by Lana Sky
“Stop it.” He wrenches out of my grip. “You try writing a few times and now you’re a fucking poet.”
“Listen to me!” I can’t stop reaching for him, my fingers crawling over the rough fabric of the cushions. I inhale as they brush something soft. His shirt. Then I snatch it, clinging tight. Tighter.
He grunts, turning to physically brush me off. “Enough. Let go, Maryanne—” He grabs my wrist, shooting me a warning glance from piercing irises. They widen and narrow in quick succession. Caught off guard.
I must look different in the moonlight. Less evil, maybe? Honest? Real?
He grits his teeth without saying, his lips parted. “I’m going inside.”
“Wait… Can I ask you for one thing for my birthday?” I’m being greedy. He’s already given me so much. Time. Attention. A watch. But I’ll always need more. Anything from him. Everything from him. “Just one more?”
He doesn’t move, his eyes flashing and wary. They narrow further as I crawl onto my knees, coming to his eye level. “What?” he demands.
I’m too drunk to copy his wordy prose or put all of my lessons into action. He told me to express how I feel. Sometimes, it doesn’t take a paragraph to do so.
“I just want…” My heart races as my gaze fixates on his lower lip. The damn muscle throbs, knowing the pain lurking at the other end of this impulsive request. Too bad. I accept the consequences. “I just want this.”
He doesn’t move when I shuffle forward, pressing my mouth to his.
He tastes like sea salt, and wine, and all those dangerous, delicious things his books whispered of. Kisses were like lightning, he described once. Zap. The main character was forever changed.
My heart gets electrocuted the moment his tongue meets mine. All those boundaries hardwired into me since childhood go out the window. I’m climbing onto his lap, inhaling him so deeply that it hurts. He’s a piece of me that I didn’t know was missing, shoving through my battered skin, making me whole.
But he’s stingy with his bliss.
“Maryanne, stop—stop!” He shoves me back, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. Anger like I’ve never seen makes him look like a giant fuming above me. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Everything.
Eyes burning, I lurch to my feet, stumbling toward the doorway.
“Not so fast—” He snatches my arm, holding tight. His breaths fan my shoulders in harsh, dangerous succession. “What were you thinking, huh? What the hell were you thinking?”
Maybe about all those times we played our word games. How he rephrases my thoughts in ways I could only dream. The millions of times I’ve climbed inside his head through his novels but never managed to understand him one fucking iota more.
“I’m sorry,” I croak. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry—”
“Just stop it!” He wrenches me around to face him, scouring my expression for the hint of a lie. His thumb grazes the curve of my jaw and he glowers as it comes away wet. “Damn it. I never fucking know,” he admits, hissing the words into my skin. “I never fucking know when you’re being serious or when you’re—” He breaks off. “I don’t know what you want from me. I can’t… Just tell me what you want. I’ll give it to you, I swear. Just tell me the goddamn truth.”
The truth? It sticks in my throat as my vision blurs. I have to cough it up, mangling the phrasing. “I just… I just want you to love me—”
“For Christ’s sake, can you be serious for five fucking minutes?”
But I am being serious. The hard truth I haven’t wanted to face before now spills from me in three little words. I can’t hold them back. “I need you.”
“Need me?” He laughs, grabbing my chin in both hands. “For what? A juicy little tidbit you can add to spice up your draft? Once that’s done, then what? Are you going to send your little notebook to Elaine? Maybe something more public to get me fired from Walden?”
I blink at him, sending fresh beads of moisture rolling down my cheeks. “No, I swear… I just need you.”
Him. It’s such a stupid wish.
His scoff says as much. “Fine. You win.” Thorny and his mind games. He lets our lips brush—mine quaking, quivering ridges, his firm and unmoving.
I’m in shock, I think. Paralyzed.
“There,” he declares, drawing back, his expression smug and punishing. “Put that in your fucking journal.”
Put what in my journal? How he feels, maybe? I’d have to use dramatic words to describe it. Electric. Dangerous. Raw. Terrifying, to convey how he grunts in shock when I lean in again to slide my tongue along his lower lip without permission. God. One taste of the wine still lingering on his skin and I feel drunker than if I had drunk the bottle myself. My hands grab his shoulders and my hips wiggle up against his frame. Anything to get closer.
Feel more.
“Maryanne!” He jerks back and grips my waist to keep me at a distance. Regardless, my body hums, relishing the firm pressure of each finger. They’re restraining me. Rejecting me.
It doesn’t matter. Either way, he’s still touching me.
“You need to stop making everything into a game,” Thorny scolds. “There are some fucking lines you just don’t cross!”
Like wanting too much from someone with nothing left to give.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I mean it. I truly do, even as I reach for him. Grab at him. Claw at him, twisting my fingers in his shirt so he can’t go. “I’m sorry. Please don’t leave—I’m sorry!”
“No, you’re not.” His hands twitch to push me away only to wind up jerking me closer. Too close.
I can kiss him again, rising on tiptoe just to taste him. He can stand there rigidly, even as his lips part, just enough.
Just enough.
“You need me, huh?” he taunts against my mouth, sounding so, so angry. “Do you want to ruin my life that badly? Fine, then. Get me fired. Go ahead.” A hiss escapes his lips when I don’t pull away like he wants me to. Like he needs me to.
I stay.
And it’s just a kiss at first. A kiss…
Slow. Electrifying. Deeper.
His hands creep into my hair, raking. My own hands are clinging to him for dear life. We’re at the edge of a glaring red boundary—I can feel it, a sensation like balancing on the edge of a cliff. One wrong move, and whoosh!
He should push me away now. I tense, preparing for it. My heart thumps, steeling against the pain. I’m ready to fall alone.
But he keeps kissing me. Touching me. Drowning me.
And, with one swift motion, we both jump.
Our fingers snatch at my dress in unison. In seconds, we hike it up over my head and cast it aside on the floor. His pants are down around his ankles. I’m being shoved onto the back of the lounger while he climbs on top of me, grunting against my parted lips. Whispering.
For once, his words aren’t frantic and polished. I barely register that it’s his voice issuing the frantic murmurs of, “We can’t. I can’t… Fuck.”
His hand brushes my shoulder and every nerve in my body sears on red alert. We’re too close, breathing too heavily. He’s touching me too high as my hands wander far too low, grazing his hips. Still, I don’t let the fear set in until he slides my legs apart and drags my panties down, capturing the lace beneath his thumbs.
“W-wait…”
It’s too late.
His hands grip the backs of my knees and I feel something start to push inside me. Hard. Splitting me open.
“Owwww!”
He stiffens at the sound of my scream, holding himself rigid while my inner muscles clench, resisting him. God, it hurts. It does.
But Becky was a little bitch when Jeff popped her cherry.
This pain…
It’s sharper than anything I’ve ever felt. So raw that it chases away everything else but the need to keep feeling.
Everything.
Even his disgust. “You’re a virgin,” he grates against my neck, stiffening—trying to pull
back. He sounds so damn confused. Horrified.
“P-please.” I cling to him in every way I can, digging my nails into his skin until he goes still. “Please. Please. Please—”
“Damn it.”
Fire. That’s all I feel as he grunts and then lunges forward, sinking deep. Burning, tearing, searing fire that makes me jump and squeal and blink back tears.
But then I feel it: Him. Inside me. Moving.
He’s slow at first, arching his hips as the sensation sinks in. His eyes widen with the terrifying realization of what’s happening: all those red lines crossed. Inhaling deeply, he closes them tight and braces one hand against the top of the lounger, using it for balance to thrust again.
In.
Out.
In.
Whimpers claw from my throat. I’m shaking, clutching him with everything I have. Every. Thing. My lips find his and he pushes against me, nipping with his teeth as if in punishment for lying.
I’m a virgin.
And sex is hell, he told me. Base, mindless need. Twisting limbs and panting breaths. It’s wanting someone inside you deeply. So, so deep. When your vision goes white and you can’t tell where they end and you begin.
You know. You just know—nothing in the world will ever match the same level of violence. You’ll never feel this good again. This fucking free.
This needed.
It doesn’t matter if you’re bleeding. Or if they’re cursing under their breath, hating every second they remain inside you.
Because you both can taste the truth in sweat and salt and hungry, sloppy kisses: This is real. It’s fucking real.
“Shit. I’m going to—” James breaks away, and suddenly, I’m empty. It hurts worse than being filled. I gasp and draw my knees together as he crawls backward and bucks into his fist.
One lash. Two. I feel the hot spurts of liquid on my inner thigh and my eyelids flutter. He’s done that naughty, dirty thing boys do. Come. On me.
“Shit.” He’s on his feet, pacing back and forth. His pants trail from one ankle, dragging along the floor like a snake. “Shit. We shouldn’t have…”
He looks down and frowns at what he sees. Me, my legs spread apart, my mouth still open. Shock is a terrifying thing. It creeps into your muscles and holds them hostage while you wait for the reality check that you know is coming.
This was a mistake.
We shouldn’t have done it.
“Damn it.” Thorny sighs as he bends and draws his pants back up, refastening them around his waist. He approaches me slowly. Hesitatingly.
I feel his fingers graze my shoulder before I hear his voice.
“Come here.”
It must be the expression on my face that makes him talk like that: softly and gently. I’m in his arms again, but this time, he carries me into the master bedroom and then into that enormous, white bathroom with the walk-in shower big enough for two.
He has to hold me upright—I’m so damn tired. My legs are jelly, wobbling like a newborn fawn’s. My arms are locked around his waist. He can’t move without dragging me along with him. Water sprays down, flooding the narrow stall with steam and heat.
Eventually, he gets a washrag and soap. He works them both into a lather and drags them over my lower back. Then higher, up to my shoulders. A part of me doesn’t want to let him go enough to allow him to finish. It might break the spell keeping him here. Poof. He’ll run away.
It’s stupid. He tells me as much, murmuring into my ear. “Come on. Let go. It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
His heavy tone of voice says it all: we did a bad, bad thing. He has to wipe the blood off to make it better and let the evidence float down the drain.
“Maryanne, let go.”
There’s a bench built into the wall of the shower. He steers me to it and hunches over to lower me onto it.
Almost immediately, he crouches and grabs my leg. I watch the rag dart over my skin, held by his fingers. The knuckles are white as he scrubs and scrubs.
Then he looks up.
I’m naked; he’s not. His pants are probably ruined, soaked to the bone. With a trembling finger, he bats a strand of my hair from my face. Then he lowers his head and continues to clean. He makes a good go at it, old Thorny—but it’s a bust. No matter how much soap he uses, I don’t disappear.
He has no choice but to bundle me up in a towel and watch me drip all over the polished floor.
I’m such a good manipulator, according to him. So good that one look at my face makes him bite back the words I know he has poised on the tip of his tongue. The cliché ones Jeff muttered to all of his conquests once he’d gotten what he wanted.
We shouldn’t have done that, Becky, baby. You’re too young. I’m too old. I took advantage of your innocence.
He just sighs instead. “You’re crying.” He sounds horrified by the realization. Annoyed. “Just stop. Stop crying. Please.” His hand grazes my cheek and he sighs again when the fingers come away wet. “I can’t…”
He lumbers into the master suite and rummages around, returning a minute later wearing dry pants and carrying an oversized shirt. He tugs my towel off and dresses me in the shirt—his shirt. It even smells like him.
“Come on.” He takes my hand and leads me from the bathroom.
I expect a quick and efficient trip to my room, where he’ll tuck me into bed. This was all a bad dream.
He does guide me over to a bed, but it’s the wrong one. The wrong size. It’s big enough for him to climb on beside me and pin me down with the weight of one arm flung over my waist.
“Go to sleep,” he commands in that surly, gruff tone. “We’ll talk about this tomorrow. Just go to sleep.”
I wake up knowing that the entire world is different. Things have changed like a reset chessboard. The old score has been erased and a new game is in play.
Maybe it’s because I’m officially one year older.
Maybe it’s because I finally lost that pesky virginity.
Maybe it’s because I feel a sinner’s breath on my cheek, quickening the moment he knows I’m awake.
“I need to ask you something,” he says while my eyes are still closed.
I could doze off again if it weren’t for the telltale warmth of sunlight on my skin. It’s daytime. I crack one eye open and flinch; the room is flooded with yellow, more sun than we’ve had in days.
“I need to ask you something that could seem insulting,” Thorny insists. “I don’t care. I need to know.”
Something heavy applies pressure to my shoulder, drawing me closer to a warm surface beneath my cheek—his arm, tightening involuntarily as if to keep me from running away.
“Did you… Did you plan this? Fake it?” he asks hoarsely. It’s a question that kept him up all night. I can tell. My skills for devious manipulation must have no bounds in his mind. I’m that psychotic. “Did… Was this your plan? Get drunk. Let me—” He breaks off, and suddenly, his arm is gone. He’s gone, and I slump against a wall of pillows alone.
Heavy footsteps tread the floor nearby. I open my eyes just enough to catch him pacing. He’s still shirtless, wearing only wrinkled slacks. One of his hands massages his forehead.
“If that’s what you wanted, then fine. You got me.” He holds his hands up in surrender, laughing in a way that makes my stomach churn. Each chuckle rips from his chest, hysterically loud. “Just say it. Come clean. Was it all an act? Fake blood?” His gaze darts to my bare legs. Cursing, he changes direction to march away from me and back again. “Just tell me if—”
“No.” The truth can seem so boring in retrospect. No wonder I love telling lies. They make everything sparkle like natural flavoring to otherwise dull conversations.
Why yes, Thorny: I faked my cherry so you could pop it with your big, bad manhood. I’m that devious. Hahaha.
“I didn’t.”
He slows to a stop. “I… I believe you.” He doesn’t sound like he does, so cautious and gruff. But he comes to sit on the side of the
bed, his back to me, and sighs.
Poor Thorny. I’ve made him fluent in those heavy, exhausted sighs. They say so much without him having to utter a word.
We’re fucked.
“So, you lied,” he cautiously deduces. “About the other boys? And the kid in the headmaster’s office?”
“Maybe…” I close my eyes again and release a sigh of my own. It’s not fair, having to spill so many of my secrets. Honesty is cathartic, they say.
It’s not.
He hasn’t run yet. I have him riveted like those readers glued to his every word. Writer, I tell myself, filing the career choice away for later. There is so much power in wielding the truth.
“Sammy Kean is gay,” I tell him, letting the cat out of the bag. “I wanted out of Whorton’s and he wanted the headmaster to see his penis.” Why? Who knows. Boys are strange creatures.
So are men.
“Son of a bitch.” Thorny’s shoulders slump. “I take it you weren’t given much of a sexual education?”
“I know that the penis goes in the vagina and—”
“What about ensuring that your partner uses a condom?” he questions harshly. “I didn’t. Do you understand the potential consequences? Do you?”
He means the scary words our female teachers used to warn about in hushed whispers. Pregnancy. Disease.
“I could have hurt you,” he adds as though that’s the worst part of this whole affair. More than the initial pain, he means. More than emotionally or in the figurative sense. He could have done physical damage. Sex is hell, after all. Sweaty, base, emotional hell where big, bad uncles get carried away while pistoning into their delicate, little nieces…
My thighs clamp tighter together, stirring up an ache I didn’t feel until now. It’s sharp and a little burning. Like something tore to make room for him. Popped cherry. A better word might be ripped.
“Aren’t you supposed to threaten me now?” I wonder. He certainly has been dancing around the issue. “Warn me not to tell? Ruin your perfect marriage? Cost you your career?”