It broke so hard she didn’t quite know what to do with all of it. In the past, her orgasms had been quiet, private sorts of affairs. Not like that one word Melissa had used, or the thing people talked about in magazines she wasn’t allowed to read.
But this thing…this was the real one. She knew it was before she’d even slid out of the dream and back into reality, though once there that bright and brilliant pleasure took on a different connotation.
Suddenly it didn’t seem quite as bright and brilliant. Oh, she could still feel it all right. Her heart still raced, her body still trembled with it. When she moved, she could feel the slippery wetness it had produced, and blushed to know that she had done that to herself.
But there was a problem, beyond such furtive, delicious and potentially mortifying things. She knew it had happened, and yet for a long moment couldn’t bring herself to face it. No one could have brought themselves to face this.
She’d made a sound, in her sleep. One that had definitely gotten through the press of her fingers, because as she’d woken with that pleasure still surging through her body, she’d heard it.
She could still hear it now—a guttural and not just potentially mortifying moan. And as she lay there in the dark of her bedroom, breath held, she felt almost certain she could hear her father getting out of the bed. Were those his footsteps on the hallway carpet, heavy and slow?
For a long, long moment she couldn’t tell. So long that her breath started wanting out and her body began trembling under the pressure. He was going to come in here, and see her like this—awash in desire for a punk—and by God she didn’t even know what he’d do.
There were no rules for masturbation. It was just a given that she would never dare partake in anything like it. The punishment for this had to be somewhere off the page, somewhere past the point of guidelines and don’t-you-dares.
A hole dug in the garden and you in it, she thought, as the absolute silence of the house sunk over her. No one was coming, but she didn’t let out a breath until she absolutely had to. And though sleep returned, it only did so when those words returned to her, over and over like a prayer.
This girl I knew…
Chapter Three
She didn’t want to go out there. No sane person would. She’d had a sex dream about him and touched herself right in the middle of it. If she went out there, he’d read this indisputable fact all over her face and then offer to dig her father’s hole himself.
No one like him would ever be able to tolerate someone like her having sex thoughts about his body. He’d made that playlist for her because he found her fragile and pitiable. He hadn’t done it because he wanted to wander the garden of earthly delights with her.
Lord. Even my dirty thoughts are filled with religious nonsense. He probably thinks I’m a Jesus freak. He probably follows me to Bible college, and then laughs.
It didn’t look as if he was laughing when she caught a glimpse of him through the patio doors, however. He had one arm on the fence, just like before, only this time he wasn’t listening to music—obviously—and he didn’t seem to be looking out for Mickey Ryerson.
He was waiting for her, for definite. Of course he was. She had his gift, clutched sweatily in her right hand. And the gift told her the sorry truth of the matter—she would have to go out there, if only to give it back to him.
She braced herself. Clenched her teeth hard around nothing, tried to make her face as neutral as possible. But even after she’d successfully done all of this, she found she couldn’t reach for the patio door.
Instead she just had to stand there, watching him through glass, as he brought something to his lips. Like a hand he wanted to kiss, only small and smoky and completely and utterly forbidden.
God, she’d been worried about silly little things like sex thoughts and masturbation, and here he was smoking pot about three inches away from her house. Because that was almost certainly what he was doing. She knew that cigarettes didn’t look that way. And the way that he was smoking it—it didn’t look like that guy she’d seen at the bus stop, puffing away on his Marlboro Light.
It looked different. He kissed the tip with his perfect mouth and held the smoke in for so long she almost went up on tiptoe, thinking of herself in bed a few nights before, trying to contain all the sounds in her body. And then he just let it out in a little plume, too thick and coarse against the strange, blue-lit almost-darkness.
It made her want to bang on the glass the way her mother did, when the landscaper got too close to her peonies. Stop that. Stop that, you…you ruffian. You filthy devil, smoking illegal things so close to my flowerbeds!