Sheltered

by Charlotte Stein

  And if his mouth sort of skimmed hers when he did so, well, what did that matter? He likely didn’t mean it. It was just an accident, just an accident, and then his lower lip brushed over her upper lip and every single molecule in her body froze in place.

  He had touched her. She couldn’t get around it—the seventy thousand nerve endings told her the truth of the matter. Everything tingled in that general area, and the tingles got stronger and more insistent when he did it again.

  Once could have been an accident. Twice was purposeful, full of meaning—like a real kiss, only so gentle and barely there she couldn’t quite count it as such. She had to frantically think of other words to call it, as he repeated the slight contact over and over.

  Kish, she thought, but unfortunately he chose that exact moment to remove the H and replace it with a second S.

  Of course she immediately thought of a million different things at once—how he felt, the moment his mouth covered hers, so soft and firm all at the same time. How he tasted—like that burning tea flavor and like something else too.

  Mint, she thought, but mint wasn’t quite right.

  She didn’t get long enough to figure it out, however. He pulled away just as her mind paired mint with something sweetly spicy, and began searching through her mental catalog for actual flavors.

  The catalog was sparse, like everything else in her head. The manual in her mind entitled What to Do When Someone Really Kisses You said just three words—

  Go very still.

  As though she’d become a deer some time in the last thirty seconds. She was a deer, and he was…a Buick.

  “I didn’t mean to do that,” he said, once he’d pulled away. But she couldn’t think what he might have meant to do instead.

  So she just went with, “It’s okay.”

  And let the whole thing be. They could forget about it now. Go back to the good, solid way things had been before, with no kissing and no fuzzy pot feelings.

  Because that was probably to blame, wasn’t it? The pot. It had gotten hold of him and forced him to kiss a plain, weird fat chick. Tomorrow he’d likely wake up with a pot hangover, plagued with regret and disgust, all of his handsome skin itching with the idea that he’d touched a disgusting creature like her.

  How could he feel any other way? How could he—

  “I’m going to do it again.”

  Her eyes turned to moons.

  “You are?”

  “I think so.”

  She couldn’t help blurting out the sensible thing. The right thing.

  “Don’t. Don’t.”

  “God, Evie—I’m sorry. I shouldn’t—”

  She grabbed him before he could say any other words. They were just getting in the way, making everything all up and down and indecisive. But the tingles in her lips said just do it, do it, and since they so rarely spoke up she had to obey them.

  The opportunity would never come along again. Tomorrow he could think of her as disgusting. Tonight she just wanted to see one more time…

  He did taste like something sweetly spicy. Cinnamon, she reckoned, but found it hard to say for sure. Mainly because she’d put her hand in his hair in just the same way he’d done to her, and she could feel it—actually feel it—brushing against her skin. The soft fuzz of it over his ear where he’d shaved it close, then a little higher up where it grew longer…oh, so silky and fine.

  Though his hair wasn’t really what she thought of, immediately. His mouth was what she thought of as he pressed back at her. Harder than he had before, and more open too.

  His lips had technically been parted, when he’d first done it. And she supposed hers had too. But it hadn’t felt like an open-mouthed kiss—not really. It had seemed too smooth and dry, somehow, like a peck you put on an elderly person’s cheek.

  Whereas this…this was wet. His lips sank into a rhythm obviously familiar to him—like a kind of slow rock over her mouth—and there were times when she felt his tongue, hot and slippery. Times when he insinuated himself right against her and that same slipperiness made her go all funny inside.

  Turned-on, her mind threw up. While she tried to ignore it.

  It was just a kiss. He’d probably had a million of them before, and never felt all tingly about it. This was just business as usual for him—making out with some girl on the porch outside her house.

  God, she’d actually started making out with someone. She knew she had, because making out was all about wrong, wicked feelings, and she seemed to be having a lot of them right at that moment. Every time his tongue slid over hers—all slippery and slow and amazing—a swell of pleasure surged up from between her legs.

  Like a few nights before only better, because he was right there with her. She didn’t have to pretend or feel guilty about using him in some sort of fantasy dream way. He had a hand in her hair and she could feel him breathing hard and when she pressed close to him suddenly, he made a sound.

  A sound, right into her mouth.

  It did all sorts of things to her. She couldn’t even process most of them. She seemed to have grown nerves in about a hundred new places, and most of them were firing. Her nipples had stiffened, beneath the thankfully thick wool of her sweater.

  But worst of all of these things was the burst of sensation between her legs. The one that seemed to be making her wet, so embarrassingly, incredibly wet over such a small thing, really, and oh she just had to stop it before he noticed.

  Men could tell things like that, couldn’t they? He would know that she got all slick between her legs, he would know.

  “Hold on. Just…hold on a second.”

  He snapped away from her so quickly she didn’t even have time to switch thoughts. From all slick to something safer, before anyone noticed. Though it really wouldn’t have mattered, it wouldn’t have, if he hadn’t then said, “God, I can’t believe you.”

  Embarrassment flooded her, automatically. Did men really and truly know when a girl got aroused? She took a breath and tried to calm herself down, because of course the theory was nonsense. Men couldn’t possibly know things like that.

  But she’d still grabbed him, like a kiss-starved idiot. She’d put a hand in his hair and moved her mouth against his, while he probably did something like struggle to hold down his vomit.

  And now she had to leave, immediately. Before things got worse. Before he accused her of being a face rapist or something.

  “I have to…uh…go in the house now,” she said, because apparently her mind had gotten lost inside his mouth, and couldn’t come up with anything better than that. It wouldn’t even help her stand, either. She had to sort of haul herself up using the handrail, not quite making it to her feet but trying all the same.

  “Evie—”

  “I know, I know—it was awful. I shouldn’t have, I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “What? No—just sit down back again for a second. Come on, honey—stop trying to climb the handrail.”

  He caught hold of her wrist, then her forearm, then her elbow. Reeled her back in like some babbling species of fish. Of course, once he’d done it she couldn’t look him in the face. His face would tell the truth. The gross, gross truth.

  “It wasn’t awful. Unless you mean you thought it was awful, in which case, you should probably know I recently had a stud removed, and it’s really affecting tongue flexibility.”

  She had to glance up, for that. Was he joking? His mouth said no, but his eyes said yes. So maybe…half-half?

  “I didn’t think it was awful,” she said, while inside her head someone gasped the words, His tongue can be more flexible than that?

  “Sure?”

  “You were the one who snapped away from me.”

  He rolled his eyes.

  “Because you’re stoned.”

  Man, he was crazy. First he accused her of handrail mountaineering, and now this.

  “What? I’m not. I’m not.”

  “You said falled.”

  “You s
aid it was right!”

  He shrugged. Eyes still smiling, face still impossibly handsome.

  “What do I know? I think tongue flexibility is an actual thing.”

  She went to shove him and missed. Good thing, really. It was the sort of thing she knew she’d regret later, when all of her faculties returned.

  “You don’t. You just said that because you’re so…massive.”

  Of course, she knew that massive made no sense, in this context. But then neither did the first word her mind had chosen to slot into the gap. And if she’d actually gone with hairy, God only knew how total her humiliation would have been.

  “My relative bigness aside, I can’t make out with you when you’re stoned. You know that, right?”

  “I think I stopped knowing things about five minutes ago.”

  “Really? And how does that feel?”

  She closed her eyes, for just a brief moment. Reached for the nearest emotion inside her.

  “Amazing.”

  He didn’t say anything for a long, long time. So long that she started to suspect she’d said something mad again, like the massive comment. And though most of her wanted to open her eyes and find out, another part found it so very peaceful, behind her own eyelids. Everything felt foggy, and yet so clear at the same time. Everything was okay, in the land of Evie Bennett.

  Or at least, it was until he spoke.

  “You’re amazing.”

  She opened her eyes immediately, just to see if his expression backed up those two terrifying words. But the minute she did so he turned his face away, and the mood shifted.

  “I better go,” he said, too abrupt for her to process. Had he finally sensed all of her foggy thoughts about sex and his tongue and her own disobedient body? It seemed almost impossibly hard to tell.

  “You can’t go like this. You’re…um…stoned,” she tried, though she wanted to say something else instead. Something like—I didn’t mean those thoughts at all. I meant to think some other things, about flowers and ponies and happy rainbows.

  I’m not like that, really.

  “It’s cool,” he said, and that was the end of that. Or it would have been, if he hadn’t sort of canted to the left the moment he tried to get to his feet.

  Seeing him do it made her stand too, though the results were pretty much the same. The world slid sideways, briefly, and nothing on her body seemed to be working right. Fog had infiltrated her limbs too, only it was a heavy sort of fog. A fog made out of anvils and black holes.

  “No really—Van—” she started, but he didn’t let her finish.

  Good thing, really, because once the words were out she had no idea how to cap them off. She needed someone like him to shut things down for good, and he did it very effectively with a simple, “Don’t say my name.”

  “Sorry,” she said, but oddly it didn’t seem to please him. Or maybe not so oddly. Most people she knew were rarely satisfied with an apology.

  “Just…” he said, and then hesitated. Lines had appeared between his brows, and it looked almost as though he wanted to reach toward her. Almost. “I’ll see you.”

  She couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t even figure out what had gone wrong, exactly, to push them all the way down from pleasant conversation to don’t say my name.

  After all, he’d been the one to bring up the idea of people being amazing. She hadn’t pushed it on him. Hadn’t acted as though he should find her sexually attractive, or something else similarly impossible. He was the one who’d started the whole thing, and now he seemed all bullish and awkward, trapped between the fence and the bulk of her body like a soldier in no man’s land.

  “I’ll see you, Evie,” he repeated.

  But she had the sneaking suspicion she wouldn’t be seeing him ever again.

  Chapter Four

  He didn’t come the next week, or the next, and by the third she was sure she’d been right. He was never coming back. The kiss had disgusted him, and then she’d said his name like a lovesick moron, and doing so had sealed the deal.

  So when he suddenly appeared by the fence on that third Wednesday, not casually waiting but standing there with his hands gripping the wood, eyes on the glass, she wasn’t immediately sure of what to do.

  After all, if she went out there she’d have to actually probably speak to him about The Thing That Had Happened. And if she didn’t, he’d know she’d just stood there, watching him for a second, before pretending she hadn’t and disappearing back inside.

  Both seemed unbearable. And that was before she’d even gotten into the dreams she’d been having—all more disgusting and explicit than that first one. If he could read desire on her face after one kiss and some tame fantasy about him having vague sex with her, then God only knew what he’d think now.

  She’d dreamt about stroking him. There. She’d dreamt about his face opening up with pleasure, those pressed-tight lips of his parting to let her lick and touch and do all kinds of things. And sometimes in return, he would lick and touch and do all kinds of things to parts of her. Occasionally obvious parts, like her breasts.

  Occasionally not so obvious parts, like between the cheeks of her ass.

  She didn’t even know what to do with the latter. What did it mean? People didn’t lick each other there, did they? She felt pretty sure they didn’t but then again—she wasn’t even sure if one body part went into the orifice she actually assumed it did, never mind anything else.

  It was probably better that he remained over there, really, when she thought about it. She could feel her cheeks heating just remembering some of her filthier thoughts, and if they came close to touching or even just brushed against each other she wasn’t sure what would happen.

  Was dying of embarrassment a possibility? She didn’t know and felt glad she wouldn’t have to find out—though said relief didn’t last long. Because after a moment of her indecisive ridiculousness, he simply opened the gate and came right through. Walked up to the glass and made some sort of hand signal.

  Let me in she suspected, but that didn’t seem right somehow. It didn’t suit him. He’d been so careful before, so restrained. She couldn’t imagine him suddenly being forceful with her now.

  And he proved her right, for once, because after a second he mouthed obvious words through the glass.

  I’m sorry. It jolted her more than the insistent hand gesture had. Mainly because she couldn’t recall anyone ever being sorry to her for anything, but also because of all the people she knew, he had the least to be sorry for.

  What had he really done, after all? Not wanted to kiss her? Been a little gun-shy when it came to visiting her again? She couldn’t blame him for any of those things. He didn’t owe her anything.

  What for? she tried to mouth through the glass, but he obviously didn’t get it. He even put a hand up to his ear, which just made her act before they could get any deeper into bad sign language.

  She pulled the door open and said what she wanted to most.

  “You don’t have anything to be sorry about.”

  He looked relieved for about a second, but that soon became the frown she now recognized. The one that sent a line of pain down his face.

  “I didn’t mean to just take off like that.” She thought of him stumbling, telling her not to say his name. “And I didn’t mean to not come back either.”

  “It’s okay. Really.”

  He put a hand in his hair, restlessly, but he kept his steady gaze on her.

  “It’s not okay. It was rude.”

  “Hey—I understand. I was kind of like a maniac.”

  “What—”

  “And then I said your name all…weird and—”

  He held up one big hand, stopped her mid-flow.

  “Evie, no, no. That’s…not the situation. Have you spent the last three weeks thinking that was the situation?”

  She tried to think of a way to say no. No, I am not a fool who considered things in entirely the wrong way. But of course in order to do that, s
he would have to know what the right way was.

  “Sort of.”

  His mouth made that mean line.

  “That’s awesome.”

  She had the distinct impression that it wasn’t awesome at all, but had no idea what to do about it. Apologizing seemed somehow redundant, in light of his apology. And telling him it didn’t matter wouldn’t work either, because she didn’t know what the mattering thing was.

  So she went with something sort of neutral.

  “Do you want to come in and talk?”

  In the movies, people always came in and talked. However, once she’d said it his eyes got big and some weird naked thing happened to his face and then he blurted out some absolutely insane words.

  Words she never thought she’d hear from the likes of him.

  “See—this is the problem. You don’t even get where this is going. You can’t just ask me to come in, or kiss me, or tell me you want to know what smoking pot feels like. When I’m close to you I feel crazy, okay? When you say my name I feel crazy. It’s not…the right thing for you. I don’t think I can just…be your friend.”

  He said the last little bit in one big burst, as if he had to force it out of himself. And though it stung, in one way, in another she actually knew what he meant. She didn’t even have to struggle for it, or blindly guess.

  He meant the thing she’d been feeling too.

  “I don’t want you to be just my friend.”

  It came out before she could stop it, and once it was done he seemed speechless. Caught, between one thing and another. She wasn’t disappointed, however, when he settled on a course of action.

  He simply stepped forward and took her face in his hands, then kissed her. He kissed her and kissed her until suddenly she found herself sprawled on something, doing another thing she hardly had a name for.

  She supposed the term for it was making out. They were making out on the couch, like the teenager she’d never actually been. But the thing was—it didn’t feel like something so small and simple.