by Grace, A. E.
“You want to know if it got passed on, if it is hereditary?” she ventured.
“Yes. My parents didn’t have it, as far as I know.”
“Are you expecting to have children? It would make your behavior to me very-”
“No,” he said. “Not yet. I’m unattached. But hopefully in the future.”
Sasha felt relief flood through her. Damn, she thought. She didn’t want to be feeling that jealousy.
“Okay, let’s assume I believe you. How did you find this person here?”
“I saw a post on an online message board where they talked about the condition. So, I did a bit of probing.”
“Really?” Sasha asked, peering at him. “And this person ended up here? Seems awfully convenient.”
“Yes, really. I’m telling you the truth.”
“And how long ago was this?”
“Few days ago.”
Sasha thought about it. “Why didn’t you drive here?”
“I don’t own a car. Well,” he said, correcting himself. “I do, but I didn’t want to drive it here.”
“Why not? And if so, why hitch? Why not take the bus?”
“I did take the bus most of the way,” he said. “Stopped off at Rainbow Valley for a day to do a bit of sightseeing, and then got lucky and managed to get a ride with someone driving up here from there.”
“Rainbow Valley, huh?” Sasha asked. That was a natural park and canyon just a few dozen miles south.
“Yup. Quite beautiful. Surprising amount of vegetation.”
“It’s a bit of an oasis, yes.”
“Do you believe me now?”
Sasha smiled at him. Truthfully, she was skeptical. He was still being sufficiently vague about it all to trip her mental alarms. But she didn’t deny to herself that he could be telling the truth.
And, after all, that possibility was just as relevant as the opposite.
“Come on,” she said. “I could do with some dinner. But you’re going to keep talking. I want to know everything you know about this guy.”
“I’ve pretty much told you everything. And why are you assuming it’s a guy?”
“Just a hunch. Statistically speaking, women don’t commit murder like that.” She finished off her glass of wine and stood up. “Come on. Let’s go.”
She watched as Dylan got up, and then did a double take when he began to remove his clothing. He took off his top first, and his upper body was, to put it as simply as possible, really fucking hot.
“What are you doing?” she asked, but he ignored her. He began to unbuckle his belt, then worked the button on his jeans, and he pulled them down his strong thighs, over his feet, socks with them.
He looked at her then, standing only in his briefs, and for the life of her she couldn’t stop herself from looking at his crotch. The bulge was prominent. He had a really sexy body.
“I told you,” he said, and he hooked his thumbs into his briefs at his hips and started to tug them down. Sasha looked away instinctually. “I need to freshen up.”
After a moment of silence had passed, she turned back toward him. Her eyes lingered on his unclothed body. Now that she had more than a quick glance, she could see that his physique was breathtaking, something out of this world. Its lines didn’t capture the single-minded vanity of gym-addicts, and its leanness spoke of power and promise; potential and possibility.
She blinked at him, slightly surprised at herself, for through her mind raced sexy thoughts that awakened her senses, and tickled her nerve endings, and were entirely inappropriate, but that she couldn’t deny had already been roused from their deep sleep into a shallower slumber since she’d first laid eyes on the man.
“Well?” she asked, unable to stop her mouth from pulling into an incredulous grin. “Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to get in the shower?”
She met his gaze with hers, and there was no mistaking the look in his eyes. It was hunger. Desire. It didn’t lurk in the background. It wasn’t hidden or shielded or behind a self-protective veil. He had bared himself to her, both physically, and that which he sought.
She was flattered and appalled in equal measure. A part of her entertained the idea. There was no doubt that it was an intriguing, even enticing one. The man looked like a fucking sex god, and she was pretty much certain he could raise her to heights she hadn’t felt in a long, long time.
It was more than just the fact that she hadn’t shared a bed with someone for longer than she’d care to admit. He held in him an intensity and confidence, a cavalier nature that, in all likelihood, was a marker for an adventurousness of spirit. He’d take risks, no doubt, and he’d never stop to ask how it was.
Truthfully, she wanted him, but she kept the truth at bay, behind a barricade of mental fortification. She couldn’t do it. But she couldn’t deny that simply the sight of him was enough to cut a swathe through her own self-determination. Suddenly, self-interest was on her other shoulder, whispering in her other ear.
After all, he wanted her. That much was obvious. Though she had tried to avoid it, she hadn’t managed to stop her eyes from traveling down to his crotch. His manhood was already halfway there, thick and, in its unsurprising impressiveness, holding a promise of pleasure that was so, so hard to say no to.
Especially when it was just there for the taking.
“Dylan, would you just go take a fucking shower?”
She shook her head at him, and she started to wonder how she’d even gotten herself into this position. Though the glass of wine she had was doing its best to dull her doubts, she still found herself asking the question of how she had ended up agreeing to all of this. Of course, she told herself that she was still investigating, still on the job. The potential for information – he was still her only lead, and she definitely intended to ask him questions to see if his own story was at least consistent – was alluring, but this was definitely not protocol of any sort. She wasn’t in any undercover capacity, and while he had a rock-solid alibi, a story that didn’t seem entirely out of the realm of possibility, there was also no evidence that he wasn’t an accomplice, wasn’t somehow partially responsible.
And that excited her more than she knew it should. It was knowledge that never once left her mind. It never once retired behind the heavy drapes of repression, disappearing from sight, from cognition, if only for a brief guilty moment.
No, she was well aware. Extremely aware. And it worried her.
In her moment of self-reflection that had taken her unaware, she hadn’t noticed that Dylan had stepped closer to her. She looked at him carelessly, caught a strand of his scent, musky and strong from a whole day out in the arid heat. It sent pulses to her center, parted her mouth just the slightest amount, and quickened her breathing.
“Dylan,” she began. She shut her eyes for a moment, wanted to form an expression of annoyance, wanted to urge him to just climb into the shower and do what he had to do so that the whole affair could be over with.
But the second word didn’t make it out from her mouth. His lips brushed against hers, his breath across her face. She felt his end-of-the-day stubble, a coarseness that roused the nerves around her lips and chin. He swept his lips against hers again, barely a kiss, but with an intimate wallop so strong she felt it in her gut.
She could already sense her inhibitions crumbling, turning to dust. What she should or shouldn’t do seemed to evaporate into meaninglessness, a void in which she found herself increasingly willing to toss common sense and caution into.
She opened her lips a little, granting him permission without even realizing it. She felt his wet tongue dab on her, just a flick, but it was enough to topple that last tower of reticence.
For a moment, it felt as though the nerves in her lips were bridged to the nerves in her womanhood, her center, for she felt there a pang, an ache; a yearning. His tongue, teasing at first, became bolder, and as he pushed his way inside her, she sent hers forward to meet it, and she tasted him then.
> His arm coiled around her, pulled her into his body, and she braced herself with her palms on his chest, feeling the heat in his body radiate through her fingertips. The hard muscle she felt was inviting, and she let a finger slide down, run over his small, stud-like nipple, to trace the curve of his pectoral.
And all the while his tongue danced with hers, their two warm bits of flesh entangled, its intimacy arresting. She was kissing him back like she hadn’t kissed a man in a long, long time. Or perhaps ever – she couldn’t remember. All she knew now was that she wanted to be intensely close with him.
His hands were exploring her body, her curves. Lost in his kiss, the usual uncertainty, sometimes anxiety, did not make itself felt. She could sense in the way he caressed her, traced her outline, grabbed at her thighs and her hips, that she had no reason to feel those emotions, and was relieved for it.
As if to further fortify that, he growled beside her ear, “God, I love your body. I’ve wanted it in my hands since I first saw you.”
She allowed herself a smile, brief, but a moment nonetheless that, at least for now, fully satisfied a lurking question in the back of her mind. He pulled her in tighter, and she felt his throbbing hardness against her leg, felt it grow and pulse, as though to the beat of his heart, until it was straining against her trouser inseam right where it met her crotch. She felt a jolt of need there, like static, and it shook her, made her jump, made every muscle in her body simultaneously flex.
Then he flexed, and subconsciously she leaned her hips back a little, and his manhood popped out from in between her legs. He pulled her back toward him, a mini game of tug-of-war, and she felt his tip through her shirt on her abdomen, already beading with his own voluminous desire.
Sasha could feel her arousal overcoming her sensitivities, pressing back against her through her underwear, and knew that she was becoming overcome by it, overwhelmed by it. A flare-up of resolve, of reserve, briefly ignited in her consciousness, and she pushed Dylan off her, a hand on either of his shoulders, and looked him in the eyes.
On his face was painted the most pure expression of lust she had ever seen. His lips were parted, his slightly imperfect teeth visible inside, and his tongue seemed poised to invade her lips again.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. In her mind, she had already formed the words. She knew what she was going to say.
But the words that came out of her mouth were different. She had wanted to tell him that they couldn’t do this. That she had already let it go too far, and that, for now, he was still a person of interest and he was not to leave town.
She had wanted to tell him that she was interested, so as not to hurt his feelings (even though she suspected he didn’t need such childish coddling), but that she couldn’t. That she wouldn’t.
And so Sasha was confused for a moment when she heard her own voice utter, “We need to shower first.”
*
Dylan’s excitement was growing by the second. Completely naked, he had to admit to himself that he found his entirely inappropriate advance on Sasha particularly exciting. He could feel his pounding heartbeat thickening his manhood with each pumping thump.
Pressed up against her body, breathing in her smell, his hands running over her curves, grabbing at her ass, the insides of her thighs, it was all he could do not to force the issue more. She did things to him, aroused him in ways he hadn’t experienced for so long… or perhaps ever. But he didn’t try to reason it, or to fight it. It was what he wanted, and he was going to go after it.
Her lips were soft, and the tinge of wine left on them tasted intensely intimate. The feel of her warm and rapid breaths washing across his face sent a stab of anticipation into his chest, and wallop in his gut. He wanted to pick her up, throw her onto the bed, tear her clothes off, and ravish her.
But he could sense in her an inhibition, something lurking. So used to being in control, Sasha hid her insecurities so well, and Dylan didn’t want to spoil the moment. So when she told him they had to shower first, convenient though not untrue, he held her hand and led her into the bathroom, where he proceeded to undress her, item by item.
First her shirt, loose and thin, button by button. He wanted to bury his face in the space between her luscious mounds, run his tongue up her there and taste her. She was excited, interested, he knew. Her rosy cheeks and quick breathing were all he needed to see to know that. But there was still reserve somewhere in there…
He stooped his head, claimed her lips with his, and tasted her tongue with his own. He kissed her, his passion growing with each blinking moment, and he pushed her up against the tiled bathroom wall, hand on the towel rack so that it didn’t dig into the small of her back.
“I need you,” he whispered into her ear, taking a lobe into his mouth and biting it hard enough to make her jolt. She pushed him back, and he grinned at her before once again kissing her with a bold tongue and bolder hands.
He unclasped her bra, pulled it off her arms, feeling her heavy breasts fall free. He took them into his hands greedily, ran a tongue down her neck, smelled her, tasted her. God, she was something! He could feel that coil winding inside him, that growing urgency and need. He hadn’t felt this way in so long. He thought he’d left this behind, but Sasha had awakened him.
Other things lost focus, lost meaning. His quest for the truth, the tug of war he’d been playing with her up until now, it was all bleached out of his mind, out of his consciousness by the thunderous lust he felt welling within him.
She sighed, a half-moan, as he lowered himself down her body, took a nipple into his mouth. She liked a bit of teeth on the hardened bud, he found, and he teased her, watched her as she writhed and grinned, as she panted for him.
But this wasn’t just a conquest. It had a different feel, something he couldn’t place, but something he knew he had to have. It was her. It was something about her!
He massaged her breasts harder, his large hands unable to capture it all in a single clasp. He loved the weight to them, wanted to feel them against his body as he lay on top of her, inside her…
His manhood was so hard it nearly hurt, and it spurred him on. He kissed downward, to the waist of her black trousers, and he pulled them down, seeing bright blue panties beneath. With a finger inside the elastic of her underwear, she stopped him, pulled him up by his chin.
“We really need to shower,” she whispered, breathless. “You warm it first.”
He nodded, kissed her again one more time, and then climbed into the shower. He found the right temperature, a refreshing warmth, and she climbed in after him. He only caught a glimpse of her whole naked body before she pressed himself into him, before her tongue was in her mouth and she was kissing him feverishly, and with a hand wrapped around his girth, and squeezing.
*
Sasha showered with him, touched him, kissed him, and held him. When she gripped his cock, it send tingles of anticipation thrilling through her, converging on her center. She gasped, too, for he was as hard as a steel bar, thicker than she’d ever had, and it was all for her.
His passion, his urgency, was contagious, and she felt imbued by it, and energized. It took only seconds before it all came flooding back into her, the heady wanting, the physical longing. It was something that she had let sleep for a long time, something that had become of little concern over the last few years. And now, suddenly, the dam had been breached and the tide was surging out, pushing everything out of her mind but for one single desire.
She ran her hand up and down his length, traced a finger over the curve of his bell, and it was her turn to press him up against the wall, run her hands over his delicious body. The lines, the bulges of muscle. She’d never had a man with a body like that, and it didn’t feel at all how she expected it to.
Where she had thought it would be like touching hard marble, she found instead an elasticity, a giving firmness that varied with his breathing, his posture. His abdomen was her favorite, like solid waves or dunes, and the dip beneath his
hip that converged on his crotch was where she wanted to run her tongue down, until she got to his center.
Their shower came to an end, and she pulled him out and led him to the bed. A need, an intense desire bordering on desperation, had overcome her. She had to have sex with him. It was like a calling, something from the beyond, or something from the within. Sasha didn’t know which, and in the moment of heat, she didn’t care, either.
His urgent hunger for her only fanned her own flames, and she returned her attention to his body, running her hands through every depression, every dip and rise and curve of his ridiculous body. How had she been so lucky? A guy this hot, and he was into her?
But that rogue thought flitted through her mind once more: Maybe it wasn’t luck…
What she felt for him extended beyond need, outgrew those human boundaries. She was lost in the desert and his body was an oasis. She was lost at sea, and his body was the sight of landfall. She trembled at the thought that he craved her impossibly more than she did him at this moment. He had advanced on her, made it clear from the beginning that he was into her. Was this what he had been feeling all along? If so, how he had suppressed that burning tension all this time…
Even though they had showered she could smell the musk of her arousal filling the air between them as they kissed and fondled on the bed. She was so prepared to be possessed by him, to be taken by him. His hot breath washing over her neck as he kissed her, nibbled her, tried to devour her as though she were his spring of life.
It was as if they were communicating more physically than they ever could through speech. Waves of emotion rocked within her, and she felt doors that she had closed long ago unlocked and opened. The pleasures of the flesh was something that Sasha had done without for far too long, and just the prelude to sex, just the runway to takeoff, already had her coiled so tightly she felt she could explode at any minute should he wish it.