Hot Summer Lust by Juliette Jones Page A

I’m up for the challenge. I’m so fucking up for it she won’t know what hit her. She’ll never be able to refuse me or resist me.
    “I’m on the pill,” she says.
    She’s on the pill ? That’s good news. Or is it? Why is she on the pill? Has she banged every redneck between here and Nashville ? Did I misread her? I was so sure she was a virgin. I’m never wrong about shit like that. And, I realize, the thing is: I so badly wanted her to be a virgin. I feel like fucking crying. Or having a goddamn tantrum. I wanted her, now and forever, all to myself.
    What the fuck?
    My sanity is in serious question around this chick.
    I need to calm the fuck down.
    “Okay,” I say, and I do sound calm. A lot calmer than I feel. Then I blurt it out before I can stop myself. “Why?”
    She laughs a little. “ ’Why?’ Why do you think? So I won’t get knocked up before I’m ready. It happened to two of my sisters and there’s no way I’m letting that happen to me. I’ve got plans. I’ve got things to do and the last thing I want is to get stuck here, like they are . I’d go crazy if I couldn’t go to Nashville and sing. I’m not willing to let anything or anyone get in the way of that. I just have this feeling it’ll work out for me. You know what I mean? You ever get that feeling about anything?”
    “Yeah.” I did. I knew that feeling once. I was sure, too , when I’d started out . I was sure I could make it with my talent and my drive and there was nothing on this planet that could’ve stopped me. I don’t tell her this. She still doesn’t know who I am and I’m not quite ready to lay it all out yet. Instead I say, “Are you in danger of getting knocked up? You getting some wild action around town?”
    She looks up at me, her sky-blue eyes flicked with a hint of mischief. “Well … I haven’t been in danger of it before … ‘til now.”
    I can’t help myself. “Ever?”
    “Nope. Not ever. Not even once.”
    I’m so relieved I feel almost light-headed. We’re still standing here, butt naked, and she’s holding the towel, drying little dro ps from my chest. And lower. My erection has fully revived and is so hard – once again – by this point it’s standing straight up and touching my stomach like it wants her attention. It does . So she has to hold it and pull it away from my body to finish drying me. She runs her fingers along my length and I sigh a little: a low exha le that sounds like an animal’s growl. She removes her touch and hangs up the towel on one of the racks. I notice then that the bathroom – and everything else – looks all tidy and clean. She’s cleaned it. This barely registers. I’ve got all kinds of questions I need answered before I can register anything at all besides Sadie, her virginity and its impending demise. By me . It’s mine . She’s mine. I feel the caveman in me rise up again. I didn’t even know I had a fucking caveman lurking around in my goddamn psyche before Sadie entered the picture. Now he seems to want his point of view heard.
    “Why not ?” I blurt out. “I mean, how the hell have you not been chased relentlessly by every man within a hundred mile radius?”
    She smiles. She’s got the tiniest gap between her front teeth that makes me want to kiss her again, to lick her mouth, to trace along the line of it with my tongue . “I just graduated from a boarding school that was pretty strict. I didn’t meet a lot of guys. Not any, actually. I’m not even sure men were allowed in the building, come to think of it. No t.v. No Internet except for approved websites.” She shrugs a little. “So I’m totally uneducated about what the latest pop culture trends are, or t.v. shows, or the latest movies. But now that I’m free , I plan on fixing all that up as soon as I can. That’s another reason I’m going to Nashville. To live my life. To get started. ”
    She’s got this defiant little gleam in her eye, like she’s already visualizing all the