Playing Hurt - By Holly Schindler Page 0,52
my dress and slowly begins working his way up, resting gently on my breast. In a single swift tug, he pulls the top of my sundress down.
A gasp escapes my throat—it had still been too hot, in the early evening hours when I’d dressed, to mess with a bra. My mind starts swimming. I’m not quite sure how to handle being naked from the waist-up, in full view of any die-hard fisherman who just might happen to wander by. But when Clint’s tongue starts tracing my nipple, my mind falls quiet. I’m immersed—only instead of being underwater, I’m under-desire. My hands race all over Clint, even though I’ve never made a conscious decision to touch him. My fingers dive under his shirt, exploring his skin.
Clint tugs at my thighs until I start sliding, my back coming down to rest against the bench seat. His kisses grow deeper as he stretches out on top of me. He slips his hand between my legs, rubbing me through my underwear.
When Clint lifts his face from my mouth, a moan, unlike anything I’ve ever heard coming from my own body, peels out from between my lips.
But it isn’t just that I have this itch I want scratched. It isn’t that I want Clint to do something to me; I want to do as much to Clint. I want to devour every single inch of him. Boyfriends and pasts and right and wrong be damned. I want Clint—wildly.
My hands travel down Clint’s side. I massage his thigh, inching my fingers around to the front of his body. Inching closer to the fly on his shorts.
“Wait,” Clint barks. He flinches as he knocks my hand away. He pushes himself away from me, sits himself up in the driver’s seat, turns his face toward the window.
“Sorry.” I hastily adjust my sundress as I hoist myself back up. “I thought—you seemed like—I didn’t mean to push—”
I stop, wondering if I’m still the same Chelsea Keyes who’d been nervous about losing her virginity in one of the most romantic locations of all time, a swanky room her boyfriend had rented at the Carlyle. Why would I want to give up that kind of first-time perfection? Had I really been ready for—that—to happen here? At the muddy fringes of a lake, with torn-up upholstery scratching my back?
“I do want to,” Clint says. “That’s the problem. I want to so bad that if you touch me, I don’t think I’ll be able to stop.”
“Would that really be such a bad thing?” The words pop out so quickly, I wonder for a moment if they’ve actually come from my own mouth.
“I don’t know,” Clint admits, pushing his hair back from his face. “This is so far from where I thought this night would go—so much faster.”
“I’m scared, too, you know.”
“You don’t exactly seem like it.”
“I am—have been—” I sigh. “First time is scary.”
Clint’s frown has crevices deeper than the Grand Canyon. “I thought you had a boyfriend.”
“I do. Hip surgery doesn’t put you on the fast-track to losing your—” I stop short. There’s that word again: virgin.
Clint’s face grows a cloud. He seems to shrink a little, in that moment.
“Don’t freak out on me,” I say, reaching for his hand again. “I know it’s a lot—the boyfriend. The broken hip. The … virginity. I’m not the easiest girl in the world to take on. But I’m not about to add to your load, you know? My issues are mine, not yours.”
“But if I’m complicating things—”
“Then I’d have to smack you upside the head. Don’t forget, you’re the one who just put the brakes on me.”
Clint leans away from me, puts an elbow on the door, rubs his eyes. But there’s far more than just space between us. Including, I remind myself, Rosaline Johnson. The seriousness of the moment weighs as much as Clint’s truck. My mind drifts back to our laughter—and I want desperately to find a path back to it.
“You know what we need?” I ask him, grinning playfully. “A small step. To tackle something that scares the both of us. Together.”
Clint stops rubbing his face to stare off into the distance. He’s wearing a look like a dead-end road sign. My stomach starts to sink in on itself, as I think he’s about to tell me it’s too much, all this history, heavy as an eighteen-wheeler, that the two of us are dragging around.
But I know I have to be delicate here. As much as I want to hang on