I leaned closer and said softly, “I’ll have you know, I had some pretty specific fantasies in mind for our motel stay.”
Her eyes flashed with desire. “Got any that center on my high school bedroom?”
17
ZANE
Then
* * *
“You can share that room, but no hanky-panky, you hear?” Miss Alice looked at us sternly over her glasses.
Maia was trying to smother a smile. “You realize I’m in my thirties and that ship sailed a long, long time ago, right?”
“I don’t give a hoot how old you are, when you’re under my roof, no hanky-panky.”
“No hanky-panky,” I confirmed, meeting her death stare. I took Maia’s hand and pulled her into the bedroom, managing to close the door before choking on a laugh.
We got ready for bed and Maia emerged from the bathroom wearing a threadbare old T-shirt that barely brushed the tops of her thighs, forcing me to wonder whether she was wearing anything under it.
“Faster than small town gossip, huh?” I said teasingly, looking at her shirt. I’d been more focused on the outline of her nipples at first, but the words eventually caught my eye.
She glanced down like she was just noticing what she was wearing. “I was on the track team in high school.”
“Oh yeah? What event?” I couldn’t imagine her running laps in a gawky PE uniform, but I guess we’d all been subjected to it at some point.
“Pole vault,” she said, proving once again that she was cooler than me. “Might’ve had something to do with the fact that I was the only girl pole vaulter. I liked the attention.”
I breathed a laugh. “At least you’re consistent.”
We pulled the covers back and climbed into bed, illuminated by the nightlight on the nightstand that was shaped like a fairy house. It was so hard to imagine Maia as anything other than the self-possessed woman she was now.
“It was like my hormones hit one day and boys and sex were the only things I could think of.” She turned to face me, tucking a piece of hair behind my ear. “I fucked one of my teammates one night on the mat that we used to practice pole vault. Little asshole bragged about it to all the others in the locker room the next day, so by the time we got to practice, it was all any of them could talk about. Nonstop innuendo and whispering all the way through warm up. It got to the point that our coach picked up on what they were saying and laughed along.”
I cringed, hating how mean kids could be and that the adult hadn’t intervened.
She smiled. “It would’ve destroyed most girls that age. They would’ve run to the locker room in embarrassment to hide and I wouldn’t blame them. But it’s like I’m wired wrong. I liked it. I liked that as much as they wanted to make me the butt of their jokes, it meant every last one of them was picturing me having sex every time my back hit the mat. And I liked the shame, the idea I’d done something bad and dirty. ThatIwas bad and dirty. There’s power in that.”
It was all I could do not to let my mouth hang open in awe. She was something else.
“So you just ignored them?”
Her smile got huge. “Hell no. One of the times I landed on the mat, the ringleader cracked a joke about me liking to be on my back, and I got in his face. He wanted me to get defensive, was ready to take me down a peg, so I looked him square in the eye and said, ‘I was on top.’ The guys lost it laughing, and suddenly I was in on the joke.”
I narrowed my eyes. “So what’s the lesson in there? Beat little assholes at their own game?”
“Don’t let anyone weaponize words against you. This is going to matter when you’re famous. It’s almost always a reflection of their own insecurity more than it’s about you. Let people say what they want. You know who you are…or you will as soon as your brain stops rewiring itself in your late twenties.”
I pulled her back against me. “Always have to bring it back to the age gap, don’t you?”
I cupped one of her breasts under her shirt, rolling her nipple between my fingers.
“Hey now,” she said, grinding her ass into my crotch in a way that instantly made me hard. “You’re not allowed to be doing that.”
I kept teasing her nipple, but fanned the fingers of my other hand across her pubic bone and held her against me harder. “She said no hanky-panky. This isn’t hanky-panky.”
“Do you want to debate that point with her?” She gasped when I switched to her other nipple.
