Cream of the Crop (Hudson Valley, #2)(51)

I smiled ruefully. “It was more like a bad CW show than it was Sex and the City. But it does have the sex. And we were in the city.”

And the city came alive in the company of Thomas Murray, who knew more trivia bits and factoids about Manhattan than anyone I’d ever met. One day we walked up Broadway from Fourteenth Street all the way to Columbus Circle, and he literally guided me through the history of our city as told through architecture. Thomas was planning to be an architect when he completed his master’s program at NYU. In the early days of our . . . whatever it was quickly becoming, I’d spend my days pining my way through calculus and AP English composition, mentally comparing every high school boy in my class to Thomas the College Man and finding them coming up woefully short. He got to study exciting things, fields of interest that would actually lead to something, a career, a real grown-up career, while I was stuck still in high school, spinning my wheels and doodling his name all over everything that would stand still. I’d always been an A student, but for the first time ever, my grades took a dip. And if it wasn’t for it being my senior year and being accepted into all three schools I’d applied to, I probably wouldn’t have been allowed to see him as much.

Although my parents had no idea how much I really was seeing him.

The first time he kissed me was on the third floor of a townhouse my father was renovating. I’d brought him there once after school, after hearing him talk on the phone the other night for what seemed like hours about pocket doors and the architectural significance of them. I’d stolen the master key ring my father always kept inside his briefcase, told my parents I was going to study at the library (not an unheard-of thing on a Friday night, thank you very much), and told him to meet me on Seventy-sixth and Madison.

I’d never done something like this before. But I’d grown up on my dad’s job sites, I knew the codes, I knew exactly how to execute this sneak attack. And when I walked Thomas inside, and he saw the breadth of the renovation my father was taking on, he was in awe.

Looking back now, it was easy to see that not only was he in awe of the townhouse, he was likely also in awe at the ease with which he’d managed to sweep the chubby and slightly lonely daughter of one of New York’s prime real estate developers off her Crocs.

I certainly didn’t feel lonely when he pressed me up against one of those very pocket doors I’d seduced him with, and kissed me until I was seeing stars.

And when his hands slipped around my waist, and I instinctively shrank from his hands on that part of my body, a part that no one ever touched, he tugged me tight against his torso and broke that first kiss. “You’re beautiful, do you know that?”

My heart soared.

“I know most guys mind a little extra padding, but not me.”

My heart soared higher.

His lips kissed a path down my jaw, stopping just below my ear, where he whispered, “Though not too much more, right?”

“Right,” I answered breathlessly.

He kissed me right out of my head, and when he pushed his hand under my shirt and grazed the underside of my breast, I was certain that if he’d asked that night, I would have let him do anything he wanted to me.

But he waited. A gentleman? Sure, let’s go with that.

The rest of that spring I spent with Thomas. If I wasn’t physically with him, I was thinking about him, dreaming about him, mooning over him. He couldn’t always be with me, of course; he had studying to do, projects to work on, and I would never think of interrupting him when he was working on his master’s thesis. But when he had a break, I dropped whatever it was that I was doing to be with him. After all, as he’d pointed out numerous times, I was a senior, and really didn’t need to spend as much time on my studies as he did. Last semester senior year was just a formality, right?

Until my midterm grades came in, and my B’s had fallen to C’s, D’s, and one very upsetting F.

My parents had met Thomas by now, and while they liked him, and liked that their daughter had a boyfriend (I had a boyfriend!), they weren’t crazy about me spending so much time with him. Especially after my grades came out.

A war was waged in our brownstone that day, a war that had been waging between teenagers and their parents since the dawn of time. And I was going to fight to the death to be allowed to continue to see Thomas.

For a girl whose world had been mostly observing the world happen to other people, now I was actually experiencing things, doing things, wanting and being wanted. It was intoxicating, and nothing could have stopped me from what I wanted, what I needed.

And what I needed, more than anything, was Thomas. Never mind the fact that I never once met his friends (it’s not the same as silly high school parties; my friends are all busy either studying or working their two to three jobs because not all of us were lucky enough to be born into wealthy families), never once met his parents (they live in New Jersey and I don’t have a car, and no, you can’t just take a town car everywhere), or even went out to a nice dinner (if we stay in, you can practice your cooking skills. I mean, really, Natalie, how can you not even know how to make toast?).

The first time he put his hands on me, he told me how pretty I was, how soft I was, and how I should never feel bad about my body, that I just wasn’t meant to look like most girls my age.

The first time he put his mouth on me, with his head between my thighs and a serious expression on his face, he told me it was natural for women to love this, and if I didn’t love it, too, that maybe I should think about how lucky I was that someone was willing to do this, considering the obvious. And that even though he personally thought I had a pretty cunt, perhaps I should visit a spa and have some of that au naturel look taken care of.