Of course, there’s not much anyone can say back to that. We’re at our table, at the organised dinner, waiting. Scout draws a blank.
“Um,” I cut in, “I hate to be a pain but my bra clip is about to come undone. We won’t be a sec.”
I know this moment isn’t about me, but I am proud to be subtle.
In the bathroom, I show Scout some deep breathing exercises. In effect, it actually looks like we’re imitating elephant trunks swishing, but she does start to calm to a point where I can talk and she hears what I say.
“Vomit.”
“What?” she says, freezing with her hands an inch away from combing through her hair—again.
“It’s like vomit. It’s going to come up, and you don’t want it while you’re running and screaming around like a headless chicken, trying to stop the unstoppable. Just say it. It’s your prerogative, and you want to do this, remember? Think of Steph and you. You both deserve to feel free and accepted.”
“If they don’t? Accept me?”
I answer with a thoughtful look.
I walk back to our table with Scout under my wing, me rubbing a bit on her back. It seems corny but I actually feel her muscles relax by the time we arrive.
I didn’t expect it to happen like this.
Scout rolls ahead so fast I don’t even manage to take a polite sip of my water as she says, “I’m gay. I’m a woman-loving lesbian. Steph is my girlfriend. Before you ask, I’ve always been gay. Um, that’s it.”
There’s always one kid in school that doesn’t handle shock well. His mouth will drop as if it’s a hinge hanging on by the last screw. His body will shut down and he’s as good as a non-living statue.
That’s Scout’s mum.
Her dad is animated. His shoulder convulse a little. His hands come up in a defensive, “stay back” stance. And the blinks; he blinks as if he can wake himself up from this dream.
“You’re gay?” Scout’s sister calls across the table.
“What? Uh, yeah, I just said that.”
“So you like girls. And … is that your, like, proper girlfriend?” Her head tilts and she points, but it isn’t directed at Steph—more of a marker of something she’s just realised. “Wait, so you full kiss her and make out and touch each other and shit?”
She shakes away something. “That’s fucked.”
“Holly!” Scout’s mum cries.
“Holly, please,” her dad whispers.
“And you know better than that,” her mum says through grit teeth, leant forward to her ear.
This is what goes on for a while, just banter on Holly’s reaction, not noticing Scout. I get a text, see the name “Donovan” come up and wonder how he got into my contacts or why he’s texting. No one from the table even notices me looking at my phone.
It gets so bad that Nate leans in soon after and whispers, “How shit. I feel so bad for Scout,” and I whisper back, “We’ll get out of here soon. Look at the poor girl,” and still no one notices us.
No one except everyone in the whole damn radius of earshot.
I place my hand on Scout’s shoulder and when she looks, I nudge my chin to where her mum and dad are.
“So,” Scout says with inflected sarcasm. Her tone is louder than needed to reach them over there, yet it takes all three of them a few seconds to look. “So can you stop telling Holly off and say something?”
“We’re talking about it,” her mum says.
“Dad?” Scout asks. “Anything?”
Please, is what she really says.
“Oh, Scout. We’re happy you told us. You know that.”
Just as I start to roll my eyes at how much of a lie “we” and “us” is, Scout’s mum proves me right. She crosses her arms over the table. She looks so calm, so serious. “I don’t know why you’d say this. I’m sure your friend, Steph, is sorely embarrassed. Anyway, what did you want to tell us?”
Scout lets out a quick sigh, and scrapes her chair back as she pushes out. Yup, this is it. The moment it all goes horribly wrong.
Scout gives me a look, so I don’t dare say bye. I just follow. Quietly.
Nate takes my hand, and squeezes. As we walk out, Scout first, Steph trailing, me behind Steph, Nate following me, he rubs shapes along my skin, holding our arms virtually straight so his knuckles graze my ass as we weave between chairs, and my knuckles graze his inner thigh. It’s so intimate without a kiss or nudity—just a private moment between us—and I can’t help but sweep my gaze up and give him a fleeting look.
He knows.
I appreciate him.
I need him.
I love him.
Seeing Scout free with no chains hiding her true self, able to start living how she wants to—I want that, and I want it with Nate.
Tonight.
26
At my house, Nate and I are linked by a few fingers as we run on tiptoe to my room. I feel like a sixteen-year-old sneaking a boy in through my window in the middle of the night—but I was never that type of girl anyway. Luckily, it’s now past nine and the boys are in bed, and so is Mum.
When we get to my bedroom door, Nate reaches for my hips and pulls me against him. I run my fingers up the back of his hair, letting my elbows rest just behind his shoulders, pressing his chest to me. His face comes down to meet mine, his lips skimming my cheek to find my lips. I run my hand along the wall behind me and flip on the light.
At the same time as my room illuminates, Nate throws his forearm over his eyes. A moment, two, I wait for his reaction, dreading that he just wants lights off and to fuck me. That I made a mistake by turning the lights on so we could see each other, remember the visual details.
He removes his arm, squinting, and finally allowing his lids to stay open, drinking in my expression like maybe I’m warm milk. And then, a smile. I lose myself in his pale eyes. My legs don’t exist, and it’s like an abyss is sucking me away, I’m only left with the part of my thoughts that are here in the moment. His elbow bends behind my back, trapping one side of me to him, and his hand comes to cup the back of my neck. With his grip, he tilts my head up. My neck feels gooey. If it weren’t for him, I’d be a puddle, like my slack muscles feel they are.
So this is what it’s like to let go.
This is what it feels like to let your lover take care of you.
“Hey, Kall Bell,” he whispers in my ear.
I smile against his cheek, then pull back to look at him.
Bringing my hands to his neck, I fan out my fingers, keeping my touch light, yet whole, possessive, yet wanting. He’s mine. We’re each other’s, and we still feel the same as we did on our date.
I sigh at the thought.
His hot fingers seep a stream of desire into me at his contact and my head lolls back to let out a moan. I slump into the crook of his neck and whisper, “You’re my undoing.”
I feel his breathed words in my ear, more than hear, “Love hearing that,” as he leans over me to dim the light.
Right, he’s adjusting the mood, not shutting me out.
Nate drops his hand, searching for mine, and leads me to my bed.
I register that I still have a pile of clothes from Scout and I in a couple of bundles here and there, and there’s definitely a shoe in his path, but the thought is gone as soon as I think it and the worry never fazes me.
At my bed, he grips my waist and pulls me over on the cover. “We don’t have to,” he says. “I want to lie with you.”
“I made something for you again.”
I flip on the bedside lamp, feel for my iPhone and headphones on my bedside table, and bring it with me to the centre of the bed. Nate feels where my hands are in between us. He touches the corners of my eyes, my rounded cheeks, my lips.
He says, “You’ve planned something again, you naughty girl.”
I can feel the shape of his grin as well as faintly see it, and I know he’s loving the prospect of a surprise despite him always saying he likes to know things. “True. But you have to
lie back to receive it.”
“Kall, I said I don’t exp—”
“And I’m offended you assume I’m going to do that.”
“’Kay.”
My hands resting on his body, I feel the bed creak and his waist disappear from my fingers as he lies back. I untangle and separate the ear buds while I gather my thoughts, and say, “Rather than mess up everything I feel about you, here.” I put each ear bud in his palms. “Listen to this.”
I scroll through files on my phone and find the recording for him. I press play, and Nate’s fingers grip onto me and pull me to his side. The sound of my first bow plays as I curl up next to him. It’s so quiet, but I hear a whisper of the music too. I find his waist and drape my arm over it. My legs start snaking around and up and down his, and as the introduction starts, slow and building, we settle with my knee bent across his thighs.
For the few minutes of my composition, we lie together. I try to stay still because I don’t want to distract him, but I know he loves it. Nate can’t help but squeeze my shoulder or massage a hand over my belly as the song builds to the climax, and my chest clenches and unclenches with the tension of the melody.
When the song ends, I stretch out, only for my thigh to graze the hardness from under his pants.
He pulls me away from him to prevent me realising what his body has done, but it’s too late, whether he knows it or not.
“You played that on your violin?”
I nod into his chest.
“Hey.”
Embracing me to him, I give in to the want inside and climb on top of him, straddling him above his hips and lying down on his chest. We lie like that for a bit, me feeling his chest expand and sink. Nate draws circles at my hips, my back.
Before I know it his fingers have slipped under the material, and I’ve slipped down to cup his bulge between my legs. Our tongues in each other’s mouths, I deepen the kiss and go with it.
We have started making out without me hungry for a thrill, and for once it feels like what nature intended between a guy and a girl. Perfect and real. And connected.
Nate flips me under him. His arms are rigid, framing his chest like a square as he leans down further over me. I crawl back onto the bed with my heels and my elbows as he lowers himself onto me. He’s agonisingly slow, when my heart and mind are racing at breakneck speed. His bulge comes down on me and like a spring-loaded trigger, my legs spread, lift and latch behind his ass and wrap around his thighs. The warmth already feels like it’s made just for me.
The feeling is wonderful, and it’s not the excitement for undressing toward sex. It’s knowing that I want to lie here, close my eyes, and feel him over me. That I want to do this right to make him feel good, and my pleasure is an added bonus. I want everything for Nate, and now I can’t imagine living without him.
“You distracted me.”
I lift to meet his lips then lie back down. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Seriously, Kall, everything about you takes me away. That song … I didn’t want to drift off but it was like it took me to a different place. I imagined it was just you and me. Just us and nothing else, somewhere. And I just let go of everything. Totally relaxed. Well, except for one part that was so relaxed it turned stiff. I’m sorry, but your thigh was pressed up onto it and with you curling up to me …”
He leans down to meet my lips, tugging on the lower one with his teeth, and I widen my lips for better access but he holds me back, letting go. “I loved it. You know it actually felt like flipping through the photo book, from kids to friends, to flirting to this.” His fingers skate down my arm, past my fingers and rest on my waist.
“That’s what I felt, too.”
For a moment he pulls back and I don’t recognise him. At the same time I recognise this other side of Nate that’s mirrored in me. It’s a deep urgency to make love body-to-body.
I want to own every part of him I can. His eyes hold mine with a fierce gaze that could eat me alive with passion. His teeth bite his bottom lip.
He blinks and snaps back into it, lifting my top over my breasts, and I shimmy my arms up so he can take it off. In my peripheral I see it sailing toward the carpet somewhere, and in a second, he’s flinging my bra off, too. He pulls my bottoms off as well. Instantly, his head plunges in my cleavage and his tongue is licking a path, finding its way to my nipples. Just the thought of his tongue on my breasts, searching, makes me want to yelp out Yes! so I throw my wrist over my bared teeth and clamp.
Tristan sleeps lightly and Mum probably isn’t asleep yet. We do not need an interruption.
It hits me: I’m here alone with Nate in a dark room and it’s pure pleasure. Once this fear went hand-in-hand with being in love, but now, I have to take a moment to remember that old me as it’s now gone.
Nate massages my breasts with his tongue, his hand finding its way and flicking my nipple to force jerky thrusts out of me, his fingers touching me in a way that has me arching back, my eyes somehow wide and making out my room with a rush amplifying my senses.
Our lips and tongues are kissing, swirling, and we’re biting at each other. We both undo his shirt buttons at the same time and fling that into the air somewhere, too.
Forehead to forehead, I look down at him undoing his button and zip, at his erection ready for me. He drops his pants to his ankles and I feel him shimmy them off as I grip onto the elastic of his briefs and stretch it far it over his length, which is saluting me, and down his thighs. My fingers are shaky and they don’t take it off, but Nate grabs it and slides it off with one hand.
And then his fingers work down his own body. He pulls his beautiful length and draws it to me. It glides to my entry and past with my wetness coating him. He slides over, back and forth in a slow erotic massage.
Nate … Nate is heaven. Knowing it’s been—what?—months since he’s slept with or had another girl touch him, I feel satisfied I have that power over his male needs. There is no way this would have felt so mind-blowing in high school. His touch knows how to please me in ways I haven’t dreamed of and knowing that experience is from past relationships, knowing he will put that to rest indefinitely so he can have me makes me want him more.
His length slides down further, and reaches my second entry.
Lips to lips, he whispers a strangled, “Sorry, you feel so fucking good everywhere,” and slides back up.
He grabs on to his length and teases my entry. He looks at me purposely and grins.
“You cock tease,” I reply.
“You desperate for some vibration, Kall Bell?”
“Vibrato,” I correct. “And I will beg. I swear.”
“Hmm,” he hums, “So stop doing this?”
He pulls back a bit so I can see him massaging himself then delicately traces my edge. Reactively, I convulse at what his touch does to me and rock the tip just inside, but he pulls back.
“Why?” I rasp. I gasp for breath and try lifting my hips. “Come on. Please! Don’t you want it?”
He moans then rights himself, hovering above me, impossibly tall and huge. “Kall Bell, watching your undoing, wanting only me and not concerned for anything else, watching you plead with me is hard to give up when I have you like this.”
I rock again and he lets me feel his tip tease my entry, pulling back just as it connects.
He massages himself more and tells me, “Touch it” so I do and we both have a fist, each jerking, and he groans, “Fucking tighter,” and I grip tight.
Biting on his lip, he stifles a cry. Then he snaps back and impossibly fast his chin is down low, between my thighs, me already forced up and into a mangled position as I can’t move fast enough for him. I widen my legs for his task.
He starts licking, sucking me in to his lips and pressing his tongue into me. He fucks me with his tongue, and my body responds. My thighs clamp his head between my legs tighter, and I squash him far, feeling so, so bad yet not even caring. He moans in pleasure and says harder so I force him down again with the
pressure between my thighs.
He pulls away and I’m left.
Breathless.
Tortured. Again.
He fucks me with his finger and almost has me at release but scolds, “With me, Kall. Let go with me,” and his finger slips out although I had every intention of taking my selfish need and riding his finger to high pleasure.
It’s then I decide to take back control and reach down to clamp my fist around his length. He slips out the beginning of a cry before silencing himself and I force him down.
He doesn’t so much as try to resist. He flops back on to the bed and his glorious length is vertical and thick like a beam. God, it’s so tasty, I think as I bend down and lick a wide streak, tasting his length as I slide up and then pop his tip into my mouth. His pre-cum is strong. He is getting off on this so hard.
Two times, I use my mouth to slide up and down and my hands to follow through and double his pleasure. His hands come to my head and push down hard and I gladly release my hands so I gag and he hears it, loud and clear. Then I gag myself again on him and he says, “Sorry, that’s so fucking hot. Fuck, fuck,” and he slips back, holding his dick.
“Give me a moment,” he says, with a hint of embarrassment. “I was too close.”
“I’ve got it in there for you,” I say and he opens my bedside table drawer and withdraws the condom. We shouldn’t have mucked around like that before, but he didn’t push into me anyway, just slid at my entrance.
He slips on the condom and flips my back to the bed. I lay there with my legs open in the air, pointed at opposing angles so wide and far for him to come in any way as quickly as possible. He grabs my foot and brings his hands down and together at my inner thigh.
Then he stops for a moment and gazes down at me.
Cutting my thoughts off, he says, “You look so beautiful like this.” Leaning an inch from my ear, he turns dirty and says, “I’m going to pound you.”
He does. I’m so wet and opened up by him that his first thrust pounds so deep his balls slap against me. And he repeats.
Being Kalli Page 19
