A Woman Gone Mad (18 page)

I’m on the verge of screaming obscenities at him through my gritted teeth like a possessed woman when I hear his husky voice, “Lil, baby, stay with me, okay? It is going to feel intense but try to relax and let me take care of you. I’ll always take care of you, baby. Always.”

“Okay,” I whimper, trying to ease the tension that feels like a rubber band about to snap in two inside my body.

And thank the Lord above, he picks up right where he left off—with one hand still on my stomach and the other arm looped around a thigh to keep me open when I instinctively try to close my knees together at the first touch of contact.

When I feel it beginning to rush against me, pushing and pulling me, building inside of me, he pulls away and slides a long finger from front to back. Then he settles in the middle and sinks it inside me to the knuckle. “Fuck, Lillian, you taste so damn good, baby. I’m never leaving this delicious pussy table, ever,” he growls, and I feel his teeth and tongue go back to their ministrations as another long finger sinks into me. He moans and starts moving his fingers in and out, deeper and deeper, until I fly apart at the seams with a hoarse scream that rips from my throat as lights and sparklers dance behind my closed eyelids.

I’m fluttering back down to earth from my high. When I open my eyes, Nick’s settled on top of me, smiling down at my face. He reaches over, grabs a towel from the foot of the bed, and wipes me from his mouth. “That was fucking sexy, baby. You okay?”

“Ah…” I smile up at him. “I’m doing a whole lot fuckin’ better than okay, Nicolas.”

He leans down and I wrap my arms around his neck to pull his weight down onto me and his mouth to mine. Our tongues and teeth lick and bite at each other’s mouth until he pulls my head back by the hair he has in a fist at the nape of my neck and takes over our kiss, consuming my mouth with his.

After my bones have melted and I am nothing more than a whimpering, begging mess underneath him, I hear my voice, thick and slurred, beginning to beg. “Please, Nick. Please baby, please don’t pull away from me, please. I won’t survive it. I swear to God I won’t survive it, Nick.” I hear my voice crack and feel tears flood behind my closed eyelids.

“Neither will I, baby.” I feel the head of his hard, warm length line up with my swollen, drenched sex. Then I feel every muscle in Nick’s entire body go rigid and tense against mine. My eyes shoot open and flick up into his in question. He still looks hungry as hell but that doesn’t keep fear from flooding through me, unsure if he is about to pull away. Then I hear him groan. “Okay, baby, you ready?”

“Fuck, Nick, I swear—”

He cups his palm over my mouth, cutting my words off, and says in a harsh tone, “Lil, yes or no or I walk out right now.”

I nod and his hand moves from my mouth.

“Lillian, I need to hear it. Are you ready?” His face is serious as hell.

“Yes, Nick, I’m ready.” The words come out more like a whiny moan to my ears.

“Mmmkay baby, I’m ready—we’re ready,” he groans as he slides into me, slowly but fully, until he’s inside me to the hilt. He keeps his eyes locked onto mine and starts to rock back and forth, never pulling out more than an inch.

His eyes clench tight as I run my nails through his inky black hair, dragging them along his scalp until I meet the top of his shoulders and grab on tight to anchor myself. I start moving against him, our bodies falling into a perfect rhythm, and soon Nick is moving almost completely out before thrusting quickly, stabbing deep back inside, searing me straight through to my womb.

I feel it coming back with a force unlike any other I have felt before, and as soon as I feel the beginnings, I am immediately ripped underneath an avalanche of fire licking up my spine and igniting my soul. Then flames burst out across my skin and behind my eyelids. My scream is something I faintly make out as it pierces the air surrounding us right before I begin to convulse around him, under him, because of him. He slams into me so deep I feel him hit my deepest depths, and when he begins to come I am sucked fiercely back into another earth-shattering, mind-fucking, skin-splitting orgasm that has me gripping and convulsing around him all over again, holding him inside me until I have milked him dry.

We are left in the aftermath, gasping for breath, our sweat-slicked skin sliding against each other until Nick has me pulled under the sheet and wrapped tight in his arms. We lie there waiting for our breathing to even out.

“Shit, it’s never been like that before, Lil—never.” He chuckles and pulls me farther up his body to kiss my forehead. “Of course I’ve never tried to make it perfect before. I’ve never made sure we were both good and that birth control was taken care of.” He kisses my forehead again then cups my face with his big hands and pulls it to his. He kisses me softly before smiling against my lips and whispering, “I’ve never not used a condom before either.
Fuck
, Lil! That felt fucking insane, baby.”

“Yeah, I’ve… It’s never been that way before, baby.” I smile up at him but quickly have to look down to hide the pain from the stake I just felt plunge into my heart. And when I close my eyelids, all I see is Leo’s dark blue eyes. His face is smiling down at me before it contorts in pain and I watch utter devastation flash across his features. And then he disappears—like he always did, like he always does.

“I love you, Lillian Shaw,” Nick whispers.

I have to count back from twenty in my head and clear my throat before I lie.

“I love you too, Nick.”

F
all and the first half of my senior year flies by in a blur of Nick, fraternity parties, Homecoming, and the daunting questions of what I plan to do with my life after graduation.

Umm, here’s a novel idea, NICK’S PARENTS! Take a DAMN BREAK!

I will give Nick credit though. He does shut them down pretty quickly when they bring it up. However, I’ve also walked past his father’s office while he and Mrs. James were discussing how my short skirts and wicked ways have definitely steered their good son toward the path to hell. I know they don’t support my relationship with Nick, but every time I try to talk to him about it, he cuts me off with, “Well, Lillian, it’s a damn good thing I’d rather end up in hell with you than anywhere else with anyone else, isn’t it?”

So we leave it and every other negative thing alone and we continue on our own merry little way.

During Thanksgiving break, I got dog sick with strep throat and ended up spending the entire week in bed, a total waste of a break. And of course I was as good as new and couldn’t run a fever if I’d tried to miss a little school the following Monday out of that shitty situation.
Nooo, that would be too easy.

My first Christmas with Nick was absolutely fantastic. He took me to every Christmas light festival in a two-hundred-mile-radius. I
love
Christmas lights. I always have and I always will. And the fact that Nick knew this without me having to remind him or beg him to take me made me love him even more.

Well that, the Christmas lights, and the Tiffany’s diamond bracelet he gave me for Christmas.

Of course Nick and I celebrate New Year’s Eve like we celebrate every new occasion—in style and filled with intense passion. We didn’t even make it to the party his parents were throwing downtown. Once he took one look at me in my silver low-neck backless evening gown, he got me in his car, he did not pass go, and he did not collect 200 dollars. He drove me straight to his house and took me like a wild man, fierce and growling, and it was the best New Year’s Eve
EVER
!

Ever since the first time we made love we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. What can I say? The man had me addicted before I even took my first hit. And once I finally got a taste—once he finally got a taste—there was no going back. RABBITS, I tell you! We were like rabbits! And it was fun, and exciting, and everything I always knew true love should be.

Nick and I were floating on cloud nine, and we stayed that way by sidestepping drama, overlooking the negative, holding on to the positive, and never taking our eyes off each other.

Now… had we taken our eyes off each other, we would have seen that there was a world-shaking, life-changing permanence barreling toward us at the speed of light and there was no stopping it.

We didn’t even get a moment to brace for its impact.

It’s the second week in January and I have had the same stomach bug for three weeks. I’m also sleepy constantly, and now even my parents are starting to get concerned. Nick is so beside himself over it that he has decided that I am no longer to drive, especially in the morning when my nausea is at its worse.

I fucking know, right? Like I said, my rose-covered glasses were trained on Nick’s and Nick’s were trained on mine.

Nick picks me up from school, and today is just like every other Thursday before until it becomes like no other Thursday in the history of Thursdays.

We’re headed towards my house when he looks over his shoulder, the one that keeps his long arm up and his hand on the top of the steering wheel, when he asks, “Baby, how’d you do in first hour?”

“Gawd, don’t remind me.” I shudder at remembering looking into the bottom of the rusty trash can and seeing old candy and stray, left-behind clumps of dipping tobacco that had melded their way into the metal before losing my morning saltine crackers into the disgusting receptacle. Gagging again, I push the memory away and make a mental side note to start carrying plastic bags around with me in my backpack.

“That bad, huh?” Concern sketches across his features. “Baby, have you thought about going to the doctor?”

“What? Shit, Nick. Don’t be so dramatic. It’s a stomach bug. They go away.” I lean back into the seat and roll my eyes.

“Yeah, baby, but this one isn’t.” He pulls the car into my parents’ driveway. He turns to me and I see his eyes flash from silver to blue then back to silver over and over. “Lil, just promise me you’ll think about it, please.” He kisses my knuckles then looks up at me.

“Okay, I will. I promise.”

Smiling his crooked smile that only lets his left dimple pop out, he asks, “So how do you feel right now, baby?” His eyes become hooded as he stares at my lips before bringing his eyes back up to mine.

“Umm, like shit. I tossed my saltines in first hour and then threw up every hour on the hour for the other six hours, so I’d say your chance at whatever it is you’re thinking is pretty much a snowball’s chance in hell,
baby.
”

“Well damn, Lil,” he chuckles. “Fucking PMS much?”

CLICK. CLICK. CLICK. CLICK. CLICK. CLICK.
I hear the sounds of the puzzle pieces clicking together. Fuck, maybe it was the sound of bullets being loaded into a six-shooter. Or hell, it could have been Lilly tapping away at a calculator while doing the math.

Whatever sound ricocheted throughout my mind has me barreling out of the corvette and on all fours, throwing my guts up in my daddy’s pristinely mowed lawn.

“Lil, Jesus Christ, what the hell?” Nick sweeps my hair away from the front of my face and twists it up to hold at the top of my head as my dry heaving turns into sobs that are racking my body and soul. After I gather a huge inhale, I wail and scream like a wounded animal.

This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening. Please, Lord. This. Can. Not. Be. Happening.

I begin to beg, plead, and pray for this to all just go away, but it doesn’t. And it won’t. And for the first time in my life, I lose a battle of optimism and feel myself sink deep down into an ugly place.

A place where there is nothing but unanswered prayers and soul-consuming pessimism.

“Lil…” Nick whispers, scooping me up and cradling my shaking, trembling body to his large, hard, still chest. “Shhh, come on now, it’s okay. You’ll be okay, my Lil. I promise,” he coos against my head while kissing the crown and rocking me.

I jerk myself up but stay in his lap. While looking into his eyes, I spit the words out with so much hate, anger, and spite. “Everything is going to be okay?
I
am going to be okay? You
FUCKING
promise?!” My raging bitch is not on her leash, and Nick is going to bear the brunt of her wrath.

“Lillian, please calm down, baby. Please.” His eyes are pleading, but I don’t reel in the anger. I let it swell and consume me inside out.

“CALM DOWN
?!” I scream. “You want me to fucking CALM DOWN?!”

I jump to my feet and watch myself in some sort of out-of-body experience as my leg shoots back and kicks the fuck out of his left side, not once but twice.

Then I’m in and out of his car with my purse, and the next thing I know, I’m flying through my neighborhood and digging through consoles and glove compartments until finding an old pack of cigarettes, pulling one out, and lighting it up. As I exhale on the fifth or tenth drag, I hear Three Dog Night’s ‘Momma Told Me Not to Come’ pouring into the car and settling around me.

My eyes blur and a sob escapes my chest when suddenly I can’t see and then the car veers off the road and hops a curb. I slam the brakes using both feet, lock my elbows, and brace for the second fucking shit impact that’s about to slam into me today.