My shoulders heave and I pant hard, as if I’ve just finished a race, and maybe I have. Soon, I open my eyes, but I still feel woozy, as if I’m barely grasping at reality, as if I’m still living on the edge of a dream. But he’s here, looking at me, with the same wildness in his eyes that I felt moments before.
“Did you picture that before I did it to you?”
I press my teeth into my lips once then nod, still dazed on the aftereffects.
“You imagined me tasting you? You fantasized about me eating you?”
“Yes.”
“Was it how you imagined it? Coming for me?”
I shake my head.
“No?”
“It was so much better.”
He inhales sharply, and the expression on his face says he wishes he could take me now, yank me off the piano, and slam me down hard on his cock, and f**k me right here, like this.
“Do you want to f**k me?” I say in a voice that’s comprised solely of lust.
“Yes. But I’m not going to.”
Chapter 16
Jill
I wash my hands then dry them, checking out my reflection one last time. My cheeks are still rosy, and I have that just-been-fucked look still. I don’t think that’s going to disappear any time soon, and I’m okay with that. I toss the paper towel in the trash can, smooth my hands over my red sweater and return to the backstage hallway, then to the stage. I still feel like I’m floating, but there’s another feeling surrounding me and it’s harder to get a handle on.
Nervousness maybe? Chased with a touch of hope? I’m honestly not sure, and maybe that’s because I don’t know what’s going on. I barely even understand who I become around him, how I can spin out of my carefully constructed world of happy-go-lucky, everything-is-fine and transform into this ravenous woman grasping at pleasure as if I need it for my very survival. As if the release I feel with Davis has somehow become as necessary as breath and air.
I move the curtains aside and walk to the piano, trying to compose myself. But into what I don’t know. The actress here for rehearsal? The woman unfazed by her boss? Or the person who doesn’t have a handle on herself?
He’s on the bench, straddling it rather than sitting at it, and he’s swiping his index finger across his phone.
“Texting someone?” Something annoys me about the fact that he’s doing something so ordinary—texting—while I don’t have a clue how to act. I wish I could abort the snottiness in my voice, but it’s too late.
He shakes his head. “No. I’m reading the news.”
“Oh.” Now I feel foolish, but also relieved. I sit down next to him. “Anything interesting going on in the world?”
“It’s snowing, and the government still has a deficit,” he says with that wry smile. I want to reach out and touch his face, trace the outline of his lips. So I do, and he leans into me, like a cat who likes being pet. Then I stop because I want to know more about him. I want to understand him.
“Are you a news junkie or a weather junkie?”
“Both. But in this case, news. I read the New York Times religiously.”
“What else? Do you read books?”
“I have nothing against books. But I would have to say nearly all my reading is the newspaper. Well, the paper online.”
“Cover to cover?”
He nods, and it seems fitting that he’s a news hound. It works for him. It suits him. He seems like a man who wants to understand the world, and so that’s what he does. But I also think there’s more to it. “Do you think you lean towards news so much because you spend your day with make believe?”
His lips quirk up as if he’s intrigued by the question, considering it. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. But yeah, maybe that’s part of it. I spend all my hours constructing the most believable artifice I can, so when I’m not playing pretend, I want to know what’s real.”
Real. There it is again, and the word makes me wince because I’m struggling so much with holding onto real and make believe, and they seem to be seeping into each other.
He fingers a strand of my hair absently and it’s such a sweet gesture, because that’s all it is. It’s not a prelude, it’s not the start of something more. It is what it is. “What about you, Jill? What do you read?”
I take a long but quiet inhale and I stare off at the faraway balcony of the theater. The balcony that will be full of people soon. I flash back to Sunday with Patrick, to how I was paralyzed with some strange fear about answering truthfully. Maybe that’s why I’ve been asking Davis these questions. Maybe I’ve been asking so he could ask me back. So I can test myself. See if I can do it. If I can speak a simple truth.
I look at him, and it doesn’t hurt, I don’t feel like all my words are stuck. It’s easy, remarkably easy to answer.
“Romance,” I say, and it’s as if a piece of my regret floats away when I voice a truth. It feels good, so I keep going. “Racy romance, to be precise.”
A grin tugs at his lips. “Of course you read racy romance,” he says in a flirty, sexy voice. No judgement. No teasing. Just knowing.
“Why do you say of course?”
“Because you couldn’t play this part if you weren’t a romantic. Because I see it in you. Because I see all this passion, all this pain, all this hope. All this sexiness.”
I can feel it again. The same thing I felt when I sang in our first private rehearsal. As if a fragment of my frozen heart is breaking away, as if the ice I’ve encased myself in is calving off, freeing up a tiny part of me that wants to be known. And it feels good, so more words spill out, like a confessional. “I read dirty stuff. And racy stuff. And erotic romance. And I love books with heroes who talk dirty,” I say as I move closer, and run my fingers along the smooth buttons on his shirt.