Page 35 of My Fault
I shoved him as hard as I could but only managed to move him a few inches.
“Why don’t you take the photo already?” This was the closest he’d ever been to me and the best view I’d ever had of those bright eyes with their long lashes. He wasn’t hard to look at. My god! The son of a bitch was making my legs tremble, it didn’t matter how much I hated him.
“How about you open your mouth without making some stupid-ass comment and we can finally get this over with?” he replied.
He lifted the phone to the height of our heads. As I watched him, my lips grew involuntarily moist. Then he pulled me into him. He kissed me; I heard the click. He put his tongue in my mouth, and when he started to move it, I felt suddenly weightless. Our lips were moving in unison, and it wasn’t just because of the photo.
I liked feeling what I felt just then. My entire body was burning with passion for the moment, and deep down in my soul, I knew I had my revenge. I was enjoying that kiss, and I couldn’t wait for my ex-boyfriend to find out!
His hands were back on my legs. This was lust, pure, undilutedlust. And hate. We hated each other, we couldn’t stand each other, and that made it okay for us to use each other in this way.
I reached up and ran my hands through his dark hair. Screw being prudent!
His hands were on my lower thighs, squeezing them, making me shiver, making parts of my body I’d prefer not to name catch fire. He bit my lower lip, and I wanted to scream.
“Don’t stop,” I said when he reached my waist. I wanted him to keep going, wanted him to make me forget all I was feeling at that instant, to make all my sorrow vanish, all my demons. I wanted to use him for that, use him the way so many boys use girls, I wanted…
He pulled away.
I opened my eyes. What was he doing?
“You’ve got your photo,” he said, and dropped the phone into my hand.
I was panting. I was angry that he’d stopped; I was angry that the one time he did something right, he had to mess it up; I was angry because he was incorrigible and I hated everything he, his father, and his godforsaken life had done to mine.
“That’s it?” I asked. My cheeks were on fire. My body was yearning for him to touch me again.
“Try to stay out of my way tonight,” he warned me.
What had happened? What had we just done?
I watched him as he walked away, feeling a strange, indescribable sensation.
12
Nick
I thought I was going to explode just then. Each of my nerve endings had awakened with a burning, unsettling intensity. My anger grew as I walked over to my friends.
Why the hell had I kissed her? Why had I entered her game? Since when did I let a girl get me so hot without me taking the reins? The answer to all these questions had four letters:Noah.
Since I’d seen her tonight, I hadn’t been able to get her out of my head. I didn’t know if it was the attraction of the forbidden, since she was my stepsister, or if I needed somehow to feel I could control her, put out that fire that kept shooting out of her mouth and make her act like all the other women I’d known and managed to control.
But Noah was completely different from all of them. She didn’t throw herself at my feet, she didn’t get weak in the knees when she looked at me, she didn’t back down when I challenged her, no—she’d answer back, and her reactions were fiercer than mine. It was exasperating…and exciting at the same time. Mentally, I couldn’t stop telling myself that she was an unbearable, whiny little bitch, that I should ignore her, but my body was betrayingme, and I didn’t know what the hell to do. I’d kissed her. I’d offered to do it not because I gave a damn about her getting revenge on her ex-boyfriend or wanted her out of the party; it was just pure desire. I wanted to taste her, to feel her. As soon as I saw her that night, I wanted to get between her legs and make her mine. It was uncomfortable, hellishly uncomfortable, and frustrating, especially since I couldn’t stand her. Why did she have to be so goddamn attractive?
Her shorts left most of her long legs free to excite me. She was daring any man to reach out and touch them, to kiss her. Her hair drove me wild, especially when she let it down to frame her face, which was flushed from the alcohol. But more exciting still were her lips: soft as velvet and sharp as steel when she wanted to say something wounding. She’d driven me crazy when she’d opened her mouth, when her tongue had interwoven with mine without shame, without hesitation. It was nothing like any other girl I’d kissed before. She’d followed my rhythm, let me take control, and I’d bitten her lip from pure carnal desire because I’d wanted to consume her but also let her know who was in charge.
“That’s it?” she’d asked me, cheeks flushed, eyes bright with longing. What the fuck did she want me to do, though? If she wasn’t who she was, I’d have taken her straight to the back seat of my car. If she wasn’t so damn hard to put up with, I’d have given her the best night of her life. If she wasn’t…if she wasn’t turning my whole world upside down…
“Dude, where were you? The first race is about to begin!” Lion shouted from the place where he’d parked my black Ferrari next to my enemy’s souped-up Audi.
That was exactly what I needed. Discharging all that built-up tension at 170 miles per hour down a sand track in the middle of the night and leaving one of the losers from Ronnie’s gang in the dust. I needed to blow off steam, feel the adrenaline—adrenalinewas better than desire, better than knowing that I wouldn’t have the one thing I really wanted that night…
“Tell Kyle I’ve got this one,” I said, walking over to the car. My friends were waiting for me, having fun before the flag came down, drinking, dancing, in a good mood because they assumed we’d take the night’s prize money. That was the deal. Fifteen thousand dollars was on the line, plus the loser’s car in the final. I’d been putting off a race against Ronnie too long. Not because I feared losing—anything but. The problem was that he was a thug and a bad sport. Every year, the pot got bigger, and every year, there was more tension between our two gangs. He’d made it evident what would happen if things got out of hand. Everyone here knew the rules.
There were four gangs competing that night, and each had brought in its best drivers. Eight different cars were racing in total. We drew to find out which gang would compete against which, and we had two separate brackets. There would be three races per bracket until one was left, and that person would race the winner from the other bracket. That made six races in total, not counting the final.
And I was going to be in that final.
