Lost in You (10 page)

I didn’t know what to say. So I simply said, ‘Kiss me again.’

He obliged me. His mouth soft and insistent against mine until we got his jeans off. Then it was rough and insistent. My jeans were next and I shivered, laughing, at the idea of being naked in this main room. That no one was here but us. It seemed surreal that the impressive structure was deserted but for two tiny naked people.

He looked up at the stained glass and then at me. ‘The light from outside … I guess streetlights that are still glowing despite the storm and the storm itself …’ He trailed off as he dragged his fingertips over my skin. Whirls and patterns and long, lazy strokes. ‘The light from it all tattoos you with colour. You look like a painting …’ He dropped a kiss against the side of my neck and lightning filled me. My whole body seemed charged. Then another kiss directly between my breasts.

‘Please,’ I said again. Going back to my earlier plea. The simplest plea of them all.

He lay back on the settee and pulled me so I was straddling him fully, my naked body open and pressed to his. I looked down at Dorian and he threaded my fingers through his. ‘You need to be on top this time, Clover. You need to be in charge. If anyone needs control tonight, it’s you.’

My throat grew tight and my eyes pricked with a rush of unshed tears. How well this man could read me already. The dream had left me in a state of panic. A floating terrain of uncertainty and helplessness. Now I was in control and my heart felt better for it. My body simply followed suit. I nodded, saying nothing, leaned over him and pressed my mouth to his. I swept my tongue inside his mouth to kiss him deeply, only to withdraw and drag my lips along his throat. He made a gruff noise and it made my pussy that much wetter.

I moved lower, scraping my teeth on his clavicle, running my lips, parted and wet, over first one nipple then the other. When his body bucked ever so slightly, I moved lower still to leave a trail of kisses across his belly. Then I kissed diagonally down to the top of his left thigh, conspicuously avoiding his cock. I moved up and kissed back down – diagonally of course, to be even – to the top of his right thigh.

His fingers plunged into my hair, his hands so strong they felt as if they’d leave fingerprints on my scalp. A fine tremor had possessed him and I felt him shaking ever so slightly under me as I touched his skin, kissed him and finally, taking pity, took him in my mouth.

His skin was warm and sweet, tasting of salt and cotton and some hint of mystery that could only be the taste of Dorian.

‘Clover,’ he said. It was such a softly spoken word I almost thought I imagined it, but for the fact that his fingers curled more tightly against my scalp when he said it.

I pushed my mouth down his shaft, dragging my tongue firmly against his skin. I sucked gently before sucking harder. Little degrees of pressure that I amped up until I felt a pleasant ache in my jaw that was rewarded by hearing the deep, needful sounds that came out of him.

I pressed my thighs together, realising just how badly I wanted him inside me. How much I wanted to drive myself down on him and take him as deeply as I could. The thought alone set of a small spasm of want in me.

I sighed and the warm air must have caressed him just right because he growled. ‘When I said you needed control, I didn’t know you were going to try and kill me, Clover.’

I licked a straight insistent line up the back of his cock before sucking the tip of him boldly and running my tongue over that sinfully soft skin.

‘I’m not trying to kill you. I just wanted to taste you.’

He nodded, smiling, but his jaw was tight from maintaining control. ‘And I taste like?’

It popped into my head and I said it. ‘Victory.’

He laughed outright, fingers caressing my jaw and my cheek. ‘If the war is driving me insane with want of you … then you have achieved victory.’

‘Prove it,’ I said, moving up to kiss him. ‘Prove it to me now,’ I whispered as his hands came down, bold and proprietary, on my hips. He helped me get into the perfect position and when I said, ‘Please, Dorian’ once more, he held his cock straight and nudged my wet opening.

I sank down on him with the greatest care. Wanting to savour every single second of it. He parted me, stretched me and finally filled me as I sat flush on top of him and began to rock.

I took his hands from my hips and pressed them flat on the settee, holding him down, pinning him there. Watching his face so I could admire every flicker of pleasure I saw. He was hard, so incredibly hard, I thought I’d come from just a few thrusts. I squeezed my internal muscles, wanting to last, and then, in a self-fulfilling prophecy, I came instead.

I cried out, gripping his hands tight. He squeezed back when my orgasm hit me. ‘That’s my girl,’ he said.

Warmth filled me. It was more from the words …
that’s my girl
… than from the orgasm. I realised in that moment, I’d love to be his girl. A little sadness overtook me because that was nothing but a pipe dream. Trapped in here, in this odd little alternative reality we had going, it was genuine – maybe. But when the normal world, everyday life, was imposed on us again, it would all blow away like storm debris.

‘Where’d you go?’ he asked, thrusting up hard to fill me. The sudden movement and the pleasure it triggered brought me out of my funk.

‘Nowhere. I’m right here,’ I said. ‘Right here with you.’

‘Good. That’s where I want you. Right here with me.’

I leaned over him, pressing my breasts to his chest, kissing him until he was the one kissing me. Even from underneath he took control of that kiss and stole my breath.

I rocked my hips from side to side, grinding myself to him, getting the friction on my clit I needed, getting the pressure inside that I desired. When I came the second time, Dorian arched his neck to kiss my neck, my shoulder, and whispered. ‘You feel good when you come. You ripple. So wet … so soft.’

I almost came again.

He drove up from under me, moving strong and deliberate. His body grew taut, his breath quick. ‘Damn,’ he said and then he was coming, his fingers clutching at me because I still held his hands down against the faux leather of the settee.

I collapsed on him, smiling, breathing hard. He put his arms around me and I pressed my cheek to his chest. ‘Damn?’ I asked.

‘Damn, I didn’t want it to end,’ he explained. ‘But also, damn, that feels good.’

‘So a dual-purpose damn?’

‘Exactly.’ He sighed contentedly.

Despite the chill, I loved lying there in that big open room under the magical dome. The storm raged on, dropping sheets of water on the intricate glass overhead.

I opened my mouth to tease him or praise him or something. Instead I heard myself say, ‘So once when I was a little girl …’

He reached for the sweatshirt and draped it over us. It wasn’t much but it was something and neither of us seemed eager to break the spell of the moment.

‘How old?’

‘Eight,’ I said. I traced my fingers over his chest, listened to the steady thump of his heart. ‘Well, I told you my mother was a single parent.’

‘Yes.’

‘She had two jobs. Usually, my grandmother watched me on the nights that she had to work her cocktail-waitress job. This time – it was winter – my grandmother had the flu. Really bad flu. And she asked my mom not to bring me because she was afraid I’d get it too. But my mom couldn’t miss her shift. Missing her shift meant losing money and when you live on a shoestring budget …’ I shrugged. My heart had started beating faster. I’d never told anyone this before. Ever. The only people who knew were the ones there that night. And the cops.

‘I imagine losing money isn’t a good thing to do on a shoestring budget with a growing kid.’ He was being kind. It broke my heart a little more.

‘Nope. It’s not a good thing at all. So, my mom asked me … would I be OK? Did I think I would?’ I laughed and noticed there was a tinge of hysteria to the sound. ‘I was eight. Of course I wanted to be grown-up and strong. I wanted my mom to trust me and I wanted her to know it was OK to go do what she needed to do. So I said …’

‘You said yes.’ He sounded sad.

‘I said yes. I said, sure, I’d be fine. And you know we had neighbours if any emergency happened. I proved how grown-up I was by telling her if anything really bad happened, which I knew would never happen, I would simply call 9-1-1.’ I exhaled slowly, trying to still the crawling anxiety in my chest. Talking about it made me twitchy.

‘And she went,’ he said, leading me along very gently. He gave me a squeeze when I nodded. A tear slipped free of my eye and I wasn’t sure if he could feel it when it fell to wet his skin, but I was almost certain he could sense I was on the verge of crying.

‘So it was fine at first. I felt very grown-up. I even stayed up later than normal by a whole half an hour.’ I laughed softly. ‘Not much of a rule breaker, even then. Then I went to bed after making sure all the windows and doors were locked and the front-porch light was on.’ I stopped, listening to the rain that now seemed to be banging with a million fists to be let inside.

Dorian didn’t say anything. He just held me, one hand tracing small circles on the small of my back, the other stroking my hair.

Finally, I swallowed hard and steeled myself. Then I went on. ‘We didn’t live in the best neighbourhood. Not by a long shot. We couldn’t afford it. There had been … gangs, for lack of a better word, of teenagers roaming around at the time. They would break into homes they knew were empty. Three things had been announced by the police: they weren’t quiet about it, they trashed the place when they got inside, and once when they broke into a house that turned out not to be vacant they killed the man inside.’

‘Christ,’ he said. But it was more to himself than to me. He squeezed me again, holding me as close to him as I could get.

‘So anyway …’ I was rushing. My voice shaking and my body cold now. Not so much from my state of undress but from my confession. ‘I woke to this horrific sound. It sounded to me, at eight, like the whole house was coming down around me. We’d been learning about tornados in school, how they sounded like huge locomotives. I thought maybe there was a hurricane. I tried to get up and get to the phone. We didn’t have a cordless, too expensive. And the phone was in my mom’s room. But …’ Another shrug. ‘I found I couldn’t move. I was frozen. And the pounding and banging and noise were just getting worse and worse, louder and louder.’

Outside the wind howled. It was a hollow, lonely sound. And in that moment I felt the same way. Hollow and lonely. Though a very lovely man who made my soul light was holding me. The memory of this event always tore me down to raw flesh and trembling bone.

‘They got in,’ I said. ‘I heard the door burst open. Heard laughter. And my paralysis broke. Then all I could do was hide. I crawled under my bed. My mother never let me store toys under there,’ I said. I laughed. ‘Thank God she was so strict about it, because there was room under there for me. I crawled in that space and I tried as hard as I could to make myself as small as possible.’

He kissed my forehead, my eyelids. He kissed away the wetness he found there on my face. But still he said nothing.

‘They were breaking things and laughing and cussing and I was just shaking, thinking how I’d failed my mother because I had not taken control of the situation. I had never made it to the phone. I had been so bold and brave but when push came to shove I had failed utterly.’

‘Clover –’

I rushed on, not wanting to lose my momentum. ‘And then I heard the best thing ever. Just as I heard footsteps on the stairs. Just as they were coming upstairs where surely they’d have found me. I heard a gunshot.’

‘That was the best thing –’

I cut him off. ‘Yes, because it was our neighbour Mr Tom who owned the house next door. My mother had told him I’d be home. I guess she was more worried than she’d let on. And in a neighbourhood where people often turned a blind eye and let things happen just so they didn’t have to get involved … Mr Tom came and saved me. Mr Tom came and ran them out, yelling and carrying on that he’d called the cops and he’d shoot every single one of them in the ass where the good Lord split them if they didn’t get out of the house.’

I took a deep breath. ‘And they did. They left and then the cops came and my mother came and all the while I sat on Mr Tom’s lap and refused to move. That poor man …’

I realised I was laughing and crying. Nothing like looking crazy to seal the deal on a one-night-stand.

‘I’d say that poor man was a hero.’

I nodded. ‘But you see it’s so silly. Because he saved me. So nothing really happened to me and yet I have dreams and I get … well, you saw.’

He tilted my chin up and forced me to look at him. His eyes were dark and serious and he looked almost angry. ‘Are you kidding me? Nothing really happened? You were eight, Clover.
Eight
. I’m surprised you deal with things as well as you do. You’re pretty amazing,’ he said.

‘Stop,’ I whispered. And I meant it sincerely. ‘Now you know what happened. Now you know why … I had that reaction. But Dorian, I just want to let you know one more thing, then I’d like to just lie here and listen to the rain.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I’ve never told anyone that story before. Ever. And I doubt I’ll ever tell it again.’

* * *

I woke to a gentle swaying motion. Echoes of rain and wind surrounded me. Dorian was walking with me slung over his shoulder.

‘’ere we going?’

He laughed. ‘To bed.’

‘I can walk, you know.’ I let my head hang down. I let my body sway. He could do whatever he wanted, really.

‘I know, but I wanted to carry you. I thought you’d sleep and let someone take care of you for a change.’

‘This is how you carry me?’ I wanted to go back to sleep. The night had been exhausting.

‘It’s the easiest way.’

‘Are you calling me fat, Mr Martin?’

‘No. I’m calling you long. This looked to be the most comfortable for you.’

‘Oh.’

‘You can go back to sleep, you know.’

‘I know but …’ That’s where it stopped because I felt sleep claiming me again. And I let it.