Varian P
writing again
- Joined
- Jul 20, 2004
- Posts
- 1,429
*NOTE*
I've posted a re-write of the opening of this chapter (post #22).
I'm changing to green the text below which has been revised.
-V
Happy New Year, all.
I'll give you my questions at the end, in a separate post, but to preface briefly, this excerpt is the opening to a novel. Since the chapter is obscenely long, I'll post the excerpt in two segments: the first 7,200 words of the chapter follows here; the rest of the chapter is in a second post, but the full chapter is 14,000 words, so I certainly don't expect anyone to read, much less critique such a lengthy piece. But if anyone's just jonesing for material to critique or should be feeling that generous, of course I'll be grateful!
-Varian
There was a masochistic pleasure in watching those green-gray eyes begin to shimmer, pinking already with sudden tears gathering along the pale edges of the bottom lids, until the image dissolved in gray-white haze.
OOOOO
She had not even noticed how little she could see. She rolled diligently through the rain pooling and streaming over the asphalt and hanging in the sky like twisting strings of glass beads, slightly swaying, glinting in the beams of her headlights, rattling against the metal hood and glass windshield. She stomped the brake hard before she knew why and fishtailed to a stop just a foot or two before she would have hit it.
A huge black dog stood staring straight at her, as if it could see past the glare of the headlights. She watched its rib cage contract and its jaw open and snap shut, jowls flapping and shuddering with a bark silenced by the clamoring rain before it sprung into the next lane, out of the road, and vanished.
The motorcycle speeding toward her veered with a streaking blur of headlight suddenly low to the ground, scuttling away along the road behind her until bike and rider both fell still in their northbound lane.
Ahead a pair of headlights peeped around the bend.
She cranked the wheel hard left and hit the hazards as she rolled a careful, urgent U and crawled toward the crumpled, motionless form in her headlights. Already hitting 911 on her cell she plunged into the rain and rushed over, squatted down and touched the throat between helmet and collar feeling for a pulse. Viper-like his hand caught her wrist.
“It’s alright,” she said to the black visor of his helmet, dotted pale orange with reflected streetlights, “lie still. I’m calling an ambulance.”
The hand let go of her wrist and dragged open the visor. Rain pelted blinking brown eyes. He pushed himself up to sitting.
“Are you hurt? Maybe you shouldn’t move until the paramedics come,” she said.
“Hang up.”
When she didn’t do it right away, he reached and flipped her phone shut.
“I’m fine. I don’t need an ambulance.”
He crawled to the curb and sat. The northbound car swerved around hers in the southbound lane, passed them, snaked back right and just kept going.
“I’ll get your bike out of the road.”
She wrestled the thing up from the ground, over against the curb, got the kickstand down, and went back to him.
“Sure you’re alright?”
“I’m fine.”
“Can you ride? I can drop you somewhere.”
“I think I’ll walk it. I was almost home. I’m just right there.”
He pointed up the road. He started to stand, then dropped back down.
“Are you really sure you don’t need help?”
“I’m sure. I’m just a little shaken up.” His voice had an alarmed tone.
“Alright. I should get my car out of the road. Why don’t you let me drop you, then I’ll run back for your bike and walk it up to your house.”
He folded his huge frame into her tiny two-seater. His driveway was less than a quarter mile up the road. She parked and trotted back to the bike, and pushed it back to his house. He met her at the end of the drive and together they pushed it up toward the garage. He snatched the keys from the ignition and dropped them into his pocket.
“Thank you.”
“I’m glad you’re alright.”
“Fucking dog.”
“Weird. He was just standing there. Like Cerberus, waiting for a face-off with my car. I barely stopped in time.”
He gave her a skeptical look. "Cerberus, eh?" Mocking her knack for obscure references. “Want to come in? Have a drink?”
“I should get home.”
“That’s ungrateful. After all I’ve done for you? You won’t even stay for ten minutes and have a drink with me?”
She looked at him a moment, assessing him, then smiled.
“True. I do owe you.”
“Come on.”
Inside he took her coat and hung it in the closet. A pool of water began collecting beneath it on the polished hard wood.
“Great place. Very Frank Lloyd Wright.”
He nodded, smiling, scrutinizing her.
"What's your name?" he asked bluntly.
She turned from the view and gave him a sober smile.
“Vida.”
“I'm Galen." He said it strangely, probing her with his eyes. "What do you drink, Vida?”
“Vodka tonic?”
“I can do that, if you don’t need lime.”
“Why don’t you sit down and let me make the drinks?”
“Alright.” He gave her a slightly pained smile. “Maybe I’ll go stick a couple band aids on. Glasses are there, in that cupboard next to the fridge. The liquor’s there,” he pointed toward the pantry. Tonic’s in the fridge. There might even be some lime juice, actually.”
“What do you want?”
“I’ll have what you’re having.”
OOOOO
He went, limping down the hall. He turned and cast a quick look at her cracking cubes of ice from their cells in the white tray and dropping them clattering into two tall glasses before turning into his room. Light swelled at the flick of the bathroom light switch. He forgot the errand of bandages and peroxide and confronted his mirror image. He looked like a little less than himself. Pale. Afraid. Fragile look in the eyes.
No blood on his face. He’d been wearing the helmet. But there were dark stains bleeding into the water-darkened gray sweatshirt at the elbow and shoulder. Shame he hadn’t been wearing the jacket. It hadn’t been raining, though, when he’d set out for a quick cruise.
He peeled the wet sweatshirt off and looked at the raw elbow. Not that bad, really. Could have been worse. There was gauze and peroxide and miscellaneous first aid paraphernalia in the bottom drawer. He couldn’t even remember buying it, or putting it there, but he knew that was where it would be.
He managed to get the wound cleaned and sterilized, but it was too big for even the enormous-looking bandages he would have never imagined finding a use for. It was a gauze and tape job, and one-handed it wasn’t going too well. So he gathered all the crap together and carried it out to the stranger in the kitchen.
“Want to play doctor?”
”Alright, but you’ll have to administer your own anesthesia.”
She handed him the vodka tonic that wasn’t half gone, and they climbed up onto the two bar stools positioned there at the island in the center of the kitchen. He reached his arm toward her, and she took it gently, one hand cradling his forearm, the other curving softly around the thick swell of triceps above his oozing elbow.
“Sure it’s not broken?”
“Reasonably.”
She lifted his hand to her shoulder and extended his arm, with both hands, felt up along the length of his arm, from wrist to armpit, careful to avoid the raw wound midway.
“You seem to be intact.”
“You a doctor?”
She gave him a funny look.
“No.”
“What would you do if you found a wrong angle in there?”
“Call that ambulance you’re so afraid of.”
This time he gave her a funny look. She began wrapping his elbow. His hand was still resting on her shoulder, his four fingers curved over the top of her blouse, his thumb resting against the smooth warm skin of her neck, just inside her collar. He stared at his thumb there innocently, intimately touching her as she bandaged him. Her gray-green eyes locked on his suddenly, as if she had caught him at something.
“You know who I am?”
“Wondering if that’s why I agreed to come in?”
He waited. She was quiet.
“Would you normally come into the house of a man you’d just met laying on wet asphalt?”
“No. Not normally. But it’s not a normal night.” She lifted his hand from her shoulder and set it on his thigh. “I figured it out while I was making the drinks. Fear not, I won’t sell your tragic motorcycle story to The Stranger for their “celebrity I saw you” column.
“Your…eh, sang froid is rather impressive.”
“Because I’m not an autograph hound?”
He laughed. “I didn’t mean that.” His smile faded. “I think you may have saved my life.”
“Because you’d have bled to death from road rash if I hadn’t been here to wrap your elbow?”
“Yes. That, and that car behind me probably would have rolled right over me if you hadn’t thought to pull your car behind me.”
“Feeling your mortality?”
“A bit. Maybe it’s good. Get a little wake-up.”
She hopped down from her stool and circled around him.
“There’s blood on your shirt, here at your shoulder,” she touched him lightly, “and it looks like you got your knee pretty scraped up, too.” The knee was torn out of his jeans. “Which first?”
“Shoulder, I guess.”
“Shirt off, then.”
He stripped off the t-shirt and turned his broad back to her. He flinched, then went rigid as she began cleaning the wound.
“It was fucking stupid of me, taking the bike out tonight,” he panted through his clenched jaw. “I just got it, you know, about a week ago. I’m not much of a rider. I thought it would be fun—it’s kind of an antique. I just went down south, to the park for a while, before it started raining. Dumb of me not to be wearing a jacket.”
“Probably won’t make that mistake again, hmmm?”
“We’ll see. I have an tragically short memory.”
She finished off her drink when she had bandaged his shoulder.
“Have another.”
“Not until the surgery’s done. Time for the knee.”
She watched him struggle to get the cuff of his pants up without dragging the stiff fabric over the tender wound.
“Looks like it’s pants off, Mr. Ross.”
“Maybe I should go back into the bathroom and take care of this one myself.”
“Maybe you should. If you’re wearing women’s panties under those jeans, I rescind my promise about selling my story.”
“I assure you I’m wearing perfectly gender-appropriate boxer briefs. I only wear the frilly panties on special occasions”
“Careful you don't hurt my feelings," she teased as he undid his fly. "You're in a vulnerable position, here."
As he finished undoing the last button of his fly, he gave her a look, only half calculated, that seemed to wipe the teasing grin from her face. Not as cool as all that, after all. Suddenly, obviously nervous, she pulled her eyes away and made a pretense of looking for something in the first aid box as he slid his pants down his thighs, then carefully drew the folds of stiff denim over the tender wound at his knee, and off.
"Why don't you sit there, and put your foot up there," she suggested, indicating one stool, then the other.
Galen took a certain masochistic pleasure in looking down on the horizontal plane of his extended leg, the knee chewed up, red and raw, clear fluid leaking around the dirt and gravel that had embedded itself in his tender flesh. Much worse than the elbow. The knee had taken the brunt of the fall, born the much of his weight and the bike's as he'd skidded down that wet road.
"Oh. Galen. Sure you don't want to go to the doctor's for this? They could numb it."
"It's alright. I want you to do it." He issued it like a challenge.
"Alright,"
OOOOO
She said it lightly, with a smile and a shrug, but she was pale. And as she poured herself that second drink she wasn't going to have, her hand shook. After a few gulps of her drink, which might have been a double, a hunt for tweezers and some sterilizing, she dug in.
He wasn't going to faint. He wasn't even going to puke. He concentrated on the carbonated bite of the cold clear liquid he sipped through the cubes faintly clanging in his glass, and on the nice view he was getting of her tits. No bra under that thin blouse. Kind of surprising; she didn't seem the type. And he was so good at judging things like that. But there she was, her tits curving and peaking and swaying slightly under the delicate fabric clinging softly to her as she moved, and each time she bent close to his knee, her blouse gapped away from her body, and he could see her bare skin, right down to her navel between the pale inverted hills of her breasts. It was almost a disappointment when she extracted the last piece of Hillcrest Blvd. from his knee, pressed a piece of Neosporin-laced gauze to the seeping flesh, and began wrapping him up like a mummy. The hard part was over, but she seemed more nervous than ever. Maybe she'd noticed he was hard.
He got to his feet, a little too close to her. Wondered, was she feeling him—his size, his heat, his near nakedness. Was she afraid?
"Just relax," he sighed softly down to her. He waited until she looked up and he could read her face. "I'll be back in a minute."
OOOOO
Slowly the fist clenched around her heart opened, and she took a breath. For just a second she'd thought he'd…The impulse to go, without a good-bye, tickled through her whole body. Something about him. She didn't feel safe.
With a swipe she snatched her drink from the counter, the condensation chilling her skin as her fingers and palm wrapped tight around the base of the tall narrow glass, imparting a sudden, lucid calm. Strange that fear could be a comfort.
She wished him back. Hurry. Hurry. Anxiety was sweeping in like air being sucked into a vacuum through a broken seal.
Air. She needed air. White knuckled, clutching her sloshing drink, she moved to the slider, clawed the latch open, and got onto the deck. Breathe. Breathe.
An awning overhead kept the pouring rain off her, but the wind chafed her face and whipped her hair across her eyes, obscuring, revealing, and obscuring her view of the grid of orange city lights below. It seemed like her drink should be fresh, only a few sips gone, but she tipped the glass behind her bottom lip and just a trickle seeped lazily between the depleted cubes. Was she drunk?
Over the hoarse whisper of the wind and the rain thwapping the awning above and the invisible foliage below she heard the slider humming in its track behind her. The normal thing to do would have been to turn, to smile, to say something. About the view. The weather. Whatever. But she didn't feel normal. So she stood, silent, and waited. Probably he was about to say, 'Aren't you cold out here with no jacket?' Or maybe his hand was about to punch through her vision's periphery, his arm stretching away until it receded into a pointing index finger as he explained what some distant feature of the landscape, wrought by man or nature, might be.
But the seconds were slipping away and there was only the sound of the wind and the rain, and her view of sprawling L.A. was never interrupted except by the whipping strands of her hair. He remained silent. Behind her.
Now she thought he might touch her. That's what people like him did: fucked random strangers. Had one night stands. The idea of being touched by someone she didn't know scared her. Seemed ugly. It always had. But suddenly that ugliness, that fear had a strange, arousing appeal.
So, when she felt his fingers combing into her hair, she stayed still and quiet, and savored the little shudder that rippled down her body from the points where his fingertips brushed faintly against her scalp. Silent and slow, with soft strokes he smoothed and gathered her wind-wild hair. Then she felt his body against hers—more heat than touch—and his warm breath pulsed against her bare neck. Taut, stretched thin as wire, she waited for the touch of his mouth on her skin. Only when she sucked in an urgent breath did she realize how anxiously she'd been waiting to be touched. That she'd forgotten to breathe. Now she was panting urgent shallow little breaths. Waiting.
His fingers brushed faintly against her, making her shiver as he pulled her collar toward her shoulder. His lips faintly grazed the sensitive skin just below her ear, and every cell in her body seemed to constrict. Every inch of skin felt suddenly tight and faintly itchy. She waited.
His breath, his lips brushed against her again, a touch that bolted through her taut nerves like electric current, making her nipples and every hair follicle constrict. Then his tongue, hot and wet and teasing. Then his teeth. Two little nips that almost made her cry out, afraid he'd hurt her, before the incredible rush of pleasure washed over her.
"Set your glass down."
She stretched her arm to the side and set the glass on the railing. Almost the moment it was out of her hand his body drove hers forward, until her hip bones pressed against the wooden barrier, his chest against her back forcing her upper body to lean over, just slightly, but enough to make her grab at the railing instinctively. In the dark she couldn't discern how high the balcony had her suspended. The idea of a perilous drop heightened her growing anxiety. He mouthed her ear, and the sensation mingled with her fear and her flesh—from the surface of her skin to her organs to deep in her bones—tingled so intensely she started to feel delirious.
"Answer something," he whispered before stroking a particularly sensitive spot on her ear with the very tip of his tongue. "Be honest. You knew who I was before you came in tonight."
He descended on her neck again, making it hard to breathe, hard to answer.
"No."
"No? You swear?"
She was starting to feel like a liar.
"I swear."
He moved over to the untouched territory on the left of her neck.
"Then tell me ,Vida. Why did you come in with me?"
The sound of his breathing, the feeling of his mouth on her ear and neck, of his body pressing her to the railing had her more urgently aroused than she'd been in years—probably since high school, when everything was new. Fuck, she wanted him to touch her. But as she looked out into the void of night in front of her, below her, she was half scared he was about to push her to her death.
"You…I came in because…I didn't want to go home."
"And?"
"And I was afraid to."
"Afraid to what?"
"Afraid to come in with you."
"You wanted that?"
It wasn't smart. Telling some strange man that you'd come in with him because you liked feeling afraid. She knew that.
"Yes."
"You felt…afraid of me?"
"Yes. A little."
"What about now?"
His grip on her hair seemed to tighten; she realized suddenly that she was unable to move her head. His other hand slid down her side to her hip, crossed her abdomen until his forearm belted her tight against him, and she gradually became aware of him moving his hips behind her, suddenly sure she felt his erection pressing against her ass, sliding slowly up and down against her with the motion of his hips.
"What about now? Are you still afraid of me?"
"Yes," she breathed, still dying to be touched.
"Do you want to go?"
His grip on her hair didn't loosen; the insistent probing of his stiff cock hadn't relented.
"No."
"Good."
Her hair still caught tight in his fist, he backed off her just enough to allow a little gap between her and the railing, and his hand slid from her hip, over, down, and faintly wandered over her crotch. Under his delicate touch a flood of sensation pooled and began pulsing insistently. He hadn't even slipped his hand inside her pants and she already felt her climax building.
But his fingers, working so subtly, so expertly between her thighs abandoned her just as she'd sighed a desperate little whimper. Now his fingers were trilling up the back of her thigh, slowly, definitely working their way between.
"Don't," she said, softly, half afraid to deny him for fear he'd force her.
But as she twisted, ready to panic, he let go of her hair and let her turn to face him. He was looking down at her with an air of patient amusement. His gaze was so intense, so direct, she felt suddenly as though he could look right through her skin. Read her thoughts.
She wasn't used to this. Feeling…dominated. Instinctively she set out to even the scales. Reclaim her power. Feeling it already she grinned up at him and pressed her palm eagerly to the blatant bulge in his pants. She loved this part—getting a sense of the size and shape of a man, for his responses to her touch.
She drew the curve of her hand along his erection, aroused to find him so hard. Riding the wave of her power she felt a sudden urge to have him in her mouth, to hear him groan as she used her lips and tongue on him. Giving him her best wicked grin, she sank to her knees and got to work on his fly.
"Don't do that."
He said it softly. Tenderly, even. He took her hand from his zipper and coaxed her back up. She was a little stunned. If a guy had ever turned her down for a blowjob, she couldn't remember it. He stared into her for a few seconds, smiled, then opened the slider and led her inside.
Slowly, his eyes locked on hers the whole time, he guided her back until her shoulder blades and her ass bumped against a smooth, vertical plane of wall. Holding her there, he moved in close, until his thighs touched hers, until she could feel his breath on her lips. Still looking, still staring into her. Something like regret started to erode her arousal, but then he sank down, onto his knees.
The bass in her chest thrummed hard, quickened. She watched as he slid the tongue of her belt back, through the loop of her slacks, through the silver buckle, off the prong, and it flopped open to hang heavily from her hips. So quick. His hands. Her slacks unhooked, unzipped. His fingertips touched her hot, bare skin, slid down, catching the waistband of her slacks, then her panties in a single smooth gesture, and pulled them down mid-thigh. Thrumming bass, staccato, hard, fast.
He was looking at her. At her sex. David never did that. Just gaze at it from inches away.
Hot. Her face was hot. She wanted him to get back up. She moved, maybe she was going to step aside, walk away. But he caught her thighs in his hands and silently coaxed her to be still. She couldn't stand this. It was too intimate. She'd never let a man use his mouth on her until they'd been together a while. Until after they'd slept together a few times.
His breath was hot and damp on her bare skin. Did he like her smell? Did he like that she was waxed bare?
Anxiety and anticipation mingled. His warm hands slid over her skin until her thighs were wrapped in his embrace, one hand curving against her ass. Please. Fuck. She needed him to touch her.
His lips brushed faintly over her smooth mound, the hot damp of his breath teasing her. He looked up at her, took in her look of frustrated want, and touched her with his tongue.
A tiny, soft, wet touch against the soft, wet, pink flesh. All the heat in her body rushed in to that tiny point where the tip of his tongue had touched her. When he did it again she whimpered as all that heat pulsed and surged and seemed to roll inside of her.
Each little touch was a taunt. Prodded her need, vexed her arousal. But he kept his caresses so small, let so many seconds tick away between, she was almost in tears of frustration. She tried to widen her stance, to spread her legs, hoping desperately to feel his tongue slide back, lathe over her wet sex. Fuck, she needed him to really eat her. But his embrace tightened, cinched her legs tight together, making all of her, except the very front of her slit and just the tiny bit of her not hidden between her smooth, waxed lips, inaccessible to his mouth.
Each tiny little touch of his tongue made her wiggle in her torment, made her whine and whimper. Every time the tip of his wet, pink tongue made contact with her, her body tried to meet it with her climax. As if it knew it would get nothing more from him, as if it sensed that these taunting kisses, so faint, so infrequent, would have to be enough.
But then, fuck, god, yes, he pressed his open mouth to her, his lips sealed themselves against her soft, smooth flesh, and his slippery tongue pressed forward, between her lips, into her slit, lathing at last all her wet inner folds. She shuddered and whimpered and flexed against his embrace, dying to spread for him, dying for him to fuck her with his mouth. When he withdrew his tongue and its textured surface slid back over her, rubbing all along her wet, needful sex, ending with a devastating little flick over her clit, she shuddered, groaned, and thought her knees might give.
Hardly conscious of what her body was doing, her legs flexed, trying to open, her hips tried to press forward, to drive her sex against his mouth, but his arms circled tighter around her, immobilizing her, keeper her shut tight.
More, tiny, darting touches of his tongue to her, her trying to stifle the little sobs and moans threatening to squeak out. It was torture, keeping her climax so close for so long, threatening to keep her in this anxious suspense forever. But slowly, slowly, with each little brush of the tip of his tongue, that aching, throbbing pleasure built, gathering, gathering, and he'd lick, and the feeling would swell, and that little touch would land again, and the thrill would rise up, until finally another stroke of his tongue fluttered over her and a great well of pleasure flooded up and spilled over. He lightly lapped, prolonging her delicious agony, gripping her in his imprisoning embrace as he squeezed every drop of pleasure from her body. He held her as she shuddered and panted and finally calmed. At last he opened the constricting circle of his arms.
She felt strange. She couldn't remember that last time she'd been held for so long in such delicious suspense, or when she'd cum so hard. But she didn't feel at all sated. She was absolutely dying to be fucked.
To be fucked. Taken. Held down. Ridden.
Judging by the look on his face, she was going to get just what she needed. He rose, his body, his hands, traveling over her like they were taking possession of new terrain. Standing, looking down at her, he smiled like he was amused by something, evoking a spontaneous smile from her in the midst of her intense, trembling need. Then he kissed her. She hadn't wanted that before, but now, after, she wanted it.
His tongue slid into her mouth, tasting of her sex. It was like a drug working on her body, doubling her arousal, her need. Panting, he ended his hungry kiss, and with another odd little grin, started unbuttoning her blouse. Panic seized her, and she caught his wrist in her hand. He looked at her with an expression of amused surprise.
"I want…this. You," she stammered, flustered. "But I…please, leave the blouse on."
His hands slipped obediently away from her button, but then he took hold of the hem, gathering upward. She snapped. Her vision blurring with tears of panic she caught his hands again, suddenly afraid again that he was going to make her fight him. That she'd lose. That he'd…
"I'm afraid," he said quietly, his eyes guiding hers toward something near his hands, "that I got some blood on your shirt. From earlier. You should take it off. Let me wash it."
A small bright stripe of blood stretched along the fabric between his thumbs.
"I can give you a shirt to wear, if you're shy," he added with his amused grin.
OOOOO
He really didn't know why, but she was losing it. Her eyes had that glittery reddening look of someone about to cry. What the fuck. He'd played with her. A little. But there was no way, he'd done nothing to make her think he'd hurt her. Force her.
"I'm sorry," she breathed hoarsely, in the voice of someone struggling not to let a pending flood of tears break through. "I need to go."
"Alright."
He used a soft voice. He wouldn't argue. Trying to keep her there seemed like a very bad idea, if she was feeling like he was some kind of threat. He'd let her go. Live with the mystery.
She'd already frantically zipped and buckled up and was half way to the front door. He walked slowly after her. Not too fast. Not too close. She opened the door, called back with a broken 'sorry,' and was gone.
That was a first—a woman running off crying after he'd licked her to orgasm. He made himself a fresh vodka tonic as he wondered over her possible pasts. Molested as a child? Date rape? A violent assault? Or just fucked up--so repressed that a good climax sent her over the edge? Who fucking knew.
Something about it wasn't right, though. Everything about her had struck him as strong. Not the shy delicate type. Not the wounded type.
The image of the stain kept coming to him, like it was burned onto his retina, the final living image.
His vodka tonic in hand, he wandered back to his room, thinking he'd change, go to bed. But he was too wired. The accident, her. All that build-up, and no fuck to undo the anticipation. He could still taste her. The recognition, the acknowledgement of it got his dick a little hard.
He roamed aimlessly back and forth through the house, a little too disturbed by her to jerk off and go to sleep.
The stain.
From outside, a bright light blared on the living room curtains, trying to get in. Headlights.
He opened the front door. She was still there. In her little convertible, engine running, rain slanting through two violent beams of halogen light. For all the tinted windows revealed, there might have been no one inside. It might have been a humming empty shell. He tapped at the glass, rain-beaded in symmetrical chaos. No sound, no sign of movement. He was getting soaked. He pulled on the door handle.
She was hunched against her steering wheel. His core turned to ice with a sudden dropping feeling, like being in a plane that suddenly looses a few thousand feet. But then her still, silent body moved. Made noise.
She was crying. Sobbing. Gut-twisting sobs—the kind that make you think maybe you'll puke. He couldn't even tell if she'd noticed him. He touched her shoulder, softly as he could, then bent down close.
"Vida. Come back in with me."
Had she heard him? Did she even know he was there? He touched again, stroking her damp hair, tried her name again. She just went on sobbing. Impossible to leave her there.
"I'm going to bring you inside, alright?"
Nothing changed. Her hands covered her face, her shoulders hunched, her back curved, her ribs convulsed. He leaned in, got a forearm under her knees, his other arm curved around her back, under her arm, pulled her against his chest, and lifted her out of the car.
"It's alright. I'm bringing you inside, Vida," he assured her in his gentlest voice, kicking her car door closed.
"Put me down," she said before he'd reached the front door. "I'm not a fucking baby. I'm not an invalid. Put me down."
He put her down. She didn't charge back to her car.
"Come on." He tentatively touched her back, hoping to get her inside before she was as wet as he, a little surprised when she moved toward the house.
"My purse."
"I'll get it."
He trotted back to the car, reached across the driver's side and snatched her purse up from the passenger seat. Back in the house, he wrapped a blanket around her, pulled her to him, held her, rubbing her back through the blanket. She'd stopped crying, but every now and then she drew in a sudden, deep, shuddering breath. Finally, when she was quiet and still in his arms, he settled her on the couch. It was like she was in shock. Her eyes seemed not to see. He lit the fire, went back to his room, and hurriedly changed into dry clothes. When he came back she was still sitting, just as he'd left her, her unseeing eyes staring straight ahead.
It startled him when, a moment later, she spoke.
"This is so ridiculous. I'm sorry."
She was looking at him. Seeing him. He smiled.
"It's alright."
She looked like she might be about to start crying again.
"Do you think I could have another drink?"
"Sure."
He couldn't remember where she'd left her glass, so he got a clean one from the cupboard and threw a drink together for her, shorting her a bit on the vodka. In the morning, she'd be glad. She smiled at him, sad and grateful as he handed her the drink, then took a shaky but dainty little sip. She seemed to want it in her hand, more than anything. A little piece of security.
"God, you poor thing," she laughed sadly. "You invite a girl in for a quick fuck, and look what you get."
"I didn't invite you in for a fuck."
She gave him a bemused smile. "No?"
"No." He wouldn't have told her, before. But he could tell her, now. "I invited you in because the accident freaked me out. I was scared. I didn't want to be alone."
He couldn't resist smiling and adding,
"It was later I decided I wanted to fuck you."
"It was my gauze work, wasn't it? No man can resist a woman with a roll of gauze, I hear."
"Actually, it was the way you relentlessly wield a pair of tweezers."
She smiled. He was only half kidding.
He perched on the coffee table in front of her.
"Vida. Should I call your doctor?"
She looked shocked. Then scared. Then amused.
"What? I have one little nervous breakdown in a stranger's house, and you think it's time to call the men in white coats?"
Defensive. He smiled, hoping to calm her.
"I think someone should take a look at your stitches."
He waited. Watched a little look of surprise pass like a tiny shockwave over her features. Watched her think. Maybe she'd deny it. Or maybe he was wrong. Then she softened and shrank slightly as her defenses came down.
"How'd you know?"
The blood. I would have seen it sooner. The way you reacted. Got scared. I thought I'd scared you, but it didn't quite make sense. And just now, after I brought you back in. I saw your bra in your purse."
She just nodded.
"So, should I call your doctor for you?"
"I don't want to go back there. Not tonight."
"You may have pulled your stitches. You should at least go and check. Use the bathroom mirror. If it's bad, I'll take you in."
She just sat there, staring into the distance somewhere to the left of him.
"Vida?"
"I can't."
"Alright."
He took her drink, took her hand, and led her over to the kitchen, settling her on the stool he'd sat on earlier while she dressed his wounds. The first aid kit was still there, still open, spilling over with gauze and medical tape. It was a regular clinic now.
"Alright?"
"Alright."
Button by button he undid her blouse, then pulled the left side—the side with the now darkened blood stain—open, baring her breast and the square of blood-stained gauze that partially covered her nipple.
"I'm going to take the gauze off, okay?"
She nodded.
Carefully he peeled up an edge of tape.
"That hurt?"
"No."
Pinching the corner of her bandage between his fingers he slowly pulled, lifting the bandage, the white tape clinging, pulling at the delicate, smooth, pale skin of her breast. The incision, dark and thick with dried blood, came into view, a diagonal ridge just below the areola, just before the last of the tape tugged and released her nipple.
Her eyes evaded the sight of the blood-stained gauze as he set it on the counter.
"Alright?"
She nodded.
"I'm going to clean it up a little, so I can see better. Okay?"
Another nod.
He doused a wad of fresh gauze in peroxide and gently pressed it to the wound, held it there, lifted, pressed again. She was silent, but when he looked to her face, tears were rolling down her cheeks.
"I'm sorry. I'm trying to be gentle."
"I'm going to die," she whispered.
Her words hurt him.
"They told you that?"
"They don't know yet. But I do."
"This…they operated?"
"Today was just a biopsy."
He went on, pressing and lifting, staining the peroxide-soaked gauze darker and darker, slowly revealing the neat incision beneath the dried blood.
"So you're waiting. For the results."
"I know what it is. And I know I'm going to die."
"Vida. Even if it's cancer…"
"My mom died of breast cancer when I was six. She was twenty-nine. Her sister was thirty-one when she died."
The stitches were intact. He started fashioning a fresh bandage. Gauze. Neosporin. Tape.
"I don't think I've ever thought I'd get away with it."
"What?"
"Staying whole. Dying old. Of something else."
He resisted his impulse to reassure, to promise that medicine could do more now than twenty years before, when her mom had died. As gently as he could he covered her wound with the fresh bandage, carefully pressing the tape against her delicate skin, and pulled her blouse closed, covering her breast.
He understood now. Why she'd come in with him after the accident. He touched her cheek. Gave her a tender smile.
"I'll be right back."
When he returned a moment later, she was standing in front of the slider, gazing out at the wet L.A. night.
"Let me wash your blouse. Here's something warm for you to wear."
When she didn't move or speak, he tentatively touched her shoulders, then slid her blouse down her arms, realizing as he did so that she hadn't buttoned up. She had a very pretty back, smooth, muscular, defined. He slid his flannel pajama top up her arms, onto her shoulders.
"I should go."
"Stay. It's alright."
"I've put you through enough."
"You haven't put me through anything. I didn't want to be alone tonight, either. Stay."
Halfheartedly nodding her assent, she began buttoning up the flannel top. He dashed off to the laundry room, squirted the rust-colored streak with stain remover, tossed her blouse in the wash, and returned to her.
"You tired? Ready for bed?"
She looked sort of scared, but nodded her head.
"Come on."
He led her back, to his bedroom, let her pee and use his toothbrush, then did the same. When he came out of the bathroom he found her standing hesitantly at the side of his bed.
"Do you want to be alone?"
She shook her head 'no,' then stripped off her pants.
"Which side is yours?"
"They're both mine," he answered mirthfully, having gotten a good bit of teasing over the years for his indiscriminate sprawling. "Take whichever side you like, and be prepared to defend it."
She climbed in and he stripped down to his boxer briefs and slid in beside her. Met her in the middle. He coaxed her onto her side and curved his body into hers, spoon style, curving one arm over her, pulling her close against him.
They laid together like that for a long while. For three or more reasons he was wound far too tight to sleep. From the pattern and quality of her breathing, he knew she was awake, too. Thinking to soothe, to comfort her, he stroked her arm, just lightly with his fingertips over the soft rough flannel pajama top. He sensed her tense a little.
He whispered, "Should I stop?"
"No. It feels nice."
His fingers drifted up, into her hair, incredibly soft but a bit tangled, still, from the wind. She sighed quietly as he combed and petted, giving her the sorts of touches he liked best, that always seemed to soothe, to bring on drowsiness almost like a drug. Her hair was slightly damp from the rain, and it smelled just faintly of almond. She shifted and her ass flexed and rubbed against his cock. He couldn't help smiling, almost laughing at himself for having the guile to blush at being found out, that a woman in his bed would feel the evidence that he was aroused.
"You're hard."
He went on massaging her hot scalp.
"Don't worry. I can restrain myself."
"You have impressive recuperative powers, Mr. Ross."
"That's actually true, but lying in bed with you doesn't exactly constitute proof of that."
"Blood and sickness and morbid talk of disease and imminent death do it for you, do they?" Her voice had a defeated note to it.
"Tangentially, maybe you could say that."
"You don't have a scalpel fetish I ought to be aware of, do you?"
"My real thing is bone saws. Vzzzt, vzzzzzt," he buzzed in her ear, running his finger along her scalp, then her neck, relieved when she squirmed and giggled, fretting after it was already too late that his teasing might have triggered another bout of anxiety, terror or shock. When she settled down he realized her thrashing and giggling had him even harder.
"I'm not a fetishist, really. Scalpels or otherwise. But I'm attracted to real things. Sometimes fear and pain feel more real than whatever erotic games people generally like to play."
It wasn't coming out right. He just wanted her to know she wasn't…broken to him.
"So," she said in a voice so quiet he could hardly hear, "you still…you'd still fuck me?"
A little charge zapped through his body, indifferent to his brain's certainty that she was just looking for validation. Reassurance that having cancer—breast cancer—didn't cancel her out as a sexual being.
"Like I said. I can restrain myself. Restraint implies desire."
"Because I want you to."
This had to be handled carefully.
"You want me to fuck you?"
It was her word.
"Yes."
I've posted a re-write of the opening of this chapter (post #22).
I'm changing to green the text below which has been revised.
-V
Happy New Year, all.
I'll give you my questions at the end, in a separate post, but to preface briefly, this excerpt is the opening to a novel. Since the chapter is obscenely long, I'll post the excerpt in two segments: the first 7,200 words of the chapter follows here; the rest of the chapter is in a second post, but the full chapter is 14,000 words, so I certainly don't expect anyone to read, much less critique such a lengthy piece. But if anyone's just jonesing for material to critique or should be feeling that generous, of course I'll be grateful!
-Varian
OOOOO Hurt: Chapter One OOOOO
There was a masochistic pleasure in watching those green-gray eyes begin to shimmer, pinking already with sudden tears gathering along the pale edges of the bottom lids, until the image dissolved in gray-white haze.
OOOOO
She had not even noticed how little she could see. She rolled diligently through the rain pooling and streaming over the asphalt and hanging in the sky like twisting strings of glass beads, slightly swaying, glinting in the beams of her headlights, rattling against the metal hood and glass windshield. She stomped the brake hard before she knew why and fishtailed to a stop just a foot or two before she would have hit it.
A huge black dog stood staring straight at her, as if it could see past the glare of the headlights. She watched its rib cage contract and its jaw open and snap shut, jowls flapping and shuddering with a bark silenced by the clamoring rain before it sprung into the next lane, out of the road, and vanished.
The motorcycle speeding toward her veered with a streaking blur of headlight suddenly low to the ground, scuttling away along the road behind her until bike and rider both fell still in their northbound lane.
Ahead a pair of headlights peeped around the bend.
She cranked the wheel hard left and hit the hazards as she rolled a careful, urgent U and crawled toward the crumpled, motionless form in her headlights. Already hitting 911 on her cell she plunged into the rain and rushed over, squatted down and touched the throat between helmet and collar feeling for a pulse. Viper-like his hand caught her wrist.
“It’s alright,” she said to the black visor of his helmet, dotted pale orange with reflected streetlights, “lie still. I’m calling an ambulance.”
The hand let go of her wrist and dragged open the visor. Rain pelted blinking brown eyes. He pushed himself up to sitting.
“Are you hurt? Maybe you shouldn’t move until the paramedics come,” she said.
“Hang up.”
When she didn’t do it right away, he reached and flipped her phone shut.
“I’m fine. I don’t need an ambulance.”
He crawled to the curb and sat. The northbound car swerved around hers in the southbound lane, passed them, snaked back right and just kept going.
“I’ll get your bike out of the road.”
She wrestled the thing up from the ground, over against the curb, got the kickstand down, and went back to him.
“Sure you’re alright?”
“I’m fine.”
“Can you ride? I can drop you somewhere.”
“I think I’ll walk it. I was almost home. I’m just right there.”
He pointed up the road. He started to stand, then dropped back down.
“Are you really sure you don’t need help?”
“I’m sure. I’m just a little shaken up.” His voice had an alarmed tone.
“Alright. I should get my car out of the road. Why don’t you let me drop you, then I’ll run back for your bike and walk it up to your house.”
He folded his huge frame into her tiny two-seater. His driveway was less than a quarter mile up the road. She parked and trotted back to the bike, and pushed it back to his house. He met her at the end of the drive and together they pushed it up toward the garage. He snatched the keys from the ignition and dropped them into his pocket.
“Thank you.”
“I’m glad you’re alright.”
“Fucking dog.”
“Weird. He was just standing there. Like Cerberus, waiting for a face-off with my car. I barely stopped in time.”
He gave her a skeptical look. "Cerberus, eh?" Mocking her knack for obscure references. “Want to come in? Have a drink?”
“I should get home.”
“That’s ungrateful. After all I’ve done for you? You won’t even stay for ten minutes and have a drink with me?”
She looked at him a moment, assessing him, then smiled.
“True. I do owe you.”
“Come on.”
Inside he took her coat and hung it in the closet. A pool of water began collecting beneath it on the polished hard wood.
“Great place. Very Frank Lloyd Wright.”
He nodded, smiling, scrutinizing her.
"What's your name?" he asked bluntly.
She turned from the view and gave him a sober smile.
“Vida.”
“I'm Galen." He said it strangely, probing her with his eyes. "What do you drink, Vida?”
“Vodka tonic?”
“I can do that, if you don’t need lime.”
“Why don’t you sit down and let me make the drinks?”
“Alright.” He gave her a slightly pained smile. “Maybe I’ll go stick a couple band aids on. Glasses are there, in that cupboard next to the fridge. The liquor’s there,” he pointed toward the pantry. Tonic’s in the fridge. There might even be some lime juice, actually.”
“What do you want?”
“I’ll have what you’re having.”
OOOOO
He went, limping down the hall. He turned and cast a quick look at her cracking cubes of ice from their cells in the white tray and dropping them clattering into two tall glasses before turning into his room. Light swelled at the flick of the bathroom light switch. He forgot the errand of bandages and peroxide and confronted his mirror image. He looked like a little less than himself. Pale. Afraid. Fragile look in the eyes.
No blood on his face. He’d been wearing the helmet. But there were dark stains bleeding into the water-darkened gray sweatshirt at the elbow and shoulder. Shame he hadn’t been wearing the jacket. It hadn’t been raining, though, when he’d set out for a quick cruise.
He peeled the wet sweatshirt off and looked at the raw elbow. Not that bad, really. Could have been worse. There was gauze and peroxide and miscellaneous first aid paraphernalia in the bottom drawer. He couldn’t even remember buying it, or putting it there, but he knew that was where it would be.
He managed to get the wound cleaned and sterilized, but it was too big for even the enormous-looking bandages he would have never imagined finding a use for. It was a gauze and tape job, and one-handed it wasn’t going too well. So he gathered all the crap together and carried it out to the stranger in the kitchen.
“Want to play doctor?”
”Alright, but you’ll have to administer your own anesthesia.”
She handed him the vodka tonic that wasn’t half gone, and they climbed up onto the two bar stools positioned there at the island in the center of the kitchen. He reached his arm toward her, and she took it gently, one hand cradling his forearm, the other curving softly around the thick swell of triceps above his oozing elbow.
“Sure it’s not broken?”
“Reasonably.”
She lifted his hand to her shoulder and extended his arm, with both hands, felt up along the length of his arm, from wrist to armpit, careful to avoid the raw wound midway.
“You seem to be intact.”
“You a doctor?”
She gave him a funny look.
“No.”
“What would you do if you found a wrong angle in there?”
“Call that ambulance you’re so afraid of.”
This time he gave her a funny look. She began wrapping his elbow. His hand was still resting on her shoulder, his four fingers curved over the top of her blouse, his thumb resting against the smooth warm skin of her neck, just inside her collar. He stared at his thumb there innocently, intimately touching her as she bandaged him. Her gray-green eyes locked on his suddenly, as if she had caught him at something.
“You know who I am?”
“Wondering if that’s why I agreed to come in?”
He waited. She was quiet.
“Would you normally come into the house of a man you’d just met laying on wet asphalt?”
“No. Not normally. But it’s not a normal night.” She lifted his hand from her shoulder and set it on his thigh. “I figured it out while I was making the drinks. Fear not, I won’t sell your tragic motorcycle story to The Stranger for their “celebrity I saw you” column.
“Your…eh, sang froid is rather impressive.”
“Because I’m not an autograph hound?”
He laughed. “I didn’t mean that.” His smile faded. “I think you may have saved my life.”
“Because you’d have bled to death from road rash if I hadn’t been here to wrap your elbow?”
“Yes. That, and that car behind me probably would have rolled right over me if you hadn’t thought to pull your car behind me.”
“Feeling your mortality?”
“A bit. Maybe it’s good. Get a little wake-up.”
She hopped down from her stool and circled around him.
“There’s blood on your shirt, here at your shoulder,” she touched him lightly, “and it looks like you got your knee pretty scraped up, too.” The knee was torn out of his jeans. “Which first?”
“Shoulder, I guess.”
“Shirt off, then.”
He stripped off the t-shirt and turned his broad back to her. He flinched, then went rigid as she began cleaning the wound.
“It was fucking stupid of me, taking the bike out tonight,” he panted through his clenched jaw. “I just got it, you know, about a week ago. I’m not much of a rider. I thought it would be fun—it’s kind of an antique. I just went down south, to the park for a while, before it started raining. Dumb of me not to be wearing a jacket.”
“Probably won’t make that mistake again, hmmm?”
“We’ll see. I have an tragically short memory.”
She finished off her drink when she had bandaged his shoulder.
“Have another.”
“Not until the surgery’s done. Time for the knee.”
She watched him struggle to get the cuff of his pants up without dragging the stiff fabric over the tender wound.
“Looks like it’s pants off, Mr. Ross.”
“Maybe I should go back into the bathroom and take care of this one myself.”
“Maybe you should. If you’re wearing women’s panties under those jeans, I rescind my promise about selling my story.”
“I assure you I’m wearing perfectly gender-appropriate boxer briefs. I only wear the frilly panties on special occasions”
“Careful you don't hurt my feelings," she teased as he undid his fly. "You're in a vulnerable position, here."
As he finished undoing the last button of his fly, he gave her a look, only half calculated, that seemed to wipe the teasing grin from her face. Not as cool as all that, after all. Suddenly, obviously nervous, she pulled her eyes away and made a pretense of looking for something in the first aid box as he slid his pants down his thighs, then carefully drew the folds of stiff denim over the tender wound at his knee, and off.
"Why don't you sit there, and put your foot up there," she suggested, indicating one stool, then the other.
Galen took a certain masochistic pleasure in looking down on the horizontal plane of his extended leg, the knee chewed up, red and raw, clear fluid leaking around the dirt and gravel that had embedded itself in his tender flesh. Much worse than the elbow. The knee had taken the brunt of the fall, born the much of his weight and the bike's as he'd skidded down that wet road.
"Oh. Galen. Sure you don't want to go to the doctor's for this? They could numb it."
"It's alright. I want you to do it." He issued it like a challenge.
"Alright,"
OOOOO
She said it lightly, with a smile and a shrug, but she was pale. And as she poured herself that second drink she wasn't going to have, her hand shook. After a few gulps of her drink, which might have been a double, a hunt for tweezers and some sterilizing, she dug in.
He wasn't going to faint. He wasn't even going to puke. He concentrated on the carbonated bite of the cold clear liquid he sipped through the cubes faintly clanging in his glass, and on the nice view he was getting of her tits. No bra under that thin blouse. Kind of surprising; she didn't seem the type. And he was so good at judging things like that. But there she was, her tits curving and peaking and swaying slightly under the delicate fabric clinging softly to her as she moved, and each time she bent close to his knee, her blouse gapped away from her body, and he could see her bare skin, right down to her navel between the pale inverted hills of her breasts. It was almost a disappointment when she extracted the last piece of Hillcrest Blvd. from his knee, pressed a piece of Neosporin-laced gauze to the seeping flesh, and began wrapping him up like a mummy. The hard part was over, but she seemed more nervous than ever. Maybe she'd noticed he was hard.
He got to his feet, a little too close to her. Wondered, was she feeling him—his size, his heat, his near nakedness. Was she afraid?
"Just relax," he sighed softly down to her. He waited until she looked up and he could read her face. "I'll be back in a minute."
OOOOO
Slowly the fist clenched around her heart opened, and she took a breath. For just a second she'd thought he'd…The impulse to go, without a good-bye, tickled through her whole body. Something about him. She didn't feel safe.
With a swipe she snatched her drink from the counter, the condensation chilling her skin as her fingers and palm wrapped tight around the base of the tall narrow glass, imparting a sudden, lucid calm. Strange that fear could be a comfort.
She wished him back. Hurry. Hurry. Anxiety was sweeping in like air being sucked into a vacuum through a broken seal.
Air. She needed air. White knuckled, clutching her sloshing drink, she moved to the slider, clawed the latch open, and got onto the deck. Breathe. Breathe.
An awning overhead kept the pouring rain off her, but the wind chafed her face and whipped her hair across her eyes, obscuring, revealing, and obscuring her view of the grid of orange city lights below. It seemed like her drink should be fresh, only a few sips gone, but she tipped the glass behind her bottom lip and just a trickle seeped lazily between the depleted cubes. Was she drunk?
Over the hoarse whisper of the wind and the rain thwapping the awning above and the invisible foliage below she heard the slider humming in its track behind her. The normal thing to do would have been to turn, to smile, to say something. About the view. The weather. Whatever. But she didn't feel normal. So she stood, silent, and waited. Probably he was about to say, 'Aren't you cold out here with no jacket?' Or maybe his hand was about to punch through her vision's periphery, his arm stretching away until it receded into a pointing index finger as he explained what some distant feature of the landscape, wrought by man or nature, might be.
But the seconds were slipping away and there was only the sound of the wind and the rain, and her view of sprawling L.A. was never interrupted except by the whipping strands of her hair. He remained silent. Behind her.
Now she thought he might touch her. That's what people like him did: fucked random strangers. Had one night stands. The idea of being touched by someone she didn't know scared her. Seemed ugly. It always had. But suddenly that ugliness, that fear had a strange, arousing appeal.
So, when she felt his fingers combing into her hair, she stayed still and quiet, and savored the little shudder that rippled down her body from the points where his fingertips brushed faintly against her scalp. Silent and slow, with soft strokes he smoothed and gathered her wind-wild hair. Then she felt his body against hers—more heat than touch—and his warm breath pulsed against her bare neck. Taut, stretched thin as wire, she waited for the touch of his mouth on her skin. Only when she sucked in an urgent breath did she realize how anxiously she'd been waiting to be touched. That she'd forgotten to breathe. Now she was panting urgent shallow little breaths. Waiting.
His fingers brushed faintly against her, making her shiver as he pulled her collar toward her shoulder. His lips faintly grazed the sensitive skin just below her ear, and every cell in her body seemed to constrict. Every inch of skin felt suddenly tight and faintly itchy. She waited.
His breath, his lips brushed against her again, a touch that bolted through her taut nerves like electric current, making her nipples and every hair follicle constrict. Then his tongue, hot and wet and teasing. Then his teeth. Two little nips that almost made her cry out, afraid he'd hurt her, before the incredible rush of pleasure washed over her.
"Set your glass down."
She stretched her arm to the side and set the glass on the railing. Almost the moment it was out of her hand his body drove hers forward, until her hip bones pressed against the wooden barrier, his chest against her back forcing her upper body to lean over, just slightly, but enough to make her grab at the railing instinctively. In the dark she couldn't discern how high the balcony had her suspended. The idea of a perilous drop heightened her growing anxiety. He mouthed her ear, and the sensation mingled with her fear and her flesh—from the surface of her skin to her organs to deep in her bones—tingled so intensely she started to feel delirious.
"Answer something," he whispered before stroking a particularly sensitive spot on her ear with the very tip of his tongue. "Be honest. You knew who I was before you came in tonight."
He descended on her neck again, making it hard to breathe, hard to answer.
"No."
"No? You swear?"
She was starting to feel like a liar.
"I swear."
He moved over to the untouched territory on the left of her neck.
"Then tell me ,Vida. Why did you come in with me?"
The sound of his breathing, the feeling of his mouth on her ear and neck, of his body pressing her to the railing had her more urgently aroused than she'd been in years—probably since high school, when everything was new. Fuck, she wanted him to touch her. But as she looked out into the void of night in front of her, below her, she was half scared he was about to push her to her death.
"You…I came in because…I didn't want to go home."
"And?"
"And I was afraid to."
"Afraid to what?"
"Afraid to come in with you."
"You wanted that?"
It wasn't smart. Telling some strange man that you'd come in with him because you liked feeling afraid. She knew that.
"Yes."
"You felt…afraid of me?"
"Yes. A little."
"What about now?"
His grip on her hair seemed to tighten; she realized suddenly that she was unable to move her head. His other hand slid down her side to her hip, crossed her abdomen until his forearm belted her tight against him, and she gradually became aware of him moving his hips behind her, suddenly sure she felt his erection pressing against her ass, sliding slowly up and down against her with the motion of his hips.
"What about now? Are you still afraid of me?"
"Yes," she breathed, still dying to be touched.
"Do you want to go?"
His grip on her hair didn't loosen; the insistent probing of his stiff cock hadn't relented.
"No."
"Good."
Her hair still caught tight in his fist, he backed off her just enough to allow a little gap between her and the railing, and his hand slid from her hip, over, down, and faintly wandered over her crotch. Under his delicate touch a flood of sensation pooled and began pulsing insistently. He hadn't even slipped his hand inside her pants and she already felt her climax building.
But his fingers, working so subtly, so expertly between her thighs abandoned her just as she'd sighed a desperate little whimper. Now his fingers were trilling up the back of her thigh, slowly, definitely working their way between.
"Don't," she said, softly, half afraid to deny him for fear he'd force her.
But as she twisted, ready to panic, he let go of her hair and let her turn to face him. He was looking down at her with an air of patient amusement. His gaze was so intense, so direct, she felt suddenly as though he could look right through her skin. Read her thoughts.
She wasn't used to this. Feeling…dominated. Instinctively she set out to even the scales. Reclaim her power. Feeling it already she grinned up at him and pressed her palm eagerly to the blatant bulge in his pants. She loved this part—getting a sense of the size and shape of a man, for his responses to her touch.
She drew the curve of her hand along his erection, aroused to find him so hard. Riding the wave of her power she felt a sudden urge to have him in her mouth, to hear him groan as she used her lips and tongue on him. Giving him her best wicked grin, she sank to her knees and got to work on his fly.
"Don't do that."
He said it softly. Tenderly, even. He took her hand from his zipper and coaxed her back up. She was a little stunned. If a guy had ever turned her down for a blowjob, she couldn't remember it. He stared into her for a few seconds, smiled, then opened the slider and led her inside.
Slowly, his eyes locked on hers the whole time, he guided her back until her shoulder blades and her ass bumped against a smooth, vertical plane of wall. Holding her there, he moved in close, until his thighs touched hers, until she could feel his breath on her lips. Still looking, still staring into her. Something like regret started to erode her arousal, but then he sank down, onto his knees.
The bass in her chest thrummed hard, quickened. She watched as he slid the tongue of her belt back, through the loop of her slacks, through the silver buckle, off the prong, and it flopped open to hang heavily from her hips. So quick. His hands. Her slacks unhooked, unzipped. His fingertips touched her hot, bare skin, slid down, catching the waistband of her slacks, then her panties in a single smooth gesture, and pulled them down mid-thigh. Thrumming bass, staccato, hard, fast.
He was looking at her. At her sex. David never did that. Just gaze at it from inches away.
Hot. Her face was hot. She wanted him to get back up. She moved, maybe she was going to step aside, walk away. But he caught her thighs in his hands and silently coaxed her to be still. She couldn't stand this. It was too intimate. She'd never let a man use his mouth on her until they'd been together a while. Until after they'd slept together a few times.
His breath was hot and damp on her bare skin. Did he like her smell? Did he like that she was waxed bare?
Anxiety and anticipation mingled. His warm hands slid over her skin until her thighs were wrapped in his embrace, one hand curving against her ass. Please. Fuck. She needed him to touch her.
His lips brushed faintly over her smooth mound, the hot damp of his breath teasing her. He looked up at her, took in her look of frustrated want, and touched her with his tongue.
A tiny, soft, wet touch against the soft, wet, pink flesh. All the heat in her body rushed in to that tiny point where the tip of his tongue had touched her. When he did it again she whimpered as all that heat pulsed and surged and seemed to roll inside of her.
Each little touch was a taunt. Prodded her need, vexed her arousal. But he kept his caresses so small, let so many seconds tick away between, she was almost in tears of frustration. She tried to widen her stance, to spread her legs, hoping desperately to feel his tongue slide back, lathe over her wet sex. Fuck, she needed him to really eat her. But his embrace tightened, cinched her legs tight together, making all of her, except the very front of her slit and just the tiny bit of her not hidden between her smooth, waxed lips, inaccessible to his mouth.
Each tiny little touch of his tongue made her wiggle in her torment, made her whine and whimper. Every time the tip of his wet, pink tongue made contact with her, her body tried to meet it with her climax. As if it knew it would get nothing more from him, as if it sensed that these taunting kisses, so faint, so infrequent, would have to be enough.
But then, fuck, god, yes, he pressed his open mouth to her, his lips sealed themselves against her soft, smooth flesh, and his slippery tongue pressed forward, between her lips, into her slit, lathing at last all her wet inner folds. She shuddered and whimpered and flexed against his embrace, dying to spread for him, dying for him to fuck her with his mouth. When he withdrew his tongue and its textured surface slid back over her, rubbing all along her wet, needful sex, ending with a devastating little flick over her clit, she shuddered, groaned, and thought her knees might give.
Hardly conscious of what her body was doing, her legs flexed, trying to open, her hips tried to press forward, to drive her sex against his mouth, but his arms circled tighter around her, immobilizing her, keeper her shut tight.
More, tiny, darting touches of his tongue to her, her trying to stifle the little sobs and moans threatening to squeak out. It was torture, keeping her climax so close for so long, threatening to keep her in this anxious suspense forever. But slowly, slowly, with each little brush of the tip of his tongue, that aching, throbbing pleasure built, gathering, gathering, and he'd lick, and the feeling would swell, and that little touch would land again, and the thrill would rise up, until finally another stroke of his tongue fluttered over her and a great well of pleasure flooded up and spilled over. He lightly lapped, prolonging her delicious agony, gripping her in his imprisoning embrace as he squeezed every drop of pleasure from her body. He held her as she shuddered and panted and finally calmed. At last he opened the constricting circle of his arms.
She felt strange. She couldn't remember that last time she'd been held for so long in such delicious suspense, or when she'd cum so hard. But she didn't feel at all sated. She was absolutely dying to be fucked.
To be fucked. Taken. Held down. Ridden.
Judging by the look on his face, she was going to get just what she needed. He rose, his body, his hands, traveling over her like they were taking possession of new terrain. Standing, looking down at her, he smiled like he was amused by something, evoking a spontaneous smile from her in the midst of her intense, trembling need. Then he kissed her. She hadn't wanted that before, but now, after, she wanted it.
His tongue slid into her mouth, tasting of her sex. It was like a drug working on her body, doubling her arousal, her need. Panting, he ended his hungry kiss, and with another odd little grin, started unbuttoning her blouse. Panic seized her, and she caught his wrist in her hand. He looked at her with an expression of amused surprise.
"I want…this. You," she stammered, flustered. "But I…please, leave the blouse on."
His hands slipped obediently away from her button, but then he took hold of the hem, gathering upward. She snapped. Her vision blurring with tears of panic she caught his hands again, suddenly afraid again that he was going to make her fight him. That she'd lose. That he'd…
"I'm afraid," he said quietly, his eyes guiding hers toward something near his hands, "that I got some blood on your shirt. From earlier. You should take it off. Let me wash it."
A small bright stripe of blood stretched along the fabric between his thumbs.
"I can give you a shirt to wear, if you're shy," he added with his amused grin.
OOOOO
He really didn't know why, but she was losing it. Her eyes had that glittery reddening look of someone about to cry. What the fuck. He'd played with her. A little. But there was no way, he'd done nothing to make her think he'd hurt her. Force her.
"I'm sorry," she breathed hoarsely, in the voice of someone struggling not to let a pending flood of tears break through. "I need to go."
"Alright."
He used a soft voice. He wouldn't argue. Trying to keep her there seemed like a very bad idea, if she was feeling like he was some kind of threat. He'd let her go. Live with the mystery.
She'd already frantically zipped and buckled up and was half way to the front door. He walked slowly after her. Not too fast. Not too close. She opened the door, called back with a broken 'sorry,' and was gone.
That was a first—a woman running off crying after he'd licked her to orgasm. He made himself a fresh vodka tonic as he wondered over her possible pasts. Molested as a child? Date rape? A violent assault? Or just fucked up--so repressed that a good climax sent her over the edge? Who fucking knew.
Something about it wasn't right, though. Everything about her had struck him as strong. Not the shy delicate type. Not the wounded type.
The image of the stain kept coming to him, like it was burned onto his retina, the final living image.
His vodka tonic in hand, he wandered back to his room, thinking he'd change, go to bed. But he was too wired. The accident, her. All that build-up, and no fuck to undo the anticipation. He could still taste her. The recognition, the acknowledgement of it got his dick a little hard.
He roamed aimlessly back and forth through the house, a little too disturbed by her to jerk off and go to sleep.
The stain.
From outside, a bright light blared on the living room curtains, trying to get in. Headlights.
He opened the front door. She was still there. In her little convertible, engine running, rain slanting through two violent beams of halogen light. For all the tinted windows revealed, there might have been no one inside. It might have been a humming empty shell. He tapped at the glass, rain-beaded in symmetrical chaos. No sound, no sign of movement. He was getting soaked. He pulled on the door handle.
She was hunched against her steering wheel. His core turned to ice with a sudden dropping feeling, like being in a plane that suddenly looses a few thousand feet. But then her still, silent body moved. Made noise.
She was crying. Sobbing. Gut-twisting sobs—the kind that make you think maybe you'll puke. He couldn't even tell if she'd noticed him. He touched her shoulder, softly as he could, then bent down close.
"Vida. Come back in with me."
Had she heard him? Did she even know he was there? He touched again, stroking her damp hair, tried her name again. She just went on sobbing. Impossible to leave her there.
"I'm going to bring you inside, alright?"
Nothing changed. Her hands covered her face, her shoulders hunched, her back curved, her ribs convulsed. He leaned in, got a forearm under her knees, his other arm curved around her back, under her arm, pulled her against his chest, and lifted her out of the car.
"It's alright. I'm bringing you inside, Vida," he assured her in his gentlest voice, kicking her car door closed.
"Put me down," she said before he'd reached the front door. "I'm not a fucking baby. I'm not an invalid. Put me down."
He put her down. She didn't charge back to her car.
"Come on." He tentatively touched her back, hoping to get her inside before she was as wet as he, a little surprised when she moved toward the house.
"My purse."
"I'll get it."
He trotted back to the car, reached across the driver's side and snatched her purse up from the passenger seat. Back in the house, he wrapped a blanket around her, pulled her to him, held her, rubbing her back through the blanket. She'd stopped crying, but every now and then she drew in a sudden, deep, shuddering breath. Finally, when she was quiet and still in his arms, he settled her on the couch. It was like she was in shock. Her eyes seemed not to see. He lit the fire, went back to his room, and hurriedly changed into dry clothes. When he came back she was still sitting, just as he'd left her, her unseeing eyes staring straight ahead.
It startled him when, a moment later, she spoke.
"This is so ridiculous. I'm sorry."
She was looking at him. Seeing him. He smiled.
"It's alright."
She looked like she might be about to start crying again.
"Do you think I could have another drink?"
"Sure."
He couldn't remember where she'd left her glass, so he got a clean one from the cupboard and threw a drink together for her, shorting her a bit on the vodka. In the morning, she'd be glad. She smiled at him, sad and grateful as he handed her the drink, then took a shaky but dainty little sip. She seemed to want it in her hand, more than anything. A little piece of security.
"God, you poor thing," she laughed sadly. "You invite a girl in for a quick fuck, and look what you get."
"I didn't invite you in for a fuck."
She gave him a bemused smile. "No?"
"No." He wouldn't have told her, before. But he could tell her, now. "I invited you in because the accident freaked me out. I was scared. I didn't want to be alone."
He couldn't resist smiling and adding,
"It was later I decided I wanted to fuck you."
"It was my gauze work, wasn't it? No man can resist a woman with a roll of gauze, I hear."
"Actually, it was the way you relentlessly wield a pair of tweezers."
She smiled. He was only half kidding.
He perched on the coffee table in front of her.
"Vida. Should I call your doctor?"
She looked shocked. Then scared. Then amused.
"What? I have one little nervous breakdown in a stranger's house, and you think it's time to call the men in white coats?"
Defensive. He smiled, hoping to calm her.
"I think someone should take a look at your stitches."
He waited. Watched a little look of surprise pass like a tiny shockwave over her features. Watched her think. Maybe she'd deny it. Or maybe he was wrong. Then she softened and shrank slightly as her defenses came down.
"How'd you know?"
The blood. I would have seen it sooner. The way you reacted. Got scared. I thought I'd scared you, but it didn't quite make sense. And just now, after I brought you back in. I saw your bra in your purse."
She just nodded.
"So, should I call your doctor for you?"
"I don't want to go back there. Not tonight."
"You may have pulled your stitches. You should at least go and check. Use the bathroom mirror. If it's bad, I'll take you in."
She just sat there, staring into the distance somewhere to the left of him.
"Vida?"
"I can't."
"Alright."
He took her drink, took her hand, and led her over to the kitchen, settling her on the stool he'd sat on earlier while she dressed his wounds. The first aid kit was still there, still open, spilling over with gauze and medical tape. It was a regular clinic now.
"Alright?"
"Alright."
Button by button he undid her blouse, then pulled the left side—the side with the now darkened blood stain—open, baring her breast and the square of blood-stained gauze that partially covered her nipple.
"I'm going to take the gauze off, okay?"
She nodded.
Carefully he peeled up an edge of tape.
"That hurt?"
"No."
Pinching the corner of her bandage between his fingers he slowly pulled, lifting the bandage, the white tape clinging, pulling at the delicate, smooth, pale skin of her breast. The incision, dark and thick with dried blood, came into view, a diagonal ridge just below the areola, just before the last of the tape tugged and released her nipple.
Her eyes evaded the sight of the blood-stained gauze as he set it on the counter.
"Alright?"
She nodded.
"I'm going to clean it up a little, so I can see better. Okay?"
Another nod.
He doused a wad of fresh gauze in peroxide and gently pressed it to the wound, held it there, lifted, pressed again. She was silent, but when he looked to her face, tears were rolling down her cheeks.
"I'm sorry. I'm trying to be gentle."
"I'm going to die," she whispered.
Her words hurt him.
"They told you that?"
"They don't know yet. But I do."
"This…they operated?"
"Today was just a biopsy."
He went on, pressing and lifting, staining the peroxide-soaked gauze darker and darker, slowly revealing the neat incision beneath the dried blood.
"So you're waiting. For the results."
"I know what it is. And I know I'm going to die."
"Vida. Even if it's cancer…"
"My mom died of breast cancer when I was six. She was twenty-nine. Her sister was thirty-one when she died."
The stitches were intact. He started fashioning a fresh bandage. Gauze. Neosporin. Tape.
"I don't think I've ever thought I'd get away with it."
"What?"
"Staying whole. Dying old. Of something else."
He resisted his impulse to reassure, to promise that medicine could do more now than twenty years before, when her mom had died. As gently as he could he covered her wound with the fresh bandage, carefully pressing the tape against her delicate skin, and pulled her blouse closed, covering her breast.
He understood now. Why she'd come in with him after the accident. He touched her cheek. Gave her a tender smile.
"I'll be right back."
When he returned a moment later, she was standing in front of the slider, gazing out at the wet L.A. night.
"Let me wash your blouse. Here's something warm for you to wear."
When she didn't move or speak, he tentatively touched her shoulders, then slid her blouse down her arms, realizing as he did so that she hadn't buttoned up. She had a very pretty back, smooth, muscular, defined. He slid his flannel pajama top up her arms, onto her shoulders.
"I should go."
"Stay. It's alright."
"I've put you through enough."
"You haven't put me through anything. I didn't want to be alone tonight, either. Stay."
Halfheartedly nodding her assent, she began buttoning up the flannel top. He dashed off to the laundry room, squirted the rust-colored streak with stain remover, tossed her blouse in the wash, and returned to her.
"You tired? Ready for bed?"
She looked sort of scared, but nodded her head.
"Come on."
He led her back, to his bedroom, let her pee and use his toothbrush, then did the same. When he came out of the bathroom he found her standing hesitantly at the side of his bed.
"Do you want to be alone?"
She shook her head 'no,' then stripped off her pants.
"Which side is yours?"
"They're both mine," he answered mirthfully, having gotten a good bit of teasing over the years for his indiscriminate sprawling. "Take whichever side you like, and be prepared to defend it."
She climbed in and he stripped down to his boxer briefs and slid in beside her. Met her in the middle. He coaxed her onto her side and curved his body into hers, spoon style, curving one arm over her, pulling her close against him.
They laid together like that for a long while. For three or more reasons he was wound far too tight to sleep. From the pattern and quality of her breathing, he knew she was awake, too. Thinking to soothe, to comfort her, he stroked her arm, just lightly with his fingertips over the soft rough flannel pajama top. He sensed her tense a little.
He whispered, "Should I stop?"
"No. It feels nice."
His fingers drifted up, into her hair, incredibly soft but a bit tangled, still, from the wind. She sighed quietly as he combed and petted, giving her the sorts of touches he liked best, that always seemed to soothe, to bring on drowsiness almost like a drug. Her hair was slightly damp from the rain, and it smelled just faintly of almond. She shifted and her ass flexed and rubbed against his cock. He couldn't help smiling, almost laughing at himself for having the guile to blush at being found out, that a woman in his bed would feel the evidence that he was aroused.
"You're hard."
He went on massaging her hot scalp.
"Don't worry. I can restrain myself."
"You have impressive recuperative powers, Mr. Ross."
"That's actually true, but lying in bed with you doesn't exactly constitute proof of that."
"Blood and sickness and morbid talk of disease and imminent death do it for you, do they?" Her voice had a defeated note to it.
"Tangentially, maybe you could say that."
"You don't have a scalpel fetish I ought to be aware of, do you?"
"My real thing is bone saws. Vzzzt, vzzzzzt," he buzzed in her ear, running his finger along her scalp, then her neck, relieved when she squirmed and giggled, fretting after it was already too late that his teasing might have triggered another bout of anxiety, terror or shock. When she settled down he realized her thrashing and giggling had him even harder.
"I'm not a fetishist, really. Scalpels or otherwise. But I'm attracted to real things. Sometimes fear and pain feel more real than whatever erotic games people generally like to play."
It wasn't coming out right. He just wanted her to know she wasn't…broken to him.
"So," she said in a voice so quiet he could hardly hear, "you still…you'd still fuck me?"
A little charge zapped through his body, indifferent to his brain's certainty that she was just looking for validation. Reassurance that having cancer—breast cancer—didn't cancel her out as a sexual being.
"Like I said. I can restrain myself. Restraint implies desire."
"Because I want you to."
This had to be handled carefully.
"You want me to fuck you?"
It was her word.
"Yes."
Last edited:
Particularly the withholding of his identity- it keeps me at a distance from what she knows, and therefore what she feels. Not good since it hampered my ability to understand why she finds him attractive. Plus, after I discovered he was 'somebody', then the accident seemed harder to believe.
