by Ruthie Knox
“Nobody can know that.”
“I know.”
“So you’re just not going to do it? That’s your solution?”
“So far, bunny.”
“You promised not to call me ‘bunny.’ ” She reached the opening at the bottom of the staircase.
“See what I mean? Careless. I fuck a lot of things up.”
And then he more or less flung himself up the steps, and she followed him at a sprint, because she needed the burning pain in her lungs to dispel the unsettling loneliness that had come over her.
Chapter Six
When Tony finally emerged through the door at the top of the stairs, he wanted to sink to his knees and weep with happiness. He’d never been quite so pleased to see daylight—even this strange, faded, greenish-blue daylight brought by the storm.
Amber skirted around him and headed straight for the phone. He walked to the front windows on wobbly legs to look out at the parking lot.
He could still breathe. Everything was fine. Thank God for her, though. If she hadn’t been down there with him, he probably would have come up and risked getting carried off to Oz rather than sit in all that darkness.
The parking lot was trashed, leaf litter and small branches strewn all over and rain still pouring down. Something caught his eye off to the back end of the lot, where both he and Amber had parked. A big branch down off the oak tree, right on top of her little yellow car.
“Hey, Amber?”
He turned to look at her, but she was holding up her finger, phone pressed to her ear.
“Good. Glad to hear it. Yeah, I already said I’m fine. I’ll be home in a while. I have to check out the center first.”
“Amber, you’re going to want to take a look at this.”
She glanced at him, but her eyes weren’t really focusing. “I have to go, Mom. All right. Uh-huh.”
How was it possible that she could look so different now? Same slim figure in khakis and a blue polo shirt. Same long, dark hair up in a ponytail. Same whistle around her neck, same sweet, round face.
And everything about her turbocharged with sex.
“No, he’s still here, too. What? None of your business. No. Seriously, no, just stop. I’m going. Goodbye.”
She leaned over the counter to hang up the phone, and her khakis tightened over a million-dollar ass.
How had he missed that ass?
He was still trying to wipe the image from his mind when Amber walked over, looked outside, and saw her car.
“Oh my gosh! Noooooo!”
She flung open the door and ran into the lot, and Tony had to follow her, because … well, he just had to.
He picked his way across the lot, avoiding the deepest puddles until he reached her side. She was standing ten feet away from her car with both hands over her mouth. The rain plastered strands of loose hair to her face and made her pants stick to her thighs. “I just paid it off!”
“That sucks.”
“I mean, I just paid it off. Last week! I was so happy! And now it’s wrecked.”
“It’s insured?”
“Of course it’s insured, but for Pete’s sake! This isn’t fair! I just want to—I don’t even know!”
She stomped her foot, spraying water all over his legs.
“Sorry!”
“No worries.”
“Gosh darn it!”
Her hands were curled into fists, her face was red, and she looked as though the top of her head might pop off if she didn’t calm down soon. “You ever consider saying a swear word or two?” he asked. “Just to take the edge off?”
“You mean like ‘fuck’?”
“Exactly.”
“Does that help?”
“Helps a lot.”
She glanced over at the wreckage. The branch lay across the crumpled hood. It had punched a hole in the windshield, which meant the interior was probably full of water. The roof was half caved in, too.
“I hate that motherfucking tree!” she cried.
“Now you’re talking.”
“Stupid sonofabitching tree killed my car!” Amber stalked across the wet lawn to the trunk of the offending oak tree, hauled off, and kicked it.
Not a good idea. She squealed, picked up her hurt foot, and started hopping around. He was on his way over to see if he could help when she slipped in the wet grass and fell. Then she flopped onto her back and started laughing.
“Oh, my God! I can’t believe this fucking day.”
When Tony reached her, she was just sitting up. Her skin looked all gray and splotchy in the weird light. Her hair stuck to her face, and she was soaked and starting to shiver.
But she was smiling at him.
The unbridled joy in that smile struck him like a punch. Nobody looked at him like that, with such open, boundless optimism. Her car was a crumpled wreck, and still she beamed, her dimple winking at him, her big, brown eyes promising there had to be a sunny side to everything.
To be able to smile like that. Like there was no past, only future, and it would all come out all right in the end.
“You’re right,” she said. “I think it does help to say ‘fuck.’ ”
Something welled up in him. Gratitude and desire, all mixed together, bigger than he was remotely ready for.
He gave her his hand, pulled her to her feet, and kissed her.
At first, Amber was so surprised, she didn’t respond. Too many things were happening to her body at once. She was suddenly vertical, rain beating down on her head and her shoulders, chilled and soaking wet. She was furious about her car, slightly hysterical and overwhelmed—and then his arms came around her, strong and sure, and his mouth met hers, and she sort of blanked out and became just lips for a while.
Soft. His mouth was soft. His breath fanned over her face, and one of his hands came up and held the back of her head, moving it and tilting it just so. A new angle. A different kiss.
She inhaled sharply through her nose as goose bumps broke out all over her body.
He made that noise again, that grunting male noise that sent her pulse into the stratosphere, and she realized in a more conscious way that he was kissing her. Tony. Kissing her. He splayed one hand across the middle of her back, the other still behind her head, and he kissed her, open-mouthed and commanding, and she was just standing here like a limp puppet when this was her chance to touch him and kiss him back.
She brought her hands up to his shoulders. He was hot even through the wet red cotton of his T-shirt, hot and hard and broad, and oh, man, she didn’t ever want it to end. His hand on her back coaxed her closer. His knee nudged her legs apart and lodged there. Tony’s thigh. Between her legs.
Oh holy Mary.
Her fingertips had developed a mind of their own. They skimmed over his neck, plunged into his hair, memorized the shape of his head, and then trailed over the caps of his shoulders and down those amazing, muscular arms.
His tongue flicked out over her bottom lip. Hot and wet, everything was wet, her whole body damp and perspiring, cold on the outside except where Tony touched her. There, she was all moist heat, practically steaming.
Amber parted her lips, and his invading tongue swept into her mouth. She made a little noise then, a kind of squeaking mmph as her nipples came to attention at the stroke of his tongue, so aggressive and male and—and copulatory. A word from Animal Planet, but the right word, because his tongue was having sex with her mouth, and it was as though nobody had ever kissed her before.
She had been doing it all wrong.
The hand on her back dropped to her ass and hauled her up his thigh, higher and tighter, plastering their bodies together and putting pressure on the deep ache between her legs. She skimmed her palms down his back, searching for the bottom of his shirt because she wanted his skin, the wet, slick heat of him, under her palms. She wanted their hot bellies pressed together, soft against hard. She wanted him to do something about how crazy he was making her.
“Tony,” she said, because
she couldn’t not say it.
She fumbled her way into his shirt and got her own up out of the way, fumbled her tongue into his mouth to experience the taste of him as she pressed her skin against his. He was as rich and dark as she’d expected, and ten times as good.
She’d always approached kissing carefully, as if it were a skill she needed to master, but this was messy and haphazard, dirty and careless and completely amazing. She bit his lip and slicked her tongue over it, carried away with a giddy kind of power she’d never experienced before.
Tony sucked in a breath. “Fuck me,” he said, and he picked her right up off the ground and carried her, staggering several feet until her back bumped into the oak tree and his pelvis pinned her in place, a thick, perfect heat between her legs.
“You’re hard,” she said, because she couldn’t quite believe it.
“Not now,” he muttered, and his mouth moved to her neck, his hands to her breasts, cupping them through her wet shirt and her bra. His thumbs rubbed over her nipples, sweeping, pressing as he pushed between her legs and ground into her softness.
She was too turned on to think, but something didn’t quite make sense about his denial. “You are, though. I can feel your … your—”
“Don’t say that now, Amber, or I swear to God I will fuck you up against this tree, and you will like it.”
That made her shudder. Or maybe it was the way he rubbed her nipple between his thumb and finger, a pinch through two layers of fabric that reverberated at the spot where his erection pressed against her panties.
“Oh my gosh,” she said when she could breathe again.
“Shut up and kiss me.”
His mouth came down again, and she was lost, her hands all over his torso, exploring the muscles of his back and sides, his arms, tugging at his butt so he’d thrust even harder against her, because the mimicry of sex was so far superior to her experiences of the real thing.
He tore his mouth away. “We gotta stop.”
“No.”
“We have to. If we don’t, I’m gonna take off your shirt.”
He said the words, but he was still rocking into her hips, licking his tongue over her lips, into her mouth, and the ache had turned into an unbearable spiraling tension. She could come. If they kept doing this, and he kept touching her, she might. An astonishing development.
“Don’t stop,” she said. “I’m getting … I could …”
His expression turned almost fierce. “Don’t even tell me you’re gonna come.”
She shook her head. The feeling fled, scared away by all the talking and his fierceness and her attempt to hold on to it. She hadn’t come either time that she had sex, and she’d never even gotten close before when making out. Her orgasms were a shy species, afraid of men.
When he took his thigh away, she moaned in disappointment. “Shh,” he said. And then his hand was there, right where she needed it, and she moaned again.
His mouth was close to her ear, his voice low and dark and deliciously dirty. “Would you come on my hand?”
“I don’t— I don’t think so. I can’t—”
But he was unbuttoning her pants. “Can’t?” he whispered. “That sounds like a challenge.” Down went the zipper.
“Tony, we’re outdoors. You shouldn’t—”
But he did. Oh, sweet Jesus, he did.
He pushed her panties out of the way like it was no big thing. Like people did that. “Nobody’s out driving around in this weather.” One blunt fingertip found her slit and moved down, down, down. “And I’m hiding you from the road, anyway. No one’s gonna see.”
And then his finger was inside her, pushing just where she wanted him most.
“You’re so wet.” He sounded like he was choking, and she could understand that, because she felt the same way. Like she could barely breathe from all the pleasure.
His finger slid all the way in, the heel of his hand bumping into her and putting pressure up high.
“You like that, Amber?”
“Gnhuh.”
“Tell me you like it.”
He pulled out his finger, slicked it up and over and then back in. She could only thrash her head from side to side, mindless.
“Tell me, or I’ll stop.”
When he did it again, she gasped. “I like it.”
“You love it.” Then he added another finger, and she died. “I love it, too. This is nuts, but I can’t help it. You’re so hot for me, so tight. You’re making me lose my mind.”
“I’m not—making you. You’re the one—with your hand—down my—oh, God.”
He lowered his forehead to hers, his eyes trained downward on the pistoning action of his hand, and somehow that was even hotter and more wonderfully horrible, knowing he was witnessing her utter abandon.
He was so good at it. His fingers moved in time with her hips, dipping inside her, then coming up to spread her body’s slick moisture over her with a glancing touch before he dropped back down again. In and out. Up and down. But not the same every time. Sometimes he left his thumb behind, a gentle pressure like a placeholder, and sometimes he pushed a little harder, which made her want to clench and bite.
She turned her face to the side, unable to bear the weight of his forehead and the sound of his breathing when there was this storm inside her, this sharpening need that wanted out.
“What gets you off, honey?”
She shook her head. She didn’t know. Wasn’t about to tell him that when she masturbated, it was with a pillow, not like this, and that no man had ever done this to her, and she didn’t know how to finish it.
“Tell me.”
“I can’t.”
“You don’t tell me, I’m gonna have to guess.”
“Let’s just—” She made to push his hand away. “It’s not going to happen.”
He took her arm in his free hand and pinned it next to her head. “Oh, it’s going to happen.” Their eyes met. “Unless you’re saying you don’t want me to.”
He moved his hand out of her, and she wanted to cry, because no, she wasn’t saying that. She did want him to. She wanted this dark-eyed, dark-haired, hard-angled man to be the first one to unlock her, to teach her all the secrets she couldn’t discover on her own. But she cringed at the idea of failing at this. “I just don’t know how. With you. I mean—I’ve done it before. By myself. But not … And if it doesn’t work …”
He watched her as she spoke, his eyes keen and interested. She felt as if he could hear everything she didn’t say.
“You have performance anxiety.”
“That’s for men.”
“Not just for men. For anybody, especially with somebody new, and especially when they don’t have a lot of experience. Which you don’t, do you? You’re not a virgin, but you haven’t done this much.”
“No.”
“How many times?”
“Twice.”
“Same guy?”
“Two guys.”
Tony’s look of concentration sharpened. “One-night stands?”
“Not really. We were dating. It just … The sex was kind of the deal-breaker. Both times.” She saw Brian, quietly crying, and closed her eyes. “Do we have to talk about this? It’s raining.”
“We don’t have to talk about it.” He kissed her. “We don’t have to do any of this. But I want to.” Another kiss. “I think you want to, too.”
She did. She thought she did, but it was hard to know just what she was getting into with him. Everything had happened so fast, and she couldn’t even guess where they’d be in an hour, much less a day.
And the longer she stood here, pressed up against a tree with rain dripping on her head and falling in a curtain beyond the canopy of the oak tree, falling into her ruined car, falling into the weird post-tornado light—the longer she looked at everything that wasn’t Tony, the more aware she became of how uncertain she felt.
He was right. This was crazy.
A few hours ago, she’d never even spoken to hi
m, and now they were … what? What were they?
She didn’t have a name for it.
“Hey. Amber.” His hand on her face. “Look at me.”
She met his eyes and threw away all the words she might once have used. Dirty. Shameful. Wrong.
It wasn’t like that. When he kissed her, touched her, they were close. A scary, vulnerable, maybe-I-shouldn’t-be-doing-this kind of close.
She liked him, and he made her feel different. Like the version of herself she wanted to be.
It was crazy.
It wasn’t completely crazy.
Still. They’d probably dabbled enough in crazy for the time being.
“I think we should lock up,” she said.
He stepped back a few inches and zipped her up, then offered her his hand. She wasn’t sure what to do with it, but when she took it, all he did was squeeze her fingers. “Let’s go inside.”
Chapter Seven
Ten minutes since he had his hand in her pants, and she wouldn’t look at him.
Tony helped her into the truck, wishing she would meet his eyes and knowing he might not like what he saw there if she did.
Amber fiddled with her seat belt. He gave up and walked around the truck. Climbed in and started the engine.
“You know where you’re going?” she asked.
“Yeah, I think so. Just let me know if I head the wrong way.”
He turned left and drove along the playing fields at the edge of the Camelot College campus.
A too-pretty town, it hardly seemed real to him. Not that Mount Pleasant was a cesspool—it had brick streets downtown, festivals in the summer, and quaint, old-fashioned businesses. But it also had a long commercial strip with one of every chain store, and neighborhoods full of ugly duplexes.
Camelot didn’t have any of that. It was a college town, full of liberal professors and spoiled rich kids whose parents could afford to spend more than forty thousand dollars a year educating them.
