Untouchable (Untouchables, 1)

It’s quiet for a long time. I don’t like the need that swells up inside me, that hopes he’ll ask if I’m okay, or if it was okay that he did that, or even just simply decide to be pushy in the way that will reassure me—by reaching over and grabbing me, by pulling me close and snuggling me despite my concerns. Maybe that would melt some of them away.

He doesn’t, though. He lets me have my space, and every inch between us feels like a cold slab of concrete. After a few minutes, he climbs off the bed and walks naked toward the door. When it opens, the low light from the basement creeps in and I pull the sheets up to my neck like a vampire, hiding from the light. Wordlessly, Carter leaves the room. I have no idea where he’s going, for what, or if he’ll be back.

He does come back though, after just a couple of minutes. He shuts the door behind him so it’s pitch black in here again. I hear the crinkling of flimsy plastic and him gulping down some water.

“Can I have a sip of that?” I ask him.

“Of course,” he replies, reaching over and handing me the bottle.

I take a few good gulps, remembering how parched I felt when we entered this bedroom, prior to all that physical exertion. I hand the bottle back to Carter when I’m done and he caps it, putting it down on what must be an end table. Then he pulls back the sheets on his side of the bed and climbs underneath with me.

I expect him to keep to his side, but he scoots over and drags me close to him. “Don’t tell me you hate cuddling; I won’t believe you.”

I crack a smile. “I didn’t say I hate cuddling.”

“You certainly rolled away fast enough,” he remarks. Then, as if we entered into a binding contract, he reminds me, “You said you wouldn’t hate me.”

“I don’t hate you.” Then I can’t help reminding him, “You said you wouldn’t do it.”

“I know. Circumstances changed. I really didn’t intend to. Not tonight, anyway.”

I offer a faint nod and rest my head against his bicep. There’s little point raising a fuss now, when it’s already done. I’m tired, emotionally and physically. I have no idea what tomorrow has in store for me. I know I don’t trust Carter enough for this to have happened, but it did, and now I’ll just have to deal with it.

I don’t like the doubts that hide at the back of my mind, though. The doubts that paint an ugly picture of the bully who bought those panties and left the “slut” message on my doorstep. It’s not unfathomable to consider that this could have all been some sick game, that he has been lying, and that he pushed so hard tonight because he could feel his act starting to come apart. If it was all a game, it didn’t even take him long to win.

In the darkness, I feel him look over at me. “Who do you think you would have been if you’d never met me?”

It’s a loaded question with implications I can’t ignore. He knows he has changed me in the short time we’ve known each other, and he’s not just asking who I think I would have been, but if I would have preferred it that way. If I miss the more sheltered version of myself that existed before he tangled his twisted desires all around my sense of normalcy, before he dirtied me up and perverted me with his damage and his darkness.

I trail my fingers over the ridges of muscles along his naked torso, offering the only response that feels like the truth. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

Chapter 23

When I wake up again, the room is still dark. I climb out of bed as gently as I can so as not to wake Carter, then walk around to his side of the bed and retrieve my clothes from off the floor.

When I slipped out last night to go to the bathroom, I didn’t bother getting fully dressed, I just slipped on Carter’s T-shirt on the off chance someone saw me. No one did, and I climbed back into bed in only my bra and panties.

Dressed in my wrinkled clothes from yesterday, I slip out of the bedroom and head for the bathroom. When I get to the top of the basement stairs, I come across a man in the kitchen. He’s older, looks enough like Cartwright that I assume it’s his dad. He pauses in pouring his coffee to glance at me, but it must not be too rare an occasion to have random girls in his house, because he doesn’t look in the least bit stunned.

“Good morning,” he offers amiably.