When I stopped paying attention to my anxiety attack I found I was close. Every step he took jarred my pussy in the most amazing way. The fear had amped up my pleasure to a syrupy, thrumming arousal. “I am…getting there.”
“I’m getting there too.” He kissed me, crushing my back to the wall of his upstairs hallway. Pinning me there for a moment and stroking his tongue over mine, licking my lips, kissing me so deeply my stomach buzzed with it. It was nice. It made me feel good…safe.
Easy, girl. Just sex…
Then he was moving again, walking slow but sure as I kept my legs around his waist, my arms around his neck, my head down so he could see. I marveled at his strength. He only had a few inches on me and maybe forty pounds. But every pound of that appeared to be muscle.
He directly contradicted my mental image by whispering, “You’re so light, Clara. Do you ever eat?”
I blinked and was surprised to find tears clouding my vision. I didn’t answer verbally. I simply nodded against his shoulder so he could feel. He grunted, his fingers sweeping restlessly against my bottom, raising goose bumps along my skin. And then we were in his large bathroom—one of the best features of our cattle-car houses, I thought—and he had me leaning against an antique metal medical cabinet.
“You have good taste,” I said stupidly.
A night-light was plugged in by the medicine cabinet and it cast a surreal angelic glow over the room. He nodded. “You’re here aren’t you, Clara? I have excellent taste.”
And after all that he surprised me by pulling free of me, briefly rubbing the head of his cock to my swollen clitoris, then back to my split. I jumped a little, sighed loudly then watched dumbstruck as he withdrew completely and moved with stealthy ease across the black-and-white checkerboard tile identical to the tile in my bathroom.
At the window he pointed to the small expanse between his window and mine. “There you were,” he said.
It wasn’t so much a question.
I nodded, feeling chilly now that his body was over there and mine was over here.
“And you saw me.” Still not a question.
“Yes.”
“And you liked it?”
Even in the dark shadows spiked with yellow glow from the tiny night-light and bright splotches of streetlight, I could see his grin. I felt a bit stupid but kind of bold as well. As far as I was concerned, those emotions canceled each other out and I was golden.
“Yes.”
“If you liked it what did you do about it?”
He knew. I could hear it in his voice. He knew and he wanted to make me say it. If I had looked at myself at that moment to see light streaming out of my fingers and toes I wouldn’t have been surprised. I was glowing on the inside or so it felt. Partly from fear and partly from excitement.
He waited, the outline of him beautiful to me. His chest and shoulders backlit, the solid outline of his hard-on obvious. The curve of his thigh and the cut shadow of his ass were imposing. He looked very much like he’d drawn himself in pencil as he’d done with the sketch of me. I wished I could save the image and draw it myself. But I was no artist. I was barely a teacher.
“I touched myself,” I said. Mere hours earlier in my life I would have laid easy money on the fact that I would never utter a phrase like that aloud ever. And yet here I was. I would have lost that bet.
“Did you now?”
I blushed but knew he couldn’t see it. It dawned on me he’d left us in meager light. I wanted to think it a coincidence but my gut said he’d read my body language and my emotions and was giving me the darkness as a robe.
“I did,” I said as boldly as I could, trying to give back.
“And did you come?”
“I did,” I said, echoing myself.
“Yeah?”
Then he was moving toward me, looking nearly predatory in the almost-darkness. The hair on my nape rose, the skin of my scalp prickled. My breath went shallow and my ears started to ring. But then he was on me and I was surrendering to him willingly, whether he be a predator or a hero. It didn’t matter to me. All that mattered was his mouth on mine and his hands on me again.
He pushed me back on the cabinet and I clutched madly at the lip of the counter. The metal was cool under my back and he was warm on top of me. Matt pulled me toward him so I was level with the edge of the counter. He pushed my thighs wide and slid into me roughly. I made a noise—a needy, frantic noise that humbled me—and held his forearms. His breath was a rush, the heat of it washing over my face as he moved.
“You liked it. You came. You are so…I don’t know. Clara, are you a witch? Did you cast a spell on me?” He grinned slightly and his voice went on rumbling almost aimlessly. One moment I was sure he was addressing me and the next I was certain he was talking to himself.
So I said nothing. Surrendering to the moment, I wrapped a leg around his waist, drawing him down and into me harder. I arched my neck to reach him, to kiss him or just brush my lips against his skin. It had been so fucking long. Far too long. My body rejoiced in the moment—the contact, the heat, the friction, the joy.
“Yes,” I finally murmured as the pleasure swept me under. He kissed me rough and fast. I sounded like a porn movie cliché and didn’t care. It was the most logical thing to say in that moment. So I said it again. “Yes.”
“Yes,” he muttered.
“Yes,” I parroted. Laughing. Like a madwoman and loving it.
I laughed and felt it shake my belly and my chest. It seemed to jar my soul and I worried he’d think I was laughing at him. But then I heard him laughing with me. A soft, silken chuckle that tiptoed up my spine and curled softly against the nape of my neck.
“God, woman, all that vibration…”
He gripped me tight and thrust faster. I found myself falling back into it, coming hard and loud this time. My voice bouncing off the high, tiled walls and across the ceiling like a trapped bird. Matt was growling out his own release. Coming with me, laughing too.
Chapter Seven
We sat in the center of his box-cluttered living room floor on a large blanket. Around us were scattered some leftover takeout, cheese, crackers, a box of lemon cookies, mixed nuts, olives, pickles and a bottle of wine.
“This should be disgusting,” he said, eating a pickle with a piece of cheese on a cracker.
“But it’s so, so good,” I said, eating my own cracker with cheese. I ate it in small nibbles because my stomach was electric.
“Really?” He cocked his head. “Because you barely seem to be eating.” He touched my leg with his bare foot. He was warm.
“I’m eating.” I pulled the sweatshirt he’d draped over me close to my body. Besides his sweatshirt, I wore my white slouchy socks and we’d located my panties.
He held out a box of cookies. “I’m good,” I said.
Matt studied me. “I’m not as dumb as I look, you know.”
I ate the rest of my cracker and took a sip of wine. It was nice. It had that whiskey aftertaste I usually hate and yet I didn’t this time. There was enough of a fruity burst in it to temper the oak. “I don’t think you look dumb at all. I think you look really smart,” I said.
I hoped he didn’t hear the mixture of annoyance and anxiety in my voice. I wanted to get past the food thing.
No chance.
“So tell me, mysterious neighbor. Why do you seem to be a person who sticks very close to home? Why do you seem so…gun-shy? Is that a good description?”
I tried to nod but my head barely moved.
“I know why I’ve been a monkish man for almost a year. Why have you been Sister Clara Barrett?”
I cleared my throat. “I don’t know.”
He cocked his head and then cut his eyes away. He tried to make it look nonchalant but I knew what he was doing. He was giving me a moment to consider the situation.
“Really?”
“I…”
Matt held up a hand, looking me right in the eye so I felt totally naked. For a
crazy moment I felt as if there were no barriers between what was inside of me and what was inside of him. He said, “You were bold enough this morning to straight up tell me you wanted to have sex with me.”
I opened my mouth but he kept that silencing hand up and I shut it with an audible snap. His fingers slipped beneath my sock, circled my ankle and he said, very softly, “Please let me finish before you throw up your security fences and barriers.”
My throat was tight. I nodded.
“You were bold enough to watch me in my bathroom. When I probably could have spotted you at any time, and I sorta kind of did at the end there. And…” He squeezed my ankle and the pressure went right to my pussy. “You were bold enough to come over here on a…” He chuckled. “Booty call.”
I made a small noise of protest but then laughed. Our laughter mingled and I felt a rightness I couldn’t remember feeling. It scared the shit out of me.
“But you won’t tell me what your history is, Clara?” He didn’t say it to belittle me. I could tell he wasn’t angry. It was simply a question to help him understand. And that made me tell him.
I finished my wine in three big gulps and leaned back on my hands, keeping my legs in crisscross-applesauce fashion.
“I was married.” I picked at a loose thread on my sock and then looked at him. His eyes were amazing. Gorgeous and kind and deep—if they were the windows to Matt Millen’s soul, his soul was a wonder of the universe.
“I’m going to say this in one big breath and get it over with, okay?” I said, feeling my eyes sting a little. I willed myself not to cry. I could not cry. That would be stupid. That bad part of my life was over. I needed to move past it.
“Okay,” Matt said. His hand stayed around my ankle, loose but comforting. He wasn’t eating or drinking but he wasn’t poking or prodding either. He was waiting. Listening. Paying attention.
“I was married to a man who wasn’t…nice.” I shrugged but it felt like I was being blasé about something that was anything but. So I stilled my body and went on, willing myself to be strong. “He didn’t beat me or anything. But he carved me up emotionally. My sister Cat once said it would have been better if he had beaten me.” My voice had gotten small. My stomach hurt.
His eyes flashed with anger but he kept his face schooled. “And why is that?”
I blew out a shuddery breath and whispered, “She said that if he’d left bruises on me—broke bones—I’d have known that it was wrong. But as it stood, he got inside my head and…” I tapped my temple. “Fucked with me. He played on my biggest fears and weaknesses to control me. It’s like in those books where you read about demons and possession and hell,” I laughed. “He infiltrated my brain and he trapped me with my own fear.”
Matt sighed and popped an olive in his mouth. “I’m going to go out on a limb here, slim lady, and say one of your issues is food and body image?”
My cheeks heated and I nodded, saying nothing at all. I had to fight the urge to cover myself with his sweatshirt. To pull it down over my knees and hide myself in it. It was a war I still waged most days even thought I was alone about eighty percent of the time.
He watched me. He was waiting.
“I was down to a half a rice cake a day when I finally sort of opened my eyes. It was strange,” I said, pushing on. “We had an argument about something and he raised his hand as if he was going to hit me and I flinched. But it dawned on me, there would come a day. There would be a time when he wouldn’t still that hand and he’d have crossed that final line. But realizing that a day like that was going to come let me look at what was going on. Oh Jesus, don’t get me wrong,” I laughed. It was a harsh sound. “My fears and issues with my body were still my own. They still are. But I was done letting him exploit them.”
He leaned in and kissed me. No big speech. No analyzing what I’d just said. He nodded once and did so again.
My throat hurt from emotion but I still noticed that when he put his hands on my thighs and kissed me again—this time on the forehead—that my body stayed relaxed.
“Now you,” I said. “Nine months is a long time for a smoking-hot artist who looks better naked than in clothes. And you look really good in clothes.”
A surprised chuckle erupted from him and he sat back, planting his hands on the blanket behind him. I refilled my glass and sipped my wine, watching his muscles bunch and move under his skin. He had a single tattoo low on his belly over his right hip. It was a pen. That was all.
“That’s an easy story, Clara. And short. I had a girl. I asked her to marry me about a year and a half ago when I got my first graphic novel deal. I didn’t foresee a mega-career of art superstardom but I did foresee food on the table for kids I hoped we’d have.”
I watched him, ignoring the emotion that suddenly filled my gut. Jealousy. I hadn’t felt it for…years. It took me a moment to identify it and then it was so startling I immediately pushed it away.
He finished off his wine and went on, his eyes on me the whole time. “But I have a friend. Sorry, had a friend who got a deal for a line of books the same time I got my single book deal.”
My stomach dropped. I knew where this was going and it boggled my mind. How had that woman ever let this man go?
“And she saw bigger and better things with him. She dropped me like a hot potato. Me and my little one-book deal.”
“I’m sorry,” I said and I meant it. My chest ached for him.
He shrugged and I could see him walling himself off from those feelings. Not in an unhealthy way but in a take-control way. “It is what it is.”
“So that was the last time you—”
“No. That was over a year ago. I worked my way through a few party girls.” He looked down and put his finger in a small hole in his sweatpants leg. He picked at the strands for a minute and then looked me in the eye. “But I was damaging them and I was damaging me. So I sort of shut myself down and just focused on my work.”
“Until tonight.” My body was tingling. I didn’t know why. A wave of emotions slammed me, dragged me under. I struggled to get a deep breath.
“Anxiety attack,” he said.
I blinked at him. “What?”
“You’re having an anxiety attack,” he said and smiled. Matt got up on his knees and moved my legs so I was sitting knees bent, head over my knees, body curled in on itself gently. “And yes, until tonight. But that’s the same for you, Clara, so no need to panic.”
I shook my head to reassure this man that I was most certainly not having an anxiety attack. But I couldn’t really breathe and my lips had gone numb.
“Breathe,” he said.
I breathed. I followed Matt’s lead and when he said, “Inhale,” I did it. When he told me to exhale I did it. When he told me to hold the breath I did that too. My heart started to calm down and the feeling returned to my lips.
“Better?”
“Yes. How did you…” I looked away, feeling stupid.
“How did I know? Oh I’ve only had about a million of those,” he said. Then he proceeded to build a cheese-pickle-and-olive cracker. He ate it in one bite and washed it down with wine. Then he broke the seal on the cookie box.
“You?” I took a piece of cheese when he nudged the plate toward me. My stomach rumbled and I realized just how hungry I really was.
“Yes me. Don’t sound so surprised. I’m not Superman, just a guy. Who, as one doctor told me as he wrote me a prescription for Ativan, was ‘dealing with being screwed over by a woman and the fear of success simultaneously’.” He laughed.
I couldn’t help myself. “Should you be drinking then?”
He looked confused, but then he understood and a grin split his handsome face. I noticed his lower teeth were just crooked enough to be sexy as hell. And I wanted to kiss him all over again. I tried to find inside myself the badass trash can-leaner, neighborhood spy he’d met this morning. But his demeanor had shifted mine to the softer Clara. The almost-semi-trusting-as-long-as-you-don’t-fuck-me-o
ver Clara. The rare and timid openhearted Clara who rarely made an appearance around non-family.
“You mean because of the Ativan?”
“Yes.” Without thinking I slid the cookie box open and took one. They were lemon cookies dusted in powdered sugar and they were divine. On the second bite, a stab of fear skewered me and I did my best to ignore it. A single cookie would not make me fat or ugly or cause me to lose control. I took a deep breath.
“I don’t take that stuff,” he said. “I have no doubt some folks truly need it but I prefer to do it the way I did it. I found some books, read them, learned some coping techniques and I feel better. I still get them from time to time but they’re not so scary when you know you’re not losing your mind or dying. It’s just your body misfiring a bunch of potent chemicals that can make you feel as if you are.”
“Wow.”
“Wow?” He put his wineglass down and used his foot to nudge my knees apart a little. I let him, knowing he was peeking at my white panties. At me. Wanting me.
And Jesus, how I wanted him.
“You are brave.” I meant it as a compliment but I sounded like some dopey Matt Millen groupie.
So be it.
“Not brave,” he said. “Aroused.” And then he moved toward me on hands and knees, a gorgeous predator, pulling down my underwear.
Chapter Eight
“Lie back, Clara.” I collapsed under him, letting him press his bulk to me. “Kiss me,” he said.
I did. I pushed my fingertips against his scalp, hearing his shorn hair whisper under my touch. His tongue was salty-sweet with the undertones of wine. Matt forced his thigh between my legs and I spread them easily for him. Wanting to feel the pressure of his leg against my clit. To feel him moving me and maneuvering me and crushing down on me. Somehow it made me feel snug.
“Do you think I’m crazy?”
“Because you put the world on a leash and tied it up outside?” he murmured, kissing down my neck. He pushed the sweatshirt high up on my hips and stroked the skin beneath. My skin hummed with energy and my nipples spiked from his touch.
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