Lust

by Leddy Harper

  Her cheeks were red, reminding me of Ivy’s when she got embarrassed.

  Fuck! I needed to stop thinking about her and focus on the woman in front of me.

  “Stand up straight, shoulders back,” I demanded and she did as she was told. “You want to be seen as sexy? Nothing is sexier than confidence. Slouching is not confident.” As I spoke, she stood taller, straighter, and popped her hip out. Yes, that was sexy.

  I stood from my chair and walked over to where she was standing. My fingers reached out and pulled the strap from her bra off her shoulder while watching her face. Her eyes shot away and I had to remind her to again to look at me. I ran a finger across her stomach, making her hold her breath until I was done.

  Usually, things like this caused some kind of attention in my pants—a twitch or something—but not this time. Instead, I was more focused on doing my job than what my job usually did to me. It was strange, but I couldn’t help but think it had something to do with Ivy.

  Dara proceeded to remove the remainder of her clothes, standing in front of me with absolutely nothing on except her heels. Looking at her, she was sexy, but she wasn’t the one I wanted to look at. She had everything I loved to see on a woman, large breasts that hadn’t been taken down by gravity yet, curvy hips that were made to grab, and a round ass, perfect for leaving red handprints on. But it wasn’t what I wanted to see.

  I instructed Dara to get dressed again and then wrapped up the session, informing her she cleared. My admission seemed to have taken her by surprise because she looked sad at the knowledge of not coming back. When asked what was wrong, she shyly told me she thought we would do more.

  I could have done more with her, but I knew it was wrong. Ethically speaking, she didn’t have an issue with sex, only with herself. So there was no need to take it to that step. The other reason was more difficult to admit to myself, though. After seeing Ivy, and after being with Alyssa the other night, I didn’t have much of a desire for it anymore. I mean, I had the desire, but only for one person. And I needed to get that out of my system before I could move on.

  The rest of the day was a blur as I counted down the time until I could see Ivy. Different scenarios ran through my head, all of them ending with me buried deep inside of her. I knew that couldn’t happen, and I knew I couldn’t call Alyssa to relieve me before I picked Ivy up, so I was left with taking care of myself in the shower… twice. I only hoped that was enough to keep me away from her.

  *****

  The club was dark, loud, and crowded, just as I told Ivy it would be. I thought it would be good for her, but it proved to work out best in my favor. The darkness allowed me to look at her in ways she should have never seen me doing. The noise level kept us from talking too much, since I didn’t trust myself with words around her while she was wearing skin-tight leggings and a really low-cut top that gave her an illusion of having cleavage. And the crowd kept her eyes busy as I stole illicit glances her way.

  I ordered us each a drink, knowing I had to limit my intake, and then sat on a couch against the wall near the dance floor. I had given myself permission to have three drinks with nothing other than water for the last hour we would be there. It wasn’t my typical rule, but it was needed. Without the alcohol, I knew I would be too rigid around her, but if I had too much, I knew I wouldn’t be able to control myself. And I knew Ivy would need something to loosen her up as well. I convinced myself that we needed a few drinks and didn’t allow the dark voice in my head to tell me how wrong it was.

  “I don’t know how I’m supposed to act,” Ivy yelled near my ear so that I could hear her.

  “Act like Joes,” I replied with a smile only I knew what it meant.

  “I don’t know how to act like her.”

  I didn’t know what she meant by that. Joes had self-esteem issues and so did Ivy; I would assume she would know how to act. I leaned in closer to her ear and asked, “What would she do right now? If this was the book, what would she be doing?”

  Her brows pinched together as she looked at me. “Before the bar scene or after?”

  I knew exactly what she was talking about. I had the picture of that scene pinned to my metaphorical corkboard in my mind since reading it. “For the sake of having a good time, after.”

  “Then she would suck this drink down and dance. Then she’d go home with Matty.”

  She completely took me by surprise with that. I glanced at her glass and realized it was halfway gone, and wondered just how much of a lightweight she was. “Then suck away, Joes.” Wrong thing to say. Once those words left my lips, all I could picture was her sucking… and the bulge in my pants knew it wasn’t her drink.

  “You’re not really acting like I imagined Matty would.”

  I shrugged my shoulders and tried to look away. “From what I gather of the dude, he’d be fucking you on the dance floor. And from what I gather of you, you wouldn’t like that too much.” I looked back at her and caught her wide eyes. “Am I wrong?”

  Her head shook from side to side, swaying her hair over her shoulders. “Maybe I picked the wrong book.” Her voice was quiet, but I was able to read her lips well enough to understand what she was saying.

  “No, I just think we haven’t had enough to drink yet.” That gained a smile from her.

  The air around us was full of tension until the end of her second drink. By then, her knee was bouncing to the beat of the music and she seemed to have loosened up quite a bit. I was still nursing my first drink and felt like I was wound tighter than line on a fishing rod pulling in a Great White.

  I needed to do something, anything. I couldn’t just sit there for the rest of the night and battle with myself. I took her hand in mine before I talked myself out of it, and led her to the dance floor. Her body stiffened against mine as she looked up at me with a concerned expression. With my hands now on her hips and slowly moving them in time with mine, I leaned down to meet her ear with my lips. “Relax. It’s just me and you out here… no one else.”

  “I told you… I can’t dance.”

  I smiled and said, “I can’t either. So don’t worry about it.”

  No matter what I did or said, she was stiff and nervous. After one song of horrible dancing from both of us, we sat back down and ordered another drink. I had to do something. Everything that played out in my mind throughout the day was proving to be the complete opposite. I needed her to loosen up, to get out of her own head. Part of me was wondering if the loud club was a bad idea. It helped with keeping my mouth closed, but it seemed to have had the same effect on her, and that’s not what I wanted.

  I placed my hand on her thigh and felt her body freeze. “What can I do to help calm you down?”

  She shook her head with a worried look in her eye. It almost seemed as though she was on the verge of having a panic attack. “I’m fine just sitting here.”

  “Why don’t you want to dance?”

  Her eyes moved away from mine and I could tell she didn’t want to answer me.

  I grabbed her chin and forcefully made her look at me. “You are not Ivy Jaymes tonight. You are Joes. You are strong, confident, and sexual. I am not Cade. I am not your therapist. I am Matt, who is in love with you and who does things to your body no one else can. Do you understand me?” I was yelling at her as if it were a lecture, a harsh pep talk that she needed to hear.

  “I don’t know how to be sexual,” she argued back.

  I winked at her and smiled. “Good thing for you that Joes does. And it’s another good thing that I am a sex god.” It was meant as a joke, but saying that to her and watching her eyes go wide made the smile fall from my lips. I had to back away before I did something I would regret.

  What she did next shocked and surprised me at once. She touched my face, keeping it from pulling too far away from her, and leaned in, pressing her lips to mine like she had a week earlier. It was soft and quick, but enough to make the breath in my lungs disappear. I wanted to lean in and deepen it, lick her bottom lip until
she opened up for more, but she didn’t give me the chance. Instead, she took my hand and pulled me back out into the crowd.

  Her back was to my chest and I had my hands on her hips. Her ass was moving against the front of my jeans and I worried I would give her a surprise if she kept it up. After a minute, I could feel her body physically relax against mine and I began to move my hands flat against her stomach. I needed to feel her and that was the only way it was going to happen.

  She placed her hands on top of mine, keeping them from wandering further along her body. I had my head bent down by the side of her face and it allowed me to smell her hair. I felt creepy doing that at first, but there was something about her scent that calmed me. I felt calm, relaxed, happy even. For the first time in God knows how long, I felt light. I didn’t feel the darkness that had always surrounded me, even while standing in a dark room packed with hundreds of strangers. I didn’t feel the weight of my past on my shoulders. And the hatred for love that had always swirled within me seemed to have disappeared as well. Ivy was my salvation. She was my therapy. And as much as I wanted to rush things along to make the uncertainty of things go away, I knew I needed her on some level. That thought should have scared me. It should have evoked a fear deep within, but the scent of her hair and the feel of her body in my hands was enough to keep it away. At least for the time being.

  She spun in my arms, locked her fingers together behind my neck, and pulled me closer. With a soft, lingering kiss on my cheek, she moved her lips to my ear and asked, “Is this what it’s like to feel sexual?”

  My grip on her tightened as I pulled her body impossibly closer. I could feel the heat from her chest against mine and it caused me to catch my breath. “Is this what it feels like to be in love?” I hadn’t meant to ask that. I was only going to answer her question, say something about feeling sexy, but somewhere between my brain and my mouth, the words changed.

  It startled me and I froze, but Ivy kept moving, not paying any attention to the inner turmoil that filled me. With her lips so close to my ear and her fingers playing with the back of my hair, I couldn’t focus on shit. I couldn’t keep my mind centered on one thing. She was intoxicating me, more so than the liquor that seemed to have evaporated out of my system.

  “I don’t know; what does it feel like?” she asked. Her voice had me imagining that she asked it with her eyes closed and her bottom lip between her teeth like some women do when trying to be seductive. I was pretty sure that’s not what she was doing, but it was all I could think about.

  Again, the signals that my brain were sending to my mouth had misfired. I didn’t want to answer her question. I didn’t want to feed into the accidental question that lingered between us and muddled my brain. But I found myself answering anyway. “Like I want to hold onto you forever and never let you go. Like I want to feel your body against mine, skin against skin, until you’re etched into my every pore. I feel like I can’t breathe without your air and my heart doesn’t beat properly without mirroring yours.” There was so much more I could’ve said, but my brain decided to work and I stopped before the hole I had dug was too deep to pull myself out of.

  Ivy pulled her face away from mine and searched my eyes in the dark room. Her hands moved from my hair to my cheeks before pulling my face down, meeting my lips with hers. I was paralyzed and couldn’t find the strength to do anything other than let her lead. It went against everything in me to let her, or anyone, have that much control, but I was hopeless to do anything about it.

  Our bodies stopped moving as her lips took hold of mine, gently searing my skin until my entire body felt like it was burning from the inside out. I took in a deep breath just as she parted her lips, moving her tongue into my mouth, giving me a taste of her. I was gone, completely and wholly lost in her. Normally, I would have taken over by this point. I would have pressed into her, consumed her mouth, and given her all I had, but the fear of pushing her too far kept me from doing so. For the first time in my life, I felt like a domestic animal, content with being owned.

  Her tongue manipulated mine, my hands groped her sides, her arms wrapped around my neck like a boa constrictor, and our bodies pressed hard into one another. I was lost in her, in all of her. From the scent of her skin to the taste of her tongue, from the feel of her body to the breathless sounds she made, I was lost. I needed her. I needed her more than she needed me, and that realization gutted me.

  My want took over as my hands moved south, pawing at her ass through the thin material. My mouth turned greedy, hastily taking charge of her growing advances. My senses were on overload, blocking out everything else, including the ability to know right from wrong. I pressed my hips into her, the only part of my body I had been keeping away from hers. I felt myself grind into her lower stomach, ignoring the alarms and whistles faintly sounding in my brain.

  I heard a deep intake of air and then felt Ivy push away from me. Her eyes were wide and darting all around the room. Her hand landed on her chest as I watched it heave up and down, pressing her small breasts out before letting them fall, over and over again. I didn’t dare take my eyes away from her to see what she was looking at. I could only stand there and try to catch my breath as much as I possibly could. But it was impossible. Ivy Jaymes had stolen my breath. Her presence had created a vacuum around me, leaving me with a lack of sufficient oxygen. Her panicked expression had me feeling anxious, scared, fearful of what she would do. I didn’t want her to run. But if she did, I would chase after her until my legs were too numb to carry me further.

  That’s when her eyes met mine and her face softened in the dark room. The little bit of light from above danced on her face enough for me to see an expression that almost looked worried. I didn’t understand it; why was she looking at me that way? Why was she staring at me as if I had been the one to push her away?

  And then I felt it… the sticky layer of dew on my neck. Once I was aware of that, my brain became aware of everything else—the spot on my shirt between my shoulder blades that felt wet and stuck to my back, the short, desperate gasps of air, and the dark room that seemed darker than before.

  Ivy grabbed my face and started talking, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. Her lips were moving but the words were drowned out by the muted music around us. She must’ve sensed my confusion because she started to motion with her hands and mouth to breathe. I repeated what she was doing, taking in deep breaths and slowly feeling myself calm down.

  That was the second panic attack in two weeks, both times were around Ivy. I knew she wasn’t the reason they came on, but I couldn’t help but think I wouldn’t have had them had she not been with me. At the same time, I didn’t want to think what would have happened had she not been there both times. Was she the cause or was she the cure?

  She didn’t ask a single question or hesitate for one moment. Instead, she grabbed my hand and pulled me off the dance floor where my feet had been planted, pulling me through the crowds until we were outside. We stopped outside of the door and she looked at me, smiling weakly. I couldn’t pull my thoughts together enough to speak or do anything to give her comfort; so, instead, I walked her back to my car.

  Once inside, I quickly unbuttoned my shirt and pulled it off my shoulders, throwing it behind me into the back seat before turning the air on high until my skin prickled in goose bumps. My head dropped into my hands as I tried to process everything. However, the only thing running through my mind was how Ivy was feeling. It was the only thing I cared about. Had I scared her off? Had I done too much? Had I ruined everything? Was she frightened because of what happened between us or because of my panic attack? I worried that she was seeing the real me, the unstable man with issues that dated back to one weekend twenty-seven years ago. The man I kept hidden away, even from myself. The one that rejected any kind of real feelings by erecting a wall of protection that could reach the sky, the one that harbored so much darkness it could cover the earth in a blackout.

  “Cade…” Ivy cautiously rest
ed her hand on my bare shoulder. “Talk to me.”

  I picked my head up and turned to her. “Why?” I asked quietly, my entire body shaking. What was happening to me? Why was I shaking so badly? I didn’t feel cold. And why was I asking her that? Normally, I would’ve already given an excuse or ignored the words completely. Why was I giving her the chance to question me more?

  “What happened back there? What was that? Are you okay?” She sounded so sincere and worried and I wasn’t sure how to handle that. It wasn’t as if no one had shown me worry before—I’d had enough of that as a young child—but there was something in her eyes that begged me to tell her. It begged me to open up and allow her in.

  “You took my breath away, Ivy. It’s as simple as that. I told you I couldn’t breathe if I didn’t have your air. You took it away from me.” I was flirting with her, sure, but on some level, I was expressing the truth. I just didn’t want her to know that. I wanted her to think we were still roleplaying, that I was merely playing a part.

  She moved her eyes to the windshield, suddenly growing smaller in her seat, withdrawing. It took me by surprise because ever since she kissed me on the dance floor, she had shown a level of confidence I had never witnessed before. She took charge when she needed to get me out of there and showed honest compassion when asking if I was okay. Where did that woman go? I needed her back.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, turning the question on her.

  She nodded and then focused on her twisting hands in her lap. “I think it’s time to go home.”

  “I’m not done yet,” I stated, earning her attention.

  “What are we going to do now?”

  I smiled and messed with the temperature controls until it was no longer blowing freezing air through the vents. “You were confident in there. Do you realize that? You were strong, and in control, and sexy as hell. You took charge and you didn’t freak out. But now… now you’re back to twisting your hands together and barely looking at me. What happened, Ivy? Where did you go?”