“I don’t want him to.”
“Olivia, just looking at that man makes me want to have sex and I’m sure ninety nine percent of the female student body agrees with me. What’s your issue? Wait! Were you molested?”
She pronounced it “mo-lested.” I rolled my eyes.
“No, shut up. I just don’t want to. Why do I have to be a product of sexual assault because I’m not jumping into bed with him?”
“Hellooo, Caleb is a man. He wants to have sex and if you’re not giving it to him, he’ll find it somewhere else.”
I rolled over and refused to say anything more. What did Camadora know anyway? Weren’t freshman infamous for being stupid and slutty? Wasn’t my father famous for ‘finding it somewhere else’?
No. I wasn’t going to use my father as an excuse to lose Caleb again. Caleb was faithful, attentive, and he had never pushed me to do more than kiss, because he respected me. I remembered the last time we kissed. It had been in his room, lying on his bed. His whole body had felt tense, like he was wound up and ready to spring loose. What if he was using every ounce of self-control when he was with me? The word ‘cock tease’ sprung to mind and I crept further under my covers in shame.
It wasn’t that I didn’t think about having sex with him. I thought about it all the time. But, thinking and doing were two different things. I wasn’t ready and I didn’t know why.
Laura Hilberson was found the same week Caleb and I messed around for the first time. The police found her wandering the Miami airport, barefoot, and her eyelids hanging low over milky eyes. Laura's story was that a man had abducted her while she was jogging on a trail at a park not two miles from the school. Calling for help, he claimed to have sprained an ankle, and begged for her assistance. He asked to be helped to his car, which was just yonder, over the rise. Reluctantly, Laura agreed. She shouldered his weight and walked the short distance to his white van. The van was an old Astro van with rust eating away the metal like cancer. Hindsight told Laura that the darkly tinted windows and slightly cracked rear door was a flashing warning sign. As she helped him into the driver’s seat, he let his keys slip from his fingers and fall into the grass at Laura’s feet. When she bent to retrieve them, the man lifted a crowbar from the passenger seat and connected it with one powerful motion to Laura’s pretty temple. He then shoved her into the back and drove her to what the papers were calling “The Rapist’s Den.”
Laura remembered being kept in a basement of some sort, for a time she couldn’t determine, because she had been sedated. The man, who she described as “shy,” used her for sex and company. Then one day, for no good reason, kissed her on the cheek and dropped her off at the airport. She told police his name was Devon. Laura Hilberson had been missing for six months.
While Laura was lying in a hospital bed being questioned by police, Caleb and I were at a charity auction that most seniors in his fraternity were required to attend. It was one of those fluffy affairs where everyone dresses up in expensive suits and dresses, with waiters circle the room with flutes of champagne. He spotted a group of people who were huddled together in a tight pack.
“I went to high school with them,” he said casually, sliding an olive off of a toothpick with his mouth.
“How many of those girls did you date?” I said eyeing the group. Nearly all of the girls were beautiful enough to be on the cover of a magazine and several of them had greeted Caleb with a sensual familiarity that made my green monster crack his knuckles.
“Why is that important?” he asked and I could see the amusement in his eyes.
“Because, if I made a statement like that you would want to know who I’d been kissing,” I snapped impatiently.
He smiled and obliged, bending his neck to speak softly into my ear.
“Adriana Parsevo,” his voice was so low I had to strain to hear him. I repositioned my ear closer to his lips and shivered when I felt them against my lobe. “She’s in the little silver dress,” I directed my gaze towards a striking girl whose dress didn’t manage to cover even a tenth of her never ending legs. What was it with Caleb and the legs?
“We dated for a while, She was very…experimental,” that last word and the texture of his voice hinted at so much, I felt a surge of jealousy crush my windpipe. Caleb, seemingly enjoying my reaction, continued.
“The girl she’s speaking to, the one drinking the mimosa, is named Kirsten if I recall correctly. She has a birthmark that resembles Africa on the inside of her thigh.”
I blew air hard through my nose and glared at him. He laughed—the type of naughty, sexy, chuckle that stirred the sleeping butterflies in my belly.
“You asked Duchess…”
I pictured him kissing those girls. His fingers tracing their birthmarks and my breath caught in my throat. I hated them and I hated him for liking them.
“Would you like to hear more?” he asked, lips grazing the top of my ear.
“No,” I said surly and I meant it. Asking was a big mistake.
As soon as we got in his car, I pounced on him. I kissed him hard—jumping across the seat and climbing into his lap. He laughed into my mouth knowing that his game had struck a chord and he cupped his hands around my bu**ocks. I ignored him and kept working intent on proving myself seductive.
Caleb’s mood changed quickly and soon all smiles were gone as we were tangled together in a kiss so intense we were both panting. I thought I was going to die when his fingers lowered the straps of my dress and I felt air on my br**sts. Then there was more than air. His hands and his mouth found me and I wondered why I had never done this before. I said something. I don’t know what it was, but my voice seemed to snap him back to reality, because he tore away from me the moment he heard it and held me at arm’s length. I had never done anything as wanton, as daring, and what was kept safely beneath my bra and he had never had to stop at such an early point in foreplay.