Slow Twitch - Реинхардт Лиз. Страница 58

“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.

Evan, Brenna’s friend who seemed crazy, but was actually pretty damn sensible, told me not to worry. She said some hippie-dippie shit about how she could see the truth in people when it came to love, and she believed Brenna and I would see it through. She’d been right about taking Bren out on my bike and showing her instead of explaining. I hoped she was right about this, too.

I picked up the paper, but the words were swimming, floating around, and mixing up, then blurring and pressing together. It was always bad, but it was a lot worse when I had crap pressing on my brain.

I started the truck and drove some more. I loved driving. Especially in the summer, especially in the late afternoon, when the sun hung low and the wind picked up a little, when it was a little cool and the air smelled damp and clean.

I didn’t have any idea where I was headed until I noticed that the country was gone and the lights of the city were replacing the lightning bugs blinking in the fields. Before I knew it, I was in Aunt Helene’s driveway. I held the steering wheel tight, not sure what I was going to do or why I was even there.

I didn’t really remember coming to this place. But I had. Saxon and I both had. And maybe I just trusted the fact that it was here for me to go to when I needed. It was a place where there was someone who understood that sometimes a guy needed a good cry and a meal. Maybe it was just because I’d been loved here when I was a kid, and the remnant of that love kind of stuck around.