Hold Me Close Read online

  With a low, muttered cry, Heath stood, lifting her with one arm around her waist to hold her. The other hand swept the table clean, sending the cardboard bakery box thumping to the floor. The mugs clattered, shattering. She was on her back seconds after that. Heath yanked her hips to bring her to the edge of the table. He tore her panties halfway down her thighs, then with another hard tug, all the way off.

  Effie lifted her hips, offering herself to him. Heath opened his belt and undid the zipper of his jeans with the same swift desperation. Gripping his cock, he pushed inside her but did not thrust. Instead, he took her clit between his thumb and forefinger. Locking his gaze with hers, he pinched her sensitive flesh. Released. Again. Over and over until she was losing her mind.

  “Fuck me,” she breathed.

  “No.” His cock deep inside her, Heath refused to move anything but his fingers in the steady, inexorable squeezing of her clit.

  Effie arched her back. Her shoulders pressed the table’s hard wood. She would ache later, but oh, fuck, it was so good right now that anything that came after would be worth it. She gripped the table’s edge, then her knees as Heath pushed them upward. The new position opened her deeper to him, but no matter how she begged, he still would not move.

  “Shut up,” he muttered. “Just shut up, Effie.”

  “Tell me how you hate me.” She focused on his face, watching for the flare in his eyes. She gave a sobbing, breathless laugh. At the next slow tweak of her clit, she writhed, made helpless in her pleasure.

  “Shut up!”

  “Fuck me like you hate me,” Effie said.

  With a groan, Heath withdrew. He took his cock in his hand and rubbed the head of it over her slick, engorged clit. “No.”

  The torturous squeezing had been bad enough, but now this steady, rhythmic stroking of his cock head against her, sliding through her folds and up over her clit but never, never inside... He was going to kill her with this, and she would willingly die.

  She came, then again, hard on the still-rippling edges of the first. Floating, distant, Effie was aware of her low, endless cries but could do nothing to hold them back. Nor the helpless, frantic shaking of her entire body. She looked between them to watch as Heath came all over her belly, and one final shudder of pleasure racked her. Heath, however, came in silence, not so much as a gasp or a whisper or a single syllable of her name.

  When it was over, he moved away from her and went to the sink to dampen a clean cloth and wipe himself off before pulling up his jeans. Effie watched him, her elbows hurting from pressing the wood. So did the edge of her ass. She didn’t want to pull her blouse down over the mess he’d left, but she did cover her bareness with the hem of her skirt. When he came to hand her the cloth, Effie reached to pull him down by his shirtfront for a kiss. She held him there longer than she needed to, and when he made to pull away, she kept holding him until he acquiesced and stayed still. Then she let him go, took the cloth and wiped him off her.

  She had told him she was sorry, but that wasn’t quite the same as asking him to forgive her. Effie rinsed and wrung out the cloth, formulating the words. So many hours, so many times they’d never needed to speak at all, and now she found herself unable to think of the right things to say. Heath knew her inside and out, upside down, frontward, backward, side to side. There wasn’t a thought in her head he wouldn’t have been able to determine without so much as a single uttered vowel.

  So why, then, did she find it so hard to simply tell him how much she loved and wanted him?

  “It does kill me,” she told him, finally.

  He turned. “So what, then? You’re a ghost? Because that’s how it feels to me sometimes, Effie. You’re a fucking ghost, and all you do is haunt me.”

  “I don’t want to!” she cried, then lowered her voice. “Don’t you understand? That’s why it’s no good for us to be together. All we do is remind each other of the past. It will keep us both...crazy.”

  “I would rather have you haunt me, driving me mad, than have you leave me.”

  From his front door came a brief, timid rapping. Effie looked at Heath, who shrugged, unsmiling but also unapologetic. She had herself put back together by the time he opened the door, and Effie had put a blank smile on her face, expecting a neighbor, a delivery person, a stranger.

  “Hi,” Sheila Monroe said in her breathy, low voice. She pushed past Heath and was already in the kitchen before she looked up to see Effie, which stopped her short. Sheila gave Heath a startled look.

  “Hi, Sheila,” Effie said.

  Heath went to the fridge and pulled out several plastic containers of food that he put into a cooler bag with an ice pack. He added some bottled water and a loaf of sliced bread. Sheila shifted from foot to foot as she watched him, every so often flicking a glance toward Effie. She also took in the doughnuts and dishes on the floor. When Heath finally handed the bag to her, Sheila’s scrawny arm shook with the weight of it.

  “Let me take that out for you.” Heath looked her over. “Did you drive?”

  “Reggie gave me a ride. I don’t got my license back yet. He’s waiting for me in the parking lot.” Sheila gave Effie another uncertain, wavering smile that was more like a grimace. “How are you, Effie?”

  “I’m great, thanks.”

  Sheila nodded as though she’d expected nothing less. “How’s your little girl?”

  “She’s fine.”

  “She’s, what, ten now? Eleven?”

  “Almost twelve,” Effie said. “If you can believe it.”

  “I can’t.” Sheila’s laugh was bolder than her smile had been. She was missing a tooth toward the back. She hefted the bag of food over her shoulder and hesitated before opening her other arm to Heath for a swift hug. “Thanks, Heath.”

  “I’ll talk to you next week, okay?” Heath walked her to the front door and followed her out, closing it behind him enough to keep Effie from seeing or hearing what they were doing or saying.

  Not that it was any of Effie’s business. She gathered her own belongings. Coat, purse. Slipped into her shoes. She brushed her hair off her face, wondering if Sheila had seen the evidence of their fucking on her face and not only on the floor. She decided she didn’t care.

  When Heath came back inside, Effie was ready to go. Heath watched her button her coat without saying anything. She waited for him to ask her to stay. He didn’t.

  “Well,” Effie said stiffly. “I guess I’ll get going.”

  Heath cleared his throat. “She needs help. She has nobody else. She doesn’t take care of herself right. She lost her license for a DUI and is having a hard time getting hours at her job. You know it’s not... I’m not...”

  Effie held up a hand to stop him. “You don’t owe me any explanations.”

  “You don’t want one, that doesn’t mean I don’t want to tell you.”

  She shook her head, not meeting his eyes, not wanting to fight with him again, not about this or anything else. Moments ago she’d been ready to ask him to...what? Move in with her and Polly? Make a life, a family, try to see if they could make things work? Right there, knocking on his door, was the reason why that could never happen. Why they could never forget their past. Not in any way that could ever be good for either of them.

  “Polly asked me if I could live with you guys,” Heath said.

  Effie looked at him. “Yes. I know.”

  “Effie.” He sighed, and his bland expression twisted into sadness.

  “Hold me close,” she whispered.

  He had her in his arms then, and she didn’t want to leave him. She clung to him, cheek to cheek. They held each other in silence for a long time, until at last she stepped back and out of Heath’s embrace. She kissed him gently on the corner of his mouth.

  “Haunt me,” he whispered. “Make me crazy for the rest of my life. But
please, Effie. Don’t leave me. Just let me love you.”

  “I don’t think I can...” Baby. Honey. My love. Brother. At the last, Effie turned from him, steeling herself against the voracious crescendo of sorrow threatening to send her to her knees.

  “But, Effie,” Heath said, cold as ice, cold as a void, so cold it burned her worse than any fire. “Don’t you know? Not wanting to and not being able to are not the same things.”

  She made it to her car before the sobs came. Wretched, wrenching, they shook her even though she clasped both hands over her mouth to keep even a single sound from leaking out. The spatter of icy rain on the roof covered the noises of her grief, but nothing could stop her from feeling it.

  * * *

  Effie can hear them in the next room, even with her hands over her ears. Low, rhythmic slapping. Daddy mutters commands.

  “Harder. More. Slap her up a little. Good. Yeah. That’s good.”

  Effie knows what’s going on, but she has never been made a part of it. Nothing stops her from leaving the bedroom and going out there. Well, nothing except fear. She doesn’t want to see what Daddy makes Heath do.

  “I’ll kill her,” Daddy has told them, over and over. “Don’t think I won’t. If you come out? If you make a noise, Sister, if you let her know you’re in there? I will kill her. If you pull another stunt like you tried before? I will kill her. Not you, Sister. Not Brother. I’ll kill that woman. Do you want that on your conscience?”

  Daddy knows how to keep them in line, and not only with the drugs. He knows what to say. How to threaten. Later, Effie will be unable to explain why she and Heath didn’t overpower him, why they didn’t try harder to escape. It’s too difficult to understand, even for herself, when she looks back and tries to think what kept them there.

  Tonight it goes on longer than it has before. There is more talking. Daddy sounds angry. The soft, surprised murmur of a woman’s voice, protesting, is quickly silenced by the crack of flesh on flesh. A muffled sob.

  “I don’t care,” Daddy says. “I don’t care what you want. I told you to get over there and make her cry!”

  Effie does not cry. She plugs her ears with her fingers and rolls to face the wall, hoping it will be over soon. Because after, Daddy gives them whatever Heath asks for, and the food will be safe to eat for at least a day or two, and after this it will be some long weeks before they have to go through this again.

  She doesn’t think she could sleep, but she must have, because the next thing she knows is the bed is dipping beneath a familiar weight and the lights have gone out. Heath moves against her back, carefully, cautiously, as if she’s ever turned him away. As if she ever could, after everything he’s done for her.

  His breath hitches. She feels it against the skin of her neck. He’s respectful and hesitant, but Effie wriggles back against him so he can be the big spoon. She takes Heath’s arm and pulls it across her to tuck his hand beneath her chin. She is aware he’s touching her breasts, but it’s not until she wriggles again and feels something against her butt that her eyes open wide and she goes very, very still.

  Effie’s a virgin, but she’s not stupid. At summer camp when she was twelve, there had been a silent sort of competition among the girls to see if they could catch sight of “boners.” They’d been easy to spot in the pool, where the boys made a game of trying to catch and dunk girls as an excuse to get closer.

  She’d never been one of the girls who got caught. She’d seen the tented swim trunks and embarrassed expressions, but until this moment, Effie had never actually felt a boner. She wriggles again, experimentally. When Heath’s breath hitches again, she turns in his embrace to face him. She slides a knee between his thighs to press herself against him, harder.

  She says his name.

  Heath shakes; has she hurt him somehow? Effie seeks his face in the darkness, finds it with her fingertips. Tracing the arch of his brows, the line of his jaw, she tries to tell if he’d been injured, but bruises are impossible to feel.

  “Are you okay?” Effie asks.

  “No.”

  “What happened?”

  He kisses her, their lips mashing against their teeth. It takes her by surprise. It’s nothing like Effie had ever imagined her first kiss would be. It’s rough and fierce and takes her breath away. It hurts. She tastes copper, blood, her mouth opened in protest and Heath’s tongue stabbing inside and filling her up until she isn’t sure she can breathe.

  She pushes at his chest, but he grabs her wrists and holds them so tight she gasps into his kiss. Between them, that hardness presses her belly. Heat. His fingers grind her wrists until pain flares, and she brings her knee up on instinct. She hits him in the upper thigh, but it must be close enough because Heath flinches and lets her go.

  Effie slaps at him. Her hand connects somewhere on his face, a solid thud of skin on skin. Her other hand clutches at the front of his shirt. The fabric tears as he yanks himself away from her. The bed creaks, headboard scraping the wall and springs squealing.

  He rolls until she’s pinned beneath him, her wrists trapped above her head. She can see nothing, only feel him, but his weight presses her into the lumpy mattress hard enough to send the springs beating into her. His breath gusts over her face until his mouth finds hers again. Heath shoves her knees apart with one of his. That hardness presses her belly.

  “You want to know what he makes me do?” Heath says this low into her ear. “You really want to know?”

  No, no, no, Effie doesn’t want to know, but something in the way Heath rubs himself against her, lower now, makes her incapable of answering. Her back arches as he finds the softness of her throat with his teeth. She cries out when he bites her.

  No, no, this isn’t what it’s supposed to be like, she thinks, tossing her head from side to side as Heath’s mouth moves across her skin. He’s supposed to be gently insistent; she’s supposed to push him away and make him wait. It’s supposed to be on prom night, maybe, or the backseat of his car. She should be older than sixteen. It strikes her, suddenly, just how long she’s been kept here. It’s been years.

  Heath’s mouth moves lower, over her collarbones. Lower still, his mouth hot and wet through the thin fabric of her T-shirt, and then he’s let go of her wrists to run his hands up, cupping her breasts. Her nipples are hard. When he pinches them both at the same time, Effie writhes and cries out a plea, but not for him to stop.

  “Yes.” Her voice harsh and guttural. She sounds like a stranger. “Oh, please, Heath. Yes. I want to know what he makes you do.”

  Heath shakes when she says it. He moves down her body so quickly Effie doesn’t have time to react. No time for protest. Heath pushes his way between her legs, her skirt shoved up to her thighs. He’s going to put his mouth on her down there. Oh, no, that’s not... She’s not ready for that...

  Too late, he’s hooked a finger in the leg band of her cotton panties and pulled them to the side. His lips and tongue are hot and wet. She cannot stand how good it feels when he licks her.

  Effie had thought she understood sex. Why people do it for reasons other than making babies. She understands it feels good, but this, oh, this is like nothing she thought she could imagine. This is the electric pain of being tickled until you think you’re going to faint from it, but you don’t.

  There are words. She hears them. She can taste them. What they are, though, Effie doesn’t know. All she can think about is what’s happening to her, and how much she wants it to keep going on and on, maybe until...oh...yes, there, that...until she can’t breathe or see or hear.

  All she can do is feel.

  When it’s over, all she can do is lie there, limp and spent. When the bed shifts, she feels him drawing away from her, and Effie reaches into the darkness to snag Heath’s shirt. The dark makes it easier for her to pull him back to her.

  His kiss tastes like
the sea, somehow, tangy and slick, and he shakes at the stroke of her tongue. Between their bodies, he is still hard. She finds his length with her fingers, exploring, at first uncertain, then bolder at the way he mutters her name.

  Effie wants to make Heath feel the way she did. If she can. She’s aware that something in the way boys and girls are built means it’s going to be different, but she has no idea how. Still, she tries. With featherlight touches, she strokes that hardness. At the first slippery wetness, she pauses, uncertain again. Is he...done?

  When his hand closes over hers and keeps up the motion she began, Effie realizes he’s not. There is more. The sound of his breathing. The way he thrusts into her grip. The moan of her name.

  Then, finally, there it is. Heat and wetness. Not only the taste of the sea but something like the smell of it, too. Briny. It sends a rolling wave of electric tingles all through her again.

  She finds his mouth with hers. He pulls her close. They stay that way until her hand is cramped and they both begin to shiver from the cold this time.

  “I love you,” Heath says into her mouth.

  Effie thought she knew about sex; now she understands she thought she knew about love and had been wrong about both. She wants to tell him she loves him. It’s what you do, isn’t it, when you’ve both done what they just did? She wants to tell him because it’s the truth, but what stops her is something that is also the truth.

  “It’s easy to love someone when you don’t have a choice,” Effie says. “When you’re all they have.”

  chapter twenty-seven

  Mitchell was a door-holding-open sort of guy. Effie had dated a few of them. It was something in the law of averages or something, wasn’t it? That even in a sea of assholes, douchebags and egotistical thunder twats, there had to be a good guy or two among them.

  It made her feel funny, though, having to wait for him to get out and walk around the car to open the door for her. She could handle him picking up the check. She could even handle him pausing to always let her go first through any door, and pulling out her chair, but this car door thing...