Immediately his erection snapped to warm attention. I began to silently grind against him.
His grip on me tightened.
“What the heck are you doing?” he whispered.
“Cuddling,” I replied innocently. I almost said And I’d like to cuddle you balls-deep in my ass, but bit my tongue. I knew Pal wasn’t kidding about the bucket.
Sweet mother of bacon, I wanted Cooper to fuck me. I didn’t care if it was going to hurt or make a god-awful mess or set the whole blessed planet on fire. It was like I hadn’t even come earlier; my hormones were screaming for relief as if I’d spent the past decade in a convent with octogenarian nuns. Wearing a straitjacket. And a chastity belt. With the key broken off in the lock.
I have never been any damn good at keeping my pants on around a boyfriend; I have also never once cheated on a boyfriend, but honestly? Cooper was the first real boyfriend I’d ever had.
Not that I was some innocent little rosebud when I met him; far from it. I had more than my share of big dumb sex in high school, but avoided serious trouble because I was smart enough to use a condom every time and was able to work a basic silencing spell to keep the boys from bragging to their buddies (usually). In retrospect, most of the rest of the school probably thought I was a lesbian. I vocally despised the rah-rah frivolity of football pep rallies, played grumpy midfield for the field hockey and lacrosse teams, and rarely wore a dress or makeup. I liked all the boys I’d slept with, and maybe I had a little crush on a couple of them, but I’d never been in love with anyone before Cooper.
I lost my virginity when I was fourteen, thirteen if you count oral (I didn’t). Yeah, I know what you’re probably thinking, and at this stage in my life, I’m thinking it, too. But I can’t pretend it didn’t happen, because for better or worse that’s part of what made me the person I am today.
I was eleven when my mom died, and her body was barely cold before my stepfather (at that point we all thought he was my biological father) started dating my soon-to-be stepmother, Deborah. I hated Deb with a sullen passion that only increased after they got married a whole two days after I turned thirteen. As the topper on my birthday cake, we moved to Plano, Texas, away from our old Lakewood neighborhood in Dallas and the friends I’d grown up with.
The new neighborhood was a dusty grid of particle-board ranch houses with miserable stick trees in the front yards. I was pretty eager to spend as little time in the new house as possible, and my stepparents didn’t much seem to mind me being gone. Deb got pregnant with the twins right away, and she was definitely not in the humor to deal with a strange, moody teenage girl.
A couple of days after we moved in, I was slouched on the front porch reading one of my Sandman comics when a boy in his midteens pulled into the driveway next door in an old VW Beetle. I remember he was wearing clothes that were just a bit too formal and too heavy for the spring weather, and he had a fresh black eye. My interest was significantly piqued when he lifted a shiny new Alienware tower out of the passenger seat and started to carry it toward his house.
So I went over and introduced myself, probably by saying something profound like, “Whoa, that’s a sweet computer.” He blinked at me from behind unfashionable glasses, and we exchanged awkward geekeries until he asked if I wanted to come inside and help him set it up in the rec room.
His name was Edwin Chong, and he lived with his grandmother; she’d been his guardian ever since his parents died in a car crash near the Texas Instruments headquarters where they both worked. Even though he was sixteen, he was skinny as a skewer and not much taller than I was. He played first chair violin in the orchestra at Plano Senior High and worked as a projectionist at a movie theater on the weekends—thus his new computer purchase. Various fine young Baptist rednecks regularly kicked the shit out of him because he was half Chinese, half Jewish, and 100 percent nerd. Worse, he was fussy enough to come across as utterly gay to everyone