The Wicked
: Chapter 17

Her pretty face has lost most of the color that was gracing her cheeks. She looks almost frightened by the energy I’m radiating toward her – she knows what she’s done. I’m not a man who doesn’t get his way, she knows that, and every word dripping from her delicious, swollen lips makes this even more desirable. She’s making her bed, but I’ll be the one warming her fucking sheets at the end of the night.

And that isn’t me being a cocky prick, knowing she’ll give in and let me. It’s a fact.

She can’t resist what’s brewed between us, just as much as I can’t.

It’s unavoidable. We’re unavoidable.

I blink my eyes slowly and lick my lips as I finally step to the side to give her access to her car door, telling her I’ll let her pass by and leave. When she doesn’t immediately move, I wave my hand toward the door and press my lips together in a little smile before I speak. “You’re free to go.”

Her eyes narrow, as if she’s trying to decide if my word is going to be the thing that makes her leave.

Fucking spitfire.

When a few heartbeats have passed between us in silence, I chuckle. “You’ve been begging me to let you leave, and when I finally do, you’re just going to stand there staring at me?”

Penelope grits her teeth, and I fucking love it. I love the frustrated look on her face and the flush running up her neck. I want to grab her and trail my tongue over her skin to feel how hot she is from desire and anger – confusion and confliction.

She groans, adjusting the bag on her shoulder before she breezes past me and pulls her door open, then she slips into the driver’s seat and cranks the engine.

Before she can slam her door closed, I put myself between it and lower my head inside the car. She groans, slamming her hands on her steering wheel before turning her head to me, putting her face only a few inches from mine. “What?!”

I chuckle at her tone, making her huff. “Goodnight, Penelope.”

Her gaze moves to my mouth for a moment so quick, I almost miss it, and when her eyes replace mine, my chest fills with need again. I kiss her quickly, dropping my hand from the roof inside the car to grab her face, my fingers cupping her jaw.

She hesitates, but doesn’t pull away.

Instead, she opens her mouth for me, her tongue sliding against my bottom lip before slipping inside my mouth. I squeeze her face with my hand, wanting to rip her apart and consume her entirely, but letting her control our connection so I know it’s real.

Her kiss is slow, filled with passion and emotion, like she can’t fucking help it.

When she pulls back abruptly, her face is pinkened and her lips are wet, her mouth dropped open as her chest heaves.

“You’re going to give me whiplash if you keep changing your mind,” I whisper, moving my hand from her jaw to her neck where her pulse is hammering.

She shakes her head minutely. “That was the last time.”

I squeeze her neck. “No it wasn’t. But I’ll let you believe that for now.”

I remove myself from her, standing up straight and catching her gaze one more time before I turn to walk away without another word.

“I feel like all we do is get high, man,” Levi says, throwing his feet up on the coffee table in the middle of my living room.

“Yeah,” I say around the blunt hanging out of my mouth. The TV hanging on the wall in front of us is playing some rerun of a basketball game, but neither of us is paying any attention to it. Levi has his laptop on his lap, and he’s been typing away on it in between hits from the bowl he has balancing on the couch next to him.

He looks up at me. “Should we do something more productive?”

I suck on the blunt, then slide it between my fingers as I hold the smoke in my lungs. After I’ve blown the smoke out, I laugh. “Like what?”

He shakes his head, looking at his computer again. “I don’t know.”

I choke on a laugh, standing up to walk to the kitchen. “We could get drunk.”

“Pass,” I hear him say at my back, and after I’ve pulled two water bottles from the fridge, I replace my seat on the couch again.

I hand him one of the bottles, then point to the TV. “Where is Carson? Isn’t he the one who fucking recorded this game and insisted we watch it tonight?”

Levi shrugs, packing his bowl with the ass-end of his lighter. “I think him and Lo went to Franklin.”

I grab the remote and hit the power button, making the screen turn black. Taking one more hit off my blunt, I stamp it out on the coffee table before I stand up. “Let’s go replace something to do, then.”

Levi blows smoke toward the ceiling, then points to the laptop. “Busy.”

I grab the screen and turn it toward me. “What’re you doing on here?”

He pulls it back. “Writing a paper.”

“You’re writing a paper on the first day of school?” I ask, taking a drink from my bottle of water.

“Yeah,” he mutters. “Apparently, I don’t have enough extracurriculars on my transcript, so the headmistress is making me apply for student government.”

“And you need to write a paper for that?”

“Some geek asshole I was mean to last year is the president or some shit, so he requested I write some bullshit about why I want to join.” Levi groans. “Karma’s a real bitch, huh?”

I laugh, then slap him on the back. “Good luck, brother. I’m gonna replace something to get into. Lock up when you leave.”

He nods, staring at his computer as he starts typing again. “Use protection.”

I run upstairs to change and spray some cologne on myself, then head back downstairs when I’m wearing a pair of slacks and a tee, my feet in a pair of crisp white Air Forces that have never seen the light of day. I don’t know where I’m going, but I know what my destination is.

Her.

Shouting a goodbye to Levi on my way out, I jump into the driver’s seat of the Mercedes G-Class. I lift the center console in search of something to set the mood for the evening, and I’m not disappointed to replace a little baggie of pills.

I open it and fish one out at random, placing it under my tongue. Tossing the baggie back into the center console, I crank the engine, then grab my phone and click on the tab I have open for Penelope’s Instagram.

I thumb through some of her recent posts, looking for clues on her whereabouts, and get lost as I scroll. There are photos of her downtown, in the hospital visiting her dad, at the beach, then I come across one of her in her car the week she moved back to Luxington. The caption reads Home Sweet Home – Luxington.

I take a screenshot and open my photos app so I can zoom in farther, searching the background for a location.

Thankfully, the photo was taken during the day, so the location is easily recognizable as downtown Luxington.

I zoom a little closer, spotting a street sign.

First Street.

And I know the storefront behind her is on Main.

I grin, tossing my phone between my legs and throwing my car into gear, heading for First and Main.

It’s a long shot – a very fucking long shot – that this would be her place of residence, but what else do I have to go on? I can’t get her out of my head. All I want to do tonight is suffocate between her thighs. If all else fails, Amethyst is a few blocks from First Street.

I pull a cigarette out, slip it between my lips, and light it as I hold the steering wheel with my knee. Rolling the window down, my head starts floating from the pill I took as I drive mindlessly across town, so much so that I don’t even bother turning on the stereo.

Ten minutes later, I’m slowing my car as I turn onto Main Street.

It’s past seven, so most of the evening traffic has dissipated, and the street is mostly clear. A few people here and there are walking down the little strip, either heading to or from dinner, but nightlife hasn’t taken over for the day yet so it’s calm.

I read the street signs out loud as I pass through the intersections – fifth, fourth, third, second, and finally first.

Parking along the road, I look around.

There’s a coffee shop on the corner, a post office flanking that, and a restaurant across the street.

A big condo building sits on the far side of the street, towering over downtown and casting a massive shadow. I narrow my eyes, pursing my lips to the side and humming in thought.

Might as well.

Turning off my car, I grab my phone and step out into the evening. The sun is beginning to set, turning the sky to orange and pinks above my head, but the air is still humid from the day, sticking to my skin as I cross the street to the building.

I walk up the entrance for the parking garage, keeping a lookout for any cars that may come shooting downwards on their way out. When I reach the second floor, I head down the aisle of parked cars in search of her SUV.

Most of the cars are high end – Range Rover, Mercedes, Porsche. It isn’t surprising, as most Luxington natives have generations of wealth running through their veins, and I know that she has money, so this might be right where I need to be.

I light a cigarette to calm my nerves as I keep walking, searching for that shiny black Cayenne I pinned her against only hours ago.

When I don’t replace it parked on the second floor, I walk up to the third.

She probably doesn’t even live here, you fucking stalker.

My mind yells at me, telling me I’m crazy for being here, for looking for her, her car, her house, but all rational and sane thoughts have vanished. All I can see inside my mind is the look on her face when she comes, the roll to her eyes when the pleasure crests and becomes too intense, she can’t hold herself up any longer.

And I need more.

I chew on the inside of my cheek as I stroll through the third floor of the parking garage, my eyes glazing over a little as the cars all start to blend.

The dim lights hanging overhead do nothing to help the fog hanging over my head, the only light shining into the garage coming from either end where there are openings looking out onto the street. Before I know it, I’m at the end again, turning the corner and heading up to the fourth floor.

This is fucking useless.

I hear the screech of tires as a car enters the garage on the ground floor and put a kick behind my steps as I start inspecting the cars parked on either side of me.

When I’m ready to give up and go home, the brain fog clears, and I spot a black Cayenne parked at the very end of the aisle.

My heart pumps harder as my legs move faster, racing toward the vehicle in hopes that it’s hers.

Running my hands along the shiny metal of the trunk, I circle the SUV and peer inside. I don’t know what I’m looking for; I just need to replace one thing that gives me the answer I need – that it’s hers.

The car is clean inside, not even an empty cup left in the cup holder, and the faith I had in this experiment fizzles away. Maybe I won’t replace her after all.

I’m running through options in my head – I could text her, hope she feels the pull in her chest like I do and gives me some sort of green light – when I reach the front of the vehicle. I almost fall over from relief when I see the sign hanging at the base of the parking spot.

Penelope Leyton – 4B

Every fucking muscle in my body relaxes, my limbs tingling with relief and excitement because, holy fucking shit. Not only did some miracle happen that gave me the sign this is, in fact, her car, but it gave me her fucking apartment number.

I want to skip down the aisle again, jump up and click my fucking heels together like a little boy.

I fucking found her.

I lean against her car, hoping her alarm isn’t sensitive, and rip my cigarettes from my back pocket. My hands shake as I remove one and slip it between my lips, and they continue to shake as I fish my lighter out, engulfing the end of the cigarette in flames.

Sucking on the filter until my lungs burn, I try to calm the booming heartbeat underneath my ribs.

My stomach hurts with feelings I don’t recognize, and it feels like I can’t fucking breathe. With my head floating with anxiety, it threatens to spill over into a panic attack. Suddenly, I want to run away from here and pretend I never found her.

I’ve never felt my heart beat so fast, so heavy, so fucking pleasurably painfully in my life. Nothing has ever made me feel like this before, like I want to pull my heart from my chest and gift it to her. Like I want to crack every bone in my body at once and tear my flesh from them so she can see everything underneath.

I feel good and bad at the same time – the unfamiliar making me so fucking uncomfortable that I want to scream.

I suck down more of my cigarette, hoping the nicotine will level me out.

When I’ve blown the smoke out over my head, I close my eyes and take a deep breath in, letting oxygen fill my lungs until they burst.

What the fuck am I doing? Chasing a woman? Stalking her? Fucking figuring out where she lives, because what? I’m horny? There’re plenty of holes I can fill in Luxington… why am I here?

When I’m burning filter, I open my eyes once more and toss the cigarette onto the ground. Stomping it out, I decide to replace her door and see what happens. To see what I feel.

Confusion and anxiety still simmer in my chest as I cross the parking garage to the doors that take you inside the building.

Holding on to the handle, I inhale slowly and deeply, trying to gain some of my composure back. I can’t go in there acting like a scared boy. I need to be the confident man she’s drawn to.

I clear my throat, and once I feel the muscles in my back relax, I pull the door open.