The Girl of Tokens and Tears Read online

  “I had a good time tonight, Chrissie.”

  “I had a good time, too.”

  “So do you think you might want to do this again?”

  I smile. “It would be all right.”

  He leans in and gives me a feather-light kiss. He pulls back quickly and climbs from the car.

  He opens my door. I climb out. When he closes the passenger door, I lean back against it. I should go into the house.

  He runs a hand through his hair. “Good night, Chrissie.”

  I stare up at him.

  Neil steps into me, his hands planted on either side of me, and I’m flattened against the car, and he’s kissing me passionately. Across my face. My cheeks. My lips. His lower body pushing into me in time with the thrusts of his tongue. The hungriness of the assault makes my head spin, because I can feel raging desire and need in how he’s kissing me. And I can feel it inside of me as I match each kiss and thrust.

  I lock my mouth to his and the twisting urgency of my body moves against his fully erect cock. He’s grinding into me, as if he can’t get close enough. I feel my body building and building. My flesh heats. My heart accelerates.

  Neil breaks off. He steps back. We’re both breathing raggedly.

  “Shit,” he says, leaning forward. He looks dizzy, disoriented, aroused.

  I stare at him. “Don’t leave yet. You can stay for a while, Neil.”

  His arms are quivering. He’s trying to calm himself. “I’ve got to go, Chrissie. I can’t stay here with you. Your dad is in the house.”

  My eyes widen and my cheeks flush. Neil always plays it so cool, but he’s as hot for me as I am for him tonight.

  “I want you to stay,” I repeat.

  I’m shocked by my admission. Neil looks undecided, almost vulnerable as he exhales another long breath and stares at me.

  I take his hand and start pulling him with me around the house to the side.

  “What are you doing?” he asks.

  I peek around into the backyard. Jack isn’t on the patio. I tug on Neil again, this time at a running pace, and drag him into the pool house. I lock the door behind me. I lean back against it.

  Neil stops in the center of the room, his gaze does a fast float across the fully appointed bedroom, and then he stares at me.

  “No one ever comes here,” I say.

  My voice sounds strange. Excited, and lower than usual. I can feel everything in my body. The blood pumping through my veins. The pulse in my sex. The rise and fall of my breasts. Even the wayward strands of hair teasing my cheeks as I breathe.

  “Are you sure?” Neil asks.

  I’m not sure what he’s asking me.

  “That no one ever comes here? Or that I want to go to bed with you?”

  “Both?” he asks.

  My lids flutter wide. “I’m sure about both.” And I’m surprised how sure I feel about everything this second.

  Neil starts to move towards me. My breath catches in my throat. In a moment, he’s back on me, pushing me into the wall, his cock rubbing me, eager and demanding. I moan into his mouth, parting my lips so his tongue can invade me. The touch of it against mine brings the urgency singing through my limbs. There is something hard and immediate in Neil’s kiss. I’ve never been kissed like this. Not in this bludgeoning desperation. Not even by Alan in his most passionate moments. Neil is all consuming, in want of flesh and nothing else.

  I close my eyes against the disorienting, leveling assault of sensation running through me. His hands close on my wrists and he starts to move us toward the bed. Between kisses and grinds, we shed our clothes, dumping them in a trail on the floor.

  I feel his erection searching against me. I open my eyes as he takes us back upon the bed. Between kisses and brushes against my sex, he works at tearing open a small foil package. For some reason, seeing that heightens my arousal; the thought that he brought it, and perhaps planned through dinner how he would get to use it with me.

  He eases enough away from me to slip it on, and then he’s in me, hard and searching at first thrust.

  “Oh fuck, Chrissie,” he groans into my mouth pumping, filling, searching in my flesh.

  The thrusts are good. I’m almost there. My hips start to move in their own rhythm, using his body to hit all my spots of inner arousal. I’m moving in my own dance. He’s moving in his own dance. Looking for release. Separate, bodies joined, and yet it is strangely right that it should be this way with Neil. The command of our bodies for our own pleasure. Me taking him as I want. Him taking me as he wants. No emotional convolution. Just sex and want and need.

  My head starts to sway on the pillow. My breathing matches his own ragged inhales. I’m nearly there, painfully wet and tight around him.

  “Oh fuck,” he growls. And then there’s the sensation of Neil, overwhelmed by his climax, the intensity of his release, flooding my veins as he pours into me.

  It takes me a moment to realize his body has stopped. My body still wants. It continues to seek even after that last oh fuck.

  I open my eyes. He’s still in me. On me. Balancing on his arms, breathing heavily, his features awash with almost relieved contentment.

  I’m pulsing and close to the edge. He looks down at me and pulls out, easing off of me. He takes the condom off, tossing it carelessly on the floor.

  I stare. I pant in. I pant out. I brush the passion damp hair from my face. I fight to ignore my still overly alert body.

  I don’t know what is on my face, but Neil’s expression changes, a slight reddening moving across his features. He lays his head back on the pillow. He covers his face with his forearm. He looks really cute flushed with embarrassment. It makes it almost OK that I didn’t get to come.

  “I’m sorry. I’ve been thinking about this for three fucking months. I’m not usually so…”his voice trails off.

  “Quick,” I whisper, biting my lower lip.

  He laughs. He lifts his arm from his face. His eyes are smiling when he looks at me. “It’s been a long time. I haven’t been with anyone since my ex.”

  I curl into his sex damp flesh, laying my cheek on his chest. His skin feels good against my flesh. I rub my nose against him. I even like the smell of Neil.

  “How long ago was that?” I ask.

  “Six months.”

  My eyes round. “You haven’t had sex in six months?”

  “Nope.” He holds up his hand. “All these calluses are not only from playing guitar.”

  I flush and he laughs. He curls into me and starts to kiss me. “If you give him a blow job, I bet he’ll come back really quickly also.”

  I crinkle my nose.

  “No?” he whispers between kisses.

  “No.”

  He starts moving down my body, his kisses roaming from my neck to breast to the full underside. My alert sex ticks upward in need. With his hands, he eases me onto my back, his lips roaming lower. To my navel. My pelvis. My mound. He kisses the inside of my thigh. My fingers curl around the sheets.

  And very slowly, teasingly, he brings his tongue to that spot on my clit that makes me crazy. Then it is nothing but breaths and fingers, tongue and tantalizing strokes. My back arches. My body tightens in record speed. Damn, he’s good, really good at this. For some reason, I didn’t expect Neil to be.

  My legs start to quake and I grind into his mouth. He doesn’t pull back. He doesn’t toy with me, bringing me to the edge, and then taking it from me. He takes me directly there. I come hard and fast against his face.

  I’m panting heavily, trying to calm my scattered senses. He kisses his way back upward on my body, claiming my mouth with his, his tongue swirling in me so I can taste me on him. His finger lightly glides over my still pulsing sex.

  “It sucks that you’re so quick,” he whispers into my ear.

  My lids fly wide. It’s then I see the grin on his face.

  “It’s been a long time,” I say sheepishly.

  Neil reclines on his side, looking down at me. “Since
Alan Manzone?”

  I don’t correct him. For some reason I don’t want to tell Neil about my one night stand in August. And in truth, I don’t even count that, because that sexual experience didn’t even touch me.

  He lies back on the bed, pulling me against his body.

  “What’s with that scar on your wrist?” he asks quietly. “And the ones on your stomach and leg.”

  My gut churns. I should have prepared for that question. I didn’t. I didn’t expect Neil to notice the burns on my body, or to ask. And I’m really not prepared for it, emotionally. I’ve only talked about this to three people: Linda Rowan, Jack, and Alan.

  I take in a ragged breath. “I used to have problems, Neil. I used to be a pretty fucked up girl.”

  Neil’s eyes widen, answering in sympathetic heaviness. He turns on his side, moving me into the spoon of his body.

  Into my hair, he says, “I used to have problems, too. I was pretty fucked up.”

  I debate with myself if I should ask what kind of problems. “Are you OK now?” I ask instead.

  His chest shimmies with a hard exhale of breath. “I don’t know, Chrissie. I’m trying to be.”

  I kiss his arm. “I don’t know if I am either.”

  We lie together, sexually spent, emotionally messy, and in this companionable sadness hovering in the room, we feel good. Really, really good together.

  ~~~

  A sound wakes me and I turn over in bed to find Neil grabbing his clothes from the ground and quickly dressing.

  “Where are you going?” I ask.

  Neil looks at me, continuing to dress. “Fuck, Chrissie. We fell asleep. I should have been out of here hours ago.”

  I rub the sleep from my eyes. I stare at the window, the light pouring in through the shutters.

  He stops at the bed. “What do you think is the best way out of here? I don’t want to run into Jack. Do you think he’s still asleep?”

  My eyes round. His nervousness and anxiousness makes me start to laugh.

  “I wouldn’t count on Jack being asleep. He wakes at dawn every day. He’s probably sitting by the pool already.”

  Neil’s expression is priceless. I bury my face into the pillow, laughing until I’m nearly in tears.

  I peek up at him.

  “Fuck.” Neil runs an anxious hand through his hair. His eyes sharpen. “What do you think he’s going to do?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know.” And I really don’t. I didn’t think that far ahead last night.

  I sit up, tugging the blanket with me to cover my naked breasts.

  “Just leave,” I suggest.

  Neil’s eyes widen. “Like that. Just walk out there.”

  He’s staring at me like I’m out of my mind.

  His gaze softens. “I had a good night with you, Chrissie.”

  My flesh warms. “I had a good night with you.”

  He goes to the bathroom, comes back with a handful of tissues, and starts picking up the condoms off the floor. I lay back against the pillow on my side watching him.

  “When do you go back to Berkeley?” I ask.

  “This afternoon.”

  He balls up the condoms and tissues, almost tosses it in the trash, then thinks better of it and shoves it into his pocket.

  I stare up at him. “I leave today too. Don’t fly. Drive back with me.”

  It looks like he’s debating with himself and a whisper of hurt moves through me since I can’t figure out why he would debate that. Free transportation over a high-priced plan ticket? A no brainer. Does he want space from me?

  He sinks down beside me on the bed and kisses me.

  “What time are you leaving?” he asks.

  “I want to get on the road around eleven.”

  Neil nods. “I can get Mia’s car back to her and packed up by then.”

  I smile. I watch him move toward the door. He puts his hand on the knob. He shakes his head. He leans his brow against the wood. He says, “Oh fuck,” and then he passes through the door.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Spring Semester, 1990…

  As I pull off the freeway to start making my way across Berkeley to home, I peek at Neil out of the corner of my eye. He’s quiet, troubled, and a little grim. He’s been that way since he climbed into the car in Santa Barbara.

  I flip on my turn signal. “I’m not letting you out of this car until you tell me what happened.”

  Neil closes his eyes, doing a slight shudder, and then looks at me. “It was the worst fucking ten minutes of my life. I’m not repeating it by telling you about it.”

  I pucker my lips to keep from laughing. Jack only talked with him for ten minutes. It’s rattled Neil in a big way. Ten minutes. How bad could it be?

  “Jack seemed fine when he talked to me,” I say, turning down my street toward the condo.

  Neil stares. “You’re his daughter. I’m some asshole he caught sneaking out of his house.”

  “You’re not an asshole.”

  “I feel like an asshole. He made me feel like an asshole.”

  I laugh this time. I can’t stop it. Neil is a deeply sensitive guy. He’s also very respectful in a sweet, quiet way. Very different than how I expected him to be under his layer of hot-guy arrogance.

  I turn into my driveway.

  Neil rakes a hand through his hair. “Do you really want to know what Jack said?”

  I nod eagerly. I stop without going all the way to the carport. I turn in my seat to face him.

  Neil takes a deep breath. “I only remember the highlights clearly. The rest is a blur. He told me if you hurt her, I will kick the shit out of you. And then he said nothing for like five minutes. He just sat there staring at me, and I don’t know what it is, but it’s fucking unnerving to have Jackson Parker stare at you. Then he said Don’t be a fuck-up. No one can make you a fuck-up unless you’re willing. And then he walked away.”

  My eyes fly wide as laughter explodes from my chest, throaty and deep. I curl my fingers around the steering wheel and lay my head against it, trying to contain my humor.

  “It’s not funny,” Neil says, but he’s laughing a little himself. He smiles. “What did he say to you?”

  I glance up at Neil. “Six words. I wrote them in my journal and counted them afterward. I hope you used a condom.”

  Neil grimaces.

  “Your dad is an interesting man.”

  I nod. “Jack is interesting.”

  I start inching forward toward my parking space in the lot. I turn the corner at the carport row. I slam on my brakes.

  “Crap,” I exclaim, my fingers tightening on the wheel. “I’ve been on the road for seven hours. I’m tired. I don’t need this. Can’t he pick on someone else for a change?”

  Neil looks at me. “What?”

  I shake my head. “That freaking van. Every time I turn around it’s in my spot.” I push back in my seat. “Rene wants me to have management tow it. I’m towing it tonight.”

  Neil points. “Don’t go all princess-ape-shit. There’s a spot over there. Just park over in guest parking.”

  I clench my teeth. “I don’t want to park in guest parking. I want to park in my spot.” But I park in the vacant space anyway.

  I stop the car. I turn to look at Neil. He’s smiling. He lightly brushes my lips. “You’re so cute when you’re snooty and angry,” he whispers, leaning in to kiss me again.

  I melt into his mouth and, between the light play, I say, “And you’re so cute when you’re freaked out over Jack.”

  He stops kissing. He stills. “That was a mood kill.”

  He opens his door and gets out of the car. I climb from the driver’s seat. I stare at him across the roof of the car as he stretches. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now. Neil didn’t have me drop him at his place; he just had me come straight home.

  “Do you want to come up for a while?” I ask.

  He reaches in for his bag. “No. I should probably head out. I’ve got some stuff I need t
o do before work tomorrow.”

  Stuff? I frown. Why so secretive here, Neil? I watch him lift my duffel from the trunk and set it out on the ground. He goes in for his guitar case.

  “I’ll call you.” He drops a light, quick goodbye kiss on my lips.

  I stare up at him. “You can’t call me. You don’t have a phone. You don’t know my number.”

  He grins. “I can get your number from Jared.”

  I flush.

  “He was really stoked that you gave it to him, Chrissie.”

  Shit, I’d forgotten I’d given my number to Jared. I wonder if it matters to Neil. I’m not sure what this is to him or to me. It’s too new.

  I stand beside my car, watching Neil walk away. At the exit of the parking lot, he turns back and waves, and I smile.

  I grab my duffel and make my way to my top floor condo via the elevator. I hate coming home to an empty house. Rene won’t be home from her dad’s for two more days. Neither of us has classes starting until Wednesday. I had planned to stay in Santa Barbara up until Rene returned, but Neil leaving for Berkeley today made me change my plans on the fly. I sort of thought Neil would spend the night.

  Not one of your smarter calls, Chrissie. Stuff. He has stuff to do. Crap, why doesn’t anything with Neil go as I expect it to?

  I drop my keys onto the table by the door, switch on the lights, kick off my flip-flops, and toss my duffel across the room toward the bedroom door. I click on the TV just so there’s sound in the room and wander into the kitchen.

  I grab the phone, the refrigerator magnet with the telephone number for the management company, and sink down in a chair at the kitchen table. Snooty-princess is about to go ape-shit and get that ugly van towed.

  I punch in the numbers. Ring. Ring. Ring. Recorded voice. No one will be in the office until Monday. Great.

  I put the magnet back on the fridge, grab a Diet Coke, and stand at the kitchen patio doors, staring out at the view. I love how the city looks at night, all the sparkling lights from San Francisco bouncing off the water of the Bay. A million dollar view or so Mr. Thompson said in that you girls don’t live in the real world way he has from time to time. He may be a reformed man-whore now that he’s remarried, but he’s still a jerk.