HOW TO CATCH A BAD BOY

They ate quietly for a few minutes until Chandler felt like a complete asshole. It wasn’t her fault, not really. Elena didn’t have to try to understand why he and his stepmother had the relationship they did, and how that bled into his relationships with his father and brother. He opened his mouth to apologize, but Elena spoke first.

“I don’t like thinking too hard about things that upset me too, so I understand.” She told him,

This didn’t feel like the time to say anything, so he held her gaze across the table and waited. Elena twirled some pasta on her fork and took another bite. When she was done chewing, she set the fork down. “I’m not angry with you, and I don’t know exactly why I want to figure you out as you put it. I guess I just… I want to know you… And understand you… That’s all.”

Even though her words touched him, her face was so calm when she said it that he laughed.

“That’s funny?” she asked.

“Not really,” he admitted, then he added even though she had not asked again. “I don’t get angry with Laura. I just have a million other things I could be doing with my time, so why would I choose to dwell on that bullshit?” That was an answer she could understand, judging by the look on her face in the muted light of the cabin. He lifted his chin in her direction. “Truth or dare.”

“Truth, I guess,” she sighed.

Like she was trying not to be seen, he watched as Agnes wound her way around the edge of the kitchen and found a dark corner to sit in to watch them. He decided to go easy.Text property © Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org.

“Why is there a stuffed cat on your couch?”

She blushed. “I told Emily I wanted a cat once, and since we were still in the dorms at the time, she got me that instead…. I kept it since then because I love it,”

“I bet Agnes would go home with you,” Chandler mumbled.

Elena laughed. “I would never do that to Paul. But if I did get a cat,” she sighed, “I’d want her to look just like this little angel.”

Chandler rolled his eyes, much to Elena’s delight. She stood and grabbed her plate to wash it while Chandler took another bite of the spaghetti and watched her jerky movements as she

washed off her plate and set it on a towel to dry. When she whirled around, he smiled slightly. “I think it’s my turn again,”

“No,” she argued, “It’s not,”

“It is. You asked me two questions. Don’t think I didn’t notice. And I don’t think you want me to give you a dare,” he told her.

They both damn well knew what he’d dare her to do. She rolled her lips between her teeth and tried to stem her growing smile. Pushing back from the table, Chandler ignored her when she tried to take his dish. Instead, he nudged her aside with a bump of his hip, and she stayed by the counter but didn’t leave. As he rinsed and washed his dish, the fact that they still had an entire night laid out in front of them, and probably at least a good chunk of the next day, stretched ahead of him like one painful exercise in frustration. Like sitting at the bottom of a mountain of fresh white powder but not having a board to ride down it.

“Maybe I do.” She said softly. So softly that he wondered if he’d imagined her saying the words.

Chandler’s hands froze in the soapy water at her quiet words. It felt very much like the thing he wanted most was being dangled just out of reach. He could see it and smell it, maybe even brush it with his fingers if I tried hard enough. He finished rinsing the dish carefully and nudged into her again so that he could set it down by hers. Elena didn’t move this time, her head angled in his direction. His hands were gripping the edge of the counter tightly, and he looked at her in the same way.

“What?” he asked, as he stared at her lips, open and inviting and incredible.

Elena exhaled shakily. “You know exactly what I want, Chandler, and you are the one who held back the last time… not me.”

He dropped his chin to his chest and swore. Her inhale was large, not shaky, but the kind of big, deep breath you took when you were trying to fortify yourself before a giant leap off the edge of a mountain. Then she took a step back, and did something that blew every rational thought right off his head. With both hands, she reached for the hem of her shirt and tugged it up over her head.

Chandler stood still, and watched as she let the shirt drop to the floor, his jaw tightening, eyes burning furiously over the skin she’d just exposed. Left in her leggings and simple bralette, she took a step forward and pushed him back onto his chair. It wasn’t a hard shove, but Chandler didn’t trust his legs either so he went with it. Elena swung one leg over his hip so she could settle onto his lap.

His hands slid up her back, and he dropped his head into the crook of her shoulder while he seemed to try to get his breathing under control. Underneath her, he was big. Hard. Ready.

Her hands wandered up his shoulders and over the back of his head. She kissed his temple, then licked along the edge of his ear, insanely gratified when his fingers tightened painfully on her back. They moved then, started to tug down the strap of her bralette. His mouth trailed along the skin on her chest, small sucking kisses that he soothed with his tongue. When he reached the tops of her breast, he used the edge of his thumb to work her into a rolling mass of want. Still, they hadn’t kissed. Still, they hadn’t spoken a single word.

His head came back, eyes almost black in the dying firelight, and he searched her expression carefully. Elena gripped the sides of his face firmly, so he wouldn’t-couldn’t-look away.

“I want you,” she told him. “I want this, with you.”