Covered Part Two

by Holt, Mina

  “Gavin,” I managed to gasp, opening my mouth in ecstasy, his finger left to trace my lip as we came together.

  “Yes, love,” he said into my ear, “come for me, Sarai.”

  I did. I clenched and shuddered against him, felt his grip tighten as he tensed and released himself.

  We stayed like that for a moment, satisfied, our lust receding slowly.

  I was breathing heavily, and a little choked up. I didn’t know what was happening; I felt my voice catch in my throat.

  When we were both calm, he lead me to the bedroom, taking my hand to steady me. I needed no words as he fell on me, mad with passion.

  We had sex several times, long enough that the passion gave way to tenderness, the fucking gave way to making love.

  I finally fell into a deep sleep in his arms. The contentment I felt knew no bounds, there was nothing in my vocabulary to describe how he made me feel.

  Safe, loved, desired, and more importantly, like I was necessary in his life.

  As he was necessary in mine.

  Chapter Six

  Gavin and I managed to spend the entire indulgent morning in bed. I felt absolutely sinful, and beyond a call to Auntie G to let her know I was fine, and a text to work to confirm that I wasn’t coming in, I made no attempts to communicate with the outside world. The blog was being handled by Jenny; and even though she’d pissed me off…I had to be realistic, I wasn’t interested in reading a lot of books these days. Maybe I had become that girl, but who wanted to read about this kind of thing when you were living it?

  We both realized we’d have to surface at some point, but were reluctant to leave our happy little bubble. Our place. He had an early evening meeting with his agent, but beyond that we were okay to lounge.

  We’d managed to make some toast and tea at some point before noon, but had ended up back in the living room. He’d drawn a light blanket over us and we were curled up against each other on the sofa watching some old kung fu movie. He was propped on his back with me in his arms, my head resting on his chest.

  I was lazily stroking his skin, touching his body and marvelling that this gorgeous creature was mine when I suddenly focused on his tattoos. I sat up and looked at them as if for the first time.

  “What do these mean?” I asked, scanning my head for anything I’d read. He was notoriously mysterious about their symbology and I couldn’t think of anything about them that had been published. In all this time he’d never mentioned them at all.

  I traced a long, abstract pattern of symmetrical designs that curved around and around his forearm. The same arm that was wrapped around my midsection, the same arm I had clung to in orgasm.

  “Just some images I liked,” he replied and I dropped it. He didn’t seem as though he wanted to talk about them.

  Still, they were gorgeous, skillfully done and they fit on his body perfectly, enhancing his bulging muscles, not too garish or obvious. They were all in black, all abstract and symmetrical patterns that moved up his arm and down one side of him. Interspersed in the designs were some images, a Koi fish, a lion, and a dragon.

  “Okay,” I said, “I was just curious. Did they hurt?”

  “Not that much,” he replied, “I had them done over a few years, so it wasn’t too bad.”

  “It’s a little shocking though, right?” I said, “I mean for somebody from your social upbringing.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “You came from money. Here in the US we think of you guys as preppy private school kids. Not exactly the tattooed bad boy image.” I smiled and wiggled up a little so I could look at him. “Not meaning you’re a bad boy, but you know.”

  “So you think a kid from a nice family with a wealthy background can’t have ink?” he asked and grinned.

  “Do your siblings have any?” I asked, “or your parents?”

  “Dear god, no,” he laughed, “although I might pay good money to see my brother the investment banker get a full sleeve. Or my sister the international broker with a neck tattoo.”

  I laughed with him, thinking of my own lack of ink. I hoped he didn’t see me as too boring because of it. “I have nothing,” I said, “maybe one day. I just don’t know what I want to look at on my old, wrinkled body. It might look pretty bad by then.”

  “I think it would look fantastic, love,” he said, “but then again, I think you’ll be one hot old lady.”

  I giggled and play slapped him, “I doubt you’d think my old wrinkled ass would be hot.”

  “I think anything about you is hot, love,” he said and pulled me up on his chest and kissed me. I slid myself against him and felt him harden at my touch. I was already wet for him, I was pretty much always wet for him though. His body still affected me on some weird electrical chemical level. My nerves felt heightened around him, like they’d been rubbed raw and were sensitive to every cell in his body.

  “You’re only saying that because I happen to be half naked on top of you,” I said, “I have a feeling you’d tell me anything right now to keep me here.”

  “That’s not true,” he replied, suddenly serious, “I think you’re beautiful, and I’m not just saying that because you’re here. I care about you so much, Ms. Britton, and want you to know it.”

  “I feel beautiful when you say it,” I replied and frowned, “and that worries me.”

  “Why would it worry you?” he asked and rubbed my back slowly.

  “It either means you’re sincere, in which case you will slowly deconstruct my carefully constructed walls at some point soon and I’ll be vulnerable…or you’re a very good liar. If that’s the case, guaranteed I will get hurt at some point soon.”

  “I’m very good at a lot of things,” he said and pulled me in for another kiss, “but lying to you is not one of them. I mean it when I say it, you are beautiful and I care for you.”

  “I care for you too,” I replied and kissed him this time.

  “In fact,” he continued against my lips, “one might even say I love you.”

  I pulled back and scanned his face for a joke. There was none, he was being sincere. I smiled, pressed my lips against his and whispered, “One might say I love you too.” Then we kissed again, his frantic tongue swirling around mine, his hips grinding against me, and his hands running all over my back. I moaned and felt a snake of pleasure travel up my spine. I shivered and fell deeper into the kiss.

  After a moment he pulled away, furrowed his brow and was silent, his hands stopped moving. He scanned my face, as if looking for an answer, and appeared to have gotten what he needed. His face relaxed and he said, “They’re for my mother and my brothers.”

  “What are?”

  “The tattoos.”

  “But you just said your family doesn’t have any,” I replied. I was confused, everything I’d read indicated his family wasn’t the kind to appreciate gestures such as this.

  “My real family,” he said quietly, then closed his eyes. I felt him tense up, and I felt him withdraw from me, as though instantly regretting what he’d said.

  I sat up slightly, propping myself on his chest and looking at his face. His eyes opened and he stared at me. “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I’m adopted,” he said and screwed his mouth into a twisted grimace. The pained look passed as soon as it appeared, but I could see it in his eyes.

  “Your family isn’t your biological family?” I asked, incredulous. From the outside it had all seemed like a fairy tale.

  “I was adopted when I was four,” he said, “I haven’t told anyone this, love. I want you to know that, this is how important you are to me.”

  “Oh Gavin,” I said, exhaling in wonder at the trust he placed in me, “I can’t believe you shared this, thank you.”

  “You were too young to remember it, and I’m not sure how much coverage it got over here, but I was found in a terrible situation. My father was an abusive drunk who went after my mother one night,” he said and his voice caught in his throat, “
I had two older brothers. They…”

  “It’s okay,” I said, “you don’t have to tell me everything.”

  “I want to,” he said, “I feel like I need to. One night the police were called, the neighbors heard them fighting. My father had gone nuts and beaten her so badly she was almost unrecognizable. My brothers…they didn’t make it. She died later in hospital and I was given up for adoption.”

  “Oh my god,” I whispered, “I am so sorry.”

  “The press apparently called me Baby Charlie, it was all that was on TV for the entire year. My family saw the story and my mother decided she absolutely had to have me. Strings were pulled, and I became theirs, all aspects of my past was erased from the record and nothing more was said about it.”

  “Do you remember anything about that time?”

  “Not at all, thankfully.”

  “Did you know you were adopted?”

  “I sensed it, but my family is the traditional stiff upper lip sort. We didn’t talk about it really.”

  “Did they ever come out and just tell you?”

  “When I turned eighteen, my mother and father sat me down and told me the story. They had a box of items, some newspaper clippings, my adoption papers, that kind of thing.”

  “Where did you get the idea for the tattoos?”

  “The symbols are from my birth mother’s sketches. She had these books and books filled with these intricate, abstract drawings so I had some turned into these tattoos,” he said and indicated the lines wrapping his arm. “The animals each represent one of them, my mother and two brothers. Tied to the meanings of their names.”

  I was speechless, I hadn’t expected him to tell me such a deeply painful and intimate story and I wasn’t certain how to react, what to say.

  Instead of saying anything, I laid my head on his chest and listened to his heart, put my arms around him the best I could and said, “Thank you for sharing that with me, I love you for it.”

  “I love you too, Sarai,” he said quietly.

  He started rubbing my back again and we fell into a comfortable silence, the crappy kung fu movie on in the background and the sound of the city from down below on the street was the backdrop to our deep thinking.

  I felt a communion with Gavin that was growing by the day. Every moment I spent with him tightened the bonds that were growing between us.

  Each beat of our hearts put more distance between who I was then, and who I had been. The fear was being left on some distant horizon as we moved towards something new together.

  “Thank you by the way,” he said.

  I looked up at him, “What for?”

  “For not looking at me differently, for not flinching while I told you,” he said, “you don’t know how much that means to me, love.”

  “Why would that change what I thought of you?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said, “I’ve had it bottled up and hidden for so long I didn’t know how it would sound once it hit the light of day.”

  “It sounds atrocious,” I said, “and shocking, but it doesn’t change how I feel about you. If anything, it makes you more human to me.”

  He seemed to pull back slightly, raised an eyebrow and said, “More human?”

  I blushed and stuttered, “Yes, not to sound rude but it makes you more approachable.”

  “What else did you need to approach me?” he teased, “I practically chased you down, Ms. Britton. I don’t think you had much of a choice.”

  I laughed and hid my face in my hands, suddenly overcome with embarrassment at my assessment. “I mean here you are…you…and you’re famous and amazing and everybody knows who you are. And here I am…me…a nobody. I still don’t know how this all happened.”

  “You are certainly not a nobody,” he said, “especially not to me, love. You are very much a somebody.”

  “But it’s all so crazy,” I protested, “this kind of thing really doesn’t happen in real life. So when you tell me something that makes you less than one hundred percent flawless, it means I can relate with you on some level.”

  “I wish it weren’t that particular level though,” he sighed.

  “Me too,” I replied, “but sorrow is powerful, and if that’s the one place where we meet up, then perhaps it truly is meant to be. We’re in each other’s lives to help each other heal. I know I haven’t felt this alive in years, but of course I can’t speak for you and your amazing life.”

  He paused and appeared to think about my response. I loved studying his perfect face while he thought about something I said. He finally replied, “It’s odd though, people look at me from the outside and assume everything is perfect. It’s not, and for years I’ve felt like I’ve been living a lie.”

  “Do you not like modeling?”

  “I do,” he admitted, “I enjoy what I do but there are times I feel like half a person. My family doesn’t want anyone knowing about the adoption, and my publicist said if the press caught wind of my early childhood, it would be career suicide. There’s nothing sexy about the poor little orphan boy who was almost killed by his deranged father. The general public doesn’t want real, they want sexy.”

  “I’m not the general public,” I replied and pressed my face to his naked chest again, felt the steady rhythm of my heart reassuring me this wasn’t a dream, this was all happening. “I find you sexy and wonderful and absolutely perfect for me no matter where you came from.”

  He kissed the top of my head and said, “That’s exactly why I love you so much, Ms. Britton, you are unlike anyone I’ve ever met.”

  I smiled and closed my eyes, felt his hands touching me, but more than that, I felt his soul touching mine.

  Chapter Seven

  “It’s just for three days,” David, Gavin’s agent, said, “and the pay is awesome. We’ll fly you there, shoot for one full day, dinner with the photographer, and back here the next day. So not even three full days, really.”

  He had just told Gavin about a short job in New York, but it was starting tomorrow and would go over the weekend. He wouldn’t be back until Sunday evening, and my birthday was Saturday. We’d planned a small party to celebrate.

  He looked at me and rubbed his chin, he had some stubble growing in and the small action of his hand moving over it made me squirm in my seat.

  I wondered if I’d ever get tired of looking at him, if I’d ever get bored of his incredible hotness.

  My clenching, wet pussy said the forecast was not bloody likely.

  “I can’t do it,” he said, “I don’t care who it’s for.”

  “Calvin won’t like this,” David replied, “this might mean you’re bumped off next season. I know it’s not convenient, but you have to understand that the best photographers are booked years in advance, when they get an opening, the team has to take it.”

  “It’s Sarai’s birthday,” he said and grabbed my hand, “I can’t turn my back on her.”

  “Bring her along then,” David said, “make a weekend of it.”

  “I’ve got inventory Friday,” I interjected, “I promised Marta. She’s short staffed as it is…sorry.”

  “It’s not going to work,” Gavin insisted, “tell Calvin to give me more notice next time.”

  “Gavin,” David said, “I don’t think you quite get this.” He looked at me, shifted in his seat and looked extremely uncomfortable. “I know you think you’re in love, no offence Sarai, but this is your career. This could make or break you. If you want to stay in the US, you need to go where they want you.”

  “He’s right,” I said and sipped my drink, “photographers are booked forever. I mean, the good ones are.”

  “Yes,” David said and looked at me to mouth, “thank you” under his breath.

  “Your father was a photographer, wasn’t he?” Gavin asked me.

  “He was. Harold Britton, photographer to the stars,” I said and smiled, “he was a pretty cool guy.”

  “Oh my god,” David said, “I had no idea! I worked wit
h him. I mean I worked within some of the same circles, but we all seemed to orbit around him. He was his own little world, on his own level of greatness. I’m sorry about what happened.”

  “Thank you,” I said and sipped my drink again. I always hated it when people made the connection, that my parents had been murdered and I’d been left orphaned, but being with Gavin was taking the sting off. Knowing his life only added to accepting my own life story.

  “So that means your mother was Vivienne Reynolds. Oh, it’s all making sense now. You look so much like her, have you ever modeled?”

  “Oh god no,” I snorted, “I have my mother’s height and my father’s grace. Or lack thereof. It’s not exactly a printable quality.”

  David turned to Gavin and said, “Wow, she’s in the business. This is fashion royalty right here, did you know that when you snatched her up?”

  Gavin was looking at me strangely and said, “No, I had no idea.” He smiled, as though discovering me for the first time, his face full of wonder.

  “I wouldn’t say royalty,” I blushed and stuck my face in my martini glass yet again. Sipping my Manhattan was a convenient way to avoid the conversation. I might be drunk if they kept flattering me like that.

  “I would,” David said, “I had a poster of your mother when I was a teen…wait, that sounded creepy. I mean I admired her work.”

  I laughed to let him know I wasn’t offended. Almost anyone over the age of thirty told me that when they found out who my mother was, man or woman, it didn’t matter. My mother had been one of the very first super models, a known humanitarian and constant advocate for the oppressed. She’d been an amazing woman really.

  “It’s quite all right that you had the poster,” I said to David, and to Gavin I added, “and that you will miss my birthday. Just promise to Skype with me and read me a bedtime story and I’ll be okay.”

  “Just okay?” Gavin said and looked at me as if to gauge my sincerity.