Addicted (11 page)

I’m a war-torn survivor of Dillon Holt.

‘I have to … uh … go to a meeting,’ I try, but I’ve misjudged. It was way too early to attempt speech – my voice comes out all up and down and obviously stuffed full of lies, lies, lies. Though it’s not my fault entirely that he guesses.

‘At seven-thirty on a Wednesday evening?’

I jerk around, searching blindly for a clock or a watch or some other indicator that this cannot be true. The cat with the second-counting tail – the one on his wall, just above his head – won’t tell me so, however.

Seven-twenty-seven, that fucker claims.

Probably because it’s in collusion with him.

‘It can’t be that late. Wasn’t it four o’clock when I got here?’

‘Time has no meaning in my zone of sex.’

‘Did you really just say that?’

‘I’m hoping I didn’t.’

I look at him, then – accidentally. I’m in the middle of a slightly shocked laugh, and then the urge to see his face just wrestles the rest of me into submission.

It’s a mistake, however. Not only is his expression really awesome – a self-deprecating eyebrow raise aimed entirely at himself – his fingers are just sort of … trailing over his glossy bottom lip. And then as I’m watching, transfixed, he lets one slide a little way into his mouth.

He’s tasting me. He’s tasting me on his fingertips, as though I’m some exotic fruit he just finished pulling apart. I can even see the faint gleam I’ve left on him, honey soft in the dying light from his narrow window.

But there’s nothing I can say. Telling him to stop will mean I’m acknowledging the lewd thing he’s doing. Telling him to keep doing that – maybe harder, with more of a long slow suck so I can really see how he looks, when he uses that blow job mouth of his – will simply mean I’ve gone nuts.

Unfortunate, really, that the latter is what I most want to do.

‘Sure you have to go?’ he asks, after too long a time. He knows it’s getting harder to say no by the second. All I’m thinking now is: what do I taste like on him? Can he make out the tang of his own skin underneath? Am I good?

He makes it look like I’m good. He strokes his tongue up and down the underside of his finger, then seems to sink – near helplessly – into something more. A long, slow slide into his mouth, just as I had imagined.

Only better. His eyes flutter closed as he does it, the way people usually do when they’re biting into a gloriously rich cream cake. And he makes a sound, oh, God, he always makes a sound when he does these things … does he know how that makes me feel? My mind empties of all other considerations the second he does it, before filling up with all the things he could possibly say and do.

I’ve only experienced a quarter of what he’s capable of, it seems. Less – a fifth, an eighth, a piddling pathetic pinprick of an amount. And that’s very bad for me, I know. It’s a bad thought to have, when I’m trying so desperately to leave.

It makes my words come out like this:

‘The … place that I … do workings … at … opens late. And my … person in charge … wants to … to …’

‘Have this meeting?’ he suggests, for me – because he’s generous. He’s very generous, and extraordinarily kind. I need an excuse to leave, and he’s willing to let me have it.

Not to mention everything else that he’s just done for me. I should really return the favour in some way and I know it, I do, but the trouble is … I’m not like him. I’ve no idea how to start things up, just like he said. I think about maybe leaning forward to take that finger in my own mouth, but so many thoughts stop me.

The main one being: what if I do it wrong? Always, always: what if I do it wrong? It’s embarrassing when other people do ordinary things – like making everyday chit-chat about the weather – and I don’t know how to do the same. Failing horribly at something so filthy would be mortifying. Failing in front of
him
would be even worse.

Though I realise I already have. I made a bet, and I lost it. I bet I couldn’t feel anything, and I did. I felt more than was strictly advisable, for a first date that wasn’t even really a first date. And now, I’m making a second blunder. I’m trying to leave, when I know I should stay. I should stay and do all the things that other people do so easily, so easily.

But I don’t.

I walk all the way home with the thought of every single thing I couldn’t give him, in my head. Just because I’m so afraid, all the time! Just because I’m so very afraid of myself, and all the hopes and dreams I’ve never dared have.

But they don’t matter, now. Soon, I’ll be safe again. I’ll be beyond the deep-red door that guards my apartment, and maybe I’ll think of him from time to time, with fondness. But I know I’ll never see him again. He won’t call, and I definitely never will, and everything will be as it should, once more.

And then I realise, just as I step inside:

My manuscript isn’t in my bag.

He
took
it.

Of course I know why he did it. He’s holding my book to ransom, like a master criminal who has designs on a wealthy widow’s fortune.

Only I’m
not
a widow, and I don’t have any money. I don’t have a single thing that he should want – or at least, nothing I can think of. I spend the entirety of the next day trying to imagine, but the only thing I can come up with is my cat, Harold.

Harold is seventeen, blind in one eye and often farts in his sleep.

But Harold seems like a safer bet than
he wants me
.

He wants me so much that he kept the one thing that would make me return. He
knew
that I’d never come back. Apparently I’m so obvious that he can read me months in advance, and now he has something that’s going to make that psychic effect worse.

He has my book. My book that’s utterly filled with my every thought and feeling. Each chapter of it is filthier than the one before it; each word tells a tale about all the things I’ve ever wanted. And now he’s got it.

He can’t be reading it, can he?

He wouldn’t.

He wouldn’t.

And yet I know he has, the moment he opens his door to me. I might not be as good at this as he is – maybe I can’t pick up on every little nuance and gesture that someone else makes – but I’m not an idiot.

I know a gleeful grin, when I see it.

‘Kit, what a surprise!’ he says.

It is not a surprise. Surprises have stunned expressions to go with them, and his is just bursting with unchecked delight and probable mocking laughter. Oh, God, even Lori laughed after she’d heard the first chapter. This guy is going to throw a party over my died-of-embarrassment grave.

‘Yes. Isn’t it?’

I try to keep my face nice and closed – but that just makes my mouth go tight. Now my words are coming out all funny. That ‘Isn’t it?’ sounds like it was ground out by an animatronic version of me, rather than the real deal.

‘You know … I sensed that we might not see each other again. So it’s funny that you’re here. I am at a loss as to why this might be,’ he says.

‘Are you?
Are you
? Are you really?’

None of these sentences come out like questions. They come out like bullets, fired from a really angry gun.

‘But if you want to come in, I’m sure we can talk about it.’

‘We cannot talk about it. I’m going to open my bag, and you’re going to put my book in it. And then I’m going to go home and lie down in a darkened room where I can pretend that you did not read the equivalent of my diary.’

He does something then that I am not prepared for. I think I expect protests, but instead he makes the kind of expression I associate with some glorious victory. He even brings his fists up to his face, and half-bites on one of them.

Before saying this:

‘Oh, honey, if that’s your diary let me dive right into you. Let me drown in you, oh, praise be for your heavenly body of unbelievable sin!’ Those fists unfurl and reach for my face – though to my eternal gratitude they don’t quite make it. They’re too excited to make it. He’s like a kid who can’t believe he got a trike for Christmas, and is so giddy about it he just makes grabby hands around its general area. ‘God bless you, Kit Connor. You’re the reason I almost masturbated myself to death last night.’

‘You did not do that.’

He nods his head to one side, telling me what he means before he says it. He’s made the switch to rueful in under ten seconds. He could compete in the Face Olympics.

‘You’re right, I didn’t.’ He pauses. ‘But only because I’m saving myself for you.’

Oh, Dillon Holt. I’m swooning and you don’t even mean it.

‘I think you’re about thirty years too late for that.’

‘Hey – ouch. That’s the exact age I am.’

‘I
know
.’

‘Oh, uh-huh, I see what you’re doing there. You’re saying you think I’ve been a slut since birth. Which is true. But I swear, I never knew how it could be before you.’ He clicks his fingers, and I know what’s coming. I pray that it isn’t, but my praying does no good. God obviously wants me to fall under this guy’s spell. ‘I made it through the wilderness. You know I made it through …’

‘Please don’t start singing.’

‘Didn’t know how lost I was until I found you.’

‘I’m begging you. I have no defences against this.’

It’s true. I don’t. He hauls me into a rudimentary dance position, and I barely try to stop him. I just let him spin me around, drunkenly, both our arms joined together and pointing at judges that aren’t there.

‘All the better for me.’

‘You want my defences to be down?’

He looks down at me from his very great height, face suddenly serious. There’s still a hint of amusement there, and he doesn’t let me out of this armlock, but his gaze is warmer. Softer. And I can feel him making those insanely good circles on my back.

‘Well, it would make it easier to kiss you. Very hard when I have to barrel my way across a barbed-wire-riddled no-man’s-land just to put my mouth on yours.’

‘I don’t mean to be like that.’

‘I know.’

‘I want to be more … more …’

‘Open?’

‘Or maybe just less …’

‘Angry? Because you know, I
did
steal your book. You should probably be furious at me forever for that gross invasion of your privacy.’

Funny thing is: he sounds like he’s being silly. But his expression kind of says he’s not. I feel like those eyes of his are wrapping me in a big, warm embrace, of the sort that this dancing is maybe turning into.

‘Angry wasn’t what I was going to say.’

‘No?’

His mouth is getting closer to mine now. And he’s looking at my lips, as though contemplating that last bit of distance. Will I open fire on him, if he goes for it? He’s already encountered the mines, and that barbed wire stole one of his boots a while back.

Maybe he wants to turn around now, before it’s too late.

‘No. I was going to say inhibited. I want to be less inhibited,’ I say, and I confess: I don’t really think much of it, when I do. It’s just a word, the same as
angry
. Both kind of end up at the same place – him at arm’s length.

Me with seventy-foot-long arms.

But he goes kind of still, after I’ve said it. He holds his breath. This weird tension suddenly grows and spreads between us, until I’m sure I can see it there, crackling in the air. It looks sort of like a thunderous raincloud, only really, really awesome.

And then the lightning breaks, and so does he.

He goes for me, the way drowning men go for the lifejackets. I think his arm actually hugs my head, because I can feel his elbow close to my ear and his hand has kind of come up from behind to spread through my hair. I’m trapped in the cage of his body.

But I can’t complain.

I’m trapping him right back. I’m doing some of the things I desperately wanted to do the day before yesterday, but didn’t dare – like getting my hands on those fantastic fucking arms of his. I actually squeeze one of his biceps, just to see what it’s like.

And it’s everything that I could have hoped for. So thick and solid, barely giving under the pressure of my hand. Then his shoulders, his smooth, round shoulders … Why didn’t anyone ever tell me that shoulders could feel so good?

I’m rubbing them – round and round in circles – before I manage to get a hold of myself. I think he’s even laughing about it, into my mouth … though I don’t particularly care. I’ve got his kisses to distract me, from petty things like embarrassment.

And they do the job sooo well. His mouth is just as soft as I’d imagined, from the look of it and that little hint he gave me. Though that’s not the best part. The best part is how he moves those lips, insinuating them against my own in this rolling, insistent way. I knew he had rhythm, of course, but this just takes it to another level.

He presses against me when I’m ready for more, and pulls away when I’m not – leaving me just long enough to catch my breath, before coming back for more. And just as I’m lost in the sweet pull of his lips – just when I’m ripe for it – he parts them, and lets me feel the slick suggestion of his tongue.

He doesn’t even have to persuade me to open for him – like before, with my warm and ready sex. I let him in without a second thought, thrilling at the sensation of his tongue darting over mine. It makes all these little tingles spark through my mouth, but there’s something beyond the physical about it.

Some sensuous suggestion of other things he could do, if I let him.

And I want to. I’m trembling with excitement before we’ve done a single thing, and I tremble harder when he pushes me up against the wall. We just kind of stumble around until I’m somehow there; giddiness bursting through me at the thought.

I’ve never been handled like this, before. Hell, I’ve never done the handling. I’ve only seen it in movies, when the hero and heroine are so desperate for each other they don’t know where they’re going or what they’re doing – they just end up somewhere, in the middle of blindly clawing at each other.

And then I realise something even sweeter, a second later.

My feet aren’t even touching the floor. He’s not just pinning me to the wall. He’s holding me up – or maybe, oh, God, maybe
I’m
the one doing the holding. I’ve climbed him like a monkey and now I’m clinging to him, desperately, as he kisses me into oblivion.