Chapter Twenty-Six
Helene
We were once again interrupted by Hilde, but this time it was at least by phone. The sound of my cell phone ringing jolted me out of sleep, and I glanced over Kane’s body to his alarm clock. It wasn’t there, though, and when I reached for my cell phone, the clock on the screen said it was nearly ten.
“Yes, sister bear,” I answered sleepily as I sat up and stretched.
Kane’s hand ran down my back, and then his warm lips met my spine just above my waist.
“Where are you?” Hilde’s voice was curt and clipped. “I’m at your house, and you’re not here.”
“Does it ever occur to you to call before you just show up unannounced?”
“No,” she said incredulously as though I’d lost my mind. Hilde sighed. “Mark is upset with me. When I told him about the other morning, he said I was a B-I-T-C-H to Kane.”
“You were.” I glanced over my shoulder, and Kane was just pulling away from my back.
Hilde sighed again. “We want you both to come over for dinner tomorrow.”
I stared at Kane, and he watched me calmly, clueless as to what my deranged sister was proposing.
“I’ll have to check with Kane.”
Kane’s eyebrows shot up.
“Well, I assumed you were with him,” Hilde said smartly.
I rolled my eyes. “Hold on.” I covered what I assumed was the microphone on the bottom of my phone, and I looked at Kane for a moment.
He cocked his head to the side as he grinned at me. “Yes…” He drew out the word.
“Hilde and Mark want us to come to dinner tomorrow at their place.”
It was one long nod as Kane’s chin raised and slowly sank, and the entire time his brow was furrowed in a line of worry.
“You can say no,” I said.
“No he can’t,” Hilde muttered in my ear.
Clearly I had no idea where the microphone was.
“I’m guessing Hilde’s not accustomed to people saying no to her,” Kane commented wryly.
“I heard that,” Hilde all but yelled in my ear.
“How about I say yes?” Kane smirked.
“Okay.”
He took a deep breath. “Then yes it is.” He leaned to my side, and he licked slowly along the side of my ribcage before he kissed the trail he’d made with his tongue.
I shivered, and my skin prickled with goosebumps. “Yes,” I said breathlessly into the phone.
“Good. Mark is smoking ribs. You guys could come to church with us tomorrow morning if you’d like.”
“Uh…” There was no way in hell that was going to happen. “…no thanks.”
“You sure. I bet Jake would love to see you.”
I sighed. “I actually saw Jake a couple nights ago. He seems … well,” I said.
Kane leaned back from my body once again, gnawing on the inside of his lip as he watched me.
“Okay. Then try to be here about one.”
“We’ll be there.”
I hung up moments later, and Kane watched me warily. He laid down with his head toward the foot of the bed and studied me.
“It’s almost ten.” I smiled at him, but my cheeks were warming thanks to the sudden silence.
His eyes were slowly moving over my body, studying, staring, and invading me. He nodded as his eyes kept roving. “How did you get in my house, out of curiosity?”
“There’s still a key hidden behind the downspout.”
He smiled. “I’d forgotten all about that.”
He pulled my nearest leg over his body, and I instantly reached between my legs and covered my crotch. He shook his head as he pulled my hand away. He stroked a finger between the lips of my sex as my thighs tremored. The lightest touch ran over my clit, and it sent a jolt of need through my body. He parted my lips with his fingers, studying me.
“Lean back,” he whispered.
I lounged back on my elbows so I could see him, and his fingers grazed gently over my skin. He moved closer, resting his cheek on the inside of my farthest thigh as my other leg stayed over his body. His fingers continued to gently spread me open and lightly stroke my skin. It was such a strangely intimate and casual way to be with him.
“You’re very pink this morning,” he said as he glanced up at me. “Was I too rough?”
“No.”
He looked at my eyes for a moment. “Are you sore?” His focus returned to studying and touching me.
“Yes.” The ache was deep and far more painful than I’d expected. But there was also something very pleasant about his ache.
Kane pushed himself up to sit, and he pulled my legs over his until we were tangled together, sitting close to one another—so close my hard, jutting nipples nearly brushed his chest. He reached for my chin, stroking his thumb across my lower lip, and then he kissed me, letting his lips linger against mine. “Are you okay?” he asked. “You’re being a little quiet.”
I was being quiet all of a sudden—as though I wasn’t quite sure what to say to him now that I didn’t have the distraction of Hilde.
“I’m fine,” I said just as quietly as he’d accused me of being.
He held my face close to his, so close I could look into his eyes but still feel the warmth of his breath on my lips.
“Are you being quiet because my cock was inside you last night? Does that make you shy?”
A very visible shudder ran through my body, and I bit my lip as I nodded.
“It’s just me, baby.” He kissed the corner of my mouth.
If he only knew just how shy his very words were making me. It was an absolutely incredible shyness though, and all I wanted was for him to keep talking.
“Did you like looking in my eyes as I fucked you? Knowing what we were doing? Is that why those cheeks are so pink right now?”
“Yes.”
“Did you like touching our skin as my cock slid into your pussy?”
“Yes.”
“Did you like the way it felt? How tight I fit inside you?”
God, he was killing me with that warm seductive voice that was far too calm for the subject matter.
“Yes.”
“Good. Then your shyness is forgiven.” He smiled at me. “Tell me I can have you again…” He kissed my cheek. “…and again…” He kissed my other cheek. “…and again.” He kissed the tip of my nose. “Because I definitely need to see more of this blush and this adorable shyness that is all about those very private things we did together.”
I nodded.
He pulled back, and his thumb kept caressing across my chin. “You were the stuff my wet dreams were made of in high school, and I can’t tell you how many masturbatory orgasms you’ve been responsible for.” He smirked. “Now I’m going to take a quick shower, run to the store and buy those damn cupboard pulls you like, and bring lunch back for us. Will you stay right here, in bed, waiting for me?”
“Okay.”
He pushed up from the bed, and I watched him walk naked from the room.
He was incredibly fit and toned. His buttocks, his back, his legs—strong and tight with muscles. He’d always been fit, but there was a hardness to his body I didn’t recall from when we were younger. I remembered a firmness to his body that I didn’t have, and I remembered the lines of muscles that ran under his skin. But now it was as if this layer of himself had dissolved, and the muscle now ran shallow and more visible than it had back then.
His skin was smooth, tanned and unblemished, but it covered steel and strength in this exceptionally arousing way. The entire time he’d made love to me, I’d soaked in the feel of his muscles working, contracting, and tightening under my palms. It had been rough, but not too rough—not at all. But touching those tense muscles and feeling them work was like touching something that was ready to explode in an eruption of power. He could be too rough with me, and it was likely a very fine line—one he’d flirted with perfectly last night. He could physically damage me. And the tension I’d touched made it clear he was holding back—perfectly restrained.
I listened to the shower run for a few minutes, and I looked around the room. He’d painted. The walls looked clean and smooth, and he’d used a very subtle gray with just enough brown in it to feel warm rather than stark and cold. I pulled the blanket up to my face, inhaling the scent. It smelled like him. Like soap and deodorant—clean and fresh but soft and used.
I sat up to the side of the bed, running my fingers through my hair and looking out at the woods beyond his window. My attention caught on pieces of scattered broken plastic on the floor by the closet, and when I walked over to the mess, I crouched down, flipping over the face plate of the alarm clock that had been sitting on the nightstand the last time I’d been in here. He’d clearly been in about the same mood I’d been in for the past couple days. I’d paced, I’d cried, I’d panicked, and I’d finally broken down and come over here when I couldn’t stand it anymore.
When I returned to bed again, I glanced down into the still open nightstand drawer, and I inhaled sharply as I sank to sit on the mattress. I reached into the drawer, pulling a strand of balls out. They varied in size from as small as a pea on one end to damn near the size of a golf ball on the other. The balls were made of clear pink silicone, and they were connected one after another from small to large with a ring on the end with the largest ball. I set the strand aside, swallowing harshly over a sudden lump in my throat.
When I reached in again, it was to pull out something that looked like a metal bullet. But it was too large to be a real bullet. The ends were rounded, and the metal was smooth aside from a line that ran around the center of it. When I turned the thing along the line, it whirred to life and vibrated quietly between my fingers.
“Oh, fuck,” I whispered as I tried to turn the damn thing back off, and as my fingers fumbled with it, I heard the bathroom door open and the sound of footsteps coming down the hall. “Fuck,” I hissed under my breath.
“Where do you want me—”
I dropped the metal thing on the floor the moment I heard his voice, and it rolled away from me still vibrating. I spun around to see Kane standing naked at the foot of the bed still holding his towel in his hand. He was staring at the floor at the place the thing had finally stopped rolling, and his voice had gone quiet.
When he suddenly stalked toward me, I actually jumped. He reached down grabbing the bullet like thing off the floor, and as he was standing back up, he looked toward me and caught sight of the strand of balls sitting beside me on the bed. He grabbed that as well, turned the vibrating bullet off, and chucked both into the small garbage can that sat beside the nightstand. He slammed the nightstand drawer in, and when he righted his posture, he glared down at me.
But he crossed his arms, tucking his hands under them.
“What are those things?” My voice was too quiet.
His brow flinched, and he looked away. “They belonged to a woman I was seeing.”
“Lisa?” I hated that I felt jealous of a married woman who’d been having an extramarital affair on a man I respected with the man I was sleeping with. There was something horribly fucked up about that.
“No,” he whispered. “Another…” But he trailed off as he looked away again.
It was silent as I sat rigidly on the side of the bed, and he towered above me. But he wasn’t angry. The cross of his arms said it clearly enough to me. It was vulnerability. He was afraid.
“You didn’t answer me.” I forced myself to look up at him, but he couldn’t seem to hold the eye contact.
“Anal beads and a vibrator,” he finally responded, and when my focus hit the floor between us as that bit of information sank in, he dropped to his knees in front of me. “I don’t need that from you.”
I glanced at him. He was searching my eyes, but as I stared back unable to figure out how to respond, his focus started shifting around the room in a panic. His eyes searched the space around us, and his jaw was tight. I tried to lock onto what exactly I was feeling. I almost hated that he’d said he didn’t need that from me. I also knew he’d said it for my benefit to reassure me, and feeling pathetic as a result wasn’t the right response. So why did I feel so fucking pathetic and naive all of a sudden?
I reached for his hand, refusing to let my thoughts get away from me. His eyes darted back to me, finally holding the eye contact.
“Why don’t I go with you?” I stared at him. I was desperate to move on from this. I didn’t want to go back to the two days prior and try to wrap my head around who he was before this. “We can just go to my house until we have to go to Hilde’s tomorrow,” I suggested. “I mean, unless you’re working here today.”
He finally smiled. “Seeing as I slept through half the day, I’m writing this one off.” He nodded. “Do you just want to take your car?”
“Yeah.”
We dressed, and I watched him tuck some clean clothes into a small worn rucksack, and before we left the room, he grabbed the small garbage can, carrying it with him. He dumped it into the larger one in the kitchen, and then pulled the overly-large nearly full garbage bag from the barrel. I followed him out, taking the rucksack from him as he tossed the garbage bag into the tow away dumpster that was sitting off to the side of the house, and when he returned to me, he pushed me up against the driver’s door, kissing me as he fumbled with my hand and took the keys from me.
I smiled against his lips, laughing even as he still kissed me. He drove us toward town. The route, as it always had, took us down that same stretch of highway past the place the old gas station used to be. It was nothing but an empty gravel lot now, cut into the side of the road and surrounded by tall mature trees, but it didn’t take much imagination to remember exactly how the run down building used to look.
I hated driving by that place still, and as my eyes drifted off to the lot, Kane reached for my hand, taking it and enfolding my fingers within his. I glanced at him, and I tried to smile, but I couldn’t manage it any more than he seemed able to.
The now defunct Sleepaway was another half a mile farther down, and it was an eerie deserted old place now, overgrown with bushes, most of the windows boarded over, and the sign a worn and weathered nearly illegible thing. I looked over at the place, catching Kane’s own attention already glued to the same spot. He exhaled deeply, and I tightened my hand on his. Soon we were back in town, and he dropped me off at my place first, before running out to pick up the cupboard pulls and lunch.
I showered while he was gone, and when he returned, we ate while we watched T.V. I spent a while working on my dissertation with my laptop on my lap and my legs stretched out on the couch. Kane read the entire time, sitting at the opposite end of the couch with his legs tangled up with mine.
“How is it coming along?” he asked when I closed my laptop to take a break and pushed my reading glasses up to the top of my head.
I sighed, shaking my head. “I don’t know. I’m missing the mark. I know that much.”
He scowled for a second. “What makes you think that?”
“Because … I’m writing a damn good research paper, but that’s all I’m doing. It’s research, it’s rehashing someone else’s ideas, theories. There’s nothing original about it.”
“What do you think is missing?” He smirked. “Aside from originality.”
I smiled, letting my head rest back on the pillow behind me. “I don’t know.” I glanced away. “It’s not that I thought I’d be breaking new ground or writing something earth shatteringly profound. I just…” I looked back at him. “…thought I’d have something important to say. Instead, I’m relying on everything that’s already been written. I always kind of thought my dissertation would include … real research, new research—even if it was just interviews with common people about their common problems. Just something that can’t be Googled.” I laughed.
“So maybe that’s what’s missing. Maybe you need to get your head out of the books and start seeing this as a real life study. I mean, you were amazing in class the other night. You brought the relevance of the subject front and center, and you captivated the students. You captivated me.”
“I argued with you,” I corrected him.
He smiled. “You challenged me.” He studied me. “You made it feel real, relevant, and people understood that.”
“You never really did share your opinions on the subject. In fact, you refused to discuss the topic altogether if I recall.”
“I didn’t refuse anything. I said it’s complicated, and it is.” He crawled across the sofa and between my legs, taking my laptop from my hands and setting it on the floor as he laid on my body, propping his chin up in the middle of my stomach. “‘It’s complicated’ is a perfectly relevant answer.”
I sighed as I looked at him, and I reached for his lower lip, running my thumb across it. When he suddenly lunged for my finger, I shrieked. His lips closed around my thumb, and he sucked on it, his tongue circling and swirling around it as my mouth hung open. He let my thumb out of his mouth slowly, clamping his teeth gently onto the tip for a moment.
“I promise we’ll talk about this someday. But at the risk of ruining a perfectly good Saturday, can we maybe shelve this conversation for the time being?”
I nodded. He pushed off my body, stood, and walked toward the hallway, and I heard the bathroom door close moments later. When he returned, he was holding my packet of birth control pills in his hand. He walked to the couch, sinking down at the end and pulling his legs up casually. He studied me for a moment as he turned the package over in his hands.
“Can we talk about something?” He actually looked a little nervous when he asked the question.
“Yes.”
“Why do you take these? I mean … I was under the impression you weren’t too fond of fucking your boyfriends.”
“That’s an understatement,” I muttered. “Well I did have a boyfriend that I … had sex with on occasion until a couple months ago.” I rolled my eyes. “But really I’m just taking them now to stop my periods and to keep me sane, too. Bad PMS.”
He nodded as he studied my eyes, but he was quiet for a while. “I’ve exhibited some … self-destructive tendencies in the past. Yes?”
“I would say that’s likely true,” I responded.
“I need you to understand I’m not self-destructive with other people. My damage is limited to me.”
I glanced away, and I scoffed quietly. “That’s not true.” I looked back at him. “I’m sorry, but it’s just not. Ask Jake how he feels about you sleeping with his wife. The damage you do to yourself always affects the people around you. That’s just life.”
He stared at me blankly for a moment, but then his eyes shifted to look at the sofa between us. My heart pounded. I’d just taken the same damn argument we’d spent the past two days recovering from and thrown it right back in his face.
“I’m not trying to make you feel guilty, Kane. I’m really not, but please don’t say that to me. It hurts me to see you hurt yourself.”
When he finally looked up at me, he nodded subtly. “I know,” he said quietly. He said nothing else, and the packet in his hand suddenly seemed forgotten.
I crawled across the sofa to him this time, pushing his legs apart and curling up against his body. I took the packet from him, and I kissed up the side of his neck to his ear. I nipped his earlobe, and his breath caught in his throat, and then he hummed as he wrapped his arms around me. He pulled me up to my knees then, wrapping my legs around his waist as he leaned back against the end of the couch.
He took the packet back from me and held it up between us. He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “I’m not self-destructive with other people’s health. I would never jeopardize someone’s wellbeing for a fuck.”
I just stared at him.
“And above even those limits, I would never gamble with your health. Not you. Not ever. I’m careful. I always use protection, and I still get tested just to be sure. Twice in the last year, and I’ve not had sex without protection for years. If you want me to get tested again, I will.” He glanced away. “Did you always use protection with the three men you dated?”
I rolled my eyes. “When you say it like that you make me sound pathetic. I’m a little too old to have only had three lovers, but thank you for pointing it out.” I was trying to lighten his mood.
“Four lovers,” he corrected, finally smiling a little. He sat up straighter, bringing his face close to mine. “That’s not pathetic to me anymore than the fact you were still a virgin at seventeen was. I always loved your innocence. You still have it, and I still love it. I’ve always envied it. But I need you to answer the question.”
“Yes. Always. And birth control on top of that, because that’s how us nerds roll.”
“Of course you did.” He smirked. “I want to come inside you,” he said bluntly.
I gaped at him for a moment, but a shiver ran over my skin.
He kissed my chin. “And I absolutely think you understand the intimacy of that and why I would want that with you.”
I nodded.
“Tell me you’re okay with this.”
“I am.”
“Tell me you want to feel my cum inside you,” he whispered against my ear.
“Right now?” I asked.
He chuckled. “Yes. Right… Fucking… Now…”
He stood and carried me back to the bedroom as I clung to his neck. I smiled with my lips to his skin, and I closed my eyes knowing what was to come was going to feel incredible. He felt incredible. This was a nice life. I’m not sure I’d ever thought that before—or not for a long time at any rate, but it was. A good life. A life I wanted to keep.