Burning for You (Blackwater) (22 page)

“I didn’t break anything.  Isabel gave
me the garage code.”  I’m going to have to give Isabel a good lecture on taking
sides when I see her again.  “I needed to see you, Leah.”

“You didn’t a few hours ago,” I say
angrily, taking my shoes off and throwing my jacket on the floor.  “What’s
changed?”

Ash leans forward and sniffs at my
face.  “How much have you had to drink?”

“Enough to make the room spin
violently and not enough to throw up.”  Ash smirks and pulls me into his arms. 
“Stop it,” I whine.  “You’re going to take advantage of me.”

“I’m getting you to bed,” he says. 
“You’re a mess.”

“I’m a mess because of you!” I cry
out.  “I was looking forward to seeing you all day and you left me high and
dry.”

He shakes his head.  “I’m pretty
sure I left you pretty wet when you hung up on me.”

I smack him flat in the chest, hard
enough to make him wince.  “That’s exactly the problem!  How could you do that
to me?”

He grabs my wrists, just hard
enough to stop me from hitting him again.  “Leah, everything that happened
tonight was with you in mind.”

I inhale sharply.  “What happened?”

He shakes his head.  “I can’t tell
you that.”

I bite my lower lip.  “Did you have
sex with Erika?”

“No!” he says.  “Absolutely not.”

“But you were with her.”

He nods.  “That’s all you need to
know.  Do you trust me?”

“No.”

He grabs me around the waist and
spreads his legs to stand at eye level with me.  “Trust me, Leah.  I will not
cheat on you.  I will never cheat on you.  There is no one for me but you, and anyone
else would just leave me empty.  Do you understand?”  His black eyes are so fierce
that I can’t help but swallow and nod silently.  He pushes a loose strand of
hair behind my ear.  “Can I hold you tonight?” he asks me.  “I just want to
watch you sleep.”

I sigh.  “Yes, you can stay and
hold me tonight.  Because I’m a drunk sucker.”

I see Ash every night of the week,
whether it’s to dinner after work or him staying over in my bed.  For some
reason, I sneak him in every night, even though I’m an adult and my mother is
perfectly aware of what’s happening.  Something about being in my childhood
home with my lover makes me revert back to sneakiness.

I haven’t spoken to Erika since our
lunch together on Monday, but I get the impression that she’s avoiding me and
I’m doing the same with her.  I have no real reason to be angry with her,
except something about the way Ash ditched me for her on Monday is still
nagging at me, making me wonder what he couldn’t possibly tell me.  I’m also on
the outs with Heidi.  I pretend I’m too busy to care, but things at the
hospital are on edge with security and investigation with regard to the baby
napping, so it’s at the top of my mind as to whether that baby is actually
Eleanor’s.  My mother has gone over a few times to see Heidi and make sure
she’s okay, but she knows something isn’t right.  Per my mother’s reports Heidi
has been less than gracious to receive her as a visitor, and still won’t let
anyone hold the baby.  Everything is wrong but I’m completely oblivious to it
when Ash is around. 

When I ask Ash if he will go with
me to visit Eleanor and Drew, he springs another invitation on me that I wasn’t
expecting.  He wants me to attend dinner with his family at Normandy tomorrow
night.

“Did you just completely ignore my
invitation and replace it with another one?” I demand to know.  We’re lying in
my bed on a Thursday evening, limbs twisted together.  The four layers of
blankets I normally need to sleep with in the middle of November have been kicked
off the bed and onto the floor.  The heat from our bodies radiates like a glow
around us.

Ash kisses my shoulder and I can see
his grinning face illuminated in the dim moonlight streaming through my
window.  “Maybe,” he admits.  “I’ve wanted to ask you all week, actually.”  His
fingers trace my collarbone, making me inhale sharply.  “Perhaps you need some
gentle coaxing.”

“And how do you plan to accomplish
that?” I ask him.  In response, his hand moves between my thighs and I feel his
fingers plunge into me and press forward.  A surge of pleasure overcomes me. 
“Ohhh, you’re going to play that card, aren’t you?”

“I can’t help but want to touch you
whenever I’m with you,” he tells me, moving his fingers slowly out of me and
then roughly back in.  I cry out and arch my back to feel his fingers move
deeper inside of me.  “Is that so wrong?”

“So.  Very.  Wrong.”  I press my
fingers into his shoulder blades and feel his mouth take in my nipple and bite
very gently.  “Yes, dinner, fine,” I whisper.  “But you have to come with me.”

“I plan on it,” he says, looking
up. 

I giggle like an idiot.  “I mean to
see Eleanor.”

“Oh,” he replies, and moves down
the bed, flipping me on my back and crouching between my thighs.  “Alright,” he
says, murmuring right by my clit, sending me writhing in delight against his
face.  “I’ll come with you.  After I make you come and then come some more. 
There will be lots of coming.”

“Just as long as you’re never
going, I don’t care,” I say, turning my head to the side and into the pillow to
stifle my moans.  His tongue flicks over me and his fingers continue to plunge
in and out, the steady rhythm from both motions sending a swirl of physical
pleasure through me until I’m shuddering and pulling on his hair and pushing my
hips against his face in a long and drawn out orgasm.  He climbs up my body on
all fours like a cat stalking prey and I pull him toward me to kiss him and
taste myself on his mouth.  My hips push up and feel his hardness press inside
of me, making me swell and tighten around him until he moans.

“You and I are a perfect fit,” he
whispers in my ear.  Our hips move in sync with one another and the room feels
like it’s spinning, as though we’re in the tornado from Wizard of Oz and my bed
is in the center of the vortex.  I nod in response to his comment, even though
he can’t hear me, but I can’t bring myself to say anything.  Soon I’m rolling
through the waves of pleasure right along with him.  I feel the long muscles in
Ash’s back tense under my hands.  His stomach muscles tighten against my own. 
He rolls to the side of me and we lie still, breathing in the cool night air,
panting as our bodies relax and untangle themselves from each other.  When I’ve
caught my breath, I curl up against his side and trace the thin line of hair
from his bellybutton and lower, noticing he’s still hard.  I take him in my
hand, feeling the slippery wetness of myself.  “You’re going to kill me,” he
groans.

“You’re one to talk,” I reply. 
“Didn’t you just make me come twice?”

“I don’t know, did I?”

“How are we going to get through a
dinner with your family without keeping our hands off of each other?” I ask
him, leaning up on my elbow and squeezing him with my hand.  “I won’t be able
to look your mother in the eye if you’re under the table giving me face.”

“Giving you what?” Ash says,
laughing.  “Are women supposed to be as crass as you?”

I snort.  “What the hell should I
call it?  I don’t like clinical terms and anything else sounds ridiculous or
obscene.”

“I like obscene,” Ash replies. 
“And chances are, at Normandy, half the people at the table are engaged in some
sort of sexual act during dinner.  My house is like a giant orgy.”

“Yeah, right, nice try.”

He looks at me with a completely
straight face.  “You have no idea, Leah.  Dinner tomorrow will be like nothing
you’ve ever experienced.”

“I don’t even know what to make of
that,” I say hesitantly.  “What on earth are you talking about?”

“Dinners at Normandy are definitely
something to remember,” he says, looking up at the ceiling.  “Especially for
your first time.”

“Well now I have to go,” I tell
him.  “I’ll come with you tomorrow night for dinner and then the next morning
we’ll go see Eleanor and Drew, how’s that?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Ash agrees. 
“I hope you have something formal to wear.”

“Not really,” I say. 

“Good,” Ash replies.  “You go to
work tomorrow and I’ll shop for you.”

*

True to his word, when I get home
from work the next day, there is a large black box sitting on my bed with
Isabel sitting down next to it.  “I couldn’t wait until you got home,” she
says, sitting on my bed next to the box.  “First of all, you’re washing your
own sheets if you’re going to have company over.”

I cover my face in my hands.  “Oh
god.”

She laughs.  “Whatever.  You act
like I’ve never seen anything like it.  You were never a good girl, Leah, but
apparently someone likes you enough to get you into what’s in that box.”

I can no longer stand it and lift
the top of the box to see what’s inside.    “Not enough bling,” Isabel jokes as
I pull the dress delicately out.  The dress is the thinnest gold material I’ve
ever felt between my fingertips, and scandalously sheer, with strands of what
look to be gold coins draping all over it.  I’m not really sure where they go
and what goes where.

“Is this the back or the front?” I
ask Isabel, looking at a low dip in the fabric.  Either my ass crack or my
belly button will be exposed.

She stands up and takes the dress
from me, holding it way above her head so it doesn’t drag on the floor. 
“Here,” she says, stepping up onto my bed, holding the dress a little more
comfortably lower.  “Try it on and we’ll figure it out.”  I strip out of my
work clothes and toss them aside in a pile on the floor, causing Isabel to give
me a nasty scowl.  “Get out of your underwear,” she commands.  “There’s no way
you’re going to be able to pull off anything underneath this.”

“Ugh,” I make a noise that clearly
depicts how much I like to dress up.  I strip until I’m as naked as the day I
was born, which is nothing Isabel hasn’t seen considering how many years she’s
been in my life.  I hold up my arms and allow myself to be strangled into the
insane contraption that Ash has selected with me in mind, swearing and sweating
profusely through the entire process.  “I’m going to beat him senseless for
this,” I complain as Isabel works to arrange and straighten out all of the
moving parts.  “I bet it’s going to be a bitch to go to the bathroom.  And what
asshole would design a dress that doesn’t allow a girl to wear Spanx?”

“You’re a walking contradiction,”
Isabel says.  “First you complain about not being able to pee and then you pine
for Spanx?  You can’t have both.”

“I know, I know,” I agree.  “I’ve
never worn a long dress like this.  What if it accidentally dips in the
toilet?  What if I fall and smack my head on the dining room table?  I’m never
going to be able to eat more than a mushroom stem and a cube of cheese in
this.”

“You should look at yourself in the
mirror and shut the hell up,” Isabel says, jumping down from her perch on my
bed and pushing me over to my full length mirror to check myself out.  “Are you
still complaining?”

My mouth has been open the entire
time I was getting dressed and while it remains open, it’s finally silent.  My
first thought is that I look hot, and I’m always the girl who looks in the
mirror and immediately finds something wrong.  Whether it’s the dark circles
under my eyes, oily hair, a zit on the side of my nose only I can see or unruly
eyebrows, I will find the blemish.  For once, I don’t focus on that, but rather
how the sheer gold fabric drapes along my waist and over my hips to show my
hourglass figure.  The strands of gold coins fall over my breasts in front,
accentuating their size but not overly so.  The dip in the dress is actually in
the back, grazing down to my waist and showing off my smooth, white back and
the sharp lines of my shoulder blades in a becoming way.  The skirt is long and
flows down to my ankles, and I find that there is a hidden slit up the side all
the way to my thigh that will allow me to move – and bonus – also to pee.  “Only
a gay man would be able to pick out a dress this perfect,” I finally say.

“I would marry a gay man who bought
me a dress like that,” Isabel says.  “It’s perfect.”

“What shoes will I wear?” I
wonder.  “Will you help me do my makeup?”  Isabel silently holds up a pair of
strappy gold heels that aren’t too tall that match the dress perfectly.  “Where
did you get those?”

“They were sent with the dress,”
she tells me.  I am skeptical they will fit, but sit down on the bed and try
them on.  “How did he know my shoe size?”

She shrugs.  “For your giant feet? 
Had they not fit you could have worn the box.”

I look on my bed for something to
throw at her but come up empty handed.

I sit at my dressing table while
Isabel puts gold eye shadow and a few layers of black mascara on me.  She lines
my eyes with a sparkly gold pencil and puts small gold rhinestones in the inner
corner of each eye, plus a larger tear-shaped one on my forehead.  Leave it to
Isabel to add more bling, but I have to admit, it works with the dress.  She
pulls my hair away from my face and twists it in back.  Then she curls the
loose parts until I have something like a southern belle up-do.  “So what are
your plans for tonight?” I ask her.

“As of right now,” she says. 
“Popping some popcorn and sitting around the house with that fat cat of
yours.”  I miss Carlton something fierce, but Isabel swears she is enjoying him
as a companion.  “I swear Leah, I had every intention of putting that beast on
a diet so that he’d be all fit and trim when you saw him again, but instead
he’s causing me to gain weight.”

I rake my eyes up and down Isabel’s
tiny frame.  “You’re insane,” I tell her.  “You’ll never gain a pound for the
rest of your life.”

She shrugs.  “All I know is that
I’ve been baking.  I hate baking.  I only cook, you know that.”