Fake Halo

by Piper Lennox

  The head of his cock stretches my opening. Our jokes halt.

  “Why?” I manage, my voice shaking in my chest at the anticipation. “Why haven’t I slept well since that night?”

  “Because you wanted more.” He gives me one inch and pulls his face from my neck, dragging his lips over mine. “You wanted this.”

  “How would you know?”

  Wes braces his arms on either side of my head, staring down at me. “Because I haven’t slept right ever since, either.”

  As soon as he says this, he fills me.

  “Wes,” I gasp. My head presses hard into the pillows; my hips press harder into his, until I wrap my legs around his back and loop my arms over his shoulders.

  He holds still, laughing breathlessly as I attempt to ride him from underneath. “Is this sloth-style?”

  “Shut up.”

  That laugh unfurls again, painting my body like smoke as he lowers himself to his elbows, and me back to the mattress, to rock his hips.

  “I’ve thought about this so many times. Hundreds. You have no idea.”

  Imagining Wes masturbating in this bed, in this same spot, while pretending his hand was me gets me twice as wet. I feel a river of it running down my ass and forming a damp spot on his sheets.

  “Listen.” He presses his finger to my lips to silence my moans, just for a moment, as he withdraws and thrusts. I fight to stay quiet.

  “You can actually hear how wet your pussy is.” He captures my mouth in another kiss, his speed increasing. “I love this. The sound of my body inside yours.”

  My limbs buzz. Every thrust...every inch he leaves empty and then refills...every bounce of my breasts seeming to sync my heartbeat to his movements—

  “Wes,” I warn him, “I’m close.”

  “Good. You’re finishing first, tonight. Here.”

  His thumb rests against my lips. I take it back where it belongs.

  “Okay,” he says hurriedly, a few seconds later, “that’s good. I just wanted it wet...so I could do this.”

  He slows to angle his hips, leaving space to get his hand between us.

  While he starts to thrust again, his thumb rubs my swollen clitoris.

  “Oh, God,” I moan. “Oh, God, Wes....”

  His kiss is rougher than his hands, and leaves me twice as winded. “Come on my cock, Clara,” he whispers.

  Then he says it again, lips resting on my chin until I pull away, back arching, shoulders shaking.

  My walls seize and shudder around him; the high of my orgasm stabs its way through my body, zone by zone. I fight to keep my eyes open and can’t, the pleasure is so intense.

  Wes’s thumb rubs my clit harder, drawing the peak out as long as he can. His smile is the last thing I see before I’m reduced to a shivering mess in his covers and pillows. The entire bed smells like him.

  It makes me feel surrounded by him, filled with him in every way. This feeling caps my orgasm the way one bite of chocolate does after a rich meal—it’s almost too much.

  It is too much.

  But it’s so, so perfect.

  Twenty-Six

  I slip out of her slowly. She’s still shaking, arms pulled tight to her chest, and gives a pained noise when I leave her empty.

  “I can finish somewhere else,” I tell her, because something about coming in a girl’s mouth when she can hardly catch her breath feels wrong.

  Sexy as hell—but not polite.

  Clara shakes her head and stretches her arms upward, gripping the top of my headboard to pull herself up. God, she really doesn’t know what she does to me. I’ll be replaying that image for weeks.

  I can’t even explain why I like it, or anything she does. Or wears. Or says.

  All I know is I’m happier with all of it than without. And for a guy who hasn’t been totally happy in years...that’s almost a miracle.

  “Masturbate,” she says, after sipping the flat ginger ale I left on my nightstand. “I want to watch again.” Her eyes glint with the same jewel-green as the bottle when she looks at me and pulls her legs in, sitting cross-legged with her hands wrapped around her ankles.

  I slide off the bed and stand beside her. She watches me grip my cock, then turns that awed stare up at me when I start to pump.

  “You’re not going to regret this tomorrow, are you?” There it is again: my mouth asking questions my brain didn’t approve.

  “Sleeping with you? Or having you finish in my mouth?”

  “Either. Both.” I shift my jaw. “Just making sure I’m not revenge sex, I guess.”

  “You aren’t.” Her voice is low, but firm. “He would have been the revenge sex.”

  “That would have been supremely disappointing for you.” I bend down to kiss her forehead. “Revenge sex is supposed to be hot as hell. That bastard wouldn’t have known what to do with you.”

  I rest my lips against her warm skin a moment and replay the earthquake of her body when she came, instantly bringing myself to the edge.

  “Open your mouth,” I tell her, straightening.

  She does, just like she did when she wanted my thumb back.

  Instead of waiting for me to guide myself in, she puts her hand overtop mine and strokes it with me, teasing her lips over the head as we work.

  I come as hard as I did the night of the masquerade party, if not harder. Both are way too intense to rank. Her tongue swirls around the underside of my cock and milks every last drop out of me.

  “Clara,” I sigh, when it’s finally over.

  She looks up at me, pauses a moment, and swallows.

  What I wouldn’t give to be capable of multiple orgasms: the sight makes me want to fuck her all over again.

  When I climb into bed and pull my blanket across us, then reach for her, she stiffens.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” Under my touch, I see her try to relax. “It’s just strange, the idea of...cuddling with you.”

  “But not fucking me?” I laugh. It’s more of a hiss of air.

  On some level, I get what she means. The physical, mindless motions of sex are easier. As long as it’s been since I’ve had a girl in my bed...it’s been far longer that I let one stay in it, when things were finished.

  I kiss her. If we weren’t exhausted, the taste of ourselves on each other’s mouths would kick off another round.

  “I’m pretty good at cuddling, believe it or not,” I whisper.

  Clara turns in my arms and fits herself against me. I think about asking if she’d like to remove her hat—mostly because I want to press my face into her hair and breathe the scent of her in, all night—but decide against it. If and when she’s comfortable with that, she’ll do it.

  “I believe it,” she says. Her arms lock around the one I have braced across her. “You hold women like you want to protect them.”

  “Not women.” I kiss the back of her neck. “Just you.”

  Muffled in the pillows and her own drowsiness, her laugh barely reaches me.

  “What’s funny?”

  “You,” she says, twisting to stare at me, “saying all that shit about me having a fake halo, but look at you.”

  Gently, she reaches up and pushes my hair back from my forehead. “Fake horns.”

  “Morning, beautiful.”

  I smile—then immediately kick away from Wes and his awful morning breath. “God,” I laugh, “you really love doing that to me, don’t you?”

  “Not half as much as I love doing just about anything else to you.” He sits up and breathes into his own cupped hand, wincing before grabbing some gum off his nightstand. The scent of wintergreen pours across me when he leans close again.

  “Coffee?”

  “Depends.” I stretch, bracing my palms against his headboard. “Are you telling me to go get you coffee? Or asking if I’d like some? Because my respective answers are no way in hell—and yes, please.”

  Wes flashes a grin and climbs on top of me, pinning my wrists and ankles in place while I laugh.
“I wonder if everyone’s personal assistants are as much of a smartass as you.”

  “Guess you’re just lucky,” I quip, even though our jokes feel like corkscrews prying out the pit of my stomach.

  After everything that happened between us last night, I can’t imagine he’ll still hold me to the agreement.

  Then why are you so terrified to ask?

  Through the sheet between us, I feel his erection against my stomach, and whatever fear or doubt is attacking my brain gets replaced by a wildfire of need.

  Wes repositions so that he’s between my legs. The friction of the sheet as he rocks his hips, hands tightening on my wrists near the headboard, gets my heart beating too fast for such an early morning.

  “Later,” I manage, even though it’s damn near impossible to stop him. I never want to leave this bed. I never want the use of my arms back, if I can keep them pinned underneath his strength like this forever. “I need to brush my teeth. And shower.”

  Shower.

  Panic floods every part of me as I realize my makeup is probably smudged. It’s great makeup, and my setting spray is the best money can buy, but it’s not a miracle worker.

  When he rolls off me, I sit up and see my hat on the floor. The panic cranks even higher.

  “How many times,” he says softly, sitting in front of me and turning my face to his, “do I have to tell you you’re beautiful before you believe it?”

  “It doesn’t bother you?” My fingernails pick at the tag on his blanket. “Seeing it all out in the open like this...you still don’t think it’s a big deal?”

  “Not even a little deal.”

  I snort softly.

  “It might be ‘just hair,’ Wes...but all you have to do is look at one magazine or one TV show, or watch one group of people get ready in the morning, to realize how important hair actually is. And how much shit you catch for not having enough of it.”

  “Well, you’ll never catch shit from me.”

  “You say that, now. But would you still feel that way if—if one day I just pulled it all out? Or if all my brows or lashes were gone?”

  “I can say with pretty solid certainty yes, I would.”

  With a questioning look, he jerks his chin towards my hair. I shut my eyes and nod.

  Gently, his fingertips touch my scalp.

  They don’t linger on the bald patch, though. He touches every inch like it’s the same, the way I’d touch his.

  “Why is it so hard for you to see yourself how I see you?”

  I bite my lip. “When you were out of shape and strung out, would you have believed anyone who told you they still found you attractive?”

  He’s quiet a moment. “Probably not. Because I wasn’t.”

  “You were to me.”

  His hand slips to my neck. I open my eyes and stare at him.

  “You’re right,” he nods. “It is hard to believe that. But that’s because all that was, like...the physical proof of my addiction.”

  “Exactly.”

  Slowly, he lets his hand fall back to his lap.

  “Coffee,” he says, I guess just to have something we can both agree on again, and dives across the bed to give me one more kiss before he goes.

  Twenty-Seven

  “Why not? What else are you going to do while she’s gone?”

  Clara drowns her pancakes in syrup before giving me a stern look, but I see the surrender flag going up.

  “I don’t even know your family.”

  “It’s my cousins,” I explain again, “not some big family vacation. We do this every year when Theo stays at his dad’s summer house. Come on, a long weekend in the Hamptons, while your sister’s off in Greece anyway? You can’t tell me it doesn’t sound better than sitting around an empty apartment.”

  Her fork scrapes her plate a moment. “You sure you wouldn’t rather invite someone else?”

  “Like who?”

  Her shrug doesn’t fool me: her answer’s been on the tip of her tongue all along. “Maybe that girl you had over, during your birthday.”

  “A girl?” For a split-second, I’m confused—then doubling over, laughing.

  “What?”

  “That,” I tell her, managing some fake seriousness for a moment, “was my sister.”

  “No, this definitely wasn’t her.” Clara shoves some more food in her mouth, stalling before my stare makes her confess, “I saw you two. Saturday night, when I was getting into a cab with Ewan. That girl was way thinner, pale skin, brown hair—”

  My stomach twists up, but I pull out my phone and show Clara the selfies Delaney and I took by the river. I hold my breath as she zooms in on the face, then swallows.

  The truth feels like a paper cut to the tongue, but I make myself say it anyway. Clara’s told me a lot of tough shit the past few days. I owe her some, too.

  “She has leukemia.”

  My coffee doesn’t wash the taste of the word from my mouth. The burn of it helps, though. I sit at the island across from her and, after a few minutes, look up.

  She’s got tears in her eyes. “How long has she had it?”

  “On and off since she was twelve.” I throw Bowie a strip of bacon. “It came back last fall.”

  Clara’s mouth moves without much sound, words starting and dying on her tongue. Finally, she takes a breath and says, “But her videos—”

  “Old footage. She’s scary good at hiding it. Whenever she looks healthy, whether she actually is or not, she hustles like fucking crazy for acting jobs, films a bunch of footage for the channel...whatever she can, so that she can go into hiding until the side effects of her treatment are gone.”

  I nod at her hat. “I’d say she’s as dedicated to hiding her illness as you are with yours.”

  “I’m so sorry, Wes.” Her voice gets drowned in the rattle of the dishwasher, and both of us take it as a good opportunity to go silent.

  After breakfast, while we sit on the couch and watch a movie, I try my luck again: “Sure you don’t want to come on that trip with me?”

  “That’s not fair. You can’t ask me that when you know I’m feeling sorry for you.”

  “Don’t feel sorry for me. I’m not sick.”

  “That doesn’t mean it hasn’t been hard on you, too.” She pauses, and I see a light fill her eyes. “Is that who you donated marrow to?”

  “Yeah. Back in January.”

  “That must have been so disappointing for you both. That it didn’t work, I mean.”

  Drawing back, I stare at her. “What? No, it worked.”

  “But…. Well, you said she has leukemia, not ‘had,’ so I thought—”

  “Oh.” I roll my eyes at myself. More old habits. “No, she’s in her third remission right now. Just finished immunosuppression, in fact. So she still looks sick, but she’s not.”

  Clara sighs with visible relief. “God, you scared me.”

  “Sorry.” I chuckle to myself and twist the rings on her fingers. “I do that a lot.”

  “Forget she’s in remission?”

  “Yeah. I guess I’m just hesitant to believe it.”

  “I would be, too. If it kept coming back like that.”

  We fall into silence again. The question she wants to ask hangs in the air, so I decide to spare her the stress of saying it out loud.

  “We don’t know if she’ll survive or not.” I turn up the volume on the television, like that’ll make it easier. “Maybe the transplant cured her for good. Maybe…it just bought her more time.”

  She leans into me. I tense at first, my instincts telling me to pull away from her and this entire conversation.

  When her head lands on my chest, though, I relax.

  “Never know what’ll happen tomorrow,” she tells me.

  For years, I’ve told myself those same words in a very different way. For me, it’s been a reminder that shit can go wrong in the blink of an eye. For the Durhams, it often does.

  But hearing Clara say it now, I find peace in it. Just a l
ittle—but more than I ever have before.

  “Please come with me.”

  Clara rearranges the last of my T-shirts, then fixes the shitty job I did with my jeans. “You just want me there to pack your suitcase when it’s time to leave, since you’re clearly horrible at it.”

  I wait until she’s zipped the suitcase and set it by the laundry chair before I scoop her up, sweeping her legs out from under her while she shrieks a scared, happy laugh in my ear. Bowie barks from the living room, where I had to sequester him when he wouldn’t stop walking across my folded clothes and standing in my suitcase.

  “I want you there,” I breathe into her neck, “to watch you have four days of fun and relaxation...and three nights of getting so thoroughly, beautifully fucked, you’ll forget how to walk.”

  As soon as we’re on the mattress, Clara gets her feet against my stomach and pushes me away, then smiles as she tugs down her underwear. “I’m listening.”

  “Three nights,” I grin, peeling off my clothes, “of eating you out, fingering you, filling you with my cock...and coming absolutely anywhere you tell me to come.”

  I cover her body with mine and rub the head of my erection up and down her wet slit, paying extra attention to her swollen clitoris. Her hips buck, begging for more.

  “Anywhere?” she asks, locking her fingers behind my neck. Her thumbs graze my Adam’s apple; she smirks when I swallow hard, my dick flinching against her.

  “Anywhere. Down the curve of your spine, all over your thighs...across your tits while you’re still gasping for air from what I’ve done to you.”

  Every word makes her writhe against me harder. “Okay,” she pants.

  “Okay?”

  “Okay, I’ll come with you. Everything you just said sounds way too good to pass up.”

  I hide my smile and enter her. She shuts her eyes, moaning her relief.

  As I thrust, I tell her more: every position I want to get her into, every incredible view in that house I’ll burn into her memory.

  Every last way she’ll say my name, before this weekend is through.