Bone Deep (13 page)

As
my hand moves lower and lower, her body clenches tight. The side strap of her underwear dips with a tug from my thumb, my pinky drudging a snail-paced line over the triangle of silk. Bottom…to…top.

She
skims her hands around my waist and hauls me closer. Her teeth bite into my shoulder just as my finger nudges the silk to the side and slips inside her.

In, out.

Then another. Her breath catches, and she holds it in.

In, out. Deeper.

“Krister, I—”

The heel of my palm presses hard against her
clit, and this is the point I know I’ve stolen all her ability to function. A whimper slips off her lips, the sound triggering a low growl of my own.

I slide another finger in and she gasps out, rocking her hips into my hand as I stroke her over and over.
“Oh God,” she murmurs. “I wanted to last longer…but you’re making it…really h-h-hard.”

Beautiful. She is absolutely beautiful when she’s lost like this. Without the look of worry—the look that there’s something heavy and gripping driving her—marring her face.
“You’re going to have to,” I respond in a whisper. Elbowing her thighs apart, I dip out from her hold and kneel between them. With my hands on her shins, I bring up her knees, pressing them to her chest and baring everything to me. It’s a vulnerable position, and based on the flush of her cheeks she hasn’t been in it often.

All the more reason to make me smile.

With my fingers gently drawing circles around her kneecaps, I say, “I haven’t even started.”

Unhurriedly I lower
, and just watching her watch me inch closer and closer to the spot that is, without a doubt, on fire is enough to make me come undone before I’ve even made contact. She wraps her hands around my arms, the need to touch me evident in her burning stare.

With hot breath fanning over her
thighs, just millimeters away from my destination, I stop and glance up at her. “Cambria?”

Our eyes con
nect. Silence folds over us as she waits, and watches. My playful smirk is gone, replaced with something that feels much heavier.

“Don’t look away,
” I remind her, and then my tongue touches her first. One long, slow, agonizing swipe. Her breath escapes in a shaky wail that sounds like she’ll crumble to pieces if I do that again.

And then I do it again
, this time even slower. Longer. Again and again, stroke after stroke until she’s thrashing beneath me.

“
Krister… I’m…I’m…”

Dying
.
She doesn’t say it out loud, but it echoes like a gong in the room.
Dying, dying, dying.

This is where she’s wrong.

My eyes, hooded and burning with the beautiful sight of her, meet hers. “No,” I say with a slight shake of my head. “You’re living.” And then I circle my lips over her and suck.
Hard.

She
cries out, but that does nothing to stop me. If anything, it urges me to move faster, dipping and swirling my tongue against her clit until her legs start to shake and her back pitches out of my hold.

Her
body lets loose, spiraling into an abyss, but not once does she look away from my eyes. It’s the most intimate thing I’ve ever done.

Ever so slowl
y I lower her legs, taking a moment to run my fingers up and down the length of them. From the floor I find my jeans and retrieve a condom from my wallet, Cambria’s eyes following my every move as I carefully cover myself and crawl over her. She tenses, but at the same time a lazy smile spears her face. It’s more than infatuation. More than gratitude. And the look is like a magnet for that guilty-as-shit feeling.

I lower my head, lips to her ear. “I’m sorry,” I say
, and a laugh bubbles off her lips.

“
That was… Um, you should
never
be sorry for that.”

I
shake my head—I couldn’t be sorry for that even if I tried. “I meant…just…I’m sorry.”
Fuck, Krister, spit it out
. Problem is, I don’t even know what I’m trying to say.

I take a deep breath and don’t think about the words that spew out of my mouth. “
That you lost your mom. And I want you to know I will do
any
thing to make it better. Name your request, and I will go to hell and back to get it for you.”

Not sure that was what I was going for, but I mean every word. Her pain is now my pain, her broken heart now on me, and I intend to do whatever it takes to make this girl whole again.

She traces her fingers over my lips, watching for a moment as the tension in my face dissipates with her touch. “You do,” she tells me, her lips along mine. “You being here makes it better. Now will you please take what’s yours?”

~*~

I wanted to tell her
everything. I did. But that look on her face? I’d have been a dick to take that moment of pleasure away from her. And the several more that wracked her body as I devoured every inch of her.

“The fairgrounds?” I take Cambria’s hand into mine. We weave through the crowded lot, the cold night air settling over us. “Were you dying to make out on the Ferris wheel?”

“
Pfft.
If I was going to risk my life on that thing, I’d be doing much more than just kissing you.” Her cheeks flush, and I can only hope it’s because she’s thinking of the unforgettable hour we just spent together. I’ve never spent so long with a girl before. Not even Jess.

Not that I’ve never wanted to, but typically the itch to get out and away from the clingy hands and longing stares scratches at me until I do.

This time it didn’t. I could’ve laid next to Cambria all night.

“Not a fan of heights?” I say to distract myself from that thought. I don’t know why things feel differently with her, but they do. Cosmically different. And I’m not sure I want them to.

She squeezes my hand. “Not a fan of hundred-year-old Ferris wheels made of splintered wood that could crumble at any second.”

As we make our way toward the other side of the grounds, past all the ralph-on-yourself whirling rides that are likely far more dangerous than a slow-moving Ferris wheel, colors in the crowd around us start to diminish. Or the black clothing starts to reproduce. Past a few more rides, we approach a small amphitheater, and I feel like we’ve suddenly transported into a gathering for
punked-out vampires. Unnaturally pale faces, hair dyed darker than the night sky, piercings, tattoos and—

“
What
are we doing here?”

Any minute someone’s bound to pull out a vile of blood.

Cambria slips two tickets from her pocket and hands them to a security guard who I’m pretty sure is one of “them” by the angel wings tattooed on the sides of his neck. He rips the tickets, hands her the stubs, and once we’re through the turnstile she looks up at me.

“You,
Krister, are going to experience
life
tonight.” A sea of seats sprawl out before us in the shape of a bowl, across from us a decent-sized stage. Drums, microphone stands, a platform to perch on.

“Who are we seeing?”

Please don’t say the Gas Caps.

Cambria points to our left where a banner the size of my old house hangs from two
, fat posts. A cluster of gothic dudes crouch like some sort of wild animal pack, and above their heads hangs a symbol I’ve seen before: three black rabbits in a circle.

I lift her w
rist and hold it up.

“And…it’s a match,” she says, letting a chunk of hair fall over her e
yes. She doesn’t brush it back.

“Your tattoo is from this band?” Our conversation from a few weeks ago plays through my mind. “Why would you want to come here if it reminds you of what you want to forget?”

“I got this when I ran away,” she says in a whisper, breaking the beat of silence between us. “That’s the reason I want it gone.”

“Because it reminds you of running away?”

She shakes her head. “Because it reminds me of the
day
I ran away. March twenty-fourth.”

It takes a moment for the date to register. One day before the accident. A nauseou
s bubble rises from my stomach.

“My mom was killed in the train accident last year. I’d called her from
Middlerock…to tell her not to bother looking for me, that I wasn’t coming home. She had my brother trace the call and jumped on the next train. The Metro-transit departed at 4:36.”

“And crashed at 4:42,” I whisper. All of a sudden, she looks up at me, head tilted and ey
es questioning. Ah, fuck. I squeeze her hand and say quickly, “I remember reading the article.” That day, I thought my dad was dead when I got the phone call from Wrenn telling me through her sobs that there’d been a collision and to meet her at the hospital. I smooth the tip of my finger over the back of Cambria’s hand, following the lines of her tendons. “You didn’t know that was going to happen.”

All expression falls from her face until it’s blank and detached
, like she’s realizing she hadn’t considered this before. Then she points to the picture of the band members. The name Burn Me Up Inside. “The tattoo reminds me of all that. Not them. These guys give me something else—a reminder to be true to myself.” She starts walking down the steps in an obvious attempt to cease this conversation. I won’t push it. The carefree side of Cambria is much easier to be around, seeing that it doesn’t remind me spending my days with her is epically the dumbest decision I’ve ever made, or the fact that I can’t stop wanting her.

A large
, flat space of floor separates our seats—only a handful of rows back—from the stage. No doubt it’ll turn into a mosh pit considering the nature of people crowding into the arena. My red shirt stands out like blood on a black stretch of asphalt, and I would’ve been better off wearing the faded-black one. Cambria notices what I’m looking at.

“At least I’ll be able to find you in the crowd if we get split up.” She giggles, and now would be a good t
ime to give her what I brought.

“Speaking of finding something…,” I say, slipping the hard
, oblong bead out from my pocket. “I, um, found this when I was cleaning.” A lie; it’s been sitting in my glassblowing gloves since the day I left the shop for good, but she doesn’t need to know I intentionally searched it out.

She takes the bead from my fingers. “Did you make this?”

“The very first one.” And it’s much better than Seth’s. No scratches, the inside’s smooth as Cambria’s face. No ripples, either. I finger the clasp of her chain and slide it on.

“I like it,” she says, liftin
g it as the lights start to dim and the lead singer steps onto the stage—unpredictably wearing all white—followed by the rest of the band. The crowd of black yells at the top of their lungs. Cambria screams, too. The music is loud and fast, and Cambria seems to know every word. She bobs her head to the beat and, every once in a while, squeezes my arm out of excitement.

The singer of the band is quite a sight so I spend the hour watching him jump around every inch of the stage, wondering things like:
Does he get thirsty?
or
How does he still have a voice?

Finally, the last song starts to play
, and I don’t know how I know it’s the last song because the singer never says so, but everybody in the amphitheater stills and echoes with silence and then the guitar solo starts and everything about it feels like some sort of closing routine. The singer has full control over the audience, even me, who I realize is standing now with Cambria squished in front of me, between my legs and the seat below us. With her back pressed into my chest, she leans into me and whispers, “Don’t take your eyes off Lewis.”

“Lewis?”

“The lead singer.”

The song starts out slow, the guitar springing a slow string of notes that draws a deep holler from the crowd. Lights and smoke exaggerate the stage. The melody picks up
, and Lewis’s eerie voice starts humming and, all of a sudden, chills prickle down my arms. The song alternates between Lewis singing in a slow, haunting tone and an earsplitting scream. Cambria sings every word at the top of her lungs, as does every other person in the audience. I’ve never been to a concert like this before. The audience becoming one—a single being—voices vibrating the floor, up through my shoes to my hammering heart.

Toward the end of the song, Cambria stands on her tiptoes and stiffens. “Watch,” she instructs over the singing. Lewis, during a guitar solo, steps off the stage and right into the crowd. I expect him to fall through to the floor, only the crowd somehow knows his intentions and becomes a base of hands and arms for him to walk on. Lewis takes a few steps, hands gripping his feet and legs to hold him up. Lewis pushes his long, black hair out of his face and finishes the song standing on top of the crowd like he’s fucking Jesus.

The deep tones of Lewis’s voice, the solidarity of the crowd—all singing and
being
along with him—surges a swell of life through my chest, like my body is waking up from a really long nap. Music’s never made me feel this way before.