by Stella Rhys
“Dude. I swear to God. That man is a machine,” Dara said that next morning. “Like, I told you, he picked up the phone and was so wasted that he was just telling me all the things he wanted to do to you while I was screaming, ‘It’s not Lake! It’s Dara! It’s her roommate! She’s bleeding!’ And once he processed it, I could like, hear him forcing away the drunkenness as our conversation progressed and I was like, whoa – I drink two glasses of wine and I’m on my ass till the next day and this guy comes in smelling like he went swimming in a fucking bourbon barrel and he can still get shit done. I was a chicken without a head and you were just like, ghost-white and barely talking. It was such a shitshow and he just came in here and started taking care of business like it was another day at the office. I was just like, what?”
That was the day Dara became a believer and the day I removed her from my shit list for having to wake up and deal with my horrifying foot. I cracked up all morning as we sat in bed and she made impressions of Callum’s “taking care of business voice,” which she described as teetering between “I’ll guide you through this gently” and “I’ll fucking kill you if you mess it up.” I laughed so hard it practically hurt the stitches in my foot because it was such an incredibly and beautifully accurate description of that voice I knew well. So maybe there were a couple things about Callum that could actually be put into words.
“Yeah, fuck it, girl. I was a total skeptic at first but you two?” Dara held her hands up in surrender. “It’s real. You two are the fucking truth.”
Chapter Seventeen
Callum
Lake came back from my mom’s house one evening with her old sewing machine. She lugged the bag full of fabric she brought into her bedroom that she never slept in, but I nixed that idea and helped her set up in the empty room so she’d be free to cut on the floor and make a mess, which she thoroughly did. She spent the rest of the night preoccupied, tinkering with the machine and sewing little pairs of “practice” shorts that looked maybe big enough for a doll. I had no idea what inspired it but it worked out well because I needed the time to write out the itinerary for the distillery tour with the Times. And, of course, I liked dropping in on occasion to see her listening to her old pink iPod, pins in her mouth and hair falling into her eyes as she worked with such concentration that she didn’t notice me once. It was so fucking cute I wound up just sitting in my office, staring into space and remembering things about her.
The sewing obviously brought me back to her days at FIT. My mother had somewhat pushed fashion onto her. I wasn’t sure that Lake was hugely passionate about it but I knew she had the time of her life at college. She worked and played hard while I did the same at my internship. My apartment was in Chelsea, close enough to her dorm that I saw her as often as I had when we lived together in the townhouse. She was always behind on assignments and her heavy sewing machine was in the dorm room she shared with her sarcastic, slightly weird roommate, so I spent far more time there than I’d have preferred. It was always a treat when I got to have her for an entire weekend in my apartment.
She came over unexpectedly one night because her date was cut short. She’d met this guy at a club she snuck into and I was wary because I actually knew he was. Not personally but I recognized his name as one of the Mets’ shittier relief pitchers who’d been on the DL forever and wasn’t much to consider in the sporting world. But he was a young and wealthy professional athlete so Lake’s girlfriends collectively lost their minds when they spotted him at the club. I wasn’t surprised to hear that Lake was the one who walked away from that situation with his number and plans to go out. I never thought twice about the random dates Lake went on but I paid attention to this one because my assumption of pro athletes was that they were slightly more entitled than the rest of the male population when it came to sex, and Lake was still every bit a virgin.
I didn’t worry though. She was smart and strong and after high school, not one to be coerced into doing anything she didn’t want to do. It would be a lie to say that I wasn’t so easy about the random dates she went on because I had the luxury of knowing that she’d never have sex with any of them. The same way she didn’t have sex with the Met. She had a wry grin on when I opened the door of my apartment and stared at her.
“Christ, Lake,” I laughed with the end of my fist at my mouth. “That poor son of a bitch.” I stepped back to take her in from head to toe. She was wearing a casual outfit but it was the kind that pumped male blood straight to the cock – ripped shorts, a white crop top and heels. Seeing her in these outfits was still new to me because she hadn’t dressed that way when we lived with my mom. It was a thrill for me to see her tanned skin peeking out through shredded denim. It would probably always be.
I fell back to look at her ass as she walked over to the couch and planked dramatically onto it, face first. I smirked and climbed onto her back, letting my hard-on rest between her thighs as I kissed the back of her neck. I knew the drill. She felt bad after dates that ended because she could feel the guy getting impatient for sex. She felt weird and hypocritical for wanting it and being flirtatious but never having the guts to actually do it. She either called me or came to my apartment when she got in these moods and I told her not to feel guilty – that batting eyelashes while insanely sexy didn’t make her a tease. It wasn’t exactly her fault that she commanded wood with one look.
“Don’t worry about it, Lake,” I said, kissing her collarbones as she rolled onto her back. I was happy to please her up to her limit – basically do everything to her besides penetrate her. I knew she flirted with dates, grinded with them, kissed them sometimes but she knew that getting naked for these guys could strip them of their control, so she rarely let them touch her body where she wanted it touched. Lucky for me, that was and pretty much always had been my job.
“I’m starting to worry about it,” she sighed as I kissed down the luscious mounds of her cleavage. I grinned against her skin when she started squirming. I always waited for that moment.
“Why?” I asked, reaching under back and unclasping her bra. I pulled the straps down each shoulder and off her arms, till I could pull it off her breasts and fling it aside. “It never seemed to bother you until recently,” I said, sucking her nipple over her shirt. She arched her back into my mouth.
“I just want it more now,” she breathed, arms over her head and writhing under my body as she watched me push her shirt up her stomach. “I feel like I can’t hold it in anymore. And I don’t want to wait forever till it becomes a thing and I’m scared and I die a virgin.”
“We won’t let that happen.”
She laughed. “Did you always know it was going to be you?”
“What?” I looked up at her but her eyes closed as I licked the swell of her naked breast.
“Did you always know – ” She moaned at the flick of my tongue. “Did you always know you were going to be the one I lost it to?”
My answer was casual as I filled my hands with her tits. “Yeah.” It wasn’t presumption it was just the truth. Lake barely reacted. She knew I knew.
“I just don’t want to become… oh God, Callum…” Her sentence trailed off as I parted her legs and thrust my erection against her pussy. We were separated by both her denim and mine but I was almost fully hard and it took no time to get there with her body twitching under me, bucking every few seconds as I made sure to rub against her clit.
“You don’t want to become what?” I freed my cock from its prison. I couldn’t take it anymore. I jerked it while laying on top of her, kissing her neck.
“I don’t want to become dependent on it like my mom.”
I had no idea what she was talking about and it wasn’t just because I was turned on out of my mind. “Lake, you won’t.” She either ignored me or didn’t hear.
“I don’t want to be like her.”
“You’re not.”
“I know. But at the same time I’m scared. I don’t want to get hooked on it and be dependent on like…
validation. ‘Cause I swear to God, she really was and I really don’t want to be like her.”
“I’ve never met her and I know you’re nothing like her,” I said, slipping her panties off with her tight shorts. I slid down the couch and she lifted her legs, resting her calves on my back. “You’re like no one. And no one’s like you,” I murmured before running the flat of my tongue over the length of her pussy. I lived for the sound of that first cry to the ceiling. “Does that feel good?”
“You know it feels good,” she panted, thrusting her hand in my hair, her pulsing grip telling me how and where she liked my tongue. She squeezed the hardest when I licked circles around her clit, pumping my fingers in and out of her. I’d never felt her wetter, never before heard this way she was breathing. It was torturing me. I slid a third finger inside her and had to pull away to watch and savor how incredibly sexy her body looked as it ached for more of me. I thrust faster, harder inside her, falling into her when she reached for me, desperate to kiss me as she came. I always knew when she was on the verge because she stopped kissing me back, her body tight and her mouth open against mine. I’d always sweep my tongue deep inside it and palm her pussy with my whole hand, moving my fingers fast inside her while rubbing her clit with the heel of my palm. She always came so hard she ripped away from my lips and moaned as if there was no such thing as neighbors. Which I fucking loved.
But this time, something was different after finishing. She sighed, blushed about how loud she was and then pushed me back to climb on top of me, wrapping her hands around my tortured dick and stroking me to a finish. She did that for me every time with a sleepy, content look in her eye. But tonight, it was filled with hot excitement and energy.
“Callum?” She worked my shaft with both hands, bouncing her gorgeous tits between her arms. I had trouble talking but managed it.
“Yeah, baby.”
“I want you to take my virginity tomorrow.”
My eyes shot wide open. I stared at the way she bit her lip, the way her eyes sparkled. She clearly found my reaction amusing because her mouth twisted into a sexy little smirk and just like that, I came harder than ever before in her hands.
*
I was a little fucking dismayed to hear that Lake had arranged to have the dorm all to herself that next night.
I had my own apartment with a King-sized bed and good sheets and actual groceries in my stainless steel fridge to make breakfast with the next morning. But Lake, for reasons I couldn’t really wrap my head around, wanted to have sex for the first time in her twin-sized dorm bed, which was across from another twin-sized dorm bed in their weak-sized dorm room.
But obviously, I didn’t linger on that thought. Whatever she wanted, I was going to give to her.
“You’re early,” she bit her lip shyly when she opened the door for me. I raised my eyebrows right away because she’d adjusted the lighting for our night. I stepped in and looked around slowly. The room was quite possibly the girliest Christmas light Heaven that I’d ever seen in my life and I’d seen a lot because I had, on more occasions than I preferred, entertained my mom while she drank her morning coffee with her iPad and “pinned” things she thought were “too irresistibly pretty.”
Whatever affinity she had for stringing holiday lights indoors when it wasn’t actually the holidays had been successfully passed onto Lake because that night, there were hundreds of little white bulbs glowing out of dozens of Mason jars that were strategically placed about the room. Ropes of them transformed her wooden headboard and made her bed look like some kind of mystical fairy landing. I had to laugh.
“Jesus, Lake.”
“Don’t make fun.”
“I’m not. I like it,” I said.
“Don’t patronize me either,” she huffed playfully, starting off. But I caught the nape of her neck before she could walk away and kissed the growing smile on her face.
“I’m not,” I murmured, pulling away to gaze at the loose, white dress she had on. It was asymmetrical at the bottom and if I looked hard enough, glittered a little. She looked ethereal – like an insanely voluptuous and sexy brunette Tinkerbell. It felt appropriate, considering the decor. I laughed again though, when I saw the open bottle of nail polish in her hand. Her fingernails were bare so I looked down at her toes. Three nails done on the left foot and the other still bare.
“You came early,” she protested.
“I’ll refrain from jokes.”
She snorted and sighed. “Well. At least I got the décor right. I was trying to look all special and perfect before you get here.”
“You always look that way.” Lake tipped her head down and wiggled her pursed lips to the side – her expression every time I said something she liked and she was too flattered to say something smart in return. I liked the way it made her dimples look. “Care to tell me why you needed this night to be in your dorm room and not my much nicer apartment?”
She put the nail polish down and laughed. “Because.”
“Yeah?”
“Because… it just feels right. Like what normal girls do. And I want to be a normal girl.”
I looked at her, so fucking angelic in front of those Christmas lights. “You could never be a normal girl if you tried.” She wiggled her lips again but now something had shifted in her. She was nervous. She went quiet so I stepped close to take her by the waist. “Lake. You know I’m always going to be here waiting for you if you can’t do it tonight.”
“I don’t want to wait any longer.” She paused. “And I can’t know anymore that you’re sleeping with other girls.”
“Then I won’t.”
“What if I wait till I’m fifty?”
“I’ll wait with you.”
I meant it but she laughed and closed her eyes. They opened to gaze at the floor. “I love you, Callum.”
I grinned. I actually said it more often than she did. It felt like a gift when I heard it from her. “I love you, too.”
She lifted her eyes at me. They were wet and that glossy hazel was as good as two bullets to the knees. “I want it tonight,” she murmured. “I just want you to tell me that I’m a normal girl. Like Isabel and all my friends here. Even Dara.”
“Why would you want to be?”
She closed her eyes again as I kissed her forehead. “Just tell me I am.”
“You’re a normal girl,” I said. I’d never said anything that felt more like a lie to her but I didn’t mind doing it tonight if it eased whatever was going on in her head. I slid my hands from her cheeks into her hair and kissed her. “You just also happen to be the most beautiful one in the world.” She didn’t say anything in reply but her lips curved against mine.
The sex we had that night in her bed was slow, at first painful for her. I kept my eyes on her the entire time, reading her body, moving to her wordless instruction till she was moaning softly. My arms caged her shoulders, my biceps and forearms flexed completely tight as my palms dug into her mattress so I could control the pace, the strength of every push and pull. My muscles burned and strained with my need to just bury myself all the way inside her because she looked so beautiful and felt so unreal, but I wouldn’t let myself. Of course I wouldn’t. I took it slower than I thought I knew how and because it was Lake, I loved every torturous second of it.
I kissed every inch of her skin till she was no longer tight or tense. She felt too fucking good to be true and the first time, I came before getting to see how her perfect face would twist when I gave her an orgasm. But an hour later, I took in every second of it – that open mouth and the gorgeous, sexy pinch between her eyebrows. Her jaw trembled in my hand as I drove into her, filling her completely like she couldn’t bear the first time. I’d been ready to explode on ten different occasions but I forced myself to hold on and to keep my eyes open because she was too beautiful to miss even a second of.
I shuddered in her the second she was finished.
At midnight, we sat together on the fire escape and she dangled her legs
from where I came to talk her down from her panics, whether it was a bad critique in class or some other issue. I wrapped a blanket around us as she sat back against me, painting my initials onto the wrought iron.
“It just looks like the word ‘cap,’” I teased her.
“To everyone else, but we’ll know what it is.”
I nodded. “How long do you think it’ll stay there? Next time it rains?”
“Not unless it’s raining nail polish remover.” She leaned over to admire her work. “This is strong stuff.”
“Yeah.” I raised my eyebrows. “Glad you willingly put it on your body.”
She snorted. “I don’t think it’s toxic.”
“Doesn’t matter. Even if it was, so are you.”
She dropped her jaw. “Callum! What kind of thing is that to say?”
I caught her hand as it tried to smack me. “I meant it in a good way. You’re the best poison I could possibly ingest.”
“Wow. Great. I’m so flattered.”
I laughed. “Get over here.” I turned her around to face me. I let out a breath. Her skin was still glowing and for Christ’s sake, she was almost too gorgeous to handle. “I don’t always know what goes on in that crazy head of yours, but I don’t ever want you to forget that you’re my best friend and the best person I know. I couldn’t live without you. And when I say that I mean you, exactly the way you are.”
My words had her shy but she didn’t break her stare from me. She raked her perfect bottom lip between her teeth and gave a little nod. “Likewise,” she murmured. It was a short reply but all I wanted. We liked to say it because more often than not, our feelings mirrored exactly and there were only so many words with which to phrase us, so when one of us actually got it right, the other stole it and said “likewise.” I didn’t like one-word replies from other girls but with Lake, it was more than fine. She hung her hands on my shoulders as I wrapped the blanket tighter around us. “You’ll always love me?”
