Текст книги "Asking for It"
Автор книги: Lilah Pace
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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 20 страниц)
Yet my solitude doesn’t feel lonely. It feels dreamlike. All my other responsibilities have fallen away. Every other source of tension is gone.
I put on jeans and a heavy gray sweater that doesn’t get much wear in Texas or Louisiana. Then I walk out from the B&B to see a wild, rocky stretch of coastline in front of me—and behind, endless rolling hills. Only a few scrubby patches of heather linger this late in the year, but the purple is beautiful just the same. Aside from a small stone cottage near the dock, not another house can be seen for miles in any direction. Even the nearby road is too narrow for more than one vehicle at a time. The breeze off the water is cool; the air smells of salt. Splashing at the shoreline makes me look for fish, but to my delight, I instead see two otters scampering in the shallows.
Some artists believe in creating every single day—writing, painting, doing whatever it is you do—to stay productive. Others believe in a concept called “filling the well.” This means stopping for a while to just take in something new, whether it’s a book you’ve never read, an activity you’ve never tried, or a place you’ve never been before. The new experiences sink deep into your consciousness and take your creativity in new directions.
If I didn’t already believe in filling the well, the stark, wild beauty of this place would convince me.
I packed a sketchpad, thinking only to fill the hours when Jonah was working. Now I can’t wait to spend every spare hour drawing. The rugged landscape—the rocky shoreline—even the way our B&B seems to snuggle against the nearest hill: I want to capture every detail, forever.
From across the water I hear the sound of an engine and the choppy impact of waves against metal. Somehow I know, even before I turn to see the white boat coming nearer, that this is Jonah’s return. When I wave in greeting, I see him lean out—no more than an outline, at this distance—and raise his hand.
I’d thought seeing him would shatter the dreamlike quality of this place. Instead it seems as though Jonah has entered my dream.
• • •
“What did you tell your friends?” Jonah asks that night over dinner.
Unlike most B&Bs, the one we’re staying in serves food and drink throughout the night—mostly, I think, for the fishermen gathered at the other two tables. Jonah and I sit at a beat-up wooden table, near a crackling fire, with lamb stew and dark beer. The firelight illuminates the harsh planes of Jonah’s face; sometimes the flickering shadows make him look almost demonic, but at other moments, he looks as beautiful as I’ve ever seen him.
This is one of those moments.
“I told my friends the truth,” I say. “They were surprised, but Carmen and Arturo are excited for me. And Shay . . . she’s trying to wrap her head around the fact that you aren’t always as, um, reserved as you come across in the office.”
“She thinks I’m cold.”
“No, no! It’s not like that.” Shay would never be that bluntly unkind. “One of the first things she ever said to me about you was that you were the best professor in the department to work for.”
Jonah thinks that over, then nods. As well as he’s concealing it, I can tell—Shay’s opinion means something to him. I doubt he ever goes out of his way to ingratiate himself with people. So if he cares about what Shay thinks, it’s because he realizes Shay is a person whose respect is worth having. This, in turn, makes me realize he’s a good judge of character.
“What about you?” I say. “Did you tell your friends about bringing me along?”
“Most of my close friends are from undergrad. We don’t communicate every day. But I told Rosalind.”
I remember the way she smiled at me when she realized I was “Jonah’s Vivienne.” Her respect is worth having too. “What did she say?”
“She said it was about time I ‘stepped up my game.’” Jonah says this so seriously that I can’t help but laugh. Slowly, he smiles too—and yet he’s wary about something else. “You didn’t tell me how that ex of yours reacted.”
“Geordie? He said you were making him look bad, because he never took me anyplace fancier than Ruth’s Chris Steak House.” I would giggle at the memory, but Jonah’s expression seems to forbid it. He’s become stony again, and I wonder if the emotion he’s holding back is anger, or jealousy. “You realize there’s nothing between me and Geordie any longer.”
“So you’ve said. But you spend a lot of time together.”
We do. I’ve been surprised how easily Geordie and I transitioned into a platonic relationship. Then again—“We were always closer to ‘friends with benefits’ than any red-hot love affair,” I say. “You know, we tried romance on, it didn’t fit for either of us, and so now we stick to what did work. Our friendship.”
“Does he understand that?”
“Definitely.” Truth be told, Geordie looked a little wistful when I told him about this trip, and the fact that I was seeing Jonah Marks—but no more than that. “You sound jealous.”
“I am,” Jonah says. He looks straight into my eyes and speaks with a calmness that belies every word he says. “I’m jealous of every man who ever touched you.”
Just hearing him say that brings the heat to my face, to my solar plexus. Our eyes meet, and I know he wants to grab me, right now. To knock everything off this table, lay me down on it and take me . . .
But that’s not a fantasy we can act out here and now, not without giving these fishermen the free porno show of their lives.
Jonah keeps speaking as though he didn’t know I was already crazy hot for him. “You’re better at that than I am. Staying friends with exes.”
Lightly I say, “Why is that, do you think?”
This is where most guys would give me a canned speech about how it’s better for the past to be the past. Or, worse, that talk about how their ex-girlfriends went crazy, which in context always means she dared to express anger at some point. Jonah, on the other hand, thinks for a few long moments before answering. “I tend to . . . compartmentalize. To keep the different aspects of my life separate from each other. So I don’t want to change my exes into the friends they never were. When it’s over, it’s over.”
Sounds sane enough. I’m pretty good at handling ex-lovers, but I also realize I’m unusual in that way. Some people need to lock the doors behind them. Clean breaks aren’t the worst idea.
But then Jonah adds, more quietly, “I’m trying to do things differently with you.”
Wait? When we break up?
No, of course not. Jonah invited me to join him here in Scotland. He brought me into another part of his life. I’m the one he wants to change for.
He slides his hand across the table until our fingers touch. I take a deep breath and look into his eyes. The intensity of the desire I see there—the need to own me not just in bed, but in every possible way—it thrills me. And terrifies me. I can’t say which emotion is more powerful.
This is the moment when I realize what tonight means. Jonah won’t want to play out a scenario tonight. The sex won’t be any fantasy rape. It will just be us, him and me, literally and emotionally naked.
Either I’ll have to fake my way through it, or I’ll have to tell Jonah the truth.
It shouldn’t be scarier than the dark fantasies Jonah and I have shared—but it is. It is.
Twenty-four
As soon as Jonah and I enter our room, he closes the door and reaches for me. Neither of us even turns on the light.
I sink into Jonah’s embrace and feel his lips brush against mine. As he winds his arms around me, our kiss intensifies. This isn’t the hard, punishing kiss he first gave me, or the gentler one we’ve shared after sex or at my front door after our first date. This is desire without violence. Passion that comes not from any fantasy but from the emotions we’ve kindled in each other.
Jonah’s hands slip beneath the hem of my sweater, and I feel his fingers brush along the small of my back. “I never get to tell you how beautiful you are,” he murmurs. “How much I love just looking at your body. Do you know how fucking gorgeous you are?”
“You’re the gorgeous one.” Which is true. I’m attractive, but no more so than any number of women the average person sees on the average day. Jonah? He’s a breed apart.
Like no one else, I think as I unbutton his shirt—pausing only to let him lift my sweater over my head and toss it aside. The firmness of his abdominal muscles, the unreal disparity between the broadness of his shoulders and his taut, trim waist, even those storm gray eyes—Jonah is extraordinary. Anyone attracted to men would want him desperately.
But they couldn’t share his fantasy. Couldn’t give him what he really needs in bed. That’s only me.
Jonah’s fingers find the front clasp of my bra and click it, so that the lacy cups slide sideways, exposing more of my breasts. He pushes the straps over the curve of my shoulders. “Look at you,” he whispers as he starts caressing me. “I don’t get to do this enough.”
I kiss the line of his jaw, his throat. His stubble is rough against my lips. “Mmm. Do what, exactly?”
“This.”
Jonah lifts me just enough to toss me on our bed, then impatiently pulls off his shirt and lets it fall. He crawls onto the bed, his arms and thighs caging me beneath him. His kisses are warm against my skin as he moves from my neck to my breasts.
I whimper as the warmth of his mouth and tongue close over my nipple. Jonah sucks—he licks—he kisses—and he keeps going, drawing out the pleasure. Too many guys rush this; not Jonah. By the time he shifts to my other breast, I’m already writhing beneath him. Even as he sucks harder, his hand reaches for the button of my jeans.
“So—fucking—beautiful,” he murmurs as I help him get my jeans past my hips. Jonah sits up to tug them away, then sits there at the foot of the bed for a moment, gazing at me. I lie naked in front of him, my nipples hardened and glistening, my breaths coming fast. Slowly, so slowly, he slides my legs apart and stares at me even more intently. “I never get to do this either.”
Which is when he lowers his mouth to my clit.
Oh, God, he’s good at this. He’s really, really good at this. Jonah’s tongue laps at me, circles me, and then he starts to suck in a rhythm that brings me to the brink almost instantly.
But it’s not going to make me come.
Only the fantasy does that.
Pretend, I tell myself desperately. My entire body trembles. Pretend he’s forcing you to do this. That he told you to lie here and let him do whatever he wants or he’d make you sorry.
Usually that works, but tonight I can’t convince myself. Jonah’s face is buried between my legs—and I can tell he’s lost to anything but the desire to taste me, to make me come. The broad muscles of his shoulders work beneath my knees, nearly as sexy as the slight bob and turn of his head. He’s giving everything to me. Serving me. And I love it, I do, but even as I hover at the dizzy edge of orgasm, I can’t let go.
“I want you inside me,” I moan. “Please, Jonah, fuck me.”
He pulls back a bit, kisses my cunt one more time, then shoves himself off the bed to get rid of his jeans. I lie there, splayed out for him, panting hard. Jonah can’t move fast enough.
Then he’s atop me again, the hardness of his erection pressing insistently against my belly as we kiss. I take his cock in my hand and guide it downward; Jonah closes his eyes in pleasure as he feels how wet I am.
“Now,” I whisper, and Jonah pushes all the way inside me with one long, slow thrust.
Yes. I arch my back, close my eyes. Now I can imagine anything I want.
“You feel so good,” he murmurs. “So fucking tight. I love feeling you wrapped around me.”
I ought to enjoy hearing him say that. On some level I do. But his praise only cuts into the fantasy I need.
As Jonah begins driving into me, I fill my mind with images of what we’ve done before. If—if maybe that first night at the hotel, when he threw me on the bed—if he hadn’t ended the scenario then. If he’d kept me there, calling me a whore and a slut, until he could fuck me again—
–it might have felt like this—
As I get close, my entire body tenses against his, and he feels it. Jonah starts thrusting harder. Answering me. I fill my mind with the memory of that hotel room, the savage way he took me, not so unlike the way he’s inside me now. I can’t think anymore, can’t see. I belong only to him, only ever to him.
The world goes white-hot as I clench around him. My orgasm hits me so hard I think for a moment I’ll pass out. I manage to stifle my cry of ecstasy against Jonah’s shoulder, and I hear him sigh with satisfaction.
“Vivienne,” he groans, and then he’s there with me. Pleasure shudders through Jonah’s body as he grips me closer, and there’s nothing better than this.
Or there shouldn’t be.
But I can’t forget that I still had to fantasize about rape to get myself all the way there.
“At last,” he murmurs as we lie together in the aftermath. Jonah spoons behind me, drowsily kissing my neck and shoulders. “I got to take my time enjoying you. Now I get to sleep beside you.”
“I should warn you—sometimes I talk in my sleep.”
Jonah chuckles, the vibration of his laugh resonating against my back. “What do you say?”
“Nothing intelligible, apparently. Just mumbling.”
“Doesn’t matter. I could sleep through a tornado.”
“My perfect guy,” I say. I mean it as a joke—thinking of how Geordie used to grumble about my waking him up in the middle of the night. But once I’ve said the words, I realize how true they might be.
Some men would hear that and instantly panic. Jonah simply kisses the nape of my neck and holds me tighter.
I should be so happy right now. And I am—in so many ways—but the dark weight of doubt lingers deep inside. Whatever else my sexual relationship has been with Jonah, it has been completely, utterly, honest.
Tonight, for the first time, I hid the truth from him. When I indulged in that fantasy without him—in a way, I lied.
But the only thing worse than lying to Jonah would be telling him the truth.
• • •
The rest of our time in Scotland is as beautiful and unearthly as the beginning. Jonah spends most of his days out on the water, getting readings about the nearby ocean floor that I would need at least a master’s in seismology to understand. Meanwhile, I hike along the coastline, almost never seeing another human being save for the driver of the occasional truck that rumbles by on this lone, deserted road. Sometimes I run into sheep. Here, a flock is as close as you get to a crowd.
This landscape is both beautiful and strange. Not a single tree grows as far as I can see. The ground only lies level right next to the water; otherwise, the land bows and buckles into countless rocky hills. Although low clouds cover most of the sky, it only rains on me once, and then when I’m close enough to the B&B to make a dash for it.
Each day, I fill my sketchbook with more drawings. Sometimes I try to portray everything as far as my eye can see. Mostly, though, I concentrate on smaller details—the delicate, fading heather next to weather-worn stones, or the slim dark shapes of otters just beneath the water.
Each evening, Jonah returns to me, and we eat and talk in the small, darkened dining room of the B&B. He never opens up about his childhood, or really about anything else truly intimate—but even the simpler conversations we have about books we like or places we’ve been carry their own weight. Jonah isn’t someone who reveals himself easily, I realize. These smaller confidences aren’t his version of small talk; this is how he builds a bridge. Slowly, gradually, stone by stone.
Besides, I can’t be impatient with him for holding back when I’m doing it too.
Every night, we make love. Jonah’s caresses only become more tender, more fervent. I treasure every kiss, revel in the way we learn to move together. Finally I get to see his entire perfect body and worship it with my hands and tongue.
But there always comes a point where I have to imagine the rape.
It’s easier to pretend he’s forcing me when he fucks me from behind, so I ask for that a lot. Jonah seems to love it. Even when he’s on top of me, though, I can close my eyes and lose myself in yet another fantasy.
No harm done, I think, until our last night in Scotland.
“C’mere,” Jonah murmurs in the middle of foreplay, pulling me atop him. “Haven’t had you like this yet.”
“I thought you didn’t like woman-on-top,” I say, which is not exactly true but at least believable.
Jonah grins. “I like you any and every way I can have you. Come on. I want to watch your beautiful body move.”
It feels good to straddle him, better to lower myself onto his rigid cock. And it’s amazing to look down and see him sliding in and out of me—to feel his hands massaging my breasts as I move—and to watch Jonah’s face, his openmouthed smile of desire and wonder. I control the pace; I have the power.
Which is what makes it impossible to sink into the fantasy again.
I keep going, riding him hard. My breasts bounce with every move, and Jonah’s fingers find my clit. It’s not enough. Why can’t it just once be enough?
“Come for me,” Jonah whispers.
I should fake it. What’s one more lie, after the others I’ve told this week? But my unspoken fantasies were only lies of omission. Faking it for him is a kind of dishonesty I won’t stoop to, not with Jonah. “I can’t—like this—”
“What do you need?” He grips me more tightly around the waist. “Whatever you need, it’s yours. Just say the word.”
He means it. I know he does. Maybe I can at least trust him enough to take him at his word. “Push me down. Take me hard. Like in our games.”
Jonah stops moving. His gray eyes search mine, and I have no idea what he finds. All I know is that the warmth of his expression fades. Once again he becomes the forbidding, controlling figure of my darkest fantasies.
He flips me over so fast I gasp in surprise. Jonah pulls out, rolls me over, gets behind me, pulls my hips up to meet him. One of his hands closes over my mouth as he thrusts inside me again.
Oh, God, yes. Jonah takes me hard—so hard he brings me to the edge of pain—and the grip of his fingers around my face completes the illusion. I imagine him breaking into my house again, gripping me like this, telling me I have no choice but to take it. My cunt tightens around him; I know he can feel it. I know he can tell how close he’s brought me already.
Jonah’s the only one who knows me like this. The only man who’s ever fucked me the way I wanted to get fucked.
Each stroke gets better, and better, until I come, groaning against his palm. Even as I swoon from the dizzy pleasure of it, Jonah slams into me harder, determined to live the fantasy through to the end.
He’s silent when he comes, this time. I only know he’s finished from the way he tenses and goes still. After a moment, Jonah slides out of me, and I feel warm wetness slicking my thighs. Now that we’re past using condoms, sex with Jonah is a lot messier. Hotter, too. “That was perfect,” I murmur as I collapse onto the bed.
“Was it?”
Jonah sounds so . . . cool. I look over at him, but he’s already closed his eyes. After a moment he rolls over onto his side, away from me.
It’s almost as if he’s angry with me for wanting the fantasy. But that’s absurd. Jonah never judged me for wanting it before, and besides, he loves it too.
Maybe the man’s just tired. He just fucked you six ways from Sunday. Eventually he was bound to fall asleep immediately after.
Makes sense. I’m tired too. And I refuse to think about it any further than that.
But this is the only night in Scotland that he doesn’t hold me as I go to sleep.
• • •
“And you haven’t spent time with Jonah since returning to the States,” Doreen says the next Monday, as I sit on her sofa, fighting to stay awake despite jet lag.
“I wouldn’t have expected to,” I say. “It’s going to take me days to get through the Category Five storm that is my inbox, and I’m sure Jonah is at least as slammed as I am, if not more.”
Doreen simply nods, her hands folded in her lap. “Has he called you on the phone? Have you texted?”
“He texted after we got into separate taxis at the airport, to make sure I got home safe. Then earlier this morning I e-mailed to ask him to come to Arturo and Shay’s Halloween party, and he said yes.”
“Halloween party?” That makes Doreen smile a bit. “Not that I’ve ever met the man, but Jonah Marks doesn’t seem like the costume-wearing kind.”
“I know.” I have to grin too. “Still, the natural next step is introducing Jonah to my friends. Well—not introducing, they’ve all met him—but having all of us spend time together. Making sure everyone can get along.”
“And if they can’t?”
“They can.” In all honesty, I’m not sure how Jonah will react to my friends—particularly Geordie—or how they’ll react to him. But Jonah’s default mode is cool courtesy, which means even in the worst-case scenario, everyone will be able to manage. “Hopefully I’ll spend time with Jonah and Rosalind sometime soon. She seems great.”
Doreen is too smart to pursue the conversational detour I just offered. As ever, she sticks to the point. “So everything is going well.”
“Exactly.”
“Then why did you tell me you were feeling uneasy after that last night in Scotland?”
I sigh. “I shouldn’t even have said anything.”
“Vivienne.” Doreen’s voice is soft. “We’ve made a lot of progress these past couple of years because you’ve learned to be truly open with me. Be a shame to lose that now.”
“We aren’t losing it,” I reply—which is maybe not one hundred percent true, if I can’t open up to her about this. “It’s just that so many things about my relationship with Jonah are difficult to put into words.”
“He’s proved himself trustworthy. You enjoy spending time with him even in a nonsexual way. Jonah Marks has turned out to be an interesting, intelligent person.”
I nod.
“But you feel that he reacted badly on that final night, when you expressed your wishes during sex.”
“I think so. I’m not sure.” I am, though. Something about the silence between us has been—too empty. “He wouldn’t freak out about that, though. Not when we’ve acted out that fantasy in so many other ways.”
“Does that feel like the whole truth to you?”
With a sigh, I admit, “No.”
“What else might be bothering him?” Doreen cocks her head. “I think you have an idea.”
She’s right; I do. Really I’ve sensed this all along. “I guess it could be that—when I admitted what I wanted—he realized that I was fantasizing about it every other time we had sex in Scotland. Pretending he was forcing me, even when he wanted us to make love in a more romantic way.”
She says, “Why do you think that would disturb him, when it’s a fantasy he shares?”
Finally I say what I know Doreen’s been getting at the whole time. “Jonah wouldn’t be angry about the fantasy. He’d be angry about the lie, because that’s how he’d see it. As a lie.”
“How do you see it?”
My rationalizations about “lies of omission” seem flimsy now, and I’m embarrassed to even speak them out loud. “. . . I guess it was a lie.”
How do I even start to tell Jonah the truth? How can I find the right parts to tell?
All I know is that I’m never telling him the whole story. No matter what else might come between Jonah and me, I can’t confess the truth about my rape. I hate even saying the name Anthony.
And then I would have to discover how Jonah reacts when the rape isn’t only a fantasy. When he has to confront the fact that this dark, twisted scenario that gets him off is something that—in the real world—scars people for life.
Once he understood that, either Jonah would come to hate his fantasy, or—or he wouldn’t care.
Either way would mean Jonah and I could never play our games again.
And I can’t give them up.
