Earning the Cut (Riding the Line Series, Prequel) (3 page)

He was embarrassed that they had taken him down, but as his vision cleared, he knew he wasn’t seriously injured. In fact, compared to the other beatings he had taken, this one was pretty mild. “Yeah. I’ve seen worse.”

“Wh-what do you mean?!” She stared at him, genuine concern shining in her eyes mirrored by…tears?

“Are you crying?” he ground out, testing his ribs by turning side to side.

“Well, of course I’m crying, Daxter Jamison!”

“Over me?” he whispered softly, wonder and disbelief evident in his voice.

She stared at him for a timeless moment, and then suddenly, everything changed. Dax didn’t have to wonder if Trisha Wagner liked him any longer. No, the way she felt became pretty obvious when she threw herself into his arms right there on the dirty sidewalk, her soft breasts pressing into his chest. Then, her lips were brushing his, as gentle as a butterfly’s wing. Every ache and every pain dissolved beneath the feeling of her mouth on his own. He could taste the sweet honey of her breath and smell the salty tang of her tears. It was his first kiss, and it was magical.

***

That was how her father found them. Entwined on the sidewalk, engaged in a carnal embrace. It wasn’t a good first impression. The blood on his hands probably didn’t help.

“Trishelle Marie Wagner! What the hell are you doing with that boy?!”

Her father was tall, and he looked pretty angry, but nothing could dissuade Dax from the explosion of love in his chest and the near-explosion of something else in his pants. Still, he had seen the look on Mr. Wagner’s face before. It was a look of barely-disguised disgust. The man looked him up and down as he rushed to them and helped Trish to her feet. She seemed reluctant to detach from him, but the frosty glare from her father compelled Dax to give Trisha a gentle push in his direction. She went, casting him a worried glance over her shoulder. Dax slipped into the shadows as soon as her back was turned.

***

Following a long, relieving shower that evening, Dax took a good look at himself in the mirror. He was taller than most of the boys at school. He wasn’t sure of his exact height, but he figured he was approaching six feet. His mother, whose image was permanently burned into his early memories no matter how hard he tried to erase it, was petite. So, his father must have been tall. He had seen a picture of his father once, but he had been sitting on a motorcycle, so it was hard to tell how tall he was. Dax stared at himself critically, taking in the series of scars on his forearms and chest. They were a roadmap of his life and the abuses he had suffered. He knew that the ones on his back were worse. At least he couldn’t see those. Maybe someday, he’d cover them up somehow.

Dax had inherited his mother’s white-blond hair and blue eyes. His hair was kind of spiky and unruly. He kept it a little long so that the length would prevent it from sticking out every which way. His chin was covered in light blond stubble, and he rubbed it absently. He was a skinny, half-grown kid from the wrong side of life. Was he good enough for Trish? He already knew he wasn’t good enough for her family. Dax sighed. Maybe it would be better to just stay away. As it turned out, his noble intentions did nothing to prevent their relationship…or the heartache that it eventually caused him.

***

The Bodeckers didn’t give birthday gifts but each kid got a cake with candles. Dax wasn’t looking forward to the singing and attention. He was seventeen now. One more year to figure out what he was going to do after he aged out of foster care. His birthday had never been special. In fact, most often, it had been forgotten. He recalled the first time he realized that birthdays were supposed to be a big deal. It was first grade. Jimmy’s mommy brought cupcakes and everyone sang. Later, they did a craft where students cut out and decorated a cake with candles and wrote in their birthday for the wall. Dax was the only student who didn’t know his own birthday.

The memories made him feel angry and resentful, but he smiled mechanically, blew out his candles, and ducked out with a lame excuse that he had to go to the library. An hour later, he and Trish were at school of all places. Underneath the football bleachers. Seeing her was the best gift he could have asked for. When she lifted her sweater over her head and unbuttoned her bra, his mouth went dry.

“You don’t have to do this…”

“Dax, I-I want to,” she explained shyly.

Gingerly, he brought his shaking teenaged hands to the first set of tits he had ever laid eyes on. He brushed his thumbs over her nipples, his hands somehow knowing instinctively to be gentle, then insistent. He palmed her breasts, hefting them in his hands, feeling her nipples harden, hearing her gasp with surprise and delight. He looked at her, questioningly, and at her nod of assent, he took one rosy peak into his warm mouth, tasting the bud with his tongue. He was startled at the low moan that wafted to his ears, and he brought his head up to look at her.

“Was that okay?”

“Oh, God, Dax…please do that again.”

Her voice was husky as she pulled his head down to her breasts. Dax was dizzy with emotion and physical yearning. He paused briefly, trying to remember if anyone had ever touched him this way, with love and longing rather than anger. He was so hard it hurt but he focused on her soft, breathy moans as he trailed kisses from her collarbone down to her nipples, then slowly ran his tongue to her navel. Dax was on fire, and his hands moved of their own accord, demonstrating the sexual dominance that was coming to life in his teenaged body. He touched her with a kind of male certainty, listening to her sounds and paying close attention to her body’s response to his touch. Before he knew it, he was rubbing between her thighs, feeling the damp heat that emanated from her core. Her legs fell open, and as he suckled her nipple rhythmically into his mouth, pressing the heel of his palm urgently into her through her leggings, she stiffened, and cried out his name.

He stopped immediately, breathing hard, his erection throbbing painfully with his need for his own release. “I-I’m sorry…”

“Jesus!” she panted. “Don’t be sorry!” Trish peeked at him from beneath her heavily-fringed lashes. “Um, it’s your birthday but you gave me a gift. I never, um, did that before.”

He smiled, a lazy, lop-sided grin that would later make all manner of hearts break. “So I made you, uh-”

“Come. You made me come. For the very first time,” she admitted. “Now,” she looked meaningfully at the obvious bulge in his jeans. “What are we going to do with that?”

Dax swallowed hard. He didn’t want to force her to do anything she wasn’t comfortable with, and Trish said she had never seen a guy’s thing. Trish nodded at his desperate, questioning look, then waited expectantly as he knelt over her and slowly unzipped his jeans. At the time, Dax didn’t know that he was, well, big. Neither did Trish. They had nothing to compare him to. But it didn’t matter. Her eyes grew wide as he sprang out, fully erect, a pearly drop glistening on the tip of his virgin cock.

He didn’t last long. When her small fingers wrapped around the hot, hard flesh and moved experimentally up and down, he gasped aloud, and a minute later, shot his load all over her hand. He grunted his pleasure, first embarrassed and then surprised as Trish, smart, beautiful Trish, grinned at him devilishly and licked her fingertips before wiping her arm on the grass.

So began a whirlwind teenaged romance that lasted all the way to senior year. They were young, certainly, but they were in love.

***

Dax had never pictured himself at prom. He had never pictured himself as an athlete either, but with Trish’s encouragement, he had reluctantly tried out for the surf team. Even though his secondhand board was waterlogged and full of imperfectly sealed cracks in the fiberglass, he was secretly pleased that he excelled at the sport. Darling had some decent waves but it was a long walk down a steep cliff very early in the morning to catch them. A few of the rich boys were on the team, but as he later found out, they weren’t so square. They would head out before dawn to catch an early morning session at the cove, and then spark up a couple of doobies on the way to class. A quick shower, and some Visine, and no one was the wiser. The weed calmed Dax; it enabled him to blot out the blatant insults and ribbing from the other jocks. If Trish noticed, she never said anything.

Dax didn’t expect to like surfing. He had never really spent time on a beach. But, he found that he liked the sand beneath his bare feet and the sound of the water. Surfing was a strange kind of therapy for Dax. He liked the quiet that surrounded him when he paddled out, and the lonesome tranquility that permeated his soul when he waited for a set. He was alone out there, but he was one with some kind of energy that hummed through his body and mind. When he harnessed it, catching a wave with fluid grace, and riding it, he felt a peace he had never known. And when the water was choppy or rough, and he was tossed around like a ragdoll, he was able to truly let go, letting the elements take him for a ride, knowing that only the ocean knew where he would end up.

He got held down pretty good one time, but he didn’t panic, he just went limp, letting the powerful, heavy wave thrash his body until everything started to go white, then black. When he finally surfaced, heaving for breath, strangely exhilarated, he could hear the assistant coach calling his name as a lifeguard swam frantically to him. He was puzzled by their concern and somewhat frightened by his own desire to see what lay beneath the murky gray waters, beyond the darkness. After that day, there was a kind of camaraderie with the other guys on the team. A couple of them even started nodding at him in the hallway, and high-fiving him after a good session. It was odd, but for the first time, he felt like he belonged at school.

Senior year was his golden year. Dax had grown a few more inches and had started to fill out a bit. Oddly, he started noticing appreciative glances coming from girls. Well, not just girls, but women too. Even some of his teachers were reacting to him in a different way. Dax couldn’t put his finger on it, but the little half-smiles and giggles he received from some of the female faculty seemed so wrong but so right at the same time. The attention didn’t go to his head, it just made him more aware of himself as a, well, a man. Due to his height and build, he supposed he looked older than he was, but he was still a kid in one way…he and Trish hadn’t done the deed. Everything but, but not that last thing, that thing that really made you a man.

Dax let out a low hiss, wondering for the millionth time what it would feel like to have a girl beneath him, or on top of him even. He had seen dirty mags, of course, there were some stashed in the boy’s locker room. God, Trish was beautiful…there. Something about her scent and her taste drove him wild. He spent hours exploring her with his tongue, reveling in her breathy little moans and sighs, glorifying in that hot, wet rush that meant he had taken her to the moon and back. She was small, and so tight. He had felt the evidence of her virginity with his fingers, and even though she begged him to take her right there under the bleachers, he wanted her first time to be special. His too.

Groaning, Dax pushed the carnal thoughts from his head and tried desperately to focus on his Spanish class. His teacher, Senora Seville, gave him a knowing glance and another one of those funny little half-smiles before turning abruptly back to whatever she was reading on her desk. He felt himself flush as he sneaked a peek around the room. Where all the guys this horny all the time? Dax felt like he was going to explode. How the hell was he supposed to concentrate like this! Ruefully, he eyed the bulge in his pants, willing his erection to subside.
Down, boy!
Penis control….something I gotta get a handle on!

***

She wanted it as much as he did. Why else would she have risked her father’s wrath to sneak out of the house in the dead of the night? For the umpteenth time, Dax wondered if the scenario he had planned would feel special enough to finally go all the way. It was funny, but he supposed he was some kind of closet romantic. Maybe he was wise beyond his years, or maybe it was the fact that none of the other milestones in his life had been celebrated, but he really wanted this particular milestone to be something they both remembered…forever. At any rate, Dax was positive that no other horny high school kid would have cared so much about the setting, and it was starting to drive his girlfriend crazy.

“Dax, I
want
you! These details, I mean, they’re sweet, but it’s me and you! No matter where we do, it will be awesome. I can’t wait much longer!”

Trish had celebrated her birthday the weekend before. Her family had taken her shopping and out to dinner. He hadn’t seen her at all, but he certainly didn’t expect an invitation. He had no money and no car, but he hoped he could still offer Trish a decent gift by getting creative. The night was perfect for it too. It was warm and quiet, with a gentle breeze that was just enough to ruffle your hair.

Dax pushed his hand through his spiky, white-blond hair awkwardly. He waited on the bench, his palms sweaty, wondering if she’d had the nerve to sneak out and the grace to get away with it. The closest bus to her house was still nearly a mile away, at the foot of the steep hill that wound up and over the rest of the town. Luckily, Trish had always been a good girl. There was no reason for her parents to suspect she wasn’t in her room studying or asleep. Dax checked his watch. The last bus came at 11:00 p.m. If she didn’t get there soon, his whole plan would turn to shit.

Headlights glowed in the distance and he sighed. He had been half hard for days with anticipation. Just as the bus pulled up and the doors opened, Trish materialized beside him, a grin on her angelic face.

“You look too sweet to be sneaking out, darlin,’” he grinned, unable to keep the smile off of his face. She looked good. So good. In her light blue sweatshirt, dark jeans, and her hair pulled off of her face, Trish was so freaking hot. Dax felt his heart clench in his chest.
What did I do to deserve her?!

“I wouldn’t miss this for the world,” Trish responded breathlessly. Her cheeks were rosy and the shy, yet eager look on her face belied her excitement.