Awake (8 page)

-14-

If ignorance is bliss, I wonder as I drive back to my apartment, does that mean bliss is ignorance? I am trying to separate this whole thing from me, from who I am and what I am, but it leaks into my blood and feels like everything all at once.

There’s a problem with Tori’s engagement.

I do not want that to be about me. I do not want to admit a part of me is pleased. My mind will not change subjects. I am stuck on a spinning wheel of thoughts about the
who
,
what
and
why
of this.

Kat will be at my apartment in a few hours. She will force me to imbibe copious amounts of liquor. That might help a little or maybe it will just make my guilt rise and overwhelm me. One thing is for sure, I don’t want to talk to Tori or Wade or anyone who knows them.

I decide to go through my closet and try on every dress. It’s always been a way of meditating for me. I try each outfit on, pick accessories by instinct and check it all out in the full-length mirror. Does the way the dress fit my breasts make them look luscious or lost? Does the color or pattern give me a glow I feel like rolling with all night? Does my waist look tiny and set-off my hips and ass to seem booming by contrast?

I settle on a patterned magenta bandage dress with a cut-out back. It’s tight and ribbed and the pattern helps in all the right places.

Kat shows up rocking a blue lace pencil dress that I’ve never seen before. I reach out and touch the exquisite detail of the lattice work.

“Kip surprised me with this,” Kat says modeling her dress. “He even knew my size perfectly. How hot is that?”

“Way hot,” I say the obvious.

Kat notices the bottles of Bombay Sapphire Gin and Mickey Finn Sour Apple Schnapps on the island counter. “Apple Martinis!” she says. “This night is going to get bumpy, girlfriend.”

I grab two crystal tumblers from a cupboard. Kat twists open the bottles. We’re both eager to begin a memorable night. I drop ice cubes into the glasses. She splashes just the right amount of gin into the mix and I follow with the cool green schnapps.

The apple martinis hit our lips both wet and dry. We grin and moan from the pleasure of the sweet tasting alcohol electrifying our blood.

“I’m not going to puke tonight,” I say.

Kat almost chokes on her drink before swallowing. “I think it’s a little early to make predictions,” she says licking her lips to taste the apple-tinged gin and relish the likelihood of me eventually vacating a stomach full of fiery beverages and bad food choices.

When we reach the first bar our friends have already put together a big table and saved two seats for us. I get kisses from Lani and Tisha and a hug from Lani’s boyfriend of three years, Ezra.

The others lift their drinks to me and yell various things such as my name or my new age or
Tequila!
I don’t know who called for them, but soon eleven shots of Tequila appear at our table on a serving tray.

And so it begins.

I do my best to smile and hug and laugh and consume shots whenever my friends insist. I nurse my other drinks because my one goal tonight is not to throw up or to ruin my Sunday with a hangover. I drink water along with my martinis.

“Jamie sends his regards,” Ezra says. Lani gives him a quick glare.

“Why didn’t he come?” I say. “It would have been good to see him.”

Ezra looks into Lani’s eyes and then back to me. “Guys don’t do that,” he says.

“Do what?” Kat asks.

“You know, be friends with exes,” Ezra bravely responds.

Lani punches him. “Really?” she snaps at him. “If we break up you’re not going to be my friend?”

Ezra swallows his drink. “Uh, that’s not a valid question. We are not going to break up.”

Lani smiles crookedly. “Are you sure about that, big guy?”

Ezra is rendered speechless.

“Men suck,” Kat says and all the girls at the table immediately raise their glasses to toast her words. We click our glasses together and drink.

I realize now that I cannot be Wade’s friend. No romance and no friendship means he is already gone. I won’t share another meaningful hour with him. Wade Donovan was nothing more than a sexy meteor that burned across the starry skies of my dreams.

Even though we had no relationship, just one incredibly intense shower, we had enough of a connection to make friendship impossible. Ezra may have been stupid to say it out loud in front of Lani, but he is correct about the inability to be close friends after being lovers.

Just as assuredly as if we had dated for years, the days of a relaxed friendship have passed us by forever. A romance between us would be doomed to fail from the inevitable fallout over Tori’s broken engagement. The assumption would be that I slutted my way between them and that would not be entirely untrue.

A single thought of his skin or eyes or hands and all of my most tender cells begin to hum and mist. Somehow I knew what would happen if I let him in the door last weekend. I waited through the night in bed together and I waited even in the shower the next morning. When he stepped inside the shower I was thrilled but not surprised.

The world would never understand just how good of a girl I was not to have slept with him, not to experience the shocking happiness of his big, beautiful cock entering me and reshaping me to his desire. I found a solution that might appear to be the move of a megaslut, but to me it was the answer to an impossible riddle. The lesser of two evils.

I did not fuck Tori’s fiancé. I’m not expecting a round of applause or anything, but the fact remains that I did not let it happen.

I convince Kat to let me take a taxi home just after midnight. I did not have the strength to tell her about the broken engagement. I just need some rest. I need to turn the world away, turn off my phones and the TV and be silent in the world and be my animal self.

Sleeping and eating and drinking. I will skip school Monday. Two days with nothing but myself. I do this from time-to-time and it worries me that I enjoy it too much. Isolation feels like home. At least that explains my inability to stay in relationships with perfectly nice guys.

When I step out of the taxi I feel a cool midnight breeze. It reminds me of crisp autumn nights in Minnesota. I exhale and look up to the moon. My lungs fill with fresh air. There are still good things in this world. The moon, the touch of changing weather on my skin, the glorious solitude of the night sky.

“I don’t know where else to go,” he says.

I hear his voice with no understanding that it’s real. I drop my eyes casually from the sky expecting to see an empty sidewalk. I do not. Wade stands ten feet from me, calmly defeated and directionless.

We stare at each other a long time trying to understand each other.

“You didn’t kill anyone,” I say, the words falling out of my mouth feeling scripted and disconnected from my heart.

“Didn’t I?” he asks.

We are frightened to move one step closer so we don’t. We just look sincerely into each other’s eyes. My heart races in my chest. I feel its pulse in my neck. “I’m not the shelter, Wade,” I say. “I’m the storm. You don’t belong here.”

He laughs in a pained way and drops his eyes to the pavement. “I’ve never belonged anywhere, Erin,” he says lifting his eyes back to mine.

Something icy explodes tenderly in my chest. I gasp because his words could be my own. We are both alone in the storm. “I don’t know, Wade. This is just your fear. I’m an easy escape.”

“You may be right,” he says. “I just need a place to hide tonight, some place where no one will judge me.”

There he goes again, speaking my own thoughts back to me. He wants a place to hide. That was my very intention. I walk up to him, grab his neck and pull him down for a deep, wet kiss.

“I don’t know what we’re doing,” I say looking up into his eyes barely able to breathe, “but whatever it is, let’s stop lying about it.”

-15-

Standing in my own bedroom I experience the sweetest disorientation, a devilish guilt and an angelic innocence battling for the ecstasy of his attention. I struggle to stay balanced on my feet. Blood gushes hotly in and out of my heart.

He walks to the window and closes the blinds. He pulls his shirt up over his head. His smooth, muscular chest thrills me. I do nothing. I stare and feel the sensuous doom in the air.

“What are you doing?” I say weakly.

The Wade Donovan grin. “Not lying anymore,” he says with a quiet, cool tone that chills my lungs with sudden desire.

He unsnaps his jeans. My breath gets stuck for a moment in my throat. His eyes emit a simmering desire that gives me an irrational fear of melting. I feel my body preparing for him as he walks across the space between us. His musky cologne mixed with his sweat reaches me just before his fingers slide through my hair.

His hand feels larger than my head. “I’m too little for you,” I say as my heart punches hard against my chest.

“You were made for me,” he says. He kisses my forehead and then presses my face against his chest.

I wrap my arms tightly around him and squeeze him as hard as I can possibly squeeze. This is the tightest I have ever hugged anyone. I want to break through his skeleton to hide in the safety of his rib cage, next to the warm rhythm of his loving heart.

His slim frame and thick muscles send hot, electric messages racing through my blood. I feel all my most private places sizzle for the feast of his pectorals, his abs, his navel and his glorious manhood.

I reach my hands into the back of his unbuttoned jeans and slide them slowly under his briefs. My little hands ride the warm, firm curves of his devilishly cute ass and when I squeeze both cheeks as hard as I can, I feel them tensing and Wade moans quietly.

I can’t help it. I reach a little further to let my nails tickle across his undercarriage. If it’s just about the sex, I don’t care anymore. He can use me or love me as long as I can have one full night with him. It might be just the thing to break him of his need for me and send him back to his engagement.

His hands move up the back of my dress and unsnap my bra with a skilled little pinch of his experienced fingers. I step back from him, breathing heavily.

“Every girl was made for you, Wade,” I say and then reach down and pull my tight bandage dress up over my hips and belly taking the bra with it as I lift it all off over my head.

My breasts are teased with the sudden touch of the cool air before his hands are on them, testing their firmness and keeping them warm. He uses his thumbs to playfully meet my nipples.

I sense a flash of pleasure in his eyes. It drives me to madness. I knock his hands away so I can push my mouth up against his mouth and smash my breasts against his beautiful ribs.

“Erin,” he says desperately as he slides his hands over my bottom and itsy bitsy stretch lace booty shorts.

He digs his fingers between my thighs to lift my legs up off the ground so I have no choice but to wrap my legs around him. He does it so easily. I look down and admire the multiple muscles tensing in his powerful arms. His belly now knows how wet I am and so I bite his ear softly to distract him. I expect him to walk to the bed with me, but he just stands there holding me up by my thrilled ass and devouring my neck and shoulders and finally his sweet, boyish lips dive down to suckle hotly on my excited nipples.

When he repays my biting of his ear with an ever so gentle, but scary biting of my nipple, I pull his hair hard so his lips return to my mouth. Instead of kissing me, he stares at me intensely.

“I am free to be here, Erin,” he says. “There’s nothing wrong with what we are doing. Our hunger is beautiful.”

“Wade, just please let this night be free of everything,” I say. I have confused him. His hesitation makes me hesitate, but I need him so bad I have to make it really simple for him. “Show me your hunger, big guy.”

That was a little slutty but effective. He twists and throws me on my bed roughly. He drops his pants and turns suddenly around. His fucking monster swings over me like a huge, fleshy light saber. An explosion of heat expands my heart and makes me tremble.

He pulls my boy shorts off me so violently his fingernails scrape the back of my thighs. I make a frightened mental note never to challenge a man the size of Wade ever again in bed. It’s terrifying.

I panic. I sit up quickly and grab onto his cock with two hands. I am not ready to sleep with him. He’s entirely too much for me, a fact even more apparent when I can barely get a few inches of him into my mouth before it just gets stuck.

“Not that,” he says. “I need to look into your eyes.”

He pushes me back by the shoulders and I let him. I lie back onto my bed and let him crawl above me like a hungry predator. I grab him between his legs and massage him, but he is already more than ready. He lands his lips on my hips, moves to my belly with butterfly kisses and then hunger boy feasts on my breasts.

“We never had any choice,” I whisper, “did we?”

He smiles as he begins teasing the mouth of my flower with his girth. “No, Erin, this moment was destined.”

His eyes roll back as he pushes himself into me. I feel a jolt through my whole being radiating from my hot center, like a sudden spinal injury that leaves me paralyzed and hot until a nervous wonder washes away all preconceived ideas of what sex could feel like.

“Fuck my sweet pussy,” I whisper through shallow breaths as I feel my mind, heart and ravaged body shocked full of Wade’s love.

* * *

I slept in Wade’s strong arms. Twice during the night I woke to find him softly kissing my hair or the back of my ear or my shoulder. I would turn back to him and interrupt his lips with my lips. We would kiss a long time and then slowly explore each other before making love in a sweet new way each time.

If last night was heaven, I am ready to die right now and spend eternity there, but the sun comes streaming through my blinds and brings reality with it. Outside, there are people and situations and none of them will enhance the connection I feel with Wade.

“You’re awake,” he says pulling me closer so that my back is against his belly, shoulders against his chest and head nestled against his neck and under his chin.

“If I am with you,” I say almost sadly, “then I must still be dreaming.”

He does not respond. The daylight has given him perspective. The melancholic tone of my voice must have been a reminder. He broke his engagement and then ran to my bed. I can sense his harsh judgment of himself and his concern for Tori.

“Last night was wonderful, but it was nothing more than a night,” I say. “Your whole life is still out there waiting for you.”

“Last night was more than wonderful,” he says.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself then,” I say. “You are an extremely virile young man. This was something you needed to get out of your system. Simple as that.”

“How cruel you can be,” he says almost angrily, “that you think of us as some virus that can be washed away so easily.”

“Forget it, then,” I say. “I was trying to help. Feel miserable if you want to. Destroy your life too. Whatever.”

He laughs. “Don’t you
whatever
me, you little rich brat.” He grabs onto my hips and I gasp from his sudden, rough thrust into me from behind. Thank God my body was lying in wait for him.

“Asshole,” I whisper through an uneven breath.

“That might be impossible, but if you want me to try to get inside there, I’m game,” he teases. I hope he’s teasing.

“Don’t even think about it,” I manage to say as he revs up my body with deep, feverish pleasure. “That would hurt.”

He grabs the front of my neck and bends my head back so he can stare intensely into my eyes. “Then try not to say such hurtful things.”

He kisses my lips sloppily until the sex is too much. He closes his eyes to feel my wet heat pleasing him. It’s amazing how with Wade I can experience the sex from both sides. His joy and my joy happening inside me at the same time. I want to cum when he cums.

I close my eyes and try to forget that the sun has risen and night will not last forever.