Page 7 of Forever Winter

He pulls gasp after gasp from my mouth, moan after moan, and when I come he’s quickly inside me again, fucking me hard and slow and with all that passion and colour that makes it so fucking hard when he leaves.

And he’ll leave. But somehow, like always, he’s making it hard to care. Like this is good enough somehow, even though I know come Monday I’ll realize it isn’t. For now, though, maybe it is. Maybe it’s enough.

It’s 6 am and we finally sleep.

4

It’smidnightandwe’re…breaking the law.

“When’s the last time you held a can of spray paint?” James asks me, and I look over my shoulder, nervously shifting my weight to my other foot because I swear I just heard something coming from the street below us.

“Um… I don’t know. Highschool, I guess. With you. Should we… can we go? I don’t think we should be here.”

He grins at me. “Highschool? You mean the night you got me arrested?”

“Yougot you arrested.”

“You sprayed a dick on Mr. Perrault’s garage door,” he says as he pulls the hood of his black hoodie over his head. “And I got pinched for it. I don’t know if I should be more insulted that you let me sit in jail for the night or that they actually thought I’d painted that monstrosity. Drips everywhere, uneven spray, shaky lines. I taught you better than that, Mitchell.”

“Youdared me. And you could have given me up at any time.”

He scoffs. “I would never. Bet I can’t say the same for you though. You’d have had my name all over your mouth the second you saw that dirty cell. Tell you Katie, when the world ends, you willnotbe on my zombie apocalypse team. You’d betray me at the first offer of running water.”

“Only if it’s hot water,” I mutter. There’s another noise and I jump, but James steadies me, pulling up my dark hood like he’d done his. I fold my arms across my chest. “I had no interest in sitting in jail when we were seventeen, and I have no interest now. This is a bad idea. We should go.”

With a sigh, he pulls me into a kiss. One ofthosekisses. The kind that would quickly get me naked if we weren’t on a rickety wooden platform thirty feet up about to commit a crime.

“Relax,” he says, tearing his lips from mine. I’m suddenly flushed, and seriously rethinking my aversion to letting him fuck me up here. Rickety platform or not, that mouth of his makes my brain stop working. “I was hired to do this.”

“I—really?”

“Yes Katie, really.”

I narrow my eyes. “Then what’s with the dark hoodies? We look like hooligans.”

He snorts. “No one says hooligans anymore. And because I thought it would be fun watching you squirm. I know how much you hate getting into trouble.”

“Then can’t we do this during the day? You know when it’s not all… dark and creepy?”

“No. This is LA, and people like seeing street art pop up overnight. That’s the point of it. It causes a fuss. And people here like a fuss.”

“Alright fine,” I say with a huff. I pull a paint cannister from the black backpack at my feet and shake it. “How big do you want the dick?”

James laughs before looping a rope around my waist and securing it to the side of the scaffolding we’re standing on. I look down to the ground below and then crane my neck up to the top of the building some ten feet or so above us. The height we’re at seems much more daunting now that we’re up here, and that realization makes my stomach twist.

I swallow. “James—”

“Not chickening out on me are you?” he asks with a smile.

I purse my lips, fully aware that he’s manipulating me. He knows I never back down from one of his dares. It’s how he got me to vandalize our vice principal’s garage door in the first place.Not scared are you?he’d teased.Don’t be boring,he’d said, and he’d known that would get me. The bastard deserved that night in jail.

“Of course not,” I say, steeling my spine. I look back down. The lights from the lamps below us illuminate the otherwise dark street but other than the odd car passing by and the distant sound of sirens, it’s quiet here. More of a business district, James had told me, so there aren’t that many people here after five o’clock.

“Didn’t think so. I’ll do the outline,” he says as he grabs his own cannister. “You can fill in as I go, and I’ll clean up your lines after.”

“My lines will be just fine,” I say with a scowl.

He only smirks at me before pulling my back to his chest and facing me to the brick wall of the building. “Remember what I taught you? Keep your spray light, okay? You can always add more after.” He shoves a paint stained rag into the front pocket of my jeans. “And keep your tips clean. I don’t want to see any drips.”

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