Bad Intentions (Bad Love #2)(87)
And every girl hated the one who stood in their way. That’d be me. At least in their mind. Sure, Ryan would fuck them, but that’s all they ever got. He always stood a little too close to me, stared a little too long. They noticed. And they were ruthless. So, I was deemed the brother fucker. I didn’t really care. Ryan didn’t help matters by forbidding the entire male population of Riverdale to stay far away from me. He was out of high school before I even began, but he’s somewhat of a legend around here. No one in their right mind would willingly cross him.
“How’s the steak?” I ask, keeping my eyes on my own piece of meat as I slice it carefully.
“Juicy.” He laughs, his mouth full. From my peripheral, I see a trail of bloody liquid traveling from the corner of his lip to his chin, but he doesn’t make any move to wipe it. He takes another bite, his eyes honing in on me. “So, when are you going to turn eighteen?”
“You’re my brother,” I grind out. “Shouldn’t you at least pretend to know this kind of crap?”
“I’m a shit brother,” he retorts, his voice as dry as his steak is juicy. “And when asked a question, you fucking answer. It’s really that simple, Rem.”
That’s the part where I should probably mention—he calls me Rem. My name is Remington, and my friends call me Remi, but Ryan, much to my dismay, has been calling me Rem since day one.
“August sixteenth,” I groan. Ryan moves his eyes up and down my body as much as he can with the barrier that’s the table between us.
“What’s two more weeks?” he mumbles as he rubs his lower lip with his thumb, and it’s glistening with the olive oil from the pasta and the juice of the steak.
“Until what?” I ask, playing dumb. He knows I’m not dumb. In fact, he resents the fact that I want more out of life than my high school diploma. But his comments have become increasingly inappropriate over the past few months, and even though it’s flattering, sometimes alarm bells go off in my head.
“Until your big brother can show you just how much he loves you.” Ryan chuckles sinisterly. I let loose a nervous smile. I know Ryan wants to get me into bed, but more than that, he wants to own me. Own my thoughts, my actions, my body. He thinks he already does. In his twisted mind, he calls it love. Why wouldn’t he? It’s not like Ryan has ever seen a good example of it. Hell, neither have I. In his mind, he protects me, takes care of me, and he needs me. In a way, I need him, too. But, I just can’t ever see us happening. This—what we’re doing right this moment—is what the rest of my life would look like. Me cooking dinner, wishing I were anywhere else, and Ryan being perfectly content to work on his bike and get tanked with his shitty friends every night. No, thank you.
It’s not like the attraction is not there. I had a major crush on him when I was younger. I thought he hung the moon and the stars, making everything brighter in my dull universe, and I think I did the same for him. But if he were the one, it wouldn’t feel so freaking wrong every time his throbbing dick “accidentally” presses against my ass at night.
Getting up from my seat, I take our plates to the sink and saunter back with a new beer, cracking it open in front of him. When I do, he snakes one arm around my waist and grabs me in one swift movement so that I’m straddling him on his lap. I can feel the seam of his zipper grinding into my crotch. Not gonna lie—it feels nice.
“Hey,” he breathes into my mouth, always a whisper from a kiss, but never there. Where he wants to be.
“Hi.” I swallow visibly.
“So.” His hand travels into my inner thigh, and I feel something stiffen underneath me. I take a deep breath. The room is dark and dingy and small, cluttered with our old furniture, with our pasts. It’s not exactly romantic, but I can’t deny the heady feeling coursing through me.
“You a virgin, Rem?” he whispers into my lips again, and this time it could qualify as a kiss. A part of me wants it to. The other part begs me not to go over that invisible, fragile line that I’m straddling just now. “You saved yourself for me? Kept this untouched?” His fingers hover over my groin, barely touching.
“No.” The word comes out more like a groan. Never mind the fact that I’ve only done it twice. I don’t need to tell him who it was. He knows. Zach Williamson. Eleventh grade. The only guy I dated for more than two months before I got bored. We actually made it through a whole semester before I dumped his ass. I didn’t care that I’d given him my virginity. I wasn’t waiting for “the one”. To be honest, I’ve never really thought that one person putting their body part into another person was that big of a deal. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t have high hopes, because both times were pretty anticlimactic.
There’s something in Ryan’s already-hooded expression that becomes even darker and more severe, and for a minute, my heart beats faster for the wrong reason. Not because I’m excited, but because I’m unnerved. I wait, studying his expression carefully, before his hard stare turns into a half-assed, placid smile.
“Good,” he says and squeezes my butt a little too hard, indicating that he doesn’t think it’s good at all. “I don’t think you could handle me without a little practice, anyway.”
Then his lips are not hovering anymore—they’re kissing—not slowly either. He doesn’t ask for permission. He is not tentative or unsure. His tongue invades my mouth in an instant, and it catches me off-guard. As I suck in some air, he takes the opportunity to deepen our kiss. I place both hands on his cheeks to ease him away, and he throws my hands off.