A Whole New Crowd (A Whole New Crowd #1)(68)

I snorted. “You don’t need to work on that confidence. Your arrogance just sucked all the oxygen out of the room to inflate your ego.”
He laughed, but switched his body and punched the bag. It swung away and his hand lifted. It caught it as it swung back. “The shoulder. I leaned back and threw my body forward. You don’t have to be obvious about it. Twist your body. Let your feet help guide you.” He stopped and paused for a moment. “We’ve been sparring for the last month and a half. You know this.”
A single droplet of sweat rolled down the side of his face. It moved to his chin, settled on the cleft of his chin before it fell to his chest. I watched as it went all the way to his chest, making a smooth trail in its wake, all the way down, over his abdominals until it hit the waistband of his shorts. A heat that had been in me since I started, the fury from Shelly and Kevin, had been boiling, but now the flame lit up as if gasoline had been poured on it. I was burning up from the inside out and the need to take Tray and shove him against the wall was climbing. I wanted to push him to his knees, shove his pants down, and position myself over him. I could imagine the feel of him inside me, and my legs clenched. The ache was throbbing.
I started for him, wanting to feel him going in and out of me.
Tray’s smirk turned cautious, but he didn’t move. I stopped an inch from him. I could feel his body heat and moved my head to the side. I wasn’t trying to be seductive. I was trying to hold myself back. As his eyes held my mine, he saw what I wanted. His responded and darkened in lust, but he didn’t move. I wanted him to touch me. I wanted to feel the graze of his hand up my arm, over my shoulder. He would circle my throat, cup the back of my neck, and pull me the last inch to him. I would feel all of him against me. All his strength and power. I craved it.
Then I murmured, with a slight frown, “You’ve been holding back.”
“What?”
“Why do you hold back? You’ve been treating me like I’m fragile.”
A slight chuckle. “I’m not holding back and you’re not fragile. You were mourning. There’s a difference.”
For two months we’ve held each other at night. He would pull me against his chest, wrap his arm around me, and caress my arm until I fell asleep. He had fed me. He reminded me to shower at times, even told to dress for school a few days. I’d been a mess, then I’d been angry and demanding as he taught me how to fight. And now, I wanted what he’d withheld from me. I wanted him. I wanted all of him.
“I’ve only slept with one other guy.”
“I know.”
“People have always called me a slut. They assumed I was experienced, but I’ve only been with Brian. He’s the first guy I let in.”
“Hey.” His finger went under my chin and he tipped my head up. “You’re feeling a lot of different emotions right now. You were sad for a while. You were angry. You wanted to hurt someone.” He gave me a half-grin. “You might always feel that, but now you’ve moved past some of those emotions. Wanting to have sex is normal. You’re alive. You want to live. I understand, but I’m not making one damn move on you until I know it’s pure. Until I know that afterwards, you’re going to want me again and again and again. That you’re not going to curl in a ball with self-loathing or guilt because you’re alive and he’s not.” As he said those words, his finger tightened under my chin and I was pulled slowly to him. He looked straight down into me. I felt as if he was seeing my soul. I was bare to him. All the lust, pain, fury, everything was stripped clean until he just saw me, whoever I was.
A lump formed in my throat and I swallowed over it, shoving it down. I didn’t want to feel that. It was awkwardness, it was self-consciousness, and it was pain. I was tired of feeling this emptiness.
He lowered his head, his lips just above mine. If he moved a fraction of an inch down or I pressed up, they would touch. I could feel the brush of him.
Another touch. That was what I wanted. I didn’t want just sex with him. Realizing that, feeling the hunger for more, I pulled back. My heart stopped and fear crashed into my chest. I’d felt this before, the last time I saw Brian, a few times before that. Tray was my equal. He was the all. He wouldn’t play games. He wouldn’t hold back. He was real. Brian had… I turned away from Tray as I realized the truth.
It wasn’t the same. I felt more with Tray than I did with Brian.
“Taryn?”
I shook my head and cleared my thoughts. Moving back to the punching bag, I hit it. It barely moved again.
“Taryn?”
I couldn’t talk so I swung again, then again. I didn’t care if the bag didn’t move. I was moving. I was doing what I needed. I wanted all the shit from inside me out of me. As I kept going, punch after punch, I imagined a huge dump truck coming in and scooping out all the crappiness from me. With a guttural cry, I switched my feet, switched my fighting stance, and swung with my left arm. Then I kept going.
Tray came to stand on the other side of the bag. He held it, hugging it, as I kept pounding. I didn’t care if my hands bled or if my knuckles bruised. My head went down and I kept hitting. I went until my arms wouldn’t lift and my body was exhausted. Even then, after an hour, I wanted to keep going. Too many emotions were still swirling inside me. They were slithering around like snakes and I couldn’t get them out. I didn’t know how anymore.



CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“I thought Mandy dumped her friends.” I paused, then added, “Your friends.”