Knockout (12 page)

“I’ve missed you,” I whispered, pressing my face into his shoulder.

He hugged me tighter. “Me too.”

We stood there holding each other for a long time. Too long. Longer than propriety or my mom would allow. Longer than friendship considered acceptable. We held each other until the song on the sound system changed and the air around us shifted. Until the way his body felt against mine became different. It was warmer. Softer. Stronger. The rough stubble of his five o’clock shadow scraped against my cheek as he pulled his head back to look at me with serious eyes. But he didn’t let go.

I felt like I was falling inside. Like the floor had dropped out and Kellen was the only thing holding me up anymore. I stared into his eyes as he searched mine and I saw what I was feeling written all over his face. It was utterly unlike the way we’d ever seen each other before. He looked different. He looked darker, more mysterious. Older.

Before his head dipped down to close the short distance to mine, I knew. His hand had shifted slightly sending his fingertips up under the hem of my shirt and onto the skin of my lower back. I died a little then. With just that one touch I was done for. I was ruined the way his smile had ruined me four years ago. He had stolen my heart that day with that simple gesture and now the touch of his calloused fingers locked my body away as his forever. Other men would touch it. Other men would roam their hands over it and when I’d sigh they’d think that made it theirs, but it wasn’t. It never would be. They would be thieves stealing from a man who had laid claim to me on this night when my heart, my head and my body aligned to follow the same star. To guide me North.

His mouth touched mine gently once.

It was a test. Like asking permission.

I rose up on the balls of my feet, easily closing the distance between us. This time he didn’t retreat. He kissed me soundly as his hands tightened on my back. His hips met mine hard until I was pinned against him from head to toe. Then his tongue swept across my lips and I sighed, letting him in. Letting him have all of me without a fight or thought. It didn’t matter. He could take it all, every last breath in my body. It wouldn’t change anything.

I was already his.

He gripped my hips and lifted me onto the island, his mouth never leaving mine. I opened my legs for him and he stepped into me, pulling me to the edge of the counter until my body was flush with his. Until I could feel him hard against me, the rough
feel of his jeans grating through the thin material of my yoga pants. He slowed down then. His lips trailed over the edge of my mouth, down my chin and to the long column of my neck. I let my head fall back as his tongue slid across my skin, as his lips dotted my neck with hot, breathy kisses. I wove my hands into his hair. He guided his up inside my shirt, skirting them over my sides. His thumbs slid slowly over my stomach and I took a shuddering breath. But when they rose higher, he hesitated.

I couldn’t stand it. The wild feeling I’d felt when I showed him my sketches was still with me. I was off kilter, falling hard and I refused to pull my chute. I would crash and it would hurt but it would be one hell of a ride.

I pulled on his hair until his face was level with mine again. I kissed him hard. I pushed my tongue into his mouth. I wrapped my legs around his waist and I clung to him with everything I had.

When his hands continued higher, when his thumbs brushed over my bare breasts beneath my shirt, I whimpered into his mouth. He took hold of me more firmly, cupping me in his hot palms and squeezing as he pushed his body harder against mine. The friction made me moan, it made me dizzy and I bit down on his bottom lip, sucking the soft tissue into my mouth. His breath shot out sharply, hot against my face.

I slid my hands down his body, following the impossible ripples of hard muscle and soft skin that made up the man devouring me. I moved down his arms, brushed over his chest, skimmed over his stomach and came rest on his belt buckle.

We both froze. His hands held me, his mouth hovered over mine, but we paused. He breathed into my mouth, I breathed out into his and we kept each other alive in those
halted seconds. Then I moved my hand lower, pressing my palm over the top of his bulge, and he groaned. His head fell forward against my shoulder and his breathing went ragged. He gripped my body hard, his hands falling to my hips. I wasn’t breathing anymore. I was seeing stars but I couldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t get air and I couldn’t get enough of him.

Suddenly he jerked away.

“Jenna,” he moaned shaking his head.

“What?” I whispered.

“Shit. We can’t. I can’t do this.”

“Why?”

He sighed. “You’re only seventeen.”

That was not the answer I expected. I was waiting for ‘We can’t do this to Laney’ or ‘You’re my friend and I don’t see you that way’. I was not ready for ‘You’re just a kid’.

I went from breathless to pissed in a heartbeat.

“Seriously? That’s why? You’re only twenty-one!”

“Why are you yelling at me? I’m trying to do the right thing here.”

“I’m yelling because you’re being an asshole.”

His eyes sparked. “How am I being an asshole? I put a stop to it. Do you know how hard that was?”

“Yes! Because I couldn’t do it. I wanted it. I still do!”

He ran his hands over his face roughly, growling. Literally, honestly growling. “You have no idea…”

“No idea what?”

“Nothing. I should go.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket, checking the time. “I’ll head back to my apartment tonight. I shouldn’t have come.”

I snatched his phone out of his hand. He glared up at me where I still sat on the island.

“No way,” I told him. “You think I don’t know you? You’ll run, this will be some weird thing between us and you’ll avoid talking to me. Then what? We’re not friends anymore because of one kiss? That’s fine for you and your randoms at school, but that shit’s not happening to us.”

“What do you want from me, Jenna?” he snapped.

“I want you to talk to me about this.”

He shook his head, frustrated. “I’m not good at that.”

“Not with other girls but this is me. You’ve always been able to talk to me.”

“That’s the fucking problem!” he shouted, making me sit back in surprise at his sudden anger. “It’s
you
. How could I do this with you? This isn’t how we are. I don’t have a clue how to be this with you!”

“Be what?”

He turned around, pacing the room like a tiger. He was breathing heavily, shooting air harshly out of his nose and I recognized it from when he was preparing to go into the ring. When he was getting ready to knock a guy on his ass.

“Thirteen, Jenna,” he ranted. “You were thirteen when I met you. Just a kid. But you’re not anymore. Now you’re… you’re not anymore and I look at you and I—“

“You what? Kel, look at me!” I demanded, not putting up with his shit. He stopped his pacing, brought his eyes to mine. They were tense and angry. He looked caged. “You what?”

“And I want you. I have for years.”

My mouth dropped open in shock. “Years?”

“Since you were fifteen and that asshole put his hands on you. I kept thinking you were just a kid and I flipped out. Laney said I was being a psycho. She reminded me that you were almost the same age she was when we first fooled around like that and it blew my mind. You were growing up and I had been ignoring it. Then I came and apologized in your room and you knelt in front of me on your bed with your big beautiful eyes begging me and your body right there at my fingertips and I saw it.” He closed his eyes and fell back against the counter across from me, his arms crossed over his chest. When he looked at me again, he looked tired. “You were a woman and I’ve been fighting with that ever since.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

I slid off the island and came to stand right in front of him. He looked at me warily but he didn’t move away.

“Why are you fighting it?”

He breathed in deeply, his arms rising and falling with his chest. “I don’t know.”

I shook my head, refusing to let him shut down on me.

“Yeah, you do. You’re not dumb, Kel. You know exactly how you feel and why.” I reached up and laid my hands lightly on his arms where they crossed over his chest. “Don’t treat me like I’m one of them.”

“One of who?” he asked, his voice rough.

“One of the girls you look beautiful for. That you let touch you and feel some sick thrill from being with the bad boy. The boxer from the wrong side of town. The ones that love your body and your eyes and your bike but have no idea who you are because you’ll give them everything they want in a hundred different ways, but you’ll never give them you.”

His jaw clenched as his eyes burned into mine. This was his defense with people, especially women. He shut down. He hid from them but he gave them his body and made them ache in theirs to distract them from the fact that he wasn’t there. That they were alone and they never even knew it.

“I don’t want that with you,” he said tightly.

I chuckled darkly. “I don’t want that either. So don’t do that to me. Talk to me. Tell me why.”

“I just did. I don’t want that with you.”

“You don’t want to shut down on me.”

“If we have sex, I will. I can’t do both. I don’t know any other way.”

“It could be different with me.”

He snorted. “People don’t change, Jen. I am who I am. I’ll do it. I’ll fuck it up, I always do and I don’t really mind. But not with you. I’ll lose you and I can’t do that.”

I felt my heart breaking. I willed myself not to cry but the tears swelled in my eyes.

“You haven’t walked away from Laney,” I pointed out feeling spiteful, desperate and somehow hopeful.

He lifted his arms from under my hands took hold of them, let them dangle between us.

“Yes, I have. With her it’s all sex.”

“You told her you loved her.”

He flinched. “I shouldn’t have done that. I don’t feel it.”

“You told me you loved me once,” I whispered, hating how pathetic I sounded. How very small and frail.

“And I meant that. I still do. I love you, Jen, but you’ve never needed me to be in love with you. It’s different somehow. Look, you don’t want what Laney and I have. Half the time
I
don’t even want it but it’s the best I can manage. You deserve so much more than that.”

“So do you.”

“No. I don’t deserve anything. Least of all you.”

A tear slipped down my cheek. “I want to try.”

“I know. And if I thought there was a chance in hell I could do it right with you, I’d have you naked in my arms right now begging you to give me a shot. But I know me. I know I can’t. I’d mess it up eventually.”

I nodded my head in understanding. I knew him. I knew he was right; people don’t change. I could want to be the exception to his rule all day long and in a way, I already was. I was the only girl he’d ever let in. The only one to ever get close enough to see the real him. And he was breathtaking. But the bitch about it was that the price of admission was everything else. I could never be more than his friend. It was what all of those other girls had never been able to manage. They’d seen the bad boy and the body and they’d jumped right in, never bothering to look beyond that. They assumed the rest would come later, but it never did. I knew that. I always had and I also knew the door swung both ways. I was Kellen’s friend and I would never be more than that. The rest would never come to me either. It was one or the other and the second you reached for more, it was nothing.

“Kellen,” I said softly. His eyes held mine and they looked the way I felt – pained. “Before you walk out that door and we never talk about this again, I need you to know something. I don’t need you to react, I just need you to know.”

“What is it?”

I took a steadying breath. “I need you to know that I l—“

His phone rang sharply on the island behind me. It startled me, making me nearly jump out of my skin. I looked back to see who was calling him.

“It’s Laney,” I mumbled, not looking away from the flashing screen.

Kellen cursed but he didn’t make a move for his phone. We both waited silently as it rang and rang. As her picture flashed on the screen, happy and beautiful staring back at me. Finally it fell silent.

I could hear Kellen breathing deep and even. I could feel his eyes on me, his hands still holding mine, but I didn’t look away from the darkened phone. I watched it. Waiting.

“What were you going—“

His phone burst to life. Laney laughed up at me.

Swearing, Kellen stepped around me and swept the phone off the counter.

“Yeah?” he answered.

I could hear noise on the other end. Laney shouting over loud music. Laughing.

“No, I’m in town,” he said in response to something she was shouting.

I heard her voice burst excited through the phone. She was telling him she needed to see him.

“Not tonight, Lane… No, seriously, not tonight. I can’t deal with any of this tonight.”