Candlemoth: A Holy City Romance

by Pauline West

  “Not yet, not yet,” he murmured. “Oh, god, Lily, you’re like some… insane force of nature, I feel like the whole world is falling down around us, like there’s only the two of us. You’re the only thing… the only thing…”

  “Oh, oh!”

  “You want to come for me?” Ry murmured, pressing his face into my hair possessively. I bit his shoulder, trying to stifle my cries. Sweet, layered agony-

  “I want to come for you,” I gasped, “Please, please.”

  “Come for me, Lily,” he said, pressing his cock close as his fingers continued to work inside me, and I let the sensation crash through the gates of me, washing through again and again as I fell bonelessly against him, jerking a little with the aftershocks.

  “I- I- didn’t know I could do that,” I said, breathlessly.

  He smiled wolfishly, his eyes pale in the moonlight, their contrast delicious beneath his dark tan, his dark eyebrows. I thrilled again at how little there was between us- even as it terrified me how helplessly I’d fallen for him. I threw my arms around Ry’s neck and buried my face in his soft hair, locking my legs around his waist.

  “You could make me do anything you want,” I said, softly, into his neck. He pinned me back against the wall again, his eyes shining. The fullness of his cock against my still throbbing pussy sent another shockwave through me. I leaned back, shivering with his touch, looking at him.

  “It’s like I’m drunk with you,” I whispered.

  Ry began to grind into me, moaning in a low, strangled voice that made all the hair on my body lift with arousal. We kissed again so hungrily I thought we’d slide down and fuck there on the rough cobble stones.

  But he put me down gently and led me by the hand through the gate. I followed, tugging my dress down hastily. We were laughing soundlessly again, still a little breathless, and when we stopped at the door, Ry held his hand to his face and closed his eyes, breathing in the smell of me on his hand.

  His eyes rolled slightly with pleasure, and then he bumped open the door with his hip, tugging me inside.

  The silence of the house instantly folded around us. It felt different to kiss him there, in that unfamiliar dark. Ry lifted me off my feet against him and then sat me onto the kitchen counter, burying his face against my breasts. He squeezed my breasts savagely, until they began to feel heavy and swollen. Then he bit and sucked at my nipples through the wet silk of my dress. The hot darts of pain made me hiss with lust.

  “I need to make you come again, Lily,” he murmured, his hands forcing insistently between my thighs.

  “I can’t, I can’t so soon,” I said, trying to close my legs, but he forced them apart with a strength that just rode the edge of violence. Ry sank his face into me hungrily, taking my hips firmly into his hands, the pressure from his fingers spreading my flesh so that the center of me was all the more bared to him as he opened his mouth against me.

  I gasped, so slippery wet that I was soaked all down my thighs, my body begging to sheath him even as it couldn’t take any more arousal. My senses were so exquisitely tortured that I was afraid I’d pee on his lovely, hard-sculptured face.

  But Ry’s tongue began to work in expert, slow circles against my clit. One of his hands found its way warmly between my thighs, drawing me tight, stretching me raw. I bucked against his face, my hands clawing at the counter.

  “Please please no,” I said, “I can’t, I can’t take this-”

  Ry held me steady, the hot, hard velvet of his tongue relentless against my swollen achy flesh, his eyes locking on mine greedily. My nerves sizzled raw. I felt microscopic shooting stars race up the insides of my thighs as he stroked at me continually, restlessly, brinking me to orgasm, letting me slide back down again. I was panting with lust, both our bodies misted wet with sweat. I could see droplets of it on my bared thighs, on the backs of his forearms, his neck.

  Ry’s eyes glinted mischievously; he knew exactly what he was doing to me.

  That turned me on all the more, even as it made me wildly jealous to know all the women he must have perfected his skills on. Every dial on my body was cranked farther than I’d ever dreamed I could go. The bliss of it was tortuous, unending. With every raw swirl of my nerves, I felt myself sucked all the deeper into his orbit, losing any control I’d ever imagined I’d had.

  And then finally, Ry Calhoun decided to let me come. He sucked me up to the precipice of orgasm again, but this time dropped me over the edge with a hard lick. He stuck his tongue inside me as I came in a long, rolling orgasm around him.

  “Oh god, oh god-” My cries were animal now, my body so wet that I slid on the counter. Ry dug further into me, his fingers opening me deeply. The effect was shattering. I lost my mind, bucking wildly, and almost blacked out with pleasure. He lifted my legs up onto the counter so I was securely supported as I pulsed hard and then began to sob, utterly released.

  Ry moved his face back and forth as light as a butterfly on my thighs, tracing up my electrically lit body with his mouth, pausing gently at my tortured breasts, and then again at my lips.

  As I curled inwards, he leaned over me, kissing me sweetly while I sobbed with relief, the gentleness of his kisses smoothing my ragged sense while his hands continued to stroke me lightly. After a moment, he pulled back, biting his lips, as if tasting me again. I looked up at him, too limp to move or speak.

  “Now,” he said, “I’m going to fuck you to death.”

  I couldn’t even speak English anymore.

  I shook my head, trying to move away from him and his vampiric ecstasy. But even as I was overcome, I still felt a clawing, insatiable need for his body. Ry was like some unnameable drug; I was hopelessly addicted.

  He began to unbutton his shirt, revealing the tight cut of his abdominals and upper arms. The immediate bolt of lust I felt for his touch drove home how much he already owned me. Ry tossed his shirt to one side, pulling me by one leg open to him again, and undid his pants.

  His cock was enormous.

  “I’m going to make you come so hard you can’t walk,” Ry said, darkly, pulling me into him like a slack doll. “You’ll have to stay here with me. Then I’m gonna nail you all morning...” His mouth on mine was like hot stone, and I couldn’t resist kissing him back, feeling myself heat up for him all over again as he slid me down to his cock. He ran his thumb inside me again, drawing my skin taut so savagely that I cried out and fell against him, raw and exquisitely stretched.

  I throbbed with grinding lust, pulling myself upright again.

  “Yeah, you want me to sheath you good and dirty?” I breathed. “Come fuck me.”

  Ry drove himself inside me with a force that made me see stars, fitting his mouth over mine in one of his hungry, soul-sucking kisses, and I wanted all of it; I wanted him to batter me loose, fuck me to death, I didn’t care.

  It felt so good that I couldn’t feel anything of myself anymore except a sheer, shooting, bodiless pleasure. Our bodies were both drenched now, and it felt so good to clutch his hard, naked skin, to see the flash of his tattoo under my hand as I rode his thick cock to Kingdom Come. I let my head fall back, wanging it hard on the cupboards, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except-

  “Ry...”

  Suddenly, I heard a strange little ceramic click. My eyes snapped open.

  Silhouetted in the dim light from the street, an older man stood in the kitchen doorway. Coolly drinking a cup of tea, his robe loosely belted so I could see the crisp white hair on his chest; his face was craggy and seamed from a lifetime of too much sun and rich food.

  Even though his thick white hair was crazed on one side, as if he’d been unable to sleep and now was wandering aimlessly around the mansion, I recognized his face from the oil portrait I’d seen the day before.

  Mr. Calhoun.

  He looked painfully bored, his expression unchanging as he placed his china teacup into the china saucer he held in his other hand. Watching us as if we were stray dogs he’d caught fucking in his house
for the thirtieth time. His gaze wandered over Ry.

  “Christ, another one?” he said, finally. He went back out into the hallway.

  Another one.

  What did I expect? But my heart sank through the floor and dissolved. I was humiliated.

  I’d been more emotionally exposed than I’d ever felt in my life, but just as suddenly, all the new flowerings in me folded up and died off.

  I shoved Ry away, trying to cover myself with the damp ruins of my dress. But Ry had already half-turned, zipping up his pants hastily in a way that filled me with disgust.

  “Dad-!” Ry said, rushing after the bored man in the bathrobe. Then, torn, he whirled in the doorway, heading back towards me. “Lily, wait. Dad!”

  But I was already out the door.

  Ry chased me outside. “Please, please, you don’t understand. He didn’t mean it like it sounded-”

  I was crying, furious with myself for crying. “I do, I understand you perfectly, you just want-you just wanted to get laid.”

  Ry tried to kiss me, holding my arms. I wouldn’t let him.

  “Baby, don’t you remember any of the things I’ve said to you? How I’ve made you feel?” he said. “I know you feel this, too, I know you do, I could feel it- everything in you answers everything in me, Lily. You keep forgetting all of that whenever something-”

  “Bullshit! I can’t believe anything you say! I can’t believe any of this; I don’t know who the fuck you are- why are you being so fucking nice to me, anyway? I don’t like people doing things for me, remember? You know why? Because I can’t fucking trust anybody! I don’t trust you, I can’t, I won’t!”

  Somehow, I was screaming.

  “Lily, enough!” His voice cracked my name like a pistol shot. I felt my body respond to the command in his voice, instantly hating myself for it.

  “Don’t. Just don’t. All right?” I said.

  “At least let me walk you to your-”

  “Don’t fucking touch me. I don’t want you to follow me, I don’t want you to touch me, leave me alone!”

  I ran into the dark.

  I drove home with all my windows down, needing air in my face.

  Cold, clean air. Hungry black air. Anything to wash away the electricity, the unrelenting connection that still remained like an unbroken thread between me and Ry Calhoun. No matter how far away I was from him.

  ============ Chapter ==============================

  The next morning I met Hazel for coffee at the bakery down the street. We perched outside on the patio, chattering brightly as we sipped from big, sweetly mismatched coffee mugs, nibbling now and again at our chocolate croissants.

  Hazel’s hair was up in a glamorous top knot, and she was barefaced except for sunglasses and a stripe of hot pink lipstick. Whoever said girls look more relatable when they wear bright pink lipstick had never seen a girl like Hazel: she snatched the gaze of every red-blooded guy passing within a five block radius.

  I could swear a few of them were doing loops just to rubberneck. Hazel, sitting cross legged in her chair, her oversize tank top slipping dangerously down one shoulder, her pale pink yoga pants spotlighting her strong, healthy body. She was a descended goddess.

  Not that Hazel noticed. She was every bit as hung up on her married guy as I was hung up on Ry. And I was hardly in a position to judge. I was so rattled with an emotional hangover from the night before that I felt nauseous.

  But I was determined to pretend that nothing was wrong.

  And incredibly, that morning, the girl I saw in the mirror smiling back at me looked perfectly fine. My hair was still full from wearing it up the night before. My favorite sundress looked pretty against my summer tan.

  So long as I kept my new sunglasses on, nobody would ever guess my heart was broken. It’s amazing just how much protection a pretty little nothing affords. Guys rarely understand that we don’t just shop for fun.

  We shop for armor.

  “Grant this,” and “Grant that,” Hazel was saying. (Grant, I realized, was Mr. Bow-tie and Glasses from the wedding where I’d first met Ry.)

  Grant was tall, bald and handsome. He knew exactly how to touch her. They talked every night for hours and hours and no one had ever made her feel this way in her entire life…

  For a long time I tried not to say too much of anything, letting my friend talk it out. I wanted Hazel to say the words herself. I knew that sooner or later, she’d have to come around to the icy truth both of us were avoiding.

  Because Grant was also married.

  Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. “Hazel, babe,” I broke in, “I say this with absolute love, because you are fabulous, and,” I squeezed her hand, “because I love you-”

  “Oh no,” Hazel said.

  “Oh yes. What I’m hearing is this: so, you’re crazy about this guy.”

  “Yes. Madly, obsessively, over the moon for him.”

  “I know. And he’s separated from his wife. So what’s the problem? Here’s the problem. He’s never going to leave his wife. Even if he does, you’re still just the rebound chick. You know? And you already care too much about him. He’s not just a fuck for you, not at all.”

  “But I can’t just stop, Lily,” Hazel said. “I shit you not, I will die. I die every time we break up.”

  “Wait, how many times have you broken up?”

  “Like thirty. Whatever. I mean, so you honestly think I should just… stop… fucking him? I don’t think I can. I know it sounds dumb, but I really don’t think I can. He’s like a drug for me.” Hazel pushed her sunglasses up into her hair and stared down into her coffee, wild-eyed.

  “I think you gotta stop being the girl who keeps taking him back every time he gets in a fight with his wife. Play hard to get, you know?” I dunked the edge of my croissant into my coffee and took a bite. “Not that I have room to talk,” I said, cradling the buttery crumbs in my hand, “I totally don’t, it’s just-”

  “So speaking of ‘room to talk’,” Hazel grinned. “How’s Ry-motherfuckin’-Calhoun? You guys still playing doctor, and whatever else it is you two do?”

  “He’s amazing. When he touches me, it’s fireworks. But... he’s also… Satan.”

  “Oh,” Hazel said, laughing. “Well, that’s kind of shitty.”

  I sighed. “Yeah.”

  “Or wait, do you mean Satan, like, in a good way?”

  “He’s an asshole! And his dad’s an asshole, too.” I told Hazel what had happened the other night. She flinched when I told her about Mr. Calhoun standing there in the doorway, just watching us.

  “That’s pretty weird, dude,” she said. “And I have to be honest, Mr. Calhoun has a reputation around town for shady shit. But as for Ry? I don’t know, it sounds like he’s crazy about you. Maybe you should give him a chance. Then again,” Hazel licked her hand, “I’m retarded about all this stuff. You should probably, like, do exactly the opposite of whatever I think is a good idea. Except for in bed. I know some things, man, I could teach you…”

  I laughed. “Okay, that’d be cool.”

  “I’m serious!”

  “I know you are, it’s just, I can’t…. stop thinking about him. And when you start talking about bed, um,” I bit my lip. “It’s bad. This is so bad, it’s so crazy. I’m obsessed. It’s not good.”

  Hazel squealed with laughter. “Isn’t it fun, though! Eee! I mean, me too! Okay, okay. We gotta calm down, we gotta come down. Click your heels together three times. Say it with me- there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home!”

  Now we were laughing our heads off. People glanced over at us curiously, probably wondering what we’d poured in our coffee.

  “C’mon, let’s get out of here,” Hazel said. “Let’s get fucking loud, I don’t have to work today.”

  “Woo!”

  But when we walked back to my place, Ry was sitting on the curb outside.

  Waiting for me.

  ===== Chapter ===================================r />
  Ry!

  My heart jumped at the sight of him. And then immediately fell.

  “Oh, it’s okay-” Hazel said, eyeing him, “I just remembered I gotta, uh, pick something up.” She hugged me, turning back towards her car, which was still parked at the bakery.

  “No, wait!” I said. I grabbed her fiercely, hissing into her ear- “don’t go!”

  Hazel patted my cheek. “Mm mm, you just trust,” she said, smiling, and then skipped away. “Talk to you soon! Luv ya, mean it! Byeee...”

  Goddammit…!

  I knew Ry was watching us. In my mind’s eye, I could see the grin twitching at the corner of his mouth.

  When I turned, I saw it for real. My pulse skyrocketed.

  He was sitting there with his elbows on his knees, looking rangy and tan in an old-school fitted white shirt and soft, wash-faded jeans. His hair was adorably rumpled, his wolf eyes adorably worried beneath those thick black brows.

  Almost as if… he hadn’t slept at all either.

  He moved just perceptibly as I stepped onto the sidewalk outside my apartment. I was still doing my best to avoid looking at him again, but just that subtle movement of Ry’s shoulders shot a corresponding thrill into my veins. Helpless arousal flashed through me.

  Oh shit, oh no, not again.

  Quick, think of Mr. Calhoun. Think of crying all the way home. Again.

  But sense memories flooded my body instead. Ry’s kitchen counter, his eyes pinned to mine as his gorgeous, sullen mouth licked and sucked me inexorably-

  No, no, no, anything but that!

  My face burned, and I was sure Ry could see the X-rated movie in my mind as I ducked my head, walking towards my door fast. Because there was only one way to get into my apartment. I had to walk past him. He knew that.

  Just keep walking, Lily, don’t make eye contact… because if you do...

  Ry stood slowly, blocking the sidewalk. “Lily,” he said, huskily, his voice low, and the raspy hunger in it broke my heart.

  I wanted nothing more than to bury my face against his broad chest, to dissolve under his touch and his spell. But I stared pointedly off to one side. No way was I going to get chewed up and spat out by some fucking rich kid; you think I’m just another one, Mr. Calhoun? You sure got that wrong.