Move the Stars (Something in the Way 3)

“Do you miss it?” she asked.

“Miss what?”

“Construction.”

“You just finished telling me how unfair you thought it was.”

“But it was a better fit than sales.”

“I told you, I’ll take the first job I find. If it’s in sales, then I’ll do that. I’ll look at construction, too.”

“Don’t do that,” she said softly. “I want you to do something that makes you happy.”

“I know you do, but that’s a luxury I won’t have, at least not when I first get here. Maybe down the line I can concentrate on finding something more fulfilling.”

She turned her head to lie on the opposite cheek. “I’ll find a new job that pays better.”

“I don’t want you to worry about that,” I said.

“I’m not. Waitressing jobs are a dime a dozen here.”

I couldn’t talk her out of it, so I went at it from another angle. “Then you’ll have no trouble avoiding the graveyard shift.”

“I’ll avoid the twenty-four-hour job listings,” she said, shifting under me, “if you promise not to worry.”

“Sure,” I said, as if it were a remote possibility, and squeezed the tops of her thighs. Her skin was unnaturally soft all the way down. I ran my knuckle over the backside of her knee. “You have the finest blonde hairs here.”

“Sometimes I forget to shave that part.”

“At the tops of your thighs, too,” I continued. “I saw them when you wore those short shorts at camp.”

“I can shave higher.”

I shook my head to myself. It wasn’t what I meant. “When I was in solitary, I used to think about that, how I’d seen a part of your leg you hadn’t meant anyone to, and how it was so close to heaven, and I would get lost . . .”

“Lost how?” she asked, her back expanding with an inhale.

“Turn over again.”

She didn’t. “Are we going to have sex?”

“Eventually. I want to look at you first.”

“Manning?”

“Yeah, Birdy . . .”

“Why do you want to look at me so much? It makes me self-conscious. I don’t want to turn over and lie here while you look at me.”

She had no idea how touching her, seeing her, was a delicacy I never thought I’d ever be allowed to taste, much less gorge on. I was leaving tomorrow. I needed this to sustain me while I was gone. “Don’t be self-conscious. I just like the way you look. Turn over.”

With a sigh, she moved onto her back but kept her hands over her breasts. She was uncomfortable, and I didn’t want to push her. I was eager to get to the point where she could relax around me, though. “My cell in solitary was about half the size of this room,” I said to put her at ease. “Imagine having to stay locked in here for a few months . . . or, in some cases, years.”

“Did the guards talk to you?”

“No. They just pushed food through a hole most days. Then, they’d take me to the rec area, which was a slightly bigger room without windows where I could shoot hoops alone for an hour. And they’d watch me shower.”

She widened her eyes. “Really?”

I nodded slowly, bringing her ankle to my mouth. “So I wouldn’t try to pull anything.”

“I thought about you so much while you were gone. Did you think about me?”

“Every day.” I inhaled a breath by her calf, watching her face as I ran my stubble along her skin.

She shuddered. “How did you think about me?”

I could tell what she was looking for. It was my own fault. I’d kept her in the dark about these things, because of her age and innocence. She probably felt insecure about that, wondered if I’d thought of her at all. But of course I had, in all manners of ways. With her leg in my hand, shame tightened my chest. It should’ve turned me off to remember fantasizing about her while she was underage—I’d been unable to stop, even after I’d learned my dad was a pedophile. Instead, my erection raged on. Back then, I hadn’t been able to have Lake in any other way but in my mind. Now she was lying in front of me, still young and sweet and wide-eyed at heart, but with the body and mind of a woman.

I found a condom in the nightstand, put it on, and got horizontal on the mattress, lying between her legs so my lower half hung off the bed. I parted the blonde curls over her mound and kissed her once.

Her hands went into my hair, grasping me as I licked her like a peach-flavored ice cream cone that held the sweetest nectar at its core. When she got so worked up that she was trying to push my head out of her legs, I crawled over her and entered her quickly. She covered her mouth to muffle her moans, but I removed her hand and kissed her, swallowing them for her. Having to be quiet irritated me. I cradled the top of her head so she wouldn’t hit the wall and spent my frustration by fucking her fast and hard. When she was close, I put my other hand over her mouth so she could scream into it, but we weren’t fooling anyone. I looked into her eyes and she didn’t turn away, maybe because my hands held her head in place. As she accepted the length of me with each contraction, I came before I was ready.