Close Up: Exposure Book Three (8 page)

In fact, the very thought of it terrified me.

O
n the way home
, Asher put his hand on my leg. We were in his Tesla, and he kept putting his hand on my leg. “Are you okay?” he kept asking me.

I didn’t say anything, but just stared out the window. The air was misty outside, and I felt the dampness in my bones. I had goose pimples on my flesh, and they weren’t for a good reason. I knew that the entire experience with Andrea and the sex club was really doing a number on my head space.

I finally did answer him, though. “I don’t know. I have to really try to process what I remembered in there. It’s not going to be easy, though, and, to be honest with you, I don’t know if I’m going to be recovered enough to meet your father. I’m so sorry.”

He looked disappointed. “I understand. I knew that this would be a risk, making you confront that.”

“No,” I said. “We did the right thing. It’s better that I have these memories now and not have them come back to me at a later time. Assuming that I do decide to meet your father, it was too much of a risk that those memories would flood in at a very inopportune time. So, I think that this helped me.”

He stroked my cheek lightly with the back of his hand. “You’re very brave. I hope that you know that. I wish that you could see yourself through my eyes. If you did, you would never doubt yourself again. You’d know that you could come through anything, anything at all.”

I shook my head, trying hard to hold back tears. Asher saw me in a certain way, but was I really that strong? I mean, I had been in a psychiatric facility twice. That meant that there were two separate times in my life where I couldn’t keep it together. Would there be another mental breakdown in my life? If there was, would Asher still be there?

“Asher, I don’t know. I still can’t decide if I want to meet your dad or not. I mean, I so want to. I really do. But there seems to be too much against it.” Even as I said that, though, I knew, deep down, that I really didn’t have a choice. Asher made it seem like I did, but I really doubted that.

I knew, by looking in Asher’s eyes, that I was right about that. I needed to do it. I needed to meet his father, kiss the ring, and hope against hope that his father would give his blessing to our union.

I took a deep breath, and squeezed Asher’s hand. “Yes,” I said softly.

He looked at me questioningly. “I didn’t ask a question.”

“You did. A few weeks ago.” I took another deep breath. “And my answer to that question is yes.”

He closed his eyes briefly, and then trained them back on the road. He reached for my hand and squeezed it tightly. A smile began in the corner of his mouth, and it got wider as the car buzzed along the road. He slightly nodded his head and simply said “good.”

I looked out the window and hoped that I was making the right decision.

W
e got back
to Asher’s place, and I felt exhausted and spent. I felt that I had made a commitment, and there was no turning back at that point.

I should have been on top of the world. I was hopefully marrying the most magnetic, handsome, sexy, and sweet man in the world. Despite my earlier misgivings, I knew that he could be trusted, too. There was something that he was hiding about Sophie, and I had the feeling that he probably never slept with her at all. I had no idea why he would lie to me about that, but, from what he had told me about her, I knew that she was a manipulative piece of work.

All would be revealed in due time. I knew that.

So, why was I feeling so apprehensive?

Because his father was despicable. I mean, I had felt that my family was crazy. But they were crazy in a good way, or at least they used to be. But Asher’s father was….well he was a sociopath. He had to be. How else could he do what he did and look at himself in the mirror every evening? How could he sleep at night?

I also knew that there was more that was going to come out about Asher and his involvement in his father’s group. He was a soldier at one point. What did that mean? What did that entail? I thought that I might know, and that knowledge gave me a sinking feeling.

Asher had blood on his hands. There was a part of me that knew this. And that made me want to run the other way.

“CJ,” he said. “We have to move soon. Not literally, but I need to get the flight to London arranged. I need to get your passport prepared. There’s a lot to do. I wish that things didn’t have to be so rushed, but it’s how it has to be.”

“Of course, I know that.” Then I got very quiet. I was sitting down on the couch, and Asher was standing up, his hands on his hips.

I wanted to ask him to come clean about everything, but I was afraid. I was afraid that if I knew the truth, I wouldn’t want to be with him anymore. It was like a lie that people tell themselves every day, because they don’t want to face up to the ugly truths about the people they love – that the other person’s past doesn’t matter, and that the other person’s past couldn’t possibly be that bad.

I wanted to believe that. I was desperate to believe that. I wanted to think that Asher’s past was irrelevant. That it wasn’t who he was presently. That it wasn’t fair to judge him on that, because it was something that he couldn’t change. That he wasn’t the sum total of his life experiences. That I could live with everything that he had done.

I needed to believe all of these things, so I continued to keep quiet.

Asher then sat down next to me. “Hey,” he said, “there’s something on your mind. I know that there is. Please tell me what’s troubling you. I need to know.”

I finally just sighed. “There’s nothing troubling me. I mean, there is, and that club is weighing on my mind. It makes me sick to think that I was working there and was roped into it. And Andrea is stuck there. I have some memories about her, and she’s a nice girl who is in a bad situation.” I shook my head. “I hate knowing definitively about suffering. I mean, sometimes I can live with it in the abstract. You know, you read about misery, but it doesn’t exactly become real to you. But to see it, with your own eyes…” I shuddered. “I don’t know how I get past it.”

He lowered his voice and looked into my eyes. “Let me help.”

I put down my glass, and he put his hand in my hair. I took a deep breath, inhaling him, wanting to drink him in. I needed to feel his hands all over my body. I was craving the forgetfulness that was inherent in his touch. I had felt dirty about that club, knowing that I was working there, and I needed some kind of baptism. Some kind of cleansing.

“CJ,” he said softly. “I love you. I’ll never let anything happen to you. As long as I’m alive, you’ll always be protected, I promise you this.” Then, as if to emphasize that point, his soft lips enveloped mine. I drank them in like a fine wine.

His fingers lightly traveled from my wrist to the crook of my arm, leaving heat and tingles in their wake. From there, his gentle hands made their way to my collarbone, stroking and caressing my skin. I laid back against the soft leather of the couch, and he laid down on top of me. His hard-on was poking through his pants, his desire for me extremely evident. I tugged on the waist-line of his pants, my fingers eagerly finding his belt buckle and button and I deftly unhooked both.

His hands were underneath my blouse, making their way to my bra, which he unhooked with a single finger. I moaned as he lifted my blouse over my head, and lightly tongued my nipples. One and then the other, and I felt them tingling and harden in his mouth.

“Don’t stop, please, Asher, don’t stop.”

“I won’t,” he said. “Not until you’re screaming, and not even then. I want to fuck you until you can’t be fucked anymore.” At that, he lifted my legs off the couch, and tugged on my skirt and panties, then threw them in a wad on the floor. His mouth, so soft, supple and sensuous, was enveloping my pussy, and, after a few minutes of his licking, sucking and caressing that sensitive area, I felt my first orgasm.

I started to moan and scream out, not able to keep in the absolute pleasure that I was feeling with him between my legs. His tongue was gently darting in and out of my nether-regions, and the heat that was I was feeling was unbelievable. He inserted a single finger inside of me, and swirled it around while his other hand was caressing my ass.

All my problems were forgotten as his tongue gently and languidly tickled and teased my clit. He was amazing at this, as he was able to get me exactly the way that I wanted him to. He was able to give me what I needed to feel whole.

He picked me up and carried me to his bedroom, and laid me down on the bed. Then he laid down on top of me again, his mouth enveloping mine eagerly. His tongue was inside my mouth, and it was intertwining with my own. He tasted so delicious, so fantastic, and my senses were bursting and on extreme overload.

He then entered me, his hard cock piercing my insides. I screamed out once more, urging him to go faster and harder. “Give it to me, Asher, please,” I said. “Oh my God, that feels…fuck!” I wrapped my legs around him tighter as he picked up speed, and then slowed down, and picked up speed again.

“Oh, God, CJ, you’re so fucking wet,” he said as he slipped in and out. Then he flipped me on my side, and I felt his enormous cock enter me from behind. He kissed me passionately as I felt his manhood press in and out of me time and again. “I love fucking you,” he said. “I just can’t get enough of it.”

I felt the same way about him, and was going to tell him this, but he was kissing me again, so I couldn’t talk. But I felt orgasm after orgasm float over me as he continued his rhythmic thrusting from behind. He wrapped his big, strong arm around my neck and then he kissed my back. I felt him shudder, and I knew that he had come inside of me.

He pulled out, and laid down next to me, gently kissing me on my lips and around my face. I pulled his hair, making sure that I kept him near me. I didn’t want him to separate from me, ever.

I sighed, feeling totally sated.

He caressed my breasts and kissed them again and laughed. “You know, CJ, I was afraid that I would never have this again with you. I can’t tell you how I felt when you were missing. Especially since I knew what kind of men had you. I would have given anything, done anything, to have you back in my arms again.”

That’s when it struck me. He would do anything to get me back. It was established that Sophie was behind the whole thing. Would he have slept with her to get the information that he needed to find me?

If that were the case, then I might have found it in my heart to totally forgive him. Maybe.

I looked at him. “Asher,” I said. “I…”

I didn’t say anything after that for a little while, and Asher was still laying beside me, looking at me with a question in my eyes. “Finish your thought,” he finally said softly. It wasn’t said in a pushy way, but, rather, his tone was that of concern.

What came out of my mouth was something that even
I
wasn’t expecting. “I noticed that you didn’t use a condom with me this time, and I was wondering why.” Then I shook my head, wondering why I was asking that question. It
was
something that was weighing a bit on my mind, as he and I had always used condoms and he knew that I ``wasn’t taking any kind of birth control. The pill, or any other kind of hormonal birth control, was just something that I didn’t want to mess with. I didn’t want that kind of artificial drugs in my body.

But why did I ask that question, and not the question that I was really wanting to ask? I had wanted to ask him if he had slept with Sophie because maybe that was how he was able to find information. Yet I asked him about why he didn’t use condoms with me.

He nodded his head. “Yes,” he said, his finger trailing across my skin. It traveled from my breasts to my waist, and then landed on my chin. He raised my face to him ever so slightly, and then kissed me again. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have done that without asking you first.”

What was he saying?
“Are you trying to say that you want to have a child with me?”

He nodded. “But we haven’t talked about it, and I’m sorry about that. It was just something that I spontaneously started to consider, right at the heat of the moment. I’m so sorry, CJ, that wasn’t exactly responsible of me.”

I shook my head. “Asher, I’m not saying that I don’t want to have a child with you. But it’s not a good time.”

And then it struck me on what was really bothering me about him not using a condom with me. I looked at him, his blue eyes trained on me. He kissed me again, and I tried to stop from absolutely melting.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I wish that I could have taken that back. I do love you, though, and I think that you would be an amazing mother.”

“Did you also think that Sophie would be an amazing mother?” Right there was the biting question that was on the tip of my tongue. The biting question that I tried hard to suppress. Yet there it was, lingering in the air and poisoning the atmosphere.

He gave me a look of disgust. “Of course not,” he said. “Why would you say something like that to me?”

I examined my nails and refused to look at him. “Because you apparently didn’t use a condom when you slept with her. Otherwise, there would have been no way that she was pregnant with your child. You and she were not being careful.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. I suddenly didn’t feel so special. His apparent romantic gesture of wanting to conceive a child with me suddenly felt dirty and tainted. Perhaps that was just how he was – irresponsible. He thought about the consequences of what he did after the fact.

He was suddenly agitated. He sprung out of bed and started to pace the floor. His beautiful hand went through his thick dark hair, and then he pulled on his own hair. It stood up where his fingers were, giving him the look of somebody who was wild and just a little bit untamed.

Which was a perfect description for him, really. Wild and untamed.

“CJ,” he said, and then he shook his head. It was as if he were trying very hard
not
to say something to me.

He finally just decided to go to his sliding glass door and walked out on the terrace. He was still completely naked, but he didn’t seem to realize that. He put his hands on the railing that overlooked the street, and then finally put his head in his hands.

I just laid there in the bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering if I needed to go out there and confront him. I did wonder what it was that he wanted to say to me. I wondered what was so difficult for him to express. What he was hiding from me, for I knew that he
was
still hiding something.

I finally got dressed and joined him out on the terrace. He didn’t acknowledge me coming out there with him. He was still completely naked, his muscles and sinew completely taut. He had one long leg up on the stone railing, and he had a drink on the table next to him. At some point, he got up and went to the outdoor bar, and poured himself another drink and sat back down.

I felt like I was holding my breath, waiting for him to say something to me. Something, anything. I just needed answers, and it was clear that he wasn’t giving them to me. Yet, I also felt that I couldn’t speak. I didn’t want to confront him, because I had no idea what was going to come out of his mouth. I was afraid to find out, too, so I chose just to sit there in resolute silence while he did the same. Even so, he was sipping his drink, and staring out into the distance.

From far down below, I heard the distant sound of a foghorn on the harbor. From closer in, I heard cars honking. Traffic lights were changing colors on the street, from green to red and back again. The twinkling lights of hundreds of skyscrapers lit up the entire night sky. The air was misty and slightly cool, and I could see, in the streetlights, the signs of the heavy fog that had enveloped the city.

I couldn’t help but imagine, ruefully, that the fog that had blanketed New York was emblematic of my state of mind. I had felt like there was just too many things that were competing for my headspace, and I couldn’t see my way through any of them.

Asher was rattling the ice around in his glass, still staring at the horizon. His jaw was clenched, and he kept running his hands through his hair.

Finally, he spoke. “I love this view,” he said. “When I first got to the city, I craved having a view like this. There’s such beauty in the city, even though there’s this core that’s seamy and dirty. But, after living in absolute squalor, having this kind of beauty around me was just like heaven.”

I wondered if he felt like the city – beautiful on the outside, yet dark on the inside. I felt just a little bit taken aback by him talking about living in squalor.. “But your father is extremely wealthy. Why would you have been living in squalor?”

He laughed just a little bit ruefully, and took another sip of his drink. “He abandoned us when Natalia and I were only a few months old. He didn’t support the family at all, either. I don’t think that he sent a thin dime to help us. We lived off the social safety net, what little there was for us, along with my mom’s extremely meager salary that she earned as a hospital orderly. It was desperate poverty, but we were pretty happy until Anton started to disappear for days at a time.”