He nodded. “I dropped out.”
I waited, giving him time.
He looked down at the table. “End of my sophomore year, my parents died. I started working.” He met my eyes. “I mean, working a lot. And I wound up selling a design to Sabre and...I dropped out.” He was silent for a second and then his voice changed, making light of it. “I mean, I was making good money—really good.” He indicated the grand room around us. “It seemed crazy to stay on at MIT, and I figured I could always go back.”
Something had happened. Not just his parents’ death, awful as that must have been. Something had happened to him, changed him.
“You said it was a car bomb?” I wasn’t sure how far I should push. “Here?”
He shook his head slowly. “Middle East.”
“That must have been awful—them being so far away.”
He looked at me for a second, and I thought he was going to say something else, but then he just nodded. There was something there, some horror he wasn’t ready to return to.
What if he’s like me?
Don’t be stupid. No one’s like you.
He handed me another slice of pizza. “So. Where do you hang out, when you’re not dancing?” We looked at each other for a second and an understanding passed between us. We needed normality for a little while, or at least our approximation of it.
I took the slice. “Flicker. With an ‘e’. The bar, not the photo site.” And I started to tell him about Flicker and Harper’s, and Jasmine and Karen. About rehearsals and classes and auditions, and why it’s never a good idea to date an actor but every girl wants to anyway. He told me about the parties he went to—charity balls and opening nights, people with too much money and too much time.
“There’s a party the day after tomorrow,” he told me. “Twenty or thirty people. Just drinks, here at the house. Will you come? Neil and Clarissa could come too.”
Just the thought of being around that many strangers, all asking questions, made my chest go tight. But I’d be with Darrell.... “That’d be fun,” I told him.
We ate slowly, our eyes on each other as much as on the pizza. I kept looking at the little area of smooth, tan flesh revealed by his open collar. I wanted to know what his body looked like under that shirt.
There were a lot of silences, and somehow they weren’t uncomfortable at all.
His ankle grazed my bare leg, stroking down my calf, and I caught my breath. I looked up and met his eyes as he ran his warm touch up and down my leg, every nerve ending suddenly quivering. It’s amazing how sensitive a leg can be, when you’re completely focused on it. With every touch, I could feel my arousal notching higher.
He asked me about being a dancer: about how we stay up on pointe, how we remember the choreography and what the male dancers are like. I asked him about building stuff: about what it’s like to create something physical and lasting, about working for months or years on a single problem, about the frustration of abandoning prototype after prototype until you find the solution.
And then it went quiet and we just stared at each other.
All the fear I’d felt earlier had gone, and I was almost trembling with the feelings he was stirring up in me. When he stood up and walked around the table, I just sat staring up at him, helpless.
Everything suddenly felt different. This wasn’t like being down in the workshop, with Clarissa upstairs. This was two people alone.
He pulled my chair out—not just enough for me to get out, but right back a good few feet. I sat there, frozen, my whole body singing with excitement.
He bent over me, and I looked up into his eyes. He smiled that knockout smile and I swear my heart flipped over. Then his strong hands were on my waist...I shrieked in surprise as he lifted me effortlessly up and turned me around, until I felt the hard wood of the table under my ass. He sat me there, my legs swinging free.
“Natasha....” he said. He didn’t follow it with anything. It was as if he just liked saying it.
He stepped closer and I put my hands out against his chest. To stop him? To feel his body? Both, I think. I gasped at how warm he was, at the smooth curves of him, his chest like a wall. And then he was moving in, his h*ps pushing my knees open, and I closed my eyes as he kissed me.
The first time had been quick, the second gentle. This was urgent and barely restrained, promising much more to come. I could feel my breath starting to come in short, hot pants, our teeth clacking together for an instant as we moved into it. His tongue slipped into my mouth, searching and demanding, and mine danced with it.
His hand was on my back, pulling me to him, and the spread of his fingers made me aware of how big he was—I felt like a doll next to him. His other hand was on my hip, the warmth of it seeming to burn through the dress. I shifted my body to press against his palm and heard him groan through the kiss.
He stepped closer, pushing in between my thighs and spreading my knees, the dress riding up. His hand was sliding up my leg, up my inner thigh—
With a strangled gasp, I pulled away from him, leaning back on the table. He stepped back, but it was already too late. I knew he’d felt the scars. I’d felt his fingertips graze the rough lines.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked, panicked.
For just a second, a little voice told me to say yes, because that would have been an easy way out. But I couldn’t do that to him. I shook my head. “No, it’s...” And suddenly I was crying, because I’d blown it. He’d felt the scars and now he’d have questions I couldn’t answer.
He moved in again and hugged me, and I pressed my face into his chest as I sobbed and sobbed, the sort of tears that burn as they come out. Crying didn’t make me feel better, but worse. Crying was speeding me down towards the place where I’d break open and everything would come spilling out. And then I’d lose him forever.
I pushed him away again and shook my head furiously. “It’s—” I was going to say “It’s nothing,” but the look on his face told me I wasn’t going to get away with that. “It’s—Not something I want to talk about.” I sniffed. “Is that okay?”
He nodded urgently and swept me up in his arms again. I was still sobbing, but this time it was okay because we weren’t lurching towards a point where I’d have to tell him. We were moving away, back to safety, and suddenly I was furious at myself. I’d already had two freak-outs. I was damned if I was going to let a third ruin everything.
I reached up, grabbed his face between my hands and kissed him, as hard as I could. Startled, he pulled back a little, but I followed him, feeling the hot tears trickling down my face as I moved. I was still crying, saltwater on my lips as I knitted my fingers in his hair and kissed him again and again, quick and hot and urgent.
He broke away, gasping. “We don’t have to—”
“I want to.” And my mouth was back on his, my tongue slipping into his mouth.
He started returning the kiss, his thumbs brushing the wetness from my cheeks. I could feel my tears slowing. He slid one hand down to my bare shoulder, cupping it, and the warmth of it—so real—coaxed me farther from the edge, back towards safety. I twisted into the kiss, exploring his lips, the memories slithered reluctantly back into the shadows. The now took over, and my tears finally stopped.
His hand slid into my hair, his palm cupping my head and gently tilting it back. Then he broke the kiss, leaving me gasping as he laid a trail of kisses down my throat. I felt it start, the slow swirl of heat in my belly, like I was coming back to life. His lips moved lower, down to my chest, to the soft upper valley of my br**sts, and I took a deep, long breath as the heat inside spread outwards.
He stopped for a second. Just long enough to look me in the eyes, to know that I was okay. I looked steadily back at him, my breath coming in shuddering gasps, and nodded.
His hands found my legs again, but this time he traced up the outside, over the dress, and when I didn’t jerk or pull away I felt him relax. He cupped my ass, almost lifting me up off the table, and I went weak.
My hands were running down his back, marveling at the muscles there, tracing down to his waist...and then his tight, firm ass. I felt his palms slide up my back, until they reached the loop of the dress’s halter neck. He pulled and it stretched, and as I ducked my head there was just enough give in the fabric to drag it over my hair and off. The fabric flopped down to my chest, and then there was nothing holding the dress up but friction.
He stroked it down with his hands, sliding the fabric over the glossy cups of my bra. His mouth returned, and this time I tangled my fingers in the soft curls of his hair as he explored their softness, tongue running over and between them until I was groaning. The heat inside me was rising, growing darker. I wanted to grind my body against him, wanted him nak*d against me. I grabbed the hem of his shirt and jerked it up, baring his back, and then as I pulled it higher he took over and stripped it off over his head.
Everything stopped.
Ever since I’d first fantasized about him, I’d had the mental picture of his firm, muscled abs in my head. They were just as hard and defined as I’d imagined—better, even, but—
Starting on his stomach and winding around his side, there was a sweeping constellation of brutal, jagged scars. I felt my mouth open, horrified that anyone would want to ruin his perfection. I looked up at him, and he was staring back at me. Pleading with me not to ask.
I nodded. And a little voice cruelly taunted that the wrench I felt inside, the sick fear at not knowing—that was the same experience I’d just given him.
I ran my fingers down his arms, tracing his form as if he were a statue. Then over his chest, my palms flat against the broad sweep of those delicious pecs, feeling the hardness of them. And finally, tentatively down, ready to stop if he wanted me to. I looked up into his eyes as I smoothed over the damaged skin, following the shape of it round to his side. He stared right back into my eyes and I could see the pain his memories were bringing him, but he didn’t stop me.
I realized he was undoing my bra. I gasped as his fingers finished with the clasp, and then my br**sts were throbbing in the cool air of the huge room. His mouth closed on one breast, tongue slathering the nipple, and as I felt it pucker and stiffen, I whispered his name.
He lifted me onto the table, on my back, a plate hitting the floor. He climbed up onto it himself, kneeling astride one of my legs. Suddenly everything was different. A minute ago, we’d been kissing. Now, we were going to....
He lowered himself atop me, moving between my legs and kissing me again, and now his nak*d chest was rubbing against my br**sts with every movement, the sensations driving me wild, making me grind myself against the hardness I could feel at his groin.
He sat back on his haunches. My skirt was up around my thighs. He stared into my eyes as he reached up under the fabric and hooked my panties. I lifted my ass, showing my willing, and he dragged them off.
I watched him unfasten his pants and push them down. God, he was already hard and...big. He rolled a condom on, and then moved over me. And then I felt him....God!
I arched my back as he moved into me, hissing through my teeth at his girth, at the feeling of being filled. My br**sts mashed against his chest, my hands tracing down his nak*d back, feeling his muscles flex as he began to move. The heat inside me bloomed and rose, claiming me for its own.