I parted my lips and felt Katy’s tongue sweep along them, first the top, then the bottom, before her teeth nipped it, and she sucked my lip between her own. My hands started at her waist and smoothed up her body, along her ribs, and around her back, pulling her in tight. I felt her fingers weave through my hair. She pulled then pushed, indecisive, yet in need. Our breathing grew hectic and heavy, and our hands drifted over body parts they’d never before dared to touch.
She gasped when my hand slipped under her rumpled t-shirt and took hold of her breast. Can’t say I hadn’t ever dreamed of doing that. And just as I had always suspected, it filled my hand perfectly. Katy’s knees nearly buckled when I ran my thumb over her nipple then took it between my fingers, rotating it gently, slowly.
She pulled her mouth from mine and let her head loll back, the perfect opening to explore her neck with my mouth. She drew into my body, allowing herself to feel and be overwhelmed, yet succumbing to her sorrow at the same time, and sobbing into my shoulder. She clawed at my jacket and tore it from my body then pushed my t-shirt up over my head in one swift movement. I felt her nails rake across my back, reasonably sure she’d drawn blood. I hissed through my teeth and threw my head back, but Katy didn’t stop.
She ripped open the button and zipper on my jeans and slid her hand inside my shorts. Again, I inhaled sharply, only this time, I groaned afterwards as her fingers found and wrapped themselves around me, squeezing with just the right amount of pressure.
It was almost too much, too unexpected, too emotional. I feared completely losing control. I grabbed for her hand and tried to pull back, but Katy used my momentum and pushed me onto my bed. Her lips found mine once again, biting, sucking, kissing, everything she could do to keep me in the moment. And God, it worked.
My hands behaved of their own accord and pushed her t-shirt over her head, then her sweatpants down over her hips, taking her delicate lace panties with it. She cast everything aside and flipped her hair over her shoulder, then sat astride me, her gaze pinned to mine, her eyes heavy with both passion and grief. Her movement slow and deliberate, Katy slid off my lap and onto the floor, tugging my jeans and briefs as she went, peeling them off after removing my shoes and socks.
Her hands moved languidly from my ankles to my knees and up the inside of my thighs before laying claim to the very essence of me, first with her hands, stroking and squeezing, then with her mouth, torturing me with her tongue and her teeth, sucking and pulling while her hand stroked up and down. And just when I thought I couldn’t take it any more, I pulled up on her head and bucked beneath her practiced hands. She jumped up and straddled me once again, using her hand to guide me into the deepest part of her.
Her slick flesh enveloped me in a warmth so tight and wet, I thought I would explode into a million pieces. I groaned like I was about to die, and my hands twisted the rumpled bed sheets. But then Katy held still for the briefest of moments, her hands on my chest and her hair cascading like a waterfall over her shoulders and down her bare breasts.
I reached for my forehead, overcome with my need to release. I looked up at Katy, and, at first, thought I saw the smallest of smiles turn up the right side of her mouth, but it was too brief, and I couldn’t be sure. She started moving against me once more, her motion controlled and with a purpose. Her flesh tightened hard around the length of me, pulsing in a frantic rhythm with each measured thrust. I couldn’t take it. I covered my face with my hands and tried to think of something else, anything but the blessed torment this woman was putting me through.
She leaned down, then, and took hold of my wrists, pulled my hands from my face and stared into my eyes. She began kissing me as she flipped onto her back, taking me with her and never once losing even the slightest bit of contact. With my weight pressing her into the mattress, she reached down and took hold of my bare ass, pulling me farther into her as she ground her hips into mine.
I started to move, slowly at first, but as far into her as possible. That wasn’t enough for Katy. She bucked against me, pulling me in with her hands and pushing me out with her feet, faster and faster as she panted and moaned, until I threw my head back and bellowed toward the ceiling with one last, violent thrust. I released myself into her, discharging every ounce of pain and rage, all my grief and uncertainty, sorrow and fear, filling her until she could hold no more. It seeped from her and spilled between us as our bodies quivered in synchronized climax.
My heart whipped within me, thrashing around as if trying to escape. I panted in deep, gulping breaths, my arms like Jell-O as I raised myself up. Katy lay squirming beneath me, her face all flush and her hair a tangled mess. But there it was again, that smile. I couldn’t miss it this time. Her eyes were closed and her hands were twisted up in her hair as she rubbed them across her head. Small moans escaped her lips as her body twitched in final pleasure.
As my breathing calmed, I watched her body relax and her arms fall to the bed. She turned her head to the side, her pinky hooked over her bottom lip and teeth, and finally peeked up at me. I guess my expression must have worried her, because her brow drew together, and her grin turned serious, but she just stared at me, silent.
I pulled back, eased myself from her body, and slid off the bed. I stared back for a minute then began to search for my underwear and jeans. I yanked them back on while Katy lay across my bed, exposed, naked yet unembarrassed, her feet flat against the mattress with her knees bent and fluttering like a bird’s wings as what remained of me seeped from her fold and pooled in a darkened stain on the tousled sheets beneath her. She finally propped herself up on her elbows, her face unreadable, while mine surely showed every wretched emotion that was currently washing over me.
Shock. Shame. Disgust and humiliation. A self-hatred so deep, I wanted to puke.
I couldn’t believe I would do that to Leo. He’d been dead for less than a day, and here I was, soaked in sweat, my betrayal still slick upon my flesh, the smell of sex all over me and his girlfriend. What the fuck was wrong with me?
I resumed my search for the rest of my clothes. Katy’s, too. I threw her panties, t-shirt, and sweats onto the bed, yet kept searching.
“I’m sorry. I can’t find your bra,” I explained over the rigid lump in my throat.
She snorted a giggle and raised one brow. “I wasn’t wearing one. Remember?”
I stopped and stared at her again, then began to pull the rest of my clothes back on. I sat down on the end of the bed, as far from her as I could get, and yanked my socks on, then untied my shoes. All the while, Katy lay there, watching me. Just when I had finished tying up my second shoe, she flipped onto her knees and leaned up against me from behind. I felt warm moisture spread low across the back of my t-shirt, further proof of my despicable treachery.
Katy’s fingers toyed with the hair at the back of my neck, even as I tried to pull away.
“I’m not embarrassed, and I’m not sorry it happened.” She twisted around my side so she could see my face. “Are you?” she asked, her eyes boring into mine.
I turned away, uncomfortable with the look in her eyes, and shook her off my shoulder. She plopped back down on the bed behind me.
“Katy…” I started, but didn’t really know what else to say.
Revulsion twisted and coiled around my stomach. I wasn’t sure what I felt, but I did know, whatever it was, it didn’t feel good, or right. Regardless of the situation, I’d crossed some imaginary line of impropriety. It wasn’t cheating technically—I knew that much—but it was wrong, and I felt tainted somehow, soiled, and deeply ashamed.
More than anything, I worried I might have ruined my last tie to my best friend. Katy deserved better from me. She was in shock, as I was, but undoubtedly more so. She and Leo had shared a remarkable bond, and now, here I was, polluting it, desecrating it. I was repulsive, and couldn’t believe Katy didn’t agree. I rested my elbows on my knees and shook my head, offended by my own selfish behavior.
I felt the bed
tremble beneath me. I turned and saw Katy curled up in a ball, her knees pulled in tight and her arms drawn around them as she wept silently into my pillow. She looked so small, so vulnerable. I grabbed a blanket and threw it over her, then sat down beside her, my hand on her back.
“Look, K…I…I’m sorry. I don’t want you to think that I… I mean…it’s not like I didn’t…enjoy it or anything. It’s just…” I sighed, frustrated with myself. Nothing was coming out the way I wanted it to. “I shouldn’t have taken advantage…of you, of the situation. That was wrong. Leo was my best friend.” I turned away, my elbows back on my knees and my head in my hands. “Fuck, I am such an asshole.”
Katy spooned me from behind, rubbing that now cool, damp spot against the heat of my skin and making me shiver, not with a chill, but in self-loathing. She wrapped the blanket around me and settled her chin against my shoulder. Her tears continued to flow down her cheeks and onto my t-shirt. I pulled my head from my hands and turned toward her. She wore the tiniest of smiles, bitter and sad, and stroked the back of her fingers down my cheek. Her eyes tracked her finger as it traced along the stubble of my jaw then fell away. She refocused her gaze on mine.
“You are the furthest thing from an asshole, Conner Maguire.” She slid off the bed and repositioned herself at my feet, squirreling in between my knees and taking my hands in hers. New tears welled up. “I miss Leo so much. It hurts so bad, I can’t bear it. There is no one else who understands that, Conner, except you. You get it, because you loved him, too.” She turned her face and rubbed her cheek against my fingers.
“It might not have been appropriate,” she continued, “but…I think we needed each other. I think we are the only two people in the whole world who can comfort each other right now.” She came up on her knees and placed her palms on either side of my face. “What you did for me, what you gave me, it was so beautiful, so tender. For just a few moments, I forgot about the pain, and I remembered…us. The three of us, together again. Because he was there, Conner. With us,” she said then placed her hand to her heart. “Leo was right here.”
I gave her a look that said I didn’t believe it then dropped my gaze to the floor. But she tipped my chin up and stooped to gain my focus again.
“Leo would have wanted you to be there for me, Conner.”
I shook my head. “I seriously doubt it. Not like that anyway.”
“He loved us both. He would want us to do whatever it took to help each other through this. Leo wasn’t selfish or jealous, Conner. You know that. He was like your brother. He told me so, many times.”
She leaned in and wrapped her arms around my neck, allowing the blanket to slip from her shoulders. She was naked in my arms again.
“Don’t beat yourself up over this, Conner,” she said, her hands rubbing over my back and through my hair.
It felt so natural to coil my arms around her slender body. No matter the guilt, I couldn’t fight the urge to let my hands glide over her smooth, supple skin, down her back, over her butt, and along the outside of her thighs then back again.
She unfolded her arms from my neck and pulled back, taking my hand in hers and guiding it first to her breast, then lower, over her flat stomach and to the warm, moist place between her legs. I watched her face as she closed her eyes and tipped her head back, moaning gently as she pushed my fingers deeper inside her.
I abandoned all control, as well as my guilt, and crashed against her. We dropped to the carpeted floor, our lips locked together as we both gasped and panted.
“Please, Conner,” she said into my mouth. “Make me forget.”
And I did. I made us both forget.
For a little while anyway.
CHAPTER 6
Conner
I woke up alone, the space beside me cold and empty, much like my soul. Awake less than a minute and my head already felt ready to explode. I was so dehydrated, spasms seized the muscles in both legs. I needed something to drink, anything, and fast. I dragged myself out of bed and searched for an unopened bottle of 5-Hour Energy, or even just a can of Coke, something with enough caffeine to help me focus for the next five minutes. All I found was a half-empty bottle of Gatorade, but it was enough to quench my thirst and ease the leg cramps.
I opened the window and let the damp, frigid air sweep into the room and across my bare skin. It felt like needles piercing every exposed inch, and every inch was completely exposed. I had nothing clean to wear. But the misty chill felt good. It helped clear my head enough so I could get dressed and sort through the mess of unwashed clothes and empty receptacles, tossing each aside in their newly assigned corners while I searched for my cell. I felt like the walls of my room were closing in on me. I had to get the hell out of here.
After four weeks of Katy telling me how right it all was, how Leo would approve because he’d loved us, and that only I had the ability to mend her shattered heart, the pieces I’d forced together, like a mismatched puzzle, began to break apart. The bond wasn’t strong enough to make up for the fact that they just didn’t fit. There were gaps and uneven edges, places where the joints rubbed raw. It didn’t look any better than it felt.
I’d known all this from day one, but I’d let Katy manipulate me into doing things I knew were wrong. It had become a way for us to deal and accept what we’d become to each other—another coping mechanism in the wake of Leo’s death.
The evidence of that lay strewn across my disheveled room. Empty beer cans and vodka bottles, energy drinks and baggies of pot. Instead of going to class each day, we studied the art of denial and self-medication, to deaden the ache of loss and the distaste of our perfidious relationship. I think we each had different reasons for starting down that path. I wasn’t sure, but for Katy, I think it was about the connection I had to Leo, like brothers, she’d said. She seemed to need that, like air in her lungs. Or maybe more like heroin in her veins.
Godammit, where the hell is my cell phone?
For me, it was simply a way to help me forget. Not just Leo’s death, but also what I had allowed myself to do and become afterwards. Self-loathing wasn’t a strong enough term, but I was too weak to turn away. She’d gotten under my skin, much like a burr, but by the time I’d noticed, I felt I deserved as much. Only now it had become painfully infected. Yet I still couldn’t stop myself. Katy was more than just beautiful with a body every man coveted. She was a fucking wet dream. She did things to me I didn’t even know were possible, much less think the all-American college girl would know about or consider doing. I wondered where she’d learned it all. Surprisingly, Leo had never boasted about her abilities.
Their relationship became an enigma in my mind. How he had ever stepped out of bed each morning was beyond me. I could barely move I was so sore, and I was tired, like completely-physically-exhausted-tired, and I don’t mean from all the alcohol and weed. I needed a triple-shot of 5-Hour Energy each morning just to open my eyes. But it was a vicious cycle.
Once I was awake enough to function, Katy would begin her daily spiral, and I would be required to perform. I’d become a fucking machine, literally. But the parts were wearing out, and I couldn’t cope any longer. I needed caffeine to get up, then booze to come down, then Red Bull and vodka, then Katy and pot, over and over, four, five, six times a day.
I hadn’t attended class in nearly three weeks or turned in an assignment in over two. I had email notices from my advisor, the registrar, and every one of my professors or their aides, not to mention my parents. Even Tyler had called and emailed.
I’d discarded each email, unanswered, deleted each voicemail, unreturned. Hell, I’d stopped listening to them altogether and rarely even turned on my cell anymore, which is why I couldn’t seem to find the damn thing. Shit. I was completely out of control and powerless to stop it. Part of me didn’t want to. What the fuck else did I have? I was just waiting for security to come kick me out of Hansee. Every time someone knocked on the door, I thought it would be them, ready
to haul my naked ass away.
Yet the better part of me did want to stop. I didn’t think I could survive one more day, mired under another layer of booze and pot, of sex and revulsion, and my utter failure at self-restraint, not to mention the weight of my grief, which I hadn’t even really begun to face yet. How did I get here so quickly? If it was possible for me to fall so far so fast, surely I would destroy myself in but a few more days, a few more hours.
I moved the search for my phone to the closet. The little, red cooler we kept there was gone, which explained why Katy wasn’t here. She’d gone out for supplies. I needed to make a move before she got back and I changed my mind, before her clothes came off and her mouth performed its magic, before she pushed me down and settled her satiny flesh around mine.
Finally, I found my phone up on the highest shelf in the closet. Katy must’ve hidden it up there to keep me from connecting with the outside world. The battery was low, only three percent. Crap! I didn’t stop to think. I just dialed. Thank God for speed dial. My fingers shook so badly, I don’t think I could’ve hit more than one button with any accuracy. The phone rang four times.
“Pick up, pick up,” I said as I bounced on the balls of my feet. Even though, by that point, the room had cooled to probably fifty degrees, a thin layer of sweat sprouted over every inch of my flesh, and my heart felt ready to burst. “Come on!” I screamed into the phone, but after six rings, it went to voicemail. “Fuck!” I stomped my foot and threw my phone against the messy, unmade bed.
Now what? God, I have to get out of here!
Leverage (The Mistaken Series) Page 4
