“Why?” he growls.
“Why?” I echo, unsure what he means.
“Why me? Wats offered to fuck you the other week, so why me?”
“Because,” I snap, looking away from his probing eyes.
“Priss, you better get those eyes back on mine, I already told you I need you to be looking at me when you speak to me,” he snarls.
I don’t know why I comply, but I do, instantly looking at him, then immediately wishing I hadn’t. His face is granite, his lips set in a hard line, his eyes tight as he watches me.
“I want a reason. Why me? Why not Wats or Olly, or hell, one of the minions who follow you around sniffing at your cunt even knowing they’re never going to get a taste.”
“Because.” I stop, not wanting to admit the truth.
“That’s not an answer Priss.”
“Because I’d rather it be with someone I’m at least attracted to,” I confess in a rush, my cheeks blooming with heat as embarrassment consumes me.
Carson is silent for the longest moment of my life and I’m grateful for the reprieve, but hate that he made me confess it at all. What guy doesn’t want easy sex? I mean I know I’m a virgin and that’s not great, but still, surely sex is sex to a teenage boy.
“I don’t know Carrigan, losing your virginity is a big deal.”
“This wouldn’t be,” I insist. “This is just about breaking the will. Think of it as helping my sister get free of our parents. This is the only thing I can think of that will get me and Tallulah free of them, without me having to get arrested.”
“So we just have sex, what if they don’t believe you, what if your parents pay off the lawyers or something,” Carson says, his voice wary.
“That’s why we’d need to record it,” I whisper, completely unable to look at him now, no matter what he says.
“You want us to make a sex tape,” he says slowly.
“No,” I say quickly. “Oh my god no.”
“Carrigan if we record ourselves having sex, that’s a sex tape,” he says drolly.
“All the recording would be is evidence, as soon as the lawyers confirm that I broke the clause I’ll destroy it. Hopefully no one will ever have to see it, it’s just a failsafe in case my parents figure out what I’m doing. We can make sure that no one knows it’s you, that the only person that’s identifiable is me,” I tell him, trying to sound clinical and detached, and failing. I don’t feel detached, I feel panic stricken. I’m not sure if I’m terrified that he’ll say yes, or that he’ll say no, but either way my heart feels like it’s beating out of my chest.
After what feels like an eternity of silence, but was probably no more than two or three minutes, I lift my head to find him watching me, his expression guarded but not full of disgust and loathing like I’d expected.
I know how Arlo and his friends feel about me. They think I’m evil, that I screwed my sister over, that I’m just like my parents. So asking one of them for this favor is more than likely going to result in him telling me to go and screw myself. But I had to try, and Carson was the only one I could imagine touching in that way.
“Okay.”
“What?” I exclaim, feeling my eyes widen.
“Okay, I’ll have sex with you, but I have some conditions,” Carson says, calm and collected.
“What kind of conditions?” I ask warily.
“I’m in charge. You do what I tell you to do, when I tell you to do it.”
I nod eagerly. “That’s fine, I have no idea what I’m doing anyway,” I say a little too quickly, feeling a blush fill my cheeks.
A sly smile crosses his lips and I wonder if I’ve said something wrong, but dismiss it when he starts to talk again.
“Are you on birth control?” he asks matter of factly.
“Yes, I have the implant, my doctor recommended it to regulate my periods,” I say, not sure why I’m spewing verbal diarrhea at him.
“Where? Let me see it,” he demands.
Lifting my shirt, I run my finger over the tiny scar and the raised lump that holds the implant.
“Good, then I don’t want to wear a condom. I’ve never taken a virgin before and I want to feel it. I’m clean, and I’ve never had sex without a condom before, I promise.”
“I’m clean too,” I say stupidly.
“I figured you would be, what with you being a virgin and all,” he laughs.
“Oh, yeah,” I say, embarrassment forcing me to look at anything but him.
“One more thing,” Carson says.
Forcing my eyes back to his, he waits until he knows he has my attention before he speaks. “One time only.”
Nodding I swallow down the nausea that fills my throat. I just negotiated losing my virginity with a boy I don’t know that well, who hates me. What the hell am I doing?
He nods, mimicking my action, before a smile tips at the corners of his lips. “Okay then, so when do you want to do this?”
“Now,” I say decisively. “The sooner we do this, the sooner I can break the will. It’s the engagement party tonight and after last night’s disaster with my parents losing their minds, and the fact that I’ve been ignoring their calls since I left with Tallulah and Arlo, we need to do this sooner rather than later.”
“So you want to have sex for the first time right now,” he says sardonically.
“I want this to be over,” I reply, locking my gaze with his. “I just want this to be over.”
Exhaling, the smile falls from his lips and he nods solemnly. “Okay, you stay here. I’ll go buy a video camera; cell phones are too easy to hack.”
I nod, because I really hadn’t thought this far ahead. When my cell rings I jump, startled, before pulling it free from my pocket and immediately rejecting the call when
