by Sharpe, Elle
Norah
What in holy hell was I doing?
Winning, that’s what. I’m winning the most important of all the games. Ronan Baylor, prepare to meet your doom.
My hands were not shaking. Not even a little bit.
Also I was not at all wet between my legs. Nope.
I slowly pulled Ronan’s belt out of each one of its belt loops. It was obvious that he was already highly aroused—the bulge in his pants was enormous.
Ronan Baylor wanted me.
Of course he did. Apparently he was as turned on by weird power-play games as I also apparently was. We were just a couple of competitive freaks who confused arousal with intense dislike.
Maybe that should have disgusted me. But brushing my fingertips over that suit pants-budge and watching Ronan twitch in response made me pretty okay with the whole situation.
I undid the button on his pants.
“Stand up,” I commanded, and he did. I thrilled inside. I’d said to do a thing, and he’d done the thing. Ronan was under my power, doing what I said. This was better than candy.
And I was about to pull his pants down.
Do not wimp out now. Remember, this is revenge. He did this to you, and now it’s payback time.
Remembering the details of that first encounter sent a surge of electricity through my body. My hands were disconnected from my brain, dragging pants and underwear down from Ronan’s toned abdomen and over his hips.
And then, there it was. His erection, right there for me to feast my eyes on.
This was insane.
A little hysterical giggle flew out of my mouth.
He tensed.
“I’m sorry, did you just laugh at my penis?”
“No!” I said quickly. And then I remembered that I was supposed to be punishing him. “I mean, maybe. Maybe I did. What of it?”
“That’s...not a very nice thing to do.”
“Well, I’m not very nice,” I said in a way that I hoped was authoritative. “And you keep talking when I told you to stop.”
I decided to stand up. I felt like having my face that close to the evidence of his arousal was throwing me off my game.
“Well, I do feel like I need to defend the honor of my penis.”
I wrapped my hand around the penis in question with a firm grip, and used my body to push him up against the wall.
“Your penis has nothing to worry about, believe me,” I said, speaking soft into his ear. “I assume you want me to tell you how impressive you are? What a firm, hard, thick cock you have? How satisfying it feels to hold it in my hand?”
His breathing grew very strained. I moved my hand into the right position to be able to start pumping him, and he sucked in a long hiss of air.
“Well, screw that, Ronan. I’m not here to message your...ego.”
My thumb started moving back and forth. I could hear his teeth grinding together.
“I’m doing this to you because you deserve it. You deserve to suffer through this.”
His eyes were still closed, and his expression was somewhere between agonized and enraged. His face had never looked more captivating, which was absolutely unfair. I wasn’t supposed to be captivated. I was defeating him. Paying him back for four years of having to deal with the memories of his hands on me.
And I was defeating him. It was working. I knew it was working. I could feel the tension rippling through his body. He wanted more. He was holding himself back. It was torture for him.
As I stared at his closed eyelids I felt like I could imagine exactly what he was thinking. He was dying to stop me, to take control, to pull me to him and use my body to relieve his torment.
It was easy to imagine how it would happen. Any second he could lose patience and push me down onto the couch. Slide my dress up to pool at my waist, smother me with the weight of his body. Thrust himself into me, take out all this mounting frustration inside of me…
I saw him grimace, and despite myself I made a soft pining sound. He responded with a hard thrust forward into my hand.
I should not have been so wet. I should not have been making sounds. I should not have been able to feel my nipples hardening under the soft touch of my dress.
I realized that if he did try to make a move, there was a good chance I would cave in. And then I would be just as big a sucker as before.
You hate him. Remember, you’re doing this because you hate him.
He reached a hand out to brush, light as a feather, against the bare skin of my arm. The moment his hand touched my body I felt a jolt right down at the bottom of my stomach.
Yes, that was desire: a hot, sharp flash of it. But I could correct that mistake. I could re-channel that energy in its proper direction.
I clenched my hand a little tighter around his cock, and felt it throb inside my grasp. And before I could lose my nerve I pressed the forearm of my free arm as hard as I could into his chest, pinning him against the wall. I tried not to be distracted by how heady it felt to be so close to him.
“No,” I told him. “You don’t touch me. That’s not what this is.”
My voice rebelled treacherously against me. I sounded like I wanted for nothing more in the world than for him to touch me. But this was a “Do as I say, not as I do,” sort of situation.
The force of his breath pumping in his chest pushed back against my arm. I felt like I’d caged a wild tiger that might break free and tear me open at any moment. He clenched his fists at his sides. It was maddening for him, being so out of control.
“Norah.” His voice was ragged, and low, and urgent. “Tell me what you told me before.”
“What?”
The desire in his voice was so captivating that I forgot that he wasn’t supposed to be talking.
“What am I? Tell me.”
For a second I was still confused, until I wasn’t. It came back to me, just the way I’d said it in my sad little college bedroom, in my breathy voice.
“You’re an asshole,” I said.
He leaned back against the wall, like he was soaking up the words.
“I hate you,” I whispered, almost sweetly. “I hate you so much.” I said it again, and felt my entire body light on fire.
“Yeah,” he sighed out. He started to thrust rhythmically into my hand.
“I don’t think I’ve ever hated anyone as much as I hate you.”
He gave a strained growl.
“Norah-”
“You really are the worst,” I breathed. “The absolute worst person I know. You’re the biggest asshole I’ve ever met.” In a stroke of inspiration I added, mockingly, “But, like you said, an asshole always gets what he wants.”
He lost it. His hips spasmed, and his cum spilled out between my fingers. I heard a ruff groan from the back of his throat, and watched the most rewarding, pained expression grip his face.
I should have been more attentive, and quicker on my feet. But I was too distracted—mesmerized really—by that expression. I didn’t think about how close I was to him, and how it might have been a good idea to move out of the way.
It occurred to me a moment too late, when I looked down and saw the stain on my dress.
“Oh fuck. Oh no. God fucking damnit.”
Poor Ronan. I did not give him much of a chance to soak in the afterglow. I dropped his used-up penis and started pacing the room, in the early stages of a freak-out.
“Oh, this is a disaster. I can’t go back out there now. I mean, there’s no way. Maybe I can try to sneak away. But Jen will kill me. Fuck.”
Ronan hurriedly pulled his pants back up and refastened his belt buckle. In less than a minute he looked exactly like he had when he came in. Unfair. Everything about him was unfair. Looking at him, you’d never have guessed he had been getting up to anything untoward just moments earlier.
Me, on the other hand? My victory moments ago felt like it had backfired on me. Now I just had those Beyonce lyrics— “He Monica Lewinski'd all on my gown”—running in m
y head on repeat. And then, because my mind was already spinning, I took a mental trip down the pop-culture rabbit hole, remembering how Monica herself had clapped back when that song came out—“I think you meant Bill Clinton'd all on my gown.”
The validity of her point had never been so clear to me. It was the man who had done the ejaculating, but she was the one who’d become the national face of semen stains. I decided I would really prefer to not find out what that felt like.
“My dress is even blue, too” I muttered to myself, like a crazy person. “Isn’t that just the icing on the cake.”
“Huh?” Ronan said.
“I need a new dress. In like, the next fifteen minutes. Twenty minutes tops. Any longer than that is going to start to look really suspicious. Hey, you’re rich. Is there some special rich-person emergency clothing delivery service that works super-super fast?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Or do you have a secret stash of dresses from past hook-ups somewhere on the premises?”
He narrowed his eyes at me.
“You’re imagining that multiple women came here, slept with me, and then left their entire outfits behind?” he asked me.
“I...guess that doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
Ronan did not look all that concerned with my dilemma. No less than two minutes after finishing on me and he was scrolling through his phone, barely even looking at me.
“You really don’t need to panic,” he said.
“What, you don’t think it’s a big deal for me to walk out into my friends’ engagement party looking like a hooker coming back from a job?”
He smirked a little at that.
“A hooker would probably have been more careful. Professional experience and all that.”
“You really are infuriating,” I snapped. “And what the hell are you doing on your freakin’ phone at a time like-”
He turned the phone around to show me.
“Wikihow says, ‘sexual fluid stains come out easily in the wash if water is quickly applied.’ So, we’re going to wash your dress. Crazy idea, I know.”
It was an option I had genuinely not considered. It did seem a little obvious after he brought it up, which made me feel silly.
“But...it’s dry clean only?”
“I may not have access to an instantaneous gown delivery service for sex-related emergencies, but I do have some pretty high-end delicates detergent. Come on.”
He grabbed my hand and pulled me further into the depths of his apocalypse bunker.
Ronan led me down a very creepy, very mysterious tunnel. Just when I was convinced that this had all been an implausibly convoluted plot to murder me, he typed another code into one of those high-tech number pads. We emerged from the horror-movie set into an incredibly charming library, with floor-to-ceiling shelves on every wall.
“Hmm,” I said. “Secret passageway behind a bookshelf. Classic. Very James Bond.”
“Thank you. The laundry room is upstairs.”
I can’t say I was sorry to have an excuse to see the inside of Ronan’s house. The interior was as exquisitely perfect as the outside: so much delicious hardwood everywhere. And lots of 1930s craftsman-style details, which I was convinced had been put there specifically for me to geek out over decades later. I kept pausing to look at things like one-of-a-kind stained glass windows and elaborately carved mantelpieces.
Not only was the house itself beautiful, it was also styled beautifully. Dark, dignified, very masculine, and very respectful of the house’s architectural history. Ronan—and/or Ronan’s interior designer—really knew what they were doing.
Having really great taste does not make someone a good person, I reminded myself. Do not let this house play Mr. Darcy mind games with you.
“Stay focused, Green,” Ronan said, echoing my own thoughts. A pleased little smile played at the corner of his mouth.
“Yup. Very focused. Totally mediocre house. Very unimpressed right now.”
I said this as I caressed the banister in a way that could only be described as sensual. Ronan chuckled.
“I’m relieved to hear it. Impressing you is the last thing I would want to do.”
We reached the laundry room. Aside from a washer and dryer set much sleeker than any washer and dryer set had any right to be, there was also an oldy-timey porcelain basin for hand washing. For some reason I found this very glamorous.
“Here it is,” he said, reaching for a bottle on a high shelf. “The laundry liquid of the gods.”
“Great.”
“So, we better get you out of that dirty, filthy dress and get it washed, before people start wondering where the hell we are, what we might be getting up to...”
“Yup.”
I stood and stared at him with my arms folded. He looked back at me with his hands casually in his pockets, and a placid smile plastered on his face.
“So, are you going to offer me anything to wear, or do you really expect me to just strip down in front of you?”
He did that stupid one-raised-eyebrow thing at me. Very sexy. Very annoying.
We both knew I didn’t have a lot of options. If he wanted to he could stand there with that provoking grin on his face indefinitely.
“We were just even, Baylor, but you’re earning your place back on my shit list.”
“If what we did just now was your version of revenge, I’d say you’re only encouraging me.”
I glared at Ronan for this little joke, and kept glaring until I started to wonder if it really was a joke. I noticed the way that he was looking at me, like he wished he could slice through the straps of my dress with his eyes. And the longer he looked at me, the darker his expression became.
“So was that why you did...that?” He gestured at the stain. “Revenge?”
“Yes. So, now we’re even. And no more of...that...again. Ever again. I mean it this time.” I put a harsh edge into my voice for emphasis. “And it should go without saying, but you are not going to breathe a word of this to anyone. Right?”
The sharp grin that spread over his face made me feel deeply uneasy.
“Of course,” he said, sneeringly. “That is our usual arrangement, isn’t in? In that case, go out the door and take the second left. You’ll find something that you can use to shield your...maidenly modesty.”
I gave a maidenly courtesy and did as he instructed.
It turned out that the second door to the left led to an incredibly classy bathroom with a black clawfoot tub and even more awesome tiles. These ones were in a cool geometric art-deco pattern. I wished that I could pry a good square foot off the wall and take it home with me.
The thing he’d offered me to wear was his bathrobe, which was hanging on the back of the door. The bathrobe that I assumed he used every day, to cover his body while it was hot and wet and naked.
No big deal. Nope. Not at all.
I slipped off the dress, and pulled the robe on over my own nearly-naked body. Damn. It was soft. So soft. I wanted to take it home with me too.
Was I some sort of pervert, or was this just a natural reaction to really nice things? Maybe both.
When I got back to the laundry room the basin was already full of bubbly water. Ronan had taken off his suit jacket and rolled up the cuffs of his shirt. He took the dress out of my hands without a word, and started massaging it in the suds. I found myself watching the movements of his hands with far too much interest. Was I jealous of the dress? I really needed to get a grip.
When the dress was clean Ronan hung it on a hanger and steam-dried it with a powerful rich-person laundry contraption that banished all the dampness in minutes. Then he handed it back to me, good as new.
I considered dropping the robe and slipping the dress back on in front of him, just to shock him after all the fuss I’d made. But I’d spent too much time examining little details of him—his hands especially, and how just a few dark hairs brushed over his wrists—and now I was feeling a little too shy for something l
ike that.
I retreated back into the bathroom, said goodbye to the sinfully soft robe, and came back out into the hallway, fully covered-up. Well, as covered-up as I could be in that insubstantial little cocktail dress.
“Do I look okay?” I asked Ronan, as he re-buttoned his shirt cuffs.
He gave me an incredulous glare.
“I really don’t know how you want me to answer that.”
“That bad, huh? Well, I guess I can only do so much.”
I fluffed my hair up, a little self-consciously. His eyes followed my movements like they were offensive.
“Come on,” I said, making a conscious effort to smile at his stern face. “We’d better get back out there.”
Ronan
I never should have let myself be alone with her.
Yes, I’d wanted to. I had seized the opportunity as soon as it had been dangled under my nose. But wanting something didn’t make it a good idea. Unless what I’d really wanted was final confirmation of how much Norah hated me, and of just how far she’d go in the name of “revenge.” Because that was what I had now. Lesson learned.
We were seated at the same dinner table—the bridal party table. Norah was proudly wearing a dorky paper crown that had “Queen of the Thunderdome” written on it. I had taken my “King of the Thunderdome” crown off as soon as we sat down, in an effort to preserve my dignity. It was currently sitting near my left shoe. I was tempted to kick it.
I wasn’t sure why I was getting so riled up over this. Casually hooking up was supposed to be fun. Granted, I hadn’t done it for a while, but I had some fond memories. But those encounters had been very different from whatever the hell that just was. Most women didn’t derive pleasure from insulting me. Most of the time I didn’t enjoy being insulted.
Who the hell even was she? I watched her at the other end of the table. Laughing with Jen. Enjoying her food. Her hair and her skin glowed in the light from the hanging lamps. Four years earlier I’d seen her copper hair shining under Christmas lights in a dark room. These were the images that were going to stay burned into my brain. A beautiful, luminous portrait of a woman I was never going to touch again.
