Page 81 of So Wild

Instead, Sam looked up at him, taking in the planes of his face, the stubble along his jaw. He was so different from the boy who’d spied on her as she played water balloon hopscotch, and yet it was the same person. Time had brought them from there to here and the strangeness of that made her dizzy. Outside the wind blew in aural waves, sending stray leaves and twigs against the side of the house. She and Scott Sanderson, trapped beneath a bone-dry sea together.

“Why?” she whispered. “Why do you bother with me, if I drive you crazy?”

“Funny, I asked myself the same thing while I was scrubbing my face raw.” Scott’s hands applied gentle pressure as he walked her backward. “I think it’s a conversation we’d be better off having somewhere else.”

Sam pressed her lips together, trying to get them to stop tingling in anticipation. “Feel free to get back out on the tree, I enjoyed talking to you there.”

“I don’t think so.”

She felt her mattress press into the backs of her knees. “You think we should talk in bed?”

“I think we should do a lot of things in bed, talking being the last item on a long list.” Scott picked her up as though she were nothing. “What do you think?”

“I think…” Sam swallowed. “I think you already tried that last night and wound up with a Georgia O’Keefe painting on your face. Twice, if you include the sex.”

Scott’s upper lip curled and he laid her gently down onto the mattress. “If that’s the way you’d like to play it, Samantha.”

He stood there a moment, examining her, his eyes lingering on her nipples poking through her t-shirt and the damp, silk-covered place between her legs. Then he turned, striding back toward the window.

“Wait!” Sam sat up. “Don’t go!”

That was all Scott needed. In seconds he was on top of her, his hands on her wrists, his hard thighs pressing hers open.

“You want me?” he breathed, the heat of his mouth making her ear tingle.

“Yes.” Sam struggled a little against his hold so that she could feel the strength being used against her. Scott smiled and tightened his fingers—locking them around her wrists like manacles. “You’ve been a bad girl, Samantha.”

He pressed his hips against hers and she moaned as she felt the hot press of his cock. Sam liked different positions, but this had always been her favourite, on her back with a man’s weight bearing down on top of her. It made her feel—

safe

—wanted in a way that the more athletic positions lacked. You were so close in missionary, you could touch and feel almost everything. It was insanely intimate and sexually charged. It had been her unfortunate discovery that most men didn’t share in her enjoyment of the position. They preferred her on top, doing all the work while they lay below and fondled her tits.

“Samantha?” Scott muttered in her ear. “Are you with me?”

“Yes,” she whispered. Trying to ignore the way her hips were aching, asking her to push up against him and feel that most validating of sensations—him hard against her thigh. Then she remembered the way he’d sat crouching at her window, the way he had all those years ago, and the throb of wistfulness that went through her was so strong she needed to say something, to ruin this before she inevitably ruined this. She let her arms relax, smiling patronizingly at him. Scott’s hands tightened around her wrists. “You know, I had sex as soon as I went to university. As soon as I got to London, actually.”

“Congratulations. Took you long enough.”

“It took me no time at all because here’s the thing, I didn’t stay a virgin because no one wanted to fuck me.”

Sam’s heart was pulsing against her chest, only it couldn’t have been, because the ache was between her breasts, where hippies said the fourth chakra lay. The heart chakra. “So why did you stay a virgin?”

There was a moment, a hot silvery moment when Sam was sure he was going to say something they couldn’t come back from. Then Scott bent forward, his mouth inches from hers. “Because I wanted you. I wanted you to be my first.”

Sam’s throat tightened. She’d known that was the case but hearing it out loud, with such sincerity, stung. “Scott…”

“Don’t like hearing that, do you? Well too fucking bad, it’s the truth.”

He kissed her, hard and deep and wet. His hips pushed into hers, warm from the thick material of his tracksuit bottoms. He was hard beneath them and she arched her back to bring them closer together, nipping his lower lip so he knew who had agency here.

Scott’s hands tightened around her wrists. “You want to play it like that, wild girl? You want to play games here, the same way you play games everywhere else? We can do that.”

He pressed himself up on his palms and before Sam could ask what he was doing, he was drawing a long stretch of material from his pocket.

“Are they…?”

“Pulled a pair of tights off the washing line,” he said, grabbing her wrists and winding the stretchy cloth around them. “Hope you don’t mind.”

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