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“We’ve never done this before,” he whispered, sounding achingly vulnerable. “Are you sure this is okay?” He pulled back to look at me, brown eyes full of heat and longing. “To touch you like this?”

“More than okay,” I breathed, slowly removing my hand from his. “What about you?” I asked, pressing my body into his touch. “Do you like it? Do I feel okay?”

He nodded slowly, while his thumb grazed my pebbled nipple. “You feel perfect.” Gently palming me, he leaned in close and recaptured my lips. “You feel like mine.”

Because I am.

PICKING OUTFITS AND PUSHING LIMITS

Hugh

OCTOBER 5, 2002

STRETCHED OUT ON MY GIRLFRIEND’S BED, WITH MY HEAD PROPPED AGAINST A STACKof plush pillows, I forced myself to keep my eyes trained on the pages of the book I was attempting to read andnotthe girl who was prancing around half-naked.

Unfortunately for me,Ulyssesdidn’t hold a spark to Lizzie Young.

“How’s this one?” she asked, and I watched from my peripheral vision as she prowled toward me.

Liz didn’t need makeup and dresses to look feminine, and I didn’t need the bullshit aesthetics to stroke my ego. Because I knew what she was, what she had, and it was everything and more. She was all I would ever want, ever crave, and ever desire. She was it for me.

Those kinds of girls bored me to tears because Ilivedwith one of those girls. No, I didn’t want the girlie girl, with the stuffed animals and pink everything. I wanted the feisty girl with the sharp edges and the tomboy attitude. I wanted the girl who glowered at me when I held the door open, instead of blushing. The one who responded to “ladies first” with “age before beauty.”

That girl lit me up.

That girl floated my entire fucking boat.

“Very nice,” I replied, quickly retraining my attention on my book before she could pounce.

“Liar, you haven’t even looked.”

“Don’t need to,” I replied, turning over to the next page. “You look good in everything.”

There was a disco at the town’s rugby club tonight for the fourth years to celebrate their junior cert results. Instead of getting shit-faced with the lads beforehand, I was being held captive by a blond in a thong.

Apparently, my girlfriend needed my help to choose anoutfitfor tonight, and it was a matter of life or death.

This was a crock of shit for two reasons.

First, I had spent virtually every day with the girl since I was seven and never once had I heard her ask anyone’s opinion on fashion. Liz couldn’t care less about clothes if she tried. She wore what she wore when she wanted to wear it and that was the grand total of effort that went into her outfit picking.

Second, we had a momentary slip in the library last month, where I lost my head and spent the last three classes of the school day dry humping my girlfriend. Ever since that day Liz had been hell-bent on finding another hole in my moral chain-link fence.

It wasn’t like I wanted to hold back. I was weeks away from turning fifteen.Of courseI wanted to have sex with my girlfriend. Christ, I thought of little else, and I knew most of my friends were happily cracking on with different girls every weekend, but I couldn’t do that. Because this wasLiz, and I was determined to do the right thing byher.

We talked about it often and had agreed on her sixteenth birthday as the date. So when she pulled stunts like this one, it made being good a hell of a lot harder.

“So this dress is fine for tonight?” she challenged. “You’ll be perfectly fine with me wearingonlythis to the disco?”

“Perfectly.”

Her tone hardened. “So you’ll be okay with your friends seeing your girlfriend completelynaked.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re not naked, Liz.”

“Ha, so youarelooking,” she challenged, sounding gleeful.

“I may or may not have briefly glanced,” I mused, pushing the glorious visual of Liz in a bra and thong to the back of my mind, but not before leaving a mental note to return to said visual when I was alone tonight. “Accidentally, of course.”