Double Cross (2010) by Crane Carolyn

Author:Crane, Carolyn [Carolyn, Crane,]
Format: epub
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 2011-01-14T19:18:54.125000+00:00

Chapter

Fourteen

SUMMER. MONGOLIAN DELITES. I kiss Packard, and something shifts in me, relaxes in me. A warm glow flows through my heart—relief, heat. I smooth my palms over his muscular back, enjoying the warmth of his skin, smiling into his yummy lips. I want to kiss him and taste him everywhere, and I’ll never get enough of him, because he makes me feel alive.

I eat him up a little bit, pull him into me. He groans, and his passion turns me on like crazy. Breath harder and faster now, my shoulder blades thunk against the wall. I love his happiness—I can feel it as strongly as my own, and I let him overwhelm me with hard kisses that glow inside me. Warm lips on my neck, my ear. He whispers my name. I grab his hair, pull him to me. God, I love him. I want to spread out under him and wrap around him at the same time. He presses into me, and we move together and it’s heaven, consuming each other. I just want to roll with him and be happy and free with him. Everything is right when we’re free to love each other.

Packard.

I roll over, thrumming with happiness, wanting to stay in that fragile, bright love, wanting the spell to last. I slide my hand over the cool, smooth pillow, and I realize I’m not at the restaurant; I’m in my bedroom.

I sit up.

Love? Packard? No! Happiness, okay. Intense happiness. Aliveness. A kind of freedom. But love?

Is this Ez, messing with my memory? Can she do that? I try to think what Packard said.

Shit! Was Packard inside my mind that whole time? Did he experience that dream memory from my point of view? Feel what I felt?

Of course he did. I felt his fear and guilt in the school stairwell plain as day. I rub my temples. Was it even real? Did I believe I loved him then?

I stare out my bedroom window at bare, cold tree branches. I’d brought myself to forgive him during that kiss. Maybe I felt fleeting love, and maybe Ez found it and blew it up big. She didn’t bother dredging up what happened after the kiss, of course. Where he refused to apologize for making me his minion. If there was any seedling of love there, he killed it with that.

Fine. Let him make it into whatever he wants, and let him go ahead and brandish it at me and try to manipulate me with it. I’ll tell him that’s what he killed. Anything you felt in the dream is just a memory of what you killed! I’ll say.

Still, the idea of facing him mortifies me.

Five-thirty in the morning. There will be no more sleeping now.

I go back over the dream, which was like a memory, but more. It felt like being there. And made me totally horny.

One wool sock lies on the floor next to my nightstand. I grab it and tiptoe around the cold floor looking for a match, body still humming with crazy craving for Packard and an intense desire to help Ez.

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