Try by Burana Lily

Author:Burana, Lily [Burana, Lily]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2010-04-01T03:00:00+00:00

I woke early. Brandon was out swimming laps, everyone else off to breakfast. I squeezed some skin cream into my palm and rubbed it into my cracked knuckles. The dry Western summer was annihilating my skin. A hand reached across my pillow. J.W. wiggled his fingers, signaling for lotion. “I’ll do it,” I said, crawling under the sheets. I rubbed him with the cream, massaging it briskly into his feet and legs. I didn’t have any anger toward him this morning, only the urgent need to nurture. J.W.’s insensitivity around the Taffy issue had been a product of my imagination. His vulnerability, however, was entirely real. I could lose him at any time.

The room was dark like a secret cell. J.W. emerged from the sheets and allowed me access to his entire body without restraint, which made me feel guilty for the camper stunt. I smoothed lotion carefully over the bruises up and down his side, and the bite mark on his inner thigh already fading. As the sun climbed higher in the sky, light poured through a split in the flimsy blinds, a broad beam shining on the cheap comforter. He lolled in the strip of sunlight like a golden cub. “You take good care of me.”

“I like taking care of you.” When I said it, I realized it was true. I kept massaging him, moving down his abdomen, my touch firm and slow. When he got hard, I wrapped my fingers around him, returned my other hand to the scene of my transgression, and took care of him as sweetly and lovingly as I could.

His face was no longer puffy, but his eye was blacker than before, the prune-dark bruise ringed by dots of gray-green and blue. The scabs made him look like he’d slid down a cheese grater cheek first. I straddled him carefully, avoiding his sore side, and lay with my ear against his chest. “Guess I’m not so lucky for you after all, huh?”

He rubbed my temples. “Don’t say that. Think how much worse that wreck could have been. I got off easy because you were there. I’m certain of that.”

I called Jace from the bathroom, the sink faucet on full blast to give us some privacy.

“How’s Dangerboy?” Jace was fueling the truck. I could hear cars zooming by in the background.

“Fine. We’re having a nice, relaxing trip.” An awkward thing to say, with J.W. in the other room zipping up like a sailor on leave. He was so mindful of time I expected to look in his eyes and find a second hand sweeping across the pale blue iris.

“You run across his glamourpuss brother out there on the road?”

I kept my voice low. “No. I overheard someone in the stands saying Duff’s out with a concussion and may be cutting back for the rest of the summer. J.W. doesn’t talk about him at all, though. People won’t even mention Duff’s name when he’s around. Some bad blood there.”

Jace harrumphed. “A guy who can’t let bygones be bygones isn’t a good sign.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.