by Angel Lawson
Gwendolyn breathes out a dark laugh. “Nice show of leadership, already treating people like minions. Heil Bates.”
She gives me a Nazi salute.
I will myself not to lose my shit, instead sweeping a sneering gaze down her body. “Who’s being the childish, entitled toddler now?”
“I can’t believe you seriously want me to do this,” she says, readjusting her towel around her narrow waist. “No, actually, it makes perfect sense. You need to be in control, even if that means sharing it with me. Mostly because you think you can control me, too. But I already have to spend my Saturdays covering for your ass. I have no interest in taking on your half of this assignment, too—all so you can claim on your college applications that you did all the work. And,” she continues haughtily, “don’t even try to pretend this is going to change anything. We both know things will be business as usual, only instead of just making everyone ignore me, you’ll probably get the other swimmers to treat me like dirt, and then your flunkies will have new and interesting opportunities to mock me behind my back—or worse—to my face.”
I shake my head, laughing bitterly. “God, you’re so delusional.”
She rests her hands on her hips. “How am I the delusional one?”
“How am I the control freak?” I gesture to her. “Your entire life is about controlling everyone and everything you meet. Look at you, you couldn’t even let me get in trouble for blowing off detention the other day. God forbid Dean Dewey think you let a situation—let me—get out of hand. Even the twins. You hover over them like a motherfucking hen, as if they can’t find their own damn classroom without your careful guiding hand.” I grin cruelly, fueled and fired up, ready to burn it all down. “And you know what else? Sky. Yeah, I said her name. You probably baby her, too, don’t you? It’s obvious enough you blame yourself for what happened to her, despite not even being there. Because Gwen must be all-knowing and all-powerful. That’s why you were so bent on blaming the Devils. Because if that whole mess had been nothing more than her own decision, that would mean you never had control to begin with.”
I have no time to react. It’s like one second she’s standing there getting redder and redder, and the next, my head is whipping to the side, face stinging. The sound of her palm slapping against my cheek echoes off the tile walls with a hard crack.
My tongue slips out to nurse the spot where my tooth has punctured the skin. The bright, coppery taste of blood fills my mouth, but I don’t flinch. I just look right into her eyes, wide with a mixture of shock and horror, and step closer, until our faces are inches apart.
My heart bangs a dark, enraged rhythm against my ribcage when I whisper, “How does it feel to lose control?”
I expect her to hurt me again, and I wonder what it’s going to be. Maybe a punch this time, maybe even a knee to the groin. I’m ready for it, whatever it is.
The push is only briefly amusing, her two wide palms coming up to my chest and shoving me down onto the bench behind me. Her towel slides off and she’s standing before me in nothing but the thin Lycra of her swimsuit, so understandably, my brain goes kind of fuzzy at the edges.
That’s just playing dirty.
Before I can even halfway parse my lap being full with the weight of her suddenly straddling my thighs, she’s pressing our mouths together.
Truthfully, a punch would have probably been less violent.
Gwen kisses like a freight train, all teeth and tongue and unstoppable momentum. I don’t even have time to brace myself for one attack before the next comes—a suck at my lip, fingernails digging into my shoulders. It’s a sharp, hot hurt that makes my dick swell until it’s a throbbing ache trapped between us.
Her kiss is warm, disturbingly familiar. I didn’t even know I craved the taste of her until her tongue pushed against mine—that hard pang of wanting and having and feeling drunk on the taste of it. Her body is lean and strong, soft and hard in all the right places. I run my hands down her exposed back, fingers tripping over the crisscrossed straps of her swimsuit. I yank at the end, loosening the tie, and somewhere buried deep in my hindbrain is a sort of warning—that I should prepare for another slap.
Instead, she arches her back, letting the straps fall from her shoulders.
It’s possible something in my brain breaks because I have to be delirious to think I have Gwendolyn Adams' bare tits pressing into me.
I break from the kiss just long enough to look, and fuck. There they are. Her tits are absolute perfection. I cup them in my hands while she tugs at my bottom lip with her teeth, grinding down against my erection. The friction is good, ridiculously good, and my mind goes to that special, fuzzy place where I momentarily forget anything that isn’t my aching dick or the tits in my hand.
It all comes back in a snap when Gwendolyn rolls her hips, forcing the damp, narrow section of her bathing suit—the one barely covering her pussy—to slide eagerly against my cock. She drops her face into my neck and I suck the soft skin beneath her ear, groaning into it.
I run my hand down her smooth back before tugging on her long mane of hair, forcing her to look at me.
“Does that feel good?”
She looks at me with glazed eyes for a beat, cheeks aflame, lips puffy and red, before nodding. Her eyes dart to the side but she says, “Y-yes.”
“Do you want more?”
She doesn’t answer, face hardening as she keeps rocking against me.
I still her hips, grinding us both to a painful halt. She exhales in a shudder. “Tell me you want it, Adams, and I’ll let you have it.”
Her eyes clear, then narrow, and I figure....
That may have been a step too far.
Except, apparently not. With her nose pressed against mine, her eyes drop closed and she breathes, “I want it.”
I release my grip, and she resumes the motion of humping against my cock, tits bouncing just below eye level, and for all semblance of control, I am completely and thoroughly enraptured. It takes everything I have not to yank off the rest of that suit—and it’d be so fucking easy—and bury myself inside of her. But even I know that’s too much, too far.
“Fuck,” she moans against my lips, and I kiss her again, wanting that ragged edge of sound inside of me. With every rock of her hips, her breath grows shorter and shorter against my mouth, until eventually we’re just panting into one another, hips driving us mindlessly forward.
Suddenly, her head falls back, and I want to suck my mark into the long, pale column of her throat—God, I really do—but more than that, I just need to see. I need to see what she looks like when she finally lets go of all that self-righteous control and comes on my dick. Her nails dig into my back and my balls tighten, making my own breathing grow ragged.
“Come on,” I grunt, feeling the sharp swell of my own release rapidly approaching. “Come on, Adams. Let it fucking go, come on.”
Her teeth bite down into her lip, muffling her cry as she suddenly seizes, shuddering hard against me. I pull her face to mine in a kiss, swallowing her moan, and then follow her directly over the edge. It feels like it goes on forever, spilling into my shorts, grinding up into her a little more roughly than intended. She doesn’t seem to mind. She just keeps rocking into me, letting us ride it out together, panting hot and wet against my mouth.
Soon we both still, nothing but the harsh sounds of our breath filling the room, and I don’t know what to do with the hand tangled in her hair or the one clutching her hip. I know the second one of us flinches, it’s over.
The sound of my swallow is apparently all it takes for reality to come crashing back.
“Oh my god,” she gasps, clambering off of me with shaky legs. She hastily wraps her arms around her bare chest. “That—oh my god.”
I shift, wincing. “Tell me about it.” My Speedo is filled with cum, and the tip of my dick is chafed raw. I try to sort out my situation while Gwendolyn darts around the locker room, throwing on her clothes and gathering her things.
She pauses and looks at me, eyes raking over the length of my body. I’m pretty sure she left marks on my back. Just like I’m pretty sure I see a hickey under her ear.
“That,” she begins, but I hold up my hand.
“Never happened.”
“Never.
Sing me another tune some time.
“But hey, you know what did happen?” I stand on my own wobbly legs and can’t help but smirk. “I think we just kind of proved that we can work together.”
She stares at me blankly. It’s not a threat, it’s just the truth. But I see the worry in her eyes. She can’t help it. She doesn’t trust me, and frankly, she shouldn’t.
“Adams.” I hold her gaze, and I’m not proud of what comes next any more than dry humping her in the girls' locker room. I shouldn’t have to do this. But desperate times and all that. “Please,” I ask.
She watches me, and I’m not sure what she’s looking for. Even I can’t manage the artifice of deception three minutes after coming my brains out. Whatever she was looking for, she must find it. She runs her hand down her shirt, like she’s cleaning it off, and thrusts it toward me. “Co-captains?”
I offer her my own and we shake, her fingers still trembling—either from the orgasm or from the horror of what we’d just done.
Either way, I got mine.
11
Gwen
“Debbie made you this!” Michaela produces a muffin from her backpack with a crumb-flying flourish. “It’s chocolate.”
“My favorite.” The muffin looks as squished and lopsided as I feel. “Thanks.”
I’m being a total coward, having pretended at being late to avoid talking to our nanny. I couldn’t face her after what I’d done. I can barely even face myself after what happened last night.
“How does it feel to lose control?” Even now, I can call up the memory of his face perfectly, inches from my own. If I thought kissing him that first time tangled me up, then what happened yesterday just took a sledgehammer to it all. This time, it wasn’t the dark creep of nightmares that made me squirm all night. It was the near constant, hyper-realistic, Imax-sized internal replay of what he felt like beneath me, around me, against me.
How does it feel to lose control?
Starting alphabetically, agonizing. Amazing. Appalling. Awesome. Awful. I have plans to get through the Bs during homeroom. By the end of the day, I should have enough for a whole storybook on the cautionary tale of hot boys and the neurotic girls they torment.
“So, how’s dance going?” I ask Micha, welcoming the distraction. “Did you get the solo?”
“Our teacher hasn’t decided yet. The final audition is tonight. I’ve been struggling with this one move…” He pauses to drop his bag and assume a dancing posture. I was never good with dance, myself, so I’m not really sure if the twirl he pushes into is technically as perfect as it looks, but it’s quick and graceful.
A few of the high school kids walking past slow to gawk at him, and I don’t know if they’re impressed or about to say something really shitty. My hackles rise, regardless, ready to push back if they so much as snicker at him.
Micha’s oblivious, thankfully. He just completes his last step with a dip and turn, and then falls out of the posture, shrugging. “But I think I’ve got it down better than Gloria. She’s my only real competition.”
“Mom says we can go out for ice cream if he gets the solo,” Michaela explains to me. She hands Micha his bag and adds, “You’ll get it. Or else.”
I laugh at the glare on Micha’s face. “Come on, guys. We all know Mom will take you for ice cream regardless. It looks like you’ve got it down, anyway.” I tuck a piece of hair behind my ear and start to unwrap the muffin. I glance up and notice Michaela watching me closely. “What?”
She touches beneath her ear. “What’s that?”
My hand reaches for the spot. It’s tender and red. I know that from seeing it in the mirror this morning. I’d tried covering the hickey with concealer, but that obviously didn’t work. I’d sure like to know what the hell he was thinking, leaving evidence like that. My first thought was that Hamilton had tried to give me a Devil’s mark, but that’s just insane. He’d never want anyone to know. Ever. “Just a bruise. I got hit by a kickboard at swim last night.”
But a small part of me is glad it’s there. I have solid, tangible proof that last night happened. It wasn’t some messed up fever dream that my brain created. His mouth was there. It’s all at once some strange, erotic, horrifying relief.
“Ouch,” she says, satisfied and sympathetic, but I’m inwardly filled with dread. Michaela documents everything just in case she needs the information for later.
When we reach their classroom, they both say in that creepy twin unison, “See you later!”
“Bye! Good luck, Micha! Text me and let me know how it goes, okay?”
He probably won’t, but Mom’s guaranteed to give me a documentary-level video and photo account of every moment. Eating the muffin on the way to class, I furtively pull my hair over my shoulder in an attempt to hide the hickey. Every day for the last six months has been the same; I walk in, go to my locker with a negative sum of acknowledgment, and I go to class to the same treatment. The wall of silence follows my each and every step like a hostile but ever-faithful dog.
But today isn’t like every other day.
Today is the day after Hamilton and I gave each other orgasms. And neither of us hated the orgasms as much as we hate each other.
And that’s the weird thing. It’s not like my feelings toward Hamilton have changed. It’s not like I rubbed all up on his dick for a few minutes and suddenly think he’s worth the light of day. Not a bit. He’s a petty, mean, egotistical asshole. But my body? Well, I quickly learn it has a mind of its own.
But it’s not how it was supposed to be. The first guy I ever did this kind of stuff with was supposed to be nice. He was supposed to be sweet and caring, or—at the absolute bottom barrel of standards—not be the person responsible for making my life a miserable, isolated mess.
I walk down the hall toward first period and it’s like whatever happened between us has raised my awareness of him tenfold. I instantly spot him lounging against the wall near his locker. Images of him from the night before flash before my eyes, unbidden. Hamilton leaning over me, daring me to lose control. The want in his heavy-lidded eyes when my bathing suit fell. The way his hands felt, cupping my breasts, brushing against my nipples. How hard and hot he felt beneath me, the way I could feel him twitch against my center when he came. The part of his lips as he panted against my own, face twisted in the same sweet ache of release I was feeling, too.
Now, he’s talking with Reagan, which is... good. It’s fine. I’m not laboring under the delusion that what we did meant anything. The faculty at this school are clearly hell-bent on forcing us into these frustrating situations together, and what else could be expected? No, all of this—the kissing, the making out, the orgasms—was simple physical catharsis, that’s all.
A one-time thing.
Okay, a two-time thing.
Well, a three-time thing, at absolute maximum.
I cram the last piece of muffin in my mouth as I walk toward him into the classroom, stopping at a trashcan to toss the wrapper. But now my fingers are covered in sticky chocolate and I don’t have time to go wash my hands. I look woefully down at them before deciding to just lick off the residue. I start toward the classroom, my eyes being drawn toward the door. Hamilton stands there, stormy gray eyes zeroed in on my mouth. The knuckles of the fingers clutching his book are bone-white.
When our gazes meet, we both seem to just freeze. The heat in his eyes sends a white-hot spike of want down my spine, but I finally pass him, grazing his arm in the process.
A three-time thing, I repeat to myself.
That’s all.
I beat Tyson to the cafeteria and intentionally sit on the opposite side of the table. Thankfully, he doesn’t notice, just slides his tray acr
oss the table, a piece of pizza already hanging from his mouth.
“How long did that meeting with Coach James go last night?” he asks after swallowing. “I waited for you, but I had to get back to the dorm.”
I take a deep breath. “He wants us to co-captain.”
Tyson’s eyes pop. “Wait, what? The two of you? Isn’t that like asking those Oasis brothers to make another album?”
“That’s what we told him.” I roll my eyes. “He didn’t care. He thinks that our feud is causing a problem for the team, and if we can’t work together, then he’ll pick someone else.”
“So what did you say?” he pushes the hair out of his eyes and glances over to where I know Hamilton is sitting. “From the looks of it, I’m assuming ‘no’.”
I frown at him. “What do you mean?”
“Because Bates has been shooting daggers over here since I sat down. I figure he’s pissed at you for turning it down.”
I steal a glance. It’s a dumb move because he’s not looking, but Reagan is. Her fingers are playing with the curls at the back of his neck. She might as well just pee on him.
I pull a face. “Well, actually…”
“Seriously?” He honks a disbelieving laugh. “You’re going to co-captain with him? Is it even possible for you to work together? The way I hear it, if the two of you meet in this timeline, you might cause some kind of world-ending cataclysm.”
That’s certainly one way of putting it.
I shift in my seat. “We’re going to try, I guess. We managed to get through the first day of detention without killing one another, at least.”
Barely.
“That doesn’t seem like a very high bar.”
“I know.” I push my salad around with my fork. “Coach had some pretty good arguments, and I’m not the only one making concessions. We both have to cooperate.”
He shrugs. “If this is what you want to do, I’ve got your back.”
“You may be the only one.” I give him a tired smile. “Hamilton has been an ass to me for years. Way before shit hit the fan last year. He and the Devils have carefully groomed the entire student body into hating me.”
