by KV Rose
He pulls back, his eyes on mine. I grab his thigh, squeezing the hard muscles below his swimsuit. I trail my hand up higher, palm his hard cock, running my hand along the length of it.
“I’m sorry,” he says suddenly, fingering me slowly, teasingly. “I’m sorry for hurting you. The night at the party.”
I remember how his fingers curled up inside of me. How it hurt when Alex pulled me off.
It’s so different to this Eli now, being gentle and slow.
“Why?” I ask him, breathless. “Why did you do it?”
He kisses me again, licking the seam of my mouth as he pulls back. I rub my hand over his cock, wanting him inside of me so bad.
So fucking bad.
“I was pissed with Alex. It had nothing to do with you.”
I want to ask why he was mad, but instead, something else comes out. “I like it rough.”
He smiles in the dark. “Me too.”
And then he pulls out of me, stands to his feet and offers me his hand.
I already miss the feel of him inside of me and I’m disoriented, throbbing between my thighs. “What are you—”
He doesn’t wait for an answer. He grabs my arm and hauls me to my feet, my bikini barely hanging onto my hip. Before I can adjust it, he leads me to the shallow end of the pool.
My heart races, my skin crawling. “Eli…”
He glances back at me as we stand at the top of the steps. “You want to experience everything right?”
I bite my lip, my eyes flicking between the water and him. Slowly, I nod.
“Then let me hurt you. Just a little.”
20
Eli
The underwater lights in the pool and the moon overhead give me plenty of light to see by, so I catch the flicker of fear in her eyes as I lead her into the cold water.
“Eli,” she says again, “what are you—”
“You trust me?”
She looks up from the water to stare at me, her aqua-green eyes wide. “I—”
I yank her in after me and the cold water nearly steals my breath. She yelps, throwing her arms around my shoulders and clinging to me like she’s going to drown.
“What the hell are you—”
“A girl died in here, huh, Za?” I set her on the underwater steps at the entrance to the pool, the water to her waist. I sink down to my knees and she’s still grabbing at me even though she’s well above the two fucking feet of this part of the pool.
“Your girlfriend.” Her words are bitter. It makes me laugh.
I part her knees, bring my thumbs to her inner thighs under the water. She’s shivering, and she doesn’t let go of me.
“She wasn’t,” I inform her. “But we’re going to play a game.”
“What kind of game?”
“A dangerous one.” I rub the inside of her thighs, my thumbs teasing her but never getting close enough. She wiggles on the step of the pool, trying to get me closer as she bites her lip, watching me. “Take off your top.”
She swallows, but reaches behind her to untie the string. She’s so slow about it, I know she’s fucking teasing me, but I don’t care. I wait until it drops from her neck, and then she pulls the last knot free, behind her back.
The scrap of fabric falls away, floating off into the water. She keeps her eyes on me. “What’re you going to do?” she asks me quietly. Trusting me. Waiting.
“I’m going to hold you under.”
She sucks in a breath, her chest rising as she holds it, her nipples puckered with the cold of the water on her lower body, the open air of the night.
“And see if I can get you to come before you…” I smile at her, brushing my thumbs up higher.
She swallows, her eyes fluttering closed for one brief moment.
I remember when Alex stopped me, “She’s nodding off. She’s fucking nodding off.”
But Alex isn’t here, and she’s looking at me again, waiting.
She’s gonna do this.
I’m gonna do this.
It’s a terrible idea, her being high and me being, well, me. And that’s exactly why it’s about to happen.
“Okay?” I ask her.
“This seems like a bad idea.”
Very observant, this girl. “It is.” I push my thumbs up higher and watch her squirm on the step, gripping the sleek metal handrail of the pool.
But she lets me touch her. Stares at me as if she’s waiting.
I’m plenty good at waiting, but I’m kind of done with that tonight. There’ll be more later, but for now, fuck it.
I stop touching her between her thighs, grab her by the throat and push her down, so the back of her head is submerged in water.
She takes a deep breath, her eyes wide, hands gripping the ledge of the stairs on either side of her as she floats horizontal on the second-to-last step.
“Take another breath,” I tell her, still on my knees on the bottom of the steps.
She listens.
And then I push her under.
She’s probably got about thirty, forty seconds before she needs to come up for air. I’ve been toying with her the past half hour, so I know she’s ready. And with the fear, that panic bubbling up inside of her—her eyes are closed tight underwater, her hair floating white around her much like Rihanna’s did—she’s going to be close to the edge.
Fear always brings you closer.
I keep one hand on her throat, holding her down. I straddle her legs, keeping them down, too, and with my free hand I push two fingers into her, circle her clit with my thumb.
She’s still grabbing onto the edge of the stairs, but under the water, she opens her eyes.
I’m leaned over her, sitting on her legs on the steps, but pinning her down with my other hand. I’m looking right at her face as I work my fingers in and out of her, under the water.
I add another finger, three inside of her as I stroke her, my hand cramping with the effort. Do I want her to die?
No.
That’s why I have to work harder.
I do, her legs shaking under my body, but she tries to sit up. Using her hands to push her off the stairs, her chest thrusts against my hold on her but I’m not done. She’s not done. I keep her down.
Her eyes are wide, bubbles coming from her mouth, popping at the surface. She’s panicking, bucking underneath me, but her legs are still shaking, and I can feel her swelling against my fingers.
She’s so close.
She’s still scared though, thrashing under the water, more bubbles streaming from her mouth. She’s freaking out, and if she keeps doing that, she won’t finish.
Fuck.
I roll my eyes, pull my fingers out of her, grab her by the throat and haul her up to a seated position. She gasps for breath, grabbing my arm, trying to pry my fingers from her throat. Her nose is running, and she can barely breathe, her breaths short and shallow and so damn loud.
“Calm down.”
She’s staring at me like I’m a goddamn murderer, digging her nails into my forearm, scratching at my hand. I’ll have claw marks over the clock and skull tattoo on my hand, and shit, the way she’s digging those long nails in, I might be bleeding, too.
She manages to say my name, “Eli,” on a gasp as she tries in vain to pry me off her throat.
I grab her arm, too, and yank her into my lap as I turn to sit on the top step, her between my thighs.
I wrap an arm around her chest, pulling her back against me, wrapping my legs around her thighs so she can’t get up.
“Calm down,” I say against her ear. “Breathe. Trust me.”
She’s still gripping my forearm, but she’s not scratching at me anymore. She tries to slow her breathing, and then she starts to shake in my arms. I can feel her pulse beneath my arm over her chest. It’s erratic, wild and reckless just like her.
“You’re okay,” I tell her, my mouth against her ear.
If Alex walks out here, he might kill us both. I need her to calm the fuck down, because I ne
ed to get off and I want to get her off. And there’s only so much time we have to do that.
“You’re okay, baby girl.”
She takes another deep breath, leaning back against me, still trembling.
“Don’t hurt me,” she tells me, her voice a ragged whisper. “Don’t hurt me.”
“I’m not,” I promise her. “I won’t.”
“Don’t hurt me, Eli.” She’s saying it again, over and over, like a chant or a mantra, like something to keep me from doing it. Like she’s insane.
But she should know people don’t do what you want just because you beg them.
I close my eyes, think about Mom leaving even though I begged. Think about when she walked out the door for the last time.
All the fighting was done.
All the arguments were done.
It was just me and Dad.
I think about when I was held under in a bathtub.
I think about what it was like, not being able to breathe. Knowing if I did, I’d die.
“Don’t hurt me,” she whispers again.
And it’s only then I realize what she’s doing. She doesn’t think I’ll hurt her.
This is part of the game.
“Eli, don’t hurt—”
“Shut the fuck up.” I wrap my arm around her throat, cutting off her words, my eyes flying open. She sucks in a breath, trying to squirm out of my grip, splashing in the shallow water. I glide my free hand down her stomach, and she freezes, not fighting me.
This is what she wants.
I inhale against her neck but all I can smell is fucking chlorine, not her usual dark scent. It kind of pisses me off. But I still kiss her, suck her skin between my teeth. She whimpers, trembling again in my arms.
I cup her between her thighs, then rub my fingers against her clit.
She gasps as I loosen my hold on her throat.
“You like that, baby girl?”
She murmurs, squirming a little on the steps, her ass brushing against my cock.
I rub her faster and she’s panting, her heart pounding in her neck. I can feel it against my arm.
“Come for me, baby,” I tell her. “I want you to come for me.”
And then she grips my forearm, digging her nails in as she gasps, her thighs spread wide as I slip a finger into her as she comes, squeezing around me.
“That’s it, baby girl.” I kiss her neck again as she moans, arching into me. My cock is fucking aching, but I know we don’t have much time left tonight. “Good girl,” I whisper against her ear and she finally stops squirming, catching her breath in my arms.
Slowly, I slide my fingers out of her, then grab her face, twist her head around so she’s looking up at me with wide eyes.
“I like you,” I tell her, my lips moving over hers. “I like you a lot.”
She doesn’t answer me with words. Instead, she twists in my arms. “Move up,” she tells me, her words ragged. “Move up to the top step.” She grabs my cock through my swimsuit, her eyes still on mine.
I do as she says, coming to sit on the top step.
She’s on her knees on the one below it, and she undoes the Velcro on my shorts. “Let me,” she whispers in the dark.
I shift my hips, and she pulls my shorts down to my knees.
She grabs my cock, still keeping her eyes on mine, then she dips her head, taking me in her mouth.
And nothing has ever felt that fucking good.
I thread my fingers through her hair, thinking about her on her knees for Jamal. About Alex coming in and watching.
Alex will forgive her for that shit, because he thinks he’s just biding his time, picking up her pieces until she’s whole again. But he doesn’t see what I see in her. She’s not broken.
She’s not looking for someone to save her.
She’s looking for someone to drown with her.
21
Zara
“You going to the beach party next weekend?” Jax exhales a cloud of smoke on his front porch, the full moon directly in front of us, seeming to hover over Shadow Lakes’ subdivision. I hear the thud of music from a few houses over, just a typical Friday night in Falls Creek.
Jax passes the joint to me and I inhale, closing my eyes at the tang of the sweet smoke in my mouth. I hold it, letting it heat up my lungs, and then exhale through my nose before I pass it back to Jax.
As the smoke dissipates in the air, I shrug. Who knows if Alex will want me to go? All summer, he talked my ear off about this little annual beach party him and Eli host, but he hasn’t mentioned it lately.
We got dinner last night.
Wednesday night, I went home after I gave Eli head, and we saw Alex’s Jeep pulling into their subdivision. I had to duck down in the seat.
I don’t know how I’d go to a beach party with both of them. It’s all I could do last night eating with Alex not to think about Eli’s fingers inside of me.
“You going?” I ask Jax, trying to clear my head.
“Nah,” he answers me after he snubs out the joint in the glass ashtray at his side. “I wasn’t invited. Besides, I don’t really like the beach.”
I turn to stare at him, shocked. “Really?”
He rubs his neck and laughs. “Yeah, really. Sharks and shit? No, thanks.”
I rub my hands down my jeans, looking back up at the moon. “You know we all gotta die someday, right?” I ask him, kind of absentmindedly. As a teenager, it was something that drew me to philosophy, specifically Stoicism. The early Stoics did their best to accept whatever came their way and soldiered on despite their circumstances. Or at least, they tried. Death was one of those big things that was inevitable, and they made their peace with it, living while they could.
I’m not really sure how that shit will serve me when I graduate with a degree in fucking philosophy, but even if I end up in Jax’s basement, I guess I’ll be able to say I really lived life. Or, at least that’s what I’ll tell myself when I pass out in bed alone every night.
“I know, but I don’t wanna die in the belly of a shark,” Jax says with another laugh. “I ain’t Jonah.”
“You wouldn’t be Jonah,” I point out, still staring up at the moon. “Jonah was in a whale.”
Jax cackles in amusement, slapping his knee. He must be high as hell because it really wasn’t that funny. “You’re a trip, Za.”
“Something like that.” I feel my phone vibrating in my pocket but ignore it. Kylie has gone home again, so it isn’t her. Even if it was, I don’t fucking trust her anymore so I’m not fucking texting her.
Could be Mom reminding me, for the millionth time, about the engagement party this Sunday, like I could fucking forget. It isn’t every day your mom gets engaged for the fourth time.
“Why’d you start selling drugs?” I ask Jax quietly, riding my high by staring at the moon as if looking at it long enough will shoot me right up onto its cheesy surface. I stifle my own laugh, because that wasn’t very funny either.
I don’t know why I asked Jax that, but it just kind of came out. Happens when you’re high, I guess.
I can practically feel him shrug beside me. “I’m dyslexic. School was shit. I didn’t really like the idea of working in an office, like Dad. Mom stayed at home and she tried to help me out but…” He pauses and I turn to look at him, see him looking down at his knees, his palms pressed together. “She didn’t have a lot of patience. I think she wanted to be a housewife.” He snorts, shaking his head but not looking up. “Not a stay-at-home mom.”
For some reason, that makes me sad, thinking Jax didn’t feel wanted. But I don’t say anything or move to touch him. I don’t really know if he’d want any comfort anyway. He’s probably mostly over it.
Like I’m mostly over the fact my dad doesn’t really give a damn about me.
“So, I started smoking pot in middle school. Then a buddy of mine’s dad started growing it and in high school we started…” He smiles, looking up at me. “We started distributing it for him,” he tells me
with that same smile on his face, his blue eyes bloodshot. He shrugs. “I dropped out of school in my junior year. I’d made enough money to buy this house a few years later.” He looks really proud of that and it is something to be proud of, but even so, I still feel sad.
He lets out a breath and looks away from me, staring at the sky like I was. I wonder if he wants to go to the moon too.
“You ever wanna do anything else?” I ask him quietly, wondering if someone will be asking me these questions in a few years. Will someone wonder what my future might’ve been, if I’d stopped doing drugs? Because despite what I keep telling myself, about not being an addict, my bank account is depleting and I’ve seriously considered offering to blow Jax in exchange for supply, so… Yeah. I wonder what college student I’ll be talking to in the future, telling them all of my hopes and dreams that never came to be.
Jax sighs. “This is heavy, Za.”
I laugh a little, run my hands through my hair. “Yeah, sorry, I don’t know. Must be the full moon.”
He nudges me with his shoulder, and I look over at him. “Don’t be sorry,” he tells me earnestly. “I don’t think either one of us imagined being this when we grew up.”
I look down at my hands. My bitten nails, chipped polish that I never fixed. At least Jax is making a living at this. I’m just fucking everything up, left and right.
“Anyway,” he continues, before I can feel too down on myself, “I guess when I was a kid, I saw movies with men in suits, like bankers and shit. Saw those law shows on TV my mom always watched. I mean,” he snorts, “I never wanted to be a lawyer. But I thought I’d grow up and wear a suit every day to work too. But then I realized most of those suits spent all day in an office and that didn’t really sit right with me.” He sighs. “When I fell into dealing, it just…well, to be honest, it just fit.” He scrubs a hand over the back of his neck. “Just wish it was legal, ya know?”
I laugh a little, running my hand over my thigh. “Yeah, that’d be nice. If using paid the bills, that’d be cool too.”