She laughed hard at that. Then she stopped and took a long, deep breath. “I wasn’t really pissed at you because of some lawsuit.”
“So what was it?” She looked down, but I ducked my head and met her eyes, determined to not let her look away when she confessed to whatever she was going to confess to.
She gathered up all that long, dark hair at the crown of her head, then let it spill back down her back and looked me in the eye.“I was pissed at you because I didn’t want to be with you, even though I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I have neverfelt so out of control with anyone. Not like I feel with you. And I didn’t think I wanted it.”
“So you were mad at me for being so perfect for you?” I ran my hand from her shoulder, down her arm, over her hand, to her hip and back up.
“I was scared of you.” She swallowed so hard I saw all the little muscles in her throat move. “Jeff was so perfect. He was the most perfect of all of my boyfriends. He met every requirement on my list. And I felt absolutely nothing for him. Not one thing. And you called me on it, so I hated you. Because I managed to trick everyone else. I even tricked myself.” She rolled on top of me, and I put my hands up into her hair and pushed it away from her face so I could kiss her.
“This night feels fucking weird,” I said once she pulled away.
“I know. Like we might wake up, and it won’t be real.” She looked a little panicked at that.
“There’s an easy fix for that.” I kissed all over perfectly warm, sweet-smelling, sexy-as-hell neck, and I went right into superwood when she moaned and writhed around a little.
“Oh yeah?” She ran her fingers along the inside of the waistband of my jeans, and I had to suck air through my teeth to keep from passing out. “How’s that work?”
“I’m not leaving you tonight,” I managed to grind out. I threw in a shrug to try to keep it casual.
“Saxon, you have to leave.” She sat up fast, leaving the air cool and with just a subtle hint of her sexy smell. “My parents will kill me. Kill. Me.”
I took her in my arms and squeezed her body tight against mine. “I’ll be stealth.” I sucked a little trail along her neck and her shoulders, not hard enough to leave any marks, but enough to bring up a moan again. “Plus that, everyone is on opening at the restaurant tomorrow except you and me.”
When she finally smiled, it was the most alluring fucking mix of sweet and sexy I’d ever seen. “Okay. But I’m not having sex with you.”
I held a hand up. “I vow to stay out of your pants unless you ask me to do otherwise.”
“Let’s get home, then, before dawn.” She jumped to her feet and swung her hand down, and I grabbed it and let her pull me up.
We walked back to her house with our hands linked, and she kissed me occasionally because I was pretty damn irresistible. And it felt so goddamn good I stopped halfway home and stood in the street and yelled at the top of my lungs.
“Stop!” she laughed, twining her arms around my neck. “Stop you idiot! You’re going to wake the whole street up!” She kissed me to stop me from yelling any more.
We climbed her fire escape and slipped in her window, her finger pressed to her lips. Luckily, her bed was a mess of blankets and pillows, and was pretty high. I would have no trouble hiding in it or under, whatever would work best, it if it came to that.
I took off my sneakers and socks and she pointed under her bed, so I put them there. She shimmied out of her skirt and unhooked her bra and pulled it through the armhole in her shirt. She stood uncertainly in her bedroom where I was suddenly, strangely, an inhabitant. She crossed her arms over her chest, then changed her mind and let her arms fall down at her sides, and she was totally exposed.
I looked at her body, long and curvy and potentially something I would know very well fairly soon. I felt an instant, painful stiffening in my pants. She pulled me to her by my hands and tugged my t-shirt over my head, then unbuckled my pants and pushed them off of my hips, wadded my clothes up and put them under the bed.
Without a word, she pushed me onto the bed and climbed in next to me. Her eyes were wide open in the dim light of the room. We could see each other because of the streetlight blaring outside Cadence’s window.
She lifted her hand to my face and touched her fingertips to my eyebrows, my cheekbones, my nose, and chin. Her fingers drifted over my lips and brushed my forehead. We were face to face, our knees bent and crooked together, our lips so close they were almost touching.
“I’m happy you’re here.” Her voice was so quiet I almost didn’t hear what she said.
“I’m happy to be here.” I moved my hand up to her face and pulled it down along her cheek, to the side of her neck, down her shoulder, along the dip of her waist, down her hip and held it there. “I feel like I’ve been waiting a long time for you, Cadence.”
“Was it worth the wait?” She licked her top then her bottom lip, and I had to shift my leg to relieve my aching dick. But, for maybe the first time in my life, my dick took a backseat. I pushed past the fuck-crazy discomfort and realized that I didn’t even want to think about it until she was ready. Because she really would be worth the wait.
“Yeah,” I said, my voice tight. “Well fucking worth it.” I pulled her close to me and crushed her a little in my arms.
I felt an addiction to the promise of this new love, way stronger than anything I’d ever snorted or injected.
Way more addictive, way more exhilarating, and way fucking scarier.
Chapter Twelve
Jake
I drove away from Brenna’s house the day she gave me her essay, and I pulled over twice and thought about going back to get her. But something told me that I needed to pay attention to whatever it was she wrote. Brenna was always really good at making me forget everything else, and I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to know what she felt.
Even if it kind of killed me.
Because I could see it.
When Brenna looked at Saxon, I saw something. And I saw it when he looked at her. Maybe I was making too big a deal out of it, but it seemed pretty damn unfair that I’d finally found a girl who I loved and who loved me, and I had to share her with Saxon.
Of all the fucking idiots that I might have to fight off for her, why my own dipshit brother?
I didn’t want to drive to my house. My bedroom had a lot of memories of Brenna, and I liked the memories that were there. So I just drove until I found a pretty deserted stretch of road. That wasn’t hard to find in Sussex County. I know I should have started reading right away, because I was slow as hell, so it was going to take a while. But I felt really alone for the first time in a while, and it felt good.
I thought about what Brenna said about me having a secret wild side. In the last few months I’d knocked three people out for her.
Or maybe she was right; maybe it had a lot less to do with her and a lot more to do with my own crap.
I wanted to leave all my bad shit behind. I wanted to be better. For Brenna and for me. But it wasn’t easy.
The couple of months when Saxon and I had run really crazy were not good months for me. We did whatever the fuck we wanted. If we wanted to drink, we drank. If we wanted to fight, we fought. If we wanted to screw, we screwed. We were just two idiot smartasses doing whatever dumbshit thing popped into our heads. It seemed like it should have been a teenage guy’s wet dream.
It wasn’t.
Now that I was with Brenna, I realized how depressing and lonely and phony the whole thing had been. I didn’t want that back. But if Brenna wasn’t in my life, I didn’t know if there was another alternative. She anchored me, and if what I read in the paper she wrote cut me loose, I had no idea where I’d head.
It was fucking terrifying.