She shrugs, opens her mouth, closes it, then opens it again. No words come out. I stop walking, and pull her over out of the sidewalk traffic and tip her chin up to me.
“Hey, you don’t think,” I start, but hesitate, not wanting to make her more nervous than she already is. “You don’t think I’m … expecting anything tonight, do you?”
Before I finish the sentence, her eyes dart to the ground and her shoulders slump.
Shit.
“It’s not that I don’t want … that. I mean, being with you feels amazing, but I don’t think I’m ready to boink just yet.”
She grimaces, and I can’t help it. I burst out laughing.
“Boink?” I try to stop laughing when I see her crossed arms and irritated expression, but it’s no use. “I don’t think I’ll ever be ready to boink. It sounds like … cartoon sex.”
“Keep it up, and you won’t have any kind of sex with me, cartoon or otherwise, you giant ass,” she mutters as she stalks away from me.
I grab her arm before she gets very far, and pull her back into my chest. I snake my arm around her belly and bury my face in her neck. The vanilla smell of her hair, the feel of her pulse in her neck, her firm, round ass pushing against my dick.
Yep, I’m hard. Calm the fuck down, dude, or she’ll think you want to boink her.
And then I’m laughing again as Marlo tries to extricate herself from me. I drop the grocery bag and turn her around, pressing my lips to hers. She doesn’t fight me for long, and what started as a fight quickly turns into a very public make-out session.
Yeah, not exactly helping the boner.
I pull away gently, swiping a thumb over her swollen bottom lip. “I just want to be with you, Low. Doesn’t matter if we’re sitting together, fully clothed in the cafeteria, or if we’re buck naked in bed.” I pause for a second, then flinch. “Okay, so it matters a little bit…”
She slaps my chest before I can finish and laughs. “Jerk!”
“What? I can’t help it. You’re … you. The thought of you naked and a stiff wind can give me a terminal case of blue balls. Who am I kidding? You could be wearing a turtleneck and give me blue balls.” I squeeze her arms and raise my eyebrows. “Even you in a garbage bag. A nun’s habit … actually that’s way hotter than it should be.”
“Okay, okay, ya sick perv, point made. But I don’t want to lead you on or anything. I like fooling around … like isn’t a strong enough word for how I feel about it. But I’ve never…”
She stops talking and watches me. I wait. She watches. I wait some more.
She huffs and crosses her arms. “Iveneverhadsexbeforeokay?” she whisper-yells in rapid succession.
Sweat, actual beads of sweat prickle my forehead, and I rest my hand on the brick wall for balance. I’m lightheaded … woozy.
“Seriously, Low, stop right there. If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear your goal right now is to make sure I can knock down this brick wall with nothing but my dick,” I say, slightly hunched over, hand on my hip. “I can’t take any more.”
“Are you mad?” she asks, looking worried.
“Mad? Why in the world would I be mad?” I shake my head and wrap her in a hug. Well, a sideways hug so I don’t stab her to death. “What you’ve done, what you want to do, and even what you don’t want to do—those things will never make me angry. I promise you that, Low. I don’t want or expect anything to happen tonight other than supper and spending time with you. However you want to spend that time is fine with me.”
I feel her relax in my arms, and she lays her head on my shoulder. I run my hand over her hair, curly and wild today, and squeeze her closer.
“Thank you. I feel so much better.” She lets out a long sigh.
“Good. Whew,” I say with a laugh, swiping my hand across my forehead. “I’m glad I don’t have to worry about you attacking my virtue with your out of control boinking. What a relief.”
She bursts out laughing as she pushes away from me and starts down the sidewalk. She throws me a glance over her shoulder and winks.
“You coming, or are you too scared?”
I lean down and grab the handles of the grocery bag and jog to catch up with her.
I’ll never admit it, and I hope she’ll never know, but the truth is…
I’m terrified.
I sauté the onions and garlic in the pan as Marlo salts the pot of water and turns up the flame. I love being with her in the kitchen this way. It feels so natural. We’re in sync, barely talking because there’s no need.
I peeled the shrimp while we were at the market, so there’s virtually no prep work. I chose to cook shrimp and garlic pasta for that very reason—maximum time with Marlo. My phone buzzes on the counter, and I see Remy’s name.
“Can you catch that?”
Marlo swipes the phone off the counter and answers it. “Hey Remy, what’s going on?”
She’s quiet as she listens, and I raise my eyebrows in question. She just smiles at me.
“Oh yeah, just stop by Evelyn’s house. We’re here cooking,” she says. I shake my head in protest, but she waves her hand at me dismissively. “Yeah, no big deal. We’ll be here … okay, bye.”
She ends the call and places the phone back on the counter. “He wants to drop something off to you, so I told him to stop by. No biggie,” she says with a shrug.
“I’ll call him back and tell him never mind,” I say, reaching for the phone.
I paid him for a dime bag, but he didn’t have anything on him at work today. I told him we’d settle up next week. I’m straight for the weekend, so no need to meet up before work Monday. Problem solved. No reason to see him until next week.
But Remy obviously has other plans. The asshole no doubt heard Marlo and me talking about our plans for the night, and saw an opportunity to insert himself. I’m not sure what he thinks he’ll accomplish, but the bottom line is I don’t like him in Marlo’s space. Hell, I don’t like him in her presence at all. I’ve got nothing to go on but my gut, but that’s enough to make me weary. Marlo, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to mind him in the least.
I reach for the phone, and Marlo places her hand over mine. “It’s no problem, Ever. He’ll just stop in for a minute. No worries. Remy’s cool.”
She carries on as if the conversation is over, and I leave it alone instead of bringing attention to my mistrust. I don’t have anything too concrete to say anyway. I’ll just meet him at the door and get rid of him as soon as possible.
“So … you mentioned your virtue,” Marlo says, question in your tone. “Were you joking?”
“I never joke about my virtue,” I say, clearly joking. I raise my eyebrow and smirk.
I notice the nerves returning in Marlo’s posture and she sighs. “I’m serious.”
“What exactly are you asking me?” Part of me hopes she doesn’t have the nerve to ask, because I honestly don’t want to admit the truth—my virtue and I haven’t been acquainted in quite a while.
“You’re gonna make me say it? Christ, you’re difficult,” she says with a huff. “Have you ever had sex, you big jerk?!”
Damnit, there’s no hiding now. She’ll get over it. I’m sure this won’t be a deal breaker. She’ll be disappointed, though, and I’ll have done that. I should be used to the feeling, but it’s different when I’m letting her down. It’s a whole new level of suck for me. Being sorry for something I have no control over? That’s actually an all too familiar feeling.
“Yeah, I have,” I say, and I see it right away. The dimming of her smile, the slight falling of her shoulders, her downcast eyes.
I step in closer, taking the spoon out of her hand and laying it on the counter. She sighs and looks away, but I grab her waist and pull her closer. “Low,” I say, and wait for her to meet my eyes. When she does, I wave a hand over my shoulder. “That? None of that matters to me, okay? I hope it won’t matter to you, either.”
She nods and smiles grimly. She tries to look away, but I catch
her chin.
“That was never this,” I say, motioning between the two of us. “Nothing for me has ever been this before. You’ve got to know that … feel that.”
“I do,” she whispers, pushing up on her toes to press her lips to mine.
“None of that matters, Low. Because now, with the choice of every girl in the world, I’d still choose you. Always,” I say, kissing her forehead.
It was an inevitable conversation I never wanted to have, but I’m sure as hell glad it’s over and hopefully settled. I don’t care about anyone from my past, and neither should she. In the past, I used sex as a way to escape. What I told her was the truth. This? This thing between us, is not about that. I don’t want to escape. I’m not looking for a way out. I’m looking for a way in.
Her lips say she’s over it, but she feels stiff in my arms. I hate that she feels so wound up over nothing, but I’m not sure what I can say to make her understand how little my past matters to me. I can only hope it won’t matter to her.
Then I remember the pills Remy had given me a few weeks ago. I pull away from her and grab my wallet out of my back pocket. They’re in a folded piece of paper in one of the credit card slits, so I pull it out.
“Hey, wanna half one of these with me?” I ask, opening the paper and showing her the pills inside. She raises a brow as I grab one of the knives on the counter and chip the pill in half.
“What is that?”
I shrug and pop one of the halves in my mouth and swallow. “It’s just a nerve pill. I took them this weekend when I was with Easton. He was inconsolable when I got there, and it really freaked me out. It just mellowed me out and helped me relax. This is just a half, so you may not even feel anything.”
She looks at it between my fingers with her head cocked to the side and her brows furrowed. A few seconds pass, and then she takes it from me and pops it in her mouth. She grabs her cup of water from the counter and smiles.
“Bottoms up.”
Then the doorbell rings.
Ever
REMY, OF COURSE, had overstayed his welcome. He’d seemed intent on ruining the quiet dinner I had planned for us. After reluctantly giving him some of our pasta and shrimp, I’d nearly pushed him out the door to get him to leave. I close the door behind him to find Marlo in the doorway of the kitchen with two wine glasses.
“Evelyn had a few open bottles of wine in the refrigerator. I thought we could have a glass,” she says, handing one to me.
I take a small sip and smile. “She won’t notice it’s missing?”
I cringe as the tangy liquid kisses my tongue, but I hide it behind the glass. The truth is, the smell and taste of wine turns my stomach and has for years, red wine especially. This is white, maybe a chardonnay, and not quite as bad. The thought of merlot or cabernet brings memories of my mother’s purple-stained lips and rings from her wine glasses on every surface imaginable in our house. Whether I’d caught a whiff when she’d leaned in to kiss me goodnight, or while she’d clutched me during a crying jag, all too common toward the end of me living in that house, the acidic scent on her breath had always rolled my stomach.
I can remember early Wednesday mornings, before the sunlight broke, listening to the garbage truck roll down the road, one house at a time. When the glass bottles had crashed and shattered onto one another on their way into the truck bin, I would smash my pillow over my face to mute the sound. It’d felt like an announcement to the entire neighborhood that my mother was drunk and unhinged. I doubt she ever heard the bombs exploding on those early mornings like I had, having passed out cold hours before.
I never plan to share any of this with Marlo, of course. I never want her to see me that way—like some helpless victim. I haven’t been that in years, so I don’t see a reason to relive it with her. Uncle Jeffrey had barely gotten the invitation out of his mouth, and my bags were packed, ready to make the trip to New Orleans. As far as I’m concerned, Uncle Jeff, Aunt Marty, and Easton are the only family I have. My parents fall into the category of necessary evil.
“Nah, trust me. When I say a few open bottles, I mean five or six,” she says with a chuckle as she takes a small sip. “She’ll be none the wiser. I didn’t even empty the bottle.”
I walk into the living room, and she follows close behind. I grab the glass from her hand, placing both on the coffee table before I sit on the sofa. She curls up into my side and wraps her arms around my waist.
“What if this were us? What if this was our life?” she whispers, her breath on my neck being all the stiff wind I need.
“Maybe it will be,” I say, as I turn into her, laying her down underneath me. “God, I can only hope.”
Our bodies line up perfectly, and her hands round the curve my ass at the same time her lips touch mine.
Hell yes.
“If this were us,” she breathes in my mouth between kisses and licks. “I’d take off your shirt to feel you pressed against me.”
She pulls the material over my head and tosses it on the floor, her lips only leaving mine for the briefest of moments. Heavy pants and sliding tongues fill the room, swirl in my head, and go straight to my dick as I roll into her on sheer instinct. As delicate fingers trace my chest, stomach, the waist of my jeans, I touch her, kiss her, devour her in return. Her back arches, and her mouth opens on a satisfied sigh, so I reach around and pull her closer, push into her deeper.
Thin sheets of fabric are the only thing keeping virtue from high-tailing it out the damn door, along with my resolve to take things only so far with Marlo.
Get your shit together, man. No boinking allowed.
And that’s when her nimble fingers flick open the button of my jeans.
“Whoa, whoa,” I say, voice raspy and labored. “Slow down, Low. I’m riding the line of respectful and taking advantage here, but I’m no saint. We need to slow dow-ow-ow-own.”
Her hand slides inside my jeans, over my boxers, and down the length of me—slow, snug, and so fucking sweet. I swear, one pump, and I’m begging my dick not to blow. I drop my head to her shoulder and silently pray for control … for stamina … for her to never, ever stop touching me.
“I just want to feel you,” she whispers as she squeezes me. “We won’t go too far, I promise.”
I flick open the buttons of her blouse, one by one, leaving kisses in my wake. The round curve of her breast pushes against black lace, and my teeth graze her.
“How far is too far?” I lift my eyes to meet hers, pulling down the cup of her bra at the same time. My tongue grazes the pink flesh, and her head tips back on a sigh. “Hmmmm, Low. How far is too far?”
“I’m not sure anymore,” she whispers, pulling at my boxers just enough for my tip to peek out of the waistband. Her thumb runs across the top, and I swear, I see goddamn stars. My hips roll of their own accord as her thumb spreads the drop of wetness over the head of my dick. “I don’t want to stop, though, Ev.”
My lips clamp onto her hard nipple and suck as I grind into her shamelessly. I’m beyond holding back. I couldn’t stop the train barreling forward at Mach speed if I wanted to.
I don’t want to.
I don’t want to.
I don’t want to.
Marlo’s pants become moans. Her moans become cries. Her body stiffens underneath me as she throws her head back in ecstasy. The arch of her body, the squeeze of her thighs against my hips, the unrelenting pressure in my cock, ready to explode—it’s all too much, and I shoot off onto her stomach with more force and pleasure than I’ve ever felt in my life.
I kiss her. I keep kissing her, knowing with complete certainty I never want to do anything else in this world but this. Her lips on mine, the feel of her tongue, the sound of her bated breath—it’s the most perfect drug. I’ll never get enough.
I’ve righted my jeans and cleaned her up, but her shirt remains unbuttoned and I’m mesmerized by the rise and fall of her chest. She watches her fingers run across my stomach in a lazy pattern.
T
hen my phone rings.
I reach over to the coffee table and tip the screen toward me. Dad.
Damn … talk about throwing a wet blanket on a hot flame.
I kiss Marlo quickly on the forehead. “I have to answer this or it’ll be the start of World War Three,” I say as I lift up off the sofa.
“’kay,” she whispers holding my hand in hers until I’ve gone too far and she has no choice but to let go.
I keep walking, wanting to get as far away from Marlo as possible, wanting to separate the world I want from the world that won’t let me go.
I tap the green button and brace.
“Hello.”
“Everett,” he says, partly as a greeting and wholly as a curse. “Is there anything you’d like to tell me?”
I sigh as I open the front door and walk out into the courtyard. It’s a talent that only my parents hold, the ability to infuriate me in ten words or less.
“Why don’t we skip the back and forth where I pretend to care and you just tell me what I did wrong this time?”
“Watch it. Don’t forget who you’re talking to.” His voice is sharp and threatening. There’s nothing that would make me happier than to call his bluff, but there’s too much at stake, and the asshole knows it.
I keep silent and wait for him to elaborate. Anything I say at this point will sound like poison to him.
“Easton had another seizure this weekend. You didn’t think that warranted a phone call? You do realize that we’re his parents, Everett. Not you.” His voice is rising with his anger, and it only fuels my own.
“Do you?”
I flinch as soon as the words leave my mouth. There is way too much truth in those two words to leave them unsaid.
“You are dangerously close to me taking action to ensure you don’t forget again, boy, so I’d watch your mouth.” His tone is dead calm and calculating.
I need to regroup and quick. I inhale deep and pinch the bridge of my nose, trying to center my thoughts and reign in my temper that’s amping up more and more by the second.
Low Over High (The Over Duet #1) Page 15