A 21st Century Courtesan (23 page)

“Nothing ever happened with him again. He moved away a few months later. But I thought about that one moment for years.”

Joshua runs a finger over my lower lip, down my jaw, my neck. His voice is quiet. “Do you know how your voice lowered as you were telling me this? How your cheeks flushed?”

“Really?”

I smile at him, take his hand and slip it between my thighs. He goes instantly to where I need him most, his fingers sliding beneath the edge of my panties.

“Do you have any idea what that did to me? Hearing the desire in your voice …”

He pauses, his fingers slipping into my wet cleft, and I am as hot and wet as I ever was with Billy.

“Come on, Joshua.” I arch my hips into his hand.

“Come on, what?”

“I need to feel you inside me.”

I can't wait; I climb on top of him, reach down and wrap my hands around his already-erect cock. Nice. I lean over, grab a condom from the nightstand, sheath him with shaking hands.

He holds onto my hips, lowering me onto his shaft, sliding in, clean and smooth, driving into me. And it is better than
anything I felt with Billy Carrow. Better than what I've felt with anyone else, ever. My memories fade, and all I am is this moment,
right now
, with him. Nothing else matters.

WE'RE STILL IN BED
an hour later. Lazy. Lovely.

“Are you hungry, baby?” he asks me. “You must be starving. I swear I was going to bring you breakfast.”

“This was better.”

“It was. It is.” He runs a hand over my side, down my thigh, and I shiver. “But we have to eat eventually. I didn't have anything here but crackers and beer, so I went down to this little café this morning. They make the best croissants. And I got apple juice, some fruit, a few other things. What can I get for you?”

“No, you don't have to do anything. I'll get up.”

“I want to. Stay right here.”

He disappears for a few minutes, comes back with a big red ceramic coffee mug in one hand and a plate in the other. He sets them both on the night table, a large, dark piece, like everything else in the room. Imported furniture, like my own.

The coffee smells wonderful. I pick it up, sip it, let him feed me bites of pastry and fruit while he tells me what he's seen on the news that morning, how the stock market is doing.

I'm hardly paying attention. I am in some dreamlike space, and I want to hold on to it. It's too precious to me to let go.

“Do you want a shower?” he asks me. “We should go down to the beach. It's not too cold. I actually love it when it's like this, gray and cool. And there aren't too many people there on a weekday.”

“I'll shower later. I can be dressed in five minutes.”

Suddenly I want to see his beach, if only because he wants me to.

I get up, slip on my linen pants and a tank top. He gives me one of his hooded sweat jackets with some hockey team logo on it, and I slide into my sandals, then we're out the door.

The sun is still fighting the fog, but I'm warm enough. And his hand is warm in mine. I feel good. Better than I have in a long time. Lighter, somehow.

We walk the one block to the beach, and soon we're on the sand. I take my sandals off and carry them as we move closer to the water. There are only a few other people there. I'm glad it's quiet, uncrowded. It helps me to maintain this fantasy bubble I've constructed around us.

At the edge of a shallow dune, we stop, and Joshua pulls me down to sit on the sand beside him.

“It's beautiful, isn't it?” he asks me.

I look out at the Pacific Ocean, thundering against the shore, the blues, greens, and grays out beyond the swells, where water meets sky in a rippling line.

“It is. It's a little sad on a day like this. Maybe other people need it to be clear and sunny to think this is beautiful. But I like it just like this.”

He squeezes my hand. “You see? Everything doesn't have to be someone else's idea of perfect to be beautiful, Valentine.”

I look up at him and he's watching me in that way he has.

“Yes. I suppose so.”

“You don't really believe it yet, though, do you? Even after I told you what I'd done, about my own glaring flaws?”

I shake my head, look away, digging my toes into the sand. It's cold beneath the surface. Calming, somehow.

“Joshua … I don't quite know how to believe. I'm trying.
But I need … I need practice. My whole life has been one thirty-year lesson in how
not
to trust anything. It's going to take some time.”

“And meanwhile?”

“Meanwhile I guess I'm living on faith. Which is pretty damn hard for me since I don't have much of that, either.” I look back at him. His eyes are still on me. Beautiful in the pale sunlight, like everything else about him. “Except for my faith in you.”

He leans in, kisses me. And I curl my hand around the back of his neck. His skin is so warm beneath my palm. He pulls back.

“I meant what I said, you know.”

His hazel eyes are on me, searching for something. I don't know what he's getting at.

“You meant what?”

“That you don't need perfection for something to be good enough.”

I nod my head. I want to understand.

“Let me tell you something, Valentine. About my family.”

“Okay. I want to hear whatever you want to tell me.”

He pulls his knees to his chest, settles in, holding on to my hand. “I told you how crazy my parents were about each other. I grew up with the understanding that this was possible. But their relationship wasn't always easy. They worked hard for what they had. And they had a rough start.

“My mother was one of those debutante girls from a rich Connecticut family. Maybe that doesn't mean much anymore, but in her day it was everything. My father was from that same set of people, East Coast society. Their families knew each other. And my parents were friends growing up, although Dad told me later he'd been in love with her since he was fourteen
years old. When my mom turned up pregnant at nineteen, unwilling to name the father of the baby, her family was ready to disown her.

“The father was someone who had passed through town, one of the summer people. A fling. This was unacceptable in that culture. My dad stepped in and married her, knowing he wasn't the father. But he loved her. He went against everything their social circle believed in, and he took her away from there so they could have a life together. So her child wouldn't have to grow up with that stigma.”

“That baby was you?”

He nods. “I'm grateful to them for that. Growing up, I spent time with my grandparents, my aunts, uncles, cousins. And there was always this tension. There still is. The elephant in the room that is the circumstance of my birth, but they're all too polite to mention. I don't see them much anymore. It's such bullshit. But I didn't know any of this until later. Not until my dad died. Until then, I had no idea why we lived in California, so far away from the rest of the family. I had no idea why we were always treated as outsiders.”

“That must have come as a shock.”

“No. I don't know. Maybe a little, at first. I couldn't think of my dad as anyone other than my dad. But I was only twenty, and it was more the idea of my mother having had sex with someone other than my father. I couldn't care less now, but at the time, well, you don't think of your parents having sex, do you?”

I look away. “That was inescapable in my family. I was locked in my room for hours with that soundtrack playing in the background.”

“Shit. I'm sorry, Valentine.”

I just shake my head, turn back to him. “Forget it. Go on.”

“So. Mom and Dad got married and it wasn't all happily ever after. Mom was so relieved to be saved from a life of shame and rejection, she was grateful. But she wasn't in love with my father. He knew that. But then I was born, and my dad stepped in, really stepped up to being a father, and it all came together for her. That's when she fell in love with him. She was able to forgive herself because he was able to forgive her. That was a first step for her. And
my
life was good because Dad was able to forgive her. Once I knew the truth, I couldn't help but understand that.”

“And the guy? Your biological father? Did you know him?”

“No. I still have no idea who he is. I don't care. I don't need him for anything. I wanted to know for about five minutes, and then … I realized very quickly that he wasn't important. My father, the man who raised me, was my dad. This other guy who had disappeared wasn't a real person to me.”

I nod again, feeling a bit the same way about my own father, other than a lingering resentment. But it all seems vague now. He seems vague to me now, ghostlike.

“But my point is,” he goes on, “even after I was older and Dad was gone, even after I found out that their life together hadn't been without its problems, I understood people can still love each other completely. That love exists despite our flaws. Despite my own flaws. Despite yours.”

He takes my chin in his hand, forcing my gaze to meet his. My heart is fluttering at a thousand miles an hour.

“This is why I'm here with you, Valentine. Regardless of what you've done in your life, how hard it is for me to process it all. And believe me, just because I'm not hammering you over the head with it doesn't mean I'm not thinking about it, that it doesn't hurt.”

“God, Joshua …”

“No. It's okay. It is. I'm still here, aren't I? I'm trying to tell you it's because I believe.” He reaches up, tucks a windblown strand of hair behind my ear. “And because I'm falling in love with you.”

My heart tumbles in my chest, a long fall into a warm darkness. “Joshua …”

He's looking into my eyes, his gaze so intense I can hardly stand it. But I can't look away. I don't want to.

“Do you love me, Valentine?” he asks quietly.

“Yes. I do. I love you.”

My heart is going to burst, it is pounding so hard. He kisses me again, then. And all of the world's imperfections melt away beneath the soft press of his lips.

My heart is still thundering; I'm so damn scared. But it feels good, too. Incredible.

He keeps kissing me and kissing me, until my body is flooded with heat and desire.

Finally, he pulls away, says gruffly, “I need to get you back to the house. I need to be alone with you.”

He pulls me to my feet and we make the walk back to his place as quickly as we can. His arm is around me, and I can feel the heat of his big body through my clothes, feel it in the pit of my stomach. Between my thighs.

I can smell the desire on him. Or maybe it's my own?

He jams his key in the front door, pulls me inside. I still haven't had a chance to really look at his house, I realize vaguely as he pulls his shirt off, then mine. Then he slides my pants down my legs, pulls his own off, and I am unable to think anymore. We are naked together, which is what I want at this moment more than anything. To be naked with him,
to touch him, to have him touch me. And as he fills his hands with my breasts, as he kisses me until I am breathless, the only thing I can hear are the words he said to me. The words no one has ever said.

I'm falling in love with you.

My heart throbs; my body throbs. It is all one sensation as he touches me, loves me. And I need to feel him inside me, as much a part of me as he can possibly be.

He is pushing me down hard on the wide brown leather sofa in that way I love. But I put my hands on his shoulders.

“In the bedroom, Joshua. Please. In your bed.”

He freezes, tenses a little all over. The current of our desire is dampened suddenly, even with his body pressed against mine, flesh to flesh. Even with his rigid cock lying on my belly.

He says, very quietly, “You cannot clean me up, Valentine. Sex with me is not always going to be soft and pretty.”

“That's not what I'm trying to do.”

“Isn't it? The shower, the bed.”

I'm silent. I don't know what argument I can make.

His voice lowers even more. “Sometimes, Valentine, all I want is to throw you up against the wall, pin you there, and fuck you so hard you scream. Fuck you so hard I hurt you. I want to do everything to you. With you. I want to tie you up. I want it to be dirty, raw. And not because of what you've been. Not because of some twisted idea of it being a novelty with you. But because you are so damn beautiful, and I want you so badly I can barely control myself.”

I'm shaking all over. With the fear of being so open to him. But even more with need. I am melting inside. Hungry for exactly those things he's talking about.

“Joshua … you're right.” My voice is trembling. “God, you're right. I want… I want it all, too. I want it with you. Only with you.”

He picks me up then, shifting me in his strong arms, pushing me against the wall beside the big window overlooking the ocean. I can hear it, smell it, the thundering waves, the salty air. I can smell him again, or still, his scent stronger than ever as he pushes his tongue into my mouth. Soft, sweet, yet his hands on me are rougher than ever, gripping my hips as he lifts me, spreads my thighs, and I wrap my legs around him. Then he spreads my pussy lips with one hand, plunging two fingers into my wet heat. Desire, molten hot, shafts deep into my body, and I gasp, writhe against his hand.