Crazy 4U

by Cach, Lisa

  He had opened the car door for her and led her to the front steps of the B&B, and then shared with her a kiss that was more chaste, but no less intense than that in the churchyard. No one peering out a window at them would see his hands where they should not be. It was a consideration she found both touching and frustrating.

  She had lain awake reliving those kisses, feeling the sexual hunger that permeated every cell of her body. Why not? her body asked her. Who will know?

  Beyond even the attraction she felt to Sebastian was the growing, seductive sense that she could do anything she wished here, thousands of miles from anyone who knew her and from her sedate daily life. She was in a foreign land with a foreign man, and it felt as if the old rules did not apply.

  She knew that, like buying the dress, she might—months or even mere weeks from now—regret her decisions, but she knew as well that she was craving the chance to set aside good sense, and would need only the slightest encouragement to do so.

  And so this morning she had gone out and made purchases at a drugstore. She had come back and showered, shaving her legs and using perfumed soap and shampoo, preparing for an encounter she still was not certain she would allow to happen. She put on the one attractive set of matching bra and panties that she had with her, and tidied her room before she went out to meet Sebastian for lunch and the bike ride along the canals he had suggested.

  Today was her last day in Bruges. Tomorrow she would leave for home. At this moment, she still did not know which memories and regrets she would be taking with her.

  Sebastian gestured to her from in front of the ticket booth, and she went to join him.

  "We have five minutes to make it to the top before the bells start," he said.

  "Where's the elevator?”

  He grinned at her.

  "Oh, no…”

  "Oh, yes," he said. "Three hundred and sixty-six steps."

  "I don't think I can do it," she said, feeling an intense dread in her muscles.

  "Don't you know I'm much too much of a gentleman to make a woman who was made to eat chocolates climb stairs instead?" he asked, leading her over to where the stairs began their spiral ascent to torturous heights and musical bells.

  "I certainly hope you are."

  Another grin was the only warning he gave before sweeping her up into his arms, making her shriek and grasp tightly to his neck. He cradled her in front of him like a child being carried to bed, and began to climb the stairs.

  "Sebastian! Don't, you'll drop me! You can't carry me all the way up. I'm too heavy. Sebastian!"

  "I've always wanted to do this," he said, ignoring her protests. "Ever since I saw the silent film version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame as a child. I loved that movie. You're my Esmeralda," he said, and nuzzled her.

  "Watch your step!" she protested, growing dizzy as he rapidly climbed, the walls curving around them, her perspective lost as they moved around and around the tight spiral staircase, the bottom of stone steps visible above her head.

  "The bells! The bells!" Sebastian shouted, and laughed.

  "You're not Quasimodo," Eliza cried, clinging to him. "Why would anyone want to be, anyway? Quasimodo est laid."

  "What?" Sebastian asked, broken for a moment from his hunchback spell and stopping on the stairs, leaning against the wall to catch his breath.

  "Quasimodo est laid."

  "Quasimodo is ugly? Says who?" He leered at her.

  She rolled her eyes. "It was a sentence in one of my French textbooks in school. We all thought it was hilarious."

  "Why?"

  "Laid. We thought it unlikely, for Quasimodo. Who'd sleep with him?"

  He threw his head back and laughed, making Eliza fear again for their safety on the narrow stairs. "Who indeed?" he finally asked, once he'd gotten control of himself and resumed his climb. "Perhaps you, my pretty one?'

  "Careful!" Eliza said, although she could not say whether she meant his footing on the staircase or his joking invitation.

  They came to a small landing next to an open doorway, and he set her on her feet. "There, that's what they use to play the bells," he said, gesturing through the doorway to the machinery inside, including a large wooden barrel-shaped contraption with prongs on it. "They sometimes have concerts and play by hand, but not today."

  "Is this where we listen from?"

  "One more flight."

  She turned to look at where the stairs continued up, much narrower now, made of wood and wide enough for only one person, a rope wrapped loosely around the center column as the only handrail. "I think I'll go on my own two feet this time."

  "I could throw you over my shoulder," Sebastian suggested, sounding a little too eager.

  The thought of going up those rickety, dark stairs upside down was too horrible to contemplate. "I don't think so." She took a deep breath and started to climb, holding her skirts up in one hand, Sebastian right behind her.

  The twisting climb disoriented her, making her dizzy on her feet, and when she reached the top, panting, Sebastian had to steady her or else she would have stumbled upon emerging out onto the viewing floor.

  It was a small room, the windows glassed in, a few tourists at them. As they stepped into it the bells began to ring, the sound vibrating through Eliza's feet on the floor, sending thrumming tremors through her chest. It was Beethoven's Ode to Joy they rang out, the sound loud enough to make her feel that her own head was a bell. She turned wide eyes to Sebastian, unable to speak over the layers of ringing sound.

  He led her to a window, standing close behind her, his body almost touching hers as she looked down at the red tile roofs of Bruges. He put his hands on her shoulders, and she turned beneath them, the view forgotten. The other tourists had their backs turned, but Eliza knew she would not have cared even if they had stared.

  Sebastian raised his hands to the side of her face, bent down, and kissed her tenderly, then turned her around again and wrapped his arms around her waist, his cheek pressed close to her temple as they both gazed out at the medieval town beneath them, the vibrations of the Ode to Joy thrumming through their bodies.

  The bells finished their piece, and when the ringing in Eliza's own ears stopped as well, she spoke. “Tonight is my last night in Bruges."

  There was no response from Sebastian for a long moment, and then his arms loosened and he pulled slightly away from her.

  Eliza turned within his loose hold. "Sebastian?"

  The frozen look on his face gave way after a moment, melted by a half-hearted smile. "If it's your last night, then we must have mussels and French fries for dinner. You cannot come to Bruges and not eat mussels."

  Was that all he was going to say? She tried to hide her disappointment. "I hope there's not a law about that, forcing tourists to eat mussels," she said.

  "They won't let you on the train if you haven't tried them."

  She thought she sensed a tension beneath his words, however lightly said. She wished she knew what he was thinking, what he was feeling—if anything—but there seemed no way she could ask.

  Which made no sense, in view of what she was considering doing with him tonight. Asking how he felt about her impending departure should have been simple.

  She held her tongue, recognizing that no man would appreciate such a question on the third day of his acquaintance with a woman. But still, she wished she knew if he felt those first pangs of approaching loss that she did, pangs that told her she might not have been as careful of her heart as she had intended.

  "Then by all means, let us dine on mussels," she said instead, and stood on tiptoe to kiss him, and to bring him back from wherever his own thoughts had gone.

  Chapter Eight

  "Would you like to come up? I have some pictures of home in my bag."

  The invitation took Sebastian by surprise. They were standing outside the front door of her B&B. He had been seeking a way to extend the evening, but Eliza had made it clear she wanted to return to her lodging. He had assumed she wan
ted to bring the night to an end.

  The assumption had left him again with a sense of incompletion; it was getting to be a familiar sensation.

  And now an invitation to her room?

  "You can see where I've been staying," she added, as if she needed to sweeten the bait.

  If any other woman were inviting him to her room, he would have known exactly what to think. But Eliza? He couldn't be sure. She probably did have photos of home to show him. "I'd like that," he finally answered.

  She opened the door and led the way up, both of them stopping at the top of the second flight of stairs as she caught her breath.

  "You can go first," she said, gesturing to the final, blond wood flight.

  "Wouldn't you like me to carry you again?”

  "On those?" she gasped. "Are you mad?"

  Mad? He'd been suspecting that was the case since she had told him she was leaving tomorrow. It should not be bothering him like this, itching at his skin like a wool sweater. The timing was off, events were not in order... there was something unfinished.

  Eliza was a sweet, attractive companion he had known for three days. He was not looking for more. He should not care that she was leaving.

  "As you wish," he said, and climbed the stairs ahead of her. He turned at the top to see her crawling her way up, using the staircase as a ladder, and he had to laugh.

  "It's not funny," Eliza said grouchily, as he helped her to her feet at the top.

  "It isn't?" He realized that she was funny, to him. He laughed with her in a way he did not with other women, or with most other people, come to think of it. Her reactions were always unexpected, and he found himself watching her face to see what emotions would play out when he showed her something new. She was unlike any woman he had dated, and it occurred to him for the first time that maybe he had been dating the wrong type, all along. Eliza was not someone he would have chosen for himself, and perhaps–just perhaps–that was why he was still single.

  He followed her into her room, waiting to close the door until she had turned on the small lamp beside the bed. It cast a low, golden light. Intimate. Far more so than the fixture hanging from the ceiling would have been. He took in the details of the room, the dormer window, the small table, the print spread on the bed with the dip in the middle.

  Eliza was beginning to look nervous, her movements growing jerky, digging in her backpack for the promised pictures. He sat down on the side of the bed and caught

  her peeking at him from the corners of her eyes, flighty and tense. His lioness did not seem certain what to do with him now that she had him in her lair.

  She found her photos and then came over to him, standing for a moment in front of him, indecisive, before sitting at his side.

  "These are my parents," she said, handing him a photo. Her thigh was pressed against his, and he could smell the traces of floral soap on her skin as she leaned close, looking at the picture with him.

  "You look like your mother. She's quite beautiful."

  "Thank you. I've always hoped I’ll look like her when I grow old."

  She handed him another photo, one of herself with her brothers, a lit-up Christmas tree in the background. "I'm the eldest. Abe and Mike still complain about how bossy I was growing up."

  He smiled at that, then set the photos on the nightstand and turned to her. She was watching him, her eyes wide, pupils dilated. What she wanted was written there for any man who knew how to read the silent language of women, and what she wanted was too close to his own desires for him to think of saying no.

  He reached up and gently worked the hair elastic from her ponytail, then ran his fingers through the tresses, spreading them over her shoulders in silken waves.

  "There's protection," she said quietly. "In the nightstand drawer."

  He felt a jolt of shock, and turned to the nightstand to cover it. His little nun had protection? He took the unopened box out of the drawer, noting the print in three languages.

  "You planned this," he said. "Last night or this morning. You bought this here in Bruges."

  "Yes." And after a moment, "Are you surprised?"

  "A little, yes." He looked at her, and the mix of innocence and knowing willingness he saw in her face made him want to protect her from men like himself, men who would find such an expression an irresistible invitation to plunder. "Are you sure about this?" He asked it before his body had a chance to stop him.

  She put her hand on his chest, over his heart, and held it there, as if listening with her palm to the beating within. "These three days with you have been as a dream," she said. “Tomorrow I wake. Let me wake with the whole story, and not a sense of something left undone, a dream interrupted before its conclusion, never to be finished."

  Her echo of his own thoughts sent a shiver up his neck, like nothing he had ever felt before. He knew himself to be on the edge of an emotional precipice, and to block out the danger he sensed there he fell back on the solid reality of two bodies alone in a room, male and female.

  He dug his hands into her hair and kissed her, using his weight to push her back onto the bed until she lay beneath him, one of his knees between hers. Her hand on his chest moved up to wrap around his neck, but he captured it along with her other in one of his own hands, pinning them above her head as he kissed her, slowly and deeply, letting her feel his weight on her, his control.

  His free hand went to the hem of her skirt, her thigh smooth and supple beneath his hand as he slowly slid his way up to her underwear. The thin cotton stretched tight across her mound felt heated and damp to his touch. He massaged a slow circle against her, and her thighs parted, asking him for more.

  He moved his mouth, nipping and sucking his way down her neck, licking along her collarbone and then over the rise of her breast, half-exposed by the twisted neckline. He found her nipple through bra and dress, and pinched it gently between his teeth, nibbling at her as his fingers below pushed aside the crotch of her underwear and sank into the humid, rough curls, finding the tender, smooth folds of flesh hidden within the springy covering.

  Eliza shut her eyes as Sebastian stroked her, her arms still stretched above her, offering herself. She felt as if she were one of those chocolate sculptures, melting to Sebastian's touch, willing him to consume her with his mouth. The last of her reservations gave way as his fingertip played at the opening to her, dipping slightly within, then in one long, smooth slide entering her completely, his fingertip pressing up against some hidden spot within her, making her arch against the heel of his hand.

  His hand withdrew to tug at the hips of her underwear, and she helped him to draw them off, then obeyed his hands again by removing her dress and bra. He stood to strip off his clothes, and she sat naked in the middle of the bedspread with her legs folded to the side, watching as each new expanse of his body came into view.

  She felt a quiver inside her when at last he stood bare before her, his erection huge, half a threat and half a promise of what was to come.

  Her eyes crept up the carved, sanded planes of his stomach and chest, his muscled shoulders, and up to his face, where the curve of his lips was a warning of the intent she saw in his eyes.

  The quiver came again, stronger, reminding her how vulnerable she was naked on the bed, and that she had agreed to give herself over to this man and his desires.

  He did not make her wait. He laid his big hands over her ankles and slowly, relentlessly pulled her legs out straight, then off the bed until her hips were at the edge. He knelt between her thighs, sliding his hands across them, then around her back to hold her lightly against him, her nipples brushing through the hair on his chest, his hands and forearms warm and strong against her back. He kissed her gently, lips capturing and releasing her own, tongue running lightly over hers.

  He pushed her back until she lay again on the bedspread, his hands moving down to her hips, pulling her forward. He kissed her belly, small kisses, painting little trails with his tongue down to where the curls began. She felt
his fingers as they pushed aside her hair, opening her like a flower to the touch of his tongue.

  She moaned, a quiet sound of pleasure in the back of her throat that she had never made before. He tasted the length of her, slowly at first, then faster. He took the nub of her arousal between his lips and did something magical, his tongue working the tender flesh in and out as he sucked against her. The moan rose in her throat, her back arching off the bed.

  His mouth released her. “Turn over," he commanded.

  She obeyed without question, and was rewarded with his tongue along the top of the crease in her buttocks, licking up to the base of her spine. She heard the faint crinkle of a condom wrapper, and then he moved her forward until she was lying full on the bed. With his mouth at the side of her neck he lay against her and then took her from behind, forcing her thighs to close around the one leg he had between them, tightening the fit as he slid slowly within her.

  The position brought flashes to mind of lions mating, the male holding the female in place with his teeth, keeping her under control while he took her. She felt him stretching her, filling her, and she moaned again as he began his slow thrusts, the angle and her body's tight sheathing of him sending sensation to places she didn't know she had, deep within where his fingertip had earlier pressed.

  He pulled out and turned her over, propping himself above her with his locked arms on either side. He held her eyes with his own, and as he did she reached down with her own hand and guided him to her.

  He watched her as he thrust within her, altering his movements according to what he saw on her face, his whispered words of "There?" and "Like this?" answered by her own "Yes, oh, yes," again and again. And then he brought his hand down and touched her, and she was aware of nothing but the rippling contractions of pleasure.