Tear You Apart

  He gives me a shrewd look. “You think so? Why?”

  “Well...”

  His gaze flickers at the packages, over me, toward the door, around the kitchen, before finally settling on mine. “You’re just dropping off some stuff for Naveen. Right?”

  He’d called me once, and I didn’t answer, and I’d texted him once with the same result. We haven’t spoken since the day I walked out, after sucking him off against the wall I could reach out and touch if I took only a few steps in that direction. I want to scuff my toes along the tile floor, but keep myself still. I straighten my shoulders. Lift my chin.

  “Yes. So. I should go.”

  “Okay,” Will says mildly. “Thanks. See you.”

  He doesn’t walk me to the door. My fingertips skid on the metal frame before I find the handle and turn it. Then I’m pushing it open and walking through it. Into the hall, bare concrete walls, the far-off sound of sirens filtering in through the wire mesh covering the open window at the end of the corridor. The elevator is directly in front of me. I’ll be in it in a minute, the door closing behind me, beginning the rattle and shake of ancient gears and wires that will take me all the way down.

  I put one hand on the concrete wall, next to the elevator call button. The concrete’s rough and raw enough to scrape my skin when Will’s voice makes me turn. Blood beads in the wrinkles of my fingers.

  His mouth is on mine so fast I shouldn’t be ready for it, but the truth is I’ve been ready for Will to kiss me since the second I walked through his front door. Our mouths open, tongues meet. His hands anchor my hips; mine grip his shoulders. Then higher, to clasp behind his neck, to toy with the softness of the hair there. His kiss travels from the corner of my mouth, along my jaw to my neck, and I am lost.

  I was lost before I got there.

  I turn my head to give him full access. His teeth are sharp, but the soft heat of his tongue soothes any sting they’ve made. A hiss escapes me, not because he’s hurt me, but it must sound that way, because he pulls back and looks up and down the hall.

  “My neighbors,” he says after a second. “They’re kind of nosy.”

  They’re also very quiet, but I guess just because I haven’t seen or heard anyone else in this building doesn’t mean they’re not there.

  “We’d better go inside,” Will says, kissing my mouth.

  As if I’m going to say no. I laugh into his mouth, tasting his smile, and let him lead me step by step toward his front door. He hasn’t stopped kissing me when we cross the threshold, or when he kicks the door closed and pushes me up against it. Not even when he presses his thigh between my legs, nudging upward against the barrier of my dress. We’re tangled.

  Breathing hard, he breaks the kiss to look into my eyes, searching them for...what? I don’t know. I don’t care, just then, what he hopes to find or expects to see.

  I put my hand on his shoulder and push, not gently, but not cruelly, either. I push him until he edges back a few steps, and I move past him without breaking eye contact until the last possible second, when I turn and walk backward so I don’t have to look away. One step. Another. Three, four, five, and I’m in the hallway leading to his bedroom.

  Will doesn’t move.

  I retreat another step. He stays still. We don’t move, long enough for me to watch the motes of dust dancing in the shafts of light coming in the windows overlooking the street.

  It’s now or nothing; I either take this next step or I go home.

  I turn my back, but glance over my shoulder as I do. His room is to the left, toward the back of the apartment. The door’s cracked open, and when my fingers brush it, it groans. Inside, his bed is neatly made, the headboard of dark scrolled metal, the dresser and matching armoire a surprising and delightful art deco style. The far wall is a bank of floor-to-ceiling windows, all the blinds raised, the sun shining in so blinding it’s impossible for me to see if anyone is in the building across the way.

  Behind me, the door creaks.

  And then his mouth is on mine.

  I’m not ready for it. Teeth crash. I would pull away if I could, but he’s molded to me and backing me up, fast, toward the bed. All I can do is take the kiss, all the way. Deep. My head spins at the taste of him, and I hold on to him even harder so I don’t fall down.

  When the backs of my knees hit the bed, Will holds me, so we ease onto it instead of tumbling. He’s on top of me for only a few seconds before we’re turning, rolling, and I’m straddling him with my dress pulled up, out of the way. My knees grip his hips. The scarf holding back my hair slips so that strands fall in my face, and he pushes them back so he can get at my mouth. I cannot get enough of him.

  His hands move over my breasts, cupping me, before one slides inside the neckline of my dress. Under my bra, lace and satin, not new but definitely chosen with him in mind. He finds my nipple, already hard, and rolls it between his thumb and forefinger. My mouth is on his throat when he does that; I bite a little too hard. I don’t mistake his hiss for anything but pain, although he doesn’t complain. I lick the spot anyway, remembering how it felt when he did the same.

  Will makes quick work of the buttons at the front of my dress, pushing it open. I sit up straight so he can get at my breasts. The bra fastens in the back and he deftly unhooks it. The fabric falls forward, and I put a hand up to catch it before I’m completely exposed. Everything is hands and mouth, distraction, yet I can’t quite let myself be half-naked in front of him.

  His mouth moves gently along the curve of my jaw. “No?”

  “I...” I shouldn’t want to. “I can’t.”

  Will pulls away to look at my face. How could I have lived my entire life without knowing this man? His eyes are gray and green, and I smooth my fingertips over the arches of his brows. I touch the sleekness of the hair that falls in front of his ears.

  “Because of this.” He touches my left hand. The ring.

  “That’s not why. It should be.” I didn’t think I’d be able to speak, but the truth slips out with a taste like sunshine on water. “But it’s not.”

  “Then...what?”

  I would pull away, but he’s got me held tight, with his hands on my hips. Somehow we’ve managed not to fall off the bed, though he has one foot on the floor and one leg stretched out toward the pillows, and I’m on his lap with a leg curled around him and the other half bent behind me. Awkward and a little uncomfortable, which neither of us noticed before this pause.

  “I’m...I haven’t...” I haven’t been with another man since I was twenty years old, skin unblemished, stomach flat, breasts that had never nourished twins. I’m forty-five years old, and while I don’t hate what the mirror shows, I’m not sure what I’ll do if he doesn’t like what he sees.

  Will brushes my hair from my face again with an expression so tender it makes me want to weep. Without shifting me from his lap, he tugs the scarf from my hair. He holds it up.

  It was a Mother’s Day gift from Kat when she was in elementary school. Ugly. It has horses and horseshoes on it, a pattern of black and gray, but I love it because it was a gift from my child. It’s soft and oversize, and it feels like her gap-toothed grin and the soft brush of her hair when she hugged me as I opened it.

  The fabric slides through his fingers when he holds it up. “Use this.”

  I don’t understand. “What?”

  Will wraps the scarf around his neck, the ends dangling, and grips my hips again. “Use the scarf on me. Blindfold me.”

  Startled, I laugh. “What? No!”

  He smiles. “Yes.”

  Neither of us move. His erection presses against me. I look into his eyes.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re worried about how you look to me,” he says. “I don’t want you to worry.”

  The idea roots like a weed, growing in
to a blossom in a heartbeat. Vanity, I think. Thy name is Elisabeth.

  Will takes the scarf before I can. He ties it over his eyes, arranging the material so he’d really have to strain to peek. It tufts his hair in the back and covers most of his face except his mouth, which is slightly open. His pulse throbs at the base of his throat.

  He’s waiting for me to touch him.

  And I do. Slowly at first, just a brush of my fingers over his shoulders. Down his arms. Over his chest. The way his tongue slides over his lower lip makes me bold, and I slip my hands beneath his shirt again to find the tight pebbles of his nipples with my palms.

  Will sinks back against the tossed pillows, his head tipped back, and I imagine his eyes have slid shut under the barrier of the scarf. I push his shirt up, watching his face carefully, but though his lips part and a soft sigh escapes him, he doesn’t move or protest. I shift on his lap a little to get better access to his body.

  He’s lean, but not wiry. No fake tan for him. Pale, smooth skin on his ribs and belly. Over the jut of his hip bones, I run my fingers. Across the soft brush of hair below his navel.

  “Sit up.” It’s not a request, and he doesn’t hesitate.

  I pull his shirt up and off, careful not to dislodge the blindfold. His chest hitches a couple times as I toss the shirt aside. His flesh pebbles into goose bumps. When I run my hands over his shoulders and chest, he smiles. I can feel the steady but fluttering thump of his heart beneath my palms. I touch the bird tattooed there.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s a crane,” he says.

  I let my fingertips trace the lines of it. “Why?”

  “It’s a symbol of good fortune.”

  I want to lick it. I want to kiss and lick and bite every piece of him, and I start with his throat. I press him against the cushions again, my teeth taking his flesh harder than before. I don’t want to hurt him...but suddenly, I do want to mark him.

  This thought makes the breath catch in my throat. I sit up. My heart pounds, and I press my hand to it, as though I could make it slow down by doing so. I have to close my eyes when the room threatens to spin, but only for a second or two.

  This is the truth. I have been in love. I have been in lust. I have made good choices and bad ones, I have been smart and I’ve been stupid. But I have never in my life felt the way I do now, here, with Will.

  I don’t think. I move. I tug at his belt, then the button and the zipper beneath it. In moments my hand is in his pants, inside his briefs. The angle’s wrong, I can’t really stroke him the way I want to, but I don’t care that it’s awkward, because the feel of him in my palm is enough to make my clit pulse.

  He makes a noise, and for a second I think he means to stop me, but then he relaxes again against the pillows. His chest rises and falls. He licks his mouth, and I can’t resist leaning to kiss it. Deep and long, tongues stroking the way my hand now strokes his cock.

  Then I’m moving, tongue and teeth leaving a trail along his throat, over his chest. The crane tattoo. I count his ribs with my kisses, then move lower. His belly muscles jump under my mouth. I’m tugging at his jeans, over his hips, down his thighs, but his briefs stay up. They don’t matter. I tug at the elastic so I can see him. All of him.

  He is so beautiful. So perfect. I’m no connoisseur of cock, but I don’t need to be an expert to know what I like. I ease his briefs down, freeing him. Finally, I can touch him the way I want to. My fingers curl around his shaft, stroking slowly upward. Then down. I’m mesmerized at the sight of my hand on Will’s cock. How it fills my palm. How the shades of his skin change from the head to the base.

  Will’s hands are at his sides. He grips the mattress when I stroke him. Then a little harder, fingers denting the comforter. His chin tips up. He bites his lower lip. Fascinated, I watch the flush creep from his throat to his face.

  He can’t see me, but I see all of him. I have never felt so powerful or in control. When I shift, the tug and pull of the lace between my legs is delicious torture. I’m wet; I can feel how slick I am beneath the fabric, though I haven’t done so much as even tap a finger there.

  All I can think about is how he will feel inside me. I rub myself on his thigh, back and forth, the pressure on my clit just enough to make my mouth fall open with the pleasure, but not nearly enough to get me off. Will pushes his cock harder into the circle of my fist.

  Again, I lean to kiss his chest. His throat. I tug his earlobe with my teeth, and his cock throbs. I move my hand slowly, so slow, and still he shakes a little with each stroke.

  “I want you inside me.” The words slip from my lips into his ear.

  He turns his face toward me. His breath caresses my cheek. “Yes.”

  But first, I slip open the rest of the buttons on my dress. The thin belt at the waist. I pull it off in a tangle over my head, not caring if the sleeves are inside out or if it will wrinkle when I toss it to the floor. My bra. My panties. Will doesn’t move through all this, doesn’t even try to tip his head and peek from under the blindfold. His hands fist in the comforter. I swear I can see his heart beat in his prick.

  I ease myself over him. He shudders at the soft brush of my pubic hair against the base of his cock. He pushes upward, just a little. My cunt’s so wet I slide against him without friction. I rub my clit along his length, just like he once promised to do until I begged him to fuck me.

  With the blindfold covering most of his face, his mouth is both desperately sexy and vulnerable at the same time. His tongue flicks out to touch his lips, as if he’s tasting something sweet. Tasting me.

  I shake at the sudden image I have of climbing up his body to press my clit to that tongue. Of his hands on my hips, moving and shifting me against his eager mouth. But I could barely take my clothes off in front of him. I might have no problem with going down on him, but putting his face between my legs is too intimate, too strange, too fraught with complications and emotional baggage. I settle for rubbing myself against his cock again.

  Straddling him, I take one of his hands, then the other, and put them on my body. Over my hips, up my ribs. My breasts. The fullness of every curve. I give up everything to his touch. I put his fingers against my clit, then lower, inside me.

  “Oh, fuck,” Will says.

  I guide his hand while I watch his face. He has learned me so quickly. I’m on the edge as fast as I would be by myself. I could come from his fingertips, the press and bunch of his thigh muscles under my ass. But I want more than that.

  All I have to do is move a little, shift an inch, raise myself the smallest amount, and he’s inside me. All the way. His cock’s sweet curve hits me so perfectly I’m not sure I can move without coming. The best I can do is shudder and squeeze my knees to his sides. My hands go flat on his chest. I lean forward to kiss him.

  Will fucks into me, not too fast, not frantic. It’s hard to kiss him now. Hard to concentrate on anything but the way he’s sliding in and out of me, and the press of my clit against him with every thrust. I want to pay attention, to kiss him, to make this good for him, but all I can do is let the pleasure sweep me away. I bury my face in his neck, my mouth full of the salt flavor of him that is echoed in the ocean spray taste of his voice when he says my name.

  I might’ve been self-conscious about the bounce of places that shouldn’t jiggle, but he can’t see me. Only feel. I push myself upright and ride him, spine arched. My hair tickles my back. He fucks upward as I roll my hips, and then I’m coming so hard my teeth snap closed with the force of it. Will’s cry is short and rough, the tumble of sea-smoothed glass. The slap of water on rocks.

  Neither of us say anything when it’s over, though our breathing is very loud. I ease myself off him and onto my back, at his side. Will makes no move to take off the blindfold. His hands fold on his belly. Turning my head, I watch the rise and fall of his chest as his breath
slows.

  Carefully, I run my finger along the edge of the blindfold, across his cheek and over the hair in front of his ears. Gently, softly, a whisper of a touch. He barely turns his head toward it.

  “Did you like that?” I’m too sated to be offended if he says no. I know he liked fucking me; it’s the blindfold I’m curious about.

  “You have to ask?”

  “This,” I say, and touch the scarf again.

  He’s quiet at first, and I’m not sure he’s going to answer. “Yeah.”

  “What about it?”

  “I liked when you took my hands and moved them over your body. When you let me see you that way. And when you showed me what you like, how to touch you.” He paused to lick his lips. “You wanted me to touch you.”

  It is the most erotic thing anyone has ever said to me.

  “It kept me focused,” he adds after a second, with a small laugh. “And I couldn’t be sure what you were going to do, exactly, so it was a little uncertain.”

  I find words. “What did you think I might do?”

  His mouth parts on a small gust of breath, but he takes another second before he says, “...Well, you could’ve done anything you wanted to. Couldn’t you?”

  I pushed up on my elbow. “And you liked that.”

  “Yeah,” he says in a low voice. “I guess I did.”

  I tug at the blindfold to ease it off his eyes. Will rolls to look at me. I’m not so worried now about my body, though honestly, if he was going to judge, it would be now, when his dick isn’t hard. His confession moved me, though. If he could reveal that to me, I guess I can let him see what I look like naked.

  “Hey,” he says.

  I smile and let my fingertips skate along the curve of his face before putting my hand flat over his heart, which is still skipping a little. “Hey.”

  “By the way,” Will says, “I missed you, too.”

  Chapter Twenty

  I’m unaccountably nervous, cooking in Will’s kitchen. I shouldn’t be—I’m only making a pesto dish with sautéed vegetables. Simple. Yet my fingers fumble with the knife when I pull it from the holder.