by Sophie Swift
His body descends, pressing my back against the kitchen counter.
The ice bag drops to the floor and both of his hands slip under my tank top, clutching the sides of my waist. His chilled fingers send delicious shivers up my body.
I open my mouth to him, inviting him in, moaning softly against his tongue as it pushes deeper into me. The kiss consumes me. Steals my sanity. My sense of direction. I don’t even feel the floor vanish from beneath my feet as his fingertips grip my waist and lift me up.
My legs instinctively wrap around his torso and then we’re spinning. Moving. Searching for a place to land. My back slams hard against the refrigerator door, sending the various magnets holding up wedding invitations and baby announcements skittering across the floor.
He continues to ravish me, his tongue venturing deeper, his groan lost in the hollowness of my mouth. I open my legs wider, allowing him closer access. His broad hips fill the tiny space like a vacuum, pushing against me with a hunger and fierceness that I never knew Grayson Walker was capable of.
The Grayson I knew has always been gentle. Sweet. Tender.
This Grayson is someone else.
Someone ravenous. Fervent. Wild.
And—if the rock-hard bulge that’s formed beneath his pajama pants is any indication—someone ready as well.
It only makes my desperate yearning to feel him inside me—to feel him everywhere—even stronger.
His mouth dips to my neck, zeroing right into my most sensitive spot, as though he’s known about it all along. As though his lips were built to fit there. My body shudders in response, warm wetness pooling between my legs.
Holy shit, that’s incredible.
My mind wants to slow down, take time to think about what is happening. Grayson Walker is kissing me.
And not just kissing me.
Kissing the fuck out of me.
But my body won’t allow for even a moment of reflection. The sensation is too consuming. The hot pressure of his probing tongue too exquisite. I can feel his breath coming hot and heavy against my burning skin and it’s the most miraculous thing I’ve ever felt.
His large, eager hands grip my waist tighter, and in an instant we’re moving again. I don’t know where’s taking me. You couldn’t pay me to care. All I know is a moment later I feel icy cold marble stinging the exposed skin of my lower back. He lays me down across the kitchen island, my legs still gripped tightly around his waist.
His thick, confident fingers slide further up my tank top, wrapping around my ribcage, like he’s going to squeeze the air out of me.
But if breathlessness is his goal here, he’s too late.
I’m already a crazed, panting mess.
In one swift, feverish motion, my tank top is pulled over my head, the cool surface of the countertop shooting glorious tingles down my back.
For a long, lustful moment, he just stands there, hovering above me, his eyes languorously grazing my body, caressing my skin. He reaches out and places his palm down flat against my chest, his fingertips spread around the contours of my neck. Then slowly—voraciously—he claws his outstretched hand down the length of my torso, his damp skin sticking to mine, his fingertips curling slightly as they drag across the curve of my breasts.
“Oh God, Lia.”
His voice quivers as his wild eyes devour me. As his hand pushes urgently against my stomach.
The sound of my name—urgent and sensual and raspy—on his mouth is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard in my life.
Then, as though unable to wait any longer, he dives down, his searing lips landing on my stomach. I let out a quiet gasp, my back arching up. He groans greedily into my skin, his hands slipping under my bowed back to compel me closer.
I’ve never felt such hunger—such irresistible need. My body, my mouth, my thighs all ache for him simultaneously. Like one giant burning river of desire flowing through my veins.
His hands slip beneath my skirt, grasping my hips and yanking me hard against him. I cry out softly, biting down on my lip to control the sound. He kisses a trail of shivers across the tops of my breasts, before gripping the fabric of my pink lace bra between his teeth and pulling it down to expose my breast. His mouth lunges hungrily for my nipple. I bite down harder on my lip to keep the whimper locked inside me as the warm, wet texture of his tongue turns the room into an indecipherable blur.
I bury my fingers in his hair, clenching desperately against the ecstasy. Doing whatever I can to keep from waking up this entire house with a wail of beautiful release that’s been pent up in me for eight fucking years.
His tongue flutters against my rigid nipple, swirling, teasing, tempting.
My legs spread wider around him in response, my hips bucking wildly against his abdomen. I can feel the hardness swelling even larger under his pajamas, fighting its way to me.
Grayson moans against me, his hot breath tickling my skin.
Then his lips find mine again, his mouth wide and ravenous, muffling the sound of my passion. His arms are wrapped tight around my back, his bare chest crushed against mine.
I feel myself drowning in his kiss, his touch, his everything. The world around me closes down. Checks out. We are no longer in this house. We are somewhere else. Somewhere beyond reality. Beyond sense.
Which is probably why neither of us sees the light flickering on in the stairwell just outside the kitchen. We’re both too consumed by whatever is happening right now.
But we both hear the voice that floats ominously from the top of the stairs.
“Grayson? Are you down there?”
And we both recognize it as Alex’s.
Grayson flies off me, adjusting his pajama pants which have slipped dangerously low around his waist as a result of me grinding feverishly against him. I sit up fast, pulling my bra back over my breast. Grayson’s hands encircle my waist as he helps me down from the kitchen island. I immediately start scouring the floor for my tank top. Grayson finds it first and kicks it in my direction. I run to the pantry, sliding the door shut behind me.
Peering through the slats, I see Grayson fumbling to get the bag of ice back onto his hand. The bulge between his legs is still pushing against the fabric of his pants. He looks down, panic registering on his face, and then makes a hasty decision, shoving the bag of ice against his crotch in an attempt to solve the problem.
I would laugh if I wasn’t so fucking terrified.
If I couldn’t hear my own heart pounding in my ears, threatening to jump out of my ribcage.
Alex shuffles into the kitchen, rubbing her eyes. “What are you doing down here?”
Grayson raises his ice pack in the air, as though offering physical proof of his innocence, and I see that his trick worked. His massive pajama tent is gone.
“Just getting some ice,” he explains. “For my hand. It was hurting.”
She lets out a soft groan. “Well, you don’t have to ice it in here. Come back to bed.”
He casts a flickering glance my way before finally standing and following Alex out of the kitchen.
I sit in the darkness of the pantry, surrounded by the smells of flour and baking powder. My senses must be unusually heightened because I can’t remember these bland, uninspiring scents ever being this strong. Or this delectable.
But I suppose that’s what kissing Grayson Walker does.
It turns even the most bland, basic ingredients into rare, exotic spices.
I know I should go upstairs. I should lie down in my bed, let my mind take over and the guilt settle in as I try to process everything that just happened. Try to figure out what is waiting for me on the other side of this night when I’m forced to stumble through the emotional debris left behind from our recklessness.
I should be bracing myself for the aftermath.
But I just can’t do it.
I’m not ready for another hangover. I’m not ready to face up to what is sure to be yet another mistake on my long list of judgment errors.
Which is why I stay in the darkened pantry.
Which is why I allow my hand to drift under the hem of my skirt, slip past the edge of my panties, keeping the looming regret at bay with strong, purposeful strokes.
I cling onto the beautiful denial for five more blissful minutes.
Long enough to finish what Grayson Walker so adeptly began.
Eight years ago...
I didn’t actually want to go the party. Parties were never really my thing. The checkout girl at the supermarket had offered the invitation after she found out I wasn’t, in fact, another tourist, but a newly transplanted local (a distinction in this town that I would discover to be very important).
I was hesitant to go because I wouldn’t know anyone there, and I’d learned from experience that these weren’t the kind of parties you attended to meet people. Unless your idea of meeting people was making out with a perfect stranger in someone’s little brother’s bedroom.
My mom and I had just moved from Savannah, Georgia. A new start. A new state.
It was the precisely the twentieth new start we’d had since I was born.
My mom was an escape artist. Maybe not as well-known as Houdini, but possibly just as skilled. She loved the thrill of running away in the middle of the night. Not telling anyone. Just up and leaving. It’s why we never owned a house. We always rented. Preferably without a lease. It’s also why I never stayed in one school long enough to make any lasting friends.
I guess it’s fitting and all.
My dad ran out when I was five. And my mom has spent the rest of her life running.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that no matter how many times she uprooted us, she’d never be able to escape that night he left and didn’t come back.
But I’d managed to convince myself that somewhere deep-down, she already knew this.
Eastbrook was supposed to be just another town to me. Just another temporary residence full of temporary neighbors and temporary problems. It wasn’t supposed to matter. On the scale of life-altering locations, it was supposed to rate somewhere above a two.
But that was before the party.
“You should go,” my mom urged me, as she stood in the middle of our new kitchen, holding a frying pan upright in her hand as though she were about to whack someone upside the head with it. She spun in a slow circle, doing that thing she does every time she unpacks. She waits for the right cupboard to “call” to her. As though the frying pan’s new home would somehow magically foretell our future.
She didn’t need the frying pan to do that. I could foretell the future before we even pulled up in the moving van: We’d be gone in a matter of months.
“Aha!” she proclaimed, as the cabinet next to the refrigerator evidently spoke to her. She strode toward it, opened it up, and placed the pan ceremoniously inside, officially marking our new residence with the first kitchenware placement.
Even though I did all the cooking—my mom barely knew how to melt butter—she always started with the kitchen for some reason. She had a very strict protocol to unpacking. Kitchen first, then linen closet, then bedrooms, then bathroom. And she always packed in the exact reverse order.
At best, my mom was “eccentric.”
At worst, she was downright loony toons.
But I loved her. All we had was each other.
Fortunately, we rented furnished places, so the only packing and unpacking that had to be done were smaller stuff. Pots, pans, towels, blankets, cups, saucers, etc. It wasn’t always that way, of course. We used to have to hire local workers at each stop to load and unload coffee tables and bed frames and couches. Surprisingly it only took two stolen moving vans full of furniture for her to learn her lesson.
She picked up the tray of our mismatched silverware. I sat at the counter with a bottle of Bud Light and watched with half-interest as she started the slow spinning routine again. I would have offered to help but I knew she’d just turn me down. Apparently the cabinets didn’t “speak” to me the way they did to her.
“I don’t wanna go,” I said, taking a sip of my beer. “It’s just another stupid high school party full of stupid teenagers who can’t hold their liquor and who party like it’s the end of the world just because their parents are out of town.”
My mom had been buying me beer since I was thirteen. I’d asked to try it one day and the next thing I knew the fridge was stocked with a variety of domestic and imported brews. “In Europe they put wine in baby bottles!” she used to say. “The alcohol laws in this country are archaic.”
It had always been her philosophy that if I wanted to drink, I could drink at home. And because of that, I never felt the need to buy a fake ID or get wasted at parties. In fact, I rarely got drunk at all. I’d have a few beers after a particularly stressful day at school and that was it.
“You should go anyway, kiddo,” she said. “You can meet new friends.”
I shrugged. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that there was no point in making friends. We would undoubtedly be gone in a few months. But my mom was still convinced that every new town we landed in would be “the one.” The one that stuck.
I didn’t know where she got all that hope from. It was like she had this unlimited reserve of optimism buried somewhere that she drew from daily, like an oil pump extracting black sludge from the ground.
No matter how many times we moved, no matter how many houses we abandoned without looking back, she somehow always believed that the next one would be our last stop.
“I can’t go,” I told her. “Who will be here to supervise the unpacking?”
She tossed me an empty kitchen box, and I grabbed the box cutter from the countertop and began breaking it down. Mom always insisted we throw the boxes away—another nod to her optimism. She never knew that I actually hid them. Boxes weren’t cheap and when you relocated two to three times a year, they could bleed you dry.
She clutched three nested mixing bowls in her hands and looked at me, her gaze threatening. “I command you to go!” she said, lifting one hand in the air like Moses parting the seas.
“Is that an official decree?”
“It’s a ‘mom-ficial’ decree,” she amended. And that’s when I knew there was no arguing. Mom only busted out the “mom-ficial” decrees when she was really fixed on something. And debating only required more effort than it was worth.
So I finished my beer, slid my feet into my brown leather flip-flops and started the mile-long walk to the address that had been written in swirly handwriting (complete with hearts over the i’s) on the back of our grocery receipt.
Mom had said I could use the car but I preferred to walk. It was a nice night. The summer nights in Georgia had always been so hot and muggy. The cooler, thinner Connecticut air was a welcome reprieve. Plus it was a nice change not to be covered in a fresh layer of sweat within the first five minutes of being outside.
Once I turned onto the street, I didn’t have to refer to the house numbers to find the party. The blaring music and stumbling bodies on the front lawn kinda gave it away.
Judging from how out of hand the party had already become, I knew I wouldn’t be staying long. The cops would be here within the hour, if they hadn’t already been called by an irritated neighbor.
But I knew I had to at least go inside and stay long enough for the stench of marijuana and vomit to seep into my clothes. My mom would undoubtedly be sniffing them later tonight. To make sure I didn’t just hang out at the local 24-hour diner for a few hours and then come home.
She was big on sniffing.
Some parents relied on instinct to suss out lying children. My mother had always relied on her nose.
She would have made an excellent police dog.
The front door was wide open. I stood in the middle of the living room and surveyed the scene. It looked like any other high school party. Empty beer cans scattered on the floor mingling with the occasional discarded garment of clothing. A food table that had been efficiently picked over
until all that was left were a few cheese puffs and an untouched jar of olives that someone had probably brought as an attempt to look sophisticated.
Another sign that the party was well underway was the ratio of couples to singles. Most everyone had already found a hook-up partner and was exchanging saliva in varying degrees of nakedness and competence around the living room. One couple was lucky enough to snag the comfort of the couch. The girl was on top in an impressive straddle position (tipping me off that she must have been a gymnast or a dancer). She was down to her bra and miniskirt which had ridden up to her waist, exposing a red G-string that was tangled around the guy’s hands as he left white, fingertip impressions on both of her butt cheeks.
I popped a cheese puff into my mouth and leaned against the table.
I decided to play my favorite party game where I narrate a bad movie trailer about people’s lives.
I glanced toward the kitchen and saw a burly guy in a white football T-shirt bent over the kitchen sink, puking his guts out. I began the trailer in my head, infusing the narrative with a deep, haughty voice.
“Meet Ralph. Quarterback of the football team. The subject of every girl’s fantasy. On the outside, it seems like Ralph has it all. But unbeknownst to everyone at his school, Ralph is harboring a dark secret. One he will kill to protect. Ralph is actually in love with his football coach.”
I snickered to myself and moved on to my next target. A girl sitting in the corner of the living room, curled around her phone. She was crying into the receiver. “I don’t understand. I did everything he wanted. I even let him put it in my ass. Which I never let any of the other guys do. How could he dump me? Just like that?”
The trailer started instantly.
“In a world...where not even anal sex can satisfy a man, one girl will discover that being easy won’t fill the void in her heart. Will Valerie learn her lesson before it’s too late? Or will she just be another...”
My inner monologue trailed off when I noticed a girl slip through the front door, looking overwhelmed and completely out of place. For one, she wasn’t dressed like a slut (which always seemed to be the prerequisite at parties like this). Instead she was wearing baggy gym shorts and a red hoodie that was so big, her tiny body practically swam in it. Her hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail with loose strands falling into her eyes. And from what I could tell, she was not wearing a scrap of make-up. Her skin was fair and slightly freckled. Her large blue eyes scanned the room, widening in surprise with every site she took in.