Sheltered (6 page)

“Are you forbidding me?”

His mouth tightened.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“I would never forbid you. I can’t forbid you. It’s not in my power to, and it never should be.”

Something inside her grew very light, suddenly. So light that she expected her head to detach from her body at any moment and float away into the night.

Which probably just meant she’d started turning into bad Johnny, and soon a cop would turn up and explain that Evie’s head had reached the upper atmosphere and then simply popped, like a balloon.

“So I can. If I want to.”

“You can.” She watched him hold out the joint to her. Smoking end up, those big fingers of his almost pinching it at the base. “But you know you’re going to reek of it, right?”

“I already reek of it. And besides, there’s this invention—I think it’s called a shower. And another one…is it a moshing washine?”

It startled her when he laughed. He didn’t even rein it in, this time, or try to keep it behind a closed fist. He just let it all the way out, deep and throaty, until it seemed to vibrate through the air and into her body, to that place she absolutely wouldn’t think about, ever again.

She didn’t think about him that way. She didn’t she didn’t she didn’t.

“You know, you look innocent. But inside you’re like a cracking whip.”

Oh God, she totally
did
.

“Are you going to give me the thing or what?”

“Here then, smart ass,” he said, but the term didn’t bruise. It didn’t sound the least bit like her father, saying
don’t be clever
.

As though being clever was such a crime.

He handed it to her and she took it, fingers fumbling now that the moment of truth was on her. She was about to smoke drugs, right there on her own porch. Only as the moments ticked by she realized one rather important and probably humiliating fact.

“I have absolutely no idea how to smoke this.”

“Just figured that out, huh?”

“Now who’s being smart?”

He gave her a rueful smile. Shook his head.

“Put it to your lips. Take a breath. All there is to it.”

She thought of the way he’d touched it to his mouth—almost like a kiss, but not quite. Unfortunately, the image just made every bit of sense run out of her, right when she needed it most.

“So I…suck it in.”

“Yeah. Suck.”

More sense went the way of the dodo. He probably hadn’t meant the word to sound dirty, but somehow it did anyway. And he had a way of hitting a really low note when making S sounds, so that they vibrated through her in the same way his laugh had.

“Okay. Okay. I’m going to do it. I’m doing it. Is it supposed to be burning my fingers? I think it’s burning my fingers.”

Of course, she expected him to see her half-feigned panic as a cue to take the thing from her. If he took it from her, she wouldn’t have to actually do what her father’s voice was telling her not to, somewhere in the back of her mind.

And to his credit, he did half of what she secretly probably wanted. He took the joint from between her trembling fingers, just as her insides reached critical meltdown.

But he also said a word, as he did so. A perfectly innocent, simple sort of word.

“Here.”

And then he leaned forward with a newly drawn mouthful of smoke, and ghosted his mouth so close to hers she couldn’t do what was obviously expected of her. She couldn’t breathe in what he was trying to pass from his body to hers. He had to tell her, through a coil of smoke like a snake, emerging from between his lips.

“Take it,” he said, and she forced her body to relax. Tried to open her mouth without actually touching him—which proved an almost monumental task.

He just took up so much
space
. And with him being this close she could make out every detail of his face, of those lips she’d dreamt about and the almost too-straight shape of his nose. The little scar in his eyebrow, where the piercing had been. The hint of silver in his ear in the periphery of her vision.

And then heat filled her mouth and her throat and her lungs, to meet the inferno that had already started burning, low down in her belly.

She couldn’t help reveling in it, for a second. His lips were so close to hers she could almost feel the shape of them, through the slight stirring of the air in between. Plus, he didn’t seem to be moving away. He’d done the thing he’d set out to do, and now he wasn’t moving away.

Almost as though he expected her to do something more, something—

He pulled away as abruptly as he’d put himself there, and when she opened her eyes he wasn’t looking at her anymore. He took another drag on the joint instead, as though nothing had ever happened.

And really, nothing actually had. He’d just given her what she wanted—a taste of pot.

A hint of what kissing someone might be like.

“I don’t feel any different,” she said, though that wasn’t exactly true. She did feel different. Just in a completely unexpected and world-altering way, as opposed to anything to do with relaxing marshmallows.

“Give it a second,” he said. He sounded gruff, she thought. Angry, maybe, as though she was the one who’d leaned in toward him and stirred the air around his lips.

It made her want to explain, somehow, but how could you explain something you hadn’t done? The words
I’m sorry I almost sat there while you didn’t kiss me
sounded completely ridiculous, even to her.

Though fortunately, she didn’t have to go to that place. He just turned his head, instead, and settled that charcoal gaze back on her. Said in some foggy, non-angry sort of voice, “Want some more?”

Would he hold it against her, if she told him yes?

“Okay,” she said.

Okay seemed safer. Or at least, it did until he actually moved forward, and then it just seemed insane and like something that sent her heart through the roof.

She tried to appear cool about it, though. The last thing he wanted was a girl who freaked out at the slightest thing, and this was definitely a slight thing. He didn’t even touch her when he moved close, and though his lips parted so slow and sensuously around the smoke, and his hand went real close to the side of her head, he didn’t actually kiss.

It just felt as if he did. It made her eyes drift closed and her whole body lean in to him, despite the fact that she didn’t really want it to. He’d know, if she got too near him. He’d get that she kind of maybe wanted to do the thing that started with a K and ended with an S, instead of this smoky breathing that wasn’t really doing anything to her anyway.

He’d said she should feel like a warm bath filled with marshmallows. And although she was getting the warm bath thing, she felt almost certain it wasn’t because of the pot.

“I
really
don’t think anything’s happening,” she said, the moment he pulled away. Only her voice came out all funny—lazy, somehow. And when he spoke, his voice sounded that way too.

“You sure?” he asked, while her body sagged against the rail around the porch steps. Of course she almost missed and slid right through the gap to the grass beyond, but that didn’t mean anything. And besides, he was there to grab ahold of her suddenly bendy body.

“Whoa there, Miss-Nothing’s-Happening,” he said, but weirdly she didn’t feel bad. She didn’t feel clumsy, like usual, or like she’d proven her lack of coolness again. She just felt…easy.

“Did I almost fall? I definitely almost falled.” She paused, thinking. “Fell. I almost fell.”

“I think falled is right.”

“It’s not. You’re weird.”

“I know. Want some more?”

She thought about his ghost-lips again, and came close to saying no.

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

“Close your eyes this time,” he said, and though a piece of her wondered why he might request something like that, most of her thought that piece was an idiot.

So she just closed them, and after an interminable amount of time felt him move toward her. Slow, slow, and like that word. What was it, again?
Sensuous
, she thought, as he drew close. Everything had been cloaked in sensuousness, to the point where details seemed fuzzy and languid.

Like the cuff of his sleeve stroking over the back of her hand, or the feel of his breath stirring against her lips. Her lips had grown seventy thousand nerve endings between yesterday and right now, and they seemed to buzz whenever he moved.

The buzzing got louder when he put a hand in her hair.

He did it in the exact way she’d seen people on TV do it—like they needed to pin another person in place before they could…do whatever. Only Van wasn’t going to do
whatever
, was he? He just needed to hold her there so he could breathe the hot smoke into her lungs, like giving someone the kiss of life only backward.

And if his mouth sort of skimmed hers when he did so, well, what did that matter? He likely didn’t mean it. It was just an accident, just an accident, and then his lower lip brushed over her upper lip and every single molecule in her body froze in place.

He had touched her. She couldn’t get around it—the seventy thousand nerve endings told her the truth of the matter. Everything tingled in that general area, and the tingles got stronger and more insistent when he did it again.

Once could have been an accident. Twice was purposeful, full of meaning—like a real kiss, only so gentle and barely there she couldn’t quite count it as such. She had to frantically think of other words to call it, as he repeated the slight contact over and over.

Kish
, she thought, but unfortunately he chose that exact moment to remove the H and replace it with a second S.

Of course she immediately thought of a million different things at once—how he felt, the moment his mouth covered hers, so soft and firm all at the same time. How he tasted—like that burning tea flavor and like something else too.

Mint
, she thought, but mint wasn’t quite right.

She didn’t get long enough to figure it out, however. He pulled away just as her mind paired mint with
something sweetly spicy
, and began searching through her mental catalog for actual flavors.

The catalog was sparse, like everything else in her head. The manual in her mind entitled
What to Do When Someone Really Kisses You
said just three words—

Go very still.

As though she’d become a deer some time in the last thirty seconds. She was a deer, and he was…a
Buick
.

“I didn’t mean to do that,” he said, once he’d pulled away. But she couldn’t think what he might have meant to do instead.

So she just went with, “It’s okay.”

And let the whole thing be. They could forget about it now. Go back to the good, solid way things had been before, with no kissing and no fuzzy pot feelings.

Because that was probably to blame, wasn’t it? The pot. It had gotten hold of him and forced him to kiss a plain, weird fat chick. Tomorrow he’d likely wake up with a pot hangover, plagued with regret and disgust, all of his handsome skin itching with the idea that he’d touched a disgusting creature like her.

How could he feel any other way? How could he—

“I’m going to do it again.”

Her eyes turned to moons.

“You
are
?”

“I think so.”

She couldn’t help blurting out the sensible thing. The right thing.

“Don’t. Don’t.”

“God, Evie—I’m sorry. I shouldn’t—”

She grabbed him before he could say any other words. They were just getting in the way, making everything all up and down and indecisive. But the tingles in her lips said just do it, do it, and since they so rarely spoke up she had to obey them.

The opportunity would never come along again. Tomorrow he could think of her as disgusting. Tonight she just wanted to see one more time…

He
did
taste like something sweetly spicy. Cinnamon, she reckoned, but found it hard to say for sure. Mainly because she’d put her hand in his hair in just the same way he’d done to her, and she could feel it—actually
feel
it—brushing against her skin. The soft fuzz of it over his ear where he’d shaved it close, then a little higher up where it grew longer…oh, so silky and fine.

Though his hair wasn’t really what she thought of, immediately. His mouth was what she thought of as he pressed back at her. Harder than he had before, and more open too.

His lips had technically been parted, when he’d first done it. And she supposed hers had too. But it hadn’t felt like an open-mouthed kiss—not really. It had seemed too smooth and dry, somehow, like a peck you put on an elderly person’s cheek.

Whereas this…this was
wet
. His lips sank into a rhythm obviously familiar to him—like a kind of slow rock over her mouth—and there were times when she felt his tongue, hot and slippery. Times when he insinuated himself right against her and that same slipperiness made her go all funny inside.