Eyes of Ice (Eyes of Ice Erotica Series) (3 page)

             
“I understand. You’re a good girl,” he countered, and something about the way he said it made it sound like an insult to Cecelia’s ears.

             
“You know, I am!” she rejoined, snapping her head up to look at him in anger. For some reason his easy smile, once charming and reassuring, stoked her anger. “I am a good girl. I’m sorry if I don’t …
fuck
on the first date!” She had barely manage to squeeze out the curse, but she felt better for having said it. As she watched, Andrew’s smile widened to a rakish grin which he attempted to get under control. He did do it, but barely, before he responded seriously.

             
“That’s admirable. I’m sorry if I made you feel otherwise.”

             
She emitted some sort of sound that sounded like a
harrumph
even to her own ears, and inwardly gave Andrew some credit for not laughing at that, too.

             
At least I can look up now
. It was true. Her anger enabled her to observe her surroundings for the first time since the club, and Cecelia saw that they had entered some kind of park. Andrew’s steps slowed as they came to stand before a still fountain. Its waters were frozen in spiderwebbed frost littered with the last of fall leaves. The trees above, too, appeared to be shivering in the cold breeze, their bare branches trembling against the murky, overcast sky. Cecelia blinked up at the mass of clouds as snow began to fall in earnest, attempting to sight just one star. No luck.

             
“Do you ever?” the question came gently through the chilly air, and Cecelia realized that Andrew was standing much closer to her than before. Though they still stood side by side, his coated shoulder was touching hers ever so slightly. He smelled like mint and something bitterly savory, woodsmoke or coffee, something her muddled brain couldn’t place. Dizzied, Cecelia blinked to try and regain her mental clarity.

             
“Do I ever … have sex on the first date? No.”

             
“I thought not,” he said, and this time his lips felt as close to her ear as they had been before. She felt his warm breath on her cold skin, and struggled to breathe evenly and keep her eyes fixed on the night sky as if there was nothing else so fascinating at the moment.

             
“What about,” he began, and Cecelia thought she heard his voice catch with tension.  But the next moment it was gone, and she was sure she had been mistaken as he continued, “What about kiss?”

             
She closed her eyes to the sky, trying to shake off the desire which wrapped its way around her senses like a numbing, intoxicating drug. “No,” she said.

             
“Would you stop me?”

             
She squeezed her eyes shut tighter than ever, and finally saw stars, though these were of her own creation, racing across her vision. Would a kiss be so bad? No. A kiss would be the most magical thing in the world – probably. She’d heard. But she was
a good girl
. That meant no kisses on the first date. No kisses in the park, in a strange city, with a strange man, around midnight, on what was really nowhere near a first date. She recognized, somewhere within her tangled thoughts, that she hadn’t replied to his question and he probably wanted an answer, or ….

             
His lips were warm on hers, pressing with a mellow tenderness at first and then with a harder desperation as his hands returned to their former place at her back. Her own hands, and she didn’t remember how they got there, were grasping his broad shoulders as he moved closer to her. Welcomed, Andrew pulled her to her tiptoes up and against him, and Cecelia knew that they were as locked together as some of those dancers on the floor had been. As the kisses deepened, Cecelia felt her breaths becoming increasingly hurried, her pulse reaching a fever pitch as his hands traced her hips. His tongue inched forward to part her lips, and some part of her began to ache with a painful
wanting
, a foreign need that had never been satisfied.

             
His hands began to move from her hips to glide down her legs. Cecelia broke away from him when his hands began to inch up again, under her dress. She grasped his wrists with her own hands, stopping him.

             
“It’s all right,” he whispered huskily, and Cecelia vaguely recalled that this was becoming a common phrase for him.

             
“I ….” She began, nonplussed. Her heart was thudding so loudly it seemed to drown out her thoughts.

             
“No one’s watching,” he said, his voice cutting across her confusion as easily as it had cut across the noise of the club.

             
He was right, Cecelia thought, quickly glancing around her. The entire park was as empty as it had been when they arrived, and quiet with the sound of snow. The silence was only punctuated by the distant hum of traffic.
And why shouldn’t it be quiet?
She demanded of herself, grasping at her former reason.
It’s probably one o’clock in the morning
. Still, panic began to taint the excitement that had previously dulled Cecelia to the world.
I can’t just do … whatever … for the first time ever … here!

             
Trying to somehow place herself, she looked into Andrew’s eyes. Immediately she knew that doing so was a mistake, for his irises had not only darkened to a deep sapphire in the dim moonlight, but she thought she saw some sort of challenge there, glinting in his eyes and at the edge of his smile.

Can’t you?
He seemed to be asking wordlessly.

             
“All right,” she breathed, and a new feeling – a strength she had never encountered – spread over her in spite of her anxiety. Warmed by Andrew’s body, she felt oddly invincible and empowered.

             
They were both smiling into the next kiss, and he stepped even closer to her, pushing her back against the cold wrought iron that surrounded the edge frozen fountain. Drunk off his kisses, Cecelia felt one of his hands firm at the small of her back, while the other continued its smooth ascent up her leg.
Can he feel me shaking?
she wondered. His fingers were inches away from her panties now, and to Cecelia it seemed as if her entire world, once so broad and full of logic and rationality, had narrowed into a focus of just
him,
his movements, his form against hers and his hand that tauntingly moved ever-closer to her most tender place.

But as if he had read her mind and sensed that her desires were tinged with anxiety, Andrew
abruptly pulled away, taking a half-step back and pulling her away from the wrought iron. Though his hands remained steady in their place, firmly possessive of her, it was like they had become statues posed against the fountain; Andrew’s brow was furrowed, though in anger or concern, Cecelia couldn’t tell.

             
“You’re shivering,” he said, his voice still rough with longing. “Are you cold?”

             
She shook her head. “No,” she lied, her breath a white puff of air.

 
              “You are,” he accused, then, abruptly: “I’m sorry.”

             
He took a full step back and dropped his hands from her body to rest at his sides, leaving her aching, wanting, her back still arched and her body still warm.

“Don’t stop,” she blurted, reaching out and grasping his shirt collar.
It was like they were in some strange dance of resistance and attraction, Cecelia thought, for Andrew took a half-step closer this time, and paused. Then she saw it – something predatory in his eyes, something frightening in their narrowed depths. Her blood pounded in her ears. Could it be …?

             
“Not here,” he said, interrupting her thoughts.

             
“Where?” she asked, feeling that she had been effectively anesthetized by cold, desire, and countless unfamiliar sensations.

             
He took a deep breath – and Cecelia realized that it was to steady his own nerves, for he let it out slowly.
Maybe he
was
nervous earlier. Maybe it
was
just a show of self-confidence.

             
“My apartment,” he said. “Tomorrow night.”

             
“For …” she trailed off, shivering.

             
“A second date,” he murmured. “Devon will have told Margaret the address.”

He reached
forward, and softly traced the line of her neck with his index finger. While Cecelia looked on, his eyes lowered to appraise her body with that same, predatory hunger. His voice was almost a whisper once more when he next spoke.

“Are you as good as you say you are, Cecelia?”

             
Am I?
Cecelia had never wanted anything as badly as she wanted Andrew, in a way that she could not describe. All she knew was that her body wanted him, badly, and that for the first time in her life it her mind following her body’s commands.

             
“Yes,” she said.

             
“That’s good,” he said simply, offering her his arm as an invitation to continue their walk. With some regret, Cecelia took it. “I think I might be bad enough for the two of us, however.”

             
Cecelia was silent, lost for words. Andrew appeared to be in his own thoughts as well, for he did not speak a single word on their journey to Cecelia’s dormitory. They parted with the familiarity of friends, without a kiss. He held her hand, and then pulled away for a few backward steps, then turned to disappear into the snowy darkness.
There’s no need for words
, Cecelia realized. For there had been formed an understanding, a heavy kind of contract based on the deepest of yearnings that would be, Cecelia felt with another shiver, confirmed the next evening.

Two

              The next morning gleamed under early brightness, roofs dripping with liquefying snowmelt and condensation huddled in the corners of windows. Cecelia knew that students would be slow to rise today; having partaken in the wonders of the city the night before, it was unlikely that her fellow classmates would be anything but loath to face the vividness of a new day. And it seemed as if Mags was no exception – nine o’clock, ten o’clock, eleven, all came and went, until at eleven thirty, Cecelia saw Mags emerge from her covers with a dazed expression and a heavy groan. Cecelia turned on her side in her own bed in an imitation of casualness, for she had been waiting and wondering and dying to ask Mags a laundry list of penetrating questions.
How different was last night for her?
Then, with some confusion:
what was Devon … like?
And:
Will Andrew be anything like that?
And most important of all:
Did Devon say anything about Andrew?

             
Cecelia desperately wanted to know more about Andrew, having realized that all she knew of him, really, was that he was a good kisser and a good dancer.
Serves you right for taking up all your conversation time with narcissism and awkwardness
, she had berated herself more than once.

             
Still, “Are you okay?” was the first thing she dubiously asked her roommate.

             
“I’m …” Mags looked down and attempted to disentangle herself from the sheets. “I’m great!” she grinned. She slipped out of bed, and Cecelia immediately averted her eyes. From what she could tell from her briefest of observations, Mags was wearing underwear, at least, but it still made Cecelia incredibly shy to watch her roommate so close to nakedness.

             
Mags appeared, as ever, not to notice Cecelia’s conscientious display, and strode about the room matter-of-factly, yawning several times. “Devon said that Andrew liked you, and Devon said that Andrew likes hardly anybody. Oh, and before he left, he got a text from Andrew saying that you should go to his apartment at six. Wow, I’m impressed at myself for remembering that.”

             
Cecelia’s heart jumped. “Really?” she squeaked. In the light of day, the events of last night had begun to seem unreal – the memories played over and over in her mind had become more to Cecelia less of a lived experience and more like a sequence of a movie that she had watched in 3D. Apart from the constant replays, she had spent most of the night wondering how she had let someone get so close to her, in a way that no man had ever been before. The confirmation of last night’s events at once stunned and excited her.

             
Mags laughed. She had turned on the shower in the bathroom, and returned to the bedroom to collect her toiletries. Cecelia averted her eyes again.