Sheltered (9 page)

She did it on the bus ride home, and while at the kitchen counter, eating a neatly cut sandwich with a glass of milk. She did it until half past six rolled around and both of them departed, and then she tried not to do it in front of the glass doors.

They’d kissed, and he’d said some glorious things about being crazy for her, but that didn’t mean she had to seem like an obsessed maniac. So she waited politely by the dining table instead. Thought random and sick-making things like,
What if he decided not to come today
?
What if he’s been in a bike crash, and the next thing I know about him will be his picture on the news—

Evil Biker Thug Kills Twenty-Two in Massive Freeway Pile-Up.

She swallowed too hard and tried to concentrate on something else. Her clothes, for example. She’d chosen another baggy sweater but something inside had whispered,
Go with a tighter item of clothing
until her stomach had started doing little flips and most of her had just wanted to crush that little voice under her thumb.

He wouldn’t appreciate it if she went with something tighter. He’d just think she was being sluttish and obvious, and if it was her innocence he liked then the whole thing was just doomed.

Though somehow, she suspected that wasn’t the case. It didn’t feel as if he enjoyed her being a naïve idiot at all. It felt as if her lack of surety made him nervous, awkward, not quite able to do whatever he might usually do. She could feel him holding back even during the simplest of things—like looking at pictures that may or may not be naked—and it was this thought that decided the matter.

Plain white t-shirt with pink sleeves it was. And if it kind of made it obvious when her nipples were hard, well…that was okay, wasn’t it? He had to know by now that thinking about him and being around him caused certain things to happen.

Though when she saw herself in the mirror—breasts clearly outlined through the material, two little stiff points poking right out—she almost had second thoughts. She even got as far as the bottom of the stairs, ready to change out of the flimsy thing and into something more decent.

But then she heard his knock, slow and heavy on the glass. And when she turned she could see him through the kitchen archway, waiting and waiting for her to cut her way out of the clingfilm.

She didn’t hesitate.

The problem was, however, that he
did
. At first it didn’t even look as though he wanted to come in. He just stood on the threshold, eyes trained resolutely on her face. Of course she saw them slide downward the moment he thought she wasn’t looking, but seriously—did he think there was something bad about that?

It made her shiver inside, to think of him staring at her breasts. It made her wonder a cavalcade of strange and arousing things, like,
Does it make him hard, when he sees me like this
?
Does he like it, does he like seeing my stiff nipples?

Though naturally such thoughts were followed by less sure ones. After all, she had absolutely no idea if she looked like every other girl. She knew at least that her breasts were bigger than average, and that they didn’t exactly sag around her knees—which seemed like a definite no-no—but what if he liked smaller ones?

What if he preferred them pointier, firmer, less clunky?

By the time she got around to getting him a drink from the refrigerator, she felt like a giant, blockish…
thing
. All clumsy and cumbersome and oh God, her backside probably looked massive with nothing to hang over it. The t-shirt only reached the waistband of her skirt, and although the skirt itself hung long and heavy over her lower parts, she knew he could see her shape beneath it.

“You want apple juice or milk?” she asked, because if she didn’t her mind was liable to send her crazy. Unfortunately, it sent her even crazier when he didn’t immediately answer. “We have cookies too, if you want one. They don’t have anything fun in them like chocolate chips, or even something less fun like raisins, but they taste okay. I mean, if you like dull and gray they taste okay.”

“Evie…”

“Or we have carrot sticks, and yogurt. I could make you—”

“Evie, I don’t want to eat anything. It’s cool. Let’s go sit on the couch and talk.”

She breathed a sigh of relief right into the refrigerator. He wanted to “talk”. The clingy t-shirt was fine, her massive ass was fine, everything was fine. Finally, after a week of waiting, she was going to feel his mouth on hers again and his hands on something hopefully north of her waist and ohhhhh she couldn’t wait.

At last, at last.

Only when they got to the couch, she discovered something rather disappointing. Apparently, when Van said “talk”, he actually meant
talk
. It wasn’t a euphemism for something else. It didn’t have inverted commas around it.

She’d taken her first leap into assuming something filthy in the place of something sweet, and she’d been completely and utterly wrong.

“How was college today?” he asked, and she briefly considered strangling him. People did crimes of passion all the time, didn’t they?

“Great. Professor Dickinson spent two hours explaining how evolution couldn’t possibly have happened. I spent a further two wondering if I actually existed or not.”

She glanced at him, but found to her relief that the corner of his mouth had turned up. On him, that practically constituted raucous laughter.

“Sounds fun.”

“Really? Because it absolutely isn’t.”

“I take it you believe we emerged from the ocean sixty billion years ago.”

“At the very least, I don’t refuse to believe something.”

He seemed to appreciate that answer. She could see it in his expression—as though she’d really started recognizing different things about him now. She knew his various smiles, and could almost make out when her extreme virginity started to panic him.

They were getting…close. Just you know. Not close enough. Not close in the way she wanted to be right now.

“How about your day?” she asked, simply for something to say. Though afterward it struck her that they’d just had the kind of moment married couples had, on coming home from work.

Far from making her uncomfortable, however, the thought made her feel sort of easy and loose. When he stretched his arm out over the back of the couch, she had absolutely no problem resting her cheek against it—like a sort of hug.

Only one that people did casually, after years together.

“I caught a rat the size of a small dog in a saucepan. After that, I spent about four hours sketching random things in my sketch book while my art theory Professor droned on about Warhol. And then I went out and got another tattoo, before coming here.”

Of course she knew the rat comment should have been the one that caught her attention. He’d battled a beast from the bowels of hell with nothing but a cooking utensil at his side—it deserved some acknowledgement.

But she found herself blurting something else out, anyway.

“You got
another
tattoo? Do you even have space left on your body?”

It could have gone terribly. He could have been pissed, and taken it the wrong way. But when he laughed she realized one very important thing—they were past that now.

No misunderstandings. No defensiveness. Just this, this, this.

“Yeah, so I’m addicted. What do you want me to do about it?”

“Addicted? Doesn’t it
hurt
? How can you be addicted to something that hurts so bad?”

His face straightened out a little.

“Easily,” he said, and it didn’t surprise her that all the hairs stood up on the back of her neck. Of course she couldn’t quite tell what they were really talking about now, but it lingered all the same. That idea of being complicit in your own pain. “Here, you want to see?”

He didn’t even need to ask, really. She just waited, patiently, while he tugged up his t-shirt to reveal the thick swirl of black on his side.
Lettering
, she thought—like the one on his wrist. This one was bigger, however, and easier to identify than the thick bar of script just below his hand.

“It’s Latin, right?
Anima
means soul or spirit or heart.”

He paused so long she had to glance up at him, and see what expression was on his face now. But he didn’t seem amused, or like she’d gotten the word wrong. He looked surprised instead. Surprised and faintly unsettled.

“Can you read the rest of it?”

“
Mea
is my. My soul…something something. I think
cum
is
with
,” she tried, but then found herself flushing red.
Cum
meant something else too, and she knew it.

Plus, now that the translation portion of the evening was over she’d started noticing something else. Something pretty obvious and right in front of her—she could see the hair that clearly extended down from his chest to make a rough, dark tangle over his belly. And because he was sitting sort of half-sprawled, his jeans were riding
really
low on his hips.

So low that she could make out darker, thicker hair just above the waistband.

“Close enough,” he said, but he didn’t pull his t-shirt back down. He just sat there like that, half-exposed, while she searched for something else to say.

Of course her mind urged her to make it a subject change. But then, her mind was just as much of a spoilsport as he was when he started talking about going slow and having conversations. Her mind had ruled the roost for too long, and something else was in charge, now.

Something mischievous.

“Do you have any others I can’t usually see?”

A sound came out of him—half-amused, half-not—and he turned his face away. Put a hand up to his mouth, and rubbed over the scratch of stubble there.

“Yeah, but you’re not seeing them.”

“Are they in rude places?”

“We’re not talking about rude places.”

“Are you forbidding me again?”

He let out a frustrated breath.

“No.” He hesitated, then shifted on the couch. “Here. I’ve got one on my back.”

He lifted his shirt again—farther this time. If he’d been facing her she would have been able to see his chest hair, but as it was she had to make do with acres and acres of honey-colored skin. All of it so soft seeming she could hardly control herself.

Would he mind, if she just leaned down and kissed the almost apparent ridges of his spine? She suspected he would, but after a moment of staring and staring at the little black knot he’d had inked in the middle of his back, she stopped trying to control herself altogether.

She kissed him there, open-mouthed and wet. Tasted his warm skin, then licked when he tried to sort of shift away.

It was gratifying that doing so halted him in his tracks. He even made a little sound, sharp and breathless enough to send a spike of pleasure between her legs, and after a second of her doing this naughty thing his hand jerked behind himself, to find the side of her face.

Like maybe he wanted to stop her, but wasn’t quite sure how.

“Evie,” he said. Almost like a warning, really, even though he’d now found his way into her hair. She could feel his fingers threading through the strands, stroking as she licked a wet path up over his spine. Tightening there, when she found the hand he still had on his lifted shirt and kissed that too.

“Okay, enough,” he said, but he didn’t sound sure. And by the time she’d actually dared to suck one of his fingers into her mouth, he’d run said hand from her hair all the way down her back.

She wasn’t even sure how he managed to reach. But he did it, and when she got to his nape, he found the hem of her t-shirt. Pulled on it, just a little bit—almost as though he wasn’t doing anything like it at all.

He wasn’t the kind of guy who tried to undress innocent girls on their parents’ couch.

But he was the kind of guy who told her,
Jesus, your
mouth
when she licked wetly over that tattoo on the side of his neck. The one that looked like the weathered bones of something, bound together to make a shaky crossroads sign.

She wanted to ask him what it was about. The lettering literally spelled itself out, and the knot seemed sort of obvious, but the crossroads could have meant anything. And he’d burned it into such a soft, tender place, too, just below his ear and right where her tongue seemed to feel best.

And she knew it did, because he actually told her. He even pinned her up against his back as he did so, both of his big hands now spanning her back. Most of her sense disappearing down between her legs, to feel him against her and hear him being so filthy suddenly.

“Ohhh that’s good. Fuck you’re greedy. What do you want, huh? Tell me what you want.”

Of course she realized then what she’d done. Put everything into high gear. Jumped everything right over mild petting and tentative making out, to grinding against each other as though the end of the world was coming.

Though the surprising thing was how little she actually cared. Some part of her—some distant part of her, who still enjoyed eating neat sandwiches and talking to Janie—went tense with fear every time he did something that suggested he was a man, with a man’s needs.