Текст книги "Dirty Lies"

Автор книги: Emma Hart

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

I slap my hand to my mouth, and Jessie giggles, biting her hand.

“Now I’m gonna pretend you didn’t just fall for that line and send you on your way. But if I have to pull over and check on you again, I will hand you a ticket. Do you understand?”

“Fully, sir,” I mumble, dropping my hand. Fuck. Smartassed old man. “Have a good evening, Sheriff.”

Jessie is still laughing as I push the button to close the window, and I look at her. “What?” she asks. “He got you.”

“And you.”

“But I wasn’t the one who fell for his lipstick trick.”

“How was I supposed to know? You always wear lipstick.”

“But it’s almost nine and it rubbed off hours ago. Shows how much attention you pay.”

“Should I wait a moment before I drive again or are you saving some bitchin’ for tomorrow?” When she glares at me instead of saying anything, I figure she’s saving it. Good. I don’t think I can handle any more of her bitching tonight.

We make the rest of the drive without saying a word. The only noise comes when she turns on the radio, but the rapidly growing tension doesn’t ease at all. In fact, it just tightens, the low hum of the DJ only making our silence more obvious.

I pull up outside her house and shut off the engine. We sit for a long moment, her hand hovering over her seat belt before she unbuckles it and lets it snap back.

“Thanks for the ride home,” she says quietly, opening the door and jumping out.

The door shuts softly behind her, and I get out after her. “Jessie.”

Her step falters, her hand coming up to her hair as she turns her head back to me just a little. “What?”

I walk to her without another word and step in front of her. I curl my fingers around hers and pull her hand down, pushing the hair from her face myself. Her eyelids flutter before she lifts her gaze to mine, and the softness I see in the depths of the blue hue staring at me warms me from head to toe.

Gently, I kiss her, letting my lips brush against hers, over and over. Letting them feel and taste her. Test her. To see if she’ll respond just as softly. She does, and our lips meet in one long, easy kiss that I feel everywhere.

“Goodnight, Jessie,” I whisper, teasing my thumb along the lower curve of her mouth.

“Goodnight, Aidan,” she whispers back, stepping around me tentatively and resuming her walk up the path toward her front door.

She pauses right before she opens it and looks back, her eyes colliding with mine for a brief second.

I grin and walk on air back to my truck.

Jessie

Real.

That’s all I can think.

It feels way, way too real.

I imagine this is how Maine felt when it finally stopped snowing last winter after weeks of dreaming about it.

It’s the real you never expect to happen—the real that isn’t supposed to happen. The one that’s supposed to be the thing that niggles but never gets past that. The thing that just doesn’t happen. Ever. Ever. Ever.

I wish it was how it stayed. No, fuck that. I wish I’d never agreed to this in the first place. I wish I didn’t have Aidan’s name trending on all my social media. I wish his name didn’t link to articles where he’s kissing a red-headed girl with a sleeve of flower tattoos.

I wish that girl weren’t me.

I wish the Internet didn’t know my name. I wish I was just Jessie Law, art graduate, trying to save enough money to take the tattoo artist’s course. I wish I was just Jessie Law, South Carolina native who’d been cheated on by her asshat boyfriend, serving coffee every morning.

I wish I weren’t Jessie Law, fake girlfriend to Aidan Burke, and absolutely everywhere you could imagine online.

Maybe that’s it, why it feels real. It looks real, and now that it’s shoved so deep in my face that I can’t unlock my phone without finding a message from someone I know in capital letters with way too many exclamation marks, it feels real.

It does look real, too. Those pictures, from yesterday—where he held me close in the park, when he insisted he was sorry, then that he didn’t care—look way, way too real. Look like he meant every word, but like the words were softer, that his voice stayed soft. And the kiss.

God¸ the kiss.

Those are the worst.

The kiss looks like someone who means every brush of his lips and a girl who believes him.

The kiss looks like two people who believe their own lies.

Then there’s the messages—and the tweets, and the emails, too. Each one is harsh, attacking, confusing. How did his fans find me, much less get my email? How many knocks to the head did they have before they assumed these bullshit messages are okay?

How is it freaking okay to email someone and tell them that you hope their car tire gets punctured and they spin off the edge of a cliff?

“Ouch,” Saskia says into my ear.

I turn in time to see her wince and slam my laptop shut. “What do you want? Are you here to join the I Hate Jessie fan club and give me some abuse, too?”

“No. I’m actually here to tell you that those girls”—she waves toward my laptop—“are batshit crazy with sprinkles on top.”

“You think?” I roll my eyes and get up, spinning my chair back around. “I hope none of them works with kids. Or humans. Some of those messages are vile.”

“I know.” Sas bites her lip. “I’m sorry. That you’re dealing with that. It’s not okay.”

“You think?” I repeat, shutting my closet just as quickly as I opened it. I stop, take a deep breath, and lean forward, my forehead pressing against the door. “Jesus. I did not sign up for this.”

“Well, you should have guessed this would happen. Don’t you remember how crazy things got when Sofie told Conner that Mila was his baby?”

“No. I make it a point to avoid that, but this time, it’s being shoved in my face.”

Sas sighs and out of the corner of my eye I see her sit on my bed. “She missed a lot of it because Conner shielded her, but Twitter went crazy. They, like, blew up the Internet. She got so much abuse, and I even saw death threats.”

“Yep. Pretty sure someone threatened to stone me to death this morning.”

My sister pauses. “Well, congratulations, you’re officially the girl every Dirty B. Diva wants to be.”

“Amazing. I’m officially one of the most verbally online-abused women in the world, but it’s okay, because I have a hot guy who plays the drums and makes a fuck ton of money at the beck and call of my vagina.” I push up and turn, hands on my hips. “What the hell is wrong with people?”

She shrugs. “Is it crazy to say I wish I could be you?”

“Yes. I’m calling the men in white coats for you.”

“Okay, then I won’t say it.”

I shake my head and pull my nightshirt over my head, switching it out for a tank that reads BELIEVE, ACHIEVE, like the words can convince me that if I believe hard enough, I’ll achieve no longer being Aidan Burke’s fake girlfriend.

Oh, a girl can dream.

Ironic that I’m dreaming of something entirely different from the people sending me these messages.

The doorbell rings downstairs, followed by a shout from Mom of “I’ve got it!” then an “Oh! Hello!”

I freeze as the low, rumbling voice of Aidan Burke responds to her and Mom invites him in.

“Oh. My. God.”

“Don’t!” I snap at my sister, pointing at her. “Don’t you dare fangirl in my bedroom!”

She immediately gets up and takes one step outside my bedroom door. “Oh. My. God. Oh my god. Oh my god.”

“I swear to God if you take your phone out and tell anyone he’s here I will break all your fingers.”

“I use my thumbs to text.”

“Then I’ll break those, too, smartass.”

“But, Jessie!”

“You’re sixteen! Not ten! Get a life.” I push past her and go downstairs as the whine of Mom’s kettle screeches through the house.

“Jessie!” Mom beams. “Look who stopped by for you.”

“Great. Can you grab some handcuffs and maybe shackle Saskia to a lamppost down the street or something?” I walk to the cupboard and pull down a glass, then fill it with water from the filter jug in the fridge.

“Jessie!” she repeats, this time sharper. “Aren’t you going to acknowledge our guest?”

I turn to Aidan, sweet smile on my face, and let my eyes flick over his slick dark hair and his smirking lips. “Hello, darling. How are you today?”

Mom whips me with a dish towel.

“Better than you, sunshine,” he replies. “You opened your laptop, didn’t you?”

“I unlocked my phone,” I correct him, taking a sip. “Unfortunately, that was the best part of my day yet.”

“Yeah, you could say our fans get kind of . . . possessive.”

“You don’t say. Do you mean the girl who wants to blend my ovaries into her protein shake or the one who wants to scratch my heart out of my chest with a rusty nail?”

He flinches. “Ah. I see they opened the Dirty B. Day Ward.”

“Oh yes. And they forgot their meds.” I slam my empty glass down. “And if you don’t leave right now, you’ll meet their newest patient,” I warn him as I hear footsteps coming down the stairs.

“Is she going to attack me with her worn panties?”

“I sure as hell hope not,” Dad butts in, joining us in the kitchen. “How are you, Aidan?”

“I’m good, thank you, sir.” He stands and shakes his hand. “How are you?”

“As good as I can be dressed in a suit in ninety degrees,” Dad quips, grabbing a travel mug of coffee from Mom and kissing her cheek. “Y’all behave now. And by y’all I mean you, Saskia,” he adds, kissing the side of my head and shooting her a look as he walks out the door.

“Aren’t you going to kiss me?” she asks, pouting.

He comes back to kiss her head before closing the door behind him.

“Aren’t you going to introduce me?” She directs this question to me, her hands on her hips.

“Are you going to act like a spoiled, freaking-out brat?” I respond, raising an eyebrow.

“No.”

“Oh, look, you picked my answer out for me!”

Aidan laughs.

“Jessie,” Mom scolds, walking over to Saskia. “Sas, this is Aidan. Aidan, this is Saskia, my youngest daughter.”

Good grief. Is my sister trembling?

She is.

Fuck this.

I quit.

“H-hi,” she whispers when he takes her hand and shakes.

“Hi, Saskia. Jessie didn’t tell me her sister was this pretty.” He kisses her hand.

She squeals.

Oh. My. God.

“Jessie didn’t tell you anything about her sister,” I mutter, walking out of the kitchen before I lose every last bit of my patience.

I run upstairs before she starts gushing and walk into my bedroom. I know I’m safe from the insanity here, because not once in twenty-four years has a boy been allowed in my bedroom unless said boy is my father, uncle, or cousin.

I gather my hair into a knot on top of my head and look at my phone lying on my pillow. The light in the top corner is blinking green to show me I have a message, but I really don’t want to look at it.

But I do.

It might be Chelsey, or Sofie, or Ella. Or someone I’ve spoken to in the last seven days at least, and not someone wanting to burn me at the stake.

Like an idiot, I move forward and unlock it.

The notifications bombard me. Facebook. Twitter. Even Instagram. I click on the Instagram ones, because, hey, these are new, and apparently I’m a fucking masochist. Comment after comment fills my notification feed. None of them are good either.

Funny, because I’ve never put any kind of picture showing Aidan on my Instagram. I’m tagged in a ton of pictures, and the comments on my pictures—including ones of my tattoos—are all mean and derogatory.

Dear girls bitching about my tattoos: don’t you realize the man you’re lusting for is covered in them? Oh no? Then I guess you’ve never seen him naked.

I make a “pshh” noise and clear my notifications before dropping my phone onto my bed. It bounces before landing facedown, and I sigh heavily. This bullshit is probably going to continue until we call time on this sham we’re living.

My head drops forward until my chin touches my chest, and I heave in a deep breath. God. I’m not going to be able to catch a break, am I? My phone pinging with another notification answers my silent question with a big, fat freaking no.

Two hands settle on my hips from behind me, and a pair of lips rests at the curve of my neck.

“What are you doing in my room?” The words come out weak and defeated.

My phone pings again.

“I’m sorry,” Aidan murmurs against my neck. “And before you call me out on it, really, I am. I didn’t expect this shit. Not this level of shit anyway.”

“Death threats? Yeah. That’s a pretty serious level.” My phone makes another high-pitched noise, and I shrug Aidan off me, growling, and grab it. He pulls it from my hand before I can throw it at the wall and turns it off.

“There,” he says like he’s solved the whole problem.

“Oh, thank you. Because the notifications won’t be there when I turn it on, or switch on my tablet to read, or open my laptop to check my email. You just made all the messages disappear! What a hero,” I drawl, running my fingers through my hair.

Aidan steps closer to me and takes my hands. His touch is gentle and reassuring as he slides his fingers through mine and encourages me to move toward him. My feet take the step my mind is fighting against, and before I can comprehend what’s happening, our bodies are barely an inch apart and I can feel his breath ghosting over my lips.

“I won’t blame you,” he says softly, his voice the rainbow in the thunderstorm that is my mind. “It would be easy. Do you want to end this?”

“Yes,” I reply honestly. “I’ve wanted to ever since I agreed to it. I signed up for a lot of things, Ads, but not this. Not this kind of crazy.”

His thumb brushes across the back of my hand. “Are we gonna end this?”

There’s my out.

“I want to. Believe me, I want to. But there’s this little devil on my shoulder rubbing her hands together with glee at the prospect of pissing them off a little more,” I admit, cursing my own kind of crazy side.

His lips twitch, laughter brightening his eyes.

“Don’t look at me like that!” I fight my own laughter, pulling my hands away and looking down. “I’m just not very good at backing down—”

“And why fight fire with an extinguisher when you can throw another can of lighter fluid into it?”

I snap my eyes back to his, and it takes every ounce of strength in me not to let my giggles bubble over. His smile—it’s so infectious. Like a baby’s tiny chuckle or dancing in the rain. “Shut up.”

“For what it’s worth, I approve of pissing them off.”

“Well, you did admit to breaking the rules.”

“And I did invite you to come break them with me.”

I tilt my head to the side. “Are you still inviting me? Because they’ve brought out my wild side.”

“Oh, you bet.” He grabs my hands again and pulls me into him, right into him, so my front hits his and his hands clasp at the bottom of my back. “Come break the rules with me, baby.”

“Okay, but you’re about to play by mine.”

He lifts an eyebrow. “I’m ready to play.”

I grin and push away from him for a second time, lest the beating of my heart get a little too crazy, because, oh damn.

Never has breaking the rules sounded so fucking sexy. I’ll be damned if my stomach isn’t flipping and my heart isn’t sending my blood thundering around my body from that one little line.

Word foreplay. It’s literal word foreplay, and I might be kind of turned on. “Oh, you’re really not,” I manage.

“You need to get out of those Tinker Bell shorts though,” he muses, leaning against the wall, hands in his pants pockets, tattooed arms bulging out of the bottom of his fitted T-shirt. “They’re cute as fuck, but not exactly going-out-in-public kind of shorts.”

“Then you need to get out of my room, because I’m not getting changed with you here.”

“Jessie, baby, I’ve seen you naked,” he says in a low voice. “I’ve seen your ass and your pussy, and I remember really, really fucking liking the view.”

Ignoring the shiver that runs down my spine, eliciting goose bumps across my skin, I turn and, with more bravado than I feel right now, say, “That has nothing to do with me getting changed in front of you.”

“It has everything to do with you getting changed in front of me, because I’d sure as hell like to see that view again.”

Heat floods through my body, and I’m sure most of it rushes to my cheeks. I can feel them burning as distinctly as I can feel his eyes on me, unrelenting, full of desire. “Not a good idea,” I manage, clearing my throat. “This relationship is precarious enough without me doing anything that would encourage you to push the boundaries of intimacy.”

“I plan to obliterate the borders of intimacy, Jessie. So it doesn’t really matter whether or not you get changed in front of me or leave on those Tinker Bell shorts—we’re gonna fuck anyway.”

I swallow. Hard. Dear oxygen, my lungs miss you. “You sound real confident about that, rocker boy.”

“Knowledge is confidence,” he murmurs with a smile on his face, coming toward me again. “Don’t pretend you don’t know it, too. Look at you.” He lifts his hand to my face and brushes the backs of his fingers across my cheek. “Cheeks flushed.” His thumb brushes my lower lip. “Lips parted.” His fingers trace down my neck. “Pulse thumping.” And over the curve of my collarbone to my chest. “Chest heaving,” he whispers, dipping his head. The edge of his mouth teases across my jaw as he brings his lips to my ear. “And while you remember what it felt like to have me spread your legs and see you, I’m remembering what you sounded like as I got to know your pussy very, very well.”

I answer by hooking my thumbs in the sides of my shorts. He wants to play—then I’m gonna play. “Shut my door,” I whisper, deliberately not swallowing so my throat is dry and my voice is scratchy. He drops his hand and turns, pushing my door closed. As he does, I push my shorts down my legs and step out of them, then turn, facing my back to him.

Once again hooking my thumbs by my hips, this time inside the waistband of my panties, I bend forward, sticking my ass out, and slowly ease the lacy elastic over my butt and down to my thighs.

His sharp intake of breath makes me smile, something that only grows when that breath turns into a growl as I stand and kick off my underwear. I reach for another pair from my open drawer, when he grasps my wrist from behind, stopping me, and his fingers curl around my hip, pulling me back into him.

His erection, forcing against the zipper of his jean shorts, presses into my back, and my eyes flutter shut briefly at the sensation. And the power, knowing that one tiny thing, one small action, has him so out of control that I could flick open that zipper, take him in my hand, and he’d be entirely at my mercy.

But I’m also painfully aware of my vulnerability—I might be able to feel him pressing into my back, but all he has to do is move his hand down with the barest of twitches, and I’m the one at his mercy.

And, from experience, I know that isn’t such a bad place to be.

“You think you’re funny,” Aidan says into my ear, his voice a husky rumble that makes me shiver. “You get a kick out of fuckin’ with me. I know you do. I can feel your laughter now. But when it comes to sex, Jessie . . .” He trails his fingers from my hip to my lower stomach, his fingertips hovering above my pubic line and making me clench with the teasing touch. “Baby, when it comes to sex, don’t fuck with me, and don’t tease me unless you’re ready for me to do something about it.”

“Feels like you’re ready to,” I reply smartly.

His fingers dip a little lower, and I feel his smile against my jaw. “You think you have the power here? Look.” He brings my hand to my face, still holding my wrist, and forces me to look in the mirror above my dresser. Our eyes meet in the glass. “Not really in a position to be cocky, are you?”

I stare defiantly into his hypnotic gaze. “Feels like the perfect position if you ask me.” I wriggle my butt.

It’s the barest of touches, so light I might have imagined it, but my clit throbs as his finger sweeps over it.

“Still cocky?” he questions.

“Always,” I breathe, my whole body tight with anticipation.

God, I want him to touch me, but I don’t. I want him to go, leave me. But sweet Jesus, I want to feel him breathe heavily into my ear, his fingers moving across my pussy. I want his body over mine and his mouth on me everywhere. I want to remember that feeling of him being inside me, how easy it was to forget everything and get lost for just those moments. I want to remember how perfectly he fit, how quickly he worked my body, how expertly he drove me to the brink of insanity then tipped me over until I saw stars.

“Do it,” I challenge him, moving my free hand between us and brushing the hard length of his cock with my thumb. “You say you have power, Ads, well, show me. Show me yours, and then I’ll show you mine.”

He grazes his teeth down my neck to my shoulder then kisses the curve there, his hand finally moving lower until it covers my pussy and his fingers are teasing their way across my wetness. I drop my head back onto his shoulder as his thumb finds my clit and he eases one finger inside me. The double hit of sensation waltzes through me at high speed, and the tight knot of anticipation in my lower stomach only grows.

“Don’t make a sound,” he orders as there’s a bang from downstairs.

This is wrong. I know this is wrong. All of it. But I can’t stop.

He moves his fingers expertly inside me, his thumb circling my clit like he’s done it to me a thousand times before. My legs tremble as pleasure sneaks its way through my body, setting a fire roaring inside me. Shit. Holy shit.

My ears buzz and I can’t breathe. All I can feel is him. Aidan. Holding me and kissing me and touching me as I let myself go. I stop fighting against the power he obviously has and fully give in to him, to the little bursts of magic he’s making me feel with nothing but his thumb and two fingers.

A moan escapes my throat, but he silences me with a quick “shhh” and a hard press down on my clit. The latter has the opposite effect as pure pleasure bolts through me and pushes me to the brink of orgasm, but my next sound is nothing but a tight inhale of expectation as my orgasm pulses away and I balance precariously on the edge of pleasure and insanity.

“Open your eyes,” he murmurs, flicking his thumb across me slowly. “Then you’ll know what you look like when you belong to me.”

His words shock me into opening my eyes, because no fucking way do I belong to him, but he curves his fingers and rubs my clit and nothing else matters because everything happens at once from the quiet gasp to the explosion of pleasure and the swamp of heat. Nothing else exists except for him and me and this, whatever it is, just this moment.

And he holds me, pulling his fingers out of me and spinning me with his other hand while reaching behind me for a makeup wipe to clean his fingers. My mouth is too dry for me to argue, so I let him do what he wants and bury my face in his hard chest as he all but holds me up.

“Here,” he mumbles with amusement, flicking the waistband of some panties against my butt cheek. “You can get dressed now.”

I swallow and force myself to stand straight, snatching the underwear out of his grip. I pull them up my legs and stare at him, that lopsided grin making my stomach flip. “I don’t know if I’m mad at you or actually kind of like you.”

“You just said my name like you were praying to me, Jessie. I think we can assume you like me.”

“That may be so,” I reply and grab some lace shorts from my drawer. I put them on and turn to him, sweeping my hair around one side of my neck. “But I don’t like you enough to help you with that raging erection you’re sporting.”

His expression morphs into annoyance and I smile sweetly.

“Jessie.”

I walk back toward my bedroom door, twirling my hair around my finger. “What was that you said about power, rocker boy?”