Her crystal-blue eyes shimmered with emotion as she said, “Ditto.”
We were two kids who’d gone from playmates to soul mates. Some would say that was an extreme thing to claim at the ripe old age of eighteen, but it was true. Alivia Felice Taylor was my soul mate.
Chapter Two
Alivia
Shane stared down at me with a smile. “Ready?”
“I’m ready.” He opened the door and led me into his bedroom, where I gasped in surprise. “Oh, Shane…” More words failed me as I stared in awe at the pale-pink rose petals scattered over the floor and on the bed, the flickering candles strategically placed around the room.
“You like it?”
“I love it.” I wrapped my arms around him and buried my face in his neck. “It’s so beautiful.”
“No… this is a romantic gesture. You’re beautiful,” he countered, skimming his hand up and down my back.
I could say the same of him. As a boy, Shane was adorable, and I’d crushed hard… as much as a six-year-old could. When we met, being the oldest of all the other kids in the Devil’s Lair family naturally bonded us. Even though there were only a few or so years between us and them, his little twin siblings Madden and Siarra looked up to us, and Drexel, who was a baby at the time, adored Shane.
Once my brother, Trestan, was born, the nine-year age difference with Shane had automatically put my boyfriend into an idol-worshipping situation. Funny, their relationship wasn’t much different than the one Shane had with my dad when he was younger.
As far as myself, the older we got the more my crush intensified. Shane’s cute boyish looks slowly morphed into those of a hot, tall, fit man in the making, with just the right amount of cockiness. His brunette locks always had that perfectly tousled thing going. Thanks to working out religiously, his lanky frame filled out into a male model’s physique. Just imagining those sculpted pecs, that ridge along his hips, and the sexiest thin trail of hair that stretched from his belly button southward never failed to make me delirious with desire.
He dressed like a rock star: leather jackets, basic T-shirts, and jeans. He acted like one too… although he was destined to become famous. At eighteen, Shane was really good, already labeled by people in the business as a prodigy. Watching him perform had to be the hottest thing I’d ever seen short of seeing him naked. He commanded his instrument as though it were an extension of his body. Shane was already a musical marvel. Fate had given me no choice but to fall hard for him.
But our relationship wasn’t always a sappy love tale. No one could piss me off as easily and as thoroughly as Shane could. My mom said it was because I loved him so much. Maybe so, but still, we’ve had our share of fights over the years. As kids it may have been a board game, competitive soccer match, him teasing me over my love for Hello Kitty, or how he despised my cat, Miss Kitty, that caused them.
Now our arguments usually stemmed from his aversion to making plans or being serious when I needed him to be.
Shane had a “we’ll see” attitude over everything, a laxness that annoyed me to no end. Of course, there were the times his desire to wing it had created an exciting adventure. Like the day he got his driver’s license, picked me up, and drove right for the beach… school be damned. And we would’ve gotten away with it had it not been for the tracker my dad had loaded up on my phone because he had predicted that very situation. Shocker. Still, being punished for a weekend had been worth it.
Shane was quick to say that I wasn’t an angel either. That was true. I tended to push his buttons a bit. In my defense, the angrier he got, the more turned on I became. Both Infuriating Shane and Sweet Shane could equally have my heart pounding by just pinning me with those gorgeous hazel eyes. Sometimes green, sometimes gray, with golden flecks that speckled around his pupils when catching the light—they would always entrance me.
Like now.
There was no place I felt safer than in his arms. His intoxicating clean scent warmed me from the inside out and never failed to comfort me. In fact, I loved the smell of his soap so much that I switched to his brand.
He pried me off his body to search my face expectantly, probably thinking I’d freak out at any moment. “Are you nervous?”
“Not really.” And I should’ve been freaking out, but excitement dominated over nervousness. I’d been looking forward to this night since Shane and I first decided it would be the night. “I am in awe. I know you wanted it to be special, but I can’t believe all this. How did you get this done? You haven’t left my side all night.”
The way his lips quirked into a smirk meant I wasn’t going to be happy. “I had help,” he admitted.
“Please don’t tell me Edna did this for you.” I received a shrug as a response. “Shane! I’m so embarrassed. How am I going to face her tomorrow?”
Two strong arms pulled me back into his embrace. “Would it matter if she didn’t play a role? She’s not dumb, Liv.” He pulled me even closer and bent to kiss my lips. “Four teenagers spending prom weekend in a big-ass beach house screams of sex. It’s a rite of passage. We aren’t the only two who ever had this idea, you know.”
No, but we were probably the only two in our graduation class who would be losing their virginity tonight. Chase and Kim had taken the leap off Virgin Mountain months ago in his twin bed when his parents were out for dinner. After my best friend squealed that she’d lost her V-card, I’d forced her to tell me everything.
In a nutshell, for her it hurt and then it didn’t… for Chase, it was “fucktastic.”
She’d actually used air quotes for that part.
Who knew if Chase had made it only about the result? I trusted that Shane would be sensitive to both our needs. We may not have gone all the way yet, but there wasn’t much else we hadn’t done. So many times, while we made out or fooled around, we came dangerously close to having sex. Naturally, I learned a lot along the way. Like how kissing below his ear as I touched him there would cause him to moan as if in pain. Except that, he wasn’t in pain… not in the negative sense.
He equally knew my triggers as well. Like the first time he’d kissed parts of my body that until then he’d only touched had me coming harder than I ever had. Who knew the difference between a fingertip and a tongue could create a life-altering experience?
It went without saying that I liked it… a lot.
When I’d given him a blow job on his last birthday, I’d worried that I wasn’t good enough. Like me, he had never experienced that act before. But based on his reaction, during and after, I must have done something right. I loved how he’d responded. When he’d tried to pull out and spare me from him coming in my mouth, I held him tighter, determined to finish what I’d started.
That had happened in the basement of this very house, in the middle of the night, when everyone else was asleep. Afterward, he’d sent me back to one of the guest rooms, hating that he couldn’t hold me until we both fell asleep.
Such was the nature of our intimacy. Sneaking around like the teenagers we were didn’t make for an ideal romantic setup, and that was the main reason we’d refrained from having sex until now. Knowing I wanted it to be special, Shane would stop us before it got to that point. Kim and Chase had the luxury of privacy.… Shane and I did not.