East Rising (Naive Mistakes #2)

by Rachel Dunning

  There was something else in that simple-but-not-sexy light-brown hair of mine, and my not-sexy brown eyes, and in my barely-sexy Mediterranean skin, all over me:

  Oldness.

  I shook my head. Where the fuck had it all gone so wrong?

  I ran my hand through my hair (untying it and messing it up again), splashed my face once more, wiped it, and walked back out.

  Dorian was at the lawn-slash-kitchen table. His beer half-empty.

  "Sit," he said.

  I sat. The chair was hard, uncomfortable.

  We looked at each other a bit. He seemed very relaxed. Wasn't the idea that we'd be at his place, feel each other off until we came and then went our separate ways? I desperately wanted to feel needed.

  I cleared my throat.

  "So," he said, leaning forward.

  I breathed in, suddenly acutely aware of the nearby walls, the smudge on the floor in the corner...

  "So," I said.

  "What brings you to England?"

  And then something crashed. A wall. A mountain. Something. In my mind. It fell down the chalk Seaford cliffs and started a Tsunami, smashing into me and hitting me against a wall...

  "Uh, um, excuse me?"

  "I asked what brought you to England."

  Right, that's what he'd asked. And that's why I'd panicked:

  Dorian was getting to know me. Which meant, by the end of the night, we'd be closer. Which meant I'd probably like him more than I should.

  And that was bad. That was magnanimously, frickin, bad.

  -4-

  "I need to go." The words were hardly out of my mouth when I was up, the metal chair falling behind me. Dorian grabbed my wrist. The action was quick. I hadn't noticed it until it had been done. He held onto it. Not hard enough to hurt me, but solidly enough to ground me.

  Damn it. Not again...

  He pulled me toward him so my back touched his chest. In my mind I was screaming No, No! Not because I didn't want him. I did. I wanted him badly. I wanted someone to hold me, or be inside me. I wanted his warmth against mine, sweat from our chests rubbing against each other. I wanted to be steaming from a night under the covers so that we'd have to open the windows in this godforsaken wintry night to get some fresh air.

  I wanted him so much. And for all the wrong reasons. Because he wasn't really who I wanted. And he needed to know that.

  By now he'd turned me, just like a rag-doll, a puppet in his hands. My head faced his worldly chest, his rough hands cupped my cheeks.

  I looked down. His cream shoes were very clean. Very clean...

  Lips touched my left temple. Soft, gentle lips. Moist and kind and friendly. A chill fired down my left side.

  No! No!

  "No, Dorian, I — "

  I felt the pressure of his hands ease up. The "No" I'd said had come out wrong, accusatory. "No, I mean, not 'no' — Damn it!" I shook my head, stepped back from his grasp...

  It was like stepping off a cliff...

  I turned my back to him. I was reeling. I put my palms to my face and shook my head, losing it again, as I'd lost it at Starbucks earlier when Dani and Kayla had practically carried me out for some air.

  A solid hand steadied me, placed on my right shoulder. A big, firm, worker's hand. And another on my left.

  Dorian pulled me back, put his sturdy arms around me, and held me.

  This was not good. I couldn't do this to him. Couldn't.

  "Dorian," I said, knowing that my next statement would knock down a piece of that wall between us neighbors. I knew the words I was about to speak would bring us into each other's yards a little more and that I was scared of that, terrified of it. But they had to be said:

  "Dorian, I don't know why... You're the exact opposite of what I fell in love with once before..." One picket of that fence came off. "But, I'd like to get to know you, I'm sure. Actually, I like you, somehow... Only, I have to finish something first. I have to end something. For me. For closure. It wouldn't be fair to you otherwise."

  I put my hand on his forearm which was under my chin.

  Dorian said nothing, but I felt his lips on my ear. Moist, and warm, then cold as he moved them away.

  "This...Conall guy," he whispered.

  I swallowed. Hearing it spoken in that baritone, the rumbling voice of another man, a big man, felt like rocks falling down a mountain.

  "Yes. The Conall guy."

  "Well, you hurry up and close things off with this Conall boy. Because I won't wait forever..."

  Dorian's words were sharp, clear. What was it about him? One moment seeming like a child, completely uncertain of himself, the other, confident as a cobra.

  He pulled me tighter toward him, rested his chin on my head. He was hard, erect, turned on. I felt it as my butt touched his pelvis. My breath caught for a bit. This man...boy...guy had too much of an effect on me.

  He kept holding me, and he inched his pelvis left and right just minutely behind me so that his hard-on rubbed against the inner cheeks of my butt, through my denims.

  Dorian wasn't only big in his chest.

  I needed someone to hold me. I needed someone next to me. I needed to hear someone's breaths other than my own as I dozed off to sleep...

  "Can I spend the night?" I asked.

  I really had meant for it to only have been us lying together on his bed, doing nothing. I still didn't want to let him go. I was a wreck. I needed an anchor, a rock, just someone to keep me warm on a cold night...

  But with a hetero guy and a girl it never is like that, is it?

  -5-

  We lay on his bed — a small thing from which his feet dangled off the bottom. There was hardly enough space for both of us.

  Dorian had clearly sensed I wasn't ready for anything serious, so he'd held me next to him while he looked up at the ceiling, one arm under me, his other behind his head.

  He fell asleep quickly.

  I couldn't sleep.

  I looked at his clock and it was two A.M. I turned to my side and rested my head on my palm, looking at Dorian, still fully clothed. His hefty chest moved up and down rhythmically with each massive breath. His body heat moved over to mine, warming me. It warmed me enough that I wondered if the heat had been turned up in the room. But, knowing English houses, I knew that wasn't the case. Somehow, in the coldest of cold nights, they always turn it down at night...

  My mind hummed, wandered, travelled. I thought of things and I thought of nothing at the same time.

  And my fingernail travelled his chest-bone.

  With every random thought — work, then Kayla, Dani, London, the train-ride tomorrow, The Ritz — with every thought, my finger turned its course. Soon, idly, absently, I was drawing circles and runes around his nipples, once, even, directly over the left one, down to his stomach, up again.

  I heard him groan in his sleep.

  And then I understood the heat on my skin. It wasn't radiation from his skin, not entirely. It was my own heat...

  One night. Just one night. That's why I'd come over hadn't it been? And here I was, acting, acting like a little frickin girl, being all woe-is-me and shit...

  Two consenting adults. He knew that, and I knew it.

  Fuck it. I'd waited long enough...

  I eased my palm over his buckle, down his crotch. I was surprised at its hardness. Wasn't he asleep?

  What I remember of Dorian the most are his eyes, and his size, down there. He really was big.

  I pressed against his jeans and rubbed him up and down. I could do this. He was a good guy. He'd been kind to me, hadn't pushed anything with me.

  My palm got warmer from the friction. He groaned some more and I saw his eyes flutter. My own chest was fluttering as well and a sheen of sweat broke out under my cotton shirt.

  I rubbed him, slowly, hard, pressing. I felt strong doing it. This big man, this strong, able, burly longshoreman, was under my hand — all of him. And the moans and groans and little movements he was making as I touched him, wer
e all being caused by me. Little ol' me.

  I wondered — just briefly — if Conall had sought that thrill with me as well. That sense of control... Roles reversed.

  The next groan from Dorian was louder, more throaty. It was time to go deeper. I sat up. He was still partly asleep. My hair covered my eyes and I pushed it behind my ears. I undid his buckle, then went for the button of his jeans. It wouldn't open so I fought with it.

  Dorian made a sound that made it seem like he was waking. I knew he would wake eventually, I wanted him to, but not just yet.

  The button snapped open, hurting the tips of my fingers. I licked one of them, saw the red mark on it from pressed skin against metal. I lifted the band of his jeans and unzipped his pants. He had boxers on. My mouth watered briefly as I saw his size underneath them. The boxers had two buttons down the center. I undid them.

  As I got the slit of the boxers open I saw his skin, and a vein, throbbing and large. I looked up at him, bit my bottom lip, tried to ease my breathing (how had Conall remained so calm when I'd been on that Marriott table the first time with him?) and pushed my hand into his boxers, through the slit, into his warmness.

  My palm felt suddenly very cold as I felt my way in and wrapped it around his shaft, squeezing, lifting. I pulled it out, then squeezed up, down, slowly. A sheen of pre-coital goo escaped him. I touched it with my index finger, rubbed it around the tip of his head, then covered my palm with it. It moistened his shaft so that my hand, as it moved up and down, slid in some sections of it. I did it slowly, I wanted it to last. I wanted him to wake up and see me holding him, rubbing him. Dorian hadn't expected anything from me. Hadn't pushed me. And he'd treated me like an adult. I could respect that. And that's what we were now. Two adults, in a room.

  The next throaty, guttural groan from him ended with him opening his eyes, then his mouth in momentary shock as he watched my hand caress him. My eyes burned heat into him and swallowed up his manliness into me.

  He fired his head back onto the pillow, and intoned, "Oh, baby, you are too fucking good at this..."

  I smiled. It felt good to be "good at this." Not a little girl anymore, am I, Mr. Other Guy...?

  I started to lie down next to him, my right hand still holding him, still pleasuring him. He fired his hand behind my neck and pulled me into him. His teeth pushed against mine and it almost cut my lip. He didn't notice, and I didn't care. But that's not what I wanted.

  I squeezed him, hard, and told him, "No, lie back." It's amazing how much you control a man when you have his cock in your hand (or between your teeth for that matter). I imagined that many wars and battles had been decided in moments just like these: When the wife asked the husband "for a little favor, honey" while she went down on him...

  "Close your eyes," I said. I could see he was enjoying this. All the while I kept moving my hand up and down, ever so slowly, feeling his skin underneath mine.

  I learned something there, that night. I learned about closeness, maybe even something about love. Because, to me, as I'm sure it was to Dorian, this was purely physical. And, as much as I enjoyed holding him, squeezing him, pressing him and feeling his hardness under my palm, his moisture, the veins which were now more pronounced, I couldn't — and the idea even repulsed me a bit — bring myself to tasting him, to putting him inside my mouth or inside any other part of me.

  Not even the early stuff, the pre-come. None of it. This was strictly a hand-job.

  "This is good," he whispered.

  It was good. It was very good. And the center of my legs was now wet as hell, sticky. I lifted my right leg so that my knee faced the ceiling. Dorian's eyes were closed but soon his hand was between my legs.

  "Uh-uh," I said gently. He frowned. "Don't take it personally. We can do it my way or we can do nothing at all, OK?"

  He shrugged. "Suit yourself."

  All the while...up, down, squeeze.

  I smiled as I rubbed him. I was so in control. I leaned into his ear and whispered, "I want to make this last." He smiled. An involuntary smile, and he blushed.

  "Good," he said.

  There was only one problem... As experienced as I was making myself out to be, I really wasn't that experienced at all, and there was no way for me to broach the subject other than to just say it. "Um, Dorian..." I kept my voice at a whisper, not wanting to ruin the mood. "Um, I haven't really done this very often so...you'll have to tell me when..." I was hoping he'd fill in the pieces.

  He didn't. So I stopped rubbing.

  "No! Continue!" he said, his hand firing to mine on his shaft and getting it going again.

  "You'll have to tell me when you're, um, about to come, so that..."

  "So that you can stop?"

  "Exactly."

  "I'll do that."

  He'd opened his eyes as he'd said "I'll do that." Grassy green eyes in the middle of the Amazon... Lush and rich and moist...

  I looked away from them. I had to keep that fence up. Just had to...

  -6-

  The problem with sex — and I include what Dorian and I were doing in that statement — is that, the more you foreplay, the more you want it. The more it clouds your thinking until all you can think of, all you can feel — like steel in your limbs, taut and ready to snap — is the desire for completion.

  I twisted and turned Dorian's cock, slowly and firmly, each time waiting for him to say — no, to quiver — the words, "OK, wait, wait..." Then he'd lick his lips. They were dry, so dry from the length of time he'd been breathing with his mouth open, trying to get enough air. His eyes were closed more often than not.

  I kept him going for thirty minutes. Thirty. It was two-thirty A.M. now. He'd gotten harder — so much harder it felt like a pole in my hands — and bigger. His shaft was red from all the friction, screaming to explode. But every time he got close, and he gave me the word, I stopped. He taught me that if I held it, tightly, and didn't move even a hair of an inch, then he'd settle down. "Don't move!" he said a few times, his right hand digging into my leg, his left into the blanket next to him.

  I didn't. I held him. Then he told me: "If you squeeze it just at the bottom here" — he showed me — "that also stops me coming." So I did that as well, but not often, because we stopped early enough each time.

  In those thirty minutes his hand had gone a few times over to between my legs. Each time I wriggled away. But the problem with sex, is that it makes you desperate for more... For completion.

  Conall had been the only man I'd ever tasted. It meant something. This, with Dorian, was physical, purely physical. But after half an hour, those two things — emotional and physical — began to merge.

  As I watched his cock glisten with pre-come, the skin covering the head and then going back again, I imagined its feel in my mouth, on my cheek, between my breasts, the lightly salted flavor of his sweat. I wanted to lick him, wanted to put my tongue on his sac and lick that bulging tube along his length, up to the head, to the center, and tickle it with the tip of my tongue...

  I looked away, took a deep breath, kept rubbing him.

  I got pleasure from keeping him waiting, keeping him begging. I know where I earned that habit, or, should I say, from whom.

  You know it too.

  I closed my eyes, resisted the urge to taste and pull on Dorian's massive manliness with my lips, but didn't resist when his hand, one last time, eased over to between my legs. Then, when I didn't flinch away this time, he moved his fingers upward, into the band, and then down, under my lace underwear, and in. Just the tips.

  Just enough to make me moan. "Mmmmmmmmm..."

  Now I was his.

  I forgot all levels of control. I was no longer in charge. Just two little fingertips, after I'd been waiting for so long, and I melted. Whereas my hand kept moving on his cock, up and down, it was now automatic. My head fell to his chest. Dorian shifted onto his side, my eyes fluttered back, lulled. I was now on my back. The heat went up twenty degrees at least. I dug my head into the pillow, losing m
yself in the pleasure from the tips of his fingers, playing around, touching me, spreading my wetness.

  He ripped off my pants.

  He'd be able to enter me, with all of him, and I wouldn't care.

  I lay back. Cold wind accosted my legs, and then he kissed me between them, licked me and thrust his tongue in me and then his fingers, then his tongue again —

  "Uuuuurrrrghhhh...." was my statement. The groan was earthy, from the bottommost parts of me. I writhed, turned, hit the pillow with my fists because I was angry at myself — and desperate, desperate for completion. I was throbbing, enlarged, open... Part of me resisted, said no, while the other — so close to climaxing! — cried and pleaded for him to ram his fingers into me, press up, rub!

  Make me come. Make me come. Make me come! I cried inside. But not outside, no, because I was still holding on. Conall should be doing this.

  Conall...

  Conall...

  Dorian pushed his chin into me as he fed on my wet crotch, his nose rubbing my clit, then his upper lip. I was close. So close. Almost there!

  "No! Stop!"

  I fired back and hit the headboard which hit the wall and then I was off the bed! I ran to the bathroom and slammed the door! I was still tingling, everywhere, every limb, pore, but mostly between my legs. God, I'm almost about to come...

  I sat on the bathtub, opened wide and looked up at the ceiling. Stay still stay still stay still. Don't move! Think of something else.

  Throb. Throb. Pulse!

  Think of the seagulls...

  I breathed, slowly, like fricking Lamaze...

  Dorian called out for me from outside. Worried. "Leora, what is it? I'm sorry? Please, I misunderstood. Are you OK?"

  Damn it. How had I become this? How had I gone from innocent and hurt to being the one who did the hurting?

  I waited. There was no fucking ways I was going to come now. No ways!

  I felt my skin settle, the throbbing between my legs was lighter, but only just. I kept my legs just slightly open, not wanting to press, not wanting to, in any way, stimulate the area at all.

  I needed to either end things with Conall, or continue them. But, in my mind, he was still mine. And I, his.