Total pages in book: 187
Estimated words: 188957 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 945(@200wpm)___ 756(@250wpm)___ 630(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 188957 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 945(@200wpm)___ 756(@250wpm)___ 630(@300wpm)
His jaw moves under my palms. His nostrils flare as he says, his tone low and belligerent, “So what, you’ll let me do it then? You’ll give up your virginity as your birthday gift to me?”
Yes.
My heartbeats explode at the thought. At what I’m feeling right now.
All these tumultuous emotions.
All this longing and these urges that I’ve never felt before.
I don’t know what to do with them. These feelings.
I mean, I’m in love with someone else and now I want…
Oh God.
Oh my God.
No, no, no. I can’t.
And even as these conflicting feelings are filling every space in my body, my fingers won’t stop touching him. My fingers travel up and touch that bump on his nose. “I… I’m…”
He shudders at my touch.
Violently and savagely.
So much so that his forehead finally drops over mine and he growls, “Time’s running out, Poe.”
I roll my forehead against his. “M-Mr. Marshall, I —”
He shudders again. “Will you or won’t you? Will you let me send you to him or not? Will you let me send you to your punk-ass boyfriend with your thighs bloody and dripping so you can tell him? So you can tell him who got there first.”
“I’m —”
“Who got in there first. Who got in your pussy first,” he growls.
My channel spasms, making a mess of my panties. My heart spasms too.
Because I know what he’s asking.
He’s asking what he did four years ago.
And back then I was this fourteen-year-old girl who was so angry at him, so hurt by his actions that she just wanted to hurt him back, and so I’d refused. Now though, I’m an eighteen-year-old girl who is still angry and hurt, yes, but I find that I can’t hurt him back.
I don’t know how or why this happened but it did. Maybe it happened in the past week when I’d show him my designs and he’d give me this space, this safe space, to talk about them. Maybe it happened when I realized how much he believes in me and my work that I never even thought was work.
Or maybe it happened when he made me that tea.
Things changed.
I was wrong before.
They have changed between us, and so I have to give him the answer he wants.
I press my fingers on his face, his sharp bones cutting into my palms as I whisper, “Alaric. Alaric got in my pussy first.”
His eyelids flutter closed, almost as if in relief.
A gusty breath escapes him. Even his shoulders loosen up a little.
And I dig my fingers harder on his face, relieved myself.
So relieved that my four-year-long stupid stubbornness is over.
But the hard part is only beginning.
Because I’m going to have to tell him. I’m going to have to confess what I did. So I begin, “I won’t though.”
“What?”
“I won’t tell him. I won’t tell anyone what we do in here,” I say, shaking my head. “What you do to me. I can’t. Because Alaric, I —”
“Doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose though?”
“What?”
He studies my face for a second, his eyes shimmering.
With something mysterious.
But then it goes away and instead, a shutter falls in them. It falls on his face as well.
And in the next second, he moves back.
I don’t even know how it happens.
Because I was all wrapped around him. I was touching him and holding him close with my body.
But now he’s standing at a distance — not so much where I can’t see him without my glasses but still at a point where there’s no touch between us — looking all aloof and harsh.
Untouched.
As if my fingers weren’t feeling him, tracing his skin, his face, reveling in it, after four long years.
“That’s the whole purpose of this, isn’t it?” he says, his tone strangely formal and cold.
“Purpose of what?” I ask, somehow having enough presence of mind to close my thighs and push down my skirt.
Not that he glances at my actions. His eyes — devoid of anything really — are planted on me.
“This whole charade,” he explains. “Your camera.”
At this, I once again think that I’m falling. My stomach bottoms out and my heart tilts and pitches. But in reality, I’m still sitting there, on his desk, my hands back to gripping the edge of it.
“W-what?”
“I’m assuming showing it to people is a part of it,” he says, his voice low but again like his eyes, devoid of any real emotion. “The purpose of planting the camera.”
“H-how…”
“How did I find out?” He guesses correctly. “You’re not as smart as you think you are. Neither are your friends.”
I slide down the desk then. I’m not sure if it’s the right thing to do because as soon as my feet touch the ground, my knees buckle. But I have to.
I have to stand and bridge this three-step gap between us.
But his next words stop me.
“And you’re not the first girl to try to make a fool out of me.” Then, “Although I do have to say that your mother was a better actress than you are.”