Gage snaked his tongue into Eve’s mouth at the memory, tangling it with hers. She moaned into him, setting his blood on fire. Yes, yes. This is what I want!
She clutched at his shoulders, her nails biting into his flesh. The imprint of her short stature was tight against him, because he had made it so. He damned the sports bra she wore, that covered the thick globes of her breasts.
He jerked away and pushed her back on the bed. The movement caught her by surprise and she landed on the old bed lightly, but not without a loud squeak of the springs. His dick throbbed in his pants, almost as if it had a mind of its own, reaching for her, needing her. She was like a painting spread across the flower-patterned sheets, with her blond hair about her head and her bedroom eyes. She was a sight that could have lured any man into bed. No other man. Only me! His mind screamed and he flexed his fist by his side.
He took a deep breath and tried to look away from her, but couldn’t.
“What is it, Gage?” The words seemed to drip from her tongue like molasses, sweet and thick. He responded, his body thrumming with anticipation. It’d been a long time since he’d been with a woman, though details of others disappeared from his mind and all he could see was Eve there before him.
“I want you,” he growled as he covered her with his body, nipping at her neck with his teeth. She moaned in response, her body writhing. Her hip brushed against the rigid length of his cock. He grunted in response.
He kissed her mouth again, a feeling of desperation taking over. I have to have her. He gripped the bottom of her bra and jerked it over her head, breaking contact for mere seconds that felt like decades. And then she was bare before him. Her breasts were perky, their color lighter than the rest of her skin, which was tan from being out in the sun. Her nipples were a pale pink color, and small. They tightened under his gaze, making his body rigid with want.
Mine! He reached forward and covered them with his hands, each fitting perfectly like they were made for her body alone. He shuddered when his rough skin made contact with the smooth perfection of hers.
“What?”
He teased his thumbs over her pebbled nipples, reveling in the abrasive trail they made across his skin. “Hmmm?” He lowered his head, ready to take the hard flesh into his mouth. She shoved against his shoulders. He ignored the movement, not letting it faze his downward descent toward her nipples.
She pushed again and this time he halted, meeting her gaze in the dim lighting.
“Why did you say that?”
He frowned. “Say what?”
“You said…mine.” She whispered the word like she was scared of it.
“I didn’t…” Crap did I say that out loud? “It was nothing.” He shook his head and leaned back in.
“Stop.” Eve pushed at his shoulders, the malevolence in her voice stopped him cold.
“What?” He leaned back. He watched in dismay as she jerked her bra back over her head. “What the hell?”
“Nothing.” She shook her head back and forth in several rapid motions, as if she was trying to make him disappear. He reached for her, but she flinched away. The action sparked a feeling equivalent to taking her precious pry-bar through the chest.
Gage moved off of the bed. Eve jumped up and scattered toward the door.
“Wait.”
Her hand was on the knob. Her shoulders tense and moving up and down in rapid succession. The candle light reflected off of the salve Joseph had rubbed on her shoulder, making her skin shinier there.
She didn’t turn around, but she didn’t leave either.
He opened his mouth, not sure what he was going to say. It didn’t matter though, she beat him to the punch.
“I can’t do this with you, Gage. Not again.” The repeat of what he’d said earlier wasn’t lost on him. “Some things aren’t supposed to happen and they sure aren’t supposed to happen twice.”
Eve opened the door and walked out of it.
Chapter Twenty
The Before
Eve’s life significantly changed after her dad broke her arm when she’d tried to sneak out and go to homecoming. And not just because she was wearing a big, ugly cast.
No, her life changed because Gage changed. He didn’t sit by her in AP Physics anymore. After she’d skipped school on Monday, she’d begrudgingly gone back on Tuesday, afraid to miss again, for fear of what her dad would do to her if he found out.
She sat down in first period that Tuesday and waited for Gage to come in and take his seat next to her, only he didn’t. He was late, as always, and when he came in, he sat in an empty seat next to Allison and didn’t even glance back at Eve once. No one did. Not that she thrived on people’s attention, but she couldn’t deny that she’d grown used to it, especially during first period when every girl in the room would glance back at Gage, clearly in awe of him.
More than two weeks went by, without even the slightest recognition that she existed when it came to Gage, and Eve found herself spiraling downward into a pit of depression. She finally knew what it meant to love someone besides her family members, and even then, the love she had for them was brittle and thin. Gage had become the first person she developed a love for that didn’t feel forced. She loved him, quietly, but freely in her heart.
She’d watched him in the hallway out of the corner of her eye, never looking right at him. Never. Afraid that he would see her feelings exposed there in her eyes. Between most classes she could see him down the hall with his arm draped over Sally’s shoulder, his lips against her ear, or his hand in hers.
Eve had never truly hated another person in her life. Sally was the first.
On a Thursday, over two weeks later, things changed again. Thursday was the only day of the week that Eve had to walk home from school. Her parents allowed her to stay and work with an elementary children’s afterschool program for community service hours that would count toward a higher-level high school diploma.
Eve’s mom and dad were God obsessed and did evil things under misinterpretations of the bible, but they weren’t completely stupid, just mostly. They wanted her to do well in school, if she didn’t—well, she didn’t want to find out what they would do, though she feared for the health of her other arm.
Since she stayed late, she had to miss the bus, her usual ride home. Her dad would get home around five. Eve didn’t get out of her duties until six, but they refused to pick her up. So she walked.
She had barely made it halfway down the elementary school’s paved driveway when a black mustang pulled up next to her. She ignored it at first, thinking their reasons for slowing down had nothing to do with her.
Eve was wrong. The tinted window rolled down to reveal Gage in the driver’s seat. She stopped walking and gaped at him.
“Hey Eve, you want a ride home?”
Eve could feel the heat spreading across her neck and up to her cheeks and knew her eyes were bugging out of her head. She turned away quickly and started walking again. This is probably just some joke. Keep walking. Ignore him and he will leave. Go. Go. Go.
She quickened her pace, wishing she wasn’t wearing the long blue skirt that hindered any chance of quick movement without face-planting.
“Eve.”
The sound of his voice right next to her stopped her in her tracks. She turned slowly and looked up into the face she’d come to love, with his dark skin and light eyes. He wasn’t smiling down at her, like she imagined he would be. His face was blank of emotions, save for his eyes. Something was going on there, behind his gray irises, though what it was, she couldn’t place it.
He held out a large palm in front of her. He hadn’t touched her when he approached, an invisible action that she was painfully aware of. He was so close, but yet miles away. The image of his out-stretched hand would stay burned in her memory forever. The way his skin was lighter there, than on his arms, the lines in his palm were dark slashes across the skin, like broken tiles that someone had glued back together.
She took his hand,
warm against her own and followed him back to his car. In her mind, she pretended like they were on a date when he opened the car door for her and she climbed in, sliding soundlessly across the polished leather seats.
And then he was there next to her, driving her home, like it was the most normal thing in the world. Like he hadn’t been ignoring her for weeks. Her backpack sat at her feet and she clutched her hands in her lap, as best as her cast would permit, wishing her mom had let her buy that purse at the mall last year so she would have something to occupy her hands with. She tried to look at everything but him and failed. The drive to her house wasn’t far and she didn’t want to miss a moment of being with Gage, even if it was only for a car ride.
The blank look he wore outside of the car was gone, at least it appeared that way from what she could tell of the right side of his face. He wore a black football champion shirt that everyone in the student body owned, since they had won the championship last year. His right arm was muscular, and sat atop the steering wheel with a big, jeweled ring on his ring finger. The State ring. He’d been voted most valuable player. His other arm rested on a blue-jean clad thigh.
The radio played in the background quietly, a song she didn’t know, though that didn’t say much, considering she never listened to the radio. She watched his lips move, and realized he was singing along to the song playing.
“I like this song.” The words escaped her lips involuntarily.
He glanced at her and gave her that lazy smile she’d coveted for weeks. “Oh, yeah?” He reached over and turned the little black knob, increasing the volume. “I do too, but”—he put a single finger to his lips—“shh, don’t tell anyone.” He picked up his iPhone and clicked on the screen with his thumb. The song started over.
“Why not?”
“I don’t want the whole school to know I dig British boy bands.”
“Oh.”
“Have you heard the song before?”
She shook her head no.
“It’s called Meet You There by Busted. It’s pretty freakin’ awesome.” He smiled again and looked back at the road. The sounds of an acoustic guitar filled the car. Eve looked out the window and let the voice of the singer wash over her.
It’s written all over your face
Such a painful thing to waste
Tell me now, where do we go?
She sucked in a breath and looked at Gage again. He wasn’t looking at her. His gaze remained on the road, his hand lounging on the steering wheel. His lips moved with words, singing to the dirt road, not to Eve. Not to me.
Now the future’s not so clear
I can’t believe we’ve ended here
Where’s the world that doesn’t care?
Maybe I can meet you there
The song was just any other song to Gage, who sang the rest of the way home, but it became Eve’s favorite song. The words speaking to her like it was hand written for her by Gage himself, about the relationship she wished they could have, the words she wished he would say to her.
“Just drop me off here.”
Gage pulled the car to a stop at the end of her street. He turned the radio down, muting the song. “I can take you down to your house. It’s no big deal.”
“That’s okay!” she said the words too loudly. She jerked the door open and climbed out. “I really like the walk,” she added lamely. She didn’t want to admit that she didn’t want him to see her house, though she knew he had probably already seen it, but pulling up with him would be mortifying. Not to mention the fear of what her dad would do to her if he saw her in the car with a boy.
She pulled her backpack on trying not to look awkward as she struggled with getting her cast through the strap.
“Thanks for the ride.” She closed the door. Well, that went perfect.
She turned and the window rolled down.
“Eve.”
Her heart fluttered in her chest. She swallowed. “Yes?”
“Do you walk home every Thursday?”
Her head moved of its own accord, nodding.
Gage smiled. “Cool.” And he drove off.
Chapter Twenty-One
Olive sat in a chair inside the old diner they’d come across. The sun had long since set on the broken down building that sat in the middle of no-where, or at least it was no-where for everyone else. Olive had been to this diner before, though not in the before. Eve and her had spent the night inside the old building some three and half years ago after they’d left home. At the time, she had slept on the yellow tile floor, terrified for her life while Eve stayed up and kept watch.
She remembered it like it was yesterday, how her body shivered against the cold tile, though not just because she was cold. Her body ached and her skin crawled from what she’d been through the day before, the hell that her and Eve had finally escaped from.
“Are you having any pain?”
Olive was jerked from her thoughts by the sound of Laney speaking to Rose across the room. It turned out that the woman’s water hadn’t broken—a false alarm. The baby had apparently kicked Rose’s bladder causing her to pee on herself, though they hadn’t been sure until hours later when they finally stopped somewhere. The rest of their walk had been hell on earth, both Laney and Rose pleading with Reno to stop for the night and prepare for the baby.
Olive didn’t say a word. A first in her book. She usually had plenty of choice words to bring to the table when it came to her opinions and beliefs, but not this time. Maybe it was only because Reno was in agreement with her own thoughts, not that he consciously knew it.
He didn’t want to stop. Refused to even consider such a proposition. Rose potentially being in labor was not something that he wanted to hold him back, though what he was being held back from was a mystery to her. In all actuality, she didn’t care if they stopped early on, she wanted to, because her back still ached. But she would rather break her back than watch Reno fawn over the woman and baby her over the potential that she was about to give birth.
Laney had become furious over the situation and marched right up to Reno, telling him that they were “damn-well going to stop”. That was when he slapped her. The sound that rent the air was like a bone cracking in half. So quick that she questioned if she even heard it, but so loud that she knew she did. A sound she knew well. She’d heard her daddy break her sisters arm once.
Olive almost felt bad for Laney, but she didn’t. Her and Rose had both been with him longer than she had, both knew their place and yet they continuously challenged it. The fight had gone out of her after that. Laney fell back and took the dead jenks from Rose and pulled them along with all of the other things she was carrying. Olive didn’t have to look back to know they were glaring at her. The hatred of their gazes bored into her back for the rest of the day.
Even now, in the dark diner, she didn’t hear whether or not Rose responded to Laney. She must not have, because no sound permeated the dense silence that engulfed the room. Reno was stretched out on the floor to her left, asleep no doubt. What I should be doing. She couldn’t though. Couldn’t bring herself to lay down on the mustard colored tile.
Not when she was so close to home. Home? Your home is gone. She bit down on her tongue at the memory of her childhood house going up in flames with her family inside. Nothing would ever eradicate that from her memory. Nothing.
Olive sensed movement in front of her, several feet away. She couldn’t see who moved but she could hear the sound of their feet on the tile. Who’s up? She considered calling out, but thought better of it. If it wasn’t Reno, she didn’t want to risk waking him. He didn’t take well to being awoken in the middle of the night and someone’s head would spin. Especially after today’s incident with Laney. He had been in a bad mood for the rest of the day, walking faster than normal, forcing them all to sprint to keep up. When they ate dinner—berries and some other greens Rose had picked the day before—he shared very little, giving them each only a couple of berries to eat. Olive’s stomach rumbled at
the thought.
She caught a movement out of her peripheral vision. Her eyes were fully adjusted in the darkness and she could see the person moving a couple of feet away from her. There was no mistaking the pale blond of Laney’s hair.
Olive furrowed her brow. “Laney, what are you doing?”
Laney stopped her movement and Olive could feel the weight of the woman’s stare. “I’m doing what I should have done a long time ago.” Her words were a whisper as she held up her hand displaying a thin object, it was small and Olive couldn’t see it properly, but a sick feeling punched her in the gut.
She thought Laney was going to come at her, but she changed her direction and dove on top of Reno.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Eve stretched as she stepped out into the murky light of the new morning. She didn’t feel refreshed like she should have. She’d spent the entire night tossing and turning.
“You ready?”
Eve nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of Joseph’s voice. She turned and gazed into his brown eyes that twinkled with amusement. Her gaze didn’t linger long, but flitted down to his bare chest. She sucked in a breath at the huge tattoo that covered his surprisingly muscular torso. It was a large white owl shrouded under a dark night sky. The stars were so detailed behind the big bird, they seemed to twinkle, like a clear night sky.
“You like it?”
Her eyes found his again. He ran a hand over his beard that was a shade lighter than the brown locks on top of his head.
“Yeah, I’ve never seen a tattoo quite so detailed.”
“Yeah, well, it was my thing in the before. When I wasn’t saving lives or being a dad, I was getting tattoos.” He turned around to reveal that his back was covered as well, with the same picture only from behind, the owl landing in the night, the white feathers on its back ruffled by a breeze that existed only inside the night scene of the tattoo.
Alive (The Crave) Page 13
