Page 56 of To the Grave

I was surprised to realize I was glad it wasn’t entirely a lie. I liked Derrick, dug his even energy. In another situation we might have been friends despite the difference in our ages.

“We were all a little wild back then, but Arlo and Michael were reckless. They were…” Derrick hesitated, like he was choosing his words carefully. “… dangerous. Mac didn’t like rules, but he accepted that they existed. Arlo and Michael, not so much.”

“What about you?” Otis asked.

He was pushing too hard, being too direct, but the genuine curiosity in his voice told me he was beyond the point of getting information just to figure out who was behind the missing girls. Like me, he was being transported to the past: the trio of Arlo, Mac, and Michael ruling the roost at Blackwell High like we had before things had gone south with Blake.

Derrick looked at Otis. “I just wanted to be free.”

“What happened to Michael?” I asked. “You said he and Arlo liked to break rules together, but we can’t find any trace of him after high school.”

“That’s because he left,” Derrick said.

I lifted my eyebrows. “Left?”

Derrick nodded. “For college. Looking for bigger rules to break.”

“Where’d he go? To school, I mean.”

“Philly. Wharton.”

I could see it: Mac and Arlo stuck here in Blackwell Falls, Michael off to greener pastures, Derrick deciding he wanted no part of any of it, their foursome disbanded through a combination of choice and circumstance.

Like us with Blake.

“His parents live around here?” I asked. “Michael’s?”

Derrick looked at me and I saw the first sign of surprise in his face. “Parents? I thought you knew?”

Otis leaned forward. “Thought we knew what?”

“Micheal lived at the Blackwell Home for Boys.”

“What’s the Blackwell Home for Boys?” I asked.

“The foster home run by June Meynard,” Derrick said, like it was obvious. Like we should have known. “The woman who raised Arlo.”

Chapter 40

Daisy

Iarched into him because I couldn’t help myself. Now that my nipple was enveloped by the heat of his mouth, I didn’t care about anything else. There was no room to think about my boundless sense of loss when I’d thought he was dead, the possibility of facing that loss if he ever left me again.

He covered my other tit with his hand, kneading it over the top of my costume while he lapped at my nipple, alternately licking and sucking until the embers glowing at the center of my body burst into flames.

He groaned when I tightened my grip on his hair, pulling until I felt the resistance of his scalp. The sensation seemed to let something loose in him and he pulled away from my tit and wedged his body tighter between my thighs. He slammed his mouth onto mine, diving between my lips with his tongue, taking possession like a returning general determined to reclaim his territory.

I wrapped my arms around his neck and molded my body to his. The heat of his skin against my still-damp nipple sent ashock through my body and I moaned into his mouth, matching the fevered strokes of his tongue with my own.

His hands were on my neck, cradling my head as his thumbs stroked my jaw, like he couldn’t bear to have his hands off me even for a second.

Not that I was complaining. I was ravenous for him, our frenzied fucking in the kitchen the night he’d returned too far in the past to assuage the lust that had been building in the ensuing weeks.

Someone banged on the door and he lifted his head from my tit, his green eyes hazy with need. “Go the fuck away!”

I heard mumbled cursing from the other side of the door, but a second later Jace was reaching his hand under my skirt, pulling at my underwear until I heard the rip of elastic and lace.

He held them to his face and inhaled and another spark of desire ignited in my pussy.

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