Page 39 of Never Bound

“But you—” I couldn’t help it. I glanced down at his body again.

He sighed. “Do you remember giving me any of these scars?”

I shook my head.

“Because I sure don’t. In fact, I even remember a few times when you could have but chose not to.”

“But my whole life, I’ve seen so much that was wrong,” I whispered. “And I never questioned it. I never said a thing.”

“Howcouldyou have said a thing?” he said, squeezing my fingers gently, stilling them where they landed. “You were a kid. You didn’t have a choice, any more than I did. You think radical ex-fugitive bomber Erica Muller would let you darken her door if she thought you were part of the problem?”

I shook my head, though unconvinced.

“You have your whole life to do good in the world,” he said. “You’ve already started.”

“I have? How?”

“By helping me find Maeve, of course. And by going to Erica’s meetings. And if you want to,” he murmured, “you can kiss me. Right here.” He guided my hand down to brush against the long, deep, pinkish scar slicing across his midsection and poking its soft, tentative edge out of the surface of the water. His oldest one.The goose.Like it had a name or something.

“Not because you have anything to apologize for. But because you’ve never made me feel anything less than amazing. So by all means, continue.”

This time, he didn’t need to tell me twice. I pressed my lips over the damaged tissue, my tongue cutting through the cold water to his skin, his nipple hardening beautifully beneath my lips as I trailed my warm tongue up his shoulder to where his scar disappeared.

I sped up, suddenly hungry to make this boy who had seen and felt so much pain quiver and melt with pleasure beneath my lips.

It seemed to work. Speechless, he reached up to take my chin in his powerful hand, mashing his lips into mine, raw and unapologetic, exploring my mouth the way he’d done in the kitchen earlier that afternoon. The way he’d done the moment he realized he was going to get another chance to do it. The moment I realized how much I still wanted him to.

Only this time, I felt his erection pressing urgently up against my side.

“See what you’re doing to me?” he whispered as it dawned on my face what it was.

“So it isn’t just your newfound liking for poetry,” I whispered with a smile.

“Notjustthat,” he whispered back between kisses, guiding my hand underneath the water to cup it, nearly weightless, my thumb tracing luxuriously over the hard cleft as he continued to nip and nibble, and my collarbone hardened and flexed to meet his lips.

Seeming determined now, he lifted me away from him, propelling my whole body smoothly, weightlessly through the water, setting me on the narrow stone steps leading out of the pool so that only the lower two-thirds of my body was submerged.

And there it was again—that serious expression he gave me in moments like this as if I were some eternal riddle, some divine puzzle, one he would spend all night—or the rest of his life—finding the solution to. Rivulets of silvery water dripped down from his hair and onto my breasts. He palmed one of them with his large hand, exquisitely sculpted and elegantly marred. My nipple had already heightened just above the surface, trembling bashfully under his thumb. My own fingers slipped along his shoulder and back to his nape, squeezing locks of sodden dark golden hair beneath my fists.

His tongue swirled on my nipple, sending the water lapping lazily over my skin, flicking his eyes up again and again as if he couldn’t stand to completely look away from my face. I lay my head back on the cement, my insides turning to liquid at the thought of what would come next, my heart already hammering as his hand slid up my thigh, gently coaxing my legs open. Automatically, I slid up one step so I was sitting on the rim of the pool, giving him the kind of up-close view I knew he wanted. All at once, my entire body was exposed to the night air, but I still couldn’t feel the cold, not for a second, with him there.

“Still pretty?” I cooed.

“God,” he said, like someone on the brink of starvation who had been invited to a feast. “That hardly begins to cover it. Do you know how many times I imagined this?”

“I—I did too.”

“When?” His eyes had brightened into the kind of innocent yet vulgar curiosity I knew well, his lips parted in shameless hunger. God forbid anyone ever made him choose between sex and science.

“When you were tutoring me,” I admitted. I supposed I should have been embarrassed, but I wasn’t. I was so obviously turning him on. “And—and later. In bed.”

“Yeah?” he said, his arousal evident everywhere I could see and many places I couldn’t, his body a hard mass of rigid, throbbing proof. His hand traced the length of my core, making me moan. “That’s so—”

“Yes?” I said huskily, leaning closer, my thighs quivering with need.

“What did you imagine? Tell me.” His voice was lower now, darker.

“Y-you,” I hesitated. “Touching me. With your fingers, your lips, your—everything. Everywhere,” I said, almost hesitant to choke out the words, remembering acutely those cold, quiet nights upstairs, awake, alive with the knowledge that the young man starring in all my dirtiest dreams spent every night in the basement of the same house, in a room with an automatic lock on the door. Almost as if someone had seen this moment coming and tried to prevent it. And really,reallyfucked it up.

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