The Safety of Nowhere (11 page)

Then he was out, his fingers slipping up and down her crease. “Push against me.”

She raised her hips toward him.

“Push against me with your inner muscles,” he explained.

Dinah did it, unresisting. What she accomplished must have satisfied him, because he lay on top of her, his chest flattened to her back. His weight was wonderful, his hot breath on her neck almost as good. Malcolm felt hard everywhere, his muscles, his cock, and his riveting intensity. He reached down and positioned the thick head of his prick between her ass cheeks.

She was frightened, heartbeat speeding up, breath coming short, a prickling of sweat along her spine. It was just the wild fear she wanted.

He pulled her tight, their bodies flush against each other. His cock exerted pressure, making its way in. She felt a pinch and tensed at the discomfort.

“Push back,” he said. His breath was hot where tears had cooled along her hairline. Her skin drew into gooseflesh from her shoulders to her breasts. “Push against me.”

She pushed. He entered her in one smooth slide, and she was stretched and filled with that same base satisfaction spreading into all her cells.

“You let me.”
That’s what he had said.

She inched her thighs farther apart and sought more of his weight by lifting up against him. It was like he’d said it would be: she felt molten at her core, liquid on her skin, just as he’d promised. She heard him sigh or growl, or maybe he’d said something. Dinah turned her head and felt him nibbling from her neck out to her shoulder.

He moved inside her, shallow nudges that sent ripples through a growing pool of sexual excitement in her belly. His chest was hot. The night air on her breasts felt cooler, and her nipples gathered tight. Dinah flattened both palms onto the bed and reared against him hard. His free hand slid over her stomach, worked itself between her thighs, and pressed against her pussy.

“Good?” he asked.

Dinah rolled her forehead
no
against the mattress. “You,” she said. “
You
say it’s good.”

The air rasped out of him, almost a moan. He shifted, rising slightly higher over her. “You know it’s good to fuck you. Feel how good it is.” He pulled back, thrust a little deeper. “Imagine you’re the one who’s fucking.”

Dinah closed her eyes and tried to understand what is was like for him. She really wished she knew. He worked himself more deeply into her, and something flickered in her mind, the clench of hot, pliant flesh around an aching cock.

“Oh.” That tiny flash of understanding was incredible. She grabbed his hand and ground her pussy hard against it. One knee raised for leverage made her pussy lips spread open and her ass cheeks part.

“More,” she said, and he obliged her. Sensation swamped her like he’d flipped a switch. He thrust. Her consciousness slid from her body into his. Penetrating force. Clenching heat. Fucking, being fucked, and back again.

“I want to hear you lose control,” she said in a breathy, broken voice. “I want to feel you sweat and jerk and shout with it.”

Malcolm’s arm cinched under her more tightly, and his weight descended, putting pressure on her to the bone. He pulled back and pushed into her, long, pounding strokes that scattered all her other torments. Worry. Dread. Obliterated by the hammering force.

“So good,” she said. “You say it.”

“Good,” Malcolm repeated. “Fucking you. Using you. It’s good.”

“I’m using you,” she said, correcting him.

He hesitated. “Are you? Are you using my cock, Dinah?” He stroked into her deep.

“Your cock,” she said. “Your breath, your weight, your muscle, your heat, your taste.” She turned her face to one side, and he kissed her.

“That’s your taste,” he said.

“I want to fuck you.” The words were part of the sexual contact; she didn’t really know what she was saying, but his arms tightened a fraction more.

“Do you want to fuck me? With your own cock? Fuck me just like this?”

The image was so hot it made her spread her knees and arch a little more.

“Yes, I want to.”

“Then you will.”

She moaned. He fucked. She circled on his hand. The heat between her legs intensified until it was too thick and hot and good and she was coming hard. The pleasure moved inside her like a tide. She let it drag her under, down and down and down into a world of unbridled extremes.

When she resurfaced, Malcolm’s cock was still moving inside her. “I’m coming, Dinah.” He pulled away and shouted. His whole body jerked and quivered as he came onto her sweat-soaked skin. And it was wonderful to hear him lose control and feel him tense and shake and then collapse.

* * * *

When she’d regained some of her senses, Dinah pulled her pillow free from underneath the bedspread. She cradled it against her face and closed her eyes, exhausted.

Malcolm got up long before she’d even opened her eyes. He kissed her cheek and cleaned the cum streaks off her back. She didn’t move or comment. Nor did she pay particular attention to the sounds he started making in the kitchen. This numbing aftermath of sex was good, because it meant she didn’t have to think or move.

“Have some of this.” He sat beside her, propped against the headboard. Dinah sniffed the air and turned toward him.

“Waffles?”

There were three left over from that morning. He’d folded one up like a taco shell and dipped it in the syrup he’d poured on the plate. Dinah rose to join him, folding, dipping eating the way he did. They each finished one, then shared the third, alternating bites. She watched him take the plate back to the kitchen, wash it off, and put it in the drainer, smiling with self-approval as he sauntered back to bed.

“More.” She pulled his body over hers. “Make love to me again.”

He fit himself between her thighs, gathered her against his chest. “Again and still and always.”

Chapter Nine

Something was buzzing. Dinah couldn’t get the noise to stop. Her dream self labored frantically to smother it and smash it, bury it in the backyard. The harsh alarm won all the battles.

She opened one eye just as Malcolm dragged himself from bed, standing still to get his bearings. Eventually, he found his bag and pulled the messager into his hand. The sight of the device had Dinah upright, instantly awake. “What is it?” she asked hoarsely.

Malcolm met her gaze with perfect calm. “It’s Amin, writing us to say the roads are clear.”

“Oh.” A phantom echo of the buzzing started underneath her skin. Emotional alarm bells trilling through unhappy flesh. Dinah shifted deeper in the bed and pulled the blankets up under her nose. He was going. She would have to say good-bye. And then what? She was in such trouble now that Rocco and the rest of them knew she was still alive between her legs. Without Malcolm beside her she would have to worry all alone.

The sky was the pale gray of very early morning. Four, five at the latest, which meant after the countless times they’d made love she could not have slept more than three hours. Dinah doubted she would manage to doze off again. Some coffee and a long, hot shower sounded better anyway.

She got into her robe, pulling on a pair of heavy socks against the morning chill, and stumbled to the kitchen, staring stupidly down at the kettle while the water slowly heated and the steam moistened the tight skin of her face. Malcolm was now sitting up in bed. He was naked, a sheet covering him from the waist, his back against the headboard, and he was watching her, of course. Which meant he would know how sad she was and all the rest of it, but there was next to nothing she could do about that.

Dinah poured two cups of coffee and brought them back with her to bed. He took the cup she offered him. She sat down next to him and pulled the covers over her cold feet. Side by side they sipped and stared as the room lighted gradually around them.

Maybe she should say something. Sentences presented themselves to Dinah’s mind like gloomy candidates for an unwanted job:
When are you leaving? Can I make you something for your trip? Are you looking forward to getting back home?

Empty, stupid words. The real things she would never say:
Will you miss me? Will you at least remember me? Was any of it special to you?
Her breathing slowed. Another more important question wormed its way into her consciousness.

Do I love you, Malcolm? You see everything so tell me that. Do I love you? I think I do, but how can I be sure?

“What is it?”

“What?” He’d startled her. She spilled a little coffee on the soft skin of her breast and winced. He took the cup from her and slowly bent his head to kiss the scalded skin. Then he was stroking her and looking at her thoughtfully.

“What’s wrong?”

Too many things, all pointless to get into. She pressed her forehead onto his shoulder, which was hard and soft and perfect like the rest of him. “I’m glad you came,” she said. “I like you.”

“Do you?” He sounded pleased. It made her laugh, and laughter gave her courage to sit up straight again.

“I might cry when I say good-bye. Does that happen a lot?”

“Happen a lot?” Apparently she’d baffled him.

“With the thousandzzzz,” Dinah explained, remembering to add the plural. “Do any of them cry?” Tears of sadness? Tears of joy? Probably he’d seen his share of both.

The quiet in the house grew absolute. He wasn’t going to answer her. Soon she’d always have to answer for him. Speak for him. Imagine what he’d say.

He shifted very carefully. She blinked to find him staring at her. “Which sounds more important to you, Dinah. Thousands? Or one?” He sounded serious and sad. It made her feel like a bad girl. She crawled on top of him and tried to pull him close. His body was unwieldy when he didn’t help her.

“I’m the most important,” Dinah said. “No one cares about you like I do.” She settled in to her awkward position. In time he stroked her back and pressed his chin down on her head. It made it better but it didn’t make it good.

“What will you do now?” he asked softly.

“I don’t know. Feel shitty? Take a shower maybe?”

“Let’s play a game.”

Dinah raised her head and smiled into his dear face. “Really?” That was such a good idea. They always had fun when they played the game. She crawled to the bench where they’d left the box and picked a card.

The first one wasn’t good enough. She didn’t want to play at slave and gladiator now. She put it back and drew again. Naughty student. Not a chance. How many of those tired situations had they put in there? Malcolm watched with patient curiosity, making no objection when she reached in a third time.

A good one. Finally.

“Tell me,” Malcolm said.

“I’m a princess.”

He raised his brows, gently objecting. “Again?”

“I know,” she said, “but this time I’m awake. You’re my forbidden lover in a dungeon. My father, the king, has ordered your execution, so I have to rescue you.”

Malcolm studied her a moment, then acquiesced. “All right.”

“Lie down.” She motioned him toward the center of the bed. “Pretend you’re in chains. You’re worried, hungry, but not really hurt.” She ran a hand over one of his arms. “Not hurt,” she said again.

Malcolm stretched his limbs into position. Dinah nodded. “Stay here and don’t move until I save you.’’

She went into her closet and pushed clothes out of the way until she found her Christmas dress—a long, red velvet hostess gown she wore once every year, perfect for the daughter of a king. Dressing up for role-play would be new and maybe even weird, but this was the last chance she had to show herself to him in something other than a ratty robe, a pair of jeans, a dirty set of Cy’s old clothes. She put the old dress on. It had a nice weight to it and the silky lining made a pleasant swish against her skin. Encouraged by the look of it, Dinah even combed her hair and put some moisturizer on her skin.

“Sweetheart.” She went back to him and knelt beside him on the bed. He was naked and spread-eagle on the sheets. She imagined she could see the smear of dirt, the gleam of sweat, the heavy iron shackles on his wrists.

Malcolm was good at pretending things. She was nowhere near the actor he was and generally struggled to imagine what to say. This time, bizarrely, the whole thing came naturally to her. She laid her body over his. “You’re safe,” she said and placed one soft kiss on his mouth. She ran her cheek along his chest and kissed his stomach all the way down to his penis. He wasn’t hard, but she liked that. She liked his cock in all its states. Dinah cuddled him with cheek and lips. Reluctantly, she sat up and pulled a make-believe key from a chain around her neck.

“Where did you get that?” He frowned at the imaginary object she held out to him.

“I drugged the guards and took it.”

“I told you not to risk your safety for my sake.”

She ignored this, bending to unshackle him, hands first, then his feet. He sat up rubbing at his wrists while giving her a meditative stare. “You’re very beautiful,” he said.

She sat back on her heels and looked at him, feeling very tired and more than a little sad. “I hope you’ll remember me that way.”

“Remember you?”

“You have to go.”

He shook his head. “I won’t leave here without you.”

Dinah straightened, looking down at him. “But you can’t stay.”

“I said I won’t leave here without you.” On this point, it appeared the man could not be moved.

She bent her body over his and kissed the warm crease of his neck. He smelled like her: her soap, her body, and her bed. She kissed his lips, his forehead, and his hands. With both palms flattened over his chest, she kissed down to his thighs, his knees, his calves. This was a good game, exactly what she’d wanted: a place where she could be in love with him and say good-bye.

He waited while she kissed back up his body, the crimson fabric of her dress covering both of their limbs. He tightened one arm on her waist and pulled her head down over his.

“I love you,” Malcolm said.

“What?” That made her cry. Hot tears were rolling down her cheeks. Why would he say something like that? She thought about him getting into someone’s car to drive away. How could she stay here, eat and work and get into her bed alone?