Bad Romeo (Starcrossed #1)(75)
Author: Leisa Rayven

Holt sighs and shakes his head. “There’s nothing going on. Taylor and I are friends. Nothing more.”

Even though I know he’s lying, it still makes me uncomfortable.

“Bullshit, you’re just friends,” Jack says as he takes the joint from me. “I have a vague recollection of you two making out on my bed on opening night. At least, I think it was you.”

Holt laughs before leaning back against a large tree and crossing his arms over his chest. “Avery, you were drunk and stoned out of your mind that night. For about an hour, you spoke to people only in Smurf language. It was smurfing annoying. You were imagining things.”

“You’re full of shit, Holt,” Jack says. “Cassie? Care to confirm or deny that you’re smurfing the hell out of Holt?”

My blush intensifies. “Jack, I can say with the utmost honesty, that I’m definitely not smurfing Holt. Wait, smurfing means having sex, right?”

How the hell do the Smurfs know what they’re talking about most of the time? Is it a noun? Is it a verb? I’m so confused.

“Yes, Taylor, we’re talking about sex.”

“Well, then no. Definitely not doing that.”

Unfortunately. Smurf it all to hell.

I exhale as I glance at Holt. One of his hands is in his pocket while he strokes the bark of the tree with his other. I’m mesmerized by his fingertips grazing over the rough texture. I’ve never been so jealous of a tree in my whole life.

“But you’d like to, right?” Jack asks with a knowing grin. “You’d like to smurf him up real good, huh? Smurf him long and slow? Or maybe fast and hard?”

Holt glares at Jack, who promptly shuts up.

“I know I would,” Zoe mumbles. “I’d smurf him ’til his fucking head exploded.” She looks up, apparently shocked she’d spoken out loud. “Oh, shit. You guys totally heard that, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t,” Holt says, feigning ignorance.

“Oh, well, I said I wanted to fuck you,” Zoe says before covering her face. “Oh, shit. There’s no chance you didn’t hear that, is there?”

Holt smiles and shakes his head. “Afraid not.”

“Zoe, you can ride me,” Jack says and gestures to his lap. “Climb on up. One decent-sized cock, no waiting.”

Zoe raises her eyebrows. “How decent-sized?”

“Seven and a half,” Jack says proudly.

Zoe nods. “Acceptable size. Tell you what, Jack, next time I get blind drunk, come see me. I might be able to cope with fucking you if I can’t remember it the next day.”

“Oh, ha ha,” Jack says. “It’s your loss. I could give you the best two and a half minutes of your life, lady.”

We all crack up.

Our laughter is loud in the quiet woods, and I glance at Holt. He’s smiling but staring at me in a way that makes a flood of heat rush through me. My laughter dies as I jiggle my knees to try and help ease the ache between my legs.

If I’d realized pot would make me even hornier than usual, I’d have passed.

“Man, I’m fucking hungry,” Jack says beside me.

“Me too,” I say to Holt’s crotch.

“If we leave now, we can swing past the cafeteria on the way to class,” Lucas says.

We all stand and head out of the trees on the west side of the school, heading back toward the Hub. The three boys walk in front of me and Zoe. When I notice her checking out Holt’s ass, I’m not even jealous. His ass is incredibly fine. It should be ogled.

“So, you’ve really never fucked him?” she whispers, as she continues to stare at his butt.

“Nope.”

I want to bite his butt. Not hard. Just little nibbles, all over those firm cheeks. Really unsure if this is the pot talking or I just have a weird body-biting fetish. Maybe it’s a little of both.

“I bet he’s amazing in bed,” Zoe whispers. “Just imagine it, all that intensity and passion he has in his acting finally letting loose. He’d be like a sexual stallion.”

Jebus, Zoe, would you shut up? As if I’m not having enough trouble not humping him. Stop making me want him more.

I drag my eyes away from his butt and watch my feet instead.

Whoa. Look at the grass. So many blades. So pretty. So green. I wonder what green would taste like.

“So,” Zoe says and nudges me with her elbow, “who’s the best lay you’ve ever had?”

Well, so far? Holt’s thigh. And fingers. “Um…”

“Was there someone back in Washington?”

Not unless you count my old bicycle, which used to rub against me in strange and not-entirely-unpleasant ways. “Well…”

“’Cause I’ve heard some of those small-town boys can be total perverts.”

A boy from my high school videotaped himself having sex with a watermelon. And a cucumber. Simultaneously. “Well, yeah…”

“So who was it?”

I look back at Holt’s ass as I try to figure out what to say, because I’m betting that if I stare at it hard enough, the secrets of the universe will be revealed to me.

Do I tell her and risk ridicule? I mean, she’s being nice to me now, but what happens when the high wears off?

“Come on, Cassie,” she says, urging me on. “If you tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine.”

“Well, uh…” No, no one must know. Just make up a name. Any name. “His name was…”

Bob, Sam, Cletus, Zach, Jake, Joanne! Any name will do! Wait, no … not Joanne. Or Cletus.

Zoe grabs my arm and stops short. “Oh my God…”

“Zoe—”

“Don’t tell me you’re a—”

“No, don’t say it…”

She leans in and whispers, “You’ve never had sex, have you?” She says it with the same amount of hushed sympathy as if she’d just discovered I was dying of cancer.

I blush and pull my arm away from her, so I can keep walking.

“Aw, Cassie, don’t be mad,” she calls after me. “I’m not going to tell anyone you’re a virgin!”

The boys in front of me stop and turn, and Jack and Lucas look at me in disbelief. Holt glances at me nervously before shoving his hands in his pockets and staring at the ground.

“Crap,” Zoe mumbles behind me. “Sorry. My bad.”

“Taylor,” Jack says, a broad smile spreading over his face, “tell me it isn’t so. No one has planted their flag in your virgin territory yet? That’s just wrong.”