Dirty Little Secret (16 page)

“Yes!” I said, realizing only after I’d exclaimed that I’d sounded way more enthusiastic than I’d intended. Sam smiled at me like I’d just given away a secret. The truth was, I used to have nerdy conversations about music with Julie. It had been too long.

I cleared my throat and said more calmly, “I noticed Ace was adding a seventh sometimes that wasn’t in the original.”

“So cool, right?” Sam asked. “It makes the whole game more interesting to watch, like throwing an elbow. And I rescued Charlotte from our high school jazz band. She has a lot of experience playing for the local middle schools and old folks’ homes.”

“This is a good thing?” I asked.

“Yes, because she’s hungry. She lives in an apartment. She can’t practice at home because the neighbors complain. It’s not even her drum set—it’s her set from the high school band, and she’s just neglected to give it back yet. That driving beat she gives us comes from a lot of years in the marching band. But you can also hear how much she appreciates having a place to play and people to play with, and how bad she wants to keep doing it.”

I felt guilty about every uncharitable thought I’d had about Charlotte that night. But as I worked through it, I felt a little less guilty because Sam was
trying
to make me feel guilty.

Or was he? I’d suspected over and over that he was manipulating
me, yet his delivery was so honest and guileless that I was never quite sure.

However, I was sure after what he said next. “And then there’s you, miss ‘I don’t want to be in a band right now,’ miss ‘I don’t want to major in music when I go to Vanderbilt.’ ”

“Oh, boy.” Why couldn’t he let me live another hour in my fantasy world, starring him, where I didn’t need to answer questions?

“If you’re not majoring in music at Vanderbilt,” he pressed me, “what’s your major?”

We were passing the strip club again. I pretended I was holding my breath to avoid breathing great lungfuls of smoke and air freshener, but really I was hoping a piano would fall out of the second story of one of the bars, changing the subject. Sam wasn’t going to like my answer.

After several moments, when the piano crash was not forthcoming and Sam continued to watch me with an “I told you so” expression, I conceded, “Biomedical engineering.”

He gave me a sideways look like I’d said I was majoring in the literature of Antarctica. “Biomedical engineering. Like, inventing new cancer drugs?”

“More like working on one tiny part of one chemical that might someday be a component of a cancer drug.”

“Mm-hmm,” he said in a tone that sounded like I’d proven him right. “So you’d work in a lab.”

“Or a cubicle, at a computer.”

“That sounds like fun.” I heard no sarcasm in his voice, but I knew it was there. “Did you pick the major that was as far away from music as you could get?”

“No, the guidance counselors at our school gave us a personality test and matched us with professions we’d be good at.”

He nodded. “Your personality is analytical.”

Intellectual, unemotional, cold. “Yes.”

He held open the door to the parking deck for me. After it squeaked shut behind us, he said, “You’re so analytical that you would turn your back on a profession you love just because a standardized personality test told you what career you should have.” His voice echoed around the stairwell.

“You’re doing it again,” I said quietly.

“Right,” he said, opening the door at the top of the stairs and watching me as I passed under his arm. We wound through a couple of rows of parked cars to his truck, then deposited our instrument cases and his hat behind the seat and got in. All this time he didn’t say a word—which is what I’d wanted, for him to leave me alone. But now that I had my wish, I missed his nagging. His brows were knitted and his lips were pursed as he stared out the windshield of the truck with his keys in his hand, slack on the seat. Thinking hard didn’t suit him.

His eyes shifted to me. I never forgot how handsome he was, but when he looked straight at me, his brown eyes fringed with long, dark lashes gave me a shock. A guy should not be this handsome when a girl wanted desperately to keep her boots on the ground.

“Do you want me to take you home now?” he asked in his husky voice, barely above a whisper.

I licked my lips. “What are my other choices?”

His intense gaze never left me as he asked, “Do you want me to kiss you?” His normally expressive mouth quirked into the smallest smile. He’d worn the same look that afternoon when he held open the door of Borders for me. I had something he wanted. He was going to convince me to give it to him for free.

I didn’t want him to feel like he’d gotten the better of me.
There was something about his question that put the responsibility for kissing on me, not him. But even with that smug look on his face, he was so handsome with the dim glow of the parking deck lights shining in his dark waves and glinting in his friendly eyes. The responsibility was only a little one, negligible, casual, like picking up a lipstick at the drugstore.

I said, “Yes.”

7

I
expected him to lean
forward immediately, but he didn’t. His lips parted and he watched me like he wasn’t sure he’d heard me correctly.

He was a lot shyer than I’d thought. Either that, or he suspected I wasn’t serious and I would hit him. Either way, I decided I’d better take charge. I leaned toward him and to the right, aiming to start with his ear.

He crashed into my forehead. It took me a second of seeing stars to realize he’d started forward in the same direction, and we’d bashed heads.

“Oh, God,” he said, covering my forehead with his palm. “Are you okay?”

My face turned white-hot. I was blushing, and I knew it, which probably meant I didn’t have a concussion. “Yes.” I put my hand on his forehead, too. When he dipped his head, my fingers slipped back through his waves. “Are
you
okay?” I asked.

“Yeah. I’m sorry. I
have
done this before.” His hand slid down to cradle my cheek. “I’m going this way.”

“I’m staying still,” I assured him.

Now his thumb traced down my chin. My heart sped up at his touch, but I told myself he was trying to get better traction so I wouldn’t unexpectedly jerk and cause us to bash heads again.

That’s honestly what I was thinking. I could take the sweetest situation and make jokes out of it. If I expected nothing, I was never disappointed. But as he moved toward me, there was a point when our eyes locked. He looked so sincere that in that moment, I believed him. I believed
in
him. I believed anything he wanted to tell me.

His gaze slipped down to my lips. I closed my eyes.

His lips touched mine, a tickle on one side of my mouth, then a pressure that sent tingles down my neck and across my chest. My instinct was to slip both hands around his waist and pull him closer, but he wasn’t some guy from school I was making out with at a party. He was special.

So I didn’t push him. And he didn’t push me. We kissed like that for a long time, exploring each other’s lips and nothing else, while electricity ran along my skin and set my fingertips on fire.

Finally he pulled back. I couldn’t read his expression clearly in the dusky truck, but I thought he looked almost frightened, his dark eyes hooded and his brows drawn into a worried crease.

I whispered, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he whispered back. “Absolutely nothing.”

I gasped as his fingers slipped behind my neck and into my hair.

His hand stopped. His eyes widened with concern. “Okay?” he asked.

More than okay. I nodded.

He watched me carefully for a moment more like he wanted to make sure I wouldn’t change my mind. Then his fingers slipped farther into my hair, tangling themselves so I couldn’t have gotten away, and his palm tightened on the back of my neck. Now I understood why he’d asked permission. Things were about to get
serious between us. I hadn’t known when I’d said yes that this was what I was in for.

His lips met mine again. His tongue gently parted my lips and slipped inside my mouth. This time I couldn’t help my hands creeping around his waist and grabbing handfuls of his shirt to pull him closer.

“Mmph,” he said, because we both were facing forward and twisting sideways to kiss. Now he took my hands on his waist as my agreement that he could rearrange me. He never stopped kissing me as he pulled my leg across his thigh so that I straddled him. Then he put his hands over mine on his waist, reminding me this was what I’d wanted, as he scooted forward. Through his jeans and my thin dress, I felt how hard he was.

I’d always thought kissing was sweet, whereas anything having to do with a guy’s pelvis was some kind of threat. Now, for the first time, I understood how a guy getting hard for me was sweet, too—maybe because his hands in my hair and his mouth on mine were making me lose my mind.

He broke the kiss and looked out the driver’s side window of the truck, then the passenger side, making sure nobody was watching. His labored breaths sent a new shiver down my arms every time a puff passed across my cheeks.

He faced me again. He was a lot taller than me, but because I straddled his thighs, our eyes were even. He leaned forward until our foreheads touched, still gazing at me, so close and so dark that I could hardly see him. I felt his breath in my mouth as he traced down my neck with his middle finger, callused from holding his guitar string down, and unbuttoned the top button of my dress.

As I watched his fingers, I remembered that my mother had dragged Julie and me to the fabric store to pick out the material for this dress. I had protested and said that rather than red
rosebuds on a field of black, we should have the dresses made from the bolt printed with saguaro cactuses and horse heads, so appropriate that it circled back around to become ironic. I’d been tired of playing dress-up, one; and two, I was tired of matching Julie. I’d loved playing with her, but the matching outfits had seemed unhip and old-fashioned, something we would have worn on stage in my grandmother’s time.

He reached down to undo the second button of my dress. Suddenly I was the one huffing a surprised breath into his open mouth. He pushed through the opening he’d made in my dress and slipped his fingertips beneath the cup of my bra, across my bare breast. He stopped at my nipple, rolling it gently between two fingers. I squirmed on his thighs. It felt like there was a nerve stretched directly between my breast and my crotch.

I had made out with boys before. Boys had felt me up before. They had gotten my bra off me at parties. But they’d wanted to see me, or grab me, more for bragging rights than for their own pleasure.
My
pleasure never entered the equation. Sam was different. He teased me, tested me, touched me gently and watched my reaction with his depthless eyes. Ms. Lottie had warned me he was a heartbreaker.

“There should be a country song about this,” I whispered.

“I’m pretty sure there is,” he whispered back, sliding his whole hand into my bra to cup my breast.

There wasn’t, though. Plenty of tunes sung by men comically recounted everything they’d gotten away with in their trucks when they were teenagers. No songs sung by women rehashed how much they’d enjoyed it. But they should have. I could be the one to write that anthem.

Abruptly he withdrew his hand, lifted me off his lap, and set me back in the passenger seat. I was disappointed that he’d decided to end this. Then he put his hand behind my head, pulled me down
to flatten me along the seat, and rolled on top of me. “Is this okay?” he asked.

It was more than okay. In answer, I bent one knee so my pelvis was closer to his and I could feel more of him through my dress. I wasn’t prepared to go all the way and I didn’t think he would ask me to, but as far as I was concerned, Sam Hardiman could position me any way he liked on the seat of his truck. I ran my hands back through his waves and gently pulled his head until I could reach his ear with my mouth.

“Ahh,” he sighed. His breath quickened, but he held very still to savor the experience. I knew exactly how he felt. As I tickled his earlobe with my tongue, I concentrated on the sensation of my body coming alive. I’d gone through all of this before, but never with a guy this beautiful.

Suddenly a car chirped. Headlights blinked somewhere in the deck. The noise sounded so close that I stiffened under Sam.

It wasn’t my imagination that the noise was suspicious. Sam pushed himself off me, propping his elbows on the seat. He craned his neck to look out the window.

The door jerked open. The man from the deserted street must have followed us here. I screamed.

A rough hand smothered my mouth. But in the next second, I saw it was still Sam who held me. He uncovered my mouth and looked outside the truck again. “What the fuck, Charlotte?”

“Hey!” Charlotte exclaimed. “This is exactly how you got
me
to join your band.”

My heart was still throbbing from the scare. Now it hurt from being broken into pieces. Sam had made out with me so I would join his band. He had touched me that way, kissed me all night, made me fall for him, just so I would stay in his band. He had done it before, with Charlotte.