Текст книги "Breaking Him"

Автор книги: R. K. Lilley

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

I faced forward right as his hand fell away from my knee.

He hadn’t turned around, but I could tell he knew that his mother was behind him.

Dante never touched me when she was near.  It had been this way for as long as I could remember.

I used to have a problem with it, used to be sensitive about it, but just then it suited me fine.  The less he touched me the better.

His mother, Adelaide, made a big show of greeting Tiffany.  Kissing both of her cheeks, telling her how wonderful she looked, complimenting everything about her, from the top of her head to the tips of her toes.

She didn’t acknowledge me, nor I her.  This was not the place for it.

There wasn’t a civil word to be had between the two of us.  There never had been.

I thought she was evil, and she thought I was trash.  Neither of us would ever change our minds.

I was surprised, though, that there was no greeting between her and Dante.  He didn’t turn around, and she didn’t take exception to it.

That was a new and interesting development, to be sure, one that I didn’t mind at all.

Adelaide’s lifelong friend and Tiffany’s mother, Leann, soon joined them.  Again there was not a word or gesture of greeting between the first row and the second, and for the same reason.

Adelaide  by herself was an evil force to be reckoned with.  Add in her best friend, and any sane person would run in the other direction.  Two more manipulative women I had never met.  They were a team made in hell, and if they were ignoring me, all the better.

CHAPTER

EIGHTEEN

“If a thing loves, it is infinite.”

~William Blake

Dante’s father Leo sat on the row with us, but not close.  Father and son did not speak.  Husband and wife, one mere feet in front of the other, did not exchange greetings of any kind.

That was the normal way of things in the Durant family.

The sight of the father had me doing another surreptitious glance around the room, clocking at least four of his other sons, all by different women.

I wasn’t sure if somehow Leo had only sired boys or if he just never acknowledged the daughters.  With what I knew of Leo, if I had to guess, it’d be the latter.

None of the siblings were sitting together, none of them so much as acknowledging each other.

Only one of them ventured into our row.  It was Bastian, Leo’s second oldest son, his first child with mistress number one, born mere months after Dante.

Bastian sat on the far side of Leo, exchanging a brief but civil greeting with his father.

Dante was Leo’s only legitimate child, but he was far from his favorite.  If I had to guess which one was, it’d be Bastian.

Dante stared straight ahead, not acknowledging his half-brother.  Again, expected, but I sent Bastian a little nod of a greeting that he returned solemnly.

I’d never had a problem with Bastian.  Despite getting along too well with his bastard of a father, he wasn’t a bad sort, which was not something you could say about all of Dante’s half-brothers.

I made another scan of the swiftly filling room.  It would be standing room only soon it’d gotten so crowded, but still most seemed loath to take the front row seats, which were traditionally reserved for family.

My eyes stopped dead on a familiar face.

I nodded at my grandmother.

Her tightly drawn mouth drawing tighter at the sight of me, she nodded back.

I hadn’t seen her in almost ten years, but I was still shocked at how much she’d aged, how haggard her homely face appeared.

I knew Gram’s death couldn’t have been easy on her.  I had never been sure if my grandmother loved me, but I was certain of her love for Gram, and losing her must have hit her hard.

After that I faced forward and looked neither left nor right.  I’d seen enough familiar faces for the moment.

The service was brief but emotional.  Even Leo’s speech had me struggling not to lose my composure.  Leo was a shitty human being and a worse father, but he had loved his mother and didn’t even try to hide his grief at her passing.

For Dante’s speech, I had to put on the dark sunglasses I’d stowed away in my bag and look down at my hands while Dante spoke of his grandmother and all that she’d meant to him.

His words were sparse but worthy of her.

The shades hid my eyes, but they couldn’t hide the tears that ran under them and down my face.

When he finished and came back to sit beside me, I covered his hand with my own for a few brief moments, Adelaide and my grudges be damned.

We were at the front of the procession that flowed out of the funeral home, into cars, and along the short drive to her gravesite.

She’d been allotted a beautiful spot in the sprawling cemetery, right next to her long deceased, much beloved husband.

I stood stiffly beside Dante as Father Frederick recited Gram’s favorite poem and it made me cry all over again.

By that point I wanted nothing so much as to lock myself away somewhere, curl up into a ball, and cry until the tears ran out.  That was the irony of funerals, of gathering to grieve when no one who was really grieving wanted anything to do with company.  I was worn out, and we still had the reception to get through.

I almost (almost) considered escaping to my room for that ordeal, just running from it all, but I knew I couldn’t do it.

I was a lot of terrible things, but I was not a coward.

I would, however, be getting the hell out of dodge in all due haste.

“My flight home is tomorrow, right?” I asked Dante as we began to walk away from the gravesite.

“Hmm,” he responded, and I could tell just with that noise that I was about to be manipulated.  “I’ll have to double check.  Didn’t you get all of the info yourself in that email I sent you?”

“No,” I answered, knowing full well that he’d asked a question he already knew the answer to.  “You only sent me half of the itinerary.”

“Oh, I see.  An oversight.  I’ll look into it and have it sent to you as soon as I can.”

I kept my narrowed eyes on him.  The problem was, I knew him too well.  I could tell when he was planning something, even if I couldn’t have said what precisely it was.

I decided not to push it here.  It didn’t matter what he planned, besides.  I’d be out of here come morning, that was a fact.

Unfortunately we ran directly into my grandmother on our way back to Dante’s car.

I wasn’t going to say anything to her, we’d never had much to say to each other, but she had other plans.

“Hello, Scarlett,” she sneered at me.  Not a good sign.

I nodded at her, making cursory eye contact.  “Hello, Glenda.”

I tried to walk right by her, but she moved into my path, her small frame squaring off in front of me.  “Did you really have to wear red shoes to a funeral?” She made the dig quietly but with effect.  My grandmother had never had to raise her voice.  Her vicious tongue was just as damaging with or without being loud.  “And could your dress be any tighter?  You look like a Hollywood whore.  Is that what you’ve been doing down in California?  Whoring for old directors, trying to sleep your way to the top?  Must not be working.”

I gave her an unpleasant smile.  She hadn’t changed a bit.  I hadn’t expected her to, but my old resentment for her flared anew.

Just my luck it was the nice one that had died.

Everyone has a little voice in their head, holding them back from showing enthusiasm, forcing them into pessimism.

Oftentimes that voice takes the shape of someone we know.  Sometimes it’s a snarky friend, a cynical parent.

In my case, especially back when I was a kid, it was my grandma.  Every happy urge I ever had she tried to talk me out of and a lot of the time she succeeded.

When she’d kicked me out at seventeen, I’d left and never looked back.  In fact, it’d been a relief because after that I got to live with Gram.

Though I shared no blood with Gram, in a lot of ways, most ways, she’d always felt more like family to me than my own grandma, and unlike my complete adoration for Gram, my feelings for my own grandmother could only be described as complicated.

She resented me because I was a burden she’d been forced to shoulder but never felt she’d owned.

And I resented her because I was really, really good at it.

Also, she was mean.  Deep down to her core mean.  She was cold, stubborn as a mule, and vindictive to a terrible degree and with very little provocation.  There was no give in her, and if you caught her in the wrong mood, she would absolutely cut off her nose to spite her face.  She could self-destruct like nobody’s business if it meant taking someone else out with her.

Her entire wretched life was pretty much a testament to that.

Obviously, I’d taken after her with at least a few of those undesirable traits.  The irony was not lost on me.  But in my defense, I do believe that many of the toxins that resided inside of me had been set into motion quite early on and a good number of them had been planted by her.

But then again, sometimes it just feels better to have someone to blame, and my grandmother had always made herself into a very convenient target.  It was one of the few nice things I could say about her.

I opened my mouth to give my obligatory scathing retort, but Dante beat me to it.

“Have a little respect,” Dante told her, voice low and mean.  “What would my grandmother think about you talking like that at her funeral?  For shame.  And the red shoes are perfect.  You of all people should remember how much Gram loved red.”

I lowered my head and started wringing my hands.  The day had gone from bad to worse.

Dante defending me was perhaps the most cruel thing he could do.  More than anything else, it made me remember why I’d been so devoted to him for most of my life.  Reminded me of a time when I had absolute faith in him.

Made me almost forgot that all of that had only set me up for a more brutal fall.

“Oh, well,” Grandma derisively bit back, “you’re carrying on with this one again?  Didn’t he dump you?” she asked me.  “Like trash,” she added.  “Didn’t you marry Leann’s girl?” she asked Dante.  “I always told you he’d break your heart,” she told me.

This was typical.  She lobbed out hurtful things like steady grenades until one hit its mark, and she never stopped before something vital was damaged.

Story of my childhood.

I began to walk away as Dante answered.  “No and no.  And I know what you’re doing, Glenda.  You’re lashing out because she cut off all contact with you.  Maybe if you’d try to be less awful to her, she’d give you a ring every once in a while.”

I didn’t hear my grandmother’s response because I’d picked up my pace.

CHAPTER

NINETEEN

PAST

“I hate my name,” I complained one day to Gram when I was over for tea.  My name was just one thing on a very long list that the kids at school teased me about, but I’d decided to take particular exception to it because that day I’d overheard some girls chanting Scarlett harlot when they thought I couldn’t hear.

So I’d come to rant about it to Gram.  She was the only grownup I knew that I could say anything to, tell anything to, and she took it all in stride.

This though for some reason seemed to take her aback.

Her hand went to her chest and she blinked at me several times before responding, “You do?”

I looked away.  I couldn’t maintain eye contact with her when she appeared so . . . wounded.

I shrugged, not so sure about my outburst now.  “I guess so,” I muttered.

“Want to know something absolutely fascinating about your name?”

My eyes went back to her as I nodded.

“A very famous woman named you that.  She named you that because scarlet is a brilliant, brave, and daring color.  You see, she knew you’d have an interesting life where those qualities would serve you well.”

“You named me?” I breathed.

She smiled and nodded.  “I did.  Glenda was . . . overwhelmed when she first got you and so I took over for a while.  I named you because I felt strongly about it, and she didn’t mind.  I always had a talent for naming, if I do say so myself.  Do you want to know who else I named?” she glanced over at Dante as she asked the question, and I found my eyes following hers.

He was in his usual spot on the sofa across the room, just lying there listening to us, occasionally piping in to add to or argue with what we were saying.  He sat up now and looked at Gram.

“Who?” I asked, though I saw what she was hinting at.

“Dante.  Don’t those names sound just wonderful together?  Scarlett and Dante.  They have a romantic ring when you combine them, don’t they?”

Dante and I were just looking at each other.

“Did you know that she named us?” I asked him.

He smiled and laid back down.  “I did, but I thought you’d enjoy the story more coming from her.”

CHAPTER

TWENTY

“A man’s kiss is his signature.”

~May West

PRESENT

I was striding across the cemetery, had nearly made it to the car when Dante caught up to me.

“Don’t,” I told him when he fell in beside me.  “Don’t involve yourself in my issues.  Just.  Don’t.  It’s not your job to defend me.”

“Since when?”

I shuddered.  Hello, temper.  “Since you dumped me.”

“I didn’t dump you.”  He sounded upset, which upset me.

“I didn’t dump you,” he repeated when I didn’t respond.

“Are you trying to pick a fight?”  I asked him pointedly.  He had, after all, been the one to declare this a day of peace between the two of us.

He set his jaw and fell quiet.  Good.

I thought and hoped that he’d just stay quiet, but about halfway back to the house he pulled the car over onto the shoulder suddenly, putting the car in park.

He gripped the steering wheel with both hands and lay his forehead against it.

“God, I don’t want to do this,” he spoke quietly, not turning his head.  “I don’t want to deal with those people being in her home, talking about her, pretending to care, most of them just waiting to see what she left them in the will.”

What he’d said didn’t need a response.  He knew how I felt about those people.

“And if one of them says an insulting word to you, so help me, God—“

“Let’s just get home and get it over with,” I cut in, speaking to the window.  “And besides, the sooner we get there the sooner I can have a drink.”

One plus for the day—liquor.  It would be flowing freely for this ill-fated gathering, I had no doubt.

“Yeah, okay,” he said dejectedly.  “Just give me a minute.  I need to get a grip.”

I was fine with that, because I thought he meant to just leave him to his thoughts for a minute.

He didn’t mean that, it was quickly clear.

He started tugging on my arm, and I looked at him.  He wasn’t leaning on the steering wheel anymore.  Now he was leaning toward me.

“What are you doing?” I asked him warily.

His answer was to keep tugging me to him, not stopping until my resistant head was pressed to his faithless chest.

Still without speaking, he started stroking my hair.

“Stop it,” I demanded.

He kissed the top of my head and kept stroking, a soothing, familiar motion, his heavy hand moving with just the perfect amount of pressure from my temple to the ends of my long hair.

Perfect because he’d done it a thousand times.  More.  This used to be how he’d soothe me down from a temper.

“Stop it,” I repeated faintly.

Just like the bastard to declare a truce and then launch an attack.

And somehow it was working.  I was leaning into him, relaxing into his familiar embrace.

I caught myself and tried to push away.

He wouldn’t let me.  And he was stronger than me, the bastard.

I struggled harder, then harder.  It did me not one bit of good.  He held me to him easily, both of my wrists captured in one of his hands.

He knew me, knew how I fought.  The first thing he’d done was restrain my hands, or more specifically, my vicious nails.

“Why are you doing this?” I panted at him.  I was still struggling, but not as hard now.  I’d quickly worn myself out.

“Why won’t you let me comfort you?” he said, the words mumbled into the top of my head.

I don’t know how, I thought.  Even if I wanted that, wanted to pretend with you long enough to feel better, I don’t know how.

But I said none of it.  Instead I kept on struggling in his hold.

Finally he let me go, and I turned away from him to stare back out the window.

“You were always like this.”  His tone was fond, damn him.  “Even when you were just a scrappy little kid.  Always so extreme.  You take things either with a stoic face or you lose your mind.  Never any middle ground.  I miss that, you know.  You always challenged me.”

I had nothing to say to that.

“But today,” he continued, voice going softer with a tender emotion that he had no right to, “give me some middle ground.  Let me comfort you, or at least, comfort me.”

“Please,” he said, closer now.  “Comfort me.”

I blame the please.  Hearing that word coming from those lips was hopelessly disarming to me, so when he pulled me to him again, I didn’t fight him.  I laid my head over his black, traitorous heart, and let the tears fall.

I was weary of trying to suppress them, and they came out freely for a time as I quietly sobbed against my enemy’s chest.

How could you find comfort in the soul that had shattered you?

I didn’t know, but perversely, I found it anyway.

Eventually I pulled back, not looking up at him, eyes trained on the wet spot I’d left on his beautiful suit jacket.

My hands went to my face, feeling at my cheeks as I realized that my makeup was in ruins.

“I’ll need to go upstairs and redo my makeup when we get back,” I said blankly.  My mind was worrying about something small in an effort to avoid thinking about something big.

“Well, there’s no hurry.  The bloodsuckers will be there all day I’m sure,” he murmured, and not so much the words but his proximity had me stiffening.

His face was moving closer to mine, then closer.  His hands cupped my face, angling it up to his.

I kept my gaze pointed down, but it didn’t matter.  He wasn’t concerned with my eyes.  He wanted my lips.

He took them unrepentantly, passionately, devouring me like he always did, as though he’d never have enough.

And I let him have them, the fight gone out of me.  I’d always had a weakness for his kiss.  That’s why I hated them so vehemently.

I started shifting, falling against my seat back, though there wasn’t far to go.

It was the damnedest thing.  Every time he kissed me, all I wanted to do was lie down flat on my back.  That urge was quickly followed by one to open my arms, and then my legs.

It was a natural inclination.  Instinctual and all the more powerful for it.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-ONE

“I have to remind myself to breathe—almost remind my heart to beat!”

Emily Brontë

PAST

“Let’s ditch school,” I told Dante.

“And do what?”

“Go watch movies at my grandma’s house.”  She wouldn’t be there.  She was gone from seven a.m. to seven p.m. every single working day like clockwork.

And Dante never said no to movies at my house.  It had become our thing lately.

In fact, it had become my favorite thing in the world.

He shrugged.  “Fine.  Whatever.  I’m not in the mood for school anyway.”

We walked back toward my place leisurely, side by side as we strolled, so close that our arms and hands kept brushing against each other.

The third time it happened, he took my hand and laced our fingers together.

A thrill ran through my entire body, and I couldn’t hold back a smile.

Neither of us said a word about it.  He’d been doing it more and more lately when we were alone, but we never talked about it.

We’d been doing lots of things when we were alone together that we never talked about.

Nothing like what his mom had suggested, in fact all of it could be called more or less innocent, just physical contact that kept progressing, lingering until we couldn’t seem to stop.

But he’d never even kissed me.  I was starting to worry about it.  From what I heard other girls talking about concerning boys, it seemed like if he wanted to he should have tried to by now.

It didn’t take us long to walk to my grandma’s house.  Okay, house was a generous term.  It was a rundown two-bedroom trailer on a plot of land that belonged to Dante’s family.

Still, it was the only place we had where we could be alone.

I let him pick out the movie.

He chose Gladiator even though we’d already seen it like five times.  But neither of us actually cared what we watched.  The movie was not why we’d started spending all of our free time doing this.

I turned it on and Dante sprawled out on the couch, his big body taking up most of it.

As much as I complained about how fast I was growing, he was growing much faster.  He towered over me, and his lean body had started to develop muscles I couldn’t help but notice.

And as fast as he was growing, he was still as graceful, as comfortable in his own skin as he’d always been.  I hadn’t seen him suffer through one awkward faze yet.

It was infuriating.

I shot him a pointed look at his spot on the couch and moved to sit on my grandma’s ancient recliner.

This was another game we played.  I wouldn’t sit with him until he asked me.

No.  Cajoled me into it.  I resisted every time.  I knew I couldn’t make anything too easy for him.  Grandma had slapped that bit of wisdom deep into my skull.

“Psst,” he called to me.

I ignored him, eyes glued to the screen.

“Scarlett,” he tried.  “You don’t have to sit on your grandma’s nasty old chair.”

“That couch is just as nasty,” I pointed out.  Everything in the place was nasty.  Old and cheap and dirty.  I lived here and even I thought so.

“Well, you don’t have to sit alone over there.”

“You’ve taken up the whole couch.  Where would I sit?”  As I said it, I shot him an arch look.

He grinned at me.  He was sprawled out, long arms perched at the top corner of the sofa.  He kicked one knee up, throwing the other on the ground, and patted his thighs.  “You can sit right here.”

I eyed him warily.  This was new and a little intimidating.  “I’m hungry.  Do you want a snack?”

“Do you have snacks?”

Of course not.  We never did.  It was a wonder I grew so much with the lack of food available when I was at home.  Then again, I got free lunch at school and had dinner at Gram’s more often than not.

“No,” I said, sorry I’d asked.  But I was hungry.

“You should let me give you money for food,” he added, his tone careful and blank.

This was a very old and very sore subject.  And he knew it.

I glared at him.  “I won’t take any more of your charity.  It’s bad enough your Gram buys me clothes for school and feeds me dinner almost every night.”

His jaw set stubbornly, and I was pissed and bummed.  If we got into a fight, it would ruin the rest of the day.

But then he sighed and looked away, breaking the tension.

Sometimes when we locked eyes, it was like predators having a standoff.  One wrong move and—blood.

On the flip side, if one backed down then—peace.

He’d backed down for this one, thank God, because I never could have.

He paused the movie.

“Well, I need food,” he said.  “Is it all right if I order myself a pizza?”

“All right.”

“I can’t eat a whole one myself.  I’ll only order it if you promise to eat some, too.”

That was a compromise I could live with, and he knew it.  It didn’t feel so much like charity if he was feeding himself and I was just sharing.

I grabbed the phone and brought it to him.  While he dialed, I sat down carefully between his thighs.

We’d never done this before.  Usually he just put his arm around me and we’d progress through varying degrees of touching each other tentatively.  I’d lay my head on his chest, sometimes, if he was extra bold, he’d rub my knee with his hand.

Once we’d even spooned, my back to his front both of us turned to the TV.  That had happened two weeks ago and it’d been the most exciting moment of my life.

But sitting between his thighs felt like a decidedly bigger step.

Tentatively I leaned back into his chest while he dialed up the pizza place.

“Any toppings you prefer?” he asked me

I was having a hard time finding my breath.  “Whatever.  You pick.  You’re paying.”

I always said this and never meant it.  We got the same thing every time.  It was my favorite.  I couldn’t even have said if Dante particularly liked it, but he always got it.

“Yeah,” he said into the phone, his free arm moving to drape over my shoulder.  “I’ll take a large pie, thin crust with jalapeños, chicken, and sausage.  Extra sauce.”

When he hung up I pushed play on the movie again.

We sat stiffly like that for a few minutes before I felt him put pressure on my shoulders, pulling me back more firmly against him.

“Relax,” he said into my hair.  “I won’t bite.  Just lay on me.”

I tried, but it was impossible to relax like that.  He wasn’t relaxed either though, to be fair.  I could feel the tension coiled in him like a spring about to bust.

I wiggled my hips, pushing closer to him.  He jerked like I’d hurt him, and I stopped.  And that’s when I felt it, that hardness poking into me from behind, through our clothes.

I swallowed and spoke, my voice like a croak, “Is this comfortable?  Should I move?”

He didn’t answer, but he was breathing hard into my ear.

I laid back, putting the weight of my shoulders more firmly to his chest.  I wasn’t any more relaxed, but I didn’t really care.  This felt better than relaxed, like something important was happening, and I didn’t want it to stop.

His arm around me moved suddenly, went up, gripping the top of the sofa above us, his knuckles white with the pressure of it.

I started to sit up to look at him, but he stopped me with a touch from his free hand to my belly.

I stilled, my eyes glued to that hand and the way it kept moving, stroking my stomach, pushing me harder into him.

I didn’t stop him, and he just kept rubbing.  I started to move my hips, rubbing against that foreign hardness at my back.  He didn’t stop me.

This went on for some time.  Not progressing, but not stopping, which seemed like enough for a while.

Until it wasn’t.  Eventually I craved more contact.  I wasn’t sure what.  It was a tangible desire for something intangible.

Feeling drugged, my body heavy and aching, I started to turn.

I pushed my chest to his.  His eyes were on mine as we breathed each other’s air, our lips less than an inch away.

I don’t even know how it happened, but he was suddenly sitting up and I was straddling him, my fingers in his hair, his hands on my hips.

He was panting into my mouth, and I didn’t know what to do with myself I loved it so much.

He’s finally going to kiss me, I thought in wonder.

I’d been waiting for this for what felt like my whole life.  And, at last, it was going to happen.

I didn’t move to him.  I wanted him to make the move.  I held perfectly still as he leaned that last inch toward me.

The doorbell rang, breaking the spell.

I scrambled off him, cursing in my head.  My first kiss ruined by the fucking pizza man.

I was sullen as I grabbed the two cleanest plates I could find and laid them out on the coffee table.

We ate in silence, the movie playing on.  I had two slices, Dante the rest.  There wasn’t so much as a crumb left by the time he was done.  He always ate like that, and it was no surprise with the way he was growing.

He got up, threw the box away, and joined me again on the couch, throwing his arm over my shoulder.

I shrugged it off.  I felt my temper suddenly brewing.  It felt separate from me at times like this, a storm out of my control.  I couldn’t have calmed it if I’d wanted to.  I only seemed to know how to fuel it.  Every bitter pill I’d ever swallowed was lodged somewhere inside of me, just waiting for these moments.

“So that girl you’re going to marry,” I ground out, voice tight and angry.  “Is she nice?”  I turned my head to watch his reaction.

He shot me a genuinely baffled look.  “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Tiffany.  Fanny.  Your mom told me all about her.”

“What?  Who?”

“Tiffany Vanderkamp.  Ring a bell?”

He looked no less confused as he said, “That’s the daughter of my mom’s best friend.  I barely know her.  What on earth does she have to do with anything?”

My eyes narrowed on him, looking for any signs of deceit.  “Your mom told me you were going to marry her after you graduate from college.”

His mouth twisted, and he glared back at me, his own temper coming out to play.

It seemed to instantly quiet my own.  I acknowledged to myself that some perverse part of me loved to rile him.

“You know my mom is crazy.  She was fucking with your head.  It’s what she does.  I can’t believe you let her get to you.  You’re smarter than that.”

My head cleared like I’d been lost in a fog and I was suddenly out of it.  He was right.  His mother was nuts, and this was just the kind of thing she’d pull whether there was truth to it or not.

“So you know this means she’s going to try to get you to marry that girl,” I pointed out to him.

He rolled his eyes.  “Good fucking luck to her.  She tries every day to get me to do things.  Ask me how often she succeeds.”

I didn’t have to ask.  I knew.  Seldom, and only when he wanted to go along with whatever it was.

“You really thought I was planning to marry that girl?” he asked.  There was a world of reproach in his voice.

I shrugged.  “It’s not my business.”  I turned my face away.

With a hand on my chin he turned it back.  “It is your business.”

I shook my head.

“It is your business, but you of all people know that I don’t want to marry some random girl my mother chose.  There’s only one girl I want.”

My heart was pounding so hard I thought both of us could hear it.

Without a word he lifted me onto his lap, turning me sideways, bringing our faces close.

“When are you finally going to let me kiss you, Scarlett?” he whispered to me, both hands cupping my face.

“Now,” I whispered back.

With a smile he gave me my first kiss.

I didn’t know what to do, but it was still good.  I didn’t know how to be passive, so I imitated him, opening my mouth, and when I felt his tongue I mashed my own against it.

So good, even with our unpracticed mouths and unsteady hands.  It wasn’t long before he shifted me, bringing me to straddle him, our bodies making heavy contact.

Even more than my own pleasure in the kiss, I enjoyed what I was doing to him.

He was moaning into my mouth, his hands all over me, touching my neck, my shoulders, my ribs, all along my sides, then down to grab my hips.