And by the end of the song, I’m mesmerized by this man, wondering how the hell the douchebag, cocky sonofabitch I first met became this coolly confident sex pot that I’m so fucking obsessed with I can’t stand it.
When the music finally cuts off, the crowd erupts, and Kade picks me up and throws me onto his shoulders. I toss my hands in the air, one still holding the microphone, as he takes us for a lap around the stage.
He starts running so fast I have to hold on for dear life, and then with a wave and a breathless, “We’ll be right back with the announcement of tonight’s champions. Until then, enjoy this special performance by Red Leather Chains!”
The crowd goes even more crazy at the announcement of an up-and-coming band that’s been all over the music charts. I gasp, too, and try to scream over the noise to ask Kade how the hell he got them for this event, but I don’t get the chance before he runs us backstage. Darkness hits like a train, along with a strange kind of quiet. We can still hear the music, the crowd, but it’s slightly muted, like it’s far, far away.
My ears ring as Kade carefully helps me off his shoulders and drops me to my toes on the ground in front of him, my body sliding down every inch of his along the way.
We’re both panting, the music blasting from the stage, crowd cheering — but in the little pocket we’ve found ourselves in backstage, it feels like we’re the only ones in the whole universe.
Kade’s eyes flick between mine, and then he splays his palm across my heaving chest, running up the slick skin to wrap his hand around my throat. I gasp at the touch, letting my head fall back, and watching him through hooded eyes — eyes that dare him to keep going.
He squeezes a little harder, leaning in to hover over me as his gaze falls to my lips. “I know I promised you space,” he husks. “But I lied.”
His mouth crashes onto mine before I can tell him I don’t give a fuck what I said and that space is the last thing I want right now, so I pull him into me, meeting his kiss with equal need. He grips my throat even tighter, cutting my oxygen short, but I fucking love it, so I drag my nails down his back and beg for more.
I yelp as Kade bites my lip hard enough to draw blood, and then I’m in his arms being carried backward in the blinding darkness until my back slams against something hard — a ledge or a shelf or a speaker case, I don’t fucking care. All I know is my ass is half-propped on it, half hanging off, and I’ve got my legs wrapped around Kade like an anaconda.
“Do you know how mad you’ve driven me this summer?” he asks, snapping his hands over my wrists and clamping them to my sides, my fingers curling on the edge of whatever I’m sitting on. “How badly I’ve wanted to call you, see you, kiss you.” He forces my mouth open with a demanding sweep of his tongue. “Taste you.” His hard-on grinds against my core, sparking a trail of chills down the length of me. “Fuck you?”
“Show me how badly,” I dare him, and then with a monstrous growl, he rips me off the ledge and whips me around, slamming my chest into the metal this time.
I have no idea if we’re hidden from view, if we’re safe back here, or if a pledge is going to walk through at any second and see us. But I couldn’t care less — not when Kade grabs my skirt and rips it down my thighs like a beast, not when he bends down and grabs my ass, spreading my cheeks and making me arch more so he can eat me out from behind, and definitely not when he stands again and spanks me so hard I see stars.
“I’m not going to be easy with you tonight,” he promises.
And I just spread my legs a little wider and look over my shoulder with a grin that says promises, promises.
Kade smirks, shaking his head as he makes quick work of his belt, his shorts, his briefs, pulling them all down far enough to whip out his thick, glorious cock. There’s no time for a condom or foreplay or so much as a warning. He just roughly rubs his fingers between my lips, slicking his hand with my desire, and then coats himself with it before lining his tip up with my entrance and ramming it home.
Kade covers my yelp with another bruising kiss, and then he grabs my elbows in his hands, holding them behind me like handlebars as he rails me. When his mouth releases mine, my cheek pressed against the metal of whatever object we’re fucking against is the only thing I have holding me upright — the rest is all him.
His hands grip my arms so hard I know they’ll bruise, and every thrust is a punishment — a lashing I’m desperate to receive. I want it hard. I want it brutal.
I want him to fuck me all the way up.
I’m so turned on from the fact that we’re in a public space, that one brush of my clit would send me over the edge, and as if he senses it, Kade slows his pace just enough to reach around with one hand and rub my sensitive bud.
My legs instantly tremble and shake, and the hand he freed flies up to slap against the metal and hold me upright as I chase my orgasm.
It comes on like a tsunami, the wave building savagely quick before it topples over and takes me under. Kade bites down on my shoulder to remind me not to be too loud, and holding in my screams only makes the orgasm that much more powerful. My face is fiery hot, body full of numbing stars.
And then, all at once, I fall limp, panting, a tremor shaking me from head to toe.
“We’re not done yet, baby,” Kade promises, and then he withdraws so quickly, I nearly fall from the sensation of losing his warmth. He spins me, grabs my cheeks between his thumb and fingers and kisses me forcefully.
Then, he guides me down to my knees.
“I can’t make a mess back here,” he explains with a wicked grin, swiping my hair out of my face. “So open that pretty mouth wide.”
It shouldn’t turn me on so much, the demanding arrogance in his voice, the degrading act of bending to my knees on a dirty floor for him.
But it does.
God, it does.
And as I take his cock in my mouth, I can feel my desire building again, and I’m literally dripping between my legs.
Kade groans as I swirl my tongue over every inch of him, teasing him a bit before I take him all the way inside. I don’t waste time, coating him with saliva before I use both my hands, each of them rotating around his slick shaft while my tongue tortures his tip.
I know exactly what he likes, exactly what to do to get him to release.
His hand fists in my hair, and then he holds my head still, pumping his hips and fucking my mouth. I close my eyes and try to remember to breathe, to open my throat and relax.
And I don’t gag until his cum shoots out and hits the back of my throat.
The groan that leaves him is guttural, hungry and wild as he holds me there, his cock deep in my throat, my tongue flat and splayed out so far I can nearly lick his balls. I open my eyes and watch him from below, which makes him curse under his breath, and then with a shudder, he finishes, slowly releasing me, slowly withdrawing.
After I swallow, I want to grin, wipe my lips, and spout something sassy at him, but I don’t get the chance before he reaches down and grabs my arms, hauling me up to stand. He grips my cheeks in one hand again, and crashes his mouth to mine, kissing me senseless before he releases me.
“You’re fucking mine,” he says, his dark eyes hooded, jaw set.
Then, he pulls up his shorts and like nothing happened at all, strolls right back out on the stage just in time for someone to hand him an envelope with what I assume is the winner information for the contest.
And I can’t help it.
My jaw drops, and then I belt out the loudest laugh of my life.
That fucking asshole…
Goddamnit, I love him so much.
When I finally come to my senses and realize there’s a breeze in a place where there shouldn’t be, I grab my panties and skirt off the floor and hastily pull them on, smoothing my clothes and then doing my best to fix my hair with no mirror. I know it’s going to be damn near impossible to make it look like I wasn’t just thoroughly fucked, but part of me doesn’t care at all.
Let them
all wonder.
Let them all know I’m the bitch who gets to have him.
I make my way back through the crowd to Skyler in a daze, a stupid smile fixed to my face.
When she sees me, her mouth pops open and she folds her arms over her chest, shaking her head as she eyes me up and down. “You dirty skank, did you just pull a quickie backstage?”
“I’ll never tell,” I say, but my words are slurred, a little from the booze and a lot from being completely drained after that romp with Kade.
Skyler snickers, and then hands me my clutch and asks if I want another drink. With an affirmative, she leaves me at our spot to head to the bar, and I fish through my clutch for my phone.
When I pull it out, my heart stops in my chest at the text waiting for me on the screen.
From Jarrett.
I open it with a knot in my throat blocking my airway, and when I see a screenshot of a picture of me and Kade on stage from Skyler’s social media post, I nearly pass out.
I guess summer is over.
When’s my turn?
I PUNCH THE PILLOW that’s supposed to be propping me up, huffing again when I lean back and still feel uncomfortable. I lean up again, shifting for another punch, punch as the ice I have balanced on my shoulder slides off me, the bed, and then onto the floor with a thwack.
“Ugh!” I growl, letting my hands flop down on the bed and rolling my eyes.
I nearly cry at the thought of having to get up, bend over to get the ice, and then get situated again. Thankfully, Brandon comes into the bedroom with a soft, knowing smile and picks the ice up for me, helping me get it in the right place on my shoulder as he sits on the edge of the bed.
“I hear a lot of grunting coming from in here,” he comments.
“How the hell am I supposed to try to sleep like this?” I whine. “Have you ever tried to sleep propped up? It’s awful. My mouth keeps falling open, and then I’m snoring and my throat is dry and I’m drooling on myself.”
“You’re sexy when you drool.”
I glare at him, but he just chuckles, rubbing my thigh sweetly and leaning in to press a kiss to my lips — which I return with a half-hearted pucker of my own.
“Who needs wine?” Skyler purrs, coming in through the door right behind Brandon.
A little whimper is all the answer I give, but it’s enough, and Skyler hands me a damn sippy cup full of Sauvignon blanc.
I begrudgingly take the first sip, but feel marginally better afterward.
“I figured the nap wasn’t happening,” she remarks, climbing into bed next to me. She snuggles in under the covers and leans her back against the headboard. “Are you sore?”
“Yes. And irritable.”
“No, really?”
I give her a flat look.
Skyler smiles, patting my arm and sharing a glance with Brandon before she says, “You’re sad, babe. And it’s okay to be sad.”
That permission nearly breaks me, and I sniff, looking down at my bright orange sippy cup. “I just can’t stop thinking about my life without pole.”
“You’re going to pole again,” Brandon says quickly. “You heard Doctor Long after your surgery. He said once you get through these two months of recovery, you can start up at PT, and there’s no reason you can’t eventually get back to pole.”
“Except he also said my shoulder will never be the same again,” I remind him. “And that I may never get the full strength I had back. And that I might injure myself further.”
“Only if you don’t take recovery and PT seriously,” Brandon argues.
“Wait,” Skyler chimes in, brows popping up. “You really had a Doctor Long?” She smirks, waggling her eyebrows.
I snicker, too, which earns us an eye roll from Brandon.
“I’m just saying, we will get you the best physical therapy money can buy,” Brandon promises me, and he waits until I look at him, until I’m watching as he brings my knuckles to his lips and presses a soft kiss to them. “We will get you back to pole, okay? I promise.”
I close my eyes on a long exhale when he leans up to kiss my forehead, and I wish I could rewind to even two weeks ago, to when we were coming off the most perfect summer of my life. I wish I could go back to coming home and being ravaged by him before I could even drop my purse, wish I could go back to events at work being my biggest concern, go back to knowing at the end of every day, the pole studio was waiting for me to decompress.
“I love you,” Brandon whispers, and I don’t miss how Skyler smiles shyly down at her lap at the words of affirmation.
“I love you, too,” I say, but it comes out more of a whine that makes Brandon smile.
His phone buzzes from his pocket, and when he pulls it out, he frowns at the screen, standing. “Excuse me,” he says simply, and then he’s out the door and answering the call.
I turn to Skyler immediately with a dramatic sigh. “Tell me about your life so I can forget about mine,” I beg, taking another sip from my cup.
“Hey, go easy on that,” she says. “You can’t have more than one glass with the pain meds you’re on now.”
I flick her off.
“My life is boring,” she says with a shrug and a smile at my gesture, but the smile slips quickly. “Rounding out my final classes, recruitment is over. I’ve been focusing on new member events so we can get the pledges lined up with their new Bigs. Cassie has her eyes on this one girl, so I’ve been trying to get them in the same places as much as I can.”
“Little matchmaker, huh?”
“Something like that,” she muses. “I’ve been talking to my guidance counselor about what to do next, whether I should go for my MBA or start applying for jobs, or maybe formulate a business plan and try to get investors to get started.”
“Don’t you have enough money to do it on your own from winning second place in that tournament?”
He face goes ashen, but she doesn’t miss a beat. “Sure, but I think I’d like to have at least one other partner in on the project with me.”
She doesn’t have to say so for me to know she was originally planning on that partner being Kip.
“Have you talked to him?” I ask softly.
Again, no name needed. She shakes her head, eyes on her wine glass.
“Do you want to?”
“Of course, I do,” she says, finally lifting her eyes to mine. “I miss him every second of every minute of every hour of every day.”
Her eyes gloss with the words, and I frown, reaching over to grab her wrist. “So call him.”
Skyler shakes her head, sniffing away the tears that hadn’t quite formed yet. “No. I know it may not make sense to anyone else, and maybe it looks like stubborn pride.” She pauses. “Hell, maybe it is stubborn pride. But he still doesn’t see it. He still doesn’t understand what he did wrong, how badly he hurt me. He apologized, sure, but he doesn’t even know what to apologize for. He’s blind to Natalia’s true motives, blind to how he walked right into her trap, blind to how he put me behind everything else in his life and expected me to be fine with it.” She shrugs. “He’s sorry he lost me, but if he doesn’t even understand why he did, then what would I be walking into if I just brushed this under the rug and said okay?”
My frown intensifies because she’s got a point I can’t really argue with.
I open my mouth to at least attempt to ramble through some sort of positivity speech when there’s a soft rap of knuckles on the doorframe.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Brandon says, and the look on his face makes me sit up a little straighter. “Um… you have a visitor.”
If it was one of the girls, they would have just plowed right in by now. And if it was someone from the office, Brandon likely would have told them I’d see them next week when I came back. So I just answer with a confused frown, not sure what to say.
And when he moves to the side and Bo Hán walks under the arch, I drop my sippy cup, thankful for the child-proof lid as it hits my leg and bounces off to the flo
or.
“Holy shit,” Skyler says, popping up first with a wide grin. “Bo?! Oh, my God!”
Skyler runs to Bo, who’s smiling uncomfortably, her eyes flicking to me and then back to Skyler just in time to catch her crushing hug. I don’t miss the relief that washes over her the longer Skyler squeezes her, and the way her shoulders relax, her smile widening.
“I haven’t seen you in forever! How are you?” Skyler asks, pulling back to frame her arms. “You look amazing.”
And she does. Her sleek, sable hair is short and edged at her chin, her warm brown eyes highlighted with gold, lashes long and sleek. She’s as petite as I remember from college, only now she seems to stand taller, more confident, like she’s not hiding a damn thing about herself anymore. The long-sleeve, white, lace top she’s wearing buttons all the way from her chin to the hem of the little black flare skirt she’s paired with it, and though the heels she’s wearing are slight, they’re strappy and bright red and just enough pop of color to tell you you’re in the presence of a bad bitch.
“I’m good,” Bo says, tucking her hair behind her ear. Her eyes dart to mine then, and she holds my gaze, a soft smile spreading on her smooth, peony pink lips.
Skyler looks between us, then at Brandon — who looks majorly confused and marginally concerned — before saying, “Brandon, can you come help me with something in the kitchen?”
She doesn’t wait for his response before looping her arm through his and steering him down the hall. He gives me a questioning glance, but I smile and blow him a kiss, hoping it soothes whatever concerns he might have.
And then I’m alone with Bo Hán.
In the bedroom I share with my boyfriend.
Bo swallows, stepping inside a little bit as her eyes take in the length of me. “Do I want to know what happened to put you in that hardcore of an arm sling?”
“I fell off the pole,” I say, a little breathlessly, a little too quickly. I just keep blinking over and over like she’ll disappear with the next opening of my eyes.
Greek: A New Adult College Romance (Palm South University Book 7) Page 8
