by Kira Graham
Cleo moans again and whines when I separate our mouths, but the protest turns into a gasped squeal when I shove my way down her body and lick into her sex.
Ambrosia.
She tastes clean and sweet and salty, her feminine flavor a delicate musk that makes me lightheaded and ravenous all at once.
“Ohhhh! Oh.”
I growl when she moans and grabs onto my hair, the slight pain when she tugs another element of the pleasure that courses through me. I release her clit and lick down, spearing my tongue as deeply inside her as it will go, and revel in the way she curls her hips closer, greedy for what I can give her.
She needs to come, now, before I come all over myself again, and so I stop savoring her and start sucking and licking her just where I know she needs it.
Soon, she’s screaming her orgasm and grinding against me, smothering me with her sweet taste. I can’t wait anymore, but I give her time to enjoy the pleasure before I rear up, roll on a condom, and settle between her legs. After she’s calmed down, her eyes half-lidded and glowing up at me, I line up and slowly press in, gritting my teeth against the need to thrust. She’s warm and wet inside, and so tight that it drives me crazy to take things this slowly.
I’m glad I do, though, because she’s too tight, and she bites into her lip and grimaces once I’m fully seated, the fit a stretch that she needs to adjust to before I can even think of moving.
“I’m in, baby. I won’t move till you’re ready,” I rasp, my jaw clenching when she tightens around me and moves experimentally, her sheath rippling along my length in a sucking kiss that makes my balls contract painfully.
“Oh! Oh, that feels wonderful,” Cleo breathes, her eyes going to half-mast when I pull back and sink in again, using the piercing at the tip of my cock to scrape over her G-spot.
She hasn’t seen it yet, but from the way her eyes roll back when I start a rhythm, butting into her spot over and over again, I’d say that we’re going to have fun with this.
“Ahhhh. Right there. Don’t stop.”
Like I could, I think, my tempo increasing when she grabs my ass and squeezes it in demand, her nails digging into me and no doubt drawing blood. I want those marks. When we’re done here and too spent to move, I want to feel her marks on me and know that I gave her this wild, out-of-control pleasure.
More than that, I want her to crave this so much that she won’t be able to walk away from this, from me. Redoubling my efforts, I lean down to kiss her and reach a hand down to strum her clit, my groans echoing her cries when she clamps down around me, her sex convulsing and milking the come from me.
This is more, I think, as I allow the pleasure to consume me.
Cleo Sweet is mine.
Chapter Ten
Cleo
“You slept with him! Oh my gosh, Cleo. Congrats!” Rose yells, dragging me into her apartment and slamming the door shut.
I grumble and trudge towards the couch, my body aching, tired, and so heavy that I flop down onto the cushions and let out a groan. This morning was awful, like one of those moments you see on TV when you yell things at the lady and curse the man and keep telling her that she’s better off and shouldn’t cry.
This morning was just like one of those, but instead of yelling at the TV, I was the girl who woke up alone in Hart’s bed and had to do the walk of shame—without the bonus of a cab, because I may have had my purse, but I must have forgotten my wallet, so I had no money for a cab.
My phone was beeping, and the red light was flashing to tell me that the battery was almost dead, and I had no minutes left anyway, so calling someone wasn’t an option. I guess I could have asked the doorman to let me make a call, or, better yet, I could have called Rose from Hart’s apartment before I left, but I wasn’t thinking.
Right now, I’m trying not to think at all, because I’m pretty sure that if I do think, I’ll be forced to realize that I had sex with Hart—great, hot, mind-blowing sex—and he pulled a runner on me. I woke up this morning, a little scared and a little excited but a lot…hopeful, and cracked an eyelid open to look around—well, okay, I was scoping out the situation through a crack small enough to have snugly housed the eye of a needle, but still.
And nothing. Nothing happened, because the other side of the bed was empty, and his penthouse was unoccupied. Read, I was ditched. Though at first, I kinda didn’t even know it. After I ascertained that the penthouse was empty, I took a shower, got dressed in yesterday’s hideous clothes, and then sat and waited. And waited. And waited. Until an hour had passed, and I finally got the message. Hart wasn’t off getting breakfast, and we weren’t going to have a heart-to-heart conversation about how we’d transitioned from friends to whatever it is I thought we’d be. Instead, I got smacked down to reality, and fast, when I shifted on the couch and found a pair of someone else’s disgusting, whorish underwear and realized that I had gotten ditched!
Then I got mad. And then I did a few things that I could get arrested for, and my walk of shame turned out to be a sprint of shame. And okay, so I didn’t get a cab or talk to the doorman because I didn’t want anyone to identify me. Semantics!
“Cleo—”
“I’m such an idiot!” I moan, rolling over on the couch to face Rose, who is dressed in pajamas and looks like she just rolled out of bed.
“You slept with him. That’s not a bad thing, Cleo. This could be the start of—”
“He was gone when I woke up, which is a bad thing because we had sex all day yesterday, and then had some food, and then had sex again, and then I fell asleep, and then I woke up, and he was gone,” I hiss through clenched teeth, moaning again. “I should have done the whole talking thing yesterday, when we weren’t…busy. But I was so—”
“Wrapped up in the sex,” Rose finishes ruefully, her mouth twisting into a grimace. “Been there, sister. Been there so hard that I spent almost three hours waiting for the guy to come back while I obsessively checked my phone,” she snorts, smiling sadly. “Did you check your phone? Maybe—”
“It’s dying, but yes, I did check my phone, and I have sixteen texts from Mom and three voicemails from Dad, crying and asking me if I’ve been dumped in a ditch somewhere. Nothing from Hart. Not a peep, which is funny because he usually calls me nonstop on Sunday mornings, nagging at me to hang out.”
“Oh, honey…”
“You want to know the absolute worst part? I really liked being friends with him, Rose. Like, he was a great listener, and he was always funny and fun to be around. I should have stuck to just being friends,” I groan, falling back into the cushions with a curse.
“Can I ask why you didn’t?” she asks softly, her eyes filled with such sympathy that I can’t stand to look at her.
“Because, yesterday…” I gulp, sniffing when my nose gets stuffy and starts to run.
I’ve been fighting tears all morning, and I won’t cry now, no matter how stupid, pathetic, or angry I feel. I don’t cry about men. I haven’t cried about a guy since Dennis—nope! Not thinking about it. Ever.
“Yesterday…?” Rose asks gently before she gasps, her hand flying up to cover her mouth while her eyes go wide.
“Oh, Cleo! Honey, I didn’t even realize what yesterday was,” she breathes, her eyes going wet with unshed tears when I shrug and swallow the lump of sickness that seems to have taken root in my chest and keeps spreading.
“Don’t—”
“I’m so sorry. No wonder Mom’s called so many times, and poor Dad must be frantic.”
“He sang that theme song to Beauty and the Beast over voicemail,” I snort, blinking rapidly.
Dad’s such a sap, and I just love him to bits. He does weird and crazy stuff like that all the time, and, like I said before, he’ll do anything for his girls. Even try to space out a three-minute song over more than two voicemails.
Rose laughs, the sound more wheezy than mirthful, and I can practically feel her pity when she shifts and urges my eyes to look up and meet hers. Yesterday sucked, and
then it didn’t, and—and I feel like shit right now because I realize that a huge reason I slept with Hart yesterday isn’t just because I wanted to. Although I really, really wanted to. But I also needed something to make me forget, and he made me forget, and—
“You should have called me. We could have done what we always do, Cleo. It’s our tradition.”
“It’s pathetic. The four of you drink with me until I get so wasted that I pass out, or puke, or both. Then you clean me up, put me to bed, and spend the night prank-calling Dennis and making death threats,” I point out, my lips twisting. “This year, I wanted…to be okay. And I was. For the first time in six—no, wait, almost seven—years, I wanted this day to be about something else. I wanted it to be about me and not about…so I did it. I took your advice, and I stopped looking at Hart through those murky lenses that I view all men through, and—and it was good.”
It was sooo good. Instead of spending the day drunk and asking myself what is wrong with me, I spent the day being pleasured, and, for once, there was nothing wrong with me. I should see my shrink about this, I know, and I should definitely call Hart and leave him an apology voicemail to explain why I hate his guts but forgive him. A little.
“Oh, sweetie,” Rose sighs. “I really thought that things would go much better than this. Hart isn’t a bad guy.”
“No, but apparently he isn’t mine. Who was I kidding, anyway? I can’t be friends with a man who’s so handsome that I have to wear two sets of panties when I see him,” I snort, giggling at the ridiculousness of it all.
“Are you sure…?”
“That he left? Rose, I showered, I waited an entire hour for him, and then I spent ten to fifteen minutes wrecking his apartment. That’s—what, nearly two hours? Though God knows, I didn’t hang around for three,” I tease, grinning when she blushes.
“Matt was…huge, that’s all I’m saying, and you’d have hung around for three hours, too, just for one more chance at all that manly goodness,” she defends herself, jumping up and cursing. “Look, let’s have some coffee and talk about this some more. You’re feeling like shit, I’m feeling like shit, and it’s becoming depressingly clear to me that the Sweets and the Harts are not going to make the Sweetharts.”
“Preach,” I grunt, rising to follow her to the kitchen, where the breakfast bar is so clean that I can see myself in the granite.
Rose gets the coffee going, pulls a box of donuts from the fridge, and sets about cutting up some fruit while I plug my phone in to check for a text from Hart. It’s no surprise that I hear nothing from him, and it’s depressing that I feel hurt because it’s blatantly obvious by now that he was friending me so that he could get laid.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing. And there really shouldn’t be. This is a good thing! Now I won’t be attracted to him anymore. I’ve learned my lesson, and I got some good sex out of the bargain, finally popped my cherry,” I say crisply, promising myself that I mean it.
“Cleo, you had sex before Hart,” Rose snorts, shattering my illusions without a shred of guilt.
“No, I didn’t. Dennis doesn’t count.”
“Cleo, he counts. You were with the guy for almost three years, and you were engaged. He counts.”
“He doesn’t. It doesn’t count unless I want to admit that I was ever with him, and I don’t.”
She rolls her eyes and sets down a cup before handing me a donut that, for once, I’m not sure I can eat. See, this is why I don’t think about this stuff. It messes with me. It screws me up to the point that, if I let it, I’ll be back to weighing a hundred pounds or less, constantly weepy and doing anything I can to make myself feel better. I don’t like to think about that part of my life, and I like to think about it even less when I consider all the crazy stuff I did.
“You were with him! You were so with him that I was your maid of honor, Cleo! Snap out of it already, and smell the damn roses, babe. You were engaged to your high school sweetheart, and you were going to get married, and then—”
“Don’t,” I fume, my mind too fragile to hear this stuff right now. “I don’t need any of this right now. Do you hear me? I came here for comfort, Rose, not for you to remind me of everything and rub more salt in the wounds. I’ve lost everything I ever wanted, I just lost my friend, and I feel like nothing is going right for me. You’re supposed to—”
“Coddle you like Mom and Dad do? Pretend that you haven’t been self-sabotaging for six—no, seven—years?” she asks, shaking her head sadly. “One of these days, you’re going to have to wake the hell up and realize that you can’t aim for the easiest target just to spare yourself pain.”
“I already tried that! And I woke up alone,” I point out, snarling when she sighs and throws her head back, as if asking for patience.
“Cleo, you slept with Hart yesterday because you thought this very thing would happen, thereby proving to yourself that you’re not meant for love. Or happiness.”
“Rose—”
“You’ve wanted him since you walked into the restaurant and saw him sitting there. The man is beyond good-looking. He’s rich, which doesn’t hurt because he doesn’t need Sweet money like Dennis did, and he’s also a nice person. No, don’t start arguing; just listen. I know that he bailed on you, and that it hurt your feelings, but that doesn’t change the facts. Hart’s been a good guy to you, Cleo, up to this point. You slept with him for that very reason. To push things and make a good friendship implode. Admit it. And you also did it because you liked him enough that you couldn’t stop yourself. You’re so…difficult, Cleo. If things are going well, you look for flaws. If they’re messed up, you sit back and say, ‘See, I told you it was going to go wrong.’”
“Rose—”
“That’s what happened with CandyCane’s. You kept pushing that place into a never-ending well of debt. New signs. New recipes. Money. Money. Money. Until it was almost guaranteed to fail. Face it, Cleo. You’re a self-saboteur, and you have been ever since the day Dennis left you standing at the altar,” Rose says softly, saying the exact words that I didn’t want to hear her say.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I try to breathe through the way those words make me feel, knowing full well that the pain isn’t about the heartache I suffered—not anymore. No, this pain is about the way it felt when all those people were staring at me, pitying me. It’s about the humiliation I felt when I found out that Dennis had left me at the altar, on my wedding day, so that he could go be with someone else. My illusions about love were shattered. My dreams were destroyed. My sense of trust was broken in a way that I still haven’t recovered from, and Rose is right. I slept with Hart not only to forget, but also because, in some sad way, I expected him to bail on me, too.
Jesus. I really am messed up.
“You’re such a bitch,” I mumble, smiling a little when she nudges the donut in my hand and inclines her head.
“I am, but I’m also one of the few people who will always shoot straight with you, babe. You’re running scared, and you’re breaking things before anyone else gets a chance to break it. I get it, okay? You have a hard time trusting your heart.”
We both snort, her play on words turning a really awful speech into something I can at least laugh about.
“He’s an ass,” I point out because, everything else aside, he did dump my ass in a manner of speaking, and the way he did it was just wrong.
If you sleep with someone, and you don’t want a long, drawn-out, morning-after postmortem, or any sort of mortem at all, you say it and get it over with. Hart left after he got what he wanted, and the truly awful part of it is that I knew it all along. I was the date that he just couldn’t figure out, the woman who blew him off before he could blow me off. I was a challenge, and I told myself that I was playing with him, stringing him along because it amused me, when the truth is, I was always headed here. Because Rosetta is right: I wanted this to happen so that I could slink home, lick my wounds, and say, “See? I was right. Love isn’t real.”
<
br /> The truly terrible part of that is that I know it is. My parents have it. I saw it with Hart’s parents. I just don’t want it because I’m a coward. Well, no more. I want love, and I found a guy who makes me want more than just mediocre love.
“That’s the spirit!” Rose cheers, just as the door bursts open and Tee rushes in, her hair a mess and her jeans…
“What the hell?” Rose screams, brandishing a spoon as if she stands a chance against Nefertiti with anything less than a baseball bat, or maybe a rocket launcher. “Are your pants on the wrong way?”
Yup. That’s what I was gonna say, I think, checking out Tee’s ass, where her zipper is hanging open, showing off a pink thong and ass cheeks that I would envy if I weren’t laughing so hard.
“Stop laughing. Dammit, I ran all the way here because my car was blocked in,” she huffs, twisting herself so that she can zip up her jeans before she looks up, once again frantic.
“You’re not answering your damn phone! Why aren’t you two answering your damn phones? I’ve been searching for you, Cleo!” she yells, her eyes going hot when I wheeze my laughter to a halt and have to bite my lip to stop another round of giggles.
I don’t think Tee knows this, but I can see her nipples through her shirt. Because she’s not wearing a shirt, only a bright pink lace bra that is so sheer that I can’t begin to imagine how it supports her huge boobs. Rose, who is also biting her lip and making a low-pitched whining sound, clears her throat and attempts to look serious. It’s difficult because Tee’s hair is sticking straight up on one side, and there’s something suspiciously white and gunky stuck in the strands. Ew!
“What’s up, Mary?” Rose asks, pushing her tongue against the inside of her cheek, her eyes dancing when Tee frowns and looks at her questioningly, before shaking her head hard and glaring at me.
“You should have answered your phone, idiot!” Tee yells, breathing hard as I grab my phone and notice that I must have turned it to airplane mode.
