Landon had apparently read my mind, as his fingers had wended their way to the back of my bra. He fumbled for a second, but then regained some expertise. Just as the hooks of my sheath fell away, his mouth had slid the fabric to the side so his tongue could attach itself to my nipple. Now it was my turn to whimper.
He sucked long and hard on my bare tit; he sucked like he was thirsty for me. I lost sight of the car and the world around us for a moment, as his rhythm grew urgent, back and forth, back and forth across my sensitive flesh. He’d ripped my bra clasp open in one cool gesture, so the fabric landed on the floor somewhere between our coiled forms. The gear shift, the bucket seat—everything was an impediment. I was unwilling to wait.
Yet.
“No,” Landon pressed. Just as I'd wrested the zipper of his jeans to half-mast, he pulled his muscular body all the way to the far side of the car, where he coiled like a rat.
“I don't want to do it like this,” he said, wiping the back of his bitten-looking mouth. His hair stuck up all over his head, a crown of funny angles. With an athlete's grace, he bent down, tossed me my bra, and turned the ignition in one fluid gesture.
“You're not seriously going to give me Lady Blue Balls, are you Landon?” I pawed at his bare chest, pulse quickening again when he involuntarily flexed against my palm. But no cigar.
Landon swiveled toward me, and took my cheeks in his open, warm palms. His dark eyes shone in the streetlight. He kept them fixed on my own.
“When we do this,” he said slowly, “we're going to do it right. Okay?” The rest of Austin, accomplice, began to seep back in—cars were honking somewhere, music was playing. I saw the effort in his gaze and understood that he was serious. And that maybe, just maybe—we could be serious.
“Fine,” I said, after a beat. Ever the gentleman, Landy waited for me to yank my bra across my bare chest before guiding the Saab back towards the freeway. I didn't ask where we were going. Landon seemed to know. I thought I would be disappointed, or feel humiliated at the least (it's not every day, after all, that a lady throws herself at her stepbrother and is brutally rejected)—but instead what lapsed between us felt comfortable. Landon switched the radio back on. We both wiggled a little bit to Blondie, in our seats. I caught his hammy dancing face in the rearview mirror, and we both broke into shy giggles.
“Oh!” Landon screeched—so loud and impromptu that I jumped a little. “I know where we're going. Don't you worry, Doll.”
There was plenty to worry about, but somehow—I listened.
Chapter Twenty-One
Landon
I know this sounds hella stupid, but I actually felt more awake than usual. It wasn't so different than a runner's high—colors looked sharper, music sounded better. Shit was broken all over the place—at school, at home, in all the fibers of our fucked-up family—but I still had this giddy, insane sensation that everything was going to be okay. And it was all because of her.
“You're going to dig this place,” I said, swinging le Saab into the last open spot behind the bar. Fucking victory, man. Signs were sprouting up everywhere.
She reached across the armrest and started to knead my thigh. With effort, I reached down and swatted her fingers away.
“Lan-don!” she giggled.
“Ash-leigh!” I echoed, mocking her. As I slid the gearshift into park, I took a second to look at us again. Was it painfully obvious that we'd just hooked up?
“God, you're beautiful,” I heard myself murmur. I cracked a smile immediately after. I'd never before found myself in the position of being surprised by the words tumbling out of my mouth, but there she was. Her pale face spread out before me like a moon. A few hours ago, she'd been a wreck of a frown, and here I'd managed to help her forget some of the pain. Her smile was almost as good as the feel of her deft little fingers on my back, pressing, pushing...
“Fuck. We have to get out of this car now.”
“Oh, I'm really so irresistible as all that?” Doll wiggled her eyebrows and bit her lip. I felt my better half quiver, hopeful, in my jeans. In one fast swoop, I rammed towards her face, dragging her mouth into mine.
I knew we couldn't get tangled in the kiss (someone give me a medal, please—I am such a good-fucking-guy), but it was still damn near impossible to drag myself away. I'd try to make for the door, and she'd throw her hair back and expose a bare swatch of her neck. I was like a vampire again, needing to suck. She anticipated my every move and coiled her body accordingly, foreshadowing a great chemistry in the sack.
“No!” I finally shouted, jerking myself out of the driver's seat so I was suddenly yelling up at the Austin sky. “No! We are adults. We have self-control! Time for some PG fun!”
“Dork!” she tittered, climbing out of her side of the car. I stared at the ground while she adjusted her sweater, seductively. We could do this. I could do this.
“Where are we anyway, Landy?”
At that moment, the bar sounds rose out of the silence to answer my question. A few theatre-y looking kids pulled the door open, and a smattering of terrible voices joined the Texas night. Doll took one look at the neon sign and then turned back to me, shaking her head.
“Oh no. Oh no, no, no.”
“You're not a real UT kid until you've torn it up at karaoke,” I twinkled. Then I jogged over to her side of the car before she could protest anymore. I grabbed her wrist and gave it a tug.
Inside, Derby's was mayhem as usual. I hadn't actually come to the karaoke bar for something like two years—hey, an athlete's social life had its perks—but I had great memories from freshman year of screaming out Primus lines with some of my fellow pledges before I'd shirked the whole frat thing to focus on football. For one thing, Derby's was famous for never carding anybody. For another, they made a “specialty Hurricane” in a big glass shoe that could send Andre the Giant down in one, and said cocktail was a shockingly reasonable six bucks.
We had to thwack our way through a lot of sweaty co-eds, but I knew I'd picked the right spot when Doll's eyes lit up. Some art-y kid had taken to the stage with some sad man song.
“The Smiths!” she bellowed into my ear, cutting over the noise. “I didn't know they'd have, like, actually good music! I love The Smiths!” Her earnest grin made me mirror her face back to her, and I watched her wiggle out of the corner of my eye as I ordered our drinks.
“Sterling Silver! Long time no see, my bud!” cried the bartender. Same guy as it had been for years, apparently—this tall, skinny raver type named Blaine. I appreciated Blaine. He'd made me feel like a local celebrity long before I actually was one. I was pretty sure there was still a humiliating photo of me somewhere over the cash register, a still of me and Denny singing a Spice Girls song. We'd lost a bet.
“Who's the cutie?” Blaine asked, nodding over my shoulder. Doll was dancing crazy, having apparently taken on a whole new personality. Whoever these “Smiths” were, it seemed that they got her hot.
“Chick has good taste,” the bartender nodded approvingly. I made to fake punch him on the arm. If memory served, Blaine was famous for expressing open dislike of certain people's partners. I suddenly remembered one ill-fated evening when I'd taken Zora there. She'd pouted in the corner all night about how Derby's didn't serve white wine.
“Look out!” cried my old friend, and his pointer finger snapped me out of my reverie—Doll, who hadn't had anything to drink yet, had somehow wormed her way onstage to finish the rest of the sad man song. She started bleating into the spare mic, to the visible chagrin of the little singing hipster dude. Yet no one tried to scoot her offstage.