Page 43 of Just One Bite
She rocks her hips slightly, desperate for friction, and it hurts not to give it to her. I may not touch her like I want to, but I’m thinking about it. Slipping her underwear to the side and filling her the way she craves. The moans she’ll make with her body trembling around my fingers. Her bad night would be just a terrible memory.
For my own sanity, I shift my attention back to the way her skin tastes.
Every kiss is like a brand.Mine.Another kiss.Parker’s.And another.Only.
I need everyone to know. I need her to know.
“You wear tights to ballet, right?”
“Yes, why?” Her words are a breathy exhale.
“Good.” I suck at the skin of her thigh. She gasps, gripping my hair again. The exhale morphs into a faint moan. “I needed to leave a mark on you, but I don’t want you to get in trouble.”
The fresh red bruise of blood pooling beneath the skin on her thigh satisfies me enough to stop touching her for now.
Her breath calms and a strange sense of peace lingers between us as I pull away and help her with her clothes. It’s too easy. We should be awkwardly fumbling through it, but it’s like our bodies recognize each other.
I don’t know what’s happening between us, but I like it.
Chapter Fourteen
Olivia
Parker Owens is just a man.I have to keep reminding myself of that as we share the common bathroom, staring at each other in the mirror and brushing our teeth. He spits his toothpaste in the sink, then goes back to brushing and winks at me. It’s disgusting, so I’m not looking at his bare chest or thinking about those lips covered in toothpaste and how mere minutes before they were pressed to my lower thigh. No, because he’s just a man. Nothing more.
Parker is so many things, and I’ve seen him scarf down an entire plate of food at orientation in seconds and now brush his teeth, so I can confidently say he is gross. But he’s kind. And his hands are sure, and I know what his tongue feels like pressed to the underside of my breast. I spit my toothpaste in the sink, gazing over the veins in his forearms and hands as they grip the edge of the sink, and I remember the tenderness of them digging into my back. How soft, careful, and deliberate his touch was.
It’s just lust because of that dream. It’s nothing more than that. Though, I guess it wasn’t lust that drew me into his bed and had him happily hold me all night long. And he could have kept touching me. I could have asked him to. I wanted him to. More importantly, he could have asked me but didn’t.
We spit the last of our toothpaste out and rinse in sync. It’s early enough that it’s just the two of us in the coed bathroom. Apart from someone in the showers. The steam lingers in the air and billows up into the arched ceiling whilethe warmth creeps in as condensation at the edge of the mirror. It’s large and elaborate like everything else at Doxlothia and has silver inlay with filigree lining all edges.
Parker smiles, tousling his hair with his fingers. I make quick work of wetting my brush and tugging my hair into a bun for ballet. I should have started warming up for auditions earlier, but when he turns to look down at me and our chests nearly touch, I can’t bring myself to regret it entirely.
“Wow.” He looks me up and down. “Hot.”
“Move.” I finish pinning my hair and drag my warmers up over my tights. “I take it you don’t know many ballerinas.”
“You’re the first.” His teeth are perfect, with his blue eyes sparkling. It’s distracting.
Parker is beautiful. To deny it would make me a liar.
“What made you want to become a ballerina?”
I pause, take a breath, and focus on the mirror. I have two answers to that question. Both involve the truth, but only one involves mentioning my mother. I’d been roped into too many awkward conversations about her, so I developed a way around the madness that makes everyone comfortable. But Gavin’s words are still fresh in my mind. Parker lost his mother too. He can take the real answer.
“My mother was a ballerina.”
“Was?”
“Was.” That’s all I care to offer. I’ll let him make up any assumption he desires. “She had a lead role in her company. I practiced nearly every day with her. She’s the one who taught me.”
I try not to think of her. Not in Noxx House. A place she once roamed. Had she pinned her hair in this very mirror? Was she ever late because she was lying in some man’s bed all night? Surely not. My mother would never.
Parker smiles from ear to ear. It’s so distracting I forget we’re still standing in the bathroom.
“What?”
“You just lit up a little.” He leans with his back against the sink counter. “Keep talking. Tell me more about her.”
