Girl Code (28 page)
Authors: LD Davis
I gestured impatiently for him to get on with it.
“Can we at least sit down?” he asked, exasperated.
I shook my head and leaned back against the door. “Tell me. Tell me what you should have told me the night of the party.”
He blew out a long breath.
“We’ve always kept in touch,” he started. “Not often, but she’d send me a Christmas card every year and I’d send her a birthday card or birthday text. Maybe two or three times a year we’d talk on the phone. There were some budget cuts at the school she was teaching at. I offered to help her out with her bills, her rent, whatever she needed, but she had been very careful with her money and she was fine, but what she did ask was if she could stay with me for a couple of weeks. She wanted a vacation, and at the same time, she wanted to check out some of the schools in the area because one of her teacher friends got hired at a school in Boca Raton.” Leo held up his hands and let them drop. “I said okay.”
“So, just like that? She went down there and just like that you guys hooked up?” I asked, not bothering to hide my irritation.
“No, not just like that,” he said calmly. “She only stayed with me for a couple of weeks like she said she would before she went to stay with her girlfriend in Boca Raton. Nothing happened between us then. She found a temporary position in Hollywood, filling in for a teacher on leave, so after about six weeks with her friend in Boca, she came back to my place. We were cool, hanging out, she met my friends, sometimes she’d help me out at the restaurant, and we spent a lot of time at the beach surfing or jet skiing.”
Great, all of the things I didn’t like to do.
My irritation was growing with every word he said, though. It’s not that anything they did was worth being irritated about, not really, but I remembered texting Leslie during those months and when she did bother to answer, she never mentioned Leo, or even the fact that she was in Florida.
“So, what happened? What changed?” I asked impatiently.
Leo sighed heavily. “I tried to set her up with one of my buddies, and she kindly declined.” He sighed again and rubbed his forehead like I had done earlier, wearily. “She said that she didn’t want anyone else, that she only wanted me, and if I didn’t want her back she’d understand.”
A lump the size of a basketball formed in my throat. I stroked my neck, trying to push it down before it choked me, before it suffocated me.
“But you did want her back,” I croaked.
“Wanted…” he shrugged. “Not the way she wanted me, I guess, but…she was…familiar. I was looking for something a little more…settled, and Leslie was there and ready to try to settle down with me, but my heart…”
“Did she get pregnant before or after you proposed to her?” I cut him off, asking the question with an undercurrent of venom.
“I didn’t propose,” he objected. “We—”
“Before or after?” I shouted.
He stared at me hard for a long moment. “She got pregnant before we talked about getting married,” he said quickly. “But I didn’t propose. It was a conversation. We—”
“How far along was she when she lost the baby? And how long after that before you two broke up?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said in a whisper, shaking his head.
“If it doesn’t matter, get the fuck out,” I said, pulling open the door.
“Tabitha, close the damn door,” Leo said in a tone only a little louder than his whisper.
“How far along was she when she lost the baby and how long after that before you two broke up?” I demanded, saying each word clearly.
Leo walked across the room and slammed the door shut. When I tried to move away from him, he grabbed a hold of my arms and pushed me up against the door. He caged me in, putting an arm on either side of my head.
“She was five months pregnant,” he said, his voice sharp, but low. “She was five months pregnant when she
gave birth
to a little girl, a tiny little girl that could fit in the palm of my hand.” He held his hand in my face, demonstrating how small she must have been. “She lived for an hour; she
struggled
through her
life
—if you want to call an hour
life
—for an
hour
. Her name is—
was
—Nicola Leslie Pesciano. Three months after our daughter died, I knew I couldn’t stay with Leslie. I love her, but she didn’t then nor now have my heart. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life with her. Every fucking day that I was with her, I thought about you. When Nicola died, I did the best I could to comfort Leslie, but I wanted you so damn bad, Tabitha. I wanted
you
to comfort
me.
It wasn’t fair to hold on to Leslie when I really didn’t want her, so I let her go.”
My arms hung limply at my sides as I was slammed with conflicting feelings. I was sorry, very sorry for what Leo and Leslie lost. I was angry and hurt, so damn angry and hurt because this was how I had to find out. Leslie and I hadn’t been close in a long time, but
this
, she should have told me about. I felt so rejected by her and it hurt me more than I expected it could. I felt guilty, god did I feel guilty, because she went through the worst event of her life with Leo. They shared something precious, personal, and tragic and then I, the very person who promised her I would never, ever do such a thing, swept in and took the man she loved while she was still reeling from her loss.
It didn’t matter that I didn’t know about what happened, I knew about the code, the pact. I knew about that, and I broke it.
“I. Need. You,” Leo said, his voice tremoring. “I need you. It still hurts, and you are the only person in the whole damn world that eases the pain, Tabitha.
Please.
”
Tears blurred my vision, but I could see the pain in his eyes from anywhere in the universe. It was that acute.
What was I supposed to do? I was wrong, I should have never been in that position in the first place, but I couldn’t just push him away, not at that moment.
I wrapped my arms around his waist and held him close. His whole body sighed with relief as he put his arms around me and nuzzled against my cheek.
“I love you so much,” he whispered. “Please don’t run away from me again.”
He kissed across my face until his lips met mine. The kiss was tentative, like he was afraid to kiss me, afraid I would reject him, and I should have, but I couldn’t. I dragged my tongue across his bottom lip as an invitation. Breathing heavily, his lips brushing against mine, his words skated softly across my open mouth.
“Ti amo . Tu sei tutto il mio mondo , tutta la mia vita.”
I love you. You are my whole world, my whole life.
“There will never be anyone else,” he concluded.
“Ti amo,” I whispered back, and then he kissed me.
My lips grazed along the shell of Leo’s ear and skimmed across his jaw. Tiny hairs on his unshaven face prickled at the skin around my mouth. I nipped at his lips before kissing his chin, his Adam’s apple, and down his perfectly carved chest. I followed the outline of his abdominal muscles with my tongue and nibbled my way down the line of hair that lead from his navel down to the patch of dark, wavy hair surrounding his erection. I squeezed it with my hand, eliciting a moan from him.
I dipped my head and sucked one heavy testicle into my mouth as I slowly stroked the rock hard shaft. Leo cursed and bit his bottom lip as he watched me release one ball and suck on the other. I leisurely licked the underside of his cock, but when my tongue got close to the bulbous head, I teasingly started at the base of his cock again and licked my way almost to the top. Leo groaned as a small smile pulled at one side of his mouth.
“You’re a fucking tease,” he murmured.
I bit him for that, right at the center of his cock, making him gasp and then groan. I teased him a little more, barely touching the head of his cock with my tongue and then pulling away. When I thought he couldn’t take it anymore, I slipped my lips over the tip smeared with the sticky clear fluid, and sucked. Leo groaned loudly and attempted to thrust into my mouth, but I was in control of it, of him. I held onto his thick cock with both hands and kept it from slipping any deeper into my mouth.
I sucked him hard as I stroked him with my hands, swirling my tongue over him, flicking my tongue, and pressing into the tiny slit at the top. Leo’s hands were in my hair, holding it back off of my face so he could watch me.
“You look so pretty with my cock between your succulent lips,” he growled.
Languorously, my mouth slid down his shaft, widening with his girth. He hissed and cursed, and when he hit the back of my throat, I knew he was trying hard not to thrust deeper, down my throat, but I tried. I took him deeper until I was gagging and barely able to breathe through my nose.
“Cazzo…” Leo cursed, curling his fingers so tightly in my hair that I could feel it pulling away from my scalp.
I loved his reaction, and it spurred me on to suck him harder, faster, and deeper. Every time my mouth moved down his shaft, I took him to the back of my throat. When he pressed gently on my head to hold me there for long moments, I allowed it until I needed to breathe. I would release his dick with a wet noise, with strings of my own saliva and his pre-cum stretching from his cock to my mouth. I’d groan and take him in again, sucking him, licking him, stroking him aggressively as he moaned and writhed on the bed, lost in the pleasure.
“I’m so close,” Leo announced breathlessly as he thrust into my mouth.
I sealed my mouth tightly over his cock and took him deeply and massaged his balls.
“I’m going to…Tabitha, I’m…”
I didn’t pull away, even when I felt his cock jerking and twitching. Seconds later, he came, spurting hot semen into my mouth and shouting obscenities as he held my head down and thrust madly. I tried to swallow, but couldn’t. It dribbled out of the corners of my mouth until Leo released me and I was able to take a few quick swallows.
Leo was speechless, trying to speak in complete sentences, but his words came out disjoined and confused as he pulled me up to him. He put a hand on the back of my neck and kissed me passionately, as if he had not just come in my mouth.
“I love you,” he said moments later, still trying to catch his breath. “I love you so much.”
“I love you, too,” I responded, draping my naked body over his.
I did love him, and because I loved him, I made sure that I gave him a perfect, unforgettable moment, because there would be no more perfect moments between us. Leo was unaware that it was the end.
I was letting him go.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Leo said as he kissed his way down my spine.
I tried not to squirm, but feeling his bare chest touching my skin as his lips blazed a path down my back made it difficult not to move. My fingers flexed and wiggled against the mattress and my toes stretched and curled, stretched and curled.
“You think that I don’t know you,” he continued as his tongue dipped into the small curve of my back just before my ass. I did squirm that time. “You think after nine years of separation that I don’t know who you are deep down inside, that I don’t know the core of you, but I do, and I know what you are thinking.”
I remained silent. He would tell me whether I asked him to or not, and I didn’t think he really knew what I was thinking. I’d done my best over the past three days to hide my true intentions. I smiled, I laughed, I kissed him, and made love with him. We went out together, in our hometown, as a couple. We visited both of our parents, my brother, and had dinner with Sandy and Rob at a popular diner where we saw a few familiar faces. I didn’t pretend that everything was perfect, that I was over the silence he had kept about Leslie, but I seemed to be trying to move forward, when in reality, I was falling behind.
I couldn’t get past it. I couldn’t get past all of the things that I had done to betray my friend. I couldn’t get past the fact that she had dropped me like I was nothing. I couldn’t get past what had recently happened between Leslie and Leo, and admittedly, I had a hard time believing that it was completely over, that he didn’t still harbor some strong feelings for the mother of his child. The best thing for everyone would be for Leo and me to part ways. He never really belonged to me anyway.
“You want to run,” Leo said just before his teeth nipped at the sensitive curved muscle of my ass. “You have been playing the role as the pissed off, but devoted girlfriend for the past three days, and you have been playing that role so damn well. I was almost convinced. Hell, you maybe almost convinced yourself.”
My entire body had stiffened. I held my breaths for too long before expelling them in short bursts and sucking in more air to hold for too long again. My heart punched into the mattress and I felt tears stinging my eyes. Despite those physical reactions to Leo’s insights, my body still reacted to his touch, his teeth, and his tongue heatedly. His finger traced down my back, between my fleshy cheeks, and lingered over the virginal tight ring. I gasped and instinctively tried to move away, but Leo moved on quickly and pushed his finger inside of my pussy, making me moan softly.
“You know when I get back to Florida that I’ll be busy getting the new business off the ground,” he continued as his finger moved leisurely inside of me. “You think that I’ll blame the lack of communication on our differing schedules since you’ll be flying all over the place. You think that I won’t notice right away that you’re gone from my life entirely. You think that by the time I realize it, that I will have reconsidered and I won’t come after you.”
His finger pulled out of me and Leo settled the weight of his nude body over mine. He gently nudged my legs apart, wide and open for him. His warm breath on my cheek was even, his heartbeat steady against my back, the very opposite of my own breathing and heartbeat. I felt his heavy erection pressing gently at my entrance and I realized that he was about to enter me without a condom. I opened my mouth to object, but he spoke right over me.
“You are going to feel the soft skin of my cock inside of you tonight, dolcezza,” he whispered harshly in my ear. “You are going to feel me throb inside of you just before I fill you with my come. You are going to feel the liquid heat shooting inside of you, splashing against your womb and making you quiver and come. Then you’ll feel it, feel part of me, dripping out of your pussy and sliding down your inner thigh.
“I’ve proven to you that I’m clean, and I know you’re clean without you showing me shit, and even if you’re not, I don’t care. I’ll share whatever you have, because you are mine and I am yours, and we are one.”
On his last three words, he thrust inside of me and my eyes rolled to the back of my head as his arm snaked possessively around my neck and his other pinned my right arm to the bed. I did not protest. I did not try to wriggle away. A carnal, inhuman grunt-groan-growl-shout was ripped from my throat. Leo let out a similar sound. He didn’t wait to acclimate me with his size in that position. He didn’t start off slow. Immediately, he began to crash into me with a venereal force, growling and grunting as his arm tightened and his fingers squeezed mine.
Feeling his copious cock inside of me from that angle was mind numbing and blinding. His thrusts were brutal, punishing, and achingly divine.
Leo’s lips were so close to mine, that he inhaled my cries and moans. His next words came out in a hiss and a growl.
“You may run, cuore mio, but I will never give you up. I will turn the world upside down to find you. I will
always
find you.”
I screamed as my pussy clenched his cock and every nerve ending in my body was conflagrated, set ablaze. Leo’s shout was animalistic, his arms holding me covetously as he marked me in a way I had never been marked, shooting the molten heat of his semen inside of me as he had promised. I writhed and shook under him.
And I cried as I was reduced to ashes.
San Francisco was warm, welcoming, and a bit like home. In a way, it really was home. I was still co-owner of the house I bought with Xander. I didn’t try to sell it after he moved out, and he didn’t push me to sell, either. When I moved back to the east coast, Xander moved back into our house. I had my own room there for when I visited, but I knew that wouldn’t always be okay. Eventually, he would be in a serious relationship again, and I doubted that his significant other would be cool with him not only sharing ownership of the house with his ex-fiancée, but allowing me to have my own room with free access to the house and everything within.
I would be staying in our house for about a week before heading down the coast to Long Beach. After that, I would be flying to Chicago. According to the schedule Leo and I drew up, we were supposed to meet there, but that wasn’t going to happen. As Leo predicted, I used the conflicts in our schedules as my excuse, my reason for our lack of communication. That had worked for about four days before Leo called me on it.
“I can’t do this,” I had said to him just before leaving for California. He had returned to Florida the morning after our raw encounter in my bed. “If you know me so well, you know why I can’t do this.”
“I know you better than you know yourself,” he had spat out. “Of course, I know why you think you can’t do ‘this,’ but it’s an easy out, Tabitha. It’s easier for you to just give up and concede rather than fight for what you want.”
I knew I didn’t mean what I was about to say, but I felt like he was calling me a coward and it pissed me off. I wasn’t a coward for doing the right thing.
“Maybe there is nothing to fight for,” I had snapped. “Maybe I don’t want you, Leo. Did you think of that?”
He was silent for several agonizing seconds.
“I think that you’re full of shit,” Leo said evenly. “I think that you like lying to yourself, but your lies aren’t comforting, Tabitha. Your lies don’t let you sleep at night. I think you’re sadistic and like the pain, but I’m not, and I will do as I promised. I will always come for you.”
“When will you stop?” I meant to ask the question in my head, but I had whispered it, and he heard me.
“I will stop when I am convinced that there is someone else out there to complete you as I do. I will stop when I am convinced that there is someone else out there to complete me as you do, and I promise you, Tabitha, I
promise
you that there is no one else for either of us.”
That was how are last conversation concluded, ominously.
“Good morning, gorgeous,” Xander said, taking me from my thoughts of Leo. I blinked up at him. He was holding a tall glass of orange juice and biting into a cold slice of pizza. I hadn’t even noticed when he came into the kitchen.
“Hey,” I said, clearing my throat. “Good morning.”
“Where was your head just now?” He sat down to my left. His knee bumped mine and it seemed very intimate. He was dressed for work, but I was in a long T-shirt and a pair of boy shorts.
“In another dimension,” I answered with a nervous chuckle. Xander didn’t know about Leo and I wasn’t ready to divulge that information. It hadn’t been that long since I was in Xan’s bed, wrapped up in him and his sheets.
“Obviously. You want to talk about it?”
I shook my head and waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, no. Nothing too serious,” I lied. “I was just thinking about the busy schedule I have ahead.”
Xander smiled, which made me smile. I always liked Xander’s smile.
“I always had faith in you, but…wow…this is incredible, Tabitha. You’re a famous writer, touring the world, making your adoring fans happy.”
“I’m not famous.” I snorted. “And I’m not touring the world. I’m promoting the newest book stateside and then—”
“A signing in London, followed by a signing in Scotland, followed by a signing in Australia. I’d say that’s pretty damn close to being worldwide, babe. I’m really proud of you.”
I appreciated his words, and they made me smile, but hearing Xander tell me he was proud of me was nothing in comparison to hearing Leo tell me he was proud of me.
“Thank you,” I said softly. His golden eyes stayed on me. I felt the need to avert my own eyes, and turned my attention to my coffee mug.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he said after a couple of minutes of quietness.
I smiled ruefully. “I was just here a few weeks ago. You should be tired of seeing me by now.”
“It feels like it’s been longer than a few weeks,” he commented. “And I’m never tired of seeing you.”
Maybe it was just meant to be nice, a pleasantry between old friends, but it made my stomach do a small flip.
“Always so kind,” I teased, getting to my feet. “Never want to say anything harsh, even if it’s true.”
Xander followed me to the sink where I poured out the remaining coffee and proceeded to wash the mug and the plate I had my half of a bagel on. I still didn’t have much of an appetite.
“But it is true,” he said earnestly. “I’m never tired of seeing you.”
I glanced over at him and saw that his tie was untied, just hanging around his neck.
“Xan,” I said admonishingly, shaking my head. I wiped my hands on a dishtowel and went to work tying his tie. “I swear, you better learn how to tie your own ties. How do you get through five work days a week without being able to tie your tie?”
His smile was impish. “I learned how to tie my ties years ago.”
“Oh, really,” I quipped doubtfully.
“Really,” he said in a gentler tone. It may have been my imagination, but I swear he moved closer to me. “It’s just that…I like when
you
tie my ties for me.”
I knew I wasn’t imagining his hand on my hip or my sudden difficulty breathing. I finished with his tie and started to step back, but his other hand shot out and took a hold of my other hip and he held me firmly, close to his body.
“Tabitha,” he said my name so softly I almost didn’t hear it. I saw my name form on his lips once more. “Do you still love me?” he asked.
My head jerked back in surprise. I had stammered a few non-words before I burst out with “Xan! I…of course. Yes.” My hysterical laughter came along for the ride. “Hell, we own a house together still.”
What I
didn’t
say is “Hell, we had sex in your bed during my last visit.” It happened sometimes over the years when we were both single. Xander was familiar to me and I was familiar to him, and we had a history, a good history. Adding sex into our friendship was easy and convenient, especially since it was without attachment. We carried on as friends after every encounter, but last time, Xander seemed different, morose about my impending departure. I didn’t think it meant anything. We both knew that the sex was no strings, but judging by the tone of his voice and the way he was holding me at that moment, I had to wonder if I had misjudged.
“Tabitha,” he said my name with that same gentility again as he gazed down at me with his brow furrowed. “I…I don’t think I made a mistake. I think I did the right thing when we broke up, but I have to be honest here. I miss you. I miss you more lately than usual. I love you, and I want you. I want to try again.”