Getting Real

35. New



Rielle woke at the approach of dawn to Jake’s soft snore and sat to watch him. This too was new. No man she ever took to bed was still there in the morning. One way or another she got rid of them, either with a direct request or by more subtle, but equally brutal means of shutting them out. Sometimes they came back, but they were never invited to stay. It was easier that way. In any case, they weren’t still there, warm and vulnerable to her appraisal when she woke.

So much about this man was unique. So much about what she wanted from him was foreign. This man she wanted to keep. Worse, she was almost scared to let him go. What was that about? Surely it was just the sex. Holy f*ck. The most substance-shattering sex of her life. But what if it was more than that? She couldn’t think that through, not with him just a stretch away. Not knowing what they did together was a whole new kind of explosive seared inside her bone marrow, branded on her brain.

Jake lay on his back, one arm draped across the bed, the other looped over his waist, the sheet tucked down low on his hips. She wanted to trace the curve of his chest, down the muscle moguls of his abdominals to the sharp cut of his hip bone, first with her hand, then with her lips; but she didn’t want him awake, not yet. Not til she’d worked out what to do with him.

He was so much stronger than she’d thought—so much better at standing up to her, not taking her shit, than anyone else except Rand. That was a revelation, unexpected and confusing. And distracting. Would he wake if she smoothed his dark brow? If she rolled her thumb over his cheekbone?

If this was just about the sex, why did he make her feel she was transparent to him, as though he could see straight into her and wasn’t horrified by what he found? Why did she want to talk to him almost as much as she wanted to kiss his throat, tongue his nipple? The thought of spending the day with him was nearly as exciting as knowing they’d make love again that morning.

When she could be bothered, her usual hook-ups were about opportunity and physical need, forgetting and fear of being alone. All of them transitory, deliberately featureless, about flesh not feelings.

Jake was about physical need as well, so maybe he wasn’t different. Maybe the way he could tune her body better than anyone else just confused the issue. Maybe the desire to have breakfast with him and tumble into bed again was a different version of the same thing she’d always done. Distracted herself with pretty men.

Maybe she was going mad.

It was only two days til they left for Sydney and when she thought about it she could feel the panic rising. It started at the base of her spine, flicking out from every vertebra to wrap around her lungs and squeeze sense and meaning out of her. Why had she agreed to come back? Right now she hated Rand, hated the band and the whole tour. Hated her own ambition for agreeing to it all. Nothing good could come from being back.

She sighed. Yeah, that’s all Jake was, a beautiful distraction. Unparalleled, uncomplicated pleasure for her body; and a soothing contact for her soul. Something to take her mind off her fears and help her get centred. Something she needed to make it through to the other side. She’d said he was beautiful—he was perfect—but perfect for some other girl less screwed up, less emotionally spoiled and stunted than she was.

She tracked her nail around the outer edge of the tattoo on his bicep, a stylised compass, with four points. It was a permanent reminder of direction on a man unlikely to ever be lost.

While she had him, she was going to make this distraction count. When she left him, it’d be with the knowledge she did him no harm and he’d know how to find his way back to his life without her.

She butterfly kissed his shoulder, fanned her hand across his chest and moved to sit astride him. One eye flicked open and then he shut it, but a sexy grin spread over his face. “Are you the wicked hallucination of a desperate man?”

She folded down over his chest to kiss him. “I’m anything you want me to be.”

His laugh caught in his throat. “You’re such a liar.”

She’d have acted offended but he was right. She was a liar and an actress and a fake, and she was too busy running her hands over his body, tasting him, losing herself to care. It didn’t matter that it was light. That he could see her smudged and tousled with the sun streaming into the room through sheer curtains. Seeing him made it more real. Now she wanted to know if last night was a repeatable offence. If he could take her to the sky, push her off and make her feel like stars collided again.

Jake’s body twitched under her weight. “You keep doing that and it won’t be a gentle start to the morning.” He ran his hands down over her shoulders and the circle of her hips. She looked in his face with the devil of carnal intention in her eyes and he laughed. “Ho, so that’s the plan is it? Hmm, I can get with that.” He palmed her hips and pressed her into him. Then he stilled, lifted his hands. “You want this?”

She groaned. This beautiful, caring man. She had him so knotted up, he needed to ask permission when he should’ve known she was crazy, insane, ready for his touch. He left her speechless, she let her body do the talking, grinding her hips down on him, finding a rhythm that was slick, fast and smooth, making his eyes go wide and his head roll back and his language nonsense. Making him see this, for now, was real. He flipped her over on her back and her gasp was a bolt of pleasure across his face.

Ungentle was the morning. Rielle cried out as Jake made her twist and buck, her muscles clench and spasm. As the sun brought its first rays of heat, she made him sweat with her hands and her tongue—with the way she touched and tormented him. This time it was easier to approach the stars, easier to leap, free fall and fly, both of them together.

She soared outside herself and when he called her name he brought her home. Her eyes flew open. They were wet, brimming, full up with feeling. Through glazed vision, Rielle saw the shadow cross Jake’s face, felt defeat soften his limbs. He’d read her tears as shame, as dislike, as hurt, as everything gone wrong again and she knew she had to make it right. She wasn’t sure her tongue could form the words he needed to hear, her lungs let go the air to say them. She only knew she had the power to hurt this man, to take his good heart and squeeze it dry with her savage need for him. She blinked the damp away.

“You rock my world, Jake Reed.”

He frowned. “I upset you and that’s not what I want. Not what this is about.”

How to tell him he touched her soul? That he made her feel sweet, deep pleasure and sharp, sour pain at once. She didn’t understand it herself—just knew she was fractured and he had the means to break all her silos and melt her back to whole.

She brought warm, swollen lips to his to whisper, “You change me and it’s good,” the words not coming out right, words for a therapist not a lover, but as close as she could come to telling him what she felt.

He rested his forehead on hers. “I want to believe you.”

The need to convince him this was good demanded too much of her, needing to come from a place inside herself she never visited. She was a songwriter with no words, a singer with no voice. She dug her fingers into his skull, trying to press understanding into him. She stroked his back to soothe his anxiety. She rocked him against her body to impress her need on him, and when she kissed him, she flavoured her lips with the love she could never trust. It wasn’t nearly enough, but it was a start.

Later, exhaustion claimed them both again and they slept, waking at a more civilised hour when Rielle’s alarm peeped. She had to climb across him to shut it off. His hair was a scribbled mess and he needed a shave. He looked sleep rumpled and impossibly, generously gorgeous. It was the perfect excuse to lie across his chest and kiss him properly awake.

Jake played possum for about the length of time it took for Rielle to find out he was ticklish. He grabbed her hands and pinned them to her sides and her laughter was a new delight. A good sound, carefree and happy. He wanted her to feel joy like this not fear, release not shame. He wanted to give her freedom not constraint. But despite the kisses, he was still anxious about how she’d be with him this morning. He didn’t know what to trust from her, the tears or the way she responded to his body. The laughter or the way her eyes could shutter him out.

No woman had ever had him so confused, so tentative. She cut up his confidence. Made him hesitate when he wanted to be certain. Self conscious when he wanted to be selflessly lost in her. He released her hands and she snuggled into him. Their bodies were entirely open to each other now, but even half crazed with lust, Rie held herself apart from him. It wasn’t enough. He felt gypped. He wanted to get behind her detachment, behind her fears, and fight her to show him her truth, but he knew that was dumb. It would only push her away before the natural end of them came. He’d been capable of the whole Zen thing before last night because he’d denied how hard he’d fallen for her. Now there was no denying it; there was only living it until she called it off.

She drew him from his funk by flicking her tongue over the four points of his compass tattoo. “What does this mean to you?”

A dozen ways to answer that—the truth some kind of betrayal—he shrugged. “Just a cool image for a boy scout like me.”

“Liar.” She scraped her teeth against the ink. “It’s more.”

“Yeah, it’s more.” What was the point in lying to her? “It’s a reminder to watch where I’m going. Not get lost in all the white noise. To stay centred and remember what’s true.”

She folded her arms across his chest, propped her chin on her hands, considered him. “Are you lost now, Jake?”

“You could say that. You’re my white noise, Rie. I’m gone, lost in you.”

Jake saw distance form quick shifting clouds in Rielle’s eyes. “Hey, it’s okay, I’m a big boy now. I can handle a little distraction without heading too far off course.” He was getting better at this lying gig. She was teaching him the dubious virtue of hiding his feelings. He drew his hand across her sacrum, found the ripple in her skin and traced the scar around her hip. “Tell me about this?” Her lips narrowed and he knew he’d as good as shoved her away.

She stayed where she was; her heart fluttered softly against his ribs, but her voice was hard, steely. “It was a long time ago, Jake. I hardly remember it.”

“You’re lucky to be alive.”

“I try.” She was shutting down, dismissing him even as she moved up his body and kissed him. Her lips were more a seal than an enticement.

When she broke off, he said, “And the ankle?”

It was a good save. She rolled over beside him, stretching her leg straight up and pointing her toe at the ceiling so the red heart was visible inside her ankle. “My first. After a fight with Rand. I don’t remember what it was about. I was fifteen and Ben was still alive but too sick to take much notice of anything.”

He sat up, ran his hand from her hip bone across her concave belly then over her inside thigh, calf and ankle; he pressed a kiss to the ragged red heart. Her dad would be dead before she finished being much older. She’d said Jake had no idea how hard growing up had been for her. He felt lousy with how judgemental he’d been.

He dropped back to the pillow, rolling towards her and tracing his lips over the little constellation behind her ear. “And this one?”

“Just something I liked.”

So much she hid. “Rand has the same one on his chest.”

She glared at him.

“Hey, you’re the one who wanted all the shirts off.”

She blew out a breath. “The planet is Maggie, my mum, and the stars are Ben, Rand and I. We got them done when Ben died.”

If their point scoring game had still been live, with rules not fuelled by lust alone, Jake would’ve won a point for getting that story out of her. But the game had reached a new level where the play was more intense, and the stakes were about more than mere points. Now he played for trust and truth and some sense of where he might go with this woman.

He brought the inside of Rielle’s wrist to his mouth for a kiss. “And this one?” It was a strange stick figure. A straight line with an open pin head, dissected into thirds by two different types of lines, one straight, the other wavy.

“It’s an ancient alchemy symbol.”

“It’s a wolf.” He could see it now in the aerial view of a head, backbone and tail, the shorter back legs and the longer front legs and paws. “Why the wolf?”

“The wolf mythology is about good and evil, masculine and feminine, being wild and war-like and faithful and nurturing. Wolves are instinctive, strong and fierce. I got this when we started working professionally and it was so important we made it.”

Jake traced the line of the wolf’s back with his tongue. “The wolf is your totem.”

“My wolf is to me what your compass is to you.”

“And this one?” Where a ring would sit, where one did when she was Gym Girl; the entwined initials A and R were inked. Jake drew her middle finger into his mouth and sucked. “Who’s A?”

“I’m A. A for Arielle.”

He sat up fast and leaned over her, hands either side of her hips. “Arielle, your name is Arielle! It’s for you and Rand?”

She nodded, surprised at his delight. “What did you think?”

He flopped back on the pillow. “That A was someone special to you.”

He grunted when she elbowed him. “You can’t be jealous?”

He said, “I can if I want,” and laughed, dodging another elbow and catching the pillow she threw as she climbed out of bed, heading for the bathroom.

Jake folded his arms behind his head, stared at the winking fire detector in the ceiling. It flashed out a heartbeat, like it was alive, making it as close to a living witness as he could have for what he’d just learned. She was Arielle Mainline and she’d shown him the pieces of herself she could hide behind socks and watches, sweatbands, rings and hair.

He wondered what else she’d show him in time—if they had time. He counted off twenty beats of the red indicator light. He heard the shower water run, and smiled at the thought of joining her. He started his count again, made it to five before he got vaguely annoyed she wasn’t going to invite him in, and to ten before she stood in the doorway of the bathroom, naked, wet, wonderful.

“Something wrong with your compass, huh?”

As he scrambled out of the tumbled sheets, he figured maybe his compass was faulty; jammed up by the magnetic pull of a wolf woman who was inexplicably his true north.