The Boys Next Door (16 page)

At this point, I realized what I’d thought was stress and peanut butter indigestion was actually butterflies, which began dogfighting in my stomach at the idea that Adam and I were about to kiss some more. As I brushed my teeth with his toothbrush, I watched him watching me in the mirror. His muscled arms were folded on his strong, tanned chest. The bruise Sean had given him under his eye had almost faded, but the skull-and-crossbones pendant glinted dangerously.

If his parents hadn’t been in the next room with the ten o’clock news turned way up over the music downstairs, I might have made a move on him right there in the bathroom. Yes, I know, odds were I would have tripped and knocked him down and made him hit his head on the toilet. I was so turned on, I was almost willing to take this chance.

Instead, he took my hand again and led me down through the party, indoors and outdoors, to the end of the dock. The football team had run out of bottle rockets. The party had reached the stage where boys played quarters. The drinking game was run very professionally by experienced people. If Mr. Vader had found out, he would have shut down the party—because kids were drinking underage at his house, or because he would have known one of his sons had stolen beer from the marina. In any case, as a precaution, a wall of people stood across the dock, talking and flirting, shielding the boys playing quarters from the prying eyes of the Vaders in their bedroom.

The wall of people included Sean and Rachel, facing each other and holding both hands like they were about to dance a polka. Rachel hadn’t taken the precaution of kicking her shoes off before she stepped onto the dock. She was likely to catch her heel between the boards and fall flat. (Shrug.) Rachel obviously valued beauty before balance.

As Adam and I approached the wall of people, Adam aimed straight for Sean. He brushed against Sean harder than necessary as we edged through. I felt Sean and Rachel watching us, but I didn’t look back as we stepped over the boys sprawled in a circle around a cup of beer.

We sat on the edge of the dock. The wood was still damp and cold from the rain. We slipped our feet into the lake, which felt like a warm bath compared with the cool air.

“Do you want a beer?” Adam asked.

“I don’t think I could handle it. I feel so high already.” The warm lake, the cool air, and Adam had my body going in a thousand different directions.

Maybe he knew. He grinned at me and whispered, “I’m going to kiss you now. It’ll be a big one, so don’t hit me.” He leaned in.

“Wait a minute,” I said, putting my hand on his chest to stop him. I wasn’t quite ready to kiss him with boys playing quarters right behind us, and with Sean and Rachel staring at us. We’d kissed before where people could see us if they wanted to look, but we’d never been this blatant about it. Besides, I had another concern. “I want to be prepared. Are you going to kiss me, or
really
kiss me?”

He cocked his head at me, perplexed, with those little frown lines between his eyebrows. “What would be the point of kissing you if I didn’t do it right?”

“Ohhhhhh!” said the boys behind us. There was nowhere in my life I could get away from boys saying, “Ohhhhhh!” I glanced behind us to make sure the boys were talking about beer, not us. Indeed, when the boys’ quarters hit the cup and they chose someone to drink, all of them seemed to be ganging up on Scooter Ledbetter. I hadn’t seen his monster truck in the Vaders’ driveway, so at least he wouldn’t be driving home.

Sean had moved Rachel in front of him and held her with his arms crossed over her boobs. So he could watch us over her head without her knowing. Of course, she was staring at Adam, too. I rolled my eyes at both of them, like I was
so tired
of them watching us. I almost burst into laughter at the thought, but managed to turn back to Adam in time.

I told him through my teeth, “We’ve been kissing all week without, you know.
Really
kissing.”

“That was before Sean gave up a wakeboard for Rachel. Step up your game.”

I was running out of excuses. “Look,” I whispered, “when we do this stuff, we’re trying to make them jealous, but it’s also my first time for real. You know?”

His blue eyes focused on me. We were almost nose to nose, and our shoulders moved quickly in time with our breathing, in time with each other. “I know.”

“And when I fantasize about kissing”—kissing Sean, I meant, but I wasn’t going to say this—“our mouths are closed.”

“This isn’t your fantasy.”

I wasn’t so sure about that. True, I’d never fantasized about this particular scenario, but maybe that was because I’d never imagined it. I had to remember that this was
Adam Adam Adam
, and if I could replace him with Sean from my fantasies, the warm pricklies I was feeling would make a perfect dream. Except I would probably wake up.

Adam moved in again. One more time my brain knew this would make Sean jealous, but my body sounded the alarm. I put my hand on Adam’s chest and whispered, “Give me a break. I had a bad experience with this.”

He looked hurt, which didn’t make sense if we were only friends. He was putting on a good act. “With who?”

“The only person I’ve ever kissed, besides you, is Cameron.”

“You kissed
Ca
—”

I hadn’t expected his reaction to be that LOUD. I reached out and grabbed the back of his hair, which turned his head away from the crowd and also shut him up right quick.

I put my forehead to his forehead and whispered like a lover, “I was eleven. We were in the warehouse and he grabbed me. Very sloppy. Don’t tell McGillicuddy.”

Adam blinked. I felt his eyelashes on my eyelids.

“Very, very sloppy,” I said. “We still can’t look each other in the eye.”

I let go of his hair so he could look
me
in the eye. “Let me shrug that off.” He shook violently like he’d caught a sudden chill. “Okay. I’m going to
really
kiss you, but it’ll be subtle.” He moved toward me one more time. “And don’t tell me to back off. It’s starting to look like we’re not really in love.”

I closed my eyes automatically as he kissed me, and the word
love
blinked red and then black on the insides of my eyelids. His lips were warm. Was that all? I opened my eyes.

His eyes were still closed, and he came in again.

I closed my eyes. He kissed me like before, only I felt his tongue between my lips, opening them. His tongue was inside my mouth (ADAM VADER’S TONGUE WAS INSIDE MY MOUTH) not very far, and then out again.

I thought
that
was it, and opened my eyes. And closed them as he kissed me once more. Now I was getting it. You didn’t just sit there with your lips locked with the boy’s lips and the boy’s tongue turning flips at the back of your throat (cough
Cameron
cough). There was constant movement and change. It was an activity, and probably one the girl could participate in, too. As Adam pulled away, I said, “Let me try.”

He kissed me and whispered against my lips, “Be my guest.” His low voice made me shiver.

I kissed him. Strange that the lips were so soft in such an edgy boy. I kissed him again and very gently pressed my tongue into his mouth.

He gasped. I mean, I wasn’t sure, because it was in the middle of the kiss. But he seemed startled. He inhaled sharply through his nose. Then
he
was kissing
me
, deeper this time.

I pulled away, laughing. “It was supposed to be my turn.”

He half-smiled. His lips stayed close to my lips.

I didn’t suggest this, and he didn’t agree to this, but somehow we telepathically agreed to give up on the witty conversation and make out. His tongue played with my lips. My tongue swept across his teeth. I drowned in it, and completely lost the people playing quarters behind us on the dock until someone said, “Is anybody filming Adam and Lori? You might be able to sell it.” Sean laughed and said something I couldn’t catch that made the people around him burst into laughter too.

Adam pulled back. He was embarrassed and saw our plan wasn’t working. He would escape to his room, humiliated. He would leave me naked, or nearly so, in my bikini and his sweatshirt in the midst of these fully clothed people.

Wrong. He kissed me again and whispered, “There’s something else you can do if you get bored with this.”

Get
bored
with this???

“You kind of do the same thing, but move around. Here.” He kissed my jaw. His tongue touched my skin just as he pulled his lips away. “Or up here.” Good Lord, his teeth were on my earlobe. Very gently he slid them off. His tongue played outside my ear. His breath was loud and hot.

It felt so good, and at the same time, I could hardly stand it. I needed something to hang onto. My fingers patted the edge of the dock, finding a firm hold—but this seemed potentially splintery. My other hand felt for Adam’s hand.

Strangely, he must have needed something to hang onto, too. He took my hand and squeezed.

The guys playing quarters may have made another comment about us, but it was hard to hear with a boy’s tongue in my ear. Also it was hard to care.

I pulled away, shoulders shaking. Adam seemed to have a hard time focusing his eyes on me, like he was in a dream. I moved in and gave him the jaw treatment. Then the ear treatment.

“Ah,” he said. He giggled and then cleared his throat before the boys heard him. “Lori.”

“Mm?” I hummed in his ear.

He shuddered. And then—oh, no! He stood up. I’d done something wrong! The tongue was indeed el grosso as I’d originally thought!

“I’ll be right back,” he told me. He picked his way across the quarters game and pushed through the wall of people watching. He had sense enough not to push through Sean and Rachel again, or they’d know the ear was for them. At least, they’d
think
the ear was for them. I was beginning to wonder who the ear was for. It
felt
like it was for me.

He came back dragging a beanbag float and nearly knocked the legs out from under a few folks. He dragged it right over the quarters game, scattering the boys, and would have spilled the beer if someone hadn’t been faster. Then he dropped the float into the lake and kicked off the part of it that sagged over the dock. He gestured toward it and grinned at me. “Your limo awaits.”

I had my doubts about this. The lake was black, and the sky was black with faraway stars. But anyone who drove their boat to the party this late would know to dock at the marina where there was more room. We were safe. I shrugged off Adam’s sweatshirt and—
without looking to see if Sean was watching me
, very important—slipped into the hot water. I hadn’t realized my butt was frozen solid from the cold dock. The lake was such a relief. Ahhhhh.

Until Adam did a cannonball, socking me in the eyes with water and splashing everyone on the dock, including Sean and Rachel.

“Aaaadaaaaaaaam!” they all cried. He chuckled softly to himself as we held onto the raft and kicked it out into the lake, beyond the glow of light from the house.

He stopped kicking and crawled higher on the raft, straddling it. “Come up here with me.”

The beanbag raft was filled with floaty bits rather than air and always seemed in danger of sinking. This could be annoying when you wanted to stay on top of the water, getting a tan. On a night like tonight, it was perfect. It would keep us from drowning while giving us more hot water than cool air.

“Now. Where were we?” He put both his strong arms around me, pulled me close, and kissed me hard.

I hadn’t thought this was possible, but it was even better than before, because no one was watching. Which was actually my new problem with it. I put my hand on his chest to stop him.

He groaned in frustration. I made a mental note to make him groan in frustration more often. It seemed like something a treacherous girl would do. Also he was really cute when he groaned.

“I just wanted to know,” I breathed, “why we’re doing this where no one can see us.”

“We think no one can. We thought no one was watching us at the bridge. We need to act the part all the time, and never step out of character.” He put his hand on my arm. “If that’s okay.”

I nodded. I was still nodding as he pushed me gently backward until I was lying down on the raft, and he was lying on top of me. His whole weight was on me, but he didn’t squash me because I was hovering on the raft, just under the surface of the warm water. I felt him along me. Almost every inch of his skin touched almost every inch of mine.

I watched the skull and crossbones glinting in the starlight, and tried to impress it on my retinas so I’d still see it when I closed my eyes to kiss him again. This was Adam, not Sean. I was after Sean, not Adam. Adam was after Rachel, not me. And if kissing Adam was better than anything I’d ever dreamed of doing with Sean… well, I could see how that was going to mess up my plans.

I kissed him anyway. The skull and crossbones lay on my throat.

“And when you kiss me,” I said against his lips, “you’re thinking about Rachel. Right?”

Almost before I got the last word out, he was kissing me again, harder than before, so intense I got lost in it and thought I might drown in the blackness even though my head was still above water.

I pinched his ass.

He yelped, and the yelp echoed across the lake and back. Silhouettes moved far away on the dock, peering in our direction without seeing.

“Did you hear me?” I asked.

He propped himself far enough above me to be able to see me. With one finger he smoothed a strand of wet hair away from my face. He traced the line of my cheek down to my chin. “Do you want to stop? Tell me and I’ll stop.”

“I don’t want to stop,” I said. The absolute truth, for the first time in a week. “But how far are we going with this?” Adam was used to jumping off the roof. I wasn’t. These were dangerous waters.

He moved to my ear again, and my body braced for the shockwaves. Just before his lips touched my skin, he whispered, “I guess we’ll know when we get there.”