Collide (20 page)

“Looky-look,” said Bellina, her voice husky from too many cigarettes. She raked me up and down. “Didn’t mean to interrupt.”

She hadn’t said it with malice, and I only smiled into Johnny’s kiss before I reluctantly pulled away. “Hey, Bellina.”

“Give us a hand here. Candy’s got a lot of food. We’re having ourselves a real party,” said Ed. He looked stoned already.

“Yeah, a party in my house.” Johnny didn’t sound put out. “Nice of you guys to come over.”

They all laughed. Even I got the joke. This was Johnny’s house, but they might as well all live there. Like a commune. Or a hive.

We worked together putting away the food, every package a new surprise to me. Cans that didn’t have pop-tabs, brands I didn’t recognize. Everyone laughed and joked around me, and at first I joined in, but with every new item we pulled from the bags, or I spotted in the cabinet or fridge, I got quieter.

Normally, I’d never have made myself so at home in someone else’s house, but here there seemed very little regard for personal space or possessions. I went from cupboard to cupboard, looking at the boxes, bags and cans. I opened the drawers to peek at silverware. I studied the Tupperware containers stacked haphazardly on shelves. And then, as they all watched me and pretended they didn’t, I turned slowly in the middle of the kitchen and looked at all of them.

I checked the calendar on the wall.

“There’s so much,” I said aloud, not caring what they thought.

Because what could they think? Nothing but what thoughts I gave them. They could do nothing but what actions I provided. All of these people were puppets, this place the stage I’d built. And yet I stood and stared, sweat sliding down the line of my spine, and I shivered.

Johnny linked his fingers in mine. Held me tight. He kept me from shaking when I looked at him, his smile making everything else go away.

“Let’s go upstairs,” Johnny said. “C’mon, gorgeous.”

“Ooh, Emm, watch out. He’s going to ask if you want to see his etchings.” Ed snickered as he lit a hand-rolled cigarette with a familiar tangy smell.

“How about it, Emm?” Johnny tugged my hand, never looking away from my eyes. “You wanna go upstairs with me now?”

“Yes.” One small word, forced from a dry throat.

I didn’t care if they were all staring, or what they might think. I wanted to go upstairs with Johnny, of course. I wanted to strip him naked and kiss my way up from his ankles to his chest, and every sweet inch in between. I wanted to slide him deep inside me and ride him until we both came and collapsed, exhausted and sweaty.

When I lived with my parents I’d been responsible for very little. My mother, despite my protests, had insisted on doing my laundry. I gave them money toward the bills but didn’t have to spend the time paying them. I didn’t even cook for myself most of the time, and any grocery shopping I did was often done with my mom and thus only half the effort. When I lived at home, I’d had a lot more free time that moving into my own place had eaten up with mundane tasks like changing the toilet paper and cleaning up after myself. I wouldn’t have traded it for anything, but it had meant I’d forgone some of the time-wasting habits I’d had when I lived at home.

Playing the Sims was one of them. I’d spent hours at the computer lost in that virtual world—building houses, creating families, watching them live, work, sleep, eat, fall in love, marry, have children…even die. I’d been the God of that universe, sometimes but not always benevolent. The maximum number of Sims that could be played on any one lot was eight, but I consistently failed at keeping more than three of them happy, with all their needs met, and along a positive life path. I wasn’t a very good God.

I wanted to go upstairs with Johnny because suddenly being in that kitchen was making my brain hurt. All those pieces. All those details. All those people. I wasn’t a very good juggler, either. All the balls were in the air, and I stood there with my hands out, ready but not expecting to catch them all.

“C’mon,” Johnny said again. His eyes flashed. He backed up, grinning but ignoring the catcalls and lewd comments from his friends. “I want to show you my etchings.”

He wasn’t lying. In his bedroom he pulled a leather-bound sketchbook from a drawer and flipped it open to show me a pencil drawing, a series of lines and shading. I studied it. I wasn’t familiar enough with his work to know if this was something I should recognize.

“You’re good,” I said sincerely. Even I knew enough to see that.

“Nah. I’m just a scribbler.”

Johnny stretched out on the bed beside me as I sat cross-legged, flipping pages. He had photographs slipped into some of the pages, mostly small but a few eight-by-tens. I pulled one out and studied it with more familiarity than I’d been able to give his art.

“Nice ass,” I teased, waving the picture at him.

Johnny laughed and lay back with his hands behind his head. “That ass paid for a coupla month’s mortgage on this house.”

The photo, black and white, was of Johnny, nude, posed like a classic Roman statue. Minus any fig leaf. His face in profile was serious, his body tight and toned, his ass mouthwatering. I found another from the same series, this one a little creased and bent. Also full frontal.

“You should be more careful with these.” I spied a signature in the corner of the print. “Wow. Are these signed?”

“Yeah. Paul took those.”

I knew that, of course, though the name hadn’t risen immediately to my mind. I’d seen the first one online, the second one in cropped and grainy versions that did nothing to show off the real beauty in the picture. And the others, the sheaf of a dozen other shots, all glossy and signed, I’d never seen at all.

I looked at each one carefully, seeing more than just his body. It was luscious, yes, but there was more to it than that. The shots weren’t cheesecake, or even gay porn, though that’s where I’d seen them before, on sites dedicated to such things. I put them carefully in order. These pictures told a story, one to the next.

“You should take good care of these,” I said when I saw a shot I’d once seen in an online auction, going for close to four thousand dollars. “Signed like this and stuff.”

Johnny pushed up on an elbow. “What for? They ain’t worth nothing. I did them as a favor to Paul. He paid me a couple hundred bucks, that’s all. He hasn’t even used them for anything.”

I flipped it over and saw a poem scribbled on the back. I remembered, then, why the picture in my hand had been selling for so much money, and it wasn’t the custom-made frame and matting. “Ed wrote this?”

“Yeah, he’s always writing shit down on stuff.”

Everything’s worth more after the artist dies. Ed D’Onofrio had killed himself. He’d slit his wrists and drowned in a swimming pool. I hadn’t paid much attention to his death, just that it had spurred the breakup of the Enclave, leading its members to all pursue their own projects and achieve success or failure.

My throat dried and I looked at him. There was another bit of information I’d gleaned from my online stalking. After Ed died and the Enclave broke up, Johnny’d broken, too.

Some accounts said he’d simply holed up out of grief. Others claimed it had gone further than that. That he’d actually gotten hooked on heroin, gone to rehab, been committed to a mental facility. That he’d come out of it clean and dry and, arguably, not crazy, and that sometime after that he’d started creating art, real art, the kind critics wet their panties for. I’d never found confirmation of the rehab or institution part, though it was proven fact he’d become a respected artist in that time frame.

Johnny sat up to take the picture from me, then the book. He put them both aside and pulled me into his arms. “Don’t worry about that stuff now.”

In my real world, flirting was something I’d never really gotten the hang of. I had no trouble talking to men. My problem was more that I was too straightforward, too practical, too honest. The subtle dance of back-and-forth my friends did with potential lovers had always escaped me. I wasn’t sure it had ever stopped me from getting dates, but it had gotten me into trouble more than once when something less than bluntness might’ve served me better than being forthright. Honesty in dating wasn’t always the best policy.

Here, with this Johnny, the one with longer hair and a younger face, I discovered my ability to flirt. To vamp. I felt my mouth curve up in a saucy, sexy smile, felt the lift of my brow, the parting of my lips. Come-hither eyes.

“What should I pay attention to, then?” Even my voice shifted and went sultry.

“Me.”

“Oh, really? You?”

He was already taking my hand and putting it on his crotch, where he moved it in slow circles on his hardening cock. “Yeah. Me. Right here.”

I laughed and shifted closer to push him back on the bed and straddle him. I pinned his wrists, one next to each ear. I leaned in to kiss him but pulled away just as he leaned to kiss me back. He snapped his teeth at me, growling.

“No,” I said. “Not so fast.”

Johnny lay back, eyes flashing, but he didn’t try to get away the way I knew he could with a simple push. “What are you going to do to me?”

“What do you want me to do to you?”

“Anything you want,” Johnny said with a sly grin. “Everything you want.”

I tilted my head, looking him over, then glanced over my shoulder at the book he’d tossed aside. I let go of his wrists and sat up. “I want you to pose for me.”

He blinked, smile fading into confusion. “Huh?”

“Like in those pictures, Johnny. I want you to pose for me.”

“Are you going to take my picture?” He sounded teasing and amused.

“No. I don’t have a camera.”

“Draw me?”

I laughed hard at that. “Oh. No way.”

“So…you’re just gonna look at me?”

“Oh, yes,” I told him as my heart started up its thumping in anticipation. “And maybe some other things. But yes. Looking, to start.”

I slid off him. Johnny, still grinning, got up and stood at the side of the bed. First came his shirt, off over his head and tossed to the floor without a second glance. He was good at this. I rolled onto my belly and put my hands in my chin to watch him.

“Keep going,” I said.

Johnny ran his hands over his chest and belly. “You sure?”

“Yes,” I began, but the word turned to a shivering mess of stuttering syllables when he rubbed his thumbs over his nipples.

“You like that?”

I nodded. “Love it.”

He licked a fingertip and circled his nipple, then drew it down his belly. “That?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

His grin got broader even as his gaze heated. His fingers went to his belt buckle, and he teased it open. He slid the belt from the loops—thwap, thwap, thwap. He held it in his two hands, snapping it taut. “You like that, huh?”

“I love it.”

“You like leather?”

Leathah.
I nodded. “Oh, yes, Johnny. A lot.”

He tilted his head to look at me, then tossed the belt aside to unbutton his pants. His zipper. He eased his jeans down over his naked hips and thighs. No underwear. His cock, thick and half-hard, shifted between his thighs as he pushed the denim over one foot, then the other. He stood there, naked and beautiful, and I yearned for him so fiercely my body actually ached from the wanting.

“Pose.” It was a demand that sounded like a plea.

He did. Twisted his hips, turned his face, curled his arms. Muscles worked and shifted under his sun-burnished skin. His lines became curves; curves turned to planes. He turned in place, showing me that epic ass and the dimples just above it.

I pushed myself up on my hands. “Turn around. Slowly.”

I got off the bed as he obeyed. Fully clothed, I stood in front of him. We stared into each other’s eyes. We weren’t smiling. This had become business of the most serious sort. This had become something more than play. This had become everything.

I put my hands so lightly on his hips he shouldn’t have been able to feel me, nor I him. The fine hairs on his skin stood on end, and the heat of him touched me. I drew my palms up his sides, then around and over his chest and belly, all with that microscopic distance between his skin and mine.

Johnny shivered. “Emm.”

“Shh.”

I drew my phantom touch over each of his thighs. Moving around him, his back, his shoulders, his ass. Down over the sweetness of the skin behind his knees. His calves. To his front again I moved, and cupped the air around his shins before getting to my knees in front of him.

I touched him then for real. My hands cupped his ankles. Johnny groaned. I slid my hands up his legs, shins, knees, calves, thighs. I let them rest on the backs of his thighs, just below the curve of his buttocks.

His cock was hard now. In front of my face. I wanted to taste him. Still holding him, though he’d made no attempts at moving, I leaned in to nuzzle against his thigh. I let my tongue flicker along his balls, then the base of his shaft. He twitched, and his hand came down to tangle in my hair, but other than that, he stayed still.

I took him into my mouth slowly, savoring each inch. I sucked gently and used my hands to move him in and out of my open, willing mouth at my own pace. His fingers tightened in my hair, and he groaned.

I paused to look up at him. “You like that, huh?”