Lust - 1 (7 page)

“Which would explain both the barking and the biting,” Kaia pointed out.

He laughed. “Exactly.”

They were both quiet for a moment, and Kaia realized that this was the most she’d ever heard Adam speak. He hadn’t said much during dinner, and even when Beth was in the car, he’d mostly been listening to her prattle on about her day. The strong, silent type, Kaia decided. Likes listening better than talking—so maybe she should give him something to listen to.

“Wel , pit bul or not, you don’t have to worry about me,” she assured him. “I can handle myself. You have to be tough when you …” She let her voice trail off and looked down at her hands. Would he take the bait?

“When you what?” he asked, sounding concerned.

Score.

“It’s just—you know, it’s hard, bouncing from school to school, always being the new kid, knowing that neither of your parents want you around ….” Amazing how truth can sometimes be more effective than fiction.

Kaia let her voice tremble, just a bit. “And people assume things about you, you know, treat you in a certain way, like you’re this person, this person who has nothing to do with who you real y are ….”

Adam took one hand off the wheel and rested it on her shoulder; Kaia suppressed a grin.

“Hey, we’re not al like that,” he assured her.

Kaia laughed, shakily.

“Listen to me, ‘poor little rich girl.’ And I don’t even know you.” She wiped an eye, hoping he wouldn’t notice the lack of a tear.

“Can we just … just forget I said anything?” she asked.

Adam nodded—but he kept a firm hand on her shoulder.

They drove in silence down the empty highway for several miles, until Kaia pointed to the shadowy silhouette of a mailbox, the only sign of civilization along the dark stretch of road.

“Turn up here, I think,” she said, and the car swung left, up a long gravel pathway, arriving at the foot of a large house of glass and steel.

“Whoa,” Adam murmured softly. “Unbelievable.”

The house—more of an estate, real y—gleamed in the moonlight. Its sleek modernity would have been utterly out of place amidst the age-encrusted remnants in the Grace town center, but out here on the fringe, the elegant beast seemed a perfect fit with the harsh aesthetics of the dessert landscape. Stark steel beams, giant windows, a jigsaw puzzle of smooth surfaces—it was like no house he’d ever seen.

“This is where you live?” he asked in a hushed voice.

“Like I said,’poor little rich girl,’” Kaia quipped.

Adam turned off the car and hopped out to open Kaia’s door for her.

A total gentleman.

“Listen, Kaia,” he said as they walked up the long, narrow path toward her door. “Obviously we don’t know each other that wel yet, but I just want you to know—if you ever need anyone to talk to, you know, I’m around.”

Brushing away another fake tear, Kaia threw her arms around Adam and hugged him tightly to her.

What a body.

“Thank you,” she whispered into his ear, making sure to graze his cheek with her moist lips. “You’l never know how much that means to me.” She let herself into the house, pausing in the doorway to watch him walk back to the car. Even his silhouette had sex appeal.

This is almost too easy to be worth my time,
she thought.

Almost.

By the time Adam got home, it was too late to cal Beth—and besides, what would he say? “In case I didn’t make it clear to you before, I’d real y like to sleep with you—and even though I am the perfect PC boyfriend and wil stand by you no matter what and don’t—I swear to you,
don’t—
just want you for sex, I think it’s natural for me to want that, too, especial y since I’m probably the only eighteen-year-old homecoming king virgin this side of the Mississippi”?

Yeah, that would go over real y wel .

He sounded like one of those Neanderthals in the teen after-school specials they played on local access TV and occasional y showed as a precautionary measure in health class: “But gee, honey, I have these urges …”

No, best just to wait it out.

It hadn’t always been like this, of course. Back in the beginning, she couldn’t get enough of him—they couldn’t get enough of each other. He would come over to her house after school and they would try to do homework together, and after a few minutes she would tire of aimlessly flipping through the pages of her history textbook, and he would give up on furiously writing and erasing and rewriting wrong answers to the same trig problem over and over again, and that would be it. He would look up, she would look up, their eyes would meet, and they would be on each other, kissing, stroking, fumbling with buttons and bra straps, desperate to drink each other in, to find every one of their bodies’ hidden secrets, to touch, to meld. Sometimes al it took was an accidental touch—sitting across a table from each other, his hand would brush against hers, and it was like a stroke of lightning, a bolt of charge between them, and he would have to have her. And it wasn’t just him. There were times … that day last spring in the empty hal way when he’d given her a quick peck on the cheek before going off to practice. He’d turned to leave, and she grabbed the back of his shirt col ar, pul ed him back to her, back into his arms. Then Beth—practical Beth, shy Beth, tentative Beth—had pushed him up against the wal and dug her body into him, sucking on his lips and kneading her fingers into his muscles. Not caring who saw. In the beginning it had been like that.

Not in the
very
beginning, of course. At first they’d done nothing but talk. Which, to be honest, was the exact opposite of what he was used to. They talked and talked—on their first date, they talked through dinner, through dessert, late into the night, until Beth realized her curfew had long since run out and, like Cinderel a, she’d fled off into the night. He’d never real y
talked
to a girl before (except Harper, and that didn’t count), but then he’d never met a girl like Beth, who real y listened. Who real y seemed to want to know him—not the al -star jock, not the homecoming king, but
him
. On their second date they’d talked even more. About everything—families, school, religion, what they loved, what they wanted. They’d talked, and talked, and that was al . As he walked her to her door, he’d hesitantly taken her hand, and she’d let him. They’d stood in the doorway, her hand warm in his, and he’d slowly lifted his other hand to her face, touched her chin, but before he could lean in, close his eyes, bring his lips to hers, she’d pul ed back. Jerked her hand away and slipped inside the house, without a word.

It was on the third date—the date he’d figured would never happen after she’d run away from him on date number two—that he knew. They’d stood in the park, looking up at the stars—Mars and Venus would be spectacularly bright that night, she had told him. And with any other girl, that would just be a tactic, a ruse to get him somewhere dark and alone. But Beth just wanted to show him the stars. They’d stood close together, his arm brushing hers, their necks craned toward the sky.

“It’s so beautiful,” she’d said in a hushed voice.

“Yes,” he’d whispered. But he was looking at her. He put a hand on her waist, another on the back of her head, on her soft, blond hair, and drew her face toward his. And their lips met, their bodies came together. She’d been so hesitant, so scared and tense, almost pul ing away. And then she took a deep breath—he could feel her chest rise and fal in his arms—and her arms wrapped around him, her fingers running through his hair and caressing his neck. When they final y broke away from each other, she didn’t move away, but stayed close to him, her arms loosely wrapped around his shoulders. At first he’d thought she was crying—but she was laughing.

“I had no idea,” she’d told him, when he asked why. “Al this time, and I just—I had no idea.”

But she wouldn’t explain, just kissed him again.

That was the beginning of everything. They had stil talked, al the time, for hours, but they talked in quiet voices, their lips inches apart, their bodies wound together. It seemed like it would last forever—but here they were, or rather, here he was, alone.

It was al different now, now that there was this
thing
in their way that they wouldn’t, or couldn’t, talk about. And that was the problem. It wasn’t about what he wanted or what she didn’t want—it was about what neither of them could say. She was tense again, scared, hesitant, but this time there was no endless conversation, no soul baring. After al they’d had together, she wasn’t turning to him, and he was afraid to push—afraid that this time, if she ran away, she might not come back.

He stripped down to his boxers, fel into bed, and, as his tired mind began to wander, pictured himself back in bed with Beth, curled up tight against her warm body.

Except—

Except that Beth didn’t have long black hair that cascaded down her back like a shimmering river, or eyes of deep green that you could lose yourself in for days. Glistening, ful red lips and a mischievous smile. And she didn’t cling to him, didn’t lean on him—didn’t need him.

But someone did.

They decided to meet that week to discuss logistics for the party. An anti-Dance Committee committee. Kaia had offered her place—though it was a fifteen-minute drive out of town, on a deserted stretch of broken-down highway, it had plenty of space and came with a guarantee of no parental supervision. And by Grace standards—both Grace the town, whose mining elite had had neither the time nor the inclination to build grand estates even when there was money to do so, and Grace the family, whose four-bedroom house, a holdover from the good ol’days, may have been on the right side of the tracks but was in dire need of a fresh paint job and a new roof—it was a palace. Five bedrooms, three bathrooms, maid’s quarters, a shiny stainless steel kitchen that would have been at home on the Food Channel—and the crowning glory, a capacious living room that took up half of the ground floor and was wal ed by floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the wide desert expanse. Kaia’s father had flown in an architect and designer from Manhattan, and the two had guaranteed that every detail—from the moldings to the banister of the spiral staircase, from the towels in the pool house to the sterling silver cocktail shaker on the ful y stocked bar—worked in concert, creating a pristine world in which everything had its place. (Everything except Kaia, of course, who hadn’t been prescreened and careful y selected for her ability to match the wal paper

—and, mainly out of spite, never used a coaster.)

Pool table, hot tub, open bar, an inside glimpse into the lifestyles of the very rich if not so famous? It was an offer even Harper couldn’t refuse.

After al the oohing and aahing had ended—quicker than might be expected, since Adam had already seen the place from the outside and he’d had plenty of time to imagine what wonders the inside might hold; Kane’s excitement was rarely roused by anything he couldn’t smoke, drink, or snort; Harper would rather have died than admit even a fraction of the awe and envy that struck her as she stepped through the doorway, and Miranda loyal y fol owed Harper’s lead—they got down to work. Almost.

“So, what’s this I hear about a hot tub?” Kane asked, sauntering through the large living room and pausing before one of the oversized windows that looked out over the pool deck.

Harper cleared her throat in exasperation and waved her notebook in the air. “Forget the hot tub, Kane—we’ve got work to do. Remember?” Kane spun around to face the room, a slow grin creeping across his face. “Yeah, yeah, work beforeadviser,” Adam play,” he al owed. “But …” He strode to the edge of the room and squeezed himself behind the mahogany bar. “Rum and Cokes before work—don’t you think?” He cocked an eyebrow in Kaia’s direction—the closest Kane ever got to asking permission.

“Be my guest,” she said, shrugging. “That’s what it’s there for.”

“Harper?” Kane asked, brandishing an empty glass at her and temptingly dangling a bottle of rum over its rim.

Harper sighed and tossed her notebook down on one of the leather couches. “Okay Fil ’er up.”

She was only human, after al .

Delighting in his favorite role, Kane began to dole out the drinks—vodka cranberry for Miranda, beer for Adam, dry martini for Kaia, and, of course, rum and Coke for Harper.

Final y, Kane poured himself a glass of single-malt scotch, then stepped out from behind the bar and suggested they get started. He was already getting bored.

“So Beth’s definitely not coming?” Miranda asked, catching Harper’s look and trying not to laugh as her eyes practical y rol ed out of their sockets.

Adam shook his head. “She’s got some meeting for the school paper,” he said, frowning. “She told me to say she was sorry she couldn’t help out, though.”

“Now, how could I begrudge her when she’s devoting her time to the worthy cause of Haven High investigative journalism?” Harper asked.

Miranda and Kaia snorted in sync.

“I’m on the paper,” Miranda commented. “There was no meeting scheduled for today.”

“Some one-on-one thing with her and the new adviser,” Adam explained. “To discuss the ‘new direction’ or something.”