He pulled away after a while and looked deep into my eyes. “Serious question time,” he said in a voice which would not stand for any deception. “Did you fuck with Gary’s cupcake?”
“No,” I said without flair.
He nodded, satisfied. “Do you know who did?”
“Yes. Julianne.”
He nodded again. “Second question. Did you steal the shaving cream out of Bradley’s locker?”
“No. And yes, I know who did. Same person.”
He blew out a breath. “Cool. Were you the one who put the fish under the seat of my car?”
I wrinkled my nose. “No! Ew. I don’t know who did, though, I hadn’t heard about that one.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “Fair enough. My backpack?”
“I was as surprised as you were.”
He sighed as the tension wound out of his back. I liked the feel of his muscles relaxing under my hands.
“Your turn,” he said.
“Okay. Did you or your brothers fill my locker with shaving cream and soap sud?”
“I definitely didn’t and I don’t think they did.” He sounded more sure about that than he had the last time the topic came up.
“You talked to them?” I asked, running my hands up and down his back. God, I liked to touch him.
“I did. They said they didn’t do that or the flagpole or the car. Though Chris was laughing hella hard about the car, so…I mean, I don’t think he’s the one who did it, but I don’t really know for sure. I—well. I don’t know.” It was clear that he wanted to say something else, but there was a world of hesitation there and his eyes kept sliding away from mine.
“No, finish what you were going to say,” I said.
He sighed and let his hands drop to my hips. “I don’t think Chris did it because the first thing he said when you popped your hood was that you were trying to lure us into some kind of a trap. He was pissed at me for going over to try to help you and kept insisting that we were going to be pelted with water balloons full of paint or something.”
“Specific,” I said, impressed.
“It’s happened before. But—even though they are my brothers—I only met them three years ago. Still, I don’t think they would lie to me. I don’t. But I can’t be certain, and so I can’t promise you that they aren’t behind all of it.”
“Oh.” That didn’t really surprise me, but there was an ache of anxiety and disappointment in my chest. I didn’t like the grim look on his face, so I kissed it to give it something else to feel. It worked, at least a little bit. “Do you want a soda?” I asked, turning away from him to go to the fridge.
“Sure,” he said. He looked around again, a subtle look of surprise on his perfect face. “Your appliances all match. They even match the cupboard handles. And the toaster.”
“And the coffee pot,” I said with a wince. “My parents picked the most neutral everything so they wouldn’t have to think about it. Wait until you see the family room. It’s white on white, with…wait for it… a white accent wall. In fairness, the living room is a little better, but only because my mom chose a living room out of a magazine and had a decorator match it exactly, down to the socially-conscious book titles on the shelves.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “Interesting. I always did wonder how rich people lived.”
“They don’t live. They work.” I slammed the fridge harder than I needed to and handed him his soda. He took it gingerly like he was afraid to piss me off more than he already had. I sighed. “I’m sorry. They just told me they weren’t going to be back for a while—my life is getting more complicated every day and I can’t even talk to my mother about it. It’s annoying.”
I started for the back door and he followed me. As soon as we stepped outside, he stopped. I turned to him, watching as he blinked a few times then broke into a huge grin.
“You did this,” he said confidently.
I cocked my head at him and sat down on one of the little white chairs. “How do you know?”
“Because it isn’t basic or empty or neutral. It’s all colorful and chaotic, understated and screaming all at once. Damn. Jason would fucking love the heck out of this.”
“Jason? Mr. Seymore?”
Rudy nodded and sat down across from me, basking in the atmosphere of my garden.
“He loves this kind of thing. You saw our front yard? He did that. He likes to plant things and let them figure out how they want to grow, then he just helps them do it. He has an entire patch dedicated to dandelions because he admires them.”
I grinned. “He admires dandelions?”
Rudy laughed. “I said that too. Yeah, he does. He says it’s because they’re tenacious. They fly away and land somewhere, then they make the best of it, no matter how hostile the environment.” His eyes and smile softened. He swallowed once, then took a sip of soda, then put it down again, gazing at his hands. “He says they remind him of us.”
“You and your brothers?”
He nodded. “And the other foster kids. Nobody goes to Jason right out of the gate, you see. He has a reputation for rehabilitating kids, the ones who are dangerous to themselves and to other people. The ones who have been hurt too badly and too deeply and just want something to kill. He—helps.”
That was vague enough that it set my heart pounding. Everything Julianne told me about how Jason Seymore was just a killer using kids to do his dirty work ran through my head.
“What do you mean he helps?” I asked carefully.
Rudy smiled gently, completely unaware of my moment of panic.
“He creates this—world inside his house and on his property. Everything’s chill. Even fights and lost tempers. It’s chill. I don’t know how he does it, but he’ll make someone talk about what they’re feeling when all they want to do is put their fist through a wall.” He shrugged, chuckling at something. “And if they punch the wall anyway, he teaches them how to patch and paint drywall.”
“Good skills to have,” I said a little enviously.
He grinned. “It’s not just that, either. He lets each one of us choose something to care about, and he makes sure we get it. For me, it was my guitar. For Chris, it was his reptiles. He has a huge terrarium in the basement, but he had to earn it—by being kind to a little bluebelly Jason caught for him.”
I relaxed. “Wow. That’s nothing like what I expected.”
His mouth tightened bitterly. “Doesn’t surprise me,” Rudy said and put his soda down. He stood up impatiently, then started pacing. “He isn’t magic, you know. He can’t just take a violent kid and make him behave like an angel overnight, it takes time. It takes trust. Trust takes boundaries, and kids—especially ones like us…like me and my brothers— we need to find those boundaries with our hands, with our actions, words aren’t enough. We can’t trust words. Too many words. Too many promises broken.”
He huffed for a second and muttered something in Spanish too quickly for me to hear. When he looked at me, his eyes were full of hurt.
“We act out because we don’t expect to be here. Sometimes it’s private, en la casa. Sometimes it’s public. When it’s private, he can handle us. When it’s public, he can handle us later. But—people see. People talk.”
His chest heaved – just a little bit, but enough for me to notice. I put my soda down and moved closer to him—not so close that I was crowding him, but close enough for him to reach me if he wanted to.
“People say, they say, oh that Mr. Seymore, he takes the bad kids, he like for them to destroy things, he want them to make chaos, he covers his ass with their mess so he can do crime.” His grammar was breaking down the same way one of my nanny’s had when she’d been fired. It broke the hell out of my heart.
Rudy stopped – stop talking, stop breathing, stop being for a moment - and sat down hard on one of the stone benches and put his head in his hands. I sat down beside him and touched him gently on the shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” I said. And I was. I’d heard the things that were break
ing his heart and didn’t dismiss them right away. It had taken two years and a whole lot of illicit make out sessions under the bridge for me to have the openness to believe that he and his family weren’t all criminals. Rumors—what terrible, terrible things.
Rudy turned his head away from me and scrubbed a hand over his eyes. It came away wet and he wiped it on his pants, then took a long, shuddering breath. When he turned to me again, his eyes were dry. He put an arm around my shoulders and pulled me in roughly for a kiss.
“Stop looking at me like that,” he growled when he released my lips and put his forehead against mine. “No pity. It’s not allowed.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I lied lightly.
He grinned and kissed me again, more gently this time. Heat washed over me, clear down to my toes, and I melted into his embrace.
Long, luxurious touches drove me wild, sending shivers over me as I tensed into him and relaxed against him over and over again. When we finally stopped, I was breathless and weak with desire.
“Hey,” I said, my voice lilting like I was drunk. “You think…maybe… you wanna see my room?”
His laugh was warm and inviting, as comforting and enticing as his kisses. “Hell yes,” he said.
I took his hand and led him upstairs.
All the built-up tension we’d created under the bridge came bubbling up as we kissed on my bed, touching each other over our clothes the way we had a dozen times before.
My breath came quick and hard as we hurtled inevitably toward the conclusion that had been building for so long. I trembled when his hands slipped under my shirt and he pulled away, gazing into my eyes.
“Don’t stop,” I whispered.
I took off my shirt, hoping I’d chosen a reasonably cute bra that day. The way his eyes traveled from my throat to my breasts made me realize that it really didn’t matter. He wasn’t judging my clothing; he was just seeing me. Really, really seeing me. It warmed my heart until I thought it would burst.
We undressed each other slowly, taking each other in. His smooth, tan skin felt like velvet under my fingers and tasted like heaven on my lips. It wasn’t the way I had imagined it, like we would suddenly become porn stars, with nothing but sex and sweat and bodily fluids between us. It was better, infinitely better, because Rudy was still Rudy and I was still me.
It was Rudy’s hands moving over my body, making me jerk and writhe with pleasure.
Rudy’s mouth, kissing every heated part of my body until I shivered.
Rudy who moaned as I wrapped my mouth around him, twirling my tongue for his pleasure.
Rudy who whispered wonderful, musical words that I didn’t understand because no one had ever said them to me. Private words that were full of promises and need, lust and desire.
When I took him inside of me, it wasn’t the melding of souls that one of my very religious nannies insisted it would be. We were still us, giving and taking pleasure, reveling in one another’s bodies. I trusted him implicitly, and he didn’t abuse my trust. I’d known he wouldn’t.
His lips on my breasts, his teeth slowly and carefully grazing one nipple and then the other. His fingers in my hair and his cock stretching me, slick with my juices as he pushed in and pulled out, slowly turning hints of pain into mountains of pleasure. I held him close. He held me closer.
Our lips, in the madness and the calmness, the chaos and the peace, always found their way to each other. Tongues met and teeth collided. His breaths became mine and mine became his. I licked at his neck, the saltiness from his exertion turning me on just that much more as he burrowed deeper into me, pushing me higher and higher and way too high. My toes curled and my body tightened, feeling like it was being wrapped in a silk veil of ecstasy. When my climax hit, it hit hard, surprising us both—when he came a few seconds later, it was no surprise at all.
We lay in each other’s arms, limp and sweaty and satisfied. I played with his hair, gazing hazily up at the softly glowing stars on my ceiling. The sun was going down, making my plain white walls blaze orange.
“Will you stay with me tonight?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said, so easily that it made my heat flutter. He kissed me again, reigniting the flame that had burned down to embers. Neither of us would get much sleep that night. And I don’t think either of us minded.
Chapter Thirty-Four
I was dreaming of floating in a warm brown sea. It was wonderful and I wanted to stay there forever—if only I could find that phone and make it stop ringing.
Eventually I swam to the edge of consciousness to find the phone still ringing, jangling and buzzing away on my nightstand. Groaning, I stretched as far as I could without leaving the protective circle of Rudy’s arms as I grabbed the phone and pulled it into my line of sight. Julianne?
“Mmph. Hello?”
“Out of bed, sleepy head! It’s almost nine o’clock, we have to get your keys to the school before we go swimsuit shopping. No, don’t tell me you already have one. This is an important party—my parents invited some official people, and those people are bringing their kids. You are going to hook up with a senator’s son, but not in that awful maroon one-piece you call a swimsuit. I’m already on my way, I’ll be there in five minutes. Be ready!” She hung up without waiting for a response.
Panic buzzed down my spine, pinning me to the bed for ten precious seconds. Then I moved. Launched, really, out of bed and into the closet.
“Rudy, wake up! Julianne’s on her way, I have to get you out of here!”
He groaned. “Five more minutes,” he grumbled, still asleep.
“Rudy! Wake up!” I was wriggling into my underwear and throwing dirty jeans aside to find the clean ones. One of these days I’d organize my closet.
“Wait, what?” he asked, sitting straight up in bed. His hair stuck out all over the place and the sleep in his eyes made them look like two mystical pools.
I tossed his clothes at him and grabbed a bra.
“I have got to get you out of here,” I said, my voice hitting a pitch that would make dogs howl. “Julianne is going to take one look at my outfit and it doesn’t even matter what outfit that is and decide that I need a different one and she’s going to drag me up here and make me change and when she finds you here she’s going to explode and it’s going to fuck us both because we didn’t come right out and tell her and I’ve been telling lies to cover it up and she’ll know that and—”
He grabbed my face and kissed me so hard I felt dizzy when he finally pulled away. He’d dressed himself as I was ranting.
I took a deep breath and kissed him again, then tugged a t-shirt on over my bra, jerked my socks on, and shoved my feet into my shoes. I didn’t have time to do anything about my hair, so I grabbed a brush as I hustled him down the stairs.
“You have your phone?” I asked.
He slapped his pocket and nodded. “Will I see you tonight?” he asked as I herded him toward the garage door.
“No. Julianne’s making me go to her pool party. I’ll see you soon, though. I—” I bit my lip before I said words I’ve been dying to say to somebody, anybody, for as long as I could remember. Rudy winked at me and kissed my mouth, then dashed out to his car and started it as I hit the switch to open the garage. He didn’t waste any time getting out of there; even so, the garage door was barely closed again when Julianne pulled up outside.
He hadn’t even been gone thirty seconds. They must have passed each other.
Had she seen him pulling out of my driveway?
Would she know everything before I even opened the door?
I ripped the brush through my hair as I went to answer the door. I’m just flustered because I overslept, I told myself. That’s all she has to know. I yanked the door open right as she put her finger to the buzzer.
Here goes nothing.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Julianne’s face was hard to read. Her eyes were filled with a mixture of determination and panic. She scanned the area around me
before flipping her hair over her shoulder and letting out a little sigh.
“Hey! Wow, you were asleep, weren’t you?” She looked me up and down and rolled her eyes. “Oh, well. Put your hair up, grab your keys, and let’s get the hell out of here.”
I blinked at her, surprised, then did as she said. “You aren’t going to make me change?” I asked half-jokingly.
She shook her head, pursing her lips as she stared off in the direction she must have come from. “We’ll talk about it in the car.”
Frowning, I grabbed my things and followed her out to her car. Once we were on the road, she shot a worried glance at me. “Did you know you have a stalker?”
“What?”
She sighed. “That’s why I didn’t want to wait around for you to get dressed. Every time I come over lately, I see the Seymore’s ugly car. One of them is watching you.”
I shrugged. “Maybe they just have a friend in the neighborhood.”
She gave me a look full of disappointment. “Have you learned nothing? They don’t have friends, especially not in this neighborhood. They have victims, and I’m pretty sure one of them has chosen you to be his.”
I shook my head. The look of worry on my face was surely easy to see. For Julianne it would mean I was worried about being the next Kitty May. In truth, I was terrified of how uncareful Rudy and I were being.
“I really don’t think so, Julianne,” I said, rubbing at my eyes.
She shrugged and sighed, but I could tell she wasn’t letting it go. After we’d dropped my keys off with Mr. Foster and had made it to the mall, I ducked into a changing room at the first opportunity.
I think we need to tell everybody, I texted Rudy. Julianne thinks you guys are stalking me. Idk what she’s going to do about it.
He didn’t respond immediately, but I didn’t really expect him to. We’d both had maybe four hours of sleep the night before, and if I hadn’t been wriggling in and out of skimpy little bathing suits I would have been napping, too.
“Archie Jameson’s favorite color is green,” Julianne said from the other side of the door. She tossed an ugly green frond-printed suit over the door. It was knotted in surprising and unintuitive ways and it took me five minutes just to get it on.
Them Seymore Boys: An Enemies to Lovers Bully Romance (The Seymore Brothers Book 1) Page 22