The moon made a pretty picture, painted high in an inky sky, with stars dotted all around. It was as though the windows were the canvas, and the sky presented its own art for enjoyment. The sight momentarily distracted Catherine as she tipped her head to the side. A slow exhale left her lips, but just as fast as she had released the air, she sucked it back in sharp and fast.
Her distraction only lasted as long as it took for her to take a breath.
A single second.
Then, she felt Cross’s mouth find a sensitive spot on her collarbone, where he sucked hard enough to leave a mark behind, but it was damn good, too. She understood perfectly well why her body always seemed like a fine-tuned instrument that she allowed him to play. He knew all her chords, and hit just the right ones to make a special kind of music. He did that because he listened, and he watched. Her. When he found something—anything—that made her move in just the right way, or had her breathing change even in the slightest, he picked up on that.
Then he did it, again and again.
Over and over.
He added something different to it. His tongue struck out against her skin, or his teeth nipped after a kiss. His fingers pressed lower, while his mouth worked higher.
Anything to make her move or breathe or sound the same way again.
That was exactly what Cross was doing to her, as she laid naked in soft blankets, and waited for the bliss to start rushing through her bloodstream. Again.
It was his mouth first.
Wicked and sweet all at the same time.
Tasting, relentless, and wonderful.
Now, it was his hand. His arm was pressed between their bodies; two fingers stroked and curled deep in the best way while his thumb circled and fucking circled.
He was listening and watching her, she knew. Listening for the stutter in her exhale, watching for when it changed to his favor. When her back curved as she lifted, or her breaths turned into high cries, he won.
That was when he won.
And so did she.
It was far more than just what he was doing, too. Although, he couldn’t possibly know that. It was his weight on hers, naked and warm, even when the room felt cold. It was the deepened grin, pleased and anticipating, when his dark eyes locked on hers. It was his length, already hard and sheathed in latex, digging into her inner thigh and almost there.
His thumb pressed harder, and oh, God.
Fuck.
Fuck.
“Do it for me,” she heard him say while drums beat loud in her ears.
Catherine tightened all over; every muscle in her body balling and ready to release.
“Shake again for me,” he demanded while her blood thickened.
Almost, almost, almost.
His low rumbling approval, hidden under her jaw where he kissed and kissed, let her know those words did not stay hidden inside her head. That was okay, too.
“Come again, for me.”
It still managed to surprise Catherine when she finally fell off that teasing cliff. No matter how long it had been building, she still couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was that pushed her over, or how it felt just before, so she could prepare.
There was no preparing.
She just felt.
She just fell.
Cross clouded her vision, and she was just so damn high. Or, that’s how it seemed. His thumb stroked over her bottom lip, and she could taste herself on the touch, tart and new. He was already between her spread legs. His weight substantial—lovely—against hers.
He opened his mouth to talk—to ask, maybe.
Don’t ask questions.
Don’t make this weird.
He did ask, but it wasn’t weird.
Cross’s thumb swept her lip again, but this time, she peeked her tongue out to taste while she had the chance. “Okay?”
She smiled. “So okay.”
Catherine didn’t want to overthink it; she didn’t want Cross getting lost in that crazy headspace, either. She was still quite sure in what she wanted. Her nerves fluttered like butterfly wings beating in her stomach, but it wasn’t as bad as before. Not nearly as bad.
So, she didn’t give either of them time to overthink at all. Her hand slipped between them, and found his shaft hard in her palm. She liked the way his heartbeat thudded on the underside of his length. When she did something he liked, that beating pulse picked up, and she could feel it reverberating through her bloodstream.
Catherine held him where she wanted him, then leaned up to kiss under Cross’s jaw. “Okay.”
She expected pain.
She found none.
People talked of pain, and that had frightened her a lot. Others said they felt no pain at all, or very little before it was quickly gone. Both were normal, apparently, but Catherine was happy to have fallen into the latter category. She did not want pain to be the thing she remembered about having sex for the first time; she didn’t want it to be the sharpest memory to come forward.
It wouldn’t be, now.
It was a tight, too-full sensation. A stretching pull that wasn’t at all bad when her muscles clenched and unclenched, and she could move. It was every single one of her nerves being lit on fire and woke up as Cross pulled back, and then pushed forward again with a slowness that was going to drive her crazy.
His fingers dug into her waist, and pulled her body into his. She liked the way he looked like this—high above, muscles flexing with every twitch, and his gaze sweeping over her, back and forth, up and down.
Catherine hadn’t realized how hard she was clenching her muscles until she heard Cross mutter, “Jesus Christ, you’ve got to relax, or you’re going to kill me.”
As fast as Cross said the words, his arms wrapped around her back, and he rolled them over. The sudden movement left Catherine dizzy, and her vision blocked by the wildness of her hair. His hands pushed her hair back, and his thumbs swept under her eyes with soft touches.
She found they were both sitting up, but with her in his lap, and God.
Catherine shifted just a bit, her knees digging hard into the blankets, and found that he was hitting something inside her that made it hard to breathe. She must have relaxed enough for Cross because his husky laughter echoed in her ears. His amusement rocked them both, making her shift all over again and hit that spot again. Her fingers on his shoulders tightened hard with the intense sensation, making her nails score red lines on his tan skin.
“Found something, did you?” he asked. “You do what you want, babe. Make it feel really fucking good for us, Catty.”
She could do that …
That was easy.
And he always felt good.
Catherine tiptoed through the main entrance to the Marcello home, and cringed when a floorboard creaked. It was exactly five after two in the morning. Her father had asked for her to be home before one, at least, and to call if she would be out past twelve. She was not looking forward to that talk. She hadn’t mentioned her curfew to Cross because he would have made sure she was home, and she wanted to stay out.
Her parents did not sleep like the dead, either. A simple noise would wake both her mother and father up, not to mention, put them on high alert for some kind of bad shit about to happen in their home. They had always been like that. She wasn’t sure if that was because of their lives, or their respective careers. Probably both.
She just walked past the darkened kitchen entryway when a throat clearing made her freeze on the spot.
“Evening,” she heard her mother say from inside the dark kitchen. “Or would you prefer good morning?”
Catherine turned on her heel at the same time her mother flicked on the pot lights over the cupboards. It still kept the kitchen dimly lit, but allowed her to see Catrina perched on the edge of the counter with a cup of coffee in her hands.
“Sorry, Ma,” Catherine said, “I’m late, I know.”
“You called,” her mother said, shrugging. “I asked for a call.”
“Yeah, but Daddy said to be back—”
Catrina waved her fingers toward the ceiling. “He cannot drink like he used to when he was in his twenties and thirties. Although, he would never admit it, and would be greatly offended if I pointed it out to him. He’s been passed out since twelve-thirty. Too much commotion for me today, though, so I am still awake.”
“Oh.”
“And we’ll try not to mention to him that you were a little late, okay?” Catrina asked.
Catherine blinked.
Seriously?
Catherine wondered if she entered the Twilight Zone.
“How was your night?”
“It was … good,” she settled on saying.
Really good.
Catrina smiled. “And your birthday party?”
“Perfect. Thank you, Ma.”
“That’s all that matters.”
Her mother pushed off the counter, and set her coffee cup into the nearby sink.
“I’m going to head up to bed,” Catherine said.
Her mother followed behind her. “I think I will, too.”
“Are we still doing church in the morning?”
Catrina smirked. “Always, even with a hangover, in your father’s case.”
Catherine shouldn’t have bothered to ask.
Church was a given.
Parties and late nights did not matter.
Not for the very Catholic Marcellos.
Although to be fair, Catherine figured her family was much more Catholic in appearance than in behavior and action. But those were the kinds of things that were not appreciated when they were pointed out.
“Do try not to make a habit of this, though,” her mother said as they climbed the stairs.
“Pardon?”
“Coming home late, Catty.”
Catherine groaned. “Fucking Andino.”
Her mother’s laughter echoed through the quiet, dark house.
“He meant no harm,” Catrina said, grinning widely.
“Lies. Who else heard him use that nickname for me?”
“Well …”
“Well, what, Ma?”
“Everyone.”
Ugh.
Goddamn Cross.
And Andino.
All of them.
Catherine would never shake that nickname now.
She knew it.
“Oh, and Catherine?”
“Yeah, Ma?”
Catrina waved a finger toward the collar of her long-sleeved shirt. “Wear something with a high neck tomorrow, and for a while afterward.”
Catherine’s brow furrowed.
Her mother flicked a wrist, as if to explain her next words away. “Dante might overlook one late night, but certainly not a mark like the one on your collarbone there. Your father is not ready for that reality where you and boys are concerned just yet, reginella.”
Oh.
Catherine’s cheeks heated red, and she failed to come up with an appropriate response.
“You are being safe beyond your birth control shot, right? That shot is good for preventing pregnancy, but not anything else.”
“Yeah, of course I’m safe, Ma,” Catherine said quickly.
Catherine had been on birth control pills from the time she was eleven because of periods that made it damn near impossible to get out of bed for the first three or so days. The pill helped to manage those symptoms for years. Then, after she had turned fifteen, she asked her mother to take her in for a better, more reliable birth control. She wanted it for the very purpose of being birth control, even though she hadn’t started having sex at that point. It was a just in case sort of thing.
“And I’m here,” her mother added, “if you need something, Catherine. Anything.”
“I know, Ma.”
Catherine barely noticed the month of April melting into the month of May.
Suddenly it was there, and she didn’t know how.
She could have blamed her distraction on a lot of things, given the time of the year. End of year functions were starting to be planned for school, and the threat of exams loomed, which meant teachers being even worse than they already were on a regular day.
She could have blamed her distraction on the fact she spent two hours a day with a driving instructor, earning her hours on the off-chance she could take her road test a single month earlier than was usually required.
She could have blamed it on the fact her brother would be moving to Detroit the first week of June so that he could start school in Ann Arbor. Her family was already starting to feel those effects of him being gone, before he actually was.
There were lots of things for her to blame.
None of them were the real cause.
Catherine had mistakenly—or maybe stupidly—assumed that sex, and having sex, would change very little about her life, or her relationship with Cross. She thought it wouldn’t make a difference because she already loved him. They had already been involved in other ways, and it was just sex.
She was dumb.
She didn’t know anything.
Sex did change things.
It changed it a lot.
Her. Him. Them.
It made things intense because that option was there, and then sometimes, more often than not, she wanted it to be there when it couldn’t be.
She found she liked the very unique kind of rush that came with it all, and that made her stupid, because she chased it with Cross even when she knew she shouldn’t. He let her, too, teasing and toying, but never, ever denying.
It made them stupid.
She just hadn’t realized how much.
Catherine came up behind Cross in the hallway, ignoring the fact he was talking to one of his friends at the row of lockers. Her hand skimmed under the back of his shirt, and she felt his muscles jump at her touch. Teasing, she dragged her nails gently against his lower back, making him stiffen, even as he kept talking.
“Just shoot me a text when you get it,” she heard Cross said.
“Got it, man.”
That was that.
The conversation was over, and the other boy was gone.
Catherine grinned when Cross turned around to face her. “You’re wicked, Catty. You know that, right?”
She shrugged, stood on her tiptoes, and kissed his mouth quickly before pulling away. He could tease, sure, but so could she.
Catherine had found that it was a great deal easier for her to tease Cross, than it was for him to tease her. She could work him up, wind him around her pinky, and get him to act just as stupid as she did when she wanted him to.
Maybe he didn’t even realize it.
“That kiss was cheap,” Cross muttered, slamming his locker closed.
Catherine winked. “You know, last classes are optional today since it’s Senior Skip Day.”
“We’re not seniors.”
“Nope, but we do have my Lexus. Which means we can just leave, go wherever, do whatever.”
Cross’s tongue peeked out to wet the corner of his lip as he grinned. “Catty—”
“My house is full of people, in case you didn’t know. Constantly. Michel is leaving, so people keep coming. All the time.”
“So let’s do something this weekend,” he suggested.
“Can’t. Party and dinner on Saturday for my grandmother, and there’s a church thing on Sunday after Mass I have to go to.”
Cross groaned. “Throw me a bone here, Catherine.”
“The Lexus has, like, really tinted windows.”
“Not that kind of bone. I swear, I would drive your car back to drop you off and pick up the Rover, and your dad would know somehow that I fucked his daughter in the back of that car.”
“You should tuck that paranoia back in or get it checked before it spreads.”
Cross rolled his eyes. “I love how you never take anything I tell you seriously when it comes to that man, and his hatred of me.”
She did.
She currently just didn’t care.
“And the school is pretty much empty, so …” Catherine trailed off with a grin, saying, “Let’s just go, hmm.”
“Wicked,” he said under his breath again.
Catherine was already walking away, laughing over her shoulder when Cross jogged to catch up. He caught her wrist in his grasp, spun her into the wall, and kissed her hard, taking away her breath and making her smile grow sinful.
“You’re lucky the hallway is empty,” she said. “No teachers to shout at you for being … well, you.”
“Yes, Catherine. The school is practically empty. I hear you loud and clear. You’re teasing me for a reason. It’s still not going to happen, babe.”
She snuck her hand up under his shirt and let her fingernails drag over his skin again. She found he liked that a lot, her nails on his body, leaving marks and digging in when she was breathless and under him.
“Fuck,” Cross muttered.
“So … yeah?”
“You’re gonna kill me.”
“But it’ll be fun.”
The principal’s voice droned on, but all Catherine could hear was her rising embarrassment flooding her blood and rushing in her ears. Still, she caught a few things in between her desire to melt into the chair and disappear forever.
“Hallway cameras caught the beginning of the … incident,” the woman explained.
Catherine used the heels of her palms to rub her eyes.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
“The outside cameras, however, were only placed to see a portion of the car, but it was enough to suspect—”
“Suspecting,” Catherine’s father interjected, “is not proof.”
“Hush,” her mother uttered. “This isn’t a damn courtroom, Dante.”
“No, but we are discussing expelling Catherine right now, Catrina. Expelling her. For a fucking kiss in a hallway, and the sight of two kids climbing into the backseat of a car instead of sitting in the front. That’s it. That’s what we know—what they know. So if we’re going to discuss the expulsion of my daughter from a school I pay a lot of goddamn money for her to attend, there better be something better than them suspecting shit.”
“Mr. Marcello, that language—”
“Fuck off,” Dante barked.
The principal snapped straight in her chair. “I beg your pardon?”
“I didn’t stutter.”
Catherine’s mother put a hand to her husband’s shoulder. “Relax, bello.”
More than ever before, Catherine really wished she could hide away from the rest of the world until her biggest screw up yet went away forever.
She would not be so lucky.
Her mother was calm.
Her father was pissed.
The school was … well, two short steps away from kicking her out for the last month and a half of classes, refusing to allow her to take her final exams when they came up, which would effectively hold her back a grade. A full grade, unless she could somehow manage to make up for every single credit she would lose in the span of two years until she graduated. Which was very unlikely. The incident would go on her record, which would effectively screw her chances at getting into a school of her choice because of the very nature of the issue.
This was bad.
All over, entirely, completely bad.
Catherine hadn’t thought of anything when the school called her into the office on Monday morning, and let her know her parents had been called. She didn’t think it was anything too serious until a shot of her and Cross in the hallway started to play, and there was suddenly not enough space in the office for her to sink away in and die.
“Here’s the thing,” Dante said, his tone reverting back to a calmer state, “you’re not going to do anything all to my daughter about this because you can’t. You can try, but I’m going to make it very hard for you to follow through on anything you attempt. See, write her up for the little hallway thing because fuck us all if two teenagers who’ve been dating for almost six months dare to kiss where someone can see them. But fuck you and your administration if you think for one second I’m going to let you write up anything from outside this building. That video shows nothing, and you will not use an assumption to punish my daughter in such a way that could ruin her education for many years beyond this one.”
“Mr.—”
“Try me,” her father interjected coolly. “And watch how fast I can work.”
Catrina glanced over to Catherine, and nodded toward the office doors. Catherine took her mother’s unspoken demand and ran with it, literally bolting out of her chair and from the office before someone could tell her differently. Cross and his parents happened to be in the outside reception area, likely waiting for their turn in the office. She didn’t stop walking until she was out of the damn school and hidden in the backseat of her father’s SUV.
Catherine wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but eventually her mother slipped into the front passenger seat while her father leaned against the driver’s side. He stayed outside the vehicle for long enough that Catherine was starting to get worried, but he eventually jumped in the driver’s seat. His gaze darted to her in the rearview, and he reached for the ignition, but stopped at the last second.
“Catherine.”
“Yeah?” she asked.
“Do you realize how incredibly stupid—”
She flinched.
Her mother stepped in. “Absolutely not.”
Her father stared at her mother, a silent sort of war waged between the two before he spat out, “It’s not okay, Catrina. Not that it happened, not that is probably has been happening, none of it. It’s not okay.”
“She’s sixteen. This is what teenagers do, Dante. It’s normal for them to experiment and these things happen, even if it is stupid. Telling her not to have sex, or giving her an abstinence-only speech will hurt her in the long run, just like whatever you’re thinking about saying in your head right now would do. Don’t you understand that? This is normal. It’s how they become healthy, sexual—”
“That’s quite enough, Cat.”
“Dante, come on.”
“It’s not normal to be caught having sex in a car, when you’re supposed to be in classes, Catrina.”
“I didn’t say that was okay. I said sex is normal. You’re going to pretend as though you didn’t have sex at her age? And hold up before you do because I’d like to ask if it was even with someone you were in a relationship with because she is. I know exactly how you were as a teenager, so please don’t lie to me. I’ve got the rundown to throw back at you.”
Dante’s jaw tightened before he said, “You knew about her and him, I suspect.”
Catherine’s mother looked away. “Dante, she’s been on birth control for years.”
“What?”
“Not for sex, but for other medical things. But yes, I knew it was a possibility that sex was coming or happening because last year she wanted to change birth control for the sake of having reliable birth control. She came to me because she trusts me. That’s not a bad thing.”
“And you didn’t tell me? You didn’t think to bring it up to me that my daughter is having sex, or wants to have sex, or anything? None of it, Cat?”
Her father’s voice became progressively louder until he was simply shouting.
Catherine’s guilt and embarrassment compounded harder in her chest. She didn’t like the way her father’s gaze skipped over her in the mirror, like he was disappointed, as though he didn’t know what to think of the girl he was seeing at all.
She was supposed to be the good one.
She made good choices.
She did good things.
“You’re freaking out because of sex, Dante,” Catrina murmured. “That’s it.”
“No, that is not it.”
“It’s a big part of it, bello. Tell me differently.”
“You should have told me.”
“Why, so you could lock her in her room, until you felt she was old enough to handle sex?”
Dante blew out a hard breath. “It’s more than that—it’s this whole situation! I don’t know what in the hell has gotten into my daughter. I don’t know the kind of shit she’s been pulling when I’m not looking, or why. And I don’t know her, Cat. I thought I knew my daughter, and what she was doing, but apparently, I don’t know anything at all. Thank you for that, really.”
“Dante—”
“Just be quiet, please.”
That was all her father said.
Her mother kept quiet.
Catherine couldn’t look her father in the eyes when he stared at her in the rearview. His disappointment radiated throughout the vehicle, and she felt oh, so small under the weight.
This was not who she wanted to be.
Not at all.