“Oh, fuck,” I say, as he stretches me wide.
“Fuck me,” Mateo says. “Fuck me the way you like it so I know how to do it next time.”
I forget about the people all around us. I forget about everything. How old he is, how much more experienced he is, how much trouble I will be in if people find out, what they’ll call me. I throw it all away because the only thing I have room for is the way he makes me feel.
I place my hands on his shoulders, gripping his hard muscles, and ease up and down so slowly it makes him grimace.
“Slow, then?” he asks.
I nod into his neck, my teeth nipping at his skin, my hands desperate to bring him closer to me. His finger finds my ass, probing the tight entrance just enough to drive me wild.
“Ohhhh,” I moan.
“Shhh,” he says. “We can be loud inside, but when we fuck out here, we will be quiet.” He whispers that so close to my ear, it vibrates through my whole body. The only part I care about is the promise of more.
I want more.
So I ease down, and up, and down and up. I get a rhythm going, my hips moving forward as I press his cock inside me so I can rub my clit against his shaft. Our breath becomes heavy and mine turns into uncontrollable panting.
“Come,” he whispers in my ear. “Come on my dick.”
I can’t help myself. Even if I wanted to wait, I can’t. I lean my head into his neck, my fingernails grip his shoulders so hard he growls, and I bite his ear—moaning, and moaning, and moaning so only he can hear me.
We sit there like that until I can feel his come slipping out of me. “We didn’t use a condom,” I say.
“We don’t need one,” he says back. “I found your pills in your room last week.”
Chapter Sixteen
He doesn’t give me any time to question him about that statement, because he says, “Lie on me, Shannon,” as he rearranges us so we are lying back along the couch and I’m on top of his chest.
I give off a huge sigh.
“Tired?” he asks, dragging a long strand of my hair up and down my back.
“Relaxed,” I say.
And then we go quiet. Our breathing evens out and I listen to his heartbeat get slower and slower and if he wasn’t still tickling my back with my own hair, I’d be convinced he was asleep.
“Will you come back here on Friday?” he asks, breaking the silence.
“Do I have a choice?”
“Do you think you don’t?”
I do, I realize. I could’ve walked out at any point today. I could’ve stopped this before it got started if I wanted to. But I don’t want to. “I’ll come back.”
“We’re really not going to fuck again until you pass a test.”
“I hope you’re a good teacher then. Because I could get used to this side of you.”
“What side?”
“The quiet side. I don’t get enough quiet in my life.”
“Mmmm,” he says, but it’s more of a question. “Your teenage problems are typical? Or atypical?”
I think about this for a moment. I was going to immediately say atypical, but it’s a thoughtful question, so it deserves a thoughtful answer. “My mom died a year and a half ago and my sister Jill got custody of me because I was already seventeen. She wanted to move to California. See the world, take a risk, become new people.”
“Did you hate the people you were?” he asks.
“I didn’t. But I guess she did.”
“Then what happened?”
“We bounced around, Escondido first, then San Diego. We always lived with her boyfriends. But then she got pregnant by Jason, my-brother-in-law who I live with now. And we moved up here with him after the baby was born. But she OD’d the day after we moved in. Left me with him, and him with the baby. Olivia’s three months old now.”
“I think that counts as atypical.”
“Me too,” I say, but it comes out filled with sadness.
Mateo drops the strand of hair and just uses his fingers to caress my back. It feels so good, I can’t even find a word for it. We sit there in silence for a long time and I wonder if he’s thinking about me and my sad situation or something else.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Shannon.”
“Are you hurting me?”
“Am I?”
I shake my head into his chest. “I—” But I have so much I want to say and no good way to let it out. “You’re not hurting me.”
More silence. I’d like to ask about him back. Learn a little more, see a little deeper. Why is he so weird? Why does he like young girls? Why me, mostly. But when I open my eyes I see the stars.
“Why stars?” I ask instead.
“Astronomy, remember?”
“You love them?”
“How could anyone not love them? They’re filled with the mysteries of the universe. When I was a kid I read this book about a star who came to Earth reincarnated as a dog.”