Stripped Read online

I don’t.

  He stares down at me, into me. “Do I have to spell it out?”

  “Yes. ”

  “Be mine. Be with me. ” He’s whispering. His hands are rock steady, but his eyes flick back and forth, the only sign of nerves.

  “Have sex with you, you mean. Be a one-night stand, you mean. ”

  He growls. “No. Fuck. No, Grey. I mean, yes, I want to be with you. But…in every way. With you. ” He runs his hands down my arms, to my waist, to my hips, and he lifts me up. My legs instinctively go around his waist and his hands are on my backside, and I feel him all around me, so, so close. “I want to kiss you whenever I feel like it. I want to tell you when you’re being ridiculous. I want to make love to you. I want to f**k you. I want to hold you. I want to be yours. I don’t know you, like, at all, but I want all this. It’s total craziness. I feel like I should be admitted for saying this to you. Fuck, I should have my man-card revoked for being all emotional and girly and telling you my feelings. But…I’m nothing if not honest. So there it is. ”

  I can’t breathe. I’m not hyperventilating; I’m whatever the opposite of that is. My lungs are burning because I’m literally not breathing. I’m staring into his eyes and hearing his words and completely at a loss. I can’t believe it.

  “Say something, Grey. Jesus. I just put my goddamn heart out on a wire for you, and you’re not saying anything. ” His voice is a harsh whisper.

  “You want that?” I swallow. “With me? But…you don’t know things about me. You don’t…you don’t do that. You don’t have girlfriends. ”

  He frowns. “No, I have—rather, I’ve had—a shitload of girlfriends. Girlfriends are a dime a dozen. I could snap my fingers and have six girlfriends, one for every day of the week and Sunday off. I don’t want that. I’ve had that. It’s boring. I want you. ” His eyes are going thundercloud gray, dark, threatening. “I don’t know anything about you. But that’s the point: I want to know. ”

  All I can do is kiss him. It’s necessary, more than breathing. He kisses me back tentatively, as if not quite sure I’m really doing this. But I am. I’m kissing him because it’s the only answer I have. My legs tighten around his waist, and my hands feather through his hair and cup the back of his head and pull him to me, and I’m beyond desperate.

  This man wants me.

  He spins in place, and suddenly I’m on the bed with Dawson above me. It’s so right like this. He’s delicious. He tastes like coffee and bagel and the faint trace of toothpaste. His tongue slips between my lips and my teeth and touches my tongue. I’m holding on to him for dear life and kissing him with everything I have, letting him capture my mouth with his, letting him possess my tongue. He pulls away gently, and I’m lost briefly, spiraling with need to have his kiss, and then his teeth take my lower lip, nibble, bite, and then my lip is in his mouth and he’s shifting his weight. His hand brushes my hair away from my face, and his eyes are a thousand shades of gray and blue and green and brown, indefinable, indescribable and he’s gazing at me as if I hold the answer to every question in his mind. His palm brushes down my neck, and his thumb skates over my jaw, and then down my arm to my waist. His shirt is bunched under my br**sts, baring most of my belly; he touches my hip, his palm hot and strong and callused against my soft, white skin. I suck in a breath as he dares upward, touching my ribs. His knuckles brush the underside of my right breast, and I let my eyes fall closed, but he doesn’t take my breast in his hand. He just pushes the shirt up a little, and stares down at me. My eyes are closed, but I feel his stare. I let him look. It’s not like on stage, though; his gaze is tender. It’s too much, and I have to kiss him again, before I completely lose myself in him.

  He kisses me, and then pulls away and lowers his mouth to plant a kiss between my br**sts. I’m terrified, my heart hammering. His mouth is hot and wet on my skin, and now he’s moving his slow kiss down the slope of one breast and my heart beats wildly against my ribs—surely he can feel it pounding?—but he shows no sign of noticing my terror, he just slowly and carefully continues his small, slow kisses all over the round weight of my right breast, until he’s ringing my nipple with kisses. My nipple is erect, hard, almost as if begging him to plant a kiss there.

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  And then he does, and the moan that erupts from me is loud, breathy, and erotic. I feel myself blush at the moan, but I have no time or thought-space for anything else as he sucks my nipple hard, flattening it. I moan again, gasping, writhing underneath him. I’ve never, ever felt anything like this. It’s overwhelming, earth-shattering. I clutch the back of his head as he releases my nipple with a pop and then flicks it with his tongue, grazes it with his teeth. Heat and pressure build inside me, centered low in my belly, in my core. It’s a desperate pressure, a volcanic need, and I don’t know what to do.

  While his mouth is busy with my right nipple, his left hand is doing similar things to my left breast, and I’m gasping and breathless, making all sorts of embarrassing noises. I know, deep inside me, that I shouldn’t be doing this. My pastor’s daughter guilt is kicking in, telling me I’m sinning with this man. I do my best to ignore that little voice, that leftover seed of shame.

  He moves his mouth to my left nipple, and his right hand carves over my ribs, over my belly, to my hip, and his fingers slip under the waistband of my yoga pants, and then stops, eyes on mine. I take over for him, pushing my pants down, rolling them away.

  I’m helpless. I have no will left, no capacity to resist his touch, no ability to stop this. I know I should, but I can’t. I’m so weak. So weak. He’s all over me, kissing my mouth, kissing my throat, tweaking my ni**les in his fingers, keeping me breathless and restless and writhing, and the pressure is mounting inside me, in my core. I’m damp down there, slick. I press my thighs together in a vain attempt to relieve the pressure, but it does nothing.

  My tight black yoga pants are rolled down far enough that the top of my underwear is showing, a strip of red cotton. My eyes are closing and opening, taking in Dawson’s face, his eyes as he glances at me, his mouth as he sucks at my nipple and stretches it, making me moan and squirm and gasp as the heat and pressure build to an unbearable level. And then his fingers graze the elastic line of my underwear and pause. I’m completely at his mercy. I know that I shouldn’t let this happen, that I’m crossing some line I shouldn’t cross, but I won’t stop it. He’s touching me; he owns me. He knows exactly what I need, what I want, even if I don’t.

  And now, oh, god. His fingers, just his middle and ring fingers are slipping under the elastic to touch the waxed-smooth skin, and I’m trembling all over. I want this. I want him to touch me.

  I’ve never even touched myself there. Never. It was an unspoken sin, shameful and disgusting. And then, as an adult, I had no reason or time. I’ve never known desire, never known the need to touch myself like he’s touching me.

  His eyes are greenish now, a color I’ve never seen in him before. He’s watching me as he moves his touch—oh, so gradually, so carefully—downward. My thighs are pressed tight together, but loosen to welcome his touch, as if my body wants this even though my mind, heart and soul are at war. My body responds. His long middle finger is nearing the top of my opening, and then the tip of his finger is slipping inside me. I whimper, a noise of need and fear.

  “Tell me to stop,” he murmurs. His eyes are on me, and I know he’s reading my emotions.

  I open my mouth, but no words come out. I just meet his eyes, and then my back lifts and my hips rise, and again my body makes my decision for me. His middle finger sinks deeper inside me, and now a word finally escapes my lips.

  His name. “Dawson…” It’s a whispered plea, but I don’t know if I’m asking for more or begging him to stop.

  I’m trembling all over. My knees shake, my hands shake. My lips shiver, and my eyes can’t focus. I feel his finger between my lips, a foreign feeling, a fullness, and then he’s delving deeper. His hand curls, and his finger moves deeper yet.

  And then his finger touches me in a certain way, and lightning hits. A moan rips from my throat as raw pleasure rifles through me. He’s watching me, and I watch him watch me. He’s lying partially on his side, and my shirt is rucked up over my br**sts, which are heavy and falling to either side of my body, and my hip bones are visible as I arch off the bed under his touch. I can’t help the whimpering moan as he touches me just right again, and the heat and pressure deep within me build and build and build into something unsustainable, something violent and on the knife edge of detonation. Something has to break.

  “Oh, god, Dawson!” I hear the words leave my lips, and I’ve never, ever sounded so needy, so erotically breathy and womanly.

  “Grey…god, Grey. You’re so gorgeous. You’re perfect. ” His voice is a murmur in my ear.

  And then his touch becomes motion, a gentle circling around that spot, and I’m lifting my hips to the rhythm of his touch, and I’m blushing hot at the way my body is responding, but I can’t help it. Nothing has ever felt this way, and I can’t stop it and I don’t want to, even if it’s wrong.

  His mouth descends to suck my left nipple into his mouth and the ratcheting pleasure bursts open, becomes a scattering pulsating series of explosions in my chest and my core, and my heart is a wild tribal drum in my chest, and my breathing is all moans and gasps, and his whispered name.

  His fingers are moving swiftly now, and the detonations inside me are building, and I don’t know what to do. I’m going to come apart, I’m going to lose myself to this, I’m going to be lost in the hurricane of sensation, but he doesn’t relent. He bites my nipple and I hear myself make a noise that’s almost a scream, and then his fingers inside me find that perfect spot and his mouth sucks my other nipple between his lips and worry at it and now I’m gone…

  Everything inside me comes apart. I’m screaming, actually shrieking as white-hot lances of raw ecstasy spear through me. I’m shattered, convulsing, completely unable to stop the way my hips lift clear off the bed, seeking his touch, needing more, and he gives me more, so much more. He kisses me on my mouth as I shatter under his touch, and his tongue is inside my mouth and his lips possess mine. I’m grabbing at him, clawing at him as my muscles clench and release. My head spins and my breathing goes erratic. I hear my own long moans of pure sensuality and erotic desperation.

  His hand withdraws and his mouth presses against my cheek, and he holds me against him as I tremble uncontrollably.

  When I’m capable of speech, I lift my head to meet his eyes. “What…what did you do to me?”

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  He doesn’t realize I’m serious. “I gave you a taste, babe. ”

  It’s not lost on either of us that I don’t protest at the term.

  “A taste of what?” I wonder if I should tell him I’ve never done anything even remotely like that before. If his fingers had gone any deeper inside me, he’d have felt the evidence of my innocence.

  “A taste of us. ”

  I don’t know what to say. Part of me expects him to ask me to do something for him, because as inexperienced as I am, I know something of the way things work. But he doesn’t. He just holds me until the trembles subside. It’s then that the sense of shame and guilt overtakes me.

  Technically, I’m still a virgin but I gave him more of me than anyone has ever had. And I still don’t know what this is or where it’s going. I know what he said, that he wants me, but…wouldn’t he have said that to the others? There have been dozens before me. Dozens of women, and they knew what to give him, how to touch him, how to please him, and they knew what to expect. Did he whisper the same words he did for me?

  I know only one thing for sure: I want more. What he just did to me…I need more. I see what the big deal is now, and that was just a taste. I’ll never be able to get enough but I can’t have any more. I can’t. Because I need more from him. I know my feelings for him are going out of control. I know where they’re leading.

  And I cannot afford to fall in love with him. How can I let that happen? How can I trust him? How can I give myself to him when I’ve only known him for a matter of days, and if I fall in love, what then? I move in with him? Would he marry me?

  Do I want to get married? Does he? Is that where this is going?

  Not for him, surely. And what about his movies? They have sex in them. Meaning he has sex, with actresses, on screen for millions of people to see. And yet he’d come home to me and I’d kiss him and touch him and have to know that another woman just did all that, even if it was for a movie and not real emotion? Even without emotion, it would be real kisses, real sex.

  I’m hyperventilating as these thoughts pound through me a mile a minute.

  I let him touch me. I let him give me an orgasm. His fingers were inside me. His mouth was on my ni**les. I basically had sex with him, and I barely know him. He can get me fired and make sure I never work in Hollywood again. He can do anything he wants and get away with it.

  He touched me. He kissed me. He made me feel so much, so much.

  Tears leak down, tears of raw confusion and desperation and fear.

  He sees them. “Grey? What…what’s wrong?”

  “I…I’m sorry. I don’t… I can’t…” I scramble away from him, off the bed and into the bathroom.

  My stomach heaves, the welter of emotions turning to nausea, as it always does. I don’t throw up, though. I taste bile, fight it down. Dawson is on the other side of the closed door; I feel him there. I know I have to face him. I open the door and there he is, huge and gorgeous and clearly upset.

  “Grey, what’s wrong? I thought we’d—”

  I shake my head. “Dawson, I’m…God, I’m messed up. ” I want his arms around me, because even when he’s the one who upsets me, he comforts me. I can’t let that happen because I’ll get lost in his touch all over again. “I’m so confused, and I don’t know what this is, what we are…I don’t know anything. ”

  “Don’t—don’t you want to be with me?”

  “I don’t know! You make it so hard to think! You touch me, and I can’t make sense of anything. You could have anyone, or several people, and I can’t compete with that. And you’re a movie star. You’re going to be in Gone With the Wind, and you’ll kiss Rose. Or, knowing how Jeremy directs, you’ll have a love scene with her. And then what about us? Am I supposed to be okay with that? Where is this going? And what we just did…it was…amazing, but I couldn’t stop it. It was so much, so fast, I didn’t know it could—”

  “Are you saying you felt like I was forcing you?” There’s a razor-sharp edge to his voice.

  “No! I’m saying it was me…I wanted it, but I shouldn’t have…It wasn’t…” I don’t want to admit that I’m a virgin. I don’t know how he’ll react or what he’ll say or do. What it would mean for us, or whatever this is between Dawson and me. I push past him, adjusting my clothes. “Just…I need to go home. I need to think. This is all happening so fast, and I’m so mixed up—”

  “You’re running away again. ” He’s equal parts angry and resigned and sad.

  “No!”

  “Then what would you call it?” His eyes are blue-gray, and he’s pacing away from me.

  “I don’t know. I’m just saying I need some time. ”

  “Time for what? Either you want me or you don’t. ”

  “It’s not that simple, Dawson—”

  “Then explain it to me. ” He turns back to me and stands over me and stares down into me, into my soul. “Tell me one true thing. ”

  “I want you so much it terrifies me. ” I can’t look at him.

  “Why does it scare you so much?”

  “Because it’s so much, and I don’t know how to handle it. I don’t know what this is between us. ”

  “It’s a romantic relationship, Grey. It’s not that complicated. I like you, you like me, we spend time together. We make love. We tell each other true things about ourselves. ”

  “Then you tell me one true thing about you. ”

  He rubs his hand over his face, and then through his hair. “Okay, fine. You’ve still not told me anything real, anything deep. I know you’re afraid, that’s no secret. But I’ll show you what I mean when I say ‘one true thing. ’ I’m the son of Jimmy Kellor. My mother is Amy Lipmann. You’re in film, so you have to know those names. ”

  I knew this. Of course I did. Dawson being Jimmy’s son was public knowledge. But somehow I never thought of the effect that would have on Dawson. Jimmy Kellor was—and still is—one of the best-loved directors of all time. He was notoriously difficult to work with, demanding and exacting and quirky, but he was brilliant. He’s mostly retired now, and is famously reclusive. No one knows where he lives, but he’ll sometimes consult on a film from his home, via email and phone. Amy Lipmann was a romance actress from the seventies and eighties. She had a reputation as a wild child, and her relationship with Jimmy Kellor was a huge scandal at the time, since he was over forty and married with kids. Amy was barely twenty-one. Jimmy left his wife and kids for Amy, and the two stayed together for almost twenty tumultuous years. Tabloids recorded every accusation of cheating on Jimmy’s part and every visit Amy took to rehab. Eventually Amy overdosed on cocaine in the mid-nineties. Jimmy’s last film was the year Amy died, and he hasn’t directed since.

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  Dawson sighs. “So yeah. I grew up around Hollywood. I was an extra in Dad’s movies starting at the age of four. He got me my first real acting role when I was six. Mountain on the Moon. After that, I got my own roles. Mom and Dad managed me. ” His eyes go dark, brown with remembered pain. “You want another true thing? I found Mom. When she OD’d, I mean. She was in her bathroom. She was naked in her tub. The tub was empty, not filled with water. She was just sprawled in it, covered in puke. I was just a kid. It was in ninety-six, so I was like…eight, I guess. The puke was all bloody. I didn’t speak for six months after that. I was in the middle of filming my second feature film and when I shut down, they had to recast and reshoot. ”

  I put my hand over my mouth, trying to imagine what that must have been like for a little boy. I can’t.

  “My mom died of cancer. When I was a senior in high school. ” I’m barely whispering. “She was my best friend. My everything. She was the only one who understood me or supported me. My dad…I’ve never gotten along with him. We’ll just leave it at that. Then she died, and I watched it happen. Day after day I watched her fight and fight, but she lost, and she died and…she—she left me! She died, and left me alone, and God didn’t stop it. ”

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