Lust

little surprised.” Kaia guessed there was no particularly polite way to say, So, your friend is an uberbitch. Hopefully she’d made her point without doing major damage to her mission.

“Look, I know Harper can be kind of-”

“Harsh?”

“Kind of a bitch, basically,” Adam acknowledged. Kaia suppressed her laughter-good to know he wasn’t totally blind. “It’s not something I love about her,” Adam continued with a sigh. “But the thing about Harper is, well, things come pretty easy for her. She gets bored-and you can see why.”

“Bored? In this town? No,” Kaia drawled sarcastically. How could you be bored when the bowling alley was open 24/7?

“No, it’s not just that,” Adam clarified. “It’s not just that it’s a small town. It’s Harper-she just-doesn’t belong here, somehow. She’s better than this place.” He shook his head ruefully. “And the problem is, she knows it.”

“It sounds like you-” But Kaia cut herself off almost as soon as she began. No reason to put ideas in his head. If he was too dense to figure it out for himself, she certainly wasn’t going to help him along.

“I what?” he asked, confused.

“Nothing.” Kaia paused, watching the dark shadows of parked cars, deserted buildings, flat, arid land speed by. The emptiness was endless. “Have a lot of respect for her, that’s all,” she finished feebly.

“Well, I’ve known her a long time,” he explained, pulling onto the empty highway. “She was the first friend I made when I moved here. I trust her-and whatever else she’s done, she’s never betrayed that. She’s the same with Miranda. When Harper decides you’re worthy of her time, she’s actually the best friend you could have. Loyal as a pit bull.”

“Which would explain both the barking and the biting,” Kaia pointed out.

He laughed. “Exactly.”

They were both quiet for a moment, and Kaia realized that this was the most she’d ever heard Adam speak. He hadn’t said much during dinner, and even when Beth was in the car, he’d mostly been listening to her prattle on about her day. The strong, silent type, Kaia decided. Likes listening better than talking-so maybe she should give him something to listen to.

“Well, pit bull or not, you don’t have to worry about me,” she assured him. “I can handle myself. You have to be tough when you…” She let her voice trail off and looked down at her hands. Would he take the bait?

“When you what?” he asked, sounding concerned.

Score.

“It’s just-you know, it’s hard, bouncing from school to school, always being the new kid, knowing that neither of your parents want you around…”

Amazing how truth can sometimes be more effective than fiction.

Kaia let her voice tremble, just a bit. “And people assume things about you, you know, treat you in a certain way, like you’re this person, this person who has nothing to do with who you really are…”

Adam took one hand off the wheel and rested it on her shoulder; Kaia suppressed a grin.

“Hey, we’re not all like that,” he assured her.

Kaia laughed, shakily.

“Listen to me, ‘poor little rich girl.’ And I don’t even know you.” She wiped an eye, hoping he wouldn’t notice the lack of a tear.

“Can we just… just forget I said anything?” she asked.

Adam nodded-but he kept a firm hand on her shoulder.

They drove in silence down the empty highway for several miles, until Kaia pointed to the shadowy silhouette of a mailbox, the only sign of civilization along the dark stretch of road.

“Turn up here, I think,” she said, and the car swung left, up a long gravel pathway, arriving at the foot of a large house of glass and steel.

“Whoa,” Adam murmured softly. “Unbelievable.”

The house-more of an estate, really-gleamed in the moonlight. Its sleek modernity would have been utterly out of place amidst the age-encrusted remnants in the Grace town center, but out here on the fringe, the elegant beast seemed a perfect fit with the harsh aesthetics of the dessert landscape. Stark steel beams, giant windows, a jigsaw puzzle of smooth surfaces-it was like no house he’d ever seen.

“This is where you live?” he asked in a hushed voice.

“Like I said,’poor little rich girl,’” Kaia quipped.

Adam turned off the car and hopped out to open Kaia’s door for her.

A total gentleman.

“Listen, Kaia,” he said as they walked up the long, narrow path toward her door. “Obviously we don’t know each other that well yet, but I just want you to know-if you ever need anyone to talk to, you know, I’m around.”

Brushing away another fake tear, Kaia threw her arms around Adam and hugged him tightly to her.

What a body.

“Thank you,” she whispered into his ear, making sure to graze his cheek with her moist lips. “You’ll never know how much that means to me.”

She let herself into the house, pausing in the doorway to watch him walk back to the car. Even his silhouette had sex appeal.

This is almost too easy to be worth my time, she thought.

Almost.

By the time Adam got home, it was too late to call Beth-and besides, what would he say? “In case I didn’t make it clear to you before, I’d really like to sleep with you-and even though I am the perfect PC boyfriend and will stand by you no matter what and don’t-I swear to you, don’t-just want you for sex, I think it’s natural for me to want that, too, especially since I’m probably the only eighteen-year-old homecoming king virgin this side of the Mississippi”?

Yeah, that would go over really well.

He sounded like one of those Neanderthals in the teen after-school specials they played on local access TV and occasionally showed as a precautionary measure in health class: “But gee, honey, I have these urges…”

No, best just to wait it out.

It hadn’t always been like this, of course. Back in the beginning, she couldn’t get enough of him-they couldn’t get enough of each other. He would come over to her house after school and they would try to do homework together, and after a few minutes she would tire of aimlessly flipping through the pages of her history textbook, and he would give up on furiously writing and erasing and rewriting wrong answers to the same trig problem over and over again, and that would be it. He would look up, she would look up, their eyes would meet, and they would be on each other, kissing, stroking, fumbling with buttons and bra straps, desperate to drink each other in, to find every one of their bodies’ hidden secrets, to touch, to meld. Sometimes all it took was an accidental touch-sitting across a table from each other, his hand would brush against hers, and it was like a stroke of lightning, a bolt of charge between them, and he would have to have her. And it wasn’t just him. There were times… that day last spring in the empty hallway when he’d given her a quick peck on the cheek before going off to practice. He’d turned to leave, and she grabbed the back of his shirt collar, pulled him back to her, back into his arms. Then Beth-practical Beth, shy Beth, tentative Beth-had pushed him up against the wall and dug her body into him, sucking on his lips and kneading her fingers into his muscles. Not caring who saw. In the beginning it had been like that.

Not in the very beginning, of course. At first they’d done nothing but talk. Which, to be honest, was the exact opposite of what he was used to. They talked and talked-on their first date, they talked through dinner, through dessert, late into the night, until Beth realized her curfew had long since run out and, like Cinderella, she’d fled off into the night. He’d never really talked to a girl before (except Harper, and that didn’t count), but then he’d never met a girl like Beth, who really listened. Who really seemed to want to know him-not the all-star jock, not the homecoming king, but him. On their second date they’d talked even more. About everything-families, school, religion, what they loved, what they wanted. They’d talked, and talked, and that was all. As he walked her to her door, he’d hesitantly taken her hand, and she’d let him. They’d stood in the doorway, her hand warm in his, and he’d slowly lifted his other hand to her face, touched her chin, but before he could lean in, close his eyes, bring his lips to hers, she’d pulled back. Jerked her hand away and slipped inside the house, without a word.