by Marni Mann
“Ahh,” she groaned again. Her fingers were running through my hair, tugging it so hard that I thought she was going to pull it out of my head.
I fucking loved it. I wanted her to pull harder. Because everything I heard, everything I felt, told me how good she was feeling, and that was the only thing that mattered to me. Except I knew I could make her feel even better. It would just mean that my hands would have to dip down to her pussy. Once they touched that part of her, I didn’t know if I could stop what would happen next. There had already been a lot of firsts tonight. I didn’t want to take her virginity, too.
I held her waist still and pulled our faces apart. She squeezed my shoulders as she tried to catch her breath, gnawing on those wet, puffy lips.
I couldn’t get enough of her innocence. That was something that didn’t exist around here. But I’d protected Kyle and made sure she didn’t lose hers.
I’d be the one who eventually took it.
“Why did you stop?” she finally asked.
There was hurt in her eyes, and that was the last thing I wanted.
“I’m out of self-control. I’ve been trying real hard, but I want you so bad, it hurts. If I don’t stop now, I’m going to take things much further, and you don’t want that yet.”
“Maybe I do.”
She was so fucking sweet. And so naive.
Rubbing her nipples and grinding against my dick had made her horny, and I hadn’t given her any relief. But if we had sex, there was a chance she’d regret it in the morning. Until I was sure it was what she really wanted, the only thing she was getting from me was more kissing.
That would have to come tomorrow though. I needed to jack off before I trusted myself around her again.
“I’ll give you everything you want, Kyle. Things just need to move slowly.”
The hurt returned to her eyes. I needed to fix it.
“You’re my best friend. Nothing is going to ruin that. I want this.” I pushed my hips up, so my hard-on pressed into her pussy. “You can feel how much I want this. But I want more than just sex, and that’s why we have to go slow.”
“I do, too.” The hurt started to dissolve when a grin spread over her lips. “More than anything.”
I lifted her off my lap and set her feet on the floor, standing in front of her with my arms on her shoulders. “If you stay here tonight, I won’t be able to keep my hands off you.”
“I kinda figured.” She was hiding her smirk by chewing her lip again.
I sucked it into my mouth and ran my tongue across it to heal it. “Stop chewing,” I said when I finally pulled away. “That’s my lip, and I’m the only one that’s allowed to bite it.”
She laughed, and it was the sound I’d been waiting to hear. A sound that caused my hands to wrap around her face and pull it toward mine. I knew I shouldn’t be kissing her again. It was too dangerous to keep tasting her. But I had to. I hadn’t gotten enough. I would never get enough of her, not when I’d waited this long to have her.
This was just a tease.
Hours with my mouth on her wouldn’t even give me the satisfaction I was craving. I needed days, months, with her. I needed to know that every part of her was mine. And I needed to feel that over and over. And ravishing her mouth was making that need intensify.
“You have to go.”
I licked the wetness off my lips and got another taste of her.
The want rushing through me made me want to fucking growl.
“I’m never going to sleep tonight,” she said so softly.
“Neither will I.” My thumb traced that curve around her mouth again. “But it’s not safe for you to be here a second longer.”
She tried to touch my chest, but I clenched both of her hands between mine.
“I’ll walk you out.”
I stopped by my closet before I took her downstairs, grabbing a plastic sleeve of powdered doughnuts. I always kept a few boxes of them in there. They were my favorite—Kyle’s, too—and we’d eat them every morning on our way to school.
I put the sleeve in her hand when we reached the bottom step. “Stay here,” I said.
“Garin?”
I opened the fridge. “Yeah?”
“I know you’re getting me more to eat, but I’m really not hungry.” She rubbed a finger over her lips. “I just want to taste you tonight. I’ll eat in the morning before school, I promise.”
I wasn’t used to her speaking this softly, but I liked it. Hell, I wanted so much more of it.
I shut the fridge and moved over to her. With her standing on the first step, we were almost the same height.
I leaned forward and nibbled her bottom lip. “Is this what you want?”
“Yes,” she sighed as I pulled my teeth away. “Keep eating me.”
“I want to.” I gripped her hips. “Every bit of you.” I lifted her off the step and set her by the front door. “Eat those doughnuts before you go to bed. All of them.”
The only way she’d get some sleep was if she put food in her body. The hunger pangs would keep her up all night if she didn’t. She knew how to convince herself she wasn’t hungry, that it didn’t hurt. We all knew how.
I wouldn’t let it happen anymore.
“But—”
“Eat them for me, Kyle. No excuses.”
“Okay.”
I opened the front door and held on to it while she stood in the entryway. “If I kiss you again, there’s a chance I won’t let you leave.”
Her teeth slipped out of her mouth and rubbed across her bottom lip.
“That’s mine,” I reminded her. “Chew on something else…like those doughnuts.”
She laughed. “Got it.”
“I’ll see you in the morning.”
I closed the door behind her and rushed up the stairs to the bathroom. I stripped off my clothes and jumped into the shower. The freezing water hit my chest as I wrapped my hand around my hard dick and tugged. I didn’t have to search my head for an image to jerk off to or picture one of the porn scenes I’d watched. Kyle’s face was what I saw when I closed my eyes. It was her moans I heard in my ears. It was her body I could feel under my fingers.
She was so fucking sexy.
I gripped my dick tighter and twisted my hand as I got closer to the tip, that familiar warmth already starting in my stomach. I pushed my other hand against the back wall and aimed my cock toward the water stream.
Boom!
My eyes burst open, and I froze as the sound vibrated across my body.
A sound I’d heard too many times before.
Motherfucker.
I left the water on and hurdled the short step of the tub. I grabbed the towel that hung on the back of the door and threw it around my waist as I ran down the stairs. When I got outside, someone was lying facedown in the middle of the road. The clothes and short hair and the size of the body told me it was a guy.
I hurried over to his side and knelt on the icy ground. “Hey, buddy. I’m going to turn you over, so I can help you.”
He didn’t respond.
I squeezed the back of his jacket and slowly rolled him toward me. There was so much adrenaline running through me. I could barely feel the cold air on my naked skin or the ice and rocks scraping against my knees. The only thing I felt was the stab in my fucking chest when I saw his blood-splattered face.
“No!” I screamed. “Paulie, open your eyes!”
I held my hand against his chest to feel if it was rising and falling and my ear to his face to hear if he was breathing. There was nothing—no movement, no sound.
“Paulie, open your eyes and talk to me!”
I unbuttoned the top of his jacket and saw the bullet hole. It was on the right side of his chest. And there was blood. On his shirt. On the ground. On my hands. A puddle of it pooling around my feet.
“Paulie, come on, open your eyes, buddy.” I checked his pockets for a phone. I didn’t find one. “Help!” I shouted, looking up and down the street.
&nb
sp; There was no one on the sidewalk, no one standing on their front steps, no one at their front door, no one looking at me through their windows. Where the hell was everybody?
“Help me!” I put my hands over the bullet hole and tried to stop any more blood from coming out. “Paulie, I’m going to get you some help, and they’re going to take you to the hospital and make this better.”
I was holding his wound hard enough where he should have been groaning from the pressure. But he wasn’t making a sound. He wasn’t moving. There was just silence and so much fucking blood.
I didn’t know when I saw the plastic sleeve—if it happened while I was holding Paulie’s chest and waiting for the ambulance to come or if it was when Billy showed up and broke down when he saw his brother or if it was after I got back from the hospital. But, at some point, I saw it lying on the ground halfway between my apartment and Kyle’s. The sleeve was open, and the doughnuts inside were crushed. There was a single doughnut smashed onto the sidewalk. Sugary white powder was all over the pavement, like little piles of coke.
And Kyle?
She was nowhere to be found.
Four
Kyle
“Bring us another one, please,” I said to the waitress, pointing toward our half-empty glasses. Or maybe they were three-quarters full or only a quarter. Or there were more than two glasses on the table. I wasn’t really sure. I’d stopped caring after the fourth round. That was when I’d stopped seeing straight, too.
But I didn’t really need to see straight. I only needed to see to the right of me—where Garin sat. My childhood bestie. The boy I’d been in love with for as long as I could remember. And the boy I’d given up because I was forced to leave New Jersey.
I hated that.
I hated it more than anything.
When I looked in his direction, I couldn’t believe he was here, sitting so close, his face filling my vision. Those eyes…their intensity.
I wasn’t cold, but my whole body was covered in goose bumps.
He was cold though. Freezing, icy. He hadn’t warmed even the tiniest bit since we’d gotten to the bar and the drinks started flowing.
“Maybe I should have ordered a water,” I said. “And gotten you some coffee to melt all your icicles.”
“You know what would make me less cold?” His eyes narrowed. “If you slowed down on the drinking and started answering some of my questions.”
I laughed, covering my mouth with the back of my hand, so I wouldn’t say anything stupid. The last time he’d said slow was during a sexy memory…the only sexy memory I had of us. “Slow doesn’t apply to drinking.” My hand must have fallen away because something incredibly stupid had slipped out.
His tongue swept over his bottom lip, reminding me of a time when he had been so possessive of my mouth. “It only applies to when I tried not to fuck you on the same night I kissed you for the first time.” His tongue swept in the opposite direction. “The first and only night I ever got to kiss you.”
So, he was thinking about it, too.
A shiver passed through my entire body, leaving a tingling sensation in my chest. I could still feel his hands and that kiss. The tingling wouldn’t budge when I tried to rub it away. It grew instead, spreading to my breasts and down between my legs. I crossed them, squeezing my thighs together, hoping that would help alleviate it.
It only made it worse.
So did the way he stared at me. His gorgeous eyes looked straight through me, the alcohol practically unzipping my soul so that he could get a better view.
A view that needed to stay hidden, so I looked away.
“Yeah…that night,” I breathed.
“And then you ended everything.”
There was the sound of anger again.
I lifted the glass to my lips. “Something like that.” I swallowed however much was left. I couldn’t feel it go down my throat. I couldn’t taste it. I was completely numb, except for the tingling, and the tingling was only getting worse. My body shouldn’t have been reacting that way. This was all wrong. So wrong.
“I’m back in Atlantic City, drinking my face off, and Billy has died from an OD. This is so fucked.”
“Kyle…”
I liked the way he said my name a little too much.
I set the glass down, my hand still clinging it for support, and I slowly met the eyes that made me so unsteady. “I know my face is still on. It just feels like it’s off.”
“Tell me why you left.”
“I left to go to school. You know that.”
“That’s not what I’m asking. You know that.”
He wanted to know why things had changed after the night Paulie died. Why I had left our relationship. Why I had never allowed him to kiss me again.
But I couldn’t tell him any of that.
My face reddened. “That kissing though…”
I could tell by the way he glared at me that he knew how he affected me. My flushed cheeks just confirmed whatever he thought. I was even sure he could sense the tingling in my body, the goose bumps, and the wetness between my legs.
“And then Paulie died.”
His gaze shifted to my mouth.
“And now Billy…” The tingle briefly turned to an ache. “Why did it happen?” My voice trailed off as I answered my own question.
I’d watched Billy’s using go from a few times a week to several times a day. That was back then. I was sure it had only gotten worse. Garin had told me not to worry, that he would take care of it. But he couldn’t fix Billy, especially after Paulie died.
No one could fix us after Paulie died.
Now, it was too late.
“He lost his fucking brother, and that ruined him.”
“It ruined all of us,” I whispered.
It especially ruined me.
“It didn’t have to,” he said.
I wished that were true.
Garin fed me, he bought me clothes, and he made sure I always had a little cash in my pocket. He made sure I stayed safe. He was my family. My everything.
And then…he was my nothing.
“You saved me, you know.” I could hear my words start to slur. “I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t taken care of me.”
He gritted his teeth. “Then, why didn’t you stay?”
Why didn’t I stay?
My legs were bouncing underneath the table, and my hands couldn’t sit still. I only fidgeted this badly when I thought about him or when I was around him. “My mom was a mess, and my brother used way too much. Drugs made them feel good.” That was the truth, but it wasn’t the reason I left. “And what made me feel good was you.” I wished my hand were back over my mouth instead of playing with my napkin. I didn’t know why I was saying any of this.
“Bullshit.”
He didn’t believe me. That absolutely killed me.
I guessed I wouldn’t believe me either. But he had made me feel good; that part was pure honesty.
“It’s true, Garin. Even when I slept, I always wanted to be close to you. And then I left your apartment and…”
“And what?”
“And I just couldn’t stay anymore.”
A lie.
The drinking didn’t ease the hurt of the lie, nor did it ease the guilt. That was always there, no matter what I tried to tell myself or what I put in my body.
“I just couldn’t, Garin. It hurt too much.” Another lie. I shook my head to get rid of the memory and rubbed the center of my chest. That was where the pain lived, where the gnawing started. I wanted the tingling back. The tingling was so much easier. “I struggled so much with it, and I was only—” I cut myself off. I’d already said way too much.
“You were only what?”
I raised my glass, but there was nothing in it. So, I twirled the base of it over the table.
“You were only what, Kyle?” He didn’t shout, but his voice was so stern.
I finally looked at him again. “They’re both dead now
. The two brothers. Almost a whole family. It’s such a tragedy.”
“Stop avoiding this.”
He was right. I was avoiding.
And, if he continued staring at me, he’d see the truth. And the truth needed to stay where it was—hidden behind years of scars.
I pulled out my cell to check the time. The numbers were squiggly, thanks to the liquor, but it looked like it was close to midnight. Or ten past one. Either way, we’d been here for hours, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gone to the restroom.
“Ladies’ room,” I said, getting up from the stool. “I’ll be back.”
I hurried into the restroom and locked myself in a stall. The buzz hit me even harder now that I was standing, and I had to use the walls to hold myself up. It felt like they were getting narrower, the longer I hovered over the bowl, my ankles becoming wobblier in these heels.
Only a few more hours, I reminded myself, and then I’ll be on a plane heading home. Away from Atlantic City. Away from the secrets. Away from the lies that stared me in the face. Away from Garin Woods, who made me feel as unsteady as these damn shoes. God, he was sexy.
Hiccup.
And he’d been the best kisser.
Hiccup.
And his hands had known just how to touch me, just the right amount of pressure to use on my nipples. Hands that, I was sure, had only gotten more talented in the twelve years that had passed.
Hands that needed to find their way out of my head.
I wasn’t here to be touched or to think about being touched. I wasn’t here to feel any pleasure at all. I wasn’t here to remember how much I missed Garin, and I couldn’t miss him when I left. I’d have one more drink, go back to the hotel alone, and sleep for a few hours before I got on the plane.
Hiccup.
I wiggled my panties back up my legs, ignoring the wetness that had soaked into the fabric. Wetness that Mr. Hands had caused. Wetness that needed to dry and not be added to.
The automatic flush roared behind me as I stumbled out of the stall and washed up at the sink. The lighting showed my eyeliner had smudged a little, giving my eyes a sultrier look. My hair had loosened out of their curls and was wilder than normal. I didn’t bother to tame it.