Falling Into Us (18 page)

He rubbed it, and I began to move with his touch. His finger brushed and moved, and then swiped a little too hard, and I gasped. “Not so rough,” I whispered.

“Sorry,” he said, and started to withdraw his hand.

“No, don’t stop,” I said. “Just…be gentle.”

He feathered his finger against the nub, and I gasped, moaned, and moved again. I sounded like a woman to my own ears. Like Sookie in
True Blood
when she was with Eric. A word from some book I read floated through my mind:
wanton
. I sounded wanton, dirty. I giggled at the thought, but the laughter evaporated when he moved his finger in a tight circle and all I could do was moan again. His movements were slow and slightly clumsy, but I didn’t care. A little rough, but that was fine. The balloon inside me was burgeoning, stretched to a fullness that couldn’t be contained.
 

“Kiss me,” I whispered. He moved his mouth toward my lips, and I grinned, laughing breathlessly. “Not…there.” I pushed his head toward my breast. “Kiss me there again.”

He complied willingly, and I felt that tugging inside me, like there was a string connecting my breasts to my core, and his moving mouth and licking tongue and tugging lips were pulling at the string, unravelling something inside me. He was moving slowly, consistently, and I needed more.
 

“Faster.” I barely heard myself, and I don’t think he did at all. I said it louder, bolder. “Faster. P-please.”

His finger sped up, and I gasped, heard a whimper escape from my throat, and I felt my spine arch off the seat, heat flushing my body, sweat beading on my skin, my heart hammering. I couldn’t stop another moan from getting past my lips, and then faster wasn’t enough, more wasn’t enough, and I was thoughtlessly moving against his touch, gyrating hopelessly, lost in the moment.
 

Heat, pressure, lightning, motion, expansion… I didn’t have the right words for what swept through me. All thoughts stopped, and I was arched almost completely off the seat, trying to get closer, more, more, and I didn’t care how I sounded or how I looked or anything. There was no room for anything but the bomb going off inside me, like a star going nova low in my belly.
 

I think I might have made a really loud noise, and then I was limp and breathless, staring up at Jason, his vivid green eyes piercing me hot and sensual.

“God…that was…am-mmm-m-amazing,” I stammered, smiling up at him.

“Now you know what you did to me.”

I glanced at the clock on the dash.
 

1:48 a.m.

“Shit, you have to take me home,” I said, sitting up shakily, my every muscle still trembling.

He had me home by 1:59, and my father was waiting. Father had left most of the lights off, thankfully, so he didn’t seem to notice the brightness of my eyes, or the glow of my skin, or the mussed mess of my hair. Those are things I saw at least as I undressed for bed. I stared at myself in the mirror before I slipped a long T-shirt on over my naked body. I turned to one side, and then the other, posing, examining myself, trying to see what Jason saw.
 

I just saw me: five-foot-four, fluctuating between one hundred twenty pounds and one-twenty-five. Large breasts with wide, dark arolae and thick, pink nipples. Wide, curving hips and strong thighs, a flat midsection, dark, caramel-colored skin. Hair so black it was nearly blue, hanging past my shoulders in thick strands of coil-tight springs, impossible to manage. Eyes nearly the same color as my hair, a brown so dark they appeared black, my pupils all but indistinguishable from my irises. I had a bit of a sway to my back, making my ass look bigger than it really was.
 

Normally, when I looked at myself, I saw the sum of my flaws; now I saw myself a little differently. Now I saw my flaws as the sum of my beauty.
 

I slept deeply, and dreamed of Jason’s touch.

SEVEN: Falling Into Us

Jason

Two weeks later, the end of January

I was perched on the edge of the couch in Kyle’s basement, the wireless white Xbox controller slick in my grip from the last four hours of
Madden
,
Halo 3
, and
Call of Duty: Black Ops
. The girls were out doing their weekly manicure-pedicure-shopping-milkshakes thing, leaving Kyle and me alone on a cold, snowy Saturday afternoon with nothing to do but play video games.
 

I was in the process of whooping Kyle’s ass in
Madden
, my Chargers crushing his Vikings 48-14, when he glanced at me with an odd look in his eye.

“So…you and Becca.”
 

I shot him a “yeah…and…?” look.
 

“What about us?” I asked.

“Have you guys, like, hooked up yet?” He didn’t look at me as he asked, his tongue sticking out the side of his mouth.

I cursed as he made a touchdown, bringing it to 48-21. “Have you and Nell?” I shot back.

“Asked you first, dickhead.”

I didn’t answer until after I’d chosen my play. “Depends on what you mean by ‘hook up.’”

He smirked at me. “All the way. Hook up, not mess around.”

“Then no.”

“But you’ve messed around with her?” He was inching forward on the couch, then shot to his feet as my quarterback threw an interception, resulting in another Vikings TD, bringing him to 28 points.

I wiped my palms on the knees of my jeans and glanced at him. “Yeah, we’ve messed around a bit.”

He paused the game, and I knew the conversation was about to get serious. “Will you?”

“Will I what?”
 

He punched my bicep hard enough to make it sting. “Hook up with her?”

I set the controller on the coffee table in front of me and leaned back to put my feet up, thinking about how to answer Kyle’s question. “I don’t know. Possibly?”

He just laughed. “C’mon, Jase. This is me you’re talking to. Don’t bullshit me. Are you gonna sleep with her or not?”

I frowned at him. “Dude, don’t be an asshole. This is Becca, not some chick.
If
we do, I wouldn’t call it hooking up. That just sounds…I don’t know…cheap, I guess. Becca’s not cheap.”

He raised his hands in front of himself. “I wasn’t trying to say she was, man. I’m just curious, I guess.”

“What about you and Nell?”

It was his turn to shift on the couch, considering his answer. “We mess around, like, a lot. And at some point, I’m thinking we have to just make the decision to do it.”
 

“How do you feel about her?”

He snorted. “What, we’re gonna talk about our feelings now? Should we paint each other’s nails, too?”

I kicked his ankle. “Don’t be a dick. This isn’t the locker room, this is a private conversation. We’ve known each other almost as long as you’ve known Nell.”

He sighed. “I think I’m in love with her.” He pulled at a loose thread on a hole in the knees of his designer jeans. “If you laugh or make fun of me, I’ll kick your ass.” He glared at me in warning.

“I wouldn’t have asked if I was gonna give you shit about it, dude.” I dug my phone out of my hip pocket and checked for texts. “Have you told her how you feel?”

He shook his head. “Nope. Why is it I can say that shit to you, but if I think about saying it to her, I freeze?”

I laughed. “It’s scary, that’s for damn sure. Girls can get you all messed up. You know I’m gonna either understand or I’ll laugh at your sissy ass, in which case you’d try to kick my ass—”

“I wouldn’t have to try, I
would
,” he cut in.

“Yeah, whatever, pussy. You’d be crying like a baby by the time I was done with you.” I kicked out with my heel, knocking his feet off the coffee table. “My point is, with Nell you can only hope you know she feels the same way. There’s just no telling how she’ll react. I think that’s what makes it harder to talk about with her than with me. My heart was beating so hard I was sure she could hear it when I told Becca I loved her.”

“You told her?”
 

I nodded, feeling stupidly smug about it. “Yeah, man. Right after Winter Formal.”

“Did she say it back?”

I grinned. “Yeah.”
 

I think he must have caught the hints in the way I grinned. “What were you two doing when you said it to her?”

“You know that spot, up on the hill beneath the big oak, where we go to plink cans with my .22?” He nodded. “We were up there after everybody left Ram’s Horn.”
 

He lifted an eyebrow. “And?”

“It’s
real
nice having a truck with a bench seat.” I knew I had a shit-eating grin on my face.

“Come on, man. Don’t hold out on me.”

“This stays between you and me, Kyle. I’m serious.”
 

“No shit.”

“Remember the dress she was wearing for Winter Formal?”

He grinned and nodded. “She looked hot.”

“Well, I discovered she wasn’t wearing a bra beneath it.” My mind brought up the mental image of Becca beneath me, and I resisted the urge to shift positions. “She
was
wearing underwear, though.”

The silly grin on Kyle’s face told me he’d had a similar experience with Nell at some point. “I love those kinds of dresses.”

“Almost as much as I love yoga pants.”
 

“Whoever invented yoga pants
had
to have been a guy,” Kyle said.
 

“No shit. So you and Nell…?”

He shook his head. “Same as you. We’ve messed around, gotten pretty close, but we haven’t had sex yet.”

“But you’re going to.”

He nodded without looking at me. “Yeah, we will. Not sure when or where yet, but yeah. I know she wants to, and I know I do, obviously.”

“Obviously.” I smirked at him. “Have you gotten
all
her clothes off?”

He shook his head. “Not all of them all at once, no. I’ve seen all of her at one point or another, but it’s always been with other clothes on.”

“Have you made her…you know…” I trailed off, not sure how to put it without sounding either stupid or like a tool.
 

Kyle wasn’t going to let me off that easy, though. He wanted to see me squirm. “Have I made her what?”

“Have you made her come?” I said it in a rush, staring at my thumbnail, knowing I was blushing like a little boy.

Kyle’s grin was equal parts shit-eating and embarrassed. “No, we haven’t gone quite that far yet. I think we’re both kind of afraid if we let it go that far, we won’t stop.” He gave me a curious look. “Why, have you?”

I nodded, looking down at my feet. “Yeah.”

“What was it like?” He sat forward.

“It was fucking awesome,” I said, laughing. “It was like watching her just…lose it. It was cool.”

“How’d you…you know…get her to…make her—” He obviously couldn’t say it, which made me laugh.

“I honestly don’t know. You just touch her in the right place, and you can tell she likes it. Keep doing that, and eventually she’ll just…” I shrugged, grinning awkwardly.
 

“Touch her…down there?” He seemed eager and awkward. I felt odd talking about, explaining it, telling him about something I’d done and he hadn’t.
 

I nodded. “Yeah.” I laughed with self-deprecation. “I honestly had no fucking clue what I was doing. I was just…trying to figure out what she liked, and then she was going crazy.”

“Did she scream?” Kyle asked.

I could only nod, remembering. “Yeah. Pretty loud. I don’t think she meant to. Good thing we were in the middle of nowhere.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “What about you?”

“What about me?” I asked, even though I knew exactly what Kyle was asking.

“Has she…have you—” He cut himself off and grabbed a coaster off the coffee table and hurled it at my head. “You know what I’m asking, you fucker.”

I laughed and swatted the coaster away. “Yeah, I know. And yeah.” That was as much as I’d say.

“But you haven’t actually done it, though?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Aren’t you guys worried you’ll go too far?”

I frowned at him. “Dude, it’s…it’s not like that. It’s not something that you can just go ‘whoops, I slipped!’ You get carried away, yeah, but you can’t, like,
accidentally
take off all your clothes and
accidentally
have sex. I mean, once you start crossing physical lines, in terms of how far you go, it’s pretty much impossible to go back, though. I’ll tell you that much.” I cracked my knuckles, and then tossed my phone in the air and caught it. “I mean, at first, just holding her hand and kissing her was exciting, right? And then once you know how awesome kissing is, you want to keep doing that. Then, once she lets you touch her a little bit, then you want to kiss her
and
touch her. Outside the clothes at first, right? And then once you feel her skin, it’s…touching her on the bra isn’t enough.”

Kyle nodded his understanding. “That’s what I’m saying. You just want to keep going further.”

“Yeah, but going from making out and, like, groping or whatever, to actually having sex? I personally don’t think you can just ‘end up’ doing that. Just my opinion.”

The conversation drifted after that, but I could see the wheels in Kyle’s head whirling, much as they were in my own. For all that what I’d said to Kyle was true, Becca and I had been skirting the fine line between “messing around” and “having sex,” and I knew we had to either slow down or go all the way. We couldn’t keep up the balancing act much longer.

The fact was, I’d imagined what sex with Becca would be like, and I wanted it. Badly. And I was pretty damn sure she felt the same way.

*
 
*
 
*

Becca

 
I stared at the foil packet of pills in my hand, my emotions a roller-coaster within me. I’d had my cousin Maria take me to a clinic to get birth control, which was, honestly, one of the most frightening experiences of my life. Sitting in that waiting room, then sitting on the crinkly-paper-covered table/chair, getting examined…ugh. All of it taken individually wasn’t too bad, but knowing I was doing it with the intention of having sex with Jason, and knowing the doctor knew? I was so nervous I could barely breathe, barely swallow my own saliva.