The kitchen grows quiet as I enter. Wrenn, leaning over the counter, skims her glazed eyes over me—up my jeans, across my red T-shirt.
“Wanna join us?” She points to her half-empty glass of wine. “We’re celebrating.”
I tip my head with the most convincing look of bemusement and say, “Is it your birthday?” She snatches the dish towel from behind her and hurls it at my head, smiling.
“You look nice. Where you off to?”
Jamon points the tip of his beer bottle in my direction. “He combed his hair. Classic indication that it’s a date.”
I roll my eyes, even though he’s somewhat right.
Wrenn sips her wine. “Well, it’s about time. Who’s the lucky girl? You seeing Jess again?”
“No date. No Jess. Just going downtown with some friends.” Or one friend. I grab the keys from the table ignoring their teasing stares.
“Don’t stay out too late,” Wrenn says as I turn to leave. “Tomorrow’s a big day.”
Yeah, so big I feel like I’m going to pop.
~*~
There’s nothing more entertaining than watching the skinny shadow of a girl slip out from a second-story window onto the roof, inch toward the edge in small, uneasy steps, hang by her fingertips from the eve and…drop.
I push open the passenger door as Cambria runs across the lawn and down the sidewalk, brushing smudges of dust from her black tank top. She sinks into the seat beside me and lets out a deep breath.
I reach over her for the seat belt, my lips so close to her ear I feel her shiver. “I would pay money to see that again.”
She giggles. “How ’bout you convince my brother that his little sister isn’t so little anymore and can go out whenever she wants.” Then she tilts her head, frowning. “I said to wear black.”
True, she did. But the only black shirt I have is faded with a bleach stain the shape of a limp dick on the collar. Not exactly appropriate for wherever it is she’s taking me. “What’s the big deal with black anyway?”
Leaning closer, she runs her fingers from my wrist up to where my sleeve sits. The tip of her finger slips beneath my shirt and draws a squiggly line up to my shoulder and, damn, it’s just my arm—my arm—but I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smothering her with my mouth. Then she smirks.
“You’ll see. After we make a quick detour.”
Above the trees, the sky is transforming. Traces of daylight are bleeding into the pitch black of night, turning the middle of the sky a deep blue. The comfort of sitting beside her should scare me. Or, at the very least, remind me that one of these days I’m going to have to come clean with her. Although, the girl sitting next to me in black jeans that show off the slight swell of her muscular thighs is making it difficult to think logically.
I drive where she directs me to drive, park where she tells me to park, and open the door for her because it’s the polite thing to do. Or because I want to be closer to her. Whichever.
“Your dorm?” I say, pushing open the door. “That reminds me… Why did I not pick you up here?”
“My brother…” Her back is to me, but even so I can tell those two words score up her throat. “Remember I said he wasn’t in a great place right now?” I nod, even though she can’t see. “He’s…um, yeah, sometimes he just needs someone to look after him, make sure he’s, you know, acting normal.” With that she turns, eyes focused on mine; they look so sad. She wants to sleep here. To be a normal, college girl—go to parties, hang out with friends, giggle with her roommate. And because of her brother and whatever his issues are, she can’t.
Clearly, it’s why she’s hanging out with me. I swallow the bitter thought away and gesture around the room, to the surplus of clothes spread out over the bed opposite hers. “Does this mean Leesa won’t be back for a while?”
“Maybe the entire night.” Cambria steps up to me. Her hand settles on my waist, fingertips slipping under the hem of my shirt with a trail of tingles skittering across my flesh. I clutch my legs through the thin layer of pocket fabric, waiting. Watching.
“And you brought me here, why?” I think I know the reason. Or…I wish to every god in the universe that I know what she wants to do. We haven’t had sex, yet. Not because I haven’t wanted to—Lord knows I would be one lucky sonofabitch to have this gorgeous girl in my bed. But because I want her to want it. More than just physically, or as a distraction.
Arms circle my neck, and her body eases closer to mine, warmth radiating off her skin like a hot water bottle. I press back, craving to feel her against me, but also waiting for her to make the first move. Which she does when she slips her hands down my shoulders and removes mine from my pockets.
“I think you know why…” She guides them around the back of her and presses them onto her tight ass. “And I think…” Fingers start with the buckle of my belt. My heartbeat sinks lower. “…more than anything…,” she continues, “you really…really want to participate.”
I take her by the shoulders, spin, and back her body into the door. My mouth on hers is as much of an answer as I can give. Her lips part, allowing me in without a request. Kisses quickly become fast and hard and, before I know it, she’s climbing up me. I leverage her against the door as she wraps her legs around my waist. Gone is the fragile, death-consumed girl I met a few weeks ago. This girl is insistent. Demanding. And impossible to say no to.
My lips move down her neck, and I slip the strap of her tank top off her shoulder, dragging my mouth over the sweet-smelling skin. Jesus, she tastes like heaven. Holding her with one arm, I yank down the neckline of her shirt and nip at the mounds of flesh spilling out of her bra. Tiny as she is, she’s sure got plenty here.
A whimper purrs off her lips as I tug down the edge of her bra and suck her nipple into my mouth. Hands tunnel through my hair. Another whimper, this one louder. “Krister,” she says shakily, “I want you. Tonight. Here. Right now.”
My lips still. And the word “no” muffles along her skin.
Fuck, did I say that out loud? As I lift my gaze to hers, a tiny o forms on her mouth, a dip between her eyebrows. I don’t know why but her worry sends a bead of satisfaction budding in my chest. This isn’t just about her; she wants me to want her. My tongue draws a slow circle around her nipple, my fingers finding her other. The hard nub presses back into the pad of my thumb, and I say, “Tell me one thing. Is it just this you need?” I loosen my grip around her just a tad until her weight lowers onto the fly of my jeans. She inhales a tiny gasp at the pressure. “Or is it something more?”
Whether it’s the anticipation of her answer or the fact that she’s got me so worked up, but it suddenly feels like the room is shrinking. My eyes find hers, fingers trailing over her skin.
Slowly, she cups my face, and a stream of chills skim the feather touch of her fingers on my skin. “Krister,” she says lowly, smoothing her knuckles down my just-shaved cheeks. “I need you to put your hands on me. I need you to kiss me until I can’t breathe. I need…you. All of you.”
It’s funny, the bubble of happiness her words send through me. “No one else?”
A laugh bumbles off her lips. “That’s what this is about?” I stay perfectly still, not saying a word; I want to know her answer. After a moment, her face goes all serious, and she takes a deep breath. “It would be a phenomenon if there were another person on this planet who could do what you do to me.”
Ever so slightly, my lips tilt up. “And what do I do to you?”
Take away the pain?
Make it easier to breathe?
I hope both.
She nods over my shoulder and says, “Carry me to the bed and find out.”
Her eyes blaze into mine for one single breath, and then I plunge toward her neck. Teeth nip at her skin in a path over her shoulder as I strip off her shirt and toss it to the floor. She closes her eyes as my hands slink around her back, fingertips digging into her skin as the word “beautiful” plays on repeat from my mouth. Gently, I c
up her face in my hands and lean in closer to her ear.
“Cambria, open your eyes.” She does, and then we’re face-to-face, her eyebrows tipped, forehead slightly wrinkled.
“Please don’t reject me,” she whispers. “I… I—”
I pull back an inch. “Reject you?” The incredulous raise of my voice washes away her look of worry. A beat of silence, then I cradle my hand around the back of her neck. “Baby, I couldn’t reject you if there was a gun pointed at my head.”
“What is it then? Why did you pull away? Again?” Then her eyes widen, like a thought suddenly occurs to her, and she says, “Wait. Is this your…? Are you a virgin?”
I throw my head back with a laugh, and she lifts a tentative, yet possibly a tad hopeful smile. A ridiculous question, but one I have no words to answer. Not unless I want to explain the whole I-feel-guilty-as-shit wave that continues to crash into me every time I’m with her.
I shake off the thought and find that panty-dropping smile I know, in fact, will have her panties on the floor in two-point-five seconds then say, “I’ll let you decide that after we’re finished.” My mouth moves closer, lips brushing hers but not in a kiss. The tips of my fingers dip between her breasts, trace a line up her collarbone, down her sides, and across her stomach. Chills follow my touch, and she closes her eyes again, as if her brain’s unable to process the feel of my skin on hers and the sight of me at the same time.
Her head rolls back, and I catch it in my palm, cup her face, and whisper her name again. Her eyes open to my mouth warring with words I don’t know how to say. She can’t close her eyes, not know who exactly is about to rest her body on an altar and worship the hell out of it.
She starts to pull away, likely to ask what’s wrong, but I tense my fingers along her jaw and murmur against her lips, “Please…” The catch in my voice is louder than cracking glass, and by the slight flare of her eyes, she heard it, too. “Don’t close your eyes,” I say. “Don’t stop looking at me.”
She says nothing, just stares.
“Please.” It’s not teasing like she sometimes does with me. To my utter lameness, this word is heartbreak and sadness and desperation all rolled into one, heavy-as-a-weight syllable, and it’s all she can do to nod speechlessly and help me out of my shirt. She does as I request—doesn’t stop looking—as I carry her to the bed and lower her to the mattress. She watches as I step out of my jeans then peel hers from her legs. Wearing only my boxers, I spread her knees apart and crawl up between them, propping one hand beside her head, the other smoothing a line across her forehead and down the side of her face then farther to rest just above her heart.
Seeing the intense, yet glazed, glow to her eyes, I could pounce now. But there’s something else I want to know.
“Tell me one more thing,” I say, eyes darting from my hand to her face. “Why do you want to be with me?”
She tips her brow at me, running her fingers softly over my face. “Krister, what is it you’re looking for? What do you want me to tell you? That I don’t want to be with anyone else but you? Because I—”
The question was stupid, her answer ridiculously clear by the slight gasps that accompany her words as my fingers trail south. It’s enough of an answer I need. My mouth covering hers silences her words. My tongue slides into her mouth, and all thoughts disappear. Insistent and warm, her lips meld to mine as I tuck my hand beneath her and unhook her bra. One strap down. Two. The bra hits the floor, and I smile.
“This is what I was looking for. You. Naked beneath me.” I take her nipple into my mouth and whisper against her skin, “Dear Jesus, you are pure fucking perfection, Cambria.”
Weight presses on my hand, pushing it farther and farther down her stomach. My body squirms with the thought of touching her down there again—of doing much, much more.
As my hand moves lower and lower, her body clenches tight. The side strap of her underwear dips with a tug from my thumb, my pinky drudging a snail-paced line over the triangle of silk. Bottom…to…top.
She skims her hands around my waist and hauls me closer. Her teeth bite into my shoulder just as my finger nudges the silk to the side and slips inside her.
In, out.
Then another. Her breath catches, and she holds it in.
In, out. Deeper.
“Krister, I—”
The heel of my palm presses hard against her clit, and this is the point I know I’ve stolen all her ability to function. A whimper slips off her lips, the sound triggering a low growl of my own.
I slide another finger in and she gasps out, rocking her hips into my hand as I stroke her over and over. “Oh God,” she murmurs. “I wanted to last longer…but you’re making it…really h-h-hard.”
Beautiful. She is absolutely beautiful when she’s lost like this. Without the look of worry—the look that there’s something heavy and gripping driving her—marring her face. “You’re going to have to,” I respond in a whisper. Elbowing her thighs apart, I dip out from her hold and kneel between them. With my hands on her shins, I bring up her knees, pressing them to her chest and baring everything to me. It’s a vulnerable position, and based on the flush of her cheeks she hasn’t been in it often.
All the more reason to make me smile.
With my fingers gently drawing circles around her kneecaps, I say, “I haven’t even started.”
Unhurriedly I lower, and just watching her watch me inch closer and closer to the spot that is, without a doubt, on fire is enough to make me come undone before I’ve even made contact. She wraps her hands around my arms, the need to touch me evident in her burning stare.
With hot breath fanning over her thighs, just millimeters away from my destination, I stop and glance up at her. “Cambria?”
Our eyes connect. Silence folds over us as she waits, and watches. My playful smirk is gone, replaced with something that feels much heavier.
“Don’t look away,” I remind her, and then my tongue touches her first. One long, slow, agonizing swipe. Her breath escapes in a shaky wail that sounds like she’ll crumble to pieces if I do that again.
And then I do it again, this time even slower. Longer. Again and again, stroke after stroke until she’s thrashing beneath me.
“Krister… I’m…I’m…”
Dying. She doesn’t say it out loud, but it echoes like a gong in the room. Dying, dying, dying.
This is where she’s wrong.
My eyes, hooded and burning with the beautiful sight of her, meet hers. “No,” I say with a slight shake of my head. “You’re living.” And then I circle my lips over her and suck. Hard.
She cries out, but that does nothing to stop me. If anything, it urges me to move faster, dipping and swirling my tongue against her clit until her legs start to shake and her back pitches out of my hold.
Her body lets loose, spiraling into an abyss, but not once does she look away from my eyes. It’s the most intimate thing I’ve ever done.
Ever so slowly I lower her legs, taking a moment to run my fingers up and down the length of them. From the floor I find my jeans and retrieve a condom from my wallet, Cambria’s eyes following my every move as I carefully cover myself and crawl over her. She tenses, but at the same time a lazy smile spears her face. It’s more than infatuation. More than gratitude. And the look is like a magnet for that guilty-as-shit feeling.
I lower my head, lips to her ear. “I’m sorry,” I say, and a laugh bubbles off her lips.
“That was… Um, you should never be sorry for that.”
I shake my head—I couldn’t be sorry for that even if I tried. “I meant…just…I’m sorry.” Fuck, Krister, spit it out. Problem is, I don’t even know what I’m trying to say.
I take a deep breath and don’t think about the words that spew out of my mouth. “That you lost your mom. And I want you to know I will do anything to make it better. Name your request, and I will go to hell and back to get it for you.”
Not sure that was what I was going for, but I mean ev
ery word. Her pain is now my pain, her broken heart now on me, and I intend to do whatever it takes to make this girl whole again.
She traces her fingers over my lips, watching for a moment as the tension in my face dissipates with her touch. “You do,” she tells me, her lips along mine. “You being here makes it better. Now will you please take what’s yours?”
~*~
I wanted to tell her everything. I did. But that look on her face? I’d have been a dick to take that moment of pleasure away from her. And the several more that wracked her body as I devoured every inch of her.
“The fairgrounds?” I take Cambria’s hand into mine. We weave through the crowded lot, the cold night air settling over us. “Were you dying to make out on the Ferris wheel?”
“Pfft. If I was going to risk my life on that thing, I’d be doing much more than just kissing you.” Her cheeks flush, and I can only hope it’s because she’s thinking of the unforgettable hour we just spent together. I’ve never spent so long with a girl before. Not even Jess.
Not that I’ve never wanted to, but typically the itch to get out and away from the clingy hands and longing stares scratches at me until I do.
This time it didn’t. I could’ve laid next to Cambria all night.
“Not a fan of heights?” I say to distract myself from that thought. I don’t know why things feel differently with her, but they do. Cosmically different. And I’m not sure I want them to.
She squeezes my hand. “Not a fan of hundred-year-old Ferris wheels made of splintered wood that could crumble at any second.”
As we make our way toward the other side of the grounds, past all the ralph-on-yourself whirling rides that are likely far more dangerous than a slow-moving Ferris wheel, colors in the crowd around us start to diminish. Or the black clothing starts to reproduce. Past a few more rides, we approach a small amphitheater, and I feel like we’ve suddenly transported into a gathering for punked-out vampires. Unnaturally pale faces, hair dyed darker than the night sky, piercings, tattoos and—
“What are we doing here?”
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