Authors: Cora Carmack
When he finished, my skin was flushed and my breath heavy. My knees grew weak, and my hands clutched at the door behind me. Our eyes met, and his lids were heavy and his pupils dark. I felt intoxicated. Everything in the world but him was blurry. Everything in the world but him disappeared.
“Beautiful,” he whispered.
A “please” slipped from my mouth, and he rewarded me by pulling me forward until my chest pressed against his. It was good, but he was still clothed so it wasn’t enough. I reached greedy fingers toward the bottom of his shirt, and he lifted it over his head for me.
He loomed over me, one hand perched on the wall on either side of me. It was reminiscent of the night he’d kissed me outside of Trestle, but the view was so much better this time. His chest was broad and tanned, and gave way to rippling lines of muscle on his abdomen. But my hands went straight for the V of muscle that started above his hips and disappeared down into his jeans.
Mace had been fit, but on the skinny side.
Cade was . . . God, he should just stop wearing clothes altogether. I would fully support that. A little impatient, I slipped a finger under the waistband of his je fingernails scrapetS drinkans and tugged him forward. The first touch of his skin on mine was like lightning. I could feel the charge between us building.
After that, slow became a thing of the past.
His mouth crushed down onto mine. His hands left the door to tangle in my hair, and my back hit the wall with a loud thud. There was nothing sweet or delicate about this kiss. The guy who’d traced the lines on my skin was replaced with someone hungry and desperate. His hands held me in place as his lips conquered mine. I gave myself up to him and wrapped my arms around his neck.
He released my hair, and I whimpered at the loss, but then his hands found my thighs. He bent his kneesmach, athe black bra
Cade
S
he looked so good spread out on my bed. I hadn’t had nearly my fill of kissing her, but I was just as impatient as she was. She uncurled her legs from my waist, and I knelt on the bed between them. I reached for the button on her shorts and slid them and her tights down her legs. Her hips were perfect. Her legs were perfect. And the black underwear that matched her previously discarded bra were pretty damn perfect, too.
Something devious glinted in her eye, and she pushed on my abs until I stepped off the bed. Then she kneeled at my feet, and unbuttoned my jeans. Whatever blood was still left in the rest of my body rushed south. I fisted my hands at my sides to try to stay in control, but when my jeans and boxers hit the floor it was a lost battle. Her mouth was heaven and hell all at the same time, and the tables of control turned so fast that my head was spinning.
“God, Max.”
I groaned and laced my fingers into her bright red curls. I couldn’t make up my mind what I wanted more. Part of me wanted to take our time, while the rest of me wanted to screw going slow. There would be time for all this later.
It was torture pushing her back, but I just couldn’t wait any longer. I pulled her up to stand in front of me, and slid her underwear down over her hips. She was so gorgeous that it hurt to breathe. She sat on the bed and scooted back toward the pillows. I wanted to follow, but I made myself stop and grab a condom from my nightstand. Then I crawled toward her until my body hovered above hers. I hesitated, knowing how powerful the press of our bodies would be. Her eyes were closed in anticipation, and she was biting her kiss-swollen bottom lip. I pressed my lips against hers and sucked that bottom lip into my mouth before lowering myself into paradise.
I started slow, mostly because I was trying to memorize the way she felt around me. I hated that she’d been with that asshole, Mace. I hated that he’d seen her like this, but I was happy to know that she was mine now. I took her hands from around my neck, and laced our fingers together. I pressed her palms down into the mattress at the same time that I rocked my hips into hers. Her mouth opened in a silent cry, and she tilted her head back. I wanted to hear her, so I did it again, harder.
She bit her lip, and let out the smallest whimper. Each time I pressed into her, her reaction was a little less inhibited. I ran my hands from her knees, down her sweat-slicked legs, to the curve of her bottom. I snapped my hips forward and pushed up on her hips at the same time. She twisted and arched beneath me, moaning my name. The sound of it nearly pushed me over the edge, but I made myself slow down.
“Max.”
Her eyes fluttered open, and she looked at me from under half-lowered lashes. I pressed a kiss to her forehead, and then rocked my hips again. Her eyes closed, and I slowed my movements again.
“Look at me, Max.”
She whimpered but did as I said. The next thrust made my vision go spotty, and though her body contorted fingernails scrapeed downowI wondered if underneath mine, and she tried to tug her hands free from my grasp, she kept her eyes open.
There was too much pleasure, too much want, too much beauty beneath me. There was too much everything. The wbone, and I fi
Max
I
was relaxed and numb and glorious.
Until I wasn’t.
Until the glow faded fingernails scrape tlpt, and I was assaulted my all the thoughts that my mind had been too preoccupied to think before. His arms were tight around me, secure and comforting and caging all at once.
Sex had never been like that for me. It had always been about bodies and sensations and simplicity. Sex with Cade was confusing. It was adding one plus one and getting an answer other than two. It was more than it should have been, and it threw my world off balance.
Cade got up to go to the bathroom, and I slipped my panties back on, and then went to the living room to hunt for my shirt. Cade’s place was the opposite of mine. He had pictures of friends and family on walls and bookshelves. Those shelves actually had books on them, along with mementos and keepsakes that apparently meant enough to him to bring all the way to Pennsylvania with him. His place felt homey. It felt nice and comforting, just like him.
Unease flitted around my chest, but I pushed it down. I tiptoed back to Cade’s room, and my nerves started to rattle. I stared at the rumpled sheets on his bed and just couldn’t make myself get back inside it. Cade was wonderful. Mind-blowingly wonderful. Tonight had been one of the most intense moments of my life.
But that was the problem.
We’d known each other ten days. I looked at the clock, and it read 3:00
A.M.
Make that eleven days, but still . . . eleven days. There at the end, he’d looked at me in a way that no other man ever had. I couldn’t even put into words what that look had done to me.
It wrecked me, completely.
It was so honest and raw that it made the rest of my life feel fake and insignificant in comparison. Everything was changing too fast. Even now, thinking about it, I felt like something in me was disintegrating faster than I could hold it together.
I jumped when Cade’s arms wrapped around my middle. His chest pressed into my back, and he placed a few kisses down the side of my neck. His touch was almost enough to deflate my worries, but they stayed there, lurking at the back of my throat, making it harder to breathe. Even so, my body was at ease with his. I leaned back into his arms.
His lips hovered next to my ear, and he whispered, “Have I told you how gorgeous you are?”
I swallowed. “Not in a few minutes.”
“Mmm . . .” The scruff on his jaw tickled the sensitive skin of my neck and he said, “As long as you know.”
He was too good for me. That much was abundantly clear. He was sweet and thoughtful and generous in every way. He never missed an opportunity to reassure me or compliment me or touch me. I wasn’t used to that kind of affection. I shied away from it in every other part of my life, but coming from him I soaked it up like rain on arid ground.
I was tired of thinking, so I turned in his arms and wrapped myself up in his embrace. His chest was still bare, but he’d slipped on a pair of pajama pants that hung low on his hips. I pressed my cheek to his chest and looked down. Seeing our bare feet facing each other pulled something in my chest, and my breath caught in my throat. The intimacy of this embrace made me panic, but at the same time, the thought of moving out of it was painful.
He tugged me down onto the bed and pulled the covers over us. I concentrated on breathing normally as he slipped an arm over my waist. He reached over me to turn off the lamp beside the bed. In the dark, he pressed a kiss to the back of my neck, and I shivered.
I felt fingernails scrapeNBowlmy like crying.
I just . . . this wasn’t my life. Things like this didn’t happen to me, and if they did, it never lasted. Girls like me didn’t get guys like Cade.
Maybe it would take a week, maybe less, but I would end up screwing this up. It was what I did. The only thing I was better at than destroying things was singing, and with my behavior today, I was beginning to realize I was in danger of destroying that, too.
More than anything, I didn’t trust myself. With Mace I’d been obsessed with him a few weeks ago. I liked him enough to go through this elaborate scheme just to keep my parents from scaring him off. Then boom, I woke up and couldn’t care less about our relationship.
That was how I worked. Or rather . . . how I didn’t work.
I couldn’t do that to Cade. What if we got together, and I woke up one day and wanted out? I liked him more than I liked myself, so I’d probably end up sacrificing my own happiness to keep from hurting him. It would be just like all the years I played at being Alex to keep my parents happy. But instead of blond curls and cheerleading, it would likely mean kids and a minivan.
I may not have been the most self-aware person in the world, but I knew enough to know that if I let myself care about him, I would sabotage my life to better his.
Or I would sabotage it all just because I could.
Or maybe I wouldn’t have to sabotage it. Cade was obviously getting over that Bliss girl. Now, she . . . she made sense with him in a way I never would. What if being with me was just a phase, an overcorrection after things didn’t work out with her?
How long would it take for him to realize that I wasn’t really what he wanted? And how badly would it hurt when he did?
I felt sick from my stomach to my soul.
I waited until Cade’s breathing evened out, and I was certain that he was asleep. Then I slipped out of his arms and slipped on my shorts. I’d only wanted a little space to think, to breathe. But the minute he was no longer touching me, my blood pumped faster, singing
run, run, run
with every beat. I looked back at him, the hard lines of his body, the relaxed expression on his face, and I did just that.
I grabbed my heels and my purse and opened his front door as quietly as I could. It was nearly four in the morning. I couldn’t walk home alone in this neighborhood, but I couldn’t stay either. I was minutes away from a meltdown of ugly proportions.
So, I called Spence to pick me up. He lived in Northeast Philly and had a car. Despite the late hour, he answered on the second ring. I sighed in relief at hearing his voice, and tears pricked at my eyes.
Shit.
“Spence, I’m so sorry, but can you come pick me up?”
His voice was groggy, but he didn’t hesitate before he said, “Yeah. Yeah, of course. Where are you?”
I gave him the cross streets, and he told me he’d be here in about ten minutes. I ended the call and pressed the phone to my chest.
I knew what I was doing was awful, but if I was preventing a bigger tragedy did that make it so terrible?
I needed to stick with my intuition. Cade deserved better than me. And I couldn’t give him what he needed. He needed a girl who could commit to him with the same care and complete abandon that he gave her. That wasn fingernails scrapeAinow’t me. I was broken and patched and missing pieces. I couldn’t give him all of me, because I didn’t even have that. There was a piece of me still on that highway, a piece of me buried with my sister. I’d left shards all over this city, and he didn’t deserve to have to clean up that mess.
And he wouldn’t want to . . . not when the luster wore off and he got a good look at the girl he’d caught. Then he’d see me for what I really was . . . toxic. And he would want nothing to do with me.
I sat at the top of the stairs at the end of Cade’s hallway. I wrapped my arms around my middle. The muscles of my body were tense, once again trying to hold myself together by sheer force. I remember the way his arms had wrapped around me tonight and that time on Thanksgiving when he’d been the one to hold me together.
And I lost it. My vision swam with tears, and I held my breath, like that would keep the tears at bay, too. I shuddered and pressed my face into my knees. For the first time in nine years, the first time since Alex, I couldn’t push the tears down. I couldn’t control them. I cried. I sobbed. The emotions ripped free from my chest, taking pieces of me with it.
It was four in the morning. If I couldn’t cry now, when could I?
So, I let the guilt wash over me, and I said good-bye to something beautiful and terrifying and delicate that I’d held in my soul for a few short hours. I said good-bye to something that should never have been mine.
A door swung open on the floor below me, and laughter floated up the stairs. I tried to wipe my eyes, but I was too far gone and not fast enough. Cade’s friend Milo and a pretty girl were at the bottom of the stairs, staring up at me. I ducked my head and scooted close to the wall so they could get by. The giL0AL">rlI saw her star
Cade
T
he bed was cold when I rolled over, and already I had a sinking feeling. I didn’t know if it was how quiet she was as we went to sleep or the way she’d clung to me in that hug, but I just knew something wasn’t right. Though she’d lay right beside me, she’d felt miles away. Even so, I got up and checked the bathroom.