Moment of Impact (7 page)

When his thumb rubs against my clit, I practically come undone. Nearly. He presses hard and circles the area around my clit until I’m squirming beneath his touch.

“Gus, I can’t take this. I…” I moan and breathe hard, feeling my body rise and fall with each stroke. My mouth is open as I take in each breath. I can’t take it, but I don’t want him to stop.

He takes his finger out of my vagina and grips my ass with both hands. I fall back flat on the island as his tongue comes down on my clit and teases it, first with light flicks and then a circular motion that drives me wild.

Somewhere in my mind I know my roommates are upstairs and Heather could come back to the house at any time. But I honestly don’t care. I don’t want Gus to stop. I want him to love me with his mouth and take me wherever he wants to take me.

He grips my ass tighter as he suckles on my clit and I feel my whole body begin to split in two. I reach down with one hand and press his head against me, as if that would bring us closer and make the tension build faster. I can’t breathe. As my body rises higher and still higher, I’m only vaguely aware of the moans that are escaping my mouth.

I call his name. “Gus. Please! Please!”

And then white light surrounds me as I climax against his mouth. He doesn’t stop. He keeps me there as wave after wave rocks me. As I’m floating back to reality, I know he’s fumbling with something but I don’t know what. My legs feel heavy and are no longer on his shoulders.

I glance down and I realize he’s taken his cargo pants off and his cock is hard and throbbing next to my crotch. I reach down between us and touch him, causing him to hiss sharply. At first I’m not sure if I’ve hurt him, but then I know for sure that he’s wanting me as much as I want him. It sends another wave flowing through me.

He wastes no time at all pulling me closer to the edge of the island so my ass is only barely sitting on the edge. And then he’s inside me, driving himself deeper with every stroke. I feel myself building again and I can’t take it. I have no strength at all.

With one hand on my legs and the other gripping my breast, Gus drives himself in me harder and then harder still until I can’t take anymore. He throws his head back with the last few strokes and then opens his eyes and mouth wide as if he’s taking his last breath and then moans as he cums inside me. Only then am I thinking about protection. But it’s too late.

Moments later, when Gus is steady and he pulls himself from me do I realize he’d put a condom on before coming inside me. Relief washes over me. I don’t want to feel regret at all. And now I don’t have to.

“Are you okay?” he asks, still breathing heavy.

“I’m perfect.”

He glances down at me and smiles wickedly. “I guess I can either kiss you goodnight now and walk out the door. Or I can lock the door and we can take this upstairs.”

“Don’t lock the door,” I say. His smile collapses. “Heather never remembers her key.”

He laughs with a roll of his eyes.

We pick up out clothes, which we’ve scattered all over the kitchen floor and walk up the stairs naked to my room. We made love until my body ached and fatigue became too much for us to ignore. I fell asleep in his arms, feeling the aches in places where I’d never felt them before. And wanting more.

***

I didn’t wake up alone the next morning. I normally would have jumped out of bed and gone downstairs to do a workout before anyone got up or before going to work. But I wanted to stay right where I was, in Gus’s arms.

He talks in his sleep. Not full words. I can’t make out what he was saying. But he’s been dreaming and talking to someone in his sleep. My curiosity over who it is kept me from falling back to sleep for quite a while. I stay still in his arms and listen to his breathing, feel his body stir against mine, and every so often, I feel his arm wrap around my waist and pull me closer. That is the part I like. Being close.

As sunlight made the bedroom brighter, Gus rolls over on his side facing the opposite direction. I roll over with him and touch the tattoo that covers his back with the tips of my fingers. I couldn’t see it last night. It had been too dark by the time we made our way to my bedroom. But I can see the eagle wings spread wide now. More important than that, I can feel the scars underneath that he used the tattoo to hide.

With a slow sigh, I run my hand over his back. Gus jerks his head up and turns to me, giving me a sleepy-eyed smile.

“I didn’t think I’d be waking up here,” he says.

I can’t help the smile that spreads across my face as I remember the way he’d touched me last night in the kitchen.

“It’s a good thing everyone went to bed early. It would have caused quite a scene in the kitchen.”

I can’t help but giggle at the memory of Gus picking me up and putting me on the island and going down on me. I’d never had oral sex before. I’d never had a lot of things. But it surprised me just how uninhibited I’d felt. And the way I’d responded to him.

“I’ll say. I’m never going to be able to be in your kitchen without thinking of you that way again.”

“I didn’t expect things to turn out this way. Not when I invited you over last night. I mean, I’m glad it happened. I just don’t… Oh, I don’t know what I’m saying. I didn’t think anything was going to happen.”

“Nothing happened,” he says, his face totally serious. And then he chuckles. “Want to do it again? I loved the way you come undone with me. You have no idea what a fucking turn on that is.”

“Yeah?”

“If that is how you cut loose, babe, then I’m all for it.”

“Babe?”

“You don’t like that?”

I shrug. “No one has ever called me babe before.”

“No one?”

I don’t want to talk about other boys. But that’s intimacy. Revealing the things that are painful. I like where me and Gus are right now. He’s with me. He hasn’t disappeared. And I don’t want him to.

I roll on my back and look up at the ceiling. “There was never really any time. I practiced a lot. And when I wasn’t dancing, I was doing school work, or participating in some other activity that my mother insisted I be a part of.”

“You didn’t go out on Saturday night and get fucked up?”

I laugh. “I wish.”

“No.”

The seriousness of his voice makes me turn to him. “No? You mean, you didn’t do that?”

“I did it too much. And it never ended good. It was all bullshit. You’re lucky you missed all that. You stayed focused. That’s why you’re where you are.”

“Where exactly am I? And don’t say on Nantucket.” I chuckle but his face is still serious.

“You’re going places I’m never going to go.”

I frown. “Why would you say that?”

“Because people like me don’t get that lucky. And there’s never been anyone in my life worth following.”

“No one?”

“No one worth remembering or missing. No one who believed in me.”

“I do. I believe in you.”

He hesitates a second and runs his fingers lightly over my exposed breasts. “I know you do. That’s what makes this so scary.”

I roll onto my side again. “Why? It should make you feel good.”

“You don’t know me, Lily. If you don’t believe in me, I can’t disappoint you. I can’t screw up and make us ugly. The last thing I want in this world is to make us ugly. I’ve seen too much of that in my life.”

“There is no way that can happen,” I say, kissing his chest and looking up at him so he will know it to be true. His dark eyes fill with moisture and I swear I can see straight to his soul.

# # #

Gus

It was hard to imagine being with someone who was so different. I hardly know a thing about Lily. In a way, we started out backwards. We skipped the getting to know part and went straight to the fucking. Except, it doesn’t feel like fucking. It’s hot. I can’t deny that. But it’s not the way it used to. Being with Lily is different. Pure, like her. I’d never noticed it before, but there was something exotic about her that I couldn’t put my finger on. At times she looked almost oriental. Her long legs were meant for dancing. Her hair was a medium brown, but it looks like she’s had highlights put in her hair, made lighter from being in the sun so much. So it was probably much darker.

We’d work during the day and then spend the evening in bed. We don’t talk about much except what’s happening today and I like it that way. I don’t want to look back.

Each day we’ve spent together since that first night has been a gift. At the same time, it terrifies me. She woke up this morning wanting to take a walk on the beach before the summer tourists wake up and swarm the beach.

“This is what it’s like when I walk to Scooners,” she says, holding my hand as she digs her toes in the sand. “Quiet. Peaceful.”

“Do you make good money there?”

“The tips are great. But I leave there smelling like French fries and eggs just about every day. Don’t say you haven’t noticed.”

I laugh because I know exactly what she means. “My first job was a dishwasher at an Italian restaurant. I ended up wearing a lot of spaghetti sauce by the end of the night.”

We walk about twenty feet in silence and then I ask, “You look like your Chinese or something.”

She glances at me quick and smiles. “Hawaiian. My mother is half Hawaiian.”

“Yeah? What’s the other half?”

She chuckles. “Irish. My father make me even stranger. He’s Swedish. What about you?”

I shrug. I knew the question was coming, but I don’t like talking about myself the way some people do.

“I’m a mutt.”

“A mutt?”

“So they say.”

“Who is they?”

The tide is coming in and the surf is spreading over the dry sand we’d been walking on.

I squeeze her hand in mine and it gives me a measure of comfort. “I lived in a lot of places. In a lot of homes.”

“Yeah?”

“Families who got paid to keep me there.”

She stops walking and looks up at me. Her eyes are sad and her smile is gone. I hate that. I don’t want to talk about myself anymore. How the fuck can I ever keep the past where it belongs without it ruining the present? Every day I wait for the impact. That moment when the good will get ruined by the bad. It always happens. I don’t know anything else. I don’t want it to ruin us.

But Lily isn’t moving. She doesn’t say anything except with her eyes. She’s waiting, digging her toes in the wet sand and then packing it down again.

“What do you want to know?” I finally ask.

“Everything.”

“The summer will be over before I get to everything.”

She gives me a hint of a smile. “We have the summer.”

I take a deep breath of salty sea air and look out at the ocean. It rolls and swells and comes into shore and then back out to sea a million times a day. A different pattern but the same motion. That was my life. A storm of waves that crashed against the rock and then retreated only to do the same thing over and again.

“My mom was a heroin addict. She died when I was two.”

She squeezes my hand. “That’s awful.”

“I don’t remember her. I lived with my dad until I was about eight and then he got arrested for dealing. He was her supplier. He shot her up the night she died.”

“Where is he now?”

“Still in prison. I think I’ll be about thirty-five when he finally gets out. I haven’t seen him since I was eight though.”

“These families you lived with…”

“Foster homes. Lots of them. Some of them were decent. But I was a handful. It was a lot for them to take. So when I wasn’t living there, I was in juvie.”

I tug her arm. I don’t want to stand still. I need to keep moving as if that will put all this talk behind me.

“Who is Edmond? I mean, I know you said he was your parole officer, but it seems strange that a parole officer would want you to stay with a member of his own family.”

“Edmond isn’t like the others. He’s…kind of like a big brother, I guess. He’s hard on me. He gives me shit straight and doesn’t sugar coat it. The last time I got arrested for assault…” I glance at her and add, “Without a weapon.”

“That’s good to know.”

“He told me if I didn’t do what he said I’d end up like my dad, spending my life in prison.”

“That was enough to make you change?”

“No. It was an eye-opener though. Thing is, I got into a lot of fights. Edmond gave me a lot of shit about abandonment and stuff. I guess maybe he’s right. He said I was trying to get someone’s attention and I had his, and he was going to set me straight. I fought him hard for a while. But he gave the judge my sob story and convinced him that he’d be my guardian and make sure I stayed straight.”

“Wait? You’re how old?”

“Twenty-four.”

“You don’t need a guardian. You’re of age. You can do whatever you want.”

I shrug. “Tell that to Edmond. He convinced the damned judge to let him be my guardian until my parole was over. If I keep my nose clean, as Edmond puts it, then I stay out of jail.”

“Who did you assault?”

“It doesn’t matter. Some guy who probably looked at me wrong. I don’t remember because I was pretty drunk. But I knocked his teeth out and he stabbed me.”

“Is that how you got the scars?”

“You mean the ones on my back? No. I got whipped by one of my foster fathers. He didn’t like the fact that I was ten minutes late coming home from school. The bus got a flat tire and they had to get a new bus to pick us up. But he didn’t care. He was waiting for his dinner and I made it go cold. So he took off his belt and started hitting me with it. Buckle side.”