Yours: A Standalone Contemporary Romance

by Jasinda Wilder

  “Lock, Lock…LOCK!” She loses it, then, with my name shouted from her lips, shuddering, shaking, crying out wordlessly and grinding hard as I lick and slide my fingers in and out until she’s limp and collapsing down, sliding down my body to lie on top of me, involuntarily shuddering as aftershocks rip through her.

  “Shit, Lock. I haven’t felt anything like that in—” She shakes her head against my chest, shrugging. “Ever, maybe.” She lifts up, brows scrunched, eyes wide, lip quivering. “And that scares the hell out of me.”

  I smooth my hand in circles on her back. “I know what you mean.”

  “Do you?”

  I nod. “Yeah. What I feel with you, what you make me feel?” I shrug, at a loss for words. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt. I don’t know what it means or how to deal with how intense I feel everything with you.”

  “Not the same, though.” She traces idle patterns on my chest with a finger. “That’s not the same as what I’m saying.”

  “What are you saying, then?”

  A long pause, and then she sniffles. Flattens her left hand on my chest—she took her rings off. The skin is whiter where the rings used to be, indented slightly. “I had something amazing, with—with…with Oliver. And it really was amazing. Really amazing. Once in a lifetime beautiful. But…this?” She digs her fingertips into the muscle of my chest, sniffling yet again. “Whatever this crazy thing is between you and me, it’s…so intense. I feel things, Lock…I feel things with you that I—that I’ve never…that I’ve never felt before. Such crazy, intense things I didn’t even know were possible. And that hurts, and it’s confusing, but it’s so addictive.”

  “Niall, I—”

  She’s not done, though. “I want to tell you to leave. I don’t know how to—how to deal with the fact that you’ve got—that you have—” she obviously can’t even say it, placing her left hand over my heart, feeling it beat like a kick drum in my chest, but she continues in a ragged whisper, “…you have his heart. You’re nothing like him. I don’t mean that as a bad thing. You’re just totally different people. But you have his…his heart. You have my…you have Ollie’s…heart.” That last word is a broken sound.

  I try again, even though I have no idea what’s going to come out. “Shit, Niall. I’m sorry. I wish—”

  “Don’t!” she snaps. “Don’t you fucking dare wish that. It’s not going to bring him back, and I’m not going to wish you weren’t alive. Because…because I’m finally feeling again, Lock. I was numb, ever since his death. All I felt was hurt and pain and anger and confusion and loss. And I couldn’t keep feeling that, but I couldn’t make it go away or get over it, so I just…I numbed myself. With wine, with whiskey, with work, with staying home and going to sleep however I could and going to work, and just…existing, until I was numb.

  “Then you showed up—and I—I’m finally alive again, Lock. And the thing is, being alive again fucking hurts, it hurts so bad, Lock.” Now she’s crying, saying these words through tears. “It hurts. Feelings hurt. I don’t know how to be without Ollie. I don’t know how to…how to let myself feel good things without feeling guilty, because he’s not here to feel those good things with me, and it’s someone else making me feel those good things. How can I let that happen? He was the love of my life, and he’s gone, and I shouldn’t ever feel good things again, should I? But I—I want to feel them. I fucking—god, I can’t get enough of how you make me feel. And I hate myself for that, but…I can’t stop wanting more.

  “I masturbated thinking about you too, right before I came here. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t help masturbating to you, and I couldn’t help coming here, knowing we’d do this, knowing how it would make me feel, both so good and so bad. Not good-bad, but confused bad. Guilty. Sick to my stomach and dizzy with anticipation and so eager for more I don’t know how to contain it. I need this, Lock. I need what you make me feel. Because it means I’m alive, but I don’t want to be alive, not without Ollie, but I know I have to be. I have to live. I have to…move on. I have to let him go. But how? How, Lock? How do I do that?”

  “I don’t know,” I whisper. “I don’t know.”

  I have so much going on inside me. Guilt. Need. Confusion. Fear. All layered above and in and around this other feeling, a new feeling I don’t have words for. I can’t even wrap my head around it. It’s an immense, intense emotion centered around Niall, and it’s not about sex, not really. It’s not about her body. It’s not even about my heart, the heart in my chest. It’s…something more. Something deeper. Sharper. Bigger. It cuts. It rips. It swells so my chest feels like it’s cracking open. It’s the feeling of dizziness, right before you fall off a cliff.

  I did that once, fell off a cliff by accident. I was climbing straight up a sheer cliff face in one of those remote Chinese fishing villages where the mountains are spires spiking out of the sea. I don’t remember everything, just that I was a hundred feet up, no ropes, just my hands and feet and the stone. I reached for a handhold, felt the wind snatch me right off the cliff face and toss me like a doll out into space, free-wheeling, arms flying, pinwheeling. I just barely missed being smashed on the rocks, and I hit the water like a ton of bricks, so hard I couldn’t breathe. Only instinct saved me, kept me fighting for the surface, fighting for breath, even though I was in agony, wondering if maybe I’d crushed all my bones on the impact of my fall.

  I feel like that now. I’m drowning. Free-wheeling, pinwheeling through space, stomach in my throat, no up, no down, no surface to hold on to, only something sharp and hard beneath, waiting to smash me to pieces.

  And here she is, pouring her heart out to me. Spilling everything, braver than I could ever hope to be.

  I can’t speak. My tongue might as well have been ripped out of my head for all that I’m capable of speaking.

  Fear is a serpent in my chest, pumping venom in my veins. I want to run. But I can’t. I can’t. But I also don’t want to run, because she’s in my arms and nothing has ever felt so good, nothing has ever felt like this, like her. God, there’s never been anything like her in my life, and I’ve got her in my arms and I don’t dare let go. Don’t fucking dare.

  But, god, I’m so paralyzed it’s painful. I’m not even breathing.

  And then she lifts up, forearm braced on my chest, hair a loose wild fall of curls on my skin, eyes the color and shape of almonds streaked with green, fingers tapping unconsciously along with the rhythm of my heartbeat, her eyes on mine. Piercing, seeing so much, too much.

  “Lock?” She’s searching me with those eyes. Seeing all, or seeing nothing, I don’t know. “Say something.”

  “I—” I shake my head, as if to shake words loose. “Niall…”

  What do I say? How do I put into words what I can’t even put into thoughts in my own head?

  All I can do is kiss her.

  I roll over with her, cup her face in my hands and kiss her, trying to show through the kiss the ineffable, unfathomable feelings I can’t express. Through the kiss, I hope she’ll begin to understand what I sure as fuck don’t.

  At the risk of sounding like a fuckboy douchebag…I’ve kissed a lot of girls. I’ve had an uncountable number of hot-and-heavy makeout sessions, so I know how to kiss. I know how to turn a woman on just with kisses.

  Nothing in my life, no woman, no encounter, no kiss could have ever prepared me for the next sixty seconds. I know it’s exactly sixty seconds because right before I kiss her the clock on the bedside table flicks from 11:31 p.m. to 11:32 p.m. I watch the red lines forming the numeral change and then I lean in and our lips are fused, and my life is irrevocably altered.

  We kiss.

  Not for the first time, but it’s a minute of my life that I know will always be indelibly imprinted on my mind as the most important kiss, the most important minute of my life.

  And then I open my eyes just in time to see the clock change from 11:32 p.m. to 11:33 p.m.

  I don’t really have words for the kiss.

&nbs
p; It’s so much more than the meeting of lips. So much more than tongues tangling. It’s…

  See? I don’t even know.

  It’s the feeling of my heart being ripped open, the long-fallow soil of my soul churned and tilled. It’s a feeling of belonging, a sensation utterly alien to someone like me. It’s a wanting to belong. Needing something I’ve never wanted. Something, as Niall said, I didn’t even know existed. Except for her, she’s talking about physical sensation, and for me this is…deeper. Something…more.

  And yes, the way she makes me feel, the way everything with her feels is so much more. We’re not doing anything I’ve never done before, nor do I think any of this is new for her. But something about the way it is between us is…different. More, for the lack of a better word. More, in the way the heat of the sun is more than the flames of a bonfire.

  That one kiss, and I knew what it was I was feeling; it’s an emotion I am simply unprepared to accept. Unable to accept. Incapable of comprehending. I can’t even think it. This isn’t denial, it’s the sheer incapacity to wrap my head around a concept so unutterably, inconceivably massive and strange.

  I just can’t.

  Cannot.

  All this in the space of sixty seconds. One minute of kissing a woman, and I am a man turned inside out and spun in circles so I can’t find up, can’t stand on my own two feet. I’m shattered.

  By a kiss.

  I break away from her, roll off and slide off the bed, stagger backward, rubbing my wrist across my mouth as if to wipe away the stain of change. As if I could wipe away the effect of that kiss.

  As if I could ever go back to the person I was before that kiss.

  The word thuds and thunders through my mind, it sears across my soul in lightning-white letters:

  L

  O

  V

  E

  The word arrives in my brain unbidden, with no context, no surrounding thoughts. It might as well be a neon sign, so brilliantly clear is this epiphany.

  And how do I handle it?

  I freak the fuck out.

  The worst me is just a long gone memory

  I’ll never forget the look on his face as he lurches off the bed and stumbles away from me. It’s an expression of stunned and fearful befuddlement. He doesn’t know what’s hit him. He doesn’t know what it is, what to say, what to feel. Or how to handle it. I don’t know what he’s feeling, or what he’s thinking, or what he’s afraid of, or what’s confusing him. I just know he’s totally overwhelmed.

  I get it. That kiss was one of the most intense kisses of my life. Maybe the most. I get it. I don’t say this, because I can’t help him through this. Either he’s man enough to handle this, or he’s not. I see it in him, the war, the fear, and the panic.

  I sense what he’s afraid of, and I don’t dare examine it too closely myself, because I’ll panic, too. Surely it can’t be that. That word, that feeling, that emotion.

  But what if it is?

  If he were to be man enough, strong enough, brave enough to be what I need to get through the pain, it could be beautiful, between us. But it all rests on him.

  And I sense he’s not used to putting effort into anything. He’s coasted through life. Never had anyone depend on him; never had anyone expect anything of him. This, what’s building here? It would demand a lot of him. I would expect a lot of him.

  “Lock,” I whisper, because I feel like a normal speaking voice could spook him. “Lock, just…breathe. It’s okay.”

  “I don’t know how to do this.” He doesn’t whisper, he speaks in a low rumble from across the bedroom.

  Naked, and so gorgeous. All hard planes in the moonlight, thick muscles and tan skin and taut curves, grooves of definition and slabs of bulk. Thick, shaggy, wild hair loose around his shoulders, his beard a tangle. All man, masculine, rugged, sensual, sexual.

  “You don’t have to know,” I tell him. “Not right off the bat. We can figure this out.”

  “I don’t know what this is.”

  “Hell, neither do I.”

  I move off the bed and stand a couple of feet away from him. My dress is a mess, the top tugged down under my breasts, the hem shoved up around my hips. I stare at him, wanting him, not wanting to deal with these emotions right now. I want the physical. I want his hands, his mouth, his manhood. I want to forget all this intensity and just feel like a…woman, again. I forgot, for a while, what that means. How it feels.

  It’s a need.

  Sultry, sensual, sexuality. Knowing myself, knowing what I want, and not being afraid to go after it.

  I let out a breath, because I came here for him, wanting him, wanting something I’m not sure I should have, wanting something so bad I can taste it. It’s not forbidden, but it still feels wrong, somehow. We’re two consenting adults, neither of us committed to anyone else. And that’s the problem, for me. I am committed to someone, but he’s dead. And his heart beats inside the chest of the man I want.

  Dammit, it’s too confusing.

  It’s just easier to not think about it. It’s easier to let my hormones drown out my thoughts. Easier to stare at Lock’s beautiful body, easier to think about those big, talented hands on my skin, that nimble tongue slippery and firm and tasting every erogenous zone I have, and some I didn’t know I had. It’s easier to tell myself that later will be soon enough to think things through, later is soon enough to sort out my heart and mind and body.

  I’ve lived outside my own head for so long, shutting out the world, shutting out emotions, shutting out needs and desires and hormones. I’ve floated through life over this last while, more a presence than a person.

  And now?

  I’m fully here, fully present in my mind and heart and body.

  And right now, I only want to pay attention to the present.

  I don’t know how long we stand there, neither of us moving.

  I know the moment my tenuous hold on restraint snaps, though.

  I peel my dress off, toss it aside. Glide toward him. He groans, a tortured sound. I move closer to him, until there are mere inches between us, and then centimeters, and then our bodies are touching, my breasts against his chest, our hips brushing, his manhood nudging me. I slide my palms over his chest, over his shoulders, down his sides. Cup his taut, hard backside, his trim, narrow hips. Reach between us. Stroke him.

  “This doesn’t solve anything,” he whispers.

  “No, it doesn’t,” I agree.

  God, he’s so perfect in my hands. Hard as steel, so thick my fingertips don’t meet when I wrap my hand around him, skin like velvet. He’s breathing hard, hands at his sides, fists clenching and unclenching. Fighting for control. Fighting himself.

  His gaze is a maze I can’t navigate, a wild, blue-green labyrinth, and I don’t have a ball of yarn to find my way. I dive in anyway.

  Slide my fist up and down his length until he’s grinding involuntarily into my touch.

  “Niall, shit…” he murmurs.

  And then he’s got my wrists in his hand and I’m flying through the air, his arm under my butt carrying me across the room, settling me on my back on the mattress. His mouth is on mine, and this time the kiss isn’t the subsuming tsunami of intensity and tenderness and meaning it was before, this time the kiss is furious and hungry and utterly sexual, teeth clashing and lips slamming, devouring and demanding. His hands pin my wrists above my head, and his mouth slides away from mine, descends to my breasts, and I writhe in his touch, fight his grip, needing to touch him, to hold him, to encourage him. But he doesn’t let go. He laves at my nipples, flicks them to hypersensitivity, erect and hard and begging for more. My hips lift, my core throbs, screaming for attention. And god, does he give it. Fingers find me wet and waiting, and I moan my relief as he manipulates me to a writhing fervor, whips me into a frenzy with kisses to my lips and licks to my nipples, his fingers moving in quickening circles.

  He’s levered over me, kissing me, touching me, and his hand is gone for a brief mom
ent. I hear something crackle, and my eyes fly open to see him ripping open a condom with his teeth, rolling the rubber down around his shaft with one hand in a smooth motion. He tosses the wrapper aside, knocks my thighs apart with his knees. He still has my wrists pinned over my head. I fight him, but he’s unrelenting. He bites my lower lip, tugs it away with sharp but gentle teeth, and glides his erection against my opening.

  “Lock…” I don’t know what I’m saying or what I’m asking for.

  “You want it?” he whispers into my ear, his breath hot.

  “Yes, god yes.” I do know what I’m asking for.

  “Say it, Niall.”

  “I want it. Give it to me. Please, Lock. I need you.” Wrong thing to say.

  He tenses, and his eyes narrow, his chest inflates with an inrush of breath. Jaw tenses, flexes. He searches me with that gaze as turbulent as a storm-tossed sea.

  He slams into me, and I whimper as he fills me to stretching. I could cry from the bliss of it, how he feels inside me, and I’m straining against his grip on my wrists, gyrating my hips against his, leaning up to nip at his skin with lips and teeth wherever I can reach. Chin, cheeks, lips, neck, shoulders, kissing and nipping and sipping at his skin. His mouth is begging, pleading silently for more.

  “Oh, fuck…” His voice is ragged. As if he’s giving in. “God, Niall. You feel—”

  I slam my mouth up against his, mash my lips over his. To shut him up the way he shut me up. I move my hips in a silent plea for motion. He pulls away from my kiss, rooted as deep as he can go and stilled, holding there, hips flush, my wrists pinned up over my head. My breath comes in gasps of need, making my tits shake and sway. I arch my back, pushing them into him. Toward him, needing his mouth on them again.