by Lucy Lambert
The Camry did its very best to start, it really did. The little starter moaned and whined. Stopped as though to take a breath, started again. The headlights kicked on each time, lancing the drops of rain with their brightness.
Then the horn let out one brief, sharp cry. Charlie took out some of her frustration on the steering wheel.
I turned back and rapped my knuckles on her window. Her hands were white-knuckled on the wheel, and she forced a smile at me. She pried her fingers away and rolled the window down a crack. “I’m fine. It’s nothing. Does it all the time! …Come on, start!”
She tried cranking the motor again. More whining.
“I’m giving you a ride,” I said.
“It’ll start. I know it will…”
It didn’t.
I opened her door. She shrieked at the sudden wall of water. Then she glared at me. But it was a glare of defeat. She knew I was right. So she got out and slammed the door before the interior could be completely soaked.
“I don’t know how, but this is your fault,” she said, still smiling, “I’m telling you, it always starts!”
“I wish I could take credit,” I said. I couldn’t help looking at her again, letting my eyes take in the way her face lit up when she smiled. The way the rain plastered some long locks of her hair to her cheeks, made her glow. The back of my throat tightened.
“We should get to your car…” she said, glancing up at me quickly and then back down.
In my admiration, I guess my grip on the umbrella loosened. A sudden gust of wind grabbed at it, snatched it from my fingers.
“Damn!” I said, grasping for it but missing. In two heartbeats my expensive umbrella shot across the parking lot.
The rain soaked us both to the bone in an instant.
“Run!” Charlie said. She laughed. I laughed, too, chasing after her.
She reached my Mercedes first, grabbing at the handle and finding it locked. “Open the door!”
I reached into my pocket and fumbled the keys out, but they snagged in the wet material. They slipped through my fingers and splashed on the pavement.
Charlie, laughing still, knelt down and grabbed them up, then offered them to me. I reached out, my hand closing around hers. She looked up into my face and didn’t look away. Rain ran down over her cheeks, her blouse was plastered to her body.
We both stopped laughing. I couldn’t hold off any longer. I slipped one arm around her waist and pulled her forward until our bodies pressed together.
The rain was cold but her lips were hot. Fiery, even. And just as eager as mine. Her hands, trapped between us, balled into fists against my chest. Her body trembled in my arms.
The rain washed over us, cold and clean. I slid my hand up into her soaking hair and held her mouth to mine.
It felt like that kiss made enough electricity to turn that rainstorm into a thunderstorm. The harder we kissed, the more we wanted it. I pushed her back against the side of the Mercedes.
This was so much better than I thought it would be.
When we finally parted we both shivered from the cold of the rain soaking our clothes. It was funny, I hadn’t noticed that cold at all until then.
“Alex…” she said, her eyes flipping up and down from my lips to my eyes. She trembled more when I brushed a long strand of hair away from her cheek and back over her ear.
“I’m going to take you home now,” I said. I found my keys and unlocked the car, its flashers catching in the mist on the asphalt.
“Okay… okay…” Charlie said, her chest and shoulders heaving while she struggled for breath.
Chapter 18
CHARLIE
It wasn’t the cold of the soaking rain that had my whole body trembling. I didn’t even really feel that cold.
His kiss stayed on my lips long after his mouth left mine. It had mingled with the fresh, cool taste of the rainwater.
The rhythmic beat of the wipers across the windshield moved in time with my heart. We got about half way to my apartment building before I realized that I had sat down without making any attempt at drying myself.
“Sorry!” I said, “My seat is soaked.”
He spared me a glance. “Mine too. Don’t worry about it. Are you cold?” he asked, reaching for the heater.
“No, not at all,” I said, looking at him. Once I did I couldn’t look away.
Rain beaded on his cheeks and forehead and glistened in his hair. His skin shone like some Greek god’s. I wanted to reach over and touch his cheeks. I wanted him to stop the car so that we could kiss again.
God, what has he done to me? I thought. The fire of desire and want pushed through my veins, left me throbbing and pulsing deep inside.
A terrible thought occurred to me: what if Ash, trying to be a friend, showed up at my building wanting to talk about how all the press stuff went?
That would definitely be Murphy’s Law kicking me in the teeth again.
But when we pulled up into my spot (I told him to park there since my Camry was still at school) I didn’t see Ash’s little Kia anywhere.
He left the engine running, one hand on the shifter and the other on the top of the steering wheel.
“I think this is your stop,” he said. A little rivulet of water ran down his cheek and I had the sudden urge to kiss it off him.
“What we did back there…” I started.
“I’m not sorry. I’ve been wanting to do that since we met,” he replied.
My heart did its best to punch through my sternum. I didn’t think it possible for a person’s blood to feel so hot.
He held my eyes with his. That electricity sparked between us again, but this time I didn’t lower my gaze.
“Will you come upstairs with me?” I said, nervous energy tickling me like I was at a school formal asking my crush if he wanted to dance at the next slow song.
“Why?” Alex said.
“…what?” I said. That had been the last response I’d been expecting.
“Why do you want me to come upstairs with you?” he said, something glinting in his eyes.
I swallowed hard. Unable to burst forth from my chest, my heart decided it wanted to try exiting up through my throat.
“I think that you know why.” I found some of my old strength and I pushed open the door. The rain had slacked off a bit, the first earthy smells of petrichor coming up from the ground, “So are you coming or not?”
“Yes,” he said.
I don’t remember the journey from his car to my front hall. My memory resumed when he closed the door behind us, grabbed me, and pushed me against it, trapping my body between his and that door.
I panicked for a moment, thinking that Rufus might run over, tail flopping from side-to-side, and try a running leap at the both of us.
But I guess the old guy was asleep on his fur-covered blanket in the corner of the living room. Great guard dog, I thought briefly before Alex’s touch pulled me back.
He took my face gently in his hands and tilted my head back. We kissed again, the heat from it pulsing down from my mouth into the rest of my body.
I thought I might actually float away. I reached out with both hands, one finding and grabbing the door handle and the other pushing white-knuckled against the frame.
Alex grabbed them and pushed them both up against the door over my head. He held my wrists captive one-handed.
The other hand slid down my arm, down my side, the pad of his thumb brushing light and quick over one breast. That barest touch stiffened my nipples until they ached.
His hand found my hip and then pulled me hard against him. A little whimper of desire escaped me.
The sound inflamed his passion, and he kissed me harder.
When he pulled back I was breathless. Shivers and trembles ran rampant through me. If he let go of me then, I knew I would slide down the door to my knees.
“I think we need to get out of these wet clothes,” he said, his eyes drinking me in like a man dying of thirst who’d just b
een presented with a tall and glistening glass of water.
“I think you’re right,” I said. My lips tingled with the need for his.
He took me by the hand and led me down the hall, pausing a moment while he remembered the layout of the place from his first visit.
He shoved the door to my bedroom open. A momentary embarrassment seized me when I saw that I hadn’t made the bed that morning.
Not that it mattered. He grabbed the comforter and the sheet and ripped them off, leaving them in a pile by the foot. I liked the look of naked desire written across his face.
“Alex…” I said.
He turned from the bed and wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling our hips together. My insides quivered when I felt the hardness of his desire trapped between us.
“If you want to stop this you have to tell me now. Because I can’t hold back any longer. I want you so badly, Charlie,” he said, his eyes searching mine for any sign that I didn’t want to do this.
“I don’t. I don’t want to stop this, I mean. I just… I just need you to be gentle, okay?”
He nodded. Then he kissed me again.
His hands moved from their clasped position at the small of my back, gliding up my sides. He began unbuttoning my blouse, swallowing hard as he revealed more and more creamy skin.
His mouth slid down from mine, his soft lips, warm and insistent, gliding down the delicate flesh of my throat. He left a trail of gooseflesh behind.
My breath hitched inside of me when the heat of his mouth pushed between my breasts.
I wanted him to tear my blouse off, rip it all off and subdue me on the yielding surface of my bed.
But he didn’t. His mouth traced up from my cleavage, moving along one bared side of my collarbone as he slipped my blouse down from my shoulders.
“You’re teasing me,” I said. A needful shudder started deep inside me, spreading out through my hips to my stomach and my arms and legs. I shoved my hands beneath the shoulders of his jacket, still soaked from the rain, and pushed it partway down his back.
“Ah, so you’re finally getting a taste of your own medicine,” he said, his eyes sparkling up at me. He pulled my hands off him and then pushed me down onto the bed. His face was so close to mine.
I arched my mouth up, trying to fit it to his. He let our lips graze before pulling back, that sparkle in his eyes becoming a glint, the corners of his mouth turning up in a devilish smile that really poured the gas on the fire of my desire.
“What do you mean?” I asked. I couldn’t resist sliding my hands down his back, feeling the muscles go taut and rigid at my touch.
They slid all the way down to what I discovered was an ass that felt even better than it looked. I could have swooned at that firmness I found there. And just thinking about what that perfect ass might feel like while it flexed and relaxed in the rhythmic throes of passion nearly sent me over the edge.
And he hadn’t even removed my bra yet.
“I mean,” he said, gracing the tip of my nose and my cheekbones with more of his electric kisses, “That you know I’ve wanted you since the first time we met. Can you imagine feeling the way you do now all the time?”
I couldn’t. And there was no way he did, either. Was there? No one had ever wanted me so badly before him. I searched for signs of insincerity in his eyes, in his face. I didn’t find any.
My heart became a jackhammer in my chest. My lips felt like someone had set them on fire. And the only thing that could cool them were Alex’s lips.
So I grabbed his face and pulled it down to mine. When he discovered my insistence, my need, his hands moved faster.
He pushed away from me, giving him the space he needed to strip me bare, peeling all of my soaked clothes off and leaving it on the floor.
And then I lay naked before him. For the first few moments, I became self-conscious. Am I what he expected? Am I what he wanted? What is he thinking? I had the urge to cover myself, to grab the sheet and pull it up over my nakedness.
“God, you’re gorgeous,” he said, his eyes drinking me. He swallowed heavily, his hands for once still.
Heat flooded into my cheeks. And everywhere else. My skin prickled with it. Because he meant what he’d said, I realized. He wasn’t playing a game, or mocking. He meant it.
Then he stripped down, the slants of grey light coming in through my curtains giving me tantalizing tastes of his abdominals, his chest and arms.
He climbed back onto the bed, the muscles in his powerful arms standing out while they supported his weight over me. This close, I could smell the fresh scent of the rain on his skin, feel the heat radiating from his body.
A few inches of distance had never seemed so far away.
He kissed me again, this time with more insistence, more raw desire. My body quivered in response, the slick heat within me almost too much to withstand.
“Do I need…?” he said, locking my eyes with his.
It took a moment for my lust-addled mind to understand what he meant. Protection. Something inside me wondered how he even had the willpower to hold back long enough to ask. I knew it had completely slipped my mind.
“No,” I said. Even though I hadn’t been with anyone for a while, I hadn’t stopped my regimen. And now I knew why.
“I’ll be gentle,” he said, his lips grazing my cheek and stopping near my ear, “At first.”
I slid my hands up his waist while I watched the play of muscles in his chest and shoulders. Then I felt the pressure of his desire against me.
And then he slipped into me, the warm slickness of my flesh encircling him, accepting more and more of him.
My mouth dropped open, my eyes closing, and he kissed my bottom lip.
“Alex…” I groaned, my fingers pushing into his hips, urging him farther, deeper. It was so good. It had been so long. I needed this so badly that I didn’t even know how bad it was.
Shuddering heat rushed up and down through my body, building higher and hotter the faster and harder he brought our bodies together.
Beads of perspiration replaced the cool remnants of the rain on our bodies. I kissed his throat, ran my lips along his collarbone while my hands explored him.
He was gentle at first, too. Gentle enough to allow my body to become used to his. To let us find our rhythm.
“I can’t hold back much longer,” he said, the intensity of his eyes almost too much to take.
“Then don’t,” I said.
Our bodies slammed together then, again and again. He reduced my vocabulary to crying out his name in between telling him to not stop, to not slow down.
My hands looked for something, anything to hold onto. My fingers grabbed handfuls of the sheet one moment before shooting back behind my head to squeeze the pillow.
I’d never been with a man who had such stamina. I kept thinking how at any moment he’d start to slow, the pressure of his own climax too much to resist.
He didn’t. He went faster, harder. He was merciless.
“Don’t hold back on me. Not anymore,” he said.
I didn’t. I let go of it all when my first climax ripped into me, hot and razor sharp. So sudden that my body arched beneath his, all the tendons and muscles in my back rigid and tensed. My grip on him tightened and he still didn’t slow down.
“It’s too much…” I groaned when my body finally relaxed. Sweat drenched us both, leaving us glistening. Every time I closed my eyes I saw starbursts of color. My lungs couldn’t draw enough breath, so I lay beneath him heaving and shuddering.
“I still haven’t had enough of you,” he replied.
He was like a machine. How could he keep going?
I didn’t know the answer to that question, only that he did. He took me back up to the cresting wave of my climax faster than I thought possible.
This time I locked eyes with him, “Do it with me,” I said. My voice came out pleading.
When I came for him again, he came with me. Our bodies pushed together, locking as one.
His eyes squeezed shut in an expression of pleasure that was so good it hurt.
I couldn’t stop thinking about how hot he was inside of me, how rigid. How I could feel the rapid beat of his heart.
And then we collapsed.
A deep yet satisfying ache spread out through my when we parted.
I looked at him and he looked at me. I knew if I’d been in a bit of trouble before, I was in a lot more now.
Chapter 19
ALEXANDER
I wanted her again right away. In my mind, at least. My body panged at the thought.
“That was intense,” I said.
“Intense doesn’t quite cover it for me,” Charlie replied. She hadn’t moved to grab the sheet from its pile at the foot of the bed and for that I was grateful.
I’d noticed the way she’d seemed so self-conscious at the start. The way she kept wanting to cover her body. But now she didn’t and I couldn’t keep my eyes off her.
The afterglow of our passion left her absolutely radiant. She was perfect. From the way her hair fanned out around her face to the way the sweat glistened on the flat of her stomach.
“So was this your plan all along?” she asked.
“Yes, I conspired with the weather to arrange for a downpour so that we’d both be soaked. Oh, and that whole thing about your car not starting, too,” I replied, looking at her lovely face. I tried to keep a straight face of my own, but couldn’t.
“I wouldn’t put it past you,” she said. Her smile wilted and she pulled her eyes from mine. “So… what now?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I don’t know about you, but this is sort of a big deal to me. I don’t think I can go back from this. Back to the way we were before, I mean,” she said.
I turned onto my side, propping my head up. I could see her problem straight away. It was a by-product of my life. She knew my reputation. Even a few cursory glances at the rags for sale at the checkout aisle of the grocery store would show the trail of broken hearts and relationships I’d left in my wake.
“It’s a big deal to me, too,” I said. I remembered Alisha then. How I’d suddenly pushed her away, refused her. I’d never done anything like that before. Never had any problem going with more than one woman at a time before.