“Are you close?”
“Yeah. She’s older, and she tends to baby me. It can be a little overwhelming at times.”
Who he was expanded in my head to now include a sibling. “Any other brothers or sisters?”
“No. Just the two of us.”
“Parents?”
He was quiet a moment. “Yeah, the usual. Two of them. They live out east.”
The address he’d given me. That must have been it.
“I should go,” he said. “So you can sleep in peace.”
I remembered my plan, and realized this was the perfect opportunity to end this right here. The sex and the dumping. Over and done. I’d gotten myself into this mess, and it seemed the only way out. And I was the only one who’d get hurt. Just how hurt? I wasn’t sure.
“You can sleep here if you want,” I said, my heart slamming in my chest, my eyes refusing to make contact with his.
“Really?”
“No sense in driving home right now.” As an afterthought, I added, “And you still have alcohol in your system.” The truth.
“Right.”
I lifted the quilt that I’d tucked around me earlier, inviting him under while giving him a brief and maybe interesting glimpse of my panties.
He blinked as if trying to disguise any reaction as I turned out the light.
Chapter 14
~ Julian ~
I crawled into bed with Ellie, the sheet cold against my hot skin. Once under the covers, I did the gentlemanly thing and turned my back. That’s when the bed shifted and I felt her hand slide inside my jeans. I wasn’t wearing underwear. She cupped me and massaged me and curled against my back as she kissed my neck, her signals very clear.
I’d never gotten out of my jeans so fast, and seconds after I kicked them aside she was cradling me again, this time as we faced each other. I don’t know what happened. It was like all of the pain and anguish of the day exploded, and I ground myself against her hand, gasping at the pain.
She pulled me on top of her as she bent her knees, a welcome if I’d ever felt one. But women liked foreplay, so I held back while at the same time wanting to plunge myself deep inside the hot softness I felt against me.
“Now,” she whispered.
In the back of my mind, I realized this wasn’t unfolding in a typical way. No light kisses that led to deeper kisses that led to skin and more skin and finally the final act. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought she wanted to do it and get it over with.
I found her mouth and I drove my tongue into her, across her teeth. I pushed her T-shirt up under her armpits, and I kneaded one bare breast, and then I spread her legs wider and I continued to suck on her mouth while I slipped myself deep inside her hot tightness.
Oh, my God.
Once I was in there, I lost it and I drove into her, pulling myself out completely with each lift of my hips, each downward plunge grinding against her clit, hoping to make up for the lack of foreplay. My hips were moving fast as I went in and out like a piston. She was moaning under me, her fingers digging into my thighs, her hips rising up to meet every one of my thrusts.
One minute I was calm, thinking okay, let’s have sex. The next, I was out of control.
We were both sweating like mad, and our skin was beginning to make a slapping sound that would have made me laugh if it hadn’t all been so intense. I kept hammering away, and she kept clinging to me, whispering to do it harder. The bed was moving under us, back and forth, the headboard banging against the wall, and I thought I’d never fucked like this, and I’d never given into such a frenzy.
In the back of my mind I knew it was because of what had taken place in the shrink’s office, and I knew I was trying to erase the conversation the same way I erased it with running. But now I was pounding into Ellie.
I didn’t come. Somehow I held it while I continued to drive into her. Sometimes I would quit kissing her and just bury my face in her neck while I pumped away, and other times I would grasp the headboard with one hand and work her clit with the other while I slowly ground myself into her, constantly changing the tempo.
And finally, finally, I couldn’t hold out any longer and I took one long, deep thrust, driving myself as deep as it would go, lifting her from the bed with both of my hands, filling her.
Then I collapsed and just lay there inside her.
Now I know why sex is sometimes called the little death, because I couldn’t move. Not a finger.
We were stuck together. I was aware of our wet bodies, from her breasts down our stomachs to my dick that was still buried deep.
“Wow,” she finally said.
I extricated myself and rolled over to my back. Wow was right.
In the darkness, I groped for her and found her belly and rubbed my palm against her soft skin. “God, I’m sorry.” I was out of breath. I never got out of breath. “I kind of lost it.”
“No kidding.”
Did she sound upset? I didn’t think so. She’d sounded groggy and stunned, but not upset. “Did I hurt you? Was I too rough?” God, please don’t say I hurt you.
She was quiet a long time, so long that I thought I’d better get dressed and leave, or so quiet that I began to wonder if I’d killed her. Could you fuck someone to death? No, that was insane. People were made to do what we’d just done.
“I finally understand the appeal of athletes,” she said in a level and sober voice.
I laughed, and the laugh was part relief, and part delight at that blunt honesty of hers.
“And tomorrow I’m going to be really embarrassed about this, but right now I don’t care.”
I felt her leg wrap around me until she was straddling my thighs. She began to stroke me again, just kind of a soft petting that slowly increased until she was waking me back up. And it was like she couldn’t wait another moment. Before I was even fully engorged, she came down on me.
Somewhere along the way she’d removed her T-shirt, and I was able to caress her breasts and play with her nipples. But she quickly grew impatient for a repeat of what had gone before, and I framed her hips with my hands and started the whole ride over again.
Chapter 15
~ Ellie ~
When I’d mentioned being embarrassed, I was talking about having to see my roommates. I knew Julian would be long gone for my walk of shame, and I was right. I heard him get up and heard him get dressed, but I pretended to be asleep. Before he left he whispered my name, and I didn’t budge. Footsteps, followed by the door softy closing, marked his departure from my life.
Later, once the sounds of activity dropped to nothing, I slipped on jeans and a T-shirt and ventured out to find my roommate Carmen on the red couch in front of the window overlooking the Mississippi River, staring at her laptop. She glanced up and said: “That was some performance last night.”
Heat flooded my face.
She had no mercy. “I was really hoping to get up early enough to catch a glimpse of what kind of guy could elicit such noise, but I take it he’s gone.”
“Yeah. Gone.”
I wasn’t a sexual person. Not in comparison to my loft buddies. In the year I’d lived there, I’d spent my share of nights with a pillow wrapped around my head, trying to muffle the sounds coming through the walls, or rather, over the walls. In all that time I’d had one guest, and that had been a disaster.
Before that, a few guys had stirred me up enough to extract a small orgasm, but nothing to really remember once it was over. I’d actually started to think sex really didn’t interest me all that much. Guess I was wrong.
Last night was something I’d probably remember the rest of my life. When I was old and sitting in a nursing home, I’d probably kick back in my rocker and tell the other residents about the night this long-distance runner named Julian fucked my brains out.
I poured myself a glass of orange juice and perched on the bar stool, realized I was sore, so opted to stand.
My whole body tingled. The surface of my skin… it was kinda like it was singing. Like all the capillaries were doing a banana dance. Like, thanks for the sex!
I finished off the orange juice and put my glass in the sink. “I doubt you’ll ever meet him,” I said.
“That’s cool,” Carmen said. “Some of the best sex I’ve ever had was with nameless one-nighters. I think it’s the lack of inhibition that kind of thing brings. Or the booze.”
Carmen was one of those practical earth chicks. She worked at a co-op, was a strict vegan, and sex was natural and didn’t have to take place just within a relationship. I knew that was the way to be, but I couldn’t remove the relationship from the equation. So last night also brought with it a weird sense of guilt since I’d entered into it knowing it would never be a relationship.
But there it was. And I was glad it had happened, because I wasn’t even sure I would have ever known what sex was truly about if it hadn’t. And that kind of blew my mind.
Was he just that good? Or was it something else? And then I thought of the girls, Charlotte and Paige and Beba, and the way they’d giggled and said I’d want to have sex with Julian. Had he blown their minds too? Probably. Most likely. I almost wanted to know. I almost wanted to compare notes.
Like it or not, I was now part of the sisterhood.
“I gotta run,” Carmen said, slipping her laptop into her messenger bag and unfolding herself from the couch. “Glad you finally got some.”
Most people would have said that as a joke, but Carmen was totally serious.
After the door clicked closed, I thought about taking a shower, knowing I should take a shower, but I felt this weird reluctance to wash Julian off my skin. And let’s face it. I was still high from our hours together while at the same time trying not to think about never seeing him again. I didn’t want to dwell on that. And actually what had happened between us gave me some hope that I might be able to have a somewhat normal relationship with somebody someday.
Or not.
The intercom buzzed. I pushed the Talk button. “Yeah?”
“It’s me.”
Me. Me, being him. Me, being Julian.
My heart began to pound, my mouth went dry, and my brain misfired. I took a few steps toward the hall that would lead me to the shower I should have taken. Then I stopped and went back to the intercom on the wall. “Come on up.” I pushed the button that unlocked the entry.
Seconds later I heard footsteps pounding up the metal stairs, then a weird rap on the door, more like someone had kicked it rather than knocked.
I opened it to see Julian standing there with a carryout bag between his teeth, and two coffees, one in each hand.
Stepping inside, he passed one of the coffees to me, then pulled the bag from his mouth and dropped it on the counter. “Breakfast,” he explained.
This was not supposed to happen.
Well, in the original version, in the revenge girls’ version, this was exactly what was supposed to happen. But in my version…no.
“I don’t know how you like your coffee. I have a latte and straight black.”
“Latte,” I said in a baffled voice.
“Ah.” He checked his cup then traded me. “I kinda thought you might be a latte girl.” He set his paper cup aside, and now I could see it came from Espresso Royal, the same place I’d met the girls that first day.
He tore open the bag to reveal two scones.
“That’s a lot of sugar.”
A stupid thing to say. A really stupid thing to say.
I wasn’t prepared for this. Morning after the hot sex thing. I wasn’t prepared to face him. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be prepared to face him after the stuff we’d done. Maybe Carmen was onto something when she said one-night stand sex was the best kind. Maybe that’s why I’d been so uninhibited.
“Hey, your eyes. They’re not violet.”
I wasn’t wearing contacts.
I shoved the latte at him. “I have to go do something.” Something being hide, get away, regroup. Which I liked to do in the shower. Alone.
I turned and hurried to the bathroom, locking the door behind me. A minute later, warm water was pouring over my head.
What was he doing here?
Every touch of the washcloth reawakened my already sensitive skin, and by the time I shut off the shower and dried myself, I wasn’t thinking of much else other than Julian.
I tried to tamp down my sex drive as I wrapped a towel around myself and slipped into my bedroom for a pair of yoga pants and a gray T-shirt. Contacts back in.
In the living room, I found him staring out the window. “This is a great view.” He turned. “But this isn’t the same place I dropped you off the night we met.”
“No.” An excuse came easily because it made total sense. “I didn’t think it was a good idea for someone I’d just met to know where I really lived.”
“A girl’s gotta be careful.”
“Right.”
I sipped the latte, but I wasn’t sure my stomach could handle anything else. I was so nervous, and I’d hardly slept—a bad combination.
The distance of the room still separated us. Me, hovering near the kitchen counter, Julian backlit by the window, his body a silhouette. Finally he crossed the space and came to stand in front of me. He wasn’t all that much taller, maybe five inches or so.
“I didn’t think you’d come back,” I found myself saying.
His eyes were a little bloodshot, and his hair was a mess, and he needed to shave. His lips…his lips were red, and I wondered if they were as sensitive as mine were this morning. After all the kissing…
“Why’d you think that?” he asked, putting his coffee aside, removing his jacket and tossing it on a chair.
I shook my head, my heart still pounding. I’ve always laughed at the ways people described sex and attraction. It always seemed so corny and melodramatic. And then there was the whole physical response. The body that responded without engaging the brain.
I was experiencing that now. And it was kind of funny, but not funny. I actually felt hot all over, and especially hot and even swollen between my legs. Like if a female could have an erection then I was having one.
We were both thinking about sex—that was obvious.
“I have roommates,” I said.
“Are any of them here?”
“No. But they could come home any time.”
“So we should go someplace private.”
“Yeah. We should.”
I put my hand in his and led him to the bedroom, to the rumpled sheets spilling to the floor, a space that still smelled like warm bodies. As soon as the door clicked shut, we reached for each other, now, in the bright light of day. I tugged my T-shirt over my head, and before he could help me I stripped down to nothing, kicking my yoga pants and panties aside. Still dressed, he pushed me back on the bed, his breathing uneven. “God, you’re so beautiful,” he whispered in an awe-filled voice that made me even hotter.
I let out this low moan and spread my legs for him. He slipped his hands under my buttocks while his fingers dug in. He kissed me and licked me until I was going crazy under him, arching against his mouth, feeling his teeth and his hot breath on me. I moaned and had an orgasm right there with him between my knees. And while the shudders rocked me, he continued to taste me and kiss me, his mouth making sucking sounds against my hot flesh.
I should have been embarrassed, but I wasn’t.
At one point, he straightened, his knees between mine. I push his hands away and unzipped his jeans, freeing his erection. I cupped him and stroked him. I took him in my mouth and ran my tongue around the tip of him, following the contour and the crease. I raked my teeth against him, and he moaned and thrust himself deeper into my mouth. I sucked him as hard as I could. He trembled and pulled away long enough to strip his jeans completely and drop to his back, his breathing irregular, both of us sweating in a room that wasn’
t hot.
I kissed him everywhere, but mostly his penis while he moaned and dug his fingers into my scalp. Finally, I climbed up his body and impaled myself with him, burying him deep. He filled me, and as I moved my body, I ground myself against his pubic bone.
I couldn’t get enough of him. I couldn’t get close enough no matter how deep his penetration.
Later, we showered together. And it was ridiculous, but we couldn’t stop. With the touching, the tasting, the following the shape of him, hearing him pull in a trembling breath, feeling him shudder—it gave me a sense of power. Until he finished it. Until he drove himself into me and I clung to him while moaning and making sounds I swear I’d never made before in my life. This kind of whimpering, this kind of cry.
Back in the bedroom, curled up and temporarily exhausted, we lay in bed, his arm around me, my head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat while he occasionally kissed my forehead and stroked my face.
His phone rang.
He didn’t answer it.
Then the text messages started coming, and he finally shifted from under me, left the bed and found his jeans, dug in the pocket, and pulled out his cell phone. He read the screen, frowning, all the while standing there nude and beautiful.
“I have to go,” he said. “The call and texts are from my coach. I missed an important meeting, and he’s really pissed. I’ve gotta stop by his office.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not.” He looked down at me, hair hanging over his forehead. No doubt or hesitation, just the facts. “I don’t want to let you out of my sight.”
His words made me feel wonderful. Even more wonderful than I already felt.
“I’m afraid you might vanish or something,” he said. “It’s like you just appeared in my life when I most needed you, and that makes this not seem real. Does that make any sense?”
He wanted me around. My heart was singing.
“Yeah. It does.” I had to tell him. About the revenge girls. About what I’d done. Would he forgive me? Maybe he’d laugh. Because when I thought about it… We’d never have met if not for the girls. We’d never have met if I hadn’t decided to take the job.
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