Captivated (Stranded) (7 page)

“Fuck, I’m gonna—”

He came in her mouth, every part of his body rigid and focused on shooting cum. When he was able to take a breath, she kneaded his dick and pressed her finger in his ass, and he shot more. She milked him for longer than he’d known was possible, until it really was painful. Slowly, he came back down onto his heels and eased her hands away. She gave his dick one last kiss and stood.

“You,” he said.

She smiled and bent to retrieve the washcloth, cleaning the finger that thirty seconds earlier had been inside him. She tossed the cloth to the rooftop and faced him again. “Yes?”

“You,” he said, chuckling.

She grinned. “You’re on repeat. What about me?”

“You’re in trouble,” he said, and squatting low, pushed her over his shoulder and splashed out of the pool.

“Ah!” she yelled, writhing and laughing. “Put me down!”

“Hush, Iowa.” He smacked her ass.

She squealed, which he was totally going to tease her about later, but right now the only thing going through his head was
panties, panties, panties.

Stooping to grab his towel, which brought another squeal and another ass smack, he carried her to the far side of the roof. “Got a surprise for you,” he said and carefully set her on her feet.

Her reaction was immediate. “Oh!” she gasped and looked down. “Grass?”

He spread the towel. “Top secret lawn. Special clearance only.” He leaned down and spoke low into her ear. “Lie down, please.”

Another
oh
, this one barely a breath, and then she stretched out below him.

He joined her, supported on one elbow and looked her in the eye. “You’re still in trouble. It’s good trouble,” he said, plucking at the top elastic of her panties, “but I want to make sure it’s okay.”

“Okay,” she said, smiling. “Well, everything but intercourse until we have a condom. Cool?”

Until.
“Cool,” he said. “Now these have got to go.”

Her breath sighed out of her, until nothing moved but her eyes, bright and wide in the moonlight.

He moved to kneel between her legs, spreading her just enough to accommodate his thighs. Smoothing two fingertips over the damp fabric, he pressed it to her skin. Above the panties, her abdomen rose and fell unevenly. He stroked a thumb up the light fuzz leading to her bellybutton. Her skin felt warm under his, and pulsed with her heartbeat. Leaning over, he dipped his tongue into her navel.

She sucked a big breath.

He grinned to himself. “Just getting started, troublemaker.”

Gripping her hips in his hands, he moved his mouth to her waistband and slipped his tongue underneath, licking her from one hip bone to the other. He raised his head and gave her a serious look. “Removing panties is a delicate operation. Gotta work from the outside in.”

“Oh.”

“This might take a while.”

“Fuck,” she whispered, and her head fell back to the grass.

Spreading her thighs, he pushed his tongue under one of the leg bands, near the top. Slowly (maddeningly, he hoped), he swiped a wet trail under the band, down, down, until his mouth was even with her pussy. He pulled up to look at it, tugged the fabric tight so that it molded to the contours of her sweet lips. He leaned down to breathe her in, but the bathwater had washed away her scent.

Mission: get it back.

He repeated the lick on the other leg band. When he reached her lips this time, he pushed his tongue a little farther under the fabric and waggled the tip.

She gasped.

He sat up. “And roll over,” he said, casual as a masseuse.

“Tease,” she grumbled but turned herself over. Her ass cheeks squeezed together a few times as she settled herself, and then she was still.

Waiting for him.

He laid kisses along her waistband, lifting the hem of her shirt to trail a few up her back. Hooking a finger into the elastic, he drew it down to the top of her crack and touched his tongue to the dip there.

She squeaked, her hands clutching at the grass.

Easing her waistband back into place, he shifted to the elastic at one leg. Her activity in the pool and subsequent ride on his shoulder had caused her panties to ride up, showing him two tantalizingly plump crescents of ass. Ignoring the panties for the moment, he set his tongue to the crease where her leg became her butt and licked toward her center.

Moaning loudly, she pushed her ass up into his mouth. He pressed her back down and snapped her elastic. He followed the same path on the other side, with the same results. Pushing her legs together, he crouched over them and held down her hips with his hands. She squirmed, causing the panties to ride even higher. Hooking his thumbs into the leg bands, he pulled them up, wedging the fabric high in her crack. Then he lowered his head and used his nose to prod the tender skin where her upper thighs met. She kicked her feet and panted. He opened his mouth wide, and bit lightly on one round cheek, drawing a sigh from her. Then he set his stubbly chin almost as low as her pussy and scraped it up her crack.

She shouted and bucked.

He rolled off. “Turn over please.”

She whirled on him. “Are you going to take these panties off or not?”

“Yes.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Soon?”

“What’s wrong, Iowa? Are you not enjoying your stay in Barcelona?”

She fell back on the grass and muttered something he was probably glad he didn’t hear.

But far be it from him to be a bad host, and so he slipped the offending panties down over her hips, her knees, her feet, and tossed them aside. She had a sweet little patch of dark hair on her mound. Everything else was shaved. He ran a knuckle lightly up one side of her pussy, then the other, and all the tension went out of her legs.

That lasted about five seconds, because
he
only lasted about five seconds before he had to bury his face in her. Slipping his hands under her hips, he lifted her to his mouth and set to eating her out with the single goal of discovering her flavor. The way she wriggled and moaned and yelped were definitely side benefits, and when she reached down and pulled his hair, he ground his dick into the cool grass, seeking relief. But then he was back on task, pulling her flower-petal inner lips into his mouth to suck on. He gave her long, hard drags with his tongue and a few flicks now and then on the delicate skin between her pussy and her asshole. When she was getting hard to hold onto, he worked his way back up, up, up to her clit, so sneaky in its little hood. He pulled the skin back with a thumb and sucked her nub between his lips.

She came almost immediately, arching up into him, letting loose a high-pitched sound he decided on the spot he was going to hear again. For now, he let up on the pressure and moved his tongue to her pussy, pushing it as deep inside her as he could. Her muscles pulsed against him, and she made another noise for the list of those to achieve again, and then he eased her down to the towel. Leaving her legs to relax on his shoulders, he lapped at her with gentle strokes, coating his mouth and chin in her cum, which tasted salty and sweet, with a slight tang that reminded him of the tamarind candy the shops sold here. He was pretty sure he could live on what she was giving him, especially if it came with her thighs pressed to his ears. But eventually, her fingers found the top of his head and tugged at his hair. He kissed her thighs and crawled up to lie on his back, his good side toward her.

She let her head loll sideways and gave him a goofy smile. “I need to get in trouble more often.”

“You’re a specialist, I bet.”

Her smile widened, and she reached for his face.

He caught her hand and kissed her wrist, before trapping it against his chest. But after a few seconds, she pulled her hand away, and before he could stop her, climbed over him to lie on his other side.

He stared at the sky, the scarred side of his face frozen like normal, only worse because he could feel her looking at him. His fingers dug into the grass at his sides. He itched to get up and run.

“I have a few questions,” she said.

He braced himself.

Chapter 8

He lay so rigid it hurt her heart. She pulled his hand from its grip on the grass and kissed it, then rolled onto her back, knees tented, and held his hand on her belly. His shoulder pressed, warm and solid, against hers. Only a few stars shone in the city sky. The grass under her tickled. She burrowed into it. She needed to say something soon. He was waiting and not happily.

“What’s your middle name?” she asked.

“It was a chemical bomb,” he said.

Her hand tightened on his.

“I’ll just tell you, okay?”

“Okay.”

He was quiet for a moment, then he squeezed her hand back. “It was stupid. So fucking stupid. I mean, the kind of thing they tell you to watch out for all the time. But you can’t watch every minute, and the minute you stop watching…” His ribs pushed against her arm on a deep breath. “That’s the minute they count on.” He shifted, pulling her hand to him. “It was a jar. A
clay
jar, which should’ve tipped me off because you can’t see through it, you know? Can’t see what’s going on inside. But it looked like every other clay jar I’d seen over there, and there was this dog fighting with a kid down the street. They were tugging on something between them, and I was trying to decide whether I needed to go help the kid get it back, whatever it was, and then
wham
.”

He lifted her hand, studying her fingers.

“All I remember was the pressure. It blew out my eardrum before I could even hear it and knocked me out cold. When I came to, my buddies were dragging me away, shouting for help. I could only hear out of my right ear, and my vision was all fucked up. It was like I was floating, except I felt like I was on fire.” He curled her fingers over his. “I sort of was.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know what was in the jar—pretty much the worst cocktail you can imagine. They told me later some of the chemicals they’d isolated during tests, but I didn’t recognize the names. Hydro-this and chloro-that; I wasn’t very good in chemistry. But whatever they were, they obliterated my uniform and then started eating into my skin. I couldn’t stop screaming. My buddies got some of it on their hands before one of them figured it out. Burned right through their gloves. So then they were trying to pull the shreds of my kit off with sticks and shit. Eventually, someone got me to a medic or the medic found me, and he knocked me out again. The next time I woke up for real, I was in Germany.”

“When?” she asked.

“Three years ago.”

“How long were you in the hospital?”

“Almost a year. Got my sight back, and my hearing. They did a few grafts, but mostly tried to get my skin to heal itself. It sucked, basically.”

“Evan.”

He turned his head to glare at her. “No pity, Iowa. I can’t stand it.”

“It wasn’t pity. It’s just…such an understatement to say it sucked.”

He didn’t respond to that, seemed to change the subject. “My dad came to see me in Landstuhl. A couple times, actually. The first time, I didn’t even know he was there. They must have convinced him I was going to be okay, because he went home. He came back when I was more coherent. I was glad to see him. Embarrassingly glad. I started bawling the first time I realized he was in the room with me.”

He lay quiet for a long time. The contractions of his chest felt erratic under her hand. She kept her gaze on the sky but reached her free hand up over her head and slipped her fingers into his hair. He pressed his head into her hand.

“He wanted me to come home,” he said after a while.

“Of course he did. But you wanted to travel?”

He let out a harsh breath. “Not exactly.” He lay silent another moment, then, “I was engaged.”

Her fingers stuttered. She forced them to keep caressing.

“Her name was Stacy.
Is
Stacy, but we’re not engaged any more.”

“Why not?”

“She broke it off.” He made a sound of exasperation. “They weren’t sure at first if I’d make it. I did, but it was tricky going for a while. That’s why my dad came over the first time. I guess it was too much for her. Either she was going to have to bury me or live with some gargoyle—”

“You’re
not
a gargoyle—”

“—so she sent word with Dad.” He shrugged against her arm. “She had to move on.”

“But you pushed through.”

“I pushed through.”

Should she say it?

What the hell.

“And you think she should have pushed through, too.”

He didn’t answer that.

Laine sighed. “You’re a good man, Evan.”

He snorted. She risked a glance at him to find his brows heavy with a frown.

“You refuse to blame her.”

He rolled his head toward her and fixed on her eyes. “Not out loud,” he said. “In my head’s a different story.”

She smiled at that. A good man, and honest. “Was she a high school sweetheart?”

“Nah. Met her in college.”

“Must have been pretty good if you were engaged.”

He shook his head. “It was more just expectation, you know? Go to college, meet a girl, get married, et cetera. It’s probably good she ended it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. We were okay together, but just okay. Not very…adventurous.” A small smile curled his lips. “What I just did to you?”

Laine grinned. “Which part?”

“All of it. She never let me do any of that.”

“Oh.” Laine wasn’t sure she wanted to hear this.

“Yeah. It was pretty much just missionary with a side of cowgirl.”

“Those are good, too,” she said, trying to be objective.

“They’re great!” he said and laughed when she did. “But there’s a big world outside them, you know? What am I saying? Of course you know, you study it.”

“It’s a big, big world,” she agreed, “and yet, it all just comes down to touching someone in whatever way feels good.”

“Hey.”

“What?”

“I don’t want to talk about Stacy any more.”

“Thank God.”

He grinned his lopsided grin at that, and coming up on one elbow, leaned over to kiss her.