Captivated (Stranded)

by Mia West

  She let her head loll sideways and gave him a goofy smile. “I need to get in trouble more often.”

  “You’re a specialist, I bet.”

  Her smile widened, and she reached for his face.

  He caught her hand and kissed her wrist, before trapping it against his chest. But after a few seconds, she pulled her hand away, and before he could stop her, climbed over him to lie on his other side.

  He stared at the sky, the scarred side of his face frozen like normal, only worse because he could feel her looking at him. His fingers dug into the grass at his sides. He itched to get up and run.

  “I have a few questions,” she said.

  He braced himself.

  Chapter 8

  He lay so rigid it hurt her heart. She pulled his hand from its grip on the grass and kissed it, then rolled onto her back, knees tented, and held his hand on her belly. His shoulder pressed, warm and solid, against hers. Only a few stars shone in the city sky. The grass under her tickled. She burrowed into it. She needed to say something soon. He was waiting and not happily.

  “What’s your middle name?” she asked.

  “It was a chemical bomb,” he said.

  Her hand tightened on his.

  “I’ll just tell you, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  He was quiet for a moment, then he squeezed her hand back. “It was stupid. So fucking stupid. I mean, the kind of thing they tell you to watch out for all the time. But you can’t watch every minute, and the minute you stop watching…” His ribs pushed against her arm on a deep breath. “That’s the minute they count on.” He shifted, pulling her hand to him. “It was a jar. A clay jar, which should’ve tipped me off because you can’t see through it, you know? Can’t see what’s going on inside. But it looked like every other clay jar I’d seen over there, and there was this dog fighting with a kid down the street. They were tugging on something between them, and I was trying to decide whether I needed to go help the kid get it back, whatever it was, and then wham.”

  He lifted her hand, studying her fingers.

  “All I remember was the pressure. It blew out my eardrum before I could even hear it and knocked me out cold. When I came to, my buddies were dragging me away, shouting for help. I could only hear out of my right ear, and my vision was all fucked up. It was like I was floating, except I felt like I was on fire.” He curled her fingers over his. “I sort of was.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know what was in the jar—pretty much the worst cocktail you can imagine. They told me later some of the chemicals they’d isolated during tests, but I didn’t recognize the names. Hydro-this and chloro-that; I wasn’t very good in chemistry. But whatever they were, they obliterated my uniform and then started eating into my skin. I couldn’t stop screaming. My buddies got some of it on their hands before one of them figured it out. Burned right through their gloves. So then they were trying to pull the shreds of my kit off with sticks and shit. Eventually, someone got me to a medic or the medic found me, and he knocked me out again. The next time I woke up for real, I was in Germany.”

  “When?” she asked.

  “Three years ago.”

  “How long were you in the hospital?”

  “Almost a year. Got my sight back, and my hearing. They did a few grafts, but mostly tried to get my skin to heal itself. It sucked, basically.”

  “Evan.”

  He turned his head to glare at her. “No pity, Iowa. I can’t stand it.”

  “It wasn’t pity. It’s just…such an understatement to say it sucked.”

  He didn’t respond to that, seemed to change the subject. “My dad came to see me in Landstuhl. A couple times, actually. The first time, I didn’t even know he was there. They must have convinced him I was going to be okay, because he went home. He came back when I was more coherent. I was glad to see him. Embarrassingly glad. I started bawling the first time I realized he was in the room with me.”

  He lay quiet for a long time. The contractions of his chest felt erratic under her hand. She kept her gaze on the sky but reached her free hand up over her head and slipped her fingers into his hair. He pressed his head into her hand.

  “He wanted me to come home,” he said after a while.

  “Of course he did. But you wanted to travel?”

  He let out a harsh breath. “Not exactly.” He lay silent another moment, then, “I was engaged.”

  Her fingers stuttered. She forced them to keep caressing.

  “Her name was Stacy. Is Stacy, but we’re not engaged any more.”

  “Why not?”

  “She broke it off.” He made a sound of exasperation. “They weren’t sure at first if I’d make it. I did, but it was tricky going for a while. That’s why my dad came over the first time. I guess it was too much for her. Either she was going to have to bury me or live with some gargoyle—”

  “You’re not a gargoyle—”

  “—so she sent word with Dad.” He shrugged against her arm. “She had to move on.”

  “But you pushed through.”

  “I pushed through.”

  Should she say it?

  What the hell.

  “And you think she should have pushed through, too.”

  He didn’t answer that.

  Laine sighed. “You’re a good man, Evan.”

  He snorted. She risked a glance at him to find his brows heavy with a frown.

  “You refuse to blame her.”

  He rolled his head toward her and fixed on her eyes. “Not out loud,” he said. “In my head’s a different story.”

  She smiled at that. A good man, and honest. “Was she a high school sweetheart?”

  “Nah. Met her in college.”

  “Must have been pretty good if you were engaged.”

  He shook his head. “It was more just expectation, you know? Go to college, meet a girl, get married, et cetera. It’s probably good she ended it.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. We were okay together, but just okay. Not very…adventurous.” A small smile curled his lips. “What I just did to you?”

  Laine grinned. “Which part?”

  “All of it. She never let me do any of that.”

  “Oh.” Laine wasn’t sure she wanted to hear this.

  “Yeah. It was pretty much just missionary with a side of cowgirl.”

  “Those are good, too,” she said, trying to be objective.

  “They’re great!” he said and laughed when she did. “But there’s a big world outside them, you know? What am I saying? Of course you know, you study it.”

  “It’s a big, big world,” she agreed, “and yet, it all just comes down to touching someone in whatever way feels good.”

  “Hey.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want to talk about Stacy any more.”

  “Thank God.”

  He grinned his lopsided grin at that, and coming up on one elbow, leaned over to kiss her.

  She pursed her lips just long enough to feel the firm warmth of his, and then opened her mouth to him. Cupping her face in his hand, he gave her tongue a languorous stroke with his. She could taste herself on him, but below that was his flavor, a little sour from nerves, maybe. She arched up at him to get more, then started laughing.

  “What?”

  “That was our first kiss,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said warily. “Was it okay?”

  “Of course,” she said and gave him a reassuring peck. “We just have everything backward is all.”

  “No complaints here,” he said and bent to kiss her neck.

  “Nor here, but we have some ground to make up.”

  He raised his head. “This isn’t a race, is it?”

  “No.”

  “Good.” He toyed with the hem of her shirt. “I like to take my time.”

  Oh boy.

  “Tell you what,” he said, lifting her shirt to expose her navel. “You figure out our itinerary. I�
�m just going to do a bit of exploring here.” He planted a kiss on her belly, then in the hollow under her sternum, then on a rib.

  “Right,” she breathed. At his urging she lifted her shoulders and he peeled her shirt up and off.

  “Jesus.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Just praying.” He bent his head to her breast. Closing his eyes, he took her nipple into his mouth and groaned against her.

  Or maybe that was her groaning.

  He teased her with a hot, insistent tongue (flick, swirl, flick) ending with a forceful suck that pulled her nipple tight before letting it go. He watched her breast bounce, then drew his free hand roughly up her ribs on the other side and squeezed that breast. Rolling its nipple under his thumb, he lowered his head to suck on her again. She began to feel a tightening, as if her breasts and pussy were connected by cords, and every suck and nip from Evan’s talented mouth plucked them, twisted them, until she felt herself dripping. She squirmed, digging her hips into the grass, and scissored her thighs to get the friction she craved.

  Evan pulled up to watch her struggle. “You want some help?”

  “God, yes.”

  “You only have to ask, Iowa.”

  The hand on her breast drew a hot swath down her belly and curled around her mound. The heel of his hand pressed on her clit, drawing a cry from her and a shove back from her pelvis. He dragged his fingers up through her folds.

  “Goddamn, you’re wet.”

  “Please,” she said, not sure what she was asking for. Just, “More.”

  Without hesitation, he slid two fingers into her pussy. She shouted and pushed against him, grabbing his hand to make sure he gave her every bit of length he could. He pushed into her, hard, mashing his palm against her clit, before drawing his fingers out. He kept contact with her skin, spreading her lips with the upward sweep of his fingertips, before pushing back into her on a long, slow glide. This time, he pressed against the front of her on the inside, curving his fingers before dragging them back out. The friction and pressure drew a trail of pure pleasure, and fuck itineraries, this was the only path he needed to follow.

  “Yes. Again. Please.”

  He buried his face in her neck and then kissed her ear. “Whatever you want, Laine.”

  She moaned at the sound of her name in his voice, and then he took her breast into his mouth again, matching his rhythm there with his fingers in her cunt. She bucked against him and he took the hint, driving his hand harder, smacking her clit on each impact of his fingertips inside, then sucking off of it with every drag out of her. She clutched him inside and out, panting and twisting, and she heard him curse, once, before her climax blasted through her. He gripped her tightly, not moving, as her muscles ticked against his fingers. As soon as she let her ass settle back in the grass, he pulled his fingers out and rolled away.

  “Sorry, I gotta.”

  She opened her eyes to find him on his back beside her, fisting his cock in a punishing grip. It glistened in the moonlight—coated with her cum on his hand, she realized with a physical aftershock. Evan’s teeth were gritted, his breath puffing through them harshly, as he stroked his length in rough pulls that brought his sac up with each tug. Watching his cock, he reached his free hand over to her, cupping her pussy again, pressing his fingers into her wetness. “Fuck,” he grunted, and then cum spurted from his slit, marking his ridged belly in small, pale pools.

  As he milked the last of his orgasm, Laine rolled over to look at them. In the moonlight, his semen stood iridescent against his skin, as if he had managed to melt pearls. Without thinking, she licked one of the pools off him, drawing a startled chuckle from his chest. One by one, she cleaned the liquid pearls from his skin, rolling each over her tongue before swallowing it. When she finished, she found him watching her, his expression as open as she’d ever seen it.

  She half-expected an emotional declaration. He certainly had the look of a man about to spill his feelings, and in that moment, she was sure she would meet him wherever his heart stood.

  But what he said was, “I need to show you something.”

  Chapter 9

  Stopping only to track down her discarded panties and pull on his boxers, Evan led Laine to the stairs.

  “Watch your step,” he said over his shoulder and stepped down first, ready to catch her if she stumbled. He would always catch her, he told himself, and he knew it sounded goofy and overdramatic, but if that fucker back home was idiot enough to push her away, Evan wasn’t about to squander the chance to give her everything she deserved. But he had to come clean first.

  All the way clean.

  Ducking through the kitchen window, he helped her into the dark apartment, smiling at the damp underwear and shirt she hadn’t bothered to put back on, or more accurately, at the parts of her now accessible to his hands. As soon as she stood on two feet inside, he stepped close and kissed her. She kissed him back, enthusiastically, and he slid his hands down her back to her butt, kneading her gently.

  She chuckled and grabbed his. “I’ve spent two months trying to get peeks of your ass.”

  He pulled away, surprised.

  She gave him a squeeze. “It’s your own fault; I only ever saw you from behind. Sometimes, in the afternoons, I’d have to duck into the bathroom.” She nipped his ear and whispered, “You were there with me.”

  Jesus. Little did she know. “I saw you, too,” he admitted.

  Her smile looked shy. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “See anything you like?”

  He palmed her ass. “This.”

  “So I gathered.”

  He lifted her hair from her shoulders and held it in one hand. With the other, he stroked the nape of her neck. “This.”

  She shivered. “Nice.”

  He tugged down a lock of hair from her temple—“This”—and tucked it behind her ear.

  “Oh.”

  “And this.” He kissed the corner of her jaw. “I actually tried sketching you. Is that okay?”

  She frowned a little. She looked from him to the sketches on the walls. “I guess so. It was art, right?”

  Sort of. “The thing was, it never looked right. So I tried something different.” He sighed. “Come on, before I lose my nerve.”

  She gave him a bemused look. He took her hand and pulled her to the closet door. Inside, he flipped on the light switch, causing them both to groan. Candlelight probably would’ve been better, he thought, his eyes smarting. Way more romantic.

  But is this romance? Or confession?

  Behind him, Laine pulled her hand away from her eyes, and stepped into the closet. “So this is the secret space.” She scanned the crude pallet he’d made of sheets and blankets and extra clothes. Her attention caught on the sketch pad next to his makeshift pillow. “Is it in there?”

  “No.” He tipped his head toward the long interior wall.

  Her gaze traveled up the shelves to the bits of paper glued to the wall above. She studied it with polite interest, head tilted, eyes skipping over the collage’s surface, and one glance back at him that said, What am I looking at? The same kind of expression he’d worn at more than one modern art museum.

  He slipped a hand to her bare waist and moved her to his usual vantage point. “Now let your eyes go blurry,” he said.

  Her lashes fluttered, and she gasped with delight, but a general pleased sound, as if she’d thought of the right word for a puzzle. She saw something but still didn’t see herself.

  He waited, intent on her face as she squinted at the piece.

  Then it happened. Her eyes widened in recognition, and for a moment her brows rose in happy wonder, and he wanted to drop with relief.

  But then she frowned and took in the whole thing again, edge to edge. His throat tightened at the series of expressions that played over her face, from confusion to alarm.

  “It’s a collage.”

  “I know what it is,” she said. “Did you start this yest
erday, after we met?”

  “No.”

  “When?” Her voice didn’t sound right. It came out flat and forced, as if someone were pressing her chest like a bellows to work her voice box.

  Panic beat wings against his ribcage. “About a month ago.”

  Wrong answer. She hugged her shirt to her chest, then tried to pull the bottom down to cover her crotch.

  Shit. “Don’t—”

  She reached down and jerked his top sheet up to wrap around herself, then looked at the bed again. Slowly, she looked back to the collage. Then she sank down to sit on his bed, her eyes on the wall the whole time. She shifted around, testing something. When she turned to him, her face was as blank and taut as a newly stretched canvas. “Do you masturbate to this?” she asked in a tone too casual to be anything but dangerous.

  “Laine—”

  “Do you?”

  She already looked ready to run, hands clutching the sheet tightly, shoulders rigid. He couldn’t lie to her. Still, to admit it out loud. He stared at her, hoping his silence would give her the answer, but no, she was waiting. She wanted the word. “Yes,” he said.

  She glared at the piece, and then shot up from the bed and stalked to the walk below the collage. Planting her hands and feet wide against the shelves, she let the sheet fall to the floor, leaving her entire backside exposed. “Is this what you’ve been picturing?”

  He stared, unable to reconcile the furious woman across from him with Laine, his Laine, from the roof.

  She looked up at the collage, then pulled her hair up with one hand, leaning her elbow on the shelves. She yanked loose a curl with her free hand, then braced it again. “I don’t have my glasses on, but is this close enough?”