Lust - 1 (11 page)

There must have been something in the air.

Harper stared down at her French quiz, the letters swimming on the page, as she struggled to focus on the
subjonctif
tense instead of on Adam.

She’d been having just a little problem with that al day long.

She’d seen him the night before, shooting hoops in his driveway.

No shirt on.

God, she wanted him.

She had been about to go to sleep when she heard the rhythmic pounding of the bal on the cement pavement—and when she looked out the window, there he was, barely visible in the dim light of the ful moon.

Racing back and forth across the driveway, his muscles straining with the effort, his hair wild, his movements fluid, one sculpted pose melting into the next.

So lean and taut, so graceful. His large, warm hands, his supple fingers massaging the bal .

She liked to imagine those fingers grazing her body, climbing through her tangles of hair, stroking her legs. Too bad it was only her imagination; too bad his fingers were, for the moment, taken. Just like the rest of his body, from his thick calf muscles to his tight pecs to the light sprinkling of freckles across his nose.

Her memory was far from photographic, but when it came to the minutiae of Adam’s body, in al its curves and spots and ripples, she had total recal .

Harper forced herself to scrawl down a couple of answers and then lay her pen down and closed her eyes for a moment, imagining the warm pressure of his arms wrapped around her, his lips kissing their way down her neck, her shoulder, her breasts ….

Her body was tingling, and she raised a hand to her breastbone, lightly grazing her fingers across the bare skin.

If only …

If only she would just trust him. If only she would just get over whatever it was that—

No.

Adam shook his head. It’s not that sex was al he wanted. He wasn’t that kind of guy. (Not that Beth seemed to notice.) But he was a
guy
, for God’s sake. He was eighteen, he loved his girlfriend—was it so wrong that he wanted to be with her?

Did it bother him that al his friends just assumed that he and Beth were sleeping together? That they would probably laugh him out of the locker room if they knew the truth?

That half the cheerleading team would be happy to jump him and tear off his clothes—and yet he was stil a virgin?

Okay, yeah, maybe a little.

Enough that he couldn’t look at Beth without thinking of sex.

Hel , he couldn’t even
think
of Beth without thinking of sex—and sex was the last thing he wanted to be thinking about while sitting in history class staring blankly at his middle-aged teacher and her poorly bleached mustache. But he couldn’t stop himself. It was like he was fourteen again—total y out of control.

It wasn’t a status thing, it wasn’t about his reputation. He loved her, and he
wanted
her—those slim arms wrapped around him, her lithe body tangled up in his, her hair splayed out on his bed. He wanted her—al of her.

And she wanted him, too—he could tel . So what was holding her back?

She didn’t trust him. That was obvious. And completely unjustified. He was absolutely, total y devoted to her. And if he thought about other girls sometimes, wel , that was normal too, right?

No harm, no foul.

Unless it’s just
one
other girl, a smal voice in his head pointed out, and Kaia’s flawless figure suddenly sprang, unbidden, into his mind.

Now
there
was a girl who knew what she wanted and went for it.

His dream Kaia smiled mischievously.

“I want
you
,” she said silently to him, licking her lips and peeling off her damp, clinging shirt.

With horror, Adam realized that he—or at least, his body—wanted her, too. He shifted around in his seat and surreptitiously pul ed a notebook onto his lap to cover up, a move he hadn’t had to make since the hormonal nightmare that was eighth grade.

And in his mind’s eye, the dream Kaia tilted her head back and laughed, chest heaving. And then she went back to the task at hand: stripping off her clothes.

It was just a fantasy, right?

No harm in that.

Just a fantasy,
Beth told herself.
No harm in that
. She’d whipped through her quiz in a few minutes and was now left with nothing to do but stare at the front of the classroom, where Jack Powel was relaxing, feet kicked up on the desk and hands clasped behind his head.
What was he thinking about,
she wondered.
Parisian cafes? African safaris?

When they’d last met, he told her al about his travels around the world, and it set her mind on fire. And his voice—she could listen to those words spil ing over her, the impeccably crafted sentences and delicious accent, for hours. For days.

She pictured the two of them sitting across a breakfast table from each other, exchanging sections of the
New York Times
(she’d once seen this in a movie, and it had since seemed to her the epitome of sophisticated romance). Or maybe they’d be working their way through a crossword puzzle together … in bed.

Beth blushed furiously, and Mr. Powel looked up, as if he’d somehow sensed that she was picturing what he looked like beneath his chambray shirt and khakis. Their eyes met, and he grinned at her and winked.

God, she loved that smile.

Kane always had a hint of a smile on his face. It was one of the things Miranda loved about him. And that perpetual smirk in his voice—as if al of life was a joke, and only he knew the punch line.

Which, Miranda supposed, was enough to make most people think he was a jerk. And he was. Cocky, pampered, self-centered, lazy, a confirmed believer in “never walk when you can ride” and “never do today what you can put off until tomorrow.”

But it was al part of his charm.

She loved watching him in class, the way he leaned back in his chair and propped his feet up on the rim of the seat in front of him, as if he were kicking back in an armchair after a long day’s work, rather than suffering through forty-seven minutes of American History. Sometimes he scrawled something on the single piece of paper atop his desk, sometimes he tipped his head back and closed his eyes—occasional y, he even sat up straight and looked at the teacher, though the smoldering disdain never left his eyes. And the cocky smile never left his face.

He was a jerk, al right. A slimy asshole who sailed through life on his good looks, who probably, if asked, would tel you he had never truly cared about anything or anyone but himself. And he would probably be tel ing the truth—or at least he’d think he was.

But Miranda wasn’t fooled. She’d watched Kane for years now. Laughed at his jokes, insulted his attitude, admired his effortless skil at almost everything—noticed the way, every once in a while and only when they weren’t looking, he would actual y be there for his friends.They didn’t see it, they weren’t looking for it; but Miranda paid attention. She was an A plus, Phi Beta Kappa student of Kane Studies—and she was convinced that beneath the smirking curl of his lip and the chiseled abs and the perfect tan, there was something else.

Something real.

You just had to be wil ing to look.

Long and hard.

Looking for love was hard work.

There was Ilana: al body, no brains.

Shayna: al brains, no body (but a great sound system—and TiVo).

Julia: al boobs, no ass.

And, of course, Katie: al mouth. Which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. But even that got old.

Sometimes Kane felt like Goldilocks (a tal , goodlooking, straight male version of Goldilocks, of course)—nothing he tried out ever quite measured up.

Not that he didn’t love the variety—forget too hot, too cold, too tal , too short. It was al a beautiful rainbow of possibility as far as he was concerned, and he had no complaints.

Okay, he had one: He was bored. Even more bored than usual.

Whatever happened to the thril of the chase, the lust for victory? That was the problem, actual y. Most of these bimbos didn’t give chase—just head.

Of course, there was one girl who might present quite the interesting chal enge. One girl he’d been waiting a long time to get a taste of.

That blond hair, those blue eyes, al that innocence crying out for a little corruption.

There were, of course, a few stumbling blocks in his path.

His supposed best friend being a not inconsequential one.

Her supposed love for said friend being another.

So it wouldn’t be easy. Kane smiled. He was done with easy. Easy was boring.

Difficult? Chal enging? Messy and emotional and violent and dirty?

That was more his speed.

That was
fun
.

It’s al fun and games until someone gets hurt—and then, Kaia thought with a grin, that’s when the
real
fun starts. Now that things with Adam had been set in motion, it was real y only a matter of time—which meant it was time to start thinking about what would come next. Adam was, after al , just a diversion. He couldn’t be expected to hold her attention for long.

No, she had her sights set on a much bigger fish.

An older, more sophisticated,
British
fish.

She glanced up at the front of the classroom where Jack Powel had stretched himself out in his chair. He looked bored out of his mind.

She knew the feeling.

And she decided that it was time to answer both their prayers.

She knew every girl in the room was thinking the same thing, every girl
wanted
the same thing—she could see it in their hungry eyes, hear it in the way they tittered as he brushed past them on his way to the front of the room. But it didn’t matter what they wanted. Because of al of them, Kaia was the only one who had the nerve to act. These pathetic smal -

town girls could fantasize about him, long for him,
want
him al they liked—but that’s al it would ever be. A sil y fantasy. As far as Kaia was concerned, fantasizing was a waste of her time

—when you saw something you wanted, you took it.

She looked down at the quiz in front of her. Stil blank.
Subjonctif?
She snorted.
Give me a break,
she thought. As if she hadn’t covered this stuff in tenth grade. This place was so backward.

She grabbed her pen, thought for a moment, and then began to write: large, deliberate letters, the words spanning across the width of the page.

VOULEZ-VOUS COUCHERAVECMOI?

(
En anglais:
“Would you like to sleep with me?”)

A little hackneyed, perhaps, a little cliché—but he’d get the message.

Kaia, after al , didn’t believe in being subtle.

She believed in getting the job done.

Harper picked up the phone on the second ring. Thanks to cal er ID, she knew it was him and—irrational y—felt the need to smooth down her hair and do a quick mirror check before saying hel o. As if he would be able to somehow hear her beauty through the phone. Ridiculous, she knew. But stil —every little bit helped.

“Adam, what’s up?” she greeted him, lying back on her bed and relishing the sound of his musical voice in her ear.

“Great news—I think I may have found a spot for the party. I just need to drive over and check it out.”

It was just what she’d been hoping to hear. She and Miranda had already spent hours burning CDs (no way were either of them risking their personal CD col ections on a roomful of drunken teenagers), and Kane had promised them that the drinks, courtesy of his older brother—and a number of mysterious other “connections”—were a done deal. But al the beer and hip-hop in the world wouldn’t be enough to make this party work if they didn’t find somewhere to hold it, and so far every possibility—the golf course, the gravel pit on the edge of town, some kid’s dingy basement—had been a major bust.

Harper knew she should have been somewhat worried, but she had other priorities right now, and one of them—the only one, real y—involved getting some quality alone time with Adam. So if he’d found some suitably large, deserted outpost with ample facilities for drinking, dancing, and doing … whatever, it seemed only right that in her capacity as leader of this little party squad, she help him with his final investigations. And whatever else he might need help with, of course.

“Cool,” she said, as nonchalantly as she could. “Do you want me to—”

“Kaia and I are heading over tomorrow afternoon,” he added.

Oh.

She should have known. Since when did Adam go anywhere without Kaia by his side? She shut her eyes tight and tried not to picture the two of them creeping through a deserted building together, hand in hand. She supposed that she should be able to assure herself that Adam was too much of a stand-up guy to ever cheat on his girlfriend—but it was a little late to make that case, given that she’d spent the last couple of months convincing herself that, under the right circumstances and with the right girl (read: Harper), he’d have no trouble doing exactly that.