by L. B. Dunbar
He pulled back from me and stared into my eyes. His left hand was all that could hold me.
“You’re lying again,” he said, but a slow smile crept up his face. He had the most glorious face. Deep brown eyes the color of warm chocolate matched the darkness of his hair that was wavy and wild, at the moment. A shadow of stubble already graced his face. His lips were red from our battle moments ago. He looked the part of devilish rogue, and he didn’t mind one bit. He used it to his advantage to capture the ladies. Ana’s face sprang into my head. I pulled back abruptly.
“We should go,” I blurted, scooting off the deck of the boat. I stood and turned quickly to find he was right behind me. His chest collided with mine and for another second we were braced against each other. He’d removed his shirt before he started the boat. My hands tried to stop me from falling into him and only encouraged me to touch him further. Awkward wrapped hands met hot skin and melted down him like a wanton woman. His hand gripped my hip and tugged me against him firmly. He was rock solid pressed into my lower abdomen and squelching the pulse was a lost cause.
Instinctively, I tugged at the waistband of his shorts. We fell against each other.
“We should go,” I groaned through clenched teeth.
“Oh, I’d like to go,” he said very deliberately, shaking his head slowly right to left as he spoke. His hips nudged forward to further emphasize his meaning.
“Arturo,” I warned on a hiss and let my head fall into his chest. My thoughts were becoming muddled by hormones. I had to shake my brain and focus.
“Okay,” he said, kissing the top of my head. “Okay.” We remained standing like that for a minute or two, and then I pulled up.
I looked around me. “Do you need your…uhm…your hand?” I asked, sucking in a breath as I inquired.
“It’s hot, and I’m sweating. I don’t know if I can get it back on properly.” He paused and looked over me. That new slow smile picked up one side of his mouth.
“How about if you be my right hand, Guinie?”
“What?” I snickered.
“You drive. I’ll guide you.” His face lit up like a little kid who just made up rules to a game. He brushed past me and started the engine. Propping himself back against the seat, he stood and spread his legs.
“Here, stand between me,” he said, without blinking. I, on the other hand, could do nothing but stare. He had to be joking. I could still see he was semi-hard. I couldn’t balance between his legs.
“Come on, Guinie Girl,” he said, as he leaned down and patted the seat before him.
I moved slowly, climbed over his knees, and stood stock still between his thighs. He gave the throttle a little gas. Fortunately for him, it was on the left side of the wheel.
“Put your hands on the wheel. We’ll go slow; so you don’t have to hold tight and hurt your hands. You’re just guiding. Leading us back home.”
His words were not lost on me. The innuendo was clear. He was giving me control, and he would follow. He implied there would be only one direction, though. That was back to where we were before, a time when he called me his home. Additionally, the irony was not lost on me that we were standing in the very position we’d been in when he called me his home.
I want to live inside you. You are my home.
I shivered at the memory and his left hand rubbed gently up and down my arm. Goose bumps rose even higher. He continued the tender strokes as we steered, slowly, methodically in the direction opposite of our current position. I hadn’t realized how far we had come as the return trip was moving us leisurely back. His finger continued to tickle, and I felt the soft chuckle from him as he noticed my skin pucker further. His touch was turning me on, and he damn well knew it.
I tried to let go of the wheel, but the boat steered violently to the right. Arturo reached around me and tugged the direction back to the left with his left hand. As he brought his hand back toward his body, it stopped and rested on my hip, pulling me along with it. Within a second I was braced against the firmness of Arturo at my backside.
“Arturo,” I growled.
“Both hands on the wheel,” he demanded, as he placed a delicate kiss on my shoulder. He had anticipated my intention to move before I did it.
“Arturo,” I hissed as he kissed the clavicle bone, drawing closer to the trigger point on me. My neck and shoulder were sensitive to his nips.
“Don’t let go of that wheel,” he commanded, with another quiet laugh. Then he bit me.
It wasn’t hard. It was the nip I was expecting. The nip I was secretly hoping for. As his teeth tightened and his lips sucked, I fell back into him, my backside completely resting on him. He moaned into my neck, and my head fell to the side as I groaned in response. His one hand tightened on my hip as the other arm wedged me still against him.
“Don’t move,” he warned. It wasn’t like he wasn’t hard. He was solid beneath the cheeks of my ass. Two could play this game, I decided. I pressed back against him hard as I pulled my upper body forward. I gently swayed back and forth, torturing myself with the heaviness that dragged against me. I closed my eyes as his fingers gripped my skin. He’d moved his hand under my tank, covering my hipbone.
“You vixen,” he hissed as I straightened. His hand spread to cover my warm belly. His guitarist fingers separating as he tried to touch every inch. His fingers crept downward.
“You wouldn’t,” I snapped, shaking my head. His fingers had already descended below the waistband of my bikini bottoms.
“Don’t let go of that wheel,” he ordered again into my neck then he bit me, hard. I collapsed into him and he pushed upward under me. At the same time, his fingers finished their descent into my bottoms and found what they were searching for. A long finger spread through slick folds, and I melted into Arturo behind me.
“Why?” I groaned, letting my head roll back. He was still kissing my neck as he mumbled, “Why what?”
“Why must you torture me?” I pleaded as his fingers worked over sensitive skin. The throbbing had gone from a steady drumbeat to a full on symphony. Every chord was stroked and drum was beat. I only needed the singer to sing his song.
“You tortured my dreams when I thought I was dying. Now I want to live the fantasy.”
Fingers slammed into me, and I squirmed against the length of him behind me. He let me move and grind. I rocked against him. I gave into him again. I couldn’t find it alone. I couldn’t feel it with another. It was only from him. My Once. I screamed as I came. I let it all out as I gripped the steering wheel with my bandaged hands and his fingers played on inside of me.
Everything that happened next was a blur of motion. He pulled out of me, as I shuddered a breathless, “No.” He threw the throttle down, jerking us to a stop. He reached around me and pulled the key out of the ignition without turning it. Then he spun me. He untied my bikini with one quick tug of the laces on my right. He frantically tugged down his shorts enough to reveal the solid length of him. He only removed his shorts enough for freedom. Pushing aside the bottom of my bikini, which dangled precariously off one side of my body, his body fell against mine. He fumbled to position himself outside of me. The wetness of his head was nothing compared to the slickness between my legs.
His face looked up. His eyes met mine. Then he stopped. He glanced from side to side to see that I had been bracing myself awkwardly with my bandaged hands behind me, on either side of the steering wheel. My backside was pressed firmly into the curve of the wheel, but my back was wedged painfully against the top of the circle. He was breathing heavily as he stared around him, like he wasn’t certain where he was. On a deep exhale of air, he looked directly at me and spoke.
“What am I doing?”
She was visibly shaking as I stared at her. What the fuck was I doing? I thought again. It shouldn’t be like this, not with Guinie. We’d never get back to where we were if it was like this.
I pushed back slowly and awkwardly pulled my shorts up to cover myself. I was still stiff a
s the throttle stick, but I was going to have to suffer. My left hand reached for the laces that hung down her legs and pulled the string up to cover her. I held it in place over the dark mound of hair and watched as hands that trembled uncontrollably, fumbled for the necessary lace behind her. I didn’t even have the decency to redress her. I couldn’t. I only had one hand at the moment, and I couldn’t retie her suit. I cursed myself for my incompetence. I scolded myself for frightening her.
“Guinie? I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”
If it had been another day, a summer ago, her response might have been that she came over me. In the present, I could see she had no words. She didn’t try to speak as fingers shook while attempting to tighten the laces on her right hip. My right arm instinctively went up and the stump brushed back hair that had blown in her face. She flinched and wide blue eyes stared at me.
“Please don’t be afraid of me,” I pleaded. I could take anything else: her rejection, her finality that it was over, her separation from me, but not that she was fearful of me.
“I would never hurt you, Guinie. Never,” I emphasized. Her mouth twisted as if she was about to say something.
Then her face softened and she replied with words that seemed to surprise her, “I know.”
We were quiet for a moment. The boat was still rocking with the force of the immediate stop and the weight of frantic movement within. We stood for a minute with that awful sense of physical closeness and mental distance. I didn’t like that feeling.
“Let me hold you?” I questioned. She nodded once and I wrapped her in my arms. She was tentative in her response to me. I could only surmise she was leery that the sexual tension would start again, and we’d be back to where we were a second ago. I wasn’t going there, though. My arms tightened around her back and my chin balanced on her shoulder.
Hold tighter, I thought.
Her arms slowly made their way around me, and I felt the scratchy gauze against my back. It was the best I could hope for. Her hands were immobile at the moment, too.
Delicate fingertips gently scratched at my skin and within a short time, she relaxed into me. We remained standing, wrapped around one another as the boat ebbed and flowed gently with the rustling lake below. I was the first to break the connection, moving my head so my lips could kiss her shoulder.
“I guess we should head back,” I muttered into her warm skin. I let my arms begin to drift down her back. She surprised me by tightening her hold on me. Her cheek was pressed against my chest. I wasn’t sure I heard her correctly, but I thought she said, “Not yet.” She still held firmly to me.
My arms returned to her envelop her, squeezing her against me.
“Whatever you want, Guinie Girl. Whatever you want.”
We eventually headed back to the opposite shore. I still needed her to be my right hand, as I didn’t want to separate from her and return to the prosthetic. She agreed to continue steering, once she saw I meant what I said. There would be no funny business on the way back. She stood between my legs again, and followed my directions to guide the boat across the wide expanse of Lake Avalon. In time, she settled against me. There was nothing I could do about my lower body’s response to her against my lap. We both ignored it. With her back pressed into my chest, I balanced my stubbly chin over her shoulder and let her lead onward. We didn’t speak.
Another déjà vu occurred as we neared the slip to dock the boat. Ana LeFaye and Lansing Lotte paced the decking. Only this time, Lansing had a baby strapped to the front of him. His son, Galahad, lived up here with his mother, Elaine Corbin. Roughly three months old, the baby had the same shocking dark hair as his father but eyes toned closer to the green of his mother. Elaine had been one of our oldest friends from the Lake District. She’d always had a crush on Lansing. The night of my accident, Lansing had his own accident of sorts, when he conceived Galahad.
The baby was jiggled as Lansing bounced and Ana walked briskly back and forth. At the same time, their heads went up and they saw our approach. My hand tightened on Guinie, but she pulled forward. She resisted me as I attempted to keep her against me. She helped me maneuver the boat alongside the dock, while Ana glared and Lansing continued to jostle the baby. As we drew closer, I heard the cry of an infant when I cut the engine.
“Someone doesn’t seem happy,” I muttered, not sure if I meant the baby, or the glaring looks of Ana and Lansing that spoke volumes.
“Where have you been?” Ana began in a shrill voice I hadn’t heard for a long time. Nails on a chalkboard would have been a symphony in comparison.
I looked down at the boat as if it wasn’t obvious. She knew we’d been out all day. It was only this morning she left in a huff when I refused to allow her or Morte to spend the time with us. Lansing was continuing to shush the baby, whose wails seemed to increase. I found it strange that Ana was doing nothing to assist Lansing. Surely as a mother herself, she should know some trick to soothe the child.
I was still docking the boat when Guinevere stepped gingerly out of it onto the deck.
“Here,” she said, reaching for the bundle attached to Lansing’s chest. He struggled to remove the wailing babe from the contraption over his shoulder and handed the baby to Guinie. Laying Galahad in her arms, she gently swayed with the infant, whispering sweet words, and kissing his forehead. It seemed only seconds later that the child silenced. By then I had exited the boat myself and stared as Guinie cooed over the infant.
“Wow, you’re a natural.” My words seemed to hang in the air, the tension of them thickening the space around us.
Guinie’s eyes shot up to look at Lansing. My head swung back and forth between the two of them, watching an expression cross each of their faces then pass.
“What did I say?” I asked outright.
“Nothing,” they said in unison. The response was eerie in that the words were said as if they were one voice. I shivered like a ghost stepped through me. Something a child would say, like Morte.
“Where’s Morte?” I addressed Ana, ignoring the continued glare at me. I was surprised she could see me, her eyes were slit so thin.
“He’s up at the house with Lila and Fleur,” Lansing answered instead. “I went to get the baby for the day. Elaine’s having a party tonight and she needed to do some things. I brought Fleur here to swim.” He said it matter of factly, but his voice hesitated the further he spoke. Lansing had an open invitation, as did any of the band and their growing families, to come to Camlann. It was my home, but our place. His faltering voice proved he was uncertain of his welcome.
“Fleur? Good. No worries. Lila, too?” I questioned. For some reason I felt safer if Lila were present with Lansing.
“Of course. Lila, too,” Lansing replied, attempting to assure me without knowing why. I pointed for everyone to lead the way, placing my hand on Guinie’s lower back to guide her as she walked slowly with the sleepy Galahad.
“Arturo, could I speak with you? Alone?” Ana hissed. I sighed as I stepped forward and Lansing stepped back to walk with Guinie.
“I’d like us to appear at the party together,” she said. “Elaine Corbin’s would be the perfect place to introduce Morte as your son.”
I stumbled in my steps up the gravel drive.
“I don’t plan on introducing him anywhere, Ana. If it happens, I promised I would no longer deny him, but I’m not making a grand spectacle of him.”
“I’m not asking you to make a spectacle of him. I’m asking you to recognize him as your son.”
“I already do that,” I rebutted.
“Not with me present.”
That was it. Ana didn’t care if Morte received the attention. She wanted it. She wanted the recognition that she was Morte’s mother, the mother of my child. I glanced over my shoulder to see Guinevere and Lansing had fallen even farther behind us. Guinie’s head was bent as she spoke to the child and Lansing was watching her. When her hair fell forward, he pushed it back for her, as her arms were full. The
smile exchanged between them sent that ghostly shiver through me again. They made the image of a perfect family.
I stopped. My eyes glared back at Ana.
“I will not announce Morte at the party like he is some object. If you and he wish to attend, so be it. I won’t be going.”
“Why not?” Ana demanded.
“I have plans,” I said, looking back at Guinie and Lansing, who were now catching up to us. Guinie’s eyes looked puzzled as she noticed the aggressive stance of Ana. Hands on her hips, her legs spread in a fighter’s stance. All she needed was to raise her arms, and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear the ding of a bell. Ana was just looking to pick a fight with me.
“What’s going on here?” Lansing asked as he approached. There was laughter in his voice, as he knew the conflicting relationship of Ana and me. We fought constantly, although we hadn’t been in recent months. When I woke from the coma, Ana was the first person I saw. There was no fight on her face then. It was a mixture of fear and relief.
“Arturo was just telling me how he isn’t going to Elaine’s party,” Ana answered for me.
“What? Why not?” Lansing questioned. “Kaye was hoping to make a big announcement at the event.”
Kaye Sirs, my foster brother, band manager, and business partner had been conspicuously absent since my return. While the band and I had gathered often to hang and chat, Kaye only briefly spoke with me. I assumed his focus was on the completion of our album. There had been some discussion of changing the playlist once I had returned, and there was the question of the additional three songs. I argued that the guys had worked hard to complete the album by writing their own songs. Their songs should stay on the list, and we worked collectively to finish the album. Kaye disagreed with the final combination and we were at a standstill for the moment at its final production.
“No,” I said adamantly. “No announcement. I’m not attending a society party tonight.”
