Hours later, we decided to skip lunch and go to my room. The house was quiet. Penny and Jenna were working. Heather was still asleep in her room, nursing the hangover from the night before.
Gus and I make love with the windows wide open and the sun shining on the bed. His hands are between my legs, stroking me, teasing me. I reach between us and wrap my fingers around his cock, stroking slowly at first and then faster, harder. He stops what he’s doing and I hear him start to breathe heavy.
I want to kiss him all over. I lean forward and run my tongue over his nipple, circling it and then flicking it. I can’t see him responding but I hear it with his sharp intake of breath. He likes it. Pushing him back gently so that he’s lying flat on the bed, I get up and straddle him.
“Wait,” he says. “I need a condom.”
“Not yet. Not for this,” I say. I kiss him on the mouth, tasting him, breathing him in. I kiss his neck and his shoulders and make a trail down his body until little chest hairs tickle my cheek and my nose.
Gus is squirming beneath me and I feel his hard-on throbbing against my thigh and then my belly. Then my breasts as I plant kisses all over his stomach.
I want to give him pleasure the way he’s given me pleasure. I want him to feel so insanely out of control like I do when he goes down on me and loves me that way. Only when he’s making love to me do I feel my life is mine. My life is my control. It doesn’t make sense, but it’s real and it’s true and I love it.
I open my mouth and lightly circle the head of his penis with my tongue. Gus arches his back and grabs my head and then slides his hand to my shoulder. I hear his moan and it only makes me want to do it more. I like pleasuring him. I like that sense of power it gives me.
Opening my mouth wider, I take his cock into my mouth and stroke it slowly. Every so often I use my tongue to tease him.
“You’re killing me,” he says, closing his eyes as he drags in each breath.
I lift up my head to look at him and giggle. “What a way to go.”
He chuckles too and reaches for my shoulder. I know he wants more. I know how this feels as if it’s too much to take but you can’t get enough. I continue to stroke his cock with my mouth until I feel his body rise. Only then do I pull away and kiss his stomach, then his chest and then I’m straddling him again.
“The condom,” he says, dragging in each breath.
He quickly sheathes himself and then he’s inside me, gripping my hips and moving me up and down on his cock. I’m the first one to climax, but he’s not far behind me. I can hear his moans mingle with mine as I go higher and then feel my orgasm rip through my whole body, splitting me in two.
Seconds later, I collapse against Gus’s chest and feel the warmth of his body and the sunlight coming through the window.
We lay there quietly for a little while, neither of us talking.
“You’re disappearing again,” he says, stroking my hair as I rest my cheek on his chest. “You do that a lot.”
My ass is still in the air as I lay on top of him. I don’t want to move. I can understand why he thinks I’ve gone somewhere in my mind. I had. But I’m still here and I want to stay here.
I lift myself up and slide off his chest so I’m lying next to him uncovered. For some reason I don’t mind being naked with Gus. I know I’ve gained weight since I’ve been on the island. I hate my body. I hate that I can’t condition it to be the way it was when I was sixteen and I felt like I was on top of my game.
Since I’d been on the island, I hadn’t had as much time to work out. My normal daily two-hour dance workouts had been reduced to a half hour at best. I wasn’t used to sharing space with so many people.
I like my roommates. They’re different. Freer in ways I hadn’t even imagined it was possible to be free. Heather doesn’t mind being forward. I like that about her. She knows what she wants and goes after it. A smile pulls at my lips as I recall the tirade she’d had one morning at breakfast about Jason, her ex who’d gotten angry with her for getting the job at the Windjammer and ended up grabbing the first waitress who walked by and kissed her right in front of Heather.
If that were me, I would have cowered in the corner and cried. Not Heather. She waltzed up to the bouncer, a total hunk of a man in his late twenties who could probably be an A list movie star if he had the brains to get his sweet ass out to Hollywood and try out for a role. He didn’t even have to know how to act. Women of all ages would pay money to just sit and drool over him in the movie theater. Heather just grabbed him by his head and planted one right on his lips. It was enough to intimidate the shit out of me. But not Heather.
Up until then, I’d believed Heather was all hot air, complaining about everything from the lack of hot water in the pipes to the smell of low tide. But after that, I knew she was just one of those girls who wouldn’t let life get the better of her. And I envy her for it.
In a way, it reminds me of Gus. The only difference is Gus wasn’t the open book that Heather was.
I don’t know why Penny worries about Heather so. She’s so much stronger than me. I’d let my life be crippled by my parents for far too long.
“Earth to Lily!”
I glance up and see Gus with his hands cupped around his mouth like a megaphone, quietly shouting to the ceiling.
I giggle. “What?”
“You left me again.”
“Again? I didn’t mean to.”
He touches my chin with the tip of his fingers. “You say I do that all the time. Why don’t we go there together?”
“Okay. Where do we go?”
“How about that place that makes you look so sad.”
My stomach begins to burn so I sit up in bed and stretch. Gus loves my tits so I’m hoping he’ll get sidetracked and just want to make love again. But he doesn’t move. He continues to look at me as if this is the most important thing I could ever tell him.
“There’s no place,” I say.
His jaw tightens. “Fine.”
He starts to push the sheet off his body but I won’t let him. I don’t mind seeing him naked, and he’s never seemed shy with me. At least not the way I can sometimes be. But I don’t want him to leave. Instead of leaving the bed, he sits up with his feet touching the floor and angles back to look at me.
“It goes both ways, Lily. You say I go somewhere. I know I do. It’s a dark place that I choose to forget just to get me through the day.”
He’s shared some of his past with me, but I know there’s more. And what he hasn’t shared is as haunting as the memories that have surfaced lately. I don’t want them to, but they come to me at odd times.
“I’m afraid too,” he says. “But when we’re being real, it doesn’t matter.” He points out the window to the big blue sky that sits above the Atlantic Ocean. “Out there it’s different. Out there, it’s survival. Not here with you. With you, I’m all in.”
He grabs me by the shoulders and forces me to lean into him. I do it willingly because I can see how rattled he is and I want to comfort him. But he’s determined to do the same.
“Right here,” he says, looking into my eyes the way he does when he’s soulful and being open. “This is real. This is safe. If we can’t be real here, both of us together, then I don’t want it.”
He lets me go and it feels like a sting. He hasn’t hurt me physically. His touch didn’t even bruise me. But I hurt and I can’t gather up enough strength to figure out why.
He gets up from the bed and grabs his cargo shorts from the floor.
“My father’s partner…he ah, he…” I say. I haven’t even said the words out loud to anyone. Ever! And I can’t believe that even that much came out of my mouth now. I don’t want to hear me say it and remember it again. My whole body starts shaking and I feel bile rise up my throat.
“Jesus,” he whispers. “What did he do to you?”
Gus is sitting next to me again somehow. I don’t remember him abandoning his pants and walking across the room. He’s just ther
e and I’m afraid again, just like I had been that night.
He kisses my head, hesitating as if I might break if he touches me too hard. I don’t want him to be afraid to touch me. I’m not a china doll like the girl my parents put on display.
I take a deep breath. “That’s why I’m not a virgin. It’s not because I’ve been with other boys before. I’ve never been with a boy. Only you and…him.” My stomach suddenly feels sour like it does when I’m about to throw up. I can hear the water rushing through the pipes in the bathroom across the hall so I know that Penny is home and is now in the shower.
“That fucking prick raped you?” I can see a dark storm swirling in Gus’s eyes as if J.C. Denton would be toast if he were here in this room with us now. And I realize that if he were here now, he’d be dead. Gus would kill him.
Gus’s eyes are wild, but when he sees my tears, his rage turns to concern. I always thought I wouldn’t be able to control my tears. I’ve shed enough of them over the years. But even though the tears are heavy in my eyes, they don’t spill. I’m surprisingly numb and find the words come out of my mouth as easy as asking someone to pass the salt at the dinner table.
“It was the night of one of my parent’s parties. J.C. lives in Monaco. He does business there with my father so I don’t see him that often at all. My parents were busy schmoozing like always. Dad had a big deal he was about to close and he wanted to show off and make everyone happy at the same time so things would go through smoothly.
“I’d just gone downstairs and was introduced to some of the people at the party. My parents always did that. Then they’d brag. I was always afraid to fail because then they’d have nothing to brag about. That night they were bragging about my recital. I got the lead role in the show.
“I remember going into the kitchen to get something to drink. He followed me and told me he had a good drink he wanted me to try. It was some fruity drink that was filled with alcohol. I remember it going down really easy and then feeling like I couldn’t feel my lips because they were numb. I was only twelve years old so the alcohol hit me hard. I was also starting to get boobs and he kept staring at them.”
Gus is quiet. I feel disgust that I don’t want to feel. But he’s not looking at me that way. His eyes are sympathetic. His hand is on my shoulder and every so often his fingers lightly play with my hair as if that connection is what I need to be brave and tell the rest. It’s surprisingly comforting.
“He pulled me into the pantry and pulled up my dress. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t stop him. I remember feeling his throbbing purple dick against me and hearing him moan as the whole pantry started spinning like that house in the Wizard of Oz. It hurt. A lot. But I couldn’t stop him. I couldn’t even cry. Afterwards he just pushed down my dress and told me to clean up. He’d gotten cum all over my dress.”
“What did your parents do?”
“I never told them. You’re the only one who knows.”
“You never told anyone?”
I shake my head. “I went to my room using the back stairs the servants usually use and I sat on my bed trying to figure out what to tell my mother about the stain on my dress. That fucker raped me and I was worrying about a damned dress.”
Gus lay down next to me. “Do you have any idea how lucky I feel right now?”
I shake my head and use my finger to clear my eyes of the tears that are now coming down my cheek now that it’s over. I told someone. And it didn’t kill me.
“You could have been with anyone, Lily. You’re beautiful in so many ways. There are a thousand guys out there who would kill to have you want them. And you chose me.”
“You’re the only man I want. I told you that.”
“I thought I was invisible before I met you.”
I frown. “Why?”
He swallows hard. “People didn’t see me. I went from home to home and no one wanted me until I decided I didn’t want any of them. I lived on the streets for two years before Edmond found me. He was the only one who cared. People would look right at me, but they didn’t see me.”
“I see you.”
“I know you do. That’s why…”
“What?”
“That’s why you scare me. You can hurt me.”
My lips stretch into a slight grin. “I’m not that strong, Gus. If you’d seen your face when I told you about J.C.—”
He doesn’t even let me say his name. That lethal look he had earlier is back and I know without a doubt that Gus would kill him. He’s capable of it.
“You’re stronger than you think, Lily. And if the fucker was here right now he’d be dead.”
“I don’t want you to think about him. I don’t want that to be a part of us.”
“What do you want?”
I get up out of bed. “We don’t have to go to the club for another few hours.”
His eyebrow lifted on one side. “Then dance for me,” he says in a voice so silky and sexy that I feel myself getting excited all over all again.
“Dance for you? How?”
“I just love looking at you. You can dance any way you want and it will captivate me. You captivate me, Lily.”
So I danced.
#
Chapter Nine
Gus
“I’m only going to be in there for a minute,” I say, giving Lily a kiss. I don’t really want to go into the Windjammer. Me and clubs are usually bad news. But I promised Lily that I’d go in with Penny just so she could check on Heather.
I look at the bouncer, a bruising guy who is taller than me by three or four inches and double the width of me.
“Come on, man,” I say. “She’s legal in two months. They’ve probably already done last call at the bar.”
He shook his head. “You know I can’t.”
Lily touches my hand. “I’m fine. I’ll just sit over on the picnic bench by the burger stand until you come out. He’s here,” she says, pointing to the bouncer. “No one is going to steal me.”
I follow Penny into Windjammer. At least the bouncer didn’t make us pay a cover charge since it’s already past midnight.
“What’s the deal with Heather and Jason?” I ask Penny over the noise of the band playing in the back of the room.
“She is trying to win her ex back. Jason has been playing some serious mind games with her. Telling her it’s over, but still fucking her when he wants to. I don’t think he’s ever been physically abusive to her but I have seen cuts that she’s tried to hide from me. It’s a totally fucked up relationship.”
Penny scans the room for Heather and then spots her. “She’s at the bar.”
I scan the room and wonder why the bouncer made such a big deal about letting Lily in. Half the club is underage. And half the room is cocked out of their mind.
“Let’s just check on her and leave. I don’t like being in here.”
Penny glances at me, makes a face and then laughs. “You’re supposed to be protecting me. You’re not making me feel very secure.”
“I gave up going to clubs for lent.”
“I know you’re not even Catholic and it’s not even lent. Just give me a minute.”
Heather turns around and sees us moving toward her. She has a terry cloth sweatband around her wrist and there is a bruise on her cheek. An unsettling feeling comes over me and I realize now why Penny wanted me to come with her.
“Shit,” Penny said, racing toward Heather. “Did he do that to you?”
“I got pissed when he started making out with this fuck-face bimbo in the orange dress,” Heather says, pointing to a girl on the dance floor who was dancing as if she needed a pole.
“He hit you?” I ask.
“I swung at him and missed. I fell against the bar.”
“I don’t believe you,” Penny says.
“Fine. Believe what you want.” I can tell Heather has been crying. But she’s also been drinking and if she’s on the job, that’s not good. “Last call was five minutes ago but I can get you a d
rink if you want.”
“I’m going to be waiting outside to walk you home, Heather. Stay away from Jason.”
“I’m fine. We’re fine. This is just how we are. Jason wants me to wait for him.”
“So he can have sex with you if bimbo girl doesn’t do the honors.”
“Penny?” I say, trying to keep her from escalating the situation. I know she wants to protect her friend, but she can’t protect someone who doesn’t want to be protected.
Heather is classic. She’ll allow herself to be used by Jason as long as he keeps using her just to feel some love.
The bartender puts drinks on Heather’s tray and says to us, “Bar is closed. Sorry.”
“I need to deliver these to Jason. He’s drinking tequila with a beer chaser.”
“Not a good combo,” Penny says.
Heather walks into the crowd with the tray high in the air so the dancing patrons don’t knock into it and cause her to spill the drinks.
“Let’s wait outside,” Penny says. “She’s hopeless.”
The word strikes me hard. How many times have I heard the word hopeless? He’s hopeless. The situation is hopeless. I’d been thinking that Heather was pretty pathetic for the way she was behaving. But now I just feel bad for her. If her own friends were starting to give up on her, who would she have?
No one. And I know exactly how that feels.
We make our way through the crowd until noise on the dance floor escalates and the band stops playing.
“Hey, guys,” the bass player says into the mic. “You’re killing the encore.”
I turn around and see a full-blown brawl in the middle of the room. People start running to the door. The bartender jumps from behind the bar and runs into the mayhem.
“Oh, my God. Heather is in the middle of that!” Penny says. “We need to get her.”
Fight or flight kicks in for me. Most of the time, I go in with a fist. But Edmond had been working on me. I hear his voice in my head telling me walk away. Not my game. Not my fight.
But then I see Jason grab Heather by the hair and yank her to the ground and I can’t stop myself. I run to her, pushing past the crowd of people trying to exit before they get hurt. I’m not thinking about the cops or anything like that. I just see Heather on the ground with people stepping all over her as they fight.
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