A Valentine for Two

by Lia Davis

  “I don’t know, Charlotte. If you were my daughter, I wouldn’t let a guy like me anywhere near you.”

  “Good thing you’re not my daddy, then. Isn’t it?” She reached under the table and squeezed his thigh.

  “You guys ready for dessert?” Vance asked.

  “I’m always ready for dessert,” Charlotte answered.

  “Good. Let’s go up.”

  “Up?”

  “There’s a rooftop lounge for special guests. I’ve had champagne and sweets arranged.”

  Jace arched a brow. “All the stops, huh?”

  “Well, I couldn’t arrange the nighttime balloon ride. I tried.” He shrugged.

  Her stomach twisted with anticipation.

  “Are you kidding me right now?” Jace snorted.

  “Of course not. I was very put out.” Vance said. “Our dessert under the stars awaits.”

  Chapter Eight

  Jace

  Vance had been serious.

  He wasn’t just trying to seduce Charlotte. He was romancing Jace, too, and Jace didn’t know how to process it.

  He’d thought at first it was some... He didn’t know. Something that wasn’t genuine, but Vance was sure to pay them equal attention. He asked questions and actually listened to the answers. He was present in the conversation. He’d stowed his phone and turned it off. There was nothing more important to him tonight than he and Charlotte.

  Jace didn’t quite know what to do with it.

  How to react.

  Especially with all of the reservations he still had.

  The rooftop setup was the icing on the proverbial cake. The air was cool, but not cold. The stars were hard to see being in the city, but the view was phenomenal with all the lights spread out below them.

  White candles burned all around, the champagne was iced, and ready to go. A red-checkered cloth had been spread out for them white pillows for lounging as they drank their champagne and enjoyed their dessert.

  It was all a little too surreal for him.

  He was getting everything he wanted—more than he wanted. More than he deserved. Something bad was going to happen. He knew it, could feel it deep in his bones.

  For a moment there, he’d pretended he could have this and it had been good, but the rage was always there.

  Every time Vance touched her, every time Vance touched him, he hated the guy a little bit more. The nicer he was, the more perfect, the more he hated.

  He thought about the tease in the locker room. The offer to fight him. He’d been kidding, but that was part of what Jace loved about rugby. The violence. The physicality. The way it worked his body beyond exhaustion. Beyond desire.

  Beyond rage.

  He felt human after he played. He felt like he wasn’t... what he was.

  They were both so lovely together in the candlelight. Perfect golden matching bookends.

  One of these things is not like the other, the voice in his head that sounded so much like his mother said to him over and over again.

  Poor white trash, ain’t nothing good for nobody. Little bastard.

  The scars burned, but he knew it was the ghost of a memory. The ghost of her. He’d never been so glad to have put a knife in someone. He only wished he could silence her voice in his head.

  He’d never forgotten her last words. “Shoulda’ chased you out with a coat hanger.”

  Sometimes, he thought she was right.

  “Where’d you go, Jace?” Vance brought him back to the present.

  “Ah, you know.” He tried to shrug it off. He didn’t want to talk about it.

  “Stay with us. We’re here. So are you.” He held out a glass of champagne to him.

  “I don’t even know what to do with this.” He was afraid to accept thin glass flute. Afraid he’d crush it with his clumsy paws.

  “Drink it. The bubbles are nice on your tongue,” Charlotte instructed.

  They were sitting on the blanket now, and Jace had never felt more like he didn’t belong. Like he wasn’t supposed to be there. He got up and walked away from them toward the ledge and looked out over the city.

  He didn’t want to think about what was going to happen now. What he couldn’t be part of, even though Vance and Charlotte both wanted him to.

  He was going to hurt them both.

  Part of him wondered why he’d ever agreed to this. If he could escape and save them, but he had a feeling Vance wouldn’t let him go. He’d push and he’d push until something inside of Jace snapped.

  He inhaled a deep breath.

  “Jace?” Her soft voice called to him. “Do you want to go?”

  He turned to face her, and there was such a mix of things in her eyes. He saw hope there, and he saw sadness.

  He saw need.

  “I don’t think I can be what you want,” he said.

  “I don’t want you to be anything other than what you are. Didn’t we already talk about this? Stop shutting me out. You want me? You said you do. So have me. Do every depraved thing you can imagine. Only let me in. I can’t live like this on the outside anymore.”

  Her pain stabbed him, but he still resisted.

  “Guys, come back to the blanket. I’ve managed something better than a balloon ride,” Vance called.

  She pressed her fingers into his palm and he noticed how small they were. How delicate. How breakable.

  But she had a grip on him like a man twice her size.

  He followed her back to the blanket and sat down, his stomach in his throat.

  “Everyone, lie back. Look at the sky. It won’t last very long.”

  All the lights in the city suddenly went dark and as the last of the last faded, the stars blinked like diamonds fixed in velvet.

  With Charlotte’s hand curled in one palm and Vance’s fingers linked with his other hand, for that moment in time, that minute Vance had arranged for them to see the stars, he knew an unfamiliar peace. A quiet in his head.

  It couldn’t last.

  It didn’t last.

  As soon as the lights began to come back on in neighborhoods across the city, the din was back and he couldn’t breathe.

  But he wasn’t ready to let go. He wasn’t ready for it to be over.

  “Vance, that was beautiful. How did you make that happen?” Charlotte asked.

  “I’ll never tell. Did you like it?”

  “It was amazing. Better than a balloon. Better than the champagne,” Charlotte said, leaning into Jace.

  “And you,” Vance’s voice was in his ear, “did you like it?”

  He more than liked it, but he didn’t have the words to share what it meant to him. What it had done for him. “Yes.”

  Vance’s lips were on his cheek, his arm across his chest as he reached for Charlotte’s hand.

  Charlotte’s mouth was on his neck and he was having sensation overload. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. It was supposed to be Charlotte between them. Charlotte who was driven mad with lust and pleasure. Charlotte on display because she was beautiful.

  Because she was perfect.

  He wanted to believe this was real. He wanted to believe, but he knew, and so did the voice in his head.

  And the one deep in the dark cracks in his heart.

  His body didn’t want to listen. His body kept replaying their conversation where she’d said she and Vance were going to suck his cock together.

  He couldn’t.

  “Stop,” he said, launching himself to his feet. “I can’t.”

  “Not now, or not ever?” Vance asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Okay, there’s no pressure here. Let’s have some more strawberries.”

  “You go ahead,” he said, fleeing back to the ledge, back to the city lights where things made sense. They were horrible, ugly things, but there was a logic to them. What happened on that blanket was madness.

  He’d give them a few minutes to get caught up in each other and then he’d leave. He’d go back to Ridgemont Hall and
he’d...

  He’d what?

  She wasn’t going to stop now. She’d keep pushing him until he broke. His only other option was to leave her.

  He’d known that in the end, that’s what would happen. He’d have to let go. He couldn’t keep her forever, but the boy he’d been had thought whatever he could have would be enough. Or maybe he’d been afraid to admit to himself that he wasn’t ever going to let go. Afraid to confess it because if he did, something worse than boiling oil would happen to him.

  He could get loans to pay for the rest of his education. He’d have to move out of Ridgemont Hall, but hell, maybe it would be best if he left Hollingsworth all together.

  Jace kept waiting for them to do what beautiful people did. They were drawn together. As they should be. He kept waiting for them to kiss, for Vance to touch her, but he didn’t.

  Jace didn’t understand.

  “If you want to leave, we can go,” Vance called out to him.

  He sighed and wandered back over. “I’m just gonna call it a night. You two stay. Enjoy the strawberries and champagne.”

  “No, we’re not staying without you,” Charlotte said.

  The only way he’d ever get any peace again, or something that passed for it was to do what she wanted.

  “Just let me go.”

  “No,” Charlotte said, standing. “Not a chance. You’re running away.”

  “Not for my safety, but yours!” he snarled.

  “Stop. Just stop with that.”

  “Maybe you should let him go, Charlotte.”

  “I said no. Why are you leaving? Why are you throwing this away?” she cried. “Why are you throwing me away?”

  “Right now, it’s not about you.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No, for once it’s about me. It’s about me being broken in a way you can’t understand.”

  “Try me,” she demanded.

  “When I think about you like this, you’re not a person to me anymore. I can’t let you be. If you’re Charlotte, it’s dirty. It’s wrong.”

  “But that’s what you like about it, isn’t it?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “I... Goddamn you, Charlotte.”

  “So, I’m not a person. I’m a thing and that’s what you want from me?” Her fingers went to the tie of her wraparound dress. “I’ll give it to you, and then maybe you’ll stop being so fucking crazy about this.”

  “Charlotte,” Vance admonished.

  “That’s exactly what I am,” Jace confessed, even as his eyes were drawn to her flesh as she peeled off the dress.

  “Is this what you want to see?”

  “You know what I want to see.”

  “Fine. You’re eager to see me with him, then watch.” She turned to Vance. “Let’s win that bet.”

  “Charlotte, this isn’t what you want,” Vance said.

  “I know what I want.”

  “Okay, this isn’t how you wanted it. Things are new between the three of us. I don’t want to ruin that.”

  “Oh, now you want more than sex? You were more than willing to take me up to your room when I drew your name at the party.”

  “That was before. Don’t you think I’m invested, too? That I have feelings about all of this?” Vance said.

  “I... no. Actually, I kind of thought you were caught up in the novelty. I wasn’t sure.”

  “That’s exactly why we shouldn’t do this right now.”

  Charlotte dropped the dress on the ground and unhooked her bra. “I guess I’m doing this by myself.”

  He was entranced by her, which wasn’t unusual, but this new side of her both intrigued and terrified him. She was single-minded and ruthless in her pursuit of what she wanted. She’d never been like that before.

  If she wanted something and he thought it was bad for her, like the class trip to Mexico her senior year, she deferred to his judgement. Kidnappings, severed heads found in tourist destinations, no. She’d wanted to go so badly. She’d wanted to see Mayan ruins. Go zip lining across the jungle, and explore hidden beaches. She’d been disappointed, but she’d understood.

  Maybe that was problem. She just didn’t understand the danger.

  Except the way she looked at him, the determination in her eyes. Nothing was going to stand in the way of what she wanted now. Not Vance, not him, and not even her own self-preservation.

  Her breasts were like the rest of her, perfect.

  They’d been the object of many of his fantasies, and there they were, bare with her nipples puckered in the cool night air. He didn’t even think about touching her, though.

  Vance, he could touch her. He could taste her.

  And Jace could watch.

  “You said you’d do this for me, Vance. Will you still?” He’d claimed he’d be the intermediary. He’d offered to keep Charlotte safe. He’d never trusted another person with that before.

  Vance met his eyes and an understanding passed between them.

  “If you can promise me that this is the start and not the end.”

  He’d gone too far to turn back now. He’d tried to flee, but they wouldn’t let him. So now there was nothing for it, but to see it to the sure end. The end he had to promise Vance wasn’t coming.

  He nodded, knowing it was a lie.

  Vance took her in his arms and tangled his hand in her hair and he kissed her. She melted against him, her hands on his body, peeling off his shirt.

  He found himself just as entranced by Vance’s body as he was by Charlotte’s. Especially watching the way they moved together. He thought again that it had to be right they were together because they looked like art.

  And a piece of him that had been hurting for so long finally died. It was the piece that kept hoping, kept needing. Watching them together smothered it.

  Again, it was a kind of peace.

  He wished he could drown everything that made him feel that way, so there was nothing but quiet emptiness.

  And this.

  Jace sat down on one of the marble benches and watched Vance worship her body like he wanted to. Watched her pretty hands move over his perfect, unscarred flesh. He stored it all up, not just so he could find his own pleasure later, but because he knew that they were doing this for him. They weren’t trying to punish him, even though he was trying to punish himself.

  They were trying to give him what he needed.

  The experience was so foreign, and it wouldn’t let him shut that knowledge out. It wouldn’t let him forget so he could punish himself for wanting her.

  For wanting them.

  He remembered the taste of her on his lips. The cries of pleasure that were for him. He felt just as decadent in this moment, watching, as he had doing.

  But Charlotte wasn’t going to let him be a passive observer, no.

  “Like this,” she instructed Vance, and rose up on her hands and knees so she faced Jace.

  Oh Christ, this was like half of his fantasies come to life, but it was real. He couldn’t handle it.

  She was so beautiful. So pure. Everything that he thought a person should be. Yet, here she was on display. Here she was getting fucked for his pleasure.

  Here she was, just as foul and dirty as his... Goddamn it. He gritted his teeth. This was different. Charlotte wasn’t letting strange men fuck her so she could get another needle in her arm. Charlotte wasn’t his mother and it would be a damn fucked up thing if she was. He guessed that was part of his problem.

  He’d transferred everything he should’ve felt for the woman he’d gutted to her. He’d made her that paragon of virtue that all boys thought about their mothers. But that wasn’t on her.

  It was on him.

  The most fucked up part of this was that he knew how wrong he was, knew how broken, and he couldn’t seem to figure out how to fix it.

  Charlotte wouldn’t let him lose himself in the guilt, and she refused to let him be passive in this. She locked her eyes with his and focused solely on him while Vance took her from be
hind.

  “Show me,” she mouthed.

  He looked at Vance who was focused on Charlotte, but seeming to sense his regard, looked up. His expression was all hard intensity, but he surprised him by smiling and winking at him.

  Something about Vance both wrought and diffused a fire in him at the same time. He made it okay to be who he was.

  He wanted to touch them both, but instead, kept his position and touched himself.

  For him, this was more intimate than if he’d joined them. Sometimes, he hated this. Hated getting himself off because it was proof no one wanted him.

  As he watched, and moved his hand over his shaft, he wondered what this felt like for her. To have Vance drilling into her, his sculpted mouth on her skin, his unscarred hands...

  Vance was watching him now, too. Jace had only wanted to watch, not be watched, but they’d given him what he’d wanted, and taken their own share, too.

  Vance’s regard was dark with lust and just being wanted was enough to send him over the edge, his abdominals tightening and his body tense as he thrust up into his hand.

  Charlotte’s mouth was open and he could see the waves of bliss washing over her, but she never closed her eyes. Never looked away from him. She held him locked in that moment forever.

  When the wave had passed, nothing could stop him from fleeing.

  Chapter Nine

  Vance

  “He ran,” he said to Charlotte as they found their clothes.

  “I knew he would. He’s probably not going to speak to either of us for a long time.”

  “I don’t want to pry... that’s a lie. I do. I want to know everything. I wish he’d tell me. But what happened when you guys were kids?”

  “Short story? The part I can share without spilling his confidence? His parents kidnapped me and he saved me. He suffered for it.”

  “I can see that.” He couldn’t find his other oxford. The damn thing was two-tone Burberry with a shine like new penny. He’d be pissed if he’d lost it. “His head is a twisted place. He came to me, you know.”

  “He did? Now it’s my turn to say I don’t want to pry, but...”

  He laughed. “Yeah. He said I had to date you. I said I’d take you both. Now, I’m not so sure I can.”