Double Clutch - Реинхардт Лиз - Страница 26

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“We just finished it a few hours ago. That‘s why it still smells a little like paint. Nice, right?”

“Yeah,” he agreed and we plopped down on the floor. He poured me a glass of soda first and then poured one for himself, which I thought was really sweet. Then we started to eat, and Jake wolfed down the pizza so fast I had to check my urge to laugh. I was glad Mom bought a large pie. She and Thorsten knew that when I wanted to, I could eat most of a pizza on my own. They would never even ask if they came home and there was nothing left but some grease and crumbs in the bottom of the box.

“Do you like Folly?” I asked. He nodded, his mouth full.

I got up and put my iPod in its base and pushed play on the Folly album that Saxon gave me. It was weird to listen to Saxon’s mix with Jake, but it also felt disloyal to Saxon, and that was a big bonus as far as I was concerned.

We ate in happy silence, and when I couldn’t force any more pizza on him, I put the rest in the fridge and left him in my room for a few minutes. I thought that was particularly considerate of me. I always loved to poke a little in a person’s room, just to get a feel for what they liked. Of course, Jake had the disadvantage of my room having been just redone and perfectly neat and bare, but he could still look at my books and check out my photos.

When I came back, sure enough, he was looking at my bookshelf, his hands crammed self-consciously in the front pockets of his faded jeans.

“You’ve read all of these?” He jutted his chin to my books, carefully arranged by height and size.

I shook my head. “The top shelf is new stuff on the right and stuff I feel like I really should read, but haven’t gotten around to reading, on the left.” I moved close to him while I talked, and it was the first time I’d stood near him since he showed up.

I dipped my nose close to his neck and took a deep, long breath. He wore some kind of good-smelling guy cologne, something sharp and clean. But he also smelled like the outdoors and a little like sweat, which was sexy though I couldn’t put my finger on why it was.

“Are you smelling me?” He glanced over his shoulder at me and grinned.

“I thought I was being pretty discreet about it. I guess I wasn’t?”

“Nope.” His voice did that low and sexy thing. He reached out, carefully, like I was a wild animal that would bolt the minute he got too close. But I held dead still and let him pull me closer. In fact, if I could have become a specialized Jake magnet I would have. Maybe I did, because he seemed attracted to me. He put his hands on my waist and pulled me close, and it was like we just clicked together.

The room receded, the colors, the music, all of it faded into the background. “Are you going to kiss me?” I blabbered stupidly.

“I’m working up the nerve,” he said softly. His t-shirt was thin and faded, too. I could see the lines of his shoulders and pecs. His lips were dry, like he needed chapstick. He skin was nice and smooth, tanned and clean.

I sighed. “Your nerve is making me crazy. I’ll just kiss you.”

And I did. Jake Kelly’s mouth was hot and sweet. This time he took his time, pressing his lips to mine with steady pressure as if he were testing his ability to keep himself from giving in to anything wilder. I opened my lips slightly, and brushed my tongue over his mouth.

The next thing I knew, he grabbed me hard under my butt and pushed me onto my new bed with the red poppies, and his mouth was hungry and quick on mine. We kissed and pulled back, kissed again and stopped to breathe. I could feel his long, hard body pressed on mine, and it felt so good, so exciting I couldn’t resist pulling his head down to mine again. His hands ran over my face, pressing into my hair. He pulled away and his fingertips traced my eyebrows and ran so lightly over my lips that they tickled. He touched my face like he was trying to memorize it with his hands.

I finally pulled him back to my mouth, kissed him deeply and ran my hands over his back and his ribs. His body was solid and warm against mine.

“Brenna, we have to stop.” I could feel, then, that he was hard and was pressing into me. “I’m not used to going slow. I don’t want to mess this up.”

It was shocking and exciting to hear him say that. Turning him on made me giddy, and it made me feel a kind of power I never really imagined I could hold over a guy.

“Alright.” I pushed away from him, but he snatched me back and held me tight before I could get too far.

“Do you mind if I hold you?"

I relaxed against him and realized that my wish from the night before was being somewhat fulfilled. He was incredibly warm, and being in his arms meant that I was surrounded by him; his skin was all I could smell, I could hear his heart beat and his breath pull in and out, and I could see his face, so handsome it made me understand why there had been a small army of willing girls. There was very little not to like about Jake Kelly.

“I like it,” I said, and he snuggled me closer in response to my declaration. I felt a happiness like a thousand bubbles in a shaken soda threatening to burst out of me.

“So, I’ve been reading your book.” His breath tickled my ear.

“Which book is mine?” It was weird to be having this semi-normal conversation wrapped in his arms. How were we ever going to be able to go back to just sitting across from each other in class?

“You know. Lord of the Flies.”

“Do you like it?” I looked at his silvery-gray eyes. They were watching my lips. I smiled, and he mirrored my smile, then he looked up into my eyes, and I had to remind myself to breathe. In and out, one breath at a time.

“Yeah. It’s a little dense, and the guy reading it is really slow on the book-on-tape thing, but I like the idea of the island as a microcosm.”

“My English teacher said it’s supposed to be based on the world during World War II, or that’s one interpretation.” I willed myself not to be surprised that Jake knew a word like ‘microcosm.’ Wasn’t I the one always defending his intelligence?

“That makes sense in a scary way.” He ran his fingers along my hip and down the side of my thigh, then dragged them back up, over and over.

I moved my fingers over his features, the way he had with mine. I smoothed his eyebrows with my thumbs, brushed over his eyelashes, outlined his nose, and traced his lips.

“Did you like any of the girls you slept with?”

His eyes popped wide open. “How did we get from Lord of the Flies to this?”

My hand was on his jaw. I slipped it off of his face and picked at a loose thread on my comforter instead. “We didn’t really. I just wanted to know. That’s all.”

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