Beyond Repair (12 page)

Apparently all was enough.

“Feels so good when you do that, don’t stop don’t stop,” he
said, though he needn’t have worried. She couldn’t have stopped if a train had
hit her. If anything she ended up doing more, like licking a long, wet path
down his body in a way that made him even filthier and more lustful. He cursed
when she laid a hot, wet kiss on that line of muscle above his groin, then told
her she was a
horny little thing
for the nails she scored along his
sides—all the time unintentionally pushing and pushing her into ever more
daring acts. Some of them small, like the love bite she left on the inside of
his wrist.

And then some of them bigger, such as the hand she couldn’t
help pushing under the waistband of his pants. Yeah, that one seemed pretty
big, all right. Or at least, he sure seemed to think so. He went up on tiptoes
the moment she did it, one hand snapping up as though to get hold of something—anything—on
her.

Before he seemed to realize he wasn’t supposed to.

He actually realized and stopped dead, even though she knew
he didn’t want to. It was obvious he was aching to touch her, and not just
because that was the way things were supposed to go. He didn’t just need to
stroke and caress her.

He needed something to hold on to.

He really, really needed something to hold on to, to the
point where he had to say.

“I gotta sit down, honey. I think my knees are
disintegrating,” he gasped, but he didn’t wait for her permission. He just
backed up until he was at the bed then threw himself on in a big messy sprawl,
half on his back and half not. He kind of had to in truth, because she couldn’t
seem to let up long enough for him to do it gracefully.

She followed him with her hands, teeth and tongue, until he
was practically writhing. His body made this beautiful twisting arch beneath
her when she finally brushed him
there
, and everything only got more
tangled and intense after that. Somehow she found herself near nuzzling the
recently bared cheek of his ass, while he rocked and moaned and tried not to do
a thousand things.

She could see he wanted to rub against her fingers, because
her fingers didn’t know what they were doing. She kept almost forming a circle
around his thick length before darting away in a daunted sort of manner, and it
was clearly driving him nuts. It was driving him so nuts she could now feel the
pressure of his hands, even though they were still hovering an inch from her
body.

One was close to her face and the other almost at her
breasts, and if she moved another millimeter they would be on her. God, she
needed them to be on her. For a second she needed it so wildly every wire in
her body crossed, and that led to something completely insane. She didn’t know
how it happened, really. She only knew that it did. It did. He almost touched
her right breast and there it was—one overexcited slide of her tongue between
the cheeks of his ass.

Of course she tried to tell herself she’d been aiming for
something else. She’d just been mouthing along the curve of his spine, so
really it wasn’t hard to veer down and hit…the thing she had hit. Yet somehow
she knew that wouldn’t wash. How could it possibly, when he was already taking
it exactly as she’d intended?

“Jesus
Christ
, Alice,” he said, as though she’d just
detonated a bomb.

Only the bomb was really, really fucking fantastic, by all
accounts. He pressed his face into the pillow the moment he registered what she
had done, and the way his hips rolled and bucked, holy
fuck
. She could
almost picture a slick little pussy sliding down over him just by the way he
pumped his cock into nothing but air and material.

And he had more things to say. Lord in heaven, he always had
more things to say.

“Are you serious with this? Are you seriously going to do
that? I’m going to have to jerk off if you’re going to do something like that.
If you wanna give me a fucking
rim job
I have to put a hand on myself.
You understand that, right?”

Luckily for him, she did.

She understood that he’d said
rim job
.

Good Lord, was that what she’d just done? She supposed it
was, if she was thinking of the right thing. She’d seen it done and sort of
paired it up with terms for various filthy novels, but by God it didn’t seem
like her. It seemed like some other super-horny girl, who got so carried away
on a wave of moaning and dirty talk that she did sex acts on people without her
own permission.

Then did them again, before her brain could kick into gear.

She licked him—this time deeper, hotter, wetter—and holy
mother of all that is holy the
sound
that came out of him. It didn’t
seem like something a human being should make. It was practically a grunt, so
guttural she had to wonder if he’d come right there and then. The only thing
that told her he hadn’t was the hand he had on his cock, though once she’d seen
what he was doing she sort of wished she hadn’t.

He wasn’t slowing through the spasms of an orgasm. He was
fucking his fist in the most desperate, delicious sort of way. For a second she
actually forgot what she was meant to be doing and just watched as he pumped his
cock—though he had to take some of the blame for that. He’d warned her what to
expect, but he certainly hadn’t done it enough. Not by a long shot.

He was so thick he was practically straining against his own
enormous grip, and so long he had to use two hands instead of one. She watched
him rub the root of it with one and work the swollen head with the other in a
way she’d never seen anyone else do before. Not even in that one Tumblr clip
someone had tagged
size kink
.

And that made her mouth hang open just a bit.

She knew it did because after a second he asked her if she
wanted to stop—even though he clearly didn’t want to. He’d passed the point of
stopping about seventeen years ago, yet still he said it. He even tried to slow
down a little in deference to a fear she didn’t feel. He had to know that she
didn’t feel it. She wasn’t
afraid
.

She was full of this sort of thrilling fascination, to the
point where it took almost nothing to carry on. She simply bent her head and
licked that bad place until she felt him falling back into that good, good
rhythm again. The one that made him arch his back and rub too hard, pushing
himself toward his orgasm at a punishing pace.

Or was she the one doing the pushing? It certainly seemed
like it, whenever he managed to pant out a word. They were all about her—about
how good she was, how hot, how it got him so close to feel her doing this
filthy thing to him.

And he wasn’t lying, either.

The more she did to him the harder he lost it. She gripped
his hips and his moans skewed sideways, and the second she licked a little
deeper—right over his tightly clenched hole in a way that made her zing too—he
called out her name.
Alice
, he said,
Alice, Alice
, and for the
first time since she’d met him she found herself wishing for something odd. Odd
because it happened in the middle of this insane sex, and odd because she was
so
sure
she wanted to be this person.

But for just the barest moment…she would rather have been
herself.

And then it passed, thank God it passed. She didn’t have to
suddenly stop all this lovely pleasure with a pathetic announcement. She could
simply let herself sink back into it, drawn by the sights and sounds of him
coming. Anyone could forget anything in the face of that. He seemed to clench
all over like a fist, eyes tightly shut and muscles taut, everything straining
so hard it almost looked like a fight…like maybe he didn’t want to go over yet.

Or maybe he did, and his body just wasn’t willing to give it
up. Either way it was making her heart pound—hard enough to be visible. Her
chest actually appeared to be vibrating, and she could hear a sound in her head
like coming thunder. If he didn’t go soon she was pretty sure she was going to
pass out, but oh it was no relief when he did.

She almost swallowed that pounding heart to see him do it.
To see him arch and shudder so violently, eyes locking with hers for just a
second before he went over. And then the way his cock seemed to jerk in his
hand, spilling thickly over his still-working fist…to see him shooting in these
thick ribbons all over the sheets…it was much too much to take in all at once.
No reasonable person could be expected to withstand it, without at least
nibbling on their own insides.

Thankfully, however, she made it her lip, instead of
anything vital. And her lip was pretty easy to hide. All she had to do was
swallow the blood she drew when she bit down a little too hard—then maybe not
talk to him for a few hours. He probably wouldn’t notice that she’d mangled
herself, but better to be safe than sorry. Plus it didn’t turn out to be too
hard.

She didn’t know what to say anyway, when he straightened
himself out enough to gasp a rather shocked few words.

“What the
fuck
?” he asked, and though she knew he
meant it in the good way it was a little unnerving anyway. He just looked so
stunned. He didn’t seem to know whether to laugh or be amazed or share his
total confusion, and that made it next to impossible to respond. She wasn’t
sure whether he wanted soothing or a handshake.

She didn’t know if
she
wanted soothing or a
handshake.

Both sounded really nice and really bad in equal measures.

But what he settled on was twice as intense as either of
them.

“How do you do that? How did you do to that to me? I’ve
never felt anything like it, honey, I swear to God—I’m fucking daunted. That
was daunting. I don’t even know if I can make you feel half as good as that but
if you want I’ll try, I’ll—”

She didn’t mean to cut him off. Or shout as she was doing
so. It just sort of happened. The
no
burst out of her like a bullet from
a gun—but luckily without the brutal impact. He didn’t clutch himself and reel
back to hear her say it, thank the Lord. He just looked…faintly puzzled.

Then a little less so when she added, “No really, it’s okay.
I’m just tired now that’s all.

Though maybe it wasn’t quite enough. He held out an arm to
her and let her cuddle down to sleep, but she could tell he was still thinking.
His breathing seemed to take a long time to turn into something longer and
steadier, and even after it had she could still see a faint frown between his
brows.

And he was justified in it too. Even she wasn’t sure why
she’d said no so readily, when faced with the state she seemed to be in. She
was still so turned-on she could have taken a trip to the bathroom to sort it
out, and only the thought of waking him stopped her. He was quiet now and
unquestioning, and she wanted him to stay that way. But as she finally sank
into something like oblivion, she couldn’t help wondering.

How long could that possibly last?

She woke from the same dream she’d first had a few nights
ago. The one that had made tears run in great tracks down both sides of her
face. She wasn’t sure why, however. There wasn’t anything horrible about
Captain
Amazing
. It was undoubtedly his best role and even if it hadn’t been, even
if the character was an out-and-out disaster in spandex, he hadn’t done
anything bad to her.

She was somehow sinking into a big tar pit, so he’d hauled
her out.

That was all. That was all. There wasn’t any subtext. Holden
wasn’t even anything like Captain Amazing. He didn’t smoke a pipe, for a start.
And to the best of her knowledge, he had never eaten a crystal from the planet
Corian then split into an evil version of himself. Unless the guy she was with
was the evil version of himself.

In which case, she hoped he wouldn’t fly her into space then
leave her there.

That would be a real downbeat end to their little love
affair.

Though once she really thought about it, there were a lot of
things that could count as a downbeat end to their little affair. He might
decide it wasn’t a love affair at all because they’d never been out on a date
or met each other’s parents or admitted anything of the sort aloud.
She
might decide it wasn’t a love affair at all, just because she couldn’t do any
of those things that he was possibly bothered about. Then finally the worst one—he
could have realized that she was a lying pervert.

Space sounded almost cool when compared to any of those
reasons, and especially that last one. Why on earth had she let herself fall
asleep the night before? At the very least she should have explained to him why
she’d done all of those things. She could have told him she read books. Hell,
she could have told him about the weird internet porn.

Everyone watched weird internet porn these days. He was
probably watching right now, in an effort to catch up with the crazy things
she’d done. When she closed her eyes she could almost see him Googling
My
virgin girlfriend is a secret sex freak who licks my butt
, but of course
the moment she did she had to poke something hard and sharp right through her
ear and into her brain.

He wasn’t really thinking that, was he? How bad had she
been, on a scale of one to ten? She suspected a six, then had to bump it up to
an eight when he wasn’t where she expected him to be. He usually took a shower
first thing in the morning, but she couldn’t hear him singing
Goodbye Horses
.
And he wasn’t in the basement either, picking stuff for them to devour
together. She shouted down and didn’t get,
Hey remember that bit in
Clue
when he goes for the door handle and gets sprayed in the face
?

There was only silence.

A long, long silence, of the kind she used to love. No
people asking her if she was okay, no endless questions about how she’d managed
it. No constant wondering how she had. Just that
shush
of the ocean, low
and calm. The sound of her own breathing, saying clearly that she was alive—that
it was
all right
to be alive.

But suddenly that wasn’t enough.

She’d grown used to his voice, his presence. She’d made a
space for him inside herself and wasn’t sure how to make it go away now. She
tried to shrink it with terrible thoughts about his playboy lifestyle, or maybe
that picture she remembered of him with a perm. None of it worked, however. The
space remained.

And when she heard him calling her name, that same space
swelled to three times the size. It made more room for him, more doors for him
to open, more of everything.

“I’m out here,” he said, and she had about thirty seconds to
wallow in relief. Thirty seconds of spontaneous smiling and lots of soppy
thoughts about how cool he was and how he kept not disappointing her…before she
realized with a start. He wasn’t actually in the house. He was outside.

He had gone outside onto her porch.

“Why are you out there?”

She did her best to keep her voice light. To make it sound
as if she thought he were somehow silly for doing this—even though there was
nothing silly about it at all. He hadn’t accidentally fallen into a big hole.
He’d just walked out the door. There was nothing ridiculous about that, no
matter how hard she tried to make it so.

“Come inside and get some breakfast,” she said, but knew she
was fighting a losing battle. It was obvious before he’d even answered.

“First you have to see this sunrise, Al. It’s amazing—seriously,
how do you not want to look at this every day?”

Because I have agoraphobia.

I have severe and crippling agoraphobia.

“You know how much I love sleeping.”

“I do know that. I have enjoyed you sleeping on me many,
many times now. Last night was a particularly good example of your passionate
relationship with snoozing.”

“Oh I didn’t…I really didn’t mean to nod off, I—”

“It’s fine, baby, it’s fine. You worked hard. You deserved a
rest.” He paused. He paused so much she could practically hear him thinking.
“Besides…I can’t talk. I lapsed into a coma about five minutes after that. And
to be honest, I’m amazed I lasted that long. I think you liquidized most of the
bones in my body.”

“That doesn’t sound like a good thing.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s a good thing. It still feels like a
good thing now.”

“It does? I was worried that I…seemed like a sex maniac.”

“And you think there’s something wrong with seeming like a
sex maniac?”

“There is if you previously thought I was a timid virgin.”

“Oh I see, so you can’t be both?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you can.”

“I hope so, because it was
awesome
.”

“Really? You thought it was that good?”

She could feel the tentative smile trying to spread out over
her face.

And then he answered, and suddenly it was dying on the vine
again.

“Come outside, lemme show you how good I thought it was.”

Of course she’d known they couldn’t keep talking like this.
They’d already had an important conversation through a half-open door—they
couldn’t make important physical contact through one. Some part of her still
hoped, however. She still wondered if there was a way to get out of this, right
up until he spoke into the silence she’d allowed to spool out for far too long.
Suspiciously long, she thought. And she was right.

“You’re afraid to come outside, aren’t you?” he asked after
a second.

It wasn’t a question. A question would have given her room
to maneuver.

Instead she had to try putting it back on him.

“It’s not as though you’ve been real big on the outside,
lately.”

“That’s absolutely true—I don’t have the slightest
inclination to go anywhere. But when I use the word ‘anywhere’, what I’m really
saying is toward people who are not you, and places that are not the place
where you are. Whereas I think for you it’s more like…extreme fear of anything
that’s beyond your front door.”

She wondered if she could get away with focusing on the
brilliant parts of what he’d just said. The ones that made her heart swell to
seventeen times its normal size, and caused her to smile even though she was
sort of dying inside. He’d said that he only wanted to be where she was. He’d
said
people who are not you
. Surely she could just tell him what that
meant to her?

Even though he’d said that other thing too.

She knew she couldn’t get around the other thing.

“And what happens if that’s right?”

“Then you can just imagine I’m holding you in my arms.
Imagine it really hard, okay? Oh and I’m also stroking the hair away from your
face, over and over until your eyes start to get a little heavy—you know the
way they do?”

“I know it. I know what you mean,” she said, though it
wasn’t what she really wanted to say. She wanted to tell him that more than
anything, more than anything in the world she wished she could go to him. She
even took a few steps forward until she was mere inches from the threshold. If
he was looking in her direction he might be able to see the hem of her
nightgown as the wind lifted it.

It was probably why he said, “And then one day if you want
to…”

“If I wanted to…”

“If you feel like you can…”

“Yes. Yes, if I can.”

“We could sit out here together.”

“That sounds nice,” she said, but only because she couldn’t
manage any more without her voice breaking. As it was the words came out so
full of longing they didn’t seem like themselves at all. That one little
nice
turned into her standing on the top of a hill calling for Heathcliff. Her whole
heart went with it, and he knew, he knew.

“Are you sure? It sort of seems like you’re crying.”

“I am, but I don’t think they’re unhappy tears.”

That much was true, at least. They weren’t unhappy.

Unhappiness was having nothing, and thinking that was okay.

This was more like having everything suddenly, and not
knowing what to with it.

I’m not used to it
, she thought.

And that feeling doubled when he stood and came to the door.
The sun had risen behind him and the light formed an outline so glorious and
golden she could hardly look at it. There was something too unearthly about the
whole thing, something that seemed so unreal…until she took the hand he’d
reached out to her.

She couldn’t pretend this was a dream, then. His skin was
too warm, his flesh too solid. His fingers closed around hers as tight and
secure as a safety belt, holding someone in place.
Holding me in place.
And after that it was much easier to take a step forward. He didn’t pull or
persuade. He just let her hold on as she walked out onto her porch for the
first time in who knew how long.

It had felt like a gradual process when it had started
happening—first she’d stopped going to the store, then to her favorite takeout
place, then to the ocean, then to her own front porch. Each one drawing her
world tighter until finally she only saw the walls of her home. But now that
she was thinking about it—really thinking about it—she knew it hadn’t been so
gradual at all.

She’d only lived here for two years, yet the wooden boards
felt like the surface of an alien planet. The smell of the ocean was
overwhelming, impossible—she couldn’t believe the difference that being an inch
outside her door made. By the time he’d led her to the railing around the porch
she was practically hyperventilating, but only because she wanted to get more
of it into her lungs.

What if tomorrow she couldn’t do this?

She had to store it up for later reference, even if it
seemed to freak him out a little.

“Okay, do you need to go back inside? You’re breathing
scarily hard. And I mean, I’ll catch you if you pass out but…I’d
really
rather that didn’t happen.”

It was such a pleasure to tell him it wasn’t going to.

“No, no I’m fine. I’m just…excited I guess.”

“You sure? I don’t want to force you any further than you
want to go.”

“You never force me further than I want to go, Bernie. I’m
more afraid that I did that to you last night, even though that seems kind of
weird and backward.”

“I promise, you took me to the exact place I wanted to be.”

“Is that place a sex place? A really dirty sex place?”

“Yeah, it’s definitely that. But it’s something else too.”

“And what’s the something else?”

“It’s feeling safe to be myself. To be the kind of man I
want to be, and not the one expected of me. I could never have done what we did
last night with any of the girls I’ve dated before—you get that, right?”

“Maybe they’re just not as weird as I am.”

“Well, that’s probably true. But it’s also…it’s just
that…I’ve never trusted anyone as much as I trust you. Not anyone, not my
family or my friends or people who supposedly work for me. They’d sell me down
the tabloid river for a dime, but somehow I know you wouldn’t.”

“How? How do you know?”

“Because when you care for me, I feel that caring. When you
touch the back of my neck as I’m reading, it’s not just to get my attention.
It’s because you want to touch me. You want me to feel that affection. When you
ask how I’m feeling today, it isn’t out of fear that I’ll stop making you
money, that I’ll stop being famous. It’s out of fear that one day I won’t be
here anymore. That I might still decide my life isn’t worth living.” He paused
and that was good. She needed a moment to catch her breath, before he
continued. “And finally I know it because when I say that last thing, you look
like you’d do anything to convince me it is. You’d play a million movies and
have a thousand conversations about Clark Kent, just to keep going. And I want
to keep going, for you.”

She knew she was crying again. She knew it was in a weird
way too. She wasn’t making any sound or doing those little crying hitches. He
spoke and her eyes just spontaneously gushed water. It ran down her face in
big, stupid lines—so stupid she wanted to reach up and wipe it all quickly
before he could say anything about it.

But she didn’t need to. He didn’t make her feel like a fool.

He did something far, far worse than that.

“I want to do the
same
for you,” he said, which
sounded so lovely, it really did. He took her in his arms and stroked her hair
in that exact way he’d just said. The way that moved her, deeply moved her—and
it still did. Those feelings were still inside her. It was just that they came
with something else now. A new and startling knowledge that almost made her
take a step back.

In order to do what he’d just suggested, she would have
to
tell
him.

He was probably waiting for her to tell him
now
. She
could practically see it in his eyes—a tentative waiting for all the things
that troubled her, and all the ways he could heal them. Somehow, somehow the
balance was shifting right in front of her. She wasn’t the one with her hand on
the back of his neck anymore. She wasn’t the one who got to care for someone
and look after them and make up for things that weren’t her fault.