He moved his hand. “I’m sorry, it’s just very hard to keep my hands off you right now.”
“Sure it is.” I took a sip of my martini. “That is such a line.”
“A line?” He drew back, mock offended. “I don’t need lines. I’m Axel Whitman.”
I snorted.
“You’re laughing at me?”
I nodded. “Yeah, you’re always saying that. Like it means something.”
“If I say often enough, it does.”
I just rolled my eyes. But there was something different between us now. I was still giving him shit, but there was something decidedly more playful about it. He was getting to me, and I was letting him. And… I don’t know, I was liking it.
“So, whenever you go out with a guy, you don’t usually wear a dress?”
“I never go out with guys.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Why not?”
“They don’t notice me.” I wrinkled up my nose. “I used to think it was because of Silas. He’s kind of scary, and I thought all the boys were too afraid of him to make a move. But then he fell in love and moved to Austin, Texas. And still, no one notices me.”
“You know what I think?”
“No.”
“I think you don’t want to be noticed.”
I narrowed my eyes. “That is not true.”
He shrugged. “I think you’re afraid to be noticed. Every time I try to make a move with you, you shut me down. You’ve got some sort of block.”
“I don’t have a block.” I glared at him. “I would let other guys make moves, but just not you.”
“Because I’m awful.”
I took another drink, nodding over my glass.
He took a drink too, and then he set it down. “What if I wasn’t awful?”
“But you are.” I was realizing that I might be a little drunk, and that I was saying whatever I thought out loud. God, I was drunk, and I was turning into Axel.
He ran his finger around the rim of his glass. “Maybe I wasn’t always.”
I cocked my head to one side. “What do you mean?”
He looked away from me for the first time, almost as if he was embarrassed. “Maybe a long time ago, I wasn’t the slightest bit smug and self-centered.”
I giggled. “I find that hard to believe.”
He glanced at me again, and there was something shy in his expression. “Well, maybe you should believe it.”
I surveyed him. “So, what changed? If you used to be a nice guy, when did you turn into a jackass?”
“Jackass?” He raised his eyebrows. “I’m not a jackass. I would never be anything so crass. Call me a vagabond, call me a scoundrel, but not a jackass.” He shuddered.
I laughed. “Fine. What happened that turned you into a wretched scalawag?”
He laughed too. “Scalawag. Now, that’s a word.”
I spread my hands. “I read shit from the 1800s. For fun. So, you know, I got word skills.”
He drank some of his martini, still smiling. “Nothing happened.”
“No?”
“It’s not as if I fell desperately in love with a woman, and she broke my heart, although that did happen to me once. I was twelve, and she was fourteen, and I was a virgin, and I thought—”
“Wait a second,” I said. “You lost your virginity when you were twelve?”
He thought about it. “I think so. Sixth grade. In the headmaster’s office at The Windman School after hours. I was enraptured with her.”
“Oh my God. You were a child.”
“I’ve never been a child.”
I giggled. “What?”
“Seriously,” he said. “People like me don’t have childhoods in the same way as other people. When your father is as rich as mine is, you can have anything imaginable, and it tends to suck all the joy out of playing pretend.”
I took a drink of my martini. I wasn’t sure how to take that. “Well, you know, when you grow up with absolutely nothing, it’s kind of hard to know of anything to imagine.”
He gave me a funny look. I could have sworn there was something like concern in his eyes. But it made me uncomfortable.
“Anyway.” I went back to my drink. “Go back to what you were saying.”
He touched my arm. “No. What was your childhood like?”
I pulled my arm away. “We don’t have to talk about that.”
“That bad, huh?”
I wouldn’t look at him.
He didn’t say anything.
I gulped down the rest of my martini. “My parents were heroin addicts.” I looked up at him, waiting for his reaction.
He simply held my gaze, not speaking. As if he was waiting for me to continue.
“They weren’t always,” I said. “It started when Silas and I were little. My dad’s parents died and and left them a lot of money. Like a lot lot of money. Enough that they quit their jobs and bought a big house and started throwing parties all the time.”
Axel was still waiting.
I fiddled with my empty martini glass. “That’s when it started. At the parties. And then they weren’t just high at the parties, but all the time. And then we lost all of it. The house, the money, the parties. When I was five years old, we were rich. And by the time I was twelve, we were squatting in this abandoned house on the outskirts of town. It had cracks in the walls, and the wind used to come through them at night. Silas and I would curl up for warmth under four or five blankets, and we’d talk about how we were going to run away.”
Axel put his hand on top of mine. I peered into his eyes, and they were pools of concern.
I snatched my hand away. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Do what?”
“Pity me,” I said. “It all turned out okay. Silas and I got away from them. I’m fine now.”
He nodded slowly.
“I am.” I grabbed the martini glass, but it was empty. I set it back down.
Axel signaled the bartender to give me another drink.
“Don’t act weird around me now,” I muttered.
He made a tent with his fingers and rested it against his lips. “It’s only that it occurs to me that my poor-little-rich-boy story probably will sound sort of stupid compared to that.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Pain is pain. Anyway, I had Silas back then.” I bit down on my lip. “Maybe that’s more than what you had?”
He mused. “Maybe pain is too strong of a word.”
“Well, I want to know, though,” I said. “I want to know about when you weren’t awful.”
“I’m not awful to everyone,” he said. “But I don’t see the point in forming lasting romantic attachments. So, I guess that’s why you think I’m awful to women.”
The bartender set another martini in front of me.
I took a drink. “You are.”
He smirked. “You really aren’t holding back right now, are you?”
“You’re the one who said I wasn’t honest.”
“True.” He finished his own drink and nodded at the bartender. “It’s the honesty that makes me awful, I guess. I watched my parents’ relationship, and I watched what my father’s infidelity did to my mother. She was beautiful and young when she met him. She had a burgeoning career as a model. She came from nothing, you know. Grew up in a tiny village in Sweden. She came to America to pursue her dreams. And she got caught in my father’s net. But she was a traditional sort of girl. She wasn’t going to just shack up with him. She said if he wanted her, he had to marry her, and for some reason I’ve never understood, my father did.” Axel shrugged.
“He didn’t love her?”
“I don’t know. What does that even mean? He told her he did. She believed him. But it was only a matter of time before he lost interest in her. Of course, he waited until she was a young mother, who didn’t want to abandon her son to pursue her career. And by the time she felt she could try again, she simply was too old to be a model. So, he stole it all from her. He married her, but he ignores
her. He doesn’t even bother to cover up his affairs. And she feels trapped. He forced her to sign a very draconian prenup, so that if she leaves, she’d have nothing. And she has no way to support herself.”
I drank more of my martini. I could sympathize with his mother’s situation. It didn’t sound ideal.
“That’s why I was insistent on starting my own business,” said Axel. “I was supposed to be going to school and majoring in pre-law, but I’m really not good at school. It was taking too long to become a lawyer. So, I convinced my father to give me a loan, and I picked something that I knew could turn a profit.”
“Strippers.”
He laughed. “Well, naked chicks never go out of style. I was able to pay my father back right away, and I’m making money. My own money. I know it’s not the same as if I’d come from nothing. Not everyone has a daddy to give them a loan like that. But it’s the best I could do for my mother, you know?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I can see that.”
He picked up his glass. “But she won’t do it. She won’t leave him. She’s too afraid. I told her I’d take care of her, but that didn’t convince her.” He took a drink. “Not that any of it matters, really. He’s got her trapped there, and she thinks if she can convince herself she likes it, it won’t be so bad.” He set down the glass. “But I would never do that. I would never put a woman through that.”
I furrowed my brow. “But the way you treat women—”
“Is honest,” he said. “I let them know up front that I’m a bastard. I can’t be blamed if it doesn’t scare them away.”
“Scare them away?” I raised my eyebrows. “Axel, you practically mobbed me today. You wouldn’t let it go until I came along.”
“Yeah, but that’s you. I don’t do this kind of thing with most girls. I would never even explain this to most girls.”
How was I supposed to take that? Was he saying that I was different? Did he say that to all the girls?
He put his hand back on my knee. “Anyway, enough about me. Let’s talk about you again. You’re so much more interesting than me, anyway.”
I opened my mouth to tell him not to touch me, but then I closed it.
His fingers crept up my thigh, just an inch at a time. His touch excited me. It sent shivers of pleasure shooting through me. It made it hard for me to think.
He leaned close. “Maybe you don’t want to be noticed because you never have been, Sloane. Maybe you just don’t know what it’s like.”
“I’ve—” My breath caught in my throat. “I’ve been noticed.”
His fingers went higher, brushing against the sensitive flesh of my upper thigh. “No,” he murmured. “Your parents didn’t notice you, did they?”
“I…” It came out as a gasp.
“I notice you.” He leaned in to whisper in my ear. “I can’t stop noticing you.”
* * *
We were on Axel’s couch, and I was underneath him, and his body was between my legs. We were both wearing our clothes, and I was kissing him. I had my fingers entwined in his hair, and he had his hands on my legs. He had pushed up the skirt of my dress, and he was stroking my outer thigh.
It felt great. I was pleasantly drunk, and I felt loose and free. I loved the heft of his body resting against mine. I loved the way his hands moved on my skin, pumping bliss through my inebriated body. I loved the way it felt to kiss him. His lips felt perfect against mine. It felt like we were all jumbled up together, like our bodies were merged or something, and I didn’t want it to stop.
Axel’s fingers eased under the band of my panties.
I moaned. But I took a hand out of his hair and reached down to push him away.
He broke the kiss. “What’s wrong?”
Oh, I didn’t want him to talk. If he talked, I’d have to think, and if I had to think, I was going to come to the conclusion that… “We can’t do this.”
He looked annoyed. “You can’t still be saying that.”
“You’ve got me all confused.” What was he doing to me? How had he managed to get me on my back on his couch? It was as if he could cast a spell over me and make me forget anything sensible.
He groaned. “Sloane, do not tease me like this.”
“That’s not what I’m doing.”
He took my hand and dragged it down his body, making me touch his crotch. I could feel the outline of his penis, straining against his pants. Oh, geez, he was really hard.
“That’s what you do to me,” he gasped in my ear. “I don’t want to stop this.”
Touching Axel there was turning me on. It had been a long time since I’d had sex, pretty much as long as it had been since I’d been kissed. (They’d kind of happened at the same time.) I had a trusty little bullet vibrator that took care of me when I needed it, but it wasn’t the same thing. I remembered the feeling of being pierced and filled by a man, and my whole body seemed to convulse with desire for it.
Almost involuntarily, my fingers tightened around him.
He shut his eyes, letting out a ragged breath.
I ran my hand over him, through his pants.
And it was as if he was unleashed. He began kissing me furiously, and he put his hand back under my panties, sliding over my sensitive skin.
It felt so good. My body arched against his, my head burrowing back into the couch.
He kissed my neck. My collarbone. His fingers slipped between my legs, finding my most sensitive place.
I moaned. My breathing sped up.
His touch glided against my clit, and I gasped and gasped. He was really good at that. He knew just the right places to caress, and he was gentle but insistent. He was driving me crazy. I writhed beneath him, against him.
Of course he was good at it, though. He’d probably had a lot of practice. He said he’d lost his virginity when he was twelve. How many girls could he have slept with between then and now?
That thought soured all the sensation.
Suddenly, it didn’t feel nearly as good. My eyes snapped open. “Don’t.”
“Mmm?” Axel’s mouth was against my shoulder.
“How many?” I said.
“What?” His voice was constricted.
“How many girls have you done this to? How many on this couch?”
He grunted, but his fingers stopped their assault on my body. “I don’t want to talk about that right now.”
“Maybe I do.”
“I’m not thinking about other girls, Sloane,” he murmured. “All I’m thinking about is your amazing body, about how wet you are, and about how badly I want to—”
“Stop it.” I wriggled away from him.
He let out a noisy breath and got off the couch.
I tugged at my clothes, trying to reassemble myself.
He walked out of the room.
I drew my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. I huddled on one corner of the couch, trying to catch my breath. My body was still slightly aroused, and it was twitching out its annoyance with me for stopping everything. But I was relieved that I had, because I couldn’t believe that I’d allowed it to go so far. This was Axel Whitman. He was not the kind of guy I should be getting hot and heavy with.
When Axel came back, he was in sweatpants and a t-shirt. I’d never seen him wear anything so informal, but I had to admit that it was appealing. He looked softer and more accessible. He tossed me another shirt and a pair of sweats. “You can put this on if you want.”
I caught the bundle of clothes. “I should leave.”
He shook his head. “I told my driver he was done for the night and sent him home. I could drive, but I don’t like to drive after drinking.”
“I’ll call a cab.”
He shook his head. “Stay. I won’t try anything else, I swear.” He sounded defeated.
I looked down at the clothes. They looked really comfortable. I stood up.
He pointed. “There’s a bathroom through there.”
I went in and changed. There were han
gers on the back of the door, and I hung up my dress there. Then I padded back into the living room, where Axel was sprawled beside the coffee table, cutting up lines of cocaine.
I hesitated. I didn’t want to watch him do drugs. I didn’t even know why I was still here.
“I think it’s about sixty,” he said.
“What?” I said.
“Sexual partners.” He used a razor blade to even out the lines.
I didn’t say anything for a second, just letting that sink in. “Jesus.”
“It’s not really that bad,” he said. “I’ve been sexually active for twelve years, so that’s only… five people per year. One for every season and two at Christmas.”
“I really should—”
“Stay.” He got out his wallet and peeled out a bill. He rolled it up, fitted it to his nose, and sucked up one of the lines.
I twisted my hands together. This didn’t feel right.
He rubbed his nose and looked up at me. “That’s better.”
“Is it?” I said.
“You should have one,” he said.
I shook my head.
He laughed softly. “Why not? You told me you killed people, right? How on earth could doing a little blow be any worse than that?”
“That’s not why I don’t do it,” I said. “Not ‘cause I think it’s wrong.”
“That’s why you won’t fuck me, right?” He raised his eyebrows.
I drew myself up. “No. I don’t do those things because they’re dangerous.”
He nodded. “Oh, I get it. But running around with a gun, shooting people? That’s not dangerous?”
I pressed my lips together.
“If you have that serum stuff that makes you heal so well anyway, then how dangerous could the coke be, really?”
“I could get addicted,” I said.
“Like your parents,” he said. “But that was heroin, right? It’s not the same.”
“It’s not good,” I said.
“You know, Sloane, I think you’re afraid of a lot of things,” he said. “But I think the primary thing you’re afraid of is experiencing anything. You say that people don’t notice you, but you try really hard to be noticed. And you block lots of things out. I think you don’t like being out of control.”
I shook my head. “You don’t know anything about me.”
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