Very Wicked Things (22 page)

But, like the falling snow, the past fell all around me…

A few weeks after Vespucci’s, Cuba and I walked out of a late movie. It was our fifth date.

He stroked my palm with his thumb. “Come home with me. We have a guest bedroom, and my parents won’t mind. It’s too late for you to drive home tonight anyway.”

Sarah wouldn’t mind. I stayed with Spider all the time.

“Are you sure your parents don’t mind?”

“Positive. And if they’re up, I want them to meet you.” He gave me a long look. “I think they’ll love you, Dovey, especially my dad.”

We reached his house, and pulled into a long winding drive that led to a mansion, its exterior reminding me of a castle in Europe. He let us into the darkened house by a side door next to the kitchen area. My eyes adjusted, taking in big pieces of fancy furniture and heavy draperies. We made our way upstairs, and he showed me his room, a spacious blue and white themed space with a king sized bed.

“What happened to the guest room?” I asked, arching a brow.

“I promise to be good,” he countered, shuffling his feet.

I remembered his reputation and my doubts came back. “Was this a ploy so you can have sex with me?”

He crossed his arms. “Stop putting yourself down. And insulting me. I brought you here because I don’t want you out of my sight.” He shrugged. “And if I wanted to have sex with you, I’d tell you up front.”

But I wasn’t sure, and I had his parents to think about, so we decided on the bedroom across the hall from his. Decorated in sage and ivory, the new bedroom was beautiful, like something out of a magazine.

“Your mom has great taste,” I murmured, running my hands over the damask bedspread.

“She didn’t do it. Some decorator did.” His voice sounded off when he talked about her.

“Goodnight,” he told me after we’d kissed, touching my cheek briefly.

And then he walked out. Just like that.

Five minutes later, I practically ran from the room, the door banging against the hallway as I popped it open.

He opened his door and my mouth dropped. He stood there in a cocky way, shirtless in just his track pants and nothing else. I mean, I’d touched him everywhere on top of his clothes, but I hadn’t seen him bare-chested yet. I swallowed.

“Dovey? You need something?”

“You,” I said. “Sleep only though. No sexy stuff. And you gotta put some clothes on.”

He smiled and led me back to his room. After watching some mindless television together and cuddling in his bed, I grew sleepy and decided I’d shower. I’d spent three hours in the studio today and going without one seemed wrong.

So, I went into his bathroom and took a fast one, anxious to get back to him. Then, I dried off and put on one of his football jersey’s he’d given me.

The door opened, and he stepped inside the steamy bathroom.

I froze.

“You look hot,” he murmured.

I blushed. All I had on was a shirt and panties. “Thank you.”

“Think I need a shower, too,” he said, his fingers pulling up from the neck and easing off the T shirt he’d put on earlier. Broad and tan, I wanted to run my hands over every hard muscle on his chest and down to his chiseled abs. I glanced at the track pants he’d put on and the obvious bulge he sported.

Did his lower body match the rest of him? Was it all sinewy muscle and big?

Just. Yeah. That thought got stuck in my head and wouldn’t let go.

“You staying?” he asked, a little smile working his face. Pleased at my open admiration, probably.

“No.” But I made no move to go.

His smile broadened, and he pivoted to turn on the shower, the whishing sound of the water filling the room. My eyes got arrested by the muscles in his back, at how they twitched and rippled. Football and rowing had been good to him. Very good.

He hooked his thumbs into his pants, paused a moment—maybe waiting to see if I’d run from the room?—but when I didn’t budge, he slid them and his underwear off. My mouth opened. Cuba Hudson, the most popular guy at Briarcrest was standing right in front of me, naked and beautiful. And like the cocky bastard he was, he posed for me, his big muscles making me vibrate all over. Need for him slammed into me.

Did I mention he was hot?

Well, I was wrong.

He was off-the-charts, no-holds-barred, freaking going to make-me-lose-my-mind-right-there, delicious. And I had no idea how to handle him. Because I was way out of my league.

He ran a hand across the steel rod between his legs, and I bit back a moan.

“Still leaving?” he said huskily.

“Any minute,” I said, backing up against the wall, propping myself up. “Just chillin’. Shower wore me out. I might need to hold this wall up for a sec.”

“I want you to stay,” he said.

“Why?” I said, aching to touch him.

“Look at me, Dovey.”

I tore my eyes from his manhood, blushing.

His eyes burned. “There’s a sense of urgency in my head. Like our time is limited.”

I nodded. Yeah, same here.

“And, I’ll be honest, I don’t want to rush you, but I’m dying to sink into you. I want to set you on fire with need for me.” He ghosted his hands over his cock. Once, twice, and…he didn’t stop.

Oh, me.

“You can stay for a kiss,” he murmured.

“You’re all about the bargaining, aren’t you?”

“Kiss me again, Dovey.”

“That’s a terrible idea. Cause you’re naked, and I’m turned on because you’re naked. And you’re touching yourself. And again, you’re naked.” I sucked in a sharp breath. “Not a good combo. Odds are we’ll end up in that shower together or back in your bed doing the double-backed monster.”

“Do you want to join me in the shower?” he said, his amber eyes searing me.

I shook my head. Liar, liar, pants on fire.

“Because we can. And we’ll just shower. If that’s all you want, of course?” His hands still kept up the routine he had going.

Stop, I wanted to say, but I didn’t really want him too.

“No,” I said, my voice weak.

“Want me to carry you to bed then?”

“That sounds super romantic, but no.”

He grinned. “I’m dying to put my hands on you right now. Anyway I can.”

“And do what?”

He laughed low. “Dovey, it won’t be to tuck you in. I think we both know that. Things are moving fast here.”

“What do you mean?”

He sent me a sly grin. “You want me to describe what I’ve dreamed about doing to you? That every day when you sit in front of me in class, I think about bending you over that desk. That every day when I see you in the hall, I want to pull you in an empty room and kiss you until you can’t breathe. But it’s more than just sex. It’s a need to be near you. Because you make me lighter, like everything’s going to be okay if we’re together. You make me horny and happy all at the same time.”

My hands dug into the wall. Not exactly poetry but it make me want to toss him down on the floor and fuck his brains out. And I was a freaking virgin!

I groaned. I really did need to get out of this bathroom.

“Kiss me again,” he said, this time with a little more bite to it. Sweet Cuba was long gone. Bad boy had taken up residence.

And like I was his marionette, I obeyed his command and went to him.

He met me half-way. “Why do I feel like you’re going to get scared and disappear?” he ground out, threading his fingers though my damp hair, clutching it until I felt a tinge of pain, but it was the best kind.

“Don’t run from me again,” he said and kissed me, starting hard and deep.

He spread kisses across my collarbone, up my neck, and to my face. His hands wrapped around my shoulders, his tongue traced the curves of my ear. And even though we’d kissed earlier, it felt like a hundred years ago. I swayed from the need, the desire, all of it making me loose-legged and disoriented.

“Tell me,” he whispered between kisses.

I arched my body, trying to get closer. “What?”

His mouth worked its way to my chest, his hands on my hipbones, pulling me tight against him. I was putty in his hands. “Tell me you feel this too. Tell me I’m not the only one who is dying from the want of you.”

Without answering, my kisses went wild, on his chest, grazing and then biting his nipples, then trailing down to his navel. He was the vast unknown, and I wanted to mark the territory as all mine. He encouraged me with sexy phrases about how much I turned him on, about the things he wanted to do to me. I told him to touch me too, and he did, his hands mapping my body, learning my curves, hooking his fingers in my panties.

I froze.

“Dovey,” he groaned, pressing a kiss to my shoulder. “You’re not ready.”

He heaved a deep sigh, his hands falling away from my hips.

“It’s my inexperience, isn’t it?” I said. “You like those older girls better.”

He looked bewildered. “No. I love that about you. I just want your first time to be what you want and not what I want.”

Somehow he was nothing like what I’d thought.

He pressed a quick kiss to my mouth, the kind that cools things down. “But you don’t have to go. Stay with me.”

“Alright.”

He stepped into the shower and let his head fall back into the spray, the water glistening down his skin. His arousal never went down and I waited, oh I waited for him to take care of it, but he didn’t. I pleaded with my eyes for him to touch himself, to let me see how his face looked when he came, but he resisted. His eyes gleamed at me through the glass doors wickedly, and I got what he wanted me to realize, and it was titillating.

Because he denied himself for me.

He was waiting for me.

Later, after he’d toweled off, we eventually crawled into his cool sheets. We spooned and gazed out at the rising sun as it peeked through his venetian blinds.

“When I make you mine, I want it to be out under the moon and stars,” he said quietly, wrapping his muscled arm against my waist. His bare chest was warm, and I burrowed into him. “Maybe at my lake house.”

He kissed the back of my neck. “There’s this huge deck that juts out from my bedroom. I’m going to put a giant sleeping bag out there, and you won’t even know we’re outside. Trust me.”

I pictured that in my mind and clung to it.

I sighed, gazing at the light peeking in the window. “It’s daylight, and I’m not even tired.”

Then, the next thing I knew, I was on my back with his hands on either side of my face.

And he said the one thing that blew me away.

It took me up into the heavens, dropped me and I spiraled down, afraid of crashing but having no way to stop.

“Don’t you see what’s going on? Dovey, we don’t need sleep…because we’re falling in love.”

THE FOLLOWING MONDAY Spider returned to school after being sick with the flu for a week. Between detention, a band trip he’d taken, and then being sick, he’d missed most of it, so I fill him in on everything that had happened between me and Cuba.

“I think I’m falling for him,” I stated baldly to Spider at lunch in the cafeteria.

“You can’t trust him.” Then he proceeded to tell me a story of a girl who’d graduated a few years ago that Cuba still hooked up with periodically when she was home from college. Marissa somebody.

“He’s different,” I said. “Sometimes people will surprise you.”

But I got antsy. I kept glancing over at Cuba, but he hadn’t noticed me yet. He was in the lunch line with Emma and April, each of them giggling at something he’d said.

Okay, okay, nothing to get riled up about. He just hadn’t seen me yet, that’s all.

Spider watched along with me. “He’s a dog,” he warned me, his face tight with worry.

“Takes one to know one,” I poked.

“I’m not the one trying to get in your knickers. He is.”

“He had his chance and didn’t take it.”

Silence. And more silence. His face reddened, and he gathered up his lunch hurriedly, slamming his books into his backpack.

“Oh, come on, don’t be mad. You’re overreacting. I’ve watched you fall on your face plenty of times with girls. Why can’t I talk to you about what’s going on with me?”

“You’re one of the smartest girls I know, yet he’s leading you on. Bloody ridiculous.”He shook his head at me like I was a lost cause and stalked out of the cafeteria.

Cuba sat down then, a soft smile on his face, and I forgot about Spider—and the doubts he’d planted.

Later, in the middle of pulling on my legwarmers after dance, tingles skipped up my spine. Someone was watching me. I walked over to the large window that took up most of the room on the west side of the building. There he stood, leaning against a tree, feigning nonchalance.