Songs for this chapter are:

You- The Pretty Reckless

Lies- Marina and the Diamonds

Hurts So Good- Astrid S

...

Nora's POV.

Man, is he good at distracting me. I pull my mouth back a little, to get my focus back. I keep my mouth on his, but keep a few inches between our bodies. His lips are so soft. Too soft for me to pay attention to anything else. I need to gain my composer so we can finish this conversation. I open my eyes while he kisses me, his hands at are his sides for now, so I have a tiny bit of control over my body.

I look around the room, trying to find a focal point. Well, he has a hockey poster on the wall. Two rows of beady eyes on bulky men gawk back at me. Each of them, hockey stick in hand, are staring down at me like I've done something that deserves their hunky yet surprisingly judgmental stares.

Why the hell does Landon have this hanging over his bed? Sometimes his age is so there, like it a massive neon sign over his head, screaming at me when I look at him. Like now, when I'm laying here reading the list of dates for a hockey team in his bed. He clearly doesn't have women in his bed often, the thought makes me love the poster a little more.

But other times, he is nothing but pure man. He has an old soul. A wise beyond his years smile and a heart of dripping gold. He's careful and each one of his touches mean something. He puts thought behind his glances, his kisses. He doesn't just put his mouth on me, he puts his entire soul into me, taking a piece of me with every drawn breath.

And his body. He has the body of a man, threaded ropes of muscle make up his arms. His cheeks are covered in hair and his broad shoulders carry the weight of so many others. He's the most thoughtful person, man or woman, I've ever come across. But, no matter how I try to justify it, he's still five years younger than me. When our ages are pointed out, when they are focused on, the numbers change things. The air shifts, the energy between us thrums a little louder. He's only in his second year of college! What could I have in common with him?

His mouth moves down to my neck and his tongue makes sweet swirls against my skin. Maybe I can name a few things we have in common...

But then there's Dakota. She called him again. What am I going to do about this girl? I don't have the energy for this high school love triangle bullshit. I'm too old for that. I've done that. I've fought with friends over boys and cried into my fair share of bottles of cheap wine. Landon hasn't even had time to get her out of his system before I came around, pulling him in the other direction.

Part of me can't possibly understand what he sees in her, besides her appearance. She's beautiful and works hard for the body she has. But inside, she's rude and dramatic and childish and-

Am I really doing this? Am I laying here, in his bed, with his mouth on me, curating a list of reasons why his ex is awful? Is that the level I have stooped to?

I drag my fingers down his back as he continues to lick at my neck. I have never felt this content with a man and I sure as hell haven't ever met a man who would be given complete control over my body and choose to use his mouth on me until I turn into a blissful puddle, being cradled in his lap on the floor.

Still, he hasn't had time to properly date anyone. He has never even gone out on a date with anyone other than her. He's living in his first apartment, I paid mortgage in a condo. He hasn't had his college experience yet. I had my share of waking up on someone's lawn with a hangover from the party the night before. I'm positive that he's never even been to a college party. He's never had a one-night stand. Dakota is all he knows about women.

He has roots with her. She owns a part of him that I'm never going to be able to take from her. That part of him, all his first memories will never be mine. But, do I need them? He doesn't have my first either. I shared them with another man. Why does it bother me so much, then? Is it because my ex isn't hanging over us, still calling my phone while we lay in bed together?

My mind pushes a memory up front, reminding me of the look on Cliff's face when Hardin had him in a headlock on the floor. The way his bones crunched when Hardin's boot pressed them into the floor. He sent him here, to check on me. I know he did, yet I haven't had the courage to ask him. I would rather not confirm my worst suspicions.

Dakota begged me, right outside of this apartment, to stay away from Landon. She wants another chance to make things right between them. I wish I knew what is was that tied them together so tightly. What is it that's hanging between them, left untouched and unhealed, open and bleeding out?

Am I going to be strong enough to put pressure on that wound and find the strength to stitch it up?

That depends on what it is that they share. I know there's a reason he isn't ready to let her stand on her own, I just don't have a clue what the hell it is. It's not fair for me to demand to hear it when I'm not ready to share my past with him.

Why would the universe allow this to happen?

Why would she allow two people who are clearly still stuck in the limbo of our last relationships to become so attached to each other?

I don't know why I let this mess continue anyway, I should have left it as flirty, friend of a friend relationship, but I let it go further. Mostly because he became an itch I couldn't scratch and partly because I just couldn't keep my distance. My thoughts of him quickly became unmanageable and uncontrollable, much like his mouth on my breasts right now.

I hold the back of his neck, guiding his mouth to be greedy.

This probably isn't the best time to think about all this, but this is the only time I have. I made a promise to Dakota that I had every intention of breaking, but the pinch of guilt is still there. She isn't that bad when she's not threatening to run her mouth about my life or kicking me out of the apartment that was just as much mine as hers. She can be funny, and even fun to be around. The first time I met her, she asked me to go dancing with her. I had just unpacked my boxes and wanted to get to know my new roommates, Maggy and Dakota.

Dakota got dolled up, in a tight red dress and sparkly black shoes. She had her curly hair straightened out down her shoulders. She looked smoking hot and ready to take on the world. She told me she had just gone through a break-up and needed to clear her head. I suggested she dance with Aiden, the tall blond from her dance academy. If I had known what kind of breakup she had "suffered" through, I would have never suggested that. I wouldn't have pushed her toward him I knew what she had at home.

I was used to the typical breakups, my friend's boyfriends cheating on them, or breaking up because they need to focus on their career. Those are the kind of breakups I'm used to being soothed by a night out with the girls.

If I had known that half of her breakup was made up of Landon, I wouldn't have said that. Back then, he was nothing more than a tiny picture cutout from a high school prom picture. He was this college freshman living across the country. It wasn't until I hung out with Tessa the first time in New York that I put it all together.

I had already started paying attention to him, we had already had our little moment in his bathroom. She acts as if I purposely sought him out to prey on him just to hurt her. I'm not that evil. I could have pulled back from him when I realized that Tessa's perfect roommate, the epitome of everything I have wanted in a man wrapped into one, was also my roommate's ex boyfriend.

Landon was the nerdy, devoted boy from Michigan and he was the one who was afraid of hurting a fly when fucking. Dakota told us so many stories about Landon and his fear of trying new things. She told us that she once tried to get him to take her doggy style and he finished before they started. Ew.

I look up at Landon, the Landon who's mine and mine to keep, at least while his body is under mine, and his hands are digging into my hips. His mouth is so possessive, saying the things his lips are too timid to reveal. I love how full I feel with him. It's hard to explain, he just makes me feel taken care of, satisfied, important and just full. Of life, of happiness, I don't know, but I feel a sense of peace with him.

I drag my nails down his stomach, just hard enough to leave thin red marks, it's like drawing lines in a battlefield. He's mine, I want to scream to her, but maybe he isn't? Maybe he's too good for both of us and we would be doing him a huge favor leaving him the hell alone. She would never though, she wouldn't stay away from her crutch long enough for him to be able to breathe, and I would like to think I open his lungs.

I want him to be free around me, be able to be himself and put his own needs first for once in his life. Dakota seems to want to keep him locked away in a childhood romance that she's too afraid to leave behind. If I knew what it was between them, I would have a better footing while trying to navigate.

When she confronted me about him, time after time, I should have learned my lesson. She isn't going away without a fight and I'm too exhausted to give her one. Something has happened between them that made Landon appoint himself as her knight in shining armor and she makes for the perfect damsel and distress.

But what about me?

Where the hell does that leave me?

I don't need Landon for the same reasons she does, but does that make me less worthy of him? Because I want to bring him up and hold him there, like he deserves?

I don't have the past that she shares with him, but I can make a good future for him if given the chance.

Landon groans as I grind my hips over him. He's hard for me, here with me. His hands are on my body, pulling and tearing at every inch of me. It's a desperate fury that I'm enjoying getting to know. I pull at his hair and drop my mouth to his ear.

"You're so good, Landon. You're too good," I encourage him and he pants beneath me. He makes me feel like a queen and he isn't some peasant to me, he's the adored King. My King, and with him we would rule equally. I wouldn't be stuffed into a dress and heels and forced to be a trophy wife for anyone. Not like Stausey.

That was unfair. Ameen loves her. I know he loves her and a part of me is envious that their life is what it is. It's not that I want her life, I just want a partner in life. I don't need a big house with matching towels and china sets, I just want someone to want to spend time with me. I would rather have someone listen to me talk through a movie than wake up to a Mercedes wrapped in a big, red bow.

Landon's hands lift to my breasts and he fondles them, kneading the flesh in his strong palm. I would take this over any material thing. I could spend hours and days and weeks with him like this. But my time is running out, I don't have the luxury of time in my favor here.

Dakota does. She has years on me. That makes her relationship with Landon more than some child-love. That I could handle, if it was over. That same old parable about two childhood neighbors that grow up together and share lemonade on the steps of their childhood homes. Their friendship grows into love and the rest if history. I had that too. Even though I find that trope predictable and a little cliché, there is something to be said about the convenience of it.

I'm talking about something deeper, something happens when you share a tragedy. I know this first hand. I remember when the worst thing in my relationship with Ameen's little brother was when he told me that my sister was pretty. I was jealous, and only fourteen. I grew out of my jealousy and went on to be friends with him after our breakup. Well, the first breakup.

Since then, we've created our share of adult problems and now that our now that our siblings are married, the mess has become too big to clean up. Our relationship has been over for a while, regardless of the fine print.

Our siblings remind us how perfect we are and we spent years eating their fancy cheeses and drinking their sour wine that's twice my age. We are going to share a baby, with both of our blood running through it, our little niece. The darling angel child that my parents are expecting to mend the crumbled bridge between the two families. I wouldn't hold my breath if I were them.

I know my sister, along with my parents, blame me for the hostile relationship between my parents and his, but they only blame me because it's easier than admitting the truth.

What was I thinking telling Landon that he can meet my sister?

"What are you thinking about?" Landon kisses his way down the column of my neck and between my breasts. This sweet, sweet man, I can't tell him that I'm analyzing every bit of our relationship and deciding our future while he kisses every inch of my neck and chest.

"That I want you," my lips are onhis chin, peppering his jaw, before moving up to his lips. I lift my hips tohim, letting him know what I want, and how I want it    

(Author's note- LA and Orlando people- I will be at the Santa Monica Library Oct 5 at 630pm and Orlando people I will be at Shameless Book Con Oct 22! I hope to see some of you there! I'll update again tomorrow :)