Sheltered (11 page)

“No. Yes. Sort of.”

“You know what I’m doing to you now, right?”

The heat in her cheeks started to boil her eyeballs. He thought she didn’t
understand
.

“Of course I know—oh God, just there. Oh my God, oh don’t stop.”

Of course the minute she said it he backed away. Because he was an unmitigated bastard.

“So show me.”

She hadn’t even realized she’d closed her eyes until he said the words—at which point, she had to look him. He was joking, wasn’t he? He had to be joking.

Even if he didn’t look as though he was. His eyelids seemed heavy, his gaze like a lead weight. And there was a ruddy flush over his cheeks too—one that made her feel better about her own.

Though only a little. She couldn’t imagine she looked anything like him, all sensuous and lusty and sure of himself.

“Show me,” he said again, and this time she had to squeeze her eyes shut as the memories crushed in—on her front, with her hand pressed tight between her legs. Her imagination going to how his thigh had felt, rubbing in that said same place.

“I can’t do that. No. I can’t.”

Apparently, however, he’d stopped considering that a viable answer. The moment the words were out he leaned forward and clasped her wrist in his big, rough hand, then just tugged it down until her fingers were in the place his had been, very recently.

And God, he’d been right. She couldn’t even describe the level of wetness she seemed to have reached. A couple of times the dreams had left her all shaky and very slick there, but nothing compared to this.

She had to cover her eyes with her free hand to stop the embarrassment overwhelming her, but he wouldn’t allow that either. The second she did it he told her not to.

“I want you to look at me,” he said, which seemed like the most unbearable thing of all. She had to rub through all of this mortifying mess, while he watched her and she watched him?

She couldn’t. She couldn’t.

“I can’t.”

“You can. Here. Here. Like this,” he said, then covered her hand with his and urged it over her slick mound. Of course, the effect was immediate. That little bud swelled beneath her fingertips, pleasure jerking upward from it too quickly. Her toes curled, her back arched, she tried to tell him no again.

But he just pushed her hand down harder, until she couldn’t stop herself from circling that stiff shape. Just a little—no one would have to know. Except for Van, of course, who seemed to be breathing far, far too hard.

He was practically panting by the time she’d gotten up a rhythm. And she could feel him getting closer and closer, as the pleasure wound tight and threatened to do something horrible to her.

She was going to die of it, she knew. Those little pulses from the point of connection were just too much—almost like burning—and he didn’t seem to want to let her up. He wanted her to carry on, and the faster she circled, the worse it got until she couldn’t speak or move or think.

Great, racking trembles went through her, as shameful as the rest of the experience. And yet somehow she found those cares slipping away the moment it claimed her—because by God, no one could be ashamed of this. She called out his name and didn’t mind in the slightest, body bowing under its pressure. That hand of his working and working over hers, and his mouth, oh Lord his filthy mouth.

“That’s it, honey,” he said. “Give it up. Come all over yourself.”

He sounded so
gratified
too. It was almost funny, until she managed to open her eyes and saw his face.

His lower lip kept making a sort of bow shape, and every time it did it crushed the upper one into a thin stripe. He had that line of pain down his face, but this time she suspected it wasn’t about the bad kind of torture. It was about the good kind, the leg-jostling, anticipatory, dying-to-have-someone-touch-you kind.

He looked caught, she thought. Caught between being gentleman and doing something absolutely disgusting to her. Of course, the notion only brought two possible words to mind.

“Go on,” she said.

Because he could, if he wanted to. The idea wasn’t half as terrifying as the thing he’d just made her do. She’d masturbated in front of him, for God’s sake. What did it matter if he wanted to rub his cock over her pussy, or sink it in to the hilt?

Clearly, however, it mattered to Van.

“Where’s your bathroom?”

The image of him doing himself in the alley behind the house flashed up behind her eyes.

“Van…” she started. She could hardly talk. Her body felt like soup and she knew she looked like an absolute disaster. But by God she was going to get this out. “You know, you don’t have to keep going away. I get—”

“Bathroom, Evie. I really,
desperately
need the bathroom.”

She thought of million ways she could possibly say to him that it was okay. That she knew what he wanted to do, and that was cool. But the problem was, she barely had the words to describe her own bedroom habits. She definitely didn’t have the words for this.

“It’s down the hall, on your left,” she said, then just lay there, feeling helpless, as he got up and left the room.

Of course, he didn’t do it easily. But then, she suspected most things were hard when you had what looked like a hot bowling ball between your legs.

When she heard the purr of a motorbike coming up on her right, it didn’t even occur to her that it might be him. Today was Monday. She was outside the house, cycling down Narrowfoot Lane with nothing but trees on one side and the lake on the other. He had no reason to be anywhere in the vicinity.

But that purr stopped too close to her, all the same. In fact, it stopped so close that she kind of veered off the road a little and almost into a bush, before he cut the engine and called out her name.

“Hey, Evie, seriously. See a doctor about your ability to balance.”

Plus, you know. He said some other things too.

“I can balance fine when I don’t have someone riding a motorbike up my ass.”

She immediately wished she hadn’t used the word ass. Or motorbike. Or any of that sentence whatsoever. When she turned, flustered, a sprig of something now attached to her skirt and her bicycle unwilling to stand up straight, he just looked soooo…

Effortless. He didn’t even knock his sunglasses off when he removed his helmet.

“Did you want your iPod back?”

It was the first thing that occurred to account for his presence, by the side of the road. Of course he hadn’t asked for it last time, or the time before that, but so what? Maybe he just really needed it now.

Or maybe he just wanted to look at her all confused.

“My iPod?”

He took off the sunglasses, but his eyes weren’t the first thing she noticed. Usually they would be—by God she had dreams about his charcoal gaze. This time, however, she saw the bruise he had, first.

And then stupid excuses for him to be here just flew right out the window. There weren’t any excuses. He didn’t need them. She didn’t need them. They were a thing, and the thing made her blurt out, “Oh my
God
, what happened to you? Are you okay?”

She dropped her bike in the long grass, and didn’t even really feel embarrassed about that. He had a black eye. Someone had punched him or hurt him or done something…
Fuck
.

“What? Oh—” His hand went to the purplish mark that spread from the bridge of his nose to his left temple. “No, no—it’s nothing. It’s not a big deal.”

Her stomach lurched into her mouth. She had to go over to him. She had to.

“Let me see,” she said, and though he protested he leaned down for her to inspect it. Of course he seemed faintly surprised that she wanted to, and after a minute his surprise turned to something softer, something almost like pleasure.

But he didn’t try to claim it was nothing, again.

“Some guy tried to take my bike. Clocked me with a crowbar.”

“Are you serious? You got hit in the face with something large and made out of metal?” She kissed that bruised place. Kissed it kissed it. “Tell me you went to the hospital.”

“Evie, honestly—I’m fine. He was just trying to scare me,” he said, but somehow she could tell he kind of liked the fuss. He even rubbed against her hand when she pushed it through his hair, looking for further evidence of heinous injuries.

“You could have a concussion. You could drop dead right now.” She kissed him again, though this time it veered a little closer to his mouth. Plus, somehow she’d wound up with both hands on his face, the way boys did to girls in movies. “And you know if you do, I won’t be able to lug you all the way to the nearest morgue.”

“Nice. Morbid.”

“Hey, it isn’t my fault I have to think of these things. You’re the one who gets his head bashed in and then just shrugs.”

“Like you’ve never shrugged.”

This time her stomach didn’t lurch. It dropped, and so did her hands from his face.

Not that it mattered, however, because after a second of that cold feeling creeping all over her and a flutter of bitter memories, he swapped places with her. His hands went to her face. His lips went to her temple.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he said, and then he kissed her. He kissed her where you could still see a scar just above her left ear. He kissed the odd little notch to the right of her chin, where the belt buckle had caught and taken out a chunk of flesh.

And then he kissed her mouth. All cold feelings went away, when he kissed her mouth.

“I couldn’t wait until Wednesday to see you,” he said between such sweet, soft presses of his lips against hers. “I had to see you.”

It hadn’t even occurred to her that such a thing could happen. That he could meet her outside of the little prescribed time they’d set for themselves, and be like this with her. She’d thought of his fucking iPod, for God’s sake.

Whereas he had obviously thought of other things, like holding her and saying sweet things to her.

“Want to go for a walk?”

And okay, maybe he’d also thought about that bowling ball between his legs. She still couldn’t quite imagine what he’d done in the bathroom—he’d come back from it as calm as still water, as affectionate as he’d been a moment before but in a different way.

He’d laced his fingers with hers and made her lay against him. Talked with her idly about the photography assignment he was doing at the moment, and the book she’d just started reading. It had been nice, but she’d known all along what it meant.

This was what people did after having sex. They cuddled and had lazy conversations—only he hadn’t actually gotten his part of that equation. Instead, he’d jerked off in the bathroom and left her to imagine the rest.

Which she’d duly done. She was duly doing it right now, as she pictured this walk they were going to take.

“Yeah. Yeah, that would be nice,” she said, and then he just took her hand and led her into the woods, like every fairytale she’d ever read about girls getting eaten by wolves.

It should have scared her, really. Her mind should have been on his big teeth and his big eyes and on the clock, always ticking away—her father would expect her home by four. Yet she thought of barely anything until she was lying in the grass with him, his mouth on hers and his hand in her hair, stroking and stroking.

And even then the first words that popped into her head were not a comfort. They were not sensible. They just made her want to run a hand down his body until nothing but carnal delights remained, instead of the nonsensical thing she thought over and over.

I love you. I love you, love you,
love
.

“Evie,” he said, and for a moment she thought he’d somehow heard the words in her head. The ridiculous ones that she absolutely did not feel. He’d said her name like a warning, like a little stop sign before she fell any further into something stupid, and though she knew the thought was irrational it still shoved its way through her.

It still made her blurt out something she didn’t want to, just as he was probably going to say something sweet and good. She could almost see it in his eyes, that sweet goodness.

But she said the words anyway.

“I have to be home by four.”

God it came out clumsily. It came out like him saying,
I really, desperately need the bathroom
, only about some other, new thing that they now had to avoid.
Love
, she thought,
It’s love
, and then studied his face for signs that he knew.

He just looked disappointed, however. Disappointed with a side order of the bitterness she saw on her own face, almost every day. The expression made her want to reach a hand out for him as he pulled slowly away, but in the end she didn’t.

She had to hear what that expression was about first.

“It’s not enough,” he said, finally.

And then she kind of didn’t want to hear, at all. He sat back in the long grass, legs crooked in front of him. One hand on his forehead, as though a pain had started up right in the middle.