Meant For Me (11 page)

Running my thumb over her bottom lip I murmured, “You’re so gorgeous. But I’m sure you hear that all the time.”

She shook her head.

“Then I’ll just have to say it constantly.” Leaning over her I kissed her cheek next to her ear. “You’re gorgeous.” Kissed her eyelid. “You’re gorgeous.” Kissed the corner of her mouth. “You’re gorgeous.”

Chloe shivered. Her hand settled on my waist and slid under my shirt. Using my left hand, I pulled it off over my head and let it drop in a ball on the blanket next to us. The hungry and curious look on her face did things to me, made my control waver. But I lay there for a minute, watching her expression as she explored my chest with her small hands. She traced the patterns of my tattoos and moved her finger along the outlines of my muscles. A few years ago I’d had the six pack abs. Now they were less defined and I regretted my laziness. But Chloe seemed to appreciate my body and we both jerked a little when she stroked down over my shorts and found my cock. I wasn’t sure if it was intentional or not, but I was hard and she was very much aware of that now, if she hadn’t been before.

Her breath caught. I covered her hand with mine and stopped whatever it was she thought she was going to do. “You can check that out later.” I pushed her onto her back and moved one hand to either side of her shoulders so that I was over her, invading her space. She blinked up at me, fingering my necklace dangling between her small breasts. “You’re gorgeous.”

Then I kissed her and it was the sweetest, sexiest kiss I’d had in a long ass time. She twined her hands around my neck, strained up towards me, her mouth eager and moist and silken beneath mine. We kissed again and again, her lips falling open as I teased at her with my tongue and I wanted this, all of it, but more. I wanted the moment to go on and on, never end, that delicious oblivion, the ocean waves crashing over the shore below us, her soft sounds of passion arousing as hell. But I wanted more too, and I cupped her tit, teasing her nipple between my fingers. She arched her back into my touch in approval.

Her leg shifted to cover my thigh so that she drew our bodies tight together and I could feel the heat between her legs and my mouth watered as I kissed her deeper, harder, stroking my tongue over hers. “What are we doing?” I asked, my roaming hand finding her ass and gripping that tightness I’d been fascinated with since I’d first seen her walk away from me. “This is dangerous.”

The thing about random hook ups was when you started drunkenly making out with a total stranger, there was an assumption of sex. Kissing led to sex. No stopping. No making out just to make out. No teasing extensive dating period where you got there slowly. You skipped all the bases and just drove it home. It was a shift in mentality, totally different from high school and early college, where I had been content to kiss and grope and get there whenever. But I was going back to Orono and yet Chloe wasn’t a random hook up. This wasn’t just getting each other off. But it wasn’t dating either.

I didn’t know what it was.

I didn’t know how far she wanted to take this.

Her response was to untie her bikini top at the nape of her neck so that it fell slack, exposing the majority of her breasts. I guess we were doing that. I still didn’t know what that meant, exactly, but I wasn’t noble enough to be able to resist pulling those tight nipples into my mouth. It was like sucking on a berry, and I had the deep, base satisfaction of hearing her moan low in the back of her throat. Her shorts were so tight I couldn’t get inside them so I stroked her through the denim, her hips lifting to meet my touch.

I wanted her with a desperation I hadn’t felt in years and I untied the back of her bikini so I could rip it fully off of her. Then I tugged at her shorts, yanking them down. The bikini bottoms went with the shorts, a tangled mess that I couldn’t get past her thighs. But that was enough to expose her fully to me and she shivered. Watching her face, I caressed her clitoris with the pad of my thumb and her head fell back in pleasure. When I dipped inside, she was hot and wet and ready for fingers, tongue, cock. Chloe wanted me as much as I wanted her.

I kissed her everywhere while I stroked inside her, teasing over her tits, her nipples, her neck, tasting her mouth, her skin, while I worked her delicate flesh with my finger. When she came, I only knew because she stiffened slightly and I felt the rush of moisture. But otherwise she made no sound. It was both satisfying and frustrating as hell.

When Chloe started undoing my shorts, I sat back for a second, breathing hard. I glanced back at the bonfire, aware that anyone could come strolling down onto the beach and see her naked. With my dick throbbing painfully, I swallowed hard, making sure I was shielding her from view of the partiers. She looked up at me in question.

“Is this what you want?” I asked. “Sex?”

She nodded. Then as if to prove her point, she bent over me, and pulled my junk out of my shorts. The first touch of her mouth on my skin made me groan, fingers burying into her hair. It was clear she wasn’t skilled at giving head, and after a second, I pushed her off, holding her head between my hands. I needed her to understand what was happening. I needed to know she
knew
. “Chloe. What do you want?”

But I wasn’t communicating any better than she was because her expression was one of confusion. “I need to hear you say it.”

She shook her head.

“Shit. I’m sorry, that sounded so fucking rude.” I kissed her softly. “Are you a virgin?”

She hesitated, but then she nodded.

Fuck. Fuck and fuck. I couldn’t do this. We had had zero conversation about what this would mean, about what we were doing. I couldn’t just bang her on the beach, her first time, without knowing what the hell she was thinking.

“We have to go,” I said abruptly, yanking her shorts back up and into place. I crammed my dick into my shorts and zipped.

Her eyes were hurt and I felt a pang of guilt, but holy shit, this was just a big fat fucking no. This needed to not happen. With trembling fingers I reached behind her neck and tied her strings back together. Then did the same behind her back, forcing her to roll over. She just lay there, clothes all jacked up and stared at me.

“What? Don’t look at me like that. We can’t do this. I don’t know what you want, or what you’re expecting. I’m fucking leaving tomorrow, Chloe, and unless you can tell me what you’re thinking I can’t do this.”

She started to reach for her phone to type me some kind of message and I exploded. It was pent up sexual frustration. But it was mostly the frustration that I wasn’t sure I was even getting to know Chloe. It was like trying to date someone who only spoke Greek and I only spoke English. You can’t hear anything about what’s in their head. It’s conjecture. It’s assumption. It was me creating the sound of what I wanted or assumed her thoughts could or should be. It was like creating my own Chloe and that was fucked up.

Totally messed up.

So I grabbed the phone out of her hand and tossed it back down on the blanket. “No! Tell me what you’re thinking.”

It was an asshole thing to demand. I knew she wasn’t staying silent on purpose but I was so frustrated the words just flew out. Her mouth opened, then closed again.

She looked away from me.

That deflated my anger. “I’m sorry.” I drew a finger across her abdomen. “This isn’t the way I want to do this. I want to get to know you better before we have sex. I can’t just fuck you and leave you. It’s not what I want. You deserve better than that.”

Chloe sat up, still not looking at me and fixed her bikini top, making sure the cups covered her breasts. She grabbed her hoodie off the sand, shook it out, and pulled it back on, zipping it all the way up to her neck. Then she zipped her shorts and stood. I watched her silently, not sure what to say. Her jerky and angry motions spoke for her feelings. She yanked hard on the blanket I was still sitting on, forcing me to roll off of it onto the sand.

I stood up too, fishing my shirt off the ground. “Chloe…”

She held her hand up to stop me.

Typing on her phone she shoved it at me. I want to go home.

“Okay. Sure. Of course.” I tried to touch her arm but she jerked away. “Don’t be pissed. You would have regretted this,” I told her, though honestly, I had no clue if that was true or not.

She gave me a scathing glare.

“Why are you pissed at me?” I asked, feeling irritated again.

Well. Maybe because I had insisted the girl who couldn’t talk, talk.

She rolled her eyes and just started walking. I rubbed my jaw. I could smell the scent of her pussy on my fingers and I breathed deeply. I had pretty much totally fucked that up. On the drive home the silence was louder than it should have been given I’d gotten used to her not saying anything. But there were no smiles from Chloe, no laughter, no sparkling eyes. She stared out the window, her body language stiff.

I pulled to a stop in her driveway and touched her knee so she would turn and look at me. “See you tomorrow?”

She shook her head.

“I’m leaving at noon.”

She just blinked at me, stern. Harsh.

“Were you using me to lose your virginity?” I asked, the idea suddenly popping into my head. Maybe she just looking to get laid and I’d wrecked her plans.

Her mouth fell open. Then she just shoved the car door open and started to climb out.

“Hey, wait.” I thought that was a no, but I wasn’t entirely. “What the fuck is going on in your head?” I was being a dick again, but it was frustrating and infuriating. She had to understand that.

Chloe just slammed the door shut.

Totally pissed off, I brought my fist down hard on the steering wheel. It made the horn blare, and Chloe jumped. She shot a censorious look over her shoulder.

Fine. I reversed Aubrey’s car and shot out of the driveway.

On the couch, shirt tugged off, I lay there hot and miserable. The air felt like it wasn’t moving at all, and I had the memory of Chloe shattered beneath me haunting every thought. I watched the videos of her playing piano again, holding my phone up in front of me. At one point, the phone slipped and cracked me square in the nose when it dropped.

The video stopped.

The night went silent.

I texted Chloe and asked to see her before I left. Her answer was simple.

No.

As I dropped my backpack onto the floor before head out to the ferry¸ my sister gave me a hug and one of those long annoying looks.

“What?” I growled at her. I had barely slept the night before and I was cracked out exhausted. Frustrated.

“You’re back to your charming self this morning. Late night?”

We were in the kitchen and she was making herself lunch. I was drinking the coffee that had still been sitting in the pot from her morning brew. It was lukewarm and bitter.

“If you’re hungover I can make you eggs. They always help.”

She didn’t sound judgmental, but I was hyper-sensitive. “I didn’t drink anything last night. I’m just in a bad mood.”

Emma was on her hip and she held the baby while making a sandwich. She gave me an amused look over her shoulder. “Are you sad to leave your new girlfriend?”

Yeah. Some things never changed. Me and Aub would always take delight in giving each other crap. “We kind of had a fight.” I chewed my fingernail.

“What kind of fight?”

“None of your business.”

“I hope you’re not pushing her to have sex or whatever. I think she’s fairly innocent, Ethan.”

I snorted. “We had the opposite problem, trust me. She wanted to bang on the beach and I said it was too soon.”

Aubrey’s eyebrows shot up. “For real? You were the voice of reason?”

That made me smile, just slightly. “I know, right? But the thing is, Aub, I don’t know what she’s thinking because she can’t tell me. So I can’t just nail her without being clear on what it is.”

“So you just want to nail her and make sure she’s knows it’s just a hook up?”

“No. I don’t want just a hook up with Chloe. She’s different.” I meant that. “But I don’t want her thinking that we can have a relationship.”

“Then how is that different from just a hook up?”

“It’s more like a… I care about you but we can’t date. But in the end, I couldn’t do it anyway because even though I want her, I knew it would complicate the shit out of things and her feelings would probably be hurt. So I told her and now she’s pissed at me.” I knew it wasn’t exactly logical. But I couldn’t relegate Chloe to the same category as other girls I’d hooked up with. She was different. Very different. I
liked
her. But it wasn’t like we could date, so what did I do with all of it? Not having sex was the right thing to do, I knew that. I just hadn’t exactly gone about having the conversation in the best way possible.

“She’s probably just embarrassed. She’ll come around. Chloe isn’t a grudge holder.” Aubrey turned with a plate in her free hand and sat down opposite of me at the table. She put Emma into her lap, leaning against her stomach and picked up her sandwich one-handed.

“Do you want me to hold her so you can eat?” I asked. She didn’t seem like she was struggling but it looked awkward.

“Sure.” Aubrey passed the baby to me.

I sat Emma on the table facing me and watched her head loll around and drool drain out of the corner of her mouth. “When do babies learn to contain their drool?”

“I have no idea. When they’re two?” Aubrey shot me a grin. “When are you going to learn to contain your drool?”

Funny. “I’m glad I got to see you. I won’t wait three months to come back again, I promise. It’s kind of cool here on the island.”

“It is. And the locals are charming.” She raised her eyebrows up and down suggestively.

On that note, I figured it was time to go.

Chloe wasn’t answering any of my texts. After a half dozen, I gave up. Now I just sounded desperate and pathetic. She wasn’t going to talk to me. So I went to work in a foul mood and when a customer offered to buy me a shot, I took it. Then I went out after work to the bar down the road and drank some more.

I flirted with a group of girls.