Shine - Lauren Myracle [74]
“Tommy! You lost my place!” I protested.
“You looked hot in that dress,” he said. His hand slid beneath the strap of my cami. He rubbed my shoulder, then right away dipped further, his fingers tracing my collarbone.
“Tommy,” I said, pushing his hand away. I told myself he was just playing. My stomach clenched up, but I tried not to listen.
“You ain’t wearing a bra,” he murmured. His hand went back to my collarbone and kept on going, a tadpole slipping beneath a rock, that easy and quick. He squeezed my breast, grazing his thumb back and forth over my nipple. His voice grew husky. “You like that, huh?”
My eyes widened. I liked him sitting next to me, yes. But his hand where it was? No. No. It was private, the part of me he was touching. Plus he’d never even taken me for a ride on his motorcycle, or sat with me on the porch, or brought me fresh strawberries from his grandmother’s garden.
My breaths came short, making my chest rise and fall.
He laughed, saying, “You’re so cute.” He shifted so that his body was angled toward me, and I felt trapped, even though I wasn’t. Why didn’t I call out? Why didn’t I push him away?
“Tommy,” I whispered. I wanted him to understand without my having to say it. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.
His right hand squeezed my breast, and his left hand tried to work my knees apart. When that didn’t work, he slid his hand up my thigh and under my frayed cutoffs. I gasped, because he touched my panties. He went that far.
“Tommy. Don’t.”
“Hush now.” His breath smelled like my daddy’s corn liquor. He fumbled at the elastic of my panties, but my cutoffs were tight, and he couldn’t work his fingers to where he wanted. “C’mon now, Cat. Lemme feel how wet you are.”
I didn’t know what he meant. I pressed my spine into the sofa to get away from him, but moving like that raised my hips and loosened the hug of my shorts. His fingers slithered under my panties.
“Oh yeah,” he said, moving his fingers the best he could. “See now?”
I was lost. Tommy was touching a part of me that no one was supposed to. I was pushing against him, but he was so much bigger than me. And my throat, it was like someone had wrapped a band around it and cinched it so tight, I could hardly breathe. The sounds I made—because I tried, I did—they came from some other girl. They were please and stop, but so trembly that they simply shuddered up into the air.
I heard something outside, and my eyes flew to the wide front window. Christian stood on the other side, holding a stick he must have used to poke at the fire, which was still burning steadily. His hand went slack, and the stick fell, and it was so slow, the seconds drumming in my pulse, as his face registered what he saw through the grimy pane of glass. I thought, Oh, thank you, God. Thank you for my big brother, and for bringing him here to me.
Christian strode out of view. Any moment he would burst through the door and grab Tommy off me and beat the crap out of him.
Several minutes passed, and I started crying. Christian wasn’t going to beat the crap out of Tommy. Christian wasn’t going to do a thing. He’d gone back to shooting tin cans, or stirring the embers of the burning smokehouse, or sneaking more of Daddy’s moonshine for all I knew.
My face was slick with tears when Aunt Tildy stepped from the kitchen into the living room, saying, “Cat, I need you in the kitchen. Ain’t you heard me calling?”
“Aunt Tildy,” I gasped.
By that point, Tommy had unbuttoned my shorts and yanked them down around my thighs, along with my panties. I was gripping them, trying to get them back up, but he was stronger. He no longer had his hand down my tank top, but instead had his right arm stretched along the back of the sofa, bearing his weight while his left arm rode the length of my belly, straight as a rod until the sharp flex of his wrist.
With Aunt Tildy standing