The Cora Carmack New Adult Boxed Set: Losing It, Keeping Her, Faking It, and Finding It plus bonus material (24 page)

12

Max

Y
ou were a what?”

I always enjoyed shocking people with that, and it helped to distract a little bit from the pain.

“You heard me, Golden Boy. I was a cheerleader.”

His hands paused in pulling the jacket from my back, and I was thankful for the reprieve.

“I’m trying to picture it,” he said. “But I just . . .”

He trailed off and I asked, “What? Can’t imagine me in a cheer skirt?”

“No, that’s an image that I can conjure all too easily.”

“Of course you can. Men.” I rolled my eyes, but I didn’t mind so much. There was something empowering about knowing that I could attract a guy like him. Even if he had no idea the crazy he was getting himself into.

“But seriously . . . a cheerleader?”

That seemed like a lifetime ago. A different me.

I hated thinking about the past. Every time I did, I felt heavy, like gravity had doubled and instead of just holding me to the Earth, it flattened me.

I couldn’t explain why, but the words flowed with him. I said, “I spent a long time pretending to be something I wasn’t.”

He started pulling at the material again, and I could feel the stretch of my skin followed by the trickle of fresh blood. He wiped the cloth over the cut tenderly, but my skin was so sensitive. I tried my hardest to keep from flinching when he touched me, but I failed a few times.

“At least you stopped pretending. A lot of people don’t.”

Had I really? I’d just traded one kind of pretending for another.

I needed a distraction . . . from the past and the pain. I clenched my eyelids closed, and said, “Your turn, Golden Boy. Sing for me.”

He dipped the washcloth in the bowl again, and I listened to the droplets falling as he wrung out the rag. The water was warm and soothing on my skin until he started pulling at the material again. I held my breath, and heard him start to sing.

His voice was strong and clear. He sang quietly, but the deep notes rumbled in his chest, and it gave me chills.

“No matter how close, you are always too far

My eyes are drawn everywhere you are.”

His knuckles brushed my bare back, and my muscles tensed and shivered like a plucked guitar string. My breath caught in my throat, and I barely felt him pull my coat the rest of the way off.

He rewet the rag, and I waited for him to start singing again, but he didn’t. He sponged at one scrape, and then another . . . silent.

“Is that all I get?” I asked. It wasn’t nearly enough.

“As bizarre and . . . stimulating your cheertastic confession was, I’m going to need a little bit more before I start baring my soul.”

I could hear the smile in his voice. The greedy bastard.

I gave an exaggerated sigh. “I can’t think of what else to tell you.”

“I believe the word
dirty
was thrown around earlier.”

I was unnerved by how scared I was at the thought of spilling my secrets to him. Normally, I could care less what people thought of me, but with him it was different.

“I got my first kiss from my babysitter’s son when I was five and he was seven. He kissed me and then pulled my hair.”

He chuckled, and dabbed at a scrape just above the waistline of my skirt.

“We have different definitions of dirty.”

I smirked and added, “To this day, nothing turns me on more than when a guy pulls my hair.”

There was silence above me, and his hand stilled against my back. I would have killed to see his expression.

He cleared his throat, stood, and put a few feet between us.

“Bandages?” he asked.

I’d reduced him to one-word communications.

“Bathroom cabinet. At the end of the hall.”

I bit down on my lip but couldn’t stop the wide smile that stretched across my face. I told myself that there was nothing wrong with a little harmless flirting between Cade and me as long as it didn’t cross beyond that. Mace flirted with other girls all the time. Neither of us was the jealous type, so it was cool. And Cade would be out of my life after tomorrow anyway.

He took several minutes to return to the living room, and by then I’d convinced myself that being here alone with him wasn’t a big deal. Our kiss wasn’t a big deal. The nauseatingly goofy grin on my face
wasn’t a big deal
. I deserved to relax and loosen up after the day I’d just had.

It was harmless, really.

“I found some ointment, gauze, tape, and scissors. I figured that would be better than individual bandages, since there are so many scratches. The good news is none of them are very deep. There are just a lot of them.”

“Sounds fine. Now where’s the rest of my song?”

He knelt beside me, and I could just see out of the corner of my eye the way his dark hair fell onto his forehead as he bent over me. I closed my eyes as he began rubbing the cool ointment on my skin.

“About that . . .” he began. “I really don’t—”

“Come on, Cade. A deal’s a deal. Besides . . . I’m in pain.”

I lifted my head a little and gave him my best pout over my shoulder.

He glanced up at the ceiling and shook his head. “You’re dangerous.”

I liked danger. And this . . . this was addictive. Making him want me.

It was because it was wrong, because we were so different, that it felt so exhilarating. I laid my cheek against the cushion and closed my eyes, enjoying the luxurious feeling of his fingers coasting across my back.

“You might as well start again from the beginning,” I said. “So I get the full effect.”

It took a while for him to start singing, like he had to talk himself into it. But when he did, his voice was just as intoxicating the second time around. It was rich and resonant, and it rooted into my soul.

“No matter how close, you are always too far

“My eyes are drawn everywhere you are.”

He paused again, and I thought he wouldn’t go on, but then he pitched his voice higher, and I melted at the sound.

“I’m tired of the way we both pretend

Tired of always wanting and never giving in

I can feel it in my skin, see it in your grin

We’re more. We always have been.

“Think of everything we’ve missed.

Every touch and every kiss.

Because we both insist.

Resist.”

They were only words, but their effect on me was just as strong as the kiss we’d shared earlier in the evening. The anticipation of his touch was almost as exquisite as the contact itself. I had to concentrate to keep from arching up into his hands. He began taping gauze across sections of my back, and I lived for the moments when his finger would smooth the tape down and graze my skin.

“Hold your breath and close your eyes

Distract yourself with other guys

It’s no surprise, your defeated sighs

Aren’t you tired of the lies?”

His volume had grown, and I felt nailed down by his words, trapped by his hands. I knew this song wasn’t for me. It couldn’t be. We’d only met today. But just because the song wasn’t
for
me, didn’t mean it wasn’t about me.

“Think of everything we’ve missed.

Every touch and every kiss.

Because we both insist.

Resist.”

I could feel his breath against my bare skin as he sang, and my whole body tensed. I couldn’t even pretend I wasn’t affected anymore. It took all my concentration just to keep breathing.

“No matter how close, you are always too far

My eyes are drawn everywhere you are.”

He placed the last bandage, smoothed down the tape, then his finger continued on, tracing the line of my spine. My skin broke out in goose bumps, and I tried to smother a moan into the cushion, but he had to have heard.

“I’m done. I won’t ignore.

I won’t pretend or resist.”

His hand settled at the base of my back. The last line was half-sung, half-spoken, and I was half-mad with desire.

“I want more.”

13

Cade

I
was playing with fire, touching her like this. My hand was resting just above the curve of her behind, and I swear she arched her hips back into my palm.

My voice was low and rough as I said, “All done.”

If I were a superstitious man, I would think I’d angered Milo’s alcohol gods because I was having a very
inconvenient
reaction to our closeness.

I moved my hand, and was ready to make a quick getaway, but she sat up and said, “Wait, let me do you.”

I tried to keep a straight face, I really did. But no male in my condition, whether he’s fifteen or fifty, could hear those words and not react.

She rolled her eyes and said, “Your head, Golden boy. The one that’s
supposed
to do your thinking.”

God, she was so different from Bliss. I could envision completely how this scenario would have happened with her. It would have started with a lot of blushing and mumbling and probably would have ended with something broken or on fire.

Max was honest. Unafraid. She was so comfortable in her skin.

And it was sexy as hell.

“Let me get a new cloth.”

She stood and took the washcloth and water into the kitchen with her. I sat on the couch, and did my best to adjust myself so that my predicament wasn’t glaringly obvious.

I’d tried to talk her out of the song because I thought it was a bad idea. I thought it would bring up memories of Bliss, but it didn’t. In fact, singing it hadn’t made me think of Bliss at all. I could only think about Max, and that caused an entirely different problem than the one I’d expected.

I kept my eyes focused forward when she returned because I didn’t trust myself not to touch her again. She pulled one of her knees up onto the couch, and slid closer to me. Her knee pressed against my thigh, and all I wanted to do was grab her other leg and lift her over onto my lap.

I searched for something, anything, to distract me, but there was nothing in this apartment to look at. There was only us and the electrifying heat that filled the space between us.

Her fingers touched my chin, and she turned my face toward her. She was staring at a wound on my forehead, so I had a few seconds to drink her in without getting caught. Her cheeks were flushed, probably from the pain, and her lips pulled down into a frown as she surveyed my injury. And her eyes were the kind of light blue that you only see on wild, untouched beaches.

“I should have taken care of you first. You’re still bleeding a little.”

I was? It didn’t even hurt anymore. There were too many other things on my mind.

Her fingers shifted on my chin, brushing across the stubble that I hadn’t bothered to shave this morning. Her eyes met mine for a flicker of a second before she pulled away and began dipping the washcloth in the water.

I watched her small hands and delicate fingers as they wrung out the rag, and then folded it into a small rectangle. She slid even closer when she turned back to me, so that her knee was almost resting on top of my leg. I was already facing her, but her hand found my jaw anyway. She cleaned the area around the wound first, and then started dabbing at the cut just along my hairline.

She used the hand on my jaw to tilt my head down slightly to give her a better look. It pointed my eyes straight to the delicate architecture of her collarbone, which had been the last place I’d kissed her.

I was dying to pick back up again where I left off.

That must not have been enough to give her a good look because she shifted, and rose up on her knees next to me. Her chest was level with my gaze, and her body swayed toward mine.

I closed my eyes and thought about multiplication tables and recited lines from plays that I’d been in over the years. Her breath fanned across my forehead, and I could feel the warmth of her skin only inches away from mine. She stopped dabbing and just pressed the cloth to my forehead, probably to stop the bleeding.

Her voice was low and warm when she said, “You wrote that song for a girl?”

“Is this you implying that I’m gay again?”

She laughed, and I wanted to sweep her into my arms, lay her down on this couch, and map out every bit of her skin with my mouth. I wanted to taste every tattoo, and know what they meant to her. I wanted to unlock the secrets that lay behind her guarded expression.

“No, I just mean . . . was she a girlfriend?”

I shook my head. “No, she wasn’t. By the time I decided to do something about it, she was already with someone else.”

“So you gave up?”

This was not what I wanted to talk about, but I guess if it kept my mind off of kissing her, it worked.

“There was no point,” I said. “I couldn’t compete.”

“Bullshit.” She pressed down a little harder, and jerked my face a little closer to her own. “You’re Golden Boy. You’re good at everything. You’re sweet, gorgeous, and probably stop to help little old ladies cross the street. If you can’t compete, the rest of us are completely fucked.”

I smiled. Hearing her say I was gorgeous was a pretty good consolation prize.

“The other guy is British.”

She tossed her head back and laughed, and my eyes caught on the smooth line of her neck.

“Yeah, you’re shit out of luck, Golden Boy.”

It felt good to be able to laugh about this with someone. I hadn’t even been able to do that with Milo or any of my friends back home. This morning losing Bliss had seemed like a weight shackled to my feet, and now it felt like what it was—a memory.

She was still smiling when she lifted the cloth from my forehead.

She hummed and said, “Looks good.”

She sat back, and the hand on my face dropped to my thigh. She used it to brace herself as she reached for the gauze. Sweet Jesus.

I searched for something, anything to say. “It’s been an . . . interesting day.”

Considering I’d only met her this morning, and I was ten miles past fascinated into obsessed territory, yeah. I’d say the day had been pretty damn interesting.

“Tomorrow will make today look like a cakewalk,” she said.

She cut a piece of gauze, and raised back up on her knees to place it on my head.

“Why do you hate the holidays so much? Do your parents go way overboard?”

She pressed tape to the edges of the bandage and started smoothing it down, and her other hand rested on my shoulder for balance.

“It’s hard to explain.”

“I think I can keep up.”

She reached for the rag again and started cleaning more blood off my face. With her eyes focused on her work, she said, “The holidays bring up bad memories for us. My parents think if they pretend enough and have enough decorations and food that they won’t think so much about the things they don’t have.”

“And that doesn’t work for you?”

Her eyes met mine for a few seconds.

“Nothing works for me. But music.”

I brought my hand up and placed it over hers that rested on my shoulder

“I’m sorry.”

She looked down at me, and her eyes searched mine. “Normally, I hate it when people say that, but . . .”

The damp rag skimmed across my cheek to the cut on my mouth. Her eyes were dark, and her lips parted. She dabbed at the cut carefully. I watched the movement of her throat as she swallowed.

Slowly, so slowly that it felt like a dream, her hand turned so that the backs of her knuckles trailed across my lips. Her eyes were open and clear. We were both sober. One of my hands found her hip, and her chest brushed against my shoulder as she leaned over me.

I could feel her breath on my lips, and her eyes were dilated with desire. She bit her lip, and I held in a groan. Her eyes dropped to my lips, and the rag dropped to the floor.

Then her phone rang.

She jumped back so quickly that she was across the room before I’d released the breath that had been caught in my chest.

She picked up her phone, and her expression was blank as she said, “It’s my boyfriend.”

I swallowed, but my mouth still felt as dry as the desert.

The universe was doing us both a favor. I didn’t want to make her into a cheater. Kissing her earlier had been bad enough.

“I should be going anyway.”

I crossed to the door as quickly as possible, and she called back to me, “Cade!” I pulled the door open wide, and looked back at her. She held the phone in her hand, ready to answer. She said, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m not.” She took a small step toward me, and I turned. “I’ll see you in the morning.”