The Thrill of It (29 page)

He eyes me greedily, drinking me in as if he’s desperate for what’s next.

“I want you, Harley. I want to sleep with you. I want to make love to you,” he says, breathing out hard as he starts tugging off his own shirt. “And I’ve never fucking said those words before. I have never said make love. I have never wanted to make love. And I think those words are cheesy and ridiculous, but they’re not cheesy and ridiculous with you. Because I’m so fucking in love with you that I will say things I’ve never said. I’m dying for our first time.”

Sparks of electricity zoom through me, and every single inch of my skin, of my body, of my heart is reaching for him, needing him, wanting him. I am longing for something I’ve never had before and now I can’t imagine being without. I am hot all over and tingling everywhere. My veins, my blood, my bones, everything is singing out to be touched.

I grab at his waistband, fumble at the zipper, tug down his pants, all while he’s kicking off his shoes, trying not to trip over his clothes. Somehow, he manages to step out of his jeans and is now only in his boxer briefs, and we are both panting and frantic.

“Condom,” I say. “Do you have a condom?”

“Yeah.” He steps away from me to reach for a foil packet in the nightstand next to his futon.

Then he pushes off his underwear, and he’s naked and gorgeous and throbbing. I draw in a deep breath and bite my lip briefly. This is going to happen. This is real. I’m going to say goodbye to my virginity, and I’m going to have him inside of me, and I honestly don’t know how there’s room for him in me.

“Are you sure you’re going to fit?” I blurt out, a touch of nerves in my voice.

He laughs once, wraps his hand around my waist and tugs me gently down on the futon, laying me next to him. Skin to skin, flesh to flesh. I look in his eyes and I’m flooded with so many feelings – love, lust, anticipation, fear. It is staggering, but I am ready.

“I’m pretty sure the parts are all designed to fit.”

I gulp, bringing my hand to his belly, letting my fingers dance near his erection. “You’re just really big.”

“We’ll take it slow, okay?”

“Yeah,” I say, but I’m scared. I don’t want my first time to hurt. I want it to be amazing, even if that’s asking for the moon. I don’t care. I want the moon and the sun and the stars with him.

“Do you want to put it on me?”

He hands me the packet. I look at it like it’ll bite. “Tell me how.”

He rips open the foil. “Pinch the top, then roll it on,” he says, and he moans in pleasure as I slide it on him. “See what you do to me? I get even more turned on just from you doing that. You can do anything to me, Harley. Anything.”

I lie on my back, propped on my elbows, and foreplay is over and that’s fine because the last several months have been foreplay, and now there is only this.

When he hovers over me, my shoulders shake once, twice.

“You okay?”

“Yes. No. I’m nervous as hell.”

“We don’t have to,” he says as if it pains him, but still I love that he offers an out.

“I don’t want an out.”

Then he teases me, rubbing the head against me through all my wetness, and it feels so good the way he’s touching me. I start to spread my legs wider for him. “You’re so wet it’s almost a sin for me not to go down on you. But I love that you’re so wet,” he says, then he pushes into me. Not far, maybe an inch. Hell, maybe even half an inch.

I tense up.

He meets my eyes, asks me with his if it’s okay.

“It’s okay,” I tell him as I wrap my arms around his shoulders. “You can come in more,” I say, with a silly smile because the words sound silly.

He slides in deeper, and I clamp my legs against his. “Are you sure?”

I breathe out deeply, yoga breaths, deep calming exhalations. Then I spread my legs again, relax my body, and tell myself that it will feel amazing because it’s him. I close my eyes and nod into his shoulder, then run my hands down his strong back, to his ass, guiding him.

He sinks slowly into me, and the pain is intense. It’s like my stomach has been jammed up into my neck. I am being stretched in directions I didn’t know I had. This man is so big, and I don’t know how he’s fitting inside me. Oh wait, I do know. Because when he thrusts once, my spleen leaps into my chest.

I grit my teeth and try to tell myself it’ll be over soon. It’ll be over soon. It’ll be over soon. He’s turned on, he’ll pump once, twice, three times, and he’ll come, and I can curl up and let the pain roll out to the night.

Then I feel his breath on my neck, his stubble on my cheek, his hand on my hip. “Harley, I don’t want to hurt you. I can tell you don’t like it,” he says, but he’s not mad, he’s not hurt. He’s simply being honest.

And I decide to do the same. I open my eyes, look up into his. They are so earnest, so heartfelt. “Yes, it hurts. But it’s okay. I can handle the hurt,” I say, and it’s strange, but true. Because maybe it hurts now, but it might not hurt the next time. Or in five minutes, or in five seconds. And with that, I start to relax, to let go, to give in. As I do I realize the pain is fading, and now I just feel full with him deep inside me. I let go of the tight grip I have on his ass, and of the way my strong thighs are holding him like a vise.

Then he slips his hand between my legs, and he slowly, softly rubs me with his finger while he moves inside me. I gasp in pleasure for the first time.

“Oh!”

I let my eyes roll back into my head, and I can feel him smile.

“That better?”

“Yes,” I say with a happy sigh. “More.”

He slides his finger across me, rubbing me, stroking me, all while sliding gently in and out, and the sweep of pleasure from his finger starts to consume me. And soon, I’m opening my legs farther, and I’m wrapping them around him, and I’m taking him in. And holy fuck. He’s all the way in me and it no longer hurts. It starts to feel good, this feeling of being filled, of his hard length moving in and out of me, of his nimble finger rubbing me. Then the tingling sensation grows stronger, ripples through my veins like a wave, and I shudder.

“God, I fucking love this, Harley,” he groans as he touches me. “I fucking love being inside you. I love touching you. I love you so damn much.”

His words thrill me. His feelings shred me and soon, all the hurt washes away, and I am left with only the barest of essentials – this imperfect moment in time with this perfectly damaged man who is mine and who knows all of me, and still loves me, and still wants me, and doesn’t want to turn me into his fantasy, but he wants us to create a new reality together. I wrap my arms around him and he sinks deeper. The stretching is still bizarre but it’s delicious at the same time, and I want to feel every second of it as I start to rock with him, to move with him, and then his pants and groans aren’t solo anymore. They’re meshed with mine, with these sounds and noises I make as I gasp and moan from his finger working me over in the most delirious way all while he thrusts into me.

“
Trey
.”

“Oh fuck, Harley. Is there any chance you’re going to come? Because I can’t hold back much longer. I am so fucking turned on.”

“Yes,” I answer, and I dig my nails into his back, so deep I’m leaving marks, but I have to hold on, I have to mark him. My body tenses, then it’s like there are sparklers set off in my belly, lit up and burning brightly, and they become an explosion of color and light and sounds, and that sound is my sound, it’s my voice, it’s me, calling out his name, and then he’s doing the same, chasing me into this sweet release on the other side.

Here, where there is sex and love, and love and sex, and they don’t just spill over into each other.

They are one and the same with him.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Harley

“I’ll expect your first writing exercises on character development by the end of the week. You can deliver them via email, and remember to think about what makes each person unique. What events informed them, how they grew up, how they were raised. All of those are part and parcel of what makes a character in a story come alive.”

My writing teacher taps the laptop screen for emphasis.

I grew up strangely, I was raised in a topsy turvy world. But now and then, memories flutter in and out of my mind of peaceful, sunny days from long ago. Maybe they’re all part and parcel of me.

“See you next week,” he says, then dismisses us.

Summer classes have begun, and I am hoping to enjoy writing again. That when I write for fun, it won’t be so bone dry. Funny, how blackmail can sap the love of something. I leave the classroom, grab my sunglasses from my purse and slide them on as I head outside.

I stop in my tracks when I see my mother waiting for me outside the building.

She’s been calling and writing to me for the last week, but I’ve ignored all her messages. Let’s be honest, there’s not much to say to each other.

“Harley,” she says crisply from her post standing sentry on the sidewalk.

“Barb,” I say, and this time I use her name not because she wants me to. But because she doesn’t deserve to be called mom.

“You haven’t returned any of my calls. Nor my emails.”

“That is a correct observation. I see your reporter skills are strong,” I say, and I can barely contain a wicked grin, because
holy cow
– I sassed her. I talked back and she’s not used to it.

She raises an eyebrow sharply as if that action alone can bend me back to her will, into her submission as the sister she wishes I were.

But I am not my mother’s daughter anymore. There was a time when we were cut from the same cloth, but no more.

“In any case, I’ve decided to forgive you.”

“Excuse me?” I scoff. “I think I might have heard you wrong.”

She nods. “I have been thinking about what you did. Your actions. Your choices. And I have a way for you to be forgiven.”

I’m dying to know what she has in store. “Oh, do tell.”

She gestures grandly to the modern building I just left. “I pay for your college. And I am glad to do so because education is a vital element in one’s growth. And I will continue to do so under one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“That you come home and live with me again. That way I can help you.”

“
Oh
,” I say, letting the one syllable last forever. “Like rehab for my bad behavior?”

My sarcasm is lost on her.

“Yes. That’s exactly what I would call it. We can start over, we can have nightly chats, we can have dinners together. We can be open about your whereabouts so you don’t descend into your bad habits again.”

Right. Because talking with her would change things.

“So if I do this,” I say, as if I’m truly trying her experiment on for size, “Would you be willing to go to Miranda and confront her about the blackmail? Because I’m pretty sure what she did in forcing me to write that book is illegal, and you could expose her since that’s what you do. You expose people.”

She presses her plum-colored lips together as if she’s considering my request. “I could but I’m not sure that’s best. We don’t really want that getting out, do we? I think it’s best to let that sleeping dog lie.”

“Oh yeah,” I say, nodding as if I completely agree. “Definitely that one lie. I mean, sexting senators are so much more important than editors blackmailing your own daughter. You wouldn’t want that out. Because that might besmirch your unblemished reputation.”

“That’s not it. I just think we could both benefit from moving on. What do you say? Truce?”

She extends her hand. I look at it like it’s a diseased object.

“I don’t think so.”

“Then you leave me no choice but to cut you off.”

She parks her hands on her hips, waiting for me to grovel. She has the trump card, right? She thinks she can buy me back. She thinks she can buy my love.

I shake my head. I’d like to cry, but my eyes are dried for her. I have no more tears. I have no more emotions to waste on her.

“So cut me off then,” I say like it’s no big deal.

She blinks, as if a UFO has just crashed through the sky, splattered onto the sidewalk and little green men are pouring out of it announcing they’re from another solar system. She’s as astonished at my brinksmanship as she’d be by the miniature aliens.

“Are you just going to drop out of college? Become a hooker full time?”

I point a finger at her. “Actually, allow me to make a correction since I know precision is important in your line of work, Barb. I wasn’t a hooker. I was a call girl. I was a specialized one. A very high class, high price call girl. So guess what that means?” I can’t bother to contain the grin. This is wonderful. This is me stubbing out a cigarette with my pointy heel.

“What?” she says with a quaky wavering voice.

“I made some serious bank, and I saved every single penny of it. Never spent a dime. So you can’t buy my love and I don’t need your money. Which means I don’t really see that there’s anything more for us to discuss.”

I could snap my finger, swivel around then strut off, reality show style. But I don’t. Instead, I simply walk away, and it hurts that she isn’t who I wanted her to be, but it also feels good that I finally found the words to tell her so.

In my own way. In my own time.

* * *

I am not my past. I am my present. I am my future. The past can chase you if you let it. You can spend your life trying to outrun it or you can stop running, turn around and look it in the face. I’ve stared down my past, and now I’m moving on. I am more than my past. I am my future and it belongs to me.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Trey

“Do you trust me?”

She rolls her eyes and says “Duh. I thought we’d established that by now.”

“I know. But do you trust me to do this without watching? I want you to close your eyes or else look the other way, okay?”

“Yes.”

She sits on the stool, crosses her legs, and clasps her hands in front of her. She’s wearing a jean skirt, black combat boots, and a tank top with a cartoon cat on it. In other words – she looks like my girl and I fucking love it.