The Preacher's Son #2: Unleashed (3 page)

"Oh God, Tre, don't stop! Not now! I'm so close, I'm almost there, please...."

He drew himself almost out of me, returning the tease now, just barely brushing my slick, dripping labia with his engorged head. I kept my hips up, holding still, feeling a thrill of lightning shoot through me at each tender, questing touch of his cock. Just when I was about to beg him to finish me, he tilted his hips and slipped it back in, moving with an agonizing slowness, millimeter by millimeter. 

I broke first. I crushed my pussy down around him, crying out and abandoning all games, all thought. I had come so close to orgasm so many times, been on the cusp of detonation and been brought back away. Now, now with his cock drilling into me, diving with relentless abandon, I came with a fury that erased every orgasm I'd ever had. 

In the past, even with Tre, I'd shrieked, whimpered, gasped, cried out, called his name, called on God and heaven and "oh yes fuck me," but never, in all my life, had I ever screamed.

I screamed then, tilting my head back and voicing a full-on scream. 

The world went white and I dug my arms around his neck, squeezed with all I had, driving my pussy onto him over and over again, unable to control my body. I saw stars, felt a million galaxies all go supernova in my belly as Tre convulsed into me. 

I was still riding the cusp of my orgasm when Tre came, and that sent me over the edge all over again. I felt his penis clench and release, felt the flood his essence fill me, slosh against my walls and drip loose between our joined members. I was sobbing his name into his lips, into his teeth. Our hips were locked together now, moving in sync, both of us orgasming together, and Tre was whispering my name with equal fervor.

"Oh, Shea...oh God, Shea..." his voice was rough with emotion. "Oh my God, that was...I think...I think I just saw heaven."

I lifted my head up enough to meet his eyes. "So did I." I kissed him, a tender caress of the lips. "I'm seeing heaven right now."

I hadn't meant to say that last part, not looking at him the way I was. It was too much like vulnerability, like admitting the truth that was floating around deep inside the core of my soul, behind the walls he was too naive to see.

I wasn't in love with him, but I was close. I could see it happening, if things continued. 

That terrified me. 

I rolled off of him, untied his wrists from the bedposts and cuddled into him, pushing down both the fear and the burgeoning attachment with equal ferocity. I tried to hide by not looking at him, knowing he'd see something in my eyes or on my face, and ask about it. He'd ask questions I didn't have the answers to.

"Shea?" His voice was far too concerned and far too full of compassion to ignore.

"Yeah?" I suspected he'd seen or felt what I was hiding.

"What's wrong?" 

"Nothing," I lied. "I'm just...spent. I've never in my life felt anything like that before. I don't think I could move if I tried."

"Me either," he said. "But it's more than that. There's something wrong. I can...I don't know, I can feel it. Maybe that sounds crazy, but I can just feel it coming off of you."

I hesitated a beat too long. "It's nothing."

There was anger in his voice when he spoke next. "You're lying to me, Shea." He didn't pull away physically, but I felt him withdrawing emotionally. "I can take it if you want to...be with me. If you—if this is just...just sex, I get that."

He spoke to the ceiling, his arms strong around me, but his heart pulling away. I wasn't sure how it had happened, since we'd done little together but have sex, but somehow I had started feeling something for him besides lust. He was waiting for me to answer, and I couldn't, I just shook my head, and he sighed. 

I tried to figure out what had happened. When I saw him in the church, I was immediately attracted to him. He was gorgeous, with his angular face and perfect hair and natural bulk, but it was offset by something in his eyes, a kindness that was genuine, a true, bone-deep goodness that was truly rare. He was naive, and innocent, though, sheltered from just about everything that comprises the world at large, life in general. I doubted he knew how to survive on his own out there, away from his father. I doubt he understood what love really was, or how to take care of a woman. 

I didn't doubt that he could learn, but my fear was that I'd have to teach him, and I needed someone that could not just erase the awful memories of my ex-husband, but to love me like he never did. I wasn't sure I was ready to try to make that love happen, to let anyone in. I sure as hell wasn't ready to be a sugar-momma to a sheltered pastor's kid. The sex was amazing, and we'd just gotten started, that much was true. I had a feeling if I stayed with Tre, he'd learn to rock my world in ways I couldn't even imagine right now, especially if that last orgasm was anything to judge by. 

But was that enough to base a relationship off of? I knew it wasn't. Dan had done for me what I was doing for Tre, and I recognized this fact for what it was. Dan had taken me away from my pigeonhole of a life and showed me the world. He'd introduced me to sex, to drinking, to drugs, to gambling and traveling, fine wines and expensive clothes, five-star hotels and private jets to secluded island getaways...and through it all, Dan and I had fucked like rabbits.

It had been just that, though, empty, meaningless fucking, and now, comparing it to what I had with Tre, it wasn't even that good. It meant nothing to Dan. I didn't realize that at first, though. I was too young and innocent and honestly blind to the truth to see it. I loved every minute of it, felt worldly and womanly, felt like a seductress, a real Jezebel. Then I started noticing signs of Dan's straying: Lipstick on his collars, come-stains on his boxers that he thought I wouldn't notice, perfume on him I didn't wear. I ignored it, pretended it was fine. That didn't work too long, of course. I eventually caught him in our room, with one hooker sucking his dick, three fingers deep in two more bleach-blond whores. That was the beginning of the end, although it took me a long time to siphon the money I needed.

Tre was silent next to me, not sleeping. 

"Tre...I don't even know where to start." I traced the lines of his abs, drifting lower, hoping to distract him; he caught me my hand and pulled it back up. "It's not just sex, I can tell you that much. I don't know what it is, though."

I leaned up on an elbow and looked down at him. 

"You want the truth?" He nodded, although I'd meant it rhetorically. "When I first invited you here, I meant it as that...as just sex. I thought you were sexy and I wanted you. I...wanted a distraction. But at some point it started turning into something else. I don't know what, I honestly don't. I care about you. You're a good person, a good man, and I'm so proud of you for standing up to your father. I know how much courage that took."

"Distraction from what?" Tre asked, cutting through to the one thing I'd hoped he miss.

I sighed. "A lot of things."

He took my hand in his, wiggling the diamond ring I still wore. I'd forgotten about that. It wasn't the one Dan had given me; I sold that in New Orleans. It was just a fake hunk of cubic zirconium crap I wore, because married women attracted less attention than a single one. At least, that was the idea. Now I was beginning to think otherwise. 

"This?" He said, meaning the ring. "You need distraction from this?"

He thought I was still married, I realized.

"I'm not married, anymore, okay? I left him. That's why I came here, to get away from him."

"So you're divorced?"

"Well, not yet. I had the papers sent to him...to my ex-husband, when I was in Jackson. I have a PO box there. He'll sign and that'll be that."

"If you're not divorced, you're still married." Tre's voice was hard, angry.

"No, Tre, you don't understand. I left him. I don't love him, he doesn't love me. There never was love between us. It was just...a legal marriage. This ring isn't even his, it's fake." I took off the ring and handed to Tre, who examined it in the light of the moon shining through the window. "I just wore it because I thought I'd be accepted more easily if I was married. I didn't come here looking to meet anyone, and then I saw you, and..."

"Marriage is sacred, Shea. I really believe that. I know we did all this, together, but I thought—you said—I don't know...I thought you were divorced.  This is adultery."

"Tre, please listen to me." I sat up all the way, and so did he, turning to face me; I took the ring from him and held it between us. "There are two levels to marriage, okay? There's legal marriage, and emotional marriage. You can be one, without being the other. Do you see what I'm saying? Legal marriage is just a formality, invented by men, by people. It's a tax and property thing, and that's it. Emotional marriage, interpersonal marriage...that's different. That's when two people agree that they love each other and that they want to spend their lives together, sharing everything. It's an agreement, a promise, and a...what's the word the bible uses? A covenant. It's not a legal thing. 

"So technically, legally, yes, I'm still married, and this would be adultery in that sense. But in the kind of marriage I believe the Bible means when it talks about adultery...no, I don't believe that's what we're doing."

Tre looked away, staring out the window. He rubbed his temples and got up from the bed, pacing naked over to the window. He was silent a long time, thinking. I gave him the space. It felt like a trivial justification, what I'd just given him, and I think he knew it.

"I don't know, Shea. That seems like an excuse. I mean, I get what you're saying about two kinds of marriage, and I agree, now that I think about it. But I can't help wondering...is it still wrong, even if it's just legal marriage, that doesn't mean anything to either you or your husband, ex-husband, or whatever? And if it's not cheap, meaningless sex, what is it? It's sex outside of marriage, for one thing, and that's still a sin."

"Is it? Where does it say that? Where does it say sex is wrong?"

Tre stopped and thought, then waved his hand in a dismissal. "You're justifying. I know what I said earlier, that I didn't care if it was wrong, but now I do."

I set the ring down on the bedside table and crossed the room to stand next to him. I didn't touch him, though. I didn't want to seduce him out of his beliefs. Not entirely, at least.

"Tre, you have to decide what you believe for yourself. I think you're still partially thinking with the beliefs your father drilled into you. What do you believe, for yourself? Do you think what we have is wrong?"

"What do we have, Shea? You said yourself you don't know what it is. I mean, where is this going? How long are we going to continue this? It's wonderful, and amazing, and I...God, I don't want to stop. But is it wrong? I don't know. I'm so confused, suddenly. I like you. I really, really like you. Too much, maybe. My heart goes all weird when I think about you. That sounded stupid, I'm sorry." Tre turned to look at me, gilded silver by the moonlight. "Am I falling in love with you? I barely know you. I don't...I mean, we've known each other for like, three days. Two, actually. And we've spent most of that making love. Do I just think I feel this way because of that? Because of the sex? I don't know." 

"Here's the thing. Only you can decide what you feel. I like spending time with you, being with you, and I hope you decide to stay with me, but I'm not going to try to influence your beliefs or feelings beyond that. If I did, I'd be no better than your father."

Tre turned back to the window, and I could see the conflict written in the lines of his face, the set of his mouth, the tension of his shoulders. He seemed suddenly very much a man, rather than the awkward, hesitant not-quite-a-man he'd been just a few days ago.

"I can't go back," he said, after a while. "I can't go back to being who I was. Maybe it's not being a virgin anymore, maybe its knowing my parents—my dad—don't love me anymore, but everything just seems...different. It's like...it's like being with you, having sex or making love or whatever you want to call it, changed the way I see the world, or...the way I see myself, and life, and...God, just everything."

"It'll do that," I said. "I know what you're going through, to an extent. My ex-husband, Dan, I ran away with him when I was sixteen, almost seventeen. I remember suddenly looking at everyone around me with new eyes, sexual eyes, adult eyes. Even if you don't feel desire for them, you see them differently, knowing they've done what you've done, and it does change the way you see, the way you think and feel."

I wrapped my arms around his waist; he held himself stiff for a moment, then softened and turned to hold me, pulling me against his chest. My head nestled in the hollow beneath his chin, fitting as if formed to rest there.

"Do you resent me for taking your innocence?" I asked. 

That was a question, a fear, that had been lurking in my heart for a while now. I waited for his answer with a pounding heart and suddenly tear-burnt eyes. This tryst was turning intense, morphing out of my control into something frighteningly like a relationship.

"No," came the answer, whispered into my hair. "I made the choice. I came here, knowing, at least in some way, what you wanted, and I wanted it too. When I stepped into this house, I knew I was crossing some kind of line that I wouldn't be able to uncross. I did it anyway, and that was my choice, Shea. You didn't take my innocence; I gave it to you. I don't regret it. 

"I just don't know where we go from here." This last part was whispered more to himself than to me, and I didn't respond. 

I didn't know either. 

My Audi's engine hummed, purring smoothly as Tre guided my car around the gentle curve of the highway. The top was down, wind whipping our hair, the sun warming us as we cruised south on US-49 towards Jackson. 

Tre had decided upon waking the next morning to make a clean break.

"I want to leave," he had said at breakfast.

"Leave? Okay. Where do you want to go, and for how long?"

He met my eyes, and his were intense, determined. "I mean, leave Jackson. Move away, permanently."