“It feels good to fail?”
“Maybe that’s not exactly it,” her hands grip my shoulders for support as a small boat goes by and sends a wave rolling into us. “It feels good that I can try whatever I want, and there are no consequences. You aren’t disappointed that I dumped our kayak. Are you?”
“No,” I chuckle and kiss her forehead.
Hell, she could sink the US Naval fleet, and I wouldn’t be disappointed in her. I’d be helping her launch the torpedos.
I know plenty about consequences, though.
“Is that why we do this stuff every weekend? So you can screw up,” I ask her, letting my hands trace up and down her back.
“Partially,” she looks over my shoulder and nods before giving me her big, brown eyes again. “I mean, I do like learning new things too, but I don’t know. I just… we can be bad at things together, and no one cares.”
“If this is you being bad, Emily Walker, I need to up my game,” I wink at her and watch a rose blush creep up her chest and neck.
“You know what I mean,” she lowers her head to my shoulder.
I can’t keep my lips from grazing the tiny smattering of freckles that dance across her shoulder.
I do know what she means, though, because my world revolves around consequences. Different from her consequences, but what do semantics matter?
Failing most certainly does not feel good in the Ballentine household, though.
“Is that what I am to you, too? Your experiment with being bad?” I don’t know what I’ll do if she says yes. While I’m okay with being used by most chicks for fulfilling their daddy issues, that isn’t what I thought Emily and I had.
“No, I didn’t mean it like that,” she fires back at me, her eyes going round and searching mine like she’s waiting for me to crack, to bleed, before her. “You’re not an experiment. You’re also not as bad as you think you are.”
“No?” I tug her waist against me, partially because I want to teach her how she can really be bad, partially because I want to feel more of her. And partially because I need more clarity before I lose more of myself in her if we’re not on the same page. And I’m not above forcing honesty out of her.
“You just want me to think you’re bad,” she smiles and rubs herself against me.
Fuck, this girl is going to destroy me.
“No one thinks I’m good, Em.”
And I do mean no one.
Everyone at school knows I’m just biding my time until graduation, fulfilling the mandatory obligation before I move on, doing the bare minimum. I stay just this side of being arrested most nights because while Stanley Ballentine doesn’t give two shits about what I do or who I do, an arrest record would interfere with his plans for me, and there would be consequences then.
“I do, and I like that I’m the only one who gets to see it,” she smiles and nips my bottom lip.
The hint of her jealousy turns me on more than is probably emotionally healthy, but that’s never been my strong suit. Plus, what am I supposed to do when this beautiful girl is biting my lip and grinding herself on my dick that’s barely containing itself behind some thin polyester?
I wish I could kiss her sweetly like she deserves, because even when Emily is bad—she’s good—but, instead, I kiss her like she’s my next meal and I haven’t eaten in a hundred years.
With her legs locked behind my back, I absorb the taste of her--sunshine and a trace of the Dr. Pepper that now floats down the river. Throw in a hint of a good girl wanting to be very bad with me, and it’s like heroin in my veins.
“Yo Ballentine,” someone yells behind me just as a splash hits me in the face, and Emily’s lips pull apart from mine. “Your kayak is floating away.”
My chest puffs up like a rooster preparing to defend his flock against a hawk. I move Emily behind me as I turn, grabbing the football Chuck Dixon has launched at us. Three kayaks make their way closer to us, and the cackling of drunk girls echoes through the mangroves.
“Hi, Cole,” one of them waves at me and tries to stand in her kayak with Kyle whats-his-face.
“Sit down, Brittany,” Kyle yells at her when the kayak starts to wobble.
I toss the football back at Chuck and issue them my customary greeting, “What’s up assholes?”
“Party at Bryce’s tonight, you coming?” He asks while their kayak parade creeps slowly down the river in front of us.