Fear of Falling (18 page)

I could be fearless.

It numbed the pain and gave me a substitute for the love and affection I could never receive. My body felt what my heart could not. I knew I was damaged goods. But, it was the one thing…
he
…never took from me.

Sex, affection and love would never share the same space in the tidy little compartments of my psyche.

Until now. Until Blaine.

Everything I thought I knew about my heart and body was completely shattered the moment Blaine’s arm snaked around my lower back and drew me to him. And when his soft lips fell on mine, I knew that I was far from normal. I knew I had never felt true intimacy until that very moment. I don’t even know what I had been doing before.

I had kissed this man a thousand times in my head. In my dreams, he had explored every inch of my body with thorough precision. Blaine had already known me inside and out, and he didn’t even know it. Hell, I couldn’t even understand it. But the moment that metal barbell slid against my tongue, I knew. I knew that I was forever changed.

Blaine took me in that kiss. Right in the back of his truck with the crescent moon overhead and the forgotten Mason jars of fireflies at our sides.

With my breasts pressed against his hard chest—a chest that I had studied and committed to memory—our lips melded into one moving, tasting, teasing entity. He was gentle yet demanding, aggressive yet compliant. He was perfect. His scent, his taste, the way his lips seemed to know mine automatically. Absolutely perfect.

I allowed myself to get lost in him, wrapping my arms around his neck and back, our legs tangled together, seeking the warmth of each other’s bodies. I moaned as his hand gripped my bare thigh and coaxed my leg around his waist. He groaned when my hand slid up from the nape of his neck and into his hair, tugging lightly.

I hardly registered the rumbling of thunder overhead. My tightly closed eyes didn’t see the flash of lightning that ripped through the sky. I was too consumed by him. Too overwhelmed by my own aching need for more.

Lightning sliced open the clouds, bleeding warm, summer rain down on us in buckets. Reluctantly, we broke apart, panting, our eyes trained on each other. I wasn’t done, and the seductive gleam in his eyes told me that he wasn’t nearly done with me either.

“Come on,” he growled, pulling me up with him.

We hopped off the truck and scrambled to shelter, laughing and squealing as the rain soaked us. I was only too aware of how my sheer top clung to my body, creating a silken second skin. But I didn’t care. I would have peeled off every wet layer that very second if Blaine had asked me to.

The moment we were safely inside the cab, the heat of our humid bodies creating fog on the windows, reality set in. We had just officially crossed that unseen line between “just friends” and “much, much more.” My cards were on the table. He now knew that I wanted him just as badly as he apparently wanted me. Fighting it would have been pointless and frustrating.

Just as the awkward silence had grown and swelled, filling up the enclosed space, Ed Sheeran began to belt out the words to “Kiss Me” on the radio, urging his lover to give herself over to his lips, lust and…love.

“Blaine…I…”

I don’t even know what I meant to say. But as I looked at him, the longer front layers of his sandy brown hair wet and dripping into those melted chocolate eyes, and
that
song suggesting every emotion I had tried to avoid… I just had to say
something
. Because if I didn’t, if I didn’t keep my mouth busy, I was liable to lick every little raindrop from his face.

“Kami…” he murmured, a slight frown dimpling his brows. But it wasn’t out of anger or frustration. It was as if he was fighting his own impulses.

Thank baby Jesus that whatever they were, they won out over his restraint.

His lips were back on mine, and he was sliding my body towards his before I even knew what was happening. Still, I needed to feel more of him. I needed his heat to warm me. I needed his flavor to intoxicate me. I needed his scent to take me higher than I already was.

I straddled his lap, pinning my frame between his torso and the steering wheel without my mouth ever leaving his. The slick coolness of our rain-drenched bodies created erotic sounds of skin slapping against wet skin as we pawed at each other furiously in a hungered frenzy that I had never felt before.

This is what I had heard about, yet never experienced. The intense need. The fervent craze. The spark that combusted into an inferno when you were with that one person that you couldn’t keep your hands off of. I honestly thought I didn’t need it. I thought it wasn’t necessary for a substantial sensual exchange.

Boy, was I wrong. Dead. Wrong.

In the midst of it all, I realized that my skirt had been hiked up to my hips, leaving my backside nearly bare in my thong. Blaine’s hands were dangerously close, kneading my outer thighs. Did I want to take it there? Could I actually see myself having sex with him in his truck, out in the middle of nowhere?

As if hearing my internal battle, his lips and tongue still tasting me, Blaine’s hands trailed up my hips, bypassing the exposed flesh of my ass, and rested on my lower back. But, as much of a gentleman as he was trying to be, he was still all
man
. I could feel his craving, as it pulsed with virility beneath me. He was unbelievably hard and…large. Large enough to cause me to do mental calculations, both excited and scared about the prospect of feeling every inch of him.

OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGod.

His agile fingers eased their way under my soaked top, his touch searing my skin. They massaged a path up to my bra clasp, stopping momentarily to see if I would object. When I didn’t, still too lost in sensation to do more than moan against his lips and push my already pebbled nipples against him, he unfastened the clasp in a swift, stealthy move. I gasped into his mouth, causing him to pull me even closer into him, pressing my swollen breasts into his chest.

His hands slid to my front as his lips found my neck. I was already tugging at his wet, shaggy hair by the time I felt his thumbs on my nipples, rubbing them back and forth with perfect pressure. The erotic sound that tore from my chest was pure pleasure and surprise. Blaine, the man that had starred in every one of my fantasies, was fondling my breasts. I had imagined how his skin would feel against mine, had dreamt of fusing our panting bodies together, since the day I met him. And to be honest, I had never really had a fantasy before him. He was the embodiment of everything I had ever wanted.

And I could have him. Right here. Right now.

Not able to do much more than whimper as his fingers explored my chest, I shivered as Blaine kissed my collarbone, my chin, my trembling bottom lip, nibbling and licking like I was the most delicious thing he had ever tasted. He was ravenous, like he just couldn’t get enough, no matter how much of my skin he sampled.

“God, I want you, Kami,” he murmured against the base of my throat. “I want you so bad.”

That metal studded tongue slid up my neck to my earlobe, and I reflexively rotated my hips, feeling every inch of his arousal.

“Fuck,”
Blaine hissed, pinching my nipples so deliciously hard that I felt a tremor throughout my entire body. “Do you want me, baby? Tell me you want me. Tell me you feel this too.”

An almost animalistic whine escaped me when he raised his hips into me, the friction of his jeans nearly undoing me through the thin lace of my thong. “Yes,” was all I could find the strength to say.

“Yeah?” he rasped, finding my mouth again to suck my bottom lip. “Does that feel good to you?”

“Yesss.” I felt the truck spinning.

His tongue flicked out to taste mine. “Do you want me to make love to you, Kami?”

Fuck.

My eyes popped open, trained on his hooded smolder, as I pushed back into the steering wheel. I was no longer lost in him. I was no longer swimming in a sea of sensation. I had capsized and was hurled onto shore, completely dumbfounded and terrified.

“No,” I said shaking my head, my face stoic.

“What?”

“I said no. I don’t want you to make… I don’t want you to do that to me.”

Confusion painted his gorgeously flushed face. “But you said…”

“I do want you, Blaine,” I quickly blurted out, not wanting to hurt his feelings or seem like a cock-tease. “I do. But I don’t make love.”

“I don’t get it.”

I grimaced, as I slid off his lap and sat beside him, suddenly freezing at the loss of his warm body against mine. Blaine must’ve felt the same chill because he switched on the heat.

“I don’t make love, Blaine. I never have. In order to do that, you have to be capable of feeling a semblance of love. You have to be able to return it. I’m not. I can’t.”

“Kami, I didn’t mean… Wait, what do you mean,
you can’t
?”

I kept my glassy eyes trained on the darkness on the other side of the windshield. “I’m saying I’m unlovable.”

His large hand was cupping my cheek and turning my head to face him just as the first tears welled in my eyes. I wanted to be able to love one day. I wanted to be able to feel pure bliss when someone uttered those three little words to me while gazing into my eyes. I wanted to surrender my broken heart to him so he could mend it, and make it new again.

But I couldn’t. My past, my pains, had ripped that away from me. Fear had claimed me before love ever got the chance to.

“Kami, I find it hard to believe that you’re unlovable. I know for a fact that isn’t true.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to absorb the tears before they had a chance to fall. “That’s because you don’t know me. And if you did, I guarantee you’d agree with me.”

His hand dropped from my face as his brows knitted together. It was all coming together for him. He was slowly getting it. I was broken. And no one wanted to play with the broken toy.

“It’s getting late,” I said turning my face away from him, so he couldn’t see my trembling lip. I slid on my side of the car and reached for my seatbelt. “I better get home.”

“Yeah. You’re right.”

I know I am, Blaine. No matter how bad I wish I could be wrong.

I heard him open his door and jog out to the back of the truck to secure it. The rain had let up, but inside I was battling a tsunami. When Blaine returned, he cranked up the truck without another word. A stubborn tear slid down my cheek, which I quickly batted away. It was an angry tear. I hated myself more in that moment than I ever had. I would have given anything to be someone else, someone normal, for Blaine.

We pulled up to The Madison without any more words exchanged. Blaine unbuckled his seatbelt, but I stopped him before he could open his car door.

“Don’t get out,” I said, grasping his forearm, thinking it would still his movements. Instead, Blaine slid his arm up so his fingers could tangle with mine. He looked at me expectedly, flipping the barbell in his mouth – the same one that I had sucked into mine and longed to feel again.

“Blaine,” I began, worrying my lip with my teeth. “What I said… it has nothing to do with you. And because I actually
like
you, I had to tell you before we ruined everything. Before it all turned to shit before it began.”

“What are you talking about, Kami?”

I took a deep breath, my eyes trained on our clasped hands. I wanted to pull mine away. I wanted to run and hide in my room for week to nurse the ache of regret. But then again, I wanted to touch him.
Needed
to touch him. I just didn’t understand why that need was so strong.

“When I told you that I wasn’t the girl you were looking for, I wasn’t lying. I’m not. I’ll never be. I can never give you more than this right here. And you don’t want more. Trust me; it’s not worth the hassle.”

I flicked my gaze up to his warm, brown eyes and bit back the sob at the confusion he still wore. Then came a flash of resignation, causing him to pull his hand from mine. But he wasn’t done with me yet. He unbuckled his seatbelt, leaned over to unclick mine, and pulled our bodies together.

“You’re wrong,” he whispered, his lips mere inches from mine. One arm snaked around my waist, imprisoning my frame to his, as the other raked my still damp tresses. “You’re so wrong. And I’ll prove it to you. I’ll make you believe it one day.”

“That’s impossible,” I replied, holding his gaze.

“It’s not, Kami. Just no one has been man enough to stick around to show you. You scared them all away before they could. But I assure you, I’m not afraid. I’m not scared of whatever it is you think will send me running. I’m not going anywhere.”

“For now. But eventually, you will,” I murmured, pushing away from him before he could see the tears in my eyes. No one liked a chick that cried all the time.

I grabbed my purse, careful to keep my head down, and opened the door to the truck.

“Hey,” he called out, right before I jumped out. I kept my eyes fixed on the sidewalk below, afraid of completely losing it if I looked back at him.

“I mean it, Kami. I’ll prove it to you. I’m not afraid of this, and you shouldn’t be either.”

I didn’t respond. I simply nodded before swinging my legs out of the cab to hop down. Then I walked away from the only man I ever wanted. The man who had both owned me and set me free with just a kiss. The man who had broken me down and put me back together again with his touch.

Blaine. The scary-beautiful man I was terrified of loving.