“I swear sometimes Gram still thinks we’re ten years old,” he told me.
“She didn’t think that when she found us dry humping in her parlor earlier,” I said wryly.
His eyes did something fascinating when I said that. “Dry humping, huh? As opposed to what? Wet humping?” He wasn’t even smiling anymore, his body crowding me.
“Stop,” I told him.
“When are you going to let me wet hump you, Scarlett?” he was laughing again, which was good. For a second there he’d seemed too much for me to handle.
“Shut up,” I told him, my usual retort for being teased.
“We’re almost to your house,” he told me, though we really weren’t since we weren’t even moving anymore. “Aren’t you going to kiss me goodbye?”
“Are you going to stop teasing me?”
He leaned in close. “Never.” He kissed me.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him back. We were good at it by then, we’d done nothing but practice lately. It was a new and dear hobby.
And I was very good at giving him a little then backing off, never letting him get too far since my grandma had put the fear of God in me.
I won’t deny that the thought of another girl as competition had more than a bit to do with it, but we got a little more carried away than usual. He was grabbing my butt, holding me against the tree while he ground his hardness into me, rooting around for my softness through our clothes.
I brushed my breasts into his chest, rubbing them back and forth against him until he made the noises I liked best.
My nipples were so hard and sensitive and I couldn’t seem to stop doing it, brushing them back and forth, making him feel what he was doing to me.
He ripped his mouth away, panting as he pressed our foreheads together. “Jesus,” he muttered, a refrain that let me know he was reaching his limit.
Licking his lips, I started pulling my shirt up. Since that first time, when we’d been caught by my grandma, my breasts had been pretty much off the table, but I decided right then to put them back on it.
He pulled back to watch as I exposed my bra, his hips moving in little movements that I doubted he even knew he was making.
I unsnapped my bra and pulled it apart, letting my breasts swing free.
“God,” he said, reaching for them.
I let him fondle me while I watched him through heavy lids.
“Does this feel good?” he asked me, kneading at my flesh.
“Mmmhmm,” I hummed. So good. “Does it feel good to you?”
His breathing was heavy, his hips circling as he started tugging on my nipples. “You have no idea.” He bent his head down to me. “Can I?” he rolled his eyes up to look at me.
I bit my lip and nodded, covering his hands with mine to lift myself up to his mouth.
He started licking my nipples, sucking and tonguing them, back and forth. It felt so good, especially with the way he was moaning while he did it, but he stopped abruptly, setting me down and backing away, a hand dragging through his hair.
“Your grandma’s going to be home soon,” he told me, eyes still on my bared breasts. “I don’t want to get you in trouble.” He paused. “And I don’t want to freak you out by taking it too far. I’m feeling a little too crazed not to do something you’re not ready for.”
“Okay,” I said, because he was right about all of it, so I couldn’t argue.
I straightened and started working at getting my ample boobs back into my bra.
Dante happily helped me, bending down to nuzzle between when we had them back in place. “Can we . . . hang out at your grandma’s tomorrow? We’ll meet at Gram’s. I—“ he paused voice thickening, “need some time alone with you. More than a few minutes in the woods.”
I kissed him, then kissed him again. “Of course. We can watch a movie or something.”
He looked amused. “Whatever you want to call it.”
But when I showed up at his gram’s the next day she was there with him.
I turned around and started walking home.
He caught up to me, stopping me with a hand on my arm. “Stop. Just meet her, okay? She’s not that bad. Just come get introduced and we’ll make an excuse and leave, huh? But there’s no need to be rude. She’s not rude. Trust me.”
I was fuming, but I went back with him.
If only to get a closer look at the girl his family wanted him to marry.
Dante introduced us.
I mumbled out a surly, “Nice to meet you.”
She seemed unfazed, beaming at me. “Nice to meet you too, Scarlett.”
We did not leave right away, much to my chagrin. Instead we stayed while she chatted with Dante and I glared at them both.
She was very sweet, even to me. And she had an obvious, extreme crush on Dante. She looked up, up, up at him like he was the center of her universe.
I knew the look well. I wore it often myself.
Meeting her didn’t help. I hated her more than ever. The sweeter she was, the more it made me sick to my stomach. I’d wanted to her to be awful, and ugly.
But she was beautiful and good.
It made no sense.
I was a fighter. A warrior of a girl.
She was a delicate flower. A shrinking violet.
Why did her timidity cow me? How?
Self-disgust resonated through me, and I steeled myself.
Just because she was something I couldn’t understand, something he might like, that didn’t mean I’d back down.
I studied her while they talked, eyeing her head to toe. She was thin in the way that models are thin, not an ounce of fat on her, but still some shape, even if it was just the way her skin molded around her bones. She’d look good in anything. She had no breasts to speak of, so she was basically a walking clothes hanger.
Everything I wore pulled across my breasts, drawing eyes, making things fit worse than they should have.
And her hips were nonexistent. That I hated even more. Breasts, particularly big perky ones like mine, were well beloved by boys, and more importantly, well beloved by Dante.
But fleshy, shapely hips? It was anyone’s guess. Mine were a handful and then some.
I had mentally catalogued every inch of her by the time either of them turned back to me.
They seemed to be getting along, which made me sick.
What if he liked her more than me?
Maybe he’d had enough of sharp tongues and rough edges. Maybe he longed for someone soft.
I couldn’t even stand the thought.
I turned around and started striding away.
“Did I say something?” I heard Tiffany asking him.
“Nah. We just had plans. Catch you later.”
I heard him running up to me, falling in beside me, but I ignored him.
“You don’t have to come with me,” I bit out. “Go back to your new girlfriend. Do whatever you want. I don’t even care anymore.”
I swear I could hear him grinding his teeth, but he didn’t respond at first. We were into the trees before he spoke.
“What the fuck?” finally burst out of him. “What is it with you? I was being polite. We talked about nothing for five minutes with you right there. I was just being nice.”
“You and I were supposed to have plans. You weren’t supposed to bring her along.”
“I didn’t! She came by Gram’s house to say hi to me. The timing wasn’t good, but it was a perfectly normal thing to do, unlike how you’re acting right now!”
I rounded on him. He’d hit a nerve and I wanted to hit him back. “If you don’t like the way I’m acting, if you don’t think it’s normal enough for you, then leave me the hell alone. If you don’t want to fight, you followed the wrong girl! Go follow her instead, if that’s what you want!”
He made a noise of deep frustration. “It’s not what I fucking want! What is your problem? Why do you turn everything into a fight?”