She'd heard the wistful sighs of Magnus's former lovers. Although none spoke of him resentfully—an accomplishment she attributed to his sunny charm—she couldn't doubt he was a hard act to follow.
Regrettably, she couldn't convince herself she'd last any longer than Magnus's previous one-night stands. Even ignoring his warning, her history wasn't reassuring on that subject. She hadn't held on to Alex when they were kids, and she wasn't so insecure that she didn't know he'd wanted her quite a bit.
Her toes curled beneath the water at a memory: her and Alex making out in the back of his mother's hideous wood-paneled station wagon. As she recalled, it had been the night before a big game. They'd been dating six months by then, starting a week and two days after she'd been assigned to tutor him in calculus. He'd been a typical I'll-never-use-this jock, whereas she'd been grades ahead. The match had been perfect—in more ways than one.
Other boys before Alex had thought that hanging with a psychic was cool… until they realized she wouldn't, or couldn't, tell them which teachers were going to give pop quizzes. The dead came to Zoe with their own agendas, so hungry to communicate with their loved ones that they'd gravitate to anyone who could hear. Most boys, no matter how brave they thought they were, were creeped out by the idea that Zoe didn't just see ghosts, she drew them—a teenage pied piper to the deceased. Boys like that wanted a normal girl they could take to dances. They wanted a girl they could get to second base with without wondering if their Aunt Ida was watching from the Other Side.
Alex was the first boy Zoe met who was more interested in her than in what she could do. Oh, her gifts were what had sparked his curiosity, but it was her he called on the phone each night to talk for hours. All the extras she could do and see he simply took in stride. To Zoe, this was a miracle of the highest order: not to be doubted or viewed as a freak. Alex could have been ugly and obnoxious, and he'd still have earned a friend for life. That he was the hottest boy in school, a championship quarterback over whom Zoe had been struggling not to sigh, earned him her devotion almost before he'd known he wanted it.
Happily for her, his attraction hadn't taken long to match hers. The three-year age difference had bothered him from the first, but he hadn't been able to resist her bumbling overtures. Naturally, him having to fight his honorable intentions had made the relationship all the more romantic to her.
He'd been very careful not to "despoil" her, as he'd put it. They'd kissed—a lot—and he'd touched her br**sts under her bra, but the closest they'd come to actual sex was grinding against each other with all their clothes on. This had gotten them so excited, they'd both been able to cl**ax, a feat Zoe could only marvel at today. None of her partners since had managed anything like it.
That night, though, like most nights when she was fifteen, Alex was the only male in her world. That night in the beat-up Ford Country Squire, she'd made up her mind to touch his penis with her bare hand, a decision he was trying to argue her out of between their usual deep and desperate French kisses.
"It's too much," he'd gasped, his lower body pressing hers insistently into the station wagon's thin carpet. "If you take it out, I'll want to put it inside you."
"I won't let you," Zoe promised, though when his teeth scraped lightly over the skin beneath one ear, she wasn't quite as sure.
"You're wearing a skirt tonight. That's only panties between you and me."
"I'll stop you," she said more firmly. "I just want to see it. I want to feel what happens to it when you come."
Alex groaned into the neck of her pink-and-white-striped spandex halter, the one she'd worn to persuade him to go along with her idea. It clung to what br**sts she had with formidable faithfulness, but so far it wasn't living up to the hopes she had for it.
"I probably shouldn't before a game anyway. The coach said we should refrain."
"The coach isn't you. Remember what happened the last time we 'refrained?' You fumbled twice on important plays."
She wasn't certain Alex heard her. He was licking her nipple through the halter's stretchy cloth, which instantly hardened it. Then—as if this evidence of her responsiveness was too much for his control—he groaned and sucked most of her breast hard into his mouth.
It was a rough thing to do, and not his usual style, but Zoe couldn't have loved it more. Her back bowed off the cargo area's floor as she thrust her hands into his sun-streaked hair. A line of fire had ignited between her nipple and her sex, tightening the sensations welling there. He groaned again and tugged at her more fiercely. What he was doing felt so good that, for a startled second, she thought she was going to come from that.
When he let her go, her moan of protest was sincere.
"I didn't refrain that night," he panted in his dark, rough voice, the voice that made him sound like a full grown man. "I got so crazy not doing it with you that I jacked off five times in a row as soon as I got home."
Fresh heat flushed through her to her toes. She had to swallow before she could make her own confession, and that was only in a whisper. "I've done it five times in a row myself, but I didn't know boys could get off that often."
Alex's breath caught at her words. Clearly, he hadn't thought about her needing release, too. He stared at her, his eyes burning in the soft illumination of the dome light.
"Jesus," he finally said, forgetting she'd asked him not to curse in front of her.
The bulge in his jeans pressed snug against her panties, so huge it frightened her. She was more excited than afraid, though, and she laid her palm gently over it. She'd never touched him that directly before. He jerked, but didn't jerk away.
"Let me take it out," she coaxed softly. "Aren't you tired of driving home with sticky underwear?"
"Zoe…"
She heard his resistance crumbling. "Who else is going to let me? All the other boys think I'm weird."
His face went hard as steel. "You stay away from other boys."
"Make me. Prove you want me more than they do."
His jaw ticked at her dare, and then he practically tore his zipper open, shoving her hand inside his briefs. He moaned with pleasure the instant her palm touched skin, a sound that made her go liquid. She'd never felt anything so silky, so hot and alive and hard as his bare penis. She tried to explore him, but when he rasped "tighter" in a pleading tone, she strengthened her grip.
It took four squirming thrusts through her inexpert hold to bring him off.
"No fair!" she remembered crying. "I didn't have a chance to pay attention!"