The Duality Principle Page 5

  “Friends of yours?” she asked.

  Connor watched the truck, his body tense and guarded until it was out of sight. Then he let out a slow, deep breath.

  “Yeah. Sorry about that. Some people never change, you know?”

  She didn’t know. She’d never had anyone yell out of a truck at her, never stared at one as it disappeared from sight the way Connor had, either. He cleared his throat and nodded in the opposite direction from where the pickup had gone.

  “So how’s your research going?” he asked, making it clear that talking about whoever had just passed by was off the table. She wished he’d let her in, because having another piece of the mystery that was Connor unsolved was almost as frustrating as how damn good he looked in his jeans from behind.

  Gabriella followed him away from the lights of the streets and toward the dimly lit wharf. “Pretty badly, actually. I’m having trouble gathering evidence, which will make it interesting when I meet my thesis advisor in the fall and I have absolutely nothing to show him.”

  “Well, disproving duality can’t be easy. I mean, everything is dual to some extent, right? Everything’s opposite is also its equal. North and South. Good and evil.” He grinned at her, lips quirking up again, eyes crinkling. “Autobots and Decepticons.”

  Gabriella laughed loudly. It felt good to abandon their former heaviness.

  “That’s the proof I need. I can base my entire thesis statement off The Transformers.” She waved her hand dramatically in front of her. “I can see the title now: ‘Eighties Cartoons Invalidate Central Theory in Projective Geometry and Boolean Algebra’.”

  “It could work.”

  Connor wolfed down the last spoonful of his dessert and tossed the bowl in the trash before they drifted in the direction of the docks. When they came to a point where a gate locked the pier, a No Trespassing sign guarding it, Gabriella stopped.

  “Dead end,” she noted, but Connor typed a code into a keypad by the knob, and the catch in the metal door released. He opened it for her, and Gabriella eyed the pier down at the end of the ramp. Sailboats and yachts floated and rocked in every slip. “Do you have a boat down there?”

  “No, but like I said—I know my way around codes.”

  “And I’m guessing No Trespassing signs don’t apply to rebels like you, either.”

  He laughed and held her gaze. “Something like that.”

  His voice was soft and low, his eyes hooded and dangerous again. The Connor she’d seen for a few moments at the café was back, and she wanted more of him. She stepped through the open gate and waited as he closed it behind them. The ramp was steep, and they walked down the length of ropes and wood to the flat of the dock. It was steady, secured in place by tall poles made of timber, moss growing where the water broke around them. The noise from town quieted and was replaced by the softly lapping shore, the creak and groan of idling boats, and the sound of their footsteps. As they neared the edge of the pier, Gabriella was intensely aware of Connor’s presence and the fact that in between the moored boats and sleeping seagulls, they were completely alone.

  “I still don’t see how you can disprove duality,” he continued. “Every extreme is a variation of its dual, right? Hot and cold are opposites, but really, they’re just degrees of the same thing.”

  Gabriella enjoyed his logic, even if he wasn’t understanding the whole picture. “So you’re saying that light and dark aren’t opposites. They’re just two poles of the same phenomena.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Good theorizing. I’m impressed.” She leaned back against one of the poles and slicked her tongue over the pool of melted ice cream in her cone. “Do you have any other examples to share with me?”

  “Tons.” Connor braced an arm above her head, his body so muscled and sure and towering over hers. “Love and hate. Repulsion and attraction.”

  She felt the pull between them like magnets. Like gravity. She had to know if he felt it too.

  “Pleasure and pain.”

  “Exactly,” he repeated softly. “I mean, how can you try to disprove something when it’s standing right there in front of you?”

  She licked her ice cream again. Connor’s eyes darkened as his gaze dipped down to her mouth, his heavy stare fixed on her tongue. Gabriella broke off a piece of the sugary cone and bit down on it sharply. She heard his breath catch.

  “Going for the cone already when you haven’t finished your ice cream?” he asked.

  “I guess I’ve had enough.” The truth was that she was nowhere close to full, her body empty and throbbing with the need to be taken and claimed.

  “Well, I finished mine, and I’m still hungry.” His mouth was inches away from hers. “Sharing is caring.”

  She tilted her half-eaten cone toward his mouth. Connor leaned in, his eyes locked with hers as he slipped his tongue inside it. He probed and licked, achingly slow, his tongue sliding into the wafer funnel the way she imagined it pushing into her body. She shivered and reached back to clutch at the wood behind her with one hand, her knees starting to buckle.

  “You sure you don’t want any more?” he asked.

  “I might want more.” But she didn’t mean the ice cream.

  “You should. It tastes really good.”

  He took the cone from her hand and slowly, purposefully gathered some ice cream onto the tip of his tongue. Closing the distance between them, he bent down to brush his lips against hers. For a moment, all she felt was hot breath and cold lips, and then his kiss washed over her. Gabriella melted into the feeling, drinking the ice cream that spilled from his mouth into hers.

  Connor pulled back to take a breath and threw the cone to the ground.

  “You taste better.” He roughly clasped her neck, cleaving her to him for another dizzying kiss. “Goddamn, you taste so good.”

  Everything that had been pent up inside her suddenly released. Gabriella returned his kiss in a frenzy of want, not caring how the move dug her glasses into her face. He leaned in and that wall of muscle lining his abs just barely grazed her nipples. Wanting him closer, she reached forward and grasped the belt loops of his jeans, trying to yank him toward her.

  “No,” he whispered harshly. “Hands behind you. Leave them there.”

  She choked out a strangled moan. The dirty taunt and command in his words was something she’d wanted to hear for so long, something she’d been desperate for. Obeying, she moved her arms behind her until she felt the rough support of the pole again, and Connor kissed her, hard. His hands tangled in her hair, pulling and twisting and arching her up for more. She gasped at the sensation, a sound that Connor swallowed until he broke the kiss to smile wickedly at her.

  “That feel good?” he asked, tugging the rope of hair he’d coiled at her nape. She could only nod, too much of a panting, needy mess to reply. He chuckled and bit at the side her mouth. The decadent pinch made her buck against him. “Fuck, you’re so sexy.”

  Pleasure spiraled through her, meshing with the abrasion of the wood on her back and hands. Connor pushed her against it, his body pressing, tongue seeking, teeth rasping. He freed her hair and raked his hands down her sides, then moved to her waist, his fingers sinking into her flesh. It pushed him more firmly between her legs, and Gabriella whimpered when she felt the thick outline of his erection through his jeans.

  Connor hiked up her skirt and she flexed her hips, an involuntary move, her mind lost to instinct. His hands found her ass and tilted her hips up toward his thrust, giving him ample space to slide his denim-covered cock along the damp cotton of her panties. Her clit swelled and throbbed, soft and warm against hard and unyielding. He dipped his tongue into her mouth, and she wanted to slide her fingers into his jeans in the same way. She wanted to disobey his order to keep her hands behind her, to shimmy her back down that pole until her knees met the uneven slats of the dock and take that hard length o
f his into her mouth.

  So she decided on doing exactly that.

  Her hands shook as she lunged for his jeans, her fingers snapping to the buttons and pulling them free. She’d just run her palm over the cotton underneath, feeling the dampness where it touched his thick, blunt head when Connor hissed and stopped her. With a grunt, he pulled her hands up to his mouth. He kissed her knuckles, his lips lingering there, the move almost reverent as he gently pressed his forehead against hers.

  “Fuck, Gabby. You…” He trailed off, his breathing coarse and jagged. “You are not what I expected.”

  Gabriella closed her eyes. “Neither are you.”

  Chapter Six

  Connor slammed the gate shut and thundered back down the dock. He didn’t stop walking until he was at the water’s edge, as far as he could get from the parking lot where he’d said goodnight to Gabby and then took off.

  What the fuck was the matter with him? Was he actually going to try to be different this time around, or was all that just bullshit to get his grandfather off his case?

  He plunked down on the edge of the dock and hung his legs over the water. It was dark, the sea black and deep, and he felt so stupid he almost wanted to hurl himself into it. Still, he didn’t know how the hell he was supposed to have resisted Gabby tonight. She was unreal, quoting The Matrix and Transformers, turning his inner geek into a drooling idiot, all while licking her ice cream like she was giving head. How on earth had she made something so innocent look so goddamn hot? It was like watching porn, for Christ’s sake.

  Connor closed his eyes and brought his hands up to his face, hoping that grinding his palms against his eyelids would force the picture of her mouth from his brain. But as images of what else he wanted to slide past those soft lips of hers began to fly through his head, he reopened his eyes and let his hands fall back to his lap.

  He hadn’t planned on bringing her here, hadn’t consciously realized he was leading her to this secluded spot where few would find them. He’d broken the code to that lock at the gate years ago, after watching enough snooty yacht-owners try to deftly hide the keypad with no idea how easily they were giving the numbers away. He’d just planned on meeting Gabby for ice cream and then maybe taking a nice walk around town. Nothing else was going to happen. They were going to be in public after all, although that had never really stopped him before. Then the opportunity presented itself, and he couldn’t resist.

  Connor lifted his hands to his face again and cupped them around his mouth, sucking back a few shallow breaths. He hadn’t counted on her being as tempting as she was—as eager and sexy and more responsive than he’d ever imagined. As soon as she unbuttoned his jeans and touched him, he almost lost it. He had to stop things when he did, had to walk her back to her car and keep a healthy distance between them, making up some bullshit about being parked in another lot and bolting away like he’d just thrown a Molotov cocktail in her backseat. If he hadn’t, he would have been leading her into the belly of some shoddily locked yacht, and he’d be playing out the same pattern all over again.

  He couldn’t let that happen. No matter how frisky she was getting on the docks, Connor was sure she wouldn’t go as far as he would. She’d never want to see just how bad he could be.

  Damn it, if he didn’t act differently around her, how was he going to convince her he was worth her time?

  He winced and shook his head. He’d done more than wish his father was around—he’d started to turn into him. Shit. All these years he’d hoped not to be anything like him, and here he was, putting up a front for Gabby that wasn’t so different from the crap his old man fed his mom.

  Patricia Hapwood had been raised with a good head on her shoulders, had a diploma under her belt and plans to make something of herself. But when Travis Starks rolled into town with a vintage Harley for wheels and a cross hanging from one ear, all her good sense went out the window. It was the eighties, and Travis was a dead ringer for Rob Lowe in St. Elmo’s Fire. That’s what Patricia always said, anyway. Travis told her he was going to take her on an adventure, that he was going to be the best thing that ever happened to her, and she believed him. She snuck out in the middle of the night and he rode her out of Portland, took her down Route One from the rocky coastline of Maine to the palm trees of Southern Florida, getting her hooked on crystal meth along the way. They got married somewhere in the Keys and were making their way back north when Patricia found out she was pregnant. She wanted to raise a kid in Maine so they set up camp in Augusta, and she stopped using until Connor was born. Money was tight, even tighter when she got hooked again. The adventure Travis promised her turned into renting a shitty apartment and working the morning shift as a cashier at Cumberland Farms. Patricia never bothered to tell her parents she was back, even though they were only living fifty miles away. As a matter of fact, until Connor was fifteen, he never knew his grandparents existed at all.

  The familiar buzz of a motorcycle barreling down Commercial made Connor snap to attention. It was the sound that once heralded Travis’s arrival home. His father loved the shiny beast he rode, took better care of it than he did his own family. Occasionally when a gear or filter on it needed fixing, Travis would call Connor out to the asphalt to help. He’d listen to instructions, making sure to hand over the right tools, learning everything he could, wanting to show his father that he was worthy of his attention. Travis would even take him out on it once in a while, and those times sitting between his father and the open road were the only happy memories of him that Connor had.

  There weren’t a lot of them.

  Most of the time Travis came home late, tired and covered in grease and in a hurry to light up. Odd jobs in dirty garages didn’t put food on the table, not when you had a habit to support. Patricia’s job didn’t help much, either, although it did mean she was at least physically present when Connor got off the bus, even if she was too high to help him with homework or make something that resembled dinner.

  Connor wrapped his arms around his stomach. Even all these years later, he still remembered exactly what it was like to go to bed hungry and wake up even hungrier, how the need for food had turned into nausea by the time he broke into his first store.

  He’d been twelve when he did it—just the local deli when there was nothing left in the house to eat. The cops caught him, carted him back home and threatened his parents with words like court and Child Protective Services, but it ended up being a total joke. They didn’t change, so Connor kept stealing, and the cops kept reeling him in. It wasn’t until Travis ran out of patience with the responsibilities of being a husband and a father, riding out of town for good, that Patricia tried to sober up enough to be a parent.

  That, apparently, had been another joke.

  The bike in the distance picked up in speed until the sound of it vanished, and Connor inhaled a shaky breath. Because of his father, Connor knew engines inside and out, knew the difference between a single, a V-twin or a boxer just by hearing its growl. He could figure out what was wrong with a bike simply by the vibration of its handlebars, knew just how to make a machine roar to life and then calm into a patient, powerful idle. Until he learned his way around computers, working with motorcycles was all he could do. And even after that, it was the only way he could make any money. It was how he paid his way through SMCC. But Connor didn’t want that life anymore. Grease on his fingers wasn’t the way to a better future, to a life that didn’t look like his father’s.

  A life that included a girl like Gabby.

  What he’d told her about his first months in Portland had only been the tip of the iceberg. He was a mess when he got here, even more so when he realized his mother wasn’t coming back. He started tenth grade at South Portland High angry and defiant and eager for a fight. Word about who he was and where he came from spread fast, but at the time, Connor didn’t care about the bad rep. He mouthed off to his teachers and wore his detention slip
s like badges of honor. He got a tattoo just for the hell of it, got into fights with the football players and had their cheerleader girlfriends whimpering out orgasms behind the bleachers. One night his senior year when he got tired of walking into town for parties, he stole his grandfather’s car. Only after he was pulled over and brought back to their house in cuffs did he discover what being grounded was like.

  It wasn’t fair to treat them like that when they’d done nothing but support him, but Connor guessed that when you grow up without any limits, you’re constantly trying to find out what finally crosses the line. There was no way in hell he wanted Gabby knowing about all that.

  Connor drew his legs up to his chest and hugged his knees. After that night, his grandparents told him he was on his own if he didn’t get his act together. That as soon as he turned eighteen, he was out. The idea of losing the only family he had left in the world terrified him, and he’d done his best to cut the crap. He started studying, started getting better grades and avoiding brushes with the law. He got into SMCC and spent his days working at the shop and his nights going to class. He stayed on there after he got his degree, building up his skill with bikes while reading books on coding and making a couple of low-budget websites on the side. He managed to leave most of his rebel past behind him, but it wasn’t as easy to change his habits with girls as it had been with everything else.

  While drugs and empty promises may have been Travis’s way of luring a woman in, seduction was Connor’s. Somehow he’d figured out the right way to smile, learned how to talk softly and look at them in a way that would make their pupils dilate and their nipples hard. He knew what to whisper in their ears, words just dirty enough that they would follow him anywhere. They’d hide in the dark with him and gasp in surprise at the lewd things he liked to do, crying out that no one had ever made them feel so good or come so hard.

  And that’s where it always ended. After the last panted breath was where Connor cut things off. He’d never asked a single one for her phone number. He had no desire to spill his soul, to tell his whole sorry story and see the pity in their faces. He didn’t want to become someone’s project or to try to make sex turn into something more. He had no clue how to be in a relationship. How could he, considering his parents’ shitty example? But being with Gabby made him want to figure it out.