Selling the Drama (3 page)

She stood before him, in shorts so
unbelievably short they surely challenged the very definition of
the word and a crop top that showed an awesome amount of flesh,
along with a ring pierced through her belly, flashing evocatively
and constantly drawing his eye. Her smile was wide and pretty,
dimples in both cheeks and skin devoid of a single blemish, with
braces on what looked like already straight teeth. Her hair was
long and dark brown, pulled up into a high pony tail. Her eyes were
brown also. Toby was aware he was standing before her like a mute,
but seriously, he was going to live with this girl? Possibly share
a bathroom with her? Get to look at her every single day from here
on in? Swallowing deeply, the teenager within him roared to life
and he grinned at her, taking note of the way her eyes widened with
interest as he did so.

Things were looking up. Things were so, very
definitely, looking up for him.

Charlotte felt intensely sorry for Toby. His
situation brought her to tears. The horror; it was bigger than
anything she'd ever had to wrap her head around before. But the
knowledge that he didn't want anyone to know about what had
happened to his parents kept her sympathy in check for those first
few days. He didn't say much, just seemed wary and unable to relax.
She supposed that being forced to move to the opposite end of the
country to live with strangers you knew nothing about couldn't be
helping him much either.

Given there were only two weeks left of
school before the September holidays, Iris had allowed Toby to stay
home, announcing it would be better for him to start school at the
beginning of the next term. Despite being already sixteen, he was
going to be in the same grade as her, the ages and grades down
south differing to what they followed in Queensland.

They didn't see each other a whole lot over
those first two weeks. She was either at school or the gym,
practicing for her upcoming acrobatic trials. During his second
week with them, Iris started sending him to the gym at seven to
walk her home and he would wait outside the door, kicking at the
dirt with his hands shoved into his pockets, wordlessly trailing
two steps behind her for the entire walk home.

She wished he would talk to her but he
merely nodded, shrugged, or shook his head if she ever addressed
him directly. After eight nights of brooding silence on the walk
home, she slowed her pace to match his and said completely out of
the blue: "I'm sorry about your parents. It's one of the most
horrible things I've ever heard and I'll never mention it again,
but I didn't want you to think I didn't care because I hadn't said
anything." She exhaled in a rush, looking at him out of the corner
of her eye, wondering if she had just made a monumental mistake in
even bringing the subject up.

He shrugged. And that was it.

She turned to him, keeping pace while
walking backwards, trying to catch his gaze, but he was looking
away, always looking at anything but her. He was a hard one to
crack, that's for sure. Charlotte put out her hand and placed it
against his chest, stopping him from walking any further. "Why
don't you ever talk to me? Or look at me?" Boys always looked at
her, fell over their feet to be the first to talk to her. She was
unused to being ignored by boys. And this boy interested her. He
was an enigma, all mystery and brooding good looks, his face unlike
any of the boys at school who were constantly clamouring to stick
their tongues down her throat and their fingers into her pants. He
was looking at her now though, as she stood before him in her crop
top and gym pants, her hand flat against the middle of his chest.
She could feel his heart beating beneath the palm of her hand,
thudding rapidly. She drew closer to him, her gaze fixed to his.
"Don't you like me?" she asked, in her best, come at me now,
breathy voice; to date, it had never failed her.

He smiled then, his face altering, the
beauty of his youth coming to the fore. Charlotte warmed at the
sight of it, quivering slightly as he placed his hand gently around
her wrist. "Yeah, I like you well enough. But your parents have
opened up their home to me and I have nowhere else to go if I stuff
this up, so let's go back to us not talking all that much and you
walking a few steps ahead of me so I can perve on your arse without
you knowing." He dropped her hand then and indicated with his head
that she should keep on walking.

Charlotte opened her mouth to reply, but
then snapped it shut again immediately. She really had nothing to
say to that. Turning on her heel, she continued walking home, Toby
a few paces behind her. She put a swing into her step, figuring she
might as well take him at his word and give him something to watch
for the trip home. He wouldn't stay cool for long. Not now that she
knew she held his interest. Will power could bend if you applied
enough pressure in all the right places. It was just a matter of
patience and perseverance.

From the minute the words left his mouth,
Toby regretted them. She'd see him as a challenge now. Girls like
her, the pretty and popular ones, they were all the same. Wanting
everyone to be falling all over them and hanging for the next crumb
of attention they saw fit to toss out. He should have just told her
he wasn't interested, but there you have it, he had to go and tell
her the truth. And now he had two solid weeks of her, all day long,
while both of her parents went out to work from eight in the
morning until six at night, the two of them left to rattle around
this large old fashioned house with its huge veranda and even
bigger swimming pool.

He liked Royce and Iris. They were good
people. They laughed a lot, talked about everything from current
affairs to neighbourhood gossip, and seemed completely wrapped up
in each other in a way that had at first seemed gross, given they
were parents, but after a couple weeks of having been with them,
seemed kind of just normal now. The pair of them were fairly
liberal on rules, and Charlotte seemed to do pretty much whatever
she felt like, with this liberation appearing to extend to him by
default. They expected you to pick up after yourself, do a job if
you saw it needed doing, and generally just pull your weight around
the house and yard, but other than that, there was nothing set in
stone. Toby was slowly finding himself able to relax, the tension
of living under his father's roof beginning to finally leave him.
He didn't miss either of his parents, but he was prone to fits of
melancholy if he dwelled too much on his mother's wasted existence.
Being so far away from his former life was the best thing that
could have happened to him and he had not been lying to Charlotte
when he said he didn't want to stuff up this new life he had before
him. He was happy here, the happiest he had ever been, and he
wanted his life to stay that way.

Which is why he should not have been leaning
over the rail perving on Charlotte as she lay stretched out on a
lounger by the pool in a red bikini that was covering such a small
amount of her body that its existence was almost obsolete. She was
yakking on the portable phone to some friend, clearly another girl
by the angle of the conversation and the giggles that continued on
and on. At least while she was caught up with that, she wouldn't
likely notice him openly staring at her from up above. Royce and
Iris seemed pretty casual alright, but he wasn't convinced for a
minute that wouldn't change if he put so much as a finger on their
daughter.

Charlotte's phone conversation seemed to be
dwindling down and after only a few more minutes of talking, she
hung up and dropped the phone down beside her, adjusting her
sunglasses before reaching behind her back to undo her bikini top.
Flinging the top away, she stretched her arms wide, lying back
against the lounger, exposed and exquisitely bare.

Clearly she had been aware he was up above
on the balcony, standing over her, the entire time. She stretched
out a little, arching her back and pulling one of her legs up,
before turning her head to angle her face up towards him, her wide
smile confirmation of her intentions.

"Toby, do you think you could bring me out
the sunscreen from the laundry? I'm worried I might get burnt."

Toby cleared his throat and took a small
step away from the rail, lest his interest in her showed itself too
obviously. "You're less likely to get burnt if you put on a shirt,"
he offered, uselessly.

She merely shrugged. "It's too hot for a
shirt."

Stepping further back into the shadows, he
thought for a moment. Shit. She knew exactly what she was doing,
messing with him like this. Toby was no stranger to girls playing
him. He was well aware they were drawn to him, but he had
deliberately avoided too much contact with girls. His home life had
been such a shit fest it had always seemed like far too much of a
complication to get involved with someone. Getting involved meant
bringing them home and that was never going to have happened in any
lifetime ever. He had limited himself to groping kisses at the
movies, and had been the beneficiary of one glorious head job from
a girl who had particularly liked what he had done to her with his
fingers. Standing on the shaded porch right now, he thought over
his options. She was not going to quit until she had a win, and he
was not going to risk what he had here for a quick thrill; yet
there she was, quite possibly the hottest girl he had ever seen,
lying topless down by the pool just begging for a reaction, and his
body was refusing to stick to the plan.

With a snap decision, Toby pulled off his
own shirt, tossing it onto one of the outdoor chairs. Two could
play at this game. He headed down to the pool, grabbing the
sunscreen from the laundry along the way. Sinking down into one the
loungers, he tossed the sunscreen at her. Toby had never actually
seen a girl naked before, in the flesh, so while he had no real
life comparisons to draw on, he was quite certain that even if he
did, none of them would possibly come close to her. She was like a
fantasy realised. He stared at her openly, trying to make her
uncomfortable with his scrutiny. It worked, because he noticed her
cheeks beginning to colour, and she shifted slightly, not that she
had anywhere to go, but it gave off the impression of slight
embarrassment, as though she might now be getting more than what
she had initially bargained for. He welcomed the scales tipping in
his favour.

"Would you like me to rub your sunscreen on
for you?" He pinned his gaze to her chest while he spoke, watching
as a line of perspiration worked its way down from her throat,
nestling into the hollow space between her breasts. What might it
be like to press his lips there, into that hollow, to feel the heat
of her skin, to taste the salty tang of her perspiration? Almost
immediately, he regretted the thought, the image nearly giving him
cause to explode into his own pants.

Charlotte sat up and nodded to him, turning
in her seat to present him with her back. She pulled her hair over
shoulder and waited. Leaning forward, he grabbed the sunscreen,
squeezing a liberal amount onto the palm of his hand. He started at
her shoulders, rubbing at her skin firmly, working his way down
until he had reached the base of her back. He skimmed his fingers
just inside the waist band of her bikini bottoms, smiling as she
jumped, her gasp a confirmation that she was indeed now somewhat
nervous about this situation she had initiated. Squeezing some more
sunscreen onto the palm of his hand, he returned to her shoulders,
working his hands around to the front of them, skimming the tops of
her arms. He felt her tense and sensed, rather than heard, her hold
her breath. Back up to her shoulders, he touched her much more
lightly than he had on her back, and as he concentrated on her
shoulders and neck, he felt her relax beneath his hands. Her skin
was soft and perfect, a warm peachy colour that smelled divine, a
combination of coconut from the sunscreen and her own perspiration.
Toby lifted his hands from her shoulders, trailing his fingers down
the sides of her arms; she jumped slightly, her back pressing into
his chest, the perspiration of their skin meeting. He let his
fingertips brush back up along the inside of her arms this time,
noting how tense she had once again become. When his hands reached
her shoulders once more, he grasped them, firmly, putting his mouth
against her ear.

"You're all done." He breathed into her ear,
smirking at the shiver she gave off. Releasing her shoulders, he
stood rapidly, striding over to dive immediately into the pool.

Toby swam the length of it under the water,
not surfacing until he was on the other side of pool to where he
had left Charlotte. Rising, he put his elbows up onto the cement
edge and rested his forehead there, trying to get his breath back,
grateful for the bracing cold temperature of the water. He heard a
splash behind him but refused to turn around. He contemplated
hauling himself out of the deep end without looking back. He felt
the momentum as she approached, the force of the water pushing up
against his back and then her hands, reaching around the front of
him and diving down into his board shorts. She took hold of him,
squeezing, both of her hands covering his hard length. Her lips
touched his ear and he heard her voice, whispery and soft.

"I want you to touch me like that again. And
I want to touch you. And I want you to kiss me, and lick me, and
put your mouth all over me." Her grip on him tightened.

She was far more aggressive than he would
have guessed and clearly far more skilled at this game of seduction
than he was. He was completely in over his head and he should have
just stayed up on that balcony. "If your parents found out, that
would be the end of me. I have nowhere else to go."

Her lips were at his ear once again. "They
won't care. They told me to be nice to you."