She bit her lip, wanting so much to go after him.
But something stopped her, and it wasn’t pride or even shyness. It was something else, something that told Lane the next step...had to come from him.
So please take that next step, she whispered in her heart.
Please.
AND SO THEIR CAT-AND-mouse game continued. In class, he would do his best to avoid her gaze even though she would not stop staring at him. But every damn day, there would be that one instance he wouldn’t be able to help it.
He’d look at her, and always she would already be looking at him, her rosebud lips seemingly parted in invitation.
Steal my first kiss, those rosebud lips seemed to tempt and taunt him at the same time.
And it would be her first kiss, he thought grimly. Even though she and that boy from the convenience store were going out, he was experienced enough to recognize the signs, had seen innocence defiled too many times to count.
She had never been kissed, and certainly her body had never known a man’s touch.
But the fact remained.
She belonged to someone else.
That first day they had met, he had practically tripped on his own feet in his haste to get back to her. But from across the street, he had seen her with the boy, and they had their heads together, talking with a kind of intimacy that only people who were exceptionally close could do.
And when he had spoken to the boy, saw the love in the younger man’s eyes, Angelo’s worst fears had been confirmed. Even now, the taste of bitter defeat still hadn’t left his mouth, and just thinking about it made him murderous.
She was everything he didn’t want in his life, dammit. She would only bring him nothing but trouble, he thought savagely. He knew all this, dammit, so why the hell couldn’t he put an end to this game?
All it would take was a single moment to show her that he was not what she imagined him to be, a single moment for her to know what he already knew.
That he was worth no one’s love.
THE CAT-AND-MOUSE GAME could have gone on endlessly.
But there was no way to know.
The rules, and the very game itself, completely changed the day he saw her kiss the convenience store boy.
Even though he had always been known to be courteous and cool-headed, the truth was that Angelo was as proud and possessive as any other hot-blooded Italian.
Her standing so close to another man who wasn’t him, her laughing in another man’s company when that sound should only have been for his ears—-
All of those he could commit murder for.
But for her lips to be taken by another man—-
This, he could not, would not forgive.
He didn’t give a damn if he was being sexist about it, didn’t give a damn if his feelings made no sense at all.
It didn’t matter if they had made no promises, didn’t matter that he had deliberately made no attempt to learn her name.
The moment she had stared at him like she wanted to belong to him—-
A part of him had believed it.
But she had betrayed him.
And so from that moment on, she ceased to exist for him.
TO FORGET HER, THERE wasn’t a night that he went to bed alone. He would have one, two, sometimes even more girls than he had fingers in bed with him.
But while all the girls he fucked were as experienced and skillful as he was, none of them ever proved capable of filling the growing hollowness inside of him.
It was as if her mere existence had served to underscore the emptiness of his life, and he hated her and himself even more for it.
Was he to be eternally condemned to want what could never be his?
Memories of his past answered him mockingly, and his face hardened.
Jaw clenching, he told himself that this obsession he had for the girl would soon pass. That the need to possess when he had only felt the softness of her hand would fade. Soon.
Because all of this was just sheer insanity.
And it would pass.
It had to.
But he was wrong.
HE SAW HER AT THE BUS stop on the last day of school, right before spring break. He was on his way to the parking lot when he saw her, hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, and her petite, curvy frame dwarfed by hideously serviceable clothes.
That was another thing about her, he thought broodingly. She didn’t seem the type to have such appalling taste in clothes, but she always showed up to class wearing things that could only be politely described as...unappealing.
He stopped walking even as his mind warned him it would better to pretend he hadn’t seen her...and that goddamn boy.
They were talking again, and she was smiling, too. The sight of it made him want to shake her.