I force myself to stare at him, as bravely as I can.
“I’m a virgin, Trent.”
His lips twitch into a smirk.
I pull my hands away, reeling and turning to the road, striding away. I don’t know where I’m going.
But I won’t wait around for him to laugh at me, even if the taste of his lips and his tongue is still swirling around my mouth, around my body.
“Tess, wait,” he growls, striding up next to me. “What’s wrong?”
“You were going to laugh.”
“I was smiling. I’m happy.”
He was smirking. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Trent Tanner outright smile.
“You’re happy?” I say, gazing up at him.
“Of course I am.”
He raises his hands as if to touch me again, but then an engine rumbles, and a car appears at the end of the road. I step away, instinct driving me.
Youngstone is a small town and people talk.
I glance at the car, relieved I don’t recognize the driver. It must be somebody just passing through.
“Of course?” I murmur. “It doesn’t seem so obvious to me.”
“You’re mine.” He breathes heavily, lust nestled within the noise. “You belong to me. Everything you are, everything you will become, you’ll always be mine. So of course I’m fucking happy. I’m going to claim your virgin slit for the first time. You will be mine for the rest of our lives. Nobody else will ever get to touch you.”
His words send starlight cascading around my body, bright and wonderful, and yet there’s a tinge of darkness beneath the light.
What about Angie?
I want to ask, but I also don’t want to ask.
It’s the last thing I want to do because it will shatter this moment irrevocably. It will tear it to pieces and I’ll be left wondering what could’ve been between us…
Even if I know nothing can ever happen between us.
“Let me take you somewhere,” he growls, inching closer. “Just for a little while. I need to taste you, Tessa. I’m going crazy just thinking about it.”
No, no, no, part of me screams, the reasonable part, the piece of me that held Angie when she wept over her mother’s death, that was there for her through every up and down during high school and after.
But my body won’t let me be honorable.
My body screams louder than the voice of reason, singing yes, yes, yes, singing that this is the moment I’ve been waiting my entire life for.
“Okay,” I whisper. “But only for a little while. And I’m not ready… for that, you know, not yet.”
He smirks. “Don’t worry, Snapshot. I can wait… for a little while, at least.”
“I didn’t even know this place existed,” I say when he pulls up outside a cabin in the middle of the forest.
It sits raised from the forest floor on blocks, a sturdy-looking building made of wooden boards slotted together. It looks rustic and homey and inviting.
“It was my father’s,” Trent says. “When I decided to retire, I hired somebody to restore it. It was rundown before that. It didn’t feel right, returning to Youngstone knowing Dad’s old cabin was in such a state.”
He steps from the car and walks around to my side, opening my door with a captivating smirk on his face.
“After you, m’lady.”
I can’t help but giggle, despite the strangeness of this, despite how wrong this should feel. “What a gentleman.”
I climb from the car and we walk toward the cabin.
Trent walks close to me, his hand on the small of my back, his touch burning through my tank top and causing heat to whirl around my body. My belly tingles and my stomach tightens, as though gathering up energy, getting ready for an explosion.
“You like that,” he snarls, his lips suddenly close to my ear, his warm breath washing over me.
“Yes.” I sigh. “Oh, God, it feels so good.”
“You’re going to shiver for me soon,” he snarls, sliding his hand down and palming my ass. “You’re going to come all over my fucking mouth, come hard.”
I open my mouth to say something, anything, but then I realize I can’t. My throat closes with nervousness and need and a thousand other whirling emotions, all of them colliding together with the force of a crashing meteor.
He opens the door, revealing a homey log cabin, with an unlit fireplace and plush rugs. Sunlight glows through the closed curtains, tinged oak-brown.
Trent guides me firmly through the cabin toward a room at the back, throwing it open like he can hardly wait to get me inside. The bed is large and the sheets have antler patterns on them.
“Fuck,” Trent growls, closing the door behind us. “You have no idea how badly I’ve wanted to do this ever since the diner.”
“Do what…”
I trail off with a gasp as he slides his hand up the back of my leg, tickling my thigh as he brings the heel of his palm against my sex and rubs it firmly.