Sheltered (7 page)

Turned-on
, her mind threw up. While she tried to ignore it.

It was just a kiss. He’d probably had a million of them before, and never felt all tingly about it. This was just business as usual for him—making out with some girl on the porch outside her house.

God, she’d actually started
making out
with someone. She knew she had, because making out was all about wrong, wicked feelings, and she seemed to be having a lot of them right at that moment. Every time his tongue slid over hers—all slippery and slow and amazing—a swell of pleasure surged up from between her legs.

Like a few nights before only better, because he was right there with her. She didn’t have to pretend or feel guilty about using him in some sort of fantasy dream way. He had a hand in her hair and she could feel him breathing hard and when she pressed close to him suddenly, he made a sound.

A sound, right into her mouth.

It did all sorts of things to her. She couldn’t even process most of them. She seemed to have grown nerves in about a hundred new places, and most of them were firing. Her nipples had stiffened, beneath the thankfully thick wool of her sweater.

But worst of all of these things was the burst of sensation between her legs. The one that seemed to be making her wet, so embarrassingly, incredibly wet over such a small thing, really, and oh she just had to stop it before he noticed.

Men could tell things like that, couldn’t they? He would know that she got all slick between her legs, he would know.

“Hold on. Just…hold on a second.”

He snapped away from her so quickly she didn’t even have time to switch thoughts. From
all slick
to something safer, before anyone noticed. Though it really wouldn’t have mattered, it wouldn’t have, if he hadn’t then said, “God, I can’t believe you.”

Embarrassment flooded her, automatically. Did men really and truly know when a girl got aroused? She took a breath and tried to calm herself down, because of course the theory was nonsense. Men couldn’t possibly know things like that.

But she’d still grabbed him, like a kiss-starved idiot. She’d put a hand in his hair and moved her mouth against his, while he probably did something like
struggle to hold down his vomit
.

And now she had to leave, immediately. Before things got worse. Before he accused her of being a face rapist or something.

“I have to…uh…go in the house now,” she said, because apparently her mind had gotten lost inside his mouth, and couldn’t come up with anything better than that. It wouldn’t even help her stand, either. She had to sort of haul herself up using the handrail, not quite making it to her feet but trying all the same.

“Evie—”

“I know, I know—it was awful. I shouldn’t have, I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“What? No—just sit down back again for a second. Come on, honey—stop trying to climb the handrail.”

He caught hold of her wrist, then her forearm, then her elbow. Reeled her back in like some babbling species of fish. Of course, once he’d done it she couldn’t look him in the face. His face would tell the truth. The gross, gross truth.

“It wasn’t awful. Unless you mean
you
thought it was awful, in which case, you should probably know I recently had a stud removed, and it’s really affecting tongue flexibility.”

She had to glance up, for
that
. Was he joking? His mouth said no, but his eyes said yes. So maybe…half-half?

“I didn’t think it was awful,” she said, while inside her head someone gasped the words,
His tongue can be
more
flexible than that
?

“Sure?”

“You were the one who snapped away from me.”

He rolled his eyes.

“Because you’re
stoned
.”

Man, he was crazy. First he accused her of handrail mountaineering, and now
this
.

“What? I’m not. I’m not.”

“You said
falled
.”

“
You
said it was right!”

He shrugged. Eyes still smiling, face still impossibly handsome.

“What do I know? I think tongue flexibility is an actual thing.”

She went to shove him and missed. Good thing, really. It was the sort of thing she knew she’d regret later, when all of her faculties returned.

“You don’t. You just said that because you’re so…massive.”

Of course, she knew that massive made no sense, in this context. But then neither did the first word her mind had chosen to slot into the gap. And if she’d actually gone with
hairy
, God only knew how total her humiliation would have been.

“My relative bigness aside, I can’t make out with you when you’re stoned. You know that, right?”

“I think I stopped knowing things about five minutes ago.”

“Really? And how does that feel?”

She closed her eyes, for just a brief moment. Reached for the nearest emotion inside her.

“Amazing.”

He didn’t say anything for a long, long time. So long that she started to suspect she’d said something mad again, like the
massive
comment. And though most of her wanted to open her eyes and find out, another part found it so very peaceful, behind her own eyelids. Everything felt foggy, and yet so clear at the same time. Everything was okay, in the land of Evie Bennett.

Or at least, it was until he spoke.

“
You’re
amazing.”

She opened her eyes immediately, just to see if his expression backed up those two terrifying words. But the minute she did so he turned his face away, and the mood shifted.

“I better go,” he said, too abrupt for her to process. Had he finally sensed all of her foggy thoughts about sex and his tongue and her own disobedient body? It seemed almost impossibly hard to tell.

“You can’t go like this. You’re…um…stoned,” she tried, though she wanted to say something else instead. Something like—
I didn’t mean those thoughts at all. I meant to think some other things, about flowers and ponies and happy rainbows.

I’m not like that, really.

“It’s cool,” he said, and that was the end of that. Or it would have been, if he hadn’t sort of canted to the left the moment he tried to get to his feet.

Seeing him do it made her stand too, though the results were pretty much the same. The world slid sideways, briefly, and nothing on her body seemed to be working right. Fog had infiltrated her limbs too, only it was a heavy sort of fog. A fog made out of anvils and black holes.

“No really—Van—” she started, but he didn’t let her finish.

Good thing, really, because once the words were out she had no idea how to cap them off. She needed someone like him to shut things down for good, and he did it very effectively with a simple, “Don’t say my name.”

“Sorry,” she said, but oddly it didn’t seem to please him. Or maybe not so oddly. Most people she knew were rarely satisfied with an apology.

“Just…” he said, and then hesitated. Lines had appeared between his brows, and it looked almost as though he wanted to reach toward her.
Almost.
“I’ll see you.”

She couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t even figure out what had gone wrong, exactly, to push them all the way down from pleasant conversation to
don’t say my name
.

After all,
he’d
been the one to bring up the idea of people being amazing. She hadn’t pushed it on him. Hadn’t acted as though he should find her sexually attractive, or something else similarly impossible.
He
was the one who’d started the whole thing, and now he seemed all bullish and awkward, trapped between the fence and the bulk of her body like a soldier in no man’s land.

“I’ll see you, Evie,” he repeated.

But she had the sneaking suspicion she wouldn’t be seeing him ever again.

He didn’t come the next week, or the next, and by the third she was sure she’d been right. He was never coming back. The kiss had disgusted him, and then she’d said his name like a lovesick moron, and doing so had sealed the deal.

So when he suddenly appeared by the fence on that third Wednesday, not casually waiting but standing there with his hands gripping the wood, eyes on the glass, she wasn’t immediately sure of what to do.

After all, if she went out there she’d have to actually probably speak to him about The Thing That Had Happened. And if she didn’t, he’d know she’d just stood there, watching him for a second, before pretending she hadn’t and disappearing back inside.

Both seemed unbearable. And that was before she’d even gotten into the dreams she’d been having—all more disgusting and explicit than that first one. If he could read desire on her face after one kiss and some tame fantasy about him having vague sex with her, then God only knew what he’d think now.

She’d dreamt about stroking him.
There.
She’d dreamt about his face opening up with pleasure, those pressed-tight lips of his parting to let her lick and touch and do all kinds of things. And sometimes in return, he would lick and touch and do all kinds of things to parts of her. Occasionally obvious parts, like her breasts.

Occasionally not so obvious parts, like between the cheeks of her ass.

She didn’t even know what to do with the latter. What did it mean? People didn’t lick each other there, did they? She felt pretty sure they didn’t but then again—she wasn’t even sure if one body part went into the orifice she actually assumed it did, never mind anything else.

It was probably better that he remained over there, really, when she thought about it. She could feel her cheeks heating just remembering some of her filthier thoughts, and if they came close to touching or even just brushed against each other she wasn’t sure what would happen.

Was dying of embarrassment a possibility? She didn’t know and felt glad she wouldn’t have to find out—though said relief didn’t last long. Because after a moment of her indecisive ridiculousness, he simply opened the gate and came right through. Walked up to the glass and made some sort of hand signal.

Let me in
she suspected, but that didn’t seem right somehow. It didn’t suit him. He’d been so careful before, so restrained. She couldn’t imagine him suddenly being forceful with her now.

And he proved her right, for once, because after a second he mouthed obvious words through the glass.

I’m sorry.
It jolted her more than the insistent hand gesture had. Mainly because she couldn’t recall anyone ever being sorry to her for anything, but also because of all the people she knew, he had the least to be sorry for.

What had he really done, after all? Not wanted to kiss her? Been a little gun-shy when it came to visiting her again? She couldn’t blame him for any of those things. He didn’t owe her anything.

What for?
she tried to mouth through the glass, but he obviously didn’t get it. He even put a hand up to his ear, which just made her act before they could get any deeper into bad sign language.

She pulled the door open and said what she wanted to most.

“You don’t have anything to be sorry about.”

He looked relieved for about a second, but that soon became the frown she now recognized. The one that sent a line of pain down his face.

“I didn’t mean to just take off like that.” She thought of him stumbling, telling her not to say his name. “And I didn’t mean to not come back either.”

“It’s okay. Really.”

He put a hand in his hair, restlessly, but he kept his steady gaze on her.

“It’s not okay. It was rude.”

“Hey—I understand. I was kind of like a maniac.”

“What—”

“And then I said your name all…
weird
and—”

He held up one big hand, stopped her mid-flow.

“Evie, no, no. That’s…not the situation. Have you spent the last three weeks thinking that was the situation?”

She tried to think of a way to say no.
No, I am not a fool who considered things in entirely the wrong way.
But of course in order to do that, she would have to know what the
right
way was.

“Sort of.”

His mouth made that mean line.

“That’s
awesome
.”

She had the distinct impression that it wasn’t awesome at all, but had no idea what to do about it. Apologizing seemed somehow redundant, in light of
his
apology. And telling him it didn’t matter wouldn’t work either, because she didn’t know what the mattering thing was.

So she went with something sort of neutral.

“Do you want to come in and talk?”

In the movies, people always came in and talked. However, once she’d said it his eyes got big and some weird naked thing happened to his face and then he blurted out some absolutely insane words.

Words she never thought she’d hear from the likes of him.

“See—this is the problem. You don’t even get where this is going. You can’t just ask me to come in, or kiss me, or tell me you want to know what smoking pot feels like. When I’m close to you I feel crazy, okay? When you say my name I feel crazy. It’s not…the right thing for you. I don’t think I can just…be your friend.”