Chapter 23 #3
I squeeze my eyes shut as he continues to kiss me, resolutely refusing to kiss him back. He notices after a moment and stops. I can’t help the moan that escapes me at the loss of his lips against mine.
“Don’t you want this? Don’t you want me?”
Am I imagining the crack in his voice? I must be. Quill Nelson is incapable of emotion.
I squeeze my jaw shut as hard as I’m squeezing my eyes. It’s hard for me not to talk, even after all these years of constant bullying. Silence is just not my default mode.
But I’m going to do the impossible, and keep my voice to myself. I won’t give him a single part of me. Not even my words.
“Don’t you want me?” he insists, and this time, I can’t deny the way his voice sounds strained, like the lump in his throat is just as big as mine.
So much for the silence. Clearly, I’m not great with following through on my decisions.
“I don’t see why I should want someone who hates my guts,” I blurt out.
This time, it’s his hand that leaves my cheek, and I whimper again, feeling very lonely without the touch of the boy who I know despises me.
But when he speaks again, the strain in his voice is gone, replaced by… humor.
Goddamnit, I want to punch his stupid face. I can just tell he’s wearing a smirk, like I’m the funniest thing in the world to him, and when I pop open my eyes, my intuition is confirmed.
At least have the decency to hate me properly. Don’t find me… funny.
“I don’t hate you,” he says, his soft voice making me feel really confused. “Why do you think that?”
I stare at him like he’s gone mad. Where the hell do I even start? The first week of freshman year, when he dunked my head in the toilet? Or every single second since then? More than a thousand days have passed, and every one of them, Quill has made clear he hates me.
Even last night. Especially last night. What girl gets the kind of hard spanking Quill gave me and concludes that the guy giving it to her loves her?
I literally couldn’t move this morning, I was in so much pain, and I was still imagining he loved me.
I’m even crazier than he is.
It feels impossible to even start counting all the ways Quill has shown his hatred of me, so instead, I settle on, “You glared at me this morning.”
He frowns at me in confusion.
“I was late to class. I saw you and thought you were waiting for me. Instead, you glared at me and walked in.”
“Oh.” His brow clears. “I was waiting for you. And I didn’t mean to glare. I saw you were in pain, and I was angry with myself.”
“Oh.” It’s my turn to let that stupid little word escape my lips. But then I continue, “Well, you were looking at me with murder in your eyes, when I was…” I make a wry face. “In the corner.”
It sounds so juvenile that I wish I could disappear underground. Within a span of twelve hours, I’ve been spanked and sent to the corner. I want to die right now, but not from pain anymore. From pure embarrassment.
He doesn’t seem amused, though. His eyes look furious again, but now that I’m standing an inch away from him, I can tell the anger’s not directed at me.
“He shouldn’t have done that,” he says. “I told him so after class.”
I raise an eyebrow in surprise, before he continues, “And I was angry at Will for throwing that ball of paper at you. Why would I be angry at you?”
Because you’ve been angry at me since the moment I stepped foot in this school? Is my silent answer, but he doesn’t give me time to voice that thought, instead adding, “I had a few words with Will about that, too.”
“You mean you beat the crap out of him,” I correct him, my lips curling up into the smallest of smiles.
So much for my conclusion that he doesn’t care. Every single thing he’s done to me over the past three years is all but forgotten as I start to feel practically giddy, realizing he stood up for me.
Beaten the hell out of Will and… “Uhm, what kind of talk did you have with Mr. Binney?” I ask, my eyes wide as I realize what his version of talking means.
No freaking way did Quill beat up a teacher.
He doesn’t answer. He’s really the polar opposite of me.
The unnatural silence I’ve forced myself into in order to put up a wall between us is gone, and I’m back to wanting to chatter away.
Meanwhile, his reserve of words is all but depleted, and now that he can tell I’ve accepted his explanations, he apparently doesn’t see the use in forcing more words out of his mouth.
Instead, he grabs me suddenly by the wrist, unlocks the bathroom door and yanks me out.
Liam and Dane are still standing there, their smirks slightly dampened by the fact that I’m still dry, but apparently convinced nonetheless that their friend has just tortured me in some way.
Quill doesn’t seem to notice their expressions, instead pulling me down the hallways toward the entrance. He might have convinced me he doesn’t hate me, but his abrupt way of pulling me outside the school is clearly not convincing anyone else.
I try to keep up with him, still wincing at every movement as we head toward his motorcycle, though the pain feels more than manageable now.
In fact, I welcome it, because it’s tied to a memory that’s once more grown happy.
Meanwhile, the nagging sensation that I’m being incredibly naive and stupid to give in to Quill so easily is fading with every second that I feel his touch on my skin.
Then we stop by his bike and I quickly try to rearrange my face so that I’m not showing any of my physical pain as he fits his one helmet on me.
But he notices. He follows my glance as I eye the seat ruefully.
Any other time I’d be over the moon at the thought that he’s going to take me for a ride, but right now, all I can think of is that my ass is about to be in contact, once more, with a seat.
This one is far more comfortable than the metal classroom chair, but still.
I try to disguise my reaction by saying, “We shouldn’t. We’ll be late for English.”
Nerd. I really hate myself as I see his mouth twitch into a smirk.
“You’re going to have to get used to skipping class, now that you’re with me.”
My heart skips a beat. Now that you’re with me. Yes, please. Yes. I don’t care what it says about me, I’m suddenly totally willing to skip all the classes in the world. I’ll happily destroy my GPA. My GPA’s meaningless, anyway. It’s not like I could afford anything but the local community college.
Everything’s meaningless but Quill, standing in front of me, his hand once more possessively wrapped around my wrist.
“You’ll also have to get used to…” He drags his eyes toward my nether regions. “Pain. I don’t know how to be any other way.”
I blush hard, remembering the spanking that had surprised me at first, but then had turned… pleasurable, in some weird way. Even though it still hurt like hell.
“I liked it,” I breathe out, so quietly that I wonder if he’s heard it. But his deepening smirk tells me he has.
“I didn’t mean for it to hurt this bad,” he says, repeating a version of the semi-apology he’d given to me before. I have a feeling it’s the closest thing to apologizing that he’s capable of, and my heart clings to the words. “Come on,” he adds.
“Where?”
“Home. I’m going to take care of you.”
Again, my heart seizes at those words. Everything that’s happening right now feels like some magical dream, far crazier even than this weekend.
Because it’s not just his body anymore making me live intense sensations that are far better than anything I could have dreamed up in the solitude of my room.
It’s his words, telling me that he cares.
Then I once more take in the motorcycle seat with a wry face. No matter how much I desperately want what Quill is promising, I think my ass will explode if it comes into contact with one more surface, after the three-hour-long torture session that was math class.
His hand still around my wrist, he pulls me to the motorcycle, but instead of making me sit down, he leads me over it, so I’m lying down across the seat, reminding me of the degrading way he kept me over his lap in the car ride to the lake.
But this time, it doesn’t feel degrading. Only awkward as I let out an embarrassed laugh. “Quill! What are you doing?!”
“Making sure I don’t hurt you again,” is his answer, and then he pins me to the seat with a hand to my back.
The engine roars and he takes off, clearly not caring about the surprised stares of the students lingering around the school. Well, if he doesn’t care, neither do I, and I sink into the delicious feeling of his body heat against me, his hand on my back, and his promise.
You’re with me. I’m going to take care of you.
This is the best day of my life.