“Maverick, stop.”
“Don’t ask me to do the impossible.”
An explosion hits me, dissolving my body into a million pieces. Maverick rises to his knees, positioning my legs over his shoulders. His hips move in frenzied desperation.
“Cocoa,” he shouts as he collapses on top of me.
After a few minutes, he rolls onto his back, pulling me over his chest.
“You have to leave before my mom and Michael get home.”
“Soon.”
I yawn, closing my eyes. When I wake up in the middle of the night, Maverick is gone.
I wanted to stay with Cocoa last night, wanting another taste, but I needed to leave before Mr. Thompson and her mother came home. I finally left after watching her sleep for a while. Having her warm body pressed against mine just felt right, and wrong. I’ve never had that level of closeness with anyone. Cocoa hasn’t arrived in class yet. I wonder if she’ll miss school today only to avoid me. She’s as confused as I am, lost in this whirlwind of the hurricane that’s continuously building whenever we’re around each other.
I never would’ve imagined that a person could consume me the way she does. I’m not supposed to want her. I’m losing the battle inside me. My eyes greedily eat up the vision of Cocoa when she steps through the classroom door. Our eyes lock as she walks towards me. It’s like we’re connected by an unseen entity. My body is instantly alert, recognizing her on a primitive level.
My eyes follow her until she takes her seat. The air shifts, an electric surge running between us. Mr. Barnes begins to talk after the bell rings, signaling the start of class. I don’t listen to a fucking word he’s saying. I can’t take my eyes from her. She’s looking straight ahead, pretending to be engrossed in whatever the hell Mr. Barnes is talking about, but she’s not fooling me. She can pretend if that makes her feel any better, but I know Cocoa’s aware of me just as much as I’m aware of her. I’m going to prove that to her.
I wedge my left hand between her legs, tracing the contours of her pussy through her panties with my fingertips. Cocoa releases a breath and grips the front of the desk so hard that her fingers turn red. There are advantages to being in the back corner of the classroom; it prevents prying eyes from seeing what they shouldn’t. She doesn’t tell me to stop like she did that first day. She wants this. When Cocoa raises her hand, I remove my hand from between her thighs.
“Yes, Cocoa,” says Mr. Barnes.
“Can I go to the bathroom?”
“Go ahead.”
Cocoa leaves the classroom in a hurry.
The bathroom door slams against the wall when I enter. I walk over to the sink, gripping the edge, attempting to calm my nerves. I can’t stop the uncontrollable shaking of my body. I don’t recognize the person looking back at me from the mirror. I tried not to let him get to me, to resist him, but the inevitable happened. Now I’m free-falling and my body will shatter once I hit the ground.
After a few more minutes, I leave the bathroom to return to the classroom. Strong arms wrap around my stomach, lifting me from the ground as a hand covers my mouth. I immediately start kicking and lashing out. The assailant enters an unoccupied classroom. When I’m placed on my feet, I swing around to face this person head-on. When I see who it is, the fight leaves my body.
“Maverick, don’t. We can’t keep doing this. I don’t even know what this is. What brings us together is the main reason we should stay apart. We’re both volatile, when we’re together all my reasoning and morals are nonexistent.”
“I’m done fighting to ignore you. I’ll deal with the aftermath later.”
“What do we have besides sex? We don’t talk. I don’t know any personal details regarding your life.”
“What do you want me to say, Cocoa? My father beat the shit out of my mother and me almost every damn day. He's the reason my mother committed suicide. He’s the reason why I pissed my bed almost every night from the nightmares that haunted my dreams. I quickly hid the bedding each morning, so he wouldn't discover what I'd done. He made me watch as he beat my mother black and blue before raping her. He forced me to hit the prostitute he went to fuck, starting at age six. I lost my virginity to a prostitute who John forced me to fuck at the age of twelve. I lived and breathed fear from breakfast, lunch, and fucking dinner until I was old enough to knock John on his ass. I was taught to hate people like you, Cocoa.”
He’s telling me what I want to know but the truth is leaving a sour taste in my mouth.
“I love fucking pain, Cocoa. I love causing and receiving it because it makes my dick hard. I have all of this pent-up rage inside my body, and most days it takes me considerable effort not to unleash the beast.”
“Do you want to hurt me?”
“Yes, I want to fucking hurt you!”
“Why?”
“Because you make me feel shit I don't want to feel! You make me want what I shouldn't! You make the pain go away, but I don't know how to live without it!”
My heart breaks for the little boy he was.
“Don't look at me like that! I don't want you to feel sorry for me, ever.”
