by Hughes, Mary
My arms were still trapped between us. I didn’t know what he meant. He crawled over me until his knees were beside my head. I blinked up at him. He smiled down at me, and stripped off the towel.
My mouth fell open. He jutted above me, all the larger for the perspective. His smile grew.
I snapped my mouth shut. “You can’t want…it doesn’t go there!”
“It can,” he coaxed. “But no, you’re not ready.”
My throat was thick, my lips throbbing. What he was casually asking me to do was so far out of my experience—and this was just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.
But I’d come to trust him. “Maybe I am. Ready, that is. What if I want to?”
His whole body clenched. “A kiss then.” He shifted until the tip was right in front of my mouth.
I lay beneath him and shyly put my lips on him. The head was warm and velvety. It was nice, so I gave it another fuller kiss.
He groaned softly and collapsed to his fists over me, his eyes closing. His black lashes made soft crescents against his hard cheekbones. It encouraged me. I reached out with my tongue and touched him.
“Ah.” He stiffened gratifyingly. “Raquel…that was lovely. But if you’re not ready for this—”
I gave him a tiny lick.
His eyes opened, hot fire on mine. He took my head in one hand. “Are you sure?”
Daringly, I licked him fully. He gasped, his belly making an intriguing jerk that rippled his abs. I licked again, swirling my tongue at the end. His fingers tightened in my hair and his eyes clenched.
I stopped, horrified. “Did I hurt you?”
“No. You slay me.”
This time when I licked I tasted salt.
“Sakra. I am so aroused, and just by a few teases. Take me in your mouth, drahý, just the head, just for a moment. I need to feel your heat surround me.”
I wasn’t sure what he wanted exactly. Tentatively, I closed my mouth over the tip. I was laying there with his naked penis in my mouth. I’d never done that before and it was a surreal moment. It was pleasant enough, but what really blasted it into the stratosphere was his reaction.
He began to pant, his belly rippling rapidly. “My love. You’re so hot. You unhinge me.”
I felt both beloved and beautiful in that moment. So when it occurred to me that he might like heat and friction together, I was confident enough to swirl my tongue over him.
He shouted and pulled from my mouth and began to come. I could see the contractions wrench his testicles before he grabbed the towel and contained most of it.
“Drahý.” He blinked down at me, his pupils vast and black. “You make me into a green boy.”
Me. Inexperienced Rocky Hrbek. I’d made Dragan not only climax, but come before he’d meant to. Heat rose in me, surged.
And suddenly it wasn’t enough. I wanted to push him on his back and take him in my mouth and make him come again, trying every move I could imagine and making up new ones, just to see his eyes that star-struck again.
I uncrossed my arms and grabbed his hips and shoved him onto the bed. He went willingly, landing on his back. I crawled over him, then tried to wrestle the beautiful gown over my head. Since desire doesn’t make ability, I nearly tore it before he half-sat to help me get it off.
And then I was lying along his magnificent torso, my breasts pressed skin-to-skin into his chest, my nipples tightening at the simple friction of my panting breaths. My thong-clad hips pressed against his belly, his cock beginning to lengthen against my thigh.
He framed my face with his hands and kissed me. It wasn’t enough, not nearly enough. I kissed him back, trying to do to him what he did to me, twirling my tongue and nipping his lips and licking everything I could reach.
Including swiping the length of one fang with my tongue.
He howled. I filled with confidence—no, more, with potency; I nearly burst with it. I licked again and his eyes flew open and he gasped. I licked the other long canine, and for good measure sucked it. His cock sprang full and needy into the gap between my thighs. I grabbed it with my legs and writhed awkwardly against him because it put my feet on his shins and I had no purchase. He grabbed my hips, hard, and ground into me.
The length of his erection ran against my silk-covered slit. Now I howled. He did it again. I moaned. He spread my thighs, my feet and knees thumping onto the mattress, and rubbed blatantly against me.
I reached down and pulled aside the thong, shifting my hips so the next rub would take him in.
He stilled instantly. “Raquel, no. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“But I do.” My voice trembled. I firmed it. “I want you inside me.”
He hissed. “No. That might…we have no protection.”
“I want you inside!”
“No!” He tore himself away from me and rolled off the bed. Stood trembling as if pulled in two directions at once. “Playing at sex is one thing, but…how can I make you understand? You are perfect, Raquel. You deserve a man…” In appeal he held out one elegant hand; it was shaking slightly. “A man much better than me. One worthy of you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’ve let people down, drahý. The closer they were to me, the more I disappointed. I won’t take that chance with you. I’ll have housekeeping get you more comfortable clothes.” He snatched his phone from the nightstand and stalked into the next room.
“Dragan, wait. Please come back.” I lay sprawled on the bed, unmoving, blinking at the empty doorway. Emotions roiled through me, too frightening to name. “Don’t leave, please. Don’t leave me…”
Shame throttled my voice to a whisper, “…like Todd.”
Chapter Sixteen
“Who the fuck is Todd?” Dragan appeared in the doorway, his expression stark. He’d put on a pair of black slacks, his naked waist rising lean and sexy from the unbuttoned waistband. “And how did he hurt you?”
“You heard that?” I may have squeaked it.
He was at the bed in two strides and grabbed me by my upper arms. “Tell me.”
His eyes were burning red, with a fury that was beyond human. Somehow I knew it wasn’t aimed at me but was on my behalf. I managed, “‘Syrinx’.”
“Ah. The man who abused your love. Todd,” Dragan repeated in a deadly purr. “I will take great pleasure in dismembering him for that.”
“No, wait. He was a boy then. He didn’t know any better.” I pled with my eyes. I didn’t want to be the cause of anyone’s dismemberment.
One raised black brow let me know that Todd wasn’t getting off that easily.
So though it would show how stupid and gullible I’d been, how needy for the fleeting approval of the popular kids, I sighed and said, “I’ll tell you. You’ll see it wasn’t his fault. Todd was my orchestra crush. In eighth grade he asked me to his school’s graduation dance. It was my dream come true. At first.” I sighed again. The oxygen was thin in the rarified air of a Chicago penthouse. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.
Dragan sat beside me on the bed. “Go on.”
“I wanted a new dress, one of the flippy little dresses that were popular then. But my mother’s idea of fashion was broomstick skirts, peasant blouses and Birkenstocks and we were shopping with our grocery money, so how could I say no? There was nothing left over for makeup. I did my own hair in a lopsided French braid.”
I curled my knees to my breasts and wrapped my arms around my legs. Dragan put an arm around my back. The skin-to-skin comfort gave me the courage to continue. “Todd came in a limo a lot like yours tonight. He came to our trailer. I’d have run out to meet him but my mom told me to wait. Sure enough, he actually got out of the car and started up the walk to get me. I thought it was incredibly sweet. As he approached the door, I saw he’d brought me flowers. I was thrilled. Then he saw me in my secondhand everything. He…he…”
I stopped. My eyes were wet. I wiped them against my knees. “He flinched. Mom invited him in, but Todd…he
made some excuse and turned away.”
Dragan said, “I will kill him.”
I gave him a watery smile. “We were kids. Kids make mistakes.” I fell silent.
“There’s more, isn’t there? Tell me.” He spread his hand on my back and rubbed gently. “Please.”
The “please” opened a place hidden deep in my heart. I pulled in another breath, the air coming easier this time. “When we got to the dance, Todd went to hang with his guy friends. I tried to make friends with the girls, but Todd’s school was really cliquish. Since I wasn’t rich and I wasn’t one of them they treated me like dirt. I remember pulling half my hair out of the braid to curtain my face.”
“Raquel, I am sorry.” He continued to rub my back.
I shrugged. “Again, kids. Kids can be cruel, but they grow out of it.”
“It doesn’t lessen the pain they caused.”
“I suppose not. But you know what made it worse?” I hugged my knees harder. “One girl was as plainly dressed as me and I tried to make friends. But she spat a mean name at me and turned her back. Later I realized it was because the other kids usually harassed her. She was just grateful it wasn’t her for a change. I can’t say I blame her, but it made me feel even more singled out and lonely. Anyway, you can see it wasn’t Todd’s fault.”
“Raquel.” Dragan cupped my face in both hands and raised my gaze to his. “That’s still not all.”
I searched his black gaze. If I told him, I’d be sitting here naked in more than mere body. What had happened that night had remolded my life, altered my innermost beliefs and desires. Warped them, stunting my soul. Or maybe those events merely revealed its stunted nature.
I saw only compassion in his eyes.
“Yes, there’s more.” I took his hands from my cheeks and set them in his lap. I sat straight and folded my own hands on my lap. At the last minute I chickened out, and burrowed my hands into his warm grip instead. “During the last dance set before the announcement of the King and Queen, Todd found me and…and he led me out of the gym. I thought he’d figured out how uncomfortable I was. I was grateful.”
A low, deadly growl started. Dragan.
My eyes flashed up to his. Thin coronas of red surrounded his pupils. I almost smiled. “Yeah, you can dismember him a little for what he did then. He led me into a dark corridor and…and he tried to get fresh with me.” I swallowed at the memory, tasting old fear and shame.
“I’ll do more than dismember him ‘a little’.”
“Dragan, it’s okay. When I didn’t give him what he wanted, he just got a little insulting, that’s all. Said he’d thought because I was poor, I’d be easy.”
“What an ass.”
“Wish I’d thought to say that at the time. Then I only wanted it to be over. I ran back to the gym—and surprise, Todd and I had been elected King and Queen. I was overjoyed. I thought I must have imagined all the nasty looks and snide remarks. But when we stood on the dais…in a Carrie-esque moment, we were sloshed with two buckets of dark, glossy liquid.” I tried to laugh, but all that came out was a bitter chuff.
“Pig’s blood?” Dragan drew stiff in outrage.
“No, no. Better, and worse. One of the kids’ parents was a chocolatier and we got doused with a batch of semisweet. We were laughed off the stage. Todd flailed his way through the mass of kids. I had trouble following. I called out to him, reaching for him…but he gave me one disgusted glare before disappearing out the door.
“I stood there. When I first developed and Todd had noticed and asked me out I’d felt pretty and womanly; there I felt thick and useless. My stomach was this sour lump. The room and the crowd of kids pressed in on me. I tried to follow Todd, but the chocolate had started to harden, and my skirt wouldn’t move right. I tripped and fell into the crowd. Kids pushed me off, calling me names. ‘Dirt Girl’ and ‘Mud Queen’ were the kindest.” I blinked back tears. “They say names don’t hurt but as with a lot of other things, ‘they’ are wrong.”
“Oh, Raquel.” Dragan pulled me into his arms.
In the warm depths of his embrace I found the courage to go on. “I didn’t have telekinetic powers to get even. So the only thing I could do was get gone. I made it outside to see Todd’s car driving away. I had to borrow money from a stranger for the bus. I came home from that dance a broken girl. My mother said, ‘Don’t worry, honey. According to the great German philosopher “Frau Manners”, boys don’t like obvious. You stick to being sweet and Mr. Right will come along and sweep you off your feet.’”
I huddled in Dragan’s arms. “She was trying to be supportive.” But in reality that was the most destructive part of all that messy night. Because what I took away from that was a) Don’t stick out in any way and b) I had to wait for Mr. Right to rescue me.
I took a deep breath. From the darkness of Dragan’s cocoon I finished it. “I ate to comfort myself and ballooned fifty pounds. I had no energy, no joy. I think my friends—my true friends like Nixie and Liese—tried to break through. They were constantly asking me to go places, do things. But I couldn’t afford to, and it only made me feel lonelier.
“Spring of my freshman year I played ‘Syrinx’. I poured my feelings into it and was shocked to get a Division I. From that moment on I dumped all my feelings into my flute, instead of letting them eat me.”
“Drahý.” He slid a hand under my chin, raised my face and gently kissed my forehead. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that. But know you have turned it into music of extraordinary depth and life.”
“Maybe.” My cheeks heated. My greatest failure—yet he saw it as a success? “All I knew then was that it worked. My despair lifted. I lost weight and became a more comfortable size. Although I’ll never be chic, I found a weight where I was at peace with myself. A comfortable place in life. With hard work, real friends, and a lot of luck, I got through.”
I straightened. His arms fell away. “But I want you to know I understand.” I couldn’t look him in the eye. “I understand you don’t want to…you know with me. What did you say? Playing at sex is one thing. I get that. I understand why you don’t want to make love with the likes of me.” My voice cracked on the words.
“Raquel, no. That’s not it. I can’t go into it but believe me, that’s not it at all.” With an unhappy laugh, he fell silent.
That wasn’t it? Of course that was it. What else could it be? I looked up to find the confirmation in his face.
His expression was as grim as I’d ever seen it and he wouldn’t meet my eyes.
It made me quixotically brave. “Man of La Mancha” unfurled in my brain. “Dragan, what’s wrong? It can’t be worse than the mess I just spilled.”
He was silent a moment longer. Then, with hesitancy that was painful coming from the normally confident conductor, he said, “I see how you turned your pain into beauty, into music, and…I am ashamed.”
He glanced up at me, an instant only. Horrors hid behind his eyes.
Automatically I reached for his hands, to comfort him.
He pulled away. “No. You don’t know what I’ve done. Who I was…and still am, underneath it all.”
“It doesn’t matter.” I didn’t understand why he was pulling away, putting an emotional wall between us not because I was inadequate but because somehow he was the unworthy one. “Your music is the most beautiful I’ve ever heard. You pull music from us. From me. You saved my life. You made my mother happy. Liese and Logan like you and trust you. Whatever you’ve done in the past—”
“I killed my family.”
All the music stopped.
My breath rasped in my ears. My heart thudded painfully. I managed, “What?”
“I killed my parents. My brothers and sisters. I didn’t want to say anything but, well, I guess you deserve to know.” His hands were fists on his knees.
I didn’t know what to say, uncertainty icing my brain, my throat. But I groped for his hands. They were so much bigger than mine. I settled for taking one fist and wor
ming my fingers inside. I clasped his hand with both of mine and remembered what he’d said to me. “There’s more. Tell me, please?”
“You don’t want to hear—”
“Yes. I do.” I added, when he was still silent, “I told you my worst.”
“It’s hardly in league with what I’ve done.”
“Doesn’t matter. I told you my worst and you stayed. Let me do the same for you.”
He inhaled a surprised breath, eyes flying up to meet mine. A dozen conflicts raged in their dark depths: fear, confusion, shame, hope.
I ached for him. Squeezed his hand in encouragement. “Please?”
“If only to make you see how much better you deserve.” He took a deep breath. “My mother and father had a dozen children. But we were all close. I was surrounded by…by…” He fell silent again but his gaze clung to mine.
Surrounded by love. He didn’t say it, but it was in his broken tone. “When was this, the 1700s?”
“Around 432 CE, more or less.”
I swallowed my shock. “Were Czechs even around in the fifth century?”
“We were Boii, hiding from the Romans. My parents were druids—although there might have been a Byzantine prince in my lineage.” Which explained his black eyes. “We passed down our training in secret. Even white practices could get you killed.”
My hand rose to my breastbone. “Did the Romans find you?”
He laughed, dark. “I wish it had been merely the Romans. No, something else found us.” He paused. His other fist fell from his knee, as if it had suddenly become too heavy to keep up.
“Dragan, what’s wrong?”
“It wasn’t pretty, Raquel.” His rich voice broke on my name. He swallowed visibly.
I gave the hand I held a squeeze.
He inhaled a bushel of air, letting it out slowly. “I was eighteen. Mother and Father were away for a month, communing with other tribes. They’d left me in charge. I was performing a ritual in the sacred grove. Eighteen, eldest druid in the grove, and I thought I knew it all. Thought I’d seen it all.” Another dark laugh.
“What happened?”
