Page 31 of Melt With You

Van ran his fingers over her cheeks, pressed his back up against the wall and started whispering words of encouragement to her. She liked the way it felt to be on her knees for him, liked the way it felt to make him moan. She reached one hand up to trace the tail of the scorpion he had tattooed around his waist. The colors seemed to dance under her fingertips. Why was she so turned on by this boy? She didn’t know. By the time she and Bryce had broken up, they’d forgone most oral pleasures. When they did fuck, it was very paint-by-numbers. His hand here, her body there. A predetermined amount of thrusts before he rolled off her and fell asleep.

Fucking Van was so different.

Actually, all of the sex she’d had since the break-up was remarkably different. Her night with Luke, and then Van in his truck, at the Rave, and now.

Van pulled her to her feet, and he stared into her eyes once more. She was starting to recognize his desires. She could tell that he wanted to be inside of her, and she waited, heart racing, for him to say something, to do something. She was surprised when he reached over her head for a box high up on one of the shelves. And then she grinned. The Beauty Box sold condoms, as novelty items only. Condoms with funny slogans printed on the packet. Happy faces and little fortunes. The sort of thing women bought as favors for bachelorette parties.

Van slid one on, while Dori watched, embarrassed at how hungry she was for his cock. He saw her looking, and then said proudly, ‘I’m eight keys long, you know.’

‘What?’

He blushed, which she found almost irresistible. But she wanted to know what he meant.

‘We measured once,’ he continued, and the blush to his cheeks deepened considerably.

Oh, God, she thought. The way boys do. She only knew that concept from Porky’s movies, but that was with a ruler. What did he mean by keys?

‘On the piano,’ he said next, then gathered Dori up in his arms.

She sighed hard when he used his thumb and forefinger to part her nether lips, opening her up. She felt the cool rush of air from the fan above them, striking against her wet pussy lips. Van gazed at her for a moment, seeming awed by her nakedness before bringing her down on him. Now the query she’d made moments before was a reality: they were fucking. And he still hadn’t answered, so Dori tried again.

‘Really, Van, will Bette mind?’ Her voice was a whisper. She could hardly think, let alone speak. And it seemed bizarre to have this conversation during intercourse, but nothing was normal in her world any more, was it? She was fucking a delivery boy in the stockroom of a beauty store where she’d worked as a teenager. And if that wasn’t odd enough, she was back in time twenty years, with all of her teenage insecurities along with her thirty-eight-year-old body. Trapped in the 80s. Jesus, she might as well have a little fun, right?

And that’s what Van seemed to offer: a little fun. The way he held her, the way he moved his body on hers. It had been years since making love had felt this good. Why? She didn’t have any answers. All she knew was that the way Van felt inside of her made her want nothing more than to wrap her legs around his waist and pump her body up and down.

For several moments, they were silent together. The music was loud, yet they could still hear people in the shop down below. Nothing mattered to Dori right now. Nothing but the fact that she and Van were locked onto one another, moving. Dori’s hands on his shoulders, his palms under her ass, lifting her up, and bringing her back down. Letting her ride him. Letting her press against him to get the contact that she craved. They moved to the rhythm of the music. How could they not? But Bette had taken pity on them, changing the soundtrack of their sexual encounter, no longer cranking the hard rock music, but Sliding on Roxy Music’s ‘Love is the Drug.’

Bryan Ferry’s voice slowed them down, while the rich, haunting melody wrapped them up. Dori stared at Van. He had the most beautiful eyes. Clear blue right now, like a bit of frozen sky. Or like one of the colors that Nina would choose for her talon-like nails. Dori could lose herself in his eyes, focused now, not off in some drug-fueled land of X, but in an actual place of ecstasy. A pleasure that was better to her than any drug. Didn’t Bryan Ferry know the truth?

He set her down and turned her around, so that she was facing the large oval mirror on the wall, looking into her own dark, chocolate-brown eyes. There was no escape from herself, no matter what decade she was in. But as Van rocked forward, as she watched her cheeks turn pink with pleasure, she realized that maybe she didn’t want to escape.

Maybe it had taken her falling back twenty years in order to understand that she’d found the perfect time.

Chapter Twelve

Running always cleared Rowan’s head. His feet pounded the pavement as he tried to make sense of what had happened.

Dori had hooked up with someone. Rowan had never thought of that possibility. And now, she was working, had actually gotten a job, gotten a man, had managed to create her own mini life in less than a week.

What was he going to do now?

He had created his plans so carefully. Down to the precise moment of arrival, and then she’d gone and messed everything up. Getting drunk with her friends at the bar, and then waking up far earlier than he’d expected. Or perhaps Violet had given him the wrong departure time. He could beat himself up for hours, but he wouldn’t. He’d just rethink the concepts that he’d taken for granted before. If nothing else, Rowan was a master at problem-solving.

But the biggest problem he faced at the moment was his own conscience.

He had sent her back on her own as a form of punishment. That was true. He didn’t want to look too hard at himself for that, or at the reasons why Dori had wound up in the 80s without him. Rowan liked to think of himself as a fairly nice guy, and that concept was challenged when he thought about the photo of her, emailed to him by Chelsea, that had prompted him to mess with her.

But honestly, he’d meant to catch up right away. To meet her at the B&B and explain what was going on. He had no idea she would get an early start, that he wouldn’t find her still in bed, where he’d be able to explain, to soothe her worries, to calm her fears. And then for the past few days, he’d been consistently one beat behind her.

Fuck.

As he ran through the neighborhoods where he’d played as a kid, he found himself on a familiar route, the one he’d had as a paperboy. He passed the candy-colored pastel houses where he knew the kids and where he’d played after school.

You could trust numbers. That was all. People were the variables. Emotions were unpredictable. Even his own.

He sprinted past one house where a man was out front mowing the lawn, then he backtracked, and ran past from the other direction, stopped across the street, and tied his shoe. Or pretended to tie his shoe.

God, he hadn’t thought of them in years. The Hugheses.

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