Chapter 3 Living in the past

** POV - Melaena – age 19 Warning – sexual content! He moves his fingers under the lace of her panties, yanking them off. Moving slowly he kisses his way up her thigh, turning his head so his breath tickles her. She lets out a deep moan, moving her hips in anticipation. He moves in, tongue lashing against her clit while his hands move under her hips pulling her into his face. She lets out a cry of pleasure, her hands pulling his hair. He licks and sucks, moving his fingers into her wet …. I groan and close my eyes. Green orbs stare at me and I feel an ache forming between my legs. I press them together and throw the stupid book on the bed. Kiara peeps out of the closet. "Mel, stop reading yourself into a climax!" A pair of jeans hit me in the face before I can react. "It s time to get funky!" She shouts excitedly pulling clothes from the shelves, throwing them on the bed. Kiara is a fashion-obsessed individual, unlike me. I will wear anything I like without thinking about who designed it or how much it costs. She stops and looks at me, her eyes shining even more. Then she picks up the book on my bed and looks at the cover picture. "Ug, you re sex dreaming again?" I just snort and pull my knees up to my chest. Kiara always teases me for being such a romantic. She s more of a realist, not believing in true love. She loves to date good-looking blokes but never lets it get serious. Me, on the other hand, dream about …. well, let's just say I dream about something different, something special, the sort of storybook love where two people s eyes meet and BAM – true love forever, like a Romeo and Juliet kinda thing, but without the dying part. What can I say? I for sure as hell know that love at first sight exists, but the living happily-ever-after part is a warped cliché. The universe is cruel and mischievous, that s for freaking sure. Yes, I got the eyes meet – BAM part under the belt, but the rest is all screwed up and intertwined – twisted up into a corrupted ball of claustrophobic frustration. Cause in that same BAM moment, I ve learned that love and hate are homogeneous, like identical twins they share the same DNA and it s almost impossible to distinguish between the two. I now have a theory that the perverted universe likes jokes, especially when it comes to love, because of all the boys in the world, they set me up to have my BAM moment with HIM. Granted, he s the most beautiful man in the world, with fiery green eyes, jet black hair, the body of a Greek god, and the face of a fallen angel. Sounds great, but there s just this teeny little problem the sick depraved universe just had to add to the whole fated soulmate plot - turns out my love object is a rebellious, moody, troubled, bad-boy player with an annoying Batman-on-steroids attitude AND the soul of the devil. If that s not enough, another fact worth mentioning is that he s also my brother s best friend. Turned out that the handsome doctor who fixed Kiara s foot has an equally more handsome son. And, yes you guessed it, Logan started a lifetime BFF friendship in his junior year with non-other than Damion Grimm, a cocky bad-ass playboy and MotoGP champion. I think back to where my love-hate relationship with the devil started, and our first meeting, after the haunted house incident, replays in my mind. It was the first Friday back at school, Sophomore year, Kiara and I were stashing our stuff in our lockers before leaving for the weekend. As usual, Logan would come to pick us up from school. He was in an all-boys school just a few blocks over. I was standing with my back to the doors. Suddenly all the girls in the hallway started acting like monkeys in heat, and I didn t need to turn around to know that my brother just entered the building. It was the same thing every freaking Friday. Logan would walk through the doors, strutting his handsomeness in his school uniform, smiling and flirting with every girl in the hallway, just to piss me off. It s not the fact that all the stupid overeager females, and probably some males, would drool over him, flaring on his already massive ego, that got on my nerves. No, it was the intrusion of my privacy the whole week after his dramatic performance of maleness, when every stupid bitch would enter my personal space trying to get his freaking number, that mangled my anger. As soon as he spoke I could hear the mocking in his voice blazing on my heating irritation. "Hi, girls. You re ready to go?" He just never waited outside like I ve asked him a million times over, and I knew he did it on purpose to antagonize me. He just loved the attention and as much as it hurts me to say this, he liked to misuse it following in his siblings man-whore footsteps. But that specific day I was already grumpy as a cow with tit-infection for ending in the principal's office twice, getting my knickers in a twist for being innocently accused. First for kicking a bitchy senior on the shin, and next for giving Jason a shiner. Don t get me wrong, I did both of those things, but they deserved much more of course. But still, I got punished. I tried to explain to the principal that the bitch emptied her strawberry milkshake on a friend s head, and Jason squeezed my butt cheek, but still, I m the one that ended up in detention. Displeased, I slammed my locker door shut with a little extra force, ready to take all my anger out on my dickface brother. "Logan, I swear one day I m going to fudging kill you, prick!" I hissed before turning around eyes blazing with anger, ready to give my brother a piece of my mind and maybe even my fist. But then BAM my breath and everything else inside me got sucked out with force by teasing bright apple-green eyes. The hot as hell guy standing next to my brother filled out his uniform better than Thor himself ever could, his raven hair was in a messy-sexy style and the skew smile heated my core to boiling point. For some crazy reason, I wanted to grab and kiss a total stranger. And to top it all off, it s the same boy that helped us years ago at the haunted house, the one I just couldn't seem to forget. "Hello," He said in a husky raspy voice. Of course, even his voice would be sexy, how could it not be. I don t remember much after that, just Kiara holding me up, cause my knees suddenly couldn't support my weight and Logan laughing, saying something about me having drool all over my face. And that s how I met (or re-met) my brother s new best friend, the guy who spelled trouble, with a capital T. The simple boy whose number 13 jacket still hangs in my cupboard. After that Damion came to our house lots of times with my brother, and he became part of the family, just another brother. But to me, he was the persona where love and hate become indistinguishable, kindred, so much alike that I can never answer the question, no matter how hard I try. Are the heavy heartbeats, the twisted stomach, the nauseating feelings a reaction of love or hate … or a combination of the two? I always opt more towards the hate side, because even though he s physically a picture of perfection, the rest of him was more of a huge pain in my butt, an itch under my skin I couldn t get rid of. And it s still there, increasing each year, and it s getting almost unbearable and I m getting scared that I just might do something irresponsible one of these days – like ripping his balls off. I pull myself back and realize Kiara is staring at me, waiting for a response. "It s cliterature – you know like clit-literature. I have to learn from books to gain experience since all guys seem to walk in circles around me. You don t have that problem." I pout my lips at Kiara and she just shoots me a pitty-full look back. "You know that s something I could never understand. The guys voted you the hottest girl over and over, but as soon as they ask you out they just seem to change their minds or they just never show up without any reason. But at least you have Ren now." She s right. I went through my school years with guys eyeing me, checking me out, but no one did anything more than stare. Hell, they didn t even talk to me, they literally ran away from me. I had to go to my prom with Axel. Sometimes I wondered if they were scared of my brothers but when I asked Axel about it he just grinned and shrugged his shoulders blabbing "Something like that." When we got back from Europe, we reconnected with some of our friends from school, and I met Ren, a friend of Jason s, who asked me out. It s not that he s the love of my life, but I was just so glad to be asked out, at last, I couldn t say no. "Yep, I suppose." Grabbing my black dragon soft-toy, Ripper, I squeeze it against my chest as if it can dull the ache in my heart. Funny how I use the toy Damion won for me to always remind me of the devil under his pretty-boy exterior. Yep, I ve experienced just how evil he can be more than once. Kiara s voice ships me back to reality. "Um, mm." She pulls her judgmental face and looks at Ripper with a pity-full look. Kiara knows I hate Damion, and for 2 good reasons. One, he woke me up one night, dared me onto his bike, and then we broke into the zoo. It was a great night, walking hand in hand between the animals, just talking without anybody judging us. But then the very next day he broke my heart into pieces, showing up with a bimbo behind him on his bike. Then, like a sucker for punishment, a few months later he made me skip school and go with him to the Boardwalk. It was just after he won his first MotoGP championship. Again holding hands, spending the day having fun on the rides, eating ice cream, playing games. He won the big black dragon toy for me and it was the best day I ve ever had. But when he dropped me off, Jackson caught us and they had a big fistfight on the grass. I m not sure who won but like clockwork, the next day a new girl was paraded on his bike for me to see. This time my heart got ripped from my chest and I cried for weeks. For every tear that fell the hate grew in my heart and Ripper got its name. Damion never asked me out again after that. Hell, we hardly had a decent conversation since then. I tried to ignore the annoying dimwit, acting mostly as if he was invisible, only talking to him when I had to and even then I was rather hostile and cold. Only Jackson guessed about the real reason for my coldness, but other than telling me to stay away from Damion, he never talked about it with me. But of course, Damion goes out of his way to annoy and antagonize me every moment he can, and believe me he can. He can get me from zero to mad just by opening his mouth, and at the same time from dry to wet in just one stare. Yeah, I m not proud to admit that fact even to myself – physically I m attracted to the man like a bee to a flower. But I learned my lesson the hard way and no amount of honey can ever make up for the pain of a broken heart. Like I said, love and hate – different sides of the same coin. So, yes, Kiara knows everything, but she doesn t understand what I m going through here. How do I explain something I don t even understand myself to my best friend. How can I be so attracted on one hand, but hate him so much on the other? I hate his fudging humongous ego, and I hate every girl falling before his feet. And most of all I hate his man-whore ways. Then there s also that smoldering, moody, on the edge, dangerously mysterious bad-boy reputation of his. I m not sure yet if it scares me away or intrigues me. I stop the mind-running to answer Kiara before she suspects where my mind is lingering. "What, I like Ren," I say this more for myself than her to be honest. Ren is a real good guy, what more can I ask for? It s just that our views of the future at this moment differs. Ren is already talking about getting married and having children. At 19 I m way too young to think about marriage and I for certain don t want to even think about kids and that stuff. I won t even know which side of the baby is up and which side goes down. Kiara snorts. "Yeah right. You keep telling yourself that." I sigh. How can I tell her, that when I kiss Ren I don t feel any sparks? And sometimes Damion s frickin green eyes are laughing at me. I ssssoooo much want to delete Damion forever from my life because he just messes up everything. It s as if my mind, body, and heart are in a constant war, each one fighting for a different outcome. My mind repercussions me about staying miles away from the cock-ass, my body lusts to be in his arms, kissing him and my poor little heart is hoping just to come out of this mess in one piece. And truthfully, I m not sure whose side I m on.