Olivia (74 page)

“
Yes,” she groans, “I want this, so
badly.”

“
I can tell.”

“
Please?” she begs, and I comply by
undressing completely for her. She comes to me willingly and we
kiss again. I just want to watch us. Seeing her like this, from
both angles… seeing what I do to her… seeing how she reacts to me.
Oh god, I want her so badly. “Can we lie down?” she asks at one
point when I’m looking in the mirror. “This is driving me crazy.”
She tries to guide me in that direction, but I’m much stronger, and
I don’t want to move away from here, or away from her. I have her
right where I want her.

Do I take her now? Just like this?

“
Please?” she says
again.

I breathe heavily, shaking my head. “I want you,
Liv,” I admit. “I want to… I don’t know, I want to
possess
you.” I want her in animalistic ways. I want
her like I’ve never wanted her.

“
Like, put me under a spell, or,
like, own me?” she asks. “Because I think you’re already well on
your way to the first one.” Her gaze is rather hypnotic. I can’t
read what she’s thinking. I don’t know what she’ll
allow.

“
Own you,” I answer
honestly.

“
What do you mean?” Her head leans
against my chest, but then I feel her lick me.
Holy shit.
“
Own
me?” she asks
before putting her tongue back on my pectoral muscle.

“
Does that turn you on?” I ask her
quickly. Gauging by her actions, I think I know her answer. I put
my hands on her head and angle it upwards, making sure I have her
attention.

“
A little.”

“
Ohhhh…“ I say, my lips returning
to hers hungrily, then traveling down her neck to her heart.
“Jealousy does strange things to a man.” I want to be honest with
her about my intentions. I have to be.

“
What do you mean?” she asks. I
stop to focus more on our conversation as my thumbs rub her
hipbones lightly.

“
I’m not thinking very clearly
right now, Olivia. But even when I was… even in those moments in
the past week when I was, I wasn’t.” I kneel in front of her and
take her into my arms, pressing my lips to her stomach.

“
You’re not making much sense
now.”

“
I know.” I’m nervous to express to
her my desires, but I have to if I have any dream of her letting
this happen. “Olivia, I want to do something with you that I’ve
never done with anyone else.”

“
Okay. Will it hurt?”

I wonder what she thinks I’m suggesting. “No.”

“
You’re sure?”

“
Positive.”

“
Will it feel good?” she follows
up.

“
I hope so.” I smile, imagining the
feeling. “No, I know so.” I stand back up and rub the back of her
neck, trying to loosen her up. She opens her mouth to kiss me
again. I can’t stay away from her. I want her. But I have to tell
her what I want. I pause once more, about to say it when her hand
travels down my body, making me fully alert. “Just a second.
Okay?”

“
Okay,” she says
tentatively.

When I planned this conversation in my mind earlier
today, it seemed to flow so easily. Now, I just seem to be fumbling
with the idea and with my words. “Have you missed any pills?” I ask
her.

She shakes her head. “No,” she answers, but it sound
like a question.

“
You take them like you’re supposed
to?”

“
Faithfully, every night before
bed,” she says with certainty.

“
Do you have them with
you?”

“
In my purse,” she says. I reach
for her bag and give it to her. “Why?” she asks, reaching inside
for the packet. I take it from her and study the rows of pills
before snapping the lid shut and setting the container down. “Why?”
she repeats.

I still delay my response, trying to erase the
confused expression from her face. I kiss her on the forehead.

“
Do you not have any protection?”
she asks.

If I just say no, will she go with it? It sounds
like she might, and then I don’t have to admit that this is more of
an assertion of dominance over her… because really, that’s what
this is. I know this.

I have to be honest.

I reach into my dresser and pull out a small box of
condoms, producing one from the container. I hand it to her. “I
don’t want to wear it.”

My room goes completely silent. I can’t believe I
just admitted this to her. I don’t think she can, either. It takes
a second for both of us to resume our breathing.

“
And you’ve never done that with
anyone.” She stares at the condom as she says this. Please say it’s
okay, Olivia. Please don’t be angry with me. But even more than
that, please say it’s okay.

“
No,” I whisper. I cover the condom
with my palm and hold her hand in mine as she considers
this.

“
And you want to, with me.” Instead
of sounding reluctant, she sounds very open to the idea. She sounds
like she’s smiling. I finally look at her face, and I see that she
is.

“
Ye–” I try to answer, but she
doesn’t let me. She reaches out for me to kiss her, and I make it
easy by picking her up and laying her down on the bed. I crawl on
top of her, pressing my lips strategically to different parts of
her body. I pull away to show her the condom. I’ll give her the
opportunity to change her mind. I have to give her that
opportunity. I know what I want, but I also know I’ll have to stop
if she tells me
no
.

Right now, though, I just want to take advantage of
the
yes
she already gave me.

“
It’s going to be right here,” I
tell her as I tuck it beneath the pillow. “If you want me to wear
it, I will.” She nods at me, showing me she understands, but she’s
also grabbing at me to return to her, so I don’t think she’ll
change her mind. “I’m not going to wear it unless you ask me
to.”

“
Okay“ she says softly.

“
Okay?” I clarify. “At any point,
just stop me.”

“
Stop you from what?” she whines.
“You haven’t started anything yet.” I love her impatience, and I
align my body with hers, lying down slowly. She sets the pace,
though, and it’s quick and needy, and there is very little thinking
going on between either of us.

I wake up with the sun streaming in my eyes through
the window and thoughts of Olivia still lingering in my head. Last
night was staggering. After she left, I stood under the stream of a
hot shower for about 30 minutes, grinning like an idiot and
reliving every moment.

Thirty minutes was all I needed for the reality to
set in.

What a
stupid
risk we took
– that I talked her into taking. I mean, she’s taking her pills,
and I saw the evidence. I know enough about women’s physiology to
understand the extremely low chances there would be of us
conceiving a child. But still. It’s a
chance
. Never again. I will never ask that of her
again, until far in the future when both of us could accept the
responsibility of a baby. That day isn’t today. It’s years down the
line.

Did my alarm go off?
I pick
up my phone, and my heart stops. My lab is half-way over. I never
set the alarm.
Shit
. Hurriedly, I throw
the sheets off the bed and grab some clothes from my closet and put
them on. I’ll come back and shower at lunch time. I brush my teeth,
grab a baseball cap and scour the room for my books and supplies. I
have to empty my messenger bag that I’d used over spring break, and
piece together everything I need to bring. After putting my books
and laptop inside, I head for the door.

My headphones
. I like
drawing to music, so I return to my desk to grab them.

A pink plastic container sits atop my earbuds.
Shit
. Olivia’s birth control pills. I
stare at them hard, afraid to touch them. My bag slides off my
shoulder, and I barely catch it before it slams into the floor. I
set it down on the bed and sit beside it.

I can’t believe she left the pills here. I hear our
conversation in my head.

“
You take them like you’re supposed
to?”

“
Faithfully, every night before
bed.”

Maybe she took her pill before she left last night.
Surely she did. I mean, they’re sitting out. They’re right here.
But then I remember the panicked state in which she left the
dorm.

We’d fallen asleep, and she had fifteen minutes to
make it home. She never took the pill. She didn’t even have time to
put her clothes back on properly. She didn’t notice, but part of
her silk underwear was showing because her skirt was tucked into
itself. I fixed it for her, not wanting to tell her, not wanting to
worry her that guys definitely saw her like that leaving my
building. If anyone recognized her, her father would have yet
another public relations nightmare on his hands – once again
because of me.

Remembering that fact, I pull out my laptop to check
the main gossip sites that have featured pictures of her in the
past. Fortunately, there’s no mention of her, and a quick Google
search brings up nothing recent, either. We dodged that bullet, but
in the bigger scheme of things, I would almost rather a scandalous
picture than her untaken birth control pill sitting on my desk.

She just needs to take it as soon as she can. I pick
up the packet and check the blister pack, seeing Sunday’s pill
staring back at me. It’s in the middle of her cycle. I know if she
missed one now, it’s probably the best time to make that
mistake.

Not that there’s really a good time for that.

Is she still on antibiotics?
Oh,
shit.
Now’s a great time to remember that.

Why did I do this? I’m smarter than this.

I’ve never felt so stupid in all my life.

I decide to skip the science lab, remembering
there’s another session later in the day that we were told we could
attend if we needed to make up a class. I pick up my phone to call
her, but I don’t place the call. She’s in class, anyway, and
wouldn’t be able to see me if she even noticed her phone ringing. I
can wait a few hours for lunch time.

While I wait, I skip my art class, too, opting to
lose myself in a book at the library. My head is all over the
place. I can’t believe I did this to her. Last night was about
possession. I wanted to prove to her that she was mine, and no one
else’s. I needed to leave my mark on her. Was a civilized man at
all present for what happened last night, or was I just some
mindless beast acting on primal instinct alone?

I’m disgusted with myself. I can’t bear to think
that I had
no
conscious thought in what
happened, but if I admit that I did, then I have to admit that I
wasn’t considering her life or our futures whatsoever.

Shit.

Is this even something I need to worry about? A
pregnancy, probably not, but I do worry about how careless my
actions were. I can vow to never let it happen again, but if there
was no conscious thought…

There is
always
conscious
thought. I just sucked at that last night and let jealousy get in
the way of all of my decisions.

I make a stop at the drug store on the way to
Olivia’s school, picking up a bottle of water so she can take her
medicine privately, off campus.

I’d hoped to be there just as lunch started, but she
must be half-way through by now. I call her, waiting out front.

“
Hey!” she says. She obviously
hasn’t realized that she’s missing her pills, or else she’d be a
lot more somber right now.

“
You at lunch?” I ask, already
knowing the answer.

“
Yeah.”

“
I’m out front, just outside the
gate,” I explain, then pause for a second. I’m afraid of her
reaction–so afraid she’ll be angry about what I convinced her to
do. “Do you think you can come out?”

“
Ummm…” she hesitates. “I’m not
supposed to leave the campus during the day, but… I guess they’ll
never know.”

“
Okay. See you in a few.” A few
students from her school stand under an awning, watching me warily.
I scan the grounds, checking all the exits, until I finally see her
to my left. She’s wearing her school uniform. Those should be
illegal in this day and age. I think now they have quite the
opposite effect than they did when they were introduced in the
middle of last century.

She nearly skips to me, saying a happy “hi“ to me
before she kisses me. I hold her tightly, afraid my expression will
worry her, but she’s distracted by the bag I am carrying.

“
What’d you get me?” She grins in
anticipation. I can’t hide my worry about her reaction, and I want
to go somewhere private in case people are watching us.

“
Wanna walk to your car? Are you in
the private lot?” I ask, heading in that direction.

She stops me by placing her hand on my forearm. “I
can’t skip class–”

“
No, I’m not asking you to,” I
assure her.

She looks confused. “Do you need my car?”

“
No, Livvy. Just walk with me?” I
plead, glancing around nervously.

“
Okay. Can I open the present?” She
takes it out of my hand.

“
Wait until we cross the street,” I
instruct her, guiding her through the crosswalk. She stops suddenly
in the middle of the intersection, and when I look down at her, I
see she’s peeked inside the bag. Her face goes ashen and her mouth
falls open. “C’mon, it’s fine, baby. Get to the sidewalk at
least.”