by L. A. Rose
“I’m really really sorry, though, like the most sorry out of all the sorry people—”
“I know.” She smiles, and her face is the face of evil. I’m now aware how Harry Potter felt when he stared down Voldemort for the first time. Maybe Adrian will lend me his wand… “Which is why I’m going to forgive you. On one condition.”
“Why do I have the feeling that Adrian has something to do with the condition,” I mumble.
He leans back in my foldout camping chair that I use as a table seat, munching on an apology cookie that I baked Marie yesterday. “Marie said you made these,” he chokes out. “They’re amazing.”
My eyes widen. Those cookies could be used as chemical warfare. He must really want that new notch in his bedpost.
Marie stalks around the table. Business Marie has leveled up, to be known from now on as Evil Business Marie. “Your writing mojo has dried up. Kaput. All gone. Correct?”
“Correct.” My fingers inch toward my cell, in case I need to call an ambulance for Adrian, who has finished the cookie with a grimace.
“But we still have a book’s worth of sex scenes to write. Correct?”
She doesn’t even blush, despite the use of the word ‘sex’ in front of a boy. Adrian really is good at putting people at ease. “Correct.”
“This is my career,” says Marie firmly. “My future. And you need the money to pay for next semester at Statham, so it’s your future too. Consequently, we need to do everything we can to get you some writing inspiration, stat.”
“You totally rehearsed this,” I say, accusing.
“I did.” She waltzes up to me, swipes the apology chai, and hands it off to Adrian, who pretends like he’s not gulping it to get the taste of my cookies out of his mouth. “With Adrian.”
What the actual fuck. “How are you two suddenly best friends slash partners in crime?”
Adrian opens his mouth, but Marie cuts him off. “It’s not like I didn’t know that the Sex King has sworn off other girls in order to chase you. It’s all anyone’s talking about, and…” She blushes. “I read his column. Anyway, he showed up this morning asking for you, and we got to talking.”
Adrian shoots me a boy smile full of apologetic charm. It’s possible that the microwave behind me groans in longing. I’m not having it.
Okay, maybe I’m having it a little.
But that’s no reason to let him know. “Just tell me. What’s going on? Let me guess, you’re both axe murderers and you’re both about to reenact the plot of the first Saw movie?”
“Better,” says Marie happily. “You and Adrian are you going to act out all the erotic scenes in my book. Then you’re going to write them.”
My jaw falls to the center of the earth. “I think I’d prefer the Saw scenario.”
Adrian leans languidly on the table. “You didn’t tell me she was that kinky, Marie.”
“Oh, you have no idea,” she says, elbowing him.
I hate her. I hate her entire line of descendants. I hate her great-great-grandmother’s ghost. “Have you lost your freaking mind? No, no way, NO on a biscuit with ham and gravy—”
I’m shaking my head so hard that I don’t see Adrian get up. In a flash, he’s before me, pressing a finger to my lips. His touch sends an electric shiver down my whole body. “You don’t have to,” he says softly. “I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.”
At the moment, the only thing I want to do is pop his finger in my mouth and suck it, but that’s my uterus speaking over my brain.
“Clothes on,” says Marie quickly. “Obviously. Like, you won’t actually be doing it. It’s just to get a feel for what you’re writing about.”
I open my mouth to refuse again, but I hesitate. Marie’s right. I need cash bad. It’s not like we’ll actually be hooking up, and maybe it really will help. I can’t deny how my body is responding to Adrian’s barest touch. For the first time in weeks, for a brief moment, I feel like I could sit down and write.
It’s not like I’m selling my body for money, or auctioning off endangered tiger pelts, or anything awful. It’s just a creative exercise. That’s all.
Adrian lets his finger trail down my lips until he’s no longer touching me at all. My skin crackles, wanting him back. “I could help you,” he says.
“You owe me,” adds Marie from behind us. “Do this and I promise I’ll forgive you.”
The word that escapes my mouth next is, “Okay.”
A slow, easy smile spreads over Adrian’s face.
“We’ll try it once,” I correct. “And if it doesn’t help my writing, no more.”
“There’s one more condition.” Adrian won’t look away from my eyes, not once. “Have dinner with me on Friday.”
“Adrian—”
“Just one dinner,” he amends. “After that, I’ll stop begging. Promise.”
“I’m surprised you’ve been begging,” I say, probing the edge of the question that’s been hounding me all week. “You don’t seem like a guy who normally begs.”
“I’m not.” His gaze sizzles over my body. I suddenly wish I was wearing something more attractive than jeans and a T-shirt, but he looks at me like I’m wearing sexy lingerie. “Only for you.”
“Well, that’s settled then.” Marie claps twice, shattering whatever was building between us. Adrian steps back and I can catch my breath.
“Whatever we’re eating, it better be damn delicious,” I say, to hide my shiver. “It’ll be the best thing you’ve ever tasted,” he promises.
It’s just one dinner. Just one measly little dinner with the sexiest man I’ve ever met, who has an uncanny ability to turn me into a sweaty mess with just one look, who is absolutely and completely not an option for me.
He’s experienced. Confident. In control. And I’m—
“Let’s do this, then,” Marie says suddenly, slipping on her shoes.
“What?” I squawk. “Now? Right this second in this universe right here?”
“No, in eighteenth century Britain.” She rolls her eyes. “My draft is due in two months, Cleo. We need to get it done.”
“Then why are you putting your shoes on? There’s a bed upstairs.” I refuse to look at Adrian. Not that my face is red. My skin is a perfectly normal flesh-colored tone. Promise.
Marie winks at me, and I’m left to wonder again which science lab this evil clone of my mild-mannered roommate has recently escaped from. “The first hookup in my book doesn’t happen in a bed, Cleo.”
I am no longer a normal flesh-colored tone. At the moment, I’m approximately ghost-colored. “No.”
“Yep,” she says. “You might want to change out of that white T-shirt.”
Never mind. This evil clone of Marie didn’t escape from a science lab.
She came straight outta hell.
~6~
ADRIAN
In this particular moment, in Marie’s beat-up Chevy driving off campus to a mysterious place that made Cleo change colors twice when Marie mentioned it, there are only two questions in my mind.
One—why am I wearing rain gear?
Two—how did I end up in the front passenger seat and not in the back next to Cleo, who’s glaring out the window like she just saw her least favorite fourth grade teacher spraying down the sidewalk?
There’s also a third question, I guess, which I say out loud. “Where the hell are we going?”
“You’ll find out,” Marie sings. I’m a little concerned, as Cleo’s roommate appears to have cracked. She was sweet when she was handing me glasses of orange juice in her kitchen and explaining the whole situation in that near-to-tears writer way, but now she’s got the manic eye-gleam of Captain Ahab when he finally spotted the whale.
Just because I’m hot as fuck and have more sex than a rabbit on steroids doesn’t mean I don’t read.
We’re heading away from Boston, into the sticks. I twist to hopefully meet Cleo’s eyes just as Marie takes a corner so hard I’m pretty sure the Chevy pops o
nto one wheel. My head bashes against the roof, and the top of my skull becomes flat enough to serve drinks on.
That’ll be a pretty nice party trick, actually.
Cleo lurches forward, and I look up just quick enough to see the instinctive concern in her eyes. “You okay?”
“Just fine.”
“Sorry. Marie drives like she’s trying to escape the police,” Cleo says, her natural smile brightening up her face before she remembers she’s annoyed. It’s like she reaches up to rearrange her eyebrows into a frown, that’s how forced it is. I’m getting to her. No women can resist me for long. A scientifically proven fact. Like gravity. Which it’s basically a form of.
We drive for another half hour before stopping in a public park. It’s empty, probably because it’s Thursday night and most people are in front of the TV, drinking off the workday and not on a crazy mission with your first love and her psychopathic writer roommate to simulate sex scenes in a book.
I’m not complaining, though.
Marie leads us to a big, clear manmade pond in the corner of the park, with a sandy bottom and no frogs in sight. In the center is a huge fountain, spraying a fan of water to rain down into the pond. A few pennies shimmer at the bottom.
Marie takes out a notebook and a pen. “At this particular juncture in my novel,” she intones like a radio announcer, “Jonathan and his beloved have just shared a picnic when the wind takes Amelia’s hat and blows it into the fountain. The hat was a gift from her grandmother, and she runs in after it. Cleo?”
Cleo dances from foot to foot. “You’re seriously making me go into this fountain?”
Marie lays a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Yes.”
Cleo stomps toward the fountain, muttering to herself adorably. I catch the words “evil” and “tacos.” As she steels herself to take a step into the water, Marie turns toward me.
“It’s been a month for her,” she whispers. “I honestly think she’s forgotten what it feels like to be touched and that’s why she can’t write about it. Inspire her, okay? I’m going to go back to the car and wait.”
She doesn’t need to ask me twice.
I step into the water after Cleo. She’s already ankle deep, arms crossed nervously. As I approach, she lets them fall to her sides, unconsciously asking me to come closer. I obey, the surprisingly not-too-cold water swishing up to my shins.
It’s strange, looking at her so closely after so many years of imagination. My mind smoothed over the freckles, and her large earlobes, and the tiny cowlick at her temple. My mind got rid of everything that made her real and whole, turned her into a fantasy figure. The real thing is so much better. I wonder—what else about her is different from my fantasy?
There’s a smattering of goosebumps on her arms, and whether she’s aware of it or not, her nipples have risen to greet me through the thin fabric of her shirt. The horny side of my brain beats the philosophical side into submission with a tire iron.
You know how people in cartoons have a good angel and a bad angel on each shoulder? I have a horny angel and a philosophical angel.
The horny angel gets pretty violent. I’ve been meaning to talk to him about that.
“I couldn’t let you get wet out here all by yourself,” I murmur, moving closer to Cleo. I want to rip her clothes off and run my hands all over her naked body—that’s a given—but the urge that surprises me, the urge that’s just as strong, is the one that tells me to pull her body into mine and make sure she’s warm enough. “I want to be the one making that happen.”
Her sharp intake of breath gratifies me.
“Do you use that on all the girls you hook up with, or just the ones you simulate it with?” she asks.
I step closer. She stiffens but doesn’t move away. Her eyes betray her, roving over my body with pure longing. “Just the ones I find standing in a fountain at night in September.”
“Any girl crazy enough to jump into a fountain just to get her roommate to stop being mad at her probably isn’t one you want to hook up with, simulated or otherwise.”
I’m standing so close now that I can feel her breath on my neck. She has to look up to meet my eyes, her chin tilted back just slightly. Defiance mixes with desire.
“You have no idea how badly I want you,” I murmur. She probably thinks I’m laying it on too thick, and maybe I am, but what she doesn’t know is how honest these words are. I’ve craved her ever since that night four years ago.
“You should know I’m just humoring Marie.” Her voice has gone low, so quiet that nobody can hear us but the wind. But her eyes burn into mine. “This isn’t going to work. You can try, but—”
I lean forward, slip my hand around the back of her neck, and kiss her.
She tenses in brief shock, but as I pull her lower lip into my mouth and then release it, she goes limp all over and shudders. A tiny “oh” escapes her. Pure need erupts in my stomach and boils all the way down to my knees. I’m instantly hard, hard and aching. But I pull back.
“This is okay?” I breathe into her mouth.
“It’s not…the worst thing ever,” she manages, her words bumping into each other and stumbling. “I mean. It’s not the least pleasant of all the things I’ve ever done.”
“I’ll take that,” I say quietly, covering her mouth again. I slide my tongue over hers, my hand dipping into the small of her back, and she gasps.
I’ve kissed so many girls.
At this moment, I know that I never want to kiss any girl but Cleo again.
“Describe it,” I tell her. “Talk about it like you’re writing. Maybe that will help.”
I lightly bite her lower lip and then let her speak. Her skin is flushed and the reflection of the water shines in her eyes.
There’s something about growing up that means understanding clichés. Life isn’t fair, etc.—lines you hear all the time as a kid but never get, until that one moment when you understand why they’re embedded in the lexicon of humanity. So I hope you can forgive me if I tell you that she takes my breath away.
It’s like being socked in the chest.
Because fantasy isn’t even on the same playing field as reality.
“My lips burn from his kiss, but not unpleasantly,” she says. The line connecting our eyes is so powerful you could hang clothes out to dry on it. “Like how it feels after you drink really expensive whiskey…a liquid burn. God, I don’t know what I’m saying.” Her voice falls to a whisper. “Isn’t this embarrassing you?”
“Embarrassed?” I give a low chuckle. “Embarrassed isn’t anywhere near the range of things I’m feeling right now, Clee.”
This time, she doesn’t protest the nickname.
“This is important. This is your job.” I trace a piece of hair back from her forehead before leaning close to her ear. “And I want to hear you describe this.”
She groans, just barely. I let my hand dip low, my fingers sliding over the fabric of her jeans to caress her thigh.
“He touches me like a violin master touches his favorite instrument,” she says, and she blushes again at the sound of her own voice. Her words are surprisingly beautiful. I cup her chin with my other hand.
“Keep talking,” I order her. “Tell me about this.”
And I slide my hand up her thigh until I’m cupping her, feeling the heat of her below the fabric, imagining the skin.
“He touches me…” Her voice fades and comes back stronger as I slide my fingers hard against her. “He touches me right where I want him to.”
Those words springing confidently from her lips gets me hard as diamond. My whole body is taut with desire, every muscle below my abdomen straining. Hearing her describe what I’m doing to her is unbelievably sexy.
“Even under my clothes, I respond to him. I’m wet, and not just from the fountain.”
I feel her mouth curve into a smile against me, as the fabric beneath my fingers dampens. I deserve the national willpower award for not sliding her pants down over her hips, press
ing my face to her, and breathing in her scent.
“I want him.” Her voice burns. Her pretty language is deserting her now, leaving her with only straightforward words. “He’s hard against me, and I imagine what it would feel like to take him in my hands, in my mouth, take him everywhere…”
Jesus Christ Almighty.
Suddenly I hate with a burning passion the person who invented clothes.
Sadistic motherfucker.
“I can feel how large he is, even through the fabric of his pants.” And then her small hand is exploring, tentatively at first, before gripping me. I groan. I’ve never come in my pants before, but for the first time, it’s an actual danger.
Her voice is so silky, so sexy.
“I want to taste him,” she murmurs, almost to herself, and it breaks me.
I kiss her ferociously, keeping one hand on her back and one between her legs, pressing against the hot, wet fabric, exploring the place where I know her clit is hidden. She jolts against my body and suddenly there’s moisture all around us, pouring down. We’ve backed into the fountain.
“I think I’ve gotten you about as wet as possible,” I say into her mouth, and she makes a noise somewhere between a laugh and a groan. The water plasters her clothes to her body, highlighting the outline of her full, gorgeous breasts. I caress one, then the other.
“I missed your perfect tits,” I growl into her ear, and she moans, arching her back so her body is pressed firmly into me. “Looks like they missed me too. Now keep talking.”
“He bites my neck gently,” shudders Cleo, as I continue to do what she’s describing. “It feels like electricity…he…oh, God…he kisses his way down the exposed skin on my chest and licks the space above my breasts. It feels so good. I never want him to stop…”
I’m never going to stop. Whatever train we’ve climbed on is speeding toward one destination. I want to make her come through her jeans. I’ve been holding back, but no longer. I’m going to push her over the edge.
