Page 16 of Ravaged By Lust

The rest of my body is draped over Bishop. We’re both naked. Basking in that post-sex glow.

Being with Bishop feels right, more right than anything else. I had thought, when he started sneaking through my bedroom window, that I might begin to doubt everything that’s gone on between us, and yet there hasn’t been one glimmer of this not feeling just right.

“I never expected us to end up together,” I say to Bishop. “Not when we first met.”

The eighteen-year-old snorts. “What? When we were, like, ten?”

I giggle. “Um, yeah.”

“Well I, for one, have always known I’d end up with you, Chloe. I fancied you the first time I saw you.”

“Come on, Bishop, don’t mock…”

“It’s true. Sometimes guys just know when they see the girl that will be their everything, the girl that every other girl in their life will be held up against. The girl who every other girl will never compare to. You’re that girl, Chloe, for me. For real.”

I don’t know how to react to that other than to pinch him. He doesn’t even react to the pain except to laugh.

“You’re a real sweetheart, Bishop. You should be a songwriter with the honey that you can speak.”

“Don’t call me sweetheart.”

“You might’ve been thinking all that, but me, at ten years old, wasn’t really thinking which of my brother’s friends I would fuck one day.”

“You were being pretty narrow-minded, then.”

“Ha, ha. Very funny.”

Bishop squeezes my hand. “I spoke to Drake Sharpe today,” he says softly, as if broaching something dark and serious.

“Oh, yeah?”

I know Drake Sharpe. Not well, though. He’s a friend of my brother’s. He and Bishop are only close in that they attend the same year at Crystal River High and that they have mutual friends in common. Bishop telling me he spoke to Drake is unusual, but not abnormal or anything. I wonder why he’s bringing him up.

“He’s pretty intent on forming a band at high school this year,” Bishop continues. “He’s spoken to the teachers and everything and is looking to organize something. He told me he’s going to hold auditions in the gym, hopefully soon.”

I nod

“Yeah, Axel told me something like that, but he didn’t mention Drake. He told me he’s considering doing it, and now I guess he’ll be a shoo-in, of course, being a friend of Drake’s.”

“And also for being fucking awesome at the bass,” Bishop adds.

“Yeah. He’s been practicing like he’s possessed.”

“He hasn’t told me he was thinking about doing it, though,” Bishops says. “Why not?”

I shake my head. “I think he thinks it’s silly. He’s worried that if all this goes nowhere, then it’s embarrassing. He spends all his spare time in his room now, though, rehearsing like mad.”

“Like I said, Axel is fucking talented,” Bishop remarks. “I bet he’ll be going places.”

I nod.

“I hate to admit it, but it’s true.”

“Music runs in your family’s blood,” Bishop says.

I blush. “Maybe…”

“Why don’t you think about auditioning for Drake’s band?”