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PROLOGUE
ARCHIE
Twenty feltthe same as nineteen, felt the same as sixteen and fifteen. But Mandy’s square-cut acrylic nails drawing circles up my arm felt different than they had the year before.
Different from the month before.
The night before.
There was a new intent behind her touch, and for as long as I’d been looking forward to the shift, I wasn’t sure I wanted it anymore. It felt practiced, pre-meditated and, while I didn’t know much about sex, I knew it wasn’t supposed to be either of those things.
“You look distracted, Archer,” she whispered, letting her hand fall with a focused purpose onto my lap. “Youfeeldistracted.”
“It was a big day,” I managed to answer.
She flexed her fingers against the fly of my jeans, and I closed my eyes, desperately trying to will myself into the right mood for what she had planned.
“It’s not every day my boyfriend graduates with his Bachelor’s degree at barely twenty.”
“It’s not every dayanyonedoes that,” I reminded her.
She laughed, a melodic lilt in my ear.
Mandy pushed her palm harder against my dick, which would have been content to ignore her for the rest of the night if I didn’t fight him about it. Ironic, considering for the past three years I’d been borderline desperate for the meal on the table tonight, and now that itwason the agenda, I couldn’t have wanted anything less.
Three years I’d been with Mandy. Three years of hand jobs and blow jobs, and eating cunt like it was the key to getting on the Dean’s list. Three years of coming all over her stomach while we kissed because I was out of my mind with want for the obsidian-haired woman I’d been obsessed with since before my balls had even thought about dropping.
I’d wanted her for as long as I’d known what the words even meant. Mandy was my best friend’s older sister, the one person I should have only ever fantasized about and never had. But I’d raced through high school and started college early, running into her on campus on my very first day of classes. Mandy had known me as long as I’d known Owen, but she didn’t know about how long I’d wanted her.
So when she offered to show me around campus, it was an immediate yes.
When she asked for help with calculus, I couldn’t tell her no.
And when she’d asked me to the movies on winter break of my freshman year, I’d kissed her for the first time while the credits rolled and never looked back. I was seventeen then, and she held off like a saint until the day I turned eighteen, but she hadn’t given me everything. Not at first. Not even now.
She’d wanted to wait until I finished school to fuck, and I’d waited and waited, and now…
And now?
“Are you nervous?” She popped open the button on my jeans.
“I’m here,” I lied, forcing a smile.
I was distracted.
Distraught.
Mandy took my earlobe into her mouth, swirling her tongue in the way she knew I liked. I sighed, closing my eyes and leaning back against her headboard, willing every drop of blood that existed in my body to head southward because I didn’t want to ruin this for her.
Or for me.
“You know I’ve done this before,” she said, voice quiet like she was embarrassed about the fact she was four years older than me and not a virgin.
“I know.”
I didn’t mind. If anything, it made things easier between us. Less fumbling and confusion. It was practical for at least one of us to have hands-on experience about the whole deal. But if I’d learned anything in college, if I’d learned anything as the youngest person in every single college class I’d taken over the last three years, it was that book learning rarely translated to real-life experience.
Downstairs, a door slammed, and I startled. It was reflex; it was instinct. I managed to turn my head barely, just enough to get a look at Mandy from the corner of my eye. I loved her.
