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“I couldn’t be more serious. From now on, you’ll smell like me, so whenever you move, you’ll remember who owns you.”
I was scared. I was turned on. That was the cold, hard truth. Fucked up as it might be, this was the sexiest thing that had ever happened to me. The sexiest, and most infuriating.
“I have to admit that reading your journal last night, and knowing my cum was touching your cunt all day yesterday, has been on my mind.” His shocking words stole away my breath. I could only stare at him, stunned. “So, as payment for distracting me all day, to get your assignment back – I want a taste.”
He leaned in then, his mouth brushing my ear. “I didn’t say where I was going to kiss you, though, did I?” Those words slid through me, sending heat trailing in their wake. God, it couldn’t be normal to be so turned on by someone so terrible. I had a problem. I was sick.
I shook my head, leaning my forehead against hers. “It wasn’t a request, Lily. Do it, or I will, then I’ll fuck your mouth and come so far down your throat that you choke on it.”
I didn’t recognize myself in his arms. I felt wild and free, untethered by my usual pressures, and he saw it all. I saw him, and he saw me back. It was terrifying. Raw and vulnerable in a way I’d never allowed myself to be.
“Now, shut the fuck up like a good girl and stop pretending you don’t like it. Liars get spanked.”
An entry about trying a new cake recipe was a bedtime story for me. Like a vampire sucking the pure, brilliant life from the ordinary little tales. Stories I’d never come close to experiencing. I closed my eyes and pretended I’d been there with her, safe inside this warm, welcoming house, far away from the monsters in my dreams.
I tilted my face up just as he pulled away and caught his chin with my lips. It should have been awkward, how clumsy and unpracticed we were. It should have felt ridiculous, but it didn’t.
He sighed against my lips. “I’ve never met anyone I wanted to do this with before, so I’ve never needed them.” His words jolted me. “You mean you’ve never…” I trailed off, the words too ridiculous to say.
Maybe I’d simply crawl into her bed when she was sleeping and wake her by sliding inside her tight cunt, just like in her dream. I could cover her mouth, so when she woke, no one would hear her cry out.
My first time. Our first time.
He reached for the covers and pulled them up over my lower half. He stretched down and pushed the covers in around the sides, sealing me up. Then he turned and left me there, full of him, spent and panting, tucked in like a good girl.
In my anger, there was no weapon within reach that I wouldn’t hurl. It was a horrible thing to find out about yourself.
Was I the pathetic girl heartbroken over lack of attention from her bully? Yes, it turned out, I was that fucked up.
I took out the T-shirt that I’d stolen from her room. It was from some science summer camp she’d gone to and was huge and shapeless. Regardless, it smelled like Lily. She often slept in it. I lay down on my bed and put the T-shirt next to my face on the pillow. If I closed my eyes and let my mind drift just right, it was like she was there.
It was the same addictive smell of her T-shirt, the one I slept with every night.
No one who had ever really seen me had ever wanted me. No one except her.
Life was rushing by so quickly after years of slow motion.
I’d been frozen in ice until he’d arrived in my life. And now, his mere presence sparked a raging inferno of need inside me, and every touch made the flames burn brighter.
I love you, Freckles. I know I’m unforgivable…but if anyone can try to forgive a parasitoid like me…it’s you, my love – C
I could hardly say to him that since his daughter was moving across the country, and I had to be with her, and making her stay was apparently unloving, that it looked like I was just going to need to go after her, wherever she went.
“You should know, in the spirit of full disclosure, that I was never planning on letting you leave me here alone. I was going to be where you were, even if I was just driving the Zamboni at your fancy school.”
“Dreams change…I have a new dream, and if she wanted to be in California, then I’d be in California.”
Cayden shrugged. “I can move in with Beckett if it’s a problem. Us dating and living together, I mean. I don’t want to hide it from anyone, including your parents.” “Seriously?” He nodded. “Seriously. I’ve never had very good parental figures in my life. I don’t want to start out on the wrong foot with my future in-laws,” he said with perfect seriousness. I smacked his chest, shocked and thrilled at the same time. “You’re crazy.” “Absolutely certifiable.”
He grinned in a lighthearted, truly happy way I’d never quite seen from him before.
In the few weeks I’d known Cayden, my entire world had changed. I’d felt more and done more in that short time than in all the years before it. Sometimes life was like that. People came into your world who forced change. Cayden would always be a force of nature who had blown my life apart at the seams, and yet the new one I’d built in the aftermath of his destruction was a life I wanted. One I was proud of.
