I found a napkin in the kitchen, spitting the rest of the now inedible pizza into it and tossing it in the garbage can before helping myself to a glass of tap water. I collected myself as the beautiful but ravaged words of the song pushed through the stereo system and pounded their way into my ears, unwilling to be ignored.
“Want some water?” I whispered as I returned to the couch, leaving a full glass on the table for him. I just needed something to do, something to focus on other than all of this pain.
They say evil isn’t born, but made. Whatever happened to Kyler Sinclair had left a thunderstorm swirling that was inescapable. Now I understood why he didn’t collect friends like his easygoing sister. I didn’t have friends because I marched to my own drummer and that usually put people off, especially teenagers. But that wasn’t Kyler’s truth. I had the deep sense that something or somebody had made Kyler this way.
As the song came to a close, Kyler didn’t speak a word, only set his half-eaten pizza slice back in the box and took a drink of the water. I didn’t know what to say, but it felt like he was waiting on some sort of words or feelings from me. He’d just revealed himself to me in a song--a song of bleak loneliness--what was the right thing to say?
“Beautiful Girl by INXS.” And then he turned to me, smirk in full effect, and held out his hand. “Dance with me.”
I broke into a grin, the dark cloud suddenly evaporating into one of lighthearted fun. I slipped my hand in his and he pulled me up to him, mouthing the words beautiful girl, stay with me as he moved me back and forth against him, our hips connecting, then twirling me out at arm’s length and causing me to interrupt into another fit of giggles.
Kyler, like this, was contagious.
The easy way he moved his body like this, with music on and no conversation to be had. He was at home. My heart trembled behind my chest when his fingers snaked up the underside of my arm and lingered at my elbow.
I felt him everywhere.
“Stay with me,” he breathed, his lips suddenly hovering at the corner of my mouth. Dark eyes etched with ragged emotion clung to my own. I didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know what this thing was, living and breathing between us, that made me want to do whatever he said as long as I could be his for even one night.
I barely nodded, unsure what he meant by that exactly.
Then he pressed his lips to mine. Slow and tentative at first, he pushed his tongue past my lips. I sighed into his mouth and our tongues brushed together, my nipples puckering as all of my nerves came to life with his touch. His palms ran up my torso and slipped under my shirt, and a tiny moan fell from my lips before I could help it.
He groaned painfully once, before his fingers dug into my skin and he pushed us both back against the wall. The speakers bled out the next INXS song on the playlist as Kyler’s hands worked over my skin, setting me on fire, making me dizzy with desire.
We shouldn’t be doing this. Nothing about us together was smart; we’d been an epic crash and burn before now. I still didn’t know if I even liked him, depending on the day, but still, here I was, broken down and consumed by Kyler Sinclair.
My bully. My savior. My favorite complication.
What could he possibly see in you, Madison? You’ve never been with a man in your life, what are you thinking?
“Kyler, I...” Words fought for sense in my mind when he was pressed against me like this.
“I'm trying to do right for you, Madison, but when you look up at me like that with my name on your lips, you make it hard on me.”
My stomach swam and my knees swayed as he bent me over the arm of the leather sofa, his palms fisting at the cheeks of my bottom, before he hooked his fingers in the waist of my jeans and tugged them down my thighs. The cool air of his apartment, in contrast to the hot breath at the tops of my thighs, flooded my insides with arousal, making me desperate to feel him. I struggled to breathe as I inwardly begged him to make me his. I would always be his on some level anyway, even if all of this ended right here, right now, I could never forget the way he made me feel.
I bit my lip, dubious of uttering a sound. I felt such overwhelming pleasure charging through my body. I hummed when he ripped down my panties, leaving them twisted at my knees before his hands were kneading at the globes of my ass, his thumbs teasing dangerously close to…
Oh god, his tongue.
His tongue—his tongue was there.
He traced the tip around my exposed entrance, engorged with need for his body, his fingers working in a quick rhythm, before slowing down and swirling my juices with deft fingers. His tongue plunged in and out of my entrance as his hands continued to rub at my flesh and ease away the anxiety in massage-like strokes.
My thighs twisted and I clutched at the leather of the couch, wishing desperately that I could have him in bed the first time. See him, face to face, connect somehow more than—
“Fuck, little mouse, you’re sweeter than I thought you’d be.” The rough stubble at his jaw abraded my over-sensitive nerves, his roughened fingertips that’d flicked a thousand pages on a thousand different books, landed countless right-hooks and bloodied too many noses, were rubbing at my most private place.
“Oh god,” I ground as an orgasm tore through my aroused body.
He gripped my waist
