8

The Prick Next Door

We wake up kissing. It happens in that inconclusive point between sleep and consciousness. The first thing I recognize is her steady breath hitting my throat, and then a shift of weight on the bed, and then her sweet, fuckable mouth finds mine, and then there's us mapping out one another's lips. It's a heady sensation. My mind identifies her by taste but doesn't register what's going on. It's like waking to a very comfortable position in bed and sinking deeper into it. Only the down of her mouth feels infinitely better.

Then we stir. Things go from hazy to solid in a matter of seconds. I sense desperation in her movements. My lids flash open, and there she is, and there we are, mouths attached, and we grin into the kiss.

But when I break away, I see the lines slowly bunch between her dark brows. I sense her working through what's happening. I find myself doing the same thing. We study each other. The rain has stopped. For once, I don't have words. I've never slept with a girl while not fucking her. I don't think lying in bed has ever felt sweeter or more terrifying.

She has to get back to the house before her family comes home. The damn goodbye is disjointed. At the door, she won't meet my eyes. And yet when she turns, I grab her arm and wheel her back around to kiss her sweet-candy lips. And she doesn't object. She's serious again, but she molds her tender mouth to mine anyway.

With a heavy sigh, I let her go and watch as she cuts through the fog in her damp dress. I fight myself not to run after her and trap her against the hard, wet bark of a tree, and fuck her to oblivion. Last night, that kiss had strangled me. It was more lasting than any sex I've ever had.

I hope she knows what she's doing with me. I sure as hell don't know what I'm doing, but I usually don't think too much about what I do in the first place. That's why I'm such a colossal prick, I guess.

For some reason, Annabelle overlooks that part of me. I'm stunned that she trusts me this much, with no expectations of me pushing things too far.

Which means this isn't good. I'm out of my mind, I'm losing control, and most of the time I don't give a shit. She has too intense of an effect on me. I'm constantly being pulled in two different directions. I don't want to revert back to the old me. Any second, I could trip into that skin.

Usually, risk is my thing. In this case, it's not. This connection we have is the kind of bad I don't prefer, but I can't make myself stop. I'm rebelling against my own self. It's fucking nuts.

Inside the cabin, I fall face first onto my pillow, cursing at myself to get it the fuck together. I’m a fucking asshole, and there’s no way I wanna screw her up in the process.

Now in the cornfield, midday, I'm still cursing. Only this time, it's because I'm fucking lost. I was too busy thinking of her and nursing an erection to focus on where I was going. I dump the shoulder bag I'd been hauling and strut east, then west, then who the hell knows. The stalks are taller than Godzilla. I hear the voices of the other workers, I hear Mr. Chaste, but it's all a labyrinth to me. The field is a mess after the storm. The ground is moist and the stalks damp, but that hasn't delayed the work.

On a stroke of good luck, I cross into a row and find that naughty braid — that’s begging to be pulled mid fucking — dangling down her olive neck. I sneak up on her, debating whether to cover her eyes or tickle her or whisper something decadent into her ear.

None of the above. I dip my head close and draw out a long moooooo.

Annabelle yelps, jumps around, and sees me laughing. She scowls, tries not to laugh back, but an unwilling chuckle pops from her anyway. It sounds like music.

She stiffens when we hear people getting closer. I guess I wasn't that lost after all.

She gulps when I press my forehead to hers. It's a mix of guarded and confused and curious...really curious. She's blushing but uncertain. I'm humiliated by the goofy middle-school smile that I know I'm wearing.

"Hey," I say.

"Hello," she says, then wavers. "You're not supposed to be here."

"Says who?"

"You didn't come looking for me, did you?"

"I tracked your scent."

Christ, I wanted to smell her pussy more than anything. I’d burn that scent into me.

When she wrinkles her nose in disapproval, I drag my thumb over her lips, producing a startled intake of breath from her mouth that makes it adorably difficult for her to lecture me. "Does it matter how I got here?" I ask.

"We can't..." she begins.

"Can't what?"

"Can't be caught together like this."

I told myself not to push or make things complicated, but I feel her wanting. So I suggest, "Let's go somewhere, then."

"No," she answers.

"Yes," I insist, stepping closer and locking eyes with her.

She frowns, and I think she's going to refuse. But then she takes my hand. In a sudden hurry, she leads me down the row. We turn into another one, and then another. I lose my direction again, but she seems to know where she's going. She ploughs through, her breathing getting more labored.

The green columns of the stalks shiver as we pass them, flashing on both sides of us. The further we travel, the riper their smell gets. I hold out my free hand, my palm beating against their long, solid, tight frames. Dew from the rain covers them in a glistening sheen.

At one point, we stop. The shoulder bag of corn she's carrying has to be getting heavy, so I take it from her and loop my arm through the handle. Annabelle hasn't lost that stern look, but her eyes tell a different story. She outlines my jaw while I trace her cheekbones and slide my finger down her nose, counting the freckles. I make it to eight when we start moving again.

Voices grow thinner, more distant. Reaching a secluded spot, she jerks to a stop and whips around, staring at my lips. I dump the shoulder bag.

Our mouths connect. I swathe her tongue with my own, relishing her fingers as they drag through my hair. The friction of our lower bodies tugs a whimper from her that I silence by deepening the kiss, licking my way through her with lazy, measured strokes.

I break away and her head falls back, exposing her throat my lips. Accepting the invitation, I help myself to her, trailing the skin and tasting her sweat, down to the canyon between her collarbone and up again. I feel the muscles in her neck quiver as I reach the spongy little corner behind her lobe and suck the tender area. Her secretive mewls drive me crazy.

My own growl mists against her ear. I lift my head, eager for another kiss. I lean in...and out of nowhere, awareness sets her into a frenzy, vacuuming her moans. She wrenches out of my arms and leaps into the next row. The corn stalks slam against each other and spray leftover rain droplets on my face.

Mr. Chaste appears around the corner. "Cassius. I was looking for you."

Annabelle must have heard him coming. She knows every seed, every tint of light, on this farm. She can probably hear her family from a thousand paces.

I can't look at this guy. He'll accept whatever answer I give him because he trusts me. He trusts me the way he trusted my father, and I want to be worthy.

Not much chance of that when I'm standing here, talking to him with a concealed hard-on caused by his pride and joy. His innocent, pure, virginal Annabelle.

I scrub my hand through my hair. "I got lost."

He chuckles. "We need you at the tractor. Something's stuck under the wheel and it's going to take strong bodies to help lift it. You can return to your work later. I've noticed how well you've taken to the fields. Especially the wheat."

"It's a cook thing," I say stupidly.

"Yes, I'm sure it makes you think of James."

It's the first time he's said my dad's name. It thwarts my plans to keep this topic at bay. I figure my silence will be taken as confirmation. The wheat field does make me think of Dad.

The breeze disturbs his long beard. I see the wheels turning, steering us into another heart-to-heart. Mr. Chaste reminisces, "He would have liked this farm. Sunsets here are best in the fall. He taught me how to play chess, you know."

No, I didn't know. I didn't know my father knew how to play chess.

"What..." I thrust my hands into my pockets. "What was he like back then?"

"Like you. A shell at first. Tough. Short-tempered. When I spent the summer working at your family's café, he didn't want much to do with me. But one day, I defended him against a customer who claimed he served them burnt food. I was taught not to involve myself in other people's business, but I did it anyway. And it felt right. I was standing up for a member of the family hosting me.

"From then on, we were friends. It turned out he was charming and funny. When something mattered to him, he held on. He was loyal. He admitted he couldn't wait to have sons and predicted that his youngest would be the wildest."

My mouth lifts into a grin. "He said that?"

"And that his youngest would be the most self-sacrificing and generous."

I glance down. My father must have meant his oldest son. I don't feel remotely self-sacrificing or generous.

"We balanced one another well during that time," Mr. Chaste says. "With him, I learned to appreciate joy for joy's sake. My patience and refusal to yell, even when I closed a drawer on my hand by accident, annoyed James. He would tease me about it. But he became calmer. Underneath it all, he longed to find hope in every situation. I like to think we taught each other many things. I like to think we taught each other to make the right choices. Especially when it came to others."

"He didn't marry the right choice," I mutter.

"Perhaps you will be different in that regard. You're capable."

He's wrong. In fact, his esteem sets me more on edge than every tantrum my mother has ever thrown.

"The strongest among us are those who forgive," Mr. Chaste reflects.

"It's not that easy," I snap, remembering the blows to the head. The fractured rib. Especially the burn on my wrist. I'd been blocking Mom from getting to my oldest brother, when she did it.

Forget cuts and punches.

Fire is a pain you never forget.

"The choices that build character aren't meant to be easy," Mr. Chaste says.

"So what about that tractor?" I remind him.

He nods. "You're right. We should hurry, but don't think I haven't noticed how hard you've been working, without relying on praise. That's an honorable trait we take stake in here."

He stares at me. "People here warned me about you, Cassius. About having you around my daughters. Needless to say, I've let my faith and my relationship with your father guide my decisions. I see the redeemable parts of him in you. Which is why I haven't concerned myself over letting you interact with my girls. Besides, and I think it's good for Annabelle to know you. She's never done anything serious for me to doubt her integrity. She's not easily influenced."

A bunch of thoughts involving Annabelle's desperate, suckable cherry lips invade my mind.

"You've been helpful to her and Elsie. You noticed their strained relationship and sought to neutralize it at dinner. You succeeded where I haven't. You're a good young man."

A tennis ball gets lodged in my throat. I don't know how to handle the compliment. Not when I've been kissing his daughter senseless. Not when I haven't considered him in all this time.

As he leads me away, I catch a pair of gray eyes hiding behind the stalks. The same emotion wracking me is smeared all over Annabelle's face.

Guilt.

I should have seen it coming. Annabelle rewinds back to who she was before the storm. Before the motorcycle, in fact. Over the next two days, she keeps close to me in the field but then wiggles away when I try to touch her. She barely speaks.

It's pissing me off. Normally if a girl did this, I would shrug and move on, not follow her around like a fucking love-sick puppy.

Somehow, she manages to avoid being alone with me, sticking to areas of the farm where other people are working in plain sight of us. As if she thinks I'd grab her the second we were alone, pin her to the nearest surface, and fuck her.

She's right. She's very right.

I know she feels bad about her father. I do, too. But I'm not an idiot. It's more than that.

Then I notice other stuff. The way older people shoot her uncertain glances and whisper to each other behind her back. At one point, as I'm watching this happen, I mindlessly throw a hay bale so hard at the guy piling them on a wagon that it slams into his stomach and knocks him to the ground. He doesn't believe me when I say it was an accident.

Yeah, I’m a prick.

Mr. Chaste wags his finger and tells me to concentrate. And I do. I concentrate on his daughter. Groups of girls surround her whenever they get a chance and smack their lips in her face. They tilt their heads, and from the way their mouths move, and the way she leans away from them, I figure they're asking her questions that make her uncomfortable.

As I'm lounging on the ground against a tree, using my Sunday off to cool my heels, I see a woman return with the Chastes from church. She resembles Asshole, though older, maybe a family member. She stops Annabelle on the porch and gives her some kind of speech.

I think of how many times Dylan gave me speeches to stay out of trouble, warning me about what would happen if I didn't.

Whatever the woman says, it's the final trigger. Annabelle's shoulders sag. She nods. The woman notices me on her way into the house and gives me this uppity glare. And just like that, I know why else Annabelle has been giving me the damn silent treatment.

Light from inside the cabin illuminates a smudge of dirt beneath her ear. She doesn't know it's there. I memorize the visual for a future sketch.

We watch each other from across the threshold. She's holding a portion of Shepherd's pie in a glass container. She doesn't let go of it, even though it's my dinner.

Delaying the inevitable, she indicates the rings on my fingers. "What are they?"

The one on my middle finger is just an intricate silver design, like the motif of a wrought-iron fence. The one on my index finger is a bird with an elongated neck.

"It's a symbolism of freedom," I tell her, my voice darkening. “Freedom to listen to your heart. Your desires. And not give a fuck what people think.”

Annabelle flinches. It's bitterly quiet this evening. You'd think a storm never happened a few nights ago.

My fingers choke the door frame. "Just say it," I spit out.

"I've done something awful," she admits, then colors when she sees my answering expression.

I'm something awful. Time with me is something awful.

She tries again. "I didn't mean...this...this was a mistake."

"Am I really that wrong for you?"

"This isn't a criticism. Don't take it that way."

"Since that isn't an answer, I'll give you a different question. Did you like kissing me?"

Annabelle looks away. I press my thumb to her stubborn chin and lift her head. "I told you once before not to break eye contact me. We were dancing, if I remember correctly."

"I can't betray David. If I do, what does that make me? What has my life taught me?"

I hate mentioning that asshole, but I’ve been cornered.

"Does he make you laugh? Do you guys talk the way we talk? Does the world disappear when he touches you?"

"This is about what's right."

"And we're back to that clusterfuck of indirect responses, are we?" I rasp.

She swallows. "This is my life. My people."

And they matter more. It's not just about Asshole, not completely. It's about going behind her dad's back. I don't like it anymore than she does. I'm not Catholic or a member of Unity. Yeah, this isn't just about me not being good enough, but the very thought of Mr. Chaste, my father's friend, disapproving of me cuts through bone.

Again, she becomes aware of how I translated her words. "My father loves me the way my mother never did," she explains. "He means so much to me. As does Elsie. They're safe and steady and forever. But with you, there is no such thing. You're leaving. If we continue, it will go nowhere. There's no point to this."

"And if it actually went somewhere? If you ended up with me?"

"That would be my right, but once I made that choice, I would be shunned."

I frown. I don't have a clue what she's talking about.

"I'd have to leave my community to be with you," she explains. "I'd have to leave my house. In other Catholic Orders, it's different. You only get shunned if you've already made a commitment to the church and then break it. If you haven't promised yourself and choose a non-sect life instead, you can still keep in contact with your family. It's not so very punishing." There's a jealous tinge to her voice when she says this. "But in my Order, it's different. The rules are not as lenient. It doesn't matter if I've made a commitment or not. If I chose you, I could never come back here or speak to my family again. There would be no contact allowed. Ever."

She considers this and sighs. "Technically, shunned is too harsh a word for what it is here. It is not so much being shunned as being...separated for good. Yet to me, it still feels like the same thing."

My blood boils. I don't care what her community thinks of me, but I don't want to screw her over. I hate thinking this is the consequence of choosing me. I hate to think of her never becoming what she wants. I hate her world and I admire her world. I hate how she just accepts all this. I hate how much I understand her.

But I'm still fuming at her choice. What did I expect? That she would drop everything for me after a couple of kisses? No, I don't think that far ahead, and I feel like a dumbass. Somewhere along the line, I'd wanted to become more important.

Her features become resigned. "Things have to stay the same."

"Is that what you really want? Really?"

"I'm not like you, Cassius Gunner. I take things seriously."

She's saying I don't. I thought she saw past that. I thought she saw me differently than everyone else.

She moves toward me, then holds herself back and shakes her head miserably. "I'm sorry...I mean..." Her voice hitches. "This is not coming out right."

It's fine. I get it. One thing's for sure. We're both determined to suck it up.

I reach out to catch her braid between my fingers and spare her the trouble of trying to edit herself. "So we stay away from each other. Simple enough."

She chews on her bottom lip. "Yes. It's simple."

We fall into a staring contest.

"Goodbye, Annabelle," I say and shut the damn door before I do something stupid like scream at her.

Leaning against the wall, I flex the fingers that touched her hair and listen to silence on the other side. It's a while before her footsteps begin to fade. I wait until she's gone, knowing that she left my food on the front step. Knowing that tomorrow she'll go back to the more important business of dating Asshole.

I punch the wall.

Well, good. Whatever. It's better like this. I never deserved her in the first place.