First Love: A Superbundle Boxed Set of Seven New Adult Romances

by Kent, Julia

  Dick move? Hell, yeah.

  Then again, I am my father’s son.

  Amy

  2 months later

  I stared at my prom dress. It was perfect. Peach with a slight copper undertone to it that set off the occasional topaz flecks in my brown eyes. Princess perfect.

  Tonight, I was supposed to be a princess and Sam was supposed to be my prince. I knew I was supposed to be kind of jaded and hard edged and not talk like that. I was supposed to be all Gossip Girl, and smooth, and edgy. But really, even smart, above-that-crap girls could be allowed to be a damn princess on prom night. For prom night, I was supposed to put that dress on. I was supposed to have someone come to my house with a corsage, drive up in a limo with a group of friends all paired off for the night, either with boyfriends and girlfriends, or just going as buddies. Tonight, I was supposed to dance in Sam’s arms, marvel at how handsome he looked in the tux, look into those eyes, feel his arms around me, sense the comfort.

  Tonight, I was supposed to sneak off to a hotel that everyone knew we would get, that our parents would turn a blind eye to as long as we didn’t drink and drive. Tonight, I was supposed to lose my virginity in a glory of cliché.

  Instead, here I was, sitting in my bedroom, staring at the dress. The dress my mom helped me pick out long before I had a prom date, when I was hopeful and optimistic that I’d have fun going stag with my friends and maybe get to be that perfect princess. The shoeless dress. I never went out and bought anything to go with it. No jewelry, no shoes, no matching nail polish, or perfect earrings, nothing. Because I hadn’t seen Sam since the day he walked out of the auditorium when they announced my name. Hadn’t heard from him, hadn’t—anything. Nothing. The cold reality of the past months of silence, emptiness, and despair meant that I’d be throwing good money after bad if I assembled any sort of fashion plate for myself. My friends tried to convince me to go. Even Erin showed up at the last minute, pulling me along, literally yanking on my arm and trying to convince me that I could still go stag.

  “You’re crazy,” she said.

  We’d been best friends since kindergarten. She was going with her boyfriend, Jonathan, captain of the football team. A guy who looked just enough like Tom Brady to make you wonder if he wasn’t his bastard child. Her dress was slutty—her word, no judgment from me—in a really good sort of way. They’d have fun, I knew. It was easier to be immobile and immutable than to let the tiniest crack of hope seep in and make me think that maybe—just maybe—I should go.

  Mom was almost inconsolable. She couldn’t believe that her little girl wouldn’t go to prom. “There are so many other boys you could ask,” she said.

  No, Mom, I thought, there aren’t. I asked the only one I wanted to go with. So, instead, my date would be Ben and Jerry’s. Who knew? A threesome. And a movie, something from Judd Apatow. I needed a good laugh. Maybe I’d even watch Fanboys again. That would be my night.

  It felt a little bit like paying penance, as if I’d done something wrong and needed to be punished. Being ignored by Sam was punishment enough, no question there.

  Making it to Nationals meant that in a few weeks, after graduation, I’d be on a plane to some Southern state I didn’t care about to compete in an event that had no real impact on my future. It wouldn’t get me more money for school. It was just a feather in my cap. A very expensive feather in my cap. It cost me a guy I could have loved. Who am I fooling?

  A guy I already loved a little.

  I wondered what he was doing. Was he hanging out with his buddies? He went to a different school and I knew that their prom night wasn’t the same, so to him this was nothing, just a throwaway night. Like I was a throwaway girl.

  Why the hell did he walk out of that auditorium and never say a word to me again? I got his cell phone number from Joe Ross and texted him. Nothing. I wasn’t going to try anything else. I looked him up on Facebook, but couldn’t bring myself to push the Friend button, because what if it hung out there in limbo?

  With debate season over, my Saturdays were free again, and instead of feeling an opening in my life, it felt like something had closed. The feeling of his arms around me, of his lips pressed against mine, of the potential that rested in our touch, had swirled down the drain the moment we shook hands and that debate had begun.

  And yet, if I could turn back time, I don’t know if I would do anything differently. If I’d pulled any punches along the way it would have been false, and Sam would have hated that. If he had condescended to me, I wouldn’t be pining away for him right now, that’s for sure.

  I can understand being mad at me. I could understand being embarrassed, or pissed, or frustrated, but the silent treatment, being able to just push aside what we had? It’s so unlike the Sam I thought I knew. I wanted to storm over to his house, barge in on him, make him talk to me. Instead, I sat here on my bed, my phone turned off, staring at a bunch of peach cloth. I stood up and pulled the dress out of the closet, then threw it on the bed like a blanket. It was perfect for a perfect night that never would happen.

  The doorbell rang and I ignored it. Evan hollered up, “Liam’s here!”

  Liam? I’d known Liam McCarthy since we were, well...babies. He was popular. His parents had divorced years ago. He lived with his mom over in the same school district that Joe and Sam went to, but his dad lived next door, still in the house, so he was over here constantly.

  He bounded up the stairs, came through the door, all blonde and tan and Godlike. My friends all wanted to date him. Half of them wanted to fuck him. But to me he was like a brother. Except I hadn’t seen him much this past year and he looked nothing like my brother.

  “Sam never called?” Liam was a straight shooter. He was dressed in soccer shorts, a v-neck short-sleeve shirt made of the same lightweight material, and he smelled faintly of a mixture of Old Spice, Polo and oranges. My head swam for a moment as he stretched his long legs out, easing onto the bed beside me, a serious look on his face. Blond, curly hair peppered the tanned skin that stretched out for miles in front of me, my eyes trying so hard not to drift up the black, silky shorts that covered his middle. His shirt was the same color and his eyes were a bluish-green, like looking at the ocean as it met the sand dunes in Truro, on Cape Cod, just after a storm.

  My pulse needed a minute to recover. My heart was still stuck on Sam. My body, though, knew exactly what it wanted—and recovering wasn’t it.

  “Nope.”

  “Asshole.” He sat on the bed next to my dress and fingered the hemline.

  “Yup.” They were in the fledgling band that Trevor Connor and Joe Ross had put together this year. They had a weird name I couldn’t remember. That meant Liam saw Sam regularly, and my heart soared—not just from Liam’s hot skin so tantalizing on my bed, either.

  “Did you talk to him about me?” I tried to keep the hope out of my voice, but failed miserably.

  Uncertain how to answer, Liam seemed to struggle with his words. This was not his normal state; the guy was confidence itself on legs. “Sure. Told him he was crazy to give up a chance of tapping you. Fresh virgin meat.” A predatory smile made my knees go weak and a wet warmth spread from my—

  Pressing my hands over my heart, I said, “Like words from Shakespeare.”

  “I aim to please.”

  My laughter came out like normal, at first, and then settled into a strange braying sound of half sobs and half giggle. Liam looked at me with alarm and sat up, his body impossibly big and beautiful, right in front of me where Sam should be.

  “Amy?”

  Waving my hands in front of my face like I was swatting a bee, I said, “I’m fine! I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “I’m pretending to be fine! I’m pretending to be fine!”

  “That makes two of us.” His face fell, and in his pain I could see the man he would become. It was jarring.

  Yet I knew why he winced. “Charlotte, huh?”

  He leaned back, folding his hands unde
r his head, and sighed. I swallowed, hard, as the soft cloth of his shirt rode up at the waist, showing a thickening of those golden curls right where it would lead down to—

  “I miss her,” he huffed, not quite convinced he should tell me.

  “I can imagine,” I squeaked, feeling like an adulteress to the memory of Sam. How stupid! This was Liam. The guy who launched spitballs in my hair on the bus. The one I took baths with when we were kids. The dude who kissed my cheek at our first co-ed party when we played Truth or Dare. The guy who was like a brother to me in a way that my own brother barely was.

  And also? I owed no allegiance to Sam or my imagined reality with him. Go away, Sam. Get outta my head.

  “Why’d you break up with her?”

  He sat up fast, like a wrestler doing quick sit ups, his flat stomach muscled in ways that made me want to reach out and touch him for the pure joy of touching a body that could do that.

  “Because.” His voice went cold.

  “Gotcha. I’ll shut up about it.”

  He stood quickly and walked over to my prom dress. “You would look good in this. Why don’t you go?”

  “Where’s your tux?” I joked.

  A look of confusion, then a kind of dawning horror, spread across his face. “Aw, Amy, I never even thought about it!” Then pity. “Of course I would have taken you.”

  “NO!” I shouted, jumping to my feet. “No, no, no, no, no, that’s not what I meant! I don’t need a pity date.”

  “So not a pity date, Amy,” he answered, eyes combing over me, then the dress. “I’d have been honored.”

  Tears came in a giant wave then, the power overwhelming me, my stomach clenching in one hard wall of anguish. “Why won’t Sam even talk to me?” I wailed. “Why am I the weirdo stuck at home on prom night?”

  And then Liam was holding me, arms wrapped around my sobbing self. His body felt so good, and comforting, and hard. Not like a brother, suddenly.

  Like a man.

  “I am so sorry,” he crooned into my hair, the vibration of his deep voice making my neck tingle. “At least there are two of us. You’re not the only weirdo.”

  I half-laughed, half-sobbed into his shoulder. My hands slid across his back and he held me closer, lips touching my earlobe with the briefest of kisses. Was he...was this...did he want...?

  In an instant, he put my questioning to rest by pulling back, his hand at my cheek, soulful eyes taking mine in. “I wish everything were different.”

  And then another hug.

  “I know you miss Charlotte,” I whispered, faltering as I tried to think of what to say. He stiffened.

  Wrong thing.

  “I don’t want to talk about Charlotte,” he murmured against my cheek. In a breathtaking split second his lips were on me, and Liam—the same Liam who had teased and tormented and played and cajoled as kids, the one I’d captured fireflies in a jar with, who had gone on camping trips with my family when we were little—was a muscled wall of man above me, hovering over me and doing to my mouth, my body, what Sam was supposed to be doing this very moment.

  Sam.

  Tears formed at the corner of my eyes and slid down the edge of my face. Liam felt it as he kissed me tenderly, and wiped one away. “Amy, I—should I stop?” He froze, starting to roll off.

  Gratitude mixed with frustration and I pulled him back to me.

  “No. Don’t stop. Please don’t stop at all. I want this. I want more. I want it all.”

  “You’re sure?” No question in his voice—he was confirming.

  “I am. What about you?” I asked.

  His warm lips and confident hands were my answer as he eased me onto the bed, our bodies resting on top of a pile of peach cloth.

  And so Liam took as much as he gave, and it was pure and tender and what I needed.

  In the end, I had lost my virginity on prom night, alright.

  Except with the last guy I’d ever imagined.

  Chapter Five

  Sam

  Amy’s apartment, after the show

  Reaching for her again, my hands cradled her jaw, fingers interlaced in the long hair at the back of her neck, our breath mixing as tongues touched. My hands shifted to her arms, finally settling down and then—

  Peace.

  Something deep inside me just stopped, as if it could finally rest.

  Sanctuary.

  This wasn’t about fucking. That I could get nearly any time I wanted after a show. This was about intimacy. The point when you’re with someone, touching them and you realize that you’ve been invited to cross an invisible line and enter a new world. We all build shells around ourselves, and cracking them open to display what’s underneath takes a lot of courage. Sex itself isn’t what I’m talking about; there are degrees of touching and knowing and forging ahead with someone when it comes to being intimate.

  Amy trusted me enough to let me touch her again.

  It’s all about trust.

  My hands roamed over her waist, the curve of her side and hips, the ends of her long hair tickling my palms. God, she smelled so good, and the heat of her lush body felt made solely for me, conjured only for the space between us. Her mouth devoured mine, her boldness making me rock hard as we entwined ourselves on her bed. Months without sex made me more than ready.

  A tight band of need clenched every muscle in my body as Amy’s hands found my ass, then roamed up my back. No woman I’d been with had ever been so bold, and it turned everything up a notch. Wanting a willing body in bed was one thing; finding a woman willing to tell me what she wanted so that we could make everything so much better had been a rich fantasy of mine for—well, forever.

  Could this really be Amy?

  “Amy,” I said, pulling back just enough to look in her eyes, “I don’t get many second chances in life. I feel like I’m living in some sort of surreal moment where it could all be taken away in an instant, like when I open my eyes, or when I blink, as if this is an alternate reality,” I explained, my words feeling empty and stupid.

  “No,” she gasped, interrupting me, wrapping those warm arms around my neck. “It’s the past four years that were the alternate reality. This,” she added, punctuating her words with a kiss that shot down my core and back to my brain like being stroked, “this is the life we should be living.”

  “And now we are,” I finished for her, so ready to make love to her, to connect and deepen, to serve her for all the rest of time—in whatever reality we could carve out for ourselves. Pumped by desire, it was hard to balance my body’s screaming need to be in her, to give myself to her and to have her do the same, to get hot and sweaty and breathless on her bed with what I also knew—via a thin shred of restraint—needed to be respected.

  I’d hurt her so intimately four years ago.

  Could I heal her with intimacy now?

  If this was her giving me the chance, then maybe I could start to believe in the divine again.

  Amy

  “Tell me what you want,” Sam said, murmuring in my ear before kissing my neck.

  “What I want?” I laughed, my palms meandering down his back. What was left to want?

  “I want to know everything about you, Amy. How you want to be kissed, how you want to be touched.” His eyes sought mine, looking up through his eyelashes as his mouth traversed my shoulder and collarbone.

  As his lips touched mine again, tongue languid and searching, seeking as much to touch and know me as to communicate his own need, Sam’s words echoed in my head. My inexperience hit me hard, cutting short the yearning touch my hands wanted to continue. Once with Liam, a year with Brent—that was it. Sam must have been with so many people. A drummer in a band? And so hot? Of course he had expectations and comparisons and I—I had just my own wanting of him.

  Half naked and all-eager, the full impact hit me just as Sam’s hungry kiss swept me out of my mind. His hands were on me, stroking my breasts and making my nipples ache. His palms were cupping my ass and his erection was at my
fingertips, his hard, muscled back was mine to explore with my own hands.

  But so much more than that—his words. Who says these things? I’d played out this moment thousands of times in my head over the years. Wondered how it would feel to hear him whisper my name, to be told he wanted me—needed me—craved me like no other woman.

  His words were enough.

  I didn’t want enough. I wanted so much more, and he offered it to me right now with his mouth, his hands, the hard press of his rigid manhood against my torso, my hand now seeking it out, enjoying the anticipated groan.

  Sam didn’t disappoint. He slid his hands under my bra and unclasped it, nimble fingers so confident, as if he’d touched me this way a thousand times before. I felt unbound in more ways than one. Without saying a word, I pulled my own top and bra off, the air chilly enough to make my flesh pebble. When I threw my clothes aside and brushed my hair from my eyes, I found Sam gloriously shirtless, too, his eyes expectantly delighted. Matching mine.

  So many years of pretending to be someone I wasn’t faded as reality filled the room like oxygen, fresh and clean and rejuvenating. Images of what it meant to be a sexual being tore through my mind like the moment of orgasm, where time speeds up and slows down at once. The headiness and import of this epiphany dissolved as I lit up in a grin, which Sam returned. I decided in that moment that I simply would not be self-conscious. Any hesitation was gone.

  Gone.

  Like his stilled hands, the butterflies of self-doubt stopped their fluttering.

  And something in me just...broke.

  Snapped.

  Surrendered.

  Be still, my heart had a whole new meaning as his eyes took me in and I found him appreciating what he saw. My fingers drank in his skin, parched, seeking to be quenched. Everything outside of this room faded, leaving only the sound of our breath, the rasp of skin against skin and sheets, and the deafening silence of questions unasked but quickly answered through touch.