WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
This book is for sale to ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It contains substantial sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which may be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.
All sexually active characters in this work are 18 years of age or older.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover Design: Varian Krylov
Hurt © 2008 Varian Krylov
eXcessica publishing
All rights reserved
Hurt
By Varian Krylov
Chapter One
There was a masochistic pleasure in watching those green-gray eyes begin to shimmer, pinking already with sudden tears gathering along the pale edges of the bottom lids, until the image dissolved in gray-white haze.
Driving. She made herself believe there was only the car and the road and the night.
She levered the clutch and downshifted. Willing every synapse to focus on the speedometer, the wipers squeaking across the windshield, the feel of the wheel in her grip and the sound of the tires whipping up water from the wet pavement as she navigated the curves of the rising and dipping road, she rolled diligently through the rain pooling and streaming over the asphalt and hanging in the sky like twisting strings of beads, slightly swaying, glinting in the beams of her headlights, rattling against the metal hood and glass windshield.
She had not even noticed how little she could see. A shadow. A movement. She stomped the brake before she knew why and fishtailed to a stop just a foot or two before she would have hit it.
A huge black dog stood, staring straight at her as if it could see past the glare of the headlights. Her heart hammering, she watched its rib cage contract and its jaw open and snap shut, jowls flapping and shuddering around vicious white teeth with a bark silenced by the clamoring rain before it sprang into the next lane, out of the road, and vanished.
Abandoned by the canine chimera, her gaze was snapped up and dragged off by the motorcycle speeding toward her as it veered with a streaking blur of headlight suddenly low to the ground, scuttling away along the road behind her until rider, then bike fell still in their northbound lane.
Ahead, a pair of headlights flashed around the bend.
She cranked the wheel hard left and hit the hazards as she rolled a careful, urgent U and crawled toward the crumpled, motionless form in her headlights. Already hitting 911 on her cell with shaky hands, she ducked into the rain, rushed over, squatted down, and touched the throat between helmet and collar, feeling for a pulse. Viper-like, his hand caught her wrist.
“It’s OK,” she said, with forced calm to the black visor of his helmet, dotted pale orange with reflected streetlights. “Lie still. I’m calling an ambulance.”
The hand released her wrist and dragged open the visor. Rain pelted blinking brown eyes. He pushed himself up to sitting.
“Are you hurt?,” she asked. “Maybe you shouldn’t move until the paramedics come.”
“Hang up.”
When she didn’t do it right away, he reached and flipped her phone shut.
“I’m fine. I don’t need an ambulance.”
As the northbound car swerved around hers in the southbound lane without slowing, hissing past them barely two feet away, she froze, then shuddered as it snaked back right and just kept going. He crawled to the curb and sat.
“I’ll get your bike out of the road.”
She wrestled the thing up from the ground, over against the curb, got the kickstand down, and went back to him.
“Sure you’re OK?”
“I’m fine.”
He didn't sound fine.
“Can you ride? I can drop you somewhere.”
“I think I’ll walk it. I was almost home. I’m just right there.”
After easing his helmet off, as if he was afraid his head might come off with it, he pointed up the road. He started to stand, then dropped back down, his ass hitting the wet curb with a smack.
“Listen." She tried to smooth the warble out of her voice. Wished the adrenaline surging through her like a bad caffeine overdose would subside. "I should get my car out of the road. Why don’t you let me drop you, then I’ll run back for your bike and walk it up to your house.”
He lifted his eyes to study her a moment. What the hell was the guy afraid of? That she was going to steal his bike?
"All right," he finally said. "Thanks."
He let her help him up but shrugged off her effort to support his limp toward the car, then folded his huge frame into her tiny two-seater. His driveway was less than a quarter mile up the road. When she came back with his bike, he met her at the end of the drive and together they pushed it up toward the center cell of the three-car garage. He snatched the keys from the ignition and dropped them into his pocket.
“Thank you.”
He didn't sound all that grateful, but then he came through with a warm smile.
She said, “I’m glad you’re not too hurt.”
“Fucking dog.”
“Weird. He was just standing there. Like Cerberus, waiting for a face-off with my car. I barely stopped in time.”
His smile turned to a grin that went with a raised eyebrow. "Cerberus, eh?" Mocking her knack for obscure references. “Want to come in? Have a drink?”
Yeah, right.
“I should get home.”
As it left her lips, the word “home” stung her with the image of the generic hotel room scantly personalized with a minimal complement of clothes and gear, and the thought of a night of insomnia and anxiety. Suddenly, the ridiculous impossibility of strolling through some stranger's door for a drink looked more like a tempting—if reckless—alternative to driving around bleary eyed through the L.A. night until sunrise.
“That’s ungrateful." His boyish smile was back. "After all I’ve done for you? You won’t even stay for ten minutes and have a drink with me?”
She looked at him a moment, assessing his pallor, the way his hands trembled as they found the right key on the ring he'd fished back out of his pocket. She tried a smile.
“True. I do owe you.”
“Come on.”
He led her through a tall iron gate and a pocket-sized courtyard doing a bold impression of a Japanese garden, a screen of bamboo whispering to the rain twenty feet above them, red dwarf maples, junipers, and needled shrubs arching and twisting in fabulous, unnatural poses beside majestic boulders and arched against the stone facade of the house, all lit up from below by lights hidden among stones and moss. Maybe he was house sitting.
Inside, his fingers beeped over the alarm pad. She let him take her coat and hang it in the closet, then watched distractedly as a pool of water began collecting beneath it on the polished hard wood. If it pooled there for too long it would dissolve the finish. Rot the planks. A dark, soft hole. She pulled herself back.
The place looked like the centerfold from Sunset Magazine. Circa 1960. The guy had to be an interior decorator living with a housekeeper. Or vice versa. The rugs and the furniture and the walls all subtly tied together with a bold slash of orange here, ocher there, vivid complements to the sedate warmth of stone and wood. There wasn't a glass or a pair of shoes or a book laying around anywhere. Across from the front door, a vast bank of floor-to-ceiling windows glowed and dripped in oranges and blacks, a rain-smeared mural of L.A. night.
“Great place. Very Frank Lloyd Wright.”
He nodded, smiling, scrutinizing her. She smiled too, amused to notice that the retro house and décor seemed to go with the mod shag cut of his dark hair.
"What's your name?" He asked this simple question with a directness that somehow made her nervous.
“Vanka.”
“That Slavic?”
“Russian.”
“I'm Galen."
The way he said it, probing her with his eyes, made her feel as if there was some inside joke she was missing.
"You live around here?"
"Los Feliz."
"What bring you to this neighborhood?"
"Just driving around."
"A pleasure cruise?"
She shrugged. None of his business, anyway.
"In this weather?" he pressed.
"It's been a rough day,” she finally gave up to close his line of questioning.
He seemed to be working awfully hard at reading her but finally relented with a "What do you drink, Vanka?”
“Vodka tonic?”
A bad idea maybe. But a cocktail or seven had been beckoning for hours. And the accident hadn't helped. She slid her fingers into the snug back pockets of her slacks to steady or hide her shaking hands.
“I can do that, if you don’t need lime.”
“Why don’t you sit down and let me make the drinks?”
He gave her a slightly pained smile. “Maybe I’ll go stick a couple of Band-Aids on. Glasses are there, in that cupboard next to the fridge. The liquor’s there,” he pointed toward the pantry. "Tonic’s in the fridge. There might even be some lime juice, actually.”
“What do you want?”
“I’ll have what you’re having.”
* * * *
Limping down the hall, he turned and cast a quick look at her cracking cubes of ice from their cells in the white tray and dropping them clattering into two tall glasses. In the bathroom, light swelled at the flick of the switch. Forgetting the errand of bandages and peroxide, he confronted his mirror image. He looked like a little less than himself. Pale. Afraid. Fragile look in the eyes. Even so, even though his hands were shaking, he felt a pleasant sense of satisfaction. The fear, the adrenaline, even the throbbing, burning pain were so real.
At the elbow and shoulder, dark stains were bleeding into the water-darkened gray sweatshirt. He peeled away the wet top and looked at the raw wounds. Not that bad, really. Could have been worse. He managed to get the elbow cleaned and sterilized, but the wound was too big for even the enormous-looking bandages he'd dug up in the first aid kit stashed at the back of the bottom drawer. It was a gauze and tape job, and one-handed it wasn’t going too well. So he gathered all the crap together and carried it out to the stranger in the kitchen. As she turned and watched him approach, her eyes slid down from his face, over the bare skin of his shoulders and torso. She was checking him out so blatantly he caught himself smiling before a change in her expression made him wonder if she was regretting coming in.
“Want to play doctor?” he teased.
She smiled. Through the burn and throb of his injuries, a pleasant heat stroked him as he noticed she was quite fuckable.
”OK, but you’ll have to administer your own anesthesia.”
She handed him the vodka tonic, which wasn’t half gone, and they climbed up onto the two bar stools at the island in the center of the kitchen. He reached his arm toward her, and she took it, one hand cradling his forearm, the other curving around the thick swell of triceps above his oozing elbow.
“Sure it’s not broken?”
“Reasonably.”
She lifted his hand to her shoulder, extended his arm, and with both hands felt up along the length of his arm, from wrist to armpit, careful to avoid the raw wound midway.
“You seem to be intact.”
“You a doctor?”
Her eyes flashed up to meet his, starry, startled. Then she retracted her mysterious surprise with a weak smile.
“No.”
“What would you do if you found a wrong angle in there?”
“Call that ambulance you’re so afraid of,” she challenged, with a long, steady look and a naughty little grin.
So, she wasn't clueless after all.
She began wrapping his elbow. His hand was still resting on her shoulder, his four fingers curved over the top of her blouse, his thumb resting against the smooth warm skin of her neck, just inside her collar. He stared at his thumb there innocently, intimately touching her as she bandaged him. Her gray-green eyes locked on his suddenly, as if she had caught him at something.
“You know who I am?” he challenged, instantly feeling a pleasant prick of shame at the way he'd put her on the spot.
“Wondering if that’s why I agreed to come in?”
He waited. She was quiet. He tried again.
“Would you normally come into the house of a man you’d just met laying on wet asphalt?”
“No. Not normally. But it’s not a normal night.” She lifted his hand from her shoulder and set it on his thigh. “I figured it out while I was making the drinks."
"It took you that long, eh?"
"Don't be insulted," she teased with an impish grin and a mischievous glance from under mascaraed lashes, "I'm a bit of a pop culture shutout."
"Sure. I suppose if you'd scraped Brad Pitt up off the road, you wouldn't have known, either."
"Brad who?" she deadpanned. "Anyway, fear not. I won’t sell your tragic motorcycle story to The Stranger for their 'celebrity I saw you' column."
“Your . . . eh, sang froid is rather impressive.”
“Because I’m not an autograph hound?”
He laughed. “I didn’t mean that.” His smile faded. “I think you may have saved my life.”
“Because you’d have bled to death from road rash if I hadn’t been here to wrap your elbow?”
“Yes. That, and that car behind me probably would have rolled right over me if you hadn’t thought to pull your car behind me.”
“Feeling your mortality?”
Her eyes flickered up to his face and lingered there. The way she was looking at him, it was like a curtain opening. Or a drawbridge lowering.
“A bit. Maybe it’s good. Get a little wake up.”
Nothing like skidding over thirty feet of asphalt to slip you out of your emotional coma. And to stay out? Maybe you just had to hang on to fear and pain. Or find a fresh source.
She hopped down from her stool and circled around him, started in on the shoulder. His body flinched, then went rigid as she began cleaning the wound, but his brain was savoring the sharp sting of the disinfectant, the way her gentle touch tortured his torn flesh. She finished sterilizing and gauzing and taping, then finished off her drink.
“Have another.”
“Not until the surgery’s done. Time for the knee.”
He was aware of her watching him as he struggled to get the cuff of his pants up without dragging the stiff fabric over the tender wound.
“Looks like it’s pants off, Mr. Ross.”
“Maybe I should go back into the bathroom and take care of this one myself.”
“Maybe you should. If you’re wearing women’s panties under those jeans, I rescind my promise about selling my story.”
“Lucky for me, I only wear the frilly panties on special occasions”
“Careful you don't hurt my feelings," she teased as he undid his fly. "You're in a vulnerable position, here."
As he finished undoing the last button of his fly, he gave her a look, only half calculated, that seemed to wipe the teasing grin from her face. Not as cool as all that, after all. Suddenly, obviously nervous, she pulled her eyes away and made a pretense of looking for something in the first aid box as he slid his pants down his thighs, then carefully drew the gathers of stiff denim over the tender wound at his knee, and off.
"Why don't you sit there and put your foot up there," she suggested, indicating one stool, then the other.
Galen felt a perverse satisfaction in looking down on the horizontal plane of his extended leg, the knee chewed up, red and raw, clear fluid leaking around the dirt and gravel that had embedded itself in his tender flesh. Much worse than the elbow. The knee had taken the brunt of the fall.
"Oh, Galen. Sure you don't want to go to the doctor's for this? They could numb it."
"It's all right. I want you to do it."
He issued it like a challenge. He liked the thought of this good Samaritan, this woman, hurting him. More than she had already. But maybe she wouldn't do it.
"OK."
She said it lightly, with a smile and a shrug, but she was pale. And as she poured herself that second drink she wasn't going to have, her hand shook. After a hunt for tweezers and some sterilizing ointment, and a few gulps of her vodka tonic, which might have been a double, she dug in.
He wasn't going to faint. He wasn't even going to puke. He concentrated on the carbonated bite of the cold clear liquid he sipped through the cubes shifting and clanging in his glass, and on the nice view he was getting of her tits. No bra under that thin blouse. Kind of surprising—almost as surprising as the fact that he hadn't noticed sooner—she didn't seem the type. And he was so good at judging things like that. But there she was, her tits curving and peaking and swaying slightly under the delicate fabric clinging softly to her as she moved, and each time she bent close to his knee, her blouse gapped away from her body, and he could see her bare skin, right down to her navel between the pale inverted hills of her breasts. And, twice, a brief glimpse of pale pink aureole. It was almost a disappointment when she extracted the last piece of Hillcrest Boulevard from his knee, pressed a piece of Neosporin-laced gauze to the seeping flesh, and began wrapping his knee.
The tough part was over, but she seemed more nervous than ever. She seemed to be avoiding his eyes, busying herself with winding up the gauze and putting away tubes and bottles and tweezers. Her breathing had gone fast and shallow, and he was pretty sure her hands were shaking. Maybe she'd noticed he was hard.
Weird. He'd have thought the vicious poke of the tweezers and the sting of disinfectant on his raw flesh would remedy—not double—the effects of her fabulous . . . bedside manner. Maybe he'd overlooked an unexpected avenue of sexual gratification. Maybe he was a pain slut.
He got to his feet, a little too close to her. Wondered, was she feeling him—his size, his heat, his near nakedness. Was she up for something? Was she afraid?
"Just relax," he sighed down to her, amused at how threatening a bit of politeness could sound. He waited until she looked up and he could read her face. Apprehension. Or full-blown fear. "I'll be back in a minute."
* * * *
Slowly the fist clenched around her heart opened, and she took a breath. For just a second she'd thought he'd. . . . The impulse to go, without a good-bye, tickled through her whole body. Something about him. She didn't feel safe. The way he looked at her, digging in. So taciturn. So big, so hard. And, fuck. The guy had actually gotten turned on by the little torture session with the tweezers.
The memory of the bulge of his stiff cock pressed back against him by his snug briefs sent a little throb through her.
Half ready to go, she ran her fingers over the shape of the key in her pocket. Her heart gave one big thud. Like the heavy echo of a phantom beat. She felt light. Empty. Frail.
She swiped her drink from the counter, the condensation chilling her skin as her fingers and palm wrapped tight around the base of the tall, narrow glass, imparting a sudden, lucid calm. Strange that fear could be a comfort.
She wished him back. Hurry. Hurry. Now that he was gone, anxiety was sweeping into the void left by his vaguely threatening presence.
Air. She needed air. White knuckled, clutching her sloshing drink, she moved to the slider, clawed the latch open, and got onto the deck.
Breathe. Breathe.
An awning overhead kept the pouring rain off her, but the wind chafed her face and whipped her hair across her eyes, obscuring, revealing, and obscuring her view of the grid of orange city lights below. It seemed like her drink should be fresh, only a few sips gone, but she tipped the glass behind her bottom lip and just a trickle seeped between the depleted cubes. Was she drunk?
Over the hoarse whisper of the wind and the thwapping of the rain, she heard the slider humming in its track behind her. The normal thing to do would have been to turn, to smile, to say something. About the view. The weather. Whatever. But she didn't feel normal. So she stood, silent, and waited. Probably he was about to say, “Aren't you cold out here with no jacket?” Or maybe his hand was about to punch through her vision's periphery, his arm stretching away until it receded into a pointing index finger as he explained what some distant feature of the landscape, wrought by man or nature, might be.
But the seconds were slipping away and there was only the sound of the wind and the rain, and her view of sprawling L.A. was never interrupted except by the whipping strands of her hair. He remained silent. Behind her.
She thought he might touch her. That's what people like him did: fucked random strangers. Had one-night stands. The idea of being touched by someone she didn't know scared her. Seemed ugly. It always had. But the drink was nowhere near doing the trick, and suddenly that ugliness, that fear had a strange, arousing appeal.
So, when she felt his fingers combing into her hair, she stayed still and quiet and savored the little shudder that rippled down her body from the points where his fingertips brushed against her scalp. Silent and slow, with soft strokes he smoothed and gathered her wind-wild hair. Then she felt his body against hers—more heat than touch—and his warm breath pulsed against her bare neck. Taut, stretched thin as wire, she waited for the touch of his mouth on her skin. Only when she sucked in a desperate breath did she realize how anxiously she'd been waiting to be touched. That she'd forgotten to breathe. Now she was panting urgent shallow little breaths. Waiting.
His fingers brushed faintly against her, making her shiver as he pulled her collar toward her shoulder. His lips faintly grazed the sensitive skin just below her ear, and every cell in her body seemed to constrict. Every inch of skin felt suddenly tight and faintly itchy. She waited.
His breath, his lips brushed against her again, a touch that bolted through her taut nerves like electric current, making her nipples and every hair follicle constrict. Then his tongue, hot and wet and teasing. Then his teeth. Two little nips that almost made her cry out, afraid he'd hurt her, before an unsettling rush of pleasure washed over her.
"Set your glass down."
She stretched her arm to the side and set the glass on the railing. Almost the moment it was out of her hand his body drove hers forward, until her hip bones pressed against the wooden barrier, his chest against her back forcing her upper body to lean over, just slightly, but enough to make her grab at the railing instinctively. In the dark she couldn't discern how high the balcony had her suspended. He mouthed her ear, and the sensation mingled with her fear and her flesh—from the surface of her skin to her organs to deep in her bones—tingled so intensely she started to feel delirious.
"Answer something," he whispered before stroking a particularly sensitive spot on her ear with the very tip of his tongue. "Be honest."
He descended on her neck again, making it hard for her to breathe, hard to answer.
"Why did you come in with me?"
He moved over to the untouched territory on the left of her neck. The sound of his breathing, the feeling of his mouth on her skin, of his body pressing her to the railing, had her more urgently aroused than she'd been in years—probably since high school, when everything was new. Fuck, she wanted him to touch her.
"You . . . I came in because . . . I didn't want to go home."
"And?"
"And I was afraid to."
"Afraid to what?"
"Afraid to come in with you."
"You wanted that?"
It wasn't smart. Telling some strange man that you'd come in with him because you liked feeling afraid. She knew that.
"Yes."
"You felt . . . afraid of me?"
"Yes. A little."
"What about now?"
His grip on her hair tightened; she realized that she was unable to move her head. His other hand slid down her side to her hip, crossed her abdomen until his forearm belted her tight against him. Gradually, she became aware of him moving his hips behind her, suddenly sure she felt his erection pressing against her ass, sliding slowly up and down against her with the motion of his hips.
"What about now? Are you still afraid of me?"
"Yes," she breathed, still dying to be touched. Really touched. His hand between her legs. Inside her panties.
"Do you want to go?"
His grip on her hair didn't loosen; the insistent probing of his stiff cock hadn't relented.
"No."
Fuck. What was she doing?
Her hair still caught tight in his fist, he backed off her just enough to allow a little gap between her and the railing, and his hand slid from her hip, over, down, and teased over her crotch. Under his delicate touch, minute by minute, a flood of sensation pooled and began pulsing insistently. He hadn't even slipped his hand inside her pants and she already felt her climax building.
But his fingers, working so subtly, so expertly between her thighs, abandoned her just as she'd sighed a desperate little whimper. Now his fingers were trilling up the back of her thigh, slowly, definitely working their way between.
"Don't," she said, softly.
He went still, but his hand was still there, her hair still caught tight in his grip. In that moment an awful feeling of vulnerability made her core soft. There was a dropping feeling. But as she twisted, ready to panic, he let go of her hair and let her turn to face him. He was looking down at her with an air of patient amusement. His gaze was so intense, so direct, she felt suddenly as though he could look right through her skin. Read her thoughts.
She wasn't used to this. Feeling . . . dominated. Instinctively she set out to even the scales. Reclaim her power. Feeling it already, she grinned up at him and pressed her palm eagerly to the blatant bulge in his pants. She loved this part—getting a sense of the size and shape of a man, for his responses to her touch.
She drew the curve of her hand along his erection, aroused to find him so hard. Riding the wave of her power, she felt a sudden urge to have him in her mouth, to hear him groan as she used her lips and tongue on him. Giving him her best wicked grin, she sank to her knees and got to work on his fly.
"Don't do that."
He said it softly. Tenderly, even. He took her hand from his zipper and coaxed her back up. She was a little stunned. If a guy had ever turned her down for a blowjob, she couldn't remember it. He stared into her for a few seconds, smiled, then opened the slider and led her inside.
Slowly, his eyes locked on hers the whole time, he guided her back until her shoulder blades and her ass bumped against a smooth, vertical plane of wall. Holding her there, he moved in close, until his thighs touched hers, until she could feel his breath on her lips. Still looking, still staring into her. Something like regret started to erode her arousal, but then he sank down, onto his knees.
The bass in her chest thrummed hard, quickened. She watched as he slid the tongue of her belt back, through the loop of her slacks, through the silver buckle, off the prong, and it flopped open to hang heavily from her hips. So quick. His hands. Her slacks unhooked, unzipped. His fingertips touched her hot, bare skin, slid down, catching the waistband of her slacks, then her panties in a single smooth gesture, and pulled them down midthigh. Thrumming bass, staccato, hard, fast.
He was looking at her. At her sex. David never did that. Just gaze at it from inches away.
Hot. Her face was hot. She wanted him to get back up. She moved, maybe she was going to step aside, walk away. But he caught her thighs in his hands and silently coaxed her to be still. She couldn't stand this. It was too intimate. She'd never let a man use his mouth on her until they'd been together a while.
His breath was hot and damp on her bare skin. Did he like her smell? Did he like that she was waxed bare?
Anxiety and anticipation mingled. His warm hands slid over her skin until her thighs were wrapped in his embrace, one hand curving against her ass. Please. Fuck. She needed him to touch her.
His lips brushed faintly over her smooth mound, the caress of his breath teasing her. He looked up at her, took in her look of frustrated want, and touched her with his tongue.
A tiny, soft, wet touch against the soft, wet, pink flesh. All the heat in her body rushed in to that tiny point where the tip of his tongue had touched her. When he did it again, she whimpered as all that heat pulsed and surged and seemed to roll inside of her.
Each little touch was a taunt. To prod her need. Vex her arousal. But he kept his caresses so small, let so many seconds tick away between, she was almost in tears of frustration. She tried to widen her stance, to spread her legs, hoping desperately to feel his tongue slide back, lave over her wet sex. Fuck, she needed him to really eat her. But his embrace tightened, cinched her legs tight together, making all of her, except the very front of her slit and just the tiny bit of her not hidden between her smooth, waxed lips, inaccessible to his mouth.
Each tiny little touch of his tongue made her wiggle in her torment, made her whine and whimper. Every time the tip of his wet, pink tongue made contact with her, her body tried to meet it with her climax. As if it knew it would get nothing more from him, as if it sensed that these taunting kisses, so faint, so infrequent, would have to be enough.
But then, fuck, god, yes, he pressed his open mouth to her, his lips sealed themselves against her soft, smooth flesh, and his slippery tongue pressed forward, between her lips, into her slit, laving at last all her wet inner folds. She shuddered and whimpered and flexed against his embrace, dying to spread for him, dying for him to fuck her with his mouth. When he withdrew his tongue and its textured surface slid back over her, rubbing all along her wet, needful sex, ending with a devastating little flick over her clit, she shuddered, groaned, and thought her knees might give.
Hardly conscious of what her body was doing, her legs flexed, trying to open, her hips tried to press forward, to drive her sex against his mouth, but his arms circled tighter around her, immobilizing her, keeping her shut tight.
More, tiny, darting touches of his tongue to her, her trying to stifle the little sobs and moans threatening to squeak out. It was torture, keeping her climax so close for so long, threatening to keep her in this anxious suspense forever. But slowly, slowly, with each little brush of the tip of his tongue, that aching, throbbing pleasure built, gathering, gathering, and he'd lick, and the feeling would swell, and that little touch would land again, and the thrill would rise up, until finally another stroke of his tongue fluttered over her and a great well of pleasure flooded up and spilled over. He lightly lapped, prolonging her delicious agony, gripping her in his imprisoning embrace as he squeezed every drop of pleasure from her body. He held her as she shuddered and panted and finally calmed. At last he opened the constricting circle of his arms.
She felt strange. She couldn't remember that last time she'd been held for so long in such delicious suspense, or when she'd cum so hard. But she didn't feel at all sated. She was absolutely dying to be fucked.
To be fucked. Taken. Held down. Ridden.
Judging by the way he was grinning up at her, his eyes bright with hunger, she was going to get just what she needed. He rose, his body, his hands, traveling over her like they were taking possession of new terrain. Standing, looking down at her, he smiled like he was amused by something, evoking a spontaneous smile from her in the midst of her trembling need. Then he kissed her. She hadn't wanted that before, but now, after, she wanted it.
His tongue slid into her mouth, tasting of her sex. It was like a drug working on her body, doubling her arousal, her need. Panting, he ended his hungry kiss, and with another odd little grin, started unbuttoning her blouse. Panic seized her, and she caught his wrist in her hand. His eyebrows rose and his mouth curved in an expression of amused surprise.
"I want . . . this. You," she stammered, flustered. "But I . . .please, leave the blouse on."
His hands slipped obediently away from her button, but then he took hold of the hem, gathering upward. She snapped. Her vision blurring with tears of panic she caught his hands again, suddenly afraid again that he was going to make her fight him. That she'd lose. That he'd . . .
"I'm afraid," he said quietly, his eyes guiding hers toward something near his hands, "that I got some blood on your shirt. From earlier. You should take it off. Let me wash it."
A small bright stripe of blood stretched along the fabric between his thumbs.
"I can give you a shirt to wear, if you're shy," he added with surprising, sweet gentleness.
* * * *
He really didn't know why, but she was losing it. Her eyes had that glittery reddening look of someone about to cry. What the fuck. He'd played with her. A little. But there was no way, he'd done nothing to make her think he'd hurt her. Force her.
"I'm sorry," she breathed from some parallel dimension. "I need to go."
"All right."
He used a soft voice. He wouldn't argue. Trying to keep her there seemed like a very bad idea, if she was feeling like he was some kind of threat. He'd let her go. Live with the mystery.
She'd already frantically zipped and buckled up and was half way to the front door. He walked slowly after her. Not too fast. Not too close. She opened the door, called back with a broken “sorry,” and was gone.
That was a first—a woman running off crying after he'd licked her to orgasm. He made himself a fresh vodka tonic as he wondered over her possible pasts. Molested as a child? Date rape? A violent assault? Or just fucked up—so repressed that a good climax sent her over the edge? Who fucking knew? Poor thing.
Something about it wasn't right, though. Everything about her had struck him as strong. Not the shy delicate type. Not the wounded type.
The image of the stain kept coming to him, like it was burned onto his retina, the final living image.
His vodka tonic in hand, he wandered back to his room, thinking he'd change, go to bed. But he was too wired. The accident, her. All that buildup, and no fuck to undo the anticipation. He could still taste her. The recognition, the acknowledgment of it got his dick a little hard.
He roamed aimlessly back and forth through the house, a little too disturbed by her to jerk off and go to sleep.
The stain.
From outside, a bright light blared on the living room curtains, trying to get in. Headlights. Brushing the curtain back, he peered into the dark and rain. She was still there, in his driveway. In her little convertible, engine running, rain slanting through two violent beams of halogen light. Another minute or more slid by.
He skidded his feet into a pair of shoes, crushing the stiff backs under his heels, and started soaking up the rain. Robbing the flagstones in the courtyard and the concrete drive. For all the tinted windows revealed, there might have been no one inside her car. It might have been a humming empty shell. He tapped at the glass, rain-beaded in symmetrical chaos. No sound, no sign of movement. He was getting drenched. He pulled on the door handle.
She was hunched against her steering wheel. His core turned to ice with a sudden dropping feeling, like being in a plane that suddenly loses a few thousand feet. But then her still, silent body moved. Straightened.
Some evil wizard had stolen her life and turned her into a crash test dummy. Smooth face void of expression. Blank eyes. He couldn't even tell if she'd noticed him. He touched her shoulder, softly as he could, then bent down close.
"Vanka. Come back in with me."
Had she heard him? Did she even know he was there? He touched again, stroking her damp hair, tried her name again. She just went on gazing vacantly at his garage door.
"I'm going to bring you inside, all right?"
Nothing changed. He leaned in, killed the ignition, grabbed the keys, got a forearm under her knees, his other arm curved around her back, under her arm, pulled her against his chest, and lifted her out of the car.
"It's OK. I'm bringing you inside, Vanka," he assured her in his gentlest voice, kicking her car door closed.
"Put me down," she said before he'd reached the front door. "I'm not a fucking baby. I'm not an invalid. Put me down."
He put her down. She didn't charge back to her car.
"Come on." He tentatively touched her back, hoping to get her inside before she was as wet as he, a little surprised when she moved toward the house.
"My purse."
"I'll get it."
He trotted back to the car, reached across the driver's side and snatched her purse up from the passenger seat. Back in the house, he wrapped a blanket around her, pulled her to him, held her, rubbing her back through the blanket, while something he'd glimpsed a moment earlier began worrying the back of his mind. She was quiet and still in his arms, He settled her on the couch. She'd slipped back into catatonia, but every now and then she drew in a sudden, deep, shuddering breath. Her eyes seemed not to see. He lit the fire, went back to his room, and hurriedly changed into dry clothes. When he came back she was still sitting, just as he'd left her, her unseeing eyes staring straight ahead.
It startled him when, a moment later, she spoke.
"This is so ridiculous. I'm sorry."
She was looking at him. Seeing him. He smiled.
"There's nothing to apologize for."
She turned her shell-shocked aspect toward him.
"Do you think I could have another drink?"
"Sure."
He couldn't remember where she'd left her glass, so he got a clean one from the cupboard and threw a drink together for her, shorting her a bit on the vodka. In the morning, she'd be glad. She smiled at him, sad and grateful as he handed her the drink, then took a shaky but dainty little sip. She seemed to want it in her hand, more than anything. A little piece of security.
"God, you poor thing," she laughed sadly. "You invite a girl in for a quick fuck, and look what you get."
"I didn't invite you in for a fuck."
She gave him a bemused smile.
"No?"
"No. Believe it or not, I'm not in the habit of fucking people I've just met. Anymore."
He wouldn't have told her, before.
"I invited you in because the accident freaked me out. I was scared. I didn't want to be alone." He couldn't resist smiling and adding, "It was later I decided I wanted to fuck you."
"It was my gauze work, wasn't it? No man can resist a woman with a roll of gauze."
There was something sweet in her attempt at humor when she was so obviously sad. Hurt.
"Actually, it was the way you relentlessly wield a pair of tweezers."
She smiled. He was only half kidding. He perched on the coffee table in front of her.
"Vanka. Should I call your doctor?"
She looked shocked. Then scared. Then amused.
"What? I have one little nervous breakdown in a stranger's house, and you think it's time to call the men in white coats?"
Defensive. He smiled, hoping to calm her.
"I think someone should take a look at your stitches."
He waited. Watched a little look of surprise pass like a tiny shockwave over her features. Watched her think. Maybe she'd deny it. Or maybe he was wrong. Then she softened and shrank slightly as her defenses came down.
"How'd you know?"
"The blood. I would have seen it sooner. The way you reacted. Got scared. I thought I'd scared you, but it didn't quite make sense. And just now, after I brought you back in. I saw your bra in your purse."
She just nodded.
"So, should I call your doctor for you?"
"I don't want to go back there. Not tonight."
"You may have pulled your stitches. You should at least go and check. Use the bathroom mirror. If it's bad, I'll take you in."
She just sat there, staring into the distance somewhere to the left of him.
"Vanka?"
"I can't."
He took her drink, took her hand, and led her over to the kitchen, settling her on the stool he'd sat on earlier while she dressed his wounds. The first aid kit was still there, still open, spilling over with gauze and medical tape. It was a regular clinic now.
"All right?" he asked.
"Yeah."
Button by button he undid her blouse, then pulled the left side—the side with the now-darkened blood stain—open, baring her breast and the square of blood-stained gauze that partially covered her nipple.
"I'm going to take the gauze off, okay?"
She nodded.
Carefully he peeled up an edge of tape.
"That hurt?"
"No."
Pinching the corner of her bandage between his fingers, he slowly pulled, lifting the bandage, the white tape clinging, pulling at the delicate, smooth, pale skin of her breast. The incision, dark and thick with dried blood, came into view, a diagonal ridge just below the areola, just before the last of the tape tugged and released her nipple.
Her eyes evaded the sight of the blood-stained gauze as he set it on the counter.
"All right?"
She nodded.
"I'm going to clean it up a little, so I can see better. Okay?"
Another nod.
He doused a wad of fresh gauze in peroxide and gently pressed it to the wound, held it there, lifted, pressed again. She was silent, but when he looked to her face, tears were rolling down her cheeks.
"I'm sorry. I'm trying to be gentle."
"I'm going to die," she whispered.
Her words hurt him.
"They told you that?"
"They don't know yet. But I do."
"This . . . they operated?"
"Today was just a biopsy."
He went on, pressing and lifting, staining the peroxide-soaked gauze darker and darker, slowly revealing the neat incision beneath the dried blood.
"So you're waiting. For the results."
"I know what it is. And I know I'm going to die."
"Vanka. Even if it's cancer . . ."
"My mom died of breast cancer when I was six. She was twenty-nine. Her sister was thirty-one when she died."
The stitches were intact. He started fashioning a fresh bandage. Gauze. Neosporin. Tape.
"I think I've always known I wouldn't get away with it."
"What?"
"Staying whole. Dying old. Of something else."
He resisted his impulse to reassure, to promise that medicine could do more now than twenty years before, when her mom had died. As gently as he could, he covered her wound with the fresh bandage, carefully pressing the tape against her delicate skin, and pulled her blouse closed, covering her breast.
He understood now. Why she'd come in with him after the accident. He touched her cheek. Gave her a tender smile.
"I'll be right back."
When he returned a moment later, she was standing in front of the slider, gazing out at the wet L.A. night.
"Let me wash your blouse. Here's something warm for you to wear."
When she didn't move or speak, he tentatively touched her shoulders, then slid her blouse down her arms, realizing as he did so that she hadn't buttoned up. She had a very pretty back, smooth, muscular, defined. He slid his flannel pajama top up her arms, onto her shoulders.
"I should go."
"Stay. I want you to."
"I've put you through enough."
"You haven't put me through anything. I didn't want to be alone tonight, either. Stay."
Halfheartedly nodding her assent, she began buttoning up the flannel top.
"You tired? Ready for bed?" he asked when he'd put her blouse in the wash.
She looked sort of scared, but nodded her head.
"Come on."
He led her back, to his bedroom, let her pee and use his toothbrush, then did the same. When he came out of the bathroom, he found her standing hesitantly at the side of his bed.
"Do you want to be alone?"
She shook her head “no,” then stripped off her pants.
"Which side is yours?"
"They're both mine," he answered mirthfully, having gotten a good bit of teasing over the years for his indiscriminate sprawling. "Take whichever side you like, and be prepared to defend it."
She climbed in and he stripped down to his boxer briefs and slid in beside her. Met her in the middle. He coaxed her onto her side and curved his body into hers, spoon style, curving one arm over her, pulling her close against him.
They laid together like that for a long while. For three or more reasons he was wound far too tight to sleep. From the pattern and quality of her breathing, he knew she was awake, too. Thinking to soothe, to comfort her, he stroked her arm, just lightly with his fingertips over the soft rough flannel pajama top. He sensed her tense a little.
He whispered, "Should I stop?"
"No. It feels nice."
His fingers drifted up, into her hair, incredibly soft but a bit tangled, still, from the wind. She sighed quietly as he combed and petted, giving her the sorts of touches she liked best, that always seemed to soothe, to bring on drowsiness almost like a drug. Her hair was slightly damp from the rain, and it smelled just faintly of almond. She shifted and her ass flexed and rubbed against his cock. He couldn't help smiling, almost laughing at himself for having the guile to blush at being found out, that a woman in his bed would feel the evidence that he was aroused.
"You're hard."
He went on massaging her hot scalp.
"Don't worry. I can restrain myself."
"You have impressive recuperative powers, Mr. Ross."
"That's actually true, but lying in bed with you doesn't exactly constitute proof of that."
"Blood and sickness and morbid talk of disease and imminent death do it for you, do they?" Her voice had a defeated note to it.
"Tangentially, maybe you could say that."
"You don't have a scalpel fetish I ought to be aware of, do you?"
"My real thing is bone saws. Vzzzt, vzzzzzt," he buzzed in her ear, running his finger along her scalp, then her neck, relieved when she squirmed and giggled, anxious after it was already too late that his teasing might have triggered another bout of anxiety, terror, or shock. When she settled down, he realized her thrashing and giggling had him even harder.
"I'm not a fetishist, really. Scalpels or otherwise. But I'm attracted to real things. Sometimes fear and pain feel more real than whatever erotic games people generally like to play."
It wasn't coming out right. He just wanted her to know she wasn't . . . broken to him.
"So," she said in a voice so quiet he could hardly hear, "you still . . . you'd still fuck me?"
A little charge zapped through his body, indifferent to his brain's certainty that she was just looking for validation. Reassurance that having cancer—breast cancer—didn't cancel her out as a sexual being.
"Like I said. I can restrain myself. Restraint implies desire."
"Because I want you to."
He carefully crafted his reply.
"You want me to fuck you?"
It was her word.
"Yes."
"Yes."
She was still lying on her side, facing away from him. He slid back a bit, drew her shoulder back, toward him, until she turned onto her back, and after a moment of waiting, turned to face him in the dim moonlight seeping hazily between the dispersing rain clouds. Tracing the outline of her face with the tips of two fingers until all stray strands of hair were off her forehead and cheeks, he pressed his lips to her temple. He was thinking about it.
"You're not a child, Vanka. I won't question what you need tonight. I'll trust you to say something if you change your mind."
"I won't. It's what I've wanted all night."
He could do this. Play the masochist. Begin to make love to a woman he was sure would tell him to stop just as his arousal hit its limit. Again.
It was kindness that overcame his cynical reasoning. But nothing had to overcome his body. He wanted her. Everything about her—everything—had been pulling him to her, all night. The way her bottom lip, like a plump, ripe cherry even without lipstick, begged to be tasted and bitten, the way it curved a little lopsided, to bare sugar-white teeth in her sardonic smile. Her hands, with long, graceful fingers, her warm, sure touch. Her ass, smooth, round as two bread loaves under her low-riding white slacks.
Her calm competence, her strength and certainty after the accident—on the road, and later, when she'd treated his wounds. Her blatant, frightened arousal out on the terrace. Her pain. Her fear. Her need. All of it fed his attraction. His desire for her.
And her fear. Her fear of him. Her fear of her disease. Her fear of death. He wanted to fuck her while she was full of that fear, because it was so real.
Even her wound. The incision, with its coarse, hair-like sutures. It was raw. An opening in the fragile mortal barrier to death. A mark of vulnerability. Of frail human flesh. It belied all the artifice, the grotesque masks she, he, everyone put forth for others to look at and touch. Her waxed cunt. Her tinted hair. His wardrobe, put together by a three-hundred-dollar-an-hour stylist to give him just the right air of casual urban disarray. That fucking motorcycle of his, bought with some adolescent fantasy of daring, of leaving to chance (and mad dogs with Cujo complexes) the life he'd grown so bored with.
She was looking at him, waiting to see what he'd do. He smiled, pressed his palm softly to her cheek, and took her lips in a small, tender kiss. When he looked at her again, she looked strangely startled for a woman who'd just asked to be fucked. He gave her a chance, but she didn't say anything, so he kissed her again. A little deeper this time, tasting her lips with his tongue, then going into her mouth. She kissed him back as sweetly as he was kissing her, deep but slow. A delicate dance. An exploration.
Did she want him to touch her breast—the unhurt one? Or was she lying there, hoping he'd keep his hands out of the top he'd lent her? As a test, he brought his hand down from her cheek and faintly brushed over the curve of her tit on the way down to caressing her smooth, bare thigh. She didn't flinch, or make a noise or protest. His palm slid over her warm, soft skin, feeling the strong muscles in her thighs, the firm round curve of her ass, the dip of her at the small of her back, taut and narrow, the softer, vulnerable feel of her belly, the ridge of ribs as his hand glided up, in the heat of the air trapped between her body and the shirt, and curved over the firm swell of her breast, over the soft smooth skin he'd seen was pale and free of tan lines, and, just lightly, his fingertips brushed over the raised, textured flesh he remembered as a delicate pink, over her hard nipple. She just went on, breathing deep, kissing him. With the pad of his thumb he pressed that firm nub of pink flesh against the side of his index finger, his whole hand gently squeezing her breast, and she sighed softly against his mouth, arching against his body.
For a while he went on like that, kissing her, caressing her as slowly, as carefully as he would a virgin, noting with pleasure, but also with a discerning concern for how it was all going for her every little sigh, every writhing movement, striving for her arousal, on guard for any sign she was anxious or afraid. Maybe he needed her fear, the way some people need love, to feel assured and alive and complete, but he wasn't such a selfish ass that he'd take it at her expense on a night like this. There was very nearly as much pleasure, as much satisfaction, giving her what she needed, as taking what he did.
He'd had her sighing and wiggling so long, he knew she'd be wet. Savoring the thought, the anticipation, his hand left her breast slowly, took its time over her belly, the skin hot and smooth, back and forth between hip bones, feeling the architecture of the body under that hot, tender flesh. The edge of her panties. The feel of the silky fabric under his fingertip sent a surging force to his cock. He loved that, touching that article of clothing, knowing he was about to go under, touch her sex. It didn't matter that he'd been there already with his mouth. The anticipation was fucking hot. All his fingertips touched down, just below the little belt of elastic along the top, and slowly slid down over the slippery nylon. What color? He'd forgotten. Even through the panties it was obvious she waxed. No pressed down puff of pubes, no rough stubble. Perfectly smooth. Down, down, over the little hillock, down, to the soft contours at the apex of her thighs, the narrow hills and the hidden fold of valley between. His cock throbbed in anticipation, aching to press between, dip into her wet heat.
With his middle finger, he rubbed gently along that little valley, feeling that the crotch of her panties was moist, hearing her little groan as he teased her clit through the thin fabric. She spread her legs a little, and her hips arched a little now and then, pressing her cunt more firmly into his hand. Sensing her eagerness, he finally slipped his hand inside her panties, circled his fingers a few times over the delicious soft smoothness of her waxed mound, then curved his fingers down, between her open thighs, and found her silky wetness with the tip of his middle finger. Fuck, his dick was throbbing. He took his cunt-wet fingertip up to her clit and painted it with her juice, enjoying the twitch of her pelvis and the sound of her gasping a breath through her clenched teeth.
She was ready. He didn't want to make her cum first. He wanted her itchy, squirming with need when she took his cock for the first time. And he was ready, hard and aching, even though she hadn't touched him. At all.
She'd returned his kiss, sucking his lips, licking his tongue. But that was it. Maybe the way he'd stopped her before, when she was going to suck him, had put her off initiating anything. By way of encouragement, and because anything resembling the missionary position was out, with his knee chewed up and screaming, he wrapped his arms around her and rolled onto his back, pulling her astride him.
She went on kissing him, but he sensed that some of the excitement had faded for her with that move. He sat up, palmed her ass, one cheek in each hand, and pulled her against him. Thrilled where it counts by the feeling of her crotch pressed against the underside of his hard-on, he pulled two buttons from their holes and bared her uncut breast, sucking her hard nipple hungrily between his lips, licking the pressure-stretched tip of her tit eagerly until she groaned.
He took his mouth from her breast with a wet suck sound, kissed her lips, stroked her cheek. Her wet cheek.
"Vanka?" he whispered.
She didn't answer. She just sat there, straddling him, panting and silently letting tears roll down her cheeks. He pulled her to him, holding her, stroking her hair.
"Sssshhhh. It's okay. We'll stop."
"I can't. I'm sorry. I can't . . . "
He held her and rocked her, not knowing what to say.
Her voice hung up on a sob, she said, "This isn't what I want."
"I know. We'll stop. I'm just holding you now."
"I don't want you to pretend to make love to me."
Okay. Now he was confused.
"Pretend?"
"It's not how you were before. Out there. On the balcony. Before you knew."
"Vanka. Vanka. I just. . . . You were upset. I was just trying to be gentle. To give you what you wanted, what you needed tonight."
"Well, I don't need your fucking pity. Your charity."
Oh, she was asking for it now. He grabbed her wrist and forced her hand down, between them, and with his free hand, he molded her palm and fingers over his raging erection.