It was our song
again.
Our
song...
I shook my head in disbelief. "How many
times have you heard this song since you've been here?" I asked
him, my eyes still closed. His fingers curled around the collar of
my coat, tickling my shoulders and sending a galvanizing shiver
down both sides of my back. I put my arms to my side as he slid the
coat off of me, letting it drop to the floor.
"I've heard this song every day since I
left. It's the first thing I hear when I wake up, the only thing I
listen to when I take lunch, the last thing I hear before I go to
sleep..."
I felt his wavy hair, sweet apple scent,
graze across my nose as he moved his head to the other side of my
neck. Dry lips scraped against my neck, up, this time, to my ear.
And then his hands touched me, around my waist, then under my
blouse. And my head dropped.
I hit his shoulder with my
forehead. My arms curled instinctively around his back as his hands
moved up around my sides, to my own back. This felt different, so
different. This felt...human, emotional. This
felt...
way
too
strong for it to be only physical.
This felt...like Conall. Conall Williams. My
Conall. My only one.
"You feel good," he said.
Self-conscious, I said, "I've picked up
weight."
"Don't lose it. You look magnificent."
Conall, always the
diplomat, always the salesmen.
That's why
they pay him the big bucks
, I remembered
thinking about him after he'd beaten the shit out of that
drug-dealing lowlife.
Except, this sounded nothing like diplomacy.
It sounded completely like he meant it.
The word echoed around in
my mind:
Magnificent
.
I smiled, slightly
embarrassed. His index finger eased itself under the clasp of my
bra, pulling it back, tightening the cups against my breasts. Then
he brought the strap in again, still clasped, slow. Always slow.
Conall always took his time, and it always made me desperate for
him, desperate for cooling water in a parching desert; every move,
every touch, every confident scrape and caress, planned,
calculated, made me yearn blisteringly for this man.
My
Conall.
His left hand gave a gentle scratch with its
nails across the small of my back.
I became suddenly wet. I shifted, easing my
legs more outward.
The pain of the last six
months was still there, just outside a door of my mind on which it
knocked. I understood, rationally, logically, that he'd had no
choice. That if he hadn't done what he'd done, I might
be...in
Hungary
!
Logically, consciously, I knew all these things.
Emotionally, none of it made sense. None of
it was fair. And all of it hurt. My skin — the skin he know rubbed
so assuredly with his hands — was bruised.
My emotions whispered the
next words: "Conall, I died when you were gone. Don't do that to me
again. I don't care what the circumstances.
Just...
never
leave
me again.
Ever
."
Before speaking, his lips stopped at the
base of my neck. He kissed me, gently, wetly now, his tongue only
momentarily flicking on the skin, making me shiver. "Leora, I died
a thousand times in the last six months."
My emotions continued, all
logic aside: "Conall, I
mean
it. I don't care what happens, what the dangers
are. Please, I won't survive it again. And I don't know why, but...
I just can't. You are my everything. I know what you mean by that.
I know it. I..." I wanted to say it, to tell him I loved him, only
he was right, love wasn't the right word. What we had, especially
right
now
in this
room, was
so
much
more.
"Love is a misnomer," I said, "for what I
feel for you."
He smiled. "A crime against humanity."
His magnificent, regal, turquoise-blue eyes
quivered as they looked into mine. I was always naked in front of
him. Conall had entered my life again. Crawled under my shell and
cover and become the most important person, thing, subject in the
world to me. If I fell off that cliff again, this time, I wouldn't
survive.
The song changed.
I Was Made for Loving You
, the Maria Mena version. And, boy, you gotta believe that
that made me
hot
.
Because, tonight, I wanted to give it all to Conall, in the
darkness...
We went at it.
He kissed me. I mean, really kissed me, his
tongue and moisture on my traps. He grazed his teeth against me and
it made me writhe. I groaned. I groaned without thinking. I groaned
from so far down that the groan felt like something from the Stone
Age, primal, needful, instinctual. A vibrating rumble that shook
the floor and walls and rafters above.
He pushed me against the counter and my foot
slipped from the bar at the bottom of the stool. The stool leaned
back, on two legs. I looked up, let him kiss me on the front of my
neck, across to the other side. Each kiss precise, soft, leaving
just a little bit of moisture so that his breath cooled my skin. He
blew on it. Quivers ran up and down my skin like ants to sugar.
He pushed against me but
couldn't get closer because of that damn bar stool. He braced his
hands firmly around the sides of my back, lifted,
kicked
the stool away!
The stool crashed, nothing supporting me now but Conall's hands. My
legs fell, only my toes touched the ground. Conall held me up. I
was bent backwards, virtually dangling in the air.
He leaned in closer. I let my arms ease
around his back. I was ready to be taken. Why bother trying to
control things? Just let him do it. Conall liked that. And I liked
it. I enjoyed that, in his hands, I was putty, that he could do
whatever he wanted to me, and that I would let him, and that he
would never disrespect me.
The song changed.
Slow Down Baby
, Christina
Aguilera.
No, please don't,
baby
.
He eased his arms down, my
feet now flat on the ground, and he pressed against me.
Oh. God.
I felt his hard-on, right
up against my pelvis. But it was more than that. It was him.
His
manhood. Our
connection. Against me. Wanting me. And I wanted him.
I love you too much for my
own good
, I thought. A part of me believed
he felt the same.
With the rhythm of the
music he rubbed against me, side to side.
Fuck!
I exhaled, opened my
legs.
Damn skinnies!
Conall kissed me, and it was heaven. As he did it, he breathed
in deeply, as if taking a breath for life.
His hand went to the back of my head, hard,
pushing me into his mouth. "I've missed...you...so...much," he
said, kissing me all the while.
The heat got higher. He
kissed me faster, and I kissed him back. Tongues touching lips,
fighting teeth. His hands ruffled my hair. He
inhaled
me into him. My hands
massaged his wavy black hair, felt all its strands in the webs of
my fingers.
My back hurt from being pushed against the
counter so hard. And, still, I felt him, his manhood, rub against
me. He had it precisely positioned, right on my clit, and my body
heat changed to a squirming need.
"Conall," I said.
He said something, but I couldn't understand
because he hadn't stopped kissing me as he'd said it.
"Conall..."
"What?"
"You
need
to take my pants off." I was
throbbing now, warm, abso-fucking-lutely
drenched
... So much pressure. So
much. Damn it. I needed to come.
Now
. But I knew he'd make me
wait...
"I'm getting to it," he said. His chest
heaved against mine.
Mother...fuck...
He fanned his hands across my back, pulled
me against him... "Oh yeah," I groaned there, because my clit went
right to his belt buckle. My head lolled to the left. "Mmmmmmmm," I
said, all without will. I was losing focus, just letting the pulses
of energy take over me.
Then the song changed.
And
then
he went for my belt.
The song was
Lady Marmalade
from
the
Moulin Rouge
Soundtrack. And you
know
what they sing about in that song...
I smiled. "You are
such
a player," I said.
"Did you plan that all along?" I asked, my buckle now undone, my
zip open.
Conall scraped his
fingernails gently down my pubes, put his middle finger right
between my legs, then the index, pushed in,
thrust
, pulled up — the tip of his
fingers right up against that sweet spot, baby! — and he said, "Of
course I planned it." Only I didn't really hear him say that. My
eyes were at the back of my head, and somehow I was on my tip
toes.
He massaged me. And I moaned and I groaned
and didn't know what the fuck was going on now but it was so good
and it flowed all around me and through my legs and his hand felt
like heaven massaging away all the pain and sending me into a
blissful oblivion. Somewhere along the line my legs gave way, not
fully, but mostly. Conall's left arm held me up by my back and he
massaged and thrust and rubbed into me with his right and — oh,
god, he did that thing again, pressed toward him from inside.
"Urrrrrrrgggghhhhhhmmmmmmpffffff," I cried,
a primordial statement of pleasure. My pelvis moved back and forth
with his hand.
And then, without warning, as if it had
always been there but only now snapped, I came. Hard, shuddering,
tensing convulsions pulsed in and around my crouch, my legs, up the
bottom of my back, back to the front. My head shook. My legs shook.
My chin dug into his shoulder so badly that I'm sure I hurt him. I
bit my lips. Growled and groaned, long and deep and echoing in the
room...
Then it slowed, almost stopped. Almost. One
more shock of pleasure.
I exhaled.
And I held Conall, satisfied.
I put my heels on the ground. He kept his
hand between my legs, his fingers still inside me, moved them
around slowly, and they felt so good, just lolling, left, right,
back and forth, up and down. They squished audibly. I smiled
embarrassedly. He kept at it.
Bliss.
With his hand still in me, I put my eyes to
his shoulder, sniffed in his manly scent, breathed it all the way
into me so that it filled me, and I said, "I love you."
"I love you, Leora. More than words can
tell."
The song changed.
Just Hold Me
, Maria
Mena.
What a fucking player...
I loved him for it. Loved him so much. Loved
him so much it scared the shit out of me. Because I'd lost him
once.
I couldn't lose him again.
Conall convinced me to spend the night. It
didn't take much convincing.
He ordered pizza
from
Dominos
and
we sat on the floor eating it.
"Can I wear one of your shirts and walk
around without underwear if I sleep over?" I asked.
"Of course you can. You can also walk around
without one of my shirts and without underwear."
The pizza slice in my hand stopped as it
entered my mouth. He laughed at me.
Later that night, when it was time for bed,
I lay on my side and looked at him, my head on my palm. He stared
up at the ceiling.
"I have to work tomorrow," I said. "Will you
take me to the train station?"
He looked at me like I'd insulted his
mother. "Of course not, I'll drive you there myself."
"It's a two hour drive."
"One hour and forty-five minutes."
"Oh, you've done that drive? Was your P.I.
not enough that you had to come over and spy on me yourself?"
"I never spied on you myself. The P.I. was
just a precaution. I did all I could to respect your privacy while
still keeping enough of an eye on you to keep you secure."
"Sorry, I was only kidding."
He looked serious, not the joking type on
this subject at all.
"Conall, I want to thank you."
He swallowed, cleared his throat. "OK."
"Wow, usually when someone thanks you, you
tell them it was your pleasure!" I undid his top shirt button as I
spoke.
"Oh, that's very proper Ms Caivano. England
teaching you well then, is it?"
I chuckled. "You're so full of shit, you
know that?" I undid his second button.
He turned to his side,
facing me. "Leora, I didn't say it was my pleasure because it
was
because
of me
that you might've been in danger. It wasn't my pleasure. It was my
duty. The worst is I don't even know if they would've come for you.
So all that pain, these last months, might've been for nothing
after all. I fucked it up for us. And I'll spend as long as I have,
making it up to you."
He grabbed my hand, the one that had been
unbuttoning his shirt. I'd gotten down to three buttons. He held it
firm so that my fingers squeezed under his grip.
"I get it," I said. "But thank you
anyway..." I ran my fingernails across his chest hair. His skin had
gotten so much darker. I wanted to ask him about that, but I was
distracted now. Distracted by the curly hairs tickling me under my
fingernails. Distracted by his magical eyes which now scorched me
from the top down.