Deeper (Caroline & West #1)(68)
Who are we talking about? I’m not sure. I’m starting to feel kind of drugged, dumb, like I might be saying more than I mean to, but I don’t really care.
“West?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s he do next?”
“He puts his tongue on her, right through her panties. Gets his hands underneath the elastic, holds her there on the bench and licks and licks her until her panties are soaked through and she’s just about dead from it.”
“Does he like that?”
“He f*cking loves it. Making her feel good, making her give up control, shut her head off and just feel—it’s a trip. And he likes those panties, too. Those yellow panties. But he needs more, so instead of taking them off, he just eases them over a few inches. Enough to get his tongue in her slit, where she’s soft and swollen and so wet. He can’t get enough of her. He just buries his face in her, gets himself wet all over his chin and his mouth.”
“West.”
“She tastes incredible.”
“God, West, I can’t—”
I can’t, either. I’m thinking about her *, the way she felt under my fingers, under my tongue. Her thighs pressing against my head, her hands in my hair, on my dick—it’s too much. “I want you,” I say. “Fuck, I want you.”
“You’ve got me.”
“Right here, on this couch, here. I want you here, Caro. I want to taste you. Get my fingers inside you, tongue your clit. I want you naked.”
She’s panting.
“Use your hand,” I tell her. “Pretend it’s me. Come for me. I want to hear.”
“West.”
“Yeah.”
“You, too.”
“I’m close.”
And then it’s just breath. Noise. It’s just moaning, grunting.
It’s knowing what she’s doing, picturing her doing it, her tits, her *, her eyes closed and her mouth open and the way her face looks when I make her come.
It’s my hand working hard and fast, her fingers flying, this thread of connection between us, nothing real about it, nothing true, nothing right, but here it is, anyway. Nothing I can do about it. Nothing I want to do but this, but Caroline. Nothing.
She sucks in a breath, says, “Now,” and I go with her with a grunt and a hot splash on my hand and a little bit on the couch, which, f*ck, I’m going to have to clean that up, but I can’t even care. She’s trying hard not to make noise, and even so I can hear her, I can hear the not-noise she’s making, and it’s f*cking glorious.
I come apart, a little bit. Lean back, close my eyes, listen to her. I go loose, unhinged, and break into pieces.
But I feel, afterward, like maybe some part of me got put back together.
It’s late. I walk out to the greenhouse, dodging dog shit in the backyard and wishing I’d turned on the back porch light.
I step in something too soft. “Fuck.”
I try scraping off my boot in the grass, but it’s no use. The smell is in my nose now, my lip curling. I have to find a stick, try picking brown crap out of the treads, but that doesn’t work, either, and I end up turning on the garden hose, covering the cold copper fitting with my thumb, blasting the sole of my boot and sending flecks of shit shooting all over the place.
By the time I’ve got the boot cleaned off, my pants are sticking to my shins. I’m cold and pissed, disgusted with everything.
I’m going back to school in a week, and my whole life has turned into a minefield of crap.
When I get to the greenhouse and open the door, I don’t see Bo right away. I take a breath, trying to find a calm spot to do this from. It’s not his fault I stepped in dog shit. Not his fault I’ve been waiting to talk to him for days and there’s never a right time.
He’s working. Mom’s around. Frankie needs help with her homework.
Bo has been pushing away from the kitchen table and disappearing for hours at a time, and I’ve always thought of the greenhouse as his domain, where he goes to be alone, not to be pestered by his girlfriend’s kid, who’s sleeping on his couch, eating his food, getting in the way.
But I have to talk to him, because I’m leaving soon. Nobody else will tell me.
There’s music playing in the back. I follow it, follow the light, and find Bo just leaning there, blowing cigarette smoke out a broken pane of glass into the night.
I recognize the song. Metallica. He’s into all those old metal bands, but Mom can’t stand the stuff.
The greenhouse is a rusted-out dump, a lot of the glass broken. Bo loves it. He likes growing things—not just weed, which he only plants back in the woods, but vegetables, herbs, all kinds of shit. He talks about finding a freeze-drier, storing up food against the collapse of civilization, but he mostly ends up putting bushel baskets of tomatoes and corn and peppers out by the road with a sign that says: Help yourself.
Bo is short, barrel-chested, with a shaved head and grizzled chest hair you can usually see because he goes around shirtless or half unbuttoned. In his prison uniform—belt weighed down with his radio, his phone, a nightstick, his Beretta—he looks like a badass.
He is a badass. He’s got the scars to prove it. I saw him get into a fight once at a bar. He destroyed the dude who picked the fight. Just destroyed him.