That earns me a faint smile. “You’re pretty destructive yourself.”
I place my palm on his chest, feeling the steady rise of his breath, the beat of his heart. “You feel nice and solid. Put together. Not broken at all.”
“A trick of the light,” he says softly, blue eyes intent on mine.
“Have you told him?” I whisper because confessions can’t come too loud.
A slow shake of his head. He retreats to the armchair opposite mine. “What would I say? He makes me want to punch him in the face. He makes me want to climb out of my skin. There’s not a word for what I feel when he’s in the room.”
“Desire?”
“The closest thing would be… maybe obsession. The most unhealthy, fucked-up kind of obsession. It made me throw my money in with his. Made me go after the woman he loves.”
Obsession. “Do people ever just meet and fall in love and get married?”
That earns me a soft laugh. “I’m sure you’ve met plenty of well-adjusted guys in college. Why aren’t you married to one of them already?”
“I don’t know,” I say, but that’s a lie. I wanted magic and fireworks and the kind of explosive chemistry that changes my DNA. It makes me sound too naive to admit that.
“I’ll tell you why. Because none of them could have kept up with you, none of those pumpkin cocks would have been enough.”
His words echo on my skin with total truth. Those frat boys who brought me lukewarm beer in a plastic cup, the ones who lured me into an upstairs bedroom only to collapse into confessions at the slightest sign of kindness. They couldn’t have handled the real me, and the thought gives me a sense of power. A sense that, amid my confusion and doubt, I’m in the right place.
I’m wearing jeans and a T-shirt, my makeup smudged after a long day, drops of water on my shirt from helping my mother shower before bed. This is the least sexy I’ve ever been, but I become a siren right here in this armchair. I’m a seductress for the ages as I stand up in front of Sutton. His blue eyes darken, proving me right, goading me on.
It doesn’t really matter what I look like, anyway. I’m burned out on grief, desperate to feel something real. Maybe I want Christopher, but so does Sutton.
All we have in this moment is each other.
“What are you doing?” he asks, sounding amused. “Do you want a new model for your pumpkins? Because I have to tell you, I’m not going to stand very still like the boys at art school. I’m not going to get hard for your entertainment.”
“No?” I ask, reaching for the hem of my T-shirt. I have on a plain white bra underneath, but it might as well be black silk for how proud I feel once I’m bared. “But I would heckle you so nicely. And I think you’d enjoy it, Sutton, I really do.”
A muscle ticks in his jaw. “You are playing with fire.”
“Sometimes a girl wants to get burned.” I push my jeans down my hips and step out of them, revealing plain pink panties that are soft from washing a hundred times, and he sucks in a breath. He’s already hard, judging from the way the denim stretches taut between his legs. He’s tense everywhere, muscles flexing in his arms, his thighs. His whole body held at alert.
His voice is hoarse. “If I get up from this chair I’m going to have you bent over the side of the couch so fast you’ll get dizzy. I won’t bother taking off your panties, I’ll push them out of the way so I can get inside you. I’ll reach under your bra and touch your breasts, pinch your nipples until your tight little pussy squeezes around my cock.”
Now it’s my turn to squirm, legs pressing together where I stand. My body aches for what he promises, but I don’t want to lose control of the situation. “You aren’t allowed to get up from that chair. Those are the rules.”
“Never been real good at following rules, sugar.”
“Does that mean you can’t handle me? I thought you were stronger than those frat boys.”
A low chuckle. He stands up with slow, deliberate movements. And he pulls his shirt off the same way, revealing ridges of well-defined abs and a landscape of tanned skin. “I’m plenty strong, but I think you know that. Strong enough to see through your rules bullshit.”
My mouth feels dry. There’s a jump in my heartbeat that reminds me of holding my hand out to Gold Rush, feeling her breath against my palm. Having so much violence so barely restrained. There’s no wooden door between me and the animal in front of me now.
“Strong enough to give you exactly what you want, even if you’re going to fight me.” He opens the placket of his jeans, revealing his bare cock. No underwear or boxers between the rough denim and his flesh. He’s hard and thick and shiny at the tip. He runs a cruel fist down the length of his erection, twisting at the top as if he needs to hold something off.
Even if you’re going to fight me. The crazy thing is, even I don’t know if I’m going to fight him. The way he looks at me makes me wet and pliant. My fear makes me stiff. I take a step back. “I’m allowed to say no, Sutton.”
“You’re allowed to. Maybe I’ll even believe you.”
And then he would leave me here, all worked up with nothing but my pumpkin cocks to satisfy me. “You really do want me,” I say, my gaze flicking from his hard cock to his intense eyes. “I’m not just a Christopher stand-in.”
He laughs, though there’s no humor in it. “Oh, sugar. You have no idea. I would fuck you all night long, even if I never saw Christopher again. I would fuck you for the rest of my life if you let me. You’re the one using me as a stand-in.”
The idea makes me gasp, but there’s no time to dwell on it. No time to think about whether I would really do that. No time to wonder why, because Sutton always keeps his promises. He flips me around and has me bent over the curved arm of the sofa. My body arches as he touches two fingers to my most sensitive place. Arousal gives him all the slickness he needs. It’s my own desire that betrays me, letting him invade me. Then his cock nudges me, burning hot.
I arch my back, though I don’t know whether I’m asking him to wait or wanting him to do it harder. Faster. Deeper. Then he slides inside, and it’s like I’m complete. My body had been hurting from the space inside it, and now he’s there—filling me almost like he belongs there. It’s the fake pine cone scent from the logs, a way to pretend this is real.
He cups my breast through the white bra, and I flinch away, already knowing what comes next. He told me, didn’t he? He told me how the story went, but still I find it shocking when he presses my nipple between thumb and forefinger, when he sends a bite of pain through my breast.
“I’m not,” I gasp between the first thrust and the second, my eyes shutting tight against the pleasure so sharp it turns to pain. “Not. Not. Not.”
“Not what?” he murmurs, pressing deep for a long moment.
I’m not using him as a Christopher stand-in, at least I don’t think so. And I don’t think he’s using me, either. “I’m not in love with Christopher Bardot.”
“You keep telling yourself that.” A hard thrust. Another. “You keep saying it.”
I don’t know whether he means it literally, but that’s what I do. I say it out loud, over and over. “I’m not in love with… not in love with Christopher… Oh God, Christopher Bardot!”