Know Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book One) (27 page)

“
I get the gist of it. I’m not really into
football.”

“
Well, you know what a quarterback is,
right?”

“
Yeah.”

“
That’s you, Blaze. You’re like a freaking
quarterback.” He pokes my upper chest hard so I have to take a step
back. “
You
, you’re the
quarterback. I know that. I can tell it. You get sacked and you get
up again, and you charge for that wall with everything you have
again.”

I’m not looking at him, but at my
feet.
“Maybe it’d be a
better idea to stop running at the wall? And rather to go around
it?”

“
No, it’s not. Because that ain’t living.
Living is facing up to the pain. And charging against the
failures.” He chuckles. “But, Blaze, maybe it’d also be a better
idea to simply get a better team.”

And i
t’s that statement that throws me over the edge.

The gasp takes me like
greedy hands to the stomach, and the tears
shatter my eyes. My hands go to my face.

Get a better
team
.

—
She’s dead, Blaze.

—
No! NO! NO! Stop holding me
back. NO.

I had
a better team. And if I compare it to football, they were a
bunch of misfits who’d always end up at the bottom of the
league.

But they were my friends.

I hold him. Actually, I hold his shirt.
And I fight the remaining tears. I do. But they win.

H
e holds me in return. He holds me throughout it all. When
I’m done—it must be ten minutes later, fifteen?—I feel
different
.

Relieved?

Absolved
.

I wipe my eyes with his shirt. And I
actually laugh about
that. You get that? I
laugh
.
Mirth. Happiness.
A release.
And
that in itself makes me almost wanna cry again.

But for a totally different
reason.

As if merely to solidify this fairytale
moment, his lips join my neck, under my hair, over my little star
tattoos. I smile, simultaneously wiping my eyes.

“
I’m cancelling my night with the boys
tonight,” he says.

“
Won’t they be disappointed?”

“
One night won’t kill them.” He sends a
text, then carries on kissing me.

My hands gravitate to his hair. But
we’re in a whole new world now.
Suddenly this ain’t just some dude anymore. This is
my
dude. I can really feel it now.
And for the first time since I met him (
days
ago) I feel like there’s really something here.
Not just heat-of-the-moment. But
something.
An actual
thing
.

Hot, yes. Fiery, yes. Caught in the spin
of the rushing moment,
oh yes
.

But that’s not what I’m talking about.

I mean: Now it’s no longer
This guy I’m
hooking up with
.

I know him
. And he knows me.

It’s
Declan.

My Declan.

It’s also:
Me moving his hand to between my legs for
him—
Down
There
—not letting him
feel afraid to do it. Letting him know that,
It’s OK...because I trust
you.

He rubs me there. Understand? He
rubs
me
. Not my cunt
or my pussy or my fucking crotch.

Me.

And I rub him back. But I go deeper this
time. I lay him on the bed and undo his belt buckle, take off his
belt. I unzip his pants, and I wrap my hand around his shining
shaft, on my knees next to him.

I start rubbing him, twisting and moving
him up and down. He slicks up, and so do I
, most definitely. His hand slides down my side.
He groans, manly and low—the grooviest bass in any House beat I’ve
ever heard. He sits up, and his lips touch my chin, lick my
neck.

And I caress him more.

He gets my own belt off, slides his
fingers into my panties and I—

“
Hah!
” I shake, and my hand pauses on his cock. “Oh,
god.” Then I gather myself up, and I move him up and down
again.

We start to rock in rhythm—he rubs, I
pull. The strength in my legs gives way. I fall on the bed, and he
lies back down, next to me. I’m on my stomach, he’s on his back. My
feminine sounds match his manly ones. Each murmur from him, each
groan, sleeks me up further.

I feel him grow
ing more, getting even harder. His cock pulses,
shivers, shakes. His other hand tightens around my shoulder. His
teeth meet my flesh, by my shoulder. “Oh, Blaze,
urcka-mpf
.”

He moves his pelvis, raises it, moves his
cock in and out of my looped hand
as if it were
me
there
.

I tighten
my grip on him.

His finger drives deep into me and my hand
stops moving while my eyes flutter back, expecting that stinging
explosion. But it doesn’t arrive. I keep my hand tight on him, and
he does the rest, riding up and down, pumping into my hand while
his other hand bursts into me with passionate speed.

I’
m greased, sodden. I feel my body twist, writhe. The taste
of cloth fills my mouth as I lie on the bedsheet, face down, lying
over his hand which is inside me. His growls increase, he pumps
harder—pumps the hand that’s inside me, and pumps his cock into the
loop of my other hand.

I start to
pump
him!

I steal a glance at his manhood.
It’s
beautiful
. Red and oiled
and screaming out. Then:

His pelvis stays up. “Oh, god, Blaze, I’m
gonna— You’re gonna— Oh, damn. Oh—“

I
yank
down, hold him there. His other hand—inside me—goes deep
and stays there.

I squeeze, yank, hold. My own
words
, muffled into the
sheets: “Oh..oh..OH FUUUUUUUCK!”

The orgasm slashes
into me with unmitigated fury. And I slam
my forehead into the sheets while it takes over me.

He
climaxes gorgeously. His juice spreads onto my arm, his
chest, his stomach. And I rub him more.

But
, after, the physical release is overwhelmed by something
else, something more tender. Lips on lips. And tongue on tongue.
And overwhelmed by yet another thing entirely. Something totally
and completely cliché. But it’s how I feel.

You r
eady for it?

Motherfuckin’
soul to soul
, baby.

Lying on my bed and staring at the ceiling
(which is becoming an increasingly favorite pastime of mine),
Declan twiddles a finger over my hair.

“
You’re making me sleepy,” I
say.

He turns and kisses me, says nothing.

“
I want to get to know your friends. I
mean, really know them. I like them. Especially Trevor. He’s
cool.”

“
I think he’s secretly trying to set us up
together permanently.”

“
Yeah, I noticed that! But...look, I got
some baggage as you can see—”

“
So do I, honey.”

“—
but I don’t want that to get in the way of
you spending time with your bros.”

“
My
bros
?”

“
Whatever. Don’t get me angry.”

“
You’re growing teeth.”

“
Huh?”

“
You’re growing teeth. I can see you’re
gonna punch me if I don’t do what you say.”

I smile, ’cause I do kinda feel like I
could punch him if he pisses me off. Or anyone for that
matter.

Even
Gavin the Golden
.

Or Xavier.

“
Maybe I will,” I say. “Don’t test me.” I
fold my arms over my chest proudly. I guess this pleases him
because soon he’s on top of me, smiling so widely that I think I
could just melt into him.

He kisses me.

And, well,
we go
there
again...
Oh. Yeah. Mmmmmm.

We’re still on my bed, looking up at the
ceiling.

“You forgot the music you wanted to
play.”

“I thought the music we were making was
pretty cool as it was.”

I stretch my hand
out to his. Our fingers meet,
interlace.

And t
hat’s how we fall asleep.

In the morning:

“
Are we, like, officially dating?” I
say.

“
Officially.”

Declan Cox

Blaze
is like the walking
Yelp
for Brooklyn Indie Rock. “I like mixing their stuff into my
music because it has heart. There’s nothing like a struggling
musician to put some real feeling into a song. It’s when money gets
involved that the music gets shit. You know, Ashley Tisdale, Selena
Gomez, Miley Cyrus, all that crap.”

The light goes green and I hit the gas.
“You think they play only for the money?”

“
No, I think that they’re pop stars who
never had to play in bars to make ends meet. That changes the
music. When you’re surrounded by wolves, you sing about wolves.
When you’re surrounded by
Dom Perignon
and all that crap, well, you can try and sing about the
pain, but generally your beats end up coming out smelling like
roses, not like the ghetto. Cyrus tries to bad. But she never will
be. She’ll just always be a rich kid who had it handed to her on a
platter and then shat all over it.”

“
And you don’t wanna make money with your
music?”

“
Of course I do. I mean, I can mix that
Demi Lovato and Ariana Grande sunshine music into my sounds. I’ve
done it, and I’ll keep doing it to make ends meet. But you gotta
understand that that’s down at the bottom of the barrel stuff. As
in: Being right at the bottom where the shit smells bad and you
damn near hurl just by walking in its vicinity. Real
desperation.”

I stop the car because we’ve arrived.
“City parties?”

She laughs. “Precisely! Where they hire
the cheap Brooklyn DJ because the auto-mix expert from the Upper
East Side’s too busy patting himself on the back in his limo while
sipping on that same
Perignon
.”

She starts stepping out, but I grab her
wrist. With her lips inches from mine, so close that I can feel her
heat radiate onto me, I say, “You fascinate me.”

The left side of her
mouth tugs once up, then breaks into a
smile. “And you embarrass me sometimes with your crazy magic
stare-me-downs.” She tries to pull away but I hold her by her
cheeks. “Hey!”

I move into her.

She
softens under me, and my heart breaks into a gallop. “We’re
gonna steam up the windows,” she says.

“Oh, so you’re aware of that now.”

“Hey! Don’t make fun of my lack of
experience!”

“
Let the windows steam up. I want people to
know what’s happening in here.”

Outside the car, I put her shoulder under my
arm. She’s a good head shorter than me. And I like that. I like
engulfing her. Holding her.

Hold it against me if you will, call me
chauvinistic, but I downright
enjoy feeling like I protect her.

Because I do. And as we cross the street
to the bar, I’m looking around me. Because I sense in my bones that
there are wolves in the wings.

We’re at
Slambam
—a bar (I discover later) whose bathroom walls are covered
in old magazine cutouts of everything from beyond-impressive
cleavage and high-on-the-thigh shorts, to the words
SEX
and
LUST
spelled out as if they were in a threatening
letter from a psycho to a victim.

The place itself is a little
cramped—booths along the wall, a stage in the back.

Trev and Skate are already
seated, three cans of empty
PBRs on the table. Trev gets up and hugs Blaze who, I can see, is a
little taken aback by the affection. “It’s nice to see you again,
Blaze.”

She moves a lock of hair behind her ear
and says, “Uhm, thank—thanks.”

Trev gives her a deadly smile, and if he
wasn’t my boy, I’d be nervous.

She scoots over next to me and I lean back
in the corner like I’ve just won the UFC title. Because that’s how
I feel. My two homeboys and my new homegirl.