The Book of Matthew (The Alex Chronicles Book 1) by K.T. Doyle Read Free Book Online Page B

mind again and rushed forward and I felt him on me—his lips on my mouth, his hands pressed to my jaw.
    There were groans and whimpers and a tangling of tongues and then our kiss was over. We stood flushed and breathless in the middle of the room. My lips felt swollen and tingly. I touched them and watched as his dark eyes darted from the floor to the ceiling and then from my mouth to my eyes.
    With one quick motion I stripped off my shirt. Matt’s eyes widened and he scanned my bare flesh. He pulled off his own t-shirt, let it drop to the floor, and pressed his bare chest against me as he wrapped his arms around my back. He pushed me backwards and we stumbled and groped our way to the stainless steel counter next to the sink.
    We stripped off more clothing. I hoisted myself up with Matt’s help onto the dusty cold steel. I winced as it hit my warm skin. Once he was between my thighs, my legs wrapped around him, with one hard push I took him in.
     
    …
     
    There was a moment of enveloping calm and nothingness before the trembling started. I was alone and then I was not. My skin was hot and perspiring and then it was covered with goose flesh. My body was lax and flaccid and then it shook and shuddered.
    Matt sat next to me on the kitchen counter. I turned to him. He looked ahead with a vacant, unblinking stare, his chest heaving in and out.
    “We should get out of here,” he finally said, still staring straight ahead. He slid off the counter to collect his clothes. He hastily threw them on and rushed out of the room without a glance back, leaving me alone and naked to drown in the blinding, revealing light.
     
    …
     
    I stood in the doorway of the practice room, watching him, his back to me as he pulled his guitar out of the cabinet. I smoothed out my knotted hair. My cheeks still burned and I felt them with both hands and they were warm. I imagined they were flushed with the unmistakable glow that comes after coming.
    The first of Matt’s students arrived and pushed past me. Several more voices echoed up from the stairwell and two more boys excused their way into the room as I stood blocking the entrance. Everyone was now accounted for.
    Matt kept his back to everyone. I stared at the back of his head as I took those first few steps into the room.
    Things had seemed to happen so quickly between us I hardly had time to process it all. One minute we were shaking hands for the first time, the next we were making music alone together, and the next we were naked on a kitchen counter.
    I was shocked, confused, exhilarated. I felt relieved, empowered, free.
    Matt finally turned to face everyone. The glow that flushed his cheeks was just as unmistakable.
     
    II.
     
    “How about this one?” my mother asked.
    I looked up from the rack of dresses I had been searching through and saw my mother clutching a white sequined dress. She held it up for me to see it.
    I wrinkled my nose at her choice. “Too formal.”
    She let the dress fall to her side in a slump. “The dance is called a Spring Formal .”
    “Whatever.”
    With a flip of her wrist the dress disappeared, stuffed back among the other dresses on the rack.
    My mother and I had been searching for a half-hour. Who knew finding a simple dress for a high school dance could take so long, or be so tiring or so depressing. Every dress was too long, too short, or too ugly. I hadn’t even tried any on yet and I was already prepared to give up. The pangs in my stomach reminded me that the sooner I got this over with, the sooner we could eat lunch. And the sooner I could get away from her .
    She tried again. “How about this one?”
    I scanned her second pick. Although the style was to my liking, the turquoise color absolutely was not. “It’s okay, I guess. I’ll try it on as a last resort.”
    Ever since the week before, since the therapy session with Dr. Cramer, I had tried like hell to ignore my parents. Dismissing my mother had been hard. A few times I walked by my