Record, Rewind (7 page)

“Oh,” I said as he began to stroke his finger in and out, slow and insistent. “Oh, oh,
oh
...” His thumb found my clit again, and then he was playing me just like his guitar, coaxing notes from me that I didn’t even know I could make.

“You’re tight,” he whispered to me as his hand moved in and out, in and out, making my toes curl, my mouth go dry. “I can’t believe how tight you are.”

I blushed, but before I could answer him I felt something strange. Something dark and twisting in my belly.

Oh
, I thought.
Oh god. Am I really going to...?

Yes. Yes I was.

My skin dissolved into shivers as my hips took up his rhythm, as I clawed and clung to him, as my muscles began to quiver, as my belly began to clench.

“Oh Jesus,” I whispered, and then he did something amazing with his finger, circled it inside me, rubbed it in some way, and I exploded in his hands, my orgasm riding me hard as I thrust and writhed against him. “Oh, Jesus, oh Dalton, oh Jesus, oh Damien...”

He laughed as he drove me up to my limit and then beyond, and it wasn’t until I jerked away from his hand that he stopped his exquisite torture.

The world seemed to start up again, as though time had stood still for us for that one long moment, and I blinked, not comprehending what had happened. Everything was suddenly...changed. My legs ached and shivered with the effort of riding Damien’s hand, my pussy throbbed with aftershocks, my heart raced, refusing to slow down, and beads of sweat, even in the freezing night air, gathered on my brow. It was sweltering under his coat, and I suddenly wanted nothing more than to throw it off me and invite the icy winds to carry away the heat. It was too much, too intense. I couldn’t handle it. My breath, fast and shallow, fogged in the air.

After a long moment Damien withdrew his hand. With his eyes on me, he licked his fingers clean, and I blushed so hard I could have been used as a homing beacon.

He gazed at me speculatively for a second. “Good to know I’m on par with Jesus in your pantheon,” he said after a minute.

“Damien!” I said, horrified, and he just grinned at me.

I shifted, trying to avoid his gaze, but when I did I was reminded that the night was only half-spent; though I had nearly broken apart with the strength of my orgasm, Damien was waiting patiently between my legs, ready for me.

He wanted to be inside me.

God. I wanted that. But a thin thread of apprehension ran through me—I was a virgin, and on top...so what was I supposed to do?

Damien’s hand found my face and stroked down my cheek. Immediately I felt better, more confident, and reached down to his groin where his erection waited, hard and pulsing. My mouth went dry as my fingers ran over it, and I relished the soft sigh that escaped from him at the touch. I leaned forward so he couldn’t see how uncertain I was, I buried my face in his chest and kept stroking.

Gently at first, then more firmly as I gained confidence, I rubbed my hand over him, reveling in the obvious evidence of his want for me, and he responded with small thrusts and soft moans. The music of his voice filled me with satisfaction and desire, and after only a few minutes I felt brave enough—and urgent enough—to let my fingers stray to the button of his jeans.

His hand on mine stopped me.

Startled, I pulled back and gave him a questioning frown. “What’s wrong?” I asked him.

His sleepy, sexy eyes gazed down at me filled with desire, but around his mouth there was something tight and anxious. “Cassie?” he said, then fell silent.

“Yes?” I prompted.

He took a deep breath. “Are you a virgin?”

The question smacked me across the face and I wanted to crawl into a hole and die. I must have given myself away somehow. Dammit. Dammit, dammit,
dammit.

I couldn’t look at him so I dropped my eyes to our hands where they lay on his straining cock. “Yes,” I confessed. My voice came out a tiny squeak.

This time his deep breath was a sigh. “That’s what I thought,” he said. Then, very gently, he disengaged my hand from his erection, and I felt as though he’d just stabbed me in the heart.

“What?” I said. “Why? What’s wrong? What did I do?”

His hand came up to my chin and tilted my face to his. His gaze was sweet and kind, but now I didn’t want sweet and kind. I didn’t want chivalrous Dalton, I wanted bad boy Damien. I wanted a lot of things. “It’s nothing you did,” he said, his voice gentle. “It’s just that I don’t think I can show you a good first time when we’re...like this.” He gestured at the roof around us.

I bit my lip. “I mean...okay, that’s okay,” I said, “but what if I want it anyway?”

He shook his head and my heart sank. “It wouldn’t feel right,” he said. “I can’t...it wouldn’t be right.”

“What’s not right about it?” I demanded. “I want you, you want me, this is a chance to get each other out of our system...right?”

His lips thinned into a line and he looked away, embarrassed. “I suppose,” he said, “but there’s more to it than that. There’s... well, for one I’ve never been with a virgin before. I don’t...it’s not right. Not like this.”

I was going to kick him in his stiff cock. “Can I at least...I don’t know, help you out? With, you know, your penis?”

He coughed in a way that sounded suspiciously like a snort. “No,” he said. “No, that’s fine. I think we’re warm enough by now anyway. We probably need to try to get some rest and conserve the heat we have.”

Stung, I brought my hand back into my lap. Then, not knowing what else to do with them, I stuffed both hands into my hoodie pocket. “Okay,” I said. “That’s...that’s cool.”

He looked pained. “I promise, this has nothing to do with you.”

“Except for the fact that I’m a virgin?”

“That’s only...that’s just a part of it.”

I sniffed. “Oh. Okay.”

His arms stole around me again, and god help me, I let him pull me close. I still straddled him and now we semi-reclined against the wall. It was comfortable, if you didn’t count the emotional distress. I laid my head on his chest and listened to his heart beat.

“I really am sorry,” he murmured after a long while, and his voice poured over me like honey.

I pretended to be asleep, and, some time afterwards, my pretense became reality.

*

“M
r. Colton!”

I snapped awake, disoriented.

The world was dark and hot, and I was sweating like a stuck pig. I was lying on something lumpy and...moving.

The night came flooding back to me and I shot bolt upright, then immediately wished I hadn’t. The coat that had kept us warm fell away, and icy air invaded. I started shivering and grabbed the coat again, hunkering down against Damien’s chest and holding the wool over us.

The sky was still dark, but the dim gray light of the rising sun was starting to encroach on the blackness. There were also a bunch of people standing around, looking down at us, none of whom I recognized.

One of them was a woman with short dark hair, an exquisitely expensive coat, and a half-worried, half-exasperated look on her face. She was staring down her nose at me with a hard, assessing gaze, and it didn’t take much intuition to know she was quietly judging me.

I colored and groped for words but all I could think was:
I hope my pantyhose aren’t ripped to shreds when I stand up.

“Lina.” Damien’s voice rumbled against my ear, and despite how he’d withdrawn from me last night, the sound still sent little trickles of molten desire down my spine. “How’d you find us up here?”

The dark-haired woman’s eyes, still studying me critically, narrowed. “We almost didn’t,” she snapped. “Someone called the hotel to ask if one of the maids had left. She was missing.”

Dwayne,
I thought. Good old Dwayne. I knew I could count on him.

Lina continued. “They pulled up the security cameras and there you were, going up to the roof with her and not coming back down. Come on.” She cast a brief, critical glance over him. “Let’s get you to the hospital.”

“I don’t think I need to go to the hospital,” Damien said.

“Shut up,” Lina told him. Her eyes returned to me. “And get off him. The door’s unlocked, you can go home now.”

My blush deepened and I scrambled to get off Damien’s lap. Mortified, I turned away and pulled my hood over my head, then checked my purse to make sure I had everything I’d need before fleeing the country in humiliation. No passport, but that was okay. I was planning on jumping into the bay and swimming to Spain.

“Hey,” I heard Damien say. “Don’t talk to her like that. This is an old friend of mine. I knew her back in high school.”

“Okay. That’s great. Let’s
go
,” Lina replied, clearly not impressed. A man who had been hovering behind her shot me an apologetic smile, but I couldn’t muster one in return, so I just ducked my head and tried to stuff my hair back up under my hood.

“Just a minute.”

I was only half-listening to Damien and Lina. I was now thinking that this had to be
the
most awkward morning-after in the history of morning-afters, and my mind was preoccupied with ways to escape it. But then I saw Damien step up to me and his hand touched my elbow.

Plastering a smile on my face I turned to him. “Yes?” I said.

He looked pained. “I...” he started, and for a moment I thought he was going to say something about catching up later, or how much he secretly loved me, or propose marriage, or
something.
But then he shook his head. “It was nice to catch up with you,” was all he said.

Yeah.

Stung, I swallowed the sudden lump in my throat. “Same. Thanks for helping me survive the night.”

“Same.”

We stared at each other for one long awkward moment. I waited for him to give me his phone number, or to ask for mine, or something. Anything. But he just watched me, deep in thought.

I coughed and gave a little laugh. “So maybe someday soon I’ll come to one of your shows. I’ll wait backstage and be one of your groupies and everything,” I said.

I’d meant it as a joke, but instead his eyes widened, and if I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn that he was almost...scared. His face seemed to grow pale, and he was silent for a long moment. But what was he scared of? That I’d lame up his gig? Embarrass him somehow?

“No,” he said finally. “Don’t do that. You wouldn’t belong there.”

Oh.

There it was. Rejection. Right there. Just like I’d always knew would happen.

It took me a second to get my voice under control, but I was very proud of myself when I finally did. “Oh,” I said. “Okay. Thanks for sharing your coat.”

“Cassie. Lauren...”

But I was backing off, my head down. Then I turned and walked away, around the wall to the door and down the stairs.

He called after me, but I pretended not to hear him.

It was fine. It was all fine. I’d had some fun, finally kissed Dalton Rooker, finally got fingered by Damien Colton, and really, wasn’t that all a girl really needed in life?

But I’d wanted more. Deep down inside, I was still that naïve high school student who dreamed big, and when her dreams were too big for her to hold on to they slipped through her fingers and she crashed and burned.

That’s okay
, I told myself.
At least you’re used to it now.

I went home to my soft, disappointing world, where I belonged, and refused to cry.

“Y
ou’re boring,” Dwayne told me four days later. “This is boring. You bore me.”

“How can you be bored?” I asked him, peeking out from beneath the blanket I’d put over my head. “That’s not like you at all. Besides, didn’t you tell me only boring people get bored?”

He had, and it was true. Dwayne was one of the few people in the world who was never bored because everything was either an opportunity to learn something new, or an opportunity to ruthlessly fuck with people. He loved to do both, and I wasn’t convinced that my semi-permanent residence on his couch had changed that fundamental fact.

“Fine,” he said. “You aren’t boring me. You’re destroying the ambience of the apartment. You’re depressing.”

“Maybe that’s because I
am
depressed,” I said, feeling cranky. “Thanks for asking, by the way.”

“I
know
you’re depressed but you don’t have to go spreading it around like herpes.” He glared at me and waved his hands, as though pointing out the sores from the mopey STD I’d given his apartment.

I glared right back up at him. “Can’t you just let me wallow in peace?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “Wallowing doesn’t do you any good. I should know. I wallow in a lot of things. None of them are healthy and sometimes you have to take a shower afterwards.” Heaving a put-upon sigh, he turned away from me and headed for the kitchen where more beer awaited him. Tipsily I watched him retreat.

It was now six or so in the evening and we’d been drinking since about ten in the morning. Dwayne had decided to “work from home” today because it was RPG night and he wanted to get everything in order before the nerds showed up. Dwayne, a six-foot three-inch impeccably dressed black man who worked in finance, was not the sort of person I would have pegged as a tabletop gaming fan, but, without fail, every Wednesday he had a whole slew of people over to his apartment. He would wear a ridiculous fedora and put on glasses with plain glass lenses, to “fit in” he claimed. He fit in like my ass “fit in” to pencil skirts—badly, but with a certain perilous charm.

RPG night was how I’d met him, actually, the very first week I’d moved into my apartment. He lived directly below me in our cramped brownstone and he and the nerds had been drunk and arguing about the finer points of elven and dwarven relations. Or something like that—no matter how closely I pay attention I can’t seem to get the hang of imaginary politics. Regardless, they had been so loud that I’d had to roll out of bed, put on clothes, and stomp downstairs to yell at them.

Dwayne had answered the door, dapper as fuck in his stylish work clothes and unironic fedora, looked me up and down, and then invited me in for cocktails. “Cocktails” turned out to be Red Bull and vodka, and I was invited to observe the game so that I could see how unfair it was for me to ask them to be quiet. So I did. That night instead of sleeping I’d actually had fun, and Dwayne later told me he wanted me to stick around because I had at least entered the 3 AM game session with an open mind.