Shit.
He’s literally the hottest thing I have ever seen. His head looks freshly shaved. He smells like rain and stormy summer nights. His features are so fiercely masculine, his cheekbones proud, his jawline so sharp you could cut yourself on it, and I can’t look away. I’ve never been able to look away from him. This lingering obsession I’ve had with him has been my blessing and my curse. The sweetest heaven and the bitterest hell.
He smiles, his lips parting suggestively, and a violent tremor runs the length of my body. Why is a smile like that so dangerous? Does he know he can end entire civilizations with that cruel mouth of his? “Okay, Firebrand. Open your legs for me.”
“Why?”
“Because I have a camera in my hand and you’re my muse. What’s the big deal?”
Has he done this before with other girls from the academy? Is there a stack of photos in a drawer somewhere, from other muses who happily spread their legs for him? I’d ask, but honestly, I don’t want to know the answer to that question.
“What are you gonna do with these photos if I do?” I ask.
He looks positively evil. “Does it matter? If you’re not afraid of me, why would you be afraid of what I might do with some photos?”
Such a backwards argument. Of course I should be afraid of what he plans on doing with them. I’d be out of my damn mind not to be concerned. But the worst-case scenario flashes before my eyes: he posts them around school. Everyone sees them. Principal Harcourt sees them. She shows them to my father. The Riot House boys have pulled this shit before. It wouldn’t be completely unimaginable that Pax would make a million copies of these pictures and plaster them all over Mountain Lakes by tomorrow morning. But…somehow…I don’t fucking care.
I open my legs.
Pax hisses between his teeth. “Jesus fucking Christ.” He steps back, eyes boring into the most private area of my body, a strange rush of color creeping up his neck, and I feel so alive. Even more alive than the time I woke up from the dead to find him panting over me, covered in my blood, right before he bruised my ribs. “Don’t move,” he growls. Raising the camera, he holds it to his face and looks through the viewfinder. I’ve never found myself in this position before; I’m not sure what to do with myself. Hiding myself seems like a good option, but fuck that. I’ve come this far. I might as well see this thing through. I look directly down the lens of the camera, refusing to even blink.
“Fuck,” he whispers.
The sound of the shutter snapping open and closed can be heard even over the thrashing heavy metal. He fires off another three shots, stepping closer, and then dropping into a crouch to get another shot at a lower angle.
And then he does something that will be burned into my memory until the end of fucking days: He puts down the camera. Then, he steps into me, right in between my legs, places his palms on my thighs, trailing them inward, and pushes my legs open as far as they’ll go. My heart races away from me as he bows his head, ducking the tiniest bit, purses his lips, and releases a trail of saliva from his mouth…that lands right on my pussy.
He grunts, satisfied, staring down at the spit that he just deposited onto me, where it’s slowly running down my pussy lips, warm and wet, and…holy fucking shit, what is happening right now?
He looks up at me from under hooded, half closed eyelids, watching me closely as he slides his hand up, up, up the inside of my thigh, then presses the pads of his middle and ring finger against me, rubbing the wetness he left there all over my flesh.
Holy…
…fucking…
Oh…
…my…
God…
Not content with his work yet, he parts me, pressing his fingers into me, rubbing his wetness into my wetness…
Fuck. I didn’t even realize I was wet until now.
And I am. I really am.
“Looks like you don’t need any help from me,” Pax rasps out.
Stunned, absolutely staggered by what’s happening, I can only shake my head. I dig my fingernails into the lip of the chest of drawers when he finds my clit, smirking wickedly, and begins to rub it.
“Ahhh! Oh my god!”
Pax ducks down even lower, curving himself over me, so much bigger, taller, stronger than me, until his lips are dangerously close to brushing mine. “You come here to fuck, Firebrand?” he whispers. “Is that what you did? You think one kiss in a hospital bed entitles you this?” His hand finds mine. He guides it to his dick, forcing me to take hold of him, closing my fingers around the rigid, hard length of him.
A startled gasp flies out of my mouth. I touched him at the party, in the forest. I think I did. Everything from that night is such a blur. There won’t be any forgetting this, though. My fingers don’t need any further encouragement. I tighten my hold around him, squeezing hard, and I catch the little shudder that ripples through his body. “That kiss didn’t earn me anything,” I pant. “But I have a feeling you want to give this to me anyway.” I dig my nails into him, through the fabric of his sweats, and Pax bares his teeth. He doesn’t pull my hand away, though.
“Careful, Firebrand. You have any idea what you’re doing?”
Nope. I have no fucking clue what I’m doing. I’ll figure it out if I have to, though. I’ve been waiting way too long for this. And here, in Pax’s bedroom, with his calloused fingers probing the most intimate parts of my body, expertly waking me up, making me come alive…I do feel like I’m alive. I don’t feel like I’m dying. I don’t want to die, and the relief I feel because of that is insane.
I squeeze harder, and Pax gives me a worryingly pleased open-mouthed smile. “This is your out, Chase. You know where the door is. If you wanna leave, let go of my cock, grab your shit and walk out of here right now.”
“No.”
He flicks my top lip with his tongue. “No?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“All right, then.” His hands are on me in a heartbeat. He lifts me from the chest of drawers, snatching me up into his arms, and my legs have nowhere else to go but around his waist. My breasts smash up against his chest, and the slick wet heat between my legs presses up against his rock-hard stomach.
My hair falls in a curtain around his face as he hikes me higher, folding me into his arms, and he snarls as he tips his head back to claim my mouth. “Kiss me like you fucking mean it,” he orders. “Kiss me the way you want me to fuck you.”
I react. I’m higher up than him, the way he’s holding onto me, and I bring my mouth down on his with a desperate need. Nearly four years’ worth of pent-up desire surges out of me like a tsunami; I force his mouth open and drive my tongue past his lips, and Pax grunts, maybe a little thrown off by my response. I lick and I taste him, kissing him so deeply and desperately that it actually takes him a second to catch up.
When he does, he’s an avalanche. A riptide. An unstoppable force of nature that I can’t reckon with. His right hand digs into my hair, his fingers closing to fist a handful of my thick waves, and the next thing I know, he’s throwing me down onto the bed, onto my back, and he’s ripping his sweats down his legs. My ribs are still sore, my chest fucking screams at the rough treatment, but I don’t care. I barely even notice the pain.