Jolie Blonde (Vigilare Book 3) (18 page)

“Huh,” she whispers, grateful for the cunning lead. “Thank you, I guess.” Eyeing him cautiously, she wonders if he is to be trusted.

“For what?” Dr. Godfrey asks aloof as if he said nothing, an advising tone that he would swear to such if asked to testify. His eyes track the noisy monitors, making mental notes of her vital signs. Tying a tourniquet around her upper arm, he preps a needle-tipped catheter at the interior of the crook in her elbow. “Just like a bee sting,” he warns, penetrating her skin.

Brianna exhales brusquely, a trick she picked up in yoga class aiding in pain control. Watching the crimson sanguineous substance travel through the blood tubing and into a collection bag, she recalls the tiny dot in the center of a similarly small bruise on the inside of Lon’s arm. She scolds herself internally for accusing him of advanced drug use when he was simply doing what he has always done—anything for her.

Breathe me in

Let me take you away

Hold me in your hand at the end of the day

Take you higher

You’ll feel no pain

Love me like sweet Mary Jane

Returning to campus, Brianna’s silver coupe, much like her innermost compass, so natural in its navigation, pulls up in front of the commonplace frat house. A completely different scene from last night, the roomy house and its exterior lie dormant. Apparently the party resides elsewhere this Saturday evening.

She turns off the ignition, having aligned her extravagant graduation gift behind Lon’s familiar, old-school Scout. Although its exterior portraying a modern facelift, the vehicle still holds for her a multitude of past memories. The prized chariot of their youth signifying many firsts—the vessel for their first date, their first fight, their first kiss, and even their first mysterious encounter with the skull, ultimately resulting in her parents’ death.

Brianna trails her hand along the side of the open Scout. Her eyes falling on Lon’s baseball cap hooked around the rearview mirror, she remembers how he slowly removed it, facilitating the agile duck of his head the first time his full lips met hers.

Closing her eyes, her heartbeat enhances, stirring the bygone emotion of how nervous yet completely welcoming she was of the sweet affection. An affection that seemed to take forever in manifesting, the ride home thereafter filled with bewildering silence. She smiles at the memory of her sleepless night, wondering when and if the magical occurrence would happen again, hoping she had done it right.

Making her way inside, the raucous house of last night lies quiet, its boisterous inhabitants having moved on to the next party. Retracing her steps, the ones led by Lon’s forceful arm pulling her up the stairs, Brianna stands in front of his bedroom door. The dim lamp from yesterday still burns, its faint light radiating from beneath the crack in the frame. Soothing reggae-inspired music plays from inside. Unwilling to negate her soul-seeking purpose, she knocks lightly.

“Go away,” Lon’s voice chimes from behind the door. Figuring someone beckons him for another party, he is disinterested.

Brianna tries the round brass door handle. Her momentum, gentle in its coercion, is met without resistance. The smell of the room as she enters is that of an earthy herb, reminding her of burning sage. Although uncommon to her, she can identify it as marijuana, having been in its pungent presence a time or two throughout her sparse collegiate party career.

Lon grimaces upon seeing her as he contemplates the total lack of privacy his public frat life opposes. He sits on the couch catty-corner to his bed, his body completely relaxed, a physics textbook spread across his thighs.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he says. His eyes at odds with his words, the steel blues sleepy and sensual in their scanning of her body.

“Probably not. I do a lot of things I shouldn’t.” Her voice is soft but liberated. Desperate for him to see her as a woman and not some soft, squeamish girl, she takes great pleasure in the proclamation. Closing the door behind her, she fastens her back to it, firm in her denial to leave.

Lon’s glance peruses of her basic black v-necked cotton t-shirt and how it curves around the moderate swell of her breasts, a most natural and arousing form. His train of sight lowering to a narrow waist, where her shirt defines her curves as it tucks tightly into a pair of matching black jeans. His mechanical mind thinks of an hourglass as he takes in the same shape her body makes from the top of her hips to the bottom of her thighs.

“Is that the only color you wear these days?” his tone perturbed, still competing with the windows to his soul as his infatuated gaze meets hers.

“Seems appropriate,” she replies, “if style is one’s way of expressing who they are…how they feel.”

He picks up on her artistic insinuation that black is not a true color no more than is white. Both of them only exist representative of light, either by its reflective presence or exclusion. “You feel like nothing?” he asks, his inflection indicative of the fact that he feels the same.

Brianna nods. “Except when I’m with you.”

Walking to him, she kneels, her arms resting on his knees as he remains motionless on the couch. Even with his lack of verbal response, the increased rise and fall of his t-shirt-laden chest is enough for her to deduce that he most definitely feels something in response to her closeness.

His hands working their way into bound-up fists at his sides, he resists the compulsion to touch her. “Where did you get that?” His steel blues fall to the familiar crucifix hanging from her neck.

“Your mama.” Her hands are as gentle as her voice in removing the silver chain. “I had some errands in New Orleans this afternoon. I stopped in to see them,” she explains.

Rising on her knees, she lengthens her arms about his neck as he does not budge toward her at all. Fastening the protective symbol around the thick, muscular flesh just above his shoulders, her hands then trail down the fabric of his t-shirt, causing his skin to grow reactive with goose bumps beneath.

“What business did you have in New Orleans?” he asks, suspecting, knowing she hasn’t felt the need to re-acclimate herself to the area in three years.

“Nothing you wouldn’t do for me,” she leads vaguely.

Lon studies her, his eyes pressed at the corners, fluid thought a chore with his present and gratifying high.

Brianna closes up his physics textbook, setting it off to the side. Replacing its absence with the backs of her thighs, she sits astraddle him there on the couch.

“I know what you do. In New Orleans. At ETNA. For me.” She releases her sentiments in tidbits, hoping it will parlay Lon’s discontent. Her fingers stroking his arm, finally come to rest over the interior of his elbow where the tiny bruise and needle puncture mark has turned a purplish hue.

His eyes close, her feminine, lingering touch accompanied with the toned warmth of her frame melding against his is tenfold with the help of Mary Jane. What is usually a simple, pleasurable feeling now consumes him. Each caress, the heat from her body, the sound of her voice—all euphoric. His entire system—smell, sight, touch, taste and sound—indubitably turned on.

“I know why you smoke, Lon,” she whispers, replacing Mary Jane’s conventional resting place with her own. Her bottom lip, wet with moisture, presses against his. She kisses him softly before pulling away, their lips parted and elastic, yearning for another union. “You don’t have to do it anymore,” she purrs, her emerald greens fixed on his steel blues are completely moved and indebted for his sacrifice. “I fixed it.”

Words roll off her needy tongue, laced in her candied breath as their mouths hover over one another. Attempting to quell his reply, she traces his upper lip with her tongue. Giving in to the urgency to taste him completely, her mouth presses and retreats in a most natural and gluttonous stroke with his as if she cannot get close enough to him, inside of him.

Lon groans, his mind sluggishly connecting the dots. The intoxicated chemicals wafting about in his system accompanied by Brianna’s audacious and most satisfying caress impede any sense of urgency. He forces his lips away creating a safe yet intolerable distance between. Resting his hand firmly along the side of her neck, his thumb lazily strokes her jaw, utterly bewitching at the southernmost point of her heart-shaped face.

“What do you mean, you fixed it?” he expels, part of his laborious post-kissing exhale.

“Nothing. You just don’t have to do it anymore, that’s all,” she pants, dipping her face in toward his for another savory kiss.

Lon stalls her impetus, his hand pressing firmly into her shoulder. Scanning her arms, seeing how she was so interested in his, his hand squeezes over the matching bruise at the inside of her elbow. “Brie,” he exhausts.

Her lips can’t help but curl up at the corners, hearing him inherently call her Brie (not Jolie Blonde), the way he used to on so many occasions, hopeful their history is stirring his contesting and stoic demeanor.

Biting down on the inside of his cheek, Lon gently pushes her off of him onto the couch as he stands. “Why in the hell would you go and do that?” He takes to pacing his carpet, his hand raking through his coarse dark hair, his dreamy high ultimately ruined.

“You did it for me,” she points out. Frustrated and embarrassed at yet another refusal of her romantic advances, she hugs her knees to her chest.

“That’s the point. I did it,” Lon beats his hand off his chest, his voice rising, “so you wouldn’t have to.” He growls, turning to his dresser drawer. His hands hunting for the brown paper bag, he continues, “Was it Dr. Godfrey? Is that who you saw? Why would you go there alone? Goddammit, Brie, this isn’t a game.” Pulling the bag from the drawer, he tears into it in search of a much needed fix.

“I know it’s not a game. I was just trying to help.” She gets up off the couch, coming up behind him. Her hand swipes at the brown bag and its contents, winging it across the room. “You don’t need that shit,” she barks, turning him around to face her.

“Oh,” he chuckles, patronizing. “This is the part where you tell me all I need is you. Right?” His defiance as much a defense as anything, aiming to push her away, the same as she did him years ago. “I used to want you so bad it hurt,
Jolie Blonde.”
The disdainfully laced moniker is backed by his equally aggressive hands lacing in the sides of her golden hair, holding her face level with his. “I used to wait for a phone call, a letter, something…anything that would let me know you felt the same.”

“I’m sorry,” Brianna laments, her hands gripped around his forearms, their pressure equal to the firmness of his hands anchoring her hair. “What could I have said or done that would’ve changed anything?” Her eyes dart back and forth between his mirroring the same pain, knowing she could not change history. She couldn’t reverse her parents’ death, no more than she could make her grandparents see that Lon was good and decent.

“Nothing,” he releases the word and her at the same time, symbolism of his reciprocal emotion akin to her style of dress—a desolate wasteland of nothingness.

“But I’m here now,” she whispers, her hands locking about the belt buckles on his jeans, pulling him taut to her frame.

He discharges a libidinous groan with the contact, his voice tormented, “What do you want from me?”

“I don’t want anything from you,” she promises. Swallowing the lump in her throat, she continues, “I just want to give you what has always been yours.” Figuring actions may speak louder than words, Brianna removes the t-shirt from over her head, her hands diligently resorting to the same treatment of his.

Lon’s collarbones work excessively in keeping up with the roused cadence of his heartbeat, forcefully moving air in and out of his lungs at the image of her creamy skin half-naked and standing smack dab in front of him. The confident look in her eyes far removed from the bashful and quickly retreating glances she used to give him in their youth after a brief PG-13 petting affair.

The thought runs through his mind how it took him his entire adolescence to steal a kiss, his hands only allowed to touch her above the neck—couldn’t get past first base. And now, in a matter of two nights, she’s partially disrobed and promising a trip around third, encouraging him to drive it home.

Her hand unable to refrain from granting itself access to his skin, she trails it firmly along his flexed sun-kissed abdomen, his Cherokee lineage to blame for his tormentingly attractive bronzed and gleaming skin.

“I want to make you feel like Mary Jane.” She points to the crumpled up brown paper bag in the corner. “You think you could breathe me in? Let me take you away?” Brianna hugs his bare skin to hers.

Lon’s conflicting exhale is audible, his mind reeling with comparisons between the two. Mary Jane—a short-lived escape from the outside world. Brianna Bentley—the girl, woman, he has wanted to escape into for the majority of his natural life. He grows burdened that akin to Mary Jane, his consuming of her may result in an insatiable need to have more.