Growing and Kissing (18 page)

“Jesus!” yelled one of the bikers. “Enough!” He and another guy finally ran at me. I swung the handle of the hammer into the stomach of one, hard enough to leave him doubled-over and winded. The other guy I dodged and then pushed backward, using the head of the hammer against his chest, so that he was out in the middle of the street. The other bikers followed, snarling and cursing but not brave enough to try rushing me again.

“You stop dealing,” I growled at them. “Or you keep it off Lennie’s turf.”

“Alright!” snapped one of them. He had a President patch on his jacket. “We get it!”

I stepped back towards the bikes. And took out a lighter.

“Aw, come on!” pleaded the President. “We got it!”

I looked from his agonized eyes to the pile of gasoline-soaked bikes...and something happened: I saw the scene as Louise would. And suddenly, the anger slunk away, an animal forced back to its cave, and I just felt disgusted at myself.

“It’s your lucky day,” I muttered, and put the lighter back in my pocket. Then I stalked back to the car, where Lennie was grinning at the devastation I’d caused and the blonde was wiping her mouth.

The car moved off with me sitting brooding in the back. I couldn’t even enjoy the one thing I did well, anymore. Staying away from Louise wasn’t working.

I had to see her.

Louise

The grow house had changed. With summer properly underway, it was stifling inside. It wasn’t so much the raw heat—we couldn’t let it get
too
hot, or the plants would die—but the lack of windows. Combined with the thriving plants, the whole place was starting to feel like a jungle: a few howler monkeys and a leopard prowling around and the picture would be complete. I knew the conditions were ideal for the plants...but that didn’t make them comfortable to work in. I’d stripped down to a spaghetti-strap pink top and an old pair of shorts. I didn’t normally like baring that much skin, both because I’m shy and because with my skin I burn in about thirty seconds flat. But I figured it was okay since I was out of the sun...and there was no one there to see me.

Since that day when I’d seen his scars, Sean had virtually disappeared. He put his head around the door once a week or so to check on me, but that was it. Every time I thought back to what had happened, I winced. I knew better than to try to ask him about it—his reaction had made it pretty clear it was private. All I could do was wait for him to open up, but I had a feeling that was never going to happen. And if he kept me shut out, that was going to come between us.

There is no “us,”
I reminded myself. We’d nearly kissed, once, because we’d let things get out of control. That’s all it was.

Except...on those rare days I
did
see him, I couldn’t stop looking at him. He’d barely be there, just a minute or maybe two, but I’d drink in every smooth, tanned inch of him.

My gaze would start at his shoulders—I didn’t dare make eye contact—and trickle down his whole upper body like a drop of water on a glacier. It would hug the broad swells of his shoulders, following the delicious in-and-out as his arms narrowed and then flared again at his biceps. It would dance along the veined hardness of his forearms, picking up speed as it neared those big, powerful hands, the ones that could so easily grab me. And then, at his waist, where the hem of his tank top flapped in the breeze from the air conditioning, it would reverse course and go up.

Here, things varied a little. If he was facing the air conditioning unit and the breeze was flattening the thin cotton against his muscles, my gaze would do the same. It would skim up his body, molding the black material into every crease and valley of him, and I’d imagine I was doing the same thing with my cheek, feeling the heat of him through the cloth as I stroked each hard ridge.

Sometimes, though, the breeze would catch his tank top in just the right way and it would balloon away from his body for a second, an inviting dark tunnel that, if I
just so happened
to be crouching down beside one of the plants for a second and looked up in
just
the right way, let me catch a glimpse of his abs. Then my gaze would go up
under
the cloth, fueled by my imagination, and I’d be able to almost feel his body under my palms as they slid upward, moving slower and slower, hitting each hard band of muscle like a note on a rising piano scale. I’d imagine it all so vividly that I could actually feel the tight fabric against the backs of my arms as I slid my hands higher, until my palms were smoothing over his pecs and I had to stand so close to him that my breasts were brushing his body. And then his arms would suddenly lock around me, his hands on my ass, and—

And then I’d look away and redden, the heat throbbing through me. A moment later, he’d be gone, back in the Mustang before the engine had even cooled. The memories, though, would stay with me the rest of the day and the combination of the sweltering heat outside and the dark heat inside left me practically rubbing myself against the furniture. I’d never felt anything like it. I’d thought I’d been addicted before, but now I was in full-on withdrawal.

I wanted him. Before, that had been a secret, shameful admission to myself and it had felt like a safe little fantasy because, obviously,
no way
would he want me. The biggest thing I was risking, by lusting after him, was humiliation if he found out. But ever since the nearly-kiss, things were different. Now I knew that there was a real risk of something happening. He could obviously control his feelings: for now, he was keeping his distance...but if he figured out how much I wanted
him…
.

He could grab me in the time it took to blink.

He could push me up against the wall without effort. He could lift me off the ground and hold me there while he stripped every stitch of clothing from my body. I could kick and struggle all I liked, but I wouldn’t be able to escape...and I wouldn’t want to.

That was the scariest thing: not that he’d lose control, but that I would. It was so, so, tempting to look at that hard body and those cobalt-blue eyes and to think of him as a normal guy. And then I’d remember where he was going, when he drove off. I’d think of that whole world he belonged to, the one I’d worked so hard to keep Kayley and me away from. A cold, dark world, with sickeningly strong gravity that pulls in anyone who gets too close. I was already flying way, way closer than I should, drawn in by its promise of quick money. As long as it was just business, I told myself that I could still break away. But once I let Sean into my life, once I let the darkness wrap itself around every inch of my body and invade me...then, there’d be no escaping it. I was going to be drawn down by that world’s gravity and crash. And neither I nor Kayley would ever get back to our world again.

I had to stay the hell away from him. I closed my eyes for a moment, drilling that into myself.

When I opened my eyes again, he was standing there, the door still swinging closed behind him. He was breathing hard, as if he’d almost run up to the house, but now he wasn’t moving at all.

He’d stopped as soon as he saw me.

We stared at each other and for a moment the only things that moved were our chests as we took slow, shuddering gulps of that oven-hot air. Then he stalked closer, lithe as a jungle cat, and my breathing got faster with every step he took. He slammed his hands down on the table between us and I flinched, even as the sudden nearness of him sent a surge of excitement through my body.

“We have a problem,” he growled.

Sean

I hadn’t known what I was going to do, the whole way over there. Four times, I’d turned off down side streets and started to head home...but every time, I’d cursed and changed my mind and steered back towards the grow house. Even as I was getting out of the car, I had no idea what I was planning, once I got inside.

Then I smelled it, and suddenly I had an excuse to be there. It was almost a relief, despite how serious the problem was.

“It’s the plants,” I told her. “I can smell them from outside. Fuck, you can smell them halfway down the block!”

Louise looked around her. Seeing those big green eyes blink in bewilderment made my chest ache—God, she looked so innocent! “I don’t...I mean, sure, they smell, but not
that
much…”

“You’ve gotten used to it,” I told her. “You’re here too often. You don’t realize it, but it reeks in here...and outside.”

She pressed her lips together and nodded. Then, before she answered, she licked her lips. I wasn’t ready for how that sent a jolt of electricity straight to my cock. I glanced away, afterimages of that quick, pink tongue playing over and over in my mind. “What do we do?” she asked.

“Filters,” I managed. “We need charcoal filters over the air vents.” I sighed and ran my hand over my face. “I knew we would. I kept meaning to do it, but…”
But I haven’t been around enough.
I was meant to be protecting her. What if one of the neighbors had smelled the scent and tipped off the police? “I didn’t think we’d need it yet,” I said, then waved at the plants. “They’ve grown so fast, this month…” I did everything I could to avoid her eyes, but somehow wound up looking at her anyway. “Good job.”

“Thanks,” she said. A breathy little whisper that drove me absolutely insane. Fuck, she looked so
right
standing there, surrounded by plants. Like a farmer’s wife raising her crop, all good and pure and natural. She was wearing some skimpy little barely-there top, just a couple of bootlaces and a few handfuls of pink fabric that put the whole top of her breasts on display, creamy and ripe and rising with each breath...fuck it, was she
trying
to make me lose it?

“I’ll go to the store,” I said. “I can have it all set up in an hour.”

She nodded, but neither of us moved. The thick, pungent scent of the weed seemed to hang in coils around us: every breath was full of it. And it was hot, too. The combination of the smell and the heat and Louise in that top...and the place was so private, every window covered, no one watching what we did. It felt like an opium den or a Parisian brothel, temptation inevitable unless I left
right now.

“You want to see?” she asked. Her eyes seemed bigger than normal, her pupils huge. “You want to see what I’ve been doing?” I could hear the timid pride in her voice. She’d spent all these weeks working, I realized, and there was no one in the world she could share her achievement with, no one to give her praise...except me.

I swallowed and went to say,
no.
But nothing came out. And then she was beckoning me closer, walking away from me towards the corner of the room and—

Fuck.

I hadn’t seen it when she was standing behind the table, but she was wearing cut-off denim shorts that hugged the lush curves of her ass, the frayed edges teasing at her skin, inviting me to feel just how soft and smooth and warm it was. Without any conscious effort, my legs carried me after her. The plants were so big, now, that there wasn’t much room between the tables. She slipped easily through the gaps, but my shoulders brushed through the leaves on either side as I passed. Everything was so soft and green and delicate and I was so big—I was scared I was going to break something.