Page 58 of Turn

I took a deep breath. Something would happen here and now. I wanted it to happen. “I like that you called me by my full name,” I said softly.

His voice was gruff, almost pained. “You’re too fucking beautiful.”

It started because I touched his hand. Just gently, tentatively, in the darkness.

Curtis sucked in a sharp breath and took a bolder step, circling both hands around my waist and turning me around so that my back was against his chest. He was all muscles and primitive male power. My body responded instantly, my breasts tingling, my breathing accelerating. But nothing could match the excruciating ache between my legs as his hands gripped my hips and then moved across my belly.

I moaned a little and pressed into him, wanting more, ready to beg for it. I hadn’t let anyone get this close to me in so long. Now I wondered how I’d managed to make do with only battery operated relief all this time. I wanted everything and I wanted it right now.

He knew. His hands traveled up to my breasts and I heard him groan a fevered curse when he realized I wasn’t wearing a bra. I pressed against him as he kneaded my breasts. He pushed himself against my back it and I felt him, what he needed. He could have it. The clothes we wore were such a nuisance. They were in our way and I wanted them gone. I wanted him to carry me to my room and do everything I’d been fantasizing about.

I gasped when he abruptly reached low, cupping between my legs. I didn’t have time to think about the fact that we were in the backyard or that my parents would be home soon. There was only the rough bristle of his jaw against my cheek and the fact that the straps of my nightie had already fallen when I reached my arms up and hooked them around his neck so I could arch my body against him more completely. His hands were working overtime to conduct a magnificent kind of torture between my legs and I was throbbing, aching, on fire as I strained against him.

“Yeah,” I breathed, moving in time to the stroke of his hand. “Yeah.”

All my inhibitions had fallen away with one touch. And Curtis obliged by getting his fingers inside my panties and then with an insanely delicious shock I realized they were inside of me. It was too much, too soon. I’d been thinking about him far too often and I’d gone without this feeling for far too long.

I broke, climaxing with his fingers deep inside of me, stifling my own cries of ecstasy while biting my lip as wave after agonizingly beautiful wave of pleasure rocked me. I nearly cried when Curtis finally pulled his hand away, hating the feel of him leaving me. I was ready for so much more. I was ready right now.

I spun around and was feverishly reaching for his pants when he stopped me, fending my hands off by taking two steps back.

“Wait a minute, Cassie,” he said gruffly.

I blinked. “We can go to my room,” I said, still a little breathless from the aftershocks of the orgasm.

Curtis looked away like he was embarrassed for me. “But we’re not going to.”

I pulled my straps up, suddenly in a hurry to cover my bare breasts. “I don’t understand.”

“Yes you do,” he said quietly. He still faced away. He still didn’t want to look at me at all.

“Curtis, this isn’t wrong.”

“It isn’t right either. Your folks have been really good to me and to my brother.”

I was starting to feel slightly humiliated. “What does that have to do with this, with us?”

“Everything.”

“Curtis,” I said in a choked voice and then lost my train of thought because I was mortified by the reality that a minute ago I’d climaxed on his hand and now he was flatly rejecting me. “I know what you think of me. But I’m not some privileged princess who gets anything she wants.”

“Then don’t act like it.”

He said the words casually, as if they shouldn’t hit me like a slap. But they did. I had nothing to say to this man, this sullen jerk who threw out mixed signals like confetti.

I didn’t need him.

I just needed to go back to my room, scream into my pillow and forget I’d ever practically begged Curtis Mulligan to screw me.

He called my name when I stormed past him but I didn’t pay any attention. I slammed the door to my room and collapsed on my bed, prepared to cry for a while until I was tired.

Barely five seconds passed before the door was flung open. Curtis walked in and closed it behind him.

I shot right to my feet. “Get out.”

He shook his head. “Not yet.”

I braced my palms on his broad chest, hating myself for marveling over the hard feel of his muscles. I pushed him toward the door. There were things I could say to him, cruel things, but I just wanted him to leave.

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