by K. A. Linde
“Oh yeah? What’s that?”
“She said that your parents didn’t let you date.”
He frowned. “She said that?”
“Yeah. I realized that I’ve never met your parents or anything.”
He sighed heavily and pulled the car over to a stop in front of Forsyth Park. He jerked off his Ray-Bans and faced me. “She’s not wrong.”
“Then … what have we been doing?”
“Dating,” he insisted. He glanced down and then back up. “Look, my dad is … he’s an acquired taste. He’s a hard-ass. He hates everything and thinks that I have to be raised the same way that he was. So, I have a job and I have to go to Duke and I can’t date in high school. My mom is on too much Prozac to disagree with anything he says. We’re all a mess, and I didn’t want you to think that I was like them. I didn’t want you to meet them and them to ruin this.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, reaching across the seat and taking his hand.
“I don’t have experience with this, Lila.”
“Experience with what? I’ve heard you have experience.”
“I’ve had sex.” He traced a circle on my hand and then met my gaze. “I’ve never been in love.”
“Ash,” I whispered.
“I love you, Lila. I’m in love with you.”
My throat closed, and I swallowed hard. “I love you too.”
He brought my hand to his lips and kissed it. “I love hearing you say that. God, it’s perfect. And I don’t want anything to come between us. Especially not my dad.” He kissed my hand again. “I’m going to tell them about us I promise. I just have to figure it out.”
“Okay.” I’d wait for it, for him. I wanted this more than anything else ever before. What was a few more weeks before he told his parents that we were together? What was the worst that could happen?
“Thank you,” he said, drawing my lips to his. “I’m going to be the guy that you deserve.”
“You already are,” I insisted.
Then our kissing deepened until I was breathless and the windows fogged up. He unbuckled my seat belt and pulled me onto his lap. Everything felt hot and needy. I should have been heading home. I had to get to the studio tonight. But all I could think about was Ash’s hands on me and his lips trailing kisses down my neck and the feel of him through his school khakis. Heat built in my core like I’d never felt before, and only the friction from his pants could make it stop.
I’d said no at New Year’s. I’d said I wanted to go slow. And yet here, right now, I could go a lot further.
A tap on the window sent us both scrambling. I jerked back across the seat. Ash ran a shaky hand back through his hair as he rolled the window down.
“Afternoon, officer.”
The police woman had her bike propped next to her. She looked us both over with amusement in her eyes. “You kids should probably get home.”
“Yes, of course. We’ll get home right away.”
“This is just a warning.”
“Thank you,” Ash said with a radiant smile.
As soon as she was gone, Ash gunned the engine and pulled back out on the street. I burst into laughter, and he joined me.
“Maybe we should find a better place to make out.”
His eyes were still glazed with lust when he looked at me. “Maybe we should.”
“Or maybe we needed the break,” I said, biting my lip. “I’m not sure I’m ready for more.”
He took my hand again as we parked in front of my house. “We’ll go at your pace. I’m not in a rush with you, Lila.”
I leaned over and kissed him again. “Thank you.”
“No need,” he said as he dragged a finger across my collarbone. “We can take all the time you want. This is forever.”
Forever.
Ash was forever.
9
Savannah
March 30, 2007
Marley rolled her neck. “I pinched something in that last acro section of the dance.”
“Tell me about it.” I cracked my back with a sharp twist. “I really need a massage.”
“Same.”
We were heading out to her minivan when my phone rang in my purse. I fished it out and saw Ash’s number on it. I smiled at Marley and held up a finger.
“Hey! I wasn’t expecting to hear from you until later.”
“Can you meet me at the park?” He sounded frantic and maybe even angry. Not at all like himself.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I mean, maybe.”
“Ash, are you driving? Should you pull over?”
“Please meet me at the park,” he all but begged. “Near the fountain entrance?”
“Okay. Yeah, I’ll see if Marley can drop me off. My mom is working tonight. She won’t even notice.”
He breathed a huge sigh of relief. “Thank you. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
Then he hung up on me.
Marley’s eyes were round. “Is everything all right?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Do you mind dropping me off at Forsyth?”
“I can do that. It’s not that far out of the way.”
Marley’s grandparents were stricter than my mom had ever been. If she wasn’t home within a certain time frame after dance, she’d be grounded. I didn’t think she’d ever date with how strict they were. They loved her, which was why they cared so much. Sometimes, I wished my mom cared a little bit more. Though at this particular moment, I didn’t mind.
We pulled up to Forsyth Park, the same park Ash and I had gotten interrupted by the cop a couple months earlier. We’d spent an inordinate amount of time together in here since then, meandering the thirty acres, lounging by the fountain, and sitting lazily under the Spanish moss. Tonight, the park was dark. It was open twenty-four hours, but no one ventured in this late at night.
Marley let me out next to the passenger side of Ash’s Mercedes.
He waved at her. “Thanks, Marley.”
“Hope everything is okay,” she said to him.
He nodded unconvincingly.
She drove away, and I sank into the passenger side. “Hey, what’s going on?”
His hands still clenched the steering wheel, his knuckles gone white. “Can we drive for a bit?”
“Should you be driving?”
“Yeah. I’m better because you’re here.”
“Okay.” I bit my lip in worry.
He put the car in drive and pulled away from the park. We drove in silence for a few minutes before he finally spoke, “I told my parents.”
I straightened at that statement, my eyes going wide.
We’d been in a sort of argument about his parents for months. He’d promised back in January that he was going to tell them about me. That he wasn’t hiding me. Then, every day that went by where he didn’t tell his parents felt more and more like he actually was hiding me.
We’d been making plans to go to prom. We hadn’t been going to any of the Holy Cross or St. Catherine’s parties. So prom was a big day in our relationship. It was the next step. The biggest step for me. But I’d been cautious about the whole thing. Not with Ash exactly, but with the possibility that he never would tell his parents.
“They didn’t take it well?” I guessed.
Because of course, they hadn’t. The fantasy in my head was, they discovered their son was dating someone, and they were magically excited. They’d want to meet me and get to know me, and I’d be the daughter they never had.
But no. Of course not.
“You could say that.”
“How bad was it?” My voice was even, strong. None of the meekness or general sense of impending disaster that I felt to my core.
He shot me a bleak look.
“God,” I whispered.
We lapsed into silence again. I didn’t even know what to say. Ash had told me time and time again that telling his parents was a bad idea. That it was better to just be us, the way that we were. Even if that
meant sneaking around and meeting in the park and having adventures that no one else could ever know about.
Except I wanted more than that. I wanted Sunday brunch after mass with his parents. I wanted weekends on the yacht. I wanted lazy afternoons in his entertainment center. I wanted everything with him, and I was only getting half.
Ash after dark.
That was what I called our relationship. I got the part of him that no one else ever saw. But I didn’t get the part of him that everyone else had.
He’d tossed his phone into the drink holder, and it lit up brightly every couple minutes.
“Is that them?” I asked.
“Yeah. I kind of just … left.”
“Fuck. They’re going to be worried.”
“Let them be,” he said vengefully.
“I don’t want them to blame me for this.”
He reached across the console and took my hand. “They won’t.”
But he didn’t know that.
Ash drove into the empty parking lot for the Savannah Yacht Center. His parents’ yacht was docked here. We’d taken it out on New Year’s when they were too busy with their own party. We’d snuck back out here a couple times since then. But nothing was as magical as being on the water when the fireworks burst overhead.
He killed the engine, and I followed him down the row of docks before stopping in front of his parents’. He helped me climb on board, and we ventured below deck.
Ash found a bottle of champagne in the wet bar. “Shall we?”
“You have to drive home,” I reminded him.
He drew me back into the bedroom. “What if we didn’t go back home?”
“My mom would freak out.”
“Your mom doesn’t get home until, like, six when she’s working over night. We could be back before then.”
I put my hand on the bottle. “Just talk to me.”
He set it down and took a seat on the edge of the bed. “They told me I wasn’t allowed to date.”
“Which you already knew.”
“Yeah. I told them it was bullshit and that I was going to take you to prom.” He ran a hand back through his hair. “That’s when it got rough.”
I took a seat next to him. “You can tell me.”
“You don’t want to hear it.”
“It’s okay, Ash.”
“They said that this was a phase and I’d get over it. That I was too good for you and someone like you only liked me for my money.”
I laughed in a self-deprecating manner. “Well, at least they got that out of their system.”
“It was terrible. I defended you. I told them you weren’t like that.”
“You don’t even have any money yet,” I said with a grin, nudging his shoulder.
He chuckled. “Thanks for that.”
“Look, it’s not anything I haven’t heard before. You don’t think the girls at school haven’t said every horrible thing imaginable to me? That I’m a poor scholarship student with no fashion. That I only caught you by opening my legs. That I must be some whore to keep you.”
“Who is saying that?” he demanded.
I put my hand on him again. “Honestly, it doesn’t matter. It hurts, but they don’t say it because of me. They say it because they’re projecting. I get messed up about it when it happens, but afterward, I know they only do it because they’re insecure. And your parents are only saying it because they think they’re protecting you. They think that keeping you from dating and keeping you from ‘someone like me’ will help you get further in life. They likely don’t want you to make the same mistakes they made.”
“That is very levelheaded, Lila,” he said calmly.
“I’ve had three years of this at school. My mom handles it with a calm demeanor.” I straightened and imitated my mom’s gentle but firm speech. “Girls in high school hurt people when they’re hurting. Give them grace.”
Ash relaxed a little more. “You sound just like her.”
“I have a dozen of them. But she always says the same thing. I can only be who and what I am, and I don’t want to be anyone else. And I don’t want to stoop to their level.”
“That’s all fine and well for the bitchy girls at school, but what the fuck am I supposed to do about my parents?”
I sighed and flopped back on the bed. “I don’t know, Ash. What do you want to do?”
“Move in with your mom?”
I giggled. “She’d adopt you in a heartbeat.”
“Might get awkward.”
“I wouldn’t mind having you right down the hall.”
“Yeah?” he asked as if suddenly realizing that I was lying back on a bed. His hands slid up my bare legs to the skintight acro shorts and up the torso of my leotard. “You have me here, right now.”
“I do. But you haven’t figured out what you’re going to do about your parents.”
He moved his body next to mine, pressing kisses across my collarbone and down across my ribs. “We’re still going to prom, Lila. Whether they want me to go or not.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
His finger hooked the leotard strap, dragging it down my arm and exposing my breast. I shivered despite the warm, humid air in the cabin. He cupped my breast in his hand, rubbing the nipple between his fingers. I arched against him, my breathing uneven at the contact. Then, his mouth replaced his fingers, and I moaned into the empty space.
“Ash,” I murmured.
He pulled down the other side of my leotard, dragging the material to my waist and baring me completely before him.
“I love your body, Lila,” he said as he settled his mouth on the other nipple. “I love making you feel good.”
He sucked the nipple into his mouth, grazing it with his teeth until I squirmed under him.
“I love you.”
“I love you too,” I gasped.
His free hand moved to my legs, spreading them slightly. I shifted self-consciously, but he didn’t seem to notice. He drew his hand up, up, up my inner thigh, dragging his large, rough hand along my smooth, creamy skin until he reached the apex of my thighs. I trembled at the first touch as he pressed his palm against my core.
That friction alone made my entire body shudder. We’d gotten here before. We’d done a lot more than this. But we never had a bed and uninterrupted time on our hands. There was always a rush and sense of urgency. I never felt ready to take the next step. Which was why we’d both thought prom would be our moment. Finally our moment.
But now that I was lying back on the bed with him massaging me through the thin layer of my shorts, I knew that we’d waited long enough. He’d told his parents. He was serious about us. We both wanted it. Why wait any longer?
“Ash,” I said breathlessly.
He trailed a finger down my center. “Yes?”
“I think … I think I’m ready.”
His eyes snapped up to mine. Blue meeting blue. Desire roaring through both of us.
“Are you sure? You wanted to wait until prom.”
“I’m sure. I don’t want to wait.”
He nodded. Clearly, he wasn’t going to ask me twice. He’d done this before, and I hadn’t. He already wanted this, and I was filled with anticipation. Nerves built in me, but Ash was just Ash. This felt like the right time.
I wiggled out of my shorts and leotard, leaving me naked in the dim lighting. Ash shucked off his polo and khakis. I sat up to my elbow and then reached for his boxers. He stood still, letting me take the lead, letting me test the limits.
I pulled his boxers down, letting them drop to the ground, and then I took him in my hand. Not that I had any frame of reference, but he was huge. Like I had no idea how he was going to fit inside of me. I stroked him a few times, and his head dipped back. A growl escaped his throat, and I thought about doing more, but he gently pushed me backward on the bed.
He retrieved a condom out of a side drawer, and I tried not to think about what they were doing there as he tore the
foil. I watched, slightly embarrassed as he pushed the condom down all the way around himself and then crawled on top of me. At the first touch of the tip of him against my opening, I jumped in shock.
“Ash,” I said, suddenly wide-eyed with worry.
“Hey.” He brushed my hair back and pressed a kiss to my lips. “It’s okay. We can stop if you’re not ready.”
I swallowed hard. “I’m ready.”
“I’ll go slow,” he assured me.
It felt good. So fucking good. Just him against me, the inch he pushed inside. I gasped in shock. I’d never experienced anything like this. Nothing compared.
He moved in and out slowly, just as he’d promised, warming me up and opening me to fit him. I was wrong about him not fitting because, he eased all the way in. The pressure was tight and almost uncomfortable. But nothing like Josie had said it would be. She deeply regretted her first time, and I couldn’t imagine regretting this with Ash.
“Are you okay?” he asked once he was fully seated inside of me.
“Yes,” I whispered.
He dropped a kiss onto my lips as he pulled out again, nearly as slow. A breath escaped me.
“Oh my God.”
“Yes,” he groaned as he pushed back in. “You … fuck, Lila. You feel so fucking good. I’ve wanted this for so long.”
I brought my legs up to his hips as he picked up a rhythm, pulling out and pushing back into me. My legs were trembling. My body rigid with unceasing pleasure. I didn’t know what I was feeling or where it was building. Just Ash on top of me and everything coalescing into this one moment.
“I’m … close,” he said, dropping his head into my shoulder.
Then, he moved faster. A lot faster. I gasped as the pleasure shifted closer to pain. A good pain but still … pain. Still too fast and too much. And I couldn’t slow him down, but part of me didn’t want to.
My fingers dug into his biceps. “Ash, too … fast. Too fast.”
“I know,” he growled into my neck. “I know. I’m so close, Lila.”
“Please,” I whispered.
And that sent him over the edge. He shouted his pleasure into the bedroom, tipping his head back and shuddering as he finished inside of me.