Dirty (22 page)

It was my turn to interrupt, damn the rudeness. “He said I offered him alcohol?”

“Does it make you feel good to corrupt minors? Get them drunk, show off your body? Boys’ll do anything for a glimpse of titty, won’t they? I bet you thought you had a nice little thing going on!”

Her statement so boggled me I couldn’t reply. It didn’t stop her from continuing. Her voice got louder, cutting through the hot summer air.

“Bet you thought you could get him to do just about anything you wanted, huh? Get him to take off his shirt. Get him drunk. My son was a good kid until you got ahold of him!” Her voice rose on the last words and echoed down our street.

“What happens at home stays at home,” I murmured without thinking. I wanted to beg her not to say anything more. Plead with her to keep quiet, to stop, to stop embarrassing me. I imagined curtains twitching aside and neighbors peering out to witness the lies.

“What? What did you say? You’re lucky I don’t press charges! But honestly, who’d do anything about it? He’s a teenage boy, of course he’s going to fuck a woman who—”

“I did
not
behave inappropriately with your son, Mrs. Ossley.” My voice froze the air between us. It backed her up a step, but only for a moment. She was too full of her own self-righteous accusations to pay attention to my defense. “I did ask him to take off his shirt, but that was because I was worried about the cuts on his stomach. And yes, we’ve spent a lot of time together, but I have never…I’ve never…”

I couldn’t go on. She took the chance to shake her finger at me. Gavin looked like her, I saw, even though her face had twisted and become ugly in her anger.

“I could have you brought up on charges of giving alcohol to minors! And for the other stuff, too.” She crossed her arms over her ample chest. “Just because he went along with it doesn’t mean you have the right to molest him!”

“Nobody deserves that,” I told her.

She seemed to be waiting for more from me, but I said nothing. I couldn’t. The things she’d said had sickened me. I backed up further and went to my own porch. She swiveled her body to follow me with her eyes as she lit another cigarette.

“You stay away from my son!” She shouted. “Or I will call the cops on you!”

I paused, my hand on my own smoothly painted railing. The curtains I’d imagined twitching all along the street seemed to be remaining closed. All except for one. The one on their second floor shifted, and I caught a glimpse of a white face shadowed by a black hood. It ducked out of sight as soon as it saw me looking.

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Ossley,” I told her. “I will.”

I
didn’t emerge from the cocoon of my past to become an uninhibited, emotionally healthy butterfly. Nothing is ever that easy. Sometimes grief is a comfort we grant ourselves because it’s less terrifying than trying for joy. Nobody wants to admit it. We’d all declare we want to be happy, if we could. So why, then, is pain the one thing we most often hold on to? Why are slights and griefs the memories on which we choose to dwell? Is it because joy doesn’t last but grief does?

The confrontation with Gavin’s mother had left me shaken and determined to mind my own business from now on. Instead of tackling a new painting project, I enjoyed learning to bake cookies with Mrs. Pease, whose son did visit, eventually, if not as often as she’d have liked. And, I made an effort, a real effort, with Dan.

Since the extent of my cooking extended no further than sugar cookies at this point, Dan invited me to dinner at his place. I knocked on his door with a bottle of good wine in my hand, and the smile he gave me when he opened the door made me smile back. We did an awkward little dance for a moment before he took the lead and pulled me into his arms for a hug brief enough to remain casual but full of meaning just the same.

I felt a different kind of nervous around him. More anticipatory than anxious. I didn’t mind it. I followed him to the kitchen and we opened the wine as we chatted.

“Pasta à la Dan,” he said from the stove, where steam had wreathed his face. He turned, grinning. “My own special recipe.”

I cast a pointed glance to the empty jar of expensive spaghetti sauce he’d left in clear view on the counter. “Uh-huh.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You doubt me?”

I held up my hands and sat at the table. “Hey, anything I don’t have to cook is fine with me.”

He laughed and poured the pasta into a strainer, ladled it onto plates, layered the sauce over it and added a sprig of parsley. He slid the plate in front of me and sat down with his.

“Cheese?”

“That’s a nifty gadget.” I watched him shred Parmesan cheese in a minigrater like the kind they have in restaurants.

“Pampered Chef.”

I blinked. “You really do like Pampered Chef?”

“Hell, yeah.” Dan set the grater down and reached for the bottle of wine to refill our glasses. “Their stuff is excellent.”

“I don’t cook, so I guess I wouldn’t know.” That was true. “My domestic gene is broken.”

He looked up. “Seriously?”

I smiled. “Seriously.”

He pushed the basket of garlic bread toward me. “Damn. Here I thought I’d finally found me a woman who’d cook and clean for me.”

I rolled my eyes and took some bread. “Whatever.”

He twirled some pasta on his fork and blew on it, then tucked it into his mouth and sighed in contentment. I watched him eat. It was nice to see someone take such enjoyment out of something so simple. That impressed me about him. He was just as happy eating home-made pasta as he’d been at La Belle Fleur. It was refreshing and a little paradoxical, that the man who put me up against a wall could be the same as the one now cooing over spaghetti.

“Not hungry?”

He’d caught me staring, and I looked down at my plate. “Oh, yes…this looks great.”

“Tell me something, Elle.”

“Like what?” I looked up from the bread I’d been tearing into small pieces.

Dan smiled. “Anything.”

I sipped some red wine and studied his face. “The sum of the squares of the shorter sides of a right-angled triangle will equal the square of the hypotenuse.”

“The sum of the what will equal the what of the what-what?” He shook his head. “What’s that?”

“Pythagorean Theorem,” I told him. “You said anything.”

“How about something about yourself?” He poured us both more wine. I’d barely realized my glass was empty.

“I wear a size seven glove.”

“Really?” He made a show of looking at my hand. “I’d have said an eight, easily.”

“You make a habit of guessing women’s glove sizes?”

He looked up with a grin. “I’m better at guessing bra sizes.”

Another man saying the same words would have made me frown, but Dan…Dan got me to giggle. I put my hand over my mouth to cover it, but the sound slipped free. He looked pleased.

“I made you laugh. That’s good, right?”

I ran my finger across my lip and bit my finger gently before taking my hand away. “That’s good. Yes.”

The food was good. The wine better. The conversation easy and flowing, and as relaxing as anything could be, for me. It helped that his plates had a multicolored pattern of dots on a dark background. Counting the dots between bites kept me occupied.

He kept my glass filled, the sneaky bastard, but I didn’t mind. The wine was good, a rich, dark red with a fine flavor that was a pleasure to drink. I didn’t realize how much I’d had until I stood and had to grab the back of my chair.

“Whoa,” I said with a small laugh. “Wine.”

“I’ll take that.” He stole the plate and silverware from my hands and put it in his dishwasher. He lifted my wineglass and reached for my hand. “Living room.”

“You’re always doing that,” I told him, though I followed him willingly enough.

“What’s that?” He looked up as he settled my glass on the coffee table and moved the pillows on the couch so I could sit.

“Telling me what to do.”

As I sat, he grinned and leaned in very close, his mouth not quite touching mine. “You like it.”

“And that,” I breathed. “Telling me what I like.”

“Am I wrong?”

I turned my head a little, smiling. “So far…I don’t think so.”

He nuzzled my earlobe. “But you’d tell me if I was. I’m sure.”

I turned my head more, this time not to keep him from kissing me but to encourage it. “Of course.”

He’d put both hands on the back of the couch, one on each side of me. His lips brushed the side of my neck, then down, stopping at the small bump of my collarbone. He licked it. I shivered.

“Because you don’t really need me to tell you what you like. Do you?

“No.”

“Because you already know.”

I smiled at that. “Yes.”

He pulled away and put a finger to my chin to turn my face toward him. “Or is it that you know what you don’t like?”

I looked into his eyes. “That, too.”

“Nothing wrong with that, Elle. Not a thing.”

He kissed the side of my neck again, then sat next to me. I licked my lips, and his eyes followed the motion of my tongue before he looked back into mine. He stretched his arm out along the back of the couch, his fingertips an inch from my shoulder. I wanted to move closer. I didn’t. Then I did.

“Thanks for dinner,” I said after a moment of us staring without speaking. “It was delicious.”

He buffed his fingernails on his shirt. “Aw, it was nothing. Really.”

I reached for my wine and sipped it slowly. My head was buzzing, but unlike other times, when I’d sought oblivion, I wanted to savor the taste. Not get drunker.

We stared again in silence for what seemed like a long time. It became a game, like seeing who’d blink first. He put a hand on my shoulder, toying with the ends of my hair in a way that sent shivers creeping along the back of my neck.

“Elle.”

“Dan.” I liked the way his name tasted, like wine and garlic.

“I want to kiss you.”

Chewing my lower lip is a bad habit but one I can’t break myself of. Again, his eyes focused on my mouth. Self-conscious, I slid my tongue over the place I’d gnawed and forced myself to stop biting.

He moved closer, his hand moving closer to the slope of my neck. His thumb pressed against my pulse. He leaned in, moving with slow precision and concentration.

At the last second I turned my face. His kiss landed at the corner of my mouth, his breath hot on my skin and his lips soft. He didn’t pull away.

“No?”

I wanted to give a glib answer. More than that, I wanted to turn and let him kiss me on the mouth, to feel his tongue on mine, to open for him. I wanted so badly to open for him, but I simply…could not. I gave a minute shake of my head instead.

Dan kissed my jaw, then down toward my neck, and his lips found the place his thumb had caressed. My heart thumped harder when he kissed me there, and I imagined he must be able to feel the rush of my blood beneath his mouth.

The hand on my throat moved down to cup my breast. A sigh eased out of me, followed by a quick intake of breath when he passed a thumb over my nipple, already straining against the lace. He tweaked it through my clothes, then put his hand flat over it again. A hand over my heart and his mouth on the pulse in my throat, so in two places he could feel my blood rush through my veins.

His other hand slid up to curl around the back of my head, fingers threading through the hair at the base of my neck and tangling a little. Tugging a little. He sucked on my skin as his thumb traced another path over my nipple, and every muscle in my body thrummed under his touch. He pulled me closer as the hand on my breast moved down to inch up my skirt over my thighs, and he curled his fingers over my knee, caressing the skin with soft feather touches that made me jump.

“Ticklish?” He moved to breathe the question in my ear.

“A little.”

He slid his fingers higher, tracing little circles on my skin. “Now?”

I let out a small gasping giggle. “Yes.”

“Want me to stop?” A little higher, stroking.

“No.” A whisper.

Higher still, until his fingertips teased the lace of my panties. “Now?”

“No.”

When he finally touched me I moaned. He bit down on my neck as he put his finger inside me. His other hand pressed my back as I arched against him.

“Tell me what you want me to do to you, Elle. I want to hear you say it.”

Heat crept up my throat to burn my cheeks, and surely he must have felt it, but I gave him what he asked for. “I want you to touch me.”

“Where?”

“There. Where you are—”

He moved his hand against me. “There?”

I nodded and had to swallow hard to answer him. “Yes.”

“That feels good?”

He pulled back a little to look at my face. I blinked and faced him, acutely aware of our position, him with his finger inside me and all our clothes still on. He took his hand away, but slowly, so it didn’t feel like he was abandoning me but rather taking the time to take care of me.

“Do you always wear skirts?” He smoothed the hem up and down over my thigh.

I leaned back against the pillows, my hand still on his shoulder, his collar between my fingers and the side of his neck. “Not always. But usually.”

“I like that.” He smoothed the skirt higher, exposing my thigh. He rubbed my skin. “You don’t shave up here.”

I blinked. “I…no.”

Dan scooted down so fast I didn’t have time to react until he kissed my bare thigh, just above the knee. “How come?”

“The hair is blond, and it’s very fine. Shaving is more of a pain than it’s worth.” My answer was honest but difficult to give, as his mouth on my leg distracted me.

“I love it” came his answer as he ran his fingers up and down my leg.

I laughed, moving back a little away from him. His position made me nervous. “Do you?”

He nodded, looking boyish with tousled hair and that grin. He held my leg in his hands and ran his thumb over my knee. “What happened here?”

“I fell.”

He kissed the scar, and I frowned.

“Don’t, Dan.”

He looked up at me again. “Why not?”

“Because it’s ugly.”

“You think this scar is ugly?” He rubbed it lightly with the tip of his finger. “It’s not. It’s part of you.”

I shook my head. “It ruined my knee.”

“How’d you fall?”

“I was running, and I tripped. I landed in some gravel. It tore up my knee. Then, when it was healing, I ran into a coffee table and opened it up again.”

He wouldn’t let go of my leg. “How old were you?”

“Twelve.” I didn’t want to think about my scar.

He bent his head and again kissed the ragged, raised line. “It must have hurt.”

“It did.”

He kissed higher, on my kneecap, then just above, and then a little higher, nuzzling against the fine, downy hairs I didn’t shave. My breath caught, and I wanted to pull away. I watched him, his eyes closed as he kissed higher, working his way up to my inner thigh, pushing my skirt along ahead of him until my panties flashed white against the black of my skirt.

“Stop!” I put my hand on top of his head, and he paused, his mouth hovering over the mole nobody ever saw.

He looked up at me, then deliberately kissed it.

“Dan, I said stop.” I jerked away from him, though the pillows at the back of the couch made it difficult for me to get very far. I yanked my skirt down and pushed his hands away. Pushed him away.

He sat up, silent. He looked at me. I looked at him. My heart skipped, and I crossed my arms over my chest to keep my hands from trembling.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t…I don’t like that.”

“You don’t like me kissing your mole?” He tilted his head and reached out to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear.

“No.” I shook my head. “I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Because it’s ugly?”

That was not my reason, but I lied and agreed. “Yes.”

His eyes studied my face. His hand cupped my cheek before moving down to my shoulder. I waited for him to laugh at me or roll his eyes or scowl. To insist I do what he wanted. To press the issue. Men don’t like being told no.

He sat back and unbuttoned his shirt, took it off, tossed it to the chair next to the couch. I knew his body already. Knew its smell and taste and the smoothness of his skin. His chest was paler than his arms, but not by much, his shoulders freckled like his nose, but with darker spots. He didn’t have six-pack abs, though his stomach didn’t bulge. Curling hair a little darker than that on his head made a small vee in the center, surrounded the brown circles of his nipples, and made a trail down to his belly, where it furred more thickly as it disappeared into his pants.

He bent his arm, showing me his elbow. “Soccer, ninth grade.” Set among the wrinkles of his elbow, the scar was almost invisible until he pointed it out. “Hit a rock when I took a dive to make a shot.”