Crushed (26 page)

He tastes and teases, and I let him drive me up and over the edge, as I turn my head, bite my finger, and shatter into a million orgasmic pieces.

When I finally stop shuddering, I open my eyes, and he’s there, looking down at me.

“What are you smiling at?” I ask, my voice all ragged.

“I would have bet serious money that you were a screamer.”

“Why’s that?”

He kisses me. “It makes no sense. You’re the noisiest girl I know, except when you come.”

“Oh. Sorry?”

“Don’t apologize,” He says, nudging my chin aside, along with my apology. “I think it was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen, you biting your finger like that, locked in a silent scream.”

“You make it sound weird,” I mumble, my arms around his back even though my limbs still feel heavy.

“It wasn’t weird.” He kisses my shoulder. “Trust me.”

He reaches above my head, and I hear rummaging in the nightstand before I hear the unmistakable sound of a condom tearing.

Is this actually happening? Am I having sex with Michael?

He smiles down at me and my breath catches. When did that happen? When did he make me feel that way?

And then it hits me.

The whole time.

It’s been that way
the whole damn time,
and I’ve been too stupidly clinging to an ancient crush to see it.

I pull his head down for a kiss, and he hesitates only for a second, as though wanting to hold back. And then he gives in, sinking into the kiss.

His lower body nudges mine, and I move my legs apart. “Do you even know how to do it all standard missionary like?” I ask as he settles between them.

He lifts his head, his eyes half-exasperated, half-aroused. “What?”

I brush my fingers along his cheekbone. “You’re just so . . . I don’t know, I figured you only did it against the wall or from behind, sort of like an animal.”

He cracks up, his forehead dropping to my shoulder. “Chloe. You kill me.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” I say, lifting my hips to his. “I like it this way.”

His breath turns ragged as my wiggling moves my wetness over him. “Do you now?”

“Mmm-hmm,” I purr in his ear. “I like—”

He pushes inside me in one solid stroke, and whatever I was going to say is gone.

Instead I can only moan.

He pulls back then, almost all the way, before sliding inside me again, and just when I think he can’t possibly feel any better, he slides his arm beneath my neck so that my head is cradled in the crook of his arm, his face pressed against my neck, and he plunges and stays, deeper than before, as though wanting the moment to last.

“Michael, I—”

“Don’t,” he whispers pleading. “Please.”

Before I have a chance to be disappointed that he silenced me, he starts to move, his hips rotating in the perfect rhythm, his breath hot against my neck as my nails dig into his back.

It’s good—it’s
so
good, and then his hand hooks behind my knee, lifting and spreading me wider, and then it’s so much better that I can barely breathe.

He moves faster, circling his hips, and the tension builds, my back arching, my breath heaving.

And then I feel his hand on my face, his finger brushing my lip, and I realize what he wants. I bite his finger, and come, silently, violently, and the second my teeth close on his knuckle, he groans, shattering with me in hoarse cries muffled by my hair.

I don’t know how long it takes me to return to earth. Seconds? Minutes? Days? I gently remove my lips from his finger, my hand lifting so I can rub a thumb over the teeth marks I’ve left.

“You’re
terrible
at sex,” I say. “Just awful.”

He lifts his head, his eyes sleepy and amused. “Yeah. I could tell you didn’t like it.”

“Sorry about your finger,” I say, my finger still rubbing the spot where I’d gone all bobcat on him.

He kisses my jaw before rolling onto his back. “Are you serious? That was fucking hot.”

I know it’s common protocol to do the postcoital cuddle, but I’m too hot and sweaty, so instead I just extend my hand until my pinky brushes his.

He turns his head to look at me, before sliding his palm beneath mine.

And then, Michael St. Claire, sex-god extraordinaire, Mr.
No Emotional Attachment Ever,
links his fingers with mine.

I turn my head so that he can’t see my smile.

“So that was okay,” I say, when I look back toward him. “But next time I’m thinking . . . cowgirl? No,
reverse
cowgirl. I mean, I am from Texas after all, and I’ve never—”

His eyes dance away from mine guiltily, and I ignore the little twinge of panic.

Because I know what that look is trying to tell me:
There won’t be a next time.

The thought causes a deep ache . . . different and more poignant than anything I’ve ever felt in my quest for Devon’s affections.

Devon
. Damn it.

I hadn’t thought about him once.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath.
For once, just live in the moment, Chloe.

When I open my eyes, Michael’s lying on his back, no longer looking at me, but his fingers are still entwined with mine, so I take that as a good sign.

Or at least not a bad one.

My fingers trail up the inside of his wrist, running lightly over the smooth skin of his inner elbow, before moving up over his biceps, to—

“Oh my God.” I sit up.

“Lord. Now what?” he asks.

“Your tattoo! Do you know how long I’ve been waiting to see it?”

He glances down. “You haven’t seen it before?”

“Your shirt’s always covering it. And whenever I tried to move the shirt to look, you’d bat my hand away.”

“Gee, I can’t imagine why. You were being
so
appropriate.”

My finger traces the pattern there. “It’s so . . . boring.”

I don’t know what I’d been expecting his tattoo to be, but it hadn’t been a simple, sleek black
O
.

“Is this an
O
or a zero?” I ask.

His eyes shutter. “I don’t really like to talk about it.”

I flop back down and watch his profile. “Wait, you branded your body in a not-so-private place, but it’s a secret that you don’t want to talk about?”

His jaw tightens, but he says nothing.

I roll my eyes. “Fine.”

I move to my back, knowing that I should probably get up. Especially since our after-sex talk is turning out to be anything but sexy, even if the sex was, well . . . The Most Amazing Thing Ever.

I run a hand over my lips. “My lips are killing me.”

He glances over. “Sorry. Razor burn, maybe. There might be some ChapStick in the nightstand, if that helps.”

“I so did not expect you to have beauty products on hand,” I say, rolling toward the nightstand and pulling open the drawer.

“It’s the twenty-first century. I’m pretty sure we cavemen are allowed a few basic grooming products.”

“
Beauty
products,” I correct, as I rummage in the drawer. “Hey, what’s this?”

I pull out a picture frame and study it. Michael turns to look at it, and if I thought his expression shut down when I asked about the tattoo, now it goes all Fort Knox on me.

“Put that away.”

“Oh, stop,” I say, bringing the picture closer so I can study it. “Whatever your secrets are do not justify this iceman routine.”

“Chloe.”

I turn the picture toward him. “Who are they?”

It’s a picture of a gorgeous blond girl with one of her arms around an equally gorgeous blond dude. Her other arm is around Michael’s waist, and although he’s darker than the other two, he’s equally gorgeous. Obviously.

They look like the too-perfect cast of some sort of teen TV show.

“He looks kind of like Devon,” I say, tapping a finger against blond guy.

Michael lets out a grunt. “Tell me about it. Figures my actual brother would look like a guy that was like a brother.”

I frown and roll over to face him again. “You’re speaking past tense.”

“That’s because he’s no longer ‘like a brother.’ We don’t even speak.”

Michael’s voice leaves no room for discussion, but when has that stopped me? “Why not? What happened?”

“Drop it, Chloe.”

“But—”

“Chloe!”

I press my lips together. “Fine. I get it. You and Hercules here had a falling out. What about the girl?”

He rolls away from me.

“Michael?”

Nothing.

I reach out a hand to touch his arm, and he jerks away, exploding out of bed, unconcerned about his nakedness.

He snatches his boxers off the ground and angrily steps into them. Then he moves around to my side of the bed, yanks the picture from my fingers, and shoves it back in the drawer before rummaging around and chucking a ChapStick at me.

I pick it up. It’s plain. No fun flavor. Black wrapping that just says
ChapStick
. Guess he’s right. It really isn’t a beauty product.

I pull off the cap and put some on, not because I really need it, but because it gives me an excuse not to look at him.

I knew the guy wasn’t exactly an open book, and I wasn’t asking for his emotional diary or anything, but the fact that we could just share, well . . . rather phenomenal sex, and then he can’t even tell me about a picture in his nightstand?

“Did they die?” I ask bluntly.

“What?” he snaps, moving toward the kitchen.

“The people in the photo. Are they dead?”

“No, they’re not dead, Chloe,” he snaps, pulling down two glasses and filling them with tap water.

“Well, what am I supposed to think?” I snap back, when he returns and hands me one of the waters. I take it, but then set it on the nightstand untouched. “You practically exploded when I asked about them.”

“Because it’s not your goddamn business!” His face is pissed. “Haven’t I given you enough? I told you that Tim Patterson was my father, for Chrissake! You know how many people knew about that? Three. Me, my mom, and the man who raised me.”

I scoot across the bed away from him, taking the sheet with me. I tug and tug until it comes free of the mattress and then stand, wrapping it around me. No way is he getting another look at the goodies now.

Then I stand up straight and glare at him across the bed. “That’s not how friendship works. There’s not some sort of magical quota, or an exchange of information. You tell each other things. It’s what friends do.”

And I think we’ve firmly crossed the line into friends.

I don’t say that last part though. He’s already skittish as it is.

He shakes his head. “You ask for too much, Chloe.”

I hold the sheet with one hand, and run the other through my tangled hair, but it’s hopeless. I stop before my fingers get lost in the curls. “I didn’t mean to snoop, Michael. It’s just . . . you told me to go into your nightstand, and the picture was there. If it was some deep, dark secret, you should have stuck it under the mattress like a proper weirdo.”

For a second I think he might smile, but his lips flatten out, his eyes dead.

This is freaking ridiculous. I point at him. “I’m sort of assuming whatever happened with those two good-looking blond creatures is what’s turned you into a closed-off asshole, and I’m sorry about that.”

I blow out a breath and reconsider.

“Actually, you know what? I’m
not
sorry. Because you’re in control of your own life, Michael. You get to decide how you respond to whatever
that
is,” I say, making a circular hand gesture in the direction of the nightstand.

“What are you talking about?” He looks pissed.

“I mean that whatever life dealt you, you’re miserable about it because you’re
choosing
to be miserable.”

He says nothing, and I begin shuffling around in the sheet, trying to figure out where my panties went.

I find them, and bend down to retrieve them. Then my bra. I stand. “Turn around.”

He gives me a
really?
look, but complies, and I get dressed in record time.

“I’ll call a cab,” I say quietly.

He turns back around. “Does Cedar Grove have cabs?”

Good point. It doesn’t have many and it takes them
forever
to get to you.

“I’ll call my sister for a ride. No, wait.
Shit,
” I mutter. “She’s going out with girlfriends tonight. She’ll probably be wasted.”

“I’ll drive you home.”

“No, thanks,” I mutter, heading toward my purse and pulling out my phone.

“Who are you calling?”

“A friend.”

“I thought most of your friends live in Dallas or didn’t come home for the summer?”

I give him a sunny smile. “And you know how you know that, Michael? Because I
told
you. Because I
tell
you about my life. It’s what people who care about each other do.”

He throws his hands up in the air and makes an exasperated noise.

I start to type a text message.

“Who are you texting?” he snaps.

“Devon.”

He’s in front of me in three seconds, the phone ripped out of my hand. “No fucking way.”

I extend my hand and lift an eyebrow. “Phone.”

He glares. “I’m driving you home.”

“No.”

“You don’t get to crawl out of my bed to go slinking off to the one you really want to be with. No guy would tolerate that bullshit.”

I wiggle my fingers for my phone. “You’re acting like a Neanderthal.”

“You are not calling my brother.” His voice leaves no room for argument.

“Your
half
brother is always there when I need him—”

“No, he’s not, Chloe!”

My head snaps back in surprise, but he leans in on me. “Devon’s a good guy, but he does
not
feel the same way about you as you do about him. Get that through your head because it’s getting pathetic.”

My eyes water immediately.

He sees it and tilts his head back as though in agony. “Fuck!”

“Phone, please,” I say. I hate that my voice is small.

He keeps his eyes closed for several moments, and when they finally open they’re calm but completely devoid of emotion.

“Listen, because I’m going to say this once,” he says, his voice more gravelly than I’ve ever heard it. “The guy in the picture is named Ethan Price. He was my best friend since before I even had memories. The girl in the picture is Olivia Middleton. Another best friend. Former. She was Ethan’s girlfriend. Also former.”