East Rising (Naive Mistakes #2) Page 3

  We passed a few apartments — mine included. (It wasn't really an apartment. I rented a garret of someone's house.) We were headed for the beach. The full moon lit up Dorian's left bicep. Small goose-pimples had formed on it.

  "You're cold?" I asked.

  He flicked his cigarette away, shook his head.

  We got to the wall by the shingle-beach and sat on it. No one else was around, only a few cars parked here and there overnight. I looked over the wall. It would be a painful fall if someone was to go over, but not high enough to kill them. Looking back at the street I saw three- and four-story buildings blocking my view from anything interesting. Two or three apartment lights were one. For a second it seemed like one of them had a Peeping Tom, but when I looked again, the drapes were drawn. Seaford was a sleepy town, generally. And at just-after-one A.M., few people were ever awake, especially on a weeknight.

  I felt like a little kid at school, waiting for her first kiss.

  And then that kiss came. Strong and forceful. And so did the hand, up my thigh, and the other straight to my breast.

  -4-

  Instinctively I pushed him away, but only slightly. It had not even been much of a push, more of a resistance with my lips. His breath tasted of tobacco and spearmint. Not altogether unpleasant, but not a bed of roses either.

  I let him touch my leg, his hand was high on my left thigh now. I remembered these kinds of kisses at school — uncomfortable, not particularly romantic, but enough to get the pulse going, maybe even a bit of a thrill. That's what this felt like. I'd play along. What had I expected, after all? (And I was still waiting for that "drink" he'd said we'd be going for tonight...)

  Dorian's lips were unyielding and his kiss a little over-enthusiastic. He fondled my left breast firmly but, sadly, it ended up hurting more than making me hot. Safe, however, I did feel. I mean, out here, on this wall, easily a hundred apartments within earshot should I scream, nothing was going to happen.

  I didn't, however, like the feeling that all the pleasure of tonight was going to be on his part, because, to get me hot, he was gonna have to try a lot fucking harder — and he was going to have to slow the fuck down!

  He pushed into me with his impatient tongue. It fired in and out and left and right so that I couldn't even get my own tongue in edgewise! His weight pushed me back and my right hand went against the gravelly wall-top, holding me up.

  No, this was not going right. I didn't mind a little fondling. Heck, I knew how far this was going to go — somehow, we'd both end up coming, I hoped; at least he would for sure... — but this lap-dog licking was getting a little heavy. Whatever happened to smooth and confident Dorian?

  Oh, right, that smoothness is just to pick girls up, not where it really counts: At the after-party.

  The small stones dug into my right hand as I held myself up. Dorian seemed to practically want to lie down on top of me on this stony wall so I'd end up with frickin bruises on my skin or something. One thing I did know, never let an unconfident man know how bad he is at turning you on... (I don't even know where I learned that.)

  I put my hand on his chest, pushed him gently away, but smiled coyly at the same time. I heaved in a breath, trying my damnedest to look sexy, or to look like a tease. I took a quick survey of the area, still empty. Peeping Tom had turned the lights off.

  I licked my bottom lip. Dorian's chest heaved and his confident grin had been replaced by a hungry thirst of a look. His mouth was open, his breath quick.

  Nope, this wasn't going to run as it had run with Conall. Dorian wasn't going to take charge here — at least, not very well. If I left it up to him he'd probably have me naked and my clothes torn right on the cement floor!

  Too much porn, buddy. You watch way too much porn.

  He rubbed my thigh up and down, desperately. Oh, fucking, Christ! Then he took his other hand and did the same, up and down like I was a frickin ruler ready to pick up paper with the static electricity!

  He buried his lips (teeth?) into my neck, hit a bone (I think) and made the left side of my body cringe.

  No, Dorian wasn't mean, or even rough really, and I felt no danger from him. He was, well, just not so smooth. He kissed away, open mouthed, lips slavering all over my neck... Are you trying to make me a goddamned vampire, dude?

  I giggled, pushed him away gently (again!) with both hands this time, kept that same coy-sexy-Kylie-Jenner thing going with my eyes. I was getting good at that now.

  I felt him push against my arms, trying to get onto me.

  Time to end this! As a mayday action I fired my hand to his crotch... There we go. That slowed him down. He gave a smile. Just like a puppy dog. Oh, brother... I couldn't believe this was happening. But it was. And it could have been worse. And I was glad I'd ended up on this wall (long way down, now that I looked at it) with over-eager-beaver here rather than with someone else, someone more sinister. I hadn't been with a man in six months, and I knew I'd have to get my feet wet sometime.

  I rubbed up, and I kissed his neck. I had to take control here.

  I rubbed him harder, up and down. My hand got hot from the friction on his jeans. My own skin was now cool. As Dorian's eyes fluttered and he groaned, I turned my head to the ocean and watched the waves as they crashed.

  Dorian spread his legs wider. "Ooh, I like the way you do that," he said.

  I barely heard him.

  I kept on rubbing. I felt like goddamned mother goose now. Damn it, would you just come already...

  The moon lit a line down the center of the silver sea. A wave broke. Dorian gave a throaty groan that went on for long. My only thought, when he was done, was thank goodness I got none of it on my hands.

  He looked at me with puppy eyes. Green puppy eyes that showed nothing but a big kid in a big body. He'd make someone happy someday. I'm sure he would. But not me. Not today. Not any other day either. Or so I thought...

  "Wow, that was brilliant," he said. I smiled. When had I become this? When had I started pretending things, letting those more naïve than myself believe something that wasn't true?

  "Yeah, it was," I said, the words slipping from my mouth like seawater from an open clam.

  "Let me make you come now," he said to me, his hands blasting in the direction of my crotch even before he'd finished speaking. I blocked him, smiled again. (Smiling, that was a good trick, I noticed...)

  "Nah, it's fine," I said to him. And then I kissed him on the lips, just as a small goodbye for the night. He was calmer now, his tongue less eager. His kiss was even gentle in some way. Talk about frustrated! The surprising softness of his lips, and his less agitated state, kept me kissing him a little more than I'd planned. Dorian had been transformed from a bloodhound on the trail of a rabbit to someone who, in this very moment, gave me a little comfort...

  I kissed him even more. I kissed him so much more, and he kissed me back, that I felt myself now disappearing into him. We kissed even longer. My eyes started closing. They didn't close completely on their own, they weren't forcing themselves down, my chest wasn't thumping hard and my skin wasn't on fire but, still, they closed...

  Dorian's tongue was now soft, moist on my own, it curled around mine slowly and mine curled around his. I felt myself — as if willed by some other force which wasn't mine — move an inch closer to him. And then another.

  Again without force, my right hand went to his cheek, then to his chest. A big, manly chest. I moved it down to his stomach. It wasn't steel-hard, not hard as rock, but it was fit, manly. My hand moved to his thigh.

  The waves crashed more quietly now, their sound being relegated to second place in favor of Dorian's rhythmic breaths. And then his hand — his hard, rough-skinned hand — moved against my cheek.

  And I felt my first chill, down from that same cheek, to the side of my body, then to my ass and out my toes.

  My skin warmed, my insides warmed. As my body eased into that hard wall (it really was very hard, and my left butt-cheek was on a pebble of some sort) I n
oticed, only then, that I'd been tense, absolutely tense.

  How long had I been tense for? A week? Since I'd arrived? Or since That Man had left, That Man who'd been my love. The man I'd been thinking about all day, all night, every second, before I'd met This Man in front of me now. This...boy. This boy in a man's body whose size dwarfs my own and who is kissing me, gently, oh so gently, moistening my lips and rubbing my cheek...

  I felt sad. Just like that.

  So I kissed him some more. Suddenly I was kissing Dorian Brant for reasons you shouldn't kiss another for. I was kissing him for comfort from loss, kissing him to forget, kissing him to feel as if the person I was really kissing...was someone else.

  Only I didn't know that then. Not entirely.

  Dorian made no effort to touch me anywhere else other than my cheek. I wished he had. I wished he'd taken control.

  As our bodies synced in breath, and as the minutes went by, lips upon lips, tongues twirling and playing, moisture chilling on our cheeks as those tongues slipped just briefly outside each other's lips, I moved his hand away from my cheek, gently, slowly, to between my legs, on the outside.

  Dorian was in control now. Not "experienced" control, not learned control, just instinctual, manly control.

  Big boy in a man's body.

  He got up slowly, keeping his lips to mine, and straddled the wall, his right leg dangling above the sand below. Hard fall...

  I pulled my lips from his, but not in a way as to tell him it was over. No, not like that at all. Because it wasn't. But I kept my eyes closed partly. Suddenly I was happy for the badly lit street. Because the boy I was kissing was the boy I had met in the bar earlier, but he also wasn't...

  I also straddled the wall. I gazed into his eyes, the moonlight blazing in his irises, green as a cup of Lemon Tea.

  I felt sad once again. And I didn't know why...

  The sadness made me, momentarily, forget to control my motions. My mind drifted, as if it were being carried away by the ocean wind, but Dorian was there, his hand now again at my crotch, on the outside. And he pressed.

  And then I felt it...

  I clutched his shirt. This was familiar territory. What was going on in my head here? What was this "something" I was feeling?

  He pressed again, and I felt it again...

  What? The sensation was good, so good, but it also wasn't —

  He pressed a third time. Not hard, gentle, above my pants, just a light push inwards.

  My breath quickened. The howling wind blew my hair behind my back and chilled my skin and, again, he pressed. And he kept it there this time, pushing in, just lightly, holding it there.

  I squeezed my legs, felt the stone wall dig into a spot below my right knee. I'd become unaware that we'd been kissing, my mind, my aura — everything about me! — focused completely on his fingers below, trying to capture this "something" in the air every time he pushed against me, sending a galvanizing pulse down my legs, and twisting my stomach.

  Now my eyes closed without will. Now my body tensed. Now I was swimming, in something, somewhere, lost.

  Press. His hand slid inside my pants, into my lace underwear. I hadn't even noticed.

  He moved his fingers around the outside, around my pubic hairs, just grazing the inside of the lips but not entering me. We continued kissing, our tongues now moving without thought and perfectly in sync.

  And then he rubbed...

  I gave a groan. An unwilling groan. A deep, throaty groan that said all it needed to say. And it said this: This is good. This is so good.

  And this is fear. And this is uncertainty.

  He moved just the tips of his two fingers to only just inside me.

  I groaned again. My head fell to his neck, my arms wrapped around his broad body, and I let him finger me.

  He moved inside, both fingers now, as far as he could go. I lifted my pelvis as much as I could to help him go deeper. My groaning and moaning had become constant. My breathing was sharp and hot on his neck. I kissed him, on the neck, feeling him thrust — hard! — into me, rubbing my clit with his thumb and making me pulse, throb, waves shooting back and forth and down and up and through my legs and —

  "Oh, fuck," I said, the sound being a mixture between real words and an unending moan.

  My eyes rolled back. Dorian pumped his hand. I was lost to him. Nothing else existed. The waves had disappeared. He pushed in and out. Rubbed. Pushed. Rubbed. Thrust!

  I held him. I held his big body and big torso and this big man and I let him pump me with his hand. My legs tensed. My nails dug deep into his back and I gripped his traps with my teeth and fucking bit!

  My body shuddered against his, the sides of the wall buried themselves into the insides of my knees as I came. I pulled him and tugged at him and he just kept pumping, pumping, pumping, back and forth, letting me ride the last moments of pleasure right to the end, giving me every little bit of it that he could.

  I let go of the base of his neck — vampire marks now on it — and I pushed against the bottom of it with my forehead. The last trembles of satisfaction escaped me as Dorian slowed the back-and-forth motions of his hand, rubbing me slowly, in and out, pushing his thumb up against me. Massaging me. Right to the end.

  And, still, I held him. As I sighed and took in deep breaths, feeling his warmness against the counterpart of cold on my back, I held onto him, my eyes closed, my head easing down to his chest.

  And then I said it. And it came out just wrong. And I wish I could take it back. But I fucking can't. And I couldn't then either:

  I said, "I love you, Conall."

  And before I knew it Dorian's fingers were out of me.

  CHAPTER THREE

  -1-

  How do you apologize for something like that? You can't. So I didn't. I sat there, looking down. A stain marked my pants, between my legs. The sticky remnants of an erstwhile pleasure. Dorian — not Conall! — had really gotten me all worked up for him.

  I turned my head, mortified, over toward the ocean, hoping, by some miracle, that I'd be able to atone for this — somehow, someway...

  I got my miracle.

  "I'm sorry," said Dorian. Not me. Dorian said it! Yes, he apologized to me!

  Huh!?

  My head fired toward him. I was scowling for some reason. He was still holding his two fingers up, sort of dangling in nowhere, the two which had been inside me. They glistened. Slowly, he curled them inwards, made a fist, hefted it. "Yeah, um, I'm sorry, that was really rude of me."

  I gave an incredulous laugh. A relieved, and unbelieving, sort of "hah!"

  "Care to explain?" I said.

  "I mean, taking my hand out of you so quick..." He shook his head. "That was really, well, shit of me."

  Heck, that had been the last thing I'd been thinking of!

  "I call you by my ex-boyfriend's name after you make me come and you apologize to me?" I think you're going to make me start falling for you if you don't watch it, Big Boy in a Man's Body...

  "Yeah, well. It's not like we're dating or anything." He'd never said the T in "not," and anything came out as anyfing... He continued: "Why should I be upset with you? If we'd been dating, and then you called me by this Donald — "

  "Conall."

  " — Conall, sorry. If we'd been dating, well, then, maybe I'd have been upset."

  There was a pause. I realized he was throwing a rod out, seeing if I'd bite. If we'd been dating...

  I waited.

  "But, of course," he said, "we're not..." Another pause. "So, it's fine."

  I smiled appreciatively and put my hand on his. Mine was so small in comparison. "Do you work with your hands?" I asked.

  "Yip. Longshoreman. My uncle got me a job on the docks at Newhaven. But I haven't started yet. I start in a few days."

  "You'll be here permanently?"

  "No, the job's three months long. Then I'm off to Hastings." Hastings was about forty-five minutes away.

  "That's not far from here." What are yo
u doing, Leora?

  "No, it's not."

  Another pause. I didn't want to commit to anything. And I didn't want to bar all commitment. Heck, I didn't know what the hell I wanted! That guy — that other guy! — had fucked me up so much that —

  It hit me. That "something" I'd been feeling when Dorian had been touching me, pressing his fingers against me from outside my pants. It was the Fear of Falling. That's what it had been. And, thinking aloud, the following words came out: "Getting physical always complicates things, doesn't it?"

  Dorian frowned, a little confused.

  "Never mind," I said. "I was just thinking out loud."

  "You really love this Conall guy, don't you?"

  Damn it! Why did he have to go there!? "I'd rather not talk about it."

  Dorian straightened, his chest bulging. He really was large. "Me neither. Ex boyfriends are always such an ugly topic..."

  Conall had said the same things once, sort of...

  "So, if this Conall or Donald or whoever the fuck he is, isn't around, I might come over to the pub there and ask you out for another drink."

  He wasn't asking for permission.

  "OK," I said, noncommittally. And then I took a long shot. I said something to him that you only say to people when you're getting close to them. And I didn't want to get close to him, but I felt myself naturally doing it. I said, "Dorian, if we do this again, you'll need to take it a bit slower in the beginning, OK?"

  I looked him straight in the eye, my hand still on his. And he blushed!

  "Yeah, sorry about that — "

  I put my finger to his lips. I guess, if this had been a simple romance, I would've kissed him. But it wasn't, so I didn't.

  "It's fine," I said.

  And there I'd done it again. Acting all experienced up in here and being the one in control (at least in this little microcosm of an event...) When had that occurred? When had I become this?

  "Dorian, how old are you?"