Pretty reckless, p.6
Pretty Reckless, page 6
A bare strip of skin is exposed at the small of my back. When his fingers graze past it, all the hairs on my neck jump to attention. I feel like a piece of gum on the bottom of God’s shoe yet still can’t seem to control the slow burn beginning to throb between my thighs. Sick, annoyed, and aroused is a shitshow of feelings to be had.
There’s the bed, dude. Throw me on it like a Viking.
But he doesn’t. Instead, he turns on the sink faucet and jogs from the bathroom. I take that as a sign. Warm water splashes on my face and drips down my neck as I wash away the remnants of my nightly bender and gargle with mouthwash. Brand new and ready to face the day, I turn to find him coming back.
The plastic of the unopened water bottle crinkles in his clenched fist. He cracks the seal and holds it out for me to take. “You gonna make it?”
I breeze by him, sucking back nearly half of it before coming up for air. “Yeah. I think I’ll live to tell the tale.”
“You might wanna keep this particular tale a secret. It doesn’t really turn out in your favor.”
“Seriously? The guy with the Beavis and Butt-Head sheets has room to talk?”
Aqua eyes shift from my face to the head-banging morons gracing his bedding. “They were on sale.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, you’re as bad as my mother is.”
With a silly smirk, he turns toward the dresser and pulls out a pair of socks. I lie back on his bed, stretching out like a cat in the sun. “I think I need some food. Let’s get breakfast.”
“I have to work—” He stops short when he turns his back to the dresser. I feel each slow movement of his aqua eyes as they roll up my body before looking away. “But I’ll drop you wherever you have to go.”
“Call in sick and play with me instead.” The ring disappears between his lips then pops back out again. I see the minute twitch in the corner of his mouth, the curt quirk of his eyebrow. He wants to say yes. “Come on,” I prod. “My first client isn’t until two. Let’s go make some trouble.”
“Trouble is exactly what I’m afraid of.” The edge of the mattress slopes under his weight. I roll to my knees and crawl up behind him, unconsciously letting the tip of my nose graze the bones on the back of his neck. “Are you . . . smelling me?”
A sheepish grin grows on my face. Oops! “Is that a problem?”
Laughter rumbles in his chest. “Whatever gets you through the day.”
“You really gonna tell me no?”
He turns toward me, bending his knee onto the surface of the bed. “How about we do something tonight instead?”
“Can’t. I have plans tonight.”
A crease forms between his brows. “What are you doing?”
“Meeting a friend.”
“Guy or girl?”
“What does it matter? You jealous?”
“Worried.”
All my warm and fuzzies begin to dance. “You like me,” I say with a shit-eating grin.
With blue eyes twinkling, he lifts his thumb and forefinger an inch or so apart. “Come on. I’ll take you home.” I look at the letters C, O, M, and E permanently inked on each finger as he offers me his hand.
“Kat, wait.” Colorful fingers splay against the door as I go to open it, these graced with the letters O, V, E, and R. “When we get out there, I need you to be cool, okay?”
I take a subconscious step back. “Why?” The word slips off my tongue with a tentative edge. Hello, Mr. Cryptic Warning. Nice to see you.
“I live with someone. She’s not used to me having girls around. Promise me you aren’t going to spaz out when you see her?”
All my internal circuits enter overdrive. Oh my God, he has a kid! Things are starting to add up. Of course! No wonder he gave me that huge speech about respecting myself and all that junk. He’s a single dad raising a daughter.
“Okay.”
With a nervous sigh, he opens the door. A long hallway holds three other closed doors, his at the far end. Red booties dangle from the tips of my two curved fingers. Why am I nervous? I’m great with kids! Don’t want any myself, but my nieces and nephews love me.
All geared up and ready to come face to face with a blue-eyed little nugget, I’m shocked when I come upon a blue-haired old lady.
Wait . . . what?
“Gram. This is my friend Kat. Can you say hi?” His usually quiet baritone turns way up to eleven as he takes a knee next to the woman in the Barcalounger. Tickers scroll along the bottom of the Fox News channel, seemingly holding the woman’s attention. She turns her head in my direction and lifts an arthritic hand.
“For a second, I thought you'd finally gotten rid of the jackass,” she mumbles.
I wave back, a smile taking over my shocked expression. He lives with his grandma? Before I have time to make a sound, the front door opens. In walks a tall, mocha-skinned woman wearing a hideous dye job and baby pink scrubs. “Good morning, Chase family!”
Grandma grunts and swats the air, scrunching her wrinkled face. “Be nice,” Chase scolds then rises to his feet. “Hey, Maggie. Can I talk to you for a sec?” Chase and Dye Job move away from Grandma, their hushed voices nothing but huddled whispers.
He doesn’t just live with his grandma; he cares for her.
Chase is a hard guy to figure out. He’s heavily tattooed and totally pierced, but his badass persona doesn’t match the pussycat living inside it. Where does a guy like this even come from? At some point, this good-guy act is going to run its course, and his true colors will show through. It has to. No one is this nice without an angle.
And if he has this much on his plate, what does he want with me?
Chase’s house is a little ranch surrounded by a picket fence meant to keep the dog in. How do I know this? The damn thing tackled me on my way down the walkway. Feet over my head, ass on the pavement, the whole nine yards.
“Zeus!” Chase grasps the dog’s collar and pulls him away before he licks the remaining makeup completely off my face.
“Sweet dog,” I mutter, wiping the slobber off my cheek.
“He doesn’t mean any harm.” Chase playfully tugs on the pit bull’s ears. “Zeusy just doesn’t realize how big he is; do ya, boy?” Chase’s baby talk when addressing his dog hits me in the sub cockles and trickles down to my erogenous zones. Oh my gosh, talk about an adorable pile of goo. When he actually does have a baby, ovaries are going to explode everywhere he goes. “Go find your house, Zeus!” The dog obediently trots off and disappears behind the red brick façade.
“You okay?”
“Other than being mauled by King Kong, I’m fine. Did I rip my pants?”
With his pierced brow raised, he peeks behind me. “Looks good to me.”
His voice comes out husky and thick. Do I detect a hint of arousal in that usually smooth baritone? “You sure?” I give my ass a little shake. “Wanna look closer?”
That tongue slips out to tease that damn ring again. I wonder if he knows how much that tiny gesture gets to me. My thighs press together, attempting to smolder the sparks popping between them before they burn a hole clear through my panties. To-do list addition: find a cock to ride, pronto.
He tears his gaze from the back of me and propels himself forward. Somehow, I became trapped in the friend zone, but if nothing else, the man likes my ass. That’s cool. I can work with that.
Turns out, Chase doesn’t live that far away from me. Can’t say I’m surprised. Most of New Jersey is just a web of tiny towns strung together to form one large stinky craphole. I guess that’s not fair to say. Some of it’s nice. The ‘burbs are pretty. It’s close to the ocean and even closer to New York City. All that is great, but as a whole, it’s just middle-slash-high-class towns surrounded by ghettos and trash-lined highways. Even the beaches are kind of dirty. Speaking of dirty, I have a mountain of laundry to wash. I wonder if I can get my mom to wash it for me . . .
My mind wanders from topic to topic as we pull in front of my house. This isn’t something new. Sometimes, my thoughts move so fast it’s hard to keep up. Other times, I’ll fixate on one thing and let it gnaw until I’m ready to unscrew the top of my head and hurl my brain at the wall.
That one thing is about to happen in three . . . two . . . one . . .
Chapter 9
Chase
“So, did you end up riding the couch last night?” Kat flips down the visor and applies a clear layer of gloss to her naturally pink lips. She looks like she’s feeling better. When I found her praying to the porcelain throne, she legit looked like an extra on The Walking Dead and smelled just as rank. Kohl smears beneath each eye and a random lash was stuck to her forehead. Real disaster zone-type stuff. Now, with all the makeup washed away and her hair pulled into a messy bun, she’s even prettier than she was last night. Beautiful. A face that could launch a thousand ships.
“Futon in the spare room.” Just the memory of her in my bed thickens my cock enough to make my jeans tight. It took all my might not to call out of work, crawl in alongside her, and throw her around like a rag doll. The sudden onslaught of uncontrollable hormones racking my body whispered in my ear as I was saying no. What’s the harm? Give her the stiff one-eye and get it out of your system before she realizes what a fuck-up you are and gets bored.
Even now, they’re plotting my demise the farther I get from my house. I grind my teeth, secretly telling my body to shut the fuck up. Kat doesn’t just turn me on; she intrigues me. I don’t just want to fuck her and forget her. I want to know what goes on inside her. What kind of thoughts bounce around inside that pretty head. Friends aren’t a commodity I’ve been lucky enough to keep. Most of them went by the wayside when things started to go south for me. Funny how that happens. Laugh and the world laughs with you. Develop a crippling drug habit, and you’re on your own. I kind of want to keep her around a while. I like her.
Katy Perry shrieks from the inside of Kat’s bag. From the corner of my eye, I see her face scrunch up as she digs out her phone and looks at the screen.
“Nikos. What’s up?” She lifts a black and purple strand off her shoulder and twirls it between her petite fingers. “Shut up . . . no way . . . no . . . no . . . Nikos, calm the fuck down . . . I’m fine . . .”
I glance to my right. The phone lodged in her white-knuckle grasp is shaking like a leaf in the wind. Her voice falls to a whisper, which seems unnecessary since she begins speaking tongues. “Okay, fine . . . I said fine, will you stop? Eímai me énan fílo . . . Óchi, den eícha kánei sex mazí tou . . . Oh, my fucking God, Nikos, I’m hanging up now . . . Okay, bye.”
“What the hell was that?”
“Just . . . my brother. He worries.”
Judging by the quiver of her lips, this wasn’t just a routine check-in. Nikos dropped a bomb, and Kat looks as though her brain is about to melt. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“It’s nothing,” she says with a dramatic sigh, but her eyes turn to glass, and her lips turn down. “A guy I used to know died.”
“Oh, man. I’m so sorry, Kat. You all right?”
She shrugs. “I honestly don’t know.”
“You were close?”
“We were. But I haven’t talked to him in a while. The thing is . . .” She tears her bag off the floor and starts rummaging through it. I get the feeling she’s looking for a distraction more than anything else. In my experience, people like Kat do what they do because they don’t know how to deal with the feelings bottling up inside them. It’s easier to ignore them than face them. “Turns out Costas had AIDS.”
My heart stops beating for what seems like an eternity. I know where this is going before the words even leave her lips.
“We only slept together once. Maybe twice. It was years ago, though. I’m fine, right?”
“Were you safe?”
Another shrug. “He was my first. He claimed he was a virgin too, but he was a fucking liar.” The corners of her lips turn down.
Fuck! Synapses in my brain fire full throttle. How could she be so fucking reckless? “You need to get tested ASAP.”
“No.”
She reaches for the door, but my fingers close around her slim bicep before she can flee. “You can’t run away from this.”
“I don’t want to know!” she shouts. “I can’t even begin to think about all the people I may have inadvertently killed, and I don’t even have their fucking numbers to call them!”
Tears burst from both eyes. She loses control, crumpling to dust before my very eyes. I rest my calm hand over her shaking one. “I know it’s scary.”
“What the fuck do you know about it?”
“More than you think.”
Her defensive tone wanes. “You’ve had it done?”
“A few times.” I nod. “It’s unpleasant and terrifying, but you don’t have to do it alone. We’ll do it together. Okay?” She swallows hard, blinking back the wetness still building in her amazing almond eyes. “Come here.” I reach out with both arms and pull her to me. Her damp face burrows in my neck, and for a few short moments, our hearts beat together with her body pressed against mine.
One day at a time. That’s all we can hope for.
Chapter 10
Kat
Costas walks into his bedroom, side-eyeing me with that smoldering, deep brown stare of his. “Katarina, what are you doing in here?”
His T-shirt slides off my shoulder as I shift on the bed, trying my best to be sexy. “Waiting for you.”
He continues into the room, barely looking in my direction. “You know how I feel about my privacy, darling.”
“When we're married, we'll share a bed. What's the difference?”
Frustration sets in. This isn't how I imagined this going. The age difference between us makes him nervous. We both agreed to no touching below the waist until I became legal. Cut to today. Eighteen years old and being brutally rebuffed by my twenty-one-year-old fiancé.
“Yes, but we aren't married yet,” he says, tapping his finger on the tip of my nose.
“Costas . . .”
“Come.” He extends his hand.
“That's what I’m trying to do.” I lean forward and press my mouth to his. After all these years, kissing him still gives me a thrill. It's not like the few I’ve shared with random boys at school. Everything with them is fast and clumsy—all pokey tongue and too much saliva—but Costas is no high school boy. He knows the art of a seductive kiss. His soft lips caress mine, taking their time before parting. He holds my face and never pushes me further than I'm willing to go. But it's been two years, and I'm ready for more.
“Our first time should be special.”
Costas comes from a traditional family like I do. In fact, our parents have been friends for as far back as I can remember. We waited a lifetime for each other. What's more special than that?
“I love you, Costas, and I’ve been patient, but I want to be with you.”
With a defeated sigh, he squares his shoulders. “Okay. Lie down.”
The serene sounds of trickling rain tap on the windows in Chase’s kitchen. The acronym HIV-1 leaps off the little white box on the table in bright blue, green, and orange. You’d think it was a coffin-shaped box with letters dripping blood by the way I’m feeling right now, but that stupid happy logo taunts me as his slender fingers tear open the top.
He bought it from the drugstore on his lunch break. Who would have guessed you could buy do-it-yourself HIV test kits right at Walgreens? Is this what we’ve become as a society? So rampant with disease that scientists have found a way to let idiots like me do this in the privacy of our own homes?
“You aren’t taking one, too?”
“I got tested end of last year. I haven’t been active.”
My jaw drops. “Why not?”
“Hasn’t been on my list of priorities.” Blue eyes scan the directions. I watch them slowly scan to the right then snap back as he goes over them line by line, flicking the lip ring with incessant zeal. I touched another nerve.
“Okay,” he says after a few minutes. “All you need to do is prick your finger and squeeze a few drops of blood into the well of the collection cassette thing.”
I sit like a stone. “This shit doesn’t happen to real people. This is a movie they show you in health class about the dangers of safe sex.”
He looks up through his lashes, waiting for me to move. A cruel mix of pity and relief swirls inside his kind gaze. “It happens. Best to get it over with.” Why is he making me do this? We’re not close. Certainly not hold-my-hand-while-I-die close. No one cares enough about me for that. Costas was my one chance at love. He was the only man who ever touched the tiny piece of my soul that still shined with innocent light. I thought we were going to be together forever. But instead, he’s underground, and I’m a potential ticking time bomb of disease. As usual, Costas got the last laugh. He wanted me dead, and I am.
I feel my face scrunch like an overused stress ball. Used. That’s what I am. It’s all I’ve ever been from day one. Until now. “Will you do it?” The question comes out so meek I hardly recognize my own voice.
The foil crinkles as Chase pulls out an alcohol wipe. The irony of it all smacks me upside the head. The contents of a little foil packet could have avoided this entire thing altogether.
When he lifts my hand, a five-fingered sweat mark slowly dissolves from the shiny surface of the table. “When I was in eighth grade, there was this talent show.” He gently works his thumbs in small circles from the heel of my hand to my fingers before swabbing the pad of my middle finger clean. “A lip sync challenge called Puttin’ on the Hits.”
“What did you sing?”
A shy smile tugs on the corner of his mouth. “‘Let’s Get It On’ by Marvin Gaye.”
