“Sex?” I ask, my voice snide, because Damian and his disgusting cheating deserve vulgarity and crudeness.
“Not just sex.” Lala bites her lower lip. “Benelli gives up on herself all the time. So I understand what she wants. Maybe she and her husband will wind up falling madly in love and it will all work out. But if it doesn’t, I think she deserves one wild, young, crazy fling with the guy she can’t have, you know? I mean, that’s part of being young, right? That freedom?”
“I know this will probably seem like a huge joke to you, but it makes me upset to think that I’ll just be some fling for her. It feels cheap.” Maybe I sound like an enormous wanker. I don’t care at all. Benelli isn’t just some girl to toy with.
“You won’t be.” For the first time since I met her, Lala drops the primping and bossing and threatening and just speaks, and I believe her. I truly do. “You’ll be something completely hers, and the memory of what you had? That will be with her forever.”
I believe her, but I don’t like it.
“I don’t like it.” I say aloud what’s sticking hard in my brain.
“You don’t have many options, Cormac.” Lala puts her hand on my arm and squeezes. “I see how you guys look at each other. You can’t be together forever, but you can have this one perfect summer. You know how many people would kill for that?”
“What about her little leather book? Her dates?” I demand.
Lala shrugs. “She’ll have to go out, of course. There’s still an endgame to all this. But her parents aren’t going to expect her to stay holed up in the house. She’ll be allowed to go out with me…and I could conveniently lose sight of her for a while if needed.” She raises her light eyebrows at me over and over.
“Stop doing that. You make the whole thing feel more tawdry that it is, and that’s quite a feat,” I mutter.
She puts her arm around my waist and leans her head on my shoulder. “Do you always talk like that? You sound like you’re in one of those boring BBC shows Benelli makes me watch. Walk me back to Abony’s.”
We do walk back, and I hope to catch a glimpse of Benelli, but there’s none to be had. Lala gets my number before she goes.
“I’ll text you, Romeo,” she singsongs as she strides into the little house with the kitchen where Benelli almost took the skin off my knuckles. The house with the yard where I started to kiss her and had to stop.
That’s our pattern so far. We start and stop. Start and stop. What would it be like to start and never stop. I can’t think of finishing, because something tells me I’d never get my fill of her, never not want to touch her or be touched back.
The rest of the day is a long, painful sludge through pages of translations that blur in front of my eyes. When my phone buzzes, I don’t even have the cool calm to wait. I juggle it like an inept clown and read the massively emoticon-filled text.
“Come to the house at 1. Abony will be out. Benellis window is the third on the right…shell leave a light on!!!!!”
Beyond the lack of apostrophes and epilepsy-inducing blinking hearts, the message is horrifying because this is real. And not at all what I wanted. Not at all.
I pace the room. I bite my nails. I work on calligraphy for a one-of-a-kind illustrated graphic novel of The Odyssey I’m doing for fun. I acknowledge that I am an über dork who should be thanking Aphrodite that a girl like Benelli ever even glanced my way.
But I don’t feel right. This doesn’t feel right, and I realize that means I should be handing over my man card or whatever, but I don’t care. It’s Benelli.
She’s worth…more. So much more.
At quarter to one, I decide that I’m going to go to her, not to share her bed, but to tell her all the things I’ve been pondering. All the things she needs to know from me. Maybe this will be goodbye, but I’m not the kind of guy who can do the whole fling thing, so that’s it.
That’s all it will be, and I’ll be okay with it.
Except then I’m in the garden, and I see the window with the light on. The walls of the house are made of old, sturdy stone, and there’s a drainpipe I can climb. I make my way up and balance on a jutting stone and the wide, old ledge. I manage to loosen one hand and knock at her window.
And almost get beamed in the head when she throws it open and looks down on the ground for me.
“Benelli? I’m right here,” I whisper, and she claps a hand over her mouth to stifle her scream.
“Cormac! What the hell are you doing hanging off the wall?” She reaches for me and we manage to pull and tug until I topple over the sill and into her small, neat room.
Where mine is Spartan, hers is old floral wallpaper and a soft bed overrun with pillows. Pictures of her family are everywhere, along with a laptop, phone, and the dreaded notebook on a small desk.
“Work station?” I point and she shrugs. “Where the magic happens?”
“Are we going to talk about that?” Her voice is soft and scolding, and I feel an immediate sense of chastisement.
“Of course not. I didn’t come here to…I didn’t come to judge you or ridicule your choices, Benelli. I don’t mean to be an ass. Honestly, I don’t. I have so much respect for you.” I pull out her desk chair and gesture to it. She nods, I sit, and she sits on the bed, legs crossed.
“So, why did you come here?” I can see the pulse point in her neck jumping in rapid blips, like her heart is running a marathon.
“I came here to tell you that I care for you.” Her blue eyes go wide and the tiniest smile crooks on her lips and slays me. It slays me because I know it’s going to disappear before I’m through with the next dozen words. “But I can’t do this. I can’t because you’re worth too much. For a fling. You and me…we have something. And if we could…if there was a choice or another direction, um, I guess what I mean is—”
“Stop,” she whispers, and it’s like a mercy-killing for all my disjointed thoughts. She tugs the red bandana I gave her last night from her very small shorts. “I never did think about running away.” She twists the fabric over her hand. “Maybe because I was scared?”
“Because you were good,” I counter.
She shakes her head. “I have to tell you…what’s happening with me. To me. And if you still want out, that’s more than okay. But, I can’t just leave this all broken and unresolved. I’m going to think of you, Cormac. There will be one more man for me, maybe as soon as this summer. So I’m going to keep thinking about you. And, even if the whole…being together…isn’t going to happen, I want you to know me. Better. Okay?”
My chest feels like a troop of gorillas just hammered on it.
“Okay.” I lean forward and wait for her.
“My dad and mom, they’re not always perfect, you know?” She takes a shuddery breath and I nod to encourage her to go on. “But they love us, all of us so much. And every one of my siblings has let them down. Remy is in rehab instead of running the family so our father can step down a little. Winch abandoned us all and ran off with a girl he’d just met at community service. Colt is butting heads over wanting to play football when our father could net him so many opportunities through soccer. And Itaca’s boyfriend joined the army, and she blames my parents, so she’s been rude and just obnoxious for months now.”
“It sounds like what I’d imagine fairly normal sibling drama is,” I muse. “I mean, I’m the only one, so I don’t really know for certain. But it sounds like the character layout for a bad sitcom.”
Benelli laughs, though I can tell she’s irritated with herself. “You have diarrhea of the mouth. Did anyone ever tell you that? You need to learn when to shut the hell up, Cormac.”
“My apologies.” I make the ridiculous zip and lock lips motion and nod for her to go on.
As a sidenote, I wonder how she expects me to keep quiet when she laughs so gorgeously at every asinine thing I say.
“So my father is just getting run into the ground. And if I can find the right husband, he’ll have a partner to help him. He’ll have
someone he can trust, and he can take more time off. And it all sounded so damn noble, you know? Like a really good thing. Then I found out…” Her words stall and she picks at a bit of lint on her comforter.
I scoot the chair across the knotty wood floor. “What did you find out, love?”
When she looks up at me, her eyes are teary. “I found out, like, one or two family secrets. One is a definite, one I’m not sure about, but it just ripped everything apart for me. Like, I had this image in my head, and I thought I worked in all the imperfections, you know? But I didn’t. I just…I didn’t realize how…how freaking selfish they could be.” She presses a hand to her forehead. “Which sounds so dumb and naive, I guess. But they did what they did to help us. Because my siblings were making stupid mistakes.”
Her breath comes out on a shuddery sigh.
“Benelli.” I keep my voice gentle. “Maybe you don’t need to rush the marriage thing. You aren’t in a good place right now to be thinking of forever. And I think it’s amazing that you want to help your family, but, and you can tell me to screw off at any second, maybe you need to sit down with your parents and tell them some of this if it’s bothering you.”
She’s wringing her hands and the tears are rolling down her face in fat, wet blobs. A girl’s tears usually make me panic, but I want to help her through this. I want to be in control so badly, I just pick up the handkerchief and wipe her face dry.
“I know. I know, I know. But you have no idea how intimidating they can be. How crazy this all is. And, you know, I had this boyfriend?”
I wipe her nose gently. “Yes. I’ve heard.”
She smiles. “You sound just like Colonel Brandon talking about Willoughby.”
“Listen well, then. Brandon wound up being right. In every way, didn’t he?” I take her hands in mine.
“You’ve read Sense and Sensibility?” Her mouth hangs open slightly. She has an amazingly plump bottom lip.
“Yes.” I sigh. “And I enjoy calligraphy and don’t want to have meaningless sex with you. If they ever bothered to issue me a man card, I would surrender it to you right now.”
“I love all that about you,” she says, her entire face suddenly still and serious. “Not that you like those things in particular. Just that you like what you like. You are who you are. There’s no pretending with you. I feel like my entire existence is one big game of pretend.”
“Not at all.” I rub my thumbs over her knuckles. “I am a socially awkward fool, and you are a gorgeous woman who understands that being a grownup means you sometimes have to put what you want aside.”
She licks her lips and presses them together hard. “What if I’m tired of always putting what I want aside? I did it for Damian. I tried so hard to be the girlfriend he’d want to marry. I dated him for my family, because I thought he’d be a good fit for them. And I found him…six inches deep in his secretary.” One side of her mouth slides up.
“Six inches, eh?” I chuckle.
“More like five. Five and a half if I was being generous,” she giggles.
When she stops laughing, I take a deep breath and ask the question I’m scared out of my skull to bring up to her. “So, what is it you want, Benelli?”
There’s an answer I want and don’t want.
One simple word that my brain will tell me to ignore, but my body, and my heart, will be unable to resist.
One word that will forever change this summer and all the summers after it, along with the springs and winters and autumns.
One word that will make it impossible for me to just walk away.
She opens her mouth and leans closer to me.
“You.”
Benelli 5
“Me?” He rubs one hand on the back of his neck, which warms to a bright red.
“Yes. You.” I tug on his hand and he walks to the bed, one cautious step at a time.
“You’re in a very vulnerable place,” he says, sitting on the mattress next to me.
I can smell the sharp cologne and ink scent of him. His fingertips are stained black, and there are callouses along his fingers that catch on my skin as I slide my hand under his.
“My father may be cheating on my mother.” The words fall out of the clear blue, and Cormac keeps his face completely calm when he hears them.
“You found this out the other day?” he asks. I nod. “Their romance…”
“Is a sham. Maybe,” I say to fill the silence where he left off.
“No one knows what goes on inside a marriage except the people in it, Benelli. I’d be careful who you trust.” Cormac uses the scratchy pad of his thumb to wipe back a tear I didn’t even realize was falling.
“The part of their story that I loved was that amazing love-at-first-sight romance.” I run my fingers over his bruised skin, bruised for me. “I love that they spontaneously saw each other and felt something and defied everything and everyone for it. I know it’s romantic and stupid, but I want a piece of that.” I lean in and kiss his lips, which are soft and uncertain.
He rubs his palms down his thighs and to his knees. “But Benelli, they got married. They followed that first crush through.”
“And maybe they cheated.” I kiss him again, and he groans. When I pull back, his eyes are half shut. I run my fingers close to his lashes, and they feather under my touch. “If you’re with me, and I marry someone else, I’ll always have this. This, what you and I have alone together…it will stay pure. And perfect. We’ll never have that whole screwed-up ending.”
“That’s a fly in amber, Benelli. That isn’t reality.” He whispers the words close to my ear, and, even though I don’t like his message, the tickle of his breath sends shivers up and down my neck.
“It’s our own reality,” I whisper back. “Please?”
How can I tell him that I want this gentle, sweet summer fling? That I want something rosy and soft to sink into when everything else in my planned life marches on the way it has to despite any objections I might have? I’m fine with giving almost everything up. I just want one tiny sliver for myself.
“I can’t say no to you.” He lets out a guttural grunt and we fall back onto the mattress. I’d been with Damian before…we’d just never had sex. So I’d never gotten that fulfilment every romance novel always promised.
I’m so curious about it. Curious about it and starving for it.
Cormac tugs up on the light fabric of my layered tanks and sucks a breath in.
“No bra?” he grits out.
“I was getting ready for bed. I wasn’t sure you’d come,” I admit while he tugs the shirt completely off and leaves me exposed.
His eyes rake over my breasts and up to my face, and the twist of his lips bottoms my stomach out. “You could call anytime and I’d come running. There isn’t a chance in hell you’d need me, and I wouldn’t come to you.”
My breath is hitched in my throat and his mouth finds mine, quickly nipping and gently tracing the curves of my lips with his teeth and tongue. I mimic him, but there’s something frenzied and wild about his kisses tonight. He’s kissing like he doesn’t have a minute to waste, like I’ll evaporate under his hands if he doesn’t keep pace.
And I realize that he’s probably on the right speed.
This will all be shared and over in a blip, and it makes me sad before it even happens.
I put both my hands on either side of his face, sandpaper-rough with five o’clock shadow. “Slower.”
“I’ll try,” he says, brushing his nose against mine. “But I can’t promise anything, Benelli. This is…more than I can…more than I…”
He never finishes. He kisses me instead. I can feel from the tense brace of his shoulders that he’s making a Herculean attempt to slow down, and every single brush of his lips and slide of his tongue is like some kind of concentrated act of self-restraint.
And it’s driving me crazy.
I’ve had guys kiss my neck before, but I’ve never had my body seize and buck under the single stroke of a tong
ue against my throat. He licks and pulls, kisses and breathes over the damp patches of skin, and my arms, shoulder to wrist, break into goosebumps.
“Are you could?” His voice severs through the sinuous stream of me and him and us together in this bed, and I’m jarred into answering suddenly.
“No. No. I’m, um…Cormac.” Once I answered ‘no’ the first time, his tongue went back to doing the lazy acrobatics over my skin that make my pulse thrum.
I run my hands up and down his back, feeling the tight, sinewy muscle under my fingernails. When I catch the hem of his shirt, I drag it up, my fingers coasting over his knobby spin, and yank it off his head, breaking the connection of his mouth and mine for a single second that has me instantly agitated and wanting to kiss him again immediately.
He’s long and lean and wiry, not like the bulked-up guys I’m used to dating. I squeeze at the resistant bulge of his bicep. “Do you workout?”
His smile answers my hokey pickup line. “I was on the rowing team, and I got used to the exercise. It helps me think. So I use the rowing machine at my school’s gym. All the benefits of lean muscle, none of the drawbacks of a group of competitive pricks screaming in your ear to row faster.”
“Rowing, huh?” I drag my hands over the bulges and dips of his muscles, appreciating the length and strength of him.
“Not very sexy, is it? We can pretend I do kickboxing. Or mixed martial arts?” He’s joking, again, but I can tell from the way nothing is relaxed on his body that he’s embarrassed.
“I think rowing is sexy as hell.” I take one of his hands and link it with mine, palm to palm. “Is it the oars that make your hands so calloused?”
“Yes.” His voice is a little shaky as my hand moves down his pecs, rock hard and defined, over his long, lean abs, and to his waistband.
Perfectly Unmatched (A Youngblood Book) Page 13
