Page 31 of Twice as Twisted

“I don’t know,” he says. “Because you’re dating and shit.”

“We’re not dating,” I say. “I told you, I don’t date.”

“And now that makes a lot more sense,” he says, nodding. “Not many guys would be cool with looking and not touching. Especially when a girl looks like you.”

I scoff and go to pick up my shirt, quickly pulling it back over my head, praying he won’t ask about the marks.

“What?” Duke asks, laying back on one elbow on my bed. He cocks his head and gives me this smile that’s so cute, amixture of bashful and shame-faced and defensive, that it’s hard to stay mad about the way he rocketed past my every boundary in five seconds flat.

“You make it sound like I look like Dolly,” I say, pulling the tie from my hair, which is all askew from his tossing me around.

He groans and flops back on the bed, clutching his heart with one hand and his crotch with the other. “Somehow you’re even hotter.”

“You’re crazy,” I say, but I can’t quite face him.

It’s not that I think he believes that, or that I do. It’s that for the first time in my life I want someone to think it’s true, even if it’s not about me, if it’s only something for someone else to appreciate. I want to believe him, and I can’t stomach the thought of seeing the lie in his eyes.

It’s bad enough seeing the consternation in Boots’s eyes as he watches me from under the edge of my bed, where he’s still hiding.

I hurry to my closet to busy myself with my clothes. As soon as I see the orderly line of hangers, each draped with a button shirt in white or pastel, slacks in shades of shell to pewter, khaki to chocolate, navy and midnight, I drift fully back into myself. I try to arrange my thoughts as neatly, to put them back into the places they belong, so he won’t see that I’m the one who’s mad.

“The good news is, you passed that test,” Duke says from my bed. “The bad news is, I kinda hate my brother now.”

“What?” I demand, spinning to face him.

“It doesn’t seem fair that he gets you all to himself,” Duke says. “We usually share girls.”

I narrow my eyes. “What do you mean, I passed the test?”

“Oh, that,” he says with a smug grin. “Obviously I was testing you to see if you were as easy as the girls we usuallysmash. If you’re going to be dating, and he’s not sharing, I had to make sure you’re faithful.”

“That was a test?” I ask incredulously, all thought of forgiveness forgotten. “What if I’d failed?”

“Then we’d know you’re a ho, and I’d have gotten my nut. Everybody wins.”

“Except me.”

“Trust, you’re gonna nut at least four times before we even start on me,” he says, his gaze stroking over me like fingers. “And then maybe a few more times, if you’re into a little pain. You wouldn’t have lost anything—except maybe the ability to walk for a few days.”

A funny, almost painful tugging sensation happens inside my sports bra, like he’s pulling on both my nipples at once. I look down and see that they’re visible even through my shirt. Confused, I quickly turn back to the closet, trying to get my thoughts back in order. It’s harder this time. I’m distracted by his presence, knowing he’s looking at me from behind, his gaze now a breath on my neck.

He chuckles from across the room. “So, you’re like… A mega-virgin, huh?”

“I dunno,” I mumble to my closet.

Virginity was always something other girls worried about. It never mattered to me because boys never mattered to me, and virginity was for them, like beauty.

“But you are, right?” he presses. “It’s not a bad thing. Baron will like that. A lot.”

“I don’t really understand what it is,” I admit.

He laughs, the sounds rolling through the room, low and deep and palpable, like something I could put in a box and release later, when I wanted to hear it again.

“You don’t understand what virginity is?” he asks. “It means you’ve never been fucked.”

“I know that,” I say, turning back around. Boots has hopped up onto the bed and is staring at Duke as if he’s trying to unnerve him.

“But is it a hymen? Penetration?” I press.

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