Читать книгу Switch - Меган Харт - Страница 8

Daylight teased the sky by the time I made it home. I paid the cabdriver and ignored the way he ogled my thighs when I stepped onto the curb. I didn’t want to be sorry I’d gone to bed with Austin even though I’d said I wouldn’t. The sex had been too good, as good as it can be only with someone who already knows you, but I’d started a new life, with a new job and a new apartment, in a new city. I wanted new habits, too, and Austin was definitely not one of those.

I wanted a man who’d gone to college. Who had a career, not a job. One who owned a car and paid bills on time and wore clothes that matched. A professional man, not one who smoked and drank and cheated, or one who’d run up the credit card and skipped out into the night without leaving a note. Not one who wrecked my car because he didn’t have one of his own.

I wanted a man, not a boy in a man-suit.

You’re unfair to me, Austin had accused me more than once. I’m not like those guys.

Those guys. The men my mother dated. No, he wasn’t like those guys. At least not mostly. But I’d always been waiting for him to turn into one. Maybe he was right and I’d been unfair, but he’d done his share of shitty things even when he knew they’d hurt me. Hell. I’d done the same.

My heels sounded very loud on the marble tile as I passed the front desk, empty at this hour. I’d occupied the elevator alone, dressed to kill, more times than I could count on both hands. Tonight, because I knew I looked ridden hard and put away wet, a hand shoved its way through the doors just before they closed, and I had to share it.

“Thanks,” said that man I’d seen before. “I’m too tired for the stairs.”

He slouched, eyes half lidded, in the corner opposite and just behind mine. His shoulders lifted with a sigh that became a yawn, prompting one from me I hid behind my hand. He looked at me with a half smile. Conscious of the fact I was sure my lipstick was smeared and my eyeliner smudged, I smiled back. We both turned to face the front, but I felt the weight of his gaze on me, could see him looking from the corner of my eye. Unlike before, this time he wasn’t too distracted to notice me. When I turned my face, just slightly, he was studiously watching the blinking white numbers showing the elevator’s progress.

I had to bite my lower lip against a smile. He was seriously eye-fucking me. Who doesn’t get off on being noticed?

It took a very long time, it seemed, to reach the first floor. He moved past me without touching me, but my skin prickled as though he had. He stepped out of the elevator and I let out the breath I’d been holding. I’d seen him twice now. Three times? It must have been the charm, because unlike all the others, this time he was the one who looked back.

“I missed you.”

I’m already diving into Austin’s arms when he says it. A week was too long to be away from him. His parents had taken him from me, stolen him to go to visit family for a funeral. At nineteen, he’s plenty old enough to stay by himself, but they’d insisted he go along to pay his respects. I think it’s more like they don’t want us fucking our way through every room in the house while they’re away, but I can’t blame them. They’d have been right. I wouldn’t have felt comfortable going along, even if they had invited me, but a week is an eternity in the summer when the only thing I have to look forward to is long hours with Austin’s mouth on mine.

His arms slip around me, hold me tight, and his hands run down my back to grip my ass. Nobody’s watching, and would I care if they were? I’m just so frigging glad he’s home, it’s worth the risk of parental discovery to have him squeezing me. His cock nudges my belly.

He really did miss me.

“I brought you something.”

“What?” I already have my hands out, expecting a snow globe, a T-shirt. A magnet, maybe. Something he picked up in the Pennsylvania Turnpike gift shop.

Austin hands me a small box with a lid. Inside it is a package of paper, not note cards but stationery. I lift a page and hold it to the light. It’s soft on my fingertips and has a faint design of flowers pressed into the paper. I give him a look.

How did he know?

“It reminded me of you.” Austin gives an awkward shrug, as if his admission embarrasses him. “You like that sort of thing.”

I do. Tablets and note cards and pretty papers. I always have, but this is the first time someone’s ever noticed or given me something as pretty as this. “I love it.”

“When’s your mom getting home?”

My mom’s been working weird shifts at the Hershey plant since she got pregnant. Because it’s summer, her brother Lane is home from college and taking over the shop, and I’ve been putting in more than my share of hours there, too. I haven’t seen her much. I’m not sure if she’s avoiding me, but I know I’m trying not to hang around her too much. She’s only got another month or so before she pops, and I can’t even begin to imagine what’s going to happen then.

“Late.” I snuggle closer, my knee going between his and my cheek fitting just right into the place over his heart.

Austin pushes me so he can grin down into my face. “Good.”

The apartment isn’t big enough to make the chase much of an effort, but we manage to work up a sweat as I dodge his grip and duck behind the big wooden rocking chair to keep out of his grasping hands. Not that I don’t want to be caught. Just that it’s fun to make him catch me.

When he does, his mouth slants over mine, his tongue probing deep inside. He’s got me so hot already. Hot for him. His hand goes straight between my legs, no fooling around now, and he cups my pussy through my thin cotton shorts.

The rocking chair, set in motion by our mock struggle, bumps my ass as we kiss. I grab the back of it to still it, then push Austin from my mouth and shuck out of my shorts. I’m wearing the tiny bikini panties he likes, but those go, too.

I lift my T-shirt up over my breasts, no bra covering them, and settle into the chair. I spread my legs. He’s watching, jaw slack and eyes gleaming. He doesn’t move.

He’s eaten me out before, though I’ve never asked him to. It’s always just…happened. But it’s all I’ve been thinking about for the past week, his mouth and tongue and fingers fucking me until I come. Every night while he was gone I’d lie in bed, eyes wide open to the dark, and imagine him there with me. I’d pretend my fingers were his tongue, flicking my clit or sliding inside me, but it was never the same.

My friend Kira says her boyfriend won’t go down on her. Not ever. He’s all about the blow jobs but refuses to dine at the Y. He’s a pussy about eating pussy. I’d break up with a guy who expected me to suck cock but wouldn’t return the favor, but Kira says she’s in love. I think she just doesn’t know what love is.

Austin’s friends, the guys from the football team and the men he works with at his dad’s construction company, would probably say they don’t go down on their girlfriends, either. I wonder how many are telling the truth? I wonder if Austin tells them about me, if men talk about their sex lives in the same detail I do with my friends. I wonder if he’d admit he makes me come with his face between my legs, or if he’d deny it.

“Austin.” My voice is low and slow, almost not mine. His gaze jerks up. I put my hands on my inner thighs and open myself wider to his sight. “Use your mouth on me.”

He’s already on his knees before I finish. I gasp when his hot, wet mouth finds my skin. When his tongue strokes over my clit, I grip the arms of the chair and toss back my head, my back arching. It feels so good it almost hurts. The chair rocks me into his mouth again and again as he licks and kisses and sucks. When he puts a finger inside me, then two, I come hard with a strangled shout.

I look down at him. He’s smiling, full of himself. I touch his hair and want to tell him how much I love him, but something about the way he’s looking at me makes me suddenly shy. I want to close my legs, but his head is resting on my thigh and I can’t without pushing him away.

“What?” I sound nervous, because I am. “What are you looking at?”

“You.” Austin kisses my thigh.

I push him onto his back on the floor and straddle his legs until I can get his belt open and his pants down. His cock springs free, nice and thick. I take it in my hand and stroke. He’s already got a little pre-come dripping, and I lean forward to taste him.

“Fuck!” His hips jerk and his hand tangles in my hair. “Paige, God.”

“What?” I want to put him inside me, but we don’t have any condoms handy and there’s no way I’ll go bareback.

“Nobody…”

I frown and sit back on my heels, my grip tightening on his prick. “Nobody what?”

What the hell did he get up to while he was away?

“Nobody does this like you,” Austin says.

He thinks he’s giving me a compliment, but I let him go and grab up my shorts. I make sure to grab my panties, too. Don’t want to leave them on the floor for my mom to find. “Nobody, who?”

“Huh?” He lifts his head to stare, then sits when he sees my expression. “What’s the matter?”

I stab the air with my finger. My throat is tight when I swallow, and I blink away the burn of tears. “Nobody does what like me? Suck cock? Nobody, who? Who else is sucking your dick, Austin?”

“Nobody,” he says and must realize how it sounds, because he scrambles to his feet to come after me when I stalk down the hall to my tiny bedroom at the back of the apartment. “That’s not what I meant, baby.”

“Don’t you ‘baby’ me.” I grab my robe from the hook on the door so I don’t have to try to get into my clothes while we fight.

His hands come down on my shoulders and turn me, reluctantly, to face him. “I just meant that the other guys, they tell me their girls don’t do the stuff you do.”

I guess that answers my question about if they talk about sex. I don’t smile, don’t lift a brow, just keep my face stony. Austin pushes my hair off my shoulders.

“That’s all I meant. That nobody…that you’re so great.”

“Great at sucking cock?” I frown, even though I’m glad to know he thinks so.

“And other things.” He teases me back toward the bed and I let him until we’re both lying on top of the quilt my grandma made me.

Austin strokes down my body and kisses me. When his hand finds my pussy again, I know I’m wet from earlier. His fingers slide against me. His breath is hot on my neck as he pants. His thumb presses my clit and his fingers move inside, then out. Against my thigh, his cock presses hot and hard. He moves his mouth to my nipple and sucks gently, and though I came just a little while ago, desire gathers in my belly again.

“I missed you,” he says again.

“Did you?”

Austin nods against my neck. It seems stupid to be angry with him now, or to worry about if he cheated on me while he was gone. I know he did, once or twice, when we were in high school. Hell. I cheated on him, too, if you want to count the times he thought we were on and I thought we were off and vice versa. But not since graduating, not since we both got full-time jobs and a full-time relationship.

He fumbles for the rubbers I keep in the box in my nightstand and puts one on. I could help him, but I’d rather watch just now. He rolls it on over his cock, his teeth clamped onto his lower lip in concentration. Then he moves up my body and centers himself before pushing inside me.

I groan; I can’t help it. I fucking love this, the sex. His weight. His prick so hard and thick and long inside me, so long it hurts sometimes when he fucks me, but I like that, too. He’s got muscles in his arms from all the heavy lifting and I grab one as he thrusts inside me.

I lift my hips to meet him and his belly presses my clit every time we move together. Orgasm doesn’t build, it tears me down. I’m coming again when he starts to move harder and faster, and I know Austin’s coming, too.

It doesn’t always happen that way, that we finish together, so it’s sort of magical and leaves me sleepy and contented and cuddly, after. He loops an arm around me when he’s thrown away the condom. We lay on my bed, spooning, and his breath ruffles my hair.

“Paige,”Austin says. “I want to ask you something important.”

And then we’re on the ocean, in a boat that’s going down.

As the cold, dark sea closed over my head, the sound of the alarm bells ripped into my ears. I took a deep breath, even though I was underwater. I kicked, the tight clutch of the waves around my ankles becoming the tangled grasp of sheets around my feet as I opened my eyes and fumbled, without seeing, for the phone.

“What?” At this hour I couldn’t be expected to be polite, could I?

“Paige?”

I blinked, not wanting to look at my bedside clock’s numbers. It was way too fucking early to be up. “Arty. What’s the matter? Where’s Mama?”

“Mama’s still sleeping. And Leo’s at work,” he added, though I hadn’t asked. “I’m hungry.”

“Make yourself some cereal.” I stifled a yawn and pondered giving in to a hangover that wouldn’t have bothered me with just a few more hours’ sleep.

“There isn’t any.”

“No Cheerios? No Raisin Bran?”

My little brother, the only other sibling I’d ever actually lived with, made a familiar noise of disgust. “I don’t like those kind.”

“Then I guess you must not be that hungry.” I was hungry, but didn’t feel like getting out of bed at the butt-crack of dawn to fix toast. “Arty, it’s too early to call me. What did I tell you about that?”

“Can’t you come over and make me some pancakes?” His little-boy voice sounded very far away. I pictured him in his Spider-Man pajamas, bare feet swinging because his legs weren’t long enough to reach the floor. “Please?”

Maybe if I kept my eyes closed I’d fall back to sleep. I snuggled deeper under my soft blankets. “Buddy, I don’t live there anymore. I told you that. I told you I couldn’t just come over whenever you called.”

Silence.

“But I miss you,” Arthur said in a tiny voice.

I sighed. “I miss you, too, buddy. How about I come down and take you to the movies sometime soon?”

“When?” At nearly seven, the kid had been reading since he was four and could tell time on an analogue clock, a skill that sometimes stumped me. There wasn’t much that slipped past him. “Today?”

“Not today, no. Maybe later this week.”

“When? When?”

I couldn’t think straight and just tossed out a day. “Wednesday?”

“Saturday. Sunday. Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. That’s a week!”

He sounded so dismayed I hated to laugh. Laughing, in fact, hurt my head. “Not quite. Five days.”

“That’s too long!” Arthur’s voice pitched high enough to drill my tender ears.

“You’ve got gymnastics on Tuesday, and Monday I’ve got an appointment in the evening. Sorry, buddy. You have to wait until Wednesday. Besides,” I said, offering an incentive against despair, “the new Power Heroes movie comes out on Wednesday. How about that?”

“Okay.” He didn’t sound convinced, only resigned. “But I’m hungry now, Paige.”

“Cereal. Or have a snack from the drawer.”

“Mama says no snacks from the drawer until after breakfast.”

“Aren’t there any cereal bars in the drawer?” I bit back another yawn. If I didn’t get back to sleep in the next ten minutes I was not going to be a happy camper.

“Yesss…” Even Arthur knew where I was going with this, but he sounded like it might be too good to be true.

“Have one of those. They’re cereal, right?”

“Can I tell Mama you said it was okay?”

“Sure.” It wouldn’t be the first time she’d holler at me for giving the kid permission to do something she’d have refused. On the other hand, this was the woman who’d allowed me to go to school in a pair of hand-me-down, slip-on Candie’s shoes in the sixth grade and bought me my first package of rubbers in the tenth. She was a different sort of mother to Arthur than she’d been to me. “Now let me go back to sleep, okay?”

“Okay. Bye, Paige.”

“Bye.”

“I love you,” my little brother said before I could hang up.

It wasn’t the first time he’d ever said it, but suddenly the memory of how he’d smelled as a baby washed over me with enough force to push my eyelids open like snapped-open blinds. How his hair had been so soft against my lips when I kissed his little baby head, and how the heavy weight of him had filled my arms and lap. How I used to hold him while I watched hour after hour of bad TV, just because he was so small and sweet. Just because he loved me.

“I love you, too, buddy. I’ll see you on Wednesday.”

He had a seven-year-old’s social graces and didn’t say goodbye again, just hung up. I put the phone back in the cradle of its receiver and my head back in the cradle of my pillow, but sleep had vanished and there was no getting it back.

With a groan, I looked at the clock. Almost eight. And I’d gone to sleep, what, just before six this morning? God. I was so going to pay that kid back one day, maybe when he was a teenager and prone to sleeping as late as he could…yeah. I’d wake him up.

Unfortunately, my revenge was far-flung and I was still awake. I stretched and sat up, waiting for the rush and boil of acid stomach or the pound of a headache, but aside from a gnawing hunger, I felt all right. At least until I heard the muted beep from my cell phone, which I’d left abandoned in my sparkly purse under the pile of my discarded clothes. I had to dig past my Steve Madden pumps to reach it.

Five missed calls.

Five? Crap. I thumbed the keypad to check out the numbers. I had voice mails, too, though without dialing in I couldn’t tell how many. Kira had called me around 4:00 a.m. but hadn’t left a message. That could be good or bad, depending. One was an old call from my mother I hadn’t deleted. The other three were from Austin.

Triple crap.

The voice mails were from him, too, half an hour apart. The first two were brief “when are you going to get here?” messages. The last one had come in around six-fifteen, after I’d already gone to bed. It turned the corners of my mouth down.

“Look, I know I’ve been an asshole to you in the past.” Then fifteen seconds of awkward silence, punctuated only by the soft in-out of his breathing. “I’m sorry. I just…I was a fuckwad, and I’m sorry. Call me, okay? Please.”

A few more seconds of silence and he added, “Please.”

Is there anything more simultaneously pathetic and arousing than a pleading man?

I couldn’t bring myself to delete that message. I thought I might want to listen to it a couple-twenty more times. I thought I might want to get that statement, “Sorry, I’m a fuckwad.—Austin Miller” embroidered on a tea towel and wipe my hands with it.

It was the only time Austin had ever apologized to me for anything he’d ever done. I wasn’t sure it meant anything now. Not after all this time had passed.

I didn’t delete the message, but I didn’t call him back, either. Instead, I hauled my sorry ass out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom where I peed for what felt like an hour and brushed my teeth and pulled my hair on top of my head in a messy ponytail.

I wanted to go back to sleep, but I knew better than to expect to be able to. I was up for the day now. My stomach rumbled and I took my last two slices of wheat bread from the fridge, where I kept it to prevent mold, and popped them into my toaster oven. I needed to hit the grocery store in the worst way, though the state of my finances meant it would be another week of on-sale tuna and ramen noodles rather than steak and lobster. Ah, well. There was nothing new about that. I’d grown up thinking Kraft shells and cheese was gourmet fare.

While my toast browned, I sifted through the pile of junk mail I’d brought in the night before. I tossed aside a few catalogs addressed to the former tenant. I thought of the note I’d had yesterday, the beautiful paper and the words written in that fine hand. What had it said to do? Make a list of flaws and strengths? I thought of it as I ate my toast dry because I had no butter or jam.

You will write a list of ten. Five flaws. Five strengths. Deliver them promptly…

From the junk drawer next to my fridge I pulled a yellow legal pad and a stub of a pencil with a point rubbed to softness by the creation of many lists. Chore lists, mostly, or grocery. I’d never used it to detail my flaws and strengths.

I tapped the pencil against my lips as I thought.

Proud

Stubborn

Independent

Smart

Curious

Determined

Conscientious

That was it. As far as lists went, it didn’t feel complete, but I couldn’t think of more than that. So much for the ten, I thought as I put away the pen and paper.

And the real question was, which had I written? Flaws or strengths? Couldn’t they sometimes be both?

I looked again at the tablet on the table. It had made me think hard about myself, though it hadn’t been meant for me. I hoped the person it was meant for had better luck.