I Need You (23 page)

He’d accused me of forcing him into stuff when we’d split. I guess his non-verbal communication had been just going along with me, when really he’d been pissed off and hated me.

Nial pressed his palms down on the edge of the pool and hauled his body out of the water. It streamed across his skin. He really did look a lot like Jason––bodily––not his coloring. He was blonde and blue-eyed; Jason had brown hair and brown eyes.

I gripped the rail by the steps and climbed them carefully, looking down to double-check my bikini still covered everything it should. I hated my belly. It wobbled a little while I moved. I glanced at Billy, his eyes were not watching my belly; his gaze absorbed my ass.

I pulled my bikini bottoms out of my butt cheeks and heard him laugh.

I swear Jason had never once, in all the years we’d been together, ogled me like that… But at Christmas I’d seen him watching Rachel like that.

“Come on, Lindy…” Nial rubbed his body down with a towel.

“Here.” He threw me a towel.

I wrapped it around me and tucked it in over my breasts, hiding myself beneath it.

“What’s your favorite?” He looked at me over his shoulder as he turned toward the house.

I smiled, following him. “Something spicy.”

“What about Billy?”

I laughed. “He’s a meat feast guy.”

The marble tiles in his parents’ house were cold under my bare feet.

“I’ll get the list and we can work out how many pizzas to order and what.” Nial walked a bit ahead of me, along a wide hall that had various doors leading off into sitting rooms, a dining room, den and a study. Every room had exquisite decoration. His parents must be really rich.

When we got to a massive kitchen with a wide central island. He pulled open one of the cedar-wood drawers and dropped a take-away pizza menu onto the black granite top. He slid it over my way, leaning across a peninsular of units that jutted out in front of a long table and chairs.

Mom would love this kitchen…

I looked at the menu, ignoring the open wound weeping inside me.

I hurt so much, and a day messing around in a pool with a pile of new friends wasn’t going to take the hurt away. This was a vacation, the little escape I’d needed to regroup. It wouldn’t fix anything permanently. Nothing was permanent. I’d learned that in the last few years.

“How many do you reckon for all of us?” Nial pushed.

I looked up and found him staring at me.

Jason’s eyes had been a warm, deep-brown; Billy’s dark intense steel; Nial’s were endless soft blue sky. Out of the three of them, I preferred Billy’s dark stormy steel eyes.

I looked at the menu, shoving the memory of Jason aside. Pain lanced through my heart. He’d never loved me, though he’d said “I love you” all the time. He’d thought he’d been in love… and then he’d met Rachel, and learned that his heart really didn’t give a shit about me… Billy had more interest in me after just having sex than Jason ever had.

“What do you think?” Nial came around beside me and his fingers touched my arm. “Lindy.” His hand lifted to my chin, bracing it and then he leaned in…

Shit.

My hands pressed against his naked pecs, his cold nipples under my palms.

A shiver of wrong ran through me.

The things-don’t-feel-right sensation I’d felt with Jason whenever we’d had sex. Maybe because he hadn’t really wanted me.

With Jason my body had screamed, no!

With Nial…

“I don’t want you to do that.”

“No?” Nial’s blue eyes glittered with confidence.

Confidence exploded in me too. The sort I’d had at high school. I believed in myself. Jason may never have been into me, but Billy and Nial were, so there couldn’t be anything massively wrong with me. Could there?

“No, Nial, I’m sorry, I’m not in a good place right now, and things are kind of up in the air with me and Billy… I’m not interested in you like that. Sorry. But I’d still like to be your friend. We’ve had fun hanging out here.”

He shrugged and laughed at the same time. “Oh, well it was worth a try. Billy is a lucky bastard…”

My ego glowed in a way it hadn’t for years. “Thanks.”

“But no thanks…” he finished, laughing before looking down at the pizza menu. “Alright, then, help me pick. How many?”

Chapter Twelve

Lindy

Billy’s arm lay over my shoulders as we walked back along the corridor toward our rooms. I was tired; I think he was too. We’d been playing around in the pool all day. After we’d eaten, the guys had put a loud-speaker system on and played music into the pool area, and things had gone a little mad.

Nial hadn’t been any different after my rejection. That had felt good. He’d still flirted and laughed, dancing with me. Lightness swelled inside me tonight. I hadn’t had a drink, but I still felt drunk.

“Are we sharing again?” Billy said in a low, deep pitch as we reached the door of my apartment and stopped.

I smiled at him. “I want to…”

His blue-grey eyes glowed. “Awesome.” The word was heat across my lips as his head came down. Longing burned through me when his lips pressed against mine, scorching me on a backdraft of memories from the last couple of days; eagerness catching in my belly.

He took the card key from my hand, slotted it in the door and when the lock clicked loose and a green light flashed he pulled it out and pushed the door open. “Go on.” His hand set a gentle pressure at my waist, encouraging me to go first. Something flipped in my belly––anticipation.

When the door shut, he said, “Lind, do me a favor tonight, go take your makeup off before we get into bed? I like you with no makeup. Don’t get me wrong. I like you with it… But it’s just, I’m the only one who’s seen you with no makeup. I like that. I want to go to bed with that you.”

The tight grip lifted from my belly to my chest.

I stepped forward and touched his cheek, then lifted to my toes and kissed his lips, briefly. “Thank you, Billy. For being so sweet.”

His lips broke apart in a wide smile and his hands braced my head, then his lips crushed mine, just for an instant. “Go take off your makeup.”

Billy was in bed when I came back. He’d left a single lamp on next to him. I ran to get in. I was naked. I had never got into bed naked. Shame, exposure crashed through me as I moved, but I ignored my fears. Billy liked what I looked like; he wanted me naked. He threw back the covers and I dived in.

I laughed as he threw them back over, covering me up.

He understood how big a deal this was. Thrills beyond my physical desire for his body skimmed through my nerves as I snuggled up against him and he turned to face me.

His palm rested on my hip, then slid up to cup my breast as he kissed me.

I played that now-familiar game of chase with his tongue, as his long fingers massaged my breast and his thumb kept brushing over my nipple. My hands were in his hair.

He broke the kiss. “I want you to touch me, Lind.”

My eyes got wide. He always had to push at a boundary. But his boundary-pushing worked. I slid my hand down and touched the rigid column of flesh that pointed up at me. It jolted as my fingers touched his tip.

He laughed into my mouth as my fingers pulled away. “You aren’t hurting me. I’m just sensitive there, that’s all. Touch away.”

I smiled as his lips came down on mine again; my heart and soul floating in zero gravity.

Billy was easy to open up and be sexual with.

I touched him, stroking a fingertip along the taut velvet skin of his erection, while his hand massaged my breast and his tongue pressed into my mouth. Then I gripped him, taking him in my fist as he’d taught me in the shower the other day, and ran my hand down, then up.

His sigh of hot breath filled my mouth, and his hand slid down between my legs, then a long finger slipped inside me.

Sensations swirling around I didn’t know what to concentrate on, touching him, fighting for who would reach the end, or the delicious stroke of his finger.

I shut my eyes, capturing different moments from each. I ached for him. Pain weaved through my middle. The texture of the solid mass in my hand, the pressure of his tongue sweeping over mine all played games with my senses…

He leaned more over me, forcing me to roll to my back as his caress got more determined, wanting to win the game. I ended up just gripping his cock and giving in, as he sent me over the edge of a tidal wave. I wanted him in me. Desperately.

I gripped his hips and pulled.

He laughed instead, rolling onto his back and pulling me with him. “Come here…”

“What?”

“Get a condom and go on top.”

“What?”

He pulled my upper arm, his grip urging me to move. “Get a condom, put it on me, and straddle me.”

His massive strength struck at another boundary. The boundary was gonna shatter, I didn’t even argue. I just wanted him in me.

His wallet rested on the side by the lamp he’d left on. My hand shook as I reached for it, and pulled a condom out. I couldn’t open it, my hands shook too much. He took it off me, opened it, then held it out to me.

It was a dare. A test. To see if I’d do it. I did, my hands still shaking as I rolled it down the length of him. I didn’t think about the intimacy or the oddness, I thought about how good it was gonna feel.

I sat astride his thighs.

“Up,” he ordered, tapping my thigh. The black circles at the heart of his eyes swelled wide.

I kneeled up, and then his hands gripped behind my knees, urging me forward.

One hand left me, grabbed his cock and angled it upward. “Now come down…” his deep throaty voice cut the air.

He knew I hadn’t done this before. I looked down at the trail of dark curly brown hair leading to his groin, as the familiar pressure of his penetration absorbed my thoughts.

“Oh.” The sound came out of my mouth as he filled me up.

He gripped my hips.

I met his gaze, his dark eyes shone in the light of the lamp. “Ride me. Rock. Lift and drop. Do whatever feels good to you.”

Yeah,
he knew
.

I’d become entirely vulnerable. This way he could look at my face and my body the whole time. His gaze skimmed down across me to prove it, but the appreciation and desire burning in his eyes and flickering in a muscle in his cheek dismissed my terror. Whatever I thought of myself, there was no doubt Billy liked what he saw.

Of course this way, I got to look at all of him too. My gaze and fingers fell on his middle, skimming over his abs. The smooth ridges and hollows. I cupped his pecs.

I’d touched Nial’s chest earlier; it hadn’t been the same. I was turned on by touching Billy. My fingers opened and my palms pressed down as I lifted up.

His leopard clawed beneath my right hand, capturing my gaze and his fingertips pressed into my thighs as I dropped and lifted again.

“Rock forward as you go up, Lind, catch my tip with the movement as you come down…”

Who had he learned this stuff with?

“Ooo.” I didn’t care. I shut my eyes and did it again. “Ahhh.” Another sound of pleasure and discovery leaked out of my mouth.

The back of his fingers ran over my breast, then touched my chin.

I opened my eyes and I met his dark gaze.

“Have you ever ridden a horse?”

“A long time ago.”

“But you learned how to rock your hips to command it to walk without words.”

“Yeah.”

“Go on then.”

“What?”

“Ride me like that for a little while, then go back to what you were doing.”

His husky words touched me like his fingers. “Shit.” He shut his eyes as I moved. “That is it, Lind. Shit.”

I kept moving, grinding against him as it kicked sparks up through my body from the sensitive spot I’d learned this week was the heart of happiness during sex.

“Oh Billy.” I got damp, swelled and burned.

His fingers massaged my thighs, gripping and releasing with my movement, his hips working against my rhythm in a slow race.

Fight. Tease.

I went back to doing what I’d done before, lifting up, sliding to the very tip of his length, then flicking my hips back. He hissed out a breath, then bit his tongue.

I slid back down and rocked forward, for my own pleasure, catching the bud on his pubic bone and hair.

“Lind. You’re good at this.”

I felt good at it. Scratch that, I just felt good.

“Fuck.” His fingers dug really hard into my thighs.

“Shit.”

“Oh my God.”

“I am not going to last much longer if you keep doing that, Lindy.”

His fingers clawed on my thighs, like he hung from a cliff edge.

I lifted one more time, just to push him to the limit, then went back to rocking on him, and arousing myself. I was so hot, sweat crept over my skin.

His breath became shallow, and his eyes looked like glass.

He made me feel… sexy…

“Lind.” Awe carried my name into the air on his breath.

I looked at his chest, my fingers splayed over the leopard, and went back to lifting up. His hips pressed up as I came down.

I met his gaze––it overflowed with adoration. What the hell did he see?

“That’s it,” he hissed.

“Yeah.” His voice caressed me with approval.

“Shit, Lindy…”

Pleasure played across his face and burned in his eyes. His breaker was rising. Mine rose to.

A sweet ache swelled in my belly, growing in intensity, getting ready to break into a wave of foamy white water frothing through my nerves and my fingertips gripped his chest. “Oh.” I shut my eyes when it hit me in a flood, swirling through my blood. I couldn’t hold myself up. I fell, gripping the sheet either side of him.

Billy braced his arms around my shoulders and thrust up into me, over and over, not letting the flood slip away. His thrusts striking me with the pressure of a fist, all his powerful muscle focused on invading me until he’d come too, with a loud growl of emotion, pain and pleasure breaking his voice.

When I came back to reality, exhaustion claimed me as one of his hands braced my head against his shoulder while the other gripped my buttock.