Ruin Me (9 page)

Patrick laps me as my legs twitch and relax. His fingers start to thrust again, deep. His eyes are on me, on whatever cruel invitation is spread out before him like a flapping red bullfighter’s cape.

I tug at his hard shoulders, desperate. “Let me make you come.”

Obediently he stands and ditches his shorts and joins me on the couch, hips settling between my thighs. I see his hand trembling when he guides his cock to my pussy and sweeps his head over my lips. The guttural sounds he makes intoxicate me all over again. He runs it up and down, over and over, and not just gentle strokes. Dangerous ones. His head is thick, shining with my juices, sliding and stroking and teasing and threatening. His stomach muscles clench in time with the motions, giving me a glimpse of how he’d look, really fucking me. Then his eyes meet mine and the gleam in them feels a hundred times more forbidden than what’s going on between our bodies.

“Tell me to and I’ll do it.” His voice is gruff and tight and he means it.

“I can’t.”

“Why’d you come here tonight?” That question again, impossible to answer. The expression on his face is wounded and scared. It breaks my heart. He never wanted to be the kind of man who’d ever sleep with someone else’s girl, but I’m making him that way. I’m making him want that so hard it must ache. He pushes against me, just a little. Not quite penetrating, but showing me how it might feel if he did.

“I don’t know why I came here,” I say. “I just had to.” I stare at his body, awed. It’s hard to explain, but when I look at him everything feels right. Everything feels like
enough
.

“It’s terrible that I’m here,” I add, grasping at a little scrap of sanity. “We shouldn’t have sex…but let me suck you off. I’m allowed to do that.” In theory, anyhow. Not that I think Jay would be so keen right now, considering he’s surely pacing the kitchen, reaching my voicemail, wondering or worrying what’s happened to me while our dinner grows cold.

Patrick stops teasing my pussy and settles back on his knees, stroking himself. “How do you want me?”

I think a moment. Part of me wants to be on my knees, him in charge. But no. “Can we go to your room?”

He stands and I follow him to his bed.

“Lie on your side,” I say, and he does. I lie down the other way, face at his waist, thighs by his head, knees on the pillows. I want as much of our bodies touching as possible when I do this, all the contact I can get. His breathing’s heavy and I feel his stomach swelling and contracting against my breasts, and I think I can even feel his heart beating against my belly. I push one hand beneath his hip and take his cock in the other. He tastes like me when I slip him into my mouth.

“Robin.” He forces an arm under my body so he can hold my ass with both hands. I hadn’t intended it but I certainly don’t protest when he drapes my leg over his shoulder and I feel his tongue on my pussy again. It isn’t like before—he’s not trying to get me off. This is for him, a complement to what I’m doing to his body. I feel his nose against my lips as he suckles my clit and he makes loud, hungry noises. He breaks away to say, “Suck me, Robin. Suck me. Make me come.”

His cock is heavy and intimidating and wonderful, the first couple inches filling my mouth. I fondle his balls, gently squeezing and pulling. I free my mouth to say, “Tell me what you need, Patrick.”

“Just suck me. Hard.”

I leave his balls to wrap my hand firmly around his base. I slip his head in my mouth and take him, aggressive.

“Fuck, yeah.” His hands clamp tight around my flesh. “Just like that.” His tongue laps me in long strokes and I know it’s about him tasting me, not about my next orgasm. I love that thought, that he wants this for his own pleasure and I shiver, imagining him as a ravenous, greedy beast.

I feel when he’s close. His hips move—tiny, involuntary jerks that beg me for more. I keep stroking and sucking and do my best to take what he gives me when he starts to thrust. His mouth abandons my pussy and he fills the room with his moans and pleas.

“Don’t stop. Don’t stop.”

I wouldn’t dream of it. I taste more of his pre-come and on a primal level it’s the most addictive flavor I’ve ever experienced. His smells are all around me, his frantic energy, these intimate parts of him right here in front of me.

“Oh yeah,” he groans. “Yeah. Don’t stop. Please. Robin.”

His hips thrust and freeze a moment and I taste the first spurt. Another thrust, another taste, again and again until he’s empty. I swallow everything he gives me and lave his cock as his body relaxes.

“God, Robin.” He sounds delirious and I feel giddy. I extract myself from his grasp and flip around to lie against him, chest to chest. He grabs me around the waist and pulls me on top of him, knocking out my breath. We kiss for a minute or two—light, fond kisses.

As the euphoria wears off it feels obscene, reveling in this post-sex haze with him. I glance at his bedside clock—five minutes of seven. I’m usually home by six fifteen, plenty of time to hang out with Jay while he finishes the dinner prep. “I need to go soon.”

I feel very cold again, very suddenly. I roll gracelessly off Patrick and pad to the bathroom. It’s odd, his bathroom. Really clean, so bare and white it’s nearly like a hotel. A razor and shaving cream, toothbrush and paste on the sink, a bar of soap and a bottle of shampoo in his shower stall. A stick of deodorant and a nearly empty prescription bottle in the medicine cabinet. I glance at the label—nothing scandalous, just scrip-strength pain reliever.
Patrick J. Whelan, 14 Fencroft Drive, Dereham, Vermont. Take up to four times daily for muscle aches.

I quit my snooping and stalling and get myself tidied up. I walk through the living room past where Patrick is finishing dressing, tugging on his socks. I feel his eyes on me through the kitchen threshold as I get my clothes on. When I finish he comes over to me, puts his hands on my shoulders and stares me straight in the eyes.

“I know you’re not supposed to be here.”

I shake my head.

“If you get home and all hell breaks loose, you can always come back here to stay. But if he takes it okay, I think maybe we shouldn’t talk until we’ve both had a week or more away from each other.”

“That’s probably wise,” I say.

“I shouldn’t have come by your work, just like you shouldn’t have come here. So let’s not talk until at least next weekend. Why don’t you call me if you see fit? Or don’t call if you think that’s better.”

I nod. He lets me give him a quick hug and a kiss on his stubbly jaw. He walks me to the door and holds it open.

“Have a nice holiday,” he says.

“You too. Happy Thanksgiving.”

Chapter Five

I feel near to vomiting as I turn the knob to the side door of the house. I’m not afraid of Jay’s anger, but I’m shaking, petrified of the pain I might see on his face. I checked my phone in the car before I left Patrick’s and he’d called three times. Two messages.

“Hey, lady. It’s six forty. Did you go to Italy to get that olive oil?” Shit. I forgot about that.

Then, “It’s almost seven. Give me a call so I know everything’s okay.”

I push the door in and there he is. Jay. Jeans and a button-up sweater. Jay’s one of those rare, slender, modern men who can make a cardigan seem hip. He’s stirring pasta sauce in a pan by the stove, looking as though it’s all he’s done in the last hour. He must have heard the car when I pulled in. The fact that he doesn’t stop stirring to hug me says he came to the right conclusion about my whereabouts.

“Hey, you.” Still stirring. “Where have you been?”

I had the whole drive to think up a lie and I think it’s some meager sign of redemption that I didn’t. I meet his eyes. “I’m sorry. I stopped by Patrick’s on the way home.” “Stopped by” in this case meaning I drove clear to the far side of town.

Jay’s expression goes blank. “Oh,” he says, and keeps on stirring.

I shrug my coat off, sure that I’m sending a huge cloud of enemy-male scent wafting in his direction.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I should have called. And I forgot the oil.”

His hazel eyes look grayish-yellow tonight and distrustful. “I see.”

I’m not sure what else I can say. I’m very good at admitting when I’m wrong but this isn’t like stranding Jay with inadequate toilet paper or shrinking his sweater. There’s nothing I can offer that will fully express how far off the deep end of wrong I’ve plunged.

“Did you guys…” He trails off.

I shake my head. “Nothing you said we couldn’t.” If barely. “But I should have called to ask. I don’t know what to say. I did it without thinking.”

“You knew I’d be here, waiting and making dinner. Expecting you.”

“I know.”

He looks down, at my knees or something behind me. “That’s pretty shitty, Robin. I’m pretty fucking pissed.” You have to really know Jay to spot the signs that back this statement up. I know all of them. His ears are pink and there are tight lines beside his lips. His voice sounds flat. His eyes look dull and they won’t meet mine anymore.

“Would you like me to leave or go in a different room?” I realize I’m wringing my hands and will them to be still.

“Dinner’s ready,” he says. “Why don’t you eat in here and I’ll take mine in and watch the game.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t really want to talk to you right now, but I’ll let you know when I do.”

“What do you think about tomorrow? Should we still go?”

Suddenly, Jay laughs. Not a big laugh, but a genuine one. “I’m not going to break up with you, Robin. We’re still getting up at five and driving to Michigan. If I’m still pissed, it could be a long-ass thirteen hours.”

“Okay.” I want to hug him so badly. It’s strange how only a half-hour ago Patrick felt like the entire world. Now that I’m here, Jay is the only man I can imagine. “I’ll be in here then.”

“If I don’t speak to you before I head up,” he says, “you should still come to bed. Just don’t talk to me, if you can help it.”

I nod. I dawdle in taking off my shoes and scarf, creating plenty of time for Jay to get his dinner and leave the room. I walk to the stove. Marinara sauce with big slices of chicken sausage. The linguine look sticky and gluey, overcooked and in need of oil. I hope dinner tastes so bad that I can’t eat it since I probably deserve to go hungry. But I will eat, because not eating would be a willful display of self-punishment and Jay hates theatrics. He meant what he said. He doesn’t want to talk to me right now. Everything else can go on like normal.

Like normal.

I stare at the pans a long time. I know I’m going to do the dishes like normal after dinner, but I bet I’ll do a better job than I ever have before in my whole life.

* * * * *

Jay did talk to me before we went to bed that night. We didn’t have a discussion, but when he came into the kitchen to drop his dish in the sink, he stopped behind where I was sitting at the table and put his hands on my shoulders.

“I always knew this whole idea was crazy,” he said softly. “But tonight was the first time when I couldn’t recognize you during all this.”

I held my tongue, feeling his fingers gently squeezing and releasing as he thought. “I’ve been really good about what you need.”

“Yes,” I said. “You’ve been amazing.”

“You really let me down tonight. I would have said it was okay, if you’d just asked me. It really fucking hurts that you didn’t.”

I nodded.

“Am I losing you, Robin?”

Maybe.
“No.”

Jay sighed, long and mournful. “I don’t really want to talk about it anymore,” he said. “Let’s sweep it under the rug and get on with everything.”

“I’ll never do that again,” I promised him. “And I don’t think I’ve ever felt so horrible in my whole life. I’m so, so sorry I hurt you.”

God, I was. I still am. There’s a danger when you’re with someone who loves you enough to forgive you and you know that about them. I’d never exploited that aspect of our relationship before—never did something bad because I knew Jay would eventually forgive me. And I didn’t mean to do that, Tuesday night with Patrick. I went there as if under a spell. I feel utterly humbled, having accidentally abused my power. Over both of them.

Thanksgiving went as it always does. We had a couple lovely meals and played board games and took long walks with Jay’s parents and his younger sister. Jay treated me as he always does, both in their company and when we were alone. The only thing different was that we didn’t have sex.

Penitent or not, I thought about Patrick a lot when we were in Michigan. I thought about how lonely I suspect he is. I thought about him pulling up to his mom’s house and seeing piles of stuff looming behind the garage windows, or whatever evidence of her hoarding might be visible. I imagined him sitting in his truck with the engine running, refusing to go inside. I pictured him having a frustrating holiday and then driving back to Dereham to his cold house all alone, sleeping in his cold bed. A couple times I pictured him lying on that bed, jerking off, thinking of me, but I caught myself and pushed the image from my brain.

Presently I look up from my crossword at the smell of burning ginger.

“Fuck!”