East Rising (Naive Mistakes #2) (24 page)

Was it even possible?

I pushed his butt into me and felt him go
all the way to the back of my throat, and felt his sac hit my
chin.

I stopped him once, as he got deep inside
me, and I held him there. He throbbed once inside me. I felt him
try to ease out but I tightened my lips. He twitched again. I
almost fucking came just sitting there on that chair. I let him out
easy, my saliva dripping all over that shaft, a long line of it
falling to the floor.

I turned my head and put his sac in my
mouth, licked the one side, then the other, then licked him
completely on the underside from bottom to top, his entire
length.

He was ready to come again. Red and hot and
hard, his shaft pulsed and twitched.

I put him into me, and
looked up at him, and I smiled — I felt
so
badass
.

I was ready to let him come in me. I wanted
him to. I wanted to feel him. All of him. In every part of me. To
taste him. I loved him with all of me: physical, emotional,
spiritual. His body was my body. But, as I pulled on him and licked
my tongue around him just one more time, Conall pulled himself out
of my mouth just before climax. He was about to come into a towel
next to us but I grabbed him and made him come on my breasts at
least. There wasn't much now anyway, only a few drops. I rubbed him
off right at the end, and he, again, wrapped his hand around mine
and we finished him off together.

His groans, at that last stage, are still
the most golden sounds I've ever heard from anyone, ever. Because
they told me more than that he loves me. They told me I was his,
and he was mine. And we were one.

Three times down, on his
part, and twice on mine, we were, finally,
done
. For real.

Conall chuckled. His body
was magnificent. It was the first time I'd really looked at him
completely naked. And there was my name:
LEORA
.

Standing there, me still on the chair, he
put his hand on my cheek, leaned down to kiss me. "I love you," he
said.

"I
so
love you back," I said.

We lay down on the hard (and now slightly
cold) cement floor by the pool. It was hopelessly uncomfortable,
and we loved it. I think we were there for an hour or so. Maybe
more. Who knows. Conall's romantic playlist continued. I held his
hand. It felt like, as we looked up at the pool lighting, as if we
were looking at the stars. Just two, innocent kids who hadn't
suffered shit in life. Staring at the sky which was the top of a
pool-house. And wishing.

"Leora," he said after an eternal silence of
us just lying there holding hands. I knew it was going to be
important, because every time he wanted to say something important
or to get my attention, he always started the statement with
"Leora."

"Yes?" I said.

"I'm not playing with you, or teasing."

Oh, right, that...
That's the topic we'd been on before the most
incredible friggin quintuple (that means
five
, I had to look it up myself)
orgasm make-out session in the history of quintuple orgasm make-out
sessions!

"I just want it to be good
for you. I want it to be incredible. Explosive. Hot and powerful. I
want you to come with every fiber of your body when we're together.
I never want it to be normal. I want it to be over-the-top,
memorable,
every
time. That's why I make you wait sometimes. It's not that I'm
playing with you or teasing you. I will
never
play with you.
Ever
. The orgasms are
just better, more explosive, when they're made to wait a little
longer, aren't they?"

He turned to look at me on
the ground. I rolled my eyes back in a "oh yeah they're
fucking
amazing
!"
motion.

He smiled. "That's what I thought. It's also
good for me when we make it last a little longer."

I looked down his body. He was getting hard
again. I couldn't fucking believe it! I looked at the ceiling and
smiled. "I'm ready for another go if you are..." I said. "I mean,
it has been like an hour or so since the last time you came,
right?"

He got on top of me, rode
me, over my thong. I learned that night that men last longer
—
much
longer! —
after coming a few times. The playlist played one whole time
through before he finally came again. By that time he'd made me
come another two times already.

Now we were even for the night.

"Leora."

Uh-oh, something
serious
. "Yes?"

"Great swim."

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, no shit."

"Leora."

Again?
"Yes?"

"How's your, um, 'kitty'?"

I laughed. "My 'kitty'?"

"Yes, I mean, was it too much?"

There
had
been a lot of friction there, but
it didn't hurt (and boy did I feel self-conscious at Conall
knowing
so
much
about women!)

I growled,
"
Meow!
" and turned
to kiss him. He smiled. "And your, um, 'rooster'?"

He couldn't stop himself
from laughing, and going a little red. Then he played along. He
sang out, "
Cockadoodledoo!
"

That's my boy...
His rooster was just fucking dandy as far as I
could tell.

We sat by the fire at the end of the night.
I was ready to pass out from exhaustion. We sipped on wine. I was
really starting to like the stuff. Sauvignon Blanc, that was my
favorite.

"Sweetie," I said to him,
"why don't you just make love to me?"
Are
you not serious about us?
I wanted to ask.
But I didn't.

He unwrapped his arm from my shoulder, put
his glass on the table. Then he turned to me. "Leora, would you be
OK with going on the pill?"

"Who says I'm not?"

"Are you?"

I was quickly embarrassed. I shook my
head.

"Would you be OK with getting onto it?"

I shrugged. "Sure, um, I mean I wouldn't
know how to go about it here..."

"I can help you with that. You know that
when you get on it you have to wait a few weeks before it's safe,
right?"

I nodded.

He grabbed my hand, the one I was holding my
glass of wine with, and eased it onto the table. I put the glass
down, and he held both my hands, stared me deep in the eyes. Flames
danced in his own eyes.

"Leora, I want your first time — at least
with me — I want it to be — "

"Wait, what? What did you say?"

"I wasn't finished saying it."

"No, the part of 'at least with you' or
whatever."

"Well, yes, I mean, that guy..."

I pulled my hand away. "Conall, I never
slept with Dorian."

Wow, the name felt like worm-infested dirt
falling from my lips. How could I ever have doubted myself, my own
gut feel, so much to have gotten involved with him? I cringed at
the thought of him and me being together, how meaningless it had
all been...

And I dreaded seeing him again.

My oh my, how things tend to complicate as
you get older, more involved, more and more tangled in the
intricacies and knots of human relationships...

"You didn't...sleep with him?" Conall
asked.

"Huh? Oh, sorry, I phased out there a bit...
No..." I thought about it. "God, no!" I pulled my hands away from
Conall. "Never! Not with — " I shuddered.

"I see." He smiled.

"You're not the only one who was faithful,
you know?"

"Then why did you — No! Never mind. Forget
it. I don't want to know."

Thank God, because the
sooner I can forget that mistake, the better.
"Good! Because I don't want to tell you!" I crossed my arms.
And I wasn't pissed at Conall, even though it probably looked like
it. I was so pissed at myself...

"Fine, whatever." He pried
my mortified hands from my chest, held them again. "I would like
it, and I think
you
would like it, I mean, I assume... I'd like it if, your first
time, well,
ever
... I want to come
inside
you, Leora. I want to be a part of you, completely
natural, the two of us, united."

I was stunned. I imagined it, him inside me,
all of him, and then the orgasm.

Damn it, that made me hot
again! Slooooowwwww down!
(Although, even
if I'd wanted to, the flesh was pretty damn weak right now on my
part. I really did need a break!)

"Does that sound weird? Tell me if it does,
I mean, I'm a guy, guys make mistakes — "

I put my finger to his lips. My own lips
tugged up into a smile. "It sounds perfect."

I dissolved into his chest, rested my ear
against it, listened to his heartbeat.

My eyes watered at what
he'd suggested. But I hid it. He'd made me so happy. And I'm too
fucking weepy when I'm happy. That night I was the happiest frickin
chick ever, in the whole world. I couldn't believe what I'd landed,
this guy, this
prince
! I couldn't believe he was mine, and that we were
together.

I had no idea, that less than twelve hours
from now, this shining, radiant light of love which I now felt,
would be replaced by a darkness of loss so black that it would
forever be the worst day of my life, and one of which I still have
nightmares about every night.

I was singing when I woke up the next
morning. I wasn't even sure what song it was, probably one of the
many-times repeated songs of Conall's lovemaking playlist he'd put
on for us the night before.

He was going to drive me down to Seaford
later that day. He'd get to know Dani. I was gonna pick up some
clothes and convince Troy to take off several more days (with lots
of eye-batting and finger-tickles down his forearm...) Conall had a
few business meetings coming up but he'd said that, after that,
he'd take a hotel near to where I was staying and only travel to
London when he needed to. He could work remotely. That was the
benefit of being a high-gun software consultant that only got
called in to pull in the big deals.

"Besides, I have a car, you don't. It's no
sweat off my back," he'd said the night before.

I was making coffee in the
kitchen, thinking about our unbelievable mutual orgasms, grinning.
The coffee aroma wafted into my nose, my aura. I sat on cloud nine,
not there at all.
So
not there that I completely missed the click of the kitchen
door as it opened.

When I finally heard it creak I figured, in
this blissfully ignorant world that I was momentarily in, that it
had probably been the wind. When I heard a footfall, I felt
suddenly confused, yanked sharply from my daydream but not enough
to apprehend what was happening around me.

It was only when the leather glove smothered
my mouth, and the hot pot of coffee smashed on my foot, burning and
blistering my lower leg, that I realized someone had made it into
the house.

And by then it was too late for me to do
anything about it.

I screamed, muffled screams, into the
leathery glove of the man I could not see but who smelled strongly
of body-wash and tobacco. I screamed for the aching throb on the
top of my right foot where the coffee pot had landed and for the
searing pains now shooting up my shins from the scalding
liquid.

But, mostly, I screamed because of the two
men who raced past me, heads wrapped in face masks and guns in
hands, up the stairs and to Conall's room. I fought the man who
held me. I tried to get a grip on him, but his other arm was to my
neck and he squeezed, just slightly, so that I knew, if I resisted,
I'd be choked to death.

My screams went unheard, just dead stifles
into nothing.

The man dragged me by my heels. I became
acutely aware, then, that I had on no trousers. I suddenly became
thankful that I did have on panties (as if that would make any
difference.) My only covering was Conall's shirt I'd put on and
slept in.

The chilled outside air
made the hairs on my bare legs rise. My heels burned from the
scrapes against the ground. The man hadn't even frickin
asked
if I'd go with him!
No, he just fucking dragged me, like all women are supposed to be
dragged on their heels because we're goddamn dogs or
something.

I tried to fight, but the brute just turned
me onto my side and dragged me that way now. I tried to elbow him,
and he kneed me in the ass. He did it several times. Each time he
did it bought him a fraction of a second because the dull pain went
all the way up my spine.

By the time he got me to the navy blue van,
I was all but defeated. It was only the fear instilled in me by
television and all those missing persons shows, by everything I'd
been brought up to believe about men taking women, that gave me
fight enough to put up one last struggle before they threw me into
the back of that van.

But it was not enough. A hood went over my
face. Four more hands grabbed me, by my shoulders. The moment the
man's glove had left my mouth, I screamed as loud as I could. My
lower back had rammed against the van door's threshold. I yelped in
pain.