by CD Reiss
“Did you decide about college next year?” he asked.
I shrugged. I wanted to get out of Barrington. Spread my wings. Meet new people and learn new things. But Chris couldn’t afford to go.
“Did you check out the financial aid booklet at the library?”
“There’s no point.”
“Well, then I’ll get an associates from Jackson County. I won’t have to move and—”
“You have to go.” He grabbed my hands.
“How are you going to leave your mother?”
“She’ll be on her own soon.”
Chris was an only child to a mother who had been too obese to leave her bed. In the past year, she’d made him proud by losing 150 pounds. Not enough to be comfortable, but enough to move around the house.
“I’ll wait for you.”
“No.” He got distressed whenever I suggested I’d slow my life down for him. “I’m the one who’s going nowhere in life. I’m the one who waits—”
“No, I do not—”
“Yes you do.” He squeezed my hands. “Look at you. You can be anything you want. Go be it. That’s all I have to say. No. I have something else.”
He looked over my shoulder, then back to my face. I knew him enough from our summer together to know I needed to wait.
“I’ll catch up with you,” he continued like he always did. “I promise I’ll follow you anywhere.”
I almost lost my mind in his eyes. Almost agreed with him. I could do anything but I didn’t want to. I wasn’t Harper with her big dreams and bigger brain. I didn’t have ambitions or a career in mind. I figured I’d inherit the factory and keep it going, or not. What I really wanted was a house full of people who depended on me.
“I’ll think about it,” I said because I wanted to make Chris happy for a moment.
“When do you have to be back?” he asked.
“Mom thinks I’m volleying with Marsha.”
He brushed my knee with his fingertips. My skin felt like it was melting underneath them and I became very aware of the hard trunk between my legs.
“Marsha’s in the pool house with what’s-his face.”
“Charles.”
He leaned into me. “What do you think they’re doing in there?”
Marsha was a tramp and everyone knew it. Maybe I was a tramp too. But no one knew, so it wasn’t the same.
“Stuff.”
“This, maybe?” He ran two fingers inside my thigh. Sensation rushed behind them, to my knees, and ahead to the soft place between my legs. We’d kissed plenty in the back room of the pro shop and the utility closet, he’d run his hands over my shirt. but he’d never touched me like that before.
“Maybe,” I gasped. I thought I shouldn’t let him run his hand up my other thigh. I should stop this right there. He was going way too fast. There were steps and he wasn’t honoring them. But that made his touch even more explosive. My body didn’t expect the speed of his advance, and it reacted by opening up all the way.
“Oh, my God.” His eyes were wide and his lip was stretched behind his top teeth. When he let it go it went from white to deep pink. “Look at you. I can’t believe how sexy you are.”
My face tingled. Chris wasn’t much more experienced than I was, but he was so open and honest about what he was doing and what he wanted that his words made me blush.
His index finger brushed the edge of my shorts.
“Can I touch you?”
I throbbed when he asked. The ache inside me was almost painful in its need.
But was it too much? Would he think I was a slut? My legs were already open, by design. Wasn’t that already an invitation? I could have swung both legs to one side, but I hadn’t taken the modest posture.
In the pause after his question, he kissed me, pressing his thumbs into my inner thighs. He was inside me, his tongue in my mouth was such a sweet violation. I wanted more. All the more.
I picked his hands up and put them on my chest. Lips locked, he ran his thumbs over my hard nipples as I reached back, under my shirt and unhooked my bra.
He broke the kiss. I came forward to put our mouths together again, but he leaned back. “Show me.”
I would have preferred to kiss while he felt my breasts so it would feel as though I was in thoughtless throes of passion. It would feel less mindful. If we were putting thought into it, pausing and stopping, appreciating every act, then I had no excuse.
Chris gently pulled at the hem of my shirt.
He didn’t want mindless. He wanted to see every second. I knew my nipples were hard under the sports bra and he was looking right at them as if he was savoring the sight. His relish shamed me and made my skin tingle at the same time.
In the choice between shame and the tingle, I made my choice.
I pulled my shirt up over my breasts. The bra lifted. He ran his hands along the underside before he pulled the bra up.
He sucked in a breath.
“These are spectacular.” He bent the hard nipples before he gently squeezed them. The feeling shot right between my legs as if connected by an electric wire. My back arched and my consciousness hid behind a wall of pleasure.
The bough went from under me, and his hands got tight on my rib cage.
“Whoa, there,” he said, keeping me from falling.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Just remember where you are.” Every so tenderly, he pinched my nipples again. It hurt a little, but the pain was part of the pleasure. “Can you put your hands behind you? On the branch?”
He guided my arms behind me. My shirt fell back down, but once I was secure, leaning back against my locked elbows, he drew it back up. I was exposed to the sky.
“Next time, I’ll do it your way.” He pushed my chin up so I was looking through the branches at the clouds and ran it down my body. “I’ll go up first so you can lean on the trunk.”
“Yes, okay.”
Both hands landed on my breasts.
“I like it when you agree.”
He kissed my sternum and twisted the nipples.
I groaned.
He twisted a little harder. “Do you like that?”
“Yes. Yes.”
“You smell like roses.” He sucked one nipple and hurt the other in a way that brought pleasure to the surface. I was filled with blood, my insides bigger than my outside, stretching my skin to thin translucence.
“More,” I gasped, the word falling out of my mouth like a piece of gum I’d forgotten about. I didn’t even know what I was saying. I was losing my mind as he worked me over. Blind, deaf, dumb. My whole body was wedged between his fingers.
My face was toward the sky, a curtain of dappled orange from the daylight on the other side of my closed eyes. A frame of white hot shockwaves flickered in my vision, and something broke in me. I stopped thinking, breathing, feeling anything but him as the world pressed in on me and I pressed out into the world.
“Jesus!” he said when I finally gasped and opened my eyes.
“Oh, my G—”
“You came.”
Sitting up straight, I put my hands over my face. I was ashamed. I’d done that, in front of him, from nothing.
“I didn’t think I would!”
When I took my hands away and saw him looking at me, I yanked my shirt down.
“It was awesome!”
Awesome? I wanted to die.
“Catherine!” Harper’s voice came past the fence. Chris looked at his watch, but I didn’t need to see it. Three p.m. had come and my bra wasn’t hooked. I reached behind me and grappled with it.
I had to get down and Chris was in my way. He’d made me come right here, outside in a tree. I was ashamed and nervous, and he was pulling my shirt down to cover me. He was beautiful with his blue eyes and the wavy fall of hair over one side of his forehead. He was inappropriate. Unsuitable. Dangerous to my future, whatever that was.
“Hey.” Harper called without shouting. As if she knew I was close by.
/> Chris climbed up a branch to get out of my way, indicating his handmade staircase, then putting his finger to his lips.
Harper had her face in the hole in the fence, looking at the bag I’d left at the base of the trunk.
“Coming!” I shouted, scuttling down.
“There you are!” She came through the hole. “Mom said to go to the car. Hey!” She pointed to the tree. “Were you climbing?”
“No.” I slung the bag over my shoulder.
“That’s really cool.” She looked back at the hole, then back up the ladder pinching her bottom lip until it creased. I slapped her hand down.
“Stop bending your lip like that. It’s going to stay that way.” I took the hand I’d slapped before she had a chance to bend her lip again, pulling her to the break in the fence. “And don’t even think of climbing that tree. It’s not even safe.” She went through first, and I followed. “I’m telling the grounds crew it’s there before someone gets hurt.”
My muscles didn’t relax until we got to the car and I knew Harper hadn’t seen Chris up in the tree. If anyone knew the way he touched me and the way it made me feel I’d die. Literally die.
* * *
Get White Knight today!
Also by CD Reiss
NEW BOOKS
King of Code | White Knight | Queen of Rust
The Submission Series
Submission | Domination | Connection
The Corruption Series
Spin | Ruin | Rule
Standalones
Forbidden | Hardball | Shuttergirl | Secret Sins
The Games Duet
Marriage Games | Separation Games
