I Need You (15 page)

Then without looking up he leaned forward and his lips settled over the sensitive place his thumb had brushed and he sucked.

Shit
. My fingers gripped in a spasm of desperation in his hair, as sensation roared through me––he’d said I’d want him to do it.

I wanted.

Was that my breath releasing in pants into the steamy air in the shower.

Yes.

Billy. Oh, Billy.

This was so crazy. Heat burned under my skin, a need to race…

He sucked harder and his fingers pushed right up into me, with a hard thrust…

I shut my eyes, falling back against the tiles as it came in on me––the wave of sensation I’d discovered yesterday morning––rolling over the top of me, but now it swilled through my body like a tsunami, rushing into every limb and every nerve.

“Lind.” My name was agonized hot breath as he pulled my hips further forward, and then his tongue invaded me.

I was Jell-O. My thighs shook, my fingers clinging in his hair.

This was why Jason had left me. This is what he’d discovered with Rachel.

No wonder.
No wonder
…

Jason had never touched me with any determination, ever. Why? Why had he not been able to give me this?

Pounding out a hard rhythm of need, my heart pumped heated blood around my body, as my soul fell into this new intoxicating world.

Liquid gold scorched through my veins.

It was no longer a choice to press back against Billy. I had to. My body cried out to. My fingers clasping clumps of his wet hair as the shower poured out more water on to us.

His tongue pushed into me, as his fingers gripped my buttocks, pulling them apart, and teasing me with the closeness of his fingertips. Nothing I’d ever seen Billy do had been half measures… He was a full-on guy…. Even in this…

Oh heavens. That sensation was coming again.

My body jolted and I slid a little down the tiles on the wall. My legs had no feeling. The wave of sensation ripped through me, swilling around my body, then sucked back, like the wave had done on the beach, and he took full advantage, his tongue moving deep within me… I could be in no doubt he liked this…

Billy stood. The grip of his fingers, now holding me up as his tongue pressed into my mouth.

He tasted weird. Of me.

I kissed him back with a new desperation to our game of tag, but then he gripped my hand, lifted it and put it against his erection.

I couldn’t.

“Billy I––”

“It’s okay I don’t want you to do the same. Just help me jerk myself off, you’re surely not mean enough to leave me hanging…”

My fingers beneath his, he wrapped them about the hard column of flesh.

I looked into his eyes, not down… He didn’t look away, like he understood I needed him to look at me.

He moved his hand, running mine up. I was scared again.
Relax.
I heard the word in his voice.

Fight it! I didn’t want to be afraid anymore. I wanted to be happy.

I stopped letting him control my grip and held him harder.

He groaned.

I pressed my tongue into his mouth, taking over the game of tag. He sighed a breath into mine. When I lifted my weight off the tiles, my breasts brushed against his chest. His body shook, then his hand suddenly moved mine faster––up and down––in swift, firm strokes.

He broke the kiss. His breathing heavy and his eyes dark.

My other hand gripped at the first curve of his buttock, as my gaze clung to his.

His strokes got faster, moving my hand, and a dimple cut into his cheek as the muscle in his jaw bunched. He was clenching his teeth.

I had never watched Jason orgasm.

Billy’s gaze clouded, like he couldn’t focus on me anymore, and he cried out. His hips grinding into our joined hands, as his flesh pulsed, pumping out a sticky fluid on my belly.

He leaned forward, his cheek pressing against my wet hair as his free arm came around me.

He was riding the wave.

Now I knew what Jason had felt when we’d done it. Why he’d liked it, and why he’d wanted to do it more. Because it felt good.

I hadn’t thought about being naked, or what I looked like, or about Mom for at least half an hour. But those feelings crashed back in on me now as he pulled away.

He looked down, letting my hand go. The back of his fingers ran over my belly, as his other hand moved me beneath the water to wash it clean.

“You okay?” he said, looking back up.

I nodded. Then I admitted, “Apart from feeling a crazy load of awkward right now.”

“You don’t need to feel awkward.” His pitch dropped. “That was awesome.” He looked away, reaching out to the dispenser to squirt some of the free shower gel on his palm. “I’ll wash you. Then you can wash me.”

He even washed my hair, massaging shampoo and then conditioner into it, combing his fingers through it and making me hold my head under the shower. Next he put soap on a washcloth and carefully washed my makeup off. No one had seen me without makeup since I’d been fourteen… not even Mom and Dad. But then I had never seen Mom without makeup ever.

I shut my eyes, nausea tumbling in my belly. I was completely naked––standing before Billy. He was the only person who’d seen me like this.

The cloth ran over my body, exploring every curve. I didn’t open my eyes, just tried to breathe and not think, and not panic.

With all that strength, he was really gentle.

When he finished, the water still cascading, he pressed a brief kiss on my lips. “You can stop hiding and open your eyes now.”

A jolt flipped something in my belly, sending up butterflies.

He gave me the cloth. “Wash my back.” he turned.

He was making me do all this stuff with an insistent determination, daring me not to pull back, to take his challenges, but he was also doing it wisely, making this a little easier for me.

I ran the soapy cloth over the broad expanse of his back, following the contours of the muscle down to his hips. I understood a little why he wanted to touch me. He had a hot body. I mean everything was right proportion, right place… built like art…

He’d touched
me
like he’d thought I was hot…

I ran the cloth over his buttock, and then slid it to the other side.

He held still. Letting me do whatever without comment.

He was daring me…

“Turn around.”

He did.

I hadn’t looked down before. I looked at the nest of dark hair and his penis hanging limp.

This still scared the hell out of me. It was way too personal. I looked up and caught him watching me. He smiled.

I smiled, though it was timid.

He gripped my hand and pressed it and the washcloth on his belly. “Don’t lose your nerve now…”

I held his gaze and smiled, determined. My hand moved up first, to his chest. Then I looked down again and watched, following the cut of his pecks, tracing the lines of his leopard tattoo over mounds of hard muscle. His muscle jolted beneath the cloth as it passed over his nipple. He had a sprinkle of dark-brown hairs that trailed downwards, narrowing toward his groin.

There was nothing that put me off.

I didn’t want to stop touching him, and even when I got down to his junk I carried on, getting as intimate with him as he had with me. He laughed.

A little weight lifted from my shoulders as I laughed too, my gaze flicking up and catching on his for an instant. I had never laughed over anything sexual. Sex had been sufferance and torture for me, and I’d tried to be right and had been so horribly wrong.

Tears blurred Billy’s face.

He gripped my hand. “Do my hair for me. Then we’re done.” His pitch was deep and gravelly.

Were we going to get into bed and do it properly? Excitement warred with panic.

When I spoke to my counselor next time, I was going to talk about this. I had something wrong with me. I knew it now. Why did I get so afraid of being intimate and exposed?

Rachel had called me frigid; Billy said weird.

Why was I different?

I didn’t want to be different.

I shut my eyes as I reached over to the dispenser beyond him. Fighting to ignore the screams in my head reminding me he was looking at my face when I didn’t have makeup on. He could see me. The me I hid––the me who always seemed to fail. The me who hurt so bad. The me who felt too guilty to fight that pain. I had no escape, only the chance of somewhere to hide.

I opened my eyes and he smiled at me as my hands lifted to rub the shampoo into his hair. I desperately wanted to tell him to turn around again. But I didn’t, I held out, knowing he looked at my face the whole time.

When I was done, he stepped under the water, not waiting to be told, and his hands lifted to rinse the shampoo out himself. I guess he knew I’d reached the margins of my limit.

He turned the water off, then grabbed a big towel from the rack beside the shower and tossed it at me. “See you in the room, I need a pee.”

Nervous and shaking, I wrapped the towel around me. It brought a sense of security as I walked back into the bedroom.

It was the same room I’d walked into an hour ago and yet it felt different.

Everything was different.

A part of me just wanted Billy to go, so I could lie down and try to put everything that had happened into a place in my head.

I hadn’t understood myself; I was beginning to. I needed time to think, and I needed help from my counselor.

But I’d taken a step forward today. I could never go back.

“Do you want to go out and get something to eat?” Billy’s towel hung from his hips, tucked in below his belly button. Even his belly button was beautiful.

Did he know I’d freaked a bit?

“Yeah, I could do with a walk. I don’t think I am gonna be great company, though. My head is spinning with stuff, Billy.”

If I walked outside, would I discover an apocalypse had hit the world?

Maybe the streets were full of zombies.

Or maybe it was just me…

“I’ll go back to my room and change.”

I nodded, not sure what to say.

Chapter Seven

Billy

When I knocked for Lindy, she had on another flimsy little cotton dress. It flowed to mid-thigh.

I guess the one thing she didn’t mind about her body was her legs.

But her makeup was back on. The layer of foundation presenting flawlessness and hiding if she blushed. Her painted cupid’s-bow lips smiled at me. The fake color not much different from the skin beneath.

Tonight’s eye shadow of choice… a pale brown-and-gold blend.

At least it looked natural. She did look beautiful, but I had a feeling her makeup hid something.

She’d looked better without it to me. She had nothing to hide.

“Ready?”

“Yeah.”

A different purse hung from her shoulder, a little tan one, but again it had a long strap and it dangled to hang just below her ass, drawing my eye to the suggestion of the curve of it through the flowing cloth of her dress.

Her jacket hung in her other hand.

“Here…” I held out a hand to take it. Then I held it up so she could slip her arms into it. She was gonna get cold in that little dress.

I didn’t really want to go out to eat. I was hungry for food. But I was hungrier for her.

I’d have just taken her to bed for three hours had this been my choice and maybe ordered something in. But Lindy was a whole barrel full of hang-ups, and taking things too far too quick was probably a bad idea. So I was taking her out and giving her time to adjust to the idea that she’d let me do a really intimate thing.

It had scared her to death, but she’d enjoyed it, the sweet intensity of her orgasm had been the defining answer to that.

She made me laugh.

She was such an anomaly.

I wanted to call Jason. My thumb had actually hovered over his name in my contacts. But I hadn’t called. What the fuck had my best friend been doing leaving her with all this garbage in her head? Okay, I knew Jason was not the pushy type. If she’d said no, he’d have just taken no full stop and not touched a discussion about why. But he could have convinced her there was nothing wrong with her body…

Didn’t they call it body dysmorphic disorder, when someone was obsessed by imagined flaws in their figure or face?

We’d been told all about that stuff when I’d been working toward my degree. We’d been warned that some people didn’t need to exercise, they needed psychological help.

That was Lindy.

At least she was getting it now.

I gripped her fingers and slotted mine in between hers, squeezing tight. “You didn’t need to put your makeup back on. You’re really pretty without it.”

She stopped walking, her hand tugging mine. I stopped too, turning to look at her.

Her forehead had crinkled and her narrow plucked and tinted dark eyebrows lifted high. “Why do you have to be so challenging?”

I yanked her into an embrace, pulling her into me and wrapping my other arm around her, because
I love you
. I had a great big pool of feeling inside me that had been there for so long with no outlet, and now…

Now she was in my arms and she’d let me do stuff Jason had never done. I laughed a little, to disguise the feelings going on inside me. But it came out weird. “You ought to know me by now, I’m always challenging.” I let her go. “Why do you think I went into being a personal trainer?”

She started walking again and I turned walking next to her, gripping her hand. “Because you like exercise and you want to do it all day.”

I laughed. “Because I get a kick out of challenging people, making them do more than they think they can. It’s rewarding. It gives me a buzz.”

When we got to the stairs, I let her hand go, and instead my hand ran along the rail. She held back, so I walked on ahead, talking. “Your boyfriend may have been calling the shots as captain of the football team, but I was always the motivator. Coach would even let me do the talks in the huddle ‘cause I got them moving. In fact, when I pack up playing, I’m gonna coach kids.”

“You still play football?” She sounded surprised; I thought she knew all this.