Love Me for Me (9 page)

But when someone like him wanted me, how was I ever supposed to say no?

Chapter Six

I knocked on Alex’s front door, then hugged my arms to myself as I waited for him to answer. I was cold, had been cold ever since I’d replaced the razor in my makeup bag.

I knew just how I was going to warm myself up.

“Hey.” I almost swallowed my tongue when he opened the door. His hair was wet, grey sweatpants hung low on his hips... and his chest was bare, still beaded with water from his shower.

His entire torso, the long, lean muscles of it, was bared to my view. I could see his tattoos, the intricate swirling arcs of them, and if I squinted, could make out the tiny puckers that were his scars.

“Serena?” His face showed no judgment, though I knew I looked a little bit wild. My ponytail had nearly fallen out, the loose strands snarled around my face. I was wearing the torn blue jeans I’d had on for a Saturday night in. My T-shirt was old and bore the faded logo of the yoga studio back home.

I could feel the intensity in my eyes as I looked him up and down.

“Hey. Are you okay?” Slowly, silently, I stepped into his apartment. Deliberately I shut the door behind me, then toed off my sneakers.

“I am now.” Rising onto my tiptoes, I clasped his upper arms in my hands. He jolted at their chill, but other than that remained still, watching me steadily.

“Kiss me.” I wouldn’t have asked, but I couldn’t reach him unless he dipped his head.

Though he looked like he wanted to ask me what was going on, he did as I asked. Bending, he brushed his warm, moist mouth over my cold, dry one.

The connection was electric, sparking to life inside of me and making everything bright.

“Yes.” I hissed the word, twining my arms around his shoulders. He inhaled sharply when I pressed my body against his, and I felt his erection harden against the soft skin of my belly.

“More.” I pushed my mouth on his, demanding a harder kiss. His hands splayed over my back, tracing my shoulder blades as his tongue licked over the seam of my lips, then dipped inside to sweep over my teeth.

When the kiss ended, our combined breath was ragged and quick.

“Tell me what’s wrong.” His hands never stopped moving, tracing the ribbon of my spine as I moved restlessly in his arms. Though I felt his body stiffen whenever I brushed against his erection, he made no move to press it into me.

Made no move to take advantage of me when I was feeling vulnerable.

I buried my face in his chest and shook my head.

“Please.” My voice was a whisper, my fingers pressing into the solid muscles of his biceps. “Please. I need you to wash it away.”

Frustration filled me as he slid his hands from my back to my arms, pulling me back far enough that he could look down into my face. His eyes roamed over me for a long, restless minute, as if he was trying to reach inside of me, find out what made me tick.

“Serena. I can’t do this when you’re so obviously upset.” His expression was firm.

My stomach rolled. I’d come to him for comfort, just like I’d gone to all those boys in high school. But he was more to me than a faceless body.

He deserved an explanation. Or at least part of one.

“I... I just talked to my mother.” I couldn’t hide the distaste that colored my words. “I—we really don’t get along.”

“Lots of people don’t get along with their parents.” He placed a finger under my chin, lifted my face towards him so that I couldn’t hide.

He wasn’t going to let me get off that easily, a fact for which I both thanked and cursed him.

“I’ll never go back there.” My words were flat, and tasted stale on my tongue.

“Why?” He asked. I sank my teeth deeply into my tongue to stop the flood of words that wanted to come. I looked up at him, eyes wide, mouth firmly closed.

“All right.” He said finally, and I saw the wary acceptance in his eyes. I’d given him something, at least, and though he couldn’t possibly have known it, it was more than I’d ever given anyone.

I shivered and waited. He had to make the next move. I had to know that he really wanted me.

“No sex.” I blinked, startled, as he spoke. His face was fierce and resolute.

“I—don’t you want me?” I appreciated what he was trying to do, but I couldn’t help being a bit hurt.

He laughed then, a great roar of sound that took me off guard. He looked down, and I followed his stare, sucking in a breath when I saw what he was gesturing to.

“Wanting you isn’t the problem, Serena.” That, I thought, was quite obvious.

“Then what is?” If I admitted it to myself, I was a bit relieved at the boundary he’d set. I was no virgin, that was for sure, but Alex...

Alex was different.

“You’re not ready.” He bent, and the kiss was whisper light, a tease more than anything.

I sighed, reaching up to run my fingers through his hair.

Then my mouth was crushed under his, and my legs were around his waist. I moaned as he lifted me right off of my feet, his hands cupping my ass through the torn denim.

I twined my arms around his shoulders as he carried me down the hall of his little apartment.

The room he brought me into was dark, full of undulating shadows cast by the artificial lights outside. I sighed when he lowered me onto a bed, turning my cheek to press it into a pillow that smelled like him.

“Can I turn on a light?” His voice was husky, and I shifted restlessly as he scraped rough palms over the band of skin between my T-shirt and jeans. “I want to see you.”

“No. Please.” I was feeling vulnerable enough. I couldn’t, just couldn’t, deal with explaining my scars, not after what I’d almost done tonight.

There was a pause, a silence, and his hands stopped moving. I shifted restlessly, needing to feel his touch on me, burning the pain away.

“All right.” I cried out when he pulled me to the edge of the bed, bending my knees so that my feet were digging into the border of the mattress.

Bending over me, he lowered his mouth onto mine in a slow, drugging kiss. He traced a path down the line of my jaw and into the hollow of my collarbone.

When his hand slid up beneath the worn cotton of my T-shirt I shivered. He paused, his lips moving to my ear, where he nipped at the lobe.

“Do you want the shirt to stay on?” Wordlessly I nodded, but instead of removing his hand as I thought he would, he continued his exploration, but kept the shirt as a barrier between his eyes and my skin.

“Oh.” Reaching behind my back, he unhooked my bra, then filled his palms with my breasts. A wave of heat liquefied me from the inside out as he toyed with the distended flesh of my nipples.

My hands scrabbled on the soft fabric of his quilt, finally finding purchase in the elastic waistband of his sweats. His hissed out a breath when my fingers stroked over the flat planes of his stomach, his hipbones.

His hands stroked down my torso, finding my waistband as well. My breath caught in my throat when he toyed with the button of my jeans.

“Is this okay?” Nerves were a million tiny needles jabbing at my skin, waking up my every nerve ending.

Slowly I nodded, then realized that he couldn’t see me in the dark.

“Yes.” My voice sounded rusty, as if I hadn’t used it for days. “Yes. That’s okay.”

I realized with a start that I wasn’t lying. I wanted this. I wanted him to take me as far as he would, even if that didn’t involve full sex.

I flattened my hands over my stomach as he pulled the button through his hole. The zipper moving through its tracks was a metallic rasp, and one of the most painfully erotic sounds I’d ever heard.

Wordlessly, I lifted my hips as he pulled the snug denim down my legs and off.

Then he knelt between my legs, one of my feet on each side of his shoulders. He pressed a soft kiss to the inside of one of my thighs, and I almost rocketed off the bed at the sensation.

“I have to taste you.” Chill bumps rose on my flesh, then disappeared in a feverish heat. “Will you let me?”

Oh God. Oh God.

“Yes.”

I cried out when he pressed a kiss between my legs, through the cotton of my panties. And then my world went bright, sensation my only reality as he used his mouth on me, pulling my underwear to the side.

“I want to hear you come.” His voice was raspy, the fingers of his free hand digging into the soft skin of my thigh. “I want it so bad.”

His words cut through the hot haze in which I was floating. The pleasure that had coiled tightly inside of me loosened, and I tensed around his lips.

“I—I don’t think I can.” I could hear the shame in my voice. I shook my head from side to side on the bed, trying to dislodge the memory of another voice.

I’m going to make you like it.

“I’m sorry.” Tears thickened my throat as, slowly, Alex removed his lips from the space between my legs and smoothed my panties back into place. “I—I want to, I just—”

I was a fucking cock tease.

“It’s okay.” He pressed another of those soft kisses to the inside of my thigh, then one to my belly as he moved back up my body. My bent legs pressed into his sides as he moved me backwards on the bed, ranging himself over top of me. I felt the coarseness of his pants abrading my sensitive, naked skin.

“Do you want to stop everything, or just that?” His lips brushed mine as he whispered, and my pelvis arched into him despite myself.

“Aren’t you mad?” This close I could see his face, though it was full of shadows in the dim room. His lids were at half mast, his eyes intent on me, but nothing about his expression said that he was upset with me.

“Of course not.” He frowned as if I’d shocked him. “Why would I be?”

I barked out a laugh; I couldn’t help it. He eyed me quizzically, then groaned when, tentatively, I worked my hand between our bodies, into the elastic waist of his sweats, where I took him in my hand.

“I don’t want to stop.” I said. He thrust forward into my grip, growling into the curve of my neck.

That same uncertainty washed over me when, with a pained groan, he caught my wrist in his fingers and removed my hand from his pants.

“If you do that, I’m not going to be able to stop.” His voice was pained, and I couldn’t help feeling a bit pleased that I was the one who was making him feel that wait.

“Okay.” I bit my lip, lying still beneath him. “Do we... do we have to stop everything?”

I yelped when he nipped at my neck, then kissed his way back up to my lips.

“No.” His voice was as breathless as mine, and I smiled against his mouth. “No, we don’t.”

***

Alex snored.

I couldn’t help but find it amusing that this prefect creature had a flaw. My shoulders shook silently with laughter as I slid from the bed, picked my jeans up off the floor and stepped into them.

The amusement faded when I stepped back to the bed for a last look. He’d drifted off shortly after we’d stopped fooling around, one arm around me, the other behind his head as he lay on his back. In truth, I’d been somewhat relieved.

Alex awake demanded all of my energy, my attention, just by being who he was. Asleep he was still gorgeous, but the animation that made him so enticing while awake slept with him, allowing me a chance to breathe.

I reached out a hand and stroked it over his arm, frowning when my fingers found the texture of his scars. Biting my lip, I bent and switched on the small lamp that sat on his bedside table.

He grumbled a bit, still asleep, and flung an arm over his eyes as the buttery golden light warmed the room. Then he relaxed back into sleep, allowing me a chance to look at him.

His sweatpants were still on—they’d never come off, though they hung a little lower now than they had earlier. The sheen of sweat from our encounter was drying on his skin, leaving behind a musky smell that even now was driving me wild.

But what I really wanted to do right now, while he was asleep and his eyes weren’t on me, was to look at his scars.

Kneeling beside the bed so that I was at eye level with the arm not draped over his eyes, I bent until I was only an inch away from his skin.

Up and down the sides of his waist, and on the parts of his arm that would have been fleshy if they weren’t so toned, I saw dozens of tiny red dots, each about the size of the head of a needle. I was pretty sure these were from his insulin injections, the shots he had to give himself at least three times a day.

The scars I’d noticed the other night were bigger than that. I had to look closely to find them, since they were so skillfully covered by his ink.

But there they were. One, two... eleven, twelve. I counted a dozen on his right arm, and I imagined there were more on his left, and his back.

What had made those? A cigarette? A laser? Large sparks? No way had his injections, or his finger pricks, caused these.

I wouldn’t tell him about my past, and so I certainly couldn’t ask him about his. But the fact that he had them...

That the ink was overtop told me that he’d deliberately chosen to conceal them. He too had secrets that he didn’t want the world to know. In the end that may not help us, but for now...

For now it made me feel like I wasn’t alone.

***

“You left.” My phone rang just as I entered my room. Kaylee was still out, so I didn’t bother to keep my voice down.

“I did.” My voice trembled as I slipped out of my sneakers, my jeans, and into my pajama pants.

My skin felt swollen, sensitive, in all of the places that he’d kissed and touched.

“Hmm.” He didn’t sound surprised, and I frowned as I pulled back my covers and slid into my bed.

“Well. I’m back at my dorm. I got back fine.” I assumed that that was why he was calling.

“You left before I could ask you something.” With the lights turned out, and my cheek on the pillow, I could almost pretend that he was here, in my bed, with me.

“What’s that?” I didn’t have to whisper, but I did anyway.

“I need a date.” I stiffened; though we’d hung out several times, this was the first time that either of us had used the
d
word.

“I think we just had one.” He snorted out a laugh, and I couldn’t help but giggle along with him.