Hard Time (14 page)

“Good.” Very good. “But why, then?”

He watched our hands, thinking. “Because you’re somebody who makes me feel what you do.” He frowned. “Because of how you make me feel, not because of how you
seem
like you’d make a man feel. Fuck, I’m not saying this right at all.”

Yet it was poetry to me, dizzying in its beauty. I squeezed his fingers and whispered, “Go on.”

“I don’t want you to think that I see you as this perfect white handkerchief that I think I can use to like, clean away the badness from myself. Because that’s how so many guys like me would see you. As some angel that’ll fix their sins. That’s not how I see you at all. That’s not why I want you, or want to feel like I’m worthy of you. I just want to be the kind of man who deserves to feel what you make me feel, instead of just settling for whatever’s available, the way people do back home. Did that make
any
sense?”

It made so much sense, I felt tears searing my cheeks. Eric raised his eyes.

“Oh, shit.”

I squeezed his hand and wiped my face with my gloved one. “They’re good tears.”

“How come?”

I shrugged. “Because that’s exactly how I’ve felt before, with guys. Back home. Like I’m not allowed to have any dimensions past whatever fits the mold of sweet, wholesome Southern good girl. Like I shouldn’t swear or talk back or say mean things or lose my temper, ever. It’s like being on probation, almost.”

The corner of his lips hitched. “I read your letters. I know you’re not that girl.”

I smiled. “And it was nice to be seen that way by somebody. And valued for it.”

His gaze fled again, dropping just to my scarf or chin. “Do you think . . .” He trailed off, but I knew what he was asking.

“I think maybe.” He’d done everything he could to fix the mistake he’d made, omitting the news of his release, and to explain why he’d beat another human being half to death. Even more importantly, I believed him when he’d said he was planning to move on. And that was what I’d really needed, to trust that what he felt for me was affection, not fixation.

His next words were barely a whisper. “Tell me what to do, to stand a chance of us ever getting there.”

I didn’t think. Only spoke. “Kiss me.”

“Now?”

“We need to know if what we feel goes beyond those letters. If it doesn’t, there’s no use in us both pining for it.”

“You been pining for me?” he asked, and his eyes narrowed in the most charmingly cocky way.

“Course I have. For that man I met on those pages. Show me he’s here with me now.” I wasn’t entirely sure who this woman was, saying these words. But maybe I ought to let her speak up more often.

He held my stare, and that look had me back in a hard chair, in a bleak room, in a mean world. Those hot, dark eyes, the ones that pinned me like a butterfly in a place where I never should’ve mislaid of my flight instinct. He edged closer. I did the same, bringing my bent leg up, resting my knee between us. My seat belt bound me, and I let his hand go so we could wrestle out of them.

My knee on his thigh, heat soldering us together. His other glove stripped, then two bare, cold hands on my jaw, and those lips suddenly so close. His fingertips stroked my cheeks, brows, nose, skirted my lips. No man had ever made me feel so fascinating. He touched me like I was something precious and beguiling. I touched him in return. The contours of his face, the stubble I’d imagined rubbing my skin—so much softer than I’d guessed. I’d memorized the shapes of him, across the dayroom, across a classroom, across a tabletop, but it was nothing like stroking them for real. Feeling his heat, smelling his skin.

A man, touching a woman for the first time since his freedom had been taken away.

A woman, touching a man for the first time since she’d been robbed of her desire.

In a truck no less, like two eager, clueless virgins, parked at the edge of something big.

He seemed like he could do this for hours—just hold my face and nothing more. This man who had to be dying for his feast, yet
he
was enthralled by the candles or the soft cotton napkin, content to delay that first coveted taste a little while longer. He was steeped in awe, and I in impatience. His lips were so near, and I needed to experience them. I needed his mouth to make promises . . . to give me clues to how the rest of his body would feel.

I rubbed our noses together, but his hands firmed, keeping me from coming any closer.

“Kiss me,” I murmured, the words thin with desperation.

“I only get to do it once, for the first time.”

“I’m going to die if you don’t.”

His lips twitched and his eyes narrowed, crinkling. “Remind me which of us has been locked up for five years.”

“Both of us,” I whispered, and it changed him. I watched as he realized it was the truth. I watched as he came to understand, I needed this as badly as he did. That he’d been going hungry for a woman’s body all this time . . . but I’d gone without the very hunger itself.

His palms cradled my jaw, thumbs on my cheeks. He tipped my face gently to his, like a chalice to obliterate a long, cruel abstinence.

And we met, skin to skin.

I’d thought I’d had the best first kiss a girl could ask for at fifteen—barefoot on a dock in the sunshine, peppermint ice cream on the boy’s lips. But as Eric’s mouth sought mine in the cold dark of this old truck, it felt more right than anything I’d ever known.

He wasn’t cautious, not the way a man gets when he’s trying to give a good girl what he assumes she wants. He kissed like he was tasting chocolate, a slow, rich, curious exploration suspended between innocent and dirty. A tease of tongue, another, then deep sweeps, ones that cocked his jaw and curled his fingers in my hair. Everything I’d imagined. Hot. Needy. His low moan made the cab go hazy, and that mouth shifted—curious to ravenous in a beat.

I surrendered to his eager, bossy tongue, dying to feel this again without fear—a man’s aggression. And his was so sweet, marinated in so much longing and waiting and mourning. When I’d tasted my fill of his hunger, I stroked him back. I told him with my mouth that if—that
when—
we found ourselves in a bed, I’d be so much more than receptive. That he’d leave those sheets with nail scratches up and down his back, maybe bite marks on his neck. When I nipped his lip, his entire body tightened, pushing a groan from his throat. He wore a hoodie under his coat and I found its drawstrings, clasping them.

He spoke my name into my mouth. “Annie.”

“Eric.” I stroked his neck, then bit him again, a little harder. Another tightening, another plaintive groan. The roughest man I’d ever gotten close to, yet here he was, so utterly at my mercy.

The me from those letters was back, that girl who’d played with fire and liked the burn. I felt a boldness in my blood I’d never experienced before, ever. I sucked his lip, kissed his chin, his ear, breathed in the frosty, faint scent of his stubbly skin.

“Touch me,” I whispered.

“How?”

“Anywhere. My face or hands or neck. Anywhere.”

He slid his fingertips from my hair and held my jaw, tasting me deeply with rhythmic sweeps, the motions echoed all through his body. He came closer, seeming above me, somehow. So big. So familiar again, this man I’d thought I’d lost. His hips shifted in time with his kiss. I waited for the pressure, for his hands pushing me back, for his weight on me, his heat. I waited, and waited. I fisted his collar and hood, all but hauling him onto me.

“You hard for me?” I asked against his cheek.

“Course I am.”

“Are you big?”

The softest, most frustrated laugh vibrated against my lips, then he pulled away enough for our noses to touch. His lips brushed mine as he spoke. “You’ll have to find that out for yourself sometime.” He nipped.

I let my palm roam down the front of his jacket, but he caught it at his ribs, his own hand trembling. “Not here. Not like this.”

“We’re at your lake.”

“Not like this,” he said again, pressing my hand firmly to his shoulder. “Not all rushed like this. Not after how long I’ve waited.”

“How, then?”

“In your room. In your sheets that smell like you, where it’s warm. In a big, soft bed. With candles and music maybe, all that girly stuff that’s nothing like how my world’s looked for the past five years. Not in the truck I’ve driven since I was in high school. Not getting watched by all this fucking
snow.”

“Tonight?”

“If that’s what you want, then
fuck
yes.”

I laughed, rubbing the tips of our noses together. “As soon as we possibly can.”

His smile was as dry as it was warm. Dry and warm as those sheets he craved. “I’d speed if I weren’t on parole.”

“We need condoms.”

“And gas.” Turning, he redid his seat belt and started the engine, headlights bleaching the pines, scaring away the stars. “Get ready for the longest twenty-five miles of your life.”

The ride back to Darren was a blur. Black asphalt, bright white service station lights. The same old decay rolling past, but a shiny little cardboard box now hiding in my purse. Eric was as impatient as I was, catching himself speeding every half mile or so, slowing down with a tight sigh.

“Where’s your place?” he asked as we exited at the city’s edge.

“That bar.”

“Same street?”

“Same building. Third floor.”

He laughed. “You weren’t kidding when you said you lived close.”

We were there inside five minutes, and he found a space right in front of the side entrance.

My hands were shaking as I fished out my keys and unlocked the foyer’s two doors. I heard his steps behind me, up two flights. Felt them. Felt
him,
the weight and nearness of his body.

I flipped on the living room lights. “You can just toss your stuff wherever.” I waved to the rocking chair by the window.

My coat, then his draped on top. Gloves, his hoodie and hat, my scarf—a big rumpled heap of the two of us. Two pairs of boots leaning into one another like weary travelers.

“It’s nice,” he said, looking around.

“Can I get you anything? Tea or coffee? Or I might have some wine.”

He shook his head, the movement tight. His eyes told me there were things he wanted to taste, but none of them came in a glass.

“I’ll give you the tour. Living room,” I said with a cheesy sweep of my arm, then a peek at the kitchenette. “Bathroom through there, and my bedroom.”

I led him inside and switched on the weak bulb of my reading lamp. I saw it all through his eyes. A full-sized bed, made up in fluffy down and soft sateen, the quilt my grandma had given me when I’d started college folded at the foot of the mattress. Curtains on the big window, blocking streetlight and brick. Perfume bottles and a jewelry box on the old dresser, a silk scarf draped from its mirror. I detected scents I took for granted. My clover deodorant, the facsimile summer of my laundry detergent. Me, in my bedclothes. Me everywhere. I watched his face as he studied my room.

“Is it what you pictured?” I asked. What he’d pictured when he’d fantasized about me. About us, in a place this soft and feminine.

“It’s perfect.”

“Have a seat.” I gestured to the bed, then excused myself to use the bathroom. Smoothed my hair, ran a fingertip over my deodorant stick and dabbed it behind my ears.
I miss how you smell, like spring and grass.

I fetched the condom box from my purse in the living room and gathered the votive and matches from the coffee table, shutting off the lights until it was just that single bulb, illuminating the man sitting at the edge of my mattress. His eyes went to the box, and I set it and the candle on the side table, feeling awkward. Feeling blatant.

“Be right back,” he said, and we swapped places, me sitting nervously on the bed as he used the bathroom. I lit the candle and turned off the lamp. I considered whipping off my clothes and waiting for him, posed seductively in my underwear, but maybe—

He returned, tossing his sweater on the floor.

“Do you want to undress me?” I asked. “Or watch me undress for you . . . ?”

“I want to kiss you, and we’ll see what happens from there.”

I smiled, loving that. Loving that even though we’d each scripted this encounter down to every last inch of exposed skin and stitch of shed clothing, we hadn’t come here to act out those scenes. We were here to explore. To discover.

I patted the covers. His weight again. Then his heat. His lips.

That mouth was hungry. His hands held back, resting unassumingly at my shoulders, but I felt excitement in the way he kissed me—starved, greedy tastes, as though I were a drink he couldn’t wait to get wasted on. I held his arms, that bare skin under his short sleeves, all that hard muscle. One warm hand rose to hold my face, thumb stroking my jaw. The other went to my collarbone, fingertips light as a butterfly, making me shiver. The need was spreading through his body, from his mouth, now his fingers, read in his torso from the way he tensed, anticipating. The hand above my breasts grew heavy. I felt a fever breaking out, felt hot in my skin and seared by his excitement. The way he kissed was as raw and dirty as any sex I’d ever had, and I ached to feel his mouth all over my body. Between my legs, like his letters had promised.

I led us down, onto our sides, heads on a pillow. My scent was there in its case, and I hoped he could smell it, too. My sweater was stifling, and I broke our mouths apart to strip it away. Then my jeans. He took my lead, and soon we were down to our tees and underwear. His shorts were slate blue, his excitement apparent. My own arousal pulsed hot at the thought that I’d feel him if we pressed closed. The first hard cock I’d touched since undergrad. The first wet, excited woman he’d touched since he was twenty-six.

Our legs locked, mouths seeking. He let me hear his heavy breaths and deep moans, let me feel him squirm, antsy. His fingertips rubbed my collarbone, then with a surrendering groan, he cupped my breast.

The contact shocked my breath away. I’d felt something for every boy I’d gone to bed with, but I’d never felt
this.
Never had a man felt so right, my need for him so urgent. Animalistic and instinctual. The rush of it made me dizzy.

He swallowed, looking a touch drunk. “Jesus, you’re beautiful.”

“Do you remember,” I whispered against his mouth, “when you asked me wear my hottest underwear for you?”

“Yeah.”

“I bought some after you said that, special. Because I didn’t own any that made me feel sexy. I bought some and I wore it that next week, just like you asked.”

He exhaled roughly, a man in pain.

“And I’m wearing it now.”

His eyes caught mine, burning hot. “You wore it tonight, knowing we’d end up . . .”

“I didn’t know. But I hoped we’d get back here. Maybe I planned for us to get back here, in a way.”

Between panting kisses he murmured, “I want to see.”

I let him ease up the hem of my shirt, to take in my panties. He looked overwrought at the sight, the same way I felt watching his lips part and his eyes grow hungry. He tugged at my top, and I arched off the mattress so he could push it up, then I peeled it away for him. With a soft push, he turned me onto my back and knelt between my legs. I was ready for his aggression, but all he did was look at me. Drank me in with that thirsty stare.

“Green,” he said with a little smirk.

I smirked right back, nerves gone. “The way you talk about plants, and summertime . . . It seemed more exotic somehow than black or red.”

He nodded, stroking my legs from calf to hip, up and down, again and again. “It’s perfect. You’re perfect.”

Worth waiting all these years for?

“I’m almost glad,” I murmured, “about having shut all this stuff out for so long. If it means I get to discover it all over again, this way. Feeling it so . . .
intensely
, I guess. Wanting it this badly. With you.”

He had no words for that, only actions. On our sides once more, and his leg thrust between mine, two mouths devouring. I pawed at his shirt until he wrestled it away. His hand was warm on my breast, thumb swiping back and forth, quicker and quicker as my nipple tightened. I’d forgotten I could feel so much there, and the way it deepened the tension between my thighs. I stroked his chest and arm, his hard belly, the crest of muscle at his hip. All these gorgeous shapes I’d stolen guilty glimpses of from my office window, suddenly hot against my palm. I imagined him flexing, imagined him pumping into me, and all at once the hunger went from an ache to a painful twist.

“I want to feel you,” I whispered, then sucked his lip. “Show me.”

His hand was on mine, leading it, pressing my palm to him. Soft cotton, hard flesh. A thousand tiny things I’d forgotten, like the weight of a man’s arousal, its heat, the way it reacted, straining for more. He stroked my hand up and down, slow and light. He was bigger than I’d let myself imagine, harder than I’d remembered possible. He urged my touch lower and curled my palm around that most vulnerable part of him, squeezing softly. Led me back up, cupping my fingers around his blunt, thick crown.

I did this to you,
I thought, tracing the cleft with my thumb.
And you’ve imagined this very moment, same as me. The moment I found the evidence of what we feel for each other, right in my own grip.

He let me explore, and I did so slowly. Thoroughly. I felt it when he got wet, from the way the cotton dragged against my palm. I freed my mouth to look between us at the dark patch on his shorts, and to let him see how fascinated I was.

“Feel how ready I am for this?” he whispered.

I nodded, swallowed.

“You want to see me?”

I met his eyes, so dark in the low light—black as the sky way out in the country. “Yeah. Show me.”

And there it was—the sight I’d been imagining forever. His big hand, big thumb tucked under his waistband, pushing it down. Big cock. He wrapped himself in a fist, eased it up and back.

“You like it?” he murmured.

“I love it.”

“I want your hand on me.” He moved his own low, circling the root with his thumb and first finger, presenting himself. “Touch me.”

His skin was hot. So was mine, and there was friction, even just between my fingertips and his bare shaft. I wrapped my hand around him, wanting us both to see how thick he was in my small fist, how dark and flushed against my pale fingers. How right that must look, after all those years stuck servicing himself.

Soft, searing skin glided along that rock-hard core with my strokes. He dropped his face, nuzzling my neck, kissing and nipping. “Say you like it.”

I tightened my grip, made the pulls long and luxurious. “I do. Even more than I’d imagined I would.”

I heard him swallow. “Am I as big as you’d hoped?”

“Bigger. And harder.” Tighter still, I let my hand tell him the things I had no words for.

He moaned, breath scalding my throat. “I tried to imagine this so many times. You touching me. But I got it so wrong, back then. I never guessed what it’d be like, smelling only you. And your candle. And . . .” He grunted softly, lost to a caress that crested his head. “And how quiet it would be. Quiet enough to actually hear you, touching me.”

Indeed. The whisper of spring-green satin, my breast moving against his arm as I pumped him. Of skin on skin. So much breathing, and the rustle of the down comforter as he shifted his eager body.

“What do you want, tonight?” I asked.

“Everything,” he said, watching my hand. “What do you want?”

“Whatever you’ve missed most.”

“Everything,” he said again. “A little of everything.”

“That thing you imagined, on your birthday . . .”

“Your mouth.”

I nodded.

“If you like that,” he said, filthy hope written all over his face.

“Lie back.”
And let me spoil you.

He arranged a couple of pillows against the headboard, half sitting.
He wants a good view
, I thought with a happy shiver. My own view was a heart-stopper—this powerful, gorgeous body reclined on my bed, taut with anticipation. He helped me get his shorts off, then spread his strong thighs for me.

I moved to my knees and elbows, capturing him in my hand. I’d forgotten the smell of an excited man. I’d forgotten that I could
love
this. I’d stigmatized all but the most gentle, romantic guises of sex since Justin, but as I brought Eric to my lips, I remembered so much. Dark things that had made me curious when I’d been younger. Rough things. Rough men. I’d closed those appetites in a box, not trusting them for so long . . .
But he didn’t break me,
I realized, taking Eric between my lips, feeling him tighten like a spring. I’d shut those things away—packed them, labeled them,
Not for me, not anymore
. But they returned in flashes now, a rush of dark desires.
My
desires again.

“Yes.” He arched when I closed my mouth tight around his head, and I felt the weight of his palms on my shoulders, then my neck.

It all came back to me, this act. Everything it had made me feel—vulnerable and excited with one boy, a little demeaned by another, powerful once, dirty another time . . . but never like this. Never hungry this way, wanting simply to taste a man’s most intimate skin, taste his arousal. Feel his desire against my tongue and between my lips. Hear it in that deep voice, chasing through the shadows like a breeze.

“God, Annie.”

His hands were neither pushy nor gentle. Warm fingertips in my hair, following the motions, urging but not forcing. His breath had grown harsh, and every little grunt and gasp lit me from the inside. I eased him out, meeting his eyes.

“Let me hear you.”

His face was flushed, lips parted, eyes at once burning and glassy. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Moan for me. Or talk to me.” Just that voice, transformed by what I made him feel.

“I don’t want to say the wrong thing.”

“You couldn’t. I want to hear whatever you’re thinking. Whether it’s romantic or nasty or mean or any other thing. Whatever comes out.”

He nodded.

I took him back inside, rewarded immediately with a long, deep groan. It vibrated through the length of his big body, and the room felt darker, the taste and scent of his excitement sharper.

“Yeah,” he murmured, fingertips guiding once more. “I haven’t felt this in so long. Nothing this soft, or sweet. Nothing that made me feel this close to anybody.”

I took him deep—deeper than was comfortable, and more aggressive, but in the moment, my need to consume him drowned everything else. My need to meet
his
needs. To taste his relief and surrender—

“Stop,” he said suddenly, nearly pleading.

I backed off and met his gaze.

“I’m too close. Way too close.”

“I don’t mind if you . . . Not at all.”

He shook his head. “Not like this. Not tonight.”

So often he made these decrees . . . But how long since he’d been able to control his experiences? I smiled. “Whatever you want, Eric.”