Page 4 of Dancing With Lies

“Bummer. Well, I’ll see you next time then.” June hugged her friend before she plopped back down to her bed and sighed. “PS: I love you.”

“PS, I love you, June,” Chloe answered with a smile, picked up her backpack, and headed out of June’s bedroom. Lincoln was there in the hallway and he stopped walking the minute she left the room.

“You heading home?” He asked nonchalantly, as if it didn’t matter what she was doing.

Why had he asked her then? She wondered. “Yeah, assmunch. What’s it to you?”

“Nothing really. I’m just heading out to a party. Want a lift home? You shouldn’t be out on your bike this late.”

“I guess.” She mumbled. It was colder outside now, and it would take him five minutes to drop her off. “Whatever.”

“Fine, get your bike.”

She put it in the trunk of his car and then got in.

“I can’t believe you still haven’t learned to drive, Chloe. Failed the test too many times already?” He asked as he started the car while she put her seatbelt on.

Her jaw dropped for the second time that night. “Are you kidding me, Lincoln? I’ve just been too busy, if it’s any of your business.”

“It’s not, I guess. I just can’t believe any girl with half a brain hasn’t got her driver’s license by eighteen. That must suck hard to be that lame.” He grinned over at her in a way that would be disarming if she wasn’t ready to spit feathers at him.

“You can kiss my ass, Lincoln Young. Right on the crack, buddy.” She tucked her arms around her chest and turned her head away from him.

She didn’t normally swear much but he brought it out in her. Although one of her favorite sayings was holy fucking moly, she only ever said it out of hearing of her parents. They were kind of old-fashioned about her swearing.

“Language, Miss Abshire, language.” He teased her with a hint of laughter in his voice.

“Fuck you.” She spit back, her rage boiling in her head now, her face a mask of anger. She was rude and she wasn’t sorry about it. She had to make sure that Lincoln stayed away from her, or she stayed away from him. Ever since she realized that she somehow always seemed to stumble into him, and when she did, her eyes would disobediently roam his sculpted body.

He stopped at the end of the long driveway and waited for a car to pass on the road. “Do you want to kiss me, Chloe?”

The question left her so stunned she was certain her tongue had gone dead. “Why the fuck would I want to kiss you?”

“For practice? I’ve seen the way you look at Liam, you’re dying for him to take you in his arms and kiss you.” He teased and she tried to ignore the sting of shame his words caused.

But maybe he was right, she thought with a sudden teenage fear of seeming inexperienced when she did finally kiss Liam. Liam! Damn, she’d actually forgotten about him while she thought about kissing Lincoln. Had Liam been in the house? She hadn’t checked after she walked in on Lincoln. She hadn’t even thanked him for the lip balm, and now here she was, contemplating kissing his step-brother. She’d always hated the other brother, hadn’t she?

Her head swiveled back to him as he kept the car braked at the turnoff and saw his eyes were on her. He was handsome. And he did smell good. And his lips were so perfectly…kissable. But she wanted to kiss Liam, not Lincoln.

“That’s what I thought, you’re scared to kiss a real man.” He chuckled about to pull out.

She was about to blurt out that she’d never kissed anyone, a boy or a real man as he’d put it as she’d always been too busy, too enthralled with her dancing, until Liam caught her eye. Instead of speaking though, she surprised them both by leaning over and taking the dare in his voice. She pressed her lips to his and gasped when she felt how good they felt. He took that as an invitation, and she shivered with pleasure as his tongue slipped over her bottom lip to tease at hers. She gasped again, with keen awareness of how this wasn’t supposed to be happening, but also with how she didn’t want it to stop either.

She leaned into the kiss, her nose pressed to his face, her hands wrapped in the cloth of his shirt over his chest somehow, holding him to her like she never wanted to let him go. As if her life depended on him continuing to kiss her. When he slanted his head, brought his hand up to cup her cheek, she couldn’t help but moan with how right it all felt. He grasped at her arms, slid his other hand up into her hair, licked a quick trail down her neck, all before she could protest, then brought his mouth back to hers.

She’d press deeper into him, beg him to do more, to show her more of this wondrous drug he’d just introduced her to, but the seatbelt caught her. She jerked back into her seat, suddenly aware of where they were and who she was with. This was so wrong. But kissing him had been so wild, had awakened something…alive inside of her.

“Well, I guess you don’t need much teaching then.” He chuckled, obviously pleased with himself.

“You could have chewed a breath mint or something, Lincoln, that was awful.” She snarled, embarrassed and wanting to hurt him.

He didn’t say anything, he just chuckled and shook his head as he drove onto the road. They were both silent as he headed towards her house and when she saw a glow in the night sky, an orange glow mixed with the swirl of smoke, she went very still. Her house was the only one down that road. Was her house on fire? It couldn’t be, why should it be? She’d only left a couple of hours before.

Lincoln pulled into the drive to her house but he had to stop before they got anywhere close. There were emergency vehicles lined up ahead of them and the swirl of multicolored lights nearly blinded her.

“What the fuck?” She heard Lincoln whisper but she was already unbuckling her seatbelt, ready to run. He stopped her when he grabbed at her hand, jerking on the seatbelt. “Don’t, Chloe. Let me help you. Just stay calm. I’m sure everything is fine.”

“But...” She brought her eyes up to his, tried to blink away the tears, but couldn’t. “Okay.”