One more trembles through me quickly, this time reaching my heart and making it beat faster and harder than the first. And still he keeps going. “Gray, please,” I plead, desperately squirming to get away from the continued slow attack. No more. “I can’t …”
He chuckles and loosens his grip a little, eventually sliding his arms from beneath me to crawl his way up my body. I stare and pant, watching his hardened features and solid, naked frame climbing until he’s over me. It gives me pause, regardless of the moment, to look him over.
I’ve never taken in all of him like he has done me when naked, never been given the time. Unashamed. Large yet lean. Looming even. Muscles move, ribs and bones holding the run of abs taut over his stomach. There’s nothing pretty about it. It’s harsh and solid, unforgiving and immovable. The only thing softening is the smatter of dark hair over his broad chest, and the glistening of me still on his lips.
He tilts his head at me as I survey what’s on offer, a slight smirk on his face. I smile at that and stretch, languid and unhurried now I’m awake. And then I wonder why he’s here at all, or why we’re doing this when he was so callous towards me earlier. He’s in my face before I can question any further than that, inches from my face and still smirking at something.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmurs. Am I?
Why say that?
I turn my head slightly, unable to deal with nice words if they don’t mean anything to him, and ignore the chuckle and brush of his lips on my cheek. “Always were. Right from the moment I saw you at the opera.” I frown. I was crying there. A mess of grief and worries. I’m not anymore. “You hid from me in dark recesses, nothing but the slither of your dress on show for me. Are you hiding again, Hannah?” Hid? I wasn’t hiding when he saw me. “I thought you’d evolved.”
I have.
I turn back to look at him, my own lips less than a breath away from his because of the move. “Why are you doing this again?” I murmur.
“Couldn’t deny it. Tried. Failed.” His lips kiss me briefly. “And I’m still hungry for you.”
“I …“ I don’t know what to say to that.
I stare, unsure what this might be becoming.
We are nothing but what we were when these bruises happened on my skin. He said that. And this softness and calm is not him. It’s someone new, someone I don’t know.
I whimper without consent, as his fingers run quietly over my ribs and tickle them with gentle pads. Quiet. So quiet. Nothing but his calm breath on my face and his hands wandering tenderly. One reaches my thigh and spreads it out to the side, the hand trailing down between my legs the moment I yield. He moves his body lower with the move, dipping his face to get to my breasts and settling his weight between my thighs.
“More beauty,” he murmurs.
His tongue flicks over them, slow and sensuous until the peaked nipples yearn for more pressure on them. That combined with the hand teasing softly on my swollen, heated pussy, and I squirm for something more from him. Nothing happens. It all just continues. Slowly, quietly, tenderly.
I watch him, part of me desperate to touch him and another part not willing to give in to whatever this is. I can’t. As he said – this is nothing, and I know, I know with every fibre of me, and every thought I’ve already had, that if I give in now, if I let this feeling consume me like the other did, I’ll crumble and be unable to bear the thought of anything less.
My eyes snap shut at the potential threat to my heart, attempting separation. I have to. It has to stay as nothing more than sex and lust. That’s it. He’s said it enough himself. And this is neither helping nor healing what has already begun to ache and yearn. Tears build under my eyes. I can feel them haunting and tormenting me with visions and possibilities that aren’t ours. They hurt.
The thought of him leaving me hurts.
“Hannah?” I shake my head, hands out to the side of me and my body as still as it possibly can be with his fingers still dancing over me. “Open your eyes for me.” Another head shake, lips clamped closed. Not saying anything. Not opening my eyes.
He chuckles lowly and moves his weight, heightening the feel of his broad chest over mine, and widening my legs. The chain moves on my wrist, the metal slipping and sliding around it. I’m not feeling that either. No. No chains on combined wrists. No attachment. No connection or sentiment that might make me want more.
“Why?” he asks, his breath filtering over my lips.
Still I don’t answer or open my eyes, not even when he kisses me softly and pushes his arm under my back to pull me closer to him, and definitely not when I feel the head of him start pushing inside me. A moan filters out, though. I can’t stop it, as his length fills me up and makes me remember. It pulls out slowly and pushes back in again, as tenderly as his words breathe from his lips.
Another moan falls from me, another snatched breath in the hope that I can dismiss this as easily as he will do, but his arms are so strong around me, his body so solid and close. I need to see, watch his eyes as he does this and wonder things I shouldn’t be thinking about.
He groans and pushes in again, one hand going to the back of my head. Fingers tighten in my hair to pull me to his lips. They’re so warm on me, so masculine and yet calm. Rolling kisses. Soft in nature and full of searching desperation. I swallow and let myself respond, tempted and teased into it regardless of trying to avoid it. Desperate. Desperate for more of him. Desperate for more of this as well as what we’ve already been, but I’m not looking at him.
Can’t.
Everything stops suddenly. His body, his hips, the light tension in his hands. He’s just there, buried inside of me and so still I can only hear the light crinkle of sheets under us. His lips are only a breath away from me, and his heartbeat is only inches from mine. I know it is because I can feel it thumping down on mine, twining with it and causing a rhythm. I can’t use that, though. Won’t.
It’s not mine.
“Open your eyes.”
Head shake.
“Hannah. Open them.”
Head shake.
“Let me look at you. I need to see you for this.”
Oh god. Why say that? I scrunch my eyes tighter and feel the tears leak out the side, trickle down my cheek. Kisses flutter over them, annoyingly wonderful kisses that make me think of things that are not ours. “Why not?” he asks.
“Because this won’t be here when I wake up,” mumbles out of me.
Quiet again. Stillness. And then his hand brushes through my hair, tousling it between his fingers softly. “You’re right. I won’t be,” he murmurs.
His hips move again, more tender movement to tempt me into opening my eyes, and then the chain moves and his fingers link into mine. “But I am here now. Be here with me.”
Lips land on mine, soft and passionate. Tempting. Pushing. Making me think and move with them until I slowly lift my legs and they’re gripping around his waist. I can’t stop it anymore. Too many nice words and too many nice feelings.
My eyes flutter open, as he links our other hands and twines the fingers together, and I find his face close to mine and the feel of his breath moving on me.
Too much.
Not enough.
Everything.
He’s here with me, and I’m here with him. Together. Both of us giving into something that is so deeply engrained I don’t know how to fight it any longer.
“No regrets,” murmurs from me.
None, regardless of waking up alone.
Chapter 20
Gray
T he driver lifts the bag and takes them over to the cabin crew. I stand firmly and look between the jet and the car, pulled and tugged between the two of them, and then look at my watch for grounding. Eleven am. Morning time.
Time to leave after the night before.
Just without her.
“Sir? We’re ready when you are,” one of the crew says.
I nod at her and walk slowly for the jet, hands in my pockets to stop them fr
om making the mistake of signalling the driver to wait. I left her early before dawn fully broke. No goodbyes. No discussions. I walked away like a coward, choosing that over conversation that would have made me leaving harder than she can possibly imagine.
A long sighs leaves me, as I make my way up the steps and into the cabin. It was too close. Too much. And I am definitely too involved for sensible or prudent thought. Regardless, I have left and broken that bond. Perhaps I shouldn’t have. Perhaps I should have gotten her home, made that last effort and seen her safely back to the world we come from, but I couldn’t. Didn’t want to for fear that leaving her at the other end, having driven her home to the apartment I own, stories beneath me, would have ended up with another bed, or more words, or more lips and tongues.
And she knew anyway. She said the words herself, knew I wouldn’t be there when she woke.
Malachi will get her home when she’s ready.
If she’s ever ready.
The chair she sat in is in front of me before I can try to ignore it. I stare at it, imagining her hollowed and haunted frame in it when we came here, and then glare at my reflection in one of the cabin windows. She looked as tired then as I look now, as lost. Not anymore, though. Under me she seemed thriving and awake again. Evolved and fully conscious of who she was choosing to be. Independent, fiery, self-governing. Beautiful. But me?
I sneer and turn from the distorted view of myself - I am tired. Tired of living, of trying, of getting nowhere with results that should mean something, and now I’m tired of not buckling and just getting on with the life I could have.
She was so alive, is so alive. And I can still smell her here in this cabin, as if she’s barely left it or me, drowning out the smell of heather somehow. Words grumble out of my mouth about that, most of them laced with other words that mean something to me because of her. Whispered words. Words in ears that had sentiment and feelings attached to them, breathed through lips as she got closer and closer, clung on tighter and tighter.
“We’re ready for take-off. If you could buckle in, Sir,” the same crew member says.
I look at her, then back at the door as it’s pulled to. Buckle in. I smirk at that, remembering her ‘no’s’, her defiance. I can only assume that will carry on regardless of me. She’ll grow more, evolve more, find her path out here in the real world and forget about the man who she shared a few days with. As she said - no regrets. The only one I do have is that I’m not still lying in that bed with her, holding her and telling her I can stay or live like she’ll be able to when she emerges back into reality.
I smile at that at least, imagining her out there when she gets back, snappy attitude being thrown around and her way the only thing she’ll ever accept. Shame, though. I liked her hollow, dismal gaze. Not quite as much as I liked the evolved version, and certainly not as much as the feel of her softly running her fingers through my hair, but the darkness is where we reached each other first. Where we lingered without shame or concern.
“Sir? Are you alright?”
I frown at the sound of the crew member again and turn my gaze away from the door, nodding and walking for the chair. Alright? Perhaps not, but that isn’t something that needs discussing or analysing any more than I already have done. I am as I am.
And my world is as it is.
My phone rings, as I get to the seat and sit. Done. I nod to myself, resignation bedding in, and answer the call as I feel the wheels start moving.
“And what am I supposed to do with her?” Malachi asks without me speaking.
I shrug, unsure, and look out the window as the world starts passing by. Help her get home. Let her stay for some more time. Maybe be a gentleman and explain some of the reasons I’ve been the way I have been without telling her the truth. “That’s up to her and you,” I murmur. “Just look after her. No more face veins. Make sure she enjoys whatever she gets, and make sure she stops taking the pills before she leaves. And Malachi?”
“Hmm?”
“Make her eat.”
He grouses about something and goes quiet, nothing but the gentle notes on his piano sounding in the background. I stay silent and listen, perhaps hoping I’ll hear her talking around him, or shouting, or getting obnoxious about something. Me, probably.
“You didn’t have to leave,” he says, morosely, another few notes played. “I was beginning to get used to having you around.”
I chuckle and sigh again, watching as the ground below leaves me and the snow and ice begins dissipating into nothing but clear blue sky. “Yes I did, Malachi.”
Quiet again on the line. Just breathing and thoughts, as if he can change my mind and get me back there somehow. He can’t. And I don’t care how much that bothers or annoys him. He won his little game by tempting me into someone I couldn’t deny, and now he can pick up her pieces if she needs that because I was never going to be able to do that and he knows it.
“I don’t like her much,” he says.
“Yes, you do.”
“No. She vexes you. That aggravates me.”
“She doesn’t vex me, Malachi. She wakes me up, pushes something in me I can’t adhere to. It’s the reason I’ve left and you know it. Too beautiful. Too well matched. And too much for me to deal with.”
“Hmm.” The notes begin playing a tune, sombre and as dark as he needs them to be. “You had a good time, though?”
Yes, it was a good time. Every time. It’s been everything I’ve been missing and more, given to me as a gift I can’t honour any further than the time we had. I smile and think of her in our room, her dark hair spilling out on white sheets, her pale body restful in my arms for the night. ”Yes, Malachi. I had a good time.”
“Good. How are you?”
“What?”
“How are you?”
“Relevant, why?”
He chuckles at that, and a flurry of notes sounds out sharp and disordered. It’s enough for me to imagine him shaking his head and closing the fallboard down along with his emotions. Good. We both need that. Whatever this has been, and however much I lived in it, I’m going home now. It was never anything more than that, irrespective of feelings I now have.
“Goodbye, Malachi.”
One last smile, one last memory thought about, and I stand to find my laptop. I end the call in the same breath and dismiss the need to continue talking to him. It’s done now. No need for more conversation about it. A frown wrinkles back into place the moment I boot up and start trawling through emails I’ve ignored. Nothing extraordinary. Nothing of any intrinsic use, but I answer the ones that need my attention and file ones that don’t.
It should be as easy as that. As simple as going back to a mechanical world that involves nothing but facts and figures, documentation and analysis. Just like it always is when I leave. It isn’t, and my gaze drifting back to the window because the clouds are moving in the wrong direction, away from her, proves it.
~
Jackson’s waiting at the car as I walk down the steps. Pristine black suit in place. Pristine black car behind him. A pristine chauffeur sitting behind the wheel ready to take me back to the apartment and the life I lead. I fix my stare on it all and let my shoes hit New York ground beneath me, attempting to shake off the thought of her in front of me when we arrived here and the thought of the dirt and murk I’ve been residing in these past few days.
“Sir,” Jackson says, smiling. “Welcome home.”
He opens the door and closes it behind me, leaving me in the confines of the solitary existence I’m used to. I look around the space absently, as he gets in the front with Tom, noting all the familiar things that should make me feel welcomed. Black leather interior. The fresh smell of a cleaned car, the same car that takes me wherever I need to go on the occasions I need to leave the apartment. Everything’s just the same as it was before, even the feel of the wheels smoothly rolling over the ground to get me home, and yet now it somehow seems lost because it’s lacking her sound or smell across it.
&
nbsp; I shake my head again, annoyed at the way she’s settled into parts of me so quickly, and glare at the back of Tom’s head. A memory is all it is. A memory of a time gone and done. Good times. Honest times to some degree. But now reality is home and Manhattan draws closer with each passing minute of true time. I look out into the skyline approaching, already feeling the anxiety creeping through me because of the traffic and people. Too much. Too many.
Pushing the intercom at the thought, I direct Tom along the freeway rather than head back immediately. There’s somewhere I need to go first, something I need to see so I can discard those times gone and get on with where I’m truly at in life. Maybe it’ll help weave me back to normality, help me settle back into the kind of actuality I lead.
Open roads rumble quietly the further out we get, the mass of noise we were approaching dispersed to nothing but the occasional car passing by. I sigh and look out into it, and then up into the crisp, blue sky above. Clouds still drift, all of them blowing in a wind away from her. I scoff and look back at the interior, focusing on the view in front instead, as we leave the freeway. That should tell me something. Remind me.
Away.
The smaller roads eventually arrive, and those smaller roads become filled with the scent of winter heather I know so well. I frown at it all and stiffen my spine, short breaths pulled in in an attempt to get me ready. I’m not. Never am. But at least this time I have some lingering thought that will help me smile through it.
More countryside, and more heather, and Tom finally pulls through the gates and glides the car down the mile long drive. I cast my gaze around at the grounds and trees. Peaceful still. Kept clean and tidy, the roaming land around us bordered neatly with fencing. More of my wealth. All of it used for a future that is no longer here with me. Maybe it was a farce, but it was a farce I would have endured. Still do endure.
The car finally pulls to a stop at the main portico entrance way and I peer through the smoky glass at the house. Nothing’s changed about it. Still vast. Still colonial. Twenty thousand square feet of prime real estate - luxury and hardwood floors, stables and barns - all of it showing an image of me that wasn’t true when I bought it, and isn’t true now either.
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