by Violet Blaze
My first response is to scream or maybe to slap him, but it feels so damn good … I groan and curl my fingers in his hair, shocked and excited at the feel of his mouth between my thighs. His stubble against my bare skin teases goose bumps on me, making me wonder why I've never done this before.
Yep, that's right. I've never let a guy go down on me. I've always felt so self-conscious of having him down there, his face buried in my pussy, seeing parts of me that even I don't get to look at.
Maybe that was a mistake though because this … this is great. Or maybe it's just Rhoden that's so damn good.
The orgasm comes up on me quick when Rhoden swirls his tongue over my already swollen clit, easing the ache he started when he first thrust into me. My hips buck up against his face and my back arches as I blink away a set of stars superimposed over the real night sky.
“Holy shit,” he says as he lifts up and props his chin on my tummy. I get a sudden urge to cover it up, or cast a magic spell that'll make it as flat and perfect as Ariana's, but … Rhoden doesn't look like he's judging me. Not by a long shot. Instead, he's staring up at me with this possessive male satisfaction etched into his features. “You're pent-up, Della Garland.”
“I am not!” I protest, but I don't move. I can't. Not yet. My body's shaking a little, and it has nothing to do with the cold wind coming off the sea. “Why would you say that?”
“Your muscles are tight,” he tells me in that deep, low voice of his, coming up to lay next to me. “And not just the ones that count.”
“Hah hah.”
“Seriously, your whole body is tense. You're carrying around a lot of stress. Have you ever thought about getting a massage? Maybe Mr. Virgin could pay for one with his billions of dollars?”
Mr. Virgin. Walter.
Craaaaaaap!
“I'm a cheater,” I groan, slapping my hands over my face and then sitting up suddenly and searching around for my discarded towel. I drape it across my naked front and squeeze my thighs shut against the wetness between them. I have no idea where Rhoden hid the used condom, but he better take it with him when we leave here. “This is … this is awful.”
When I look down at Rhoden, he's just laying there on his side, propped up on an elbow, head in his hand. A hip-hop song pounds away in the distance and he nods his head in time with the beat.
“I lied to you before,” he tells me as he opens those chocolate brown eyes of his and stares up at me. “I do know Walter.”
“You …” I start and then shake my head, auburn curls slapping against my skin. “Why would you lie about that?”
“I didn't think you needed to know any dirt about your fiancé. Seemed like you'd already made up your mind, so what good would that do?”
“I … what? You're a weird person, Mr. Richards.”
He flashes a slow, wicked smile at me.
“Please, Mr. Richards is my grandfather. Just call me Big Dick.”
“Not on my life,” I say as I turn toward him and try not to blush. But it's there, the embarrassment, peeking in from the background. Rhoden is still naked, and is cock is still big and glorious and already half-erect. His body is chiseled and lickable and perfect aaaaaand … we just had sex. That always leaves a strange sort of tension, of connection and intimacy. It's even weirder when I know for a fact that there is no intimacy or connection here. “So where do you know Walter from?”
Rhoden sits up and rubs a hand over his face.
“His company donated a lot of money to my university, built us a training center worth the GDP of a small country. He came to all the games, every single one, and sat in the skybox.” A quick flash of smile my way. “Kind of like the one you and your dad sit in during home games.”
“How do you … how do you know about that?”
“You think I don't know about you, Della? You own my team.”
“I did,” I say and then watch as Rhoden blinks quickly at me. Shit.
“What?” I lick my lips and shake my head, but he's reaching out and taking hold of my arm. His touch is gentle, but firm.
“What are you talking about?”
“My dad's selling the team to Walter,” I whisper and the words make the tears pop up again. It's so silly because really, this is nothing in the scheme of things. I can't figure out why it bothers me so much. Is it because my dad and Walter have been deciding things for me for a year? Or because my dad doesn't give a crap about what I think? What I want? I have no idea.
When I look up at Rhoden, I see his jaw is clenched tight, mouth set in a thin line.
“You can't tell anyone. Nobody's supposed to know yet.”
“Fuck.” That's all Rhoden says, and with that one sound, I know the mood is shattered. He's not smiling at me anymore, not throwing cute little looks my way, flirting with me. Now he's pissed.
“I didn't want him to,” I say, but the words sound like pleading and I hate it so I stop. “I had no idea until tonight. I tried to stop him.”
Rhoden nods his head and then runs his fingers through his hair, shaking his head like he's trying to clear it.
“Jesus.” When he stands up, I join him, tucking the towel tight around me.
“If Walter finds out about this, he'll fire my ass for sure,” Rhoden says and I feel my face fall. Oh. That's it. I've become a liability. I feel suddenly sick to my stomach. When Rhoden looks over at me, there's a very strange expression on his face; I can't read it at all. “I have to go,” he tells me, but the words sound rushed and frustrated. “I have practice at six in the morning.”
“O...okay.”
He's going to leave me here on this beach by myself? Naked and alone? Dear God.
He really is a fucking dick.
Rhoden grabs a towel from the stack on the rock and wraps it tight around his hips, just in time for another couple to appear around the corner, laughing and carrying beers in their hands. Both of them are naked, hanging on one another and kissing each other's necks.
“Come on,” he says to me, reaching out with a weird empty half-smile on his face. “I'll walk you home.”
“What did Walter do to you?” I ask when he pauses to whistle for his dog. Both Billy and the puppy come tearing around the corner in a spray of sand. “It must've been something, right, if you hate him so much?”
“It doesn't matter,” Rhoden says, his face completely guarded. I don't understand what just happened between us, why Walter owning the team would change anything about us. I mean, all we did was hookup, right? If anything, I should be the one who's scared. I'm the cheater, the one with something to answer for. I close my eyes briefly and then open them, reaching down for my discarded bra. It's still sopping wet, and now it's also covered in sand.
Fantastic.
Rhoden leads me back across the beach and over to the pier. Without looking back at me, he dives into the water and swims to the end of the broken pier, grabbing my dress and lifting it out of the waves as he swims one-handed back to the beach. The dress is still soaked, but it was a nice gesture. Still, when he hands it to me, he acts like he's in some big rush to get out of here.
“Here, take this,” he tells me, holding his shirt out for me to put on. It's big enough to hide my recovered (and fortunately still dry) panties. I slip my flip-flops on while Rhoden steps into his jeans and boots.
Our walk back to the apartment is far less fun than the one that got us here. Puppy yanks and pulls at his harness at every opportunity, and Rhoden will hardly even look at me.
“I'm sorry,” I say when we're about halfway there. “I shouldn't have said that.”
“Said what? That your fiancé is about to be my new boss? And that I just fucked his future wife?”
“I'm not exactly going to go home and tell him,” I snap, my gaze focused on the sidewalk beneath my feet. I can't look at Rhoden right now.
“Yeah, well, these things have a way of coming out,” he says, like this is somehow my fault. I stop walking, tears threatening suddenly. When Rhoden and I wer
e having sex, I felt good, wanted, free. Now I just feel cheap and used.
“I can walk myself home from here,” I whisper, turning left and starting across the sidewalk. There's a shortcut this way through an alley. It's well lit, and I know Marquis walks it at least three times a night. Plus, I've got Puppy with me. “Thanks for a crappy evening.”
The words slip out before I can stop them.
I take off before Rhoden can respond, flip-flops slapping against the pavement.
As soon as I get into my apartment, I slide down the door and put my head in my hands.
What the hell just happened here?
I decide to keep the night at the beach to myself, hiding it even from Ariana. What's the point in talking about it anyway? It started off great, but it turned out awful. Even a week later, what happened that night still bothers me.
“Jesus Christ, Rhoden!” I scream at the TV, curling my hands into fists. “What the hell was that?” I gesture at the screen as I turn in a circle and then pause to watch the replay of him getting tackled hard by a linebacker twice his size. An injury from something like that could ruin his career. Why is he being so careless?
“Ooooookay,” Hal says as she leans back into the leather chair in my dad's media room. I watch all the away games here. Can't beat the giant 4K screen, the surround sound, the blackout curtains, and the comfy chairs with Adders logos embroidered on them. “You are even more crazed than normal, what gives?”
“I'm not crazed,” I say, used to this argument by now. It's practically a ritual: I freak out over something game related, Hal who hates football comments on it, we bicker back and forth for a while. “This … did you see that? Rhoden's really screwing up today.”
“Why don't you save all that passion for your charity date? When is that, anyway?”
I ignore Hal. The last thing I want to think about right now is the Win a Date thing. I haven't cancelled it yet. Whether that's because some part of me secretly wants to see Rhoden again or because I'm just avoiding thinking about him all together, I'm not sure. I haven't seen him at the dog park since that night, haven't glimpsed hide nor hair of him—and trust me, I've been looking.
“Maybe his game's off because of that picture that got leaked?”
“Picture?” I ask, still focused on the TV. The Adders are leading the Seahawks 31-13, but Rhoden is not his best today, that's for sure. “What picture?”
“Oh my God, Del. For somebody who runs a blog, you sure are ignorant of the internet.” Hal stands up from her seat, dressed in a pair of jeans that I couldn't fit my little pinky in let alone my legs. She passes me her iPhone and then crosses her arms over her flat chest.
I look down at the picture and then feel the blood drain out of my face.
“What … what is this?” I whisper as I stare at the shot of me and Rhoden, kissing against the pier's support post. My hair is wet and mussy, draped across my face like a shield, the telltale straps of my floral dress peeking up above the water. The shot is blurry, completely out of focus and taken from afar. The picture is dark as hell, too, so it's unlikely that anyone but me would notice that, well, that it is me.
I scroll down and read the article quickly.
Rhoden Richards Spotted with Mystery Girl at Private Beach Bonfire.
The title gives about as much information as the entire article. To everybody else, this is yet another shot of Rhoden Richards being, well, Rhoden Richards. Pictures of him with girls are nothing new; I've seen my fair share. But those girls have never been me.
I swallow hard and try to act nonchalant when I hand the phone back to Hal. Clearly, she hasn't made the connection. She doesn't know the real identity of Lion Mask man from the party either. If she did, she'd figure it out. She's smart like that.
“Why would what picture bother him? The press takes pictures of him like that all the time. Remember two weeks ago when they caught him stumbling drunk outside of a hotel with no memory of how he got there? That's way worse publicity than making out with some girl.”
“Sure,” Hal says, but she's not really listening, snatching the phone back from me as my heart pounds and I try to figure out what to do about this. If anything, right? If anything. I start to chew on my nails and Hal squeals. “Della, seriously? Do you want your hands to look gross? Stop that. Walter's coming back from his business trip today. You don't want him to think you're a Sasquatch.”
Oh.
The day after the bonfire, Walter called to tell me he had an emergency business trip and wouldn't be back until Monday. Well, it's Monday and he's due in at any minute.
My stomach feels like it's made of ice as I reach down and twist the engagement ring around my finger. I've really done it now, gone and screwed everything up. My throat gets tight as I slump into one of the dozen chairs in the room, arranged in rows of four that slope up the walkway like a movie theater.
“Wow, don't look so excited,” Hal says, turning in her seat to stare at me. Her blond hair is piled on top of her head in one of those messy-pretty buns that I can never seem to figure out how to pull off. “You're not excited to see him?”
I purse my lips.
Honestly? No. I'm not excited to see Walter. I'm not sure if I've ever been excited to see Walter. Okay, maybe at first, right after we met, I thought his laugh was sexy and he could definitely fill out a suit. But after Rhoden Richards? After lion masks and beach bonfires?
I just don't know.
I would talk to Ariana about it, but she'll just tell me I hate Walter and I should ditch his ass.
What I need to do is invite him out for dinner and tell him how I feel. Or rather, how I don't feel. It doesn't seem right to keep this engagement going without sitting down and talking this out.
“Reagan, Emery, and I are going shopping later. You want to go with us?”
The look I turn on Hal says she's crazy.
“You can't just buy everything from Target, you know. You're going to be a billionaire's wife. Time to class it up, sis.” I don't really want to tell Hal this, but honestly, the last thing I want to do right now is go shopping with her and my evil stepsisters. Reagan never misses a chance to call me fat and Emery has a strange klepto thing going on that I've never understood since she's been rich her whole life. “What are you planning to wear to that party thing on Saturday anyway?”
“Party thing?” I ask and Hal screams, picking up a purple pillow with the Adders logo on it and pressing her face into the fabric. When she lifts her blue eyes up to mine, one brow is cocked in a comical arch.
“You really are oblivious, aren't you? Have you been living in a fog all week? The press conference for the Adders sale is on Saturday and then there's a huge party after. Lots of hunky football players in suits,” Hal says with a squeal, making me feel sick to my stomach again.
Great.
I imagine Rhoden will be at the party, too?
I'm sure that'll be fun. I make the mistake of checking my text messages from Ariana.
You are in BIG trouble, girl. HUGE. And then there's that picture of Rhoden and me attached to the bottom. The next text I ignore because it's a video message and I'm pretty sure it'll just be Ariana screaming at me about how crazy I am to get caught cheating on the man who just bought my lover's team.
“Craparoni and cheese,” I grumble as I curl over and put my forehead in my heads.
“Good God, learn to curse like a grown-up please. Say fuck or something and spare me your weird euphemisms.”
“I'm going home to work on my blog,” I say, standing up and grabbing my hoodie off the adjacent seat. The game's not over yet, but I can't stand looking at Rhoden right now, dressed in his red, black and purple uniform, a walking, talking, football playing slice of sex that I never should've helped myself to a piece of. “Tell Walter that I turned my phone off, so I could work.”
“I'm starting to think I spend more time with your fiancé than you do.”
The sad part about that is … Hal's right.
; And I'm not sure that I care.
I have a very important, very prominent party to attend on Saturday.
Have I mentioned how much I hate very important, very prominent parties? I have nothing appropriate to wear and my evil stepsisters (who never read this blog and therefore won't know if I talk crap about them) will be there in their finest, trying to impress rich suitors like they're from Pride and Prejudice or something.
The thing is, I promised I would try harder, step further out of my box, show my arms (maybe). But some of the new things I've tried recently have backfired, and I'm starting to second guess myself again. I feel like that same little girl who refused to go to school because her stepmother had told her that everyone would pick on her because she was fat. Even now, when my stepmom looks at me across the dinner table (she also does not read this blog), I can tell what she's thinking. Hell, I don't even have to guess because she's said all the things she hides behind her gaze out loud at one point or another.
It usually goes something like this:
1. Della, you are fat.
2. Della, you eat too much
3. Della, you don't exercise.
4. Della, nobody wants you.
5. Della, you are good for nothing.
It took me years to realize that a lot of my self-esteem issues stemmed from that woman. In exchange, I found myself seeking out unhealthy relationships with men who really did think some of those things (if you want to read about my past struggles, check out the entries from two years ago!). If you've been reading along all this time, you know that I've only recently started to separate my stepmother's issues from my own.
That's why, even if I've had a rough week, I can't let it get to me.
Yesterday was yesterday, but today … today is a new day.
So guess what? I'm going shopping … even if the idea of it makes me want to throw my laptop at the wall. Pictures to be posted soon. Stay tuned. And don't forget to remind yourself: #lovemycurves.
