Page 90 of Creeping Beautiful

We spent a lot of time together while McKay was off running jobs and Donovan was learning plastic surgery.

And if I was with Adam, I could not be with Nate.

Those two were never going to see eye to eye.

Two days after Nate told me to rip up that garden Adam told me he was sending me to another boarding school. I would start the fall semester at an elite school three hours away by plane and I was leaving the next morning.

This was the third time I was being sent to interfere with some important person’s daughter.

At least… that was what I thought at the time.

Later I would learn the real reason.

I left my bedroom in the middle of the night by way of the window, and the roof, and the tree, and walked down the path Nate and I had created between our two houses six years ago. Lots of things had grown back by this time, and the boughs of the trees that lined the path made a canopy of leaves in the summer. So it was almost like a tunnel.

Nate was outside waiting for me. I had not been to his house for over a year now. I had played by the rules and kept my word. But when I called Nate and told him that I was leaving the next day and I would be gone all semester, he begged me to come over.

He was very sad that night. His grandfather had been bedridden for years by this time. And no one had expected him to even live this long. But now he was truly not doing well and we all knew that death was knocking on his door with intent. It’s a sad thing to wait for someone to die. And Nate was the kind of boy who felt things deeply.

So I decided to disobey and sneak out.

We walked out into the woods to that old treehouse where he first kissed me when I was fourteen. Three years we’d been dating. Three whole years and we’d not done anything other than kiss and that one time he tried to feel me up.

But that night before I left for school, Nate had the treehouse all rigged up like that night he first kissed me. With fresh mosquito netting and jars filled with fireflies.

I knew what he wanted. And I wanted it too. I was ready. Seventeen and ready. Nate was going to turn eighteen in just a couple months and while on the one hand I felt like our childhood was slipping away from us, I just couldn’t wait to see what the rest of my life had in store for me.

Because I pictured myself with Nathan St. James forever. I could not imagine a time when he was not there for me. I wanted him to be my first. He was my first. In almost every way.

He held my hand as we walked through the woods towards our treehouse. And we kept trading shy looks at each other. I was smiling wide and feeling jittery in my stomach. He didn’t say much and neither did I.

But by this time in our friendship, we didn’t need words.

I climbed up the ladder to the treehouse this night the same way I did that other night. With him right behind me. I wasn’t wearing a dress. I had grown out of those a while back. So I couldn’t feel his chest bumping up the back of my bare knees like the time when he first kissed me. But I could feel his heat. And our shared desire too.

I crawled across the platform and turned over to watch him do the same. And he crawled right up my body with no hesitation at all, his hands planted on either side of my head as he leaned down and kissed me on the mouth.

I was hungry for him. And when he pressed his hard, muscled body down on top of mine, I could feel his hunger for me against my stomach.

I reached for him. Unsure, really, what to do next. Of course, I knew how to do it theoretically. But not precisely. So I was out of my element and for the first time in many years I needed his guidance.

He went slow. First, he lifted my t-shirt up and cupped my breast with the palm of his hand, kissing me the whole time so I didn’t feel obligated to say anything. Then he took my hand and placed it over the hard bump in his pants. My fingertips squeezed a little and the length of it made me think of the snakes of long ago. Both the one that wanted to eat me that night and the ones I made that deal with in the swamp when I came live here.

It took a while to get all our clothes off, but there was no real hurry. We had all night in the woods to figure it out. But soon enough we were both naked. He had brought up a comforter from his bedroom and that was what we were lying on. It was soft and old and smelled like Nathan.

Then he turned me over and straddled me, his cock sliding between my legs like a tease. He kissed the back of my neck and nipped my earlobe, and then, without saying another word, he reached down, took a hold of his cock, and pressed it between my legs until it bumped up against that tender spot that my fingers had been drawn to in the middle of the night for several years now.

I gasped when he penetrated me. I hadn’t imagined sex happening like this, with me on my stomach and him on top of my back, but that made everything better, I thought. I couldn’t see him. But I knew it was him.

He started whispering things to me that made me breathe heavy and fast. Things I’d never been told before. Things like, “I want to be inside you, Indie,” and, “I want to fuck you hard.”

I don’t know where he found these words, but they were doing strange things to my body. I wanted him inside me. I wanted him to fuck me, hard or otherwise.

It was painful. I’m not gonna lie. But it felt good too. All of it felt good. The weight of his body on top of me. The way he sat up once he was in, and lifted my hips up and grabbed them. Hard. Gripped them tight as he thrust into me.

And then he grabbed my arms and lifted me up so we were both on our knees and he was fucking me from behind.

It wasn’t what I thought it would be.