22
Sugar
“Shhh.”
“You shhh.”
“I’m trying to be quiet.”
“What do you think I’m doing?” he asks, making as much noise as a bull in a china shop. After weeks of patience and ten bags of treats, Lucy and Abby have finally grown comfortable with us. At least, until Sebastian drops the metal can of food on the sidewalk, sending them all scurrying off. “It’s fucking cold as balls out here. My fingers are frozen.”
“Give it to me.” I hold out my hand, and he drops the can in my palm. I push my nail underneath the tab and pull it open. The cats perk up and slowly stalk back over. I bend over and scoop out half the food into one of the containers on the ground, then place the rest in another.
Straightening, I don’t even flinch when Sebastian wraps his arms around me from behind. It’s not as easy as it was a couple days ago, when I was baked off the blunt at the bonfire, but it’s also not as bad as it used to be, either. There’s a moment of panic at being held, but as I’m coming to learn is best, I face it head-on instead of locking it away.
This time, it only takes a couple minutes for it to pass.
Sebastian pushes his fingers under my shirt, and I flinch for an entirely different reason. “Jesus Christ. Your hands are cold!”
“I need you to warm me up,” he says, lips against my neck.
“At least your uniform has pants,” I grumble. “If anyone needs warmed up, it’s my skirt-wearing ass.”
“At your service,” he says, voice full of innuendo.
His fingers dip below the waistband of my skirt, stroking against the skin. I’m not sure how I can go from panic, to relief, to squirming with desire so quickly, but Sebastian seems to bring it out in me. Every time he’s near me, touching me, the fire in my belly gets a little hotter, a little wilder. The idea of someone touching me like this used to repulse me, but now I find myself wishing for it—dreaming about it—all the damn time. It’s becoming a huge distraction, though not an entirely unwelcome one. It’s nice to look across the quad and see him standing with his friends, knowing the fingers he’s gesturing with are mine, in a secret sort of way.
“Lunch will be over soon,” I say, turning to graze my lips against his cheekbone. “But maybe after classes are over, we could… you know.”
He turns his head to catch my gaze, blue eyes sparkling in the afternoon sun. “We could what?”
My face heats, but I hold his gaze. “Go back to your room. Hang out for a bit.”
He holds my stare and I see the gears turning. It’s been hard to find the time and privacy for what I want, between school and clubs and Sebastian spending so much time at that garage.
To my surprise, he lets out a long, annoyed groan. “You’ve gotta be fucking with me, girl. You finally want to fool around, and I have to go to that goddamn game?”
I grimace, looking away. “Oh, I forgot about that.”
“Trust me, if it wasn’t completely mandatory, I’d be all over that.” He gives my hips a squeeze. “You should come to the game, too.”
The whole school is pretty caught up in the basketball team making it to the playoffs. I’ve been bombarded with banners and school spirit all week. “Didn’t you say you had to hang out with your lacrosse ‘bros’ or something?”
“Just for the first half. Coach is very into team camaraderie.”
“Basketball is boring,” I sigh, resigned to another night without Sebastian’s hands on me. “I may just use the time to work in the lab. I need to get the last few pieces ready for the exhibit anyway.”
“What exhibit?”
I shudder when his fingers move, wiggling enticingly lower on my stomach. “It’s this thing Preston does every year. For the Arts Department?”
“You’re in that?” His fingers still. “What am I talking about, of course you’re in that. Your stuff is fucking awesome.”
I roll my eyes, even though my face gets hot again. “It’s just a lot of pressure because most of the kids here have like years' worth of critically approved pieces, so I’ve been playing catch-up.”
What’s most embarrassing to admit is that, more and more, it’s starting to look like some of my best stuff revolves around Sebastian himself. Abby, the first car show, the shots taken of him at the mall. I’d even gotten Georgia to drive me out to that spot that overlooks the lake for a nice landscape shot, and I’m itching like fucking crazy to develop the photos I’d taken the night of the bonfire. Part of it is that Bass actually gets me off this damn campus, but I know that’s not all of it. Every picture of him—every picture taken of something in connection to him—comes out heavy and dark and full of something that almost hurts to inspect too closely.
“Well, who said you needed to come watch the game?” He licks under my ear. “I’m thinking we can make out under the bleachers.”
I watch the cats sniffing at the food, squirming as his fingers hit a ticklish spot. “Getting fingerbanged in a sweaty gym beneath five hundred peoples’ asses is not the prize you think it is, Wilcox.”
He laughs. “You tell me when you’re ready to get banged a different way and I’m all in.”
Bass and I haven’t had sex yet, but with things building the way they are right now, it feels inevitable. He makes no effort to hide how much he wants it. He doesn’t ask quite as much as he used to, but he doesn’t need to. I can see it in his eyes when we kiss, in the impatient buck of his hips when we’re pressed close together, his cock always hard and insistent.
I’ve grown accustomed to some part of his body always being on me; his mouth, his hands, the press of his hard erection into my thigh. He’s like a vampire, but instead of blood, he feeds on touch. Also like a mythical creature, he’s got me under his thrall, and it takes every ounce of energy to not just spread my legs and tell him to come on, already. The truth is that if he got me under the bleachers, I probably would let him do whatever he wanted to.
“You go to the game,” I decide, because when I finally get to have Sebastian, it’ll be somewhere quiet and private where I can really enjoy him. “I’ll see you later.”
He sighs long-sufferingly. “If you change your mind, you know where I’ll be. Honestly, it’s probably for the best. I am supposed to hang out with the lacrosse team. No chicks allowed.” He releases me and I clean up the trash from feeding the kittens, while he dumps the water container then refills it from a bottle in his bag. He taps at the bowl. “I’m a little worried it may freeze overnight.”
“We can check on it, if it does.” This cold snap is supposed to last through the next week—with even the possibility of some snow. The memorial for my father is next week, so freezing temperatures and snow sound about right. The day he was buried, it rained so hard that the dirt from the grave turned into a river of red mud. Unfortunately, that set a precedent. There’s no way my mother will let us out of it for a little snow. “We need to keep an eye on Abby, too. She needs to be warm when it’s time to deliver.”