by Mae Doyle
“Okay.” I get the feeling that there was something else that she wanted to say but she cuts it off. Nodding, more to myself than anyone else, I open the door and hold it for her. She slips past me, her blonde ponytail so close to me that I can smell her coconut shampoo. Once outside, she pauses at the edge of the porch. For a moment I just watch her. She stretches her arms over her head and then bends over to touch her toes.
My body responds in a way that it shouldn’t. Nora’s fucked everything up, once again, and now I have to go behind her and fix it all, but that doesn’t mean that I can help the way that she makes me feel. My cock throbs in my shorts as she bends and flexes, and I can’t help but think about the way it felt to be inside her in the woods.
Without meaning to, I step forward, reaching out and grabbing her hips. She stills, and I can tell that she’s forcing herself to stay in one place instead of pulling away. It’s like we’re connected, which is a fucking stupid thing to say about someone, but I can’t help but feel that way about her.
No matter what she does or how angry she makes me, I keep coming back to her. I can’t seem to stop, which is maddening. My fingers dig into her hips and I close my eyes, feeling energy surge between the two of us. If only I could let myself go around her, I know that I would feel like I was drowning. There’s something about Nora that I’ve never felt with another girl.
She turns, lightly resting her hands on my chest. “Teague,” she whispers, but I don’t let her finish. I need this from her. Now, more than ever, when I feel like everything is going wrong. Slowly I slide one hand up from her waist, trailing my fingers across her nipple and hearing her suck in a breath. She stiffens under my touch but doesn’t pull away. “Teague,” she tries again, but this time I stop her by crushing her mouth with mine.
I slip my arm around her waist, pulling her close to me so that she can’t get away. She fights me at first, and I feel her push against me, her nails digging into my chest through my thin t-shirt. Even though I know that I should pull back and stop kissing her, I can’t help it. Instead, I lean into her, kissing her harder, my lips firm on hers until she finally relaxes.
She moans, a low sound that courses through my body, and opens her mouth a little, allowing me to fully claim her. My tongue skates over hers and I nip her lower lip, sucking and biting it hard enough to make her cry out.
“Teague!” She pulls back, her hand to her mouth, feeling her swollen lower lip. Something turns in my stomach and I feel adrenaline coursing through my veins. The way some of her hair has come loose and is hanging around her shoulders and the bright flush in her cheeks is making it hard for me to stop.
With my arm still around her waist, I pull her back to me, pressing her little body up against mine. I know that she can feel my hard cock digging into her. She glances down, then back up at me, her eyes searching mine for something.
But I don’t know that I can give her what she wants. What she needs.
Fuck, I don’t know if I can give Nora what she deserves. She’s a better person than I am and I’m just going to ruin her. When I first met her, I didn’t care about that, but now? Now part of me wants to protect her.
Keep her safe.
Put her up on a fucking pedestal.
Like a trophy.
The other part of me still wants to hold her under the water until the bubbles stop coming up. I want to bend her to my will and then push her past her breaking point. I want to send her home to her crazy mom, shattered and broken.
Instead of thinking about how I’m feeling, I reach up, driving my fingers through Nora’s hair and holding her tight. She can’t pull away from me now, and she doesn’t even try. Instead, she leans up on her tiptoes and reaches for me, sliding her hand down my cheek.
No. There isn’t supposed to be passion between us. The last time that I felt anything for her was in the woods at school, and we all know how that ended up. Nora and I are never going to work, no matter how hard we try, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have a little fun.
With these thoughts ringing in my head, I reach my hand up and pinch her nipple through her shirt, watching as her pupils narrow with the pain. “You want to play, Nora?” I try to keep my voice free from any emotion I’m feeling, but it’s hard with her eyes locked on mine. “You want to hunt with me?”
Her face changes and I see sadness slowly replace the softer look. She thought that this was for real. Little Nora thought that I could actually love her, but she has to learn that there’s no way this can happen. Not if I’m going to handle everything else that I need to take care of.
No matter how sweet she tastes, there’s always going to be something else taking my attention. Something that needs me to handle it before it all explodes.
The storage locker. Jeremy.
“I…don’t.” Her voice quavers and she steps back. This time, I drop my hand from her back and let her pull away from me. “I thought…”
“What did you think?” It takes conscious effort for me to twist my face into a sneer, but I know that that’s what Nora expects from me. That’s who she knows, so it makes sense to give her what she knows. It’ll make this easier on us both. “Tell me what you thought.”
Instead, she shakes her head, her drooping ponytail coming to a rest on her shoulder. With a grunt, she pushes past me and runs into the house, slamming the door behind her.
Good. This is good, right? Sighing, I turn away from the house, even though I can hear her running up the stairs. I should go to her. I should comfort her. That’s what a good person would do. A good person wouldn’t be kissing her on their front porch.
But I learned a long time ago that being a good person isn’t going to get you very far. Pulling my keys from my pocket, I head for the driveway. Now’s as good a time as ever to go see a man about a storage unit.
Chapter 9
Nora
“Jeremy wasn’t at school today again.” Teague hasn’t said a word to me since we were on the porch together the other night, but Jeremy has missed school for two days now, which is really unlike him. Nerds don’t like to have their perfect attendance records ruined, and his just shattered.
Like my heart. Oh, grow up, Nora. I keep my eyes focused on Teague to try to see any signs of guilt, but he’s staring straight ahead as normal, one hand on the wheel, the other hanging out the window. He had hoped to get back on the football team as soon as possible, but even without him, they’re doing just fine. It’s a sore subject, and one that most people are afraid to talk about in front of him, but I’m not scared of him.
Well, that’s a lie. I am scared of him. I just don’t know if he’s done something that should really have me worried.
“Teague, are you listening to me?” Instead of responding, he reaches over and turns on the radio, cranking it up so that the loud sounds of angry rock fill the cab of his truck. I smack the knob, silencing it, and reach out to grab his arm, making sure to dig my nails in for good measure.
The feeling of his skin under my fingertips is hot and, for just a moment, I think about what it was like to kiss him again. I’m playing a dangerous game, I know that, but I can’t stop. I don’t know if I can come out on top of this with him, but I’m determined to give it a shot.
“Teague!” This time I yell his name, digging in my nails at the same time, and he finally looks over at me. Relief floods through my body as his eyes lock onto mine, but he doesn’t look happy. He doesn’t look…anything, actually. It feels like he’s looking through me and not even seeing me, which is not how we have ever been before.
Even when I’ve hated him and been terrified of him, even when he was chasing me through the woods, there was always something there when he looked at me. Some fire. Passion. Something that let me knew that if I got too close, I wouldn’t make it back. I’d burn up. He’d destroy me.
I’d always been terrified to see that look on his face, but now it scares me even more to see that it’s not there.
“Nora, what do you want me to
say? Jeremy’s not a great guy and he probably just skipped school.” He shrugs like it’s no big deal. “It’s nice out today, maybe we should have done the same thing.”
I let my hand fall from his arm. “You know something that I don’t.” After the shit day that I’ve had with Bethany and her little friends following me around making gagging noises all day long and being afraid to eat anything without checking it for cat litter, I just want some honesty, but I’m not sure that Teague’s going to give it to me.
We’re driving faster than normal, tearing up the road between his house and school, but he doesn’t look like he’s going to let off of the gas anytime soon. The trees whip by us so fast that they’re a blur and even the huge mansions we pass fly by my window. Nervously, I glance over at him, but the only sign that he’s upset is the way his jaw is twitching.
“Can we talk?” I’m not stupid. I know that every single time I speak I’m just putting myself in his crosshairs. He’s already told me how much he loves to hunt, and I know that I’m just asking for it. Just pushing his buttons. Bringing this on myself.
“No.” He starts drumming on his steering wheel, which is something that I swear I’ve never seen him do before. I think about interrupting him and saying something else, but I know that I’ll just piss him off. It’s ridiculous – I spend more alone time with him than I do with anyone else since I moved to Blacksburg, and I still don’t know that much about him.
When we pull into the driveway without him saying anything else, I let out a big sigh and bend down to pick up my backpack, but his hand on my arm stop me. “I rented a new storage unit.” His voice is low, like he’s afraid that someone’s going to hear us, even though there isn’t anyone around. Even his mom is gone again, which I’ve learned means that she’ll either come home exhausted from tennis or tipsy from martinis.
I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say to that, so I sit quietly. Teague made it clear before that I was going to have to help him clean up the mess that I created when I had Jeremy take me to the unit, but now it seems to be no big deal. Before I can get out of the truck or say anything, however, he continues.
“I need you to help me move everything. Tonight. I think that my mom will be at a charity dinner, so she won’t care where we are.” He looks more serious than I’ve ever seen him be before, and I nod, even though I don’t want to agree to what he’s asking me. Telling me. Whatever.
Also, I sincerely doubt that his mother would miss me or care where I was no matter the circumstances, but now is not the time to mention that. She adores her son, and I envy that. As much as I know that my mom loves me, there’s always been something in her that couldn’t fully commit to me as a mom. That’s why I’m here, with Teague, while she’s in hospital.
I love my mom. I know that she loves me. She just wasn’t strong enough to be the mom that I needed her to be, and that stings. It will probably always sting, to be honest.
“What do we have to do?” My pulse is racing, and I try to look calm and collected, like I help to move tons of money and guns every day. No big deal. I’m pretty sure that he can see through my façade, though, because he chuckles.
“Cut through the lock, box everything up, get it all moved to the new location. It’s really not a big deal, and I would do it myself, but you promised that you’d help, remember?” He brushes some hair behind my ear and I shiver.
Oh, I remember, alright. I remember how he didn’t give me a choice and told me that I had to help him, or else.
“Okay, cool. Cool.” I smile at him, a lopsided grin that probably looks as goofy as it feels. I know that he can tell how nervous I am, even though I’m trying my best to hide it. Teague rolls his eyes but doesn’t say anything. He already knows that I’ll do almost anything he asks me to. Hell, I was on my knees for him before, begging him not to ruin my painting.
It didn’t work, but I tried. As much as I hate to admit it, I’ll try or do damn near anything.
***
“Are you sure that we don’t look completely suspicious?” Teague completely ignores my question.
I hadn’t thought that both of us dressing in black would make us stand out as much as it did. If anything, I thought that maybe we would look really cool, or like we were artists or something. I mean, I dress in a lot of black and I’ve never attracted a lot of attention, but the two of us together have drawn some curious stares since we showed up at the Safe and Secure twenty minutes ago.
Loitering doesn’t help. Loitering with a huge bolt cutters definitely doesn’t help, but Teague seems completely unfazed. “Shouldn’t we leave the bolt cutters in the truck?” This time he actually deigns to look at me, but he just laughs and rolls his eyes.
“You worried that someone’s going to say something, Nora?”
“Yes! That is definitely, 100% what I’m worried about. Don’t you think that we look like we’re up to something?” I flinch and step behind him when an older man and his wife walk by, turning their heads to shamelessly stare at the two of us. “I think we should come back later.”
“Not a chance. People have just about cleared out of here. I want to get this done, go home, have a beer. Maybe a blowie, if you’re down.” He nudges me and I step away, not wanting to have any contact with him. As long as I don’t get too close to him or let my guard down then I can at least pretend that I don’t have this inner conflict about wanting him running through me all the damn time.
The thought of Teague’s cock makes me blush. “Let’s just get this over with,” I mutter, stepping closer to the storage unit. He glances around behind us to make sure that nobody’s coming then stands next to me, positioning the bolt cutters on his lock.
“You ready?”
I am not ready, but he doesn’t want to hear that, and telling him that I’m nervous doesn’t do any good anyway, so I nod, a tiny movement that I hope he won’t see. He nudges me again, this time his whole arm touching mine, then presses down on the bolt cutters. Even by leaning into them and grunting, it takes more effort than I thought it would for him to be able to cut through the lock.
Finally, the bolt cutters give way, and he takes a step forward, falling into the door of the storage unit as they snap shut. “There we go.” Teague steadies himself and then steps back, dropping the bolt cutters to the ground and removing the lock. It’s mangled and twisted, and he fights with it for a moment before he’s able to unhook it from the door.
The entire time he’s working on it I keep glancing over my shoulder, terrified that someone’s going to finally walk up to us and demand to know what we’re doing. I know that technically it isn’t illegal to open up the lock on your own storage building, but I have a feeling that Teague doesn’t want the contents of his storage building advertised to anyone who just happens to be walking by.
Nobody’s paying us any attention. It’s like Teague has a magic ability to make people look past the bad shit he’s doing.
“Piece of cake, Nora.” He tosses me the lock, which I drop on the ground next to the bolt cutters. Once he lifts the door and steps inside, I follow him, quickly reaching for the light switch on the inner wall. The single bare bulb flickers on with a soft hum and Teague shuts the door behind us, sealing us in. It hits the ground with a loud clang and I jump as the sounds from the outside are quickly cut off.
Everything’s the same as when I was here with Jeremy, although now the storage unit feels smaller with Teague in it with me. It’s one of the smallest units available, and I have to consciously move out of the way to keep from bumping into him when he walks around flipping open box flaps and moving papers. Every single time we touch, there’s a bolt of electricity that passes from him to me, but I don’t think he feels it. It’s all I can do to focus on what we’re supposed to be doing.
“Looks like it’s all still here. I kinda wondered if you helped yourself to a diamond or anything, Nora.” He grins at me and runs his hand through his hair. It’s usually perfectly in place at school, and seeing it tousled
up and messy makes me catch my breath. I’d love to run my hands through it. Why can’t we have normal interactions where he will look at me like that? Without him trying to kill me or us breaking into a storage unit?
“Let’s load it up and get out of here.” I try to sound brave, even though I feel like I’m going to come out of my skin with nerves, but I’m not sure if it’s because I’m in this small space with Teague or if I’m really worried that someone’s going to come up behind us and open the door. Somehow, being around all of this money and loot has me on edge.
“You don’t want to know the backstory of all of this stuff?” His voice is casual, and my head jerks up so I can look at him. There’s no way that I believe that he’s going to be honest with me, so I just scoff in response.
“Alright. Your call. I just know that you’re one of the most curious people that I’ve met before, and I was going to share it with you.” He shrugs and picks up a box. “Open the door, would you?”
Wait. Ever since I was in here the other day, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it all. The guns, the money, the diamonds, everything. I have a feeling that it has something to do with his dad, who he never mentions.
This may be my first and only time to get the real truth about who Teague is and what makes him click. I step in front of the door, blocking his way out. Even as I do it, I know that he could easily move me out of the way if he wants to, but I don’t think that he will. I think that he wants to talk as much as I want to listen.
For once, the two of us want the same thing, and I’m not going to pass up that opportunity. “The truth,” I tell him, crossing my arms. “I want the truth or I want nothing.”
He grins, a lazy smile that makes me weak in the knees spreading across his face.
“Fine. The truth.” Dropping the box, he turns and sits down on it, gesturing for me to have a seat. “Get comfy, Nora, this is better than any TV show you’ve ever seen.”
