I smiled at the doctor. “I’m not. I promise.”
We followed the doctor back to his apartment. Boxes were stacked everywhere, and his tall, equally blonde and blue-eyed wife welcomed us. They were both fair-haired and pale eyed, welcoming but a bit reserved, until Colin continued to speak Dutch to them.
The doctor’s wife offered me water while Colin had the side of his head stitched up. It was right at the hairline so it turned out he didn’t have to undergo a haircut, but he would have a nasty looking bruise there, which was already starting to form.
Afterward, we thanked our hosts and offered money they turned down, as they considered it an insult. Colin walked out, but I stayed behind. “Thank you for your generosity.” I handed them my mobile number. “If you’re ever in Seattle, please allow us to take you out to dinner.”
Doctor Rutte stared at me with cool pale blue eyes. “This attack, it’s really shaken you up. Are you sure you’re all right?”
I shook my head and began to sob. “My dad was murdered in a hit and run almost seven months ago and tonight just brought it all back. I was so worried I would lose Colin too. Thank you for doing what you have done because you didn’t have to do anything and we both know it.”
He smiled at me. “Yeah, but people in this country…we do nothing all the time, and perhaps that is why we are in the situation we’re in right now. I hope one day to return and live here again, but…who knows? Life is a very strange phenomenon, isn’t it? One minute we are here and the next we are gone.”
I grabbed his hand, though this startled him, and squeezed. “Thank you. I truly believe if you hadn’t come…just know I am very grateful to both of you. Good night, doctor and Mrs. Rutte.”
They said their goodbyes, and Colin and I waited until the cab we called pulled up. We were only three blocks from our apartment but neither of us wanted to risk walking.
The moment we got back, Colin shed his clothes and walked to the bathroom, where he immediately took a shower. I took my clothes off and slipped into a cute white negligee I’d bought in Nice.
Colin walked out of the bathroom twenty minutes later with a towel wrapped around his narrow hips and used a hand towel to dry his hair. “I hope tonight didn’t spook you.”
I glared at him as if he’d recently smoked crack. “I’m scared, Colin. I could have lost you tonight. I’m thinking the day after tomorrow, we board a plane to Paris, spend a couple of days there, and we go home early. My European vacation is officially over as far as I am concerned. Plus, we’ll have some time to spend together in Seattle before the real world comes crashing in.”
“Come on, Deirdre. I’m fine. It’s barely a scratch, for God’s sake. I like being away with you, and we have had so much fun. Don’t let this one incident wreck anything. Besides, I probably deserved it.”
He sat next to me, and I turned his face toward me. “How the hell can you say that? What could you have possibly done to get attacked by a group of feral youth?”
“There you go being racist again—”
“Sorry if I don’t feel like being fucking politically correct when a pack of fucking youths decide to play target practice with my boyfriend because they mistook you for a fuckin’ native and therefore some weak white boy. No, I don’t find anything about this amusing or cute. And yes, I am pissed the fuck off!” I said with enough emotion for the both of us.
Colin slid an arm around my back before he kissed my neck. “Does that make me seem weak to you?”
“No, it doesn’t. There were only four guys during the skinhead incident in Germany, but what the hell could you do against ten or eleven guys out there? I have never been so glad you didn’t have that butterfly knife on you because they would have killed you. We both know that.”
“Life is all about risk, baby.”
I immediately closed my eyes and surrendered to his touch as both his hands began to roam my body. He forced me to lie down on the bed. His kiss startled me but in a good way and when our tongues met in unison, the whole world seemed to disappear and all that existed was me and him.
He slipped his towel off and undressed me. I felt his hard manhood between us and I wanted him so much, I was willing to temporarily forget this evening’s incident. Once I was wearing only a sexy black bra and matching thong, I flipped us over gently and kissed his neck.
Colin moaned as I licked and bit his nipples and worked my mouth and tongue lower. I licked his belly button, and he began to shake, as he was terribly ticklish there, but once I grabbed his cock, his breath came fast and hard. I loved everything about him, including the musky yet sexy scent his body gave off. Already, the mushroom head of his manhood was covered with pre-cum. I licked the tip of his cock and admired the scarlet color of his member. He was very much turned on, and I meant to make him beg for me before the night was through.
The head of his manhood slipped easily between my open lips, and I sucked on him tenderly at first before I applied more pressure. His fingers wandered through my head and caressed my scalp, but he was never aggressive and was always willing to take what I would offer him and nothing more. He was a true gentleman when it came to lovemaking, as he was in every aspect of his life. This was a side of him I only saw, and I was lucky to witness it because he was mine, my secret Colin no one would ever truly know but me, and that was the way it was supposed to be between us.
My lips slid lower as I relaxed my tongue and allowed more and more of his length to enter my mouth until all he felt was my hot wetness covering the length of him. I loved to deep-throat him and learned to perfect my technique because I knew how much it turned him on. I alternated between taking his cock all the way to the back of my throat and pulling him out to lick up the length of his cock.
“Fuck, Deirdre, I’m gonna come,” he whispered.
I smiled at him in a wicked fashion. “Then I suppose you will have to do something for me to get that hard-on back, won’t you?”
Colin laughed as I deep-throated him again, and his cum flowed into my mouth. I pulled back further enough to receive him in my mouth so I could swallow his salty-sweetness, as it was something I quite enjoyed.
His breath came hard and fast before he flipped us over and crawled up to me. We were face-to-face when he kissed me again, tongue included. He wanted to taste himself in my mouth, and I allowed myself to surrender to his touch. His hands worked my breasts, playing special attention to my nipples, which were on fire for his kiss, his tongue, his mouth.
He undid my bra, exposed my breasts to him, and pinched the nipples hard enough to cause the slightest amount of pain, but it was more erotic than anything else. I loved the feel of his hands and fingers on my nipples and anywhere else he wanted to put them. My sex had soaked my thong, and he ripped it in the process of removing it. He put his mouth on my left nipple, and I arched my back to allow him full access. He bit down lightly with his razor sharp teeth, and I thought I would pass out from the pleasure.
While his mouth was in complete control of my breasts, his fingers had wandered further below my waist. Two fingers from one hand were caressing my g-spot while the thumb on the other hand massaged my clit. I thought I would pass out from all the pleasure alone. The feeling of multiple erogenous zones being manipulated at the same time had me in a trance of pleasure beyond reason.
Colin teased my right nipple in the same way he’d teased the left, only this time, he’d removed his hand from my clit and played with my left nipple with his right fingers. It was stiff and attentive under his expert touch. God, I loved what this man could do to my body.
Slowly and without pretense, he abandoned my nipples, but not before he said, “I want you to pinch and caress your breasts. I love watching you play with them while I go down on you.”
This brought a smile to my face, as that was not a tough request to keep. Even though I’d only had a limited amount of sex partners, I had a thorough amount of knowledge about sex in general. Without a doubt, there was no man who could eat pussy
better than Colin, and I could think this thought with a straight face because he was an expert.
He had no shortcomings to make up for because he had a decent sized cock. Hell, he wasn’t Dirk Diggler from the infamous film Boogie Nights, but he was at least eight rock solid inches with a thick girth, and that was more than enough for me. As far as I was concerned, his cock size was as perfect as the rest of him, and I never felt like I was missing out on anything because he gave me everything I needed, both sexually and emotionally, and then some.
The way he approached my soaking sex was a show in and of itself, and I had never been more grateful in my life to have a Brazilian wax. He kissed my clit and then flicked his tongue over it in a teasing, sensual way, and I was his for the taking from that moment on. He spread my sex and licked my clit again before he surrounded my nub with his mouth and suckled it deeply. My hips moved on their own and ground closer to his mouth as he licked lower and fucked the entrance of my soaking sex. I continued to play with my breasts for him as he led his tongue lower and teased my perineum. That was always as far as he’d gone, so it didn’t shock me.
There was so much about Colin to love, but I knew he was more of a freak in bed than he’d let on. I didn’t think he was the whips and chains type, but I knew he wasn’t afraid to experiment and perhaps he was waiting for the okay from me. I was pretty much open to any and everything except sadism and masochism. It wasn’t my scene, and I had enough issues without surrendering myself to a man. That wasn’t the type of person I was, and I knew I could never be like that. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with my fellow women who had it in them to do that, but I couldn’t. Deep down, he already knew this. Therefore it wasn’t a conversation that would ever happen between us.
However, when his tongue licked my anus, I jumped and sat up in bed. “What are you doing?”
Colin smiled lazily. “Relax. I’m not going to ask you if I can have you back there…not yet, at least. I am assuming by your reaction you have never had anal sex?”
I lay down again and closed my eyes. “No, I haven’t. Drew wanted to because he is…well, you know…but I have heard horror stories from Caitlyn, and she said it was the worst experience of her life. According to Aubrey, it gets better once you relax and use the right kind of lubricants, but I’ve never been as sexually adventurous as my cousin.”
“She’s right, you know. I picked up a few items since we are here in the legal sex capital of the world. Of course, you would have to be totally cool with it, but it won’t be tonight. There is a…cleansing that has to take place. It helps prevent messy accidents you don’t want to know about but yes, it can be very pleasurable for a woman too.”
“Okay, well, if there are cleanses and whatnot, then don’t lick me there because I don’t think it’s all right,” I whispered.
“Fine. Though I know your bowel patterns. We have been traveling together all this time. You actually went this morning before you had a shower, so there is nothing wrong with my licking your anus. It isn’t disgusting, and I’m not going to get sick by pleasuring you there.”
I leaned up on my elbows and looked down at my lover, who was still positioned between my legs. “I know, but can we do it some other time? Until I’m ready, can we just stick to straight intercourse and you eating me out?”
Colin stared at me in a devilish way before he nodded. “Of course, sweetheart. It’s no big deal but you should know that eventually, we will explore most of one another’s bodies. I don’t want there to be a place on your body I haven’t explored, and I would be quite honored to be your first when you are ready.”
“Okay,” I replied.
He began to lick my clit again, then devoured it, and before I knew it, he’d milked an orgasm out of me I was not quite ready to give. I felt cheated because all this talk of experimental sex hadn’t squelched my desire to have him. In fact it turned me on, and that said a lot more about me than it did Colin. Perhaps I wasn’t the extreme sexual prude I’d always believed myself to be, and that was a scary revelation in itself.
Colin crawled up my body, kissing different parts as he slowly reached my face, and when his face hovered over mine, I put my hands around his neck in a possessive manner. Our mouths met in a delicious symphony of tastes and sounds. He guided his manhood inside me, and I moaned and wrapped my legs around his waist.
I clung to his neck while he held my hips in a vice grip. Our sex became frenzied and the harder he thrust into me, the more I became one with him. I felt overwhelmed, afraid I might melt into the bed and we’d lose our closeness.
It was a feeling I’d never shared with anyone else, but one that always accompanied the sex between us. Perhaps it was my subconscious feeling we could lose one another at any moment and I would be left alone yet again. Or maybe I felt this way because part of me was convinced I should tell him I love him just in case something ever happened to him so he would know what we had was never just sex.
Colin continued to thrust in and out of me until the orgasm washed over me like a gentle wave on a beach, but I still clung to him and rode it out as my vaginal muscles clung around him like a vice. He gripped my waist tighter and buried his face in my neck as he came with a long moan and sigh crushed into one.
We lay there together for a while. He pulled out once he had gone soft but he still clung to me, resting his head on my chest as I stroked his silky flaxen strands.
“Maybe we should leave tomorrow after we meet up with Carolien and Jens. We can take the train to Brussels and from there get a train to Paris. How about it? Let’s just live fast and loose for the next couple of days. No rules—just you and me, how about it?” I said in clipped sentences.
“Yeah, that sounds like a plan. I would go anywhere with you, baby. We can do whatever you want and I would be game. You know that, right?”
“Seriously? You aren’t angry with me? Earlier, you told me I was overreacting and I just assumed you would feel the same now.”
He clicked his tongue before he sat up and crossed his legs Indian-style. I sat up as well and leaned against the headboard. “I was a fool, but I did say one true thing. I’m not convinced I didn’t bring tonight on myself. I have done some real bad shit, Deirdre. Illegal stuff, and probably the only reason why I got away with it was because I was a rich white boy. I think we can both agree that turning thirty no longer makes me a ‘boy’ in any sense of the word.”
I stared at him for a long time, unsure about what to say in response. “Do you want to tell me about it?”
Colin swung his legs around on the bed before he stood and slipped on a pair of jeans, commando-style. I slipped on one of his white oversized tee shirts that barely covered the top of my thighs, and we both walked out to the small balcony. He pulled a cigarette out and lit it. Then he inhaled hungrily.
“I don’t know if you’re ready for all that crap. I mean, Liam and I aren’t some poor ass white trash that had to fight for what we got in life, but it didn’t stop us from actin’ like we had something to prove. We were a couple of pain in the asses for our parents, and I can’t help but think of all the shit we did because Liam wanted to do something fun and exciting.” He turned his glare my way. “I wonder if he decided to tell Caitlyn about all of that, and I know the answer because I know him.”
I took the cigarette from him, slipped it between my lips, and dragged on it just as hungrily as he had. “Then why are you telling me about all this if it can just stay hidden? You know I would never say anything to anyone about it.”
He took the cigarette back from me and dragged long and leisurely before he flicked it over the balcony. “Because I’m not Liam. I have a conscience, and I am not suggesting my brother doesn’t, but he’s not me. I have worshipped him since we were kids, Deirdre. He was this hero, this amazing, larger-than-life character, and I was so proud to have him as my brother. You don’t know what that’s like because you’re the oldest, like he is.”
I slipped my arms around his waist and he
ld on to him as we looked into one another’s eyes. “That might be true, but I do know what it’s like to live in another person’s shadow. I’ve done it my whole life with Cait being the perfect one and me being the ‘Wendy’ of the family. You know, from Peter Pan. I was the one who didn’t want to grow up or become an adult. Mom used to tease me and tell me I was what was wrong with Western civilization. People like me who only wanted to acquire knowledge for knowledge’s sake and nothing else. ‘What do you think you are preserving, exactly? The world doesn’t run on knowledge alone. You need to be useful. Isn’t that why people go to college in the first place?’ It became a running mantra in our home, and I just stopped coming home. I spent more and more time with Drew back in Boston. His family was there—his mom, at least—and we would travel between Massachusetts and Washington D.C. It became fun, something to do, because his parents were so different than mine. They seemed to get it, and besides, he would eventually take his father’s position in Washington so spending a lot of time in the world of academia didn’t bother them.”
“So, what are you trying to say?”
“Well, we’re not so different, you and I. You think being a bad boy and trying to live up to your brother’s expectations makes you any different than me burying my head in the sand by hiding behind Drew and his family because he was safe? Caitlyn’s right, you know,” I whispered. “Perhaps I did lead Drew on all these years. Why didn’t I just tell him we would never be together like that? I gave him a false sense of security, and I made him believe there could one day be a him and I. That’s not right, and I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Come on, let’s go back inside. Neither one of us has the answers, but we sure as hell aren’t going to find them out here.”
He followed me back inside, and we both undressed and snuggled in bed together. I loved sleeping in the nude with him. We didn’t need to have this talk tonight, and for some reason, I knew in my heart I wasn’t ready to hear whatever it was he had to say. It was best to go to sleep with the words left unsaid.
Atonement (The Atonement Duet Book 1) Page 16