Page 37 of Serpentine Valentine
So fucking perfect in ways I hadn’t expected.
I thought I knew Luna, the pretty, popular jock, but she kept proving me wrong.
And it made the game I was playing feel even more dangerous than the others I played with the Man Eater Crew.
I couldn’t afford to lose the anger now. Not even for a second.
Not even a second spent kissing a very pretty girl’s very pretty mouth.
“I can’t, though,” Luna muttered, echoing my own thoughts for her own reasons.
I didn’t pull away or make it easy because I didn’t want to.
“I have a boyfriend, Lex,” she explained patiently.
I noticed she had her hand curled over my hip, fingertips flexing as if she liked the feel of me and didn’t want to let go.
“And?” I asked flippantly.
I knew all about Pierce Argent, the golden hockey player already garnering NHL buzz. He seemed to treat women well, but I hated his type. There were too many entitled jocks on campus who thought their star power would dim the glaring light of their misconduct against women.
Her brows tangled. “And I don’t believe in cheating. He’s a goodman, and he doesn’t deserve that. And, honestly, I’m straight.”
My laughter felt like a cough in my lungs, painful and brittle. “Ah, that old classic.”
I pulled away to sit on my side of the swing, ignoring her pugnacious frown.
“Well,” she insisted, clutching the crossword to her chest as if it were a shield, “I am.”
“You were,” I amended, then thought again and corrected myself. “You thought you were.”
“Um, I’m pretty sure I know my own sexuality better than you,” she argued, bristling so beautifully the meanness in me wanted to push her even harder to see how glorious she’d be with even an iota of my rage.
“Do you?” I taunted, baring my teeth at her. “Because I see things you don’t. The way your skin flushes when I’m close. The way your eyes dilate and your nipples pucker. Your body isn’t lying to me, Lux. You’re just lying to yourself.”
“Fuck you,” she said, but it lacked heat, and the profanity sounded wrong in her mouth like she didn’t often curse.
“You want to,” I agreed, egging her on.
Slouching in the swing, I spread my legs, my small pleated black skirt riding higher up my thighs. I could feel her gaze like a warm wind on the inside of my thighs as I smoothed my palms from my knees to my groin. A low, seismic moan quaked through me as I touched myself over my panties lightly, fluttering over my clit.
Luna didn’t move. She didn’t even seem to breathe.
“I want you, too,” I admitted. Even though I spoke the words like an insult because Iwasinsulted that my body could so easily betray me. “I want your pretty face between my thighs. I want to be the one to give you your first taste of a woman. Do you know the flavor? Have you ever played with yourself, then sucked your fingers clean of the cream?”
A little gasp. Maybe she wanted to protest, or maybe she couldn’t believe I was capable of speaking such filth.
I didn’t care either way.
“I think you’d like it,” I practically purred, the words rolling off my tongue. “The way I taste. Like salted pasta water. I think you’d become addicted to that slick sweetness. To the feel of it on your tongue. I think I’d have to pry you out from between my thighs, greedy little thing that you’d become. It makes me wet just thinking about it.”
“Lex,” she breathed, and it was there, both the protest and the longing for more. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Don’t stop? I won’t,” I promised darkly, tossing the hem of my short skirt up and over my belly to reveal my underwear-clad groin to her hungry gaze.
It was a quiet residential street, and we were partially hidden by the half wall of the porch railing. The sun was dropping quickly now, smearing the sky in tangerines and pinks deepening to indigos and blues. We had privacy beyond the intimacy of the bubble we’d created around us.
“Are you imagining what I must look like under here?” I continued baiting her, running a nail under the hem of my panties. “If I’m smooth and wet and plump like a rose almost smothered in dew?”
