I don’t let go of his slick trousers as he slowly begins to pull out of my mouth. Rather I feel the need to clutch him to me, needing more contact than the clothes we’re both wearing allow. I don’t know. I just know that I need him now. I need whatever those minutes were as much as I needed the feeling of him fucking me in Delaney’s church. He lets me hang on, his hands softening on my cheeks as he pulls out completely and just stands there in front of me. One thumb wipes beneath my eye, wiping away the rain and collecting the tears he made happen, and then he transfers them to his lips as he watches me watching him. It’s a mesmerising sight, something that makes me think of an ownership I hadn’t considered possible. I’m here on my knees in the dirt, the rain driving down on us as I’ve taken his cock raging into me and enjoyed it. And now, with just that movement, with just that collecting of my tears and sucking them inside himself, he’s proved all my fears true. He owns me, doesn’t he? My heart, my thoughts, and now my tears, too. I’m helpless to deny it anymore even if I wanted too. I’m as lost as I’ve ever been with only him to guide me forward.
“Don’t confuse yourself, Alana,” he says, one hand moving under my chin to keep me looking upwards at him, the other pushing his cock back into its confines. “You did what you wanted to do. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.” I’m not ashamed, surprised maybe, and definitely hoping there’s more than just sexual fantasy involved given this love I’m feeling, but I’m not ashamed. Far from it, in fact.
“I’m not ashamed,” I reply, choosing to stay exactly where I am and try to assimilate the feelings I am having as I drop my gaze from him and stare at the rubbish lying around my feet. Trash. He called me trashy, didn’t he? Am I? I don’t know. Perhaps I am. Perhaps this little interlude proves that he can make me do anything for him, because he has, with little fighting on my part.
A thousand dollar suit suddenly sits down beside me, his back leaning against the wall and his ass in the dirt alongside me as his arm opens up to invite me inside.
“We are all as dirty as we want to become,” he says, his smile broadening as he pulls me in between his legs regardless of my surprised gaze. “Slutty is useful, on occasion.” A snort leaves me, my own smile matching his as he knocks my head into his chest and begins brushing my hair from my face. “You need that ache taking care of?” Yes, I do, and the very thought makes me grin as we sit here on the sloppy wet ground like a pair of lustful teenagers staring out into the road. But I’d rather it was in a bed, or just inside in general really.
“I’m not aching.”
“Liar.” The reply makes me chuckle as his hand weaves into mine, our fingers mingling again as he holds them up in front of me and turns them around. “I’ve never done this.”
“What?” Sat behind a dumpster? The thought doesn’t surprise me at all. Nor have I, frankly. We must be doing something new together. The thought makes me smile more, amused that I’ve got something he’s not done for anyone else.
“Held someone’s hand.” I don’t move or show a reaction to the statement. I’m not sure what to show as I gaze at them still turning in front of me. Anything other than nothing will incite more feelings of hope, ones I don’t know worthy of consideration. “Why do I want to with you?”
I don’t know the answer to that, but my gaping mouth as I keep staring into the street watching the rain come down, probably doesn’t help me think of an answer either. The gape slowly spreads into a smile, though, that sense of hope creeping in as it does and telling me to trust every instinct that’s relaxing into his arm across my stomach. And so we just sit here for a while, the rain still tumbling down on us, and the occasional car driving by to distract my thoughts from a place they shouldn’t be going towards. It’s all as soothing as the stroke of his fingers on my forehead, as tranquil as the feel of his chest rising and falling behind me, and as picturesque as a winter’s garden spread out before me. It’s raw and unprejudiced. It has a lifetime’s worth of iniquity linked into its definitive aura around us, the one that pulls me closer to him with every heartbeat. It’s, he’s, we, are as dirty as the streets we’re lingering on and as heartfelt as nature intends us to be.
“I should get you home,” he finally says. Home. Here is home. It’s quiet here. “You’re shivering. Up you get.” Am I? I don’t care. I don’t want to get up. I want to stay here and remember this feeling. Labour in it and forget all the other things I have to do. The thought makes me remember all the deadlines coming at me, which brings on the sound of the notifications bleeping and rattling my nerves again. It makes me brace against his movement into me, holding my weight there in the hope that he understands and just lets me stay here with him instead. He does. His body instantly relaxes, only to move and prop me away from him again for a second or two. And then his jacket covers my shoulders, dowsing me in the warmth of his skin as he pulls me back into him once more.
“Tell me about the pills.” Oh, the pills. I’d forgotten about them. I dig into my pocket searching for them only to find them not there. “In my pocket.” Really? When did he take those? Not that I care. He might as well know. He’s going to take everything anyway. I know that now. I know it because I don’t want to move at all.
“You’re a thief, Blaine Jacobs.”
There isn’t a chuckle coming back as I find the small bottle and hold it up in front of me. He’s gone quiet again, clearly not amused by the topic of conversation. My mouth opens to fill the void, ready to tell him the truth, ready to tell myself the truth about my addiction to them, actually. It seems a cleansing thought, one that fills me with a sigh as I think of how to word it correctly and stare back into the rain again.
“You wanted to know about my past, didn’t you?” he says, breaking me of words I can’t find and offering me a chance to just listen again. “About why I became who I am today? How I knew something was different.” Yes, I suppose I did, but it doesn’t seem that relevant now. It’s not like anything’s going to scare me away from this anymore. It is what it is. I’m suddenly far too deep to think anything badly of him. “I fucked a guy in college. It was the first time I’d come inside something.” Wow. Okay, that shocked me a little. He’s gay? My body tries to turn to look at him. “No, stay there. You need to listen to the rest of it.” I’m not sure I do in all honesty. “It wasn’t him being a man that turned me on. It was that he fought me. I came because I forced him into something. I held him down and fucked him with a smile on my face and little care for his feelings at the time.”
I don’t know how I feel about that statement. I’d like to be appalled, disgusted maybe, but I’m more interested in him carrying on than judging him because of it. Who am I to judge anything anymore? I’ve just let him fuck my mouth behind a dumpster, panted for it, actually. I’m hardly saintly now, am I? I just keep staring into the rain instead, occasionally glancing at my pot and eventually resting my head back into him again. “I knew then. Everything needs to be in pain for me to come inside it.” He sighs quietly, his hand still relaxed on my stomach as he kisses the back of my head. “I haven’t come inside someone for over a year. Until you.” It seems like a confession of sorts, one that makes me smile. Not necessarily at the content, more the fact that he’s giving me the words he probably hides from others.
“I’m addicted to amphetamines.” It’s my own confession, and it comes out so easily it surprises me, makes me chuckle even as I blow out a breath and feel the words leave with it. “I’m addicted to amphetamines.” My body attempts to push away from him as I try to get to my feet, embarrassment starting to creep in at the thought. “I’m addicted to amphetamines. I… I can’t cope without them.” He doesn’t let me move from him. In fact, he holds tighter, slowly taking the pot from me and flicking the top of it off.
“Do you want to be?”
“No.”
“Throw them away then. Use me instead of them.” I don’t even know what that means, but the thought of those little white pills leaving fills me with dread as I watch him get
one out and hold it up to me. “Just throw it away and trust me to give you the same thing.” He rolls it in his fingers, the sight of it tempting me rather than doing anything to stop me wanting it, as water trickles along his hand. “You just have to ask, Alana.”
“I can’t… I mean, I need them, and…”
“Just ask me to help you.” Another sigh leaves me as he hands me the pill, wrapping my fingers around it and then wrapping his hand around mine.
“There’s drug advice places. I should go and see about...” I don’t know what. “You don’t understand what it’s like. The meetings, the deadlines. All the voices in my head, the stories. I can’t keep up with them all, Blaine. It’s chaos without the pills. They...” I don’t know what they do, but they contain it somehow. They make it better, help me see clearer.
“I do know how it feels, Alana. I’ll get rid of the bedlam for you if you ask. You’ve felt it already.” How? By sleeping with him? That’s just ridiculous. I can’t get over a drug addiction by sleeping with someone. He might be good, and he might have things in his arsenal that other men don’t know about, more’s the pity, frankly, but he’s not rehab. How would he know what to do?
“But I…” He brings our hands to his mouth again, releasing his and kissing mine as his fingers unfurl.
“This conversation needs to happen somewhere other than slutty backstreet avenues, nice as they’ve been. Come on, get up,” he says, his body pushing me upright as he moves and shrugs off the rain that’s soaked his shirt. “We’ll go back to yours. You can cook something. I want to talk to you anyway.” Cook? I don’t cook. And where the hell has that come from. I thought we were having a conversation about addiction. I thought we were discussing things and bonding in some way. Now he wants me to cook?
“I don’t cook.” He chuckles and walks over to his car, barely acknowledging my proclamation, one that means he won’t get fed, not by me anyway. “And I thought we were having a conversation? You can’t just stop it mid-way through because you’re hungry. I’ve just done this on a filthy sidewalk because you made me and then we’re getting all deep and emotional and you’re just stopping it? I need to get this out. We need to do this. You can’t just …”
It seems he can, because with one final smirk he opens his car door and gets in, leaving me standing by the dumpster part way through my slight tantrum and wishing I didn’t want to get in the car as much as I do. The passenger door opens within seconds, forcing me to concede to my soaking wet skin, the fact that I’m shivering, and that I want nothing more than to follow his lead. “Why were you even at that restaurant?” It’s the first thing I ask as my soaked frame lands in his seat, my arms folded in sulkiness, and the leather slipping under my backside as I do.
“I missed you, Alana.”
Chapter 21
Blaine
T he fifteen-minute drive has been as arduous as watching her mouth around my cock, filling me with all the old sensations and opening up a hope I don’t deserve. But she is here nonetheless, her hand still shivering slightly as she tries to unlock her apartment door.
“Here,” I offer, taking the key from her hand and watching as she lets my jacket slip from her shoulders. The vision makes me smile, amused by my own reaction to gentlemanly resolve given the garbage bins I damn near fucked her behind. Christ knows where the ability to stem my flow came from. The little fucking madam deserved far more than my confession to help her ease her own.
I push the door wide and show my hand, allowing her to enter before me and then closing the door quietly behind us. I don’t know why I sat with her so long. I don’t even know why I got down to the floor in the first place. Normal procedure would have involved amusement at her mental distress, and perhaps a slap or two for her dishonesty, but sentiment had taken over. It’s the same as the sentiment that appears when I admit to missing her, or the same as the feeling when I hold her hand, and certainly the same as the feeling attached to coming inside her. It warms me, damn near giving me the ability to stay wet and soaked forever in her presence, not feeling one inch of the storm around us as we’d sat there.
“Tea or coffee?” she asks, her hands hanging my jacket over a small chair by a table. “I don’t even know what you like to drink.” She giggles nervously, running her fingers through her hair to get rid of the rain and crossing the room to the kitchen. “Actually, I don’t know anything about you really.” No, she doesn’t. She isn’t supposed to know anything other than what she needs for research purposes. I won’t be helping her anytime soon either. That’s not my position here. Not now I know about the pills. It’s not what she needs anymore. I look around the room, enjoying the way her whole imagined being lives in here. It’s juxtaposed to the real version of her that lives inside her body. It’s all too tidy, too disciplined. It’s sparsely decorated with muted tones, done undoubtedly to attempt a calm she can’t produce herself. “Blaine? Tea or coffee?”
“Scotch. And have one yourself.”
“Oh, okay.”
I finger a blanket over the back of her sofa, lifting it to my nose to smell the fabric conditioner on it. It smells lifeless, its fragrance as pale as the colour she’s chosen in the space. I smirk and drop the item, unbuttoning my shirt instead and heading along a small corridor in search of a bathroom.
“Bathroom’s on the right,” she calls. I turn into the first door I find and am greeted with her study rather than the bathroom. It makes me stand and look around the space, searching for something that resembles her and not the sparingly adorned interior of creams and light woods. The only sense of colour, of her, or what I believe her to be, are some of the books that line the shelves. Valerie Du Font. Peter Halloway. Another smirk rings true as I wander over to them, immediately handling one of three vivid purple toned spines that stand out and remind me of her hair.
“Oh, you’re in here,” she says, her voice quietly filling the silence in the space along with some ice cubes clinking in the glass. “That’s the first trilogy I wrote. In college.” Probably the truest version of her there is then. I turn it over, reading the synopsis and smiling as the words talk of heroes and fairy-tale endings. “It still sells well to this day. I wasn’t much of a writer then, but I still love the story. Other people, too, apparently.” I smile again, my eyes searching the other covers for something else that gives me a sense of her. Nothing does. All the rest seem as bland as the surroundings, to me at least.
“It matches your hair,” I say, holding it out to her and taking her offered glass of Scotch, then leaving the room to find the bathroom as I shrug from my shirt. “Like my sea does your eyes.”
I wander further, still noting the lack of anything resembling her. It’s all so infertile, its soul removed perhaps, certainly covered over and lost. Where are the notes? The scrawl of papers she had on my kitchen table? The expulsion of art, distributed and lingering around so she can chase each dream the moment she thinks of it. I can’t see anything here other than perfection and a neatly ordered existence, a pretence of life.
“Shall I call some food in?”
I find the bathroom and switch on the shower, drowning out her voice and waiting for her to come searching for me again. I’ve got no interest in food. I’m interested in her and her body. I’m fascinated by the way her mind works and why it works the way it does. For once I’m so engrossed in using my own mind to understand hers I can’t fathom anything else. I want to hear it from her lips, just like the pills. I want to see her burrowed down with a drink and listing her concerns, perhaps help her find a way through them if she wants. Psychology is, after all, my profession, and rather than destroy another woman with it, rather than use her and relegate her to the reject pile, I feel the need to harbour her, look after her. Protect her maybe.
My trousers peel from my skin, the rest of my soaked clothes following suit as I fiddle with lotions and potions, none of which she needs. She hasn’t got one damn clue how beautiful she is stripped bare, that fucking mascara of hers doing n
othing but hiding the true splendour that lay beneath it.
“Blaine, food?”
“Get your ass in this shower,” I call out, needing nothing more than the feel of her skin in my hands, the bite of her teeth as I grind my cock inside her, and the taste of her cunt in my mouth. How I managed not to fuck it against the wall earlier rather than her mouth, I don’t know.
“Ravenous, are you? Good title for the book.”
“You’ve no idea.” I grab at her arm as she giggles and yank her into the unit fully clothed. I’ll strip her in here. I’ll fucking strip her anywhere, starting at the bottom and working my way up until she’s nothing more than a vessel to use. The shoes go first, then jeans, peeled from her and slung out into the bathroom where they belong. Fucking jeans. I hate women in jeans. I like skirts and dresses, like the one she wore the first time we met. Summer ones especially, the kind that flaunts a woman’s curves without showing off too much. “Don’t wear jeans again,” I snarl, lifting the shirt over her head and slinging that away, as I crawl down her perfect fucking body and push it against the tiles. “And heels, wear them all the time.” I like heels, too, specifically when nothing else is being worn with them other than underwear, corsets, or steel.
She squeals as my tongue makes contact with her, her body beginning to writhe long before I’ve made any really impact on it. It’s enough for her feet to slip, her hands scratching out at the glass for something to hold onto as she continues looking for balance. The wriggling makes me furious, my hands trying to stabilise her as my mouth searches to latch on. Fuck it, I’ve picked her up and carried her out of the shower before I can think of anything rational. I just want inside her. My tongue, my cock, I don’t give a fuck. And I want to strap her disobedient fucking ass for lying to me, something that has me reaching for my trousers as I walk past them and search for a bedroom. She lands awkwardly after I’ve thrown her on the dull cream sheets, which makes me smile at her discomfort and yank the belt from its loops.
Once Upon A (Stained Duet Book 1) Page 36
