by Zoey Derrick
She starts unbuttoning my shirt as we round a corner and the hallway darkens the deeper into the space we go. She’s managed three of four buttons but she’s never taken her eyes off of me. “Why?” she breathes.
“Why what, tigress?”
I expect her to ask about the barn, thinking that she’s reading my mind, but she doesn’t. Instead, after a moment of hesitation she asks me, “Why don’t you want me at Wellington?”
Not a question I want to answer because I don’t want it to sway her decision to go to work for them. I need her that close to me. I realized that when Shelly left my office. I have to have her that close to me. I need her to give me the chance to right the wrongs of our past, together.
“Because if you’re at Wellington, I can’t do this.” I reach for the hem of her t-shirt and start to pull it over her head. She lets go of my shirt with one of two buttons left to go and raises her hands above her head. I free her of the band t-shirt she’s wearing and I’m met with a soft pink, sheer bra that gives me the most perfect shot of her taught nipples. “Fuck,” I groan and her hands are back on my shirt, quickly freeing me of those last two buttons.
She reaches up, pushing the shirt down my shoulders until it catches on my elbows, restraining me. I chuckle and she smiles at me. I drop her shirt and move to help her. When I take over the shirt duty, her hands are quickly all over my chest. They’re soft and warm and I feel her fingers tug on my nipple rings.
I hiss through my teeth and my cock pulses in the confines of my pants.
“Not something I expected out of you,” she breathes then leans in and runs her burning hot tongue over one, then the other. I groan, but bring my hand to tug slightly on her belly button ring.
“Oh, I’m full of surprises, and so are you,” I tell her with no indication of what’s left to be revealed the more she undresses me.
I place my hands on her hips and let them roam up her sides until I reach the swell of her breasts. She was always well-endowed in that department and despite the weight loss, she managed to retain them. “Fucking gorgeous,” I whisper to her as I run my thumbs over each of her nipples. She moans and I watch her eyes roll up in her head at the pleasure I’m giving her.
“Tell me, tigress?” I say as I press my forehead against hers. She nods for me to continue. “How did you get to be so fucking perfect?”
She snorts, “I’m far from perfect.”
“You’ve always been perfect to me,” I tell her before I can stop myself.
I see her eyes flare slightly, but it quickly disappears. It’s almost like a light bulb goes off but doesn’t stay lit for very long. She’s thinking about something but she doesn’t give me a chance to ponder it further when her hands move to the waistband of my slacks and she runs her fingers between them and my hips. “Less talking, more doing.” She smiles at me. It’s a full, genuine smile that makes her look years younger, reminds me of when we were kids.
“Tell me what you want.” I breathe, my lips brushing against hers.
“I want to scream your name while your face is buried between my legs.” I watch the blush spread across her face. Just like when we were in the barn.
I smile despite the fact I get the feeling she’s pretty new to what’s happening between us. Her own lust is driving her actions.
I slide my hands around to her back and finding her bra clasp, my eyes seek permission from her and she nods. With the flick of my fingers, I undo the clasp before sliding my hands up and over her shoulders, bringing her bra straps with me as I go, pulling them down her arms. Maintaining contact with her skin leaves little goose pimples in the wake of my touch and her nipples grow harder as the covering falls away. Her mouth falls slack, her eyes close once again and she’s standing before me completely topless.
She has the most amazing tits I’ve ever seen. Plump and full. Her nipples are a dark rose color that makes me want to suck them into my mouth.
As I pull her bra from her body and toss it on the floor, I turn her so she’s between me and the bed. I don’t bother looking around her room, I don’t care, I just need her. I need to taste her, to feel her. “Lie down,” I tell her, and she smiles and does as I ask.
She slides into the middle of the bed and I climb on top of her, rubbing my nose gently against hers and I kiss her again, this time harder, more desperate. Throwing everything I feel for her into the kiss. My free hand slides up her stomach to cup her breast and she moans into my mouth.
The thread hanging on to my control snaps. I need her so bad.
I roll her nipple between my thumb and forefinger and she arches her back, deepening the kiss. I put one knee between her legs, and she spreads them for me, giving me access to her. When she moans at the contact of my thigh against her denim covered sex, I kiss her harder, swallowing her pleasure.
I pull back from the kiss, needing air and desperate to taste her flesh. I kiss along her jaw, down her neck until I find that sweet hollow between her neck and shoulder where I lick and tease gently. She moves her head to the side, giving me more access and I kiss along her shoulder, down toward the nipple I just had in my hand and I find it, sucking it deeply into my mouth and she writhes again.
Her hand slides into my hair, holding me to her so tight I can barely breathe. I’ll take it.
I nibble on her nipple between my teeth and she cries out before I back off and lick at it gently.
“I can’t take it anymore, please, I need you,” she mewls.
“Say it first.”
Her eyes come to mine in a lust filled haze. “Please.” I roll her nipple between my fingers again. “Please, god, Dyson,” she cries out and a very satisfied smile spreads across my face.
“I knew I’d get you to say it.”
“Dyson,” she says softly. “Dyson,” a little louder. “Please Dyson, I can’t take it anymore.”
“What, baby? What do you want?”
“You, help me forget, please.”
“Aw baby, I can’t help you forget anything.”
“Then make it go away, just for a little while, please?” she begs me and I can’t say no.
But I have to as I realize my big mistake letting things get this far. “I don’t have a condom.” I didn’t show up here with the intention of taking her to bed. No, I’d planned on taking her to dinner.
I watch as she pulls her bottom lip between her teeth in contemplation. “I’m on birth control,” she breathes and that makes me smile.
“But I owe it to you to at least get tested first,” I tell her. I watch realization come to light in her eyes. “You should too,” I tell her and she sits up, pushing me off her and she climbs from the bed. “Where are you going?”
“I don’t need to get tested, Dyson. I’m clean.”
“So then why are you running away? What the hell did I say?”
“How many women, Dyson?”
I sigh. “Enough. I always glove up.”
She pulls her t-shirt back over her head. “I think you should go.”
“What the hell, Ireland? What, it’s okay that you’ve been with other men, but not okay that I’ve been with-” Something in her expression makes me stop and cringe. “You’ve never been with anyone but me, have you?” I ask her.
She simply shakes her head.
Chapter 18
Ireland
“Walk of Shame” - P!nk
I can’t find my voice to answer his question because embarrassment floods through my veins. I didn’t expect him to wait around for me, but why, when faced with the fact I’ve slept with no one but him, since him, am I suddenly so embarrassed? His confession was what I needed to give me the moment of clarity I was desperate for. I was already warring with myself about whether or not this was a good idea and now I know it really wasn’t. I didn’t want to give myself a chance to think about it, a chance to back out. I know that sleeping with him means the same as it did when I was fifteen and I’m so scared of what will happen if we do cross that line again, especially
before I’m really ready to go there again.
College guys hated the virgin and I wasn’t one, but yet I couldn’t bring myself to put out. Some of the guys I tried dating joked that I didn’t get a good enough experience to decide whether or not I enjoyed sex. The first time is always awkward, but that’s just it, mine wasn’t. Mine was, and still is, everything to me.
His face portrays a look of complete and total shock at my admission. “Why?” he breathes.
“I don’t know.” That’s the truth, I don’t honestly know.
“You mean no one’s ever tried?” The flare in his eyes and the raising of his brows portrays his skepticism.
“No, they have, I just…” I wrap my arms around my stomach, fighting to hold on to any shred of dignity I have left and not wanting to go too far into detail with him about why I couldn’t bring myself to sleep with anyone else. “It just never felt right.”
He stays quiet for a moment before he adjusts himself on the bed, moving to sit at the end of it. “Would you believe me if I told you the same thing?”
I snort, “Hardly.”
“I’m serious, Ireland.”
“I find that hard to believe, Dyson.” His lips twitch, playing at a smile when I say his name again, but he keeps himself in check. I can tell he’s fighting to stay on subject and for some unnamed reason I like that.
“It’s true. Whether you want to believe it or not. It’s very true. It was true even before our night in the barn.”
I hold my hand up in a ‘don’t go there’ gesture.
“Vee…” he stops himself and I regret telling him he lost the right to use the nickname he gave me all those years ago. When I was a kid, I hated being called Ireland. Kids made fun of me because I was named after a country. They had enough to poke fun at when it came to my weight. Having the name Ireland gave them the fuel to tell me I was as big as the country I was named after. They were really harsh. So I started going by Vyolet, my middle name, and that got shortened to Vy and it stuck. “Ireland, we need to go there. We need to talk about it,” he tells me.
“I’m not ready to hear it,” I tell him.
“Don’t you think after ten years, it’s time we buried the elephant that stands between us?” he asks, genuine concern in his eyes. “If we don’t talk about it, I won’t get the chance to tell you how sorry I am for what I did to you, why I did it to you, and most of all, beg you to forgive me.”
I take a deep breath – he’s telling me what I want to hear. He’s doing it again because he wants to get laid. Then why did he stop it because he didn’t have a condom? My sub-conscious is really a bitch sometimes, I know she’s right but this is easier. “I really think you should go,” I tell him, but there is a part of me, a very large part, that doesn’t want him to go.
I’m surprised when he stands up and starts looking around for something. His shirt. He finds it in the doorway of my room and he disappears. Once he’s out of my line of sight, my knees wobble.
I hear the bathroom door click closed.
The tears he managed to eradicate with his wonderfully soft lips threaten to return. Only this time they are not tears for my mother, but tears for me. Tears I’ve been holding in for a very, very long time. Each one of them has Dyson’s name stamped on it.
I manage to pull myself together just in time to hear the bathroom door open again and he comes back into the room. He’s standing there, looking sexy as fuck in his dress shirt, tucked in, the sleeves still rolled up and this look of complete and total devastation in his eyes. “I’m sorry,” I breathe out.
He comes to me and grabs ahold of my arms and unfurls them from my body, wrapping them around his. I place my cheek against his chest and he holds me close. “I made a promise to myself the night I walked out of the barn.” His voice is soft and the vibrations in his chest tickle my ear. “That one day, I would make it up to you. That one day, I would explain everything to you and let you decide for yourself where I stand in your life.” I hear him pull in a deep breath. “I never gave you that choice and I would really like the chance to do that.”
“I need time, Dyson.”
He pulls back and studies me. “How much time?”
I shrug. “I don’t honestly know. I spent the last eight or so years accepting the fact you were never coming back and now, here you are. I need time to wrap my brain around that and I haven’t been able to. Memories of you are filled with memories of my mother and…I just need time.”
He gives me a small, sad smile. “I’ve got time, baby girl.” He pulls something from his pocket and hands it to me. “This has my number, my email address and my home address on it. The ball is in your court, Ireland.”
I nod and take the card from between his fingers. He leans down and kisses the top of my head before he leaves my room.
The loss of him walking out is nearly unbearable and I have to brace myself against the wall so I don’t fall over. I hear the click of the apartment door as he leaves and I crumble to the floor. Crumble into a million tiny pieces. Again.
Sometime between Dyson leaving and Becca returning home, I found my feet with the prospect of being able to come apart in the comfort of my own bed. I cried myself to sleep with the scent of Dyson all over me. For the first time in eight years, the recurring dream of the man who opened the doors to the world for me has a face. His face is of the one and only Dyson Cole.
I didn’t hear Becca come home last night and she didn’t wake me up the next morning before work. It felt strange, given the display of roses on the kitchen island. But knowing Captain Snoopy Pants, she read the cards anyway. Eventually she’ll put two and two together on her own. Despite still having not told her about Dyson, she’s not stupid.
I do my best to ignore the memories of last night and my dream by focusing on the fact I’m starting work on Monday and I need new clothes to accommodate my new office position within Wellington Ad Management. The idea of shopping sends a chill through me. I hate clothes.
After I manage to make myself a pot of coffee among all the roses in the kitchen, I go back into my room and grab my four-year old, busted laptop and open it. I need to figure out a few things so I know what kind of money I will have for clothes shopping.
Flying back to Missouri and burying mom really wiped out my savings. Dusty isn’t entirely broke, but he’s got more going on with his money than I do. Things like a wife, and the baby she’s expecting. I felt obligated to at least pay for half of everything, despite his objections. At the time I didn’t realize what kind of impact it was going to have on my financial status. I knew my mother had life insurance, and I knew, because of the accident, there would be a lawsuit, but what I didn’t expect was my mother leaving everything to my brother. With the exception of the house, Dusty got everything. I got a letter I still haven’t opened. On the outside of the letter it said that ‘all will be taken care of soon’. I have no idea what this means and I’m not ready to open the letter to find out.
Dusty wasn’t happy about it, but he also didn’t make any attempt to pay me back for my portion of the expenses. I thought that was the least he could do. Somewhere between Missouri and returning to Phoenix, I decided it didn’t matter. Under the circumstances, it’s easier to be mad at my mother, than it is to be upset with Dusty – he’s all I have left.
I open up the folder with the Wellington information in it and I’m thankful I saw a pay schedule in there. I pull it out and go to work on a budget that will get me through until my first payday at Wellington.
When I’m done, I send a text to Reese. He is, after all, the reason I got this job interview.
Ireland: Background & Drug Test passed – starting on Monday.
Reese: Good for you, baby girl. We need to celebrate.
I smile at the text. Unlike Becca, Reese is respectful of my time. He often lets me come to him when I’m ready. Right now he knows that despite the brand new job, I’m hurting and he will wait until I’m ready.
Ireland: concert this w
eekend?
Reese: You got it baby girl. Kerri says Gratz!
Ireland: Tell her thanx. Bring her this weekend? I miss you guys.
Reese: We miss you too. I’ll talk to her. Smooches.
Ireland: back at you.
Reese’s personality in text is rather dull. The man is a machine of activity, always. I swear he has ADHD and can’t physically sit still, but then again, he’s naturally happy all the damn time and if I were that happy, I wouldn’t sit still either.
I text Becca next. The whole point of this damn budget was to figure out if I can afford new office attire.
Got the job, officially. Start Monday. I need new clothes for work. Shopping? When’s your next day off?
Becca: Are u gonna talk about all those roses?
Vy: Nope, I’m sure you read the cards.
Becca: Off tomorrow and go in late Thursday.
Vy: Thank you Becca-boo.
Becca: Yeah! Yeah! Love your face.
I smile at her last text. I know Becca is giving me distance and space since my mom died, which is why I know she’s not pressing me about Dyson, or in her case – Mystery Man. But eventually I am going to have to explain everything to her.
What nearly happened between the two of us yesterday was too much and it’s getting to be too much to hold in anymore and I need to talk to someone. Or maybe I need someone to smack me upside the head.
I walk into the kitchen, living room, dining room area of our apartment. It’s extremely open, with the island separating the kitchen from the living room, and I walk over to the last bouquet Dyson brought me and I find the card. It’s obvious the nosey roommate found her way to it because it’s front and center. I pluck it off the stand and open it, pulling the card from the inside and this note is handwritten in the same script on the card he gave me last night.