by Mariano, Sam
I should probably care more than I do, but at this point, telling him no is more a test than anything. If I could handle what he did to me in that classroom, I can handle sex. I just don’t want to be one of his many casual hook-ups. I don’t want to be some girl he goes through and gets bored with. If that’s all I am, then no, I don’t want to give him my virginity; I’m just aware he might take it whether I want him to or not, so if he does, I need to be prepared.
“I’m not even officially your girlfriend,” I tell him. “I think it’s premature to give you my virginity when we’re not even technically together. When just earlier tonight another girl—”
“Don’t.” His tone is laced with enough warning that I stop. “I told you, that didn’t happen.”
“I know. I’m just saying. I know you’re used to moving faster than me, I understand that. But if I’m not moving at the pace you need, I need to know you’re going to bring that to me, not take the decision out of my hands and delegate it to someone else. If I’m not even your girlfriend, I guess you don’t owe me anything, but—”
“Do you want to be my girlfriend?” he asks, butting himself against my clit.
I gasp as he rubs me, closing my eyes. “Once I have the title, how long do I have to come to terms with losing my virginity? I feel like the clock starts ticking faster if we’re official.”
“You’re going to like sex, Zoey. I don’t know why you’re so afraid of it.”
“I’m not afraid of sex, I’m afraid of being used and discarded,” I blurt. “You said you wanted my virginity, and now you’re takin’ the fastest path you can to get to it. What else am I supposed to think?”
“That I want to fuck you for the first time, because then I will get to keep fucking you, and it won’t be such a fucking event?” he suggests. Shaking his head in vague aggravation, he says, “Fuck this.”
My heart kicks up and I half-expect him to pull out of my body and leave me here alone on the bed, but instead he drives his hips forward. I cry out at the unexpected pain as he tears into me, my upper body arching off the bed.
Carter comes down to meet me, bracing a hand behind my back and pulling me against his chest to comfort me. He’s not moving inside me, trying to give my body a chance to adjust to his brutal invasion, but it still hurts.
“You said you wouldn’t.”
“I know,” he murmurs, caressing my hair and kissing the side of my face. “I’m sorry. But you’re not going to start trusting me until after I’ve fucked you. You think everything I do is suspect because I only want your virginity. I do want it, but it’s getting in the way.”
I swallow, lean my forehead against his shoulder, and mutter, “Not anymore.”
“No,” he agrees, petting me again. “Not anymore.”
He holds me for a couple minutes while I wrestle with the pain accompanying the loss of my innocence, then he lays me back down on the bed. I feel more vulnerable now in every way, emotionally and physically. He starts to move inside me, but it’s such a tight fit that it stings when he pulls back and pushes inside me again.
I don’t know how to feel, but he doesn’t give me long to debate. He takes my hands and moves them, pinning them beside me on the bed, but he links our fingers together, too. He puts more weight into holding me down, but it doesn’t feel mean with our fingers intertwined. His hips move slowly at first as I get accustomed to the way my body stretches to accommodate him. I’ve never felt so full in my life.
“Does it still hurt?” he asks.
I swallow and shake my head. “Not really.”
“I need to move faster. Tell me if it starts hurting, okay?”
I nod my head and go to reach for him, but he still has my arms pinned to the bed, and he doesn’t let go when I try to pull them free. I don’t try hard, figuring we’ve already come this far, I might as well let him do this his way.
It turns out, his way isn’t terrible. I love the feeling of his weight on top of me, his masculine scent, the sounds of his pleasure as he pumps into me. Being held down doesn’t bother me now that there’s nothing left to lose. He still kisses me—hard, fierce kisses that punctuate his thrusts. I still get the impression he’s holding back, not pounding into me as hard as he wants to, but as the friction of him rubbing against my walls starts to build up inside me, I need more.
“Harder,” I tell him, somewhat breathlessly.
He misses a thrust, looking down at me with surprise. “Yeah?”
“Can I—?” I nod at my wrists.
He releases them and I immediately wind them around his neck, pulling him down for a kiss, then repositioning my hands on his muscular shoulders so I have something to hold onto. He pulls his hips back and drives himself inside me full-force. My whole body moves up the bed, then he does it again and again and again. That delicious friction starts building again and I welcome it with open arms. It’s a life raft thrown at me when I was drowning in an ocean of uncertainty. Everything feels scarier now, like he unlocked new levels when he thrust through the barrier I asked him to leave intact, but with higher risks come a chance at higher rewards.
I can’t think about all that right now. I can’t think about anything but the way it feels like my insides are being stretched tighter and tighter, preparing to snap. The way I ache, yet still crave every impact when he slams inside me. In that way, sex with Carter is exactly like him.
The tension radiates through my core and before long I’m panting and gasping, my fingers digging into his skin unintentionally this time. Carter’s thumb brushes over my nipple and that extra jolt of unexpected pleasure sweeps over me, triggering the tension between my legs. I cry out as a deafening wave crashes through me, sending white-hot ripples of pleasure through my whole body. It’s like an explosion went off and I was standing too close; for a few seconds, I can’t hear, can’t think, can’t function beyond receiving pleasure.
When I can finally feel my skin again, I feel the bite of Carter’s fingers digging into my hips, his warm breath in my neck as he groans my name. He’s still inside me, as deep as he can get, his body tense. I blink a few times to orient myself, then take stock. Carter relaxes against me, settling his face in the crook of my neck while he recovers.
I’m feeling tender, so I wrap my arms around him and hold him close. My body feels hot everywhere except between my legs, where it feels… wet.
He didn’t use a condom, and he didn’t pull out. I didn’t want him to pull out, but I shouldn’t have let him come inside me, either.
I almost laugh at my own thoughts. Let him. I barely let him have sex with me in the first place.
Carter pulls back, and I realize the short laugh must have escaped me. “What’s funny?” he asks.
“Nothing. I’m kind of surprised you didn’t have a condom on you, though. You have been planning to fuck me since that day in the classroom; I expected you’d have one handy at all times.”
“There’s a condom in my wallet,” he says, before resting his head against my shoulder again.
“What?” I blink. “Then why didn’t we use it?”
He shifts his weight and carefully pulls his dick out of me. “I wanted to come inside you,” he states, like that’s a valid reason.
“Well, I’m not on the pill,” I inform him.
“Well, you should probably get on it then, huh?” he returns, reaching over and snaking an arm under me so he can gather me against his chest.
“Future birth control doesn’t do any good tonight,” I mutter at him.
“It’ll be all right,” he says, with unreasonable confidence.
I shake my head at him, but snuggle into the crook of his arm anyway. “You’re not actually invincible, you know? The world won’t always bend to your will.”
He doesn’t bother to argue with me. I hope it’s because in every other sexual scenario he has been safe, and this was a fluke. I’m going to be really pissed off if he only assumed he was clean, and he actually gives me Chlamydia.
I’ll be doubly pissed if he gives me a baby. He’ll never hear the end of it.
I know that’s a paranoid thought to have when we’ve only had unprotected sex one time, but he’s so quiet, my mind has nowhere else to wander. It takes the direst road, leading me down the path of teenage pregnancy. Would I still be able to go to college? Probably, but only part-time; it would take twice as long to graduate, and I would feel like such a failure.
And Carter—would it even impact his life? What are his post-high school plans? He told me football wasn’t his end game, that it was just a stop along the way, but what are his future plans? Why didn’t I make him tell me that before I slept with him?
Well, because I had no intention of sleeping with him, but tonight got away from me. Wow, what a cluster-fuck of bad decision-making.
Swallowing, I tip my head back to look up at him. “Do you have any idea where you’ll be going to school next year? I mean, where do you want to go?”
“It’s not officially official yet because of the rules and regulations, but I’ve already made a commitment. There are schools with better teams that want me, but I’m not going to college to play football, I’m going for the degree. I lucked out that their quarterback is a senior this year, so they needed someone to fill the spot, and I’m the best they can get. Didn’t actually plan to play college ball, to be honest, certainly don’t need the scholarship, but Hell, it’s a guaranteed in at the school I wanted to go to anyway, so why not?”
I nod. “Which school is that?”
“Columbia.”
My stomach sinks. “Columbia. Like, Columbia University. In New York.”
“That’s the one,” he verifies.
A lead balloon seems to rest in my gut. I manage a faint nod, but icy regret starts to spread through my veins like it’s being pumped in through an IV. He’s not staying here. Of course he’s not staying here. Why would he? If I had a scholarship to go to an Ivy League school in New York, nothing could keep me in Texas.
I just gave my virginity to someone I have absolutely no future with. That isn’t what I wanted. I’m not Grace, I won’t be devastated if the man I gave myself to the first time isn’t the man I’ll marry and spend the rest of my life with, but I wanted more than this. I wanted to be positive I wasn’t a conquest, I wanted it to be with someone I trusted, a relationship I would always remember fondly, even after it ended.
I wanted to be in love.
With the icy fingers of regret already prodding me, I can’t bear to remain snuggled up against him like we’re lovers. I guess we are now in the technical sense, but it was too soon. I knew it was too soon, and he didn’t want to hear it. He decided for us that my virginity was in the way, and then he removed it.
I don’t know what happens now.
I pull back the corner of the made up bed so I can crawl under the sheets once I’m out of his embrace. It occurs to me that I am still wearing my bra. He never got around to taking it off.
It’s quiet for a long time. I don’t like the need that swells up inside me, that hopes he’ll ask if I’m okay, or if it was okay that he did that, or even just simply decide to be pushy in the way that will reassure me—by reaching over and grabbing me, by pulling me close and snuggling me despite my concerns. Maybe that would melt some of them away.
He doesn’t, though. He lets me have my space, and every inch between us feels like a cold slab of concrete. After a few minutes, he climbs off the bed and walks naked toward the door. When it opens, the low light from the basement creeps in and I pull the sheets up to my neck like a vampire, hiding from the light. Wordlessly, Carter leaves the room. I have no idea where he’s going, for what, or if he’ll be back.
He does come back though, after just a couple of minutes. He shuts the door behind him so it’s pitch black in here again. I hear the crinkling of flimsy plastic and him gulping down some water.
“Can I have a sip of that?” I ask him.
“Of course,” he replies, reaching over and handing me the bottle.
I take a few good gulps, remembering how parched I felt when we entered this bedroom, prior to all that physical exertion. I hand the bottle back to Carter when I’m done and he caps it, putting it down on what must be an end table. Then he pulls back the sheets on his side of the bed and climbs underneath with me.
I expect him to keep to his side, but he scoots over and drags me close to him. “Don’t tell me you hate cuddling; I won’t believe you.”
I crack a smile. “I didn’t say I hate cuddling.”
“You certainly rolled away fast enough,” he remarks. Then, as if we entered into a binding contract, he reminds me, “You said you wouldn’t hate me.”
“I don’t hate you.” Then I can’t help reminding him, “You said you wouldn’t do it.”
“I know. Circumstances changed. I really didn’t intend to. Not tonight, anyway.”
I offer a faint nod and rest my head against his bicep. There’s little point raising a fuss now, when it’s already done. I’m tired, emotionally and physically. I have no idea what tomorrow has in store for me. I know I don’t trust Carter enough for this to have happened, but it did, and now I’ll just have to deal with it.
I don’t like the doubts that hide at the back of my mind, though. The doubts that paint an ugly picture of the bully who bought those panties and left the “slut” message on my doorstep. It’s not unfathomable to consider that this could have all been some sick game, that he has been lying, and that he pushed so hard tonight because he could feel his act starting to come apart. If it was all a game, it didn’t even take him long to win.
In the darkness, I feel him look over at me. “Who do you think you would have been if you’d never met me?”
It’s a loaded question with implications I can’t ignore. He knows he has changed me in the short time we’ve known each other, and he’s not just asking who I think I would have been, but if I would have preferred it that way. If I miss the more sheltered version of myself that existed before he tangled his twisted desires all around my sense of normalcy, before he dirtied me up and perverted me with his damage and his darkness.
I trail my fingers over the ridges of muscles along his naked torso, offering the only response that feels like the truth. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
Chapter 23
When I wake up again, the room is still dark. I climb out of bed as gently as I can so as not to wake Carter, then walk around to his side of the bed and retrieve my clothes from off the floor.
When I slipped out last night to go to the bathroom, I didn’t bother getting fully dressed, I just slipped on Carter’s T-shirt on the off chance someone saw me. No one did, and I climbed back into bed in only my bra and panties.
Dressed in my wrinkled clothes from yesterday, I slip out of the bedroom and head for the bathroom. When I get to the top of the basement stairs, I come across a man in the kitchen. He’s older, looks enough like Cartwright that I assume it’s his dad. He pauses in pouring his coffee to glance at me, but it must not be too rare an occasion to have random girls in his house, because he doesn’t look in the least bit stunned.
“Good morning,” he offers amiably.
“Good morning,” I murmur, tucking a chunk of hair behind my ear and looking down a tad awkwardly.
Indicating the coffee pot, he says, “I made coffee, if you want some.”
“I’m okay, thank you.” I pause, then glance toward the bathroom. “I’m just gonna…” I point in that direction.
“Oh, sure, don’t mind me,” he says, going back to fixing his coffee.
What an odd thing to be so comfortable with strangers in your house.
Even though it’s hopeless, I do my best in the bathroom to make myself look presentable. My long blonde hair is a tangled mess, so I finger comb it, but it doesn’t look much better than when I began. There’s a tube of toothpaste on the edge of the sink. Since I don’t have a toothbrush but I also don’t want to greet Carter with morning breath, I s
queeze some out onto my fingertip and rub it around my teeth and tongue. I run some water into a plastic-coated paper cup to rinse, then hold my hand up to my mouth, trying to test my own breath. Not as thorough a job as I would like, but depending on what time it is, hopefully I’ll have time to shower and brush my teeth the right way before school.
That reminds me that I have no idea what time it is and school could start anytime, so I hustle back to the kitchen to look for my purse. I find it, but after rummaging through it, my phone is nowhere to be found.
The clock on the stove says I have a little over an hour before I need to be on my way to school, so I slide my purse strap onto my shoulder and head back to the basement.
I must have woken Carter on my way up, because when I come back down, he’s dressed and sitting on the sectional with Brianna and Cartwright. This morning they look nothing like a couple again, just two friends, if that.
Carter looks up at me when I come into view. His dark hair is mussed and he looks a little sleepy. Tenderness rushes over me before I can remember my hesitance to entirely accept what happened as real. I guess I’ll find out today. Until then, what’s the harm in hoping it is?
Even if it is real, it’s incredibly temporary. We have a few months together, then he’ll go off to New York, and I’ll struggle to pay tuition, even though it’s 10% the cost of his—which he will undoubtedly never have to pay for, anyway.
Gonna try really hard not to be jealous about that, but probably going to be unsuccessful in that endeavor.
As I come closer, Carter stands up. “I should probably get you home so you can get dressed,” he tells me.
“Probably,” I agree. Since it wasn’t in my purse, I ask, “Have you by chance seen my phone?”
Carter reaches into his own pocket and walks over to hand it to me.
I cock a questioning eyebrow.
Shrugging his shoulders, he says, “You left it out on the counter last night. I grabbed it before we came down.”
“Funny, I could swear I had it in my purse,” I tell him.
