by Jane Lark
He smiled, his fingers sliding out of me. Then he brought them up to his mouth and sucked them.
A tremor tingled in my belly as those fingers left his mouth and brushed across my lips.
I bit his index finger.
He laughed.
“How was it?”
“Good. I want you, Billy.” My blood hummed the words to a tune written by nature not me.
“Well that’s convenient, ‘cause I want the hell out of you…” He was already moving but turning away…
My heart kicked. What was he doing?––Reaching for his wallet, getting a condom.
The little silver packet slipped into his fingers. He ripped it open.
I rolled onto my back and bit my lip as he put it on.
I didn’t want to watch. This delay let the heat drip out of my blood and cold fear creep in.
Then he turned back and moved over me.
The comforter slipped down further so it lay over his hips and left everything above bare. He could see everything.
But then so could I.
“Ready?” His voice came out deep and heavy, loaded with emotion, like this meant a lot to him, as his weight pressed on his hands, dipping the bed either side of my shoulders.
His hips hovered over my parted thighs.
My heart pounded out a manic beat. The sheer size of his body gave me a sense of dark and dangerous, but when I met his blue gaze, I saw gentleness––Billy. Kind-hearted, lovable, Billy. My friend.
“Yeah.”
“Don’t shut your eyes,” he ordered, as he angled things. I lifted my hips without even thinking, because I wanted him there.
He didn’t ease into me like he’d done the time we’d done it in the SUV––and like Jason had every single time we’d done it––Billy shoved into me, a sudden hard invasion. It filled me up.
“Oh.” The exclamation escaped my lips. He had so much force in his muscular thighs and they pushed mine wider, and all the air out of my lungs.
“Keep your eyes open,” he ordered again, when I would have shut them. Then he was pulling out. My super-sensitized internal flesh grabbed at the sensation as a beautiful pain pulled at my consciousness. I’d swelled down there, as I had in the shower, blood throbbed sensation between my legs.
“Oh.” The sound slipped out as he pressed back in.
He smiled.
I gripped his muscle-packed shoulders.
He could cast spells. He’d been into Harry Potter when we were kids. I remembered that. “Wizard,” I breathed as his hips kept moving.
He did odd things, angling his hips, and pulsing on the edge, and… and… “Billy!” My fingernails cut into his shoulders as another sneaker wave hit out of nowhere, smashing into me.
Then he moved faster, smiling, pushing in and pulling out, over and over, the muscles in his thighs working hard.
Our gazes clashed. “You’re not fighting me, Lind. Fight for me…”
I bit my lip and shut my eyes––
“Keep your eyes open.”
Oh Lord. My eyelids snapped up and I pushed my hips against him hard. I tried to catch his rhythm. If kissing was tag, this wasn’t like a race, it was a dance… a blissful dance.
My body had woken up. Been switched on. Turned on… No wonder people said that.
Hot. Sweating. My mouth dry… My blood hummed… “I’m gonna come again.” This time I felt it approach, it simmered, rippling through my body, threatening to pull me back out to sea.
“I’m gonna come too…” Emotion burned in his eyes.
He looked down, watching our bodies join.
I stopped moving. “Frick, don’t stop, Lind. Don’t stop…”
I started again, shutting my eyes, because he wasn’t watching me, and let sensations skim through my nerves and take hold.
The fact that he watched made my skin burn hotter.
Sound left my mouth every time he pressed in and I pushed up.
He increased the pace. I followed his lead.
A race. A dance. Move and counter move.
He penetrated harder, hitting me roughly…
The wave hit. It swilled into me, like it smashed into a narrow rock pool on the shore.
The earth rocked around us; he didn’t stop, but took over. The winner of the race, pounding into me, hitting my body with a force that kept my temperature up and the sensations spinning inside me.
Fighting. Racing. Pushing toward his end.
My fingers clung in his hair, holding on. All I could do was hold still against this onslaught and let him do as he wished. There was no more dancing and I couldn’t race against this, I’d never win. He wasn’t allowing me back to earth until he’d got to his end.
My head pressed into the pillow and my toes curled gripping the sheet. Let… But it wasn’t that sort of let. This was nothing like anything that had happened before.
I came again, the feeling even more intense. How could it happen again, when I was still high on the last one?
“Ahhh.” Billy shouted, announcing his end, a low animalistic roar of sound, as he pushed in deep and hard. He pulsed inside me, holding still, his body rigid.
I opened my eyes. He looked at me, but his gaze had clouded. He shut his eyes and a low growl left his throat as he withdrew then rolled off me. Then he laughed. “Shit.” His hand came up and gripped his hair.
His body glistened with sweat in the light from the bedside lamp, making the ridges and hollows across his chest and abdomen more beautiful. The comforter rested over his groin, revealing that little cut of muscle at his hips.
He’d only just finished and I wanted to do it again.
His leg bent up beneath the comforter. “That was something…”
I guess he wasn’t disappointed. He breathed hard, his fingers still in his hair. Then he sat up, his eyes opening. “I better go get rid of the condom.”
When he disappeared into the bathroom, I pulled the comforter up. My arms held it over me. I’d been disloyal to Jason. I’d cheated. He’d dumped me months back and had a completely new life––a wife and kid. But my heart still belonged to him. I’d broken that––and discovering I could enjoy sex with Billy, Jason’s best friend, made everything all mixed up and wrong.
Tears tingled a path down my cheeks. I wiped them away as I heard Billy pee.
I felt awkward. I was back in the room, naked beneath the comforter, lonely and scared.
He came back in naked, beautiful, big and confident.
My heartbeat pulsed out appreciation. The ache between my legs reminding me there was no doubt my body liked his.
I swallowed against the dryness in my throat. “Can you get me some water?”
“Yeah, course.” He turned to get a bottle, then threw it on the comforter in front of me.
I sat up, holding the comforter over my breasts, opened the bottle and sipped from it as he got back in bed.
I put the bottle down on the chest beside the bed. When I turned back, he lifted his arm. “Come here.”
I did but I cried again, my arms reaching about his midriff and then clinging as he held me against his chest. I got his velvety skin wet.
His fingers brushed through my hair. “What are you crying for?”
“Because it was good.”
“And that’s made you cry…?”
“Yeah, it doesn’t feel right. I don’t know. I shouldn’t be here. It’s like it’s a dream and I’ll wake up soon,” with Jason.
His fingers stroked through my hair. “It’s okay. It feels like a dream to me too. Switch out the light and we’ll go to sleep. Maybe it’ll feel more real in the morning.”
I rolled away and flicked the switch, then lay on my side, facing away from him and curled up. I didn’t know what had hit me or what was wrong with me. I had too much going on in my life. I’d escaped it for an hour of bliss but that made the burden of reality even heavier…
This wasn’t a dream. Jason wasn’t ever coming back.
But it wasn�
�t the thought of Jason making me cry anymore. It was Mom. How could I have forgotten about Mom?
Billy moved behind me and curled around me, spooning; his breath caressing my shoulder.
Chapter Nine
Billy
I’d been watching Lindy for ages, my head balanced on my palm, as I lay on my side next to her.
For a girl who hated sex she’d been hot last night. It hadn’t ever been that good with anyone else. But maybe that’s ‘cause it was her. It’s like it’s a dream. I got that emotion.
Lindy and me.
The girl I’d wanted for as far back as I could remember…
I wanted to touch her face. But I didn’t want to wake her.
I was the first person who’d seen her like this. Without makeup. Truly naked.
Lust twisted in my belly, tangling up with the love playing guitars in my heart.
How could she not see how beautiful she was? She looked pretty frickin’ awesome to me. The naked tone of her lips was a very light pink. Her black-tinted eyelashes flickered. My gaze lifted to the thin lines of her plucked eyebrows; she’d tinted them too. But her cheekbones were strong and natural and her nose had that cute little upward tilt. My fingers itched to play with the waves in her blonde hair as it spread over the pillow. I’d stroke a finger along her nose too, touching because I could, sweep a finger along her jaw and down the column of her neck. Her skin had tanned since we’d got here so it didn’t look so pale.
The girl was beautiful.
Her eyes opened.
“Hey.” I said, my voice deep.
“Hey.”
My fingers brushed her hair off her forehead, then ran the path I’d imagined… before coming back up her neck to touch her pale lips. They parted.
I wanted to have sex with her again, but I wouldn’t. I figured she’d want me to leave her alone to get used the idea. Frick she’d cried. What had that been about? I’d chickened out of forcing a real answer from her. I had a feeling the truth would hurt. A huge, heavy stone, a lump of scared weighted down my belly, afraid the real answer was––I was thinking of Jason. That’s why I’d wanted her eyes open, so she saw me. But she’d shut them at the end and then she’d cried.
“How are you?” The husk of emotion echoed in my voice as her bright-blue eyes looked questions. I avoided the ones I wouldn’t want to know.
“Okay. Did you sleep okay?”
“Uh huh.” I played with her hair, threading it through my fingers.
Her hand lifted and rubbed over my hair, then down my cheek. “You’re all prickly, you need a shave.”
I laughed. “Yeah.”
“What do you want to do today?”
Stay in bed with you and have sex with you over and over again… But seeing as that wasn’t an option. “The surf is meant to be up today, do you mind if we go down on the beach and I take my board?”
She smiled. “If you want. I still can’t believe I didn’t know you could surf…”
“Yeah, well the summer I learned, you and Jason had buried yourselves in a love-nest. You had no interest in what I was doing…”
She frowned.
Dumb error! Why had I mentioned his name?
“We did not, we––“
“You did.” I turned and got up, seeing as I’d invited Jason into the bed with us, I was getting out. “You wouldn’t let him do anything without you. He’d have dropped me, like you dropped all your friends, if I hadn’t gone to the same college as you guys.” I talked with my back to her, picked up my shorts and top and pulled them on.
“Are you angry with me about that? That sounded angry…”
And she sounded confused. I wasn’t surprised I didn’t really know where it came from.
Old pain and jealousy.
I rubbed the leopard on my chest. I’d spent that first summer here fighting myself, mastering the waves and mastering my head. Trying to convince myself Jason and Lindy were together and that was it. I’d had to stop jealousy eating me up––he was my best friend. I hadn’t succeeded and I had come here every summer since, doing the same thing. But then when I had gone home last year, I’d discovered that Jason had gone to New York…
I turned back.
She leaned up on her elbows, the comforter barely covering her breasts.
She was beautiful––I’d had sex with her.
Air pulled into my lungs. I breathed it out. “I’m not angry. I was just a bit messed-up myself that summer. The waves got me through it.”
“How come I didn’t know?”
“Because you never asked, and like I said, you and Jason were holed-up. I’m gonna go back to my room, shower and shave, turn up there in an hour and I’ll get you breakfast.”
She smiled, a look in her eyes that said “please like me”. It wasn’t a smile I was used to from Lindy. Had I always overlooked her lack of confidence or had she hidden it? “I’ll see you in an hour.” A “please like me” pitch caught in her voice too.
I smiled back, walked over and pressed a quick kiss on her lips. She didn’t have to work me. I loved her. I’d never succeeded in getting her out of my head. The leopard on my chest had been the outside view of the inner pain that clawed at me whenever I was with her. “See you in an hour.”
Lindy
As soon as the door shut, I got up, went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. My naked face hit me. I hated it. I turned away and sat on the toilet to pee, gripping my head.
What happened last night was me. I hadn’t dreamed it. My nerves hummed with the sensations he’d taught my body and my thighs ached.
I showered, running a soapy cloth over my skin, while images of his hands attacked my brain.
Then I retreated into the person I knew, hiding behind makeup. But in the mirror I could still see that new person. I was different. I’d experienced things I hadn’t known existed.
I picked a cherry-pink bikini to wear, then pulled on my denim shorts and a pale-blue sleeveless tee. I covered it with a purple sweat top. I slipped my feet into my sandals, grabbed my backpack, took a deep breath, and then set off to knock on his door.
He was shirtless with wet, ruffled hair. The leopard cut its claws into his shoulder. He turned away. The cargo shorts he had on, hung low on his hips, flashing those taught lines of muscle that came up across his pelvic bone, and when he turned the top curve of his butt.
“Take a seat,” he said, with an easy smile, pointing at the sofa bed, that was folded back into a sofa. His holdall was open on the floor, with his clothes piled messily in it.
I sat down and looked up at him. His room smelled of melted butter and frying tomatoes.
He grabbed a jug of whisked eggs. The muscle in his abdomen clenching and shifting as he tipped the eggs into the pan with the tomatoes.
“When did you get food to cook with?”
“When we got here. I’m a big boy, I get hungry.” He threw me a grin over his shoulder, patting his flat belly with one hand as the other stirred the eggs.
My wits scrambled like the eggs.
I leaned back and lifted my feet up on the sofa. “How many girls have you been with? I don’t remember you properly going out with anyone at college…”
He glanced over his shoulder, his eyes wide. “Why? It doesn’t matter.”
“Nope it doesn’t, but I just want to know. You know about me…” I left Jason’s name unsaid.
Billy sighed, his shoulders lifting and falling as he stirred the eggs. “I have no idea. Quite a few. I haven’t counted them. I’m a guy…”
I didn’t say anything; it didn’t really matter. “But you never brought anyone back to the apartment.”
“Because it would have felt wrong with you…” He stopped, taking a breath as he shifted the eggs off the heat. Then he looked at me. “With you and Jason in the apartment. So I always kept it out of the apartment. But you two didn’t go to parties. I did.”
That was true. “So you had hook-ups…”
“I hooked up w
ith girls, who wanted to hook up with me. There was nothing in it and no one was let down or disappointed; they knew what we were doing.” He had his back to me again, dishing up.
Disappointment curdled in my belly. I didn’t even know why. “Was that what last night was then? A hook-up?”
He turned with my plate of eggs and tomatoes. His blue eyes intense and penetrating. “Last night was last night. It was just about you and me and no one else, and we’ll see where it goes, shall we?”
“Yeah.” My brain was too troubled to think beyond twenty-four hours anyway. He sat down and we ate, without speaking.
When he’d finished he got up and put his plate in the sink. “I’ll take you down to the beach and get you settled then get my board and wetsuit out of the SUV.”
“Okay. I’ll wash this stuff up while you get a top and some shoes on.”
He laughed but turned away as I went to the sink.
I’d spent three years living with Billy and Jason, I’d cleaned up after him before. But now everything was different. There was no Jason, and me and Billy had had sex last night. Good sex!
My heart pounded guilt into my blood.
Billy hunted through his stuff, then went in the bathroom.
I shoved the guilt away, kicking it in the ass. I deserved to live. Mom would not be upset… and Jason wouldn’t give a shit.
The scent of Billy’s aftershave came into the room before he did. “You ready?” He leaned over my shoulder and took the cloth I was wiping the drainer down with.
My belly wobbled like Jell-O and the floor tipped sideways.
He caught my arm. “You okay?”
Had I started falling?
“Yeah,” I pulled myself together, straightened up and stepped away.
“Put your stuff in my safe, then if you want to come in the water with me, you won’t have to worry.”
“I’m not going in the water.”
He gave me a half-smile. “Whatever, come on.”
He grabbed the rug that we’d used the other day from the floor near his holdall and tossed it over his shoulder as we left the room, his hand hovering near my back. Then as we walked down to the beach, his fingers settled at my waist.
