Oh my God, I’m so fucked.
“Sean? Are you okay? You went all rigid and quiet all of a sudden.”
“Totally fine,” I lie, but unfortunately, my voice is all knotted and tight, and it makes it patently clear how not fine I am. I feel like I can barely breathe, because I don’t even know who Sean Bell is anymore, and all I want in the fucking world is to be close to this girl, but even having my arms around her doesn’t feel close enough. I’m acutely, painfully aware that she’ll never be mine. She’ll always be God’s.
But before she can call me out on my obvious upset, the DJ’s voice comes over the PA system, silencing all the chatter across the rink.
“And now we have a very special couples’ skate tonight. This song goes out to Zenny, from Sean.”
Zenny swivels in my arms, and there is no way to tell if she’s amused or alarmed because the expression on her face is very much both of these things.
“Zenny, Sean says you can make this sinner change his ways,” continues the DJ, and it’s actually a lyric from the song I picked, but he delivers it with such oozing smarminess that it really sounds like something a lover would say, and for a moment I wonder if I would say it. I already want to marry this girl—what else about my old sinner’s ways is going to change from being around her?
Bruno Mars’ “Locked Out of Heaven” starts playing as the lights dim and the disco balls start spinning. (Sixty dollars at work, everybody, sixty dollars that are now in the possession of the assistant manager—an assistant manager who also happens to be an old frat brother of Aiden’s.)
“I love this song,” she says, and it’s the most warily anyone has ever said those words in the history of the world.
I laugh and tug on her hand to pull her back onto the floor. “I know,” I tell her. “I did some research before we came here tonight.” I don’t tell her that “research” involved me scrolling through her Instagram like a lovesick teenager.
The DJ chides all the non-couple skaters off the floor, and soon it’s just pairs of awkward teens, and then me and Zenny, the only adults. And despite her initial wariness, Zenny warms up to my little gesture, holding my hand tightly and singing along with the words and looking so deliciously kissable that it’s everything I can do to keep skating and not swing her up into my arms and dash away with her like some kind of rollerblading caveman. And at the end of the song, she even allows me to tug us into a slow-rolling kiss in front of everyone, letting me nibble and taste at her lips until the rink breaks out into whoops and applause and she pulls away with a bashful smile.
“I’m sorry you missed out on so much teenage fun,” I say, as the song changes and we start skating again. “But you have to admit that some things are more fun as an adult.”
She gives me a naughty little smile. “Oh really? Show me another thing, then.”
“Is that a dare, Zenny-bug?”
The eyebrow goes up. “Are you up to the challenge?”
I make an arrogant boy noise and tug her off the rink floor, onto the bad carpet and toward the skate rental counter.
“Sean? Where are we—Sean!” My little rule-follower is panicking as I look both ways to make sure no one’s around and then duck under the counter, pulling her with me.
“Shhh, it’s okay,” I murmur. “I paid off the manager on duty.”
“You what—”
But then I’m skate-crowding her behind the walls and walls of rental skates, into a dark nook that’s hidden from view. I brace my hands on either side of her shoulders and pin her against the wall with my gaze. “Now, let me show you something a man can do better than a teenage boy.”
Even in the dim, weirdly-shadowed light, I can see her pupils go big, and even over the music, I can hear her breathing change. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I lean in, trace the line of her jaw with my nose. As always, she smells delicate and floral, like roses on the wind. “You see, if I were a teenage boy, I’d be so excited to have a girl as gorgeous as you back here that I wouldn’t be able to be patient. I’d be shoving my hand up your shirt and mauling at your tits. But I’m no boy, Zenny, and I know how to take my time.”
She shudders as I move my face in the graceful curve between her neck and shoulder and I breathe her in.
“I know that girls need special little kisses,” I murmur, kissing her neck softly. “Special little touches.” And then my hand drops to the outside of her thigh, and I run my fingers up the seam of her jeans until I find a belt loop. I hook my fingers in the loop and gently tug her hips forward. Our bodies are almost pressed together now, and she’s arching to me, trying to get closer, seeking out pressure and friction.
I don’t let her yet, returning my attention to her mouth. To those perpetually pouty lips, which I brush my own lips over until she opens for me. Until I can slide my tongue against hers in a soft, warm dance. God, that tongue of hers, with its tentative flickers and hesitant flutters. I can’t stop the growl in my throat as she bravely reaches up to my neck and pulls me tighter against her, deepening the kiss.
And the thought of her inexperienced tongue making those same little flickers and flutters on the head of my cock drives me near mad, sending a rush of need so violent through my blood that my hand fists itself around her belt loop and I growl into her mouth.
My noises make her pant and break away just enough to speak. “What else do girls need?” she asks breathlessly. “Show me what a boy couldn’t.”
My other hand trails swirls over the collar of her T-shirt, make teasing tracks over the cups of her bra, giving her enough sensation to titillate, but nowhere near enough to satisfy. “You mean you want a man to please you? You want me to put my hand down your panties and make this awful, little ache go away?”
She nods eagerly, her eyes big and her lips parted and her hips squirming. “I need your help,” she whispers. “No boy my age knows how to make me feel better.”
The game is morphing a little, edging onto a dangerously pitched slope, and then Zenny goes ahead and hurls us over the edge. “If I were still a teenager,” she says, her eyes finding mine, and fuck they are so dark and hungry there’s no way I’ll be able to say no to anything she wants. “And you were still a man…”
“It would be wrong,” I manage to say, although any judge able to look at my thoughts right now would send me straight to jail.
“Seventeen,” she says. “Almost to eighteen.”
“Unethical.”
Her hips finally make contact with mine, grinding against my erection. “So close to legal.”
My cock surges, and I’m shamefully hard. “Jesus Christ.”
“Four years ago,” she persists. “I’d be almost eighteen.”
“I’d be thirty-two, Zenny.”
“And what if that’s when you saw me again? What would you do?”
“I’d—” Fuck. I can’t think straight.
“If you saw me, and I told you I needed help? That my body felt all strange, and I knew only you could make it all better?”
“Zenny,” I say, I plead. She’s done that thing again where she’s flipped the control, stolen it away and left me dazed and staggering, even though I’m supposed to be the expert and she the virgin.