I didn’t want to go home. Not yet. “I don’t want to go home.”
“I need to take you home.”
“Why?”
He touched my chin to hold my gaze on his. “Because I want you, every part of you, and I’m feeling reckless enough to not care about the consequences.”
Heat pooled between my legs and I felt both embarrassed by my body’s reaction and reckless too. “I want you. Be my first.” And my last.
“Don’t offer me that, Thea.”
He reached for my hand and led me out of the abandoned building and down the street to his car. We didn’t speak during the ride home. He told me not to offer him my virginity, but I already had. He pulled up to the curb in front of my house. Uncle Tim and Uncle Guy were still over and likely out back with Mom and Dad.
“Thanks for the ride.” I reached for the handle, but his next words stopped me.
“Being your first is special and you should only offer that to someone you love.”
I couldn’t look at him or he’d see my tears. “I just did.” Then I climbed from the car and ran up the steps and right to my room. Only then did I let the tears fall from the pain of his rejection.
I held the steering wheel so tightly I was surprised the thing didn’t break into pieces. Every instinct in me said to get out of the damn car, to follow her, to claim her. To hold her close and never let her go. But she was beauty and I was sin.
I just did. Those three words should not have the power to render me weak, and yet that was exactly how I felt when those words came from her and in the context they were given. I shouldn’t have watched, I should have driven away, but I couldn’t. I watched her run from me, and the words I felt but didn’t say. I shouldn’t have kissed her and yet I would take countless punches to the face and listen to the never-ending rhetoric spewed from my mother’s vile mouth just to kiss her again. Imagining what she tasted and felt like had driven me to the edge of madness and now knowing, I had happily slipped over that edge. Our kiss would haunt me, would become one of the many ghosts I fought to keep at bay.
I went home and right to the punching bag I had setup in the living room, a move in gift from Anton. I pounded on that bag until my body was too exhausted to feel anything else and still I ached for her.
I was pulled from my homework when something hit my bedroom window. Once, twice…on the third tap, I looked outside to see Damian. It had been a week since we kissed and I knew after badgering Cam that Damian was fighting every night. He never came here after a fight and fear that something was wrong had me running down the stairs and out the back door. He hadn’t moved, just stood there with his hands in the pockets of his jeans.
“Damian.”
“I can’t stop thinking about you.”
My legs went weak and I had to make a conscious effort to keep them under me. I studied his face, the bruises at his jaw and the swollen eye. My heart hurt.
“Why do you have to?”
“I’m not good enough for you.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“No, that’s a fact. And even knowing these hands have no business touching you, it’s all I want. I’d fucking sell my soul to have you for just a night.”
“You don’t have to sell your soul, not when I want you just as badly.”
“Give me Saturday.”
Nerves had me shaking from my head right down to my toes. “Yes.”
The pad of his thumb rubbed along my lower lip. “I’ll pick you up around noon.”
“I’ll be standing at the curb.”
“Sweet dreams.” He turned from me but not before I saw him taste the thumb he’d used to touch my lips. There was something so very erotic about that gesture, but moving at the same time. I stood in the yard long after he walked away. I was having sex for the first time on Saturday, and with Damian. The smile was slow to form but lasted for the rest of the night.
Damian and I often hung out, so Mom hadn’t even questioned it when I mentioned I was hanging with him for the day. He arrived at noon and I was at the curb, more for him than me since I didn’t want him to feel awkward around my parents. If he felt guilty, it might cause him to have second thoughts. He pulled up to the curb and I knew better than to open the door. He walked around the car and held the door for me. He looked good dressed in jeans that looked newer than his usual faded ones and a button down shirt that was the same color as his eyes.
As soon as he settled behind the wheel, those pale eyes turned to me. “What are you in the mood to eat?”
Me, the one who was always hungry couldn’t eat, the butterflies in my stomach made that impossible. “I’m not hungry.”