He led me across the sand and into the crowd of couples. This time, no mean girls gave my blue hair the evil eye. These girls were very intent on the boys they were with. More feeling up was going on than dancing.
I hoped John and I would fit right in for once. He put his arms around me, bent over with his chin resting on my shoulder, and swayed with me. As the song progressed, he slipped his hands to my waist and moved them slowly up my sides. So far so good. If his hands made it another inch, he'd be touching my boobs.
The next slow song started. Surely this would prove to be the boob song. But wait a minute. He skipped over my boobs to stroke the sensitive skin on the undersides of my arms. It certainly was titillating, but it wasn't the good old-fashioned feeling-up I wanted.
I wondered why he didn't touch my boobs. Maybe he was afraid I had Stockholm Syndrome after all, the kind where your captor makes your arms tingle. Maybe he was afraid of taking advantage of me. Or maybe I had read him completely wrong all this time. He liked me as a friend and didn't want to touch my boobs.
"Why don't you touch my boobs?"
He took his chin off my shoulder and looked at me. "Here?" He glanced around at the other couples. "Because we're not drunk."
"Right." I tried not to sound disappointed. But the air was charged with sex, positively sparkling with it. It didn't seem fair for us to be the sober ones and the pristine ones.
"And it's not very original." He hooked his thumbs on either side of the waistband of my jeans, and slowly, slowly dragged his thumbs across my skin until they touched in front, just below my belly button.
Oh, God. He didn't put his hands any farther down my pants, but there was no question now of what he wanted. And he kissed me exactly as I had kissed him in the car: along my jaw, then back toward my ear.
I should have been more careful what I wished for. The claustrophobic feeling crept up on me at the same time I opened and grew hotter for John. It was the best and the worst at once, and it was going to tear me apart. I couldn't stand it much longer. God, I wished I didn't feel this way. I wished I was a different person. But I would not get trapped in our town for the rest of my life. Not even for John. We needed to get this over with.
"Are you ready to go?" I whispered.
"You're not enjoying your spring break?" he murmured before he gently bit my earlobe.
"I am, very much. But if we left now, when we got back I'd still have a couple of hours alone with you before work."
He pulled me through the crowd so fast that I got the giggles. Yes, everything would work out perfectly. We would have a one-night stand. And then, as long as I skipped Rashad's party, wore my helmet when I rode my motorcycle, and managed to stay away from the bridge until I moved to Birmingham in June, I would never see John again.
*
I did get some sleep in the truck on the way back, despite his hand softly stroking my shoulder. I think he meant it to be soothing, but of course any part of me he touched leapt to life.
I was so beat that I slept anyway. And had wild dreams about him on the dark beach.
The truck lurched over a bump. I sat up. We'd reached Chilton County, still about twenty minutes from home. Looming over the interstate was the water tower shaped like a giant peach. Or a giant ass, depending on how sleepy you were.
I lay back down on the seat with my head on his thigh, like before. But this time, I couldn't help myself. My hand slid up the inside of his hard thigh. I didn't quite dare, because I didn't want him to tell me no. But I got very close to touching The Place Prisoners Should Not Touch Policemen.
His breath caught. I thought he was going to pick up my hand and move it back to my side of the car, where it belonged.
He didn't.
I never really went back to sleep after that. I was so alive with thoughts of what I was going to do to him, and what he was going to do to me.
At least I thought I didn't go back to sleep. But his door slammed, and I started up. We'd already stopped at his apartment complex. He walked around to my door and opened it, bracing his big body inside the frame. "You're too tired for this," he said gently. "Come inside and sleep."
Drat, he was trying to get out of it. At least he wasn't offering to take me home.
I shook my head. There was no way I was going to miss this. Scooting to the edge of the seat, I wrapped my legs around his hips and pulled him into a full-body embrace. I ran my fingers through his short hair, pressed his head down to mine, and kissed him.
And then he took charge.
Oh. My. God. He kissed exactly like I thought he would. Slowly. Thoroughly. Styled for her pleasure.
And I'd been dead wrong when I thought he might not like me after all. I could tell from the way his hands grasped my hair and trembled on the back of my neck that he wanted this as much as I did.
When we pulled back to breathe, he guided me out of the car and up the stairs. Our footsteps echoed against the other apartment buildings. It was about four in the morning. Even the hum of traffic on the interstate had quieted.
He unlocked the door and held it open for me as I walked into the dark living room. Then he closed the door behind us with an official-sounding thunk and locked the dead bolt. And turned to me.
This was it. Almost a week of crushing on him—more like two weeks if I admitted to myself how interested I'd been in him the first night at the bridge. And today, fourteen hours of slow, grinding, up-close-and-personal pining for him. Finally, this was it.
Chapter 17
He backed me up a pace and pressed me into the corner. His big middle finger stroked down my cheek, across my chin, and up to my lips. In the softest filter of streetlights through the blinds, he touched me like he really did think I was beautiful. Or at least was determined to make a good show of it. His dark eyes were so tender that I was ready to believe it.
Then he kissed me again. I opened my mouth and let him kiss me as deeply as he wanted. His hands slid down my sides and started to wander, and I let them wander where they would.
It was all good, until I flashed hot in my very small shirt, too hot. My chest pounded like I was having a heart attack. Red warning lights flashed behind my eyelids.
I pushed him away, and held on to him at the same time to keep from falling.
Dazed, he looked down at me, panting. He couldn't catch his breath. "What is it?" he whispered.
"Not in the corner," I breathed. "Anywhere but the corner."
He put his heavy arm around my shoulders and guided me across the room. I thought: Couch? Couch? Couch? No couch. We passed the living room couch and crossed the threshold into his bedroom. I thought: jackpot.