Rory got out first at my building and walked around scanning the area before he let us step from my car, and then he did the same thing before he led us into the elevator and even before he let me walk into my apartment.
“Jade, please don’t do anything bad here,” I asked, begging a little. “I don’t want to get kicked out and lose the security deposit.”
“I won’t do anything!” she answered quickly, offended, but I saw her eyes roaming around. I went into the bathroom and cleaned out the medicine cabinet, throwing everything into my purse to get rid of later. That was all I really had that she could use or sell, but I was still nervous. “Don’t open the door, and if Kash does come, call me. Well, call Rory.” Reluctantly, I handed her my phone, pretty sure that I wouldn’t see it again. Jade’s eyes lit up as she took it and started to play with it, but I had such a basic model, she couldn’t cause too much trouble. I remembered something else. “Leave Rella alone, too. Don’t go to her apartment, call me.”
“Like I want anything to do with her!” Jade told me. She started to flounce toward my couch but Rory pointed to the bathroom.
“Take a shower before you get into her bed.”
Jade slammed the bathroom door behind herself and we left the apartment with me looking back warily, wondering what she would do next
Rory also had his eyes open, watching everything as we went back to the cars. “Not that you’ll need it.”
“What? Not that I’ll need what?” I asked.
“You won’t need that bed again. You have a real one now, not just a sofa.” He took my keys from my hand and opened my car door. “You go first like before and I’ll follow.”
He meant his own bed, I realized as I pulled away. He meant that I would be in his real bed tonight, with him. I felt a simultaneous wash of heat and also a pull of nerves at the thought of it.
Rory quickly walked us into his building, but he relaxed a little once we got to his apartment. He gave the cat dinner and water and she purred and draped herself on his foot. “What happened with your boss and Mr. Tollman?” I asked him.
“Leopold.” He shook his head and gave me a brief explanation. Apparently, his boss had gotten himself into trouble over a woman but that problem was solved, and Rory had other things he wanted to discuss with me instead. “What do you think about Jade? You think a new doctor will help her? I was going to take her so you didn’t have to, but we can all go, if you want.”
We. “We can?”
“Sure. But I don’t think she can live on her own like she is. You’ll just worry all the time and have to take care of her.” He reached over to pull me toward him, to cuddle me up against his chest. “We’ll figure it out.”
“We will?”
“Sure,” he repeated.
He sounded so confident that I let myself believe that he might be right. I also let him lead me over to the couch again, where we had been sitting together before we left to deal with our other problems. He played with my hair as he asked me about my mom’s history, and I asked more about his job with this Leopold to try to judge the danger of it.
“He’s not a real criminal, he’s just an idiot,” Rory said, and went off a little bit on his boss and his bad taste in women. “His wife is just mean,” he told me. “And the girlfriend doesn’t care about anyone but herself. I don’t know why he would want to have people like that in his life.” He shook his head.
“Maybe he doesn’t really know them. How do well do any of us really know each other?” I asked.
“You think you don’t know Rella? Like she’d turn on you, do something to hurt you?”
“No, not her! She would never purposely hurt me or anyone else. Well, maybe she’d hurt Jade on purpose. They almost physically fought when I dropped out of school,” I remembered. “Rella really, really didn’t want me to leave but Jade agreed that I should be working. At least, she didn’t try to stop me from quitting like Rella wanted her to. But I had to start making some real money.”
“That’s too bad that you couldn’t finish.” He ran his hands through my hair and I almost purred like the cat.
“Rella always hated her, though, because…because, you know.” He seemed to be waiting. “Because she didn’t take good care of me,” I finished quickly.
“You take good care of Jade, though.”
I shifted, uncomfortable because I thought about what would happen if I didn’t, if I stopped like I sometimes wanted to. “Do I? She just spent a few nights on the street. But anyway, I have to try, right? Who would, if I didn’t?”
“Some people would turn their backs,” Rory remarked. “She hasn’t been a good mother to you.”
“Some people,” I echoed. “Yeah, maybe. Maybe I’m the kind of person who would get tired of her mentally ill mom and say enough was enough. I could be. You don’t really know me.”
He looked at me, waiting.
“I’m the kind of woman who stays with a guy who treats her like dirt, and I’m the kind of woman without any real education. I’m a tenth-grade dropout,” I reminded him.
“Are you trying to convince me to stay away from you?”
I didn’t know what I was doing, except that I couldn’t seem to control my mouth. “I used to steal all the time. I was stealing from Rella—that was how we met, when she caught me breaking into her car. Did she tell you that?” He shook his head slowly and the words kept tumbling out of me. “I used to steal to eat, steal to have clothes, steal for money to try to pay our bills. I stole money from the people I worked for too, remember? And not just money, other things.” I thought about the drugs I’d taken, the ones I’d removed from my apartment to keep them away from Jade.
Rory studied me. “I think I know you enough. I’m not concerned about any of that.”
Maybe he should have been. I bit my lip and he rubbed his thumb against it, making me stop.
“I’m no prize,” he told me. “I’m a felon. An ex-con. An addict. Do you remember that? I went to jail for beating a man to death with my fists.”
His face looked so bleak that I reached out to touch his cheek. “I don’t think of you like that.”
“It’s who I am, though.” He put his hand over mine, pressing my palm against his skin. “When I think about what I’ve done, I don’t know why you’re sitting here with me on this couch and not running away, screaming.”
I shook my head because he was wrong. “I wouldn’t run from you. Because…” Because that wasn’t who he was. I knew him, too.
“I didn’t mean to, Isobel. I was high as a kite and he pulled a knife. He would have killed me first, but I didn’t mean to do it.” He closed his eyes. “And it wasn’t just that night, it’s everything I did. I’m so ashamed of myself that I can barely look at you. I can’t go home and look at them, either.”
I cradled his face in my hands, shaking my head more, even though he couldn’t see me disagreeing. “You paid for it,” I said. “You went to prison and paid with eight years of your life.”
“Is that enough? I’m here, and he’s in the ground. I have a family that still loves me and his family doesn’t have him.” Now Rory looked at me with his dark blue eyes. “I don’t know if I’ll ever pay enough. I feel like I have to make it up to the world or something.”
My throat got very tight, too tight to speak for a moment, so I leaned and kissed him, first his mouth and then his cheeks and all over his face. I remembered Rella rubbing my back when I had nightmares. “It’s all right, honey,” I crooned, just like she had to me. “I’m here. I’m not leaving you.” I kissed his neck and smoothed my hands across his chest.
“I’m glad. I need you here.”
I nodded. I knew what would make him feel good, so I moved to kneel between his knees and reached for his zipper.
“Isobel, no.” He stopped my hands. “You don’t have to do that.”
I traced my fingers up and down his thighs. “You’ll like it.”
“I know I will, but you don’t have to.” He suck
ed in a sharp breath when I reached higher between his legs. “Jesus…”
Obviously, he liked my touch. I wondered if he’d been with anyone since he got out and had to swallow a surge of jealousy. No, it was better not to know. I ran my hands under his t-shirt, up over his abs and chest, and his body quaked.
“This isn’t what you are to me,” he said. “This isn’t what I need from you.”
Yes, it was. This was what all men needed. I pushed aside his hand when he tried to stop me from pulling on his zipper again.
“No.” Rory stood and lifted me off the floor to carry me to the bedroom. “This should be for both of us.”
I immediately got nervous, but sex would be fine, I told myself. This was Rory, after all. No matter what he had just told me about why he’d gone to jail, he would never intentionally hurt me, not ever. He stood me carefully on the bed and started to remove my clothes. Sex would make him feel good and I would be glad to be there for him.
“Jesus,” he whispered again, softly and reverently, almost like he was in church. He looked at my naked body, running his eyes over me in the moonlight from the bedroom window. “You’re so beautiful, Isobel.”
I didn’t know what he was seeing that made him stare like that, his eyes so big and his lips parted. “It’s just me,” I whispered back.
He passed the back of his hand over my breast, his knuckles just grazing my nipple, and I gasped. “It’s you,” he agreed softly. “You, here with me.” He kept stoking me like that, so gently and calmly, and all over. My skin started to prickle as I anticipated his touch, and wherever his hands went, my body jumped. I could hear my breath coming sharp and quick. What was happening? It was a little like when I was going to faint because my heart was beating so hard, but I didn’t feel dizzy and sick. Instead, a funny warmth had spread through me and I felt…alive.
Rory bent his head and licked across my nipple and I moaned out loud. I wanted him. This was the feeling of wanting someone. I put my hands on his shoulders to keep myself upright as he suckled me and his other hand moved between my legs to touch me there, and then I couldn’t even stand anymore. He eased me down onto his big bed and threw off his own clothes. Dark ink covered his skin, pictures and words that were only shadows in the dimness of the room. I opened my arms and he lay next to me, holding me and kissing me.
“Can I touch you now?” I asked him. I wanted to feel him, all of him. “Will you be mad?”
“I’m not mad at you. I don’t want you to think that you have to.” He looked at me again, so seriously, until I moved my own hands around his body, over those tattoos and the muscle of his chest and arms. He held his breath as I went lower and I watched his whole face tighten and then go slack.
“I’m not going to last. It’s been a long time…Isobel,” he groaned, and then he repeated my name over and over as I stroked him, and then as he came. Rory rested his head on the pillow and his body curved against mine, and I laid my cheek on his chest to listen to his racing heart. “Jesus Fuck, Isobel. Jesus…” He kissed me deeply then used the sheet to gently wipe my skin. He leaned over to kiss me again, to kiss me until I was breathless.
“You know what’s next.” He bit my ear, drawing the lobe carefully between his teeth and making me shiver.
“Next?” No, I didn’t know, because when he was done, wasn’t it over? “What are you doing?” I asked as Rory pushed me gently onto my back and then took my breasts in his hands.
“What’s next is your turn.” He put his mouth on mine and then moved it to my nipples, making that warmth inside me turn up to burning, making my legs start to shake as he went lower to my ribs and waist. Then he put my legs over his shoulders.
I sat up because I wasn’t sure about this. “Rory?” I said, and my voice quavered.
He looked up at me across the plane of my stomach. “It will be good.” I still wasn’t sure, but I nodded, trusting him. My previous experiences with this had been more scary than—I moaned as his tongue flicked against my clitoris. It hadn’t been this. This was—oh, oh—God—his fingers—he kept touching me, caressing me, and I could feel his warm breath. It was too much and I tried to tell him that but I just moaned instead, and then my body curved off the bed, pressing up to him, caught in the shock of pure pleasure.
“Isobel?”
I knew what he was asking and mindlessly I reached for him, wanting him even more. He was hard again and now he was moving inside me, but it didn’t feel like it had before with Kash, with others. No, now it felt so good, I just kept moaning, and telling him yes, and more, and please. I was begging him for something, and when my second orgasm rolled through me, I knew what it was that I wanted: not just that moment of bliss, but all of him, forever. I held onto him and trembled, and I never wanted to let go. Never.
“Are you crying?” Rory sat up on his elbows and looked down at me. “Did I hurt you?”
“No, you…” He hadn’t physically hurt me. “No,” I said again, and shook my head so he would stop looking so worried.
“Baby, it’s ok,” he told me, and pressed our bodies together. “Isobel. I need you so much.”
I shook more and cried harder, because I knew how much I needed him, too.
∞
Rory
Maybe it was weird to watch her while she slept. If she had known, she might not have appreciated it. But I couldn’t help myself because she was so beautiful, so peaceful. She had scared me to death when she’d cried but I thought that maybe it was just the closeness that had come from us sleeping together. I had been with plenty of women but I’d never felt like that, all the emotion that ran through me when I looked down at her face as she came. It felt like now, even more than before, she was a part of me. So I watched her, and tucked the blanket around her, and made sure she didn’t have bad dreams. It was probably the best night of my life.
“Rory?” She sighed out my name when she woke, when the sun lit up her white-blonde hair and turned it into a halo. She scrunched her face and turned into my chest to hide from it.
I held up my hand to shade her eyes. “Hi, baby. I’m here.”
“I dreamed about you,” she said, sighing again. She’d slept peacefully last night after she stopped crying and her grip around my neck had loosened a little. “I never want to do that with anyone else,” she’d muttered just before she fell asleep, and if she was talking about sex, then no, she wasn’t going to. I wasn’t the first, but I was the last, if I had anything to do about it.
“Do you have to get to work?” I asked her now. “Want some breakfast?”
“I don’t want to move,” she sighed again, and snuggled closer to me. But then she pulled her head away to squint up at my face. “Would you make me breakfast? Seriously?”
“Watch me.” I stood and picked her up, wrapped in the blanket from the bed, and Isobel squealed. “My brother and I used to say that the floor was lava,” I explained as I carried her. “We’d climb around on the furniture instead of walking so we wouldn’t get burned. That was how we broke the coffee table. And the refrigerator,” I remembered. “And the piano and the washing machine.”
“If the floor was lava, you’d be on fire right now,” she noted.
I looked down at her, her eyes closed, smiling a little as she rested her cheek against me. She knew that I had her. “It would be worth it,” I said. But then I had to put her down. “You can sit here.”
“In the middle of the floor?” She looked at where I’d set her. “What is this? Why is this chair here?”
“I said I would give you a present,” I reminded her. “I made it for you at the shop and I brought it up from the car this morning.”
Isobel stood and the blanket draped off her smooth shoulders, which I bent down to kiss. “You made this whole thing? For me?” She ran her fingertips over the wood. “It’s so beautiful!”
“I broke yours,” I noted. “I owed you.” I studied the chair too, which I had made a lot sturdier than her plastic one. “It turned out pretty we
ll. Remember I showed you the samples I’d turned and you picked the one you liked the best?”
“I didn’t know what it was for!” She walked around the chair, her blue eyes big. “For me, really?”
“Yeah, for you, but strong enough for me to use, too. I thought I’d make a set of six, eventually. For our house.”
“What?” She seemed to freeze.
“Our house,” I repeated. “Where we’ll live, together. When this is all over with me and Memphis, we’ll leave and go live wherever you want. But we’ll need more chairs, unless you’re going to sit on my lap all the time.” Which was all right by me.
The way she was looking at me—hope and disbelief and fear skittered across her face, and maybe some anger, too. “Why are you saying that? You can’t say things like that,” she told me, her voice shaking.
“I mean them. That’s what’s going to happen.”
She shook her head. “You don’t know. Nothing is in your control. I could say, ‘No, I want to go back to…to someone from before.’” No, because even if she didn’t want me, I couldn’t let her go back to him. But she couldn’t even say his name. “Or you could get shot today!” She swallowed hard and I could see tears.
“No, we’re going to end up together. I know it.” I pulled her close to me and when she hugged me, she dropped the blanket.
“How do you know it? Why are you so sure?”
“Because I love you, and you love me. Even after what I told you about why I went to prison, even though you know what I think about myself.”
The tears spilled down her cheeks. “You know about me, too,” she said, her voice low, and I nodded. “I do love you,” she said, so quietly that it would have been hard to hear, except that now I was holding her up with my hands under her sweet ass, her legs wrapped around my waist. That made it much easier to kiss away her tears and then to put my lips against hers. I lowered her onto the couch and lay over her, not putting too much weight down because she was so much smaller than I was, so soft and delicate. I rocked my hips so she could feel what she did to me.
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