I See Me (9 page)

He was quiet … still and gentle. But I didn’t think he was sad. Of course, I didn’t know him well enough to know exactly what he was feeling. I pressed the palm of my right hand to the table, and the cool kiss of Formica on my skin steadied me.

“You’re a mechanic?” I asked, prolonging the conversation a few seconds more.

He grinned. I liked him smiling, which was silly, because whether or not he was happy wasn’t really my concern or within my power to affect.

“Born and raised.”

“You can be born a mechanic?”

“Some things are in the blood.”

“I wouldn’t know,” I said. “I don’t know my parents.”

“I wish I didn’t,” he said. Though again, there was no hint of self-pity in his statement. “But I think you might be surprised. There’s power in blood … your blood.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I know. It doesn’t matter now.”

I stared at him for a long, long time, and he let me. Then I reached up and mimicked his own movements as I touched his cheek, ear, and neck. He closed his eyes and shuddered.

I dropped my hand, worried I done something wrong or weird. He caught it before it fell to my side, pressing it against his chest. He was super warm even through his hoodie.

He opened his eyes, and for a moment in the dim light, I could swear they were glowing green. My breath actually caught in my throat.

“You have the most amazing eyes,” he whispered.

I believed him. So help me, I did. I believed that he thought my weird, colorless eyes were amazing. “I was just going to say the same thing to you.”

“Were you?” he asked. “I doubt you ever say anything unless it’s the perfectly correct thing to say in the moment. Perfectly thought out.”

“You think you know me?”

“I think I’m very interested in knowing you.”

“It’s my birthday,” I said. “Or it was yesterday, before midnight.”

“Happy birthday.”

“Thank you.” I’d never been so happy to have someone say that, not once in the nineteen years I’d suffered birthdays. “Let’s not sleep.”

“Never again?”

“Never close our eyes on today,” I said.

He responded by kneeling before me — to even up our height differences, I guessed, though now my lips were level with his forehead — and pulling me tight against his chest for a searing kiss.

I was serious about the searing part. His lips were hot against mine. I could feel the heat of his hands where they splayed across my lower back and my right hip, even through my jeans.

I lost my balance — specifically, I lost control of my knees. I swayed into him, reaching around to wrap my hands around the back of his head and neck. I deepened the kiss, opening my mouth and inviting him in. He obligingly pressed his tongue to mine.

I’d never wanted anyone as much as I wanted to be with him. My previous sexual encounters had been planned and executed for the experience. They’d never lasted more than one night … both of them. I pushed away my instinct to crush this feeling, to dissect and judge it.

He pushed his hand up underneath the back of my hoodie and T-shirt, seeking the bare skin of my back.

I moaned into his mouth. He transferred his attention to my neck, and it was my turn to shudder at his touch. I felt like every nerve ending in my body was crying out to be stroked. I hadn’t felt this … this … vital, alert, teeming … not since before I’d started taking the drugs for the hallucinations. Maybe not ever.

He had my hoodie and T-shirt off in one smooth motion that I would have scoffed at if a silly roommate had recounted it. I reached for the zipper of his hoodie, but he knocked my hands away with a grin.

“You first,” he said. “I want to see where all the tattoos go.” He raised an eyebrow and asked coyly, “Here?” as he ran his fingers along the edge of my jeans.

I laughed. A deep, husky sound I don’t think I’d ever made before. “I guess you’ll have to see.”

He took that as an invitation to divest me of my jeans, which of course it was.

“Nice panties,” he said.

My black lace underwear matched my bra. I’d bought the set from a crazy-expensive place on Granville Street two weeks ago, for no reason other than I didn’t actually own a bra. I’d been oddly pleased when the clerk had fitted me in a size 32 with a B cup.

Kissing me again, he reached between my legs, pushing aside the panties he so admired to slip a finger into me. I felt hot and almost embarrassingly wet.

I cried out, swayed into him again, and clutched at his shoulders to keep my balance.

He grunted, satisfied and turned on. This noise somehow only increased my pleasure. Heat lapped up from the gentle pressure of his finger through my lower belly and up across my chest.

My nipples hardened further, almost painfully.

I couldn’t concentrate on kissing him anymore. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure I was even supporting my own weight.

 
He lowered his mouth to press warm kisses to my breasts, somehow holding me upright and getting my bra loosened, but not off, at the same time. He kissed all around the sides and underneath my breasts, one and then the other. Other lovers had always just gone straight for my nipples. I didn’t know the rest of my flesh was so extremely sensitive.

He sucked a nipple into his mouth and I stifled a scream.

“I can’t,” I cried. “I’m not sure …”

He paused. Everything.

“Oh, God. I didn’t mean no.”

He obliging started moving his fingers and mouth again.

I started laughing. I had no idea why I was doing it, or why I would laugh in this moment. He laughed with me, chuckling against my breast.

“I don’t think I can stand up anymore,” I said.

“I think you can,” he said.

“I really don’t think …”

My feet started tingling. The feeling moved up my legs and through my body in a rush of utter pleasure, and I bucked underneath his fingers as I orgasmed.

He didn’t stop moving his fingers until I cried out and grabbed for his hand. I stood there with his hand pinned against me, and his cheek against my chest, panting through the burn of pleasure. I’d never panted before.

“Your turn?” I asked when I could think again.

“Condom?” he asked.

“In the suitcase. I think.”

He pressed me against his chest with his right hand at my lower back, then lifted me up like that. Grasping the suitcase from underneath the dinette table in his left hand, he carried me to the bed at the back of the Brave. I wrapped my arms around his neck and sucked lightly on his earlobe.

He grunted — a simple sound so full of pleasure that it made me feel bold and free. He lowered me onto the bed, leaning over for a lingering kiss as he laid me out on my back.

I slipped backward, wriggling to pull off my panties and bra.

He didn’t take his eyes off me as he kneeled to dig through the suitcase and find the couple of condoms I had in a ziplock bag, alongside my toothbrush and toothpaste.

He finally looked away to peer at the condoms in his hand. “Hmm,” he said as he straightened to fill the space above and around me. “These might not fit.”

I laughed at his silly, manly joke. Then, still grinning, I leaned back on my elbows and splayed my legs open daringly. Invitingly.

He moaned and took his clothing off so quickly that he looked like a dark blur. I was sorry to not get a better look at him before he climbed over me and pulled my hips up to meet his. But then every other useless thought fell out of my head.

He was right about the condoms, actually. But neither of us complained.

“You should wake up and eat something,” Beau whispered in my ear. The brush of his warm breath sent shivers straight down to my nether regions. Oh, God, I was so in trouble with him. Too far gone already.

I’d been delaying getting up since he’d returned to the Brave with — by the smell — coffee and some kind of baked goods. I’d woken out of a deep, dreamless sleep. Normally, with the strength of the hallucinations that had hit me last night, I would have been haunted all evening. I’d forgotten to close any of the curtains. On any other day in late January on the West Coast, this wouldn’t have been an issue. But this morning, the sun had made an appearance.
 

He’d kissed me before he left just after sunrise, then whispered, “I’ll be back.”

I had refused to open my eyes and acknowledge the new day — and the conversation sure to come with it. I’d fretted and ached the entire time he was gone, like some silly bimbo looking to be rescued or whatever. This weirdness had only increased when he returned. My anxiety ramped up instead of being relieved. I mean, who picked up some gorgeous guy from a roadside diner after midnight and hoped to keep him in the morning?

Deliberately keeping my eyes closed, I sat up in a tangle of bed sheets and swung my legs off the bed. Beau made some sort of huffing noise. I opened my eyes to find him staring at me from the kitchen.

“You …” he said. His voice was pained or heavy with some sort of emotion I couldn’t identify. The morning light made his dark aquamarine eyes stand out even more starkly against his brown skin. He swallowed.

Then he laughed and shook his head. “I guess I shouldn’t use words like ‘beautiful,’ or ‘perfection,’ or tell you how much I ache for you even though I just had you a couple of hours ago?”

The words actually hurt as I heard and absorbed them. It was a pain that I wanted to hold and cherish, that I wanted to grab and never let go of.

I smiled, and in lieu of a verbal response, I rose, letting the sheets fall away from me. I stood before him naked, except for my tattoos. Only the peony underneath its bandage on my left shoulder was still hidden from his intent gaze. I’d never exposed myself to someone so deliberately before. I had no illusions about my own beauty, but I wasn’t stupid enough to question him, to question this moment between us. I’d take whatever he was willing to give, as I’d always done. If it lasted another hour, I’d be okay. If it lasted a week, I might be not okay, but I’d survive. I always survived. I might as well relish something for the first time in my life.

A satisfied grin spread across his face. He leaned back against the tiny lime-green kitchen counter with his hands gripping the edge, gazing at me through almost-closed eyes. His T-shirt was so tight across his biceps that I was surprised it wasn’t uncomfortable for him.

“You look like a cat relishing a pool of the rising sun,” I said.

This startled him.

I padded toward him. He leaned forward and tugged the blinds closed across the window above the kitchen table. He could reach across the width of the Brave and still lean against the counter. He was that long. The idea of him in my space should utterly overwhelm me. He should be too big, too much. And yet he wasn’t.

“Bathroom,” I murmured.

“I’ll be here,” he said.

I slipped by him, ignoring my deep need to press myself against the long length of him, and stepped into the tiny washroom to use the facilities. I washed my hands. Gary or Tess had made sure the soap dispenser was full. I couldn’t brush my hair or my teeth because I hadn’t unpacked last night. I settled for a damp-finger hair combing and rinsing out my mouth multiple times.

I slipped back out of the bathroom to find that Beau had put chocolate croissants on plates and set the table. Completely aware that he was watching me again, I crossed back to the wardrobe at the left front of the bed where he’d tucked my suitcase last night. I’d never had anyone look at me like this. But then, I’d never given anyone the chance before.

I tugged on a pair of panties and a T-shirt.

He groaned with disappointment.

I giggled. Yes, I giggled like a girl and didn’t even blush about it.

Then I pulled on my jeans and padded barefoot back to the kitchen table where he was now seated. He hadn’t taken a single bite of his breakfast or a sip of coffee. He also looked wedged in behind the table. The Brave was almost too small to be fully functional for someone as big as him.

“It’s good I bought the twenty-one footer, not the nineteen.” I slipped into the bench seat of the dinette across from him.

He raised an eyebrow.

“You’re too big for the RV,” I said.

“I’m not. I think I fit here perfectly.”

He didn’t mean the motorhome. That painful emotion tugged at the top edge of my ribcage again. Second time around, and I realized it was supposed to be some sort of pleasure, but I wasn’t sure why it hurt so much. I surveyed the breakfast he’d provided to distract myself.

“I don’t drink coffee,” I said.

“It isn’t coffee,” he answered. “I had them heat it, though.”

I grasped the paper cup and lifted it to my nose to smell the hot liquid through the tiny hole in the plastic lid.

Apple.

He’d had the bakery heat up apple juice for me.

I shouldn’t read too much into the action. There was no way he could possibly know what apple meant to me, just because I ordered apple pie last night. But still, my throat constricted, and when I tried to hold the emotion at bay, it flooded with a wave of heat through my face and neck.

I gasped when the tightness moved to my chest. I couldn’t breathe. Oh, God. I think this was … happiness. Extreme, insane happiness. This didn’t happen in real life.

“It’s okay?” he asked.

“Yes,” I choked out. I looked up from the hot apple juice in my hand to lock my gaze to his. His face was blurry through my unshed tears.

“Don’t kick me out,” he said.

“I won’t.”

He opened his mouth to ask me something else, but then didn’t speak. His hands were splayed on either side of his plate, as if he was deliberately holding himself there.

I took a sip of the hot apple juice. At the same time, I reached my free hand across the table and placed it over his. It was an easy, natural gesture. I’d never touched another human in such a way before.

He closed his eyes, swallowing whatever else he wanted to say. Then he opened them and smiled at me.

I swear my heart skipped a beat. I had to stop staring at him. I could literally feel all the reason draining out of my brain. I just wanted to be utterly unreasonable with him, for as long as such irrationality could last.