Hate Crush (Filthy Rich)

by Angelina M. Lopez

  His eyes—black but light reflecting—traveled over her face like he had the right to stare.

  “Never heard this before,” he said softly, puffs of his breath hitting her skin. “It’s good.”

  “Es mi favorito.”

  “Yeah,” he said, his eyes watching her mouth again. “Can you make a mix for me?”

  “Sí,” she said. “Yes.” She felt six years old, like they’d just met playing la rayuela on the sidewalk and then declared themselves best friends.

  He pulled the bud out of his ear and straightened, never taking his eyes off her as he held it out. When she took the bud from him, she let her fingers linger. His fingertips were warm and that tiny touch sent a frisson down her arm.

  She unwrapped the headphones from around her neck and stuffed them into her back pocket. But she didn’t move back.

  “I’m a musician,” he said, voice low.

  “I know.”

  A corner of his mouth went up. “What else do you know?”

  That he made every millimeter of her skin buzz. That he smelled like boy and sweat and ocean salt. She hated the nose-clogging scent of cologne. There was nothing fake about the way this boy smelled.

  She pulled her long braid over her shoulder and tugged on it. “You’re from LA, your father designs clothes, your mother is a famous fitness instructor. Y...you’re very good at surfing, singing, partying, working harder on less sleep than everyone else and...oh, sí, ménage à trois.”

  Shock, mortification, and humor created a palette across his expressive face. “Who said I’m good at threesomes?”

  Sofia ran a hand down her braid and shrugged, all Spanish cool. “No sé. I keep my nose to myself. It’s everyone else who talks.”

  When he grinned this time, he looked like he might lean down and taste her. “And what does everyone say about you?”

  Sofia worked to maintain her smile. She wanted to be no one to nobody. She wanted to have nothing said about her. But even if she’d lived a cloistered life in a high tower, her story would be marred with her parents’ dramas and affairs and fights, ugly public episodes that stripped Sofia of dignity without her involvement. And Princesa Sofia hadn’t lived a cloistered life. Maintaining her dignity hadn’t been high on her list when she’d mooned the crowd from atop a Semana Santa float in Cádiz or when she’d waved drunkenly to the paparazzi from a movie star’s hotel balcony when she was supposed to be presented to the Queen of England. She’d been neither drunk nor sleeping with the star. But her humiliated mother had abandoned the duke’s bedroom she’d been occupying to drag Sofia back to the Monte.

  She didn’t want to think about her scandalous past. She didn’t want to think about the demands of her future. All Sofia wanted right now was to be a dirty, half-naked girl wrapped around a beautiful boy in a wine tank.

  “I know some stuff about you,” Aish said quietly.

  Sofia focused on the air in front of his face and ran her hand down her braid.

  “Your name’s Sofia. That’s...really fucking pretty.” He hadn’t said Princess Sofia. He hadn’t said Sofia de Esperanza y Santos. Just Sofia. And he thought it was pretty. She focused again on his eyes.

  “You’ve got a great accent.” The air between them felt like it was warming up. “You like grunt work, which is so hot it kinda hurts.”

  Nothing about her royal status. Nothing about her reputation. He’d just arrived; perhaps none of the interns had told him about the princess in their midst. Perhaps his uncle had just said, “Make sure the new intern hasn’t passed out. Her name is Sofia.”

  “You’re not wearing a bra.” Her mouth opened at that, surprised, as his eyed gripped shut. “I noticed and if you noticed I noticed, I’m sorry ’cause I don’t want you to think I’m a total fucking creeper and scare you away...”

  “I don’t think you’re a creeper,” she said, reaching to brush her fingers over his clenched fist. Her breasts were so small she seldom wore a bra. But this boy acted like they were an irresistible temptation.

  Aish opened his eyes. “Are you for real?”

  Sofia smiled up at him, feeling helpless and foolish and floating.

  “I mean, am I having some weird acid flashback?” His urgency seemed to express that it was a real possibility.

  “Wouldn’t I be having one, too?” she asked. “And I’ve never done acid.”

  “No, no.” He was a lit fuse aimed in her direction. “This could be my own personal hallucination. Because, what the fuck. My uncle tells me to go check on the new intern and inside a tank is a kick-ass, bare-skinned fairy girl listening to elf music. I feel like I’m tripping. Am I?”

  With amazement beaming from her, Sofia shook her head.

  He reacted like she’d punched him. “Fuck. Your smile. Can I kiss you?”

  Before he completed the question, she stepped into him and pulled him down by his black T-shirt. Hard body and hot hands and soft, soft lips engulfed her in sensation.

  His lips were buttery-leather smooth and she licked at the plush bottom one, sucked at it before he licked in return, making her lips tingle like he’d touched raw nerve. She went up on her toes and burrowed her fingers in his hair, got two handfuls and tugged him closer, wanting him deeper, and he gave a thrilling gut-deep grunt before his tongue pushed into her mouth, before his big hand gathered her shirt at the small of her back and arched her against him.

  She was instantly addicted to his taste of wine and salt and smoke.

  He crushed her close, his touch hard and necessary as his free hand claimed her thigh. She threw her arms around his neck to eliminate any space between them.

  He pulled off her mouth with a suck that bounced off the inside of the tank. “Can I see if you’re wet?” he panted, searching her eyes. “Can we make you wet?”

  She nodded frantically before he got it all out. She craved anything he wanted to give her.

  He pushed her back against the wall of the tank, knocking the brush handle over with a clatter, before swooping down to his knees, pulling her cutoffs and panties down, not even bothering to tug them over her muck boots before he was separating her pussy lips and licking in. She’d been so self-conscious when other boys tried to do this and never understood what the fuss was about but there, down there with his gorgeous face between her legs and his soft lips mouthing at her and his calloused thumbs holding the seam of her body apart...

  “Tell me,” he whispered against the softest part of her. She scratched her fingers against his scalp, used him to keep her upright when he nuzzled his lips into her. The steel at her back alone couldn’t keep her stable. “I don’t know what I’m doing unless you tell me. Do you like it like this?”

  Normally, she didn’t know what she liked, although she definitely liked that as he flicked at her fast but she was too stunned to say it as she looked down and found him watching her, his eyes black and hungry with his pink tongue on this pink part of her.

  “Or do you like this?”

  And her whole body went to water as his tongue did this rolling, stroking thing, poking in deeper, melting her against his hands as she gripped his hair. “Yes, yes,” she moaned. “Ese. Así.”

  “Yeah,” he said, trying to push her legs wider and then growling, thrillingly, at the clothes that still held her knees closed. He ripped her shorts and panties off one boot, pushed to standing as he raised her knee and pulled her against him.

  “This is insane, right?” he asked, searching her face as the heart of her throbbed against his cock, hot and hard through his jeans.

  “Definitely,” she gasped, hips rolling against so much lean, muscular boy.

  “Is it too fast?”

  She groaned and felt him clench her ass in his big hand. “Not fast enough.”

  “I have a condom.”

  She felt him kiss the top of her head; she was sweating at her r
oots.

  “Can I be inside you?”

  She slid her hand down his torso and tugged at his jeans’ button.

  Hands wild, they got his jeans and boxers down around his thighs, they got the condom from his wallet covering his long, thick dick, they got his black T-shirt halfway up the abs she was trying to lick and suck before he stopped her, groaning, claiming she’d have him coming his brains out before they got started. He picked her up rather than fighting her, got her thighs around his waist, his hands squeezing her ass, his tongue deep and rich in her mouth. She shuddered against him, instantly compliant as the hot tip of his dick brushed her pussy. She folded her elbows around his wide shoulders as he pushed inside.

  She felt incandescent.

  “Tell me if—” He stopped. Panted. Leaned her against the tank wall and licked her nipple through her T-shirt. He pushed in again and stretched her a little further. “Tell me what—” He moaned, stopped again, and moved his mouth until he found skin in the sleeveless arm of her T-shirt, sucking his mark on her.

  Arms raised to engulf his head, shuddering between him and the warm tank wall, Sofia felt light-headed with pleasure. She gripped him with her knees and circled her hips once to work him deeper.

  He clenched her ass and buried his face against her neck. “I’m sorry,” he whispered into her skin. “I’m going to come.”

  His helplessness made the muscles inside her surge, muscles she’d never known she had, and she squeezed them again, gripped and stroked him inside of her, wanted him more helpless, wanted him at her command, and he cried out, sound bursting in the tank, and then he pushed hard and fast, hard and deep into her, pounding into her body as she used all of her strength to hold him against her, and that wetness he promised made the way sleek and fire-cracking and then he was grunting through his teeth as his penis swelled then jerked inside her body, the thick, long, hardness like an arrow of pleasure.

  She circled her hips frantically as he cursed and came.

  He sagged against her swearing promises into her skin. “...fuck...fuck...sorry...so good...you felt... Gimme a minute, just a minute, and... I promise...fuck, you feel so good...”

  Sofia hooked her ankles around his back and bathed in his worship. As she held him close, her body trembled with the promise of more. It was a journey she’d never completed, but she’d been further down the road with him than with anyone.

  As he regained his breath, he turned his head and nuzzled into her neck. “Your tattoo...it’s so fucking cool,” he murmured. “The Smiths?”

  She nodded, torn. That he’d recognized the red script from The Smiths’ The Queen is Dead album cover was one more sign that her instant lust for this foreign boy was right and good and true. But she didn’t want the outside world to start creeping into their warm and musky tank.

  She seldom got what she wanted.

  “Aish!” a male voice called out in the winery.

  They both startled. When Aish jerked up his head to look at her, she was doused in cold reality. They were strangers. Fucking. In a wine tank. Among a gossipy group of twenty-somethings. He eased out of her gently, but she grimaced at the wet, uncomfortable pull.

  He set her down on her feet. “Are you good?” he whispered, his shaggy, surfer hair falling into his eyes. She nodded, although her legs quivered beneath her. He took his warm hands away.

  “Aish!” the guy called again.

  “He’s not going to leave until he finds me,” Aish whispered, and Sofia wondered if the low voice was to protect her reputation or his. Maybe he didn’t want to be discovered with the girl in the tank.

  She reached down to pull up her shorts and panties, struggling to get them over her boots, as he took off the condom. He tied it off, but then looked around, nonplussed about where to put it. Realizing she was going to have to redo the cleaning and sanitizing of the tank anyway, she nodded at her bucket. “Allá. Put it in there.”

  “Sorry,” Aish muttered, dropping it in.

  “Where the fuck are you, man?” the guy yelled. “The girls are waiting...”

  Sofia turned her back on him, picked up the brush, while he buttoned his jeans. “Just...one second...” he murmured before he crossed the tank. He grabbed the handle above the open porthole and swung his legs then his torso through.

  “John,” she heard him call from outside the tank. “What do you need?”

  “Dude. What’re you doing?” She’d heard of John, Aish’s best friend and constant companion. They’d obviously spent a lot of time together; from outside the tank their voices were eerily similar. “Jackie and Betty already have the sleeping bags—”

  She heard Aish cut John off with a “Shh.”

  “What? Wait—” John’s volume went down. But the open hatch of the tank magnified his voice. “Is she in there?”

  Goose bumps erupted over Sofia’s skin.

  “No way,” John said, an awed smirk in his voice. “You’re all sweaty. Did you already...”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  Then there was a tussle outside of the tank before she heard a clang and a grunt and then another boy—an all-American boy about Aish’s age, good looking in that blond and bland way—stuck his head into the tank.

  “Hey, Princesa,” he called, looking her over and grinning from ear to ear. “How’s it goin’?”

  Cold encased her. Aish had known who she was the whole time.

  The legendary Aish Salinger had stepped into this tank to add a little Spanish princess to his conquests.

  With a lifetime of experience, she reacted to defend herself from the pain. “It’s going fabulous,” she drew out, smiling, making the word drip with pornographic pleasure. No one could accuse you of what you’d already admitted yourself.

  “These tanks are a bitch to clean,” John drawled in a bastardization of Aish’s voice. She imagined his act got him lots of his best friend’s leftovers. “You need any help?”

  With a yelp, his head and torso were tugged out of the hole.

  “Don’t be a dick,” she heard Aish curse him. “I’ll meet you in the bunkhouse.” There were some angry murmurs, this time too quiet for her to hear, before there was silence. Numb, Sofia began to gather the cleaning equipment.

  “Sorry ’bout him.” When Sofia didn’t respond, Aish said, “Here, let me help.”

  She turned to see Aish with his hand on the handle, about to pull himself back inside.

  “Why?” she asked.

  He stilled. “You have to start over because we—”

  “I was bored.” She cut him off. “I’m not bored anymore. So you can go.”

  She knew from gossip that he was twenty-one, that he was almost done with his music degree at UCLA. But his perfect little life hadn’t exposed him to what Sofia had been exposed to, and his surprised naiveté showed in his face. “But, baby, I thought...”

  She burst out a laugh. “Baby!” He must have been accustomed to so much more devotion from his hookups. She made a face. “Ah, cariño, you thought you’d get your dick wet again. Not tonight, mi amor. I’ll find you the next time I get bored.”

  Her smile, the ease of her body, the surety in the knives she was throwing almost had her convinced that she was this steely woman.

  When she said, “Buenas noches,” and added a meant-to-be-irritating wave, his face hardened and he jerked his head out of the tank. The concrete pad of the winery hid his steps as he walked away.

  She refused to let herself think as she picked up the equipment and shoved it outside the hole. She’d have to wash down the tank again. She refused to let herself think when she picked up the empty condom wrapper and stuck it in her pocket. And she made herself numb when, late that night, the bunkhouse already murmuring with rumors about her and Aish, she opened a carved, two-hundred-year-old box hidden in the footlocker at the end of her bed and slipped the stupid, pathet
ic wrapper inside.

  September 2

  Aish had the multiple espressos the wardrobe assistant poured down his throat and the B6 shot from the dietician to thank for being upright and heading to a vineyard in an open-air Jeep the next morning. The last year’s insomnia had him out of practice with mornings.

  And the we-will-cut-you hatred from Sofia’s brothers, bodyguard, billionaire sister-in-law and—oh yeah—Sofia had made him want to suffocate himself in the bed’s pillows.

  People used to like him. His parents were successful business owners in LA and he was the only apple of their eye and he’d grown up anticipating smiling faces whenever he walked into a room. People liked his looks, his dumb jokes, his dependable hook shot, and the way he stayed in the curl on his board. They liked it when he opened his mouth and sang a pretty tune. It had all been so easy.

  That was before John had looked into the fast-moving current of the Mississippi River and decided it offered a solution.

  “She has proof Young Son stole songs?” Devonte asked, sitting in the seat next to him. His manager kept his voice low so that the wind swept his words away from the driver in the front seat. “What proof?”

  Aish kept his eyes on the deep green vineyard rows that raced by and shrugged. Now, he could see those snow-tipped mountains Sofia talked about.

  “I mean, you didn’t copy any songs, did you?”

  Aish turned and glared through his sunglasses. “Fuck you.”

  Devonte raised his dinner-plate hands in surrender. “No judgment. Whatever you say stays with me. But I can’t keep this ship from sinking unless I know where the holes are.” He was wearing a shiny suit and dark sunglasses; he looked like he hadn’t gotten much sleep either.

  “I never copied a fucking thing.”

  Aish wished he could unspool from his chest the years practicing his guitar and days perfecting a song and the endless hours spent in the studio. Shove them into the face of anyone who doubted him.