Chapter 41 #4
“Yeah, sure, we’ll go right up, Corbell. Then do you want a hundred grand and a kick in the ass?” I walked away, frustrated by the countless nos that I’d given him in the past ten minutes.
“Fuck, you’re weird. It really is true what they say about you.” I heard him laugh behind me.
“I don’t care what they say about me,” I shot back, continuing to walk as far away from him as possible.
“Be aware that that’s all that counts. What they say.”
I rolled my eyes. I knew I should’ve ignored him, but it was stronger than me. I turned around to give him a defiant look.
“Who? Who says that? Your friends? Those future astrophysicists and Nobel Prize winners? Are you talking about them?”
I pointed at the group of football players laughing vulgarly at every little ball they managed to throw in a girl’s bra.
“It doesn’t matter who believes it. Gossip can be more convincing than a boring truth,” he shot back staunchly. “So?”
“Trust that I just put two fingers down my throat to vomit,” I answered, turning away.
But that gesture didn’t seem to be enough.
“Maybe you didn’t understand. If I go back to school tomorrow and say I slept with you—” I was horrified, while he sneered in an unsettling way.
“—everyone would take that as gospel.”
“Why would you say something like that?” I asked, scared.
“And why would you refuse?”
In an attempt to distance myself from him, I got too far away from the crowd. I looked around. We were by the stairs that led to the second floor, and nobody was around us.
Damn it, James had been right. I shouldn’t’ve given Connell an excuse.
“Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have judged your friends, but you can’t say something like that.”
“Yes, I can.”
I gulped, now pressed against the wall.
“No, hear me out.”
“No, I don’t hear anything.” He chuckled and pointed at the boxes that music was blaring out of. “Wait, I’ll hold you closer.” I caught myself trembling at those words, and I shivered again when his bearded chin grazed against my cheek.
“Connell?”
A familiar chuckle.
“So what do you say, can I bang your sister or not?”
James’s tipsy, amused voice reached my ears. That familiar sound brought me back to reality, making me feel safe again.
Connell’s face changed suddenly when he realized that James was with his sister and holding her tight.
“Is this a joke?” he spat angrily at the girl.
“What joke?” She chuckled, visibly trashed.
James seemed fully satisfied by Connell’s reaction, and to throw salt in his wound, he pulled the girl toward him and started making out with her so violently that he forced her to bend her neck to sustain that wild kiss.
If I was relieved by James’s presence a moment ago, now I felt like countless needles had just been stuck into the pit of my stomach. And the feeling got worse when she ran her fingers through his tousled hair, literally nauseating me.
Why did he let anyone do anything to him? Why didn’t he have a little respect for himself?
For a moment I hoped Connell would smack both of them.
“You’ll pay for that, asshole!”
Connell said that sentence while throwing a punch, but James quickly managed to avoid it. He walked away, only to hit a glass table that shattered onto the floor in a thousand pieces.
“Are you nuts? Why won’t you ever let me have fun?” the girl yelled at her brother. Connell went after her, and she ran away telling him to go to hell.
Watching Connell run after her made me breathe a sigh of relief. If nothing else, the scene had gotten rid of that insufferable pain in the ass for me.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw James doubled over and slipping into what looked to be a luxurious bathroom.
“Are you okay?” I asked him, staying a reasonable distance away.
“Does it look like I am?”
I stood in the doorway, but was close enough to realize it was a wound. The blood spattering in big splotches on the sink made me shiver.
“Show me.”
I moved in front of him, looking first at his face then at his neck.
“It’s nothing,” he said.
“I said show me.” I used my angriest tone possible, and even though it wasn’t credible, he decided to let me look at him.
“Oh my god! Look at all that blood.”
I tried pulling down his tracksuit pants with both hands to expose his sides, but James pulled back, irritated at my gestures.
“Oh, take me out to dinner first? What the fuck! If you want to undress me at least ask.”
“James, I just want to get a better look at the wound. It was a sharp edge. What if there are more pieces of glass in there?”
“So what? Enough fucking around.”
His words washed over me. I opened the medicine cabinet on the wall, looking for something useful to treat him with.
“Sit down, I’ll find something.” I pointed at the edge of the bathtub, but James preferred sitting down on the floor, resting his head against the white tiles.
“Oh shit,” I heard him curse when he turned to touch it. I’d avoided eye contact until that moment, but now I had to look him in the eye.
“What is it? Does it hurt?”
“No,” he snarled, clenching his jaw.
“You better go to the ER.”
James pulled out a vape pen and put it between his lips, looking up at me in response.
“No, I told you,” he insisted.
“Jesus Christ, you’re stubborn.”
“Me? Says the person who’s insisted for the past half hour on treating a scratch.”
I saw him put his hand in his tracksuit pocket looking for a cartridge, but he didn’t seem to find it.
“I’m not leaving you like this, James.”
At that point James quickly lifted his head, and his dark eyes intensely struck me. “Get a move on, then.” He shot me down curtly, pointing at the cut on his skin.
James wasn’t Mr. Manners, but I at least won. I grabbed a cotton ball from the cabinet and dipped it in disinfectant.
“I don’t understand why you have so much fun getting yourself in these situations,” I muttered before crouching over him.
James shrugged indifferently.
“Don’t tell me that you’d prefer staying with Connell a little longer.” His husky voice made me shiver.
“Do you want to make me believe that you set him off to get him off my back? Listen, I don’t need you to defend me.”
I was focused on bandaging his skin, when I looked up to meet his gaze.
“Ah no?” His lips curved up.
“No. Besides you’d been messing with that girl before.”
“Incredible. Nothing or nobody I do ever gets past you. Right, Detective Madeline?”
I kept my gaze firm on my hand, focused on cleaning the wound, but out of the corner of my eye I saw him smile, satisfied by his teasing. But I couldn’t throw it back at him because his scent started rotating around my breathing space, making me tenser than ever.
“Asshole,” I muttered, embarrassed, continuing to medicate his side.
It wasn’t the first time I’d done this, but I wasn’t an expert at first aid, and I didn’t know how to assess how deep the wound was or recognize its severity.
But when the bleeding stopped and I determined that there weren’t any foreign bodies or glass around it, I let out a sigh of relief.
“The bleeding stopped. Maybe the problem is solved.”
I stood up again to put the supplies back, but my heart almost skipped a beat when James brushed against my wrist. The contact with his warm hand made me jump. He tugged me down, straddling me on top of him.
Our bodies crashed in an inescapable almost violent collision that caused him to let out a moan.
James took the vape pen from his lips and penetrated me with a deep gaze.
“Are you sure it’s solved?” He provoked me.
I was trapped in his gaze. His blue irises became thinner and his pupils dilated impossibly wide. I moistened my dry lips, trying to keep a cool head, something that I was incapable of doing. And that apparent calmness wavered when James brushed every part of my face with the heat of his eyes.
Stay calm, June.
The cotton ball that I was holding had now slipped onto the floor. Slowly, I curved my neck when James grazed my cheeks with his fingertips. In a second, electric shocks permeated me. Feeling him so close to me rekindled weird, uncontrollable, and unclassifiable sensations.
“I don’t know what problem you’re talking about, James.”
With my mind completely clouded, I let the first words that came to mind slip out.
I felt dazed, but I couldn’t do anything. Confusion overflowed inside of me and grew when I saw James lift the corner of his mouth to smile at me in his soppy way.
“Do you mean to tell me that you don’t feel like there’s still a problem, princess?” Oh my god, we’d never even kissed, why did he have to make me think these things? While one hand caressed my cheek, the other landed on my bare leg.
“Who do you think you’re talking to?” I challenged him, feigning nonexistent control. As if the cold of his metal rings touching the heat of my skin didn’t make me shiver.
“Maybe I want to show you that you’re no different from any of the others.”
“You’re such an asshole.”
James didn’t seem to get angry at the insult. Maybe continuously insulting me amused him. Slowly, he tasted his lower lip with the tip of his tongue, enchanting my eyes with the forbidden but arousing image of his full, reddened lips.
No, June, don’t even think about it. Because it was easy to think that. I was thinking about it so much that if he didn’t kiss me now, I might almost go crazy. I don’t know why I did it, but I let both palms of my hands stick to his bare, sculpted chest.
He smiled, pleased at the move, as if he knew I’d been wanting to do it for a long time.
His breath became slow and measured under my indecisive hands.
With his gaze, James followed the trajectory of my fingers as they moved slowly on his perfect, smooth skin, like they were becoming familiar with a mysterious creature.
All it took was for me to look up to meet his cheeks, flushed from alcohol, and his hair tousled by who knew how many girls.
I felt unstable without a way out. He focused on my hands as they continued to explore his chest before descending to sculpt his hard, compact abs.
My fingertips slid along his raised veins and tense muscles until I stopped at the edge of his tracksuit pants.
“Aren’t we brave.” He smiled at me, setting off furious palpitations in my stomach.
He was just messing with me. I repeated it to myself a few times before deciding to run away from this dangerous situation.
But when I tried to get up, James held me back.
He put both hands on my hips, forcing them to stay exactly where he wanted them.
A moan escaped my lips but my attempts to move failed.
I just ended up rubbing against his body even more.
And if my breath wavered, James didn’t seem in the least embarrassed by how his erection was swelling between my thighs.
Overcome by this excruciating tension, I shut my eyes.
“Oh my god, you’re drunk, James.”
I tried to recover a bit of oxygen, but now what I was sensing under me was so obvious that my cheeks throbbed with embarrassment.
“And you’re beautiful.”
His sentence went so far, whispered in such a warm, deep voice, that I was assailed by doubt.
Was I imagining things, or did he really say that?
James took his time, as if he was waiting for a signal from me, and in a moment his fingers squeezed my shirt, barely lifting it on my hips, and he started drawing small circles with his thumbs on my sensitive skin.
His eyes darted quickly between my legs, and I thought about that morning again, when his touch didn’t seem to be for its own sake, when he seemed to be looking for something. How’d he figure it out?
I looked down, but James lifted my chin to make our eyes meet again.
“What are you hiding, Snow White?”
I was in my enchanted bubble, and I didn’t realize that the music in the background had just cut off. But both of us heard the unusual chatter, because James and I turned at the same time toward the bathroom door. Jackson appeared, his face as white as a sheet.
“What is it?”
This time James didn’t even try to pretend we weren’t doing anything; instead he seemed more annoyed by his friend’s intrusion.
“William,” was the only thing Jackson managed to say.
“What’s going on?” asked James, lifting my weight to help me get up with him.
Jackson looked like he was in shock, he couldn’t talk.
“Will . . .”
He didn’t say anything else, but one of the voices far away became clearer.
“Call an ambulance!”