Page 69
The second my fingers make contact with my clit, my body seizes as though shocked with gratification. In a few quick caresses, a wave of heat blasts through me, prickling my veins with a powerful release.
“Voss!” The sound of his name reverberates against the empty bathroom walls, an echo of ecstasy that sends one more shot of rapture through my body.
Muscles weak and flaccid, I open my mouth to catch my breath and settle into the tub again. The water goes still around me.
It’s been a long time since I felt that level of satisfaction from a fantasy. A long time since I’ve gotten myself off with such intensity that I’m exhausted from it. I can’t even imagine how it’d feel in real life.
Breathing slow and easy, I bring my legs together and curl my toes.
I won’t do it again, I promise myself.
I can’t.
* * *
Rose colored powder dusts the white porcelain sink, as Nora flicks the wide brush over her cheeks. With olive skin, blonde hair, and long black lashes set above beautiful chestnut eyes, she doesn’t need makeup. Still, the bright red lipstick is striking, mesmerizing, as I focus on her lips.
“You’re staring.” Her tone is flat and teasing, and the second I make eye contact, her signature dimple makes an appearance with a playful smile. “Stop.”
“What’s his name?” I rest my chin on my elbow I’ve propped against the edge of the bathtub, while I soak in steamy water.
“Brian. He’s a physiology major.”
“What’s that?”
“He wants to be a sports doctor someday, so he studies body function.”
“Thought you said athletes were boneheads.”
She chuckles and drags a brush, dipped in black mascara, over her eyelashes. “Most of them are. But Brian is … different. I think you’d like him.”
The age gap between me and my siblings is enough that I’m sometimes mistaken for her daughter—an error that I secretly appreciate, but I wouldn’t tell my mother that. Nora doesn’t look anything like my mother did when she was nineteen, but everyone says I will someday. My mother was beautiful back then, so it isn’t an insult.
Nora, on the other hand, takes after my father, with her sandy blonde hair and big bright eyes.
“Help me?” Crouching beside the tub, Nora turns her back to me, holding the two ends of the gold necklace our father bought her for Christmas. Its pendant is dual circles joined together to form an infinity. I have one, too, only mine is sitting on the sink so I don’t lose it in the bathtub.
I clasp the ends together for her, careful not to get bathwater on her shirt. “What do I tell Mom?”
Our parents went out for their weekly bowling date, leaving Nora in charge. Even though she’s nineteen, my parents are pretty strict with my sister. They feel that, because they’re paying for her education, her focus should be on her studies. Not boys. For the last six years of her life, it has, so I have to believe there’s something special about this boy, for her to risk my father’s wrath.
“I should be home before they get back. But if I’m not, tell them I crashed while studying for exams. I’ll stuff some pillows under my bedspread before I go.”
“I hate lying to them. I wish he’d just cut you some slack.”
“You and me, both, sister.”
She pecks me on the forehead and smiles. “I was watching Jonah when I was your age.” A gentle stroke over my wet hair, and she tucks a loose strand behind my ear. “You’re practically an adult.”
“Be careful, okay?”
“I will. Quit fretting. It’s just a date. We’re not going off to elope.”
It wouldn’t surprise me if she did, though. My parents have always been so much harder on her. I don’t think they mean to. I just think they recognize the potential in her.
“I lanu!” She bends forward and kisses me on the cheek. It’s a joke between us. When I was a baby, and my mother would try to get me to say ‘I love you’ to Nora, I always somehow combined her name with the words, and it’s stuck ever since.
“I lanu, too.” I chuckle, and roll back into the water, until my ears are below the surface and the world is mute, and I close my eyes.
