by Neal, Toby
“You do something to me,” I said. “I wish you didn’t. It’s confusing.” I tried to swig the fizzing drink, which promptly went up my nose and down my throat, causing a burning cough.
He thumped my back. “You okay?”
I’d invented a taste for champagne in my playful persona as “Juliette,” a French-speaking immigrant from the Antilles who smoked clove cigarettes, wore a beret, and favored sparkling wine. Pretending to be Juliette had helped me adjust to life so far from home, but the truth was, I didn’t know one wine from another.
“It’s fine.” I sipped more slowly. “It tastes good.”
“That’s right.” He drew me into his arms. “Come here.”
I stiffened instinctively, and I felt rather than heard the deep chuckle in the solid expanse of his chest as I pressed against him. “Relax. We’re not going to do anything you don’t want to. In fact, we can leave right now if you aren’t comfortable.”
“No!” I exclaimed, pulling back to look up into his deep blue eyes. “I want to be with you. Really.”
“I know you think you do.” He tugged me over to the rose-patterned bed, and we sat on the end of it. “But I think you’re confused, and now you’re finally admitting it. I wanted you to have this week doing things with me, spending time, so that you could get to know me. See if you really wanted to be with me, or if you just had a case of hormones.”
I felt the blush sweep up the pale skin of my neck. “I want to sleep with you,” I muttered. “I came here for ‘First Night.’”
He laughed. “I was inspired when I wrote that one. I want you, too, Ruby. You have no idea how much. But like I told you the first day, I care about you. Too much to just take advantage of what you’re offering.”
“Are you saying no?” I looked up at him. I’d been using that look to get boys to do what I wanted since I was two years old. I knew my big green eyes lined in dark, spiky lashes were hard to resist. Ever so gently, I licked my pouty lower lip.
Rafe let out a stifled groan, bent his head and set his lips on mine. The kiss started out tender but quickly activated the heat that had been turned down to simmer since our make-out session at Coit Tower.
His tongue, tasting of the wine, tangled with mine. He tilted my head for better access, bringing a large, long-fingered hand to cup my breast, loose beneath the T-shirt and jean jacket. He kissed me thoroughly as he massaged and circled the round, palming its weight and flicking the nipple, hard as an acorn, with his thumb, then switching to the other one. He lifted his head to gaze down at my flushed face.
“These feel like the most beautiful breasts on the planet,” he said. “Can I see them?”
“Okay,” I breathed. He eased me back on the acre or so of Laura Ashley and unbuttoned each of the metal buttons of the jacket. I could feel the heat of his gaze on my braless breasts in the thin, tight T-shirt I’d worn in my juvenile seduction attempt.
“I need this off,” Rafe whispered. “Please.”
Mutely, I shrugged out of the jacket and skinned the T-shirt off over my head, tossing the clothing off the bed. Lying back on the bed and looking up, I noticed the tasteful gilt-framed oval mirror on the ceiling for the first time.
It was a revelation to see myself lying topless on the bed. Long, flame-colored ribbons of red hair were spread across the bed, setting off pale, creamy skin dappled with tiny nutmeg freckles. The large, round breasts that had been both blessing and curse since I was twelve pointed dusky rose nipples straight up. The arc of my shadowed ribs and flat belly disappeared into the modest skirt slung low on the graceful swell of my hips, the slight rise of my mound the only configuration in the landscape of my body still hidden.
Rafe’s brown-haired head bent over me as he kissed my neck, his fingers sliding down my body, learning its shape. I relished the sight as he pulled off his own shirt in a quick brisk movement. His large, tanned torso contrasted with mine as he leaned over me, a sight so beautiful I wanted to watch it all day. The eagle tattoo on his arm looked alive, the wings flying as he moved, and what it was pouncing on was me.
His body was pure poetry of form and power, the muscles sliding in rippling movements across his back and arms, the chiseled plane of his chest punctuated by small brown nipples, his belly lean and contoured. Twin columns of heavy muscle supported the tender knobs of his spine as it disappeared into the waistband of his jeans.
I wanted to see it all, touch it all, kiss it all. But for now just gazing at him was a feast. I could look at him all day and never get enough. I relished the fact that he didn’t know about the mirror yet.
I saw and felt at the same time as his hot mouth come down over the sensitive tip of my breast. I arched beneath his mouth with an involuntary cry, watching and feeling his hand slide down the valley of my waist, over the slope of my hip, and back up again.
It felt exquisite, tingling sensation following his explorations, every movement awakening something new in me. I moaned and tangled my hands in the length of his hair. The experience of both seeing and feeling him touch me was so arousing I felt the nervousness that had resurfaced in the doorway of the room disappear.
I wanted this. All of it. All of him. For better or worse.
“Please,” I breathed into his mouth, into his hair, and I slid my hands up his muscled arms and drew his face down to my breast. “More.”
“As you wish.”
Rafe sucked my nipple hard, tonguing it at the same time. I gave a cry as that oversensitive bundle of nerves set off a chain reaction of combustible heat that pulsed, begging for release. He switched to the other breast and kissed his way along my collarbone and down the dip below my sternum. I thrust my hips at him in unapologetic hunger.
“So passionate,” he breathed. “So responsive. You’re pure fire. I knew it the first day I met you.” His hands went to my waistband and he undid the button and zip of my skirt.
I pushed up and he wriggled the skirt down. In the mirror above his head, I watched every line of his body go rigid as he gazed down at me, hissing through his teeth as he gazed at my naked, flame-haired mound.
I felt a wave of self-consciousness. “I’m sorry. I know I’m funny-looking,” I said, transported back to the gym showers at school, where my odd coloring had provoked so much teasing from the girls I’d refused to go back, choosing homeschooling instead.
“Exquisite,” he said. “You’re gorgeous.” He bent close and blew on me. The puff of air was a tantalizing hot caress that promised pleasure. I thrust up toward him, wantonly craving his touch. He cupped me, stroked me. I tried to open my legs, but he didn’t let me. He chuckled a little painfully as his hands made swirling patterns over my hips and thighs.
“You’re an impatient woman,” he said. “Slow down. Be gentle with me. You’re my first and only redhead, and I want to savor every moment of how amazing you are.”
“Please,” I panted. “I need you. Everything. All of it.”
He just shook his head, and proceeded to awaken my body.
He smoothed me, petted me gently, exploring and arousing. He kissed me at my core, stroking, and the incredible sensations pushed me past shyness as he flicked me with his tongue.
It didn’t take long. Sensation like a wave swept up from my toes, broke over my whole body, and engulfed me in a storm of lights that exploded in my brain and washed me up on the shore of after, boneless and wordless.
He rolled my limp body over to lie face down.
I lay on my bare front as he rubbed his rough, hard chest across the silky, firm rounds of my buttocks, an incredibly good feeling of a different kind.
I turned my head, and in the mirror, I could glimpse him squeezing my butt between his hands, rubbing himself back and forth over my ass. Even I could see that the only thing better than my breasts to look at were the firm, high rounds of my creamy-white ass cheeks, set off by little thumbprint-sized dimples above my slim waist.
“Dammit,” Rafe said, tracing my buttocks with his hands. “I can’t
wait any longer.” He dropped his pants in a quick movement and hauled me higher on the bed, still face down. I could see in the mirror as he mounted me, his hard thighs clamping around my hips. I didn’t have time to wonder what he was doing as he said, “This won’t take a minute,” and slid his huge, rock-hard shaft along my butt, rubbing up and down against me as his hands clenched the tops of my hips convulsively.
I saw and felt him come with a heart-moan, his back a vast arching of muscles I watched and longed for in the mirror above. I felt a wetness that slid like hot honey into the small of my back.
I gave a yelp of outrage. “No. That wasn’t how it was supposed to be!”
I tried to struggle up from beneath him, but Rafe had collapsed over me with his full weight. He groaned.
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t help it. And we were never having sex today. At least not the kind you had in mind.”
I slid out from under him at last. “Why do you get to decide what we’re doing?” I was furious and embarrassed. I stomped into the palatial bathroom.
My eyes were flashing and cheeks flaming as I glanced in the mirror at my swollen breasts, heavy and pink, blotched with hickeys. My hair was a snarled mess. I was marked with kisses and beard stubble, and there was something wet sliding down my back.
I’d had orgasms, and now so had he, but I was deeply disappointed.
“Total bummer,” I muttered. I turned on the shower and got in.
Moments later he got in with me. I scrubbed my body furiously with soap and a washcloth.
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t…I was going to explode. Now I can take my time with you the next time,” Rafe said. “Besides, I didn’t have a condom.”
“You booked a room and ordered wine, but didn’t have a condom? Besides, there won’t be a next time,” I snorted, but slowed my angry movements as he began working a fragrant lather of shampoo into my long hair, massaging my scalp. He washed my hair tenderly, rinsing each section of hair, sliding it over himself as if studying the contrast of the vivid color with his own hardened, tanned, hair-roughened body.
The anger gradually melted out of me under his gentle, tender touch.
He carried me out of the shower. Wrapped me in one of the huge bath sheets. Turned down the bed and tucked me in, blotting my hair with the towel.
I fell instantly asleep.
Chapter 6
I woke up abruptly, overheated.
Rafe was sleeping next to me, one arm over me and one heavily muscled thigh holding down my legs. His face was beside mine on the pillow, and in this unguarded moment, I could study it.
His deep blue eyes were closed, fans of long dark lashes resting against high, slanted cheekbones. Stubble marked the planes of his cheeks, the firm jaw now relaxed in sleep. His mouth, with its thinner top lip and wide lower one, a mouth that could look hard or tender, was slightly open, and his breath mingled with mine.
I was tempted to kiss him, and even though I was too hot, I didn’t want to wake him. A feeling swelled in me, an overwhelming tenderness. I sneaked a hand up and stroked the line of his dark brows. His breathing never changed.
I wanted to wake up in his arms every day.
The thought chilled me. Scared me. I’d not come all the way out here, lied to everyone who mattered to me, to fall for a guy who was so wrong for me.
Surfer, sailor, drifter. Rafe McCallum.
I wanted solidity. A career. To own my home and drive a decent car. Maybe have a few kids someday. I didn’t want to be dependent on the whims and generosity of strangers like my parents had been. I remembered too well how they’d had to scramble to find work, how Mom cleaned houses and Dad did yards until they’d eventually built up their vacation-rental management business.
I’d come out to San Francisco because I wanted Rafe’s body. I wanted to experience sex with someone who knew what he was doing, and his behavior confused me. First he seduced me with his letters and got me out here. Then he put on the brakes and said he wanted to get to know me. Today he’d caved to my sexual pressure and we’d ended up in bed, but even that was confusing.
On the one hand, he’d certainly known what he was doing with his mouth and his hands, but on the other—no condom? That clumsy grasping, pumping himself over me, leaving me no way to give back to him?
I didn’t know what Rafe wanted from me. It almost seemed like he didn’t, either.
All of a sudden the weight of his arm and leg felt stifling. I eased out from under him, sliding gently to the edge of the bed and out from under the sateen spread.
He slept on. I loved the shine of late-afternoon sun on his long, tumbled bronzy hair, the round of his shoulder marked by an eagle, the curled open hand that rested in the dent where I’d lain.
I looked around the gorgeous suite. At the open bottle of champagne, at the view.
This room was costing poor Rafe the earth, and the longer I stayed, the more it would cost, and worse, the more vulnerable I would be to the hold he had on me. A hold that had begun to feel suspiciously like falling in love.
It seemed he wasn’t going to have sex with me, and that’s what I’d come for. So what I needed to do was leave before things got any worse, before my heart broke any more at leaving him.
I needed to get back to school and figure out what the hell I was doing with Henry and Sam. Breaking up with everyone right now seemed like an excellent idea. It was about time I remembered I’d come to college to get an education in something more than sex.
I pulled up my skirt from the carpet, stepped into it, and zipped it up. Found my shirt and yanked it on. Dug my panties out of my purse and put them on. Buttoned my jean jacket over my loose breasts.
I found a little bathroom kit containing a comb and a rubber band, and in the bathroom I braided my long bright hair, still damp and fragrant from that memorable shower.
I splashed water on my face.
My cheeks were pale now. The flash had gone out of my eyes when I stared at myself in the mirror.
I had two more days here, and now I had to find a way to avoid Rafe.
I picked up my purse and sneaked out, closing the door gently. Out in front of the hotel, I hailed my first San Francisco cab and took it back to Rafe’s boardinghouse.
Lisa, the innkeeper, met me packing my things into my backpack in the little sitting room where I’d been sleeping on a couch. “Where are you going?” she asked sharply, hands on her hips.
“Things aren’t working out with Rafe.” I felt my eyes fill spontaneously. “I need to find a place to stay until I fly out.”
“Oh, girl.” Lisa’s warm ebony arms encircled me, and she drew me in to her remarkable bosom. “I’m so sorry. I thought he was really into you. More than anyone I’ve seen him bring home.”
“Ha.” I sniffled, grabbing a tissue out of a nearby box. “No. It’s just not happening with us. I don’t want to see him anymore. It’s too embarrassing. Can you tell me a cheap hotel to go to?”
“I’ll take you to a friend’s,” Lisa said firmly. “I don’t want you to end up in one of those nasty places in the Tenderloin.”
“Thanks. But you have to promise not to tell him where I am. No matter what.”
“Cross my heart,” she said, with a gesture over her left breast. “Now come with me.”
We got into her purple VW Beetle, and she drove me to another house made into temporary boarding rooms, this time with her friend Triad.
Triad was another gorgeous Puerto Rican woman. “Po’ thing,” she cried, welcoming me into the dimly lit hall of the house she ran. It smelled of cabbage and marijuana. “Come on to your room. We’ll keep your mind off that man with movies, and I have chocolate ice cream.”
Apparently, getting over Rafe wasn’t a new situation for either of these ladies to deal with.
I wished the thought didn’t make the tears well up and pop out of my eyes, but I was at least able to stifle the sobs until I bade Lisa goodbye with further promises from her not to tell where I was hiding.
Alone at last, I flung myself face down on the twin bed with its thin, pilly, paisley-print spread, and cried.
* * *
I spent the next day in the room without coming out, watching soap reruns on a tiny TV, VCR movies, and eating a pint of chocolate ice cream Triad dropped off.
In the late evening I finally pulled myself together enough to ask Triad for the number of a takeout place, and when the knock came on the door, I hurried to open it, expecting the Chinese food delivery I’d finally got hungry enough to order.
Rafe towered in the doorway. His face was dark with anger. He wore the same black T-shirt and jeans he’d had on before, and he was holding a white bag of Chinese food.
“Rafe! How’d you find me?” I exclaimed, snatching the bag out of his hand.
He stepped inside and shut the door with great deliberation. I didn’t look at him as I dug in the bag for the little white food cartons, unloading the chopsticks, napkins, and containers on a little side table.
“I was worried,” Rafe said, each word measured out and snipped off as if with scissors. “I thought you were maybe lost somewhere. I couldn’t imagine where you’d run off to and what I’d done that was so wrong that you had to sneak off and ditch me like that.”
I sat on the twin bed with the takeout carton in one hand and the chopsticks in the other. I knew my eyes were hugely puffy from crying and my hair, still in the braid from yesterday, was unraveling and matted. I’d never been a pretty crier.
Good. Maybe he’ll be so repulsed he’ll leave.
“Lisa promised she wouldn’t tell you where I went,” I said through a mouth stuffed with noodles. “I thought she was a friend.”
“She’s my friend first,” Rafe said. “And she only told me where when I was going to file a missing-persons report.”
I choked on the mouthful of noodles. “That would not have been good.”
“No, it wouldn’t.”
“Well. I changed my mind about being with you,” I said to the carton in my hand. “I don’t want to be with you after all. I’m going back to school and I’m going to be single. No dating. Just focus on my studies.”