Drowning in You (32 page)

I think back. “Year before your
graduation. Do you have every year, or just your last one?”

She pulls out a book, hands it
to me. I tuck it under my arm. “You don’t have your dad’s too, by
chance?”

Charz gives me a quizzical
look. She sits cross-legged on the floor and folds her arms across
her chest. “What’s this plan of yours? You want my dad’s
yearbooks?”

“
That’s why I
came.”

She ducks her head and mumbles,
“Oh.”

Shit. I crawl to her on my
knees and rest my hands on her shoulders. I tuck a few strands of
hair behind one of her ears because I love how that makes her look
even prettier. “You know I didn’t mean it like that.”

She gulps, and staring at my
lips, says, “I’ll see what I can find.”

Five minutes later she comes in
and I flick through the pages. This is Jack’s graduating year all
right. He was a popular kid, too, photo-bombing different shots,
hands hooked over his buds and hot chicks’ shoulders.

The type of photo I wanted to
see is there also. Walter May is in a photo with my brother, Jack
alone, which is strange considering I didn’t know they knew each
other existed.

Only thing is, Jack isn’t at
the end-of-year dance or any photo for the last term. I shut the
book, cutting off the memories.

“
So?”

Charlee shakes a pile of books
in her hands, thumping the door closed with her heel. “Mom and Dad
have their own collection.”

I pat the spot next to me and
she sits. We spread the books over the floor in front of us. Just
like the era, the books are bright and colorful. At least they were
when they were printed. The chicks’ hair is as long as it is wide,
skirts and slacks were worn as high as they are today, funnily
enough, and at school events or outings, some girls liked to wear
cone bras and leg warmers.

“
What are we
looking for?” Charz asks.

I hear it, but it takes me a
few seconds to answer, my eyes focused on scanning every face in
every picture. “Um…just…I’ll show you,” I end up saying.

Here. I see the first picture.
There are five or so guys in this one, all arms hooked around each
other’s, forming one line. My dad is on the left, Walter second
from the left. It shows they knew each other. It shows that
much.

“
Hey, Charz—”
I begin, but halt when I look up. She’s staring at me, and has been
for God knows for how long. I look away, shuffling back slightly,
skimming through in my head what I could have possibly done
wrong.

“
I’m sorry. I
didn’t mean to, but when it happened you reminded me of Mom lying
there in her coffin and just now Dad, in his coffin, and I couldn’t
take it anymore, so I think I’ve been trying to convince myself to
stay away or maybe we shouldn’t be together for all these silly
reasons, but maybe it’s just that I’m—”

I press my fingers against her
lips and she continues to talk for a moment before realizing she
isn’t making any sense. She stops, blushes. Finally, I pull my
finger away, but only to stroke her lip. She closes her eyes and
sighs, pushing her lip farther into my finger.

What happened to me, to us,
since I collapsed in her pool? This week in her absence, I
daydreamed of ripping another guy to shreds if I caught him on her.
I got so fucking bored with my life that I cleaned up my room. I
punished my body at the gym for a week straight and pushed myself
so far I threw up on two of those occasions. I wrote the stupidest
damn romantic lyrics for my guitar.

Charlee May and Dexter
Hollingworth can’t be apart, so we might as well stop making living
apart hell because that was never going to work.

I scoot to her side and cup her
face. Feeling her skin on mine has a natural way of soothing me the
way a deep breath eases tension.

“
I guess that
makes sense. I
was
pissed.”

“
I’m sorry,”
she mumbles into her chest.

I pick up her chin and pull her
to me in the slightest of motions, hoping she’ll come. She does.
I’m neither pulling her to me nor she is coming forward, but then
our noses are resting against each other’s and my breaths are loud,
ragged puffs of air.

I rub my cheek along hers,
along that smooth skin that’s more addictive than the rush of
adrenaline. I pant. Her hands wander for a moment before they find
my waist, and then she’s gripping my sides, with her fingers
slipping beneath my waistband. They push under my boxers.

“
I fucking
missed you,” I breathe against her lips. She moves around,
straddling me while I’m still sitting on the floor, legs
spread.

Our foreheads and noses never
lose contact, somehow. My hands, my thoughts are of her scent, her
hair, her hands, her lips. For me, that’s sweet candy pulled into
my lungs when she sweeps her blonde hair over her shoulder and
bites those lips.

God, the visual makes me want
to lose myself deep inside her.

“
I fucking
missed you,” I repeat, sliding my cheek against hers, feeling her
silky skin hot against mine, the both of us groaning and breathing
heavily, her legs wrapped around my back. I’m hard, and I want her
to feel it this time. She knows it; it’s obvious by the way she
grinds against me.

I’ve never wanted a girl like
this—never wanted to hold every bit of her naked body against mine,
just so I can memorize what it feels like for our skin to touch.
Her breasts to my chest. Her hip bones to mine. My dick against her
skin. Our feet tangled together. Just to feel our bodies as
one.

Before this, getting naked with
a girl had only been a way to come and forget about the real world
for a little while.

I pull back a bit. “Is that
door locked?” I jerk my chin in that direction.

She licks her lips, staring at
mine. I know she’s thinking the same damn things I am, and my dick
can’t wait any longer for her to mentally, or physically, undress
me. I lift her up, still pressed against my chest, arms wrapped
around my neck, legs hooked just under my ass and waddle to the bed
until I feel it behind us. Then we collapse together in a
thunderstorm of kisses. I push myself back with my hands and feet,
digging into her mattress and she lunges at me, forcing me to move
toward her pillows, crawling over me, still connecting us with
breathy kisses.

We thump into the headboard and
I catch her, pulling her back onto me. She finds the right spot,
getting in place.

The image of her little stripy
undies flashes repeatedly in my brain, so I slip my hands
underneath her leggings and cup her ass in my palms. I want to rip
her pants off. I want to rip this flowy shirt off too and suck on
what’s underneath…

“
I need to
take this off,” I mumble against her lips.

Her nipple is a hard nub
through the material even before I circle it with my tongue. Once I
lick it senseless, I almost unzip myself and rub my hard cock over
it.

“
You’re so
gorgeous I want to feel your nipple on my cock,” I blurt out, which
doesn’t help my sexual hunger.

“
H-here,” she
stutters, bringing her hand to the hem to lift her top
off.

Stopping her, I say, “No,
Charz. I want to take everything you have on clean off and love you
senseless, but you’re going to be my girlfriend when that happens
and you’re going to feel like the only woman on this planet when it
happens. We’re not going to be in this mess because everything will
be as close to perfect as I can make it. For now…”

Her response
is a barely audible “yes”, but she squealed as she said it, and
I
felt
her chest
shudder under my palm, so I got the response I needed.

Every time she tries to speak,
I close her jaw with a finger and tell her to shush.

I grab on to her top and slide
it over her head, and then I reach around and fiddle with the silly
bra clasp until it magically unclips and I fling it away as fast as
I can. Charz is quiet and trembling, pushing her nipples up at me
and thrusting her sex against my thigh and I start sucking on her
breast. I suck so much her nipple makes a popping sound when it
slips from my lips.

I flip her
under me, moving on to licking trails from both nipples to the V
leading to her sex. I slide a finger under the elastic of both her
leggings and her panties and glide them down her smooth legs and
flick them off somewhere. Just
off.

Once I crouch between her legs
and lower my lips to her mound, she’s thrusting so hard at me it
aches to watch her want my tongue on her that badly.

It doesn’t take long to trace
her sex and plunge my tongue in and out. I need to feel her, more
than ever, so I vibrate my finger on her sex as fast as I can. I
alternate speeding up my finger on the tip of her sex to slow
circles that make her shudder deeper than ever before.

Halfway through, she can’t
control her natural response to moan and scream. For me, it’s
victory. Charlee is cute when she’s awkward and embarrassed, but I
love seeing that freed look when she steps out of her comfort zone
and lets loose.

I feel her sex pulsing, so
close, so I speed up, tongue lavishing her sex and plunging in and
out faster because now I can really taste her, which sets my cock
to fucking saluting her ultimate sexiness. I’ve been going so long
I’m starting to go numb and stiff but she’s so close, so fucking
dripping wet, that I don’t care. As she finally lets loose her
fears and gets close to climax, a rush of adrenaline kicks me off
once more.

Her hands are wrapped in my
hair, ripping at clumps. It fucking hurts so good it’s better than
my dreams. Her hands hurt, clamped as tight as they are to my head
and pushing me deeper, thrusting against me, but it gets me going
so hard.

When she comes, she freezes, my
hair taut in her grip, and she shrieks a moan of pleasure so hard I
swear I almost come in my pants having her around my tongue, my
head shoved between her legs and deep in her sex.

It feels like she’s holding on
as long as she can before slowly comes back to Earth. My view is
gorgeous—looking up at her glowing cheeks and wide eyes swimming
with pleasure from down between her legs. She slowly releases
me.

She lies in awe, panting as
hard as I imagine she would after a swimming session, then lunges
at my buckle and pops it open. A surge rips through me, and it
takes all I have to push her back.

“
No, Dex. I
need you to take everything off
now
.”

“
I laid out
the rules. I’m making you feel like the only girl in the world. And
I can wait.”

“
Now,” she
growls at me in a way that makes me want to shove my cock at her to
suck this instant.

“
Charlee May.
I made you come and I will not allow you to do anything other than
lie and appreciate. Today is me showing you how much you mean to
me. Please, don’t make me feel like shit for having you repay me.
We have forever for that.”

“
I need you. I
need more of you. Please.
Please
.”

“
Fuck, I want
you, Charlee. I mean, I
really
want you,” I say. “But I want to take my time with
you. Is something’s going on? What’s up?”

She looks my body over,
stopping at my forearms, tracing lines over my tattoos. Within a
couple of minutes, she’s got her stripy undies on and her top.

“
I don’t know
anything about you,” she says, confused. “I didn’t want to miss my
‘window’ to do
it
for you with what just happened between us.”

“
Well, you’re
definitely not missing any opportunity to touch me—but later. What
are you talking about not knowing me? Of course you know stuff
about me. We’ve known each other since school and have been close
for at least a couple of months now.”

“
I thought.”
She shakes her head looking past my eyes. “So you’re really,
unbelievably hot but,” she starts a count on her fingers, “I don’t
know who your real friends are, I don’t know what all your tattoos
mean, I don’t know what you like to do with your
time—nothing.”

“
It’s because
I really have nothing to tell. Well,” I say, rephrasing,
“nothing
interesting
to tell.”

Charz tut-tuts and gives me a
look. “So you’d call the death of my parents and the hell I’ve been
through uninteresting for you, then. That’s what you’d rather
discuss?”

“
Oh shit.
You’re twisting my words. C’mere.”

I grab her waist and pull her
to me, turning her around and pressing the back of her against my
chest. I wrap my arms around her waist. They snuggle into the dip
so perfectly.

“
So you really
want to know about me?” I breathe into her ear, nibbling along the
edge.

Snuggling close, she says, “Of
course I don’t want you to tell me things because I’ve asked, but
yeah, I want to know. I find it odd you never say anything. That’s
why I think I, um, almost broke your rule just before.”

Pressed against her ear, I
laugh into her and she sighs, pressing her ass farther into me.

“
That’s hard
to resist, you know. Especially with your moans in my head and that
fucking sweetness still in my mouth…I’m trying to finally be
responsible. I want to get to know you by words, and not by rubbing
myself on you.”

“
But you rub
it so well?”

“
No such
luck.”