Can't Hold Back (14 page)

Nate:
You never answered me. Can I see you tomorrow night?

Alia:
My room.

Then, feeling panicky,
Be discreet. I don’t want Jake hearing from someone other than me.

Nate:
Will do.

A brief silence.

Nate:
In the meantime, will you do something for me?

She felt what was coming. In the fluttering in her belly and the anticipatory clenching between her legs.

Nate:
Every time you’re alone, touch yourself.

They’d started Tuesday morning, gray and heavy with fog, in Braden’s granddad’s hardware store. The hardware store that had, once, been J.J.’s legacy. That was now his own, and Braden’s.

Braden and Jim led him around the store to show him all the new merchandise that had come in since his last visit, and how it improved a hundredfold on what they’d had before. A waffle maker where you could swap out the grids to make panini. A step stool that was stronger than the old one but also folded smaller. A different brand of LED lightbulb that lasted longer.

Nate had summoned up as much enthusiasm as he could, admiring and handling everything he was shown, but he knew he didn’t feel what they felt. He didn’t nourish the same love for the wall devoted to every head size and thread count of screw you could ever want.

Every screw you could ever want…heh. Heh-heh.

His mind went off on a little romp, remembering two nights ago in ridiculous detail, until he dragged it back to the present.

He didn’t want to use too much energy wanting what he might be able to have at most a few more times.

He felt like shit, not only because he was feigning enthusiasm for Jim and Braden’s beloved stuff, but also because being here, in the store, had made him start to ask the tougher questions.

Is this really what I want to be doing?

He reminded himself that this wasn’t about what he wanted to be doing. J.J. didn’t want to be six feet under, a flag and a bronze star and a purple heart sleeping on his bed instead of him. Braden didn’t want to be fatherless, more or less an orphan. Jim and Suzy didn’t want to have lost their only child, to be in possession of an heirless hardware store.

Life was about doing what had to be done, not about kicking back and getting laid as often as you pleased.

He pushed her, and the memories of the other night, from his mind.

They headed to the camping store next. Braden went nuts in there, too. Funny, he was such an acquisitive little squirrel. That was another thing he’d gotten from his father. J.J.’s pack had been a magpie’s nest of pointless junk, weighing him down.

Braden wanted it all. Waterproof notebook. Water purification system that let you suck the stuff straight out of the ground and through a filter. Pocket-sized solar spark lighter. Full-body bug gear.

“You can write in the rain with this pen!” Braden, dark-haired, freckled, and unusually mature and serious for ten, jumped up and down with excitement.

For a kid who had to be in a lot of psychic pain, Braden was in good shape. Nate attributed that to the strength of his bond with his grandparents, who had been his primary caretakers for the last four years. And really, since J.J. had been seventeen when Braden was born, and had spent most of the last ten years overseas, they’d always been his primary caretakers.

“Okay. We’ll need that,” Nate said, straight-faced, and threw the waterproof notebook into the mesh shopping basket for good measure.

“Do we need a kayak?”

“I can borrow kayaks, life vests, paddles, floats, and pumps from R-and-R.”

Jake had offered, which had taken a big load off, planning-wise. Nate knew he could find some place to rent them near here, but it would have been expensive.

He had some camping supplies of his own, and Jim and Suzy had some. Plus, they were going for only two nights, so there were just a few things he had to fill in. Iodine tablets, camping MREs—or whatever the civilian term for those vile meals-in-a-pouch was—cookstove gas, groceries.

He still wasn’t a hundred percent sure that he could do the trip without pain, but the last couple days had made him more optimistic. He’d kept up with the stretching and strengthening, and he could feel the new flexibility and power in his neck, back, and shoulders. When the pain came, he did all the stuff Alia had showed him. Relaxed his body, corralled his focus,
accepted.
It didn’t seem so stupid anymore. A few times now, tricks he’d learned from her had chased the pain back to its source, and he was a believer. Yeah, it still hurt. A lot sometimes. But the pain didn’t make him panic, which meant he wasn’t tensing up and making it worse. He wasn’t escalating it.

Alia had given him a ton of confidence in his own abilities, and some good tools, too. Maybe he’d have some bad moments, but he’d get through them. He knew that.

He checked his phone. For the ten-thousandth time since Saturday. Not that he was expecting minute-by-minute updates, but he’d thought maybe—

He’d hoped, maybe, she’d do what he’d asked.

Every time you’re alone, touch yourself.

It had been total whim. Him prodding a little, to see what would come of it.

But there’d been two days of silence.

He sighed.

“Look at all the different ways you can purify water!”

He was a big fan of iodine, personally—lightweight, effective. The only downside was the taste. The vitamin C after-pills would cut through the unbearable iodine flavor, but there was a lingering not-quite-right-ness to treated water. It tasted—oddly enough—dry.

“This is going to taste weird,” he warned Braden, but Braden shrugged.

Damn, he could see so much J.J. in him. In that shrug. In the general gameness that the shrug connoted. In the slightly narrowed, considering dark eyes.

He took a package of iodine pills from the display, grabbed one of the small canisters of cookstove gas for his portable stove as they passed them, and led Braden to the camping meals display.

“Okay. What doesn’t look like it will taste like dirt?”

“I like spaghetti with meat sauce.”

“It won’t taste like your grandma’s. But when you’re camping you probably also won’t care. I remember one of the first times I camped I ate this crappy powdered pesto and it was seriously the best food I’ve ever eaten.”

Braden picked out a bunch more of the pouches, and they went to ring up.

“Where you headed?” the cashier asked. He was probably twenty-two, with the soft look of a guy who talked more about camping than he did it.

“Lower Owyhee, kayaking.”

“That’s a trek.”

“I kayaked there as a kid and always wanted to do it again.”

“Well, if you want something closer to home—you ever tried Fearsome Lake?”

“Fearsome? Let’s go there!” That was the J.J. in Braden again, and for a moment Nate was so slammed with sadness, he couldn’t talk. Couldn’t even make himself slide the credit card out of his wallet.

Then he collected himself.

“Maybe next time.”

He didn’t have to love the hardware store. He just had to put one foot in front of the other, for Braden.

They were unloading everything from the car, getting ready to carry it into Jim and Suzy’s house, when his phone buzzed.

He wrenched it out of his pocket so fast he scraped a knuckle.

Alia:
I’m alone. In the office. Any specific instructions?

Well,
hello,
Alia. Game on.
His heart started to pound. He’d given up hope that she’d take his request seriously.

He started to reply.

Hell, yeah—

“Who are you texting?” Braden demanded to know.

He stuffed the phone back in his pocket. “A friend.”

The fog had lifted and it was an Oregon summer-blue sky, clear and brilliant. Suzy came to the door, a bright-eyed heron of a woman. “I’ve got grilled cheese and tomato soup for dinner, boys. Jim is still at the store. He won’t be back for a while. Dinner in ten?”

“Sounds good. Hey—you mind if I run out for one more quick errand? And leave Braden with you for a few?”

“Sure! See you soon.”

He got back in the car and drove. Drove any old place, till the neighborhood gave way to a dirt road where he could park his car and yank the phone out of his pocket.

Nate:
Okay. Just me now for a few minutes. Where’ve you been?

Alia:
You wouldn’t believe how busy, doing my patients and Jake’s. And then falling into bed and sleeping like the dead.

Probably sleeping off an almost total loss of sleep on Saturday night, too, he thought, with the first grin he’d managed in a while.

Alia:
But I’m not busy now. You know what they say about idle hands…

Oh, yeah, he did.

He had to think about it for a minute, and double whoa, because there were so many things he could think of, a parade of dirty, dirtier, downright filthy. There were so many parts of her body, soft, smooth, supple, lithe, that he wanted his own hands on, that he could get off imagining
her
hands on.

He’d start her off easy and escalate.
Lick your lips. Slowly. Like you’re doing it to turn me on.

Alia:
Now what?

No. He wanted more than that.

Nate:
Tell me how it felt.

Alia:
I pretended you were kissing me.

Okay. Okay. Better. But still, he wanted more.

Nate:
No. How it felt.

He didn’t really expect a reply. Well, his brain didn’t expect a reply. His body was already revving up for one. Cock easing toward fullness. He wondered if it felt the same to her when her body got ready for him. A down-deep tug, a surge of something almost like raw power, and a sense almost like expansion, a sudden hollowing.

Alia:
Like you were licking me. Soft and warm and wet…

Ohhh. Wow, wow, wow.
Speaking of a surge of power. If he could get her to play this game with him, if he could draw her out—

The echo caught him.
I want your tongue all over me.

Forget that. Forget
MenInUni242.
He had
Alia
on the other end of the SMS connection, talking dirty.

Nate:
You know what makes me hot?

Alia:
What?

Nate:
When you want it. When I know you want it. Like yesterday, when you were on top of me and I could feel you needing to move.

There. No more pretending
that
hadn’t happened.

Nate:
When I made you come and watched your face.

The flush, her eyes, her open mouth, the kiss—her so soft with it that her mouth had melted under the thrust of his tongue, and he’d known exactly what it was going to be like to fuck her.

Nate:
Or in the shower. Telling me what you like about my cock.

Alia:
So many things. Tough to list them all.

Nate:
You could try.

Alia:
Did I mention how I love the ridge along the length?
And how big the head is?

He reached for the button of his jeans, then abruptly remembered.
Oh, Jesus, dinner.

Nate:
Was about to do some serious damage to myself, then realized I’m late to dinner. More soon?

Alia:
I could finish the list. And tell you some other things I’ve been thinking.

Nate:
Stop. Have to have family dinner.

He set the phone facedown on the passenger seat. It took him quite a few minutes before he was in any condition to drive back to the house.

Ten minutes later, he, Suzy, and Braden were sitting down together when his phone buzzed again.

He would not look at his phone at the table. He would not look at his phone at the table. He would not look at his phone at the table.

A minute later, it buzzed again.

“Do you need to get that?” Suzy asked.

“Nah.”

“You sure?”

He took a bite of Suzy’s awesome grilled cheese and chased it with a big spoonful of tomato soup, waiting for the craving to die down, but there was no way. There was no way. He wanted—
needed
—to know what she’d written.

“I just—” He shot an apologetic glance at Suzy and Braden, and caught Suzy’s eyes narrowing slightly.

Alia:
Do you know what I want to do right now?

“I’m sorry—let me just quickly—” he told Suzy and Braden.

Nate:
Give me an hour and I’ll give you my undivided attention.

“I thought you said there was no one special.”

He was so startled he almost dropped the phone into the tomato soup.

Suzy’s arms were crossed, a smirk on her face.

“He said it was a friend,” Braden supplied.

Suzy shook her head. “With the number of times Nate’s checked that phone in the last two days? And that goofy smile on his face? Uh-uh. I don’t think so.”

He tried to wipe off whatever expression had given him away, but it was hopeless. He could feel it. His mouth kept wanting to curve into a smile.

“You should bring her to meet us.”

Suzy was putting on the bravest possible face, she was smiling at him, her warmest, best smile, but he knew what it was costing her. He knew she was thinking of J.J. and how he wouldn’t be bringing anyone home to meet them, and he tried to picture it, tried to picture bringing Alia here, introducing her to Jim and Suzy and Braden, but he just—couldn’t. He couldn’t see it, as if Alia and the quiet, hidden intimacy of what they’d shared were something in one life and these guys, J.J.’s people, were a whole other life, and the two weren’t supposed to mix.

And why should they? Alia had said herself, this was almost over. Why make this more complicated than it had to be?

“It’s nothing serious,” he said.

Suzy watched his face for a long time, until he had to look away.

They’d been going back and forth for hours. After work, as she’d straightened her office and gotten things together for another monumental day tomorrow. After he’d told her to give him an hour, he’d texted again, wanting her to put her finger in her mouth.
Lick it. Really lightly. Like you’re teasing.

She’d been shocked by how good it had felt. The touch of tongue to finger, and the touch of finger to tongue. A feedback loop. She’d gotten so distracted she hadn’t reported back and he’d texted:
You better be doing it.

Alia:
Yes. And enjoying.

Nate:
Suck it.

She had to admit, it wasn’t only the feel of the suction around her finger, or how much it made her mouth crave something else. It was the pure dirtiness and rawness of the command. It was being commanded. It was the black-and-whiteness of seeing it on her phone screen. The thought that these texts were slipping through gateways, past nerdy guys monitoring communications. The NSA could be getting off on her and Nate right now. That was perversely hot.

Also,
damn.
She’d always been kind of indifferent to blow jobs, but sucking her finger right now? All she could think about was how he’d feel in her mouth—oh, so much bigger than her skinny little finger, and that amazing hard-soft combination.

She’d had to lay off the sexting during dinner for a little bit. Only because it was so rude and Gabi and Melinda kept giving her sidelong knowing glances, and it was hard to be this horny and also eat. And she was feeling self-conscious. About being so wet and swollen and aroused that she could actually smell her own sea-salt scent.

She bet Nate would love that.

As soon as she got back to her room, she told him.

Alia:
I can smell how turned on I am.

There was a long hiatus before she heard from him, during which she thought maybe she’d gone too far. Thought about softening it or taking it back or—

But the thing was, she’d lost her inhibitions around the time of
Suck it.
And there was really no going back. This was how it had been the day she’d been
MenInUni242.
When she hadn’t felt like herself and it had freed her to tell him
exactly
what she needed. What she wanted.

She curled up against the wall, a pillow behind her. She’d changed into PJs.

The urge to touch herself was overwhelming, but she was waiting for his instructions. They came only intermittently. It was massively frustrating. Sometimes a half hour or more would pass between one and the next, during which she forced herself to ride the waves of desire, which sometimes got so intense they bordered on spasms. Like if she let herself go, she could actually come from wanting him. From reading his words on her screen.

She couldn’t just sit and wait for him to text back, so she forced herself to read a little of her book. Then played a few word games on her iPad.

Then she gave in, gave up. If he wasn’t going to text, she wasn’t going to sit here waiting for him. So every once in a while she absentmindedly ran a hand lightly over herself through her thin pajama pants. Keeping herself at the same full-on state, buzzing with anticipation. She’d give him a little more time, but if she didn’t hear from him soon—

Nate:
Um. You just killed like ten million of my brain cells. Also, my hand is in my pants.

She was so wet.

Alia:
You’re ruining another perfectly good pair of panties…

Nate:
You know what got me going? How hard your nipples were that day after swimming. I kept trying not to stare at them through your bathing suit.
Are they hard now?

Alia:
Y

Nate:
I’m hoping you’re abbreviating because you’re touching them.

Alia:
Y

She was. And oh,
man.
Her whole body tightened around that light touch. She was so wound up she could barely sit still.

Nate:
Tell me.

Alia:
Have to stop touching to tell.

Nate:
Ups the anticipation.

It did. And it slowed her down a little, too, which was probably a good thing.

Alia:
Through my tank top. Feels really really good.

Nate:
Keep doing that. How long do you think it would take you to make yourself come?

Alia:
Not very long. Embarrassingly short.

Nate:
Don’t. Don’t make yourself come.

She actually groaned aloud.

Alia:
Are you fucking serious?

She looked over at the clock. It was almost ten. He’d been ratcheting up the tension, messing with her head, basically engaging in long-distance foreplay, for more than four hours.

Nate:
Yes. Also seriously fucking hard. Also very serious about what I am going to do to you when I get there.

Alia:
I don’t think I can wait till tomorrow night.

She tried to think about whether there had been a time in her life—at least past the age of seventeen or so—when it had seemed so urgent to get off that she had been unwilling to wait twenty-four hours. Now she wasn’t sure she could wait twenty-four minutes.

There was a knock on the door.

He didn’t let her talk. He grabbed her and kissed her. And she hadn’t been lying. Everything she’d told him—that sea-fragrant sex smell wafting up to him, her nipples knots against his chest even through two layers of fabric. He let her go long enough to yank his T-shirt over his head, and she said, “You’re here! You’re supposed to be in Oregon.”

“I figured if we were in bonus time I’d better make good use of it. Drove straight back after dinner.”

Then the tank top was gone, too, and he groaned and dipped his head and worked her nipples, one, then the other.

“Nate, you seriously don’t understand, you can’t do that, I’m going to come if you keep doing that—”

“And what would be wrong with that?”

“The whole time you were texting? The whole time, all I could think about was how good it was going to feel when you were finally inside me because I am seriously—I am so hot and so wet and so swollen, and you are
cruel
—and I want to come with you filling me up and I think I deserve that, don’t you?”

He’d never heard that much sex come out of her mouth; plus, she was grinning at him so evilly, and he
knew,
he seriously, seriously
knew,
but right now was
not
the time for talking about it, right now was the time for kissing the shit out of her, which he did, and pulling her clothes off, which he was doing, and shoving his jeans and briefs down—while trying to keep kissing her, which was a trick—and flailing around like an idiot for a condom.

“Wait.” She put a firm hand around him, knelt beside him, and lowered her head.

Ohhhhhh.

This was his secret vice. Well, one of them. The look of a woman’s lips stretched around his cock. The bobbing of her head, the feel of her fingers wrapped around the base.

It was a little-discussed problem in the world that a lot of women sucked at giving head. No pun intended.

Alia was not one of them. Alia was born to give head. It kind of felt like she had three tongues in there. And she was sucking, pulling, drawing so hard on him that it was right on the jagged edge of perfect.

He groaned.

She hummed her response.

Whoa, nelly.

And that, right there, was the back of her throat, and she did some kind of neat swallowing thing that was like a strong caress over his head, and he. Was. Not. Going. To. Lose. It. In. Her. Mouth. Not when he knew she was ready and willing, and
talking about it,
and he’d gotten her all worked up and swollen, so she was going to be tight—

He pulled away—in the nick of time—and sucked a few lungfuls of air while yanking out the night table drawer, trying to think about anything except the raging storm she’d whipped up in him.

He fumbled the condom on. There was really no other way to describe it. And she lay back and watched him, eyes amused but also dark and admiring.

God, that look.

She cupped her breasts in her hands and began to toy with her nipples. “This is what I was doing before,” she remarked, casual, as if she were informing him that she’d just been to the grocery store for milk and a loaf of bread.

He couldn’t tear his eyes away. Her fingertips rolling, pinching, tweaking—he reached, and she backed out of his reach, crawled off the bed, and then they were up and he was chasing her around the room. He caught her near the door and backed her against it and pinned her, then ducked his head and took a nipple in his mouth and teased it until she whimpered. Then the other.

“Don’t fuck with me,” he said.

Another whimper, this one from the soul. And then she whispered, “What if I like fucking with you?”

He scooped her up and carried her back to the bed. Set her down, pushed her onto her back, climbed over her. Was in her in one long, deep stroke, her body just as she’d said, so wet, so hot, so
ready
for him that she offered no resistance, just the slide home, and then her tight around him, clinging to him, rocking her hips to meet him thrust for thrust. And for each time he filled her, she made a small, distinct sound, half moan, half victory yell, her cries rising in volume and intensity until it was that, the sound of her taking what she wanted and
owning it
that pushed him over the edge.

“What I don’t understand,” she said, millennia later, “is if you were driving back, how were you texting? Were you driving and sexting?”

He shook his head. “Pulled over a few times.”

“Oh,
really.
So, like, side of I-five, hand in your pants?”

They were lying side by side, facing each other, and he was grinning at her.

“Yep. Because you’re hot. Because sexting with you is hot. And fun. You’re fun, you know that?”

And then his expression changed completely. Got serious, and a little—almost harsh. “So tell me. The instant messages.
MenInUni242.
You-being-Becca? Or you-being-you?”

Ohhh. This.

If she told him the truth, she’d be as good as saying,
That was me getting totally carried away, forgetting that I was supposed to be helping Becca.
That was me, totally into you, lusting after my sister’s boyfriend, getting lost in what I needed and wanted for a few minutes.

“I don’t see—what difference does it make?”

“It makes a huge difference.” He stared at her, long enough that she had to look away. “Okay, let me ask you this. I don’t remember everything about that IM exchange, but I do remember a few choice phrases. Such as, ‘I want your cock in my mouth. As much as I can hold.’ ”

Oh. Yup. He held her eyes till she had to turn away, blushing.

“You got my cock in your mouth earlier—was it all you’d hoped for?”

Actually, better.
As in bigger, thicker, harder, more velvety against her tongue than her imagination had been able to conjure.

“I think you also said, ‘I want you to pin me down.’ ”

He remembered. He remembered everything she’d said. Because it had mattered to him. She’d mattered to him. She—the woman he now knew to be Alia.

“Nate—”

“I did that just now, too. How did it compare to your fantasy?”

“Can’t we drop this?”

“No. Were you pretending to be Becca?”

He speared her with his gaze, and the intensity of the way he’d watched her face during sex had
nothing
on this. “You know I was.”

“But were you really? I mean, you were sitting there thinking,
Now what would Becca say?
Because not to be crass, but when Becca and I were making out, that whole side of her didn’t really come out, if you know what I mean.”

Being reminded that he’d kissed Becca felt like being punched in the stomach.

He rubbed his forehead. “Damn. I’m sorry. That was dickish. Look…we never…Becca and I never. Partly because…because she didn’t seem that into it. And I never wanted to drag anyone kicking and screaming. I like a woman who…who knows what she wants. I need to know, Li.” He looked straight at her. “When you wrote that stuff, who was that?”

She closed her eyes.

I like a woman who knows what she wants.

She did, at least when she was in the same room with him. She’d known exactly what she’d wanted when she’d climbed on top of him last night, exactly what she’d wanted when he’d interrupted the meditation to kiss her. Exactly what she’d wanted every step of the way. And yet putting it into words…

“Alia.” His voice was very quiet, a low rumble. “You’re not very good at saying what
you
want, are you?”

An ache began, to the left of her breastbone. She took a deep breath.

“It was me,” she said quietly. “Me being me.”

When she opened her eyes, he was still gazing at her. His eyes warm, a slight smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. “I thought so. I hoped so.”

He gave her that same wicked look he’d worn when he’d made her come against her will.

“So you meant that other part, too? When you said, ‘I want your tongue all over me?’ ”