Return of the Bad Boy (12 page)

I stiffen. “What?”

“Couple times. I wanted to tell you I made a mistake. I stood outside your dorm. Each time I chickened out.”

“You came to my dorm?” I squeak out in surprise. All this time we were in Boston, he never said he’d been there before. “Really? I kept wishing you would show up. I wanted you to, Dax.”

He tilts his head back to the sky. “I keep letting you go, and you keep coming back. And last night I got to thinking there’s a reason for it. That you’re meant to be here, with me.”

I nod, tears pricking my eyes. “I was always doing what everyone wanted me to do. Not what
I
wanted. Even at school, the more I kept going down that path, the more I wished I’d told my parents what I wanted, then.”

“What did you want, Katydid?” he asks softly.

I reach behind me, my fingers tangling with his. “You. I’ve always wanted you.”

A slow smile spreads across his face. “Well, you have me now. What are you going to do with me?”

I grin. “I’m sure I can think of something.”

He takes a hold of the silky fabric of my camisole and gently tugs me toward him. “Get up here, girl.”

“Wait,” I say.

“Yeah?” he asks, brow creasing.

“I just need to ask. That blond girl from the bar—“

He shakes his head, a crooked grin turning into a laugh. “No way, Katie. She aint my type. Not even close. I got shitfaced and went home, passed out for a while and then called you. That’s it.”

I scramble up and throw my leg over his body, straddling him. My skirt rides up, exposing the V of my red lace underwear. “Promise me that this is real?” I whisper.

He watches this intently, then presses a finger right into my slit through the fabric. I’m already wet, my body aching for him, so I squirm closer to his touch. He lets out a groan. “The realest thing I ever felt.”

I start to wiggle on top of him, feeling his erection pressing against me, sending fireworks straight up to my core. I hike up my skirt and put a finger on the strap on either hip. “I can take them off.”

“No,” he murmurs, his fingers sliding across my wet slit, making me squirm against him. I reach for his belt buckle, undoing his belt and the snap of my jeans. “I like them. Keep them on. He puts his head back and stares up at the sky. “You gonna ride me, girl?”

I nod, biting my lower lip as I unzip his fly and pull his jeans open.
I think.
I slide down his boxers and his cock springs free. “Condom?” I ask.

He motions to his pocket.

I reach in and pull it out, rolling my eyes. “You were totally planning this.”

He gives me that trademark innocent-mischievous look I can’t get enough of. I tear open the condom and hold his cock up erect. He rests his weight on his elbows and watches me intently, a sly smile on his face. “You ever done this before?”

I nod, intently squeezing the tip and settling it down over his cock, sliding it over his sheath. “Sex Ed. Banana,” I explain, rolling it down to the base, then proudly inspecting my handiwork. “This good?”

He grins. “That was one lucky banana. You good?”

I nod, pushing into place on my knees until I’m directly over his cock. I lift it and position it at my entrance, then slowly slide down onto it. And there it is, that fullness, that amazing feeling that tells me I’m home.

He sits up, pulls off his t-shirt, and takes my mouth in a hot, demanding kiss. “Fuck, Katie. Never thought I’d be here again.”

“I did,” I whisper, laying my chin on his shoulder as the insects buzz around us. “We belong together, Dax.”

“Yeah,” he admits, reaching under my camisole to cup my breast. “We do.”

I lift up onto my knees, push aside the barely-there fabric of my thong, lowering myself down onto him,
riding him
as he buries his face in my neck. I lift up, pausing with him just barely inside me, hovering there, letting him groan in frustration. His hands slide around me, cupping my ass, begging me to push down again.

Then I do, hard, so hard I feel him nearly in my throat. He lets out a groan.

“Fuck, girl. Ride me like that,” he says, in a voice not even a whisper. He lifts me, lowering me, until I get into a deep rhythm, and then he lets me go. “You’ve got it. Do your own thing. Whatever feels good.”

So I do. Fully stretched by his cock, I slide myself back and forth on him, rubbing my clit against his skin. I bounce up and down, my hard nipples rubbing against his bare, hard chest through my tank top. That, and the cool, dewy morning air on my skin is enough to set every inch of me into a state of overdrive. It’s almost too much arousal. Soon I’m on my way to completely lost, tossing aside all inhibitions, building to that point where nothing else matters but sensation. We tangle our hands through each other’s hair and grasp for each other desperately, and soon I’m screaming out his name. We come together, at once, our bodies pressed together, panting and trembling.

“Damn girl,” he says. “This, here? It’s my favorite place on Earth.”

I laugh. “Then let’s not move.”

So we don’t. At least, not right away. We stay that way for what seems like forever, until my legs are numb. I peel myself off him and collapse amidst the grass and dandelions.

He looks over at me, grinning from ear to ear. “I didn’t bring you out here to do that,” he says sheepishly.

“That’s okay.
I
did,” I tease, smiling smugly at his astonished expression. “What can I say? I love your cock.”

“I love
you,
Katydid,” he murmurs, bringing my hand to his lips and kissing it as we lie together, staring up at the bright blue sky.

W
e ride back
to with Dax’s hand resting in its proper place on my thigh and both of us sporting shit-eating grins on our faces. I’ve been drunk before, but I’ve never felt so high. I’ve always been scared about the future. But this time, for once, I’m excited about the possibilities.

He tells me that when the offer is accepted he wants to begin work on the place right away, and try to open sometime in the early fall. He’s talking a mile a minute about his plans, and I realize it’s the way he is whenever he’s around a car he loves. But even so, I’ve actually never seen him
quite
this excited.

“My parents sold their house,” I tell him. “They’re closing at the end of August. I was thinking of getting an apartment in town, maybe near the bar.”

“Above Murphy’s?” he says. “Fuck that. That’s no place for my girl. Why wouldn’t you just stay with me in my apartment?”

My girl?
I smile, about to have a heart attack for the second time that day. That’s almost as astonishing as him telling me he loved me. “Because you never asked me to?”

He grins. “I’m asking you. Damn, girl. Stop waiting for me to ask if you want something. Just take it. Like I said, you own me. I’ll give you everything I have and then get you anything I don’t have yet.”

Oh, hell, that invitation is like a thousand birthday parties, all rolled into one. Except that the only thing I want is him, and I want it forever. I shiver once again and the thought of his cock buried deep inside me and say, “I’m kind of hungry. I didn’t have breakfast.” Or dinner last night, or lunch yesterday afternoon. In fact, that sesame bagel I stole from Fowler was my last meal.

But the truth was, for the past day, I’ve only had an appetite for Dax. But now that that’s sated, if only for a little while, I feel ravenous.

“Why didn’t you say so?” He hooks a right into the Denny’s—the one restaurant Friesville has— and pulls the truck into a spot in the crowded lot. I push open the heavy door. I’m already tasting the Grand Slam breakfast I’ll be having when I realize that Dax is sitting behind the wheel, frozen with his hand on his seat belt clasp.

“What?” I ask, giving him a playful nudge. “Come on, I’m starving.”

“You want to go somewhere else?” he asks quickly, but it’s too late. I’m already following his line of vision past the windshield, across the lot to a Jeep parked a couple rows over, in the back of the lot. It’s my dad’s. He rides the Wrangler in the summer with the top down and what little hair he has left blowing around. I’m about to wonder aloud why he’s here when I see a head with long, shiny dark hair in the passenger’s seat.

At first I think I made a mistake. It’s just another army-green Wrangler that looks very like my dad’s. But then I crane my head a little to get a better look at the driver. It’s my father’s same, sandy windblown hair, my father’s same ruddy face that begs for SPF in the sun, the same mirrored sunglasses he wears everywhere. He’s talking to the mystery woman very animatedly, smiling a toothy smile that was missing the entire week I spent at the house.

Then he reaches over, locks the woman in an embrace, and they begin to make out.

My whole body rockets off the seat. I’m going to be sick. Dax is already trying to pull away, but I push open the door with the truck in motion, causing him to slam on the brakes and the truck to lurch forward.

“What the fuck?” I shriek as I jump from the cab of the truck and stomp past the rows of cars toward the Jeep.

“Wait, Katie!” Dax is calling from behind me, but I don’t pay attention. I stalk forward, watching my father going at it with a girl I’ve already determined to be a floozy of the first order. He has his hands in her hair and they’re completely oblivious to me stalking up to them until I reach through the opening and shove his shoulder.

He jumps sky high. “Katie!”

“What the fuck, dad?” I scream at him. People in the lot turn to look at us, but I don’t care. “Is she why you and mom are getting a divorce? Her?”

He holds out his hands. “Katie, I was going to explain—“

“When?” I shout incredulously. “I was home for a week and you never told me anything!”

He pats the air in front of him, trying to get me to calm down. “Look. This is Patsy. I’m not moving to Colorado like I said. Patsy and I are getting married as soon as the divorce is through, and we’ll be living here.”

I stare at him in horror. “How long have you been doing this?”

He presses his lips together, so I know the answer isn’t one I’ll want to hear. “Since last summer,” he finally admits.

I explode. “So a whole fucking
year?”
I snort. “
Sure
you were going to tell me.”

He’s speaking softly and rationally, like he usually does whenever something other than Dax Harding is the topic of conversation. It’s so false, so fake. Everything about him is just phony. “Look. Calm down, Katie. I never wanted to hurt your mother. But this just happened . . .”

Just happened? Hell no, I won’t be calm. I refuse to. After everything he’s had with my mom, he’s going to throw it away for . . . this? I study the woman, who’s looking genuinely sorry for me, as if she played no part in tearing my world apart. Pathetic. I can see what men see in her—she’s young, probably not much older than I am, and pretty—but I never thought my own dad would be taken in by that. I never thought he would be one of those cheating, home wrecking low-down assholes. He was one of the few good guys. I had him on a pedestal, and now it’s crumbling before me. Mom was
mom.
His one love. They were a team.

I open my mouth to say something. But nothing comes out. Instead, I stifle a sob and hang my head. I think of everything I’ve ever done, running away to Boston, all those years of school. For him. To please him and live up to
his
expectations and dreams for me.
My daddy.

“Oh, Katie,” my father says, sorrowfully. “I—“

I yank my head up. “No! Don’t say another word. All this time you’re lecturing me about what a big mistake I’m making with Dax? Well, it turns out you don’t know a fucking thing about relationships, if you think
this--”
I wave my hand and the woman in the passenger’s seat “—is a good idea.”

I grab Dax’s hand and make sure my father can see that I’m with him, that we’re together. “This is what a good man looks like, Dad. He’s smart and loyal as hell, which you’d have known if you’d just taken the chance to get to know him. But you were more concerned with being a phony snob then what truly makes me happy.”

My father runs his eyes over him, the same distaste leaking from them. But whereas a week ago, that kind of disapproval would have torn at my heart, now it does nothing.

He’s wrong.

My father is one-hundred-percent, totally wrong. About everything, it turns out.

“I thought you were everything,” I sob. “Everything I did, I wanted to make you happy. But Dax is a million times the man you are. You pretended to put me and Mom first, but it was a lie. Dax actually did put me first, and now that I know the truth, I’ll never fall for your lies again.”

My father’s face is ruddy, stricken. Before, I’d do anything to keep that look from his face. Now, I’m numb to it.

Dax wraps an arm around me and leads me back to the truck. I’m sobbing, oblivious to everything around me, but it’s all crystallizing in my mind. Why my mother looked as him as if she hated him. Why she told him he had no business lecturing me about Dax. Why she couldn’t stand to be in the same room as him. My stomach is suddenly twisted in knots and I can’t breathe.

I’m not sure what happens during the next few minutes. All I know is that I end up at Dax’s house. He lifts me gently out of the cab of the truck and carries me up to his bedroom, where he places me on the bed and holds me close, letting me sob against his t-shirt until it’s soaked through. He doesn’t say a word at first, but he doesn’t have to. He just doesn’t leave, and that turns out to be all I need.

I fall asleep in his arms, and have nightmares of my father and the dark-haired woman, driving away from my mother and me. When I wake, he’s sitting on a chair across from me. “Hey,” he says. “We missed breakfast. You still hungry?”

I wrinkle my nose. No, I’m nauseated.

He sits down on the edge of the bed. “You want to talk about it?”

I shrug. “What’s there to talk about? My dad is a hypocritical asshole of the first degree. You saw that yourself. Everything I believed was a lie.”

“True. But don’t go too hard on him, Katydid,” he says. “It’s like, we’re all born thinking our parents can do no wrong, right? But sooner or later we find out that they’re human. I learned that lesson when I was six, when my dad came in drunk and smacked me across the face, and broke my tooth. Your dad kept up the illusion for twenty-two years. My hats off to him. He had a damn good run.”

How can he be so understanding and kind after the way my father treated him these past few years? I have to let out a little laugh, because I realize that character shows in time.

My father has shown his character, and Dax, one again—is showing what he’s made of. And it’s pretty good stuff.

“Was I just stupid?” I sigh.

“Nah. All it means that as far as parents go, you’ve got pretty good ones,” he says, smoothing my hair behind my ear. “And I saw that look in your eye, girl. Don’t do nothing stupid like disown him because of this, okay? Give it some time.”

Truthfully, I had been thinking of sending my father a strongly worded letter, telling him what an asshole he was and that I never wanted to see him again. I swallow and decide that maybe Dax is right. I need to think on it some more. I nod. “I think I am hungry, actually,” I tell him. “Do you have anything here? I don’t really want to go out.”

He stands. “You’re in luck. I just went shopping and the mutants haven’t raided the pantry yet. Bacon and eggs?”

I nod, my mouth watering, and manage a smile. He cooks, too? How did I get so lucky?