Know Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book One) (10 page)

She pulls away, flushing red, grinning.
“So much for not being a slut—”

I kiss her
again. My blood boils. She’s tipped me over the
edge. It’s her eyes, I tell myself. It’s her hair, I tell myself.
It’s her music, her tat, the honesty in her speech...

It’s the
gestalt
of all of that crap—the whole being greater than
the sum.

But somehow I don’t believe my own lie.
Because it’s none of that
crap either.

It’s something else...

She pulls away, grinning and smiling
and—
OK, I
glanced down at her tautened nipples through her top and now I look
away.

She gets out the car, starts walking
away
. Fast.

I get out as well, slam my door closed.
Follow her.

She doesn’t wait for the elevator, runs up
the stairs. We get to a nondescript brown door with a yellow note
on it, heaving for breath—several floors up, ten or twelve. She
grabs the note, looks at it quickly, then crushes it in her
fingers. Before opening the door, she turns, breathless, puts her
arms around my neck. And kisses me again.

My tongue’s all inside her. Tasting her,
feeling her. I rub her tight sweater, only now feeling the cold on
my skin that I’ve avoided all day. When she notices my goosebumps,
when she feels me tremble, she pulls away gently, and points to a
cracked window up ahead.

“
Is that why the rent’s so cheap?” I
say.

“
I never said the rent was
cheap.”

She unlocks her door, walks backwards into
her loft while my arms are around her waist, hers still around my
neck. I barely glance around. But I do see the mammoth wall-shelf
with so many books on it it could be the goddamned Library of
Congress. Then two mixing setups—each in a different corner. And a
yellow beanbag under her personal
biblioteca
. A kitchen on one side with a kitchen-island
thingy separating it from the rest of the loft.

Beyond that, I don’t care. All I care
about is her lips, her breath. Her tongue going wild like a lizard
inside my mouth. Before I know it I have her up against some
windows facing the other building. She makes sounds that drive me
insane.

I’m
hard, and this is going so much further than I expected it
to. I’m gonna need release. I can’t deny that now. And I know she
needs it, too.

But I can’t disrespect her. I can’t scare
her off because our hormones just got the better of us despite our
plans. And when it comes down to it—I know this from endless
experience and even one slap to the face—a man’s hormones tend to
be a little less controllable than a woman’s.

I think.

I try tu
g away from her. Her breathing turns wild and
ragged. She kisses me, licks me—

She tugs at my tank, starts taking it off.
She has it up to my chest when I say, “Blaze, where’s this
going?”

I say it for
her
, not for me. Because, heck, if she’d been any
other girl, I’d want it over at that fourth base before you can say
“
Batter
up!
”

But she’s not any other girl,
is she, you doof? You know that already, right? You know there’s
something here
...

She pulls my shirt down, her eyes frantic
and wild while she ponders my question; ponders—maybe—the same
moral dilemma in her mind that I’ve just considered in my
own.

Forcefully, she places flat hands on my
chest and pushes me—her eyes constantly locked on mine—and I hit a
sofa-bed (didn’t notice
that
one!) and fall back. Then she’s next to me, lying down, her
delicate and magical hand on my crotch above my denims.

And she
rubs
. Like I’m some vinyl disk being scratched by a pro DJ. I
start burning, sizzling...

It doesn’t take me long. I move my hand to
between her legs, my mind exploding with need.

I can’t control it. I fire!
Oh GOD that feels
good!
I groan and hold
her with my right arm while my left hand rubs between her legs,
also over her jeans.

I let out a desperate roar. My body shakes
and then—

While I shudder, while my body trembles
and I try and regain some level of manliness and stay strong and
rub her up to her own climax, she holds me, tight,
squeezes
my body against
hers.

Suddenly it’s not just “a chick,” “a
babe.”

It’s
Blaze
.

And there is only one.

She keeps rubbing while I’m climaxing and
the endorphins make me mellow, but at least I’m not ravenous
anymore. At least I can think clearly again.

I push her onto her back, press hard up
against her center
with
my hand. She whimpers. Her eyes scan the room, they go crazed with
something that looks like anxiety. “Blaze, look at me.”

She does. She groans. She squirms. “Oh,
oh, oh...” Her sounds come in short spurts. I feel her begin to
pulse. She’s whispering now, husky, “Deck, Deck, Oh...”

She clenches her eyes. H
er palms make it to my shoulders and rest
there gently, as if only poising herself to grasp at something
before the oncoming fall.

Then all movement from her
stops.

And she fractures in half.

It’s an
earthquake
.

She pulses up from the bed, waist high up,
resting on her shoulders. She shakes, convulses.

I keep rubbing her over her jeans, my hand
getting hot.

Her neck tenses, her eyes flutter. She
doesn’t scream, just groans, throaty and guttural.
Fucking sexy
groans.

She hooks on my neck, practically dangles
down while I keep moving
down below.

She slows down. Then
, so do I. She sighs out a stormy relief.
A faint smile crosses her face. Her eyes droop just a little and
her eyelids go heavy. She forces herself awake, exhales forcefully.
“Deck, I’m gonna pass out shortly. And...someone’s coming by as
well. And then I really need to sleep!”

I can’t help the quick pang of
jealousy
that hits
me.
Someone’s coming by
. Crazy, I know.

“
My landlord,” she says. “The note on the
door? That was him.”

“
Oh, yeah, sure.” I guess my knee-jerk
reaction was that obvious.
And now I feel like an idiot.
“I’ll let myself out. Uhm, should I call
you?”

Her eyes open abruptly. “You better!” She
grabs my neck, and as she kisses me, I already feel her fading
away...

I get up, every muscle in my body pulling
me back to be with her. Halfway to the door, I turn back around.
She’s got her head on her hand, lying on her side. Cheshire
grin
, eyes still somehow
awake.

I stride
back to her and she welcomes me when I get on her,
kissing her feverishly. I guess another half hour goes by. And when
she’s practically passing out while our lips meet, I finally do
leave. She’s probably asleep before I even close the
door.

When the elevator door opens,
a short dude wearing a yarmulke
steps out. He smiles at me and I smile back. I’m in a smiling mood.
The thought crosses my mind that I’ll be smiling all week because
of
Heaven-Leigh
.

It’s like I’ve entered into some vortex
and come out the other side
where all the rules are changed. Everything’s different.
You only hear about that shit in
Harry Potter
or
Narnia
stories.

When I open the door to my cab, I
feel the tiredness run over me
like a tidal wave. I can’t drive like this. I check the time and
see it’s eleven A.M.

I decide to crash in the driver’s seat for
a bit.

To help my mind rest, I pull out my reader
and flip to Stephen King’s
Under the Dome
. It looks like Dale (“Barbie”) and Julia might hook up
after all. Which I think is cool, because didn’t it look like they
were destined to right from the start? I know I’ve been rooting for
it since the beginning...

But I don’t find out if they do. Instead,
my eyes close. My hand drops the reader onto the bucket seat next
to me. And I dream of a certain ex military man (me) and a certain
newspaper woman (Blaze) sitting under a mysterious dome, looking up
at it.

In my dream, we do hook up.

Deliciously
.

Blaze
Ryleigh

When I hear the banging, I think the
bass-drums at
House Market
have blown. A few cloudy seconds later, I come to
understand that someone’s knocking at my door.

Deck?

“
I’m coming!” I drag myself up.

Two things happen when I open the door: My
heart sinks—it’s not Deck. My heart lifts—it’s Mr. Bernstein. He
smiles his concerned smile.

Remembering life and its problems again,
as if being with Deck the last few hours took me completely out of
them, I say, “Tough life, isn’t it?”

“
Feh! You’re telling me, honey. Those
schmucks at
Real Developments
got real chutzpah, you know! They’re tightening around my
neck so bad I had no choice.

“
They think they can just
plotz
into Brooklyn and raise the
prices without consequences!? I mean, people gotta live!” He
squeezes one of my cheeks. “You look awful, everything
OK?”

“
Uh, yeah, I’ve just been up all night.” He
frowns seriously. “I was working!”

“
You’re not hangin wit dat schmuck—what was
his name, the one with all those drugs and things...?” He waves his
hand.

That would be
Tolek Two-Face Tomas he’s referring to. A dude I
“dated” for, like, three months or so. “Tolek,” I remind him. “The
‘schmuck’ you’re referring to.”

“
That’s
the one!” He wiggles his finger in the
air, thinking. “Even his name sounds bad!”

Well,
Xavier’s name sounds like honey on
the tongue. But he wasn’t much luck for me either.

“
No, I’m not hanging out with him anymore.
But I already told you that I was into that bad stuff before Tolek
came around. You know...me and...
Savva.
” I say this last part silently.

“
Oh, honey...” He wraps a short arm around
me, causing me to bend down at an awkward angle. “...I don’t care
if you were into that
drek
before him. I just never liked him, you know. It’s as if
bad luck follows some people, and good luck follows others. And he
was bad luck. I just know it. You gotta surround yourself with
people who bring you luck, you know?”

“
Yeah, I know.”

Mr. Bernstein moves over to my windows. I
follow. I see that Deck’s still here and wonder, a little
excitedly, why. Mr. Bernstein takes a sad breath, sighs out. “I’m
sellin that one as well, Blaze.” He points at the practically
abandoned wreck across the street.
Savva’s old building
. “I’m just too old to deal with this
drek. I can’t raise the rent because I’m not in the business of
making people hungry. It’s just the prices, they’re all going up.
They’re building hotels here—I don’t even recognize Williamsburg
anymore. And I got expenses as well, you know?” He shakes his head.
“Forty-five years ago this year, it is, that I bought my first
building. These apartments were
packed
—people coming from all over the world, settlin in New
York. Sure, we had gangs and a lotta bad stuff happening as well.
Giuliani sorted a lot of that out—or he likes to think he did—but
the place was bustling. We got the crime out, and then we got a
good bunch of people here. Artists. People like you, you
know?”

I realize, during his monologue, that he
probably came to see me because he wanted to unload a little
himself. Maybe I’m the only one of his tenants that gets him. I
don’t know. I’ve heard the other tenants
talking. They speak really badly about him, like
he’s some monster that’s only out to make a buck and charge high
crazy rents. I don’t tell them he only takes seven hundred or so
from me, and sometimes not even that! At current rates, a “normal”
tenant could pay as much as three or four times that amount for a
loft my size.

“
Well, that’s what happens with artists,
isn’t it? They come in, raise the value—then those Wall Street
types walk in, see a quick buck to be made, and they put up million
dollar condos.
Two
million
dollars! With ‘a few affordable apartments’ in each one. Affordable
to whom, Blaze?” He turns to glare at me. “To
whom!?
”

The question is rhetorical.
“Mr. Bernstein, you want some
coffee?”