The rest of the day, Marcus hovered on the edge of my thoughts. As I did laundry, as I went to the bank, as I went to the dollar store to get decorations for Homecoming, as I Googled him... The man had a Wikipedia page, for god’s sakes.

It wasn’t until I was out at a movie with Michelle, that I realized my parents hadn’t crossed my mind all day. I even laughed at the movie—a silly romcom that made me feel lighter and lonelier at the same time.

“So are you going to go with him?” Michelle asked me as we walked back to our cars.

I shoved my hands into the pockets of my fleece jacket, noticing that it was definitely getting chillier at night. The moon hung low in the sky, its yellow light bouncing off the roof of my mom’s old SUV.

She’d ambushed me before we even bought popcorn, wanting to know what the deal was with “Mrs. Blake’s asshole son.” I told her a little of the story, and now she’d gotten this idea in her head that we were some kind of second-chance Romeo and Juliet story.

Yeah… that all turned out fine and dandy for them, didn’t it?

My fingers pressed into the keys in my pocket. “Maybe.”

“He’s pretty hot, for a giant prick. Wait! Does he have a giant prick?”

Thankfully, she couldn’t see my blush in the gaps between the streetlights. “I’m not telling you that!”

“You want to go, don’t you?”

I nodded. “I owe him.”

“Screw that. If you want to go, let it be because you want to go,” Michelle said. “Life’s too short for all that guilt.”

She was right, but I wanted to make it up to him. I wanted to make a better memory, for both of us. However, I didn’t plan to start by blowing him under a restaurant table—although that might be how most prom dates began or ended these days.

Marcus’s suggestion—proposition?—had shocked me. It was so direct, so carnal, so degrading. And it made my panties damp with sudden arousal. I’d discovered over breakfast that my body was still hypersensitive around him, my hormones like a homing beacon zeroing in on him.

It all left me driving home in the dark in a confused funk. I couldn't change the past, but I still felt sorry for him. Wanted him. Hated him. He still mystified me, as Heathcliff did Cathy. Ten years hadn’t changed much in Marcus Blake, except making him even more intense. More dangerous to my equilibrium.

I was so lost in my thoughts that I almost tripped over him by my front door.

“What the—?”

He was perched on the top step, his head in his hands. His face was hidden, masked by shadows and his fingers, and a shock of blue-black hair fell over his forehead. He wore the same stark black shirt and pants from earlier, only now covered by a black leather jacket.

“Marcus?”

“She doesn’t remember me.” His voice was muffled, but the pain in it was as crisp and clear as the autumn night air.

Oh. I squatted down, my jeans cold against my legs. “Not a good day today, huh?” His mother’s good days were becoming fewer and fewer.

“I thought… last night, she was…”

“I know. She was.”

He dropped his hands and stared at them, then scrubbed them over his face again, like he was washing them in the moonlight. His sigh was heavy and redolent with…

“Have you been drinking?” I frowned, looking around for his fancy sports car.

“No, I’ve been playing tennis.” He shot me a dirty look.

I grew hot with rage. My parents had been killed by a drunk driver, and now he—

“Don’t worry, Serena. I walked. All I’ve been doing for the last hour is walking. I honestly don’t know if I’m still drunk, or if I’m just tired—so fucking tired.” He hunched his shoulders over under his jacket.

“Come on. I’ll get you some coffee or an Uber or something.”

He let me pull him into the house, and I threw a couple of pods into my instant coffee maker despite the late hour.

“Did you eat?” I asked him as I took off my jacket and shoes. I was still full of popcorn.

He shrugged his coat off, letting the expensive leather drape over the back of the kitchen chair he’d fallen into. “Sort of.”

I’ll take that as a ‘no.’ I pulled out an apple and some string cheese from the fridge and put them on the kitchen table before him. Then leaned against the counter, watching him.

“Is this my after school snack?”

His quiet joke reminded me of the times we’d studied together after school. In my room. With the door closed.

Oh god.

I squeezed my eyes shut, my heart jumping with the memory of his lean body on top of mine.

They say you never forget your first. It was so true. I just wished…

“Are you in your old room?” he asked, his eyes flashing with shared memories.

I simply nodded. He stood slowly, approached me silently. I held my breath, until he reached around me and tossed his garbage in the bin under the sink. Then I let it out in a long, shaky sigh.

But Marcus didn’t move back. His hands went to the counter on either side of me, trapping me. He smelled like leather and soap and a little bit of whiskey. His face was shadowed with beard growth, and his silvery eyes focused on my lips.

“Do you remember—?”

“Yes.” I bit my lip.

He glanced down, his mouth curving into a smile. “You wore jeans like this in high school. I remember the pockets.”

A gasp escaped me as he dipped his hands into my front pockets, the backs of his fingers pressing against my pelvic bone. He was so close I could feel the warmth of his skin, and his breath on my face.

“About that do-over…”

“Yes?” Instinctively I tilted my head back, opening myself up to him. Wanting. Waiting.

“It begins now.” His voice was rough, but his kiss was rougher. There was no shyness, no hesitation—none of the tentative touches I remember from our teenage days.

Marcus Blake helped himself.

And god help me, I melted in his arms. The rasp of his stubble on my skin as he made his way down my neck made me shiver. My arms went around him, pulling him closer.

“Oh...”

His hands went from my front pockets to my back pockets, squeezing my ass through the denim and tugging me away from the counter. I had nothing to brace myself against, except for him—and I wasn’t totally sure that he wouldn’t let me fall.

“Do you remember this?” he demanded hotly against my jaw, my cheekbone, my ear.

“No,” I panted. “It was never like this.”

“It should have been.” He covered my mouth again, pulling me across the kitchen floor at the same time as reaching for the zipper on my jeans.

This was insane. Was I really going to let him—

“Ungh!” A high-pitched moan burst from my chest as he thrust his hand into my jeans and one long, hot finger into me.

“You were always wet for me, weren’t you?” He leaned me back against his forearm, while his other hand cupped my pussy, the heel of his palm ground against my long-neglected clit.

Marcus never spoke like that in high school. His kisses then were silent, all his hot words unspoken and echoing only in my imagination. It was… different, but I liked it. The sound of his voice and the urging of his hands held me over a precipice, where I felt as if I would fly and plummet in equal measure.

“Oh my god.”

My body was hot from arousal and embarrassment, and I closed my eyes against his wicked scrutiny. It had been so long since I’d been touched like thi—no.

No, I’d never been touched like this.

I reached out for him, my hands sliding over the muscles of his arms and shoulders. He was inside me, yet I felt like he was holding me at a distance.

My eyes flew open as he began steering me into the living room and over to the stairs. I whined as he withdrew his hand from my panties, then swallowed hard as he licked my arousal off his fingers.

Over my shoulder, he looked up the stairs. His jaw flexed. “No,” he decided firmly. “Too far.”

He ripped open my blouse, filling his hands with my aching breasts. With his fingers he teased my nipples to hard points, then pinched them mercilessly until I gasped.

My head spun, my body and brain rotating on the axis of my arousal until all my common sense flew to the edge with centrifugal force. My shaking hands pulled his shirt out of his waistband, and reached for the hot, hard length beneath his zipper.

“Fuck, your hand,” he groaned. “Wrap your hand around me, please.”

I found him.

“Yes!” His hiss rang in my ears, filling me with feminine pride.

Somehow we found ourselves on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, our limbs entwined. He leaned over me awkwardly to suck my lace-clad nipples into his greedy mouth. The silky steel of his erection filled my hand as I squeezed him, pumping up and down in a choppy rhythm. My jeans had been tugged down over my hips so he could plunge his fingers back into me.

I wanted to scream. My arm ached from the awkward position, and my belly fluttered with the threat of my orgasm.

“You’re going to come on my hand, Serena. You can’t help it, can you? You’re on fire, and it’s the sexiest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.”

I could see how he’d found success as a motivational speaker.

“Marcus!” I began spasming.

With a swift movement and an impatient grunt, he pulled his hand out and spread me open on the floor. My core throbbed with the climax that had just been yanked out of my reach.

It was then that I saw the vestiges of adolescence in him, as he held himself over me and ground his pelvis into mine.

It was an epic dry humping, worthy of any horny seventeen year-old. He drove against me once, twice… three times before I shattered.

“Shit, Serena!” His body went rigid against mine. Through my panties, I felt more heat pooling between us as he shuddered.

He burrowed his face into my neck. My fingers played with the ends of his hair, and I felt the brush of his eyelashes against my skin as he blinked.

What had just happened? What now?

“Well, um, that escalated quickly,” I said. A splinter of guilt and grief twisted in my chest as I remembered just where and when and how we lay there. “I guess this is what happens when my parents don’t come home.”