by Jamie Shaw
Chapter Twenty-Six
IN THE BATHROOM, I brace my hands on the sink, cursing myself for wasting my teenage years on Brady instead of losing my virginity in the backseat of some random guy’s car like Dee. I’m not the type of girl Adam likes no matter how much I wish I was or try to pretend I am. I’ve never had a one-night stand or a threesome, both of which would require not being a freaking virgin. He would have been better off bringing Kayla or Zoey back to his room—at least they would’ve known what the hell they were doing.
Since I’m too embarrassed to face him or anyone I might find in the living room—considering they now know what I sound like when I’m having the best almost-sex I’ve ever had in my life—I stay in the bathroom until I fall asleep on the floor, and I don’t wake up until later when someone lifts me off the cold tile.
“What are you doing?” my groggy voice asks as I wrap my arms around the someone’s neck. I bury my face against their T-shirt, and Adam’s scent envelopes me.
“Besides wondering why you’re sleeping on the bathroom floor?” he asks, and I remember what happened between us in a rush.
I don’t say another word. I don’t say anything when he sets me on the bed, or when he tucks me under the covers, or when he crawls in next to me. We face each other under the dim glow of the city lights filtering in through his sheer black curtains, and I wish I could close my eyes and pretend to sleep, but I can’t. He’s impossible to look away from, gorgeous and staring at me like any girl in the world would want to be looked at by a boy like him, like I wished he would have looked at me before I fled to the bathroom.
He reaches forward and plays with a long lock of my wavy blonde hair, letting it spill between his fingers before his gaze finds mine again. “What were you going to say when I asked why you wanted me?”
My voice mirrors the nervous fluttering in my belly, tiny and uneven when I ask, “Why?”
“Because I want to know.”
“I don’t remember.”
Adam studies me, and then he says, “Then ask me why I want you.” His voice is quiet and smooth, in total opposition to mine. He stares at me like I’m something delicate and speaks to me like I might blow away. When I don’t respond, he tucks my hair behind my ear and traces the curve of my jaw with his thumb. “Peach . . . ask me why.”
His answer can’t possibly be the same as mine, and I don’t want to hear anything less. Not from him. So instead of asking, I lean forward until my lips are a breath from his, searching his eyes before I whisper, “Do you want me?” It’s not the question he told me to ask, but it’s the one I need an answer to.
I surprise myself by not waiting to for his reply. The pull of his lips is too strong to resist, and I close the distance between us just as he’s opening his mouth to give me an answer. I navigate carefully to test his reaction, gasping when his arm circles around me and tugs me flush against him. With his hand splayed across my lower back, his lips explore mine—gentle, soft, and addicting.
He kisses me carefully, too carefully, so I roll onto my back and pull him with me, urging him to take control. Instead, he pulls away and stares down at me with those stormy eyes that melt me from the inside out. I can tell a thousand thoughts are swirling in his mind, each one probably screaming that I’m a virgin, so I sit up and slowly pull my shirt over my head, dropping it to the floor before unclasping my bra. I drop that to the floor as well, and then I lie back down, allowing Adam’s hungry gaze to roam over every inch of my flushed skin. His fingertips graze my collarbone before he sweeps a feather-light curve to the swell of my breast and cups it in his palm.
Teasing my nipple between his fingers, he leans down and kisses me again, this time not so carefully. I moan against his mouth when he uses his knee to nudge mine apart and crawls between them, kissing all the way down to my naval and lower. With his lips at the waistband of my leggings, he bunches the material in both hands and slowly tugs them off. Then he settles on his stomach between my legs and splays his hand at the juncture of my inner thigh, watching his thumb as it rubs over the thin line of my pink cotton panties and soaks them all the way through. He continues torturing me even after his gaze lifts to meet mine. “I want to give you something.”
His fingers hook into the lacy waistband of my panties and slowly pull them down, leaving my naked body on display in the suddenly too bright room. I close my eyes to ignore a rush of anxiety, but then Adam gently spreads my knees farther apart and the next thing I feel is his warm breath against the wetness between my legs.
I wait until I feel like I’m about to self-combust, and then I gaze down at him, wondering why he’s not doing anything.
Which was exactly what he was waiting for.
His gray-green eyes watch my expression as his tongue swipes a slow stroke between my folds, flattening over my clit in a seductive tasting that causes the air to leave my lungs in a breathy moan. My muscles tighten and untighten until my knees start shaking, and Adam pulls away to plant soft, wet kisses against my thighs.
I groan and squeeze my eyes shut, drowning equally in the throes of ecstasy and agony. I need his lips back on me. I need his mouth and his hands and every single part of him all over and inside every single part of me.
“Peach,” he says, demanding I open my eyes and look down at him again. “Do you know how long I’ve wanted to do this?” My bud blooms under his velvet kisses, each one bringing a rush of wetness between my legs that he uses to slide his finger deep inside of me. With his finger massaging just the right spot, he sucks me between his lips and savors me with the tip of his tongue. The sensation is so overwhelming that I instinctively reach toward his head to get him to stop, but instead of pushing him away, my fingers thread through his hair and hold him against me.
I’m moaning. I know I’m moaning, and if anyone is still awake in this house—which they definitely are now even if they weren’t before—I know they can hear me. But God, I don’t care. Nothing matters but Adam and what he’s doing to me.
He withdraws his finger to swipe his tongue through me, sucking on my tiny nub like he’s trying to dissolve it under his swirling tongue. My entire body feels like it’s coiling too tightly, like it’s going to unravel at any moment, and Adam must be able to sense it because his finger pumps back inside of me, curling against my insides as he devours me with his greedy mouth. He watches me watching him, and the sight of those eyes on me is enough to pull me apart. I burst all at once into a flood of white hot rapids, fighting the pull until it overtakes me. My hand flies out of Adam’s hair to grip the pillow behind my head as I get swept away. My legs shake, my hips buck, and Adam pulls his finger out of me to grab my hips on both sides. He pins me to the bed and buries his face between my legs.
“Fuck, Adam!”
Moans rumble low in his throat as he drinks me up, and when I can’t take anymore, I grip his hair between my fingers and pull him toward me. I sit up to meet him halfway and kiss him while my frantic heartbeat pulses between my legs. Adam’s lips press against mine until I’m forced to lie back, and then he settles between my thighs, the hard-on in his boxers driving me wild with want.
“Get another condom,” I beg against his mouth.
He shakes his head, our lips brushing in a soft caress.
“Why not?”
His gray-green eyes search mine, and then he pulls away to trace his thumb over the curve of my kiss-swollen lips. “I don’t want you to regret it.”
The questions I want to ask are drowned in the kisses he gives me, so soft and tender that the rapids in my belly calm into a bubbling pool. He kisses me until my muscles loosen and exhaustion sets in. Then he shifts to my side, leaving every inch of me chilled and wanting. His arm wraps around my waist and tugs me in until I’m spooned inside the length of his body, and then his nose buries in my hair and he deeply breathes me in.
My body wants to sleep, bu
t my mind is filled with the echo of his words. I don’t want you to regret it. Why does he think I’d regret it? Would he want to forget my name, just like all of the others?
The insecure part of me is shouting, Of course he would! He’s Adam freaking Everest! You’re Rowan freaking Nobody! Even Brady didn’t want you. What else did you expect?
But the other part of me—the part of me that just accepted everything he was willing to give me, the part that almost confessed the three words that would have ruined everything—lies content in Adam’s arms, wondering why he’s holding me like he’ll never let me go.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Can you come pick me up?
The morning after my epically failed hookup with Adam, I’m desperate for an escape plan. I woke with his arms around me and his stubbly face smothered against the back of my neck, but I felt so nervous about how things would be between us that instead of falling back asleep in the only place my heart wanted to be, my stomach tossed and I felt like I was going to throw up.
Dee’s response is immediate. She knows me well enough to know that I wouldn’t ask unless I needed her, and right now, I need her more than ever.
On my way.
With Adam and Shawn still asleep, and Joel nowhere to be found, I sit on Adam’s couch gnawing my cuticles to bits since my fingernails have long since met their maker. I’m saying silent prayers that Adam won’t wake up and find me out here and want to talk about why I snuck out of bed, or why I’m using my best friend as a getaway driver, or why I practically begged for him to take my virginity last night after almost telling him I loved him.
He did me a favor. He still wants to be friends.
Friends . . . Unless in the light of a new morning, he realizes we are so far beyond that and one of us—the one who has never had and never wants a friend like that—will never be able to go back.
My thumb is bleeding and my foot is bouncing up and down when a key turns in the lock and Joel strolls in ahead of my thoroughly tousled best friend. Her chestnut locks are pulled up into a haphazard ponytail, and Joel’s normally meticulously styled blond hair is all over the place in the most sexed-up bed-head I’ve ever seen. I raise my eyebrow at Dee, but she tugs me to my feet before I can even ask.
“Let’s go get breakfast.”
She and I are almost out the door when Joel catches her hand and pulls her into a not-meant-for-still-virgin-eyes kiss that makes my toes curl in my already-tight flats. Dee’s hands flutter to his chest, and his wrap around her arms. Mine hold onto the doorknob because if they take this show to the couch, I don’t plan on hanging around to watch. I’ll have to steal Dee’s keys because there’s no way in hell I’m staying in Adam’s general vicinity, but that shouldn’t be too difficult if Joel keeps her distracted.
Fortunately for me, their lips break apart, and Dee is left just as speechless as I am.
“I’ll call you,” Joel says, his voice like melting sugar.
Dee takes only a second to recover, and smirking at him, says, “I never gave you my number.” She consoles him with a light pat against his chest, and then she leads me out the door.
As soon as we’re in the elevator, her hands clamp onto my shoulders, her eyes full of concern. “What happened last night?”
“You first,” I say, trying to buy myself some time. I definitely do not want to hear the details of what she did last night, but I’d rather talk about that than the disaster that happened in Adam’s bedroom.
Dee tries and fails to prevent a smile. She lets her hands drop and shrugs a shoulder, but then her fingers drift to her lips and I can tell last night wasn’t as ordinary as she’s trying to pretend it was. “Joel came back to my room with me.”
Yeah, no kidding. When all I can do is frown, she says, “What?”
“Joel’s not like the other guys you’ve been with, Dee . . .”
The other guys she’s been with worship the ground she walks on. She’s a siren; once they’ve had her, they always want more. She thrives on their undivided attention, and if they don’t give it to her, she does what it takes to get it. Then, as soon as she has it, she doesn’t want it anymore.
The problem is, Joel isn’t going to be that guy. She’s met her match in him—I just doubt she knows it yet—and I have no idea how she’s going to handle it when she’s not the center of his world.
“And I’m not like the other girls he’s been with,” she replies with a confident smirk, her high heels clicking onto the lobby floor as soon as the elevator dings open.
We cross the quiet parking lot together and I pause at her passenger-side door, staring at her over the plum-purple hood of her Civic. “You realize he’s kind of a rock star . . .” A rock star, a sex fiend, a groupie hoarder. A name forgetter, a phone number discarder, and hopefully not the guy who detonates my drama-bomb best friend.
“Oh, he’s a rock star alright.”
“Oh my God.” I slide into her front seat before she starts spilling the details of her sexcapades with my couch-dwelling roommate, hoping that Macy was able to stay with Leti last night or the poor girl is going to be traumatized for life. Memories of a senior year camping trip when I had to sleep in a tent next to Dee and Matt Anderson still haunt me to this day.
Dee laughs and slides in next to me, and on the ride to IHOP, I attempt to distract myself from my own train wreck of a love life by stressing about hers instead. I know she’s right about Joel never having been with a girl like her before—because there is no one like Dee—but I can’t help the sinking feeling I get when I think about them together.
“If you and Joel go south,” I warn after she finishes scolding me for not telling her about a nipple ring I’d have no way of knowing about, “I don’t want to get dragged into it, okay?” Thanks to me, things are already messed up between me and Adam; I don’t need them getting messed up between me and Joel too. If he and Dee end up going atomic, I know I’ll get caught in the blast.
She scoffs at me. “How could things possibly go south?”
I don’t bother answering because there’d be no point. Dee does what she wants, and right now, she wants a bad boy with a mohawk, a nipple ring, and more fame than he knows what to do with. Trying to stop her would be useless, and it’s not like I don’t have bigger things to worry about.
We’re seated in IHOP and have placed our orders when she clasps her fingers on the table and says, “Okay. Time to spill it.”
I sigh and rub my eyes, and then I lean forward and concentrate on a scuff mark on the plastic table. “Adam gave me my first—” I hold my fingers in the shape of an O, and Dee gasps, drawing my eyes back to hers.
“You had your first—OH MY GOD. Are you still a—”
“YES,” I interrupt, slouching in the seat and rubbing my temple. “I mean . . . I offered. I wanted to . . . But he turned me down.”
“Wait, so did he,” she turns her hand palm-up and wiggles her middle finger, and my face nearly melts right off, “or did he go,” her index finger points down and slowly lowers beneath the lip of the table.
“Both,” I answer, and her eyes widen with disbelief.
“And then he turned you down?”
Like it wasn’t mortifying enough that it happened, now I have to talk about it. With words. And eye contact. I sigh and let my head fall to the cushion behind me, preferring to stare at the weathered ceiling instead of the utter confusion in Dee’s eyes—like no guy would ever turn a girl down after doing that to her. Unless of course that guy is Adam and that girl is me.
“Yeah,” I say. Turned me down, broke my heart—whatever you want to call it.
Dee takes my hands and pulls me forward so that I have to look at her again. “Tell me everything.”
I stop chewing on the inside of my lip long enough to share in limited detail what happened between Adam and
me last night, because I’m hoping she’ll have all the answers I don’t.
But she doesn’t.
“Were you really going to give it to him?” she asks about my virginity after our pancakes arrive, adding yet another question to a list that’s already impossibly long. But at least this one, I can answer.
“Yes.” I was going to give him everything, but he didn’t want it.
He told me I’d regret it.
My heart throbs painfully against the cage of my chest because I already regret it. I should have known Adam didn’t want me like I wanted him. I guess I should be happy he cared about me enough to be honest before we crossed that line instead of after.
Dee carves into her pancakes while I let mine grow cold, her brow furrowed while she tries to dissect everything I just said. “Okay, not one damn word of that makes any sense. Why would he turn you down after messing around with you like that?”
I have the answer, but that doesn’t make it any easier to say. Dee lifts her eyes to gaze across the table at me, and I suck in a quiet breath.
“Because I basically told him I loved him,” I admit. I almost said the words, and then my actions screamed it, and both of those told Adam the one thing he didn’t want to hear. He’s always treated me differently than he treats other girls, but then I had to go and act just like them. I had to fall for him just like they all do.
“Sweetie,” Dee says, the concern in her eyes forcing me to look away again, “you do love him.”
My forehead falls to the table, and I groan. I don’t know when it happened or how it happened, but the way my heart is aching makes it impossible to deny. The only thing holding me together right now is the hope that maybe I can fix this somehow before it’s too late.
My text ringtone dings loudly next to my ear, and I lift my head to see Adam’s face appear on my phone. His perfect smile pulls at the frayed strings of my heart, and I stare at the screen until Dee orders me to read it.