Getting Real

by Ainslie Paton

  In the elevator, he kept her pulled tight against his side, his arm around her back, his fingers under the hem of her shirt. At her floor, she took his hand and led him down the corridor to her suite. She had her jacket and her shirt off before he was properly inside the room and his shirt followed hers to the floor, his grunt of pleasure meeting her gasp of anticipation as their bodies came together.

  He backed her up against a hall table, lifting her so she sat, wrapping her legs around his waist. His mouth was firm, insistent on hers. One hand pressed against her tailbone, holding her against him, the other in her hair. She opened her body and flattened against him. All thought dissolved, the sensation of his touch and her body’s response overriding every other purpose in life.

  He broke away to pull off her boots. She lifted her hips so he could drag her jeans down, inspired by the look on his face when he took in her black lace underwear.

  “Too nice to tear.” He breathed in sharply, placed a finger in the elastic string over her hip while his teeth plucked at the shoulder strap of her bra.

  She deep breathed his sandalwood scent, so much better on him than it would be in the bottle. “Not yet.” She pushed him away. “Let me see you.”

  He stepped back, undid his belt. His eyes never left hers. He discarded boots and socks, jeans and underwear. He was lit by the warm glow of a lamp which turned his skin golden. She sucked in a breath. She remade her life when she saw him naked. This is the body she’d had under her hands in the dark, and been too scared to look at, too tentative to devour, too scared to trust. She was a chronic fool.

  Jake played it up, turning in a circle, his arms wide, like he’d done at the sound check earlier. He was work hewn and lean—a man whose physical grace should never be defaced by as pedestrian an object as a shirt. Every part of his body from his athlete’s legs to the triangular flare of shoulders was defined by flexed tendons and bunched muscles placed precisely for perfect form and function. He had coiled energy and languid, unconscious confidence and he was built for being touched, for loving.

  Rielle clamped her legs together. She was a mass of wet urges and zapping electric shocks. She put two fingers in her mouth and whistled. “You’re beautiful, Jake.”

  He laughed, disbelief etched on his face. “I’ll take whatever you give me, Rie. But it’s gonna need to be quick.”

  “I can see that.” Quick would be glorious. It would burn out the fever, cap off the torrent of need, have the madness—the game—done with. She slid off the table, coming to stand in front of him. She unhooked her bra and then sent her lacy g-string slithering down her legs to the floor, making his breath hitch and his hands tremble.

  In the lamplight, as she straightened, Jake saw the scar on her hip for the first time and frowned. It was a thick white line running from the dimple of her sacrum, across the crest of her hipbone, and along her lower abdominals to her pubic bone. He went down on his knees, his lips chasing his hands across that old highway of pain, that map line of remorse.

  She gasped, her hands going to his hair, half wanting to push him away, half wanting to cry out his name. When she let them see the scar it always got a reaction, but mostly it stopped them dead, brought on conversation, killed the mood. It was ugly. It was fine and ghostly pale, easy to hide in the dark. Only the most subtle fingertips identified it. Letting him see it was her gift to Jake. And she loved him for the way he touched her and didn’t ask.

  He traced the seam of once traumatised skin with his tongue, wet licks and flicks, hot kisses, sucks and scrapes of teeth. Her body vibrated under his hands, her head tipping back, her knees going soft. She would have folded to the floor had he not held her upright. He tucked his shoulder into her stomach and lifted her into a fireman’s carry to the bedroom.

  He laid her down on the bed. “This time I want to see you.” His voice was pounded husk, unrestrained lust.

  She shook her head. “You’ve seen.” She needed the shadows now; she’d shown him enough. She met his eyes for a second and thought he’d disregard her, but his face disappeared as he flicked the lamp off. In the dead dark before their eyes adjusted to the filtered light from the other room, his hands and lips moving up her legs were enough to make her grit her teeth to stop from crying out.

  This time when they came together, she tried to stay with him, this man who she’d grown to trust and desire. Her body was his puppet to command. He made her twitch and flex and slide. He made her desperate for the touch of his hands and lips, light and heavy, soft and sure. His low sighs and murmurs made her twist and arch to get closer to him.

  At the very edge of her reason, when she was lost, lost, lost, she cried out and pushed against him, struggled to crawl away. Too much. This was too much. Her brain fizzed with sudden fear; he had total control of her and she couldn’t let that happen.

  “Stay with me, Rie. Stay with me.” Jake’s voice was ragged, his breathing harsh. “I’ll stop if you want me to.”

  She flattened her feet on the bed and tried to push away from him, squirmed to slide out from under him.

  He held her hips, “Trust me.” It was a broken whisper and a pledge carried on a current of electricity strung bow tight between them. She stilled. She looked into his handsome face, his features so even, his eyes so honest and saw his tempered desire. He would let her go. He would let her do everything she wanted before he took anything for himself.

  She jumped, like she’d asked him to, gifting him her fear, relaxing in his arms, rolling her hips to meet his. She met him touch for touch, kiss for kiss, stroke for stoke, answering his open mouthed sighs with high, sustained pleasure notes of her own. This time she kept her eyes open, locked on his, as he braced above her, moving with a rhythm both deliciously taunt and sinuously free, until torrents of sensation made her body arc, sending her sightless, soundless, breathless, as Jake taught her how to let go of everything to feel it all.

  “You. God. Rie. So fucking good, so right.”

  His tortured cry broke some barrier in her brain, tore it clear. Pins and needles pricked inside her head. Zipping white lights sparked behind now tight shut eyes, and the shock of it registered, threatened. She gripped Jake, crying out his name. She didn’t leave him, go someplace else to hide the feelings or lock them inside. She stayed and rode the swell of tension and release with him, panting in the heat and height of sensations that stripped away every defence she had.

  He stayed in her warmth, slumping to rest his forehead heavily against her shoulder, his breath coming in shudders that wracked across his back. She held him til he found her mouth to kiss with lips that smiled and could only graze against hers with infinite gentleness.

  He stroked her cheek with a hand that shook. “Baby, that was the hit single, the album, the show, the whole tour.”

  He was at peace, happy—but she was utterly, recklessly undone.

  Jake was drifting towards oblivion, every muscle gone to jelly, every bone to mulch, when he realised Rielle was shaking, sobbing softly in the bed beside him. He was instantly wide awake. He flicked the bedside light on and gathered her to him. “God. Rie, what’s wrong? Did I hurt you?”

  She tried to push him away. “No, no—please let me go.”

  Not a chance. Not again. He rolled her back into his arms, but let her hide her face. “Tell me what’s wrong.” But she sobbed harder, struggling to catch her breath.

  He was frantic, his heart gone from near comatose to hammering a cracking, crashing pace again. He sat up and leaned over her. “You have to tell me.” She was flushed and her face was destroyed by whatever pain this was, tears glistening in her eyelashes and on her cheeks. “Rie, please, I’m dying here. If I hurt you, if I hurt you, I—” He’d never forgive himself.

  “It’s nothing, it’s nothing—it’s stupid.” She put her hand to his face and attempted a smile with lips that wobbled and a dimpled chin. Her voice was a fractured sob. “That was just, oh, I don’t, I can’t—” She reached for him and pulled him down to lock
against her lips, her salt tears in both their mouths.

  He pulled away slightly, to see her eyes. “What happened?” All four points of his personal compass had converged on a place of pure, mind-bending pleasure. He’d thought she’d been there with him in those singular obliterating moments of perfection. Disappointment might split him in two.

  She dragged him back down, tried to hide in their closeness. Tried to stop him seeing her, understanding her. She fought him off with the softest, deepest kisses and stunned with distress, he almost let her win. Against her trembling mouth he said, “I need to know.”

  And she whispered, so light, so delicate, “You made me fly away,” then she tugged his hair tight, “and I didn’t shatter.”

  The tension fell away from him, like another eruption, this one near finished him off. “Ah shit, you scared me. I’ve never made anyone cry doing this, except you.”

  “Oh Jake, I’m sorry.” Rielle curled her hand around his neck. “I couldn’t hold the tears, I tried. I didn’t want to spin you out like last time but it was too much feeling—good feeling. I didn’t know it could be like that. I didn’t know I could feel like that. I don’t have the words.”

  He groaned and hugged her to him. Relief he hadn’t hurt her enveloped him like a thick blanket of exhaustion. He rolled to his back, settling her on his chest. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  She nuzzled against his jaw. “I am the sun and the moon and the stars.”

  He smiled. “That good?”

  She answered with a long sweet kiss that stung his brain to numbness. When he could talk again he said, “Way to freak a guy out, Rie.”

  “I didn’t mean to.” She traced a fingertip across his lips, brought her lips to his ear. “You’re a sex god, Jake.”

  He laughed. “Fit for a rock goddess.” But when his laughter died away he worried. Her reaction still freaked him. She lay with her head on his chest, her breathing synced with his, her body entirely relaxed, but her words capable of shocking him like 240 volts, killing him like 100 amps.

  He traced the line of her scar, only just visible to his fingertips. He’d been rocked to see it. How had that injury not killed her? What part did it play in making her so fierce, so armoured from her true self? “You’re not—” He didn’t know what to ask. She wasn’t inexperienced in bed, he didn’t understand what just happened to her.

  She trailed light fingers down his abdomen. “I trusted you.”

  “Are you saying you didn’t trust other people you slept with?” He felt her nod. “Rie, why would you do that?”

  She lifted her head, her eyes heavy with fatigue. “Because I didn’t trust myself either and I didn’t know it would make a difference.”

  He hugged her close again, stroked her back, this wild woman, so strong but so brittle and insecure as well. He knew it would take some time to sleep now. Sorrow for her curled lonely claws around his heart. To be used and not to have been loved properly, he dared not show her that emotion; she didn’t do pity. But he could show her what the value of her trust was. Now that bridge was crossed, he could love her for all the others who hadn’t understood.

  “Give us time, Rie. We can build a world from trust,” he said, but from her soft breath he knew she’d already crossed into sleep. He stared down at her, sprawled half across him, her face in profile: the wink of her nose stud as she rose on his inhalation, her tangled mess of hair, the curve of her lush lips and the fan of the outrageously long false lashes on her cheek.

  He spoke on the fringe of aloud, knowing he had no audience and whatever he said was safe and secret. “I’m in serious trouble here. Serious. See, I think I’m in love with this tough chick rock star and I know she feels something for me too.”

  He took her hand and moved it so it rested over his heart, trapped it there under his hand, waited to see if she’d stir, half of him wanting her to, so she could tell him what to do. “But I think she might slip through my fingers and I don’t know how to stop her. I don’t know if she’ll let me stop her. Tell me, what the fuck am I supposed to do about that?”

  35. New

  Rielle woke at the approach of dawn to Jake’s soft snore and sat to watch him. This too was new. No man she ever took to bed was still there in the morning. One way or another she got rid of them, either with a direct request or by more subtle, but equally brutal means of shutting them out. Sometimes they came back, but they were never invited to stay. It was easier that way. In any case, they weren’t still there, warm and vulnerable to her appraisal when she woke.

  So much about this man was unique. So much about what she wanted from him was foreign. This man she wanted to keep. Worse, she was almost scared to let him go. What was that about? Surely it was just the sex. Holy fuck. The most substance-shattering sex of her life. But what if it was more than that? She couldn’t think that through, not with him just a stretch away. Not knowing what they did together was a whole new kind of explosive seared inside her bone marrow, branded on her brain.

  Jake lay on his back, one arm draped across the bed, the other looped over his waist, the sheet tucked down low on his hips. She wanted to trace the curve of his chest, down the muscle moguls of his abdominals to the sharp cut of his hip bone, first with her hand, then with her lips; but she didn’t want him awake, not yet. Not til she’d worked out what to do with him.

  He was so much stronger than she’d thought—so much better at standing up to her, not taking her shit, than anyone else except Rand. That was a revelation, unexpected and confusing. And distracting. Would he wake if she smoothed his dark brow? If she rolled her thumb over his cheekbone?

  If this was just about the sex, why did he make her feel she was transparent to him, as though he could see straight into her and wasn’t horrified by what he found? Why did she want to talk to him almost as much as she wanted to kiss his throat, tongue his nipple? The thought of spending the day with him was nearly as exciting as knowing they’d make love again that morning.

  When she could be bothered, her usual hook-ups were about opportunity and physical need, forgetting and fear of being alone. All of them transitory, deliberately featureless, about flesh not feelings.

  Jake was about physical need as well, so maybe he wasn’t different. Maybe the way he could tune her body better than anyone else just confused the issue. Maybe the desire to have breakfast with him and tumble into bed again was a different version of the same thing she’d always done. Distracted herself with pretty men.

  Maybe she was going mad.

  It was only two days til they left for Sydney and when she thought about it she could feel the panic rising. It started at the base of her spine, flicking out from every vertebra to wrap around her lungs and squeeze sense and meaning out of her. Why had she agreed to come back? Right now she hated Rand, hated the band and the whole tour. Hated her own ambition for agreeing to it all. Nothing good could come from being back.

  She sighed. Yeah, that’s all Jake was, a beautiful distraction. Unparalleled, uncomplicated pleasure for her body; and a soothing contact for her soul. Something to take her mind off her fears and help her get centred. Something she needed to make it through to the other side. She’d said he was beautiful—he was perfect—but perfect for some other girl less screwed up, less emotionally spoiled and stunted than she was.

  She tracked her nail around the outer edge of the tattoo on his bicep, a stylised compass, with four points. It was a permanent reminder of direction on a man unlikely to ever be lost.

  While she had him, she was going to make this distraction count. When she left him, it’d be with the knowledge she did him no harm and he’d know how to find his way back to his life without her.

  She butterfly kissed his shoulder, fanned her hand across his chest and moved to sit astride him. One eye flicked open and then he shut it, but a sexy grin spread over his face. “Are you the wicked hallucination of a desperate man?”

  She folded down over his chest to kiss him. “I’m anything you
want me to be.”

  His laugh caught in his throat. “You’re such a liar.”

  She’d have acted offended but he was right. She was a liar and an actress and a fake, and she was too busy running her hands over his body, tasting him, losing herself to care. It didn’t matter that it was light. That he could see her smudged and tousled with the sun streaming into the room through sheer curtains. Seeing him made it more real. Now she wanted to know if last night was a repeatable offence. If he could take her to the sky, push her off and make her feel like stars collided again.

  Jake’s body twitched under her weight. “You keep doing that and it won’t be a gentle start to the morning.” He ran his hands down over her shoulders and the circle of her hips. She looked in his face with the devil of carnal intention in her eyes and he laughed. “Ho, so that’s the plan is it? Hmm, I can get with that.” He palmed her hips and pressed her into him. Then he stilled, lifted his hands. “You want this?”

  She groaned. This beautiful, caring man. She had him so knotted up, he needed to ask permission when he should’ve known she was crazy, insane, ready for his touch. He left her speechless, she let her body do the talking, grinding her hips down on him, finding a rhythm that was slick, fast and smooth, making his eyes go wide and his head roll back and his language nonsense. Making him see this, for now, was real. He flipped her over on her back and her gasp was a bolt of pleasure across his face.

  Ungentle was the morning. Rielle cried out as Jake made her twist and buck, her muscles clench and spasm. As the sun brought its first rays of heat, she made him sweat with her hands and her tongue—with the way she touched and tormented him. This time it was easier to approach the stars, easier to leap, free fall and fly, both of them together.

  She soared outside herself and when he called her name he brought her home. Her eyes flew open. They were wet, brimming, full up with feeling. Through glazed vision, Rielle saw the shadow cross Jake’s face, felt defeat soften his limbs. He’d read her tears as shame, as dislike, as hurt, as everything gone wrong again and she knew she had to make it right. She wasn’t sure her tongue could form the words he needed to hear, her lungs let go the air to say them. She only knew she had the power to hurt this man, to take his good heart and squeeze it dry with her savage need for him. She blinked the damp away.