by MJ Knight
“They’re still alive?”
“I don’t really know. I talk about them like they’re dead because we’re not connected in any way so they might as well be.”
His tone was light, but Julianne, who had learned early how to read body language, saw the tension in his shoulders and neck. “Okay then tell me about school.”
“It was school. I was lucky enough to become friendly with one of my teachers, and she turned me on to art. I owe my career to her.”
“Well that’s lucky.”
“She taught me a lot. And then I went to university and apart from my art classes I goofed off for four years. Though for an art major it was sort of expected.”
“The rebels.”
“We’re outlaws,” he agreed.
Their meal arrived and the talk grew lighter. He talked a bit more about his work, touched on a few relationships and said “And that’s about it for me.”
“So you’re not seeing anyone?” she asked.
He took a sip of wine and said, “This was a good choice. Um, no, I’m not. Well I wasn’t until tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“If you think you’d like to do this again, I mean.”
“Oh. Duh,” Julianne said, feeling foolish. “I think so. This is fun. Do you know I’ve never actually been out on a date before?”
His mouth dropped open and he sat back and stared in amazement. “Do not tell me I am setting the standard for all future gentlemen callers? They don’t stand a chance, not after I’ve dazzled you with my wit and elegance, not to mention that I never once stepped on your toes out there on the dance floor.”
Julianne giggled helplessly, pressing her napkin over her mouth, praying she didn’t spew a mouthful of potato all over the table. “If we ever stop being friends I’ll have to take holy orders,” she told him once she’d stopped laughing.
“No really, this is a first first date?”
“Yup.”
“So you’ve never...”
She knew what he was asking. “There was someone in high school, but we didn’t date. Certain things happened. Badly. It ended. Also badly.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Now you have that mopey look. How about we agree not to feel sorry for each other?”
“Oh thank god, I wasn’t sure I could keep that up.”
“Me neither. How’s your fish?”
“Really good. Your client was right. Are there any other crappy memories I can share with you?”
“No, I think that about covers it.”
“Then let’s talk about the play. I thought it was wonderful.”
Julianne liked the way Adrian seemed to take everything in stride. It wasn’t that he didn’t take things seriously, but rather that he had a good perspective on things. He seemed to know what was worth getting worked up about and what wasn’t. At that moment, what he was worked up about was the play.
He was adorable.
Chapter Seventeen
The cab pulled up to Julianne’s building and Adrian began to thank her for a lovely evening, but she stopped him.
“Why don’t you come in for a nightcap?”
“You sure?”
“I’m really not at all tired, and I’ve been having such a good time. Haven’t you?”
“Yes, I have,” he admitted. He paid the driver and followed her inside.
Julianne’s apartment was small, but more than that, it was cozy and filled with bright colors and a lot of texture. The living room walls were painted a dark, glossy red, and covered in art, both prints and originals. Bookcases lined two walls and Adrian had the urge to pull one of the books off the shelf, curl up on the couch and start reading. He felt completely at home. “This is a nice place, but how on earth did you get the landlord to let you paint your walls anything but white?”
“That’s in my lease. When and if I move the walls have to be a neutral color or I don’t get my deposit back. Actually, though, I have a really nice landlady. Whenever she comes up here she looks around, smiles and says “Artists!” I think she’s secretly pleased to have me.”
“Lucky.”
“I know. Believe me it’s on my list of blessings to count.”
“Pricey? If you don’t mind my asking.” It was a nice neighborhood, nicer than where he was living.
Julianne shrugged. “So-so. My parents paid for it for a few years until I got on my feet. They’ve been very good to me, but I think they’re happier to have me out of the house. I reminded them of what they view as their failure.”
“I’m sure they don’t,” Adrian said, thinking of Olivia, a living symbol of his failures.
“I don’t worry about it. I can’t afford to. Brandy? Say yes, it’s really all I’ve got aside from a bottle of crème de cocoa that I pour over ice cream sometimes.”
He laughed. “Yes, Thank you.” He sat down on her couch and unfastened his suit jacket. He was very comfortable there. He felt embraced by the place.
Julianne poured two glasses of brandy and joined Adrian on the couch. “Cheers,” she said, clinking glasses. She sipped her brandy and said, “I appreciate you being so understanding, Adrian. I’ve been wondering though if it really isn’t that you don’t find me attractive in spite of what you said earlier. I mean maybe you were being gallant and that would be okay, it would be fine. I’d understand. But please, if that’s how it is, please tell me. Because I think we should both be honest about these things.”
“I wasn’t being gallant, I meant what I said before about this being your show. Look, I am coming understand a little of what you’ve been through, and I believe you need me to follow your lead here. And if I’m wrong about that, then you need to tell me that, too. I have my own problems. Not that I would think to compare to what you’ve been through—” he added quickly.
She shook her head. “No, wait. One thing I’ve learned is that everyone’s problems are equally valid. This isn’t about who’s more wounded. The more wronged person gets to choose the first slice of cake and all that.”
Adrian ran a hand through his hair. “I know, but I would feel like a jerk trying to tell you that I understand what it’s like. I don’t. I can’t.”
“You don’t have to. Please don’t think you have to. You accept that there are things I’m having trouble with and that’s enough.”
“I’m happy to be whatever you want me to be. I like being with you. And yes, I find you attractive but to be honest, most of my experience of sex is about compulsion. I can’t imagine that I’d be good for you.”
And in admitting that, he was admitting that his own wounds were deep and still painful. He bent his head over his glass and sighed.
He felt the tips of her fingers brush his cheek, then slip under his chin to lift it so that they were eye-to-eye.
“I think everything about you is good for me,” she said softly, and leaned in to kiss him, something he had feared he would never have the chance to do.
It took every bit of his training not to lunge into the kiss, not to overwhelm her with his own need. He had the wild desire to tell her that he’d found the missing piece of his puzzle in her, to tell her he loved her and wanted to be with her forever. But he understood that the kiss had to be his boundary, the soft, first touch of lips, and a shared breath, the tentative warmth, and the thrill in the pit of his stomach. He was shivering with desire as she pulled back.
“I have a monster who lives inside my head,” she told him as she moved closer to him on the couch. “He says horrible things to me.”
“Is he talking to you now?” Adrian drew a shaky breath as her fingers caressed his cheek.
“Yes. And I know he’s lying to me. I’ve known for a long time, but tonight I’m sure.”
He prayed she was right.
They kissed again, more urgently.
“Whatever you want,” he murmured as he rubbed his face against her hand. “Nothing you don’t want. Not ever.”
“I want everything.”
&
nbsp; “Then tell me. You have to tell me,” he breathed.
Julianne put her glass down and leaned forward. “Unzip,” she said, and laid her hands on his shoulders so that he could reach around and unfasten the zipper on her dress. She slipped free of the straps and pushed the dress down to her waist. Then she bent towards him and kissed him so hungrily that he wondered if she would end by devouring him. He would have welcomed it, he thought. He would have given her anything, any part of himself.
“Unfasten,” she said and he reached behind her and unfastened her bra, slipping it off of her.
“Touch me,” she told him. “Touch my breasts.”
He ran his finger down the slope of one small, beautiful breast. He teased the nipple with his fingers, then bent his head and took it into his mouth, flicking his tongue across it as he sucked.
Julianne gasped and caught hold of Adrian’s hair. She sighed, pushed him back gently and turned his face. “Now the other,” she told him.
He rubbed his face against her chest, flicking at her nipple with his tongue, then raised his head for another kiss. “Is it good?” he asked.
“It’s... so good. I never even imagined how good this could be.” She lifted his head and kissed him again. “Please take off your clothes?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
* * * *
Watching a man undress had always been a kind of nightmare for Julianne. She had watched her uncle uncover himself with horror, and her high school boyfriend tearing open his clothing with dread. But watching Adrian do it because she’d asked him to was a kind of miracle for her because it wasn’t fearsome or threatening. It made her hungrier for him.
He was beautiful with his lightly furred chest, tan skin, and smooth, ropey muscles. When he slipped out of his shirt he did it for her, teasing smile on his lips, holding her gaze. He opened it slowly, button by button, bared one shoulder with a sly smile, then one arm bared, then the other. The sight of the soft, pale cotton sliding across his tanned skin made her vibrate with excitement. She wanted to touch him all over, move her hands over his skin the way the shirt had slid across it. She wanted to envelop him, wrapping him in herself.
She reached out and put her hands on his chest. “Let me...”
“Anything you want,” he promised, and touched her cheek with his fingertips. She rubbed her face against his hand and kissed it as she explored his body.
His skin was smooth and firm under her hands, her lips. She laid a line of kisses down to his navel, then unfastened his belt and opened his trousers. She felt bold as she laid him bare, and then wicked as she touched his cock for the first time and felt it twitch and stiffen in her hand.
She sat back. He looked so wanton, lying there on her couch, waiting for her. “Touch yourself,” she said, carried away with her wickedness.
He took his cock in his hand and began to stroke it. He never took his eyes off of her, off of her face. He was watching her reactions the same way she watched his, learning what excited her. She watched as he stroked his own flesh, watched and remembered the touches he used that seemed to give him pleasure. She wanted to make him sigh like that, she wanted to pleasure him and take pleasure from him.
She stroked his thighs, her eyes on his hand and his stiffening cock, stunned at how it aroused her. She felt little thrills of pleasure deep inside.
“What do you want?” he asked her. “What do you need?”
By way of an answer she leaned forward and took him in her mouth. He couldn’t know what a victory this was for her, and she never wanted him to. All she wanted was for him to feel how much she wanted him, wanted to feel him inside her.
She stood and stepped out of her dress, leaving it pooled on the floor at her feet, slipped out of her panties, and was pleased to see Adrian’s breathing grow ragged. Julianne straddled him in one smooth motion, then lowered herself. “In me,” she told him. “I want you in me.” And in a moment he was there inside her and she was pushing back on the fear, gritting her teeth and telling the monster that he was finished.
She looked up and Adrian was staring at her with an expression of such longing that it made her heart hurt. “It’s good,” she told him, and it was. Feeling him moving inside her was good in a way nothing had ever been good before. He was part of her now, and the feel of his hands on her thighs, her hips, her back, on her belly and breasts, was a miracle too. He cared enough for her to do this thing her way, so gentle, so very gentle and caring. He was telling her that she was safe with him and always would be.
She leaned forward and kissed him. A little voice in her head, a new one, a shy one, said “I love you.” But she didn’t speak it. It wasn’t the right time to give it life. She would carry it inside her for a little longer.
She surprised him that night. He hadn’t thought this would go very far. Adrian had been prepared for a long courtship, one that might never end, and had convinced himself that he could handle it. And now this? Holding her, touching her, moving inside her until she threw back her head and uttered a deep, satisfied cry, and slumped against him.
Now she was laughing softly. “Please don’t be offended,” she said, slurring her words.
“I’m not. Laughter is good.”
A minute later: “You didn’t finish.”
He toyed with a lie, wanted to say it was all right, but told the truth. “No.”
Julianne sat up and began to move again, long, slow lifting of her hips, circling, muscles clenching around him. She arched up, and he caught hold of her waist, thrusting harder now, trying to follow her lead but too caught up in the sensations to do much more than seek his own release. When it came, it lifted him up off the couch, and Julianne with him, then slammed him down, drained, happy. Laughing.
She lay down on top of him again and rested her head on his shoulder. “I like hearing you laugh,” she breathed.
“Laughter is good,” he repeated sleepily.
* * * *
Julianne watched Adrian sleep. They had moved from the couch to her bedroom and he was lying on his side, breathing softly, his dark hair rumpled, and the ghost of a smile on his lips. She was sleepy, but couldn’t bring herself to surrender to sleep just yet. She wanted to lie beside him and savor the moment.
She had done something she feared she would never be able to do, she had been intimate with a man without holding herself back, without the ripples of fear that had plagued her for so many years. She had taken charge, proved to herself that she was capable of a real, healthy sexual relationship. Whatever happened now—and she hoped she and Adrian would be together for a long time to come—but whatever happened, she knew that she was not the destroyed child she’d been when she first met Dr. Lange.
There was still work to do, a lot of it. She knew she’d pay for happiness with nightmares, and sometimes even with panic in broad daylight. But she owned herself now, Gerald had no more hold on her.
Adrian began to move, to make little sighing noises. One eye slitted open and she smiled at him. “It’s late, go back to sleep.”
“Mmmm,” he said and gathered her into his arms. “You smell so good.”
“So do you.”
They shifted a little until they fell into the right configuration. Adrian dropped off again, and Julianne surrendered to sleep, thinking how sweet it was to sleep in your lover’s arms.
Chapter Eighteen
Sunday morning. Waking up beside Adrian without a clue how to think or feel about what had happened between them. Julianne rolled out of bed and crept to the bathroom so she could shower, and have some time to think about what came next.
What did come next? She was so new at this that she didn’t really know what to expect. Was this a one-off? An affair? Prelude to something more? No, that wasn’t likely, she decided, and felt relieved because marriage? Much too big for someone with such a small life. Scary big.
She stepped into the shower and as the water ran down her body she had a moment, just a moment, where she remembered standing
in another shower, weeping because she couldn’t scrub her skin off to get rid of the feel of unwanted touches.
“NO!” she said, as forcefully as she could, and then began to recite the Queen Mab speech from Romeo and Juliet. She’d learned it, along with Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy, and the Hollow Crown speech from Richard II, to stop the images and ideas from running through her head. She could recite all three of them back to back, and had done, over and over again in the past, to force unwelcome thoughts and memories out of her head. She had to focus on the words to get them right and the words blocked out everything else. She the words for a good five minutes, nearly finishing all three speeches, and then stopped, waiting to see if the feelings would come back. But they didn’t. They were gone, and in their place was a feeling of satisfaction. She’d been intimate with a man and hadn’t panicked or pushed him away, and she had stared down the monster yet again.
“You’re getting weaker,” she told him. “Soon you’ll disappear entirely.”
There was a knock on the door.
“What?”
“I have to use the toilet,” Adrian called through the door.
Julianne had a moment of embarrassment, but then thought, We’ve seen each other naked; it’s not a big deal. and said, “Come on in then if you don’t mind my being in the shower.”
She was grateful she couldn’t hear him peeing.
“Can I flush without scalding you?”
“Um. I don’t know. I think so. Try it.”
“You sure?”
“Go on.” She stepped out of the spray and waited, heard the sound of flushing and tested the water temperature a few seconds later. “We’re good.”
“Thank you. You going to be much longer? I feel gritty.”
Julianne laughed. “You could join me. I’ll wash your back.” She even popped the shower door for him, and was delighted by her own boldness.
Adrian stepped into the stall with her and put his arms around her. “A very nice way to start the day,” he murmured and kissed her shoulder.