by Alex Lucian
“It’ll be here sooner than later.”
“I’ll pretend you didn’t say that. I gotta run, honey. Call you later?”
“Sure,” I said, even though I didn’t think she actually would. “Love you.”
“Love you too.”
I hung up and put the car in park right by the door to the locker rooms. After a couple minutes, the door opened and Leo exited, in mid-laugh, followed closely by his friend Cameron Hunter. Cameron looked my way for a second, narrowed his eyes against the sun and then turned to Leo, saying something I couldn’t hear from inside the car—something that caused them both to laugh hard.
Instantly, my knuckles gripped the steering wheel and my teeth clamped tight. Whatever it was they were saying, I couldn’t help but feel it had something to do with me. Was Leo bragging about bedding the preacher’s daughter to his friends?
My blood was boiling as I watched them talk, Leo giving Cameron a gentle punch to his chest. After another look in my direction, I knew Cameron was saying something about me. And it made me want to punch him, but a whole lot harder than Leo had.
When Leo finally began walking toward the car, I was sure that my temper was at its boiling point.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Leo climbed into the car and gave me little more than a “hey” before his phone was in his hands and his fingers slid quickly across the screen.
I waited a second for him to say something—anything—else, but when he remained silent, I put the car in gear and pushed hard on the gas pedal, causing Leo to jerk and drop his phone.
“Whoa, Fast and Furious,” he mumbled as I sped out of the parking lot and onto the road. He bent over and picked up his precious phone and resumed typing something out.
Normally, Leo wasn’t this … quiet. Of the two of us, he was definitely the conversationalist. So having him be that quiet while he typed something out on his phone immediately after he and Cameron were sharing a joke that I couldn’t hear but could see … well, I was annoyed. A wholly inadequate word, but the only one my pissed-off brain could conjure up.
“You should buckle up,” I said, my voice a bit snappier than normal.
“And you should follow traffic laws,” Leo returned, leaning over to view my speedometer. I elbowed him back to his side, but slowed down nonetheless.
The texting continued and I tried not to wonder what the hell was so interesting that he had to give his whole focus to his phone, but because we were close enough to recycle each other’s air, it was all I could think about.
It hurt, and it pissed me off that it hurt, imagining Leo talking about me going down on him the first time, or how he’d given me my first orgasm. These were things that were deeply private to me and imagining him tossing them around for others to digest and laugh about … well, it really hurt.
Finally, because all my annoyance was stifling, I blurted out, “What have you told other people about us?” It came out higher pitched and whinier than I’d intended, but I couldn’t very well say the words again. I let my fingers relax around the steering wheel so that my body language didn’t scream how I felt.
“Huh?”
“You know what I mean,” I said, calmer this time. “I know guys brag about who they’ve got under them at the moment. I feel like I deserve to know what’s being said about me.”
“What the hell, Scarlet? Where is this coming from?”
I regretted bringing it up while driving because I couldn’t very well stare at him as he answered, even though I felt his eyes on me. “You know,” I said, calmer still. “I saw you and Cameron outside the locker rooms. Laughing. And he kept looking at me—guys don’t just look at girls like that.”
“Because Hunter thinks you’re hot. Chill the fuck out.”
I thanked God for the red light as I turned to Leo and narrowed my eyes into slits. “Do not tell me to chill out.”
Leo reached a hand for the air conditioning and I slapped it away. I was able to watch the tick in his jaw at that before he turned to face me, his own eyes hard.
The light turned green and I whirled my head back forward to drive, turning toward the tollway and through the E-ZPASS lane.
“Like I said. Hunter thinks you’re hot. But that doesn’t mean I’m talking about you to him. Or to anyone. It’s not like that for me.”
The rational part of me told me to listen to what he was saying, but the irrational part—which likely accounted for ninety-seven percent—asked me why I was believing him. Dudes bragged all the time; it was as if it was built into their DNA to compare whose sex life was more phenomenal.
When he reached for the air conditioning, the irrational Scarlet came out and slapped his hand away again. “My family doesn’t need to hear from the whole town that we’re doing…” I paused a moment, but the anger remained at the edge of my voice, “whatever it is we’re doing.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Now his voice was louder, and I took a little bit of comfort in that, now that I was not the only one getting riled up.
“You’re not the one whose parents expect so freaking much from.” I regretted, bitterly, that Leo and I hadn’t established exactly how we would handle the situation we’d fallen into. “It’d be nice to know what’s being said about me so I know how to handle it when it reaches my parents.”
Leo laughed humorlessly. “You’re one to fucking talk.”
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t dog me for talking to my friends when you’ve probably told Liza every single fucking thing we’ve done.”
“I have not,” I said, nearly shouting. “She’s my friend and knows we’re … hooking up, but she doesn’t know the more…” I trailed off, my brain not able to formulate the words I was searching for. It was even more infuriating that I knew what I was thinking but couldn’t articulate it. Leo had reduced me to a stupid, blubbering, inarticulate girl.
“How am I supposed to believe you? Girls talk about every inane thing.”
“Because I wouldn’t lie about that,” I practically growled.
“Are you saying I’m lying to you?”
“I don’t know!” I threw my hands up before grabbing the wheel. “I have no freaking idea if you’re telling me the truth or if you’re lying just to appease me! All of this, this—whatever it is we’re doing—is new to me and I don’t—”
“Pull in here,” Leo said, pointing a hand at the service station notification sign.
“No.” With my bottom lip all pouty, I felt like a petulant child. My frustration with Leo had turned into frustration with myself, for being unable to keep my emotions in check.
“Pull the fuck in,” Leo repeated, his voice even and slow.
“I’m driving my car and I will not turn into the service station.”
“If you don’t pull the car over, I’ll yank your bony ass out of that seat and pull the e-brake.”
I didn’t doubt he could, especially with the size of his biceps and the waves of anger rolling off him.
The moment I’d pulled my car into a spot, I turned it off and ripped the keys from the ignition, stalking away and toward the woods just behind the building. I needed to get the hell away from him, so I could collect myself and return to the car a much calmer person.
Just a few yards from the car, I heard his door slam closed and I picked up the pace, my ballet flats eating up the grass with quick, long steps. It wasn’t long before I could hear him breathing—he was so close to me, and my heart skittered in a stupid kind of excitement. My blood was still boiling and it was on the tip of my tongue to scream at him, but his hand clamped on my upper arm and kept me moving forward, quickly into the woods.
I tried in vain to wrestle my arm from his grasp, but he was impossibly strong and we strode, side by side into the woods, over broken branches and fallen leaves.
When he let go of my arm, I opened my mouth to call him a number of vile things, but every single word died in my mouth as his lips caught mine.
I cursed my b
ody for giving into the spell that his mouth cast upon mine. My traitorous lips opened, my unfaithful tongue slid against his and my body became his accomplice in the way it melted into his touch. He backed me up to a tree so that I felt the bite of bark against the exposed skin along my arms.
He let go of my mouth to grip my thighs, lifting me so that I wrapped around his waist. The slit in my maxi dress from ankle to knee gave me a little freedom, but the rest of the dress bunched up on my thighs as I stretched it to accommodate Leo’s lower half.
One of his hands slid down my thigh and he mumbled, “Why the fuck is there so much fabric on this?” before finding the opening at my knees and sliding his hand under the skirt so that his palm was against bare skin.
“Reach in my front right pocket,” he said, his mouth returning to mine. Holy shit. We were going to do it. Outside. In the weeks since our first night together and the jumbled, alcohol-clouded memories that I had of us together, I never imagined that our next time would be like this.
As my body strained, needing relief from the pressure that had built up from our verbal sparring, I reached a hand forward and dove it into the pocket of his shorts, finding nothing until my hand grazed the hardest part of him.
“Wrong pocket,” he said, jerking when I touched him through the layers of shorts.
“Should I look in the other pocket?” I asked coyly as my finger slid down his length.
“Ah,” he hissed as I did it again, and again and again.
“Stop it, or I’m going to come in my shorts.”
But I didn’t stop; my fingers moved from the pocket to his front, finding the tip nestled near the waistband of his shorts. I brushed my thumb over it and took extreme pleasure in watching his eyes close halfway.
“Fuck,” he whispered. “Reach in that pocket right now, or I’ll have to put you down to do it myself.”
Reluctantly, I moved my hand to the other pocket and found the foil square. I held it up between us, just as Leo’s hands slipped over the front of my panties, causing me to buck against his touch.
“Put it on,” he said, his thumbs brushing the sides of my lips teasingly.
I pushed the front of his shorts down, releasing his cock. As I placed the condom over the tip, his fingers gently pinched my lips—an immediate shock to my core.
“Ah,” I moaned. “Don’t do that or I can’t concentrate.”
“Then don’t concentrate.” He pinched them again, sending sparks of sharp pleasure right to my center. “And hurry the fuck up.”
It was hard to unravel the condom because of our close proximity, but I managed to get it most of the way, leaving Leo to push me up against the tree so that he could use a hand to pull it on completely.
“I’m not going to undress you,” he told me, and wrenched my panties to the side. His fingers brushed that sensitive skin inside my lips as he opened me wide and put the head of his cock where his fingers had only teased.
“O-okay,” I breathed, arching my hips as far forward as I could go, to get him to actually slide inside of me.
Leo quickly looked around before thrusting forward. The feeling of being full hit me hard and I dropped my head from the immense pleasure it brought immediately. The pleasure of him being inside of again, this time in stark, sober daylight. He pulled out all way before thrusting again. Over and over, he repeated that—bruisingly predictive in his rhythm. More than once, my hands gripped his sides, urging him to go faster, to get me to fall over that edge sooner. The climb to my orgasm was painfully slow, my body screaming to hasten the pace.
When he continued that same rhythm, I arched my back drastically to get him to listen to what my body was saying—what it needed.
“You want fast?” he asked, his breath at my mouth. My breasts heaved as I nodded and my chin brushed his mouth as my head moved. He caught the tip of my chin and bit it gently.
“Yes,” I said on an exhale, my hands squeezing his mid-section.
Without another word, he picked up the pace and I sagged into the sensation. I ignored everything—the pinch of the bark, the sounds of traffic in the parking lot, the birds I knew were in the vicinity. All I heard were Leo’s breaths and my own along with the slap of skin each time he drove himself all the way up inside of me.
I felt it then, that distinctive numbing of limbs as my body approached the crest. Leo must have sensed it because his fingers delivered one hard press to my clit and his mouth swallowed the scream that tore from my throat.
Several seconds later, Leo grunted against my hair as he came and his fingers dug harder into my thighs. There was something delectable about feeling the waves of my orgasm and Leo’s touch soothing my skin as my body crumbled to nothing.
After a few long breaths between us, Leo eased out of me, instantly making me aware of the void that was left in his wake. He pulled me from the tree trunk, wrapped one arm around my back as he lowered my legs to the ground gently. He was so careful with me, something that deflated whatever unnecessary annoyance I may have still harbored.
It wasn’t until then that I realized we’d just had sex in a pretty public place. Despite Leo pulling me into the woods, we could still see the parking lot and the interstate in the background. We were far enough away to give us a small sense of privacy, but not so far that someone looking this direction wouldn’t have noticed us.
“Whoa,” I said on a breath. My legs still shook a little from the orgasm, but I wasn’t in a big hurry to walk yet.
“Yeah, I know.” Leo looked at my face as if he was waiting to see if any of our earlier argument lingered on my face. This time, I didn’t have to school my features because whatever had existed between us before he pushed me up against the tree was now gone.
“So, we can cross sex in public off the list,” I said with a laugh.
Leo closed his eyes for a second and then opened them and gave me one of his wide grins. “You’re right. We can.” But something about the way he said that made me think he hadn’t brought me here to cross off a bucket list item—he’d done it simply because he wanted to.
And damn if that didn’t add more confusion for my heart.
Chapter Twenty-Six
With every day that passed, I knew I needed to just sit Scarlet down, tell her how I was feeling— that I wanted to know how she thought of us. But the fact was, I was too chicken-shit to upset the perfect balance we had going. The sex at the service station had shifted something in her, I could tell. I’d catch her looking at me for longer periods of time, like she was trying to define something that she saw on my face.
Obviously, she hadn’t been able to. There was no way. Given that Scarlet had had a minor (major) freak-out about her parents finding out about us, I didn’t think she’d like it if she could correctly interpret my thoughts just by looking at me.
And the reason for that? Because I was about one smile away from blurting out that I was most likely, probably, almost falling in love with her.
Fucked up, right?
The girl who was a neighborhood friend when we were little, a stranger through high school, then the one person who made me feel like I’d never prove them wrong about me, was the only person in the world that I wanted to be thinking about, spending time with, making decisions about. Like, life decisions.
And I didn’t fucking know how to tell her that.
It should have been easier, considering how much time we were spending together. Every single day after she pulled her car into her driveway, I followed her in. Sometimes she’d help me with my homework; I was never able to help her with hers. She even started asking me about football without me bringing it up first.
One of my favorite conversations had been the day before, when she’d told me that a wide receiver was her favorite position on the team, with a cocky little smile on her face. I’d tackled her, tickling her into submission until she finally admitted, between peals of laughter, that the QB was the best. Oddly enough, it hadn’t turned into anything beyond that. I’d just settl
ed behind her on the couch, one arm snug around her waist, and we watched reruns of Seinfeld for the next three hours.
After we got home from the city, we hadn’t talked much. I was studying for a quiz, sprawled out on her couch, and she was typing out a paper at the kitchen table.
“Hey, Scarlet?”
She hummed in response, flicking her eyes to me and then back to the blue glow of her laptop.
“When is your dad’s sabbatical over again?” Her fingers stopped clicking, but she didn’t look over at me again just yet. “Because you’re joining them for a week, right?”
Basically, I’d just admitted two things:
I was paying very close attention to what she’d said early on.
I was concerned about how much time we had left to play house.
She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again, picking up a pen to doodle on a piece of paper next to her. “I usually do, yeah.”
My heart skipped a couple beats at her careful tone, hammering in quick succession. “Usually?”
The pace of the pen picked up where she still gripped it in her hand. “Yeah, umm, I don’t think I’m going this year.”
“Why not?”
Finally, she looked up, locked eyes with mine. “I just don’t want to.”
It wasn’t precisely the answer I was hoping for. But I still didn’t look away, in case she wanted to amend it at all. To something like, I don’t want to go because that means I lose a week of time with you, doing just this.
She didn’t. And I broke eye contact, looking back down to my statistics notebook in my lap. What was weirder than anything was that I didn’t feel even the tiniest shred of disappointment in her response. How could I when the most likely reason she wasn’t going to vacation with her parents for a week was because of this little game of house we’d been playing for the past four and a half weeks?
My phone screen lit up with a text, and I smiled when I read it.