The One Who Got Away Read online

  “Whichever,” I said, and kissed her again.

  “Fuck…” She pushed me away. “Billy, I can’t do this. I mean, I can, but I don’t want to get you all worked up.”

  “You’re doing pretty badly. What’s wrong?”

  “I’m on my period.”

  I exhaled and smiled at her. “I thought you were going to say you had a boyfriend.”

  “No boyfriend.” She brushed my lips with hers. “But you can’t fuck me.”

  “I wasn’t going to try and fuck you.”

  “Why not?” She was grinning, playful.

  “Where? Over behind the Dumpsters? The romance.”

  “Are you pedestaling me?”

  “I…no.”

  “I think you are.” She started unbuckling my belt.

  “Sadie…”

  “Billy.”

  “You don’t have to…”

  “Shut up, Billy.”

  The store was closed and in darkness. We could be seen from the street, but Orange County isn’t known for its pedestrian traffic at the best of times, never mind at close to midnight in a dubious part of town, and I doubt anybody in a car would have seen much.

  “Sadie…” I said again, this time because she’d undone my pants and pulled down the front of my underwear, her hand warm around my cock as she took me into her mouth.

  It didn’t take too long. I was already so worked up, reeling from her kisses, her scent, the feel of her breast beneath my hand, that I couldn’t have held back if I’d wanted to.

  “I’m gonna come,” I muttered, in a low, breathless voice.

  Sadie went harder, faster, stroking me as her lips moved and her tongue teased. I groaned as I reached my orgasm, my cock twitching and pulsing in her mouth, sweet relief running through my body so that I wanted to slump back on the wall and just close my eyes.

  She pushed up off her knees and straddled me, put her arms around me and let her head fall on my shoulder.

  “Not to pedestal you,” I said, when I’d caught my breath, “but that doughnut is now the second greatest thing that’s ever happened to me.”

  “You’re a dork.”

  “And you’re amazing.”

  She sat back a little, on my thighs, and stared at me for long enough that I started to feel uncomfortable.

  “Your guys won’t leave without you, will they?” she asked.

  “What time is it?”

  “After twelve, I bet.”

  “I probably should get back. The show was over a while ago.”

  We walked back to the street in a silence that was suddenly awkward. I wasn’t sure if I’d said the wrong thing or if she was regretting what had happened. My knuckles brushed hers, and I found myself wanting to grab her hand, to say something.

  “Sadie!”

  We both looked up. They were waving to her from a car on the other side of the street.

  She grinned and waved back. “Hey!”

  “Where the fuck have you been?” asked a guy hanging out the passenger side window. “We’ve been looking everywhere.” She turned back to me. “That’s my ride.”

  “Yeah, okay. Will I see you again?”

  She threw herself at me, almost knocking me off-balance, and pressed her mouth to mine in a brief but fervent kiss. “I’ll come to a show,” she said.

  “You’d better.”

  And she was gone, running across the street to her friends, waving to me from the car as it pulled away, leaving me alone on the sidewalk, feeling like I’d just been punched in the gut.

  I get through “Story of My Life,” extra verse and all, and I get through the rest of my set without casting too many glances Sadie’s way. There are no chairs left, so she leans against the wall at the bottom of the stairs, sipping her drink, watching, listening. At the end of the last song, I look up to find her smiling at me. She mouths two words at me and then disappears up the stairs.

  Parking lot.

  You can’t just ghost out of the room when you’re the only act in such an intimate setting. People want to tell you it was a great show, talk about the bands, talk about the scene, ask where you’ve been and what you’ve been doing. I keep the conversations as brief as I can, but by the time I get upstairs and out to the parking lot, it’s been twenty minutes or more and my stomach’s in knots. She’s there, though, standing side-on to me, watching the people in the street.

  “You know, when you said you’d come to a show…”

  She turns. “I’m not the one who left town.”

  I hold out my arms and she steps into my embrace, presses her face into my chest.

  “I’d sort of given up on you by then. That was, what, a year later?”

  “Eight months.” She looks up at me. Those eyes. “When was the last time you showered, Billy?”

  “I mostly go by Bill now.”

  She wrinkles her nose. “It sounds old. When was the last time you had a good night’s sleep, Billy?”

  “Shower was a couple of days ago. Sleep, I don’t know. I don’t always have the money for a motel room. Besides, I thought you liked grimy.”

  She steps back. “Do you need a place to stay?”

  “Need? No.” I point at my car.

  “Wow,” she says, looking back over her shoulder. “That is a punk rock car. Did you have it the last time we met?”

  “I did.”

  “Would you like a place to stay? I have a spare bed and a really nice shower.”

  “Is there a Mr. Sadie?”

  “No. No husbands, boyfriends, roommates or cats. Just me.”

  “Okay. I’ve got to pack up my stuff and get my money first. Can you wait a few minutes?”

  “I’ve waited eleven years.”

  I open my mouth and close it again. “You make this sound really intense when you say that.”

  “It’s not intense?”

  “This is where I say the wrong thing and then you get into a random car and drive out of my life.”

  “Is that what you…?” She laughs a little. “Get your stuff. I’ll wait.”

  It’s a couple of trips to grab my equipment and collect a surprisingly thick pile of bills from the bartender. When I’m ready, Sadie hands me a piece of paper with an address scribbled on it.

  “Follow me. If you get lost or that car spontaneously crumbles into rust, that’s where we’re going. Let’s not take any chances.”

  It isn’t far, just a couple of exits north. She lives in a gated community, in a townhouse with a beautifully trimmed lawn. When I kill the engine, I’m greeted with the chitter of sprinklers.

  “I guess you don’t work at Starbucks anymore,” I say, climbing out of my car.

  “I work for an insurance company,” she says. “Executive assistant.”

  “I feel so fucking grimy right now.”

  She laughs. “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

  Her place is three levels, hardwood floors and a stark black and white color scheme. Everything looks new, and—if not expensive—not exactly cheap.

  “This is not how I imagined you living.”

  She falls onto the couch. “You’re not the only one. I moved in here a couple of months ago. It feels like a show home or something. I have no idea what I’m doing.”

  “Well, you’re not sleeping in your car.”

  “There’s that. Billy, you look exhausted. Why don’t you go take that shower? The bathroom’s upstairs.”

  “I really appreciate this, Sadie.”

  “I really appreciated hearing you play tonight. Brought back a lot of memories.” The way she looks at me reminds me of when she told me I inspired mosh pits.

  “I’m glad I came back. And I’m glad you showed up.”

  I head upstairs to the bathroom, where I undress and look at myself in the mirror, trying to reconcile how I look now with how I looked the night we met. I’m a little leaner than I was then, and I keep my hair a little shorter. There’s a severity about my features that never used to be there, a prod
uct of my mostly ascetic way of living. I don’t look like I just got hit in the face with a decade, though, just tired, worn down.

  Sadie’s shower is hard to the point of being abrasive. It’s wonderful. I turn the heat up as far as I can stand it and let the spray pound my face and my shoulders until I can’t take it anymore, then I wash myself, wondering if she still uses the same brand of soap I smelled on her the first time we kissed, a thought that leads very naturally to considering the idea of her in this very shower, naked and glistening, the spray reddening her skin.

  “Billy?”

  I didn’t lock the bathroom door. Didn’t even close it. She’s standing right outside.

  “Yeah?”

  “Just making sure you didn’t drown in there. It’s been a while.”

  “Sorry. I got a little caught up in how amazingly brutal your shower is. It’s like a massage. Can you pass me a towel?”

  She steps into the bathroom as I step out the shower, takes the towel off the rail but makes no immediate move to hand it to me.

  “And you were so shy the last time,” she says.

  “Technically, there wasn’t a last time.”

  She looks down at my cock, still semierect from my impure shower thoughts. “Is that for me?”

  “Inspired by you.”

  We start laughing at the same time, and she comes into my arms again, tossing the towel aside as she kisses me, grabbing my cock.

  “You’re so…” She breathes laughter, warm against my face.

  “So what?”

  “I don’t know, but I want you to take me in the bedroom and do things to me.”

  I lift her easily off the ground and she wraps her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck, kissing my ear and my neck as I carry her out of the bathroom.

  “Second door on the right,” she says.

  I nudge it open with my foot, carry her in and lay her down on the bed. She watches me as I undo her jeans and pull them down, taking her panties with them. In the light from the hallway, her eyes are half-lidded, her lips wet, slightly parted. I lie down on the bed beside her. This time I kiss her slowly, thoroughly, holding the side of her face, stroking her jawline with my knuckles, then letting my hand stray lower, up underneath her shirt, smoothing the soft skin of her belly. I kiss her neck, sucking lightly, pulling my lips to her skin, grazing her a little with my teeth.

  She sighs. “Billy…”

  “Mmm?”

  “You scared me. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was scared of how attracted I was to you. We’d known each other less than an hour.”

  “You don’t have to explain.”

  “I want to.”

  “You don’t have to explain right now.”

  I cover her mouth with mine, slide my hand down between her thighs, finding her wet. She moans and bites my lip, hips moving as I caress her, hand on the back of my head, grabbing my hair. Her desire, her lust, is driving me crazy. I pull away from her hungry mouth, smiling at her as I slide down her body, my hair, still wet from the shower, dripping on her skin, making her laugh as I press my lips to her belly, out to her hip bone and down to her thigh.

  “Oh, god…please…” she says, in this desperate whisper that about kills me.

  Still, I tease her. I trail kisses up the inside of her thigh, inhale her scent, breathe on her, just brush her with my lips so that she twitches and then half laughs, half sighs as I lick and kiss her other thigh, pull away and then finally press my open mouth to her, exploring with my tongue, finding that hard little bud at the junction of her labia, teasing and playing until she lifts her hips off the bed and grabs my hair again, this time with both hands, urging more.

  I listen to her moans, feel the way she reacts, adjusting to chase her pleasure, wanting so badly to get her off. She’s tensing and relaxing, writhing on the bed, quieter than she was, her moans strained, like she’s struggling. I can feel her getting closer, and I try not to get carried away, try to focus on her.

  Finally, she’s moving around so much that she’s getting away from me. I grab her hands and pin them to the bed at her sides, hold her in place so she can’t get away, and that’s when she comes, when she stops breathing altogether, her head back and her body rigid, the room silent for a few seconds until the air rushes out of her in a long, low moan and she falls back.

  I lie beside her and she smiles at me, breathing deeply, hair damp with sweat.

  “I love what you do,” she says, a few minutes later. “The romance of it. I love the way you don’t give a fuck. The first time I saw you onstage, you blew me away. When I came up to you outside, it was just to say that I thought you were awesome, that the show was great, but I just felt so fucking drawn to you. I mean, lust, yeah, but you have something about you, like you know something the rest of us don’t. It scared the shit out of me. I worked so hard and made so many sacrifices going to college and working that stupid fucking job to make ends meet, and sitting on your lap in the parking lot of fucking Krispy Kreme, I felt like I could just get in that van with you and never miss any of it.”

  “I’d have let you.”

  “I know. The way you looked at me made it real, like we were about to do something crazy. I had to talk myself down, let that rational voice that knows how much guys love blow jobs take over.” She pulls closer to me, puts her head on my chest. “I thought about it a lot, but by the time I plucked up the courage to come and see you again, the band had broken up. You were gone.”

  “I’m here now,” I say, “and it’s a hell of a lot better than sleeping in my car. This is the first time in a long time I haven’t been in any pain.”

  “Maybe you should stay awhile,” she says, sitting up, crossing her arms over her chest and taking off her shirt. “See how the other half lives.”

  I smile, thinking of a song I might play, a song I might write. “Maybe I will.”

  AGAIN

  Renee Luke

  Jones, Mace

  Drawing in a deep breath, Cyrena Howell tenderly traced the name on her manila file with her fingertip. How many Mace Joneses could there be, and how many would actually be on base near the tiny Southern California town where they both grew up? It had to be him. She closed her eyes against the sudden burn of moisture, but that didn’t stall the barrage of memories. A lump tightened her throat.

  Shaking her head, she opened her eyes and willed away the threat of tears. She didn’t have time for memories of a dozen years ago, of young love and unkept promises of forever. Swallowing down the lump, she pulled her shoulders back and tore her gaze away from his name. She’d become accustomed to and accomplished at suppressing the yearning for shoulda, woulda, couldas. She’d spent years mastering the technique of giving up what she wanted to do for all the things that needed doing.

  Right now, she needed to do her damn job, not stare at her patient’s name like a crushing teenager. Trembling hands be damned, she twisted the handle and silently stepped into the exam room where he was waiting.

  He was sitting on the treatment table, his head bent down as he scrolled through pages on his cell phone. He hadn’t noticed her. Except for the width of his shoulders and breadth of his chest, he was just as she had seen him last. He wore his green cammies and jungle boots, his hair cleanly shaven into a tight fade, his skin the same tempting milk chocolate.

  Her heart thumped hard in her chest, her lungs burning as she held her breath. He might look like the boy who’d left her over a decade ago, but he wasn’t.

  He’d come home a man.

  Her body responded like a woman. A woman who’d known the tenderness of his touch, the gentleness of his kisses, and had set an unattainable standard for every other lover since. Her nipples puckered. Every cell warmed in memory.

  His arms were thick, heavily corded with a shadow of a tattoo teasing the edge of his sleeve. And scars? She narrowed her eyes and squinted at his arm. If only she hadn’t been distracted by hi
s name and had taken a moment to read over his file before entering, so she’d be aware of the extent of his injuries. She tightened her hand around her folder to keep from reaching for him, her fingers itching to trace the scars. To erase them.

  To fix him.

  “Mace,” she said. She hadn’t meant it to sound so hushed, like a bedroom whisper.

  His gaze lifted to hers, recognition instant. A moment—just a fleeting moment—passed, but it stretched between them, the silence full of words needing to be said, but unspoken. His dark eyes seemed to melt and return to solid in the span of a heartbeat.

  “Cyrena.”

  She saw his throat work as if saying her name had been difficult.

  Saying her name seemed to jar him and he jumped to his feet to stand by the exam table. But the movement cost him. Cyrena didn’t miss the slight wince or the look of pain that marred his brow, even as he stood steadily. She was always telling her patients that they were injured and didn’t need to get up when she came in, but it seemed they always did regardless of her reminders.

  Mace was clearly here because he was injured. He didn’t need to stand for her, but he was a Marine and standing when a woman entered seemed to go hand in hand with wearing the uniform. Her gaze traveled down his body. He wore that uniform well.

  “What are you doing—” they both began at once.

  He smiled. Oh damn, the same lopsided grin on those same lickable lips that had seduced her out of her virginity. Cyrena wanted to turn around and run. No, she wanted to strip off her scrubs and fuck away the years on the exam table. Her pussy was damp. Her inner thighs ached.

  He lifted his left arm toward her. “You first.”

  She shook her head and cleared her throat. “Was a stupid question. You were injured and are here for therapy.” She opened the file and glanced down. He’d taken some shrapnel to his right shoulder and upper arm and had had several surgeries trying to repair the damage.

  She glanced back at him, looking all delicious and sexy in his fatigues. Her assistant was supposed to have asked him to remove his shirt and put on an exam gown, but Mace was still fully clothed. She skimmed down his chart. “Two weeks post-surgery.” She glanced at him and warmth spread across her cheeks. “Are you able to remove your shirt?”