Free Any Red-Blooded Girl by Maggie Bloom Page B

me, jamming my spine against a scraggly tree
root—which didn’t actually hurt, but made me kind of nervous.
Nervous and excited, if that makes any sense.
    Anyway, I swear I’m not some sicko pervert
with a domination fetish; I just liked tasting Mick’s tongue in my
mouth and feeling his heart thump against my chest and imagining
his lust for me was so powerful we had no choice but to surrender
to it. After all, I’m only human. This boy would have turned any red-blooded girl to mush, especially so up close and
personal.
    After a good, solid five minutes of sucking
face, Mick reached toward his pants. And again, I panicked. I mean,
maybe he had more on his mind than kissing and touching. Did he
think I wanted to have sex right there in the woods? Did he think
I’d done things like that before? Had he? A stream of heavy
questions flat-lined my brain. And even though I wanted to say
something—like maybe tell him to slow down just a little—I drew a
complete blank.
    The next thing I knew, Mick’s forearm rubbed
across my hip. Then his hand went into his pants—at which point I’m
pretty sure I stopped breathing. Actually, I might have even
blacked out, because I don’t remember anything else until he nudged
me.
    “Hey, get up,” he said. He tugged me off the
ground with both hands. “I want to give you your birthday
present.”
    I was afraid to look down. Were his pants
unzipped? Shit. What was I going to do if that was my
present? I mean, we’d rehearsed all these lame ways to turn a boy
down in Sex Ed, but I’d forgotten the whole routine already. The
truth was, I hadn’t paid much attention in Sex Ed in the first
place, since my prospects of getting anywhere near a boy I liked in
the next century seemed dismal. Most of the time when I liked
someone, they never liked me back. I was cursed—until now, which
left me entirely unprepared for whatever was in Mick’s pants.
    “Okay, close your eyes again,” he said.
    “Do I have to?”
    “You said you loved surprises.”
    So the lie had come back to bite me. It
figured. “I do like surprises,” I maintained. “But I’m
afraid of bugs and snakes and stuff like that.” Who knew, maybe
exaggerating my fraidy cat ness would at least buy me a
couple of extra seconds to think of a good excuse in case I needed
it.
    “I’ll protect you. Don’t worry,” Mick said,
stopping to plant a tender kiss on my forehead. “Now go ahead.”
    I had no choice but to wing it. If I opened
my eyes and his pants were down, I’d have to come up with something
on the fly. “Okay, here goes,” I said, shutting my eyes and
praying. I mean, it wasn’t like I didn’t want Mick sexually; it was
just way too soon. Maybe a year or two down the road—if
everything was perfect between us—I would be ready. Just not right
now.
    Even though I technically had my eyes closed,
I let them drift open just far enough to catch a few hazy glimpses
of what looked like Mick fumbling with something in his hand. Not
exactly helpful.
    “Okay. Ready,” he finally said. “Open up.” I
swear, he sounded so excited I already felt bad about disappointing
him.
    “Oh my God! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”
I squealed. “I love it! Did you make this?”
    Mick was beaming—and his pants were still
zipped—which explained a great deal of my excitement.
    Displaying the leather bracelet across his
palm, he said, “I sure did. See, these are your initials,
and these are mine .” He pointed out the shiny copper FF and MD, which glowed like pure sunshine against
the black background.
    “What’s this?” I asked, transfixed by an
intricate design between the two sets of initials.
    “Oh, that’s a Celtic knot. It was my mother’s
idea,” Mick said. “It’s an Irish symbol of eternal love and other
stuff—like the beauty of nature. It’s an ancient pattern. An
endless series of connected loops. Do you like it?”
    “It’s perfect. It’s the best present anyone’s
ever given me,” I