“May I remind you, that it was you who kissed me—”
“I don’t regret it.”
Pause. Then, “I’m glad you did it. I have to confess...” He eases a hand to mine, caresses it. It sends lightning all over my skin, makes my insides bubble like boiling water. “...I was a little”—he chuckles—“I don’t know how to put this—”
“Put it any way you like.”
“I was a little...taken aback by you...when you mixed tonight. I...wouldn’t call it ‘infatuated’...but—”
I start laughing. “Are you going to tell me you were idolizing me and couldn’t imagine ever matching your lips to mine?”
“That’s exactly what I was gonna say.”
All time stops. The protective walls I’ve erected around me crash. I process the statement, swallow hard.
That’s exactly what I was gonna say...
“Declan”—I feel my insecure lips tremble—“I’m just a regular girl. You might get disappointed if you put me up on a pedestal.”
“I’m not disappointed yet. And FYI, I’m also a coffee-first kind of guy...when I have to be...” he squeezes my hand harder.
“What—”
“Coffee?” A bubbly and happy Clarissa arrives at our table, holding a pot of it. I nod, so does Declan. She pours, then leaves.
“What do you mean ‘when you have to be’?”
“Never mind, I don’t wanna scare you off.”
I look up at him. All manner of intensity rages in his aquatic eyes. I don’t pursue the last statement. All I know is his gaze burns into me. My chest lights up. I feel the scrim of sweat on my skin from last night’s party liven up again. I imagine his lips on my skin—Why!? The thought comes out of nowhere!—and realize I’d probably taste like an athlete right about now.
So would he. And yet...the thought of his briny flavor on my tongue is enough to make me shift in my seat.
There’s only one explanation to this, of course: I’m completely tired. I need to sleep and think straight again.
Of course that’s what it is.
-7-
“So why did you really stop dropping?” he asks me.
I pause as an argument rages in my mind as to whether or not I should answer truthfully. Or should I pepper it, tell a semi-truth, a lie that isn’t completely a lie? A “truthful” lie. But a little voice in my head tells me not to, tells me that I should be open with him, completely, and see where it goes.
I say it quick: “Friend of mine ODed.” Jackhammer hits me! Savva’s face, on the ground, swollen eyes looking up, fingers curled halfway... “Can we change the subject?”
Silence. I sense that he knows that the dead tree on my arm is because of that. “That’d do it,” he says. And then he changes the subject. “So how long you been mixing for?”
“As long as I can remember. I got some cheap-ass decks when a friend of ours moved back to Poland. I was twelve then, but I’d been mixing at his place already since I was eleven or so. Then I sold those and got some other decks off eBay. The current ones I have were given to me by another friend who also went to Poland. A...uhm...year ago. He DJed in his spare time.” Patryk was never much of a DJ, but he was a big spender, always liked getting the best gear even if he couldn’t afford it.
Savva really liked that about him...
“Wow.” He says it slowly. “Just...wow. So, that’s what you do? I mean, mix full-time?”
“Yeah...I try at least.”
He taps his finger on the table. “Blaze.”
“Yeah.”
“You mesmerize me. And I know that’s forward and all and maybe I’m stuck in the moment of heat, or maybe I’m still ‘infatuated’ and all but...I need to kiss you again. I mean, need to.”
I need it too. “Then kiss me.”
Electric sparks fly across our table. I actually hear the crackle of static. Declan pays the bill. We stand to leave but Clarissa grabs him by the wrist. She gives me a cold look that says to me, Gimme a minute, this is private!
I go and wait by the door. I overhear: “Gina’s not doing so good, Deck. You need to go and see her. The doctors think it’ll help. You know, her last touch with reality and all...”
“It’s not my business, Clarissa. She did what—”
“It is your damn business. You owe it to her to—”
“Clarissa, I don’t owe her shit. It was her choice, and I tried to stop her.”
“She would’ve walked to the depths of the earth for you, Deck. And she followed you when you got into the scene. Hell, everyone followed you in. You know everyone in school looked up to you. You can’t make out like you didn’t know you had that kinda influence over people.”
A pause. “I didn’t know back then...but...it was still her choice.”
“Fine, whatever. Look, that may be true. But right now it is your choice. She needs help. Go see her. Go—”
“And take another beating from her brother who thinks I’m the devil consummate?”
“Maybe. But everyone knows you never put up much of a fight on that one, Deck. You coulda taken him in two or three punches. Something says to me you wanted to get beat on. Like that woulda make it OK or sumthin. You know Gina’s in the shit she’s in in a large part because of you.”
“Damn it. I don’t need to take this crap from you. This was years back—”
“Clarissa!” It’s Mr. De Luca to the rescue.
Declan calls out to him. “Sorry, Mr. De Luca. It was my fault. I was just catching up with Clarissa on some old high school friends.”
“OK, Deck. But she’s got work to do.”
“I understand, sir.” Then, to Clarissa: “Look, I hear you. I gotta think on it.”
“Think fast. Because time’s running out.”
He exhales, exasperated. When he turns and sees me, his eyes are a raging red. He catches himself short, as if realizing where he is, and forces a smile at me. As if he’d been dragged into the past by the conversation and was stuck there a second.
I know the feeling.
Outside, I say to him, “Everything OK?”
He runs a hand through his hair. “Uhm, yeah, yeah. Sorry about that. Old ghosts, you know?”
“Yeah, I know about old ghosts.”
That gets a smile out of him. He eases his left hand to my shaved hair, rubs it once, then moves it down to my cheek. Instant heat slams me. “I like your hair.”
“The lack of it? Or the hair itself.”
As if checking, his right hand slides under my full-length side. His hand is warm, and my eyelids wanna close. He eases my head back. My chin moves up, my eyes close, then open, my lips part...
I breath in expectantly. With half-closed eyes, I see his own head move down to mine.
“Both,” he says. And then he kisses me.
I almost choke on some of my spit! I start coughing, and he laughs, but he doesn’t let go of the back of my head. My arms start moving on their own, my hands start wrapping around his hard waist. He moves down again, lips and tongue to mine, quietly, gently.
My nipples tighten. But then a gust of cold air gets the better of us—and my whole body breaks into a shiver.
I grab his wrists and pull away, because not only do I want to kiss him more. I want to lose myself completely in him.
And that can’t happen here...
-8-
It’s clear he wants to take me somewhere quiet, but I can’t wait anymore. I want to feel that toxic blanket again. That...bastid. I wanna be wrapped up and sleep in it. But whatever else, I need his tongue on mine.
We get to his truck and I push him against its door. And I do lose myself in him. When he pushes me away and says, “We need to get out of here,” I don’t listen. My lips hunt for his, and he gives in.
Together, our body heat increases. When his hand slides under my sweater, on the back, and he pushes me firmly against his solid manhood, I say, “I think you’re right.”
Letting him go feels like stopping a train on a
track.
FOUR
DELICIOUS HOOK-UP
-1-
Declan Cox
Her hand’s on my thigh as I drive. We share nothing but silence as I make my way from Prospect Park over to Bogart Street in Bushwick. Her loft, she said.
There’s nothing but velvety quiet between us. Until she says: “You read much?” At my hesitation, she clarifies. “I think I saw an e-reader in your glove compart—”
“Oh, yeah, when I can.”
“Mind if I look at it?”
I get a sudden insecure feeling—crazy, I know!—like letting someone look at the literature I peruse would be like letting them look deep into my soul. And is that safe? “S—sure, go ahead.”
I reach over to open the glove compartment. “That’s cool. I got it.” She smiles while she says that, and it breaks me apart.
She fiddles with the reader. “Stephen King fan?”
Looking deep in the soul... “Uhm, yeah.”
After a pause. “Does it sing to you?”
“Wh—what?”
“King’s work. It sings, doesn’t it?”
“Like a screeching banshee.”
“To the soul,” she murmurs. Then puts the reader away.
A demented and troubled soul. “You read much as well?”
She smiles demurely. “Wait till you see my place.”
-2-
I have to be careful with her, because I did put her on a pedestal. And I have to make sure I don’t treat this as some novelty—“screwing the DJ” kind of thing. Because it isn’t. It so isn’t. I don’t know what it is—some force or something; the alligator in the sewers, maybe—that’s boggling my mind and turning my thoughts to mush. It makes me think the weirdest shit about her. Makes me think stuff like: Sitting on the grassy hills in Sunset Park with her, and looking down over at Red Hook sprawling below. Makes me think of sipping a cocktail at The Ides rooftop, watching the sun go down behind the city, with her in my arms.
Why is this happening to me?
It’s clear. She is on a pedestal. I’ve put up an image of her in my mind and am making my life fit around it. But I have to see her for what she is: A girl I dig. Because I do. And, sure, it’s physical. The green of her eyes, that crazy pink and blonde hairstyle. And the ink...
Oh, damn, that ink. First babe I ever saw to sport so much of it. And it’s hot!
She squeezes my thigh and my thoughts skyrocket.
She’s not helping.
And then there’s her voice, soft and gentle. The way her gaze flickers when she tells a lie; I stopped rolling...just because enough was enough.
And her music. The pain betrayed by the images on her arm...
No, it’s bullshit—this idea of putting her on a pedestal. Because I do know her. I know she’s suffered. She’s been talking to me all night, through her music. Soulful, heart-wrenching music. I know that her grip on my leg is an unconfident one, one that says, I’m doing this, but I’m not sure why...
We get to her place, a building right next to a monster wallpiece of floating heads and wires. Skate would like this, I think. Most of the apartments on the left side—the apartment building across from hers—look abandoned.
She hesitates just before she opens the car door. I pick up on her anxiety. “Blaze, I’m not expecting anything from you. Heck, I’m not even normally like this. You’re more than a little interesting to me. All I know is...something’s maybe happening here. And I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let it go. I’m a good guy. You can call Randy and check with him. You can trust me. You—”
She stops me short. “I know.” The statement comes out as a raspy whisper. “Just so long as you know that...I’m not—” She laughs nervously.
“You’re not a slut. I get it. I think I’ve figured that out already. And I’m glad you’re not. Because I don’t think we’d still be hanging out if you were.”
And I guess that statement pushes her over the edge, because before I know it, she’s up on me, over the gearshift, kissing me like her life rides on it. And I’m kissing her back, fumbling on the seat and not knowing where to put my hands and shit...
Hers are all over my hair and mine don’t quite reach her own hair but now I’m tugging at her tight sweater and—
She pulls away, flushing red, grinning. “So much for not being a slut—”
I kiss her again. My blood boils. She’s tipped me over the edge. It’s her eyes, I tell myself. It’s her hair, I tell myself. It’s her music, her tat, the honesty in her speech...
It’s the gestalt of all of that crap—the whole being greater than the sum.
But somehow I don’t believe my own lie. Because it’s none of that crap either.
It’s something else...
She pulls away, grinning and smiling and—OK, I glanced down at her tautened nipples through her top and now I look away.
She gets out the car, starts walking away. Fast.
I get out as well, slam my door closed. Follow her.
She doesn’t wait for the elevator, runs up the stairs. We get to a nondescript brown door with a yellow note on it, heaving for breath—several floors up, ten or twelve. She grabs the note, looks at it quickly, then crushes it in her fingers. Before opening the door, she turns, breathless, puts her arms around my neck. And kisses me again.
My tongue’s all inside her. Tasting her, feeling her. I rub her tight sweater, only now feeling the cold on my skin that I’ve avoided all day. When she notices my goosebumps, when she feels me tremble, she pulls away gently, and points to a cracked window up ahead.
“Is that why the rent’s so cheap?” I say.
“I never said the rent was cheap.”
She unlocks her door, walks backwards into her loft while my arms are around her waist, hers still around my neck. I barely glance around. But I do see the mammoth wall-shelf with so many books on it it could be the goddamned Library of Congress. Then two mixing setups—each in a different corner. And a yellow beanbag under her personal biblioteca. A kitchen on one side with a kitchen-island thingy separating it from the rest of the loft.
Beyond that, I don’t care. All I care about is her lips, her breath. Her tongue going wild like a lizard inside my mouth. Before I know it I have her up against some windows facing the other building. She makes sounds that drive me insane.
I’m hard, and this is going so much further than I expected it to. I’m gonna need release. I can’t deny that now. And I know she needs it, too.
But I can’t disrespect her. I can’t scare her off because our hormones just got the better of us despite our plans. And when it comes down to it—I know this from endless experience and even one slap to the face—a man’s hormones tend to be a little less controllable than a woman’s.
I think.
I try tug away from her. Her breathing turns wild and ragged. She kisses me, licks me—
She tugs at my tank, starts taking it off. She has it up to my chest when I say, “Blaze, where’s this going?”
I say it for her, not for me. Because, heck, if she’d been any other girl, I’d want it over at that fourth base before you can say “Batter up!”
But she’s not any other girl, is she, you doof? You know that already, right? You know there’s something here...
She pulls my shirt down, her eyes frantic and wild while she ponders my question; ponders—maybe—the same moral dilemma in her mind that I’ve just considered in my own.
Forcefully, she places flat hands on my chest and pushes me—her eyes constantly locked on mine—and I hit a sofa-bed (didn’t notice that one!) and fall back. Then she’s next to me, lying down, her delicate and magical hand on my crotch above my denims.
And she rubs. Like I’m some vinyl disk being scratched by a pro DJ. I start burning, sizzling...
It doesn’t take me long. I move my hand to between her legs, my mind exploding with need.
I can’t control it. I fire! Oh GOD that feels good! I groan and hold her with my right arm
while my left hand rubs between her legs, also over her jeans.
I let out a desperate roar. My body shakes and then—
While I shudder, while my body trembles and I try and regain some level of manliness and stay strong and rub her up to her own climax, she holds me, tight, squeezes my body against hers.
Suddenly it’s not just “a chick,” “a babe.”
It’s Blaze.
And there is only one.
She keeps rubbing while I’m climaxing and the endorphins make me mellow, but at least I’m not ravenous anymore. At least I can think clearly again.
I push her onto her back, press hard up against her center with my hand. She whimpers. Her eyes scan the room, they go crazed with something that looks like anxiety. “Blaze, look at me.”
She does. She groans. She squirms. “Oh, oh, oh...” Her sounds come in short spurts. I feel her begin to pulse. She’s whispering now, husky, “Deck, Deck, Oh...”
She clenches her eyes. Her palms make it to my shoulders and rest there gently, as if only poising herself to grasp at something before the oncoming fall.
Then all movement from her stops.
And she fractures in half.
It’s an earthquake.
She pulses up from the bed, waist high up, resting on her shoulders. She shakes, convulses.
I keep rubbing her over her jeans, my hand getting hot.
Her neck tenses, her eyes flutter. She doesn’t scream, just groans, throaty and guttural. Fucking sexy groans.
She hooks on my neck, practically dangles down while I keep moving down below.
She slows down. Then, so do I. She sighs out a stormy relief. A faint smile crosses her face. Her eyes droop just a little and her eyelids go heavy. She forces herself awake, exhales forcefully. “Deck, I’m gonna pass out shortly. And...someone’s coming by as well. And then I really need to sleep!”
I can’t help the quick pang of jealousy that hits me. Someone’s coming by. Crazy, I know.
“My landlord,” she says. “The note on the door? That was him.”
“Oh, yeah, sure.” I guess my knee-jerk reaction was that obvious. And now I feel like an idiot. “I’ll let myself out. Uhm, should I call you?”
Know Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book One) Page 6
