East Rising (Naive Mistakes #2) (17 page)

I felt her nod. "I want," she said. "I
want."

Then she wept more. For an eternity, she
wept on my dress. How long had it been since she'd cried? I knew
that feeling — of keeping the tears in until they can't stay in
anymore and they come out like Niagara Freaking Falls. That had
been me earlier. I caressed her hair. Eventually, I wept quietly as
well, just a few tears without sobs, in a resonating sympathy of
her own tears. But the tears that came out my eyes were not my own.
I wept for her.

When I crossed the hall to
Conall's suite,
our
suite apparently, the one he'd kept permanently since putting
Alex up at The Ritz to "try and get her used to living in the city,
on her own," he wasn't there. He'd left a keycard for me
outside.

On the table inside, by the door, was a
note:

I'm out. Please don't wait up. Help yourself
to anything from room service. That keycard is yours.

I wrote on the back:

I'll stay with Alex tonight. I've arranged
with work to take another day off. See you in the morning.

At the end I wrote
I love you
and made all
the O's into little hearts. Then I covered it, just the part that
said
I love you
,
with the vase so that he'd be surprised on picking it up. I also
put another note outside her door so that he'd see it and not come
in mistakenly.

When I got back, Alex told me that Conall
was certainly at the gym: "A dingy place not too far from here
where he does kickboxing. He goes there to ease off, chill
out."

She sat on the couch across from me, a
two-seater, red and comfy. "I wear his shirts," she said, looking
down at the dress-shirt she had on, "because they make me feel
safe. No other reason. It's nothing romantic."

I didn't reply. It wasn't my place to judge.
I guess she needed all the help she could get in finding stability
in her new life.

"Thank you for staying," she said, looking
at the whiskey glass in her hand, downing it, then putting it
aside. Her head lolled back and she eventually lay down, her legs
dangling off the edge of the plush settee.

Shortly, she was asleep.

I looked around. The room really was
beautiful. Typical for a fancy hotel suite. There was a big TV, a
sound system, dining table, some painting (by some famous guy no
doubt), all the usual stuff.

I wished I had the book I'd been reading,
the one by Samantha Young. I'd bought that one new because I'd had
a good night of tips and decided to splurge. But I didn't have it
with me. I didn't have anything. I lay back, looking up at the
ceiling, wondering what the hell was going to happen with me and
Conall and Alex and... Damn it. Things were supposed to have been
simple after he and I had found each other again!

I felt my mind drifting...

A breeze licked my
cheek.
Then it became a dog, slavering
over me, its wet tongue making me cold and causing me to
shiver.

I turned on the couch. I felt a pain in my
back from sleeping on it. As luxurious as the couch was, it wasn't
made for dozing off comfortably. My eyes opened...

There was no dog, of course. I'd been
dreaming.

Alex twitched across the way. She really was
beautiful. I wondered, again, as I would many times later, how
someone kept such elegance and grace and radiance after suffering
so much. Kayla was also beautiful, in a different way. And I
wondered if beauty wasn't something generated from within. But
maybe I was just tired...

I walked over to her, kneeled next to her,
and whispered for her to come to bed. When she replied with
"Conall?" I kept my cool. An honest mistake. Or maybe not. But I
understood it better now, not perfectly, but better. So I said
nothing.

"Come on, hon." I put my hand under her
shoulders. They felt firm, a little bony maybe. But I couldn't pick
her up. I shook her gently. Her head lolled right, toward me. When
she opened her eyes there was a moment in them of terrifying shock.
She was looking at me, but she also wasn't. I heard her breath
catch. But it was brief.

Then she settled, realizing where she was,
and who I was. She gave a half smile.

It really would be best for her to go to
Switzerland... To get away from all this craziness, loud cars and
throngs of people. Wide space is good for people when they're going
through something. The ocean at Seaford had helped me a lot, helped
me clear my own mind.

"Let's go to bed, Alex."

She got up, the liquor no doubt already
effecting its hangover on her. She groaned. "I really should stop
drinking," she half-slurred. She put her hand around my shoulder
and dragged her feet to the master bedroom. She fell on the bed and
slept immediately. I scrounged her cupboard for something to sleep
in, saw the broken mirror Dr. Gehrig had referred to. Someone had
cleaned up the pieces off the floor though.

There were several men's shirts in the
cupboard. I wondered if they even belonged to Conall, or if he'd
simply bought them for her after she'd asked for some of his
shirts. I decided it was the former, because she'd referred to the
one she was wearing as "his" shirt...

In a drawer I found a baggy tee and some
shorts. The room was warm so I put them on and lay next to her.
Soon I found myself holding her hand instinctively as my head
lolled, again, to sleep.

My mind was a whir.
A vortex opened up, a storm started, I felt my
body twitch. Then I was falling, falling off the Seaford cliffs to
the ground...

I jumped!

"Huh!" I gasped. It had been a dream. I
caught my breath, lay back once again. This time I did fall asleep.
A deep, entombing sleep. By the time I started dreaming, I was so
far gone that the dream was more real than anything I've ever
dreamed.

Alex is wearing a long V-Cut dress, the cut
going all the way down to her belly. It's red, silky, glistening
from a light-source which I cannot place. It's dark in this room,
like a studio. But there is no photographer, no one but her, and, I
suppose, me. Because I am seeing her, so I guess I'm here with
her.

Her lips are crimson, her skin pale white,
milk on snow. Her eyes green, a yellow-green that fills with flames
and hurts me as they look at me. I wonder about this fact, because
I am sure that Alex's eyes are brown...

Her hair, long and strawberry-blonde in this
room, hangs to the one side of her, falling all the way to her
waist. I wonder about this last part as well, because isn't her
hair dirty-blonde? It is here where I think that, maybe, I am
dreaming...

Until she touches me.

Her hand grazes my skin by my wrist and it
sends electrified spikes of pleasure or pain, I cannot tell, up and
down my arms. How she came from where she was to where she is now,
touching my arm, I don't know.

I am suddenly on my knees, her lips to my
neck. She kisses me, and I feel her teeth enter me. They go deep,
sucking me, sucking the blood from my veins so that my arms tingle.
But it feels good. I like the feeling, the sense of being owned,
controlled.

I see the slit of her dress, all the way up
her thigh and I just catch a glimpse of her round, firm butt. But I
see also a snake in her dress, several snakes, cobras and
rattle-snakes...

I'm in a field, running
from snakes or spiders or monsters with legs, howling. It's foggy.
I sense someone running after me. Trees are in my way. Mist covers
my vision. I trip, fall onto a twig that grazes my left eye. Leaves
and underbrush cut into the skin of my palms. I try and move, but I
can't. No matter how hard I try force my body to lift itself up,
it's stuck. I know I must move. I hear
—
sense —
the creature behind me, the
red-dressed girl with the crimson lips and vampire teeth, chasing
me.

She lands!

Or is it her? The thing on top of me is
nude, that much I know. And I like it. I know I should hate the
body that is above me, in this world and in this place in which I
am, but I enjoy its feel over my skin.

It warms me. The forest was cold, but the
body above me is hot. Only the body is big and strong. It has
muscles and, something else, something between my legs, something
wet, caressing me. I like it, I don't question it. It grazes me at
my crotch, just outside the lips.

I say the word: "Conall..."

The man above me — because I know it is a
man now — writhes and spreads my legs apart. The leaves graze
against my skin, under my breasts. I am nude. I don't remember when
that happened but I just accept it, accepting that I've probably
been nude since seeing Alexandra in that red dress.

Am I a vampire now?

I come to realize that the thing between my
legs, not inside, just there, touching me, teasing me, is a
hard-on. A firm, strong, massive hard-on...

"Conall?" I ask.

The deep baritone that answers is not
Conall's voice. "No, it's Dorian."

"Oh... Where's Conall?"

"You cheated on him."

Dorian rubs his cock around my center, not
entering.

"I was saving myself for
Conall," I say. Part of me
wants
Dorian, in this world, this world of forests and
teeth in the neck and a warm male body above mine...

"I know. But that was only a dream, wasn't
it? A fairy tale. He loves Alex. Isn't it obvious?"

Dorian's cock is fat between my butt-cheeks,
squeezed tight between them. He closes my legs and straddles me,
rubbing back and forth as if he plans on coming on my back. My hand
eases down to my clit and I start rubbing it, but Dorian's hand
moves it away, rubs it for me.

He's rough, a little too fast. But he's
always been that way.

"It won't be perfect with you," I say,
resigning myself to what will happen. "But there is no other way,
is there?"

"I'll make it good for you. You'll never
forget it."

He rubs, up and down, between my
butt-cheeks, squeezing each one around his hard-on, making me feel
its head and its hard shaft as it moves. I feel his moisture, the
pre-come, lubricating and pleasant, all between my cheeks and by my
anal hole. His cock slides between as if he were rubbing it between
my breasts. Briefly he presses that anal hole with the head of his
cock, not entering, just teasing.

I think of Conall's finger...

A faint, disturbing thought comes to me, a
wisp of smoke amongst the clouds...of whether I've showered or
not...

I ignore it. I must have
showered. Only the thought begins to bother me. It's so
unimportant, so unlikely. But, in this world, this misty, ethereal
world, the thought is all-engulfing. A problem like no other. Such
that I begin to sweat with nervousness. What if, god forbid,
I
...smell...
down
there? Even Dorian deserves better...

"Dorian," I say, "I need to go. I have to do
something first."

He rubs harder. "Huh, baby? Say what?" He's
groaning, clearly almost there, almost ready to come on me. I want
him to, but I also don't. Because something is wrong.

"No, please, move away. I
have to..."
I have to
shower
, I think. I have to mist myself up
and put on a pretty dress. And my hair needs something. Because I
want to look beautiful.

Or is it something else bothering me?

Dorian keeps rubbing, and I'm hot for him,
but I'm also worried, worried about that "something." What was it
again? A shower? A man? A friend? Falling down a cliff? Are we on a
cliff? If he orgasms, will we fall? Will I fall?

Pleasure begins to course over me. I forget
my concerns, I forget making myself beautiful. Now I just want to
come. The need covers me, all over, head to toe. It calls me like a
living person. "Give it to me," I say to Dorian. "Just give it to
me. Fuck me. Fuck me hard. Fuck me now!"

As he enters me, vaginally, I sense
something is wrong again. There was someone...once... Wasn't there?
Who had That Man been? Or was it a woman?

Pleasure pulses through me.

"Conall," I say, "you feel so good."

And then it
is
Conall above me. I
feel it, I think. I don't know!

The man inside me pushes
in and out. I'm getting close. The pleasure fills me. But it
has
to be Conall. I'll
come, yes, I'll do it with this man, if it's Conall...

I turn to see his face. I don't know how
because I'm still lying face down, but all I see is blackness where
his face should be. I can see everything about him, except his
face.

Tattoos. Conall has tattoos, many of them.
Dorian only has one. Who is this man above me?

The man rides me, thrusting harder, pushing
in, out. I feel the build-up, the tension growing, ready to snap.
I'm on my back now. Burly, tensing muscles shake as this beautiful
giant rams his pelvis against me, his cock inside me. He rubs my
clit with his thumb. I hear him groan, deep and manly,
guttural.

Oh, please don't come,
Leora. If this is not Conall, please don't come!
I think.

I see the man's eyes. Green?

The pressure builds. My
arms tense.
No! Green-Eyes is Dorian! I
must get away!

The man becomes a woman,
licking her lips. Red, dripping lips. Blood on them. And now
she
is riding me
somehow.

I don't care anymore.

"I can't stop it," I say, as if Conall were
listening. I'm not sure where I say it, in what place, but I say
it. "I can't. Once it starts, I have to take it all the way.
Conall, I'm sorry..."