Yours: A Standalone Contemporary Romance (24 page)

“Lock?” Her voice is tremulous.

I have no words for her now. Only my tongue and lips all over her thighs and core. She rocks, groans. Tastes so sweet, so smoky, a taste I could lap up and never get enough of. I cup her ass with one hand, encouraging her to move. Encourage her to ride me. Slide two fingers inside her, spear them in and out. And god, she’s so tight two fingers is all I can fit. She moans, rocks, moves.

“Lock, oh fuck, Lock. God, this feels amazing.”
 

She lets go of the headboard with one hand and stabs her fingers into my hair, grips a handful and pulls my face against her, taking all she wants from me. Her hips are grinding in circles, and I feel her clenching around my fingers. She’s moaning and whimpering, eyes open and staring down at me in an expression of wild, uninhibited need conflicting with amazement and bliss and the ever-present confusion as to what the fuck is going on between us. But she doesn’t stop, continues to ride my tongue until her movements are stuttering and fluttering and her fingers are gripped painfully tight in my hair.

“Lock, Lock…
LOCK!
” She loses it, then, with my name shouted from her lips, shuddering, shaking, crying out wordlessly and grinding hard as I lick and slide my fingers in and out until she’s limp and collapsing down, sliding down my body to lie on top of me, involuntarily shuddering as aftershocks rip through her.
 

“Shit, Lock. I haven’t felt anything like that in—” She shakes her head against my chest, shrugging. “Ever, maybe.” She lifts up, brows scrunched, eyes wide, lip quivering. “And that scares the hell out of me.”
 

I smooth my hand in circles on her back. “I know what you mean.”
 

“Do you?”

I nod. “Yeah. What I feel with you, what you make me feel?” I shrug, at a loss for words. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt. I don’t know what it means or how to deal with how intense I feel everything with you.”
 

“Not the same, though.” She traces idle patterns on my chest with a finger. “That’s not the same as what I’m saying.”
 

“What are you saying, then?”
 

A long pause, and then she sniffles. Flattens her left hand on my chest—she took her rings off. The skin is whiter where the rings used to be, indented slightly. “I had something amazing, with—with…with Oliver. And it really was amazing.
Really
amazing. Once in a lifetime beautiful. But…this?” She digs her fingertips into the muscle of my chest, sniffling yet again. “Whatever this crazy thing is between you and me, it’s…
so
intense. I feel things, Lock…I feel things with you that I—that I’ve never…that I’ve never felt before. Such crazy, intense things I didn’t even know were possible. And that hurts, and it’s confusing, but it’s so addictive.”
 

“Niall, I—”

She’s not done, though. “I want to tell you to leave. I don’t know how to—how to deal with the fact that you’ve got—that you have—” she obviously can’t even say it, placing her left hand over my heart, feeling it beat like a kick drum in my chest, but she continues in a ragged whisper, “…you have his heart. You’re nothing like him. I don’t mean that as a bad thing. You’re just totally different people. But you have his…his heart. You have my…you have Ollie’s…
heart.
” That last word is a broken sound.
 

I try again, even though I have no idea what’s going to come out. “Shit, Niall. I’m sorry. I wish—”

“Don’t!” she snaps. “Don’t you
fucking dare
wish that
.
It’s not going to bring him back, and I’m not going to wish you weren’t alive. Because…because I’m finally
feeling
again, Lock. I was numb, ever since his death. All I felt was hurt and pain and anger and confusion and loss. And I couldn’t keep feeling that, but I couldn’t make it go away or get over it, so I just…I numbed myself. With wine, with whiskey, with work, with staying home and going to sleep however I could and going to work, and just…existing, until I was numb.
 

“Then you showed up—and I—I’m finally alive again, Lock. And the thing is, being alive again fucking
hurts,
it hurts so bad, Lock.” Now she’s crying, saying these words through tears. “It
hurts.
Feelings
hurt. I don’t know how to be without Ollie. I don’t know how to…how to let myself feel good things without feeling guilty, because he’s not here to feel those good things with me, and it’s someone else making me feel those good things. How can I let that happen? He was the love of my life, and he’s gone, and I shouldn’t ever feel good things again, should I? But I—I want to feel them. I fucking—god, I can’t get enough of how you make me feel. And I hate myself for that, but…I can’t stop wanting more.
 

“I masturbated thinking about you too, right before I came here. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t help masturbating to you, and I couldn’t help coming here, knowing we’d do this, knowing how it would make me feel, both so good and so bad. Not good-bad, but confused bad. Guilty. Sick to my stomach and dizzy with anticipation and so eager for more I don’t know how to contain it. I
need
this, Lock. I need what you make me feel. Because it means I’m
alive,
but I don’t want to be alive, not without Ollie, but I know I have to be. I have to live. I have to…move on. I have to let him go. But how?
How,
Lock? How do I do that?”

“I don’t know,” I whisper. “I don’t know.”
 

I have so much going on inside me. Guilt. Need. Confusion. Fear. All layered above and in and around this other feeling, a new feeling I don’t have words for. I can’t even wrap my head around it. It’s an immense, intense emotion centered around Niall, and it’s not about sex, not really. It’s not about her body. It’s not even about my heart, the heart in my chest. It’s…something more. Something deeper. Sharper. Bigger. It cuts. It rips. It swells so my chest feels like it’s cracking open. It’s the feeling of dizziness, right before you fall off a cliff.
 

I did that once, fell off a cliff by accident. I was climbing straight up a sheer cliff face in one of those remote Chinese fishing villages where the mountains are spires spiking out of the sea. I don’t remember everything, just that I was a hundred feet up, no ropes, just my hands and feet and the stone. I reached for a handhold, felt the wind snatch me right off the cliff face and toss me like a doll out into space, free-wheeling, arms flying, pinwheeling. I just barely missed being smashed on the rocks, and I hit the water like a ton of bricks, so hard I couldn’t breathe. Only instinct saved me, kept me fighting for the surface, fighting for breath, even though I was in agony, wondering if maybe I’d crushed all my bones on the impact of my fall.

I feel like that now. I’m drowning. Free-wheeling, pinwheeling through space, stomach in my throat, no up, no down, no surface to hold on to, only something sharp and hard beneath, waiting to smash me to pieces.
 

And here she is, pouring her heart out to me. Spilling everything, braver than I could ever hope to be.
 

I can’t speak. My tongue might as well have been ripped out of my head for all that I’m capable of speaking.
 

Fear is a serpent in my chest, pumping venom in my veins. I want to run. But I can’t. I can’t. But I also don’t want to run, because she’s in my arms and nothing has ever felt so good, nothing has ever felt like this, like her. God, there’s never been anything like her in my life, and I’ve got her in my arms and I don’t dare let go. Don’t fucking dare.
 

But, god, I’m so paralyzed it’s painful. I’m not even breathing.
 

And then she lifts up, forearm braced on my chest, hair a loose wild fall of curls on my skin, eyes the color and shape of almonds streaked with green, fingers tapping unconsciously along with the rhythm of my heartbeat, her eyes on mine. Piercing, seeing so much, too much.
 

“Lock?” She’s searching me with those eyes. Seeing all, or seeing nothing, I don’t know. “Say something.”
 

“I—” I shake my head, as if to shake words loose. “Niall…”

What do I say? How do I put into words what I can’t even put into thoughts in my own head?
 

All I can do is kiss her.

I roll over with her, cup her face in my hands and kiss her, trying to show through the kiss the ineffable, unfathomable feelings I can’t express. Through the kiss, I hope she’ll begin to understand what I sure as fuck don’t.
 

At the risk of sounding like a fuckboy douchebag…I’ve kissed a lot of girls. I’ve had an uncountable number of hot-and-heavy makeout sessions, so I know how to kiss. I know how to turn a woman on just with kisses.
 

Nothing in my life, no woman, no encounter, no kiss could have ever prepared me for the next sixty seconds. I know it’s exactly sixty seconds because right before I kiss her the clock on the bedside table flicks from 11:31 p.m. to 11:32 p.m. I watch the red lines forming the numeral change and then I lean in and our lips are fused, and my life is irrevocably altered.
 

We kiss.

Not for the first time, but it’s a minute of my life that I know will always be indelibly imprinted on my mind as the most important kiss, the most important minute of my life.

And then I open my eyes just in time to see the clock change from 11:32 p.m. to 11:33 p.m.
 

I don’t really have words for the kiss.

It’s so much more than the meeting of lips. So much more than tongues tangling. It’s…

See? I don’t even know.

It’s the feeling of my heart being ripped open, the long-fallow soil of my soul churned and tilled. It’s a feeling of belonging, a sensation utterly alien to someone like me. It’s a wanting to belong. Needing something I’ve never wanted. Something, as Niall said, I didn’t even know existed. Except for her, she’s talking about physical sensation, and for me this is…deeper. Something…more.
 

And yes, the way she makes me feel, the way everything with her feels is so much
more.
We’re not doing anything I’ve never done before, nor do I think any of this is new for her. But something about the way it is between us is…different.
More,
for the lack of a better word. More, in the way the heat of the sun is
more
than the flames of a bonfire.
 

That one kiss, and I knew what it was I was feeling; it’s an emotion I am simply unprepared to accept. Unable to accept. Incapable of comprehending. I can’t even think it. This isn’t denial, it’s the sheer incapacity to wrap my head around a concept so unutterably, inconceivably massive and strange.
 

I just can’t.
 

Cannot.

All this in the space of sixty seconds. One minute of kissing a woman, and I am a man turned inside out and spun in circles so I can’t find up, can’t stand on my own two feet. I’m shattered.

By a kiss.

I break away from her, roll off and slide off the bed, stagger backward, rubbing my wrist across my mouth as if to wipe away the stain of change. As if I could wipe away the effect of that kiss.
 

As if I could ever go back to the person I was before that kiss.
 

The word thuds and thunders through my mind, it sears across my soul in lightning-white letters:
 

L

     
O

            
V

                  
E

The word arrives in my brain unbidden, with no context, no surrounding thoughts. It might as well be a neon sign, so brilliantly clear is this epiphany.

And how do I handle it?

I freak the fuck out.

The worst me is just a long gone memory
 

I’ll never forget the look on his face as he lurches off the bed and stumbles away from me. It’s an expression of stunned and fearful befuddlement. He doesn’t know what’s hit him. He doesn’t know what it is, what to say, what to feel. Or how to handle it. I don’t know what he’s feeling, or what he’s thinking, or what he’s afraid of, or what’s confusing him. I just know he’s totally overwhelmed.

I get it. That kiss was one of the most intense kisses of my life. Maybe
the
most. I get it. I don’t say this, because I can’t help him through this. Either he’s man enough to handle this, or he’s not. I see it in him, the war, the fear, and the panic.
 

I sense what he’s afraid of, and I don’t dare examine it too closely myself, because I’ll panic, too. Surely it can’t be
that
. That word, that feeling, that emotion.

But what if it is?

If he were to be man enough, strong enough, brave enough to be what I need to get through the pain, it could be beautiful, between us. But it all rests on him.

And I sense he’s not used to putting effort into anything. He’s coasted through life. Never had anyone depend on him; never had anyone expect anything of him. This, what’s building here? It would demand a lot of him.
I
would expect a lot of him.
 

“Lock,” I whisper, because I feel like a normal speaking voice could spook him. “Lock, just…breathe. It’s okay.”

“I don’t know how to do this.” He doesn’t whisper, he speaks in a low rumble from across the bedroom.
 

Naked, and so gorgeous. All hard planes in the moonlight, thick muscles and tan skin and taut curves, grooves of definition and slabs of bulk. Thick, shaggy, wild hair loose around his shoulders, his beard a tangle. All man, masculine, rugged, sensual, sexual.
 

“You don’t have to know,” I tell him. “Not right off the bat. We can figure this out.”

“I don’t know what
this
is.”

“Hell, neither do I.”
 

I move off the bed and stand a couple of feet away from him. My dress is a mess, the top tugged down under my breasts, the hem shoved up around my hips. I stare at him, wanting him, not wanting to deal with these emotions right now. I want the physical. I want his hands, his mouth, his manhood. I want to forget all this intensity and just feel like a…
woman,
again. I forgot, for a while, what that means. How it feels.