ECSTASY

by KV Rose

  I think about that model car on his desk.

  The one on his computer screen.

  I imagine his hands on me at the pool.

  My stomach flips as the memory plays in my head. And he’s in this house. I wonder who he’s with. There are over half a dozen cars here, and more along the road. Could be anyone.

  Alex is silent, and he’s made no move to get out. I get the distinct feeling he wishes he was anywhere else.

  “Look, if you don’t want to go—” I start to say, but he turns to glare at me in the dim light of the Jeep.

  “We’re here, aren’t we?” he asks, his fingers still on the steering wheel.

  I look out my window, stare at the trees lining the property. The moon overhead. “Didn’t go well with your parents?”

  “My mom wasn’t home.” It’s an agitated growl, that voice, but it’s an admission, too. It’s why he’s so upset.

  “Where is she?” I don’t look at him as I ask the question. I just keep staring at the window, which is rolled up now. And I remember looking out of another pane of glass. The one in Alex’s kitchen. Seeing Rihanna Martinson floating in that pool.

  “Fuck if I know.” He opens his door.

  I open mine, too, and we step out of the car, closing the doors behind us.

  We meet at the back of the Jeep, and he grabs my hand, pulls me close to him. He’s so hot to the touch, and his jaw is set even as he laces his fingers together behind my back, drawing me to him.

  “Let’s have fun tonight, yeah?” he asks me, his words at odds with how he looks, which is mainly pissed off. “Let’s have fun tonight, and in the morning, we can work this out, okay?”

  I swallow, averting my eyes for a second. Thinking about Eli.

  God, if Alex fucking knew.

  I look up, meet his eyes, force myself to nod anyway.

  Then I jerk my head toward the trunk. My overnight bag is in there. And even though I told myself I wouldn’t do it, there’s some E in there I’m definitely going to take.

  Alex stares at me a long moment, and then he lets go and opens the trunk. I shoulder my bag, and together, we head for the winding wooden deck that leads up to the door of the beach house.

  34

  Eli

  I see her before she sees me.

  I’m on the couch in the living room, my arm around Kaitlyn, a beer in my other hand. Dwight, Alex’s friend, is sitting on the opposite end of the couch with his girl, Nadia, and at the table a few of my teammates and some girls are playing Jenga. It all goes to shit when I hear the blocks scatter and everyone laughs, one lone voice calling out, “Jenga!”

  The lights are low, the music on, Kamaara, Techno Thot!, and I see her come up the stairs opposite the couch, arm in arm with Alex.

  Who, as usual, looks pissed.

  “Alex!” Dwight calls out, shrugging his arm off Nadia, who takes a drink from her cup. “You made it!”

  Alex doesn’t bother putting on a party face. He just flicks his brows up in acknowledgement of Dwight, then, arm still threaded through Zara’s, he steers them both down a little hall to the left of the stairs, toward the kitchen.

  They disappear beyond it, and Dwight rolls his eyes, turns to me. “What’s buggin’ him?”

  Nadia shifts on the couch, curling into Dwight. She tucks a strand of long black hair behind her ear. “Alex is always buggin’.”

  Kaitlyn laughs into her cup.

  I keep staring down the hall toward the kitchen, waiting for them to come out.

  Kaitlyn shifts a little toward me, putting her hand on my thigh. I didn’t invite her, but then again, I don’t usually invite most people that come here. It’s my dad’s place, but more than out of respect for him, I just don’t like most people. This shit is always Alex’s idea.

  “You got a light, E?” Dwight asks me, and I force myself to look away from the kitchen. I move my arm from around Kaitlyn, pull my black lighter out of my jean pocket and hand it to Dwight.

  “Thanks, man.”

  I know he’s not about to smoke a cigarette, and when he offers me a joint, I don’t hesitate to take it. I don’t drink that much, and I don’t smoke that much, but some nights just call for it.

  Like tonight.

  With Zara being so close but so fucking far.

  Finally, after I’ve already smoked half of Dwight’s joint, Alex and Zara come walking back into the living room, and they take a seat on the couch across from mine.

  Zara is wearing black, ripped shorts and a tight, white tank. Her sunglasses are pushed up on her head, and I imagine she left the rest of her shit in the room Alex usually stays in downstairs.

  Her white hair is wavy and loose, kind of wild around her pale face. She’s got a cup in her hand and she’s done with her drink before Alex even takes a single pull of his beer.

  While Alex and Dwight bullshit about next week’s upcoming game, and Kaitlyn runs her fingers up and down my arm while Nadia plays on her phone, Zara just stares at the floor.

  And I stare at her, but she refuses to meet my gaze. Even though she knows I’m looking at her. She has to know.

  Abruptly, she stands to her feet, sets her empty cup on the table.

  “Where’s the bathroom?” she asks the room, raising her voice so she can be heard over the music. The guys and their girls at the table are playing another riveting round of Jenga, and Alex glances up at her but keeps talking to Dwight.

  “Downstairs. To the right,” I tell her.

  She doesn’t look up. She just tucks her hands into her pockets and nods, then walks away, practically scurrying for the stairs.

  “Chick is weird,” Kaitlyn mutters beside me, so quiet only I can hear her. “I don’t know how Alex can stand to be in the same room with her after the shit she did.”

  I glance at Kaitlyn, my head feeling a little less heavy from the marijuana.

  Kaitlyn is pretty, she’s got long, dark blonde hair. Bright blue eyes. A fake tan. Her eyes are kind of freakishly big and her cheeks are kind of sunk in—nothing like Zara’s round face—but she’s got a fat ass and she gives good head.

  She also happens to be a shallow bitch.

  I stand to my feet, clear my throat. And I don’t say anything as I step between Dwight and Alex’s conversation, and head down the stairs into the darkness of the first level of Dad’s beach house.

  Mom and I used to come here a lot. Dad rarely did, he worked. And working was for men and entertaining me was for her.

  Didn’t work out so well for him when I turned thirteen, but I guess by then, she’d already done all the hard work.

  The stairs creak with every step as I head downstairs, so it’s not like I’m a ghost drifting through the house, but even so, Zara fucking runs right into me as I step down onto the main floor.

  I reach my hands out to steady her, and she’s clutching my shirt, just above my biceps.

  “Oh my God,” she says, breathless. “Sorry, I…” She falters, maybe realizing it’s me.

  I can smell her. Flowers and fucking coffee, like she’s a barista at a nursery. And her skin beneath my fingers…

  Fuck, she feels good.

  “What were you doing?” I ask her in the darkness. Light drifts down from the first floor, along with the music and the sounds of people talking, but it still feels like we’re alone right here.

  It’s how we always meet.

  Alone.

  “I uh, I was just…” she chokes on her words, her fingers gripping my shirt so tight I can feel her knuckles brushing my skin.

  “You were just what?” My hands are around her forearms, and there’s less than a foot between us. Less than a foot and when I take a step, I’m so close I can hear her breathing.

  I can hear her swallow.

  “I should go upstairs.”

  “Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

  Silence.

  Silence, save for everyone upstairs. Everyone I don’t want to see. I wonder if she wants to see them. I wonder who she is,
when she isn’t playing this role.

  “Alex is—”

  I tighten my hold on her. “Fuck Alex.”

  “Eli, you don’t—you don’t even know me. This isn’t a good idea. Not tonight.”

  I pull her closer to me, and her hands rise to my chest as she looks up at me, the breath startled from her pretty little mouth. “Does he know?” I wrap one arm around her back, using my other hand to brush a lock of hair behind her ear, trailing my fingers down to her neck, where I rest my hand against her collarbone. “Does he know about those scars, baby girl?”

  In the dim light pouring in from upstairs, I see pink blooming on her cheeks. “Why are you so obsessed with—”

  “With the ways you hurt?” I ask her, leaning down close, pressing my brow to hers.

  She doesn’t answer me, but I can feel her pulse beneath my hand on her collarbone, and it picks up speed.

  Knowing that it’s because of me…that I’m doing that to her…

  “You saw me,” she says, her voice rough, interrupting my thought. “You watched me that night. You watched me. But you didn’t stop me—”

  “Would you have wanted me to?” I tilt my head, angling my mouth over hers. I can smell her breath. It smells like alcohol and hard candy and I wonder what she did in that bathroom. I want to press my lips to hers. I want to feel her mouth crashing against mine.

  “Eli, I don’t think we should—”

  I brush my hands down her side, skimming her waist, beneath her shirt. “Tell me to stop.”

  She doesn’t say anything.

  She doesn’t move away, instead, she leans closer. It’s such a subtle movement, if we were further from one another, I wouldn’t have noticed it. But we’re not, and her lips brush mine.

  “We shouldn’t—”

  “Tell me to stop,” I tell her again. “Tell me to stop and I will. I’m not like him.”

  “That night, you weren’t going to stop.” Her lips move against mine, and fuck, I want her.

  My dick is aching with her being so close to me. All the blood has rushed from my head and all I want is her.

  I fucking want her.

  “That night it was Alex that stopped,” her voice is little more than a whisper. “And you pushed me onto him. You pushed me and your fingers…”

  I’ve already apologized for this shit. I don’t want to talk about this again. And those very same fingers she’s referring to dig into her skin. “What, baby girl? Tell me what I did.”

  Her hands are still on my shirt, but slowly, she uncurls her fist. She uncurls each smooth finger and she slides it under the sleeves of my t-shirt, and my chest tightens with her touch.

  “You hurt me,” she tells me in a whisper. A whisper that I feel against my mouth. “You hurt me, and you watched me hurt myself and you—”

  “What the fuck are you doing?”

  Alex’s voice startles her.

  I heard him coming.

  She didn’t.

  She drops her hands, tries to back up, but my hands are on her waist and I’m not letting her go that easily.

  I hear Alex take the last few steps at my back, but I still don’t let her go.

  “I…I was just—” she starts to say.

  “Let go of her,” Alex cuts her off.

  I don’t like his tone. “I don’t think she wants me to.”

  He walks to stand beside us, glaring down at me. I can feel Zara’s heart pounding a rhythm throughout her entire body. She’s nearly shaking in my arms.

  Is she that scared of him?

  Or is she that scared of me?

  “I don’t give a fuck what she wants. Let go of her.”

  “Eli, please just—” she starts to say.

  I drop my hands, take a step back from her. Not for his sake, but for hers. He’s still glaring at me, and I can feel the tension between us. Not just me and Alex.

  Between the three of us.

  We have unfinished business. And he might hate it. He might hate what he invited me in on, because he doesn’t want to see someone else fuck her, but I don’t have that problem.

  I don’t have that fucking problem at all.

  “Kaitlyn is waiting for you upstairs,” he tells me, his jaw ticking, his eyes dark pools of black in the dim light. His hands are fisted by his side. “Might wanna get on that.”

  I don’t say anything.

  “Alex, we were just—”

  He rounds on her. “Shut the fuck up.”

  She flinches, taking a step back. I don’t know what she took in that bathroom—and I’m positive she took something—but it doesn’t seem to be working too well for her right now. She seems paranoid. Like she’s lost her fight or something.

  “Back off. We bumped into each other at the bottom of the stairs,” I tell Alex. “Leave her alone.”

  “I’m not with you,” she tells him, making me second guess that shit about losing her fight after all. “I’m not fucking with you and if you didn’t want me talking to your friends, you shouldn’t have brought me to your stupid fucking beach party.”

  “Talking?” Alex mocks her, cocking his head and stepping closer, forcing her to step back in the little hallway just off from the bathroom. There’s not much here, the stairs at my back, the front door to my right, past the bathroom, and behind Zara and Alex, there’s a bedroom. “It didn’t really look like you were talking to me.” He glances my way. “You wanna finish this?” he asks her, dragging his gaze up and down her body. “You wanna finish what we started the night Rihanna died, huh? Have a little memorial with the three of us?”

  She doesn’t answer him.

  “Because if you do,” he says, leaning down close to her, and I see, for the first time, he’s got a beer in his hand. Different from the first one he drank. I would know, because this one is mine. “If you do, we can.” He holds up the beer, shaking the bottle a little. “I think I’ve had just enough of this to want to share you tonight, Za.” And he doesn’t wait for an answer.

  He threads his fingers through her hair, leans down close, and kisses her. She’s frozen for a moment, and I see her eyes. I see the gleam in them as she looks to me, and then, holding my gaze, she kisses him back.

  I have this very, very fleeting urge to snap his fucking neck.

  But then she moans.

  And the urge is gone.

  He crowds her against the wall, puts his hand on her throat and shoves down her top, taking her breast in his mouth.

  I don’t like his hand on her throat.

  I don’t like that shit at all.

  But her eyes are still on mine and even as his mouth covers her nipple, her fingers threading through his hair, she doesn’t stop looking at me. She doesn’t stop fucking looking at me.

  I can’t stay away. Not anymore.

  I close the space between us, and I don’t care what Alex is doing. I don’t fucking care because I know she wants to kiss me, and when I’m close enough to, I angle my head, my body to the side of hers, and she kisses me.

  She kisses me, and my hand comes above Alex’s, circling her throat. She moans into my mouth, one hand still in Alex’s hair, but the other comes to my face. She’s pinned against the wall between the two of us, and I don’t know if I can wait. I don’t know if I can fucking wait to get to a bed and I kind of don’t care.

  But apparently, Alex does.

  35

  Zara

  “Not here,” Alex says, his voice hoarse as he straightens, whispering over my mouth. Beside me, Eli’s pulled away, but my hand is still on his face and he turns his head, runs his lip over my palm.

  Alex steps back, glances at Eli.

  I wait for him to stop this.

  I wait for him to stop it, but he just grabs my other hand, pulls me toward a closed door. I follow him, and Eli takes my hand from his mouth, and together, me between them, we stumble into a bedroom.

  Eli closes the door. I hear the snick of the lock at my back, his hand still in mine.

  The
re’s a big bed in the center of the room, white plantation shutters closed in the window. There’s a built-in bookcase beside the bed, lined with tall, thin books that I can’t quite make out in the darkness of the room.

  A closet is at my back, beside the door. There’s one white nightstand beside the bed, a grey lamp off atop it. No alarm clock. Beneath my feet there’s a white rug, but otherwise, it’s hardwood floors like the rest of the house.

  It smells like the ocean here. More than anywhere else in the house, I smell the salt of the sea in here

  That, and Eli.

  Coconut and citrus.

  While Alex shucks his shirt off over his head, Eli pulls me toward him, his hands running up and down my body.

  He kisses me, his mouth open, his tongue running along my teeth.

  And then Alex is behind me, his hands coming around my waist, flicking open the button of my shorts, his mouth on my neck, kissing and sucking and biting.

  My hands are on Eli’s shoulders, and I want more from him. My tongue is in his mouth, his hands come to cup my face, like he might pull me away from Alex at my back. Like he wants to claim all my attention. Like this is what he’s been waiting for the past six months, and he can’t get enough.

  Alex pulls down my underwear, and they hit the floor with my shorts.

  I pull away from Eli, reluctantly, but I need his clothes off, too. I need to feel his skin against me like I can feel Alex’s chest at my back.

  “What are you doing?” Eli rasps, his hands coming down to either side of my neck. I hear a zipper behind me.

  “Your clothes,” I manage to say as Alex wraps his hands around my hips and jerks me back into him. I feel his cock, hard and thick against my low back. His hands trail lower, to the inside of my thighs.

  Eli glances down, and I see a slight frown between his brow. I wonder if he’s thinking about the scars. I wonder if he’s thinking about the fact we’ve already done something just like this before.

  “Do you like this?” Alex whispers in my ear, distracting me. His hands come up higher, fingers grazing against my pussy but not quite touching me where I want him. “Do you like being between us?”