Page 12 of Torn
“On one condition. As long as it obligates me later, I’m okay with that.”
He cocked his head, grinning, and disappeared inside.
While he was gone, I settled on the sidewalk, sitting cross-legged, back against the bar’s façade. I figured it must have been getting later, because I noticed the street traffic—both motored and foot-powered—had slowed down. The quiet calmed me (I’d heard the Brits say, “I was in a right state!” and I understood the sentiment). I imagined I could hear the rush of the sea to the shore, although practically, the Atlantic was too far away for that, and I was probably only hearing the ebb and flow of traffic. I rubbed my arms, even though the temperature was probably in the eighties. I’d heard a radio story in passing earlier that day that said the UK was in the midst of a heat wave. A man had died of heatstroke at Blackpool Sands when he’d fallen asleep while sunbathing.
Although I had a pretty good idea, I wondered where tonight would go.
It occurred to me that I didn’t even know this guy’s name, despite my presentiment that he might turn out to be someone more special than my average trick.
I leaned my head back against the wall and closed my eyes for a second. I had an image of falling through space, almost dreamlike.
Then the door behind me creaked open, and he returned, holding two plastic cups of dark beer.
He settled beside me and handed me mine. “Guinness. I hope you like the stuff. It’s supposed to be full of iron.”
“To make me strong?”
He bumped his glass against mine. “I bet you’re pretty strong anyway. Just look at you. Those guns don’t exactly say 98-pound weakling.” He smiled, and I got a jolt when he ran a hand over one of my biceps. “No, if anything maybe the iron will give you a little added endurance.” He very skillfully raised one eyebrow, and his grin was of the cat-that-ate-the-canary variety.
“For what?” I asked, all innocence.
“Oh, I can’t imagine.”
“I bet you can.” I wanted to smile, but suddenly, the sexual tension in the heated air amped up to a boil. I couldn’t find words, so I simply stared at him, knowing how hungry I looked.
He regarded me with the same naked hunger and then took a sip of his Guinness. His cheeks puffed out with the dark liquid. He crooked his finger at me to come forward. I did, and he pressed his mouth to mine, transferring the ale from his mouth to mine. Normally, I would have had ayuckmoment, but this was incredibly sexy, so intimate that I immediately got rock hard.
I swallowed and raised my hand to the back of his neck to draw him closer. Hungrily, I probed the inside of his mouth with my tongue. Again that sensation of falling away, replaced with his presence, simply filled up my world.
When we pulled apart, I was winded and a little shaky. Let’s face it—at that point in my life, I was, to put it baldly, a slut. Jaded. I loved men. I loved their bodies, their cocks, their asses, their chests, the way their thighs looked spread wide, their smiles, their eyes, and how they smelled, especially if theyhadn’trecently showered. So, the fact that I was on the verge of trembling and all but breathless really said something.
My libido had gone to such a hot place, I was like those cartoon thermometers you may have seen where the mercury explodes out of the top. Except it wasn’t mercury exploding out of the top I saw in my mind’s eye.
“Are you okay?” he whispered in my ear and gave a small, exquisitely painful bite to the lobe.
I twisted with discomfort because the front of my shorts was so tight. “No. No, sir, I am not.”
“Do we need to get you somewhere where you can be seen? Where someone can perhaps make you all better?” Again that low whisper in my ear, almost a growl. It was making the hair on my neck stand up. It was making me leak farther south. I shifted again and laughed, swatting at him.
“Like a hospital?” I gulped.
“No, silly. Do you have a place?”
I stared at him, ready to tear his clothes off right here on the street. Ready to tearmy ownclothes off right here on the street, roll on my back, and toss my legs in the air, crying, “Come on, big boy, fill me up!” I could just about do it, too, blind as I was with red-hazed and lustful hunger.
But I did have a shred—just a shred, mind you—of propriety and common sense. These were two qualities I had yet to master drawing heavily upon, so that shred was mighty strained. I gasped, “But I don’t even know your name.”
He sat up a little straighter. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
That cooled the fires raging inside me a little. Was he, perhaps, a boy named Sue? Was he something embarrassing? Wilbur, maybe? God forbid—Marion?
Was he an infamous killer on the lam? Was there an international search in progress for him at this very moment?
Would he turn out to be my long-lost brother? The product of my mother’s secret teenage pregnancy and her giving the baby up for adoption? Was there an intuitive part of me yanking me away from the horror of incest?
I had to laugh at myself. Someday, I’d have to write this shit down. I said, “Seriously. If we’re going anywhere for treatment, I would need a name. First and last, preferably. And don’t bullshit me.”
“Well, what’s yours?”
