“His hand in my hair. The way he blushed after licking just a little.”
God, she could actually see it. A million specific details she shouldn’t know—like the fact that moonlight had made that flush look very deep against the paleness of his skin. How he had pulled back, how his lips had parted. The scent of cut grass in the air, and that same sweet scent on him.
Is this a flash of her memories, she found herself thinking.
Even though it couldn’t be. He followed it too well.
“He thought he had gone too far,” he said.
And she had to nod.
“He did. But he hadn’t.”
“You liked it. You liked it all.”
“I did, oh god, help me, I did.”
“Now tell me how you let him know that.”
Don’t, she thought. But resisting was far beyond her now.
She could feel her head had gone back. Her whole body was trembling.
And not just over this rolling wave of almost memories.
She could feel him standing so close to her. Right by her side, in a way that should have made her open her eyes. But she didn’t, she didn’t. Instead, she let herself sigh at the sense of his warm breath against the curve of her throat. She let herself think of him biting. Then of him always holding back.
And she answered as plain as that other girl would have, with her lovely Bram. “I told him he could do it between my legs, and I wouldn’t care,” she said, half ashamed of herself. Half sure she had never felt a thrill like those words created in all her life. And worse:
She wasn’t sure he had, either.
His voice seemed actually breathless, when he spoke. Eager.
“And then what? Then what happened, after you did?”
“He said he wanted to.”
“Yes.”
“So I lifted my skirt. I worked it up over my thighs, slowly. To make sure he could say stop if he liked. But he didn’t. He let me get it all the way up, right the way around my hips, in a way that let him see everything.”
“And why could he see everything, exactly?”
The question hung in the air—deadlier even than the last ones.
But this time she didn’t hesitate. She couldn’t.
He had been right about the way she wanted the story to end.
Like this, like this, all sweet and tangled up in something like filth.
“Because I wasn’t wearing any underwear,” she said, and couldhave sworn she heard him make a sound.He’s too good at this game, her mind moaned. Even as she leaned into his next words.
“Yes. Yes,” he said. “Now tell me the reason for that.”
“The tension between us that had simmered all day. Every brush of our hands, every look, every whispered word. It all just built and built until I could hardly stand to wear them. They rubbed against everywhere I was sensitive, everywhere I was slick, and so I slipped them off just before we sat out in the garden.”
Outrageous, her real self said.
