Collide (35 page)

“You don’t take shit,” Johnny said. “Not from anyone, but especially not from me.”

Slowly, slowly, his moving hand was bringing me close to the edge. But it was his voice that pushed me faster. I listened. I gave myself up.

He kept his voice low, not distracting, just loud enough for me to ride the way I was starting to ride his hand. “You don’t let anything keep you from doing what you want. You’re stubborn that way, Emm, and I admire that. You’re good to your friends. Good to your family. I like that you still like your parents.”

I laughed, breathless. “Let’s not talk about my parents…right…now.”

Johnny chuckled, low, fingers slowing, then moving faster. Making me crazy. “I like the way you wear your hair.”

“Better.”

“I like the way you do that thing with your mouth when you’re thinking hard about something and you’re not sure what to say.”

I sighed, arching.

“I like the way you cried when you came into my office that day, because you were embarrassed something bad had happened.”

I cracked open an eye, hovering too close to orgasm to pull back, but still not quite there. “Dude. Sexy things! Talk about…sexy…”

He could’ve talked about the price of tea in China just then, and I’d still have tipped toward coming, but Johnny bent to kiss my mouth. He sucked my tongue in time to the stroking of his fingers, which had gone maddeningly slow. I wanted to push my hips upward to force my clit against his hand, but I steadied myself.

“I like the way your nipples get hard when you pull your shirt off over your head on the way to the shower. How’s that?”

“Much better…”

“I like the way you taste when you’re coming on my tongue. I think about the way you taste and I get so fucking hard I think I’m going to break.”

I murmured his name. I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. Could only listen. And feel.

“The first time I saw you in that coffee shop,” Johnny whispered into my ear as his hand drew me ever closer into ecstasy, “I knew you, Emmaline. I had to keep walking past you because I didn’t have words to say what I already knew, that we’d end up like this. Together. I didn’t have a choice, and it pissed me off.”

My eyes flew open, my body tense and hovering, ready to burst into pleasure. “It…did?”

Johnny moved his hand low to push his fingers into me, fucking just as slowly as he’d stroked. A different kind of pleasure, easing off and pushing me forward at the same time. “Yeah. It did. Why do you think I was such a raging prick to you?”

More breathless, panting laughter trickled out of me, and I thought I was finally going to tip over the edge. But I didn’t. “Oh, baby, you have such a fucking strange way of being sexy….”

I loved it, though. Just like I loved him. Everything about him, including the fact I’d pissed him off the first time we met without ever having said a word.

“You’re so hot, and wet. I can feel how close you are. You’re gonna come for me, Emm.”

“Yes.”

He nuzzled into my ear, tongue flicking the skin of my neck and sending sharp, bright sparkles of pleasure coursing through me. There could be no more talking, not on my end. Voiceless, I moved with his touch. Closer and closer. Nothing would stop me, nothing could.

“Seeing you was like being hit by a truck going ninety,” Johnny whispered. “I walked past you like you weren’t there, but I thought I was going to trip on my own fucking feet. That’s what you did to me that day, when I saw you there. And you looked at me.”

Somehow, I found words and the breath to speak them. Somehow, I found my voice. “I saw you. Didn’t know you, but I felt…I felt like… Oh, God, Johnny, just like that. Just a little more.”

It would only take a bit more. Just a bit. I was surging, cresting. Falling. Flying.

“You hit me, too,” I managed to say, not sure what words were coming out or what sense they’d make. Speaking from my heart, not my mind. “We crashed, didn’t we? Right then. You and me, moving toward each other…at the right time….”

“Finally, the right time,” Johnny murmured into my hair, and I felt his cock throb against my hip, though I wasn’t touching him at all.

I came. Hard. I heard his moan in my ear and felt him pulse and throb against me. I felt his heat, the wetness. I smelled him, and aftershocks rippled through me hard enough to make me gasp.

I drifted again after that, dozing and quiet with Johnny’s hand still on me. It was sticky between us; I idly thought I should get up, maybe take a shower. I didn’t, though. I wanted to lie here forever with him, not moving.

“We didn’t crash,” he said after a few minutes, in a sleepy voice.

“No?” I turned to cuddle against him, tangled up in arms and legs.

“No, what’s it called when two objects in motion…fuck,” he murmured. “You gotta get special insurance for your car.”

I loved that I could follow this, even though he was obviously fuckdrunk and on his way to sleep. I laughed softly, nudging my face into the sweetness of his neck. I thought back to high school physics. “Two objects in motion collide, Johnny.”

“That’s what we did,” he whispered. “Collide.”

Chapter 28

T
hings were good.

Not just with Johnny and me—I wasn’t so swept up in love that I believed our relationship should matter more than anything else. I loved him, but that didn’t mean that’s all there was to me, or to him. I understood that. No,
everything
was good. I wasn’t going dark. I was firmly entrenched in the now, and even though I couldn’t pretend I didn’t sometimes miss the excitement—the sheer freedom of those imaginary days with Johnny-then—I was much more appreciative of what we had for real.

I thought often of what he’d said, though. Of what had happened to us both that first day in the coffee shop, when he’d walked past me and pretended I didn’t exist. I thought of what he’d said we’d done.

Collide.

I thought, too, of what he’d said just toward the end, when orgasm was making us both mindless. The right time, he’d said. Finally.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

“Who knows what he meant,” I told Jen over tall coffee drinks and plates of pastry in our old hangout.

The Mocha was crowded as usual, but it had changed for me. I still loved it, but I didn’t look up hopefully every time the bell jangled. Carlos had finished his book and stopped coming every day—taking a break, he said, before starting in on the next novel. I saw some new faces, missed some old. I understood, too, that the Mocha hadn’t changed; I had.

“I don’t know. Maybe it was just fucktalk, you know. People say some crazy shit when they’re coming.” Jen sipped her drink, then leaned forward. “I mean, once, Jared yelled out, ‘Saint Peter on a pogo stick!’ when I was giving him a blow job and I rang the back doorbell, if you know what I mean.”

I burst into laughter. “What the hell?”

Jen laughed, too. “You know what I’m talking about. Don’t act like you don’t.”

I raised a brow, feigning innocence. “Not a clue.”

She gave a quick glance around and then demonstrated, miming sucking a cock while she used one finger to…well, ring the back doorbell. “Girl, I thought he was going to take the top of my head off, he came so hard.”

I laughed harder, covering my face for a second, trying not to picture it and unable to stop myself. “Wow.”

“He loved it,” she said with a satisfied nod. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not really a fan of that sort of action, you know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean.”

She shrugged, looking happy. “But when you love someone…and you want them to be happy…not that I’m saying Jared needs that to be happy.”

“Of course not.”

She grinned. “But he fucking loved it.”

We laughed together. “I’ll take your word for it. I’m not sure Johnny would love it.”

She scoffed, waving a hand. “You never know.”

I shook my head and sipped coffee. “That is some kinky shit, girl.”

“I know it.” Jen waggled her eyebrows. “Who knew, right?”

A matronly woman passed us, her hair in tight gray curls and her sweater set perfect. She gave us a stern look. Jen waited until she’d gone by us before rolling her eyes.

“Different sort of crowd in here today,” she said. “Old people, geez. No offense to your main squeeze.”

“None taken. He doesn’t count.”

“Nope.” She licked icing from a fingertip. “Johnny fucking Dellasandro doesn’t get old. So, when you two get married, are you going to change your name?”

I laughed. “I don’t know that we will get married—God, you and my mom. Let us just…you know…hang out for a while.”

“You’re not just hanging out. Girl, you are full-on in love,” Jen said. “Fuhrealz.”

“Fuhrealz,” I echoed. “But I don’t know about that marriage business. He’s been married, what, three, four times? Maybe he doesn’t want to go through that again. And since we can’t have kids, does it really matter? We don’t even live together.”

“C’mon, you think just because he went through it before he’s burned? Let me tell you something, a dude doesn’t get married four times without being the sort to get married.”

“Very deep,” I teased. “Wow, that was philosophical.”

She tossed a napkin at me. “Shaddup. It’s true. I bet you’re married before I am.”

“You planning on getting married?” This was news, and good news. I leaned forward. I’d been a little worried that things with Jared were rocky.

She shrugged. “Maybe. He says it’s a shit life, being the wife of a funeral director. I said how is it any worse than being the girlfriend of one, except for the part where I have to live with a basement full of dead bodies instead of just visiting them?”

I made a face. “You don’t have to live there, do you?”

“No, but it makes his life easier.” She shrugged again, toying with her brownie, breaking off a piece and nibbling it. “I don’t know if he’s trying to convince me, or just hold me off. Then other times, he’s all over me about it. Talking about how we could elope to Vegas.”

“Do you want to marry him?”

Jen looked thoughtful. “I don’t know. But I don’t know if I’m not sure because I really don’t know, or because I don’t want to be sure in case it doesn’t work out.”

“Complicated,” I said sympathetically.

“Yeah,” she said cheerfully. “But back to you. So, change your name or not?”

“Why does that matter if I’m not even sure I’m getting married?”

“Because just think,” Jen said as the gray-haired woman started weaving her way back down through the tables, “if you did, you’d be Mrs. Emm fucking Dellasandro!”

I burst into laughter again as the woman gave us a snooty glare. “Oh, yeah. Think of how I’d answer the phone at work. ‘Hi, this is Emm fucking Dellasandro, how can I help you?’”

Jen giggled. “You have to admit, it’s catchy. Maybe I should stop calling him that, now that you’re all smoochy with him and shit.”

“No,” I said. “Don’t stop. He’s still Johnny fucking Dellasandro to me even now.”

She looked a little more serious. “Really?”

“Yep.”

“That’s cool. He’s cool,” she added. “Even if I can’t watch his movies anymore since all I can think about is the fact he’s banging my best friend.”

“Oh, like I’ll be able to look Jared in the face after hearing about you ringing his back doorbell?”

We laughed, loud and hard, turning heads and not caring. That’s what friends are for—raucous, slightly rude laughter in coffee shops. Jen ate more brownie, and I finished my apple dumpling.

“I’m so freaking nervous about the gallery show, though,” she confided. “I mean, joking aside, he is Johnny effing Dee, you know what I mean?”

“You shouldn’t be nervous. Johnny loves your stuff. He told me, and he’s not just saying it because you’re my friend. I might be fucking him, but he’s serious about art. He wouldn’t mess with you, Jen. It’s going to be great.”

“My first show.” She pointed at the blank spots along the wall where her pieces had hung. “Not like this, that doesn’t count. This is real. It’s important. I don’t want to screw up, you know?”

I nodded. “I know.”

“Not that I think I’m going to have some great, famous career or anything,” she said hastily. “I don’t expect to quit my day job. I just want people to see my stuff and like it. It’s not about the money.”

“I envy you. And Johnny. I don’t have a creative bone in my body…” I paused, thinking of the complicated stories my brain wove. “Not anything I can do anything with, at least.”

“Yeah, well, I can’t add or subtract without a calculator. The world wouldn’t spin without people who can do math.”

“The world wouldn’t spin without people who can create beauty, either,” I told her. “Your show is going to kick ass. I can’t wait.”

She made a face, but the grimace became a smile. “I guess I can’t, either.”

We chatted and drank coffee. We judged the outfits of everyone who came through. I looked at my watch after a while and sighed.

“I should get going. I promised Johnny I’d make dinner tonight, and I thought I’d actually make something. Stupid.”

“So. Fucking. Whipped,” Jen said.

“Not,” I protested, without much heat.