“Hey. It’s okay if you are, beauty,” he reassures me in a rush, sitting up straighter in the driver’s seat. “I’m not complaining. You can rebel with me as much or as little as you want, all right? Make your father mad over getting a ride home from a Southie kid? That’s fine with me. I’m not stupid. I know when I’ve been given a gift.”
My pulse flutters in my neck, the smalls of my wrists. “You think driving me home is a gift?”
He looks at me like I’m crazy. “Are you kidding? I’m never opening these windows again so I can keep that cherry cola scent in here as long as possible.”
If he wasn’t driving, I swear I might be crawling into his lap, fusing our mouths together. He’s just given me the nicest compliment I’ve ever received in my life, made all the more special because he obviously meant it. There’s no mistaking the sincerity in his tone—at all times. “You mean everything you say, don’t you?” I murmur, giving in to the urge to lay a hand on his forearm, memorizing how it jumps, flexes. “You’re an honest person.”
A line moves in his cheek, his gaze dropping to my hand where it touches him. “I don’t have much, but I’ve got my word, you know?”
“What do you have, besides your word, North?”
“This car. A two-bedroom apartment right above the train. When it passes underneath my building, everything in the place rattles. I’ve got a little sister—Tulip. She’s thirteen. It’s just me and her now.” His Adam’s apple slides up and down. “I’ve got a fucking angel in my passenger seat and she’s touching me. I’ve got that, and Christ, it ain’t nothing.”
Oh my God.
How am I supposed to breathe when he says things like that? I affect this fighter as much as he affects me. I actually have the power to move this young man who is apparently raising his thirteen-year-old sister alone. This man who I want to know everything—everything—about. And his gruff admission is making me bold for the first time in my life. Making me want to be equally as honest. Wetting my lips, I let my fingers travel up his arm, across his shoulder. Higher until I can slide them into his hair. Tugging lightly on the strands until he groans. “North?”
“Yeah, Gracie.”
“Will you kiss me when you drop me off?”
He starts to pant like he’s out of breath. “Like a motherfucker, baby.”
The engine starts to roar and I realize he’s flooring the gas. I continue to stroke his scalp lightly with my nails while giving soft directions near his ear. I’m liquid fire, throbbing in places I’ve never throbbed before, the scent of his sweat and spicy deodorant breathing life into parts of my femininity that were asleep until now. I’ve never even kissed a boy beyond a simple peck and yet, here I am, wanting to lick North’s contoured shoulder. Wanting to straddle his lap and rub myself anywhere I can get friction. What has he done to me?
Giving in slightly to my body’s urges, I lay my lips on North’s shoulder and his big chest shudders, those scarred knuckles shifting on the wheel. “God help me, I shouldn’t be telling you this. But…you don’t want to know what I’m going to do to that seat once you’re gone.”
Fire crawls in a hundred directions along my skin and I’m riveted, hypnotized by him. Innuendo and sex talk among my friends makes me cringe or grow uncomfortable, but I’m almost panting with the need for North to continue his confession. “I do want to know. What you’re going t-to do to the seat.”
Briefly, he closes his eyes before focusing them back on the road. “After I drop you off safely, after I get that kiss, I’m going to find somewhere dark. Recline it all the way back and pretend you’re still lying there. Maybe the next best thing to your body is the heat from it.”
My heart is jackhammering, the moisture gone from my mouth. “I still don’t understand.”
“Gracie,” he says on a pained laugh. “I’m going to pretend I’m between your thighs. And I’m going to hump the fucking seat. That’s as close as I’m going to get to the real thing.”
Through my suddenly sparking vision, I study his profile. “You’re so sure about that?”
His expression is hard when he glances at me. “You need to be sure about that, beauty. If I had you that way…”
“What?”
A low curse leaves him. “If I had you that way…if we had sex, I’d start having dangerous thoughts, all right? I wouldn’t be content to be your rebellious phase anymore. I’d want this to be permanent. I’d be jealous and protective and fuck…fuck, baby, maybe I already am. Maybe it’s too late. Maybe I knew you were mine from the second you walked into the Hellmouth.” He gives a hard headshake. “Am I scaring you?”