“What about you? Where are you from?”
“Here,” I said. “I mean, Bishop’s Landing.”
Just the thought of it brought it all back, what tonight was supposed to be. What I was supposed to do.
I’d like to jump out a window, I thought, but when he laughed I realized I said it out loud. I stepped back again, further into my shadows. The flask was a mistake. Leaving the party was a mistake. I had to keep my head down and swallow my screams, there was no alternative.
“Well,” he said quietly. Carefully. “If what’s coming through the door is bad enough, the jumping is not so hard.”
“I should go back in,” I said, turning towards the door, but not moving. I took a deep breath, and I heard the snick of a lighter in the shadows. The acrid smell of a cigarette drifted over my shoulder. I didn’t smoke, but I suddenly wanted one with a bone deep desire.
I could hear the scrape of his shoes as he stood up. I imagined him stretching out of the shadows and into the golden light spilling out from the door. I could feel him closer. Warmth against my back. If I turned, I would see him. And just how badly I wanted to see him was a warning.
This man with his charm and accent and flask – was not for me. Not ever.
My heart pounded against my ribcage, and I didn’t turn. Coward to the very end. Or perhaps I was just so used to giving up what I wanted. Even the small things. Especially the small things.
They were all I had left, and I was giving them up one crumb at a time.
“Who is coming through your door?” he asked, and I put a hand over my mouth to stop my sob. “Princess?”
“You going to beat someone up for me?” I asked, my voice wrecked.
“If it would help. Even if it won’t.”
Who could I set this man against? Which person inside that house if left beaten and bloody would free me from this situation. But even if that door was suddenly open to me…would I take it? Would I walk out? Would I leave? Risk poverty. Humiliation? My sister…
“I’m fine,” I said, straightening my shoulders. “What about you? Maybe I should beat someone up for you.”
“It doesn’t work like that. I’m the one who fixes problems.”
“Me too,” I said. “I am the one who fixes problems, too.”
I turned, thinking I was ready for the sight of him. Or had some kind of expectation about what he might look like. I expected handsome. Smiling and charming. Tall, maybe. I was surround by handsome men quite a lot.
But I was not braced for him.
He was beautiful. I mean, like inarguably. It was simply fact. A law of nature. Dark hair. Blue eyes like the sky at noon. Dark scruff along his hard, square chin. He wore a tuxedo with the tie pulled loose. An angel kicked out of heaven for the trouble he caused.
There was blood on the collar of his white shirt. Blood from any number of wounds on his face. A black eye. A split lip. A tiny butterfly bandage over a cut on his cheekbone.
He was beautiful, and he was savage.
“What happened to you?” I whispered.
He touched the cut on his lip. “You should see the other guy.”
I stepped forward, drawn by the joke attempt. His eyelashes. The sudden urge to be on a side of kindness. Either side. Any side. Just to experience it however I could. “Who hurt you?”
His eyes snapped to mine, sharp and bright, and my skin prickled. Uncomfortable and aware.
“No one,” he said, ice cold despite the blood on his collar. The black eye and split lip. “Not for a long time.”
I thought he was joking, and I smiled, but his face was resolute. Calm in its strength. He wasn’t joking. He wasn’t being sarcastic. He’s been beaten, but he was telling me it didn’t hurt him.
Like he’d made a choice, and that was that. Pain didn’t matter.
“It’s that easy?” I whispered. Scared in my belly because it was only there that I could acknowledge that I knew what was coming for me was going to hurt.
“No,” he said and his hand, the one with the scar, the one I’d touched, brushed my cheek, his thumb at the edge of my lip. “It’s not easy. It’s very hard. But it’s how you survive.”
His thumb pressed against my lip, and I gasped, my lips parting. I could taste the salt of his skin and everything in me screamed to leave. This wasn’t just foolish, it was dangerous. For him.
For me. Especially for me.
But I couldn’t move. He pressed and pressed until my teeth cut into my lip and it hurt.
It hurt, and he kept pushing.
It hurt, and I stood there. Taking it.
Why was I doing this? Why was he? It felt like a warning and a lesson, and it felt real. Like the grass under my feet. Like the booze in my belly. Not at all like the threats inside that house, whispered and insinuated. The pain, the taste of blood and salt from his finger. The look in his eye willing me to stillness.
So. Real.
“Don’t let them hurt you,” he said.
His words broke the spell and heart pounding, I stepped back but I didn’t leave. Like a fool, I stayed.
He didn’t have to be a Morelli to be trouble. Or to get me in trouble.
This man was lethal. And so attractive it hurt. It actually hurt.
“Who are you?” I asked, licking the blood off my lip. Hoping for a lingering taste of him.
He shook his head. “I am no one.”
Someone came to stand in the doorway, breaking up the light, casting a shadow across the stranger’s beautiful face. Both of us turned to look.
“Jesus, Princess,” my Irishman whispered when he saw who was standing there and he must have realized who I was.
“Poppy?” It was the Senator, and I went cold. Tried so hard not to, but head to toe the chill settled over me. “Everything all right?”
“I’m fine,” I said and smiled to prove it. He always believed my smiles. Everyone did. They were very good smiles. Or maybe he just didn’t care.
“We’re about to make the announcement,” the Senator said, and he summoned me with his fingers. A kind of snapping thing like you’d do with a dog, and I told myself, like I had for a while now, that it wasn’t personal. It was actually the opposite of personal. He treated everyone like that. That that made me feel better wasn’t something I was actually proud of. But I was seeking comfort from any corner.
“I’ll be in in a second,” I said. I wanted to say goodbye to this stranger. To these quiet moments of rest.
Or maybe I just wanted to pull my leash as taut as possible, to see how far it would stretch.
“Poppy?” The Senator smiled when he said my name, but the steel was there. That terrifying sharpness. Turns out my leash didn’t stretch far at all.
“You heard her,” the Irishman said from the shadows. “She needs a second.”
“I’m sorry, who are you?” Jim stepped into the light; he was smiling but it was the razor’s edge. Jim was blonde and blue eyed. He wore glasses that made him look smart. He worked out just enough that the suits he wore looked good.
Everything about him inspired comfort and confidence.
Voters loved him.
I’d never been so scared of someone in my life.
“I’m coming,” I said, and I stepped into the light with Jim Maywell the junior senator of New York who was 28 years older than me, and at midnight, we were announcing that I would be his wife.
Jim grabbed my hand too hard. But I expected it, and made my hand as small as I could in his. There was a trick to it funneling my fingers, so he couldn’t grind the bones together. I’d learned that fast. I wondered if that would be interesting on my application to the catering company.
Experience: eating canapes off trays and mitigating the pain my fiancé wanted to inflict on my body.
We stepped off the small patio into the doorway with the sound of the party filtering through the walls.
Don’t do it, I told myself. Don’t look. He’s not for you. Not ever.
But of course I
couldn’t stop myself, and I looked back over my shoulder, but the Irishman was gone.
Nothing was left of him but the taste of blood in my mouth.
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Red & White
1
Snow
The man’s head is heavy in my lap as I brush his hair. Scarlett is next to me working on his beard. She’d muttered something about beard oil when she’d first started, but between my hair products and hers, she’s managed to tame his beard into something, well…something sexy. It’s only a little longer than his jawline, and very neatly trimmed. With it smoothed and groomed, it’s easy to see his strong cheekbones and the line of his squared jaw. And his lips! I can’t resist touching them when Scarlett sits back on her heels to admire her handiwork.
She giggles as she watches me touch his mouth.
“What?” I ask, feeling heat rush to my face. I start brushing his longish hair again.
“Nothing, really,” she says. “I feel like we’re at a slumber party or something. Except instead of playing with each other’s hair, we’re playing with a complete stranger’s.”
An irresistibly handsome stranger, I think, and then I decide that I must have some kind of fairy godmother following me around and granting me wishes, because not only do I have a hot man’s head cradled in my lap, but I’m next to the girl I’ve been longing for since the day we both started working as GTAs for Professor Stoller. I look up at Scarlett from underneath my lashes, my body aching to touch every part of her. Her little snub nose and her pouting mouth painted a shade of red that would send men, women, and bulls charging at her.
The first time I saw her, her lips had been that same shade of red. Scarlett, like her name. She’d been in scuffed motorcycle boots and torn jeans, a plain white T-shirt slumping off one shoulder and knotted at her waist, and she’d been sitting cozily in another girl’s lap—straddling her, actually—playing with the girl’s hair while she regaled the girl with some hilarious story and the group around them laughed.
“Who’s she?” I’d asked my friend Camille. I’d only just started the graduate program at UT-Austin that week, and I hardly knew anyone, except for Camille, who’d gone to my high school down in Houston.
“Oh, her,” Camille said, her voice lowering to the I’ve got tea register. “That’s Scarlett Rosenthal. She’s slept with basically everyone in Austin.”
“That’s a statistical impossibility,” I murmured, glued to the sight of Scarlett’s sleek, denim-clad thighs sprawling over the other girl’s. I felt heat everywhere on my body, so much heat that I was sure it would sizzle against Camille’s skin.
“Well, she doesn’t do them one at a time, if you get what I’m saying,” Camille whispered, pulling back and giving me a raised eyebrow.
“I don’t think I do,” I admitted, confused.
“She’s poly,” Camille said with the smugness of someone with good gossip. “She likes threesomes, foursomes, that kind of thing. Guys and girls, wild stuff. Way too wild for you, Miss Snowdrop Lewis.”
I’d looked away then, a bit embarrassed at how obvious my attraction to this Scarlett Rosenthal was. It was no secret to my friends that I identified as bisexual…but it was also no secret that I’ve only ever had one boyfriend and had spent the last year living like a nun.
I couldn’t have found a worse girl to start falling for than the rowdy and shamelessly carnal Scarlett. But fall for her I did, doomed from the moment I saw her, even more doomed from the moment we were assigned the same freshman art history course to TA in. But I was so agonizingly shy. All I wanted was to tell her I needed to know what her neck tasted like, but all that ever came out was stammering small talk.
Somehow, she still wanted to spend time with me, talk to me, and over the course of the semester, she managed to become both my closest friend and the sole thing dancing behind my eyelids when I touched my pussy alone in bed at night.
When she invited me up here for part of the winter break, she’d added, “It’ll just be the two of us, Snowdrop.” And then she’d put her fingertips against the place where my heartbeat thudded against my chest, right above the teardrop curve that swelled and sang for her touch.
I knew what she meant, I knew what agreeing to come would mean for the both of us, and I assented eagerly. Austin was crowded—between roommates and classes and other grad students and the inevitable amount of drinking and concert-going that came with being a grad student in art—there was never a moment between the two of us that could really turn sexy. And short of her showing up on my doorstep in the rain, being holed up in a snowy cabin in the middle of nowhere felt like the next best thing, even if I would be the only black person for untold miles around and I would have to make Scarlett walk with me inside every rural gas station whenever we stopped along the way.
But after I agreed to come, I added in a brave rush, “It doesn’t always have to be only the two of us, you know. I want—I mean, I’ve never—I’d like to try—” I broke off, totally tangled up in my own inexperience and awkwardness.
She gave me her signature Scarlett smile, the one with her tongue curled temptingly against the edge of her top teeth, and said, “You’d like to have more than two in a bed, you mean?”
I nodded eagerly.
“That’s like four-hundred-level sex,” she said after a minute of thinking and running her tongue along her teeth. “Let’s get you past your 101s first. Walk before you can run and all that.”
But here we are now, with a beautiful male sprawled out on the floor in front of us, and I’m ready to run. Maybe Scarlett and I didn’t get much past kissing, but it’s hard not to feel ready for four-hundred-level sex anyway.
Slow down, Snow, I chide myself. The man isn’t even awake. There’s no wedding band on his hand, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t already got someone or just plain wouldn’t be interested. And even if he is interested, it doesn’t mean that his body is ready for fun after near human-popsicle levels of cold.
So instead, I focus on his hair. I finish brushing it, and then I start stroking his scalp, enjoying the feeling of his silky, soft hair moving through my fingers. I think I could pet him this way for hours, but maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe it’s better to let him rest.
Except then I stop petting him and he growls.
Growls. Like a bear.
Surprised, I start petting him again and the growl settles back down into his chest. His eyes remain closed the entire time and his breathing doesn’t change.
Scarlett giggles again. “Did he just growl at you?”
“I guess so,” I laugh, testing it again by lifting my hand from his hair.
Another growl. Deeper this time.
“Shh,” I soothe, running my fingers along his scalp again. “Shh. I won’t stop, don’t fret.”
The growl slowly tapers off and he seems at peace again, except Scarlett starts giggling uncontrollably.
“Snow,” she whispers. “Look.”
I look at where she tilts her head and can’t stop my own little gasp and giggle.
He’s hard. In fact, he’s so hard that his erection is tenting the blanket.
Scarlett sighs. “I’d pay lots of real American dollars to see that thing.” She pats his shoulder in a resigned, I’m too ethical to take advantage motion. “Maybe when he wakes up, he’ll want to thank us in orgasms.”
He stirs with another growl, his eyes behind his eyelids moving restlessly, and he manages to mostly kick off his blanket. Scarlett reaches for it to pull it back up, but not before we both see that the plum-like tip of his cock is rising a good few inches above the waistband of his boxer briefs.
“Shit, he’s big,” Scarlett breathes. “Look at that thing!”
I am looking, and she’s not wrong. It’s long and thick as hell, with two tantalizingly plump veins snaking down the underside. At the tip of the wide crown, pre-cum beads up like dew.
We yank the blanket back up to his chin, bu
t I’m already breathing hard. So is Scarlett, her pupils wide and her lips parted.
“He’s probably fine here,” she says breathlessly. “You and I could—”
I’m already scrambling to my feet, all the lust in my cunt and belly and breasts throbbing like a sore tooth. “Yes, we could.”
She reaches for my hand, and I think finally, finally, finally I’m about to have this need eased when the stranger awakes with a jolt so vicious and sudden that it has us both jumping back.
2
Liam
I’m dead. I know I have to be dead, because I’m looking at two sweet angels in front of me, and I vaguely recall hazy snippets of their merry chatter and bright laughter. The feeling of small hands petting me, warming me. Tending to me.
It felt like heaven.
I blink up at them now, the heel of my palm going to my dick out of sheer habit to press against it, and then one of them—the white girl, with lips painted the color of sin—giggles.
And I realize there probably isn’t morning wood in heaven. Not that it’s fucking morning, judging by the dark windows and the dim room, filled with the light from two small lamps and the glow of a crackling fire.
I stretch, feeling aches and pinpricks everywhere, and remember in fits and spurts the nightmare leading up to this moment. The truck breaking down. Having to choose between freezing to death in the truck or freezing to death searching for the nearest cabin along the way.
Seeing the warm dance of firelight through a haze of snow and trees…
I shake my body like a dog and lumber to my feet, tucking my eager cock away as I do. No need to scare the angels, especially after they’ve been so kind to me.
“Hello,” I rumble. My voice is deeper and rougher than normal, no doubt from the three or four hours of inhaling frozen air and snow. “I’m Liam.”
They glance at each other. I realize that they’re holding hands, that they’re standing as if they were frozen mid-motion and about to leave.
“I’m Scarlett,” announces the girl with lips the color of sin. “This is Snow.”
Once Upon a Dream Page 10
