Page 72 of The Boys Next Door
“Yeah.” She kept her face deadpan. The rub of Alex’s jeans against her bare leg was very distracting. “I don’t always make it to the record store.” Alex eyed her uncertainly over his burger. He wasn’t sure she was joking, she could tell. Or maybe he just thought she was nuts. “What about you?” she asked quickly.
“I, uh, I guess we haven’t been going to the same orgies. I keep missing you.”
“Sorry about that. Next time, I’ll call you.” She laughed, and he laughed too, looking relieved.
This was good, right? Weird, but good. She was dipping her french fry in Alex’s ketchup like she went out to dinner with guys all the time. They were actually making conversation. Alex was trying to focus on her face, but his obvious glances at the deep cleavage peeking from her dress, accented by her sunburn, drove a curl of self-conscious excitement through her body.
Alex was cute, in a scruffy kind of way. Would he like it if she pulled his hair later? Ian had loved that, the harder the better, and Brendan hadn’t minded either…
Fuck it, she was not going to think about their thick hair under her fingers, or how she wanted the twins’ hands in her own hair right now and all over her flushed body, soothing her prickling skin, or how, right when Alex asked about the literary magazine — did high school ever end? — she fought the urge to dig up all the poems she’d ripped out of her journal, hunt down Ian, and dump them in his lap.
“Want to see a movie after this?” she asked abruptly.
Alex blinked, his Coke halfway to his mouth. Shit, he’d been right in the middle of talking about college. Where was he going, anyway? Brown. Or Duke. Or some other one-syllable school, like she was.
“Yeah, yeah, of course. Whatever you want. What do you feel like seeing?”
The only logical move was to suggest the action movie at the big cineplex nearby — the last type of movie she’d normally pick. Alex looked surprised, but once they sat down in the packed stadium theatre, he dropped an arm around her bare shoulders. The warm weight made her sunburned skin tingle.
Explosions rocked the screen. Diana did her best not to jump. When she turned to Alex, ready to whisper a comment about the action, he kissed her.
Surprised, her mouth opened. His lips were softer than she’d remembered, his tongue hotter. Curious, she ran her fingers through his shaggy hair, and her glasses were in the way, and it was exciting and awkward at the same time. Alex seemed to like that. Now his hand was in her hair too, and their tongues kept brushing, and nervous arousal shot through her body.
But Diana couldn’t keep her eyes from darting around. She could writhe between Brendan and Ian in a crowded club and not give a shit what anyone thought, but here? She was very aware of the people all around. Probably because Brendan wasn’t handing her sweet bubbly drinks and Ian wasn’t urging her to find things out with him. Had to be why.
And Alex was busy running a palm up her bare arm, his other hand cupping her head to pull her closer.From the way he was rubbing her shoulder, getting lower each time, she just knew he was working up to brushing against her full breast.
Should she let him, just because it would feel nice? What the hell was normal for a first date with a guy you barely knew? Brendan wasn’t here to murmur softly, reassuringly, in her ear that she was so sexy, doing such a good job, and Ian— just feeling his hot gaze on her body, his look of pure need and desire, sent a soft moan of answering need from her mouth, right around Alex’s tongue, right as his hand brushed the heavy swell of her breast. And she was this close to pushing her firm curve into his hand, aroused past awkward excitement now that she was feeling Ian’s hands on her too…
Her breath caught when Alex’s thumb rubbed the side of her breast.
“So tell me about those orgies,” he murmured.
Before she could answer, Diana’s gaze landed on a pack of guys, sitting across the aisle and up a row. Surprise jolted her body. Her skin prickled. Quickly, she broke the kiss and pulled back.
“Everything okay?” Alex whispered.
“Fine,” she whispered back. Not fine. Her pulse had skyrocketed. She tried to breathe. Two familiar muscled males, lounging in those seats, here to watch things exploding with all their friends. She should have taken Alex to see a nice drama with subtitles at the independent theatre downtown, where she could count on neither O’Brian twin ever walking in the door. “I just saw some people I know.”
“You’re afraid they’ll see us?” Alex smiled teasingly. One hand brushed back her dark hair.
“No, no, it’s fine.”
She’d spent enough time with the twins to read their body language, and she didn’t have to be up close to know that the twin leaning back in his seat, relaxed and wearing a baseball cap, was Brendan, and the twin slouched by the aisle, staring at them, was Ian.
Her throat dry, she stared back. Why did he have to watch? He probably got off on it. He probably hoped the entire theatre would break out into one giant orgy. And dammit, his unsmiling stare made her feel slutty in a way she never had before.
Trying to remember Ian as the kid who’d run around the O’Brians’ house in Spiderman pajamas shooting his fingers at her like guns, instead of the too-handsome guy who’d ripped her insides out and stomped on them, she gave him her stoniest glare.
Unbelievably, Ian’s lips twitched. She hurriedly turned back to Alex, but her own mouth was dangerously close to a smile. When Alex’s lips slid down her neck, Diana’s eyes went back to the twin across the aisle.
There was a certain face Ian had made when they were kids and he’d wanted to get a rise out of her: eyes crossed so far they practically disappeared, nostrils flaring, tongue sticking all the way out and waggling obscenely. It never failed. He was making that face now.
Diana’s sudden explosion of laughter turned every head in the two rows in front of her. Alex pulled away, staring at her too. God. He’d been kissing her so nicely, and she’d just snorted in his face.
“Sorry. Sorry,” she whispered, her face crimson.
“What’s so funny?” Alex blinked at her like she’d grown three heads.