I Need You (28 page)

“Two beers,” I said to the guy behind the bar, holding up two fingers. My other hand pulled out my wallet. The guy popped the caps off the bottles, then slid them over the bar.

“Have you seen how Rach can knock a beer cap off on a counter? She learned it from one of her mom’s guys. I tell you, that girl was dragged up not brought up. She makes me laugh half the time, the stuff she comes out with. She loves having Mom and Dad as her Mom and Dad, she’s started calling them Granny and Gramps since Saint was born.”

I laughed; his complete domestication was funny. A year ago he’d been the one determined that his life would be better than small-town Oregon.

“What?”

“You. You’re sure different with her.”

He picked up his beer. “Shall we stay at the bar?” He glanced at two vacant stools at the end.

“Yeah.” I picked up my beer and followed him down there. We both propped an elbow on the bar once we’d sat. Whenever we’d hung out in bars until now, Lindy had always been there, leaning on his shoulder or gripping his arm.

I missed her. Watching her face as Jason talked. Being able to make a laugh rip from her throat and catch the flashes of her smile.

That sound had been rare in the last couple of years.

A frown crunched my brow as I lifted my beer and took a drink.

“Go on, then… What is it? What’s getting you down?” Jason pushed, having taken a swig from his beer.

“One word––Lindy.”

“Ah.”

I shouldn’t talk, but… “She and I have been hooking up.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Hooking up? You are not talking about my Lindy, then.”

“Yes. Only she isn’t yours anymore and if you say that you’re gonna make me hit you, and she’s not the girl you knew anyway…”

“Wow.” His eyes got wide and his hands reared, palm out. “No war from me…” His hands fell on his thighs and he leaned in. “But when you say hooking up––”

“I mean hooking up.” I sighed. “When I went out of town I took her away with me. We messed around at first, but then it became… more––”

“That is not like, Lindy.” He leaned back, shaking his head. “But why are you annoyed about it?”

“I want more.” A smug sensation rattled through my body and probably slipped into my voice. “She likes it with me. In fact she can’t get enough of it. I keep getting booty calls from her.”

“Lindy!” His eyebrows lifted, but then he laughed.

“It’s not funny. She’s fucking me around and I don’t know what she’s thinking, or what the fuck to say to her.”

He bit his lip to stop his laughter, but I could see it in his eyes.

“You know her better than anyone. Tell me what to do!”

He smiled before taking another shot of beer. Then looked me in the eyes. “Stand up to her. Like you said, I never did, that’s where I went wrong. Tell her you want more or it’s nothing.”

But I didn’t want it to be nothing.

“Billy.” His beer bottle clunked down on the counter. “Don’t put up with her shit like I did. If she’s still into me, it’s only in her head, it isn’t in her heart––she never enjoyed sex with me.” A single eyebrow lifted, punctuating that.

“But that was because she’s obsessed with what she looks like. She worried too much about getting naked…” Shit. I was saying too much.

Too late. His expression said he’d got the message. “She’s over that, she gets naked with you…”

I held his gaze. ”Yeah.”

“Well that is something, ‘cause I don’t remember ever seeing her naked.”

I shouldn’t be having this conversation, I was betraying her, but if I didn’t, how was I gonna sort it out? “I taught her to like it but it’s back-fired…” Shit, if I was telling him stuff, I might as well tell him it all. “I liked her the whole time you two were together––”

“The whole time?”

“Yeah.” I looked at my beer bottle. “I wanted to be with her before you two started dating.”

“Are you kidding me?” His fist hit my arm, but it wasn’t a punch, just a knock.

I looked up, heat burning in my skin. Fortunately the color I’d captured on the coast probably hid my awkwardness. “No.”

His eyes flashed confusion, then his gaze turned to his beer. “Shit.”

“Sorry.”

He swigged some of his beer, then looked at me again and shrugged. “It doesn’t matter, her and me are over. But did you hook up with her when I went to New York deliberately?”

“No, it just happened… I told you that. She got upset. I comforted her. But I’d wanted her for so long, I messed up and kissed her, and she kissed me back ‘cause she was thinking of you… and then, well… I took it too far. She never wanted it that night.”

“But she does now…”

“Yeah…”

My cell vibrated in my pocket.

Lindy. Had she’d frickin’ heard me. ‘I know you’re out with Jason, and I know we agreed we wouldn’t meet up. But I really want to see you. Would you come and pick me up after.’

“Shit.”

“What?”

“Lindy.” I handed Jason my cell. There was that eyebrow lift again as he read it, then he looked at me.

“A booty call?”

“A booty call.”

“That girl has changed.”

I smiled. “Well I like that she’s changed. I just don’t know where the fuck I am with her. She never talks about going out someplace, or even says we’re dating… I don’t think I’m any more than a friend to her still.”

“So how are you going to reply?”

“I’m gonna go see her.”

Jason laughed. “Have you had a massive thing for her for years, then?”

I held his gaze. This was honesty in its rawest form. “Yeah.”

“Shit. I won’t lie, that makes me feel weird. We shared a fucking apartment with you…”

“I know. Tell me about it.”

“Do you like torture or something?”

“I must do. ‘Cause she’s got me all tied up.”

He laughed and drank from his beer, then lowered it to the counter. “So what do you want from me?”

“A plan?”

“Like I said, just have it out with her. If I had done that, I’m sure we’d have discovered long before we did that we weren’t right for each other. Maybe you and her are right. Maybe she just needs to get it. You know what Lindy is like, full of opinions. She has her way of doing stuff, and everyone else just has to come into line. Call her on it.” He laughed then, before grinning at me. “Tell her she can’t have any until she makes up her mind. That’s what a chick would do. Hell that’s what she used to do to me.”

Shit, he made me laugh, and I should not be laughing at that.

Oh, my God.

Putting the brakes on would be weird, though. But I had a gut feeling he was right––and things couldn’t keep on as they were.

I needed closure one way or another.

I needed to get on with my life, with or without her. I couldn’t keep living with pause pressed.

I looked at my cell and texted back. ‘Okay. I’ll call when I drop Jason off.’

‘:D’

Cool. This was gonna be one hell of a night. My heartbeat rocketed up to the manic pace of a base beat. It pounded through my blood.

Billy

As Jason walked up the driveway to his parents’ house, I called Lindy. “Hi.”

“Hey, Billy.” Her voice was bright.

“I’m just leaving Jason’s.” In contrast, my tone came out flat; the muscles in my back knotting. I didn’t like the person Lindy made me––the anxious fool. I’d made her happier, but the problem was, for us to work, I needed to be happy too.

“I’ll see you soon. I’ll come outside.”

“Okay.” I cut the call.

My head held images of Jason and Rachel, and the easy way he’d leaned in through the truck window earlier. Stuff was relaxed between them. He’d never been like that with Lindy, he’d been too busy pleasing her.

Somehow I’d ended up dragged on to the same path. How had that happened?

Shit. Jason was right. I had to face up to her.

When I pulled into her street she stood on the sidewalk, in the place she always waited, her arms crossed over her chest, like she was cold. But the night wasn’t that cold.

When I drew to a halt she pulled the door open and climbed in, smiling. “Hey.” Her expression was warm.

“Hey. The lake?”

She pulled the belt over and popped it into the slot, looking at me with a wide smile. “Yeah.”

I pressed down on the gas and pulled away, my heart still playing that base rhythm.

“I know we said we wouldn’t meet up, but I was itching to see you.” Her hand reached over and gripped my thigh, squeezing it a little.

She didn’t see anything wrong in this. She didn’t think it was weird…

I kept my focus on the road, illuminated by the beam of the headlights.

“Are you okay?” Her voice expressed concern when I didn’t do anything to respond, and her hand slid off my thigh.

I glanced across and threw her a slight smile. “Yeah.”
No
.

“What did you and Jason talk about?”

You
. “Just stuff…”

“Anything interesting?”

“It depends what you call interesting. He told me his cousin Richard is getting into lots of trouble. The crowd he hangs ‘round with are bad news apparently, the Doyles.”

“I heard that. Is Jason trying to talk sense into him?”

“Yeah, but he hasn’t got time to pull his cousin out of that bullshit, he’s got Saint and Rachel to focus on.”

“Yeah.” The answer was quiet.

Because she was jealous? Because she still thought she loved him? Why?

The conversation died until I pulled into the parking spot we’d used every night since we’d started coming here.

She unclicked her belt. “Let’s get in the back.”

Awesome! No time for conversation again.

There was something wrong with my head, there must be, ‘cause I was a guy, this should be my fucking idea of heaven––a pure sex relationship.

But I loved her.

I’d loved her for years.

This was not what I wanted.

When her fingers gripped the door catch she must have sensed something in my mood ‘cause she stopped and glanced back. “You, okay? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I may as well do it with her one more time, it may be the last time, and I was gonna make a memory I could hang on to for the rest of my days. “Come on.”

I released my seatbelt and slid out when she did.

We got in opposite sides of the back of the SUV, like the last few times I’d seen her.

It had got sordid for me, like she was a hooker. Not that I had ever picked up a hooker.

“Take your jacket off,” she said, already stripping off her sweater. She had on a short, fluid cotton skirt and a camisole-type top.

Lust caught hard in my belly and gripped at my balls, tingling to the tip of my cock. I wanted to be in her no matter that this was sordid. Maybe secretly I was the dominatrix type… Letting her be the boss of me. But then that wasn’t what turned me on, just her body turned me on.

I took my jacket off, as ordered, and tossed it over onto the front passenger seat. Then her fingers began unbuttoning my shirt.

From a girl who couldn’t stand to be touched and had to shut her eyes and bite her lip to endure sex, she had gone from one extreme to the other… Her fingertips ran over the skin of my torso, brushing across the contours of my abs and pecs as I watched in the moonlight shining through the back window.

She lay on her back, moving her legs either side of me as I kneeled.

“Come on.” Her fingers pulled my belt from the buckle, then her cold hands were unbuttoning my jeans.

“Can’t we take it a bit slower tonight?” I just wanted her to value this, but I was rock-hard for her and she knew it as her hand slid inside my boxers.

Shit.

Ahh. Shit.

She’d learned how to touch me just right, and she didn’t hold back.

“I have to get back to the house,” she whispered up at me, as she touched.

It was always the same excuse. I have to get back home. Why? For fuck sake. What did it matter if she was home in one hour or two?

Her hand let go of me, and she pressed her heels into the leather seat covers either side of me, lifting her hips to slip off her panties. Then she turned and shifted, sliding them down her legs and off, as I rested back on my haunches watching, my jeans hanging open and my dick bouncing out the top of my pushed-down boxers, fully aroused and aimed at her. Right now that was where my brain was––in her panties, or rather not, her panties weren’t a barrier anymore.

Shit. Her fist gripped and worked me again. She pulled me along like I was on a leash.

How had she undermined me so easily?

Jason had felt snowploughed––she was doing the same to me, just in a different way.

But right now––shit––my blood hummed with need and I didn’t give a fuck. Her cotton skirt had slid up her thighs, revealing everything. My temperature shot up ten degrees as her hand left me and she touched herself when I went down on all-fours over her.

I played right along with her hand, touching her, and then sliding two fingers into her damp heat.

A whisper of a sigh left her mouth and she shut her eyes, ending her own little game as I took over, but then she pushed her hips up against my fingers.

She was fighting to get to orgasm already, letting her mind search every sensation. I watched her expression, looking for signs that meant I’d done something right. I wanted everything to be right for her––so she would stay with me––
love me
.

One hand on the leather seat holding my weight off of her, the other touching her, I nipped and sucked at her neck. Her body arched. She’d put her hands behind her back to undo her bra.

A shiver of lust ran up my dick, as she lifted her top and her bra so I could kiss and suck her breast, and then she undulated against my hand as I sucked hard on her pointed nipple.

The girl was gonna have me coming any moment… any moment… Shit,
she
broke, all over my hand, throbbing about my fingers, sticky and hot.

I slid my fingers out of her and lifted them to my mouth to suck her flavor off them, ready to power into her.

Her fingers pressed on my chest. “Condom!”

“Shit.”

She didn’t wait for me to get it, but pulled my wallet from my back pocket and helped herself.