hard to act like you’re cool and collected and in control,” I press. “You have this…this sexy guy persona. But I don’t think that’s the real you? Sorry, Marie told me to stop making everything into a question. I don’t think that’s the real you. I think the darkness in you is still there and you’re just hiding it pretty well. You can tell me if I’m wrong, I guess, but I wanted to say that it’s okay to have darkness and that all of us do—”
I’m interrupted by his lips on mine, a hard, delicious kiss. He draws me in and kisses me like he’s going to eat me. One can only hope.
He breaks away. “I don’t want to talk about my darkness, Cleo.”
“But it’s not so good to bury things,” I persist. “It’s better to let them see light sometimes. Otherwise they’ll just get bigger, down where nobody sees them.”
“It’s not the kind of thing you want to see light. Trust me. It’s just weakness.”
“It’s not weakness. It’s—”
“Cleo.”
I shut up. His tone is clipped and tight. I take a step back. He sees me do it, and suddenly he’s devastated.
“I’m sorry.” He massages his forehead. “I didn’t mean to snap.”
“It’s okay,” I say quickly. He looks so downcast, standing in the moonlight, but even more than that, he looks beautiful—the light carving out the edge of his face, his chest. His kiss is still tingling on my lips. “I’ll stop with Psychologist Cleo. Nobody really likes her away.”
“I like her.” His lips brush my jawbone. “She’s just too smart for me, is all.”
I shiver as an intense need fills me. “This isn’t the only place I wanted to show you.”
“You can take me anywhere,” he murmurs. “I’ll follow you.”
I grip his hand and guide him down the hill on the other side of Kevin’s house, into the woods. The trees are tall and spaced widely enough apart that moonlight filters down from the night sky, but it’s still dark enough that I have to watch my step.
Adrian dodges a branch beside me. “Suddenly I’m glad I’m no longer blindfolded.”
I bring him to a quiet grassy patch surrounded closely by a wall of trees. A circle of sky is framed above us—a miniature Fenway Park. “I always used to come here when I needed to think. I even brought Eric here a couple times. But there’s one thought I had a lot that I never shared with him.”
“What’s that?” asks Adrian. He looks deliciously powerful, here in the woods, a dark silhouette.
I sidle up to him. “That it would be a great spot for forest sex.”
“Forest sex, huh?” His hands travel down over my body—past my waist, my hips. “Is that something friends have?”
“That’s the other thing I wanted to tell you.” I bite down on a yelp as his hands find my ass. “I want to give you a shot. Or—not you. I want to give us a shot.”
His hands freeze on my thighs.
“That doesn’t mean we’re dating!” I add. “It just means…I’m entertaining the possibility. Someday in the distant, distant future. If you turn out to not be a psychopath and if you cook me good food and if I get over the fact that you’re way too hot for me and if…”
“If...?” He tastes my neck, and I let my head fall back. I am brave enough. I’m an adult woman who can say sexy things without sounding like an idiot.
“If you show me some of that Sex King magic I’ve heard so much about,” I murmur.
His breathing suddenly comes harsher. “Cleo, I’ll show you more than magic. I’ll show you a new world.”
Suddenly, I’m on my back in the grass. He’s so fast and strong that I barely felt him lifting me, but I feel him on top of me. Oh, I feel him. A wicked smile crosses his face, and he tears open my shirt. Buttons fly everywhere. I gasp.
“Arianne needed an excuse to take you shopping,” he says, and then he plunges down, tearing off my bra in a similar fashion and doing things to my breasts with his mouth that makes me shake.
“You have such a fucking gorgeous body,” he says into my skin, licking a path around my left nipple before teasing it with his teeth. He does the same to my right. I groan and arch my back. Hearing him talk about my body like that feels almost as good as his mouth.
Almost.
He yanks down my pants, and then I’m pressed into pine needles and earth.
“We’ll need a shower after this,” he says in a low voice, and the thought of that is enough to get me even wetter.
As he discovers when his fingers go searching below. No hovering at the edges this time, or touching me through fabric. He slips his hand inside my panties and finds my warmth. I jolt.
He stills. “Everything good?”
“It’s fine,” I manage. “It’s just…”
“Just?”
The stupidity of what I’m about to say recalls all my self-consciousness, and suddenly I’m way too aware of how naked I am, of how my body is probably sticking out in weird places and folding in weird places and—
“Cleo.” He looks dead into my eyes. “You’re beautiful.”
I breathe out, calming myself. “I was going to say…that nobody’s ever touched me down there before. Except me.”
“Then I’ll have to make up for wasted time.” His fingers move inside me, and I shiver at the strange sensation.
“Whenever I masturbate, it’s only on the clit.”
He leans his forehead against my chest. “Don’t talk about how you masturbate, Cleo, or I won’t make it.”
He massages the inside of me, moving in and out. I’m shocked at how many nerve endings there are that I’ve never touched. A hot ache follows the movement of his fingers, building in my stomach. I whimper.
“I feel bad for all the men who never got to touch you. You feel amazing,” Adrian says. “But not so bad that I’ll ever let any of them near you. Your pleasure is my responsibility, and mine alone.”
At his words, I finally manage to let go of my self-consciousness. I stop worrying about what I look like and just let the pleasure take hold. He senses my muscles relaxing and pushes harder, slipping a second finger inside me.
“Marie’
s going to kill me for not writing this down,” I gasp.
“Then I’ll have to make it memorable.”
I can feel my clit pulsing, begging for his touch. As if he senses it too, he strokes all around my sensitive nub of flesh, avoiding direct contact.
“I don’t want to make you come too soon,” he breathes. “Getting to an orgasm is like taking a drive. Too many people go the quickest way. But I promise the scenic route will show you things you’ve never dreamed of before.”
He kisses me long and hard, and then finger-fucks me again with equal passion. I’m breathing so fast it’s like I’m running a race.
“You’re so sensitive,” he says, returning to torturously circle my clit once more. I let out a long moan and he smiles. “It would be the easiest thing in the world to make you come. But I’m not going to. Not yet.”
I hiss through my teeth. “I’m going to k…”
He flicks my clit and the explosive sensation shuts me up, making my hips buck involuntarily. A wave of pleasure shimmers in the distance, but Adrian sits back, letting it fade before it gets too close.
He gives each of my nipples one good, hard suck. “You’re going to what, Cleo?”
“I need to come, okay?” I say through gritted teeth. “You don’t understand. I—”
He slides his finger over my clit, up and down once, before pulling back. Again my words falter into a moan.
“Didn’t anyone ever teach you to speak clearly?” he says into my ear.
I’m covered with a thin sheen of sweat, my chest rising and falling rapidly. He’s tormenting me.
And I love it.
“This is just my hand,” he says into my ear again. “Imagine what I can do with my mouth.”
“Show me,” I beg.
Miraculously, he obeys. He licks a path between my breasts, down my stomach, dipping his tongue into my bellybutton, grazing his teeth above my soft patch of curls. I’m suddenly relieved I remembered to trim down there. Then every thought flies out of my head as his tongue moves over my thighs and to my slit. He teases my folds, slowly running his tongue up and down my pussy.
“Fuck,” I choke out.
“All in good time,” he says. “Goddamn, Cleo, you taste so good.”
Then his pointed tongue moves into me. I jerk at the sensation, nearly strangling him with my thighs before I realize what I’m doing. He moves expertly, circling and pushing, enough to drive me into a frenzy but not quite enough to push me over the brink.
“Please,” I beg. “Please.”
“Is there somewhere you want me to go?” He runs his tongue over my inner thigh. “Here?” He nips the inside of my knee. “Here?”
“You’re a jerk,” I half-laugh, half-sob.
“Is it…here?”
And suddenly his mouth is on my clit, his tongue stimulating every nerve ending, every centimeter of skin. He sucks and my mouth opens, but I can’t make a sound. I can’t breathe. Every atom in my body has relocated to Lower Cleo. He’s still sucking on my clit, pressing on it hard with his tongue, and then his fingers are inside me too, pumping, and the pressure’s building and building until I think it’s going to tear me apart—
“Oh, fuck!”
It’s not me who said it. Not Adrian, either, who lifts his mouth from me. I lift my head, my vision spinning from the orgasm that was, yet again, halted just before its arrival, and bear witness to a hallucination.
I tilt my head to the side. “Adrian, I think you just ate me out so well that I’m hallucinating my ex-boyfriend.”
“Uh, this actually is your ex-boyfriend,” says the hallucination in a petrified voice. Eric is standing in the shadows, frozen in a half-step into the clearing. Hand-in-hand with someone else.
His new girlfriend is extremely mannish. Ha.
Wait.
His new girlfriend is just…a man.
“Fuck, dude, I told you this place was too public,” the aforementioned man says, drawing back into the woods.
“It’s the middle of the woods!” Eric exploded. “And how was I supposed to know she was home this weekend?”
I leap upright, twigs and pine needles flying everywhere. “You’re gay!”
He eyes me with the same lack of interest that I remember well. “And you’re naked.”
“Not that you’d care, you gay son of a bitch!” I scream. Adrian is sitting to the side, an amused and disbelieving smile beginning to cross his face. But this is not the time for amusement. This is the time for rage.
“You used me!” I wail. “To pretend you were straight!”
Eric winces and shrugs. “Yeah, I wanted to get my parents off my back. But they’re good with it now. Sorry.”
“Sorry?” Somewhere above me, a bird takes flight. “I worried I was some sort of freak for three years because you wouldn’t have sex with me, and it turns out it was because you were gay?”
“Well, uh…you seem to be doing pretty well for yourself now,” he offers, glancing at Adrian—and then doing a double take.
“Oh hell no, gay ex-boyfriend, you are not getting your paws on my straight current-boyfriend,” I snarl, seizing Adrian’s hand.
Adrian grins. “Is that what I am now?”
“Shut your trap!”
Eric takes a placating step toward me. “Look, Cleo, I really am sorry—I was going to call you and explain everything—”
“Explain this!” I grab the nearest throwable object—my pants—and chuck them at his face.
“She does that,” says Adrian.
My gay ex-boyfriend’s gay current-boyfriend sidles into the clearing. “Is she going to murder anybody? Should I call the police?”
“Nah,” sighs Adrian. “I’ve got this. Cleo, let’s go.”
I point at Eric. “Give me my pants back, you thief!”
Adrian unbuttons his shirt, wraps it around my own shoulders, and retrieves my pants for me. “I know it’s not really their thing, but I’m still not too big on other men seeing you naked.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I snap, and then notice how Eric and his boyfriend’s eyes are glued to Adrian’s chest. “Hey! Eyes off! He’s mine!”
“See my point?” Adrian chuckles.
“Come on.”
And I snatch his hand and drag him away after me.
~15~
ADRIAN
“Do you know what’s not manly? Modeling is not manly. And I have a duty to my new girlfriend to be manly. So my answer, for the millionth time, is no.”
“I thought she wasn’t your girlfriend,” says Arianna teasingly through the phone.
“She’s coming around.” I grin.
“Well, I bet she’ll come around even faster if you’re a famous model. Girls love famous models. Trust me.”
“Just because you’re a famous model doesn’t mean I have to follow in your footsteps. What if I’d rather be a plumber, like Dad?”
“Your father hasn’t had to plumb a thing in his life since he met me, and that’s because famous models make oodles of money, my love. If there’s another thing girls love, it’s oodles of money.”
“Thanks, Arianna.”
“I only speak the truth. And White Steel is looking for somebody to be the face of their new lineup for the second half of fall. I sent them your headshot and they want to get in touch.”
I stop halfway up the stairs. “I’ve never done headshots.”
“I took a few when you weren’t looking. You’d be surprised how professional they came out!”
I sigh. “I have other things to focus on right now.”
“No, you don’t.” Her voice is suddenly sharp. “That girl is lovely and I’m happy for you, but she’s not a career. You’ve been keeping your head down for far too long. You need to put yourself out there in the world. Expend some energy. Young people have plenty of energy and if they don’t use it up, it turns inward. Messes with them.”
“That’s some pseudo-psychologist bullshit if I ever heard it.”
“
It’s some honest bullshit. You need to make a life for yourself.”
The elevator stops on Cleo’s floor and I make sure the bell is audible through the phone. “I have to go. I’m at Cleo’s.”
“Just think about it, okay?”
I hang up, pick up my bag of takeout, and walk down the hall to my high school dream girl’s room.
Cleo answers after two knocks on her door. She’s wearing a long white T-shirt that barely grazes the bottoms of her thighs, and she blushes when she sees me. The sight of her sets me on fire.
“Why is it that I’m never wearing pants when you show up?” she asks.
I lean against the door frame. “If you think I have a problem with that, you’re dead wrong.”
She giggles and opens the door wider, then leaves me to presumably go find pants. Damn. I set my plastic bag down on the counter and do my best to banish my conversation with Arianna from my mind.
It’s been a few days since our visit home, and we’ve been so busy that we haven’t seen each other much outside psych lab. I’ve been leaving a yellow rose by her door every morning, and they’re all collected in a vase on the table. I touch one blossom as she opens the bag.
“Chinese food!” she yelps. “Are you psychic? I was just craving this.”
The only thing I’m craving is her, and it’s the only thing I’ve been craving since we were interrupted in the woods. I never finished what I intended to do that night, which was give her the most mind-blowing orgasm of her life.
And judging by the flush in her cheeks as she looks at me, she still needs it.
I’ve got all night to give it to her.
“I ran into Marie earlier,” I say. “She said you were stressed about a test tomorrow and I thought you could use a de-stressing night. Chinese and a movie. How about it?”
She perks up. “Okay! We don’t have to be careful about volume because Marie’s spending the night with her parents.”
I don’t plan on being careful about volume.
“And maybe later we can finish what we started in the woods.” I let my gaze range over her body. She can barely suppress her smile. She tries to act cool and ends up tripping over a stool. It’s adorable.
“You pick the movie.” I open a couple white cartons, feeling my chest finally settle back into its normal rhythm.