Firsts (8 page)

Somehow she didn't think he meant it in the same way she was hoping, so she smiled and hit his leg and did what she supposed a best friend would do in this situation.

“Perv.”

His brows waggled, and the tightening in her chest worsened.

There was no way she was walking away from this in one piece.

The bell had rung more than ten minutes ago, but Savannah didn't feel the need to hurry. Her hand couldn't stop shaking for reasons beyond her; every time she dialed the combination to her locker, the damn thing refused to twist and open.

Her mind refused to stop racing.

“So do you know who she is?”

It Savannah took a few seconds to realize the voice belonged to Paige, and she was the target.

They didn't consider each other exactly school-chatty buddies and hadn't done anything but glare at each other during Wesley and the bimbo's thankfully short-lived relationship. Were it not for the fact that the hallway stood otherwise vacant, Savannah would have likely ignored the blonde whore completely.

Instead Savannah swallowed hard and tried to choke back the sudden rush of Wesley-touched-you-the-way-he-should-only-touch-me bile. “Who are we talking about?” she replied.

Paige rolled her eyes. “Umm…duh? Thorn.”

Of course. Who else in the world would they have in common?

Savannah inhaled sharply and turned her gaze to the ground as her clumsy fingers managed to pry her locker open at last. The day had gone by very much like the one before. She felt cut off from herself, thinking about how yesterday had served as both the best and the worst day of her life. After the gob-smacking epiphany of how she'd never felt as complete as she had when under Wesley's tender hands, when his lips touched her skin…followed by the pukeworthy knowledge that Paige had experienced it all first.

In the long, depressing run, Savannah supposed it didn't matter. It would finalize tonight.

He'd make love to her, complete their deal, and then they'd go back to the way they'd always been.

Impossible. They could never again live the way they had.

“As usual, Paige, I have no idea what you mean. Now if you'll excuse me.”

“Oh come on!” Paige squealed. “You and Thorny are, like what, joined at the hip? It was you who broke us up, y'know.”

Savannah's heart skipped a beat. “It was?”

“Not exactly news here.”

“I barely talked to either of you while you were dating.”

“Umm. Yeah. And for some reason that pissed him off.” Paige rolled her eyes. “Decide whether or not you wanna fuck him, Savannah. In the meantime, you owe me for not making you even more of a social pariah. It totally doesn't matter now, but I wanna know who the girl is.”

“What girl?”

“The one Thorn's been hard for since forever?” She blinked. “His supercrush? Don't tell me he hasn't told you.”

“Paige—”

“What? You guys haven't talked in like three days. That's a bajillion years in freak time.” She made a face. “I figured he finally admitted who the mystery girl was and you threw your typical little hissy fit.”

Savannah sighed hard and slammed her locker shut, then tossed her backpack over her shoulder. “Really can't imagine why he let a winner like you go,” she snapped. “Nice catching up and all, but maybe next time we could, you know,not .”

“So you don't know?”

“Knowwhat? There isnothing to know!”

Hell must have frozen; no other way Paige McKenzie could have narrowed her eyes in such a way as to make Savannah feel like the weakest link on an obvious joke. Only a few seconds of recovery lapsed before the pinhead started talking again, though it might as well have spanned a lifetime. “Youreally don't know,” she said, barking a laugh. “Ohwow . And here I thought you guys were, like, close. Thorn's been hot for some girl for forever. It's sick and pathetic, but he won't give it up. He never said anything, but I knew. Ialways know about these things.”

Savannah swallowed hard.Oh God.

“Oh.”

Paige shrugged a shoulder. “If he hasn't told you, he won't. It's abig secret . He totally dated me to make her jealous. Oh well. Guess it didn't work. At least I got to ride that monster cock.”

She paused and favored Savannah with a mean look. “Whoops. Sorry. Forgot I was talking to thevirgin . You have at leastseen one, haven't you?”

Savannah's jaw hardened, her hand tightening around her backpack strap. A few days ago, the comment would have smarted—would have confirmed the rumors she always suspected Daniel had spread about her—but now… God, she barely felt a thing. She was too preoccupied raging about Wesley. What Wesley had done with this girl…this girl he swore sideways only held his loathing. How could he have touched Paige the way he'd touched her? Paige knew how Wesley looked, knew how he felt and tasted. She'd done the girlfriend thing and had taught him things Savannah could barely stomach to consider. Things that should have been solely reserved for her.

The ways he could have touched trash like Paige made her skin crawl.

Still, somehow, Savannah managed to stave off her anger long enough to form at least one coherent thought. If nothing else, she wanted to get it out before the world around her blackened.

“Why bother?” she replied. “Rumor has it there's nocock in this town youhaven't seen. Don't see why you'd need my input.”

And without another word, she spun on her heel and stalked down the hallway.

She hadn't seen Wesley all day.All day.

How she could miss someone who wasn't truly gone was beyond her, but this had to stop. He had to know. Things couldn't go back to the way they had been. They just couldn't.

Not when she was so helplessly in love with him.

* * * *

This had to end.

He didn't know why he'd thought things would be different—Christ knew nothing ever went the way he thought it would—but after yesterday, after what they'd shared, he'd expectedsomething from Savannah at school. A wave, a look, a small private smile for the secret brewing between them. Any goddamn thing would have sufficed, but the woman hadn't so much as looked at him all day. As though what happened hadn't meant a thing to her. As though what they'd shared was forgettable, bloodless, and wrong.

Whatever it was he'd planned was obsolete. The sparks he'd felt yesterday…yeah, those had been real enough. There was something in her kiss that could ignite the world into flames, something in her touch… God, the way she worshipped him with her mouth. Hadn't she known what that meant to him? How it changed everything, much more so than just sex ever could?

She hadn't felt like a novice testing her gag reflex when she took his cock into her mouth. It had felt like more. Heknew what it felt like, and he knew he hadn't imagined it.

It felt like…

Well, fuck. Thorn sighed hard and ran his hand through his hair. He felt royally buggered.

After tonight, everything ended. The smart sort of bloke might put an end to this miserable plan before the damage was beyond fixable.

But he never claimed himself as the smart sort…

He fought the urge to snicker. With sex involved, no man gained smarts. Toss Savannah in the mix and rational thought sprinted out the proverbial window. Too much time had passed, so much rode on the steps he took, the decisions he'd made, and what happened the next time they were together. He could lose her;fuck , he could really lose her. And if he allowed this barmy plan to bugger up their relationship, he'd never forgive himself.

Savannah in her lily-white innocence. Her methodical, clinical approach to losing her virginity. Her brilliantly flawless plan.

She would shred what remained of his lovesick heart.

Savannah's mother, Angela, would leave around five. Thorn's original plan entailed showing up an hour later with takeout and a romantic comedy to ease the mood, but nothing seemed certain anymore.

Perhaps he shouldn't have been so forward the day before, but he'd gone mad with want and not doing anything only made him antsy. He had so much he wanted to do with Savannah—to Savannah—and allowing the only chance he might have to touch and taste her slip through his fingers was out of the question. He'd had an opportunity, and he'd seized it.

He'd tasted perfection yesterday…and today she hadn't even met his eye.

Could she be ashamed? Embarrassed? Did she regret it?

Fuck, the girl drove him mad.

The silence exploded with the chime of the doorbell, shattering the quiet torment through which he'd dragged himself. Thorn inhaled sharply and craned his head toward the hall, his heart jumping clear into his throat. Only one person in the world he could think of would stand at his door.

She'd come here. She'd come to him.

“This is it, Thorn,” he murmured, thundering hard, heavy steps down the hall and to the front door. His chest ached, and his temples throbbed. He felt he'd aged eighty years over the span of two days, thanks to her wonky plan and his idiotic willingness to go forward with it, and now, standing at the end of the tunnel, he had no idea how to proceed. Either she'd come over because she wanted it over with or because she wanted to back out. Or perhaps she'd decided she needed a clean break from their relationship altogether, as what had happened yesterday had proven too heavy.

Maybe she'd realized the truth in what he'd told her from the beginning: sex mutated relationships one way or the other, and no amount of saying it would be all right would make them magically immune to change.

Thorn sighed heavily and threw the door open, a thousand defenses and rebuttals waiting on his tongue.

Everything flew away the second his gaze crashed with hers.

“Savannah?” he said quickly, hurrying forward but stopping just short of taking her in his arms. She choked a sob and shook her head, her puffy, red cheeks trembling under the weight of her tears. Every thread in his body unraveled and something within him shattered. “Savannah, sweetheart—”

“I don't know what to do,” she said. Her voice rode on a breath.

Bugger this. He would not stand stupid when Savannah needed him. Thorn took a brazen step forward, arms open and ready, but he hadn't prepared for the torpedo of shaking girl that exploded against him. And before he could catch a breath, her small hands had captured his face, and her tear-drenched mouth had pressed to his. Her kisses wrangled hard and desperate, a force of their own. She bit his lips and soothed the ache with her tongue, shaking her head at a voice he couldn't hear.

There lived so muchwrong in what continued to happen between them, but he couldn't stop.

She moved too fast for him to keep up, her touch too harsh to be charged with nerves alone. Her every inch had braced itself for something horrible, and the only reason she stood here at all was to get it over with.

This ended now.

Thorn's hands closed around her forearms, gently pushing her back. “Savaanooohhh—”

Her mouth burned his again before he could breathe.

“Savan—”

She shook her head again and raked him with her lips. Then her face cracked and washed away the flimsy mask of fortitude with a fresh incursion of tears. And while he knew to expect it, Thorn still shook hard enough to make him wonder if he had shattered with her. Fuck, he hated watching women cry. When it came to Savannah, he experienced everything. Everything. He felt every tear she shed tenfold.

“I can't do this,” she whimpered, arms falling uselessly to her sides. “I'm so sorry, Wes. I just can't do this.”

“That's all right,” he said, a mixture of regret and relief rolling off his skin. “It's all right.

Told you that, didn't I?”

If anything, his words only made things worse. Savannah's sobs became harder, and the tension in her shoulders tightened. Her head still shook as though she'd forgotten how to stop.

“I can't.”

“I know, baby. It's all right.”

“No, it's not all right.” She sniffled miserably and looked away. “It's all changed. Us. You and me. Everything's changed.”

An ironic smile tugged on his lips. No sense arguing what they both recognized as true, so he didn't pretend for the sake of pretending. Instead he shrugged a shoulder and said, “Hate to say 'I told you so,' but I bloody did.”

Savannah looked confused, as though wondering how he could joke about something like this.

He wondered how she couldn't. It was his best defense.

“I can't just go back to the way things were, Thorn,” she said softly. And he knew she meant it. If nothing else, the way her voice wrapped around the nickname he never got her to say hammered the final nail into the coffin.

“I know.” He blew out a breath. “Had it figured. Is that it, then? Are we done?”

She blinked, and her lower lip did the trembly thing that drove him nutty. “Are we?”