The Edge of Never (The Edge of Never 1)

And then he gets up from the bed.

I can’t move.

I want to reach out and grab him and pull him down on top of me, but I can’t move. Not only am I still reeling from the orgasm he just gave me, but my mind is still reeling from the entire experience.

I just look at him, barely raising my head from the pillow as he goes toward the door. He looks at me once just after he places his hand on the door lever.

But I’m the one who speaks first:

“Where are you going?”

I know where he’s going, but it was the only thing I could think to say to delay him from leaving my room.

He smiles gently. “To my room,” he says as if I should already know.

The door opens and light from the hallway floods into the space around him, illuminating his features over there in the shadow. I want to say something, but I’m not sure what. I raise my back from the bed and sit up straight; my fingers restlessly fidget with the sheet near my lap.

“Well, I’ll see you in the morning,” he says and he gives me one last meaningful grin just before he closes the door behind him and the light from the hall snaps out. But it’s still fairly bright in my room; I had left the lamp on by the bed. I look over, thinking about the lamp. It was on the whole time. I had always been kind of shy in bed and even with Ian the most light I ever had sex with him in was from a television, but never bright light. I didn’t even think about it this time.

And the words that came out of my mouth…I have never said something like that before. Not the P-word. I can’t even say it right now. Sure, I often told Ian to ‘please f**k me’ or ‘fuck me harder’, but that was the extent of my pornographic vocabulary.

What is Andrew Parrish doing to me?

Whatever it is…I don’t think I want it to stop.

I get up from the bed and dive back into my panties and shorts and go to the door, intent on marching right back over there and…I don’t know what.

I stop at the door before opening it and just look down at my bare feet against the green carpet. I don’t know what I’d say if I went over there because I don’t even know what I want or what I don’t want. Then I let my arms fall loosely at my sides and a deep sigh bursts through my lips.

“Like it never happened at all,” I mock him dryly. “Yeah, you’re not good enough to pull that one off.”

ANDREW

20

I’VE BEEN AWAKE SINCE 8:00a.m. I got a call from my brother, Asher, and was afraid to answer because I thought it would be the ‘news’ of my father. He was just calling to let me know that Aidan is pissed off about me taking his guitar. I don’t give a shit; what’s he gonna do, drive down to Birmingham and fight me for it? I know it really has nothing to do with the guitar; Aidan is just pissed that I left Wyoming while our dad is still alive.

And Asher wanted to check up on me.

“Are you doin’ alright, bro?” he said.

“Yeah, I’m perfect, actually.”

“Is that sarcasm?”

“No,” I said into the phone, “I’m being straight with you, Ash, I’m having the time of my life right now.”

“It’s that girl, isn’t it? Camryn? Was that her name?”

“Yeah, that’s her name and yeah, it’s the girl.”

I grinned inwardly, distracted by the very vivid image in my mind of what happened last night, but then I just smiled, thinking about Camryn in general.

“Well, you know where I’m at if you need me,” Asher said and I heard the quiet message in his voice that he wanted to convey but knows better than to speak of it more openly. I told him before never to bring it up again, or I’d have to beat the shit out of him.

“Yeah, I know, thanks, bro—hey, how’s Dad doin’?”

“He’s the same as he was before you left.”

“That’s better than worse, I guess.”

“Yeah.”

We hung up and I called my mom to let her know I was alright. A day longer and she would’ve had the police looking for me.

I get up and shove my stuff into my duffle bag. As I walk past the television, I pound on the wall with the bottom of my palm next to where Camryn’s head is probably lying against her pillow on the other side. If she wasn’t already awake, that might’ve done the trick. Well, OK maybe not, since she is such a deep sleeper—except when it comes to music, apparently. I take a quick shower and brush my teeth and I think about her being in my mouth last night and it’s kind of a shame I have to brush my teeth at all. Oh well, maybe I’ll do it again later. If she wants me to, of course. Shit, I have absolutely no issues with it whatsoever, except that afterwards I have to take care of myself, but that’s alright, too. I’d rather do it than risk letting her touch me. I know that when she does, it’ll all be over. For me anyway. I f**king want her, but I’ll only take her if the street goes both ways. And right now, I can tell she doesn’t know what she wants.

I get dressed and slip my bare feet down into my black running shoes, glad they’re dry now after being soaked by the rain. I shoulder both of my bags and take Aidan’s guitar by the neck and head out into the hallway and next door to Camryn’s room.

I hear the TV on inside, so I know she must be up.

I wonder how long it’ll take her to crack.

CAMRYN

I HEAR ANDREW KNOCK on the door. I suck in a sharp breath, hold it there for a long, tense minute and then let it out in a spat of air, blowing a tassel of hair outward that hangs freely from my braid—preparation to keep me from cracking.

Like it never happened, my ass.

Finally, I open the door and when I see him standing there so casually—and so edible—I crack. Well, it’s more like a really red blush, so hot that my face literally feels like it’s on fire. I look down at the floor because if I look at his smiling eyes a second longer my head might melt.

I manage to look back up at him seconds later.

His close-lipped smile is bigger now and much more telling.

Hey! I think an expression like that is the same as talking about it!

He looks me up and down, seeing that I’m already dressed and ready to go and then jerks his head back a little and says with a huge grin, “Come on.”

I grab my purse and my bag and head out with him.

We hop inside the car and I do what I can to distract myself from the best or*l s*x I’ve ever had in my life by finding something random to talk about. He smells extra good today: natural skin with a hint of soap and some kind of shampoo. That’s not helping me, either.

“So, are we just going to drive to random motels and not stop anywhere except Waffle Houses?”

Not that that bothers me one bit, but I’m struggling to find ‘random’ here.

He clicks his seatbelt on and starts the engine.

“No, I actually have something in mind.” He glances over.

“Oh?” I ask, my curiosity piqued. “You’re breaking from the spontaneous rule of our trip and actually have a plan?”

“Hey, technically it wasn’t ever a rule,” he says, underlining the fact.

We back out of the parking lot and the vintage Chevelle purrs onto the road.

He’s wearing the same black cargo shorts he wore yesterday and I get a quick glimpse of his rock-hard calves, one foot pressing gently on the gas pedal. A dark navy t-shirt fits his chest and arms just right, the fabric tighter around his biceps.

“Well, what’s the plan, then?”

“New Orleans,” he says, smiling over at me. “It’s only about five and a half hours from here.”

My face lights up. “I’ve actually never been to New Orleans before.”

He smiles inwardly, as if excited about being the one who gets to take me there my first time. I’m as excited about it as he is. But really, I don’t care where we go, even if it’s the mosquito swarms of Mississippi, as long as Andrew is with me.

Two hours later, after we’ve exhausted the random topics which have only been a distraction from talking about what happened last night, I decide to be the one to break it. I reach out and push the down button on the volume. Andrew looks over at me curiously.

“Stuff like that has never come out of my mouth before, just so you know,” I get it off my chest.

Andrew grins and moves his hand down on the steering wheel, letting his fingers casually steer instead. He appears more relaxed, his left arm lying across the door on the other side of him, left knee bent upward while the right foot stays on the gas pedal.

“But you liked it,” he says, “saying it, I mean.”

Ummm, there wasn’t anything about last night that I didn’t like.

My face is only a little red.

“Yeah, I did, actually,” I admit.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never thought about saying something like that during sex before,” he says.

I hesitate. “Actually, I have.” I look over sharply. “Not that I sit around and dream about it though, I’ve just thought about it.”

“Why didn’t you ever do it before then, if you had the urge?” He’s asking me these questions, but I’m pretty sure he already knows the answers.

I shrug. “I guess I was just chicken shit.”

He laughs lightly and moves his fingers back up the steering wheel, holding it more securely as we go around a curvy section of highway.

“I guess I’ve just always thought of it as something Dominique Starla or Cinnamon Dreams would say in Legally Boned or Friday Night Dikes.”

“You’ve seen those flicks?”

My head jerks around and I gasp. “No! I…I didn’t know they were real, I was just making up—.”

Andrew’s smile becomes playful.

“I don’t know if they’re real, either,” he says, giving in before I die of mortification, “but I wouldn’t doubt it, really. And I get what you mean.”

My face relaxes.

“Well, it’s hot,” he says, “for the record.”

I blush some more. Might as well just leave the blush on all the time because I find myself doing it around him a lot more every day.

“So, you think p*rn stars are hot?” I cringe inwardly, hoping he says no.

Andrew gently purses his lips and says, “Not really, well it’s hot in a different way when they do it.”

My brows draw together. “Different as in how?”

“Well, when…Dominique Starla,” he picks the name from the air, “does it, it’s just to some random guy lookin’ to get off behind a keyboard.” His green eyes fall on me. “That guy’s not dreaming about anything with her except her face in his lap.” Then he looks back out at the road. “But when someone…I-dunno…like a sweet, sexy, completely un-slutty girl does it, the guy is thinking about a lot more than her face in his lap. He’s probably not even thinking about that at all, at least on a deeper level.”

I definitely caught the secret meaning behind his words and he probably knows as much.

“It drove me mad,” he says, glancing at me long enough to lock eyes with me, “just so you know.” But then he turns away completely and pretends to be concentrating more on the road. Maybe he doesn’t want me to accuse him of ‘talking about it’, even though I’m the one that started this conversation. I take full blame and I don’t regret it.