by Natasha Boyd
“I shouldn’t have seen him.”
“Abby,” I roared at her and took a left turn through a red light on the empty road, trying to get away from the car behind us. The car did the same, and my stomach plunged.
Northside was a heavily wooded residential street. There was no lighted gas station to pull into, no way to find out who the fuck was following us. Suddenly the headlights loomed, pulling in close. I stepped on the gas out of instinct to avoid the car hitting the back of us. “Abby, please, snap out of it. We’re in trouble.” We’re going to die. I had no idea where the thought came from, and I tried to shake it off. But hell, if we did, maybe my parents, and hers, would wake the fuck up.
Abby stopped her repetitive chanting and looked at me. “I love you, Whit,” she said.
I glanced at her as she gave me a small smile and reached for my hand.
But she didn’t take my hand, she took the wheel and pulled.
“WHAT ARE YOU saying?” Liv gasped.
I was so caught up in my memory, I wasn’t quite sure what had made it out of my mouth. I looked at her pale eyes, filled with shock and, let’s face it, horror.
“I don’t know,” I lied, not wanting to admit the truth even as it came out. “Not really. It may have been a mistake. We were going so damn fast. That’s what I tried to tell myself, but…”
Liv’s face was pale. “Abby killed herself,” she whispered.
I looked at her, waiting for the fallout.
“And she tried to kill you too.”
“I don’t know, Liv. I have to believe she was caught up in some panicked state and just took the easy way out. Made a split second choice out of desperation. I have to believe she wasn’t trying to kill me too.” I found a chair from the kitchen table and swung it around. I needed to not be standing right now. Sinking down, I rested my elbows on my knees. “The truth is, I’m not sure she was thinking about me at all. I was just there. She was done, Liv. At that stage, she couldn’t think about anything else. Not me… and not even you.” I grimaced as I spoke, amazed I was finally saying these words out loud, hoping she could take it. Maybe I was waiting to see if I could take it.
Liv sat, her light blue eyes staring out of her pale face, lips parted.
I held her gaze. God, that clock was fucking loud.
“I’ve been angry at her for a long time, too,” I whispered.
She stood up and came toward me, not stopping until she stood between my knees, and I was forced to pull my arms off my legs and sit back.
I looked up as her small hands landed on my shoulders sliding over them and up my neck and into my hair, leaving my skin prickling with sensation in her wake. Then she pulled my head against her.
My cheek pressed into her body, and I closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around her hips. My chest was tight as I finally let myself feel the memory. The fear, the panic, the betrayal and confusion. The grief. The anger. I held Liv tighter. She responded in kind. Was she comforting me? Should I be comforting her? I simply held on as I let all the crazy emotions tumble through me.
“Tom,” she whispered and held on too. The simple utterance of my name, the name she’d said a thousand times, washed over me. It slid over my skin and curled through my body. I wasn’t Whit to Liv. I wasn’t Whit anymore. I would never be Whit again, and Liv knew it too. Abby Baines had broken me, changed me, and left me melted into a lump of tin in the smoldering remains of her nightmare.
Liv had found me there, and she was dragging us out of the ashes if it killed her. And it almost had. “Livvy,” I answered her, saying her name into her body so maybe her heart would hear it first.
We stayed like that for a long time. Holding each other.
“Come here,” I whispered finally against her body, then looked up.
Her eyes twitched together, questioning.
“Down here.” I loosened my arms and tugged on her hips. I just wanted her closer, where I could be closer to her mouth. I wanted to kiss her. Properly. Had she ever simply been kissed?
Chewing her bottom lip, she let me nudge her legs apart and guide her onto my lap. Her hands balanced on my shoulders for a moment before she self-consciously pushed down her dress, which had ridden up her thighs.
My gut clenched and the hot burn of arousal pooled as I realized her dress was definitely not designed to be modest in this position. I simply wanted to kiss her, and now I’d wrapped her entire body around me.
Doing my best to ignore her warm scent, I slid my hands up to hold her face. “Look at me, Liv.”
Her eyes flickered and focused on mine as she repeatedly pulled her lower lip nervously into her mouth.
I let myself look, really look at her. She was so beautiful. Every line of her face, from her small nose and full lips, to her pale eyes and smooth forehead, came to together in perfection. Up close, there was a small smattering of tiny freckles on her nose and along the tops of her cheekbones. My thumb smoothed over them. Her bottom lip was being completely mauled by her teeth, so I let my thumb slide to her mouth and rescue it.
I lingered on her lips so there was no doubt in her mind that I wanted to kiss her. And when I couldn’t stand not to for one second more, I gently brought her face toward me.
Liv’s eyes fluttered closed.
I touched my mouth to hers, brushing over her softness. She inhaled, and I did it again.
Her hands slid back up to my shoulders, her fingers reaching the skin of my neck.
My skin tingled.
Finally, I fitted my lips firmly over hers. Our mouths moved slowly together.
No rushing.
No urgency.
I let everything inside my heart pour out of my mouth with every tiny movement, every slide, every pull and every nip. I tasted her. I worshipped her.
The burn rose between us.
It was stoked higher with every sigh, and every minuscule movement of our bodies, but I refused to give in to the pulsing insistence.
Her mouth was warm, sweet, addictive.
I finally forced myself to pull away and opened my eyes. Liv’s cheeks were flushed, lips parted and glistening, chest rising and falling in shallow breaths, her pulse fluttering wildly beneath my hand on her neck. I almost lost my good intentions.
Her eyes opened, pupils dark and dilated.
“Wow,” she whispered, and I was suddenly standing on a bloody battlefield, broadsword in hand and dragon, slain under my booted foot.
I grinned, not able to help it.
Getting up off my lap, she smoothed down her dress and then held out her hand. I took it and let her pull me up.
“What?” I asked.
She dropped her hand, and her cheeks flushed. “I, uh, need help unpinning this dress again, so I can change.” She turned and went into her bedroom.
I followed.
She stopped in front of the perfectly smooth made bed.
Presented with her back again, I stepped forward to undo the pins in her dress, my mind studiously blank.
I slowly took each one out, careful to avoid touching her skin. Then, turning to place them on the dresser, I made the mistake of glancing at her reflection in the mirror. Eyes closed, mouth slightly parted. My blood plummeted to my groin.
“Tom?” she whispered.
I closed my eyes.
“Will you touch me like you did last night? On my back?”
Swallowing, and led by a force stronger than me, I walked back to where I’d been moments ago and placed my finger on the back of her neck. I dragged it down slowly and her breathing jumped at the contact, her skin rising with goose bumps. The strapless dress gaped like before, held only to her front with her arms crossed over her chest. “Don’t stop.” her whisper was so quiet, but may as well have been roared with the impact it had on me. My body tightened to brace against the impact of the lust that erupted in my gut. My fingers continued down her braless spine, pulling the dress as I went.
Unfolding her arms and letting them drop to her sides, she let the
dress go, her breath choppy and erratic.
My hand dragged down to the base of her spine, and my other hand joined it. I slid both palms onto her hips, her skin hot under my touch, and down her curves until the dress lost its purchase and fell to the ground.
A small whimper escaped her.
My heart pounded, laboring from pumping absent blood, and filling my body with nothing but crazy, clawing want. My face dropped to press my mouth to the smooth skin of her shoulder. I breathed her skin into me, wanting to open my mouth and devour her.
My hands couldn’t stop. I stepped in close, sliding them around the soft curve of her belly, fitting my front to her backside, squeezing my eyes shut at the feel of her.
Gasping sounds filled the air, like she was trying to catch her breath and couldn’t. “Is this okay?” I whispered into her ear before I traced the shell of her ear with my tongue on a whim. I was echoing her words from last night but desperately needed to know. The frantic nod of her head spiked my arousal further.
Her hands fumbled on mine and then took over, taking the lead. She ran them up her front, her head falling back, her body arching, giving me a clear view of her beautiful breasts over her shoulder before my large hands, directed by hers, covered them.
“You’re so beautiful,” I think I was able to say. We both lost our air at the contact. She gasped, but I felt like my lungs exploded. My hand closed over her flesh, kneading her, and my mouth closed around the skin on the side of her neck, sucking at it desperately. She arched. “Tom.” She twisted to face me, and I was forced to let go.
Our eyes collided, and suddenly our intimacy was a live and breathing thing crawling through me with a powerful and greedy grip. Her eyes were wild, but focused on me, as if she saw somebody deep inside me, beyond the man who stood in front of her. Her lips were parted, and her tongue darted out to wet her lip. Kissing. Yes, kissing, and I brought my hands up to cup her face. Her cheekbones. I felt like a giant holding a sparrow. I’d either crush her or let go, and she would fly away forever.
Her hands took my wrists and her eyes fluttered closed. Lowering my face, I fit my mouth perfectly over hers, gently grasping her lips with mine. My tongue was desperate to get inside, and my hands slid around her head and back, drawing her as close against my body as I could while I tasted her.
She slid her hands under my shirt, across my sides, along my lower back and then between us to my tensed stomach.
We were nothing but labored breathing and restraint. At least, I was. I needed to know how far she wanted to go, but I couldn’t ask. I wanted to devour her, but I needed her to know this was her call.
Her hands pushed my shirt up and I took her lead, forgoing buttons and simply pulling it off. As soon as it was gone, Liv plastered herself to my bare chest, and I groaned at the feel of her. Skin to skin.
“Jesus,” I rasped. “You feel incredible.” And I realized this moment had been inevitable from the first second she’d arrived and blown my reclusive existence apart. I’d lived it in my subconscious with every minute we’d spent in each other’s company, every look, every avoided interaction, and every moment I’d spent next to her the nights she was sick. The knowledge was shocking in its… rightness.
“Tom,” she whispered, pulling my mouth back to hers. “Please stop holding back on me.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m scared, Liv,” I admitted. Everything I’d said to her last night about not knowing what I was doing was true and so much more. I was terrified something I did or said might remind her of another situation, something dirty, something horrible, something painful. I just didn’t fucking know.
“Scared to touch me?” she asked.
“Scared to hurt you.”
She shook her head. “You won’t.”
“Scared to remind you of monsters.”
She pulled back and took my hand. Placing it on her chest, right below her throat, she looked up at me, her light blue eyes brimming with emotion. “Tom, you don’t get it. There are no monsters when you’re with me. I want…”
Her eyes dropped.
“What?”
“I want… the you who took me in the rain. The one who couldn’t stand not to hold me, kiss me, be inside me, for one second longer.”
I winced at the memory of how crazed I was. How ashamed I was afterward. “But, Liv, I acted like an animal then—”
“No, you didn’t. It’s not horrible to want like that, to need like that. To need me like that. And it’s not horrible for me to be needed like that. Because I feel the same way, Tom. With you there is no ugliness, or perverted want, there’s only you and me and the way you make me understand that desire like this is real and true and the most amazing and beautiful thing I’ve ever felt. And just letting these words out of my mouth is the scariest part about it.”
I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t ready to let myself go with Liv, I’d always be afraid of hurting her. Not reading her signals, her clues, messing things up. But I realized suddenly in my line of thinking the word always. I wasn’t leaving her. I was never going to say goodbye. For as long as she needed me, I’d stay right by her side. Always.
“Don’t ever be scared to tell me what’s in your head, Liv. I’m always going to need to know, no matter what.”
Nodding, she blinked and swallowed. “I used to get high just from the feeling of power when I made guys weak, and do things they might not normally do,” she admitted, making my gut clench with nausea. “That was all I got out of it.”
I tried to block out images her words conjured by narrowing my focus on the sound of her voice.
“Please,” she pleaded. “You have it now. You have the power over what I’m feeling, I’m giving it to you. Please take it. Make me lose my mind over what you make me feel. You tell me I’m beautiful, but I’ve never felt that way until you. There is nothing, no one apart from you in my head. Nothing we could do together, that would feel wrong to me. I can’t feel anything apart from you. Please don’t be scared, just…”
I stared at her hard, trying to get to the bottom of what she was saying, what she was pleading for.
“Do what you want to do,” she whispered. “Don’t make me ask.”
Was this a trap? Was this where I added myself to the list of guys who’d fucked her over? Literally and figuratively. Or was she so afraid of enjoying sex after what happened to her, that she didn’t want to make the choice for herself?
My mind warred trying to figure it out. Did she want me to be rough with her? Was that what turned her on? No, she’d enjoyed the way I’d kissed her earlier, so it wasn’t that.
No, she wanted me to make love to her, not fuck her, but she wanted me to stop holding back like she was going to fall apart every single second. She wanted me to stop forcing her to make all the first moves.
I stepped forward and ran my hand up her back ’til I could reach her hair and gently tug her head back. Her breath caught, and she looked at my lips through half lowered lids.
“Okay,” I said. “For now, for you,” I emphasized, “I’m going to do what I want to. But, asking me what I want to do is completely tied to what you want.”
She breathed out a long breath.
“And I’m going to say what I want to do. So you have a chance to say no. And I’m going to ask you things. Uncomfortable things. Because, I never, ever want to hurt you. Do you understand that, Liv? Can you answer me honestly, no matter what?”
She bit her lip, so I kissed her and delved my tongue between her lips before pulling back. I knew some of her answers would shred me inside out. She was nervous. So was I. It was a simplistic thing I was doing, but I didn’t know how else to tackle it. “I just want to know what I need to erase. Or try to.”
She closed her eyes a moment. Then nodded.
I released a pent-up breath and decided to go for it. “I want to lay you down on that bed, I want to spread your legs.” Her eyes flickered, and her breath got shallow. �
�Wide,” I added, on a whim, and she moaned.
My insides went into free fall.
Now that I’d started and could see how much it was turning her on, I couldn’t stop. I reached out and ran a finger from her throat all the way down to her belly button and the edge of her white underwear. “And taste every single part of you until you can’t do anything but feel me in every one of your senses. Until there is only me. And no one else. Until everything in the rest of the world fades. So that any time you need to, for the rest of your life, the memory of me will be so strong that you can feel me loving you just by closing your eyes.”
Her breath stuttered out in a gasp and I kissed her. Hard. “I don’t care how long it takes to get there.”
We had a long way to go and so many obstacles still to face, but today I needed to show us both the perfect truth between us. I would show her my heart with my touch and my words and take it moment by moment to make sure she stayed with me no matter how far we chose to go.
I moved her back until her legs hit the bed.
I COULDN’T STOP staring at Tom’s face. I’d imagined him under that beard of course and had a general feeling he was attractive. I mean, when he clipped his beard close I’d seen his completely lickable lips. And after spending weeks dying to feel them on me, I’d become pretty freaking obsessed. But nothing, nothing, could have prepared me for how heartbreakingly gorgeous he was.
The whole way through the wedding, I’d been so conscious of staring at him that I mostly tried to look away at others as he spoke to me. It was only in the dark of his boat last night that I’d let my fingers learn his features. His angles, his cheekbones, his squarish chin. He was different from the Whitfield Cavanaugh I thought I remembered, his face harsher, thinner, more angled, stronger, infinitely more devastating than the all-American boy next door.