“Can’t really get into it right now but think about it for a second. Am I with her? Do I go to her? Do you see us talking on the phone? Shooting the shit? Hanging out? Have I ever talked about her? Brought her over? Adriana is not my girlfriend.”

So you just knocked her up. Sweet.

“Ever watch Lady and the Tramp?” He drags the tip of his nose along mine, trying to distract me from whatever’s in my head.

“Y…yeah?”

“Remember the spaghetti scene?”

“I think so.”

“Who was the one to pull away from the kiss, Lady or Tramp?”

I search my brain for the answer, but it’s been years since I’ve watched it. Honestly, it wasn’t one of my favorite movies. I always wondered what a royal bitch would find in a dirty stray. But I know now. Oh, I know very well why girls of pedigree love the mutts. They’re forbidden. Exciting. And taming them is a challenge no silver-spooned princess can turn down.

“I think she pulled away,” I say. “Lady.”

“Ding, ding, ding. Ten points.”

“What is the point?” I swallow as his knee digs between my thighs, pressing at my clit, spreading delicious pressure all over my sensitive area.

“You never pull away when I kiss you.” He still holds my gaze.

“I don’t?”

He shakes my head, looking down at me, his longish hair falling across his eye.

“You want me,” he says simply.

I snort. “Jesus, you are conceited.”

He leans in until our noses touch again. His hand is still wrapped around my throat. He squeezes it lightly as his tongue brushes from the base of my chin all the way to my forehead, where he kisses my hairline.

“Tell me you don’t want to fuck me as much as I want to fuck you, you screwed-up, messed-in-the-head, gorgeous girl with skulls in her eyes,” he whispers hotly, his free hand traveling over my thigh, up my skirt, his callused finger pads grazing my bikini line. My throat bobs against his hand.

“Tell me you don’t want me to push my finger into you and make you come.”

“I don’t want you to…” I start, but then his hand skims between my legs, and I shudder. My eyes are at half-mast, and I can barely see what’s happening. I spread my thighs wider for him. He said he doesn’t have a girlfriend. Why should I hold back?

“Finish the sentence,” he commands.

I look the other way, closing my eyes. It is humiliating to admit that I want him to do all those things to me, and he is not even my boyfriend. He’s not even my friend. Penn slips his hand into my bikini and flicks my clit with his thumb, groaning when he touches it. He shifts a little on top of me to press his cock against my thigh. It’s hot and hard even through his jeans.

I buck my hips to meet his touch, but he still doesn’t kiss me. It’s when I wince a second before an orgasm washes through me—my whole body a tense knot of muscles and red, hot pleasure—that he presses his thumb against my clit hard and slides his middle finger into me. And I’m wet. So wet. So embarrassingly wet for my foster brother. And now some time has passed, and I realize that it’s what Penn has really become. A family of sort. I’m sleeping with someone who’s supposed to be my relative. Giving my virginity to someone I should feel brotherly feelings toward.

Marx help me.

His lips are on my ear now, his toffee-hued hair all over both our faces. Our foreheads are sticking together with warm sweat. We are heaving, in sync.

“Tell me not to kiss the shit out of you.”

When I remain silent, his lips crash on mine. I’m still buzzing from the orgasm he gave me when he fingered me. He doesn’t know that I’m a virgin. Not yet. But he is about to.

I pull away from him, breaking the kiss. “Tell me you don’t want all my firsts,” I challenge.

His jade eyes search mine for clues. I move my groin to meet his erection, and he squeezes his eyes shut.

“Tell me you don’t want to take my virginity,” I rasp.

His eyes snap open. I know that despite his initial shock, he believes me. So many guys didn’t believe me when I told them I was a virgin, so I stopped telling people. There was no point in trying to convince my friends. They didn’t want to listen.

I press my hips to his again, and we meet like a perfect puzzle.

His cheeks are so pink, his face is so beautiful, and I am so beyond screwed.

“Tell me that you don’t,” I whisper.

“But I do.” His forehead crumples in anguish. “There’s nothing I want more than every single thing you have to give.”

Closing my eyes, I inhale as he reaches into his back pocket for a condom. It’s not romantic. Or intimate. Or perfect. But it’s us. Two dirty kids in a forest where no one can see or find us. Penn retrieves the condom and kicks his pants to his ankles. As he rolls the condom on, he asks me if I’m sure.

I smirk. “Are you? You have more on the line.”

He stops, cupping my face in his hands. His eyes twinkle, but maybe I see what I want to see. I didn’t mean to save him all my firsts. But it happened, and a part of me is glad that it did. Because he was the first boy to give me a gift. The first boy to kiss me. To want to become my friend not because I was popular, but because I was me.

He was the first boy who noticed the injured animal behind the camouflage of hostility and tried to give it water and shelter.

“Fuck the line.”

The first thrust is like a sharp slice of a knife. My lungs squeeze the oxygen inside them. The discomfort subsides with the long, luxurious kisses that Penn rains on my mouth. On my cheeks, neck, and breasts. He stops every now and again, not wanting to come, to suck one of my nipples into his mouth and lick around it. He caresses my face and swipes stray locks of hair from my forehead. He is moving inside me as though he’s done it a thousand times before, but he is also careful and gentle. The leaves beneath me crunch with every thrust as he pushes into me, and they tickle my back.

He growls, and it stirs something inside me. I wrap my arms around his shoulders, squeezing hard, wanting more of him against me, inside me, with me. I wish I could lock us in a bubble and never let go. I wish we didn’t have to go back. That I didn’t have to hate him, and that it wasn’t so wrong to want this.

His thrusts become quicker and jerkier, and my eyes widen at that. I’m guessing he is going to come. I’ve never seen a guy come. Another first. The space between my thighs is sore, but the pain is lusciously sinful. I’m full of him and desire and want.

I only realize that I’m crying when he empties inside me. His jaw tightening, he is so beautiful, and I think that’s a part of why the tears stream down my face. As soon as he realizes that I’m crying, his eyes narrow, and he kisses the tears away. He doesn’t take a moment to recompose. He is still inside me when he licks them, one by one, chasing them.

“That bad, huh? I swear I leave more of an impression when they’re half-drunk.”

There’s laughter through my tears now, and I swat at his chest.

I want him to tell me everything. Why he calls me Skull Eyes. Why he has a hole in all his shirts. What Adriana is to him. And for the first time, I think I might have the chance to find out all those things. Because the way he looks at me? He doesn’t hate me. Not right now.