Isolation: Book 2 of The Quarantine Series Page 17

  Raven and I have always shared a palpable sexual tension. But ever since last night, neither of us have been able to ignore the magnitude of that sexual tension.

  Last night, she looked at me in the way that leaves no holds barred. And right now, I can’t look at her or even talk to her. Every time I do, I just want to corner her and start fucking her.

  This is so irritating. My reaction towards her is still fucking teenage bullshit, like how I used to feel when I was sixteen years old.

  How can someone affect me to this extent?

  As we reach the last stretch of the forty-five minute walk, I see possible signs of inflammation flaring up on Raven’s leg, so I cut the walk short.

  A quick video call with Uncle John verifies my own recommendation; resting her leg until the inflammation goes down.

  We make our way to my condo. Luckily, I have pain medication there and neither of us are working, in case she needs to be on bed rest today.

  The last time we came to my condo, Raven was comfortable opening up without the presence of our families. It might actually be a good opportunity to talk about last night.

  However, I did not take into account that Raven also relies on the presence of our families for the security that she seeks, and does not receive from me.

  Ever since we have arrived, it has clearly settled in with Raven that she is injured, alone, on a bed, and in an enclosed space with her predator. Her panic is evident. The signs are all there. The slight sweat that’s trickling around her forehead despite the fact that it’s cold. Her random shaking. The shortness of breath.

  I watch her lie flat on my bed with her leg propped up on a pillow. Her legs are parted and she looks vulnerable as fuck. Ready for the taking.

  The last thing I can focus on is her panic. Instead, in the true form of her predator, I am only focused on how long it’s been since I have been inside her.

  Forty fucking days. I can go four years without sex. But forty fucking days while she is actively in my presence is impossible.

  I have lasted this long because of the horror that flickered in her eyes the last time we were together. I need to remind myself of that and take a cold fucking shower.

  I turn to Raven. “I am going to take a shower. In the meanwhile, I’d love your input on decorating this place.” My condo is bare with minimum furnishing. It's so bare that it's not even liveable.

  “What would you like me to do?” Raven asks mildly.

  I hand Raven a color swatch book. “Why don’t you pick a paint color? I already own the eggshell, white, and off-white paint buckets. Circle the one you like best.”

  Raven is clueless on home decor. I bet she’d just stare at the swatches, trying to differentiate between eggshell, white, and off-white.

  I leave her to it, and head to the bathroom. By the time I come out of the shower, Raven is under the covers. I am careful not to even look her way.

  -----------

  Raven

  Milo hands me a big book of color swatches, asking me to choose between the eggshell, the white, and the off-white.

  Honestly, I can't differentiate between the three. Paint colors are different than the color swatches fashion designers work with. All three swatches looks white to me. Nonetheless, I try my best and choose one.

  Ever since last night, something has shifted in my dynamic with Milo. His words of admission were magical. I was beyond touched.

  Now, everything feels more intimate. Sexual tension is in the air.

  However, Milo has barely spoken a word to me or even looked my way. We have been hanging out for weeks, joking around, digging up nostalgia. Things were starting to feel normal between us.

  Now, it’s unbearably awkward.

  I tried our usual jokes. I tried regular conversation. It was all met with a grunt, silence, and even less eye contact. I have no idea how to make things natural between us again.

  The anti-inflammatory and the pain medication Milo gave me is not helping the case either. The after-effects of the pills on an empty stomach is causing enough dizziness to pull the covers over myself, but it’s not causing enough dizziness to blur the current visual in front of me.

  Milo walks out of the bathroom in nothing but a towel around his waist. The covers are over my face, but I can see his slightly wet body striding into the room through the opening.

  This is the most naked I have seen him in years.

  Yes, years.

  Every time we have had sex since I came back, he was too busy restraining me, and I was too busy fighting him off to take in his body. Now, there is no confusion.

  I can see his solid back as he rummages through his closet. My eyes trail his broad shoulders, his biceps, and the contours of his back, all of which seem larger than life.

  He is more than ripped.

  Milo is staring at his closet in seeming frustration. I don’t believe he keeps clothing in this condo. He is presumably making the same observation as he grabs the only available change of outfit, a flannel shirt and a pair of jeans.

  Milo throws his sweat-soaked clothes from the hike into his hamper, and in a quick move removes the towel from around his waist.

  My cheeks are probably turning million shades of crimson as I stare at his bare ass. I am such a perverted peeping Tom.

  Milo puts on the pair of jeans, sans boxers or a shirt, before turning my way to catch my drift. I feel like a kid who just got caught with their hand inside the candy jar. I should stop staring, but now I am staring at his bare chest instead of his bare ass.

  Look away, Raven.

  I am basically gaping at this point. I can’t stop.

  Did I forget to mention the washboard abs and the perfect V that I have never seen on another man?

  Look away, idiot.

  Milo doesn’t say anything. His expression remains unreadable, and he barely meets my eyes. He throws the flannel shirt and the used towel on the bed.

  “I am running a bath for you,” he points towards the bathroom. “Uncle John said it will help to soak your leg in the water. I have a flannel shirt that you can wear till I run a load of wash for our dirty clothes.” He then gives me a sheepish look. “I only have one towel, sorry.”

  “No worries,” I reply easily. “I don’t mind.”

  “Do you need help getting into the tub?”

  I slowly rise from the bed. “No, I got it.”

  I make my way to the bathroom, and close the door to strip my clothes. Sinking into the hot water, I laugh over how I just shamelessly eye-fucked Milo.

  Speaking of the devil, Milo opens the bathroom door. He doesn’t look my way. Wordlessly, he grabs my dirty clothes off the floor and walks out, shutting the door behind him.

  He is washing my dirty underwear now?

  Oh God. This is so uncomfortable.

  I sink into the water and notice all the items Milo put out for me. Like the condo his bathroom is bare of products, but he lined up travel-size bath products along the edge of the tub. I assume he collected these through his travels. I smell each one and wonder where he traveled to procure them.

  When I finish, I hobble out of the tub and wrap the towel around me. I am aware that I am surrounded by his smell. I am aware that this very towel was around his cock not too long ago.

  I had hung my bra on the towel rack, and I am relieved to find that Milo didn’t take it for a wash. It’s one of those sweat resistant bras, even though I didn't sweat much during the walk.

  After toweling off, I put on the bra along with Milo’s flannel shirt. At least, the shirt goes upto my thighs, and the bra makes me feel somewhat less naked while I have no underwear on.

  I find Milo in the kitchen, unboxing some takeout which he presumably ordered while I was showering. He gives me a tight smile as I sit with him at the dining table.

  He is still fucking shirtless, and I have no underwear on. Both of us are just hanging out half naked without a soul in sight. This big, empty condo is making that fact much more obvious.

  This is unbearable!

  I watch Milo’s expressionless face as we dig into our meals.

  Look. At. Me. I silently yell in my head while he keeps his head down.

  For the first time since I have known Milo, I feel invisible in his presence. I might as well be non-existent.

  -----------

  Milo

  Torment.

  Torture.

  Temptation. Sweet fucking tempation.

  I am doing everything in my power not to look at Raven. Not to look at her wet, naked body underneath my shirt that barely reaches past her pussy. Her pussy that currently has no underwear on because it’s in the damn washing machine.

  Are you fucking kidding me right now?

  Dad used to drag Mia and Reid to church every time he was off on a Sunday. He never bothered me with it because if he took the kids then it meant it was my day off. As a result, Mia and Reid believe in a higher power.

  Raven and I were never interested in theology. It’s one of the things I find most attractive about her. She doesn’t need a higher power to control her destiny.

  But the current situation might change my mind.

  Is this the universe’s way of telling me that there in fact is a God, and he is currently punishing me for my sins and my Atheistic approach to life?

  The amount of control this situation is requiring is more than ever before. This is the most skin Raven has shown in weeks, and the timing could not have been worse.

  We are in an empty apartment. No fucking family members. No friends. No buffers. Everything is so sexual that it’s just maddening at this point.

  And she is not helping the situation with her lusted-out looks. If I didn’t pick up on Raven’s other reactions, I would have fucked the living daylights out of her by now.

  But I do see it. I come out of the bathroom to find Raven eye-fucking me. Yet, all of her trepidation still remains. The sudden chills. Her gulps. I bet her heartbeat is rapid too. Her body seems to be in constant fight or flight mode.

  If she is so fucking terrified of me that she starts shaking as a reflex, then why the fuck is she looking at me that way? Does she not even realize the adverse affects I have on her?

  This is insane.

  It’s like the prey looking at the predator wantonly.

  Every impulse in my body is screaming for my cock to be inside her already. I need to feel her pulsing around me. I need it so bad that everything is goddamn blurry and hazy at this point.

  Ignoring these impulses till our clothes are washed and dry seems like an impossible task. I keep telling myself that I can control myself.

  Of course, I can.

  Maybe.

  Probably not.

  There is no one around. My own depraved thoughts are scaring me. How must she feel?

  If anyone else ever did what I did to her, I would have killed them by now. It’s not a joke.

  I went to Paris multiple times over the years to beat up the men she had slept with.

  None of those men had forced her. It was her choice, but I still beat the shit out of them, convinced that no one else has the right to touch her whether it's her choice or not.

  After all the shit that has happened between us, and despite Raven’s trauma that I caused myself, I still feel that she is mine. No one else is allowed to touch her, or even think about her.

  Yes. I understand my hypocrisy. I just don't fucking care.

  My eyes keep landing on the hem of my shirt that she is wearing, which is revealing too much of her legs. I trail my eyes to catch sight of her cleavage despite the damn bra she put on.

  No one should be this enticing. She is the reason why the word temptation was created. Because that’s what she is, fucking temptation served on a platter. Hazel eyes. Perfect tits. Porcelain skin. A stupid shirt that barely reaches her thighs.

  This is absurd.

  It’s fucking torment to want something this much and not be able to act on it.

  I need air.

  I get up from my chair and walk barefoot to the terrace, without providing Raven with an explanation.

  I don’t trust myself around her. The reality is I will probably lose control again at some point. I can’t be around her and not be with her in the way every instinct in my body craves.

  No one has ever felt this way around a girl, nor should they. She is the only thing that makes me feel like a person. A real person with a real soul.

  It's true.

  She came back and she restored my soul. Every single thing I haven’t felt since she left, I felt again upon her return. It’s a change that has immediately been noticed by everyone in my vicinity.

  Raven's warmth has once more filled our home. And it has also filled my body with a goddamn soul.

  All of which just makes me want her more. It feels like fucking death will take over unless I can touch her.

  I stay out on the terrace for as long as I can. When I finally come back inside, Raven is in my bedroom, on my fucking bed.

  This torture never ends.

  She is sitting at the edge of my bed, looking at the swatch book again.

  My nostrils flare the moment her smell hits my senses. No matter how many times she showers, that smell never comes off her. It’s innate to her.

  I am so fucked, and so is she.

  -----------

  Raven

  Milo has been taking refuge in the terrace for what seems like hours. To keep myself occupied, I grab the color swatch book and try to examine the colors again. I have barely opened the page when I find Milo strolling back to the room.

  He comes near me, then moves back and starts pacing the room like a maniac.

  Neither of us have still spoken a damn word to the other. I can’t take it for a minute longer. I will just walk back to the Upper West Side on a handicapped leg.

  It’s only what, two hours?

  Worth it!

  The less dramatic approach might be to simply call an Uber. I just can’t think straight while he is fucking shirtless. Why is he still shirtless?

  I get it dude. You have a good body.

  At this point, I am considering giving him my shirt to cover him up. The sight alone keeps riling me up. I am fucking soaked between my legs with no damn underwear on. When was the last time I felt this out of control? As a teenager? Jesus!

  Milo stops pacing and turns to me. He has to know what I am thinking. It’s obvious with my cheeks heating up, and the rapid rise and fall of my chest. He hasn’t done a single thing but arousal around him has become an automated response now.

  I am also aware of the lining in his jeans, with his cock about to burst out of it. We are both thinking the same fucking thing.

  Do something!

  How do you even facilitate this? This is not something you can Google. There isn’t a book called, Changing your relationship from non-consent to consent for Dummies.

  Luckily, I don’t have to worry about it. Milo’s facial expression finally changes, as if he has come to a conclusion and that decision has lust written all over it.

  In a pure Milo move, he doesn’t wait a second longer after making a decision.

  He strolls closer, drops on the floor in front of me, grabs both of my thighs, and yanks them apart. His eyes are on me. Milo is watching… I think he is waiting for a reaction.

  Am I supposed to give him a sign? They really should have a book about the step by step process.

  I'd open my legs wider but his grip on my thighs is ironclad. Looking down at him I try to communicate that protests are nowhere near my thought process. In fact, a different thought is on my mind.

  The tech-mogul, the all powerful CEO, Milo Sinclair is kneeling on the floor between my knees. The same man who is listed on Forbes 30 Under 30 as one of the thirty most impressive entrepreneurs under thirty years of age.

  A man identified as one of the most impressive men in the world is shoving my shirt up, and staring at every inch of me as if his next breath is impossible without me. As if he is my willing slave.

  Pride doesn’t begin to describe what I feel for him, but right now something more than pride for his success is rushing through me. It’s making me feel powerful and worshipped to know that everyone in our vicinity caters to this man while he only caters to me. The world kneels in front of this man and he willingly kneels for me. In fact, he treats it as a privilege.

  I have no idea why I haven’t looked at him this way before, but it’s a turn-on like no other.

  Milo leans in closer and starts with small kisses, gently teasing me. My mouth slightly parts. He picks up the pace, his tongue grinding against my clit. Then he starts licking me with manic hunger, as if he can’t live without this.