He hadn't pushed it then. I suspected he wouldn't push it now if I told him I still wasn't ready to talk about it.
"I'm not used to having so much attention," I told him. "I guess I got a bit overwhelmed. And I was confused when you didn’t try coming around again in person."
Not a lie, necessarily. But not the full reason I'd spent the week ignoring him.
"I wanted to," Matthias replied. His voice was thicker somehow. Deeper. "But you have a history of not reacting well to that. It seemed like it would be better to try something else."
"So you tried everything else."
He chuckled. "I’m sure I could have found a few more things before running completely out of ideas." Matthias shifted, turning his body to lie beside mine. Flush with mine. My heartrate spiked at his closeness. "I'm glad you came around, but I had fun doing all that stuff for you. I could just picture your annoyed little face when those balloons popped out."
I poked him in the ribs. My finger met hard muscle. "Those took a long time to get out of the library," I chastised. "You should be more discerning with your gifts."
"Maybe if I knew where you lived, I wouldn't have to send balloons to the library."
I thought about how the week would have gone if he'd pulled the same tricks, but at my apartment instead. The balloons would have been much less dramatic. The one with the bookmarks would have been weirder. The sing-o-gram? I was considering getting Candace one for her birthday. I still had the guy’s card.
"Maybe I'll show you where I live sometime." I smiled and ran a finger up his chest. "I've got a pretty neat bed."
Matthias shivered, but smirked. "And with statements like that, I’m sure you attract all the nerds into it," he murmured.
"Hey! Don't be rude."
"You should come to my bedroom," Matthias said in falsetto with a nearly perfect American accent. "I've got a pretty neat bed. It's a racecar."
I launched myself at him, giggling. "I don't sound like that!"
"You sound exactly like that," he teased, catching my hands as I pummeled his chest. "I think I did a perfect impression."
"I'm gonna make you sorry for that!"
"Please do, chérie."
I raised an eyebrow at him. "You doubt me?"
We both knew I was just acting tough, especially with him holding both of my wrists in the firm grip of a single hand.
"I've survived an attack by a North American squirrel. I think I can handle you."
I struggled against him but was unable to free myself. Not that I wanted to be freed. Anytime I was in his presence, all my lingering doubts about him seemed to melt away. It almost felt like if he held onto me like this for the rest of my life, I could die a happy woman.
We wrestled on the air mattress as it squeaked and groaned beneath us, at times sounding like it was going to outright pop. By the time we stopped, Matthias was on top of me, pinning me down with his body. He rested some of his weight on his hands, which both now held my wrists above my head. The rest he must have displaced somehow, because I could barely feel his weight pressing down.
"Give up?" he growled.
His tone sent a ripple of desire straight through me, as if my body awakened just by the sound of his voice and the weight of him bearing down on me. A soft moan escaped my lips involuntarily, but it was enough.
Matthias' lips crashed against mine in a possessive kiss that sent my head spiraling. I sighed and arched up. There wasn't much else I could do.
"Let go of my hands," I murmured against his lips. "I want to touch you."
He chuckled darkly. "I rather like you like this." He grazed his teeth against my lower lip. "At my mercy."
Another bolt of arousal caused my body to quiver. The thought of him controlling me, dominating me, was almost too much to bear. My core ached with hot, desperate need.
"Do you like that, chérie?"
My arousal had not gone unnoticed.
"Yes."
"Do you want me to fuck you with your hands up here, like this?" He transferred both wrists back to a single hand, and used his other to trail down my body. "Do you like being tied up?"
As much as my body craved this, I could also feel a rising embarrassment flush my cheeks. My skin, hot already from his touch, burned even more fiercely.
"I've—I've never been tied up."
Matthias' eyes reflected starlight as he looked deviously down at me. "You haven't, hmm?"
"Never."
"Perhaps we should do something about that."
He then rose, no easy feat on the mattress, releasing his grip on my arms. I was too numb with pleasure to move them. I wanted to see what he did next.
He took off his sweater, then the t-shirt underneath. I admired the way the white light of the moon struck his chest and made it almost glow. Each rippling muscle was defined by its own shadow.
Matthias tossed his sweater aside, but took his shirt by the neck and pulled. At first I wasn't sure what he was doing. Then, with a great rip, it became obvious.
"Take your clothes off," he commanded.
I glanced around the truck, not that I expected to see anyone. We were out in the middle of nowhere. You had to be, if you wanted to see the stars. No smog or light pollution out here—just coastline and lonely roads.
I didn't wait for Matthias to repeat his command. With shaking fingers, I piled up my clothes on the side of the air mattress. I'd never been naked outside before. Not since I was a kid, anyway.
It was exhilarating. The lick of the breeze on my taut nipples. The freshness of the air. The way I could almost feel the moonlight on me, like a cold splash of water against my burning skin.
I was hotter than hell and my pulse raced in my throat.
"Aren't you going to get naked?" I asked.
Matthias crawled toward me, eventually pushing me flat on the mattress. "Patience, chérie."
He pulled my hands up far over my head where he looped his ruined t-shirt through some gap in the metal of the truck bed, and then back around my wrists. It wasn't a tight knot, but it didn't need to be. Most importantly, it was comfortable.
Not that I would have cared if it felt like it was ripping my arms off. I was so turned on that I would have gladly missed an arm or two just to get his cock inside of me.
Matthias crawled to the far end of the truck, and I had a moment of panic that he was going to leave. The panic disappeared almost as quickly as it came as I realized that there was no way he would leave me like this. I trusted him.
Woah, that was a weird thought.
I trusted Matthias.
I had a hard time trusting anyone. And yet I trusted him.
The realization warmed a spot deep in my chest, just as my growing desire warmed a spot even lower.
24
Ally
I watched Matthias strip in the half-darkness. It wasn't like when he danced that night at the party, nor was it just him taking off his clothes. He revealed himself to me, inch by inch. And by the time his cock bobbed out of his boxers and into the moonlight, I was practically drooling.
The silver condom packet twinkled in the darkness, just like one of the billions of stars above us. I hoped he was going to use it right away. I couldn’t get any more wet between the legs than I already was. I just needed him. Now.
"Matthias," I pleaded. "Please."
If he had been intending to continue to tease me, my words snapped that resolve. He pounced, covering me with his body. My skin felt like it was on fire where it touched his, and I wanted to burn.
Out of instinct I pulled on the restraints, wanting to run my hands along his powerful back. To squeeze his firm ass. But I was stuck where I was, and I'd never felt as exposed as I did in that moment.
I'd also never felt so much devotion from a lover.
Matthias worshipped me with his tongue. He dragged it over my aching nipples, leaving them to chill once the air hit them. He kissed from my lips to my navel, then down each thigh. He covered every inch of my bo
dy with his lips, as if missing a spot would be some great sin.
When he finally dipped between my legs, it was only for a taste. Neither of us could wait any longer than that. Even though his tongue had brought me to heaven before, I needed something else now. Something harder.
And lord, was I about to get it.
The second his mouth left my pussy, he replaced it with his cock. I cried out, wrapping my legs around his hips and urging him in. Deeper. Then deeper still.
Matthias' strokes were hard and fast. There was an urgency to our lovemaking that had nothing to do with being in public. We both needed this. We needed each other.
Five days wasn't a long time to go without seeing someone. People went five days without seeing their boyfriends or girlfriends all the time. And we weren’t even that. We were just two people who shouldn't have found each other, yet somehow had.
And yet five days had been torture. For both of us, obviously. I could tell from the way he buried his cock in my pussy and nose in my neck that Matthias had been stricken with the same agony that I had.
And I liked it. I liked knowing I wielded that kind of power over him. Over Matthias, the strangely refined, party boy stripper who could have had any woman he wanted.
Yet he wanted me.
My orgasm built like a fire from coals. One second I was simmering with heat, the next I was twisting and writhing in ecstasy. It hit me so hard that I could scarcely breathe. I think I screamed.
Matthias held onto my shoulders with an iron grip as he continued pounding into me. The truck shook with each thrust, something that I hadn't even noticed until I started coming down from my orgasm.
He collapsed on top of me, shaking.
"I missed you."
The words were so quiet and so foreign, that at first I didn't realize they'd come from me.
"I missed you, too."
"We should do this again sometime." I stared past him, up at the stars still winking in the black blanket of the heavens.
"Rent cars, simply for the purpose of getting tied up and fucking in them?" Matthias shot me a quizzical expression. "I didn’t know you were so kinky."
I jabbed my heel into the back of his leg. It was the best I could do from the awkward angle. "No, you weirdo. I mean go stargazing." I paused for a moment. “And then fuck.”
He grinned. After reaching up to untie me, Matthias rolled to the side and pulled me over him.
"Back home, I used to go stargazing all the time."
"Tell me about it," I said. "You never talk about Caspierre." He’d only even mentioned the name of it once. I googled it at the library, but he was right. It was such a small nation that there was very little info about it, even on the Wikipedia page. All I really learned was that they still had a Monarchy and that it was often used as an exclusive getaway by the rich and famous because it had great beaches and was relatively unknown so provided them with much desired privacy. Oh, and that their official language was French, which explained his accent.
Matthias' face grew drawn and tight. "There's not much to talk about."
I got the sense that there was, in fact, a lot to talk about. My fears began piping up again like pesky bugs, whirring in my ears to remind me that he was hiding something, which meant he couldn’t really be trusted.
"I'm sure there's lots to tell. I mean, it's a place I hadn't even heard of before you. You could literally tell me anything about it and I wouldn't have heard it before." I didn’t want to seem like a stalker so I didn’t mention having looked it up.
His quiet laugh was humorless. "It's just an island in the middle of the Pacific. Just like any other island in the middle of the Pacific, it was once owned by the French."
"I gathered that much, garcon."
Matt pinched my elbow and I squealed.
"Tell me about where you grew up. I want to hear about your family."
Warmth blossomed in my chest whenever he showed interest in me. So much so that I completely disregarded how he’d changed the subject, yet again, after barely answering my question.
"I grew up in rural Oregon," I told him. "My parents are total hippies who have only gotten worse with age. They live on this big farm in the middle of nowhere and have a chicken coop and a cantankerous donkey."
"Seems like an odd selection of animals for a farm."
I snorted. "I mean, they've also got the goats, now." Glancing up, I grinned. "To keep the donkey company, of course."
Matthias’ smile sent shivers down my spine. "That sounds like a dream. Do they grow their own food?"
I rested my head back on his chest, looking out toward the horizon. Lights from the city streaked across it, like a broad stroke in a great oil painting.
"Yep. They usually can grow a little more than they eat, so they trade with their neighbors for other food or for alpaca sweaters and stuff like that. I think Mom's started making jam, too."
"That sounds very peaceful." The wistful tone in his voice sounded almost melancholic.
"I've been meaning to visit for a while," I mused, as much to myself as to him. "They always said if I needed a break from city life, I could come stay with them. Dad's been threatening to teach me how to milk a goat for years."
The snort of laughter that escaped Matthias did so with enough force to jostle my head. I resettled, grinning like crazy.
"I wonder what they'd make of me?"
"They'd like you," I assured. "They like just about everyone."
He fell silent, and at first I thought I'd offended him. But when I looked up, he was smiling, eyes distant.
"What are you thinking about?" My voice was barely above a whisper.
We had an endless sky and a whole world between us and any other living souls, yet I felt like even my whisper was too loud.
Matthias sighed. "The quiet life. I'm thinking about how nice it would be to do that, to build a house far away from the world and settle down with a few animals. I imagine it would be so peaceful."
"It is." The silence lengthened between us. I could tell Matthias was still far away in his dream world.
"You know," I said. "You could have that life. I don't think there's any rule in the book of life that says a stripper can't hang up his sparkly underwear and go live on a farm."
The dreamy expression on Matthias' face evaporated. "No. No, I can't."
I wrinkled my brow. "You can't quit stripping or you can't go live on a farm?"
"The farm. It's not in my future."
"Why not?"
"My future is already planned out for me." He sighed. "And anyway, it would probably get boring after a while. Farms are notoriously lacking in adoring crowds."
I rolled onto my back next to him and laced my fingers through the hand on my shoulder. "You can do whatever you want to do, Matthias."
He was silent. "Let's talk about something else."
Though we easily switched topics, I couldn't get my mind off how assured he seemed that his life was already predestined. What did that mean? And why didn't he want to talk about it?
Did he mean that he already had a life? That he already had a wife and family he was hiding from? That would certainly explain both that comment and his mysteriousness about it all.
The thought plagued me for the rest of the night. Even when Matthias dropped me off at my apartment and kissed me goodnight, I couldn’t stop my head from spinning with worry. I might not have the details right, but I was sure there was something going on with Matthias that he didn’t want to tell me about.
I just didn't know what.
25
Matthias
Veronika wasn't happy. I could tell, because she'd already ratted me out to my parents.
Normally I could count on her discretion if I went a little "off book". She didn't throw a fit every time I went down a different aisle at the grocery store, or if I went for a drive to get snacks while she was sleeping. She didn't like it, but at least I could count on her not to get my parents involved.
But
apparently sneaking off to the middle of nowhere while she was in the bathroom would not be tolerated.
I stepped into my apartment, already feeling out of sorts, and was confronted by the angriest little cauliflower the world had ever seen.
"Where the hell have you been?" she asked me in clipped French. "You've been gone for four hours. You turned off your cellphone, dammit! Do you know how irresponsible that is?"
It was the most words I'd gotten out of her in one go in a long while. I opted to continue speaking in French so as not to make things worse.
"I was out. You were busy when I left."
She scowled. "That's bullshit and you know it. Call your parents. They're very upset."
"It's the middle of the night there. I'm not calling them now!"
Veronika's scowl softened as she realized I was right. "Fine. Then explain to me where you were and what you were doing."
"Where do you think I was, Veronika?" I kicked my shoes off and strode into the kitchen, dying for a glass of water. "It's not like I have much in my calendar these days."
She followed me into the kitchen. I would have been scared by the sharp-as-daggers stare she was sending my way if I didn't know that she was under direct orders not to hit me. Plus, although she was tall and strong for a woman, I was still much bigger than her.
"So you were with the girl? Ally?" she asked. "I know you're worried about her finding out about you, but the least you could do is give me a heads-up before you go meet with her."
I filled a glass with water and chugged down half of it before wiping my mouth and shrugging. "You would have only followed me," I argued.
"Which is my job."
"We went to the middle of nowhere, little cauliflower. There was nobody around to harm me. There was no way you could have followed without being seen." Thirst quenched, I strode into the living room and plopped down onto the couch. I had grown to like American television in my time here. I wanted to watch a little before bed to ease my mind a bit.
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