“You’ll get mad.”
“I’m already mad.”
“But I —”
“Spit it out.”
“I wasn’t wearing any,” I blurt out, my voice high. “Friday night. I wasn’t wearing panties. O-or a bra.”
He stills.
His chest stops breathing and I tug on his jacket.
I pull him closer with my thighs, realizing that in the process I’ve hiked up my skirt and now my thighs are shamelessly exposed. But in the face of all the other things, I don’t pay it more than half a second of attention.
My entire focus is him.
And this anger radiating out of him.
Before I can soothe it or do something about it, he growls, “For him.”
I shake my head again. “No. It was just the dress. It was super tight and not made for panty lines or —”
“You’re right,” he cuts me off, a vein standing on his temple. “I’m mad.”
“But I swear it wasn’t for Ji—”
“If you want me to keep my promise,” he cuts me off again, “the one I made to you Friday night about not touching your punk-ass boyfriend, you’d better never say his name again. Not in front of me.”
“Mr. Marshall, I —”
“You know what, fuck it,” he growls and this time when I hear a page rip, I can see his biceps vibrating. “Fuck promises. I’m going to fuck him up regardless. I’m going to break every bone in his body even though I know it won’t be enough. It won’t be fucking enough for all his crimes. For looking at you. For making you lie and sneak out and break all the rules for him. For making you fall in love with him and giving up your purple polka dot heart to him. Even though he doesn’t fucking deserve it.”
My heart has never raced as hard as it does in this moment.
My breaths have never been this choppy and uneven and frantic.
And there’s never been a stinging pain in my chest, behind my eyes.
And all of it is because of him.
Because how he looks right now, all angry and tight, vibrating and pulsating. “Mr. Marshall, I think —”
“And once I’ve taken that, once I’ve taken your first kiss and your first fuck, I’m going to send you to him,” he bites out, “with your mouth all swollen from my kisses, and your thighs covered in blood.”
I twist my hands in his jacket. Only I realize that it’s not his jacket anymore. It’s his shirt.
Somehow my hands have migrated from his tweed jacket to his dress shirt and now my knuckles are digging into his abdomen. His tight and ridged abdomen, and only a layer of clothing separates my skin from his.
Only a layer of clothing separates my skin from his fiery heat.
“There will be blood, won’t there?” he asks then.
I rub my thighs against his hips, his soft tweed jacket, as I nod. “Yeah.”
He looks down then.
At my hiked-up skirt, my naked thighs.
It’s not all the way pulled up but it’s enough to know that the hem is there.
Right where if it got pulled up even a micro-inch, he’ll get a peek at my panties.
And I so want him to.
I so want my skirt to hike up even more so he can see.
The panties he was going to put in my mouth.
He lifts his eyes. “Because you’re a virgin.”
“I am.”
“You were saving it for him.”
“Yes.”
A flash of violence on his features. “Not anymore, you’re not.”
“Mr. Marshall, please.”
“Because I’m the one who deserves it, don’t I? I’m the one who’s given you a roof over your head. I’m the one who’s been keeping an eye on you for the past four years. I’m the one who’s running around town, going to dingy bars to fucking chase you down. I’m the one ruining my goddamn nights because you don’t know how to fucking follow a fucking rule. So you’re wrong, Poe, you owe me. You owe me because you dressed up for some other guy, looking like handmade heaven on my godforsaken birthday.”
“I’m sorry.”
He grits his teeth. “Not as sorry as I’m going to make you now.”
I believe him.
I absolutely fucking believe him when he says he’s going to make me sorry.
But it’s okay.
It’s okay because…
“It’s for your birthday,” I say my thought out loud.
Something moves over his features. “Yeah.”
“And you never celebrate your birthday.”
That something thickens over his features, casting a shadow over them. “It’s not worth celebrating.”
My hands leave his abdomen and fly over to his face. I sink my fingers in the stubble of his harsh jaw, my whole body sighing, breathing as if I was holding my breath all this time.
All through four years.
I never took a breath.
But now I am.
I’m breathing. My fingers are breathing.
My heart is breathing because I’m touching him.
Unabashedly. Without reservations.
I move my thumb over his sculpted jaw, memorizing the feel of it, the heat. “Everyone’s birthday is worth celebrating. Everyone’s. Even yours.”