Road Kill

That was a dramatic understatement, I knew, but getting this kind of confession out of him at all was an achievement so I let it pass.

“Dreams are just a way of coping with the dross that’s going round in our heads,” I said at last. “I have them, too, y’know? I get to relive what happened to me in glorious Technicolor – the four of them, the dark, the cold. And it’s so powerful I can’t shake the reality of it. I can wake up freezing in the middle of a heatwave. And sometimes, yes, there are weird twists.” I hesitated, but he was being brutally honest, so why shouldn’t I? “Sometimes the only face I can see is yours.”

He winced. “Christ,” he murmured. “I’m not surprised you knocked me flat on my back the other night. I guess I was lucky you didn’t kill me.” He brushed a fingertip across the mark on his cheekbone and allowed his lips to twitch in bitter self-contempt. “God knows, I showed you enough ways to go about it.”

“Yes, but it does not have to be this way,” I said, angry with the effort of trying to keep the anguish out of my voice. “We can do something about it if we want to.” His eyes were on mine again, black like sorrow, and I couldn’t read a glimmer of his thoughts beyond them. “All we have to do is want to enough.”

“Oh, trust me, I want to,” he said with quiet feeling. I caught the gleam in his eye only a fraction before he reared up and tumbled me back onto the pillows. He swooped for the hollow of my neck like a vampire, muttering almost to himself, “Of that you can be quite certain.”

My hands clutched convulsively at the bedclothes while he feasted at the jagged pulse that raged beneath the scar at my throat, robbing me of breath along with logical thought and any willpower I might have once possessed. Flames ignited like arson along every nerve-ending until they threatened to engulf me totally.

At last, when I thought I’d go crazy under him, he came up for air. Both of us were gasping. His mouth traced lazily across my shoulder and my hands came together of their own volition to meet at his spine, delicately sketching the ripple of muscle beneath the skin. I felt him quiver under my touch. So tough, so strong, so vulnerable.

He shifted suddenly, rolling onto his back again and this time taking me with him, hands firm at my waist. I ended up sprawled along the full length of him, leaving me in no doubt just how badly he wanted me. But there was reticence about him, too, a shadow of restraint.

He was holding back to let me make all the running, I realised, doing nothing that was going to trip any alarms. Not this time. I put a fist either side of his shoulders and arched my back so I could look down at his face.

“I never thought of you as the kind of guy who’d lie back and think of England,” I said, and my voice was husky.

Sean laughed softly. “Oh, it’s not England I’m thinking about,” he said. The laughter fell away in the face of his sudden intensity. “It’s you, Charlie. It’s always been you.”

His hands lightly braceleted my wrists, then skimmed upwards to my shoulders and I felt my elbows almost buckle. When those long clever fingers finally brushed across my collarbones and dropped to my breasts, my arms gave out completely. I sagged into him.

Infinitely slowly, he nudged my chin up and kissed me. Something spun and shattered behind my closed eyelids. His hands moved lower down my body, his deft touch causing a trail of devastation.

My illusion of being in control was fragmenting, like the last few seconds before the crash when you still have the faint vain hope that you can ride out of this intact but you’re already beyond redemption. I knew I had only moments of sanity left before little things like consequences wouldn’t matter a damn.

I wrenched my mouth free and heard a mewl of protest that could possibly have been me. Robbed, Sean went for the pulse-point at my neck again and the haze of his breath against the shallow indentation below my ear was almost my undoing.

“Sean,” I managed, even as my vision bulged and distorted. “Wait—”

He gave a low groan of protest but immediately stilled. I didn’t have to ask him twice.

“Erm, you weren’t ever a Boy Scout by any chance, were you?” I asked, pulling back a little and trying to force the shakiness out of my voice.

I saw by the quick flash of his grin that he’d caught on right away, even if he was going to make me work for it. “No, but I got chucked out of the Cubs for fighting when I was seven,” he said lightly. “Does that count?”

“No. Have you got . . .?” I said, annoyed to find myself so tongue-tied. “I mean, I wasn’t expecting—”

He took pity on me. “Inside jacket pocket,” he said, nodding to where his leathers hung on the chair next to the bed. He lifted up and nipped at my lower lip with his teeth. His hands had begun to coast again, making bolder forays that wreaked havoc with my concentration. “You don’t have to be a Boy Scout to be prepared, you know.”

I twisted under his touch, gulping in air like it was my last breath. “So sure of me, were you?”

“Sure? Never,” he said. “Hopeful? Always.”

Sean stretched out for the pocket he’d indicated. I’ve never been so glad to see a condom. He stripped the foil packet open without a fumble but still it was all taking much too long. The need was a brutal chanting in my head now, a roaring in my blood that echoed burning in my belly.

Desperate for relief I scraped against him, growling in sheer frustration, limbs slick with sweat. Then his fingers were grasping my hips to hold me steady, ready, poised, but at the last second he hesitated. I could have wept.

“Christ, I don’t want to hurt you,” he gritted out. “I’m not sure, if we go much further, that I’ll be able to stop.”

“Then don’t,” I said, swept with certainty as my voice cracked. “Don’t stop, I mean. Oh God, please don’t stop.”

And somehow he knew that I was way past the point where I needed gentleness from him. His hands jerked downwards.