Nocte

“Don’t,” I interrupt him before he can turn me away. “Draw me, Dare. I want you to.”

  He stands as still as a statue, studying me, his body so long and lean.

  “Please,” I add finally, my whisper husky. “Where do you want me?”

  I count the beats as he stares at me, as he ponders me.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Four.

  Fi--

  “Just a minute,” he finally answers, interrupting my internal counting, his eyes black as night.

  He crosses the room and pulls a chaise lounge to the middle of the living room.

  “You can sit there.”

  He sounds so professional. I do as he asks, and I perch on the edge of the seat, my nerves dancing along my skin, disbelief pulsing through me.

  He’s going to do it. He’s going to do it.

  “Close the blinds,” I tell him softly, as I unbutton my shirt.

  I can’t believe I’m doing this.

  I can’t believe he’s letting me.

  I watch him swallow hard, his Adam’s apple moving in his throat, while he does as I instruct. When the room has been darkened, he pulls a seat up in front of me, his sketchbook in his hand.

  “Are you ready?” he asks, his voice level. He keeps his eyes on my face.

  I shake my head.

  “Not yet.”

  And then I take off my bra.

  Dare clears his throat and opens his sketchbook, the picture of a professional, and I swear I feel ten thousand flames lapping at my body as every inch of me flushes.

  I stand up and shove my shorts to the floor.

  Dare doesn’t move. It doesn’t even look like he’s breathing.

  His eyes are frozen on me, appreciation flaring to life in them, and then he stares into my eyes, his gaze deep and dark.

  “Calla,” he begins again, and he starts to move, to get up.

  “Don’t,” I tell him sharply. “Please. I need this. I want to be…distracted.”

  His eyes seem guarded now as he studies me, but he still stands up. He walks to his closet and comes back with one of his dress shirts. A white button-up. He hands it to me.

  “Put this on,” he tells me. “Leave it unbuttoned.”

  My heart pounds as I do what he asks.

  He waits, then adjusts the opening of the shirt to fall just right against my skin, so that only the top curves of my breasts show. He buttons one button there, and then pulls the shirt open so that my belly button and hip are exposed.

  He settles back into his chair.

  “So I’m a distraction, then?” he asks simply, bringing his pencil to the page and drawing a flowing line. The beginning of my hip.

  I flush. “You’re far more than a distraction. But today… I need distracted.” I swallow and his eyes meet mine, then he looks away.

  “Lay back,” he tells me brusquely. He gets up and comes to me, bending and moving my hair over my shoulder. His hand brushes my skin and a fire erupts, a heat, a raging lava-like liquid, churning in my belly, and I ache for him to lay down with me, to feel him next to me.

  But he doesn’t. He stares down at me, studying me.

  “Arch your back a bit,” he tells me. So I do. He slides a small pillow behind it.

  “Bite your lip,” he tells me. “Not hard. Just enough to look like you’re thinking about something. Fantasizing, maybe.”

  Oh God. I can totally do that.

  He smiles, just a little, and returns to his seat.

  His hands move across the page, quickly, then slowly. He looks up at me, his eyes so so dark, then he returns his attention to the page.

  The electricity in this room is charged. It’s real. It’s smothering. It’s exhilarating. I can’t breathe.

  Dare meets my gaze.

  “Are you okay?”

  I nod. “I am now.”

  Now that I’m here. Now that you aren’t rejecting me. Now that you see me.

  The edge of his lip curves up, and he swoops his hand, then bends his head in concentration.

  “So what brought on this scene from Titanic?” Dare asks me tritely, eyeing me above the top of his paper. I feel a blush spread from my forehead to my chest and I look away.

  “I’m not…it’s not,” I practically stammer. The cool air drifts over my body, forming goose-bumps everywhere.

  Dare pauses. “No?”

  I shake my head. “No. I just wanted… to feel something else.”

  “Something other than?” Dare waits.

  “What I’ve been feeling,” I clarify. “Craziness. Sadness. I just want to be someone else just for a minute.”

  Dare examines his picture, then sits back in his seat a minute.

  “Why would you want to be anyone else?” he asks softly. “Calla Price is amazing.”

  He stands up and comes to me, staring down. His expression is guarded and intense and he lingers above me. His dark eyes trace the outline of my naked hip, the curve of my thigh, and then suddenly, he follows his gaze with his finger. He runs it lightly from my knee to my hip, his fingertip scaldingly hot.

  “You want me, don’t you?” I whisper, the words hesitant and afraid, hopeful and anxious.

  His eyes are ablaze as he answers. “I’ve always wanted you.”

  Any answer I can possibly give him his frozen in my throat, jammed against my tongue and so all I can do is move. I turn to give him better access, so that he can touch me, so that he can move his fingers and grip me tight and shove his tongue down my throat and…then he takes his finger away and offers me his hand.

  I stare at his extended hand in confusion, but then let him pull me to my feet.

  I stand toe to toe with him, my bare breasts almost pressed against his body. If I just rocked forward a little bit, his hips would be pressed to mine and….

  He raises an eyebrow. “Do you want to see it?”

  It. The picture. I forgot.

  I nod, swallowing hard.

  He hands me the picture and it’s beautiful.

  I look like a model, draped casually over a settee. Dare made the curtains flutter in the wind behind me, and he created an ocean view through the windows. The light shines in on me and I seem like an ethereal creature, something otherworldly.

  “It’s beautiful,” I breathe.

  “You are,” he agrees. He hands me my shirt and I hesitate.

  I don’t want to put it on. I want.. I want… I want… Dare.

  But his expression is no-nonsense and professional and he’s not touching me anymore.

  Now isn’t the time.

  I put my clothes on and hug the picture to my chest.

  “Can I keep it?”

  “Of course.”

  He turns to move the chaise back to where it belongs and I pause.

  “I was just thinking…” I begin. “That I’d like to go to Warrenton Beach today. Would you like to go, too?”

  Dare narrows his eyes, but there’s laughter in them. “Is this you, trying to get a bike ride in addition to a portrait?”

  I narrow my own. “Is this you, offering to give me one?”

  Dare hesitates, and something in his eyes is troubling, something unsure, but finally he shrugs. “I don’t see why not. It doesn’t look like rain.”

  He heads toward his bedroom.

  “I’ll grab a shirt.”

  If you must.

  He calls out at me.

  “If you look in that chest by the door, you’ll find an extra helmet.”

  I do as he says, and sure enough, there’s one there.

  “Why do you have an extra?” I ask, pulling it out and closing the lid.

  “Because you mentioned that you might want a ride,” he answers, re-emerging from his room, a shirt in his hand. “Safety first, and all that.”

  He pulls the shirt over his head, and I’m not sure what I’m more enthralled with. His rippling abs, or the fact that he bought me a helmet.

  Specifically for me.

&nbs
p; It’s enough to make my stomach flip.

  “Thanks,” I murmur.

  He throws a look in my direction that can only be classified as sizzling. His near-black eyes spark with heat, and it’s enough to set my nerve-endings on fire.

  I gulp.

  “Are you ready right now?” Dare asks me. “You can leave your picture here.”

  I shrug, trying to be casual. “It’s as good a time as any.”

  He grins. “That it is, Calla-Lily.”

  22

  VIGINTI DUORUM

  When we’re standing in front of Dare’s bike, a shiny black Triumph, it looks aggressive and intimidating, and I’m suddenly nervous.

  Dare glances at me. “Don’t have the balls?”

  I toss my hair back and laugh.

  “I think we just established that I don’t have balls. Right?”

  I could swear he flushes as he shakes his head.

  “That’s true. I just saw that for myself.”

  And now I’m the one flushing as I see my reflection in his dark eyes, as I remember how I’d just laid in front of him, half naked.

  Dare motions for me to climb on behind him, which I do.

  “Hold on tight, Calla-Lily.”

  Don’t worry.

  Within moments, we’re gliding down the mountain road and my arms are wrapped around Dare, and the nervousness fades away.

  Because I belong here with him.

  I belong perched behind him with my chest is pressed into his back. It sends sparks shooting through all of my nerve endings. His heat bleeds into me, his strength, and I want to soak it all in.

  I rest my cheek against his shoulders and lazily watch the scenery blur past as we sail through town, and then over the Youngs-Bay bridge. The heavy bike vibrates between my legs, and I can suddenly appreciate the appeal of the bike and the open road. No wonder Dare has LIVE FREE tattooed on his back.

  There’s nothing more freeing than this.

  We hug the road with the wind in our faces and too quickly, the ride is over.

  Dare guides the bike into a parking spot and we dismount. It takes a second to get my land-legs again, and Dare grins as he supports my elbow. His touch is electric and I want it. And I can’t think because lying half-naked in front of him has addled all of my thoughts.

  “Well?”

  It takes me a minute to realize that he’s talking about the motorcycle ride.

  “I loved it,” I announce. “Let’s do it again.”

  He winks at me. “Well, we’ll have to get home somehow. But first, let’s take a look at this wreck, shall we?”

  I grin and pull him toward the beach, to where the remains of the old wreck rise out of the mist. It’s weathered bones look at once ghostly and impressive, skeletal and freaky.

  Minute by minute, I’m brought out of the charged sexual atmosphere from his cottage and into the brisk sea air of the moment.

  “The Iredale ran aground in 1906,” I explain to him as we walk. “No one died, thank goodness. They waited for weeks for the weather to clear enough to tow her back out to sea, but she got so entrenched in the sand, that they couldn’t. She’s been in this spot ever since.”

  We’re standing in front of her now, her masts and ribs poking out from the sand and arching toward the sky. Dare reaches out and runs a hand along one of her ribs, the same hand that he slid along my naked hip, the same exact movement, calm and reverent.

  I swallow hard.

  “It’s a rite of passage around here,” I tell him. “To skip school and come out here with your friends.”

  Except I never had any friends, other than Finn.

  “So you and Finn came here a lot?” Dare asks, as though he read my mind, and his question isn’t condescending, he’s just curious.

  I nod. “Yeah. We like to stop and get coffee and come sit. It’s a good way to kill the time.”

  “So show me,” Dare says quietly, taking my hand and pulling me inside the sparse shell. We sit on the damp sand, and stare through the corpse of the ship toward the ocean, where the waves rise and fall and the sea gulls fly in loops.

  “This must’ve been a good place to grow up,” Dare muses as he takes in the horizon.

  I nod. “Yeah. I can’t complain. Fresh air, open water… I guess it could only have been better if I didn’t live in a funeral home.”

  I laugh at that, but Dare looks at me sharply.

  “Was it really hard?” he asks, half concerned, half curious.

  I pause. Because was it? Was it the fact that I lived in a funeral home that made my life hard, or the fact that my brother was crazy and so we were ostracized?

  I shrug. “I don’t know. I think it was everything combined.”

  Dare nods, accepting that, because sometimes that’s how life is. A puzzle made up of a million pieces, and when one piece doesn’t exactly fit, it throws the rest of them off.

  Like right now, for instance. I was lying naked in front him just a while ago, and now here we are, acting like nothing happened.

  “Have you ever thought of moving away?” he asks after a few minutes. “I mean, especially now, I think maybe getting a break from…death might be healthy.”

  I swallow hard because obviously, over the years, that’s been a recurring fantasy of mine. To live somewhere else, far from a funeral home. But there’s Finn, and so of course I would never leave here before. And now there’s college and my brother wants to go alone.

  “I’m going away to college in the Fall,” I remind him, not mentioning anything else.

  “Ah, that’s right,” he says, leaning back in the sand, his back pressed against a splintered rib. “Do you feel up to it? After everything, I mean.”

  After your mom died, he means.

  “I have to be up to it,” I tell him. “Life doesn’t stop because someone dies. That’s something that living in a funeral home has taught me.” And having my mother die and the world kept turning.

  He nods again. “Yeah, I guess that’s true. But sometimes, we wish it could. I mean, I know I did. It didn’t seem fair that my mom was just gone, and everyone kept acting like nothing had changed. The stores kept their doors open and selling trivial things, airplanes kept flying, boats kept sailing… it was like I was the only one who cared that the world lost an amazing person.” His vulnerability is showing, and it touches me deep down, in a place I didn’t know I had.

  I turn to him, willing to share something, too. It’s only fair. You show me yours, and I’ll show you mine.

  “I was mad at old people for a while,” I admit sheepishly. “I know it’s stupid, but whenever I would see an elderly person out and about with their walker and oxygen tank, I was furious that Death didn’t decide to take them instead of my mom.”

  Dare smiles, a grin that lights up the beach.

  “I see the reasoning behind that,” he tells me. “It’s not stupid. Your mom was too young. And they say anger is one of the stages of grief.”

  “But not anger at random old people,” I point out with a barky laugh.

  Dare laughs with me and it feels really good, because he’s not laughing at me, he’s laughing with me, and there’s a difference.

  “This feels good,” I admit finally, playing with the sand in front of me. Dare glances at me.

  “I think you need to get off that mountain more,” he decides. “For real. Being secluded in a funeral home? That’s not healthy, Calla.”

  I suddenly feel defensive. “I’m not secluded,” I point out. “I have Finn and my dad. And now you’re there, too.”

  Dare blinks. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

  “And we’re not in the funeral home right now,” I also point out. We take a pause and gaze out at the vast, endless ocean because the huge grayness of it is inspiring at the same time that it makes me feel small.

  “You’re right,” Dare concedes. “We’re not.” He pulls his finger through the sand, drawing a line, then intersecting it with another. “We should do this more often.” br />
  Those last words impale me and I freeze.

  Is he saying what I think he’s saying?

  “You want to come to the beach more often?” I ask hesitantly. Dare smiles.

  “No, I’m saying we should get out more often. Together.”

  That’s what I thought he was saying.

  My heart pounds and I nod. “Sure. That’d be fine. Do you care if Finn comes sometimes, too?” Because I feel too guilty to leave him behind all the time.

  Dare nods. “Of course not. I want to spend time with you, however you want to give it to me.”

  Dare grins at me, that freaking Dare Me grin, and I know I’m a goner. I’m falling for him, more every day, and there’s nothing I can do about it. In fact, there’s nothing I want to do about it. Because it’s amazing.

  The Iredale is only a shell of a ship, so the wind whips at us and Dare shoves his hair out of his face. As he does, his ring shimmers with the muted light of the sun. A sudden feeling of déjà vu overwhelms me, as though I’ve watched his ring glint in the sun before, and we’ve been here in this ship, together.

  We’ve been here before in this exact place and time.

  That’s all I can think as I stare at him, as I watch his ring shimmering in the light, as I watch him shake his hair in the wind.

  Dare drops his hand and the feeling fades, but yet the remains of it linger like the wispy fingers of a memory or a dream.

  I stare at him uncertainly, because the feeling was so overpowering.

  Dare draws back and stares at me. “Are you ok?”

  I nod, because God, it’s just déjà vu, Calla. It happens.

  But it felt so real. I shake my head, to shake the oddness away. I can’t slip away from reality, I can’t be like Finn. God.

  Dare’s hand covers my own, and we stare out at the ocean for several minutes more.

  His hand is warm and strong, and I relish it. I relish the way he rests it against my back as we walk down the beach towards his bike. And I relish the way I fold against him as we ride back home. I relish it all because it’s amazing. No matter what else is going on, this is amazing.

  I feel like I’m floating as I slide off the bike and stand in front of him.

  We pause, like neither of us wants to call an end to this day.

  Finally, Dare smiles, a slow grin, a real grin that crinkles the corners of his dark Dare Me eyes. He reaches up and tucks an errant strand of hair behind my ear, and I swear to God I have to force myself to not lean into that hand.