I Need You (13 page)

He sighed, his gaze getting more intense. “What about Jason?”

“What about Jason?” I didn’t understand.

“Your body doesn’t know how… What about Jason?” His hand slipped to the small of my back, like he thought I was going to move away and tried to stop me.

“You heard what Rachel said. I told you––“

“I mean did you want? Or did you let?”

God, the honest truth. I whispered it, “Let.”

His eyebrows went up. “Lindy, for years…”

“I told you, my body doesn’t know how.”

His hands came up and gripped my head and then he spun me against the side, kissing me, his tongue pressing into my mouth. When he broke the kiss, he said over my lips. “I can teach your body how. That’s no hard deal.”

He kissed me again, his hands slipping under the water and gripping my hips, his thumbs pressing down on my pelvic bones. I’d hated Jason touching my hips, it had just reminded me how uncomfortable I felt about my size, but Billy’s touch was different, it said… I like.

The next thing I knew his pelvis was pressing against mine and it wasn’t just his fingers saying “I like”; a hard erection pressed against my belly, and his hands slid around to slip into the back of my bikini bottoms and gripped my buttocks.

When he broke the kiss he didn’t let go and he didn’t move away.

My fingers swept his wet hair off his brow.

“So then, I guess I am up for seeing where this goes.” He looked down at me with bright eyes. “If you are, and the offer’s still open.”

I took a breath, feeling like the ground shifted underneath the pool. “The offer’s still open and I’m up for seeing where this goes too.”

My arms were up on his shoulders as he lowered his head and kissed me again, and this time his tongue kept teasing mine. Gently knocking against it, until I realized he was trying to get me to move my tongue in the same way he was. I tried. But then he broke the kiss and lifted his head. “Kissing is like a game of tag. By the way, you’re it.”

Shit. He kissed me with an open mouth, but didn’t use his tongue. It was a challenge. I felt hot and stupid as I slipped my tongue past his lips. I had never done that with Jason. Stupid. But––I had always let––never done.

Billy’s tongue stroked over mine, receptive and encouraging. I tried to relax and think about what would feel good. After a minute he pulled back, breaking the kiss again, and pressed his forehead against mine. “Overthinking babe. Just do what feels right?”

“Okay.” I tipped my chin up and pressed my lips to his, then ran my tongue over his lower lip, ‘cause Jason had always used to do that to me, and I wanted to know what it felt like to do it. Then I pressed my mouth hard against his, feeling bold and determined, and fought against my head trying not to overthink but just do.

His palm settled at the back of my head and his mouth and his tongue answered me, pressing just as hard back, as his pelvis pushed against me. A warm, sharp delicious pain pierced my belly, thrusting down between my legs.

A game of tag. I’d tagged him and he’d taken over. I let him lead for a while, but then fought for command of the kiss. My palms pressed against his cheekbones as my fingers clung in his hair.

I was breathless when we stopped kissing and I’d lost any awareness of all the people around the pool.

“Do you want a drink?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Better wait until my erection goes down, though, hey?”

I laughed. Shit. I felt like I had never kissed anyone before. But then the only other person I’d kissed was Jason. How did we get things so wrong? He was fine with Rachel.

I sighed at myself. Angry with myself. With my lack of confidence and fear. It had held me back. I wasn’t going to let it anymore, I was going to face my demons and beat them down. I had to just deal with everything, whatever, I couldn’t keep running from things…

And if I could find a sanctuary in Billy… then cool… I did want it. Desperately.

Lindy

We’d spent all day around the pool, messing around in the water, and when we’d had a drink at the bar Billy had told me to open my legs as I sat on the stool in the water, and then he’d stood between my thighs.

His hands had been touching me all day, resting on my thighs as we’d been drinking at the pool bar or at my waist when we’d just been standing in the pool. When we lay on the loungers in the sun, he’d pulled his up next to mine and rested his hand on my lower back, until I’d said move it so I didn’t get a tan mark. Then instead he’d rested his hand by my side, and his little finger had kept nudging the first curve of my breast.

He was so different to Jason.

Jason had never touched me like that.

But then if Jason had continually touched me in a way that constantly implied he was thinking about sex, I’d have told him to leave me alone.

I’d pushed him away.

This time I was trying not to. But then I didn’t want to tell Billy to leave me alone. His touch was different––reverent. Like he loved touching me. It made my nerves tingle with expectation, and I’d got damp, like I’d got damp touching myself, and hot. I felt really hot, even though the day was not that hot. It was an internal heat, flaring and simmering under my skin. Like he’d switched something on.

The last time we got in the pool, when the area had started to empty and only a few people were left around, he became more daring. When I sat on the stool at the bar in the water, his palm slid up my thigh and his thumb brushed over my bikini bottoms, rubbing just for an instant, then his hand slid away.

He did it a dozen times, running his hand up my leg as we talked, then brushing over the part of me that was already sensitized and throbbing for him to do more, then he slid his hand back down my leg.

I tried to remember to breathe and talk at the same time, acting like there was nothing going on, because there was another couple sitting two seats away from us.

Then he pulled me off the stool into the water, nearly getting my hair wet and splashing my eyes, and tugged me out into the deeper water, to kiss me. There his hand slid up over my ribs and his thumb snuck beneath my top, reaching right up to stroke over my painfully hardened nipple a couple of times.

People might have seen, but he hid his action with his body.

When he broke the kiss, his hand slipped away, pulling my top back down to make sure I was covered, then he leaned to my ear. “Your room or mine?”

“Mine,” I answered, panic swamping me.

This was new to me––this feeling. I didn’t just want him; I was desperate for him. If I didn’t have him, I didn’t know what I’d do; how I would fix the intense buzzing and burning throbbing in my blood.

He’d spent a whole day on foreplay. That is what he’d been up to in the pool, sensitizing me. Making me want it. He’d said he knew how and he did.

Now I had to face up to this decision, though.

When we approached my room, despite my longing, fear tangled in my belly, like a ball of rubber bands, as more and more were wrapped around it.

We hadn’t put our clothes back on. Billy had all our clothes draped over his shoulder and a towel about his waist. I had my towel wrapped around me and tucked in over my breasts.

One of his hands gripped mine firmly, his fingers threaded through mine. I’d swear he knew I’d had an impulse to run and he urged me not to.

Terror, desperation and desire whizzed around in me like fireworks on July 4
^th
.

I wanted him to keep me focused.

I didn’t want to run.

I wanted to do this––to feel what it was like to enjoy having sex.

“Where’s your room key?”

“In the pocket of my dress.”

He let go of my hand. I wished he hadn’t. My cowardice became ten times worse.

He slipped the clothes off his shoulder, hunted it out and handed it to me.

I slotted it in the door. The latch clicked. My belly plummeted to the soles of my feet.

I shut my eyes as I went in, praying for courage as my hands shook. My belly was Jell-O––the hunger and desire I’d burned with outside the door, smothered.

He threw all our stuff on my bed as the door shut.

I didn’t know if I could do this.

“Shall we shower?”

He didn’t know I was in full-on panic. I was too messed up, I couldn’t answer.

He took my silence as acceptance, gripped my hand, pulled me into the bathroom and into the shower, tugging off his towel. Then the fingers of his free hand pulled off the towel covering me and he tossed it on the tiles outside the shower.

There was room for two. “My makeup,” I said, as he turned it on.

The water poured down on us.

“Please tell me you don’t wear makeup in the shower.” His pitch was low and strong, no-nonsense. You-are-just-going-to-do-it-as-I-say. “You must wash it off sometime.”

His hands gripped my hips, over my pelvic bones and pressed me back against the tiles. His big body unnerved me. He was broader and stronger than Jason.

But in a way it was like a dare…

I wanted to be different, and if I could be different with Billy, I could be different with anyone. I wanted to feel what all that strength could do.

We’d done it before and I’d liked the feel of his muscle moving between my thighs. That’s what I’d imagined the other day, but I knew he’d been holding back.

I wanted to know what he’d held back, what doing it with Billy, properly, would be like. It was going to be nothing like doing it with Jason.

He kissed my jaw and by my ear, beside my eyes. Nudging little kisses. They sent tremors through my nerves. Fear and desire went to war with swords inside me.

“I don’t like people seeing me without makeup.” My head tipped back against the tiles as his kisses travelled to my jaw again and on to my neck,

“Why?” The word vibrated on my neck, as his hand clasped my breast over my bikini top, then his lips and teeth nipped at the sensitive skin on my neck.

I was hot between my legs; I’d never had that sensation with Jason.

The water poured on to my face, and his head, and his back, running down.

His other hand slipped inside the back of my bottoms and gripped my ass.

“Because, I don’t like it. I feel naked without makeup.” I said the words to the steam filling the air above us. It was hard to breathe. An iron bar of panic wrapped around me.

With Jason I’d never thought about sex, my mind had wandered around, drifting from one thought to another, never really absorbed in what he was doing… But he’d never done anything with the insistence and force that oozed from Billy.

His head lifted.

I met his dark-blue gaze.

It reached right into me, as his hand slid down beneath my breast, pressing over my ribs. He knew my brain had put on the brakes.

“So this is back to a lack of confidence. You told me yesterday you don’t like your body and now you’re saying you don’t like your face. I don’t get you, Lind, you’re the most assertive person I know. You’ve bossed Jason around for years. Remember I lived with you. Where does all this insecurity come from?”

“I don’t know. That is why I have a counselor, to help me unpick it.”

His lips tilted in an odd smile. It questioned and showed his doubt.

A memory of my first visit to her struck like a lightning bolt. My gaze dropped to his shoulder. As my hands gripped his waist, clasping muscle. “I’m like my Mom… That’s all I’ve worked out so far. I get it from her, a need to be perfect. To never fail. To never look weak, or ugly, or…” I took a breath as I thought of the truth––of how much pain that meant.

How was a person ever perfect in an imperfect world?

My makeup hid my imperfections; I couldn’t take it off.

In my second session, I’d learned that was what I was best at––hiding anything and everything that made me imperfect.

I was good at covering up what was really going on.

I had learned that from Mom too.

That was why the counselor said I’d slipped up and got so depressed. She’d said I should stop hiding and try to let things out. Talk to people…

I couldn’t do that.

But I had to deal with the stuff going on in my head and not hide it.

Oh shit, understanding rose like the sun. Makeup was a part of that. A way for me to wear a disguise and hide behind it emotionally, not just physically. I
was
like Mom…

Billy pressed his mouth over mine.

He’d known my thoughts had gone to places beyond him. That was how it had been with Jason. I’d never really been with him when we’d done it––
it had been let
.

For a minute I’d forgotten Billy was even here.

I shut my eyes. Gripping the muscle at his waist more firmly.

He was here.

And I was here.

His tongue slipped into my mouth.

Instinct pulled at me.
Play tag
. Like we’d been doing all day.

He broke the kiss. “You have no idea how beautiful you are. You don’t need makeup, Lind.”

Shit, the timbre of his words tingled through my nerves, racing through my body.

Jason had told me I was pretty. Frequently. I’d never really believed him.

But the way Billy said it…

I lifted onto my toes and pressed my lips against his. One of his big hands came up and embraced the back of my head, his long fingers separating as his whole body pressed me back against the tiles, his erection straining to get out of his swim shorts. I fought to keep up with his game of tag.

I could not forget he was there now if I tried.

His body called to mine. What he did wasn’t only in my head, but in my blood and my nervous system. I shook, but it was not from fear anymore. Anticipation tumbled around us.

Both his hands slipped into the back of my bikini bottoms. They curled and massaged my buttocks. He did it to arouse us both, pulling me against him and then letting me fall back against the tiles.

He was desperate.

I’d never felt that in Jason.

Jason had always been gentle and tolerant, slow, and deliberate––always making sure I was okay when he progressed. But I’d told him no a lot. He’d never pushed, or urged, or encouraged.