Hate at First Sight

by Penelope Bloom

  “It wasn’t bullshit,” he says. “What I wrote about the truth in sex. A real sexual experience doesn’t leave room for lies. Absolute trust. Absolute truth. I’ll need everything. Every last drop of what you have to offer, and I’ll have you cumming so hard you’ll still be feeling the aftershocks a week from now.”

  “We can’t just go on a date like normal people and if it progresses to that, then, well…”

  He shakes his head. “No. Because what I want isn’t just sex. It’s not just passion and lust boiling over. I need everything for the night. Everything.”

  A chill runs up my back at the way he’s watching me. “I don’t know, I mean, I don’t think I even understand,” I admit.

  “Then I’ll make it simple. You come on this date with me, and you are handing me the keys for a night. You’re setting your reservations aside. No second-guessing, no hesitation. You keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle or the ride stops, no getting back on, no apologies, no hard feelings, but it’s over. Understand now?”

  “As much as I’m going to,” I say. I want to sit down or get a glass of water. Better yet, a box of wine would actually hit the spot right about now. “Do I get some time to think it over?”

  “Sure,” he says. “How about thirty seconds? Yes or no?”

  I do sit down now, head practically spinning. I’m split inside between wanting to just throw away my role of the rational middle sister for one night and letting it all go and worrying that it won’t just be one night. I’ll have to live with the decision I make here for the rest of my life, and for all I know, it could shape how I see myself and whether I can still respect myself. I mean, what kind of woman lets a guy treat them like Chris has treated me and then agrees to something like this?

  Except for all my inward conviction that Chris has been a jerk to me, I’m also split on how accurate that really is. Yes, he has said rude things and been dismissive and crude, but most of the time, I’ve been the one seeking him out. If you jump in a shark tank over and over again and end up getting bitten, who is really to blame, you or the shark?

  Then again, what I’m considering is basically an invitation to that same shark tank.

  If only it were that simple.

  The problem is Chris isn’t just that guy who has bruised my ego time and time again. He’s the poster-child for wounded artist, except he takes it to an entirely different level. And maybe Brooke was right. I do want to fix him, because I think he’s worth fixing.

  “Three, two…” Chris counts.

  “I’ll do it,” I say. The words spill out of me before I’ve fully made my decision, but I’m not going to take it back now. It’s just one night. One chance for him to prove he’s not all talk, that maybe there’s more to him than meets the eye. Besides, I’ve laid awake at night thinking about the regret I feel for not getting a funnel cake that one time at the carnival before they sold out. I’d probably never sleep again if I passed something this big up. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see if it’s big in a good or bad way. The terrifying part is, I have no idea.

  14

  Chris

  We park at the end of a cobbled road that looks about two thousand years old. There’s a mossy field surrounded by rolling green hills and a scattering of rustic farmhouses in front of us. A huge medieval castle sits atop a cliff-face overlooking a lake. It’s an effort to keep my eyes off Lindsey. She looks so fuckably innocent in her little white dress and sandals that I’m having trouble containing myself.

  Right now, it’s all I’m focused on, like the prize at the end of a game. I’m not going to let myself get trapped in thoughts that will get me nowhere. Like how she brings a kind of happiness with her that leaves whenever she’s not around. Or how the creative block I’ve felt for the past few years is breaking apart day by day that I spend with her. Maybe it’s how she makes me want to be a better person. All those thoughts are a trap. I’ve put too much weight on whatever this is between us and it will only be another disappointment.

  If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that nothing is ever as good as it seems. Big houses, fancy cars, supermodels… It all disappoints.

  Lindsey is just another empty promise, and that’s what fucking her will prove. She’ll lose all her conviction and all her bite after I’ve given her what she really wants. She’ll prove she’s been playing the game with more patience than the ones before her.

  No matter how many times I tell myself that, it doesn’t manage to fully sink in. Some dumb, hopeful, and idiotically optimistic part of me wants to believe I’m wrong, but I have a lifetime of experience to tell me exactly how unlikely that is.

  Short-lived or not, I plan to enjoy tonight with her. I’ve never wanted anything as badly as I want Lindsey right now. Never. But I know better than to rush things. She probably thinks she understands what I’m going to do to her because she read my book, but I only scratched the surface in the book. She’s in for a surprise that she’ll never see coming.

  “Wow,” she says, shielding her eyes even though the sun seems like it’s not going to peek out from the overcast skies for the entirety of our time here. “This is beautiful, but I have to admit, it’s not what I was expecting when you wanted to take me on a date.”

  “Good,” I say. “It’s boring if you expect it. And trust me, you’re not going to be bored tonight.”

  She smiles, but it fades too quickly from her lips to be entirely natural. Nervous as hell. My cock stirs when I wonder if she’s already wet for me. She can try to play it cool all she wants, but I know she’s hungry for what I’m offering. The only thing standing between her and admitting it is her stubborn pride. Not that I’m not complaining. It’s more fun this way. When she finally opens her legs for me, it’s not just going to be a surrender, it’s going to be an admission. She wanted it all along.

  We’re not the only ones visiting the castle, but I made some arrangements to have that taken care of when the time comes.

  “Have you been here before?” she asks.

  We’re walking through the main courtyard now, where half a dozen other people are lingering around and admiring architectural details.

  “Once,” I say. “When I used to tour for book promotions, I had a woman on my staff to find the best experiences for me in all the nearby areas. I guess I technically still have her on my staff, come to think of it. I never did get around to firing anyone when I decided to walk away from it all.”

  She looks like she’s about to say something, but decides to hold it in at the last second.

  I decide now is as good a time as any to let her know what tonight is really going to be about, so I take her roughly by the hand and pull her into an alcove and then through an ancient wooden door. We’re in a small, private cathedral full of stained glass and enough pews to seat maybe fifty people. The addition of a gift shop at the far end of the chapel and the glass cases with museum-like displays robs the scene of any actual religious power, which makes me feel better about what I’m going to do to her in here—it’s not sacreligious if it’s not a real church, right?

  I turn her, pushing her against the wall where she can’t go anywhere until I’m finished.

  “I meant what I said about tonight,” I say.

  “I believe you. What makes you think I don’t?”

  “You held something in, back there in the courtyard. You were going to ask and you stopped yourself. I. Need. Everything. No secrets.”

  “It’s not a secret,” she says, sounding mildly annoyed. “It was just… It wasn’t a tactful question, and I realized it would be better not to ask.”

  “Ask it.”

  She’s clearly uncomfortable, but my hand on her arm and my body between her and escape seems to send a clear enough message that she’s not going anywhere, like it or not.

  “It’s just that you mentioned when you walked away from everything. I know the story out in the public is that it was a day after your parents were killed, but it doesn’t seem like you were
close to them at all. I mean I walked up on you saying mean things to their graves.”

  “Oh,” I say, stepping back slightly. I wanted truth, and I still do, but some dumb part of me was hoping her secret was going to be that she hadn’t worn panties or she was worried she wouldn’t be good enough in bed for me. Not this.

  I walk over to one of the pews and sit down, motioning for Lindsey to peel herself off the wall and sit across from me at the edge of another row. When I said I needed everything from her, it wasn’t just bullshit for my convenience. I learned a long time ago that sex is far more complicated than what goes where and how it goes there. A woman can cum from humping a pillow, sure, but that’s just an orgasm. It’s not an experience. It’s not going to change her life, won’t leave her ruined for other men and still thinking about a singular moment years from later, even when her boring husband is three inches deep in her and grunting like a pig.

  No, to give her what I can give her, she needs to drop every single ounce of her reservations. I need absolute surrender, so complete that she would walk off a rooftop without hesitation because she’d know I would catch her. The only way to start to build that kind of trust is to shine a light on every secret, every dark, forgotten corner.

  “My parents actually weren’t that bad,” I say after a while. “I always got good grades in school and my teachers would go on about how I could do this great thing and that, so my parents ate it up. They wanted me to go to some Ivy League school and change the world. But I was a little shit, and in all honesty, I did want to do something different, so I applied to Parsons, which is the top art school in the US. When my acceptance letters came in, I got in everywhere but Parsons. My parents were thrilled, because they spent months trying to talk me out of art school, and I guess they thought I’d just cut my losses and go on to the Ivy League, but I decided to skip the whole college thing.”

  Lindsey smiles a little at that, clearly trying to picture me as a kid and enjoying the image she’s conjuring up.

  “They didn’t take it well,” I continue. “They ended up dragging my sister into it and trying to get her to pick sides, to convince me.” I laugh a little, trying to make sense of it even to myself and failing. “It was like a switch flipped. One minute I was the typical rebellious teenager, the next I took it to an entirely new level, but I guess that’s what I always did. What I always do. I take things too far. So I ran away. Worked odd jobs and even panhandled playing my shitty guitar and singing songs I made up for pocket change. It felt good to do anything I knew my parents would be embarrassed by. I’d send them pictures of me on the street looking homeless—probably because I was most of the time.

  “They never even replied back, but I didn’t want them to. Guess I just took my own disappointment in how things had turned out for me and sharpened it into a weapon I used to jab at my parents. It doesn’t make much sense now, but it felt good at the time. And my book was the final blow. I didn’t expect it to take off. My entire goal was to get a paperback with my name on it to send to them. A book written by the son they pushed too hard, a book about sex and fucking.”

  I laugh again, but there’s no humor in the sound. “It all felt so dignified and important at the time, like I was fighting some centuries old battle that every son or daughter wished they had the balls to fight.”

  She nods, eyebrows squeezed together as I can see her jumping ahead, piecing together how it all ties into the way things turned out.

  “For a long time I got lost in it. The money and the fame felt good, like every dollar I made was one more reason my parents were wrong all along and I was right. I just kept waiting for the day they’d call me up and apologize for everything, tell me they saw now how I was right and they shouldn’t have tried so hard to steer my life. Of course the call never came.

  “I just kept going. Even when every new day made it feel like the real me was crawling deeper and deeper inside the shell that walked around and signed books. I kept going. It took them dying for me to wake up to it. To realize I’d tried so hard to make my own life outside what my parents tried to force on me that I ended up forcing myself down a path I didn’t even want. I looked at myself in the mirror and realized everything I had done, all the things people loved and admired me for, it was just a petty attempt by me to piss off two people who were dead.”

  I snap my fingers. “Then the illusion fell away. I was living somebody else’s life, but it wasn’t as easy as just taking the reigns again and turning things around. I’d pushed what I actually wanted down for so long that I wasn’t sure it was even in there anymore, if I was even in there anymore.”

  “Wow,” she says softly. “I’m sorry, Chris.” She reaches to squeeze my hand across the aisle, but I wave her off.

  “No, you shouldn’t be,” I say, standing. I turn my back to her and start to head back toward the courtyard. “I don’t think there’s any good left in me. Spend long enough hating and I guess you can burn away all the good.”

  I’m surprised to feel her small arms slide around me from behind, her face pressing into my back gently as she squeezes me into a hug. “There’s good in you. I’ve seen it,” she says. “I think you’ve just convinced yourself it’s not the real you.”

  I stand there for longer than I intend, drinking in the softness of her. The way her warmth seeps into me and thaws some of the frost from my bones. Like always, I’m driven by a need to sabotage the moment, to chase it away before I can start to let myself think it might be real. I pull away from her, shaking my head.

  “This was a mistake,” I say, pressing as much disdain and carelessness into my voice as I can manage, despite my pounding heart and tight throat. “I don’t need you. Enjoy the castle, I’ll send a tour guide in for you.”

  I reach for the door but Lindsey’s small hand presses to the wood, making a feeble attempt at stopping me from pulling it open. “Stop it,” she says.

  “What?” I ask, rounding on her.

  “I don’t buy it. Show me the real you. Stop pretending you’re so damaged and mean and hateful. Show me what—”

  I close the distance between us in a half step, bending to reach the soft skin of her neck with my lips. I kiss her there, savoring the sweetness of her skin and the smell of innocence that clings to her like armor, so frail and perfect that it’s begging to be shredded.

  “You want the real me?” I growl against her skin, running my lips over the goosebumps that form in the wake of my touch. “You want the gloves to come off?”

  She breathes something between a moan and a gasp, letting me drive her back until we bump against a wall inside the ornately carved wooden confession booth. I yank the red curtain shut behind us, pulling back only enough to see her face wrapt by lust, completely closed off to the rest of the world and content to exist in only this moment where the blood reds and sapphire blues of the light from the stained glass fills the tiny space.

  I use one hand to keep her where I want her, pinned to the wall by her wrist. With my other hand, I pull her legs up, wrapping them around my waist so her groin digs into my abs. Her skirt rides up until the only thing between her sweet sex and my body is the thin white fabric of her panties and my shirt.

  “Just a fucking taste,” I growl before I bite at her bottom lip and suck it into my mouth. Her hungry tongue flicks out, seeking mine.

  It’s not a slow, passionate kiss. It’s two starving people lashing out in lust and anger and confused emotions. It’s lips crashing together and wet passion as she grinds her hips into mine. I pull her down by her tight little ass until her already-soaked panties are against my hard cock. I can feel the heat radiating from her juicy little slit and the way her arousal is dampening my pants, but I can’t stop myself from grinding into her because the sound of her moans is so fucking good, so pure.

  She gasps in my ear, every single breath like a piece of her submission, just one part of the collection that I grab up and stash away greedily until I can have every last bit. I know her mind must
be going fucking wild with doubt and regret and shame and fear, but it only makes it sweeter, more visceral. She wanted to fight this with every last bone in her body and still she couldn’t stop it when it came streaking toward her with the inevitability of a meteor.

  Me and her. Her and me. From the moment she stumbled up the mountain toward my cabin, the universe was setting events into motion that would lead to this moment, whether we knew it or not. We were both sliding down the same hill that landed us here. Pulled by gravity and fate, together for one final tangle before we’d go our separate ways—because no matter how good this feels now, I still know how it ends. Even as her small hands dig at me and claw for more flesh and more to satisfy the overwhelming need she feels, even now, I know this will end like all the times before.

  “Say my name,” I rasp between kisses. I run my hand across her chest, gripping those small, perky tits for the first time and relishing in the feel of her hard nipples. “Open your fucking eyes, look at me, and say my name. I want you to know who you’re cumming for.”

  She does as I ask, eyes dreamy and intense. “Chris,” she breathes. “Chris!” she gasps again when I increase the pace, dry fucking her with my erection that is starting to feel like it could explode from the pressure if I don’t get it into the heat of her cunt, but this is new. This experience, this prelude to the final event. Despite all my talk, I’ve never actually felt what I wrote about, the kind of connection and experience that can define a lifetime and shape people into something they weren’t. The women I’ve fucked claimed they felt it, but it never touched me.

  This though…

  I’m just tasting the appetizer right now, the first glimpse of how this could all end, and fucking her the way I want would be like throwing away all the nine courses and diving straight into dessert. Not a chance in hell.

  So I keep my dick in my pants and I keep her soaked panties on her, even though I have no doubt she’s deep enough in the haze of lust that I could take whatever I want from her now. She digs her fingernails into my neck, breathing hot breath after hot breath against my chest until I feel her tensing all around me.