by Jaime Rush
“Well, yeah. I’d be all shriveled up down there if I hadn’t. I’ve just never done it . . . with anyone around.”
“And you’ve never had a guy do you?”
“No. One guy tried to ram his hand down my pants while he squeezed my breast with the other, and that was after the first kiss. I mean, minutes after the first kiss. So no, I never let him go any further. Or anyone else.”
“You’re too sweet.” His gaze swept down her, heating her skin. “But not some innocent, prim and proper flower.”
Oh, gawd, he’d remembered her exact words. She was in trouble. Big trouble. “I’ll go find my . . . you know, my thing.”
“Your vibrator? You weren’t shy about saying the word before.”
“That was different.”
“No vibrator. Use your fingers.”
Her eyebrows rose. “I’ve never done it that way before.” At least a vibe looked like a man.
“First time for everything.”
“Fine. But I’m not doing this alone.”
Again, that inquisitive rise of his eyebrow. “Meaning?”
“I’ve never touched a man, but I want to direct you, too.”
He groaned. “You’re not going to make this easy on me, are you?”
“I’ll be less self-conscious. It’ll make it easier on me.” She gave him a big smile. “You do know how to get yourself off that way, I assume. You’re a guy, and I’ve heard guys . . . well, you know.”
“If I didn’t, I’d be all shriveled up down there.”
They laughed, but it didn’t last long.
“You’re serious?” he asked.
“Very.”
Resigned, he walked to the window and closed the drapes, making the room nearly dark. The glow of the stereo lights, red and green, gave enough light that she could see him unbuttoning his shirt. He flung it to the side and started on his jeans.
She pulled her top over her head, then unclasped her bra and dropped it to the floor. They slid out of their pants at the same time.
She let out an inaudible sigh at the sight of the colored lights washing over his chest and averted her gaze. “So how are we doing this?”
“We sit on the bed, back-to-back.” He climbed to the center and sat, facing the headboard. “Lean against me.”
His back felt warm and smooth and incredibly sexy because it was bare and hers was bare. Breathe. This is going to be fantastic. And wild. And embarrassing.
“Take off your panties,” he said.
She shimmied out of them and realized it was the first time she’d been naked around a man. “You, too.”
“I’m not wearing panties.”
She rolled her eyes. “Your skivvies.” Damn, her throat felt like she’d swallowed a wad of tissue.
He pulled them off and resettled against her. “Spread your legs and—”
“Start somewhere safe. Ease me in.”
“Safe. Alright. Run your hand down your collarbone.”
The song that was playing now, so appropriate, the male lead singing, “Come my lady, come come, my lady.” Something about butterflies.
“I don’t feel any movement,” he said, a teasing lilt in his voice.
“Lachlan . . . I don’t know about this.”
“You wanted to get off.”
“No, I was mad because you got off.”
“So now it’s your turn. We don’t have to do this if you’re scared—I mean uncomfortable.”
Oh, he had to throw the word scared out there, didn’t he? Because he was drawn by her fearlessness. How brave was she when she could face Russell but not touch herself?
“I’m moving, I’m moving.” She slid her hand down the center of her chest.
“Too fast. Take your time, draw the tips of your fingers around the curve of your breasts, and then circle your nipples.”
She opened her mouth to protest but closed it and did as he said. Touching herself was far different than using a device. Was it cheating to imagine his callused hands on her?
His voice softened to a low, almost hypnotic tone. “Put your hands on both breasts, feel their weight, their softness.”
It hit her then. This is what he’d be doing if he could allow himself to. She closed her eyes. Him touching me. His hands on me.
“Your turn,” she said. “I want you to wet your fingers and run them around your nipples.” She’d seen that in a movie once. “And then blow softly.”
She felt the circular motion of his arm, heard him blow out a long breath. She imagined his nipples puckering. “Now do the other one.”
After he had done so, he said, “Move your hands lower, across your stomach. Feel your fingers on your skin, how soft it is. Skim the upper edge of your pubic hair, and then cup your hands over it.”
She felt the warm pulse of the pressure against her pubic bone.
“Slowly, up and down, round and round,” he said, his voice low and soft and persuasive.
She was already hot and throbbing. She’d never gone from zero to eighty so fast before. It was hard to focus on what she wanted him to do, with her own distracting sensations. What did the women in the novels do? “Move your hand down that hard, ridged stomach. Down through your hair, next to your . . . shaft. Just brushing by it.”
She could feel the movement of his arm, following her directions, his body twitching as he, no doubt, brushed past his penis. Being in control, telling him what to do, heady stuff.
“Slide your fingers to your inner thigh,” he said, “Tracing circles, moving closer, closer with each circle. So close that your finger brushes that delicate ridge between your thigh and your vagina.”
How did he know so much? Did those erotic movies teach him that this felt good, an innocent touch that grazed the part of her that wanted lust, that felt wet and hot?
“Wrap your hands around your cock.” His word for it. It sounded raw and slightly dirty as it came off her tongue. “Keep the touch light and stroke up and down.” She imagined his body, what she’d do to him, though she hadn’t seen him completely naked. She saw herself being creative, confident, and sexy. She felt his body move in accordance with her orders.
“Bring your fingers to your cleft, slowly,” he said. “Don’t touch your . . . I’m not sure what you call it. The nub. Put your fingers on either side of it, sliding back and forth. Are you wet?”
“Mmm hmm.” She could barely talk. Just the slightest brush of her fingers had her toes curling. Not ready to go off yet. “Grab your cock firmly, and rub your thumb over the tip. Are you wet?” Did men get wet, too?
“Aye.” He shuddered.
Guess so.
“Did you—”
“No.” The word was strained. “Try different kinds of movements. Experiment and find what feels good to you. Guys like a quick, firm stroke; I’m not sure what gets a girl off.”
It felt different using her fingers, more intimate. Real. She was so ready. But it wasn’t her touch alone. It was him, the feel of him against her, directing her and pushing her envelope.
She felt his movements, slow and languid. Lord but she wanted to touch him, to wrap her fingers around him and know she was causing him to make those soft gasps. She sucked in a breath, feeling the storm moving closer, thunder vibrating through her.
Hold on. What was the MacLeod battle cry? Hold fast!
He said, “God, you don’t know how hard it is—”
“Very hard, I imagine.”
“No, how . . . difficult it is not to reach around and do what I’m imagining you doing.”
She leaned her head back against him. “Yes, I do.”
“I did not need to know that.”
“Sorry.”
“Tell me what you feel like, Jess.”
Because he’d never touched a woman. Couldn’t learn that from a movie or magazine. “Slickery. Hot and swollen.” Touch me, Lachlan. Feel for yourself. She held the words in. If you do that, he’ll give in and touch you, oh my, touch you and slide into you and�
�she blinked—and hate himself afterward. “I’m about to go over the edge,” she said on a gasp.
“Me, too.”
“Can we go together?”
Their backs moved against each other, hot and moist.
“On the count of three,” he said, breathless. “One . . . two . . .”
Lightning struck, making her body go rigid as spark after spark of pleasure rolled over her. She let out a series of quick gasps, trying to hear him over her own noise. His body had stiffened, too, and he leaned harder against her.
They both shifted and fell backward, next to each other, chests rising and falling, the musky scent of sex faint in the air. Her head was next to his knee, but she could lift her head slightly and see him.
He flopped one arm over his head. “Haven’t gone off in almost a year, and now I’ve come twice in a day’s time.”
She lifted her head more. “You haven’t even . . .”
“No. Nothing. Not even thoughts of it, until you came along. Damn ye.”
He’d twisted the end with the Scots accent, and a smile. She could hear it in his voice, see it from her side view.
“So, are we still considered virgins?” she asked.
“We can swear in a court of law.”
She dropped her head back onto the bed. “It sure doesn’t feel that way.” If this was what having sex with a man was like, she was going to like it. A lot. The only problem was, she couldn’t imagine it with anyone but Lachlan.
Chapter 16
“Jessie was here? But . . . how? How could she have possibly come here? You’re sure?” Russell looked at the wall inside the pulsing mass the Void had become, at the soul embedded there. There was only half a face left in the wall.
“I could feel her. She came for Henry. I heard them talking, though not what they were saying. There’s too much noise, the breathing, the muffling of everything.”
He sensed the frustration, heard the underlying fear. He had created this prison for Henry, and it had taken on a life of its own, filling in the once empty space with itself like a tumor . . . drawing its life source from the Darkness he’d created it out of. He didn’t know all the secrets of Darkness. There had been no one to ask, no manual, only a desperate need for vengeance and two brothers who didn’t bother to wonder about the consequences.
He was still that same man.
Every time he visited the Void, it consumed more and more rapidly. Desperation consumed him the same way.
It stunned him that Jessie had somehow managed to come here. How had she even known about it?
“You haven’t talked with her yet, I take it?” the face said.
“She won’t believe anything I say. Now she has the man with magic protecting her. He’s put some kind of block around wherever they are. It throws the dogs off, like sending a compass spinning. They think they’ve got the scent and then they run off in another direction.”
“Julian wouldn’t help?”
He shook his head, heaviness at the thought of him. “He still hates me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. I wasn’t counting on his help. If only I’d known Jessie was here. Everything would have been solved.” But they couldn’t communicate unless he was here.
“It’s not like I could tell you. But she’ll come back.”
His heart lifted. “How can you be sure?”
“I felt her agony over leaving Henry behind. She’s stubborn and loyal, and, as we’ve seen, strong. When she returns, I’ll get her attention. She won’t leave him here to be swallowed up. I’ll use that loyalty and tell her the truth. She’ll give us what we want then.”
Hope bloomed in his chest. “I have to go.” The breathing, the ever-encroaching wall of flesh . . . how could one stay here without going insane?
He left that chamber, and as eager as he was to get out of there, slid through the layers and stepped into Henry’s presence. He took pleasure in seeing him there.
“You come here often, and yet you rarely visit me,” Henry said. “Is it guilt that keeps you away?”
Russell stepped closer. “Guilt? You think I should feel guilt for putting you here? Did you ever suffer guilt for how you treated me? For hating me only because I was born? For outright blaming me for our mother’s death? When you stole my lover, did you feel a twinge then? No, I doubt you ever did. You took her only because somehow it made us even, didn’t it?”
“I did, yes. In life, I would never have admitted it. Blaming God for taking our mother seemed too dangerous. Blaming you, a defenseless boy, was much easier and safer. You took away so much, what little we had after her death, what little of our overworked father’s time. Then we met Calista, and she filled me as I hadn’t been filled in years. But there you were, as always, horning in on our time, being the pesky younger brother. She pitied you, Russell. That was her biggest feeling toward you. I saw how you were trying to manipulate her emotions, and that’s when I pushed ahead on my plans to marry her and leave you behind.”
Russell felt exactly how he’d felt then, despair, anger. “She loved me.”
“Like a brother. But then you snuck back into her life and manipulated her again.”
Russell smiled, feeling smug about those last months when he and Calista were meeting furtively, when she told him that he brought her to life again. That was before he’d begun to heal her. Then he became her savior. “I gave her the one thing you couldn’t: healing.”
“By using Darkness, without knowing what it would do to her. Hadn’t you learned yet what playing with this . . . this dark substance can do?”
He would not address his recklessness. If Henry knew what he was planning, what he’d done, the lecture would really kick in. “Your daughter was here.”
That stilled Henry’s words, putting shock into what little Russell could see of his expression. “Leave her out of this.”
“She is to play a very important role in my life, Henry.”
“No! You’ve destroyed enough. She’s innocent.”
Russell smiled, backing toward the door. “I have no intention of hurting her. Indeed, she and I will be close. Very close indeed.”
After an early lunch, or a late breakfast, depending on how you saw it, Lachlan dragged Jessie back to the studio to work on her Darkness. The air in the courtyard felt only moderately warmer than it had in the dark of morning.
“Lachlan, I’m going back to the Void.”
“What?” He didn’t stop, his hand on her wrist—yes, literally dragging her.
“If I can get my dad out of that wall, maybe I can bring him back to his body. His soul is still here. Well, there, technically. It’s still around, and so is his body. I can bring them together like you were talking about earlier. I have to go back and get him out.”
“You’re not going back.”
“Uh, somehow you missed the part where I wasn’t asking permission.”
He paused and faced her. “When you left, and you collapsed in my arms, do you know how it felt to watch you and wonder if you were coming back?”
“No, how did it feel?” She wanted to know, to hear what she saw in his eyes now as he thought about it.
“It scared the hell out of me.”
Okay, maybe she didn’t want to know. “I’m sorry about that, but I’m going.”
He tunneled his hands through his hair, obviously still used to having his longer locks as his fingers kept going past the ends. “If you never come back, and your body dies, I’ll bury you in the plot near my mum.”
Trying to intimidate her, was he? “The plot will be fine. You’d have no believable explanation of my condition if you took me to a hospital, and you could get into trouble. I don’t want that. I’m sorry you’ll have to dig a big hole, though. But no one will report me missing. No one will be looking for me. And no one will miss me.”
His mouth tightened into a line. “I’ll miss you.”
Her heart caved on those words. Was he just manipulating her? “No,
you’ll be glad to get rid of a troublemaker.”
“Troublemaker?”
“Yeah, you know, the one who almost got you killed twice, screwed up Magnus’s life.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. You gave me something to live for, for the first time in almost a year. Maybe ever.” His fingers tightened on her wrist. “Your father said Darkness could be controlled. You’re going to learn to control it, especially if you’re going back there.”
She’d given him something to live for. Those words twined inside her. “And what if I kill you? Maybe you’d better show me where the plot is, and the shovel.”
“You are the most exasperating person I’ve ever known.”
“Ditto.”
“You make me all knotted up inside.”
“Ditto.”
“And you’re bent on driving me absolutely crazy.”
“Ditto. We’re not talking about just going to the Void anymore, are we?”
He grunted, pulling her along again.
Just as she suspected. “What’s that?” She pointed to a portion of the house next to the studio, which had only one small window and a solid door.
“My dad’s lab. He kept specimens in there, and Blue Moon, the Callorian’s DNA. It’s where he worked on the antidote.”
She looked down, now near the place where Lachlan meditated. “So these weird things all over, they’re fungus?”
“Aye, his beloved fungus and slime molds. He was obsessed with them, always had been, he said. The only way to get his attention, really, was to talk fungus with him, or go on meteor chases.”
“Sounds like you had to compete with fungus, you and Magnus.”
“We did, but he loved us, we had no doubt of that. In his way. He protected us, made a nice life for us.”
She knelt down and studied what looked like a cluster of purple balloons. The sign next to it read: METATRICHIA VESPARIUM. “Wild stuff.”
“You’re stalling.”
“Yeah, pretty much.” She stood and allowed him to lead her to the studio door. He was right, of course. She’d been hiding from her Darkness just like she’d been hiding from Russell.
She walked beside him, and he loosened his grip. She liked the feel of his hand on her, though. After their . . . well, she wasn’t sure what to call it. Afterward, they got dressed in the dark and went on as though it hadn’t happened. But something had changed between them, at least on her end. She was ultra aware of him now, of his physicality, masculinity. He had done all of that for her, guided her, and touched himself. Even though they hadn’t touched each other, it had been an erotic encounter. She felt an odd mix of embarrassment, though not shame, and hunger. She wanted more.