Outside The Lines:: Third Person Narration Read online

  Hard shudders of pleasure went through her.

  “I felt that,” he said hoarsely. “I felt that,” he said hoarsely.

  It was so incredibly scary and good, she was close to terrified. It was an out of body experience.

  “Do you like it, Juliette?” he asked in his dangerous rasp.

  “Oh God, Johnny.”

  “Tell me you like it.”

  “I like it.” It was barely words, just gasped air.

  “You want it.”

  “I want it.”

  He made a guttural sound. “One day I’m going to fuck your tight, pretty ass with my cock,” he said in her ear. “Stand behind you, make you come.”

  Her body gave a hard jerk. She was a drum, a vibration; everything he did strummed the high-pitched, quivering cord pulled taut through the center of her. Another hard undulation rolled through her body.

  “Going to come for me, babe?” he murmured against her ear. His hand was a demon, perfect, hot, pushing devils of desire, he nudged that back finger in a little more and pumped it. She cried out; it was so dangerously good she screamed, lost in a swirl of getting-fucked intensity. Johnny’s voice was her only anchor to sanity.

  “I feel everything happening inside you,” he said in her ear, then nudged her face around and kissed her mouth, not like the sinful, perfect sensual talent of Johnny Danger, but like a lover, like a man who wanted to please her.

  She came so hard her body jerked like a rag doll, her head tossing, her hair flashing by him, her body bucking.

  While she was still reverberating like a bell, he carried her to the couch and laid her down. He pulled down his jeans and put a hand on her knee, lifting it beside his hip, then grasped the base of his cock and entered her, not in a hard slam like she figured, like she wanted, but slowly, so that even in the middle of this powerful orgasm, she had to hold her breath from the force of simply feeling him entering her, of watching him want her, going slow as if to savor her, his eyes locked on hers.

  “You don’t want me, Juliette,” he said so quietly she could barely hear him over the pounding of her blood. “I’m not fit for human consumption.”

  “Oh Johnny,” she whispered back, holding his face so he couldn’t look away. “I don’t want to eat you. I just want to be with you.”

  He slammed into her then, hard and fierce.

  She took him, put her forearms over her head and lifted her hips high to take the next surge, and the next one, and the next, her body clenching in orgasm around him on every thrust.

  He held her knee by his hip and they looked deep into each other’s eyes; she couldn’t look away, she was locked in them, locked in the depths of Johnny’s cold green eyes, gone hot with desire and anger and things she could never know.

  He came in seconds.

  Afterwards, for a long time, they just lay together, throbbing, occasionally convulsing, mostly just breathing. Eventually, he pushed off her and when she was able, she wobbled to her feet, stunned.

  She hadn’t known. Hadn’t known her body could do those things, that her body wanted those things. Hadn’t known she’d wanted to be pushed, because no one ever pushed her like that before.

  No one had ever wanted her that much.

  She hadn’t known any man could touch her so deeply.

  And the one guy who did, didn’t want her back.

  He’d said it, clear as day. Oh, he might fuck her silly a few more times, but would that be enough? How could it ever be enough?

  He was on his feet, helping her straighten her skirt. He even went down on a knee and grabbed one of her shoes that had somehow ended up beneath his desk, put it on her foot, as if she were Cinderella.

  She let him do it numbly. Then he straightened to his feet. They looked at each other for a long moment.

  “You meant what you said,” she confirmed softly.

  He didn’t look away. He just nodded.

  She nodded too, and turned for the door.

  So, this was great. She’d succeeded in getting a life, beyond her wildest dreams, but apparently it was destined to include a heart. Possibly a broken one. What a shitty lesson to learn. A person had to be careful what she asked for, or they she might just get it.

  That’s stupid, she counseled herself, as she walked blindly toward the door. She’d get over Johnny.

  The breath knifed through her chest.

  Okay, fine, she’d get over the heartbreak, she amended, trying to breathe. One day. Or at least through it. But she would never get over Johnny.

  So what?, she thought numbly. Since when was getting over something a prerequisite for moving on?

  She shut the door behind her.

  She’d been so scared of the guilt.

  Bereft was a thousand times worse.

  BEREFT WAS NOT an option. Juliette did not do bereft. She did work.

  The thought strengthened her.

  She got in the elevator and jabbed the button for five. She pictured the Danger Enterprise company car sitting in the garage, ready to take her back to her empty apartment where there was nothing to do but water her African violet, again. She’d already watered it quite well, possibly a bit too well, earlier this evening.

  She should get a fern of some sort. Maybe an indoor greenhouse.

  Angrily, she punched the button for the fifth floor a few more times, in case that would make the elevator stop more fiercely when it got there.

  It arrived and dinged quite unfiercely, the muted bubble of a ding. The doors slid open smoothly and almost silently. She glared at them as she exited, thumping her feet heavily as she stalked down the hall and stopped at her small, darkened office.

  She took a deep breath as she reached for the key, waiting for relief to roll through her, the way it always did was she was agitated and saw work coming to save her.

  Oddly, the sight of her office didn’t immediately banish all feelings of bereavement.

  She scowled at the cheery ‘Gone Fishing’ sign that still hung on her door, slightly askew. It was a stupid sign, a leftover joke from a father who was eternally fishing in richer waters than those the drug-addicted mother of his kids could offer, but that didn’t stop the kids from hoping. Or at least one of them. Juliette’s brother had given up a long time ago.

  It was Juliette’s curse that she hadn’t. Wouldn’t. She could, of course, but she was far too angry too give up. The anger was fuel.

  But right now, she mostly felt…out of gas.

  That pissed her off all over again. Damn Johnny.

  She unlocked the door and walked inside, leaving the door open as she stopped in the center of the dim space, backlit by the spill of florescent lights from the corridor behind her.

  She stared at the floor safe, the triple locked file cabinets, her desk. The trifecta of distraction, the triumvirate of her real nation: work. Whatever had happened with Johnny earlier, the sense of a new flag and a new world of connections, it was a lie. Which she ought to have known. Which she did know. She’d just forgotten for a little while.

  Damn that Danger.

  Angrily, she strode to the cabinets and started unlocking them, pulling out files and flinging them onto her desk like lab experiments. Coat still on, she swung into her chair and flipped on the light with one hand while she scrabbled for a pen with the other, then bent over the closest file and flipped it open, pen out, ready to correct every mistake she could find.

  She couldn’t make out a single word.

  Not even a number. She couldn’t make anything out. Nothing. No words, no numbers, she didn’t even know what she was looking at. The dark lines of print were simply…indecipherable. It was a foreign language. Hieroglyphics. It was as if she didn’t even know how to read an OTC forward derivatives contract.

  Her heart beat hard in her chest. She realized she was breathing fast, as if she’d been running. It was all she could hear, her labored breath in the silent, empty office. It was so loud, she could hardly focus.

  She dropped the pen.
It made an insignificant plastic click as it hit the desk. She clasped her head between her palms and stared down at the papers, willing herself to focus, to think, to work, dammit.

  She couldn’t. She couldn’t make it happen.

  Sheer will had failed her.

  Sheer will was the cobweb of her life, the strongest stuff in the world.

  But not tonight. Not after Johnny had said, “No, not you.”

  She tipped forward slowly, as if the front of her had suddenly become too heavy to hold up anymore. She rested her forehead on the desk, atop the files and stacks of papers with all their important, illegible numbers and closed her eyes.

  Sheer will had failed her, and Johnny had bailed on her.

  The latter should not have had such an effect. Being bailed on was old news. The most predictable routine of her life, the endless melody, the thing she’d been trained for since the day she was born. Parents of all varieties, friends who went by all sorts of names, blue-eyed Patrick O’Faolain and his snowy seduction and shady past; it was a parade of the people who’d left.

  She was the girl born to be left behind.

  So why did this one hurt so much?

  It was ridiculous, really. Pointless. Completely out of line. She and Johnny had never had any agreement except that he would show her how to bang her head in pleasure.

  Well, he’d sure kept his end of the bargain.

  Forehead still resting on the files, she breathed down into the papers, steaming up her face.

  It wasn’t all bad, though, right? She’d learned she was capable of something more than numbers. That was good, wasn’t it? Now she knew she was capable of headbanging sex and getting her heart broke.

  Her cheeks were damp from her exhalations. Maybe I should have just stuck with work, she thought dismally. In the end, she hadn’t even gone skiing.

  She lifted her head as if a voice had spoken.

  No, wait. That was wrong. No way was she going to let this end like that.

  She was going skiing.

  She sat up straight in her chair. She was absolutely going skiing.

  She was going skiing right now.

  She got up from her desk and began shoving files back into their locked compartments with abandon. She put an R in the S section. She didn’t care. She could do anything she wanted, including misfile. She laughed, feeling giddy. Sad, almost heartbroken, but giddy. Like little bubbles were rising up inside her. They’d done that, together, Johnny and her. Popped her cork, so to speak. And now he wasn’t going to stick around to drink the good stuff?

  Fine. Juliette was.

  She locked the office door and ripped the Gone Fishing sign off as she went by, flinging it behind her. She marched to the stairwell and slammed open the heavy fire door. She didn’t have time to wait for the elevator; she was going skiing.

  And this time, she was spending the night.

  Chapter Eighteen

  SWEAT STREAKED down Johnny’s face and chest. It trickled in rivulets down his sides and dampened his groin, made his feet hot. But no matter how much he sweated, no matter how hard he pushed himself, three hours of a dawn work out still hadn’t brought relief.

  Usually a hard workout exorcised a few demons. Or at least shoved them back into purgatory. Exercise calmed him, centered him, turned off his brain. It was his meditation, his t’ai chi, his self-annihilation.

  But right now, as the sun rose on the city, he was agitated, all inside himself, and it wasn’t because of the judge, and it wasn’t because of Dan. It was because of Juliette Jauntie.

  Fuck.

  He showered and stared out the window, looking down over the city below.

  He was starting to get tired of this window.

  Going up to the mountains to find Juliette had been a mistake. Suggesting a drink with her had been stupid. In fact, coming within ten feet of her was a complete error of judgment. He should have known. She was everything he’d said: a volcano; a fire in search of a spark; an enclave of honesty in a dirty, cheating world.

  A big fucking hassle.

  And he wasn’t interested.

  He stared down through the window as dawn glowed over the city. A man didn’t drive four hours to meet someone for work if he wasn’t interested. Even Johnny couldn’t convince himself of that lie, and he’d lived a lot of lies in his life.

  A man didn’t stare at the doorway a woman had walked out of for half an hour, hoping that maybe, fucking maybe, she’d come back.

  Women like Jauntie didn’t come back.

  And she’d been right. About everything. Everything she’d said, or guessed at, or surmised. On the money. Like an arrow. Like she’d gone inside him.

  Fuck.

  He shoved his fingers through his hair and swung around. He’d meant what he’d said to her—that he didn’t need to be psychoanalyzed and he wasn’t scared. But he very much needed someone to understand him, to see through the solid wall of him. As Juliette had.

  He hadn’t known he had that need.

  He didn’t want to have that need.

  It was a weakness. Dangerous.

  He straightened, suddenly angry.

  But what the fuck? Wasn’t his last name Danger?

  In which case, what was he waiting for? Because if Juliette wasn’t dangerous to everything he’d spent his hard-armored life building up, he didn’t know what was.

  In fact, if he looked at it that way, she was just about perfect.

  JULIETTE WENT back up to the Destiny Falls Resort, because it seemed important to revisit the past. Exorcise it. Stamp a new pattern on it.

  Also, they had a lot of bunny hills.

  She drove the Danger Enterprises company car. Probably shouldn’t have done that.

  She pulled into the parking lot mid-morning. This time, the sign about her destiny awaiting her had a charming ring. Almost.

  Okay, it was actually still a little creepy.

  She got a room at the lodge, the last one available she was told, a nice one, maybe a little too nice, but it was all they had this close to New Years. She didn’t care. It could have cost a thousand dollars. She was taking it. Nothing but an avalanche could stop her from skiing and spending the night.

  Her heart raced a little at the thought of avalanches.

  She rented ski equipment, then signed up for her first ever ski lesson, voluntarily paying money to have someone tell her what to do.

  Amazing.

  With an hour to spare before the lesson, she milled around her Very Nice Room for about three minutes, then decided to take a quick peek at the gym and pool. Just the gym. And the pool. Not the banquet hall on the same floor.

  But when she stepped out of the elevators she stopped short and stared at the banquet doors. She didn’t know how long she stood there; long enough for the elevator to ding softly behind her and deposit another group of workout clad people.

  She stepped to the side to let them pass, and when the landing was empty again, she walked to the doors of the banquet hall and put her hand out.

  If they were locked, it was a sign. Even though she didn’t believe in signs.

  It was unlocked.

  She pulled the heavy door open. It was silent and empty inside, too early in the day to be in use. Bright sunlight poured though the windows, lighting the whole room up. She walked over to them and looked out.

  The mountains were tall and beautiful, blindingly white. A sharp blue sky curved overhead and the sun lit everything like a stage. Below, on the wide, snowy path leading to the lodge, herds of brightly clad people moved, skiing and falling and laughing and calling to each other.

  Juliette slowly leaned her forehead against the window, watching these people in their confusing, alluring, indecipherable dance of relationship.

  She suddenly felt rotten. She was going skiing, they were having relationships. It seemed that all the other humans possessed some skill, some ability, that Juliette simply didn’t have.

  Just give it some time, she counseled hersel
f. She’d feel okay again. One day. She’d just brushed too close to it, that’s all. The desire, the hurt, it would fade.

  It wasn’t a terribly consoling thought.

  In fact, it was a little like getting punched in the stomach. But there was nothing to be done about it, so she’d do what she was best at, press on, keep her head down, work relentlessly, and…and….

  And there was Johnny. Coming up the path.

  A wave of chills washed up, then down, her chest.

  He moved between the packs of people, stepping around them, heading relentlessly toward the door, toward the lodge.

  Toward Juliette.

  Her jaw fell. Her heart leapt. Her breath got short. Then it stopped entirely. She straightened sharply, staring down.

  As if it were a movie, Johnny looked up and saw her through the window. He stopped short.

  They stared at each other. People bustled by him but he didn’t move out of the center of the flattened snowy path. He just stared up at Juliette like she was a star in the sky.

  Me?, she mouthed, touching her fingertips to her chest.

  He lifted his hand and pointed at her.

  It was like an arrow. She felt pierced by possibility. She closed her eyes. When she opened them, he was gone.

  She waited, staring down at all the bright, happy people who maybe, possibly, did not have something she didn’t have.

  Maybe she had it too. Maybe evidence of it was walking up the stairs right now.

  She turned when she heard the banquet doors open behind her, her heart hammering, her breath short, her face hot and flushed. All in all, a state of high emotion. Shaken and stirred and in no way inert. And this time, she wasn’t going to run from it. Because although she knew that with or without Johnny, eventually she’d be okay again, maybe ‘okay’ wasn’t good enough anymore.

  And when she’d seen Johnny coming for her, she’d felt a whole lot more than okay.

  He came into the room, crossed halfway, and stopped. They looked at each other.

  “Hi,” he said.