In Harmony (39 page)

“I don’t care!” I told him. “I don’t
care
that we can’t graduate, I don’t
care
if we have no money. I want to live in a two-bit apartment with you, with walls so thin—”

“We can hear the neighbors fucking?” said Connor.

“Hell no. They can listen to
us!”
And I ran to him and leapt into his arms, kissing him savagely, and he returned the kiss just as hard, wrapping one arm around my waist to hold me while he buried the other hand in my hair, and as he gave a delighted, relieved chuckle I knew I’d got him back.

“Connor?” Ruth’s voice had always been like granite. Now it sounded like it was splintering, cracking open to reveal the rot beneath. “Connor?”

Connor stopped kissing me for a second. “No,” he told her simply. And as we went back to kissing, I heard her slink away.

I ran my hands over Connor’s bare shoulders. He was in grease-stained workpants and heavy boots, his hands and torso smudged with oil. I pushed up against him even closer.

I heard the creak of leather as a biker walked over to the open garage door. “I was gonna ask if everything’s okay in here,” rumbled a familiar voice. “But I guess it is.”

Neither of us replied and I had my eyes tight closed as I kissed Connor, but I felt his arm shift and extend, and guessed that he was giving Neil a thumbs-up. I heard Neil chuckle, and then his footsteps faded away.

There was an old tarpaulin on the floor and Connor laid me gently down on it. He pushed my sweatshirt, top and bra up, baring my stomach and breasts, and then his hands were smoothing over my skin, leaving dark, oily marks behind.

“I’m getting you filthy,” he said warningly.

“I want to be filthy,” I told him.

That was all the encouragement he needed. We started rolling over and over on the tarpaulin, first me on top and then him, his hands rough at my breasts, mine sliding down over his back and ass. His jeans came off, and then mine. We didn’t even stop to take them all the way off, just left them bunched around our knees. Both of us were panting with desire, filled with the need to restore what we’d broken.

Connor abruptly stood up and left me, half-naked and sprawled on the garage floor. It occurred to me that the main door was still open. Down on the floor, we were a little more hidden than we had been, but any bikers in the compound who strolled past the garage door would be able to see us just fine….

Connor returned seconds later with a box of condoms. Not our usual, high-tech, glossily-packaged brand. Some basic, generic type, purely functional, for when it’s just about the sex. The same box shared by everyone at the club, dipped into when a girlfriend or a hooker or an
old lady
stopped by. Biker condoms.

It seemed appropriate.

He rolled one on as I lay there panting up at him, and for a second I was back in my apartment, all those months before, pleasuring myself with my dildo.
How would Connor Locke take me?

“Turn over,” he told me in a voice thick with lust. “Hands and knees.”

I assumed the position, palms flat on the greasy fabric, feeling the chill of the concrete soaking through to my knees. With my back to the open doorway, I had no idea if anyone was watching us or not, and not knowing sent a dark thrill through me.

I felt Connor come up behind me, his dirty hands tracing up my bare thighs…my ass. And then his face was between my legs, his tongue flicking out to caress folds that were already moist. I shuddered and pushed back against him, my upper body sinking towards the floor. Again and again, his tongue traced the shape of me, until I was a helpless, writhing mass, drunk on pleasure.

And then I felt his hard length slide into me and I arched my back as I took him deep, his hands clasping my hips. Three long, slow thrusts into my tightness and he was completely within me. As he started to move, I let my shoulders sink the rest of the way to the floor, my cheek pressing against the tarpaulin. Hot red lust was throbbing through me, getting stronger with each thrust, my whole body jerking to the rhythm. I had my eyes squeezed tight shut, the world narrowing down to the feeling of him inside me, his thighs slapping against my ass. His hands came forward to squeeze my breasts, my nipples caught between his fingers, rubbing and—
God—
pinching me just right, and I knew he was leaving black smears on my pale skin and didn’t care. Every silken movement of him inside me added a new layer to the rhythm, the climax reaching up inside me to steal my voice, steal my breath—

“Connor!” I managed as the orgasm overtook me, and I pushed back with my hips, wanting him as deep as he could be. He thrust into me hard and my pleasure blossomed and spread, and then I felt him jerk and pulse inside me.

He slumped over me, his chest against my back, so close I could feel his heartbeat. His huge, calloused hands came down to cover my much smaller ones, rubbing over the backs of them again and again. Comforting and protecting me, forever.

***

As he pulled on a t-shirt, Connor asked me, “So, how do you want to spend your first night of poverty? I can stretch to a takeout pizza. Maybe.”

I kissed him while fastening my jeans. “Later. First, there’s something I need to do.”

Chapter 32

Jasmine had told me the hotel she was meeting her client at. I just prayed that she’d be early…or that he’d be late. Neil gave me a lift on his bike, grinning and muttering something about how Darrell was the one who’d got to do this, last time. We roared through the streets with me clinging onto his back and his long hair whipping me in the face. A few times I wondered if we were going to survive, but he got me there faster than any cab could have.

“Wait there,” I told him as I handed him back his helmet. My hair, already tousled from the sex, was now a complete mess. “I need to talk to you, too.”

He looked a little unsettled at that, but I ignored him. I also ignored the hotel doorman, who looked aghast at my appearance.

I found Jasmine at the bar, in a long green dress. When she saw me, she turned on her stool to gape.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she asked. “He’ll be here any minute!” She looked closer. “Is that oil on your face? Why’s your hair all scrunched up?”

I didn’t have time for long explanations. “I had filthy sex on the floor of a biker garage,” I told her. “Neil brought me here on his bike.”

Her eyes went huge as she made the wrong connection.

“The sex was with Connor, you idiot! Grab your purse. You’re coming with me.”

She shook her head. “You know I can’t. He’ll be here—”

“Call him and cancel. Tell him you’re pulling out. You’re not going to be an escort.”

Her face darkened. “I thought you were supporting me!”

“I am supporting you. I’m doing what I should have done from the start and slapping some sense into you. You are an
amazing
actress, you
are
going to be a success and you do
not
need to do this.”

She froze, as if I’d broken some spell by saying the magic words. “But—I don’t have any other place to go,” she said. “Karen, I can’t move in with my brother….”

“I know. You’re moving in with me. You can sleep on the couch.”

She shook her head. “No. God, I couldn’t—”

I grabbed her by the shoulders. “Yes you can and yes you will.” My voice softened slightly. “Part of being a good friend is letting your friends know when they’re being fucking stupid, and saving them even when they don’t want to be saved. I’m…sorry I didn’t see that before.”

We clutched each other tight, and suddenly we were both blinking back tears.

“Wait. Did you just
curse?”
Jasmine asked.

I giggled through my tears.

A man in his forties tentatively approached us. “Vanessa?” he asked uncertainly.

Jasmine turned to him. “Nope,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Never heard of her.”

***

I filled Jasmine in on what she’d missed, put her in a cab and told the driver to keep the meter running. Then I walked over to Neil.

He was still sitting on his bike, parked right in front of the hotel’s main doors. The doorman looked like he wanted to say something, but clearly wasn’t going to mess with Neil. I wasn’t surprised. I’d found Neil pretty intimidating, too.

Until I got angry.

“You need to tell Clarissa that you love her,” I told him.

“I—
What?!”

“She’s unhappy and worried and you need to fix it. She and Natasha have been trying to figure out a way that she
can fix it, but
she’s
not the problem.
You’re
the problem.”

“Now hold on just one second—”

“You’re tough and moody and you can growl in her ear and make her drop her panties in three seconds flat,
okay—we get it!
But I know there’s more to you than that. Natasha said you helped Darrell, back when they nearly split. You helped me tonight. Open up and talk to Clarissa or you’re going to lose her, you big…lunk!”

He went quiet. Then he swung one leg off his bike so he could turn all of his powerful body to face me. “’Lunk’?”

“It was all I could think of,” I said, flushing.

He gave me a long look. “Open up, huh?”

“Open up. If you really love her.”

He didn’t answer at first. He swung his leg back over his bike and started it up, and a terrible fear clutched at my chest, that I’d just tipped some awful balance and driven them apart.

Staring at the road ahead, Neil said, “I love that girl more than words can say.”

And he was gone, powering off into the traffic.

***

We swung by the motorcycle club to pick up Connor. It was a weird cab ride back to my apartment, with Jasmine sitting between us. It should have been awkward, but somehow it wasn’t—we held hands across Jasmine’s lap and she slipped an arm around each of us and we all just sat there in silence, letting everything that had happened sink in. I’d glance at one or the other of them and we’d exchange smiles in the brief flashes of light from the streetlights. I had my man back, I had my friend back, and that was all that mattered.

***

In my apartment, Jasmine declared that her first day of work had exhausted her and that she was going to crash out. Connor and I moved into my room.

“What was she doing, anyway?” Connor asked. “She said she was working, but she’s dressed for a date.”

“Long story,” I told him. “And one I’m not going to tell you.” Jasmine’s brief career as an escort would stay between her and me.

“Can I take a shower, before we do anything else?” he asked. “I’m covered in oil.”

“I’m covered in oil too.” I looked at the bed. “So it doesn’t much matter.”

Connor considered. “Or
…
we could take a shower together.”

The bed sounded good, but that sounded even better.

Jasmine must have been able to hear us. The lounge was just down the hall from the bathroom, and even though we started out quiet, with Connor soaping my back and sliding his hands down my flanks, it soon got a lot noisier. Kneeling in front of me, the water thundering down onto his head like a warm waterfall, he had me groaning and thumping on the wall with my fist. When he fucked me, my back braced against the wet tiles and my legs wrapped around his waist, my cries must have reached the next apartment, never mind the lounge. But when we emerged, wrapped in towels, and crept back to my room, all we could hear from the lounge was gentle snoring.

Of course, she
was
a very good actress.

Chapter 33

The next morning, I took Connor with me to Fenbrook to collect a few things and say my goodbyes. Technically, I could have kept going to lectures right up until the recital, but I knew I couldn’t perform without Connor, and Connor had flunked out—so what was the point?

The place was quiet, everyone either in classes or huddled in practice rooms working away at their recital pieces. Exactly where we would have been, if Ruth hadn’t screwed Connor over on the essay. I trailed my hand along the wall as we trudged down the corridor. The place had been my home for almost four years, and now—

I realized Connor wasn’t with me. He’d stopped a few paces back, staring at something on the wall. I backed up to see what it was.

It was the poster I’d pretended to read when I’d been stressing about being a virgin the day of our first real date, what seemed like a lifetime ago.
The Fenbrook Improvisation Challenge! A Timed Composition for Extra Credit.
“What?” I asked Connor.