Boys Next Door (26 page)

Until the applause.

I walked off the stage and behind the billowing curtain on legs suddenly made of jelly. I was wobbly and my head buzzed from the retreating chemical reaction of adrenaline and endorphins.

Distantly, I heard the announcer say, ‘Wow, that was well worth the wait, don’t you think, folks?’ and then mad applause.

But I didn’t get a chance to react because big arms caught me up and shoved a fedora on my head. He kissed me, muttering, ‘Jesus Christ, that wasn’t burlesque.’

I let myself be crushed to him and when I was mashed against his hard angles and warmth, I wrapped my arms around him and said, ‘I know. It was soft-core stripping, but the best I could do on such short not –’

He didn’t let me finish. He pushed me to the back of the structure, kissing me again – rough and gentle and needy and wild, all of it – until I started shaking.

‘We need to get you dressed,’ Deke said.

‘We need to get me naked,’ I said. I wrapped one fence netted leg around his waist and grabbed him by his jacket. I pressed my lips to his jaw and whispered, ‘Take me home and fuck me.’

I didn’t have to ask him twice.

We only lived ten minutes from the square. How could a ten minute ride take that long? Deke had practically thrown me in his truck and left my car there. Wrapped in a spare coat and Coop’s trousers I was still shaking. And shaking some more. And laughing.

‘You okay?’

His hand found my thigh and squeezed. It was big and warm and it felt so fucking good. I wanted it on me while I was bare. I wanted it on me while he fucked me – kissed me, held me. All of it.

‘I just want your hands on me,’ I blurted.

He groaned, low and frustrated before smiling. ‘I’m driving as fast as I can.’

‘I know,’ I whispered. ‘I’m just –’ A shiver wracked me from head to toe and I snorted.

‘Freezing,’ Deke said.

‘Yes, that too. But … alive. And it’s you,’ I said hurriedly, turning a little on the bench seat to face him. ‘I feel so … electric … and it’s
you
.
I want things in my life when I feel that way – bigger things. And when I feel bad it seems okay if you’re around. Or even confused seems okay. Because it’s you,’ I said it fast – like ripping a band aid off.

He didn’t smile. He looked like he might cry, even. He just looked so fucking intense.

‘Deke? Did I say something wrong?’ I asked, suddenly terrified.

‘No, Farrell,’ he said, his voice so deep and dark it was almost unnerving. ‘You just said
everything
right.’

He sped up a little more and I held onto the car door and his hand. We were racing home and it was good. It felt like freedom.

* * *

We went to his house. It dawned on me as we fell through the front door and bounced off the foyer wall, all the while kissing like crazy, that I’d never been in here.

‘I’ve never been here,’ I said, but at the same moment I shoved my impatient hand into his jeans. I grabbed a hold of him, an infuriatingly thin layer of cotton between me and his hot skin.

‘I’ll give you a tour later,’ Deke said. He pulled his coat open and sucked my nipples through the thin lace of my bra. ‘You’re shivering.’

‘Warm me up,’ I said.

He peeled the cups down, exposing my spiked nipples, the cool air triggering another violent shudder. ‘Maybe we should put you in a hot shower fir –’

‘No, no. Do it.’ I grabbed his face, kissing him desperately. Every emotion that had coursed through me on that stage was staring me down – waiting for me to act. ‘You warm me up.’

He scooped me up and stood with me partially slung over his shoulder as he headed toward the back of the house. ‘Thank God I have a downstairs bedroom,’ he murmured. ‘I doubt I have the patience to get upstairs.’

I laughed a little but with the air rushing out of me as he took fast impatient steps, it sounded like I’d sprung a leak.

He dropped me on his bed, a big king-sized monstrosity that was done up with a blue plaid coverlet.

‘You dress your bed the way you dress yourself,’ I observed, amused.

He paused and then grinned, tugging the trousers off of me after yanking my feet free of the shoes. ‘Plaid comforts me. Don’t ask me why.’

I wiggled out of my tango pants and he took them from me, turned them over in his big rough hands and then dropped them. Deke dropped to his knees and put his face to that warm needy place between my legs. His face pressed the fence net mesh and he breathed me in so I trembled from the effects of
him
, not the cold. I hooked my fingers in the waistband of the panty hose and began to push them down.

‘Don’t. Leave them,’ he said and licked a blazing line across my clit through the large diamond-shaped hole at the crotch. Then by way of apology he muttered, ‘I’ll buy you a new pair,’ and yanked the netting so it ripped.

His mouth was on me, warm and seeking, his tongue nudging me to the point of near-orgasm right off the bat. I wanted to tell him to never mind. To not worry about it, but the suction he applied to my clitoris made the words dry up in my throat.

My whole being had simply narrowed down to the feel of his lips, his teeth and his tongue on my pussy. I grasped his comforting plaid coverlet and waited for the orgasm swelling in me to grow to its fullest potential and burst.

‘You were amazing,’ he muttered against my thighs. Tracing my outer lips with his tongue, pushing the tip of it against tender secret places – but deliberately avoiding where I needed him most.

‘Hush,’ I sighed, trying to move my hips so he had to lick my clit.

He dodged me – I groaned and he laughed as his lips played softly up my inner thigh. ‘Hot as hell. And you looked … happy. Like you were having fun.’

His teeth pricked along the arc of my shaven mound, the heat of his mouth covering my sex, but still he didn’t lick.

I arched up under him, grabbed his head, gave him a little push and whispered, ‘Dear God, Deke, stop killing me.’

And he stopped, laughing softly so the vibration of his humour worked through my pelvis, up into my belly. My pleasure draped over me; aided by a wet slippery tongue and small subtle licks followed by hard intense strokes. Finally, he pushed his fingers into me, sucked the hard knot of my clitoris and I came. Small white lights dancing in the darkness behind my eyelids. I said a million things just then and not a single one of them seemed to make any sense. But that was fine.

He was over me, pulling at his buckle, pulling at his zipper. I tried to help and he pushed my hands away, saying, no.
No.

And I stopped.

Until he was in me – right through the hole he’d ripped in my panty hose. Right into me in one long easy stroke, my body taking him easily. Welcoming and rippling and milking at him as he thrust. His hands locked over my wrists, pinning them above my head and his lips fluttered over my face – eyebrows, cheekbones, nose – before settling on my lips.

‘So do I have to pledge my undying love now?’ I said it jokingly – but even I heard the fear in the whispered words.

He slowed, face to face with me, studying me. Deke rocked against me gently, but his fingers bit into my wrists inciting a thrill through my centre. I wiggled under him feeling studied and nervous and beyond aroused. My pulse beat wet and steady in my cunt, and just the tiniest amount of friction when he moved was threatening to push me over the edge.

Dark eyes pored over me and he smiled, that smile broke something wounded in me. ‘No. You do not have to pledge your undying love.’

He nibbled the tendon that stood out along my neck and my nipples seized tight, rubbing his warm chest, pushing me another inch closer to release. The first flutter of a spasm worked through my pussy and we both exhaled wistfully.

‘And I don’t have to promise to have a whole gaggle of your children?’ I gasped, my hips thrusting up to get him moving. Little tiny bursts of movement that made me shiver from what we were doing. My body was nearly warmed through now. The shiver had nothing to do with my dance or the chilly wind.

Deke pushed my wrists a bit harder, moved against me a bit faster, whispered in my ear, ‘Not a gaggle. Not a murder. Not a horde. You just have to promise – I hope – that I’m not one of your many distractions.’

I laughed and wrapped my legs around his waist, pressing my pussy flush to him. I wanted him to feel the wet heat of me. The need in me. More than anything, the vulnerability in me. I was terrified and I needed him to know.

I hadn’t ever wanted this, I thought.

Deke moved his hips in just the right way, his cock touching every sensitive place that was needed to trigger the orgasm. And when he triggered it, I fought against his grip involuntarily. ‘And I know you’ve been with them and I don’t care. I know you promised none of us a damn thing and I don’t care. I don’t care about anything that came before this moment in time. Anything that happened before today, when you realised that if something big happens in your life, I’m the person you want there with you. Do you hear me?’ His grip tightened on my wrists and I nodded.

I’d heard every word, even over my soft cries as I came. Long slow spasms wracked me and I moved up under him restlessly and greedily, driving him as deeply as I could so that the pleasure would just go on and on.

I kissed his face, his chin, his neck. Wherever my lips could land, I kissed. ‘I hear you,’ I sighed.

‘And ya know? It’s been fast as fuck. You rolled into town and I felt myself going,’ he said, pulling free of me.

I made a soft noise, a surprised noise, and then another when he flipped me easy-squeezy onto my belly. His hands yanked me up and Deke nudged my knees apart a bit more. His lips dropped soft kisses on my right ass check and when I rippled, laughing because it tickled, he kissed along the small of my back and down to my left ass cheek. I didn’t want him to finish the sentence he’d started. But a different part of me, the small quiet part, wanted him to.

‘I felt myself tumbling and rocketing down, down, down into it,’ he whispered sliding into me with ease. He palmed my bottom and held on as he slammed into me. My forehead brushed the comforter, the smell of him and where he slept filling my head.

‘Down into what? Down into what?’ He’d reduced me to repeating myself. Mumbling and muttering like a mad woman.

Deke reached under me, stroking my clitoris so I sighed. ‘Down into you. Falling. For you.’ He thrust fast and deep and pinched my clit so that a spark of pain fired off in me. My pleasure ratcheted up, my face pressed to his bedding, my ears taking in every pretty word he laid down for me.

‘I fell in love with you. I
am
in love with you.’ My body went tense and he chuckled, pulling free of me again. He ran the head of his cock back from my slippery hole to the tighter entrance of my ass. I stiffened further and then moaned when he pressed just the tiniest bit.

‘I know you’re afraid and you don’t have to love me, or tell me you love me, or even think the word “love”.’

He pushed again a little harder and the head of his cock breached my ass. I tangled my fingers into soft plaid and pushed back just a bit. So he could feel my willingness. My readiness.

This time he groaned and his fingers gripped me tight.

Fingers pushed into my cunt. I was wet – so terribly wet – and then he pushed them into my ass. And every time he pushed forward I pushed back. We sighed in unison and Deke added another finger – stretching me, readying me, forcing me wider.

‘Do it, do it –’ I moaned and he replaced the fingers with himself. The head forced past the tight ring of my anus and the entire room seemed to inhale deeply and exhale easily. I let the sparkle-sizzle-burst of pain take me down – cool sweat springing up along my lower lip – and then it passed like a choppy wave and I was baring back to take him.

‘Fuck, I’m in,’ he murmured. ‘I didn’t think you’d … I wasn’t expecting you to let me –’

‘Hush. Fuck me,’ I said. ‘Come for me, Deke. I can’t tell you I love you yet. But I can tell you that if I knew what love really felt like, I’d imagine it feels like what I experience when you’re around.’

His groan made it sound like he was in pain, but I could tell it was my words. He was as humbled by what I was trying to explain to him as I was by his profession of love.

I impaled myself on him, pushing back to take his cock as deep as I could. Pressing my cheek to the bed, I slid my fingers into my pussy, brushing that fragile wall of flesh that separated his cock from my fingers.

‘You’re killing me, kid,’ he chuckled.

‘Not killing. Joining,’ I sighed.

I let all the fear and worry about his feelings for me – and my feelings for him – slip away for that moment. I found that rhythm between fingers and his thrusts. The heel of my hand bumped my clit relentlessly and when his fingers bit into my flesh and his breath quickened I came.

His name burst past my lips before I could stop it and I shuddered under him, repeating his name over and over until he gave in and came with me. Driving into me, hard enough to scoot me across the bed forcefully.

Then I crashed to my belly, Deke softening, disengaging, gathering me close. ‘You’re still shaking.’

It had nothing to do with the cold outside any more. It had nothing to do with lust or release. It had everything to do with what I was feeling for him. I was starting to realise how big my feelings were. And how fucking scary it all was.

He wrapped me in his arms and then pulled his plaid comforter over us. ‘Shaking,’ he repeated.

‘It’ll pass,’ I said.

Two days – that was what I took after our sweet bed sheet confessions. I fled – ran, hightailed it. Whatever you want to call it. I was a pussy, a wimp, a wuss, a baby. Tape any name you like on me, label me if you will. But Deke was no fool. He took one look at me after pushing me into a hot shower and pouring a mug of tea into me and said, ‘You need time.’

And then he took me home.

Something about the gesture broke my heart, something about it mended it.

I did need time and had he not spied that in me, I don’t know if I’d have had the balls to say. But he saw it in me and I locked myself away from the world – the salon was closed the rest of Monday – Tuesday and Wednesday I took off. Calling and asking Donna with as much self-control as I could muster if my job would be safe if I did. She assured me it would be.