“Dig in, babe,” he says.
I sit cross-legged, and try to figure out a way to eat while keeping the sheet tucked under my arms. Adam watches me for a few seconds, fighting a grin.
“What?” I ask, giving him a sideways glare.
He shrugs, the smile ghosts across his lips, gone again immediately. “Nothing. You’re just so fucking cute it’s ridiculous.”
“And that means…?” I prompt.
He shovels a bite of eggs into his mouth and speaks after he’s chewed a few times. “You’re being so modest all of a sudden. It’s just cute.”
I sigh. “I didn’t care when we were in the moment, but now, it’s different. I’m not…I don’t even get changed in front of Ruthie, and I’ve known her for years, and we share that shoe box of a room every summer.”
“Why?” he asks, as he snags his T-shirt off the floor and hands it to me.
I put it on with a grateful smile at him.
“Why what?” I cut my French toast into tiny squares and take a bite. I can’t help a moan of bliss from escaping as the rich flavors explode in my mouth. This is no IHOP French toast. It’s fancy gourmet food, bursting with spices and ingredients I can’t identify, but I know I’ve never had them in French toast before.
“Good, huh?” Adam says. “Why are you so uncomfortable being naked?”
I shrug and keep my eyes on my breakfast rather than him. “I just am. For lots of reasons.”
He sighs and takes several bites. I can feel him thinking, processing. “You really won’t tell me one single thing about yourself, will you?” he says eventually.
“It’s not like that, Adam. I just…don’t see the point.” I swipe a chunk of French toast through syrup, wash it down with coffee.
Again he doesn’t respond immediately. “There’s no point in getting to know each other?”
“Not really.” I finally look up at him. He’s troubled, judging by the expression on his face. “I mean, it’s not like you’ve told me much either.”
Adam scrapes the last of the eggs into a pile. “What do you want to know?” He laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “That you can’t find with a quick Google search, I mean.”
I groan in frustration and set my plate aside, empty except for the bacon, which I saved for last. “Adam, god. It’s not about information. I’m sure you would tell me whatever I wanted to know. I’m not doubting that. And I’m not hiding anything.”
“Then tell me anything. One fucking thing.”
“Why?” I nibble at a slice of bacon. “What’s the point? Let’s not make this something it isn’t, Adam.”
He growls in irritation. “You keep saying that. ‘What this is, what this isn’t.’ I thought we’d already gone over this.”
“Adam. You don’t have sex with someone you’ve known barely forty-eight hours and think it’s gonna be a match made in heaven. Especially not when you’re leaving. That’s all I mean.” I have to push away the disappointment I feel when he doesn’t disagree. “I’ve had a great time, Adam. You’re amazing. This has been incredible. Honestly, the best two days of my life, and that’s the truth. So thank you.”
“So you’re going to tell me you didn’t feel…I’m not sure how to put it…a—a connection? Last night, you didn’t feel that?” His eyes bore into mine, and I’m trying desperately to deny what I see there.
I have to protect myself. I can’t go there with him. I can’t let him know that I did feel it, that I still feel it. I can’t get attached. Can’t let my emotions out of their cage. So I lie, sort of. “I mean, maybe? I don’t know. It was incredible sex, I felt that.” Which is true, and I hope that came out casual. It’s not as if I have anything to compare it to.
Adam stares at me for a long moment, his eyes piercing, demanding, and open. I see his emotions. I see that he felt something, just like I did. But it still means nothing. He’s leaving, and I’ll never see him again, so what’s the point? I keep my eyes neutral. It takes every ounce of strength I possess to do so. I’ve got a lifetime of experience in burying my emotions to draw from, a lifetime of denying the pain of loneliness, the pain of a foster-father’s fists or belt, the pain of never fitting, never belonging, of never having a real home. I know how to block everything out, how to pretend I’m unaffected. I know this like I know how to breathe, because it’s what I do, what I’ve always done, what I’ll always do. So I do it. I imagine a brick wall going up, brick by brick, around my heart, around my soul, around my emotions, and I build it high, build it strong.
After an eternity, Adam tosses back his coffee and sets the mug down on the side table with excessive gentleness, as if to combat the urge to smash it. And then he stands up, squares his shoulders, lets out a breath, and walks with stiff precision to the balcony, closing the door behind himself.
I stay where I am, still and silent and cold.
But I can’t leave him like this. I can’t walk out and let him think this meant nothing to me. I can’t walk away yet, not when I can see the hurt in the slump of his shoulders as he leans his forearms on the railing of the balcony. It’s a sunny, beautiful morning, no clouds in the sky today. A gull wings past the window, cawing. Adam is utterly still, his broad back a frozen sculpture of muscle and skin. I want to go out there, run my hands over his spine, over his shoulders. I want to kiss each vertebra of his spine. I want to feel his skin, slip my hands under the elastic of his shorts. I want one more moment with him.
My feet are carrying me out there. I’m unable to stop them, even though I know that whatever happens next, I’ll still shut down, close him out. But I can’t fight the momentum of my feet, can’t stop my hands from pulling open the sliding door. Can’t stop my palms from touching his sides.
“Change your mind?” He doesn’t turn when he speaks.
My lips are pressed to the wide arc of his back, between his shoulder blades. Yes, I want to answer. But I can’t lie to him. I haven’t changed my mind, and if I speak, he’ll know the truth. If he looks at me, he’ll know. So I just touch him. Explore the bulk of his chest, palms moving in slow circles. He hangs his head, as if he knows I’m avoiding his question. Perhaps he doesn’t. Of course he does. He’s so smart, so perceptive. He can read me, somehow. He takes a deep, deep breath, his chest swelling.
The sound of a door opening alerts us that we’re not alone. The balcony we’re on is part of a shared structure. The floor extends across at least three or four rooms, each room’s balcony made into a separate area by a pair of white, wooden, seven-foot-tall partitions that is part wall and part bench. If you stand at the rail, like we are now, you can see the other room’s balcony. I hear voices, an elderly man and woman. They talk about how beautiful it is out here, how lovely the view is. The wood beneath our feet creaks as they move toward the railing.
Adam spins, pushes me backward, takes me by the shoulders and moves me toward the partition bench-wall. He turns me to face the wall, takes my wrists in his huge hands and presses my palms to the wood. His foot slips between mine and nudges my feet apart. His body is a mountain behind me, blocking out everything— the sun, the rippling blue of the Straits, the balcony. My heartbeat increases, begins to hammer in my ears. His hands slide up under the shirt. Touch my waist. His front presses against my back, and I can feel his heart thudding against my spine, feel his breath coming deep and fast, feel his cock thickening and rising against my ass.
His lips touch my ear. “Don’t make a sound,” he whispers. “Don’t even breathe loud.”
I nod, and feel dampness coat the inner walls of my vagina, feel heat curl in my belly. His palms slide over my stomach, up, up, and cup my boobs, lifting and caressing, thumbs scraping across my nipples. The heat and pressure tighten inside me. And then one hand dips down between my thighs, the other remaining at my tits, toying with one nipple and then the other. I have to bite my lip hard to keep from gasping, from moaning as he slides not one, but two fingers into my channel.
Those fingers, god…they drive i
n, smear my juices over my clit and circle and circle and circle, and I’m grinding my pussy against his touch, silently begging him to make me come. He knows, oh he knows exactly what I need, what I want, and he gives it to me. He doesn’t draw it out, doesn’t play games. He brings me to orgasm within seconds, and I taste the tangy salt of blood as I split my own lip in the effort to keep silent.
“Oh, my. Why didn’t we come here sooner, Bob?” a shaky, elderly female voice says, mere inches away, just on the other side of the thin wooden wall. “It’s just so lovely and pleasant.”
“I don’t know,” the man says, his voice coming from the balcony’s edge. “But we’ll come again next year.”
Adam’s voice is a hot breath in my ear, barely audible. “Don’t move.”
And then he’s gone from behind me, and I tilt my head to watch him carefully, silently slide the door open, step through and snag the square packet of a condom from the bedside table. I hold my position and watch him, pulse pounding, climax still tremoring inside me, keeping me breathless and shaking. He leaves the door open, standing just inside. His eyes find mine, and now he’s making sure I’m watching. When he knows he has my full attention, he drops his shorts, baring his erect cock. It strains, juts high and proud. He rolls the condom down his length and takes cat-silent steps out onto the balcony, completely naked and fearless. When he’s behind me, he drags his fingers up the backs of my thighs, over my ass, lifting the T-shirt as he goes. My ass is bared, then my breasts, and then he’s guiding one of my arms out, then the other, and now I’m naked too. I shiver, not from the cold but from being nude in broad daylight, and I’m about to be fucked.
Adam leans into me, and his hands run over my shoulders, along my arms, to my hands. His fingers tangle in mine, my palms pressed against the wood, his palms against my knuckles. His chest is hot against my spine, and his cock is a thick, rubber-coated rod nestled between the globes of my ass. His breath heats my right shoulder, and then his lips touch the back of my neck.
“Ready?” The word is a warm thread tickling my earlobe.
I nod. It’s all I can manage. I’m not breathing. I couldn’t move a single muscle but for that incremental inclination of my head. I feel Adam dip, bending at the knees. He pushes his hips against my ass, and I feel the broad tip of his cock nudge against my clit. He rolls his hips, and I have to stifle a gasp. Another nudge, I have to hang my head and suck in as silent a breath as I can. And then he draws his hips back ever so slightly and pushes, and the head of his dick is spreading the lips of my pussy apart, and I’m angling myself to let him in, sinking down and pushing back.
My mouth falls open in a silent scream. He exhales in my ear as he slides his cock into me, inch by inch, until he’s fully seated within me.
“Not a sound, Des,” he whispers in my ear. I shake my head, and his teeth nip at my earlobe.
He pulls back and thrusts in, and I’m shaking all over, filled, spread apart, aching and burning and needing and replete. And then he drags my hands down the wall to bend me at the waist, and his fingers curl around my wrists and slide up my forearms, up my biceps, and then he’s cupping my hanging, swaying tits as he pushes into me. There’s no warning, just his cock driving into me with a sudden and punishing rhythm. He’s careful, though, and every thrust is silent, not even the wet sound of joining giving us away.
Inches away, Bob and Martha quietly discuss their grandchildren, upcoming birthdays, their son and daughter-in-law’s marital difficulties.
Tension in my core become unbearable, thick and hot and taut, and every drive of his dick into me makes it worse, or better, or something. Increases the fire’s potency, tautens the wire coiled inside me, swells the balloon of pressure expanding in my sex. He holds my tits in place, uses them for leverage as he fucks into me hard but slow.
Then, abruptly, he buries himself deep and releases my tits, grabs my hips and pulls me backward. I’m forced to bend even further, so I have to press back into him and push against the wall with my hands to keep my balance. And now he’s thrusting in even more slowly, gently, and his palms caress my ass, my back, the crease of my hips.
I have to suck in a breath, realizing I’d stopped breathing entirely for a few moments. I’m bent double, and he’s driving into me. I’m motionless, taking what he’s giving me and soaking up the ecstasy. I don’t need to move, don’t want to. I just want to let Adam do this to me, to take me.
But then the volcano within me rumbles and begins to detonate, and everything I thought I knew or wanted or needed is erased. All I want and need is to come, is to have him deeper, is to get him to keep going, keep fucking me. I want to say that to him, but I can’t speak. I don’t remember why not, but I know I can’t. I’m breathing hard, and I hear a barely-audible whimper escape my lips.
Adam’s hand goes across my mouth, muffling me. His other hand is at my hip, pulling at me, urging me. I move back into his thrusts, push, push, and I spread my legs farther apart. Adam’s hand slides down my thigh, grips me at the knee, and lifts. I put my foot on the bench, straighten, and I feel Adam lift up on his toes behind me, thrusting hard. And in this position, he reaches so deep it’s impossible to not whimper, but his hand is there quieting the sound. His foot goes up on the bench too, on the opposite side, and now he’s thrusting and thrusting and his breath is raspy in my ear. One hand is on my tits, cupping one and then the other, massaging and kneading and tweaking nipples. His other slides over the inner thigh of my propped-up leg, touching the delicate, sensitive crease between thigh and labia, and then his fingers are rubbing at my clit and I’m gritting my teeth to keep silent, the climax spreading through me from the tips of my toes and tingling fingers to the sun-hot fires burning in my core, and I’m dipping at the knee, needing him harder and deeper.
I feel him rumble deep in his chest, and his breath catches, and his cock spasms inside me, his rhythm faltering, and he’s coming with me, coming hard, his face burying in my neck, my hair a black mass between us and around his head and face, and he’s still rubbing at my clit to make me come harder, or again, or still, or something, all I know is that I’m going supernova, being torn apart by the orgasm and he’s fucking deep and hard and fast and his voice is murmuring quietly in my ear:
“You feel it, don’t you? I know you do…fuck, Des, you have to feel this.” He bites my shoulder; a sharp nip that I know is going to leave a mark. “Deny it if you want, but I know—I know you feel this connection.”
I want to whimper, as much from the unerring truth of his words. I feel them like an arrow striking my secret heart.
“Don’t make a sound, Des. Don’t say a word.” He’s thrusting to the rhythm of his words, milking our orgasm even as he sends arrow after arrow of truth into me. “You don’t need to. I feel you. I know you. Fuck, fuck, you’re so incredible. I know you feel us. You do, don’t you? Yeah, you feel it, you fucking feel us, Des.”
We’re both exhausted, shaking, tremoring from the orgasm, but he’s still thrusting, and I’m so sensitive, so sore, aching from having taken him so hard, so many times, yet I can’t get enough even though I’m so post-climax sensitive that it’s unbearable.
And then he pulls out, sweeps me off my feet and into his arms, carries me into the room and lays me on the bed. I watch him strip the condom off and wrap it, discard it, close the sliding door, and then he’s back on the bed, hovering over me. His mouth descends so slowly, so gently, and that almost breaks me, almost jerks the truth from me.
I feel us, Adam, I want to say. But I don’t.
Because I’m afraid. Because I can’t trust anyone.
Because anyone I’ve ever trusted has hurt me. Those I don’t trust have hurt me, too. Everyone hurts me. It’s inevitable. Home after home, foster parent after foster parent. I wanted to trust them, to love them, to belong, and they always turned on me, hurt me, betrayed me.
So I don’t say a word. I just kiss him back and hope he can feel the regret and the buried emotions.
But the kiss doesn’t end. He breaks it, his lips parting from mine, his breath on my mouth, and then he kisses my throat and my chest and my breasts, and I want him again, even though I know I’ve had all I can physically withstand.
His cock nuzzles my thigh. I can’t help touching it, grasping it, and can’t help caressing its marvelous length. I feel wonder course through me as it responds, and I watch between our bodies as it comes to life in my hand.
He kisses my nipples, and then gasps and looks at me. “What are you doing, Des?”
“I don’t know.”
“Again?” It’s a suggestion.
I shake my head. “I can’t…I want to, but I…can’t. It’s been…a long time and I’m…sore.”
“Then what are you doing?”
I can only shrug. “I don’t know.”
He doesn’t stop me, though. He remains on his hands and knees above me, and we both watch as I stroke him to life. He watches, and I watch, and my hand slips and slides, back and forth along his length. I rub my thumb over the head, and he flinches. I do it again, and again, stroke and rub the tip. He lifts his head, and his eyes meet mine.
I don’t know why I’m doing this. I’d rather have him inside me, and I know he’d rather the same thing, but neither of us suggest this. He doesn’t move, and I keep stroking.
“Des…” His voice is shaky, low and rumbling.
I keep my eyes on him, and I know that everything I’m feeling is shining out of my eyes. The conflict, the wish that I could say what he wants me to say, that I feel us, that I don’t want him to go, that I want this to last forever, that I wish I could stop time and have this with him for days or weeks or months, that I want this to just last, and last. And I know the fear is there, the fear that I’m already attached and that I know he’s going, and so am I.
I feel us. The thought bubbles at my lips.
He’s arching his back and pushing into my touch ever so subtly. He’s close. I want to watch this happen. I want to see it. His face is strained, his eyes hooded and dark.
Trashed (Stripped #2) Page 13
