by Toby Neal
I bucked so hard as he took me over the edge that my body bowed upward off the bed, muscles I didn’t know I had spammed and straining, the pillowcase muffling ecstatic cries as showers of pleasure exploded through my body.
I sagged into a molten puddle a few moments later, exhausted. He lay his head gently on my belly, his fingers playing with the satiny skin of my inner thigh, and I could feel his heavy length against my leg. I longed for him to try to put that giant thing inside of me, ridiculous as it was to imagine—but instead, I felt a tiny pressure again, a swirling slickness that could only be his tongue. I tried to wriggle away, but of course could not.
I spat out the pillowcase. “No. I’m too tired. I can’t do any more,” I gasped. “Oh please, no. I think I’m going to die. Really. My brain is going to explode or something.”
Rafe stopped. His dark blue eyes gleamed mischievously from the valley of my breasts as he looked up my body at me. “I don’t think you begin to know what you’re capable of,” he said softly. And he applied his tongue, gently, so gently.
It wasn’t “no” anymore that I was saying as the tenderness expanded and plumped again. It took longer that second time. He was very gentle and very thorough.
I came so hard that I knew my wrists and ankles would be bruised the next day, and I had a charley horse in my left ass cheek from the extremity of torturous, wonderful pleasure when he untied me.
He gathered my limp, gasping form into his arms.
“I didn’t know how intense that could be,” I panted. My throat was raw, and I wasn’t at all sure the pillowcase had been enough to muffle my cries.
“Like I told you, there are a lot of ways to have sex.”
“So we aren’t going to do it the—the usual way?”
“Not until we’re married,” he said. “You’ll thank me later.”
I pushed away weakly and smacked him on the chest. “That’s never going to happen.”
“Just say the word and it will. The word is ‘yes.’”
“I want to.” I couldn’t help leaning forward to kiss the wide expanse of his muscled chest where I’d just hit him. “You can get me to say anything. But it wouldn’t be fair to either of us. It wouldn’t be true.”
“You’re the boss.” His voice sounded sad.
“I didn’t feel like the boss just now.”
“Well. We can take turns with that kind of bossing.” He smiled. “When we have time. And I plan on having a lot more time.” He pointed to the pearly dawn at the window. “Sun’s up. When do you have to be at the airport?”
I looked at the digital clock on the nightstand. “Oh no! We have to go. My plane’s in two hours!”
“Shower first, at least.”
And in the shower, he soaped and kissed and rubbed the marks the cotton cord had left on my wrists and ankles, and he let me use my newfound skills on him, too, so that we were both delightfully, if temporarily, sated.
Rafe handed me my backpack at the check-in gate and kissed me goodbye one last time. He released me and took my hand. Looking into my eyes, he uncurled my fingers and pressed a small black velvet box into my palm.
“Open it when you’re alone,” he whispered into my ear. “And let me know your answer when you can.”
I tried to hand the box back to him, but he’d already turned and was pushing through the crowd around the busy entrance.
I got on the plane feeling numb, as if my feet were miles away.
A sensation of rending opened within me, as if that charged space between us had been sundered. In the void where it had been, the dark vastness of space echoed back frozen emptiness. It felt utterly horrible.
I leaned my head against the window and shut it out by falling asleep.
Chapter 9
I unlocked the door of our suite late that night, relieved to peek into Shellie’s dorm room to the left and see that her bed was empty. Spring break was officially over tomorrow, so she was probably out partying or hadn’t returned from New York yet.
I felt a stab of guilt. I’d been so busy with Rafe I’d hardly spared a thought for my roommate and best friend, whose house I’d told my parents I was visiting.
I flicked on the light of my bedroom and jumped back with a little shriek.
There was a man in my bed.
Sam sat up, my coverlet falling to his bare waist, his bearded face fuzzy and adorable with sleep. He pulled the coverlet back up to his chest, a wide burly chest I’d had occasion to explore during winter break spent in New York with Shellie and their family.
“Oh hey, Ruby,” he said. “I was waiting for you and fell asleep.”
“Oh, no,” I said, dropping my backpack. “You have to get out of my bed.”
“Sure you don’t want to join me?” His golden-hazel eyes were alight with mischief and invitation as he lifted the covers.
He wasn’t wearing anything under there. He was huge, and gorgeous. I didn’t want to compare him with Rafe, but I couldn’t help it a little bit. I decided I’d have to have them side by side for closer inspection to see whose body was better, but it would definitely be a tough call.
If I hadn’t just spent a week with Rafe, I might have been happy about this surprise.
Might even have responded with enthusiasm to Sam’s open, happy smile and naked invitation into my own bed. After all, I was trying to shuck off my virginity.
I didn’t see Sam as the type to suddenly grow a conscience and refuse to sleep with me. He’d been a totally enthusiastic, kind, funny companion in New York, and even taken it like a gentleman when I canceled our spring break plans for my mythical trip home to the Virgin Islands.
“Sam.” I came closer, and Sam’s wide smile faded. I saw his eyes, those golden eyes that reminded me of beloved toads on Saint Thomas, sweep over me and come to a stop at the hickey I knew was blooming like a big purple rose on the side of my neck where Rafe had been a little overenthusiastic last night. “I’m sorry, but this isn’t going to work.”
He swung his legs out of my bed and stood. I kept my eyes on his with difficulty, intimidated by the six-foot, angry, naked man standing in front of me.
“I should have known that story about going home to your family was a crock. You look like hell. You look like you haven’t been out of bed all week because you’ve been banging someone nonstop. Who is it?” he growled, as big and hairy as a golden bear.
I felt sick and sad and miserable. I’d liked Sam so much. He made me laugh. He understood me. We’d been playful, sexy friends, and I knew we could have been so much more. Sam was so different from Rafe, and unlike Rafe, was perfect for me long-term.
“You don’t know him.” I dropped my eyes to my feet.
Sam scooped up his jeans from the floor and yanked them on. “I can’t believe I wasted my time on you. I could have had a dozen girls since I met you, but I was waiting to be with you. I thought you were different.” He spat the words at me as he dragged a long-sleeved polo shirt on over his muscular football player’s shoulders.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I would never want to hurt you. Ever. I’ve been confused.”
“Well, I’m not confused. You’re obviously not who I thought you were.”
He scooped his jacket off the back of a chair and left, slamming the door so hard the room vibrated and the picture of my parents fell off the wall.
Yes. I was a terrible person. And there was still Henry to hurt.
I was too keyed up after sleeping all the way across the continental United States and the upset of hurting Sam to go to bed, so I unpacked my meager belongings and got in a long, hot shower. I washed my hair and blow-dried it into a long, straight fall. I put on careful makeup and dressed in a turtleneck and jeans that hid the bruises, hickeys, and stubble rash left by two days of orgasms with Rafe McCallum.
I might as well get the rest of this terrible business over with.
I took off the little gold moonstone ring Henry had given me and taped it back onto the cassette of love songs he�
��d made me before I left for San Francisco.
I’d told him he’d know one way or the other when I got back, and it was going to be the other. I then sat at my desk and wrote a letter, pausing to get the words just right and brushing the feather quill pen “Juliette” liked to use across my cheek as I searched for the right words.
I thanked Henry for being a great first boyfriend. I thanked him for all the fun sights we’d seen, the dates we’d been on, the experiences we’d had. I thanked him for sharing his beautiful music with me. And I told him I’d met someone else and I needed to take a break from everything and everyone, and I hoped he understood.
I put the letter, the cassette, and the moonstone ring in a manila envelope in case he wasn’t home. I put on my old pea coat and let myself out into the damp, chilly Boston spring night.
I walked the whole way to his off-campus apartment, at least ten blocks. The streets were empty, and my brisk walking felt a little like penance, like a punishment I deserved, and at the same time something I needed to do to clear my head.
Because I was planning to send much the same letter to Rafe tomorrow.
My gloved hand held the velvet ring box he’d given me in my pocket like a talisman. I’d been afraid to look at it on the plane today, too overwhelmed with feelings to deal with any more.
I knew Rafe wasn’t going to accept a letter easily, but I needed to break things off with him, too. I needed time to refocus on priorities. To sort out my heart, body, and emotions.
I reached Henry’s building. The old brownstone, where I’d had my breasts awakened in the chilly light of fall in the second-story window, seemed as slumbering as a turtle closed in a dark shell.
Taking the coward’s way out, I thrust the bulky envelope into Henry’s mail slot and turned and walked back.
And finally, after checking to make sure the street was deserted, I took the ring box out of my pocket and opened it in the golden glow of a streetlight.
I’d expected some sort of diamond, probably small—but the stone was a cabochon ruby so dark it looked like a drop of blood in the dim light. It was surrounded by tiny, fiery diamonds.
It was utterly divine.
“A ruby,” I whispered aloud. “Oh my God. Where did he get something so perfect?”
I couldn’t resist trying it on, and it slid easily over the knuckle of the ring finger of my left hand. A stray beam of light caught it, and I could see fiery gleams in the heart of the stone.
I turned it so the ruby rested in my palm and fisted my hand closed around it. I’d never, ever had something so valuable in my possession, and it scared me.
The way Rafe scared me.
Too big, too much, too demanding.
I ran and ran and finally arrived at my building out of breath but feeling like I was back in my own body at last.
This was me. An almost-nineteen-year-old who liked to run, who had dreams for herself that didn’t include getting married at a ridiculously young age, and who needed to get focused on what she came to college for. A career in the law.
Something as far away and different from the life I’d always known in the Virgin Islands as I could get.
Shellie was in her room even though it was past one a.m. by now, and I barely got the door open before she was grabbing me by my coat and hauling me inside the entry area. She was so mad that her golden-green eyes, so much like Sam’s, were shooting sparks. Her tawny curls bounced as she stomped her feet.
“You lied to me!”
I smelled alcohol on her breath. Uh-oh. Shellie was a lightweight, so she seldom drank, but when she did, bad things happened. So far she’d streaked in the quad, picked a fight with the resident assistant in our building, and dropped a watermelon out the window onto the sidewalk below our room, refusing to admit it.
Now she screamed in my face. “You broke my brother’s heart, you slut!”
“I’m really, really sorry,” I said. There was nothing to say, nothing to do. I was losing everything right now through my risky choice to run off to see Rafe.
Well, maybe not everything. The ruby on my finger felt like a tiny comforting nugget in my hand.
Shellie pushed me in the shoulder. “I can’t believe you lied about going to the Virgin Islands. You’re white as a ghost! You didn’t get any sun at all. Sam was right. You went somewhere else, with someone else. Where would you go? And who with? It had to be that Rafe guy, that worthless bum you met working in your parents’ yard business!”
She could be forgiven her demeaning inaccuracies about Rafe and my parents’ business. I was a terrible person and I felt terrible about myself.
“I’m so, so sorry. I don’t expect you to understand.” I tried to get my door open, fumbling with the key. I now deeply regretted I’d ever told Shellie about Rafe and our letter writing, because she’d jumped to the right conclusion about where I’d been.
“You should be with that worthless drifter. You two losers deserve each other! You’re not good enough for my brother!”
I’d had enough verbal abuse now that I’d finally got my door open.
“Let’s talk in the morning, when you’re sober,” I said firmly, and closed the door in her furious face and locked it.
“Slut! Whore! Liar!” she yelled, and kicked the door.
I heard the hurt behind Shellie’s hot-tempered words. She felt betrayed by my lies, by her brother’s hurt, by disappointment in her own hopes for our relationship. There was nothing I could say or do right now that wouldn’t make the situation worse.
I went to my bed and lay down on it fully clothed. I heard Shellie’s furious voice on the phone in the room next door. She was probably ruining my reputation with her parents, with any of our mutual friends she could get hold of.
I deserved it.
What had I been thinking? I’d been so caught up in Rafe, Rafe, Rafe that it hadn’t occurred to me who’d be hurt if my ploy to meet him in San Francisco was discovered.
I pulled my blanket up over myself and burrowed under it. I imagined I still could smell the fresh scent of Sam in my bed, and my eyes prickled with tears.
I really did like Sam. So much. And Henry, too. I hated having to end things with them in such a hurtful way to all involved. The only fair, smart thing to do was to break up with Rafe, too, take a total break from men until summer, as I’d decided to do.
I deserve to be miserable for hurting everyone.
I opened my hand to peek at the ring.
The light of my bedside lamp fell on the ruby. It was set in antique-looking reddish gold with tiny leaves etched on the shank. The ring of diamonds around the edge of the central stone caught fire in the light, and now I saw that the center cabochon was a star ruby.
The stone lit from within as light struck it. Rays played across the rounded, deep red surface, following me whichever direction I turned it.
It was the most beautiful ring I’d ever seen.
I took it off my left hand and slid it onto the ring finger of my right hand. I couldn’t wear it on the left without accepting Rafe’s proposal, but it couldn’t hurt to sleep wearing it, just tonight.
Because the ring reminded me that at least one person in the world didn’t hate me right now.
Chapter 10
I waited in my room the next morning until I finally heard Shellie leave, slamming and locking the outer door extra loud. She was still mad.
Only when I was sure the coast was clear did I go out, unlock Shellie’s door with the key she’d given me for emergencies, and retrieve the clunky black phone on its long cord, which was part of the suite’s furnishings.
I dragged it to my side, locked the door, and sat on my bed with the phone.
I dialed the number for Lisa’s boardinghouse, the only number I had for Rafe.
“Hello?” Lisa’s rich voice with its hint of the tropics was enough to make my eyes fill.
“Hi, Lisa. It’s Ruby. Is Rafe around?”
“Hey, girl. Guess you two aren’t on the outs an
ymore?” She sounded hopeful.
“No thanks to you, telling him where I was hiding out,” I said. “We’re still figuring things out.”
“He’s an old friend, and when he didn’t come home the other night, I thought you two had made up. If you know what I mean.” I could almost see her wiggle her expressive eyebrows.
Even three thousand miles away, I felt a blush heat up my cheeks thinking of all Rafe and I had gotten up to that night. “I just need to speak to him,” I said firmly.
“Well, he’s at the boat, but he said he’s coming home this afternoon to do some errands. He’s getting ready for another trip out on the Creamy Maid.”
“Oh.” I felt my stomach clench with something I wasn’t ready to figure out. “Well, tell him I called and I need to talk to him.”
“Will do.”
I hung up and looked at the calendar across the room.
I had a shift in the cafeteria in thirty minutes and a class after that. It was time to get on with whatever would be my man-free life. I felt as miserable as if I’d been beaten all over.
I scooped a blob of mashed potatoes onto the tray and pushed it across the counter to someone, whose hand reached out to stop me.
I looked up into Henry’s gray eyes.
They were his best feature, a light bluish silver with a ring of dark slate around the iris, and he had black lashes long as a girl’s. His long-fingered musician’s hands were his other best feature, and one of them, warm and firm with tiny calluses on the pads from playing violin, touched my hand.
“We have to talk,” he said. Gently. Not angrily. I blinked to keep instant tears from welling over.
“Okay. Tonight, after class,” I said. “I’ll meet you at the coffee shop.” We had a favorite hangout, a little greasy-spoon diner where they served inky coffee in thick white china cups at red-checked tables.
I made it through the rest of the shift and class, struggling with my concentration but diligently taking notes during Intermediate Composition class with four hundred other freshmen, and finally I walked down the gum-dotted sidewalk through a gleam of light rain to the diner.