I rub my hands up and down my arms in hope that I’ll create enough warmth to bridge me through the wait. A feeling like someone is watching me ripples down my spine, and I turn to see a pair of striking green eyes. The same eyes that belonged to the man looking at me in the bar earlier. I normally ignore whatever attention I receive, but this man’s whole presence seems to slip me from reality into a place where only the two of us exist. My breathing stills but my heartbeat increases. My palms start to sweat. My mouth runs dry. I remember feeling my face heat when he looked at me before. It’s odd; I generally have no interest in boys, yet this man is just that — a man. I don’t know why he’s looking at me. I don’t know why I want to keep looking at him.
Shouldn’t I find this creepy? So what if he’s got the chiseled jawline of a man crafted from marble? His lips are sensual. I look between his strong eyes and his full, pouty mouth and wonder how a man can have such suggestive lips.
Yes, suggestive. Because suddenly, I don’t feel like being Carrie the virgin anymore.
Oh god, he’s walking closer to me! Can he tell by my face that I’ve been thinking about him? Maybe the shock reads through my eyes. I shut my mouth, snapping my lips closed when I realize they’re hanging open at the sight of him.
I can’t look away. He’s got to know I was staring at him, and he can only know because he was staring at me, too.
If I had a single calm bone in my body, I could tell myself to relax and then, you know, actually do that. But I’m awkward and totally unsure of how to act in situations like this.
“Are you cold?” the green-eyed man asks when he approaches me. There’s a dark, rich tone to his voice that sends shivers down to my toes, making the hair at the nape of my neck stand at attention. I didn’t know eyes could be so striking. I didn’t know a voice could be so…delicious.
“No,” I say quickly. I am cold, but for some reason I say no.
“You look cold, Carrie,” the stranger says.
He knows my name. Why doesn’t it raise some kind of red flag for me? The sound of my name on his lips charms me rather than scares me, and that scares me more about myself than it does him. That’s got death wish, or at the very least, weirdo written all over it.
His eyes crinkle in a charming smile. “My name is Jeremy Burke. I saw you with your friends at the bar.” He pulls off his coat and places it on my shoulders, his hands holding me for a few extra seconds. The extra touch prompts me to put my hands on his, and I hold them there for a few very long seconds. Jeremy looks into my eyes so intensely that I think that if I had secrets, he’d know them just from that look. If I had secrets, I’d want him to know them.
How can I be so utterly bewitched?
I pull my hands from under his, sucking in a breath. “They’re not my friends at all.”
Jeremy laughs, a quiet, haunting sound. I feel as though I recognize the pain behind that laugh, and he recognizes something in me, too. Jeremy’s eyes promise as much. “I didn’t think they would be. You didn’t seem like you wanted to be here tonight, yet you are.”
Considering his question, I purse my lips as I look at the smooth lines of his suit. He’s sharp and well-dressed, his smoothed-back hair looks like something from GQ and his hands are large and powerful. He’s even impressively tall. I didn’t know they made men this way, and if I did, I don’t think I’d ever consider that I had something in common with such a fine specimen of masculinity.
I narrow my eyes, studying him. “You say this because you watched me, not because this is some vague pick-up line. You picked up on more than just my name.” I, too, can speak in statements that aren’t even questions.
“Not many men observe the women they find attractive,” Jeremy says, a faint smile ghosting the corners of his lips. “It is more than just beauty. I was observing you, finding that you were too smart for your not-friends.”
That makes me smile. Sure, Jeremy could be just complimenting me, but he’s charming me and I’m enjoying it. And he’s right. Those prep school kids are some of the dumbest shitheads that I’ve ever spent time with, and my mother considers the books of reality TV stars to be the pinnacle of intellectual expression. “If you saw that my peers were so intolerable, then why bother looking at me at all, beyond seeing my beauty?” I ask. I don’t know why I ask it; it feels presumptive to say that he was looking at my beauty when he could have been speaking generally. I think I just want Jeremy to kee
p talking to me until the limo service arrives, so I’m crestfallen when the notification on my phone announces the driver that pulls up before me.
“Thank you for this,” I say, reaching to hand Jeremy back his coat.
His hands close over mine. My breathing stops and it’s hard to form words. “Thank you, Jeremy,” I sputter out.
“Carrie,” says Jeremy, and he opens the car door for me.
I step inside, wishing I could pull him inside this limo, lift up the partition, and do something utterly uncharacteristic for me.
Well, the thing I want to do is Jeremy. And he’s just odd enough that if it weren’t for his charm, I’d say we were similar. I have none of that. Nor do I have the courage to ask for what I want.
“Goodbye,” I say before Jeremy shuts the door. It is an odd choice of words, and I blink uncertainly, nervous. When I start to gather my wits, I see that Jeremy has vanished.
I pull his coat around backwards and hug it against me, inhaling the scent of him and what I recognize as Acqua di Gio. I smelled it once at a department store counter and found it alluring (and far more interesting than the makeup my mother wanted me to look at). I’m glad that Jeremy let me keep his coat, but it might be difficult to explain to my parents if they pay any attention to me when I come home.
Just then, my phone dings. A text message from Mother. They’re out for the evening, and I can have friends over.
That’s some kind of joke there. My parents know I don’t have friends at my school, but they think that forcing me to attend these parties is going to magically conjure up some kind of compatibility with other Westwick Prep students. As if.
At least I can be alone tonight. I’m feeling friskier than I can ever remember. The heat pooling in my belly won’t let me ignore it, and I raise the partition of the limo since it’ll be at least twenty minutes before I’m home.
My mind is racing with dark sexual fantasies about Jeremy. I’ve never done anything with a boy, or a girl for that matter. I don’t know what I’d want, and some of the ideas that flutter through my mind are a little strange. But the privacy in the back of the limo means that only my hand and I need to worry about the thoughts I have. I want Jeremy to ask me more questions. I imagine him touching my neck when I answer, grazing his thumbs over my collarbones and then telling me to undress. I think about him doing the same, wrapping me in his arms and telling me I’ll never be cold again. It is cheesy, but I don’t even know what it would feel like if we had sex. I drag my fingers over my clit with increasing speed, my gown bunched up around me, and let my head fall back as my eyes roll back. I let the fantasy take me away and very quickly my breath hitches in my throat. Little cries accompany the fireworks behind my skin as thoughts of Jeremy take me right to an orgasm.