Live (The Burnside Series): The Burnside Series (17 page)

“Take your clothes off,” she said. And while he pulled off his shirt, she grabbed the waistband of his briefs and jeans in one go, so quick he made a little noise when the waistband tweaked a muscle in the base of his cock. He had to help her untangle his trainers from the cuffs of his jeans while his hard-on bobbed around madly.

Then she had her arms around his hips, her fingertips tracing around his flanks. She buried her face into his hip. He hovered his hands over her head, a little uncertain. “Destiny?”

“Yeah?” Her mouth moving at just that place made him close his eyes against the sluice of warmth drawn into his dick.

He didn’t know how to answer. She seemed very happy, snuggled into such a place, nothing but a serviceable muscle over a hard bone and the hair, of course. He was quite hairy. “Would you like to get more comfortable?”

“I am comfortable. You smell good, and these are so pretty.” She reached around to grab at the muscles around his hips, and when she did he coughed, the breath caught so hard in his throat. Like they were power cables running directly to his genitals, which he supposed they were.

“Jesus, Destiny.” He reached down and extricated her from her position, hauling her up and holding her close.

“I was going to make my way to the other thing.” He might have thought she was pouting, except for her grin.

He gave up and started kissing her again, backing her up to her bed. They slithered their way to the middle and she pulled down her boxers in between their kisses. When he hitched over her, slid his forearms under her shoulders, he felt her soft inner thighs squeeze around his waist, smelled her as she opened underneath him, just before he felt her, a wet brush against him.

He reached down between them, looking into her eyes. Her hair, there, was so soft, as fine and straight as the hair on her head. Yesterday, in the limousine, he had wanted to suck the salt from it like he had licked the sweat away from the hair at her temples.

He had never seen anything better than that sopping, light blue twist of silk splitting her and opening her, so tight against her he could feel her pulse within the tension of the fabric.

Now, he slid his middle finger where those panties had been and it was so soft and wet what he felt was nearly without definition under his fingers. She pushed up though, and sighed, and the firmness of her clitoris was a surprise, unexpected, among the impossible tenderness around it.

His fingers frustrated him, they were so callused that he couldn’t feel what he wanted, explore her. Her wriggling as they kissed kept nudging his hand away.

He kissed down her throat, then shoved up her vest, over her breasts. Her nipples were so tight they seemed to gather the whole of her breasts with them, everything swollen and pinkened. She went to take the vest off the rest of the way, but he stopped her.

“Keep it like that.” He remembered her bra twisted under her shirt, the eroticism of her mangled clothing. He liked how the vest rolled on itself and framed her breasts, made her look ravaged already, hastily fucked.

He wished she was wet, or that the morning hadn’t been so cool and that she was sweating and shining, that the clinging bit of pink fabric was darkening with wetness as it got in the way of his hands. So he leaned over and took her nipple in his mouth, the texture startling, her instant response turning his blood so hot he felt nothing but a throb, a clench.

He let his mouth go sloppy, watched her watching him, and he made one breast gleam and redden with the scrapes of his whiskers, then the other. Then she brought her own hands to them, brushing her fingertips around them, breathing through her teeth as she tested how sensitive he’d made them.

“You’re gorgeous,” he said, and she smiled at him, tipped her face up to ask for a kiss.

She tasted familiar, nearly, and sweet. Her hands moved from her breasts to his shoulders, mapping his back, making him aware of how he was curved over her, that the hair at his nape needed trimming but felt fantastic as she rubbed it back and forth.

She tipped a thigh open and he abandoned her mouth to look at it, freckled and corded. He hunched down to kiss it, then he was the one to bring his arms around her hips, hold her flanks in his hands, bury his face in her hip just to feel so much of her skin
against his face.

“Hefin?”

“I’m making my way to the other thing, not to worry.”

She smiled, wide and pretty. Pink and flushed, even over her mons, roses blooming on her belly in splotches, she sat up on her elbows, then reached down and circled herself with her ring finger.

“That’s so lovely,” he said.

“Yeah?”

He watched her circle and tap, her hips hitched in his arms, then he got close and licked through her, feeling all her muscles under his hands tighten, even while her folds opened and yielded. His tongue encountered her finger, still moving, and he joined it, then let her go to take her hand in his and suck her finger into his mouth, massaging over it with his tongue.

“Come up here,” she said.

She curved her body, and he fit into it. She put her hand down around his erection, and when her thumb nudged back his foreskin to skim over the sensitized head he almost shouted but ringed her neck with kisses instead, tasting soap, smelling grass.

Her hand was so gentle and loose around him, just cupping and testing, and it let him stay just ahead of the rich impulse to come, to fill her palm with his slickness while deep into a kiss.

He kept to her neck, and let his fingertips swirl her wetness from her entrance to her firm clit without rhythm, holding them both just short of coming.

“I want to,” she whispered.

“Okay.” He stilled. Closed his eyes tight. Thought
here
. Even as something tight in his chest flew away to
there
.

“Do you want to? I have condoms. Regular color.”

He wanted to. He wanted to nudge inside of her, feel her slide up around him, that indescribable give. Then feel it again, and again.

But he also wasn’t a casual man. Jessica left their flat, and another woman hadn’t entered it. He had come with her to the States because their affair had convinced him of the rest of their lives together.

In fact, this, the cocoon of breaths and touches shared like this, he’d only done with women he had been convinced of.

Here
, he reminded himself.

“Hefin?” She moved to bring them both to their sides, so that they could easily face the other. She hooked her leg around his hips and it was such an unexpected pleasure, to be brought close to her body in just that way, that he closed his eyes and felt a gorgeous sort of comfort, even as his cock beat its impatient pulse along her belly.

“Yes. I want to,” he whispered.

“It’s okay if we just enjoy this. I love this.”

As an answer he took her head in his hands and kissed her like they were starting from the beginning. Let himself get convinced. Realized he had never really needed convincing, not of Destiny.

“The thing is, maybe I’m a bit nervous.”

She traced her finger softly down his arm. “Why is that?”

“I think I’d like to be your personal sex god.” He had meant to lighten things after his withdrawal, his uncertainty, but he realized that yes, he would. For as long as he was given the right to, he would like to be a sex god, just for her.

It seemed like the right sort of goal to have to get through this.

Her laughter was perfect because she hung on to him with her arms and legs in that way that made him feel present. Like he was right here, where he was supposed to be.

When she scooted backward, he went with her, and then he realized she was reaching under the bed. She brought up a box of condoms, very plain and ordinary ones to his relief, and took out one. “Even if I put this on you, it’s just to be careful. We can do anything you’d …”

But he stopped her, interrupted her with his kiss, asserted his kiss as the beginning of his desire to really be her god, over this, over their limbs tangling and their tongues touching, their hands reaching for slick places that ached and ached.

He opened her hand and took the condom, tipped his hips away to open and fit it over himself, loved that she watched him, put her palm to his hip while she did, and when he was finished, she reached down and dragged the tips of her fingers softly over him, and it was a near thing, that gentle touch, it made his control a near thing.

She moved to her back again, but he stayed where he was. “No, like we were.” He wanted her leg over his hips again, to be in a position where they would need to rock together.

He didn’t wait, he took ahold of himself and nudged where she was so wet, had been wet for so long as they played. She bent the leg at his hip even more, then he was inside her without even a thrust, just with the sudden work of their bodies so close together, clasped, then fit together.

Here
, he thought, and then he was. Warmed through, his body working against hers, their breaths exchanging, woven so tight every release of her muscles along her bones contracted his.

Here. In her arms. Destiny in his.

Right there.

Right here.

“No.”

“It would help me out, too.”

“Don’t go there, Des. Please don’t guilt me into this.” Sarah was on her good side, on her sofa, an afghan their mom had made bundled around her.

Des had tried to see her on Sunday after Hefin had left, and all through the first part of the week, but Sarah held her off.

Carrie had Des visiting satellite branches to do a survey of their site-page needs, and between that and taking Rennie and his friends to after-school stuff and hauling some items to Sam and Lacey’s clinic in the limo and putting together a Web portfolio of her own to send to friends for some ideas, this was the first time anyone had gone to see Sarah in days.

She looked terrible.

She was pale, not as pale as when she had reacted to the fentanyl, but her skin looked greasy and gray. She had obviously not washed her short dark hair, which was normally as glossy as a seal’s and framed her unusual eyes.

Sarah, though a tomboy from the start, was always beautiful. Like their mom, who even in snapshots always looked a little like a celebrity.

The whites of Sarah’s eyes looked strange, almost too white, like they were made of glass or painted. Sarah kept brushing her hands over the sides of the cushions, and all of her nails were different lengths, all of them ragged. Her hands were stained with muted, transparent colors, like watercolor paint or markers.

Des leaned over and brushed over the marks. “What’s this?”

“Ink. You know Marnie?”

“Yeah. She has that T-shirt place, right? Are you helping her screen shirts again?”

“No, she opened a letterpress last year, it’s what she’s actually apprenticed in. She’s been printing on her own, but has been swamped lately with summer wedding jobs. I’ve been helping her because I’d like to partner with her, once I’m more recovered.”

Des kept tracing the splashes of ink, her stomach tight. “Is that why you crashed today? You’ve been helping her all week?”

“I just need to rest a bit, get weight off of my hip and leg.”

Des looked at her sister. Who was totally lying. About what, she didn’t know. She grabbed the edge of the afghan, focusing on a rainbow granny square, had a sudden flash of her mom crocheting in front of the television. “Let me see, Sarah.”

“No,” said Sarah, but there was no strength in it.

Des pulled the afghan away. Sarah was wearing a pair of Sam’s old track pants from high school, the waistband folded multiple times and the drawstring cinched. Des picked at the knot and loosened them, and pulled the loose pants down over Sarah’s hip, her hands shaking.

And then her stomach bottomed out and her eyes blurred with tears.

“Oh
Sarah
.”

Sarah tensed. “It looks worse than it is, I swear.”

Des looked at the angry red scar that traveled from her bikini area up over the flare of her hip and down her leg. It didn’t look totally closed in places, and the openings looked like swollen red suckers, like from a tentacle. The worst was that Des had uncovered a surgical drain—a clear tube sutured into one of the scar’s openings connected to a little plastic bulb filled with what looked like blood and pus. Sarah hadn’t had drains since her last surgery. Des gently touched it, and Sarah hissed.

“Why do you …”

“It’s not a big deal. It’s just that between the PT and trying to do a few things, not even that much, and all the surgeries, the scar’s kind of fucked. I got this abscess and …”

“Oh my God, Sarah. I remember that your surgeon said that an abscess was a big complication. That it meant things weren’t healing, and the abscess could turn into one of those things, a fist …”

“Fistula,” Sarah supplied, and closed her eyes.

“Right. And then get into the joint. This is bad. I don’t understand. Does Sam …”

“Don’t. Just don’t, Des. Look. I see my surgeon. He knows. I’m on crazy heavy-duty antibiotics. My lab work shows I’m a little low on protein, it’s probably why I’m not healing, and so …”

“You look a little low on everything, Sarah.” Des couldn’t help it. Sarah’s arms and legs looked almost fragile, she had dropped so much weight. Burnsides were always thin, but Sarah was bordering on emaciated, her skin tight, her color wrong. Sarah had always been so active that her body had curved out in lean muscles, and like Des and
their mother, had hips and an ass. But Sarah looked fragile. Tiny, instead of compact and strong.

“I know. I
know
.” Sarah yanked up the pants and pulled the afghan back over. “It just takes a lot of calories to heal and get around and it’s hard to get them in. I just need to up my protein.”

Des looked at the coffee table where there was a half-empty glass of orange juice and part of a dry-looking energy bar inside its wrapper. “Is this the kind of stuff you’re eating?”

“You sound like Sam.”

Des clenched her fists. “Sarah. Jesus fucking
Christ
, Sam’s a doctor. A doctor! If I sound like him, then I’m really upset, because that means you’re getting actual medical advice to take better care of yourself.”