He gave me a second to process his not actually finishing that sentence, then he put his head down and kissed me.
I had time to take in lips and tongue and my little moan of submission in my throat, and then he was pulling back, smirking at me now, and I swung my hand back as much as I could in the space I had and slapped him.
“Oh I love when you do that,” he said.
“Try that again and I’ll do it again,” I told him, and only realised when his mouth was on me again, trailing down my cheek to the side of my neck, that I’d basically invited him.
And he was right, of course: I was the furthest thing from experienced. I’d kissed only a few other guys before, when I was too young to think better of it, and none of them had resulted in me feeling much of anything. Never mind this complete rush that left me afraid my blood might actually catch on fire.
I couldn’t get my head around the smack he definitely deserved once he backed off again. I could only stare at him, panting, aware I was obviously sweating now.
“Just an invitation,” Steven said. “The next move is up to you. You’re a proper little stalker, so I trust you’ll be able to track me down if you need to.”
And then he turned and walked away, leaving me to sink to the ground next to my lunch, my blood an inferno in my ears and the parts of my body he was no longer touching feeling like they were never going to be warm again.
If he’d stayed, I could have screamed at him. Hit him. But that smart bastard had left me to consider what I was going to do next.
I knew it couldn’t be nothing. But I had no idea what else it could be.
Chapter Seven: Tamara
I didn’t see Steven for the rest of the school day, thankfully… not that I saw anything else either for as long as I was still in school. Classes passed around me, Aileen spoke to me, and I think I responded at all the times I needed to, but nothing was really sinking in.
I felt like a stranger in my own life suddenly. Like, I couldn’t just go back and continue being the Tamara I’d been before, because now that I knew a man’s touch could feel like that, I didn’t fit the way I used to.
Now I understood it all. I knew exactly why someone like my mother would go for a man who could hurt her, who she knew would hurt her before she committed. Why she might select someone nice and safe like Mike in the aftermath, to protect herself, but never really be able to be happy with that. Because here I was, fighting the same battle in myself.
I’d never been precious about my purity or anything like that. My mother had drummed that into me from when I was old enough to understand the concepts. Don’t stay with a man just because he was the one to take your virginity, because chances are you’ll make a bad choice about that.
Not that I was itching for Steven to take my virginity or anything. Mum had also said I should wait until I was out of high school to think about things like that, give myself the best chance possible, and I was still so on board with that. But I was definitely up for more kissing… and maybe kissing in some different places, although when I had that thought my body reacted instantly and the horror of getting a bit turned on while sitting in class nearly snapped me right back to reality.
How could I of all people be having these thoughts about a guy w
ho had possibly abused another girl he was involved with? Perhaps he was setting me up to take her place right now, trying to isolate me from anyone who could help by keeping the whole thing a secret.
Well, he’d said nobody needed to know, not that I couldn’t tell anyone. But who would I tell? If I said one word to Mum she wouldn’t leave me alone until I assured her I’d given up on the idea. Aileen would laugh at me too much. The thought of getting Ms. Miller more involved was laughable.
I needed Callie. We needed each other. Everything had started to go wrong from the moment she decided to keep secrets from me, had become set on a path of wrongness when I’d gone off at her instead of trying to understand, to help. The thing was I didn’t know how to fix it now, and I wasn’t sure Callie wanted to try.
One thought rose to the surface of my messy mind: if I was straightforward with her instead of sneaking around, maybe she would at least listen to me. So instead of going straight to the street where Ryan parked to wait for me after school, I ran to the parking spots at the front of the school building and scanned around until I spotted Callie, standing outside a big car that had to be Lucas’s.
She stood up taller when she saw me approaching. “What’s up, Tamara?”
I didn’t know how to answer her question. I just stood there in front of her with my hands on my hips and my eyes swinging from left to right, biting my lip.
Callie sighed. “I’ve done all the apologising I can think of and Lucas and Steven will be here soon, so if you have something to say you’d better be quick about it.”
The last thing I wanted was to run into Steven. “I guess I’ll talk to you later,” I managed to get out.
The funny thing was, that seemed to make Callie happy. “I might like that.”
“We’ve picked up another one!”
I froze at Steven’s shout, like I was a bird who’d suddenly realised the gun was already pointed at me. Steven and Lucas were walking towards us, schoolbags balanced impossibly on the edges of their shoulders, uniforms a crumpled mess.
If Callie had been tense before when it was just me, she was rigid now. She looked like she was bracing for a crash, the way she’d looked riding in Ryan’s car the couple times he’d given her a lift home after her old car got hit the first time.
The thing was, Steven had been more right than he intended—Lucas was nothing like him. Lucas had always seemed a pretty decent guy to me, aside from being as entitled as anyone that rich and handsome. I wasn’t worried about him hurting Callie—not intentionally, at least. But he was well out of her league, and I guess that made all the difference.