Missing Hart (25 page)

“Thank you Leah. I honestly don’t know what I would do without you.”

Tally called me eight days after our dinner date. Not one to waste time, she got right to the point.

“Have you thought about it?”

I nodded before realizing that she couldn’t see me through the phone. “Yes, I’ve thought about it.”

“What’s the verdict?”

Mustering up some courage I replied, “I’m in.”

She breathed what sounded like a sigh of relief. “I’m giving you my address. Come over, I need to touch you.”

Gulping I asked, “Is that an order?”

“It was a plea. I can’t wait another second.”

“In that case, I’ll be there in an hour.”

My hands were shaking by the time I arrived at her apartment, and I felt like a virgin again. I was going into unchartered territory and it scared the bejesus out of me.

The first rap of my knuckles against her door had barely ended before she flung it open and pulled me inside. Pushing me up against the door, she grabbed me before covering my mouth with hers.

We kissed against the door for an eternity before she took my hand and started pulling me down the hall to her bedroom. In a way I couldn’t believe I was being so easy, but a bigger part of me didn’t see the point in delaying the inevitable.

There were several stops on the way to her bedroom, and all involved kissing and fondling. Just as we crossed the threshold to her room she pulled my shirt off and then her own, and I sucked in a breath when I saw that she wasn’t wearing a bra. Her full round breasts looked beautiful in the dim light of her bedroom, and I wanted to tongue her pert nipples badly. My sex clenched in response to the thought, and Tally gave me a smile of understanding.

Tugging me to the bed, she pushed me down before quickly taking her shorts and panties off. Naked she was even more beautiful, her tiny triangle of pubic hair adding to her mystique. The sight of the arousal on her lips was hugely erotic, causing me to lick my lips with longing.

I made a low sound of approval in my throat as she divested me of the rest of my clothes, happy to be as naked as she was. Standing over me she looked at my body in silence before looking up at me with a smile.

“Your so beautiful. I can’t wait to learn your body, to savor your taste on my tongue.”

Her words caused me to blush from head to toe. Climbing onto the bed, she extended her arm and ran her hand from my collarbone to the bottom of my foot before starting to make her way back up the inner portion of my thigh. I arched into her touch, barely breathing when she gently caressed the top of my mound a half dozen times before sliding her middle finger between my soaking lips and dipping her finger inside of me.

Sliding gently in and out, she rubbed my clit with her thumb at the same time. I heard how wet I was and I knew that she did as well.

“You really do want this,” she said.

I nodded my agreement with that sentence before moaning when she slipped another finger inside of me. Curling her fingers against my special spot, she worked it in tandem with my clit as I started to come apart at the seams.

“I want you to come all over my fingers Nikki and then I want you to make me come.”

My back arched as her fingers thrust faster, so close to coming that I could taste it.

“Do you know what I’m going to do to you tonight?”

I shook my head, incapable of speech.

“I’m going to spread your beautiful pussy lips and dive in. If you taste even half as good as you smell, I’m going to be in heaven when I’m drowning in your come.”

Her words hurtled me over the edge and I came with a little yell of release.

Ever so gently she removed her fingers and I blushed when she touched my face and said, “Look at me Nikki.”

Opening my eyes, I found her looking down at me with a look of pure unadulterated lust. Lifting her hand to her lips, she inserted the fingers that had been inside of me into her mouth. My breath came in bursts as she licked and sucked each finger, smiling at me as she finished.

“You don’t taste as good as you smell-you taste better.”

She straddled me before descending on my mouth again, and we kissed desperately as she aligned our pussies and started to ride me.

“You’ve never fucked a girl before so you have no idea how good what we’re doing right now is about. It’s called tribbing, but that’s just a fancy word for rubbing. Grab my ass and hold me while I fuck you.”

I did, gasping and moaning at each delicious slide of her sex against mine. In that position we both came several times. We were both covered in a fine sheen of sweat as she fucked on top of me and we made out like two sex crazed lunatics. I needed to get the act of tasting her out of the way, needed to know if I could actually go through with it.

Using my leg I pushed against the bed and rolled so that she wound up under me. Quickly, before I lost any nerve, I licked my way down her body before spreading her legs. I was now face to face with her sex, and I was scared to death. Swallowing my nerves, I leaned in for my first taste of Tally.

She tasted fine, salty sweet with a gently musky undertone that was a lot better than I had anticipated. I worried that I wouldn’t know what to do, but when it came down to it I just did what I liked to have done to me and I listened to the accelerated sounds of her breathing and took my cues from that. In no time at all she was calling my name as she came against my tongue, and continued to make love to her with my tongue until she yanked my hair and pulled me up so that we could kiss again.

Tally knew just where to touch my body to get a response, and she was very good at oral sex-although I have to admit that was nowhere near as good as Dillon was. We didn’t stop making love until hours later when I begged her to because by then I was so wrung out from coming that I was completely overwhelmed and had started to shake.

She held me in her arms and soothed me as I continued to shake from the aftershocks. If someone had told me that making love with a girl would be so intense, I wouldn’t have believe them. Now, I knew better.

After that Tally and I were together as much as possible. Our sexual connection was solid and I was thrilled to be enjoying myself again. I decided to throw caution to the wind and jump into something real with her. The plain truth is that it didn’t always feel right and I struggled with that a lot. When I say that I don’t mean the fact that she’s a girl felt wrong-what I’m referring to is the fact that it’s not as natural as being with Dillon was.

I’ve fallen in love with her, but I’m not in love with her the way I am with Dillon. She knows this, but she doesn’t understand it and more often than not lately she’s been pushing me for a commitment that I don’t want. To me the commitment to each other is already there and it doesn’t need to be anything more than it is. She’s not sleeping with anyone else and neither am I, so I don’t see the big deal. Her issue is that she wants us to move in together, a step that I am in no way ready for and I very likely never will be.

She keeps bringing it up and I keep shooting her down. She wants to meet my family, but I’ve told her that I can’t and won’t tell them about our relationship because they wouldn’t like it. The real issue there is I don’t see a reason to get them involved with her. It’s a longstanding and unspoken rule in my family that none of us bring “temporary” people around. No one has ever broken that. If I turn up with Tally, they’re going to assume that I’m committed to her for the long haul, but I can’t guarantee that I am.

There’s also the fact that I don’t feel like having to explain my relationship with Tally to them. If I bring her home, they’ll think I’m a lesbian. When I explain that I’m not, they’re going to think that I’m just like our mother-open to having sex with anyone.

I just can’t commit to this relationship being more when I don’t have everything to give. I’ve never been less than honest about that with Tally, but lately it’s like she just doesn’t care. Her lack of understanding and my inability to commit are taking a toll on our sex life. She’s annoyed with me and I’m pissed at her for pushing, so half the time we don’t have sex at all anymore.

We were now fighting basically every single time we saw each other. She pushed for a commitment and I stood firm and told her that I couldn’t do that to my family. I was using them as an excuse, but she wasn’t having it.

I love her, I really do, but this isn’t my forever love. I’m not going to marry her or have children with her, and I’ve never been less than honest with her about that. The fact that she’s pretending that if I tell my family everything will fall into place really pisses me off because I’m not sure how much more honest I can be with her without leaving for good. God knows I’ve tried. Each and every time I leave she calls crying and I wind up feeling bad and going back. It’s a no win situation, and I don’t know what to do.

I’ve been stressed and anxious about it for weeks, and it’s making me a grumpy bitch. Delilah and Brooke are both up my ass about what’s bothering me, but I’m not saying a word. Leah is the only person that knows and her position is that Tally is a stage five clinger and I need to dump her and move on.

“She’s like that chick in Single White Female that fell in love with her roommate. It’s completely fucked up how needy she is where you’re concerned. Unless you want this to be a forever thing, you need to nip it in the bud.”

I didn’t think that Tally was a stalker, but I have to admit that she manipulates to get her way about things and she is extremely needy. The truth is that her neediness is my fault, and it’s time for me to nip the relationship in the bud.

At Tally’s request I went to her apartment earlier today to talk it out. I told her that as much as I loved her, I just couldn’t do it anymore. I explained to her that she wants more than I do, and that it isn’t fair of me to stay with her when I’m never going to change my mind.

I was a miserable wreck when I got to Dante’s house for family dinner even though I had two hours to get myself calmed down and presentable. The truth is that I felt shitty that I meant so much more to her than she did to me, and her pleas always made me feel guilty because it reminded me of how I felt when I pleaded with Dillon and he didn’t listen. Now I felt like I was doing that to someone else and it didn’t sit well.

If I weren’t so worried about Brooke and her frame of mind lately, I would have found an excuse to miss family dinner. Since it was Brooke, I couldn’t ignore the responsibility I felt that I had to her. When the chips had been down her father had been there for me. Now Brooke was really down and I needed to be there for her since he couldn’t be.

As everyone started arriving, it was clear that most of us were miserable. I was a wreck, Brooke looked like she hadn’t slept in god knows how long, Delilah was cranky and Spencer seemed totally out of it.

The only two people in the room who weren’t totally off were Dante and Sabrina. Seeing my brother as in love as he is has been a revelation. He doesn’t just love Sabrina; he worships her. They touch and kiss and whisper to each other all the time. They’re so disgustingly happy and in love that sometimes I want to throw my hands in the air and stomp out in protest of the fact that it’s too damn much. Of course, I won’t never do that since the joy I have about my brother finding love and putting himself out there for the girl of his dreams makes me so happy that I want to do cartwheels. Even as cranky as I am bearing witness to what I don’t have, I am overjoyed for my brother. After all that he sacrificed for our family, he deserves it.

If my idiot brother Damien would man the hell up and make his move on Brooke, it would be great. The two of them stare at each other like they’re the last glass of water in the desert, but they don’t act on it.

Asking for everyone’s attention, Dante announced that Damien had been dating someone for the last few weeks and was bringing her home for dinner tonight. Brooke looked like she’d swallowed poison as she turned and ran from the room and my heart broke for her. Now I had to believe that Damien really didn’t want to be with her, because he would never break the rule and bring someone to dinner that didn’t mean something to him.

Delilah and I ran up the stairs after Brooke, finding her sitting against the wall in one of the guest bathrooms. Both of us dropped to the floor next to her and did everything that we could to soothe her. I was proud of her iron will, because she never shed a tear. At her core Brooke was stronger than she knew.

As we entered the kitchen again, I saw Damien standing with his arm around a girl. A chill of unease ran up my spine just before she turned and my worst nightmare became reality. Tally had just blown my life up right in my face.

I couldn’t believe that she’d finagled her way into my brother’s house. I talked about my family all of the time-how could she not know what house she was going to? It was true that I had introduced myself as Nikki when we first met, but a few months in I’d confessed that my real name was Dominique Hart.

Turning on my heel I hauled ass up the stairs, mindlessly bursting through a door to one of Dante’s guest rooms before hurling myself onto a bed. Who, exactly, had luck as shitty as mine? No one, that’s who.

I buried my face in the comforter as I tried to formulate what words to say. Unless I opened up about Dillon there was no way that I could tell my family that I wasn’t gay. No, my bed had been made and now I was laying in it. There was no way of getting out of this unscathed and, truth be told, I felt bad for Tally. My lack of ability to commit to her had made her do something crazy and it was my responsibility to handle it.

I was afraid that my brothers weren’t going to be very accepting of my ‘coming out’, but they were fine. To my great shame they supported me just as beautifully as they always had. Damien and Spencer told me that they had gotten to know her and had been hearing her tell stories about ‘Nikki.’ They both assured me that they liked her and they encouraged me to make it right.

A big part of me was absolutely disgusted with her for backing me into a corner and forcing my hand, but a larger part of me felt like I had earned her manipulation by not being the partner she deserved. My entire family encouraged me to go to her and work it out, and since that felt like the right thing to do, I did.