I love your rough edges

and soft parts that bleed.
The ruins of your soul
are poetry to me.

~Anna Krizzan

Have you ever been felt up? Over the bra, under the blouse, shoes off... hoping to God your parents don't walk in?...She had now, with John Bender no less. Her pre-detention self would have been disgusted but not now...never again. She could feel him everywhere and everywhere had never felt so good.

She wanted him. No, needed him. She probably did from the moment she first met him.

But it wasn't just lust anymore; she trusted John more than she had ever trusted anyone before.

John pulled her close, their bare chests flush against one another, hands fumbling with buttons and bra hooks. "I swear to god, Princess. I won't stop until your legs are shaking and the neighbours know my name."

Claire giggled, unzipping his rough denim trousers as he gently pushed her back on to her fluffy pink duvet. "Shhh, John. My parents and brother are down the hall", but she couldn't bite back her smile as she slid her hands through his long shaggy hair, his dark hooded eyes, teasingly featherlight touch on her hips and devilish grin setting her alight.

Who was the tease now!

God, She loved him. She loved how he annoyed her, how he drove her crazy with frustration and how he cared about her underneath it all more than anyone else ever had.

Over the panties, no bra, blouse unbuttoned, Calvins in a ball on the front seat, past eleven on a school-night?

It was meant to happen like this, sheets rustling in her darkened too pink room and his dark eyes all she could see.

Warm bodies, sweaty backs, tugging at hair.

No panties. No boxers. Skin on skin.

John had done this before, of course he had..but never quite like this, not with a girl he really wanted, a girl who made him crazy but he loved anyway. Nothing could compare to this.

Nothing could prepare him for the feel of her coming around him, for the look in her eyes afterwards or for the roaring wave of affection that ran through him (slightly foreign and a bit bizarre but as much a part of him now as his arms and legs or the blood running through his veins).

'Fuck I'm in trouble', he thought to himself. 'The princess is going to be the death of me.'

But he already knew that. He had from the moment she had walked into him in that damn closet the day they met in detention.

She was his. And he was hers. And this was their world...they would find a way to be together.

The princess and the criminal.

"I love you."

"I love you too, sweets."