“What the hell is your problem?” She tried to keep her voice low so ourparents wouldn’t overhear. Her expression had gone from “innocent girl” to “fucking furious girl,” and, funnily enough, I found that even more arousing.
“What’s my problem?” I echoed. “Nothing. I just want you to knock it off. I hate women who look at me that way,” I answered with a narcissist’s sense of unassailable superiority. Selene stared at me in confusion, not understanding why I was being so bad-tempered all of a sudden.
To be perfectly honest, it was simply a sick and twisted defense mechanism that I used against her and against the things that I felt when I got lost in her eyes. Now that she’d finally decided to go back to Detroit, I wasn’t going to make the mistake of drawing her back into my world or my fucked-up life.
“And what way do I look at you?” she asked sharply before scooting down the log to put some space between us.
“Like you want me to fuck you,” I whispered, leaning in close to her ear. Tinkerbell’s eyes widened, and she stared at me in horror.
“You are an idiot, Neil. Truly an idiot!” She leaped to her feet, drawing everyone’s attention. Matt and Mia looked confused, but Logan just glared at me.
“I’m going for a walk.” Babygirl tossed her stick into the fire and stalked indignantly away.
I grasped my perfectly toasted marshmallow between my fingers and popped it into my mouth, chewing placidly.
I needed to pretend that none of that had anything to do with me, and, like always, I did it perfectly.
“What got into her?” Chloe huffed, but no one answered her.
“Dick,” Logan mouthed at me, and I brushed him off with a shrug.
I was well aware that I was a dick, but, with Selene, I needed to be even more of a dick so she could see things as they really were.
Matt shot a glance at me, and I held his gaze and feigned indifference.
When we finished eating the marshmallows I hated, my mother, complaining of the cold, went back to the house. Chloe followed her while Matt stood up and shook sand off his pants as he finished his conversation with Logan.
I was the last to get up off the log, and I paused to dig out my pack ofWinstons. I opened it and pulled one out before finding my lighter and holding it to the end of the cigarette. I took my first drag, and, as I exhaled the smoke into the air, I saw Matt coming toward me.
“You not going in?” he asked in a tone I couldn’t read.
Was he checking up on me? Was he worried I was going to worm my way between his daughter’s thighs? It had happened before, but he had no inkling of that.
“I’m going to finish this first and then head back.” I gestured to the cigarette between my fingers, and, with a nod, he walked away.
I could have picked another time to smoke, but it was a plausible excuse to hang around outside for a while.
Once I was alone, I looked around for Babygirl. I found her not too far away on the seashore, illuminated by the light from the dying bonfire.
I clenched the cigarette between my lips and went to her, pushing back a bit of hair that had fallen over onto my forehead. As I approached, I took the opportunity to scrutinize her silhouette while she was turned away from me and distracted. I took note of her slim shoulders, tapered waist, and round, nicely turned ass.
Her body drove me wild.
I thought about how much I enjoyed taking her from behind, how I loved to watch her long hair swing. It had grown out almost to the base of her spine now, and it wasn’t difficult to imagine wrapping it lewdly around my fist as I positioned her however I wanted.
A stab of arousal hit me in the lower abdomen, and I needed to think about something else so I didn’t get an inconvenient hard-on right there. It would have been tricky to hide that.
“Did you come over here to be a dick and humiliate me some more?” Selene sensed my presence without turning around, so I halted right behind her.
WhyhadI gone over to her?
My goal, supposedly, was to push her away from me. But whenever I did that, I seemed incapable of staying away. I figured that came from the unhealthy protective instincts that she provoked with her naivete and…
No. That wasn’t the truth.
The truth was, I couldn’t deal with the upheaval that was happening inside me.
I was furious because my mood now depended on her, and it was confusing me.
