ECSTASY

by KV Rose

  I stand between his legs, yank down the zipper.

  He adjusts his position, letting me pull down his pants and his boxers, to his knees.

  I can’t get any further than that before my hand is wrapped around his dick, and I lean over, my mouth on the head of his cock. He tastes so fucking good, so fucking hard and soft at once, my fingers barely touching, circled around him.

  I stroke him while I suck on the tip and he groans, his fingers in my hair.

  “Fuck, Zara.” He doesn’t move his hips, just lets me suck him how I want to, and in this moment, I’ve never wanted to do anything more.

  I try to deep throat him, which has always been a fucking challenge. And just as I think it’s too much, just as I think I’m going to choke on him, he shoves my head down and my eyes water as he hits the back of my throat.

  I try to jerk my head back up, but his grip tightens in my hair.

  I dig my nails into his thigh, and he hisses but still doesn’t let me go. I’m gagging on him, but no sounds are coming out. Everything seems to be going gray, saliva dripping from my mouth to the base of his cock.

  My stomach tightens.

  He’s done this before, but I can’t quite shake the feeling that maybe he’s paying me back for Jamal. Maybe we aren’t done with that little standoff. Maybe I’m a fucking idiot.

  But then, when everything starts to turn black around the edges, he lifts my head up by my hair, all the way off him. Drool spills down my chin as I lick my lips and he stares at me, a conceited little smirk on his face.

  “You’re so perfect,” he tells me. He caresses the back of my head and my eyes flutter closed.

  He’s perfect.

  Alex.

  He’s not bad.

  He’s good.

  He runs his thumb over my swollen lips. The gesture is almost tender.

  He’s so good.

  “Now get up here and ride my dick, princess,” he commands me, one hand curling around the base of his cock.

  He doesn’t need to tell me twice.

  I stand to my feet, spin around.

  He runs his hands up and down my sides. “I think I’m going to like this,” he whispers against my spine.

  I brace myself on his forearm, reaching between us to grab his cock and position him underneath me. He helps me get both feet up, my knees on the bed as I kneel over him.

  Slowly, I lower myself down, feeling the sting of his width as he enters me, and I stretch around him.

  “You’re so fucking tight, princess,” he whispers, gathering my hair in his hand, pulling it away from my neck as he kisses my shoulder.

  I wince, but I want him all.

  Every inch of him.

  Fisting my hands in his sheets, I lower myself all the way down.

  “Alex,” I moan his name even before I start fucking him.

  He kisses my back again, then lets go of my hair, his hands dropping to my sides.

  “Fuck me, Zara,” he tells me, grabbing my waist and helping me do just that. “And make it good, because last time I didn’t get to fucking finish.”

  My thighs burn as I bounce on his cock, his hands helping guide me. It’s so fucking worth it. I tilt my head up, close my eyes. The feel of my hair grazing my low back makes me flush with confidence. The feel of Alex stretching me, filling me, the sound of his rapid breaths, his low groans makes me feel sexy.

  I run my hands through my hair, close my eyes as I focus on the feel of him inside of me.

  Sex has never felt this good.

  I’m going to come, and I don’t even need to touch myself.

  I’m going to fucking come all over his cock and he’s going to finish inside of me and in the moment, that’s all I want.

  Maybe that’s all I’ve ever wanted. Maybe I’m just really high, but I don’t care.

  I don’t care.

  I can’t stop the moan that escapes my lips, and I don’t want to.

  “Fuck, baby,” Alex says. “You feel so good. You sound so fucking good.”

  I moan louder, all of my nerves tight and taut and ready for me to just fucking explode. I feel so safe here in his lap, with him inside of me, his hands on my hips as I ride him.

  And just as I’m about to throw my head back, just as his brow comes to my shoulder, his groans telling me he’s almost there, too, I see the doorknob to his room twist.

  So slowly.

  So slowly that maybe it isn’t really turning. Maybe the door isn’t really being pushed open, just as Alex is moaning my name, just as I feel him tightening inside of me, maybe that isn’t—

  All the air leaves my lungs, and the door does open, just a crack, and Eli’s eyes connect with mine.

  But I can’t stop it.

  I can’t stop it, and I’m coming all over Alex as I hold Eli’s gaze, until I can’t. Until I have to close my eyes, Alex’s hands on my breasts as we slow, panting. Breathing. Feeling.

  And when I open my eyes again, the door is closed, and Eli is gone.

  23

  Eli

  Kaitlyn’s fingers trail down my chest, her mouth against my neck as I stare up at the dark ceiling of my room, one hand on my stomach, the other by my side.

  The music is so loud downstairs, there’s no way I’m going to be able to sleep. But even if it was quiet, I can’t stop thinking about her.

  It’s impossible to stop fucking thinking about her.

  Wednesday night, after we got each other off, I wanted to beg her to stay. I wanted her to stay in bed with me. Sleep with me. I wanted her all over me.

  Fuck what Alex thought.

  He doesn’t deserve her. He’s lied to her. Kept things from her. He doesn’t even know her. Not like I do.

  I fist my hands by my sides.

  “Get off me.”

  Kaitlyn stiffens, her lips still on my throat, her fingers still grazing my chest. I can feel where every inch of her body connects with every inch of mine and I can’t stand it.

  I need her to get off me.

  She sucks in a breath. “What?” She sounds offended.

  I don’t bother repeating myself. I sit up abruptly and she crawls backward on the bed, holding up the white sheet to cover her chest as if I didn’t just fuck her sixty seconds ago.

  I don’t bother looking at her as she stumbles off the bed, picking her clothes up from my floor. It’s dark in here anyway. Not much to look at.

  I run my hand through my hair, lean my head against the headboard at my back as Kaitlyn huffs and stomps around as she gets dressed, clearly pissed.

  I was surprised she came up to my room with me so easily. She’s not a cheerleader, but I thought she and Rihanna were friends. They were always hanging out with each other at the house on the weekends. Shows how much I know about the inner workings of girls.

  I close my eyes, and Mom’s eyes flash in my mind.

  Green.

  They were so green.

  Looking up at them through the bath water, they were brighter than usual. Things are usually murky underwater. Dim. But not her eyes. Not then.

  This is why I don’t fucking sleep.

  I open my eyes to clear the memory.

  “Have a great night, Eli,” Kaitlyn snarls at me, but she doesn’t open the door.

  I wish she’d open the damn door.

  “Yeah. You too.”

  She sighs again. Loudly. “I thought Alex was the asshole.”

  I think about Alex shoving Zara onto the kitchen counter. I think about him pushing that bottle between her teeth. I think about how I wanted to break it over his head.

  My thoughts shift to last fall.

  How he got hammered because his dad cheated on his mom, again. I think about how he followed that girl upstairs.

  “He is,” I assure Kaitlyn. “Close the door on your way out.”

  That does the trick. I watch as she storms out, slamming the door so hard the white model Trans Am on my nightstand slides into a glass of water, making a high-pitched sound that makes
my skin crawl.

  I stretch out my hand, without looking, to steady it and my fingers curl around the cool metal car. I rise to my feet and head to my desk on the opposite side of the room from my bed. I sit down, flip on the little black lamp, and tap the keyboard on my laptop.

  The browser is already open, cars for sale in Falls Creek on my screen.

  I grab my noise-cancelling headphones and slip those on, turn up Feel You Out, and start scrolling through cars, first checking out an old Corolla that would be a good daily if I wanted to spare the 370Z a few miles.

  But I’m not really seeing the dark green paint, gone pale from the sun. I only just notice the rust on the side of the driver’s door. I’m barely paying attention.

  All I can see is her face as she came on Alex’s dick.

  I press my thumb to my mouth and bite the skin hard enough to bleed. The taste of iron fills my mouth, and I think about her blood. I wonder if she’d let me lick it from her thigh.

  I wonder what it tastes like.

  Sweeter than mine.

  That’s all I know. It’s definitely sweeter than mine.

  24

  Zara

  When I open my eyes, I’m standing up.

  I’m standing up, and for a second, I can’t move. I’m paralyzed, and everything is dark and it’s so quiet. It’s so fucking quiet that I don’t know where I am. I’m not in Alex’s house.

  This can’t be his house.

  This is not a party.

  This is like hell.

  I sense something looming in the shadows, something coming closer, the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. Something is going to get me, and I can’t move. I can’t scream. I can barely even breathe.

  I want to clamp a hand over my mouth.

  I want to turn around. I want to scream.

  Run.

  It’s getting closer and everything is so dark and so quiet except this thing.

  “Zara. Zara, wake up.”

  I flinch, my eyes flying open, and I stumble back into someone’s warm body. I open my mouth to scream, but a hand comes over my mouth.

  “Shh,” a voice says in my ear. “Shh, baby girl. It’s me. It’s Eli.”

  Slowly, like binoculars coming into focus, I see the room, and it isn’t Alex’s. It isn’t the one I fell asleep in.

  It’s bigger, and it’s shrouded in shadows. There’s a bed in front of me, a desk to my left with a dimly lit laptop screen. Is that a car?

  There’s a door between the wall of the desk and the bed and I think it’s to a bathroom. I think I see white tile beyond it. And the floor beneath my feet is cold.

  But Eli’s hand over my mouth is so warm.

  With another little jolt, I realize his body is pressed against every inch of mine.

  I open my mouth to speak and he must know I’m not going to scream because he drags his hand over my lips, my chin, down my throat, then brushes back my hair off my shoulder.

  The words I was going to speak are stolen from me. Hijacked by the feel of him.

  I’m in a tank top, and he slides his finger under one strap, pulling it down. His mouth touches my skin, warm and wet and so soft. His other arm is wrapped around me, fingers digging into my waist as he holds me to him.

  “Why did you come here?” he asks me. I can feel his every breath against me.

  I realize I’ve been holding my own breath and I exhale, slowly, trying to will my pulse to calm. My head to clear.

  Why did I come here?

  He drags his bottom lip over my shoulder, toward my neck. I tilt my head to the side, giving him better access. I shouldn’t…

  “Talk to me, Zara. Why did you come here?” His mouth trails up my neck, just underneath my ear.

  “I don’t—I don’t know.”

  He slides the hand on my waist lower, his fingers gliding under the material of my tank top until his skin is on mine and I feel a fire light in my core. It’s hard to stay standing, hard not to sway here in his arms.

  “What did I…I don’t remember—”

  He kisses that hollow behind my ear, and I can’t think. I can’t do anything but feel him. His mouth, his fingers on my skin. His erection against my back. He’s so hard.

  He’s so hard for me.

  “You don’t remember?” he teases me, his voice low but rough. Playful but…not.

  I don’t remember. I fell asleep with Alex, after we…after Eli saw… “You watched us.”

  He nuzzles his nose just below my ear. “I watched you,” he says, and I can feel those words against my skin.

  I clench my thighs together, wishing I was wearing something besides Alex’s boxers, far too big, barely hanging on as it is. And if Eli just brushed his fingers a little lower, grazed the waistband, he could send them floating to the floor with barely a touch.

  But I want that, too.

  I want him.

  “Why?” I gasp as he walks us forward, until the front of my thighs are against the side of his bed. “Why did you watch?”

  He slides his hand down my abdomen, slipping it under the loose boxer shorts. I should stop him. I should tell him no. I should get out of this room and tiptoe back to Alex’s room.

  I should do a lot of things I’m not doing.

  How did I even get here?

  I try to reach for something. Something to put distance between us as he runs his teeth over my shoulder, his hand reaching lower down my shorts.

  “S-shouldn’t that bother you?” I whisper into the dark. “Watching us?”

  He pauses, his hand still on my low belly, his mouth momentarily gone from my skin. Then he laughs, a throaty sound. He kisses my neck with an open mouth, and I shiver at the warmth of him in this cold room. “Oh, Zara.” He laughs again. “You can fuck him all you want, baby girl. I couldn’t care less about that. In fact, it turns me on, thinking about his cum inside of you right now.” He brushes his hand lower down my shorts, until his fingers graze my inner thigh. “Keep it up.”

  God, what is wrong with you?

  Fuck, what is wrong with me?

  “You don’t mean that, Eli,” I whisper, wanting it to be true. “You don’t mean that.”

  “You don’t want me to share you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I thought you wanted to experience everything, Zara. And that’s what I want for you. Everything.”

  I bite my lip, gripping the sheets of his bed in front of me. “How did I get in here?” I shake my head, trying to remember. “I don’t remember walking in here.”

  He’s quiet a moment, only the sound of my own pulse in my ears. The feel of his breath against my skin. His fingers calloused and rough, igniting a fire within me. But I have to think over it. I have to breathe through it. I need to know.

  “You really don’t remember?” This time his question isn’t teasing. It’s curious.

  “No,” I whisper into the dark.

  He kisses me again, on the curve of my shoulder, and even though I don’t remember wanting my brain to do it, my head leans back against him, resting against his chest, my throat exposed.

  Surprising me, he pulls his hand from my shorts and wraps his arm tighter around me. “You walked in.”

  I blink into the darkness, and then I laugh. He seems to stiffen behind me, like he doesn’t know what to make of it.

  But I can’t stop it. I’m laughing, gripping his sheets, him tense at my back.

  “Do you mind telling me what the fuck is so funny?” he asks quietly, and it makes me laugh a little more.

  His hand goes up to my throat, clamping down around me.

  I stop laughing. “Eli…no fucking shit I walked in here.”

  He’s silent a moment, then he sighs, his hand loosening around my throat.

  And then he lets me go. He just…steps back, and I have to tighten my grip on the bed in front of me to keep my balance. The absence of him is so disorienting.

  I spin around, see him running both hands through his hair, the
glow of his laptop screen behind him.

  That is a car, I realize.

  “You need to go back to Alex’s room,” he says, turning his back to me, his hands fisted in his hair. His shoulders are so broad, and I can see his biceps, the dark stains of tattoos on his arm, trailing down to his hand. I can’t make out the art in the darkness, but I can see it there.

  Almost like a reminder.

  Eli is cold.

  “Okay,” I tell him, my voice rough, my own hand at my throat. “Sorry for…” I trail off. I don’t know what I’m sorry for. I don’t know if I am sorry.

  He doesn’t look at me.

  I take a step toward the door, the floor creaking softly beneath my feet.

  “It’s not the first time,” he says, catching me off guard.

  I freeze, staring straight ahead, at the door. My mouth opens to ask him what he’s talking about, but nothing comes out. I think because I know.

  “Remember that night, against the counter. You came down to the kitchen.”

  My chest is tight. My hands clench into fists, and I feel a shiver start down my spine, trail to my knees, making them tremble. And I hold my breath. I hold my breath as I wait for him to say it. To say what I don’t want to know.

  But he doesn’t say anything.

  He’s silent.

  “You can stay,” he adds quietly. “If you want. You can stay.”

  “Why do you want me?” I ask him instead, not wanting to talk about sleepwalking. “Is this just a game to you, Eli? What are we fucking doing?”

  More silence. I want to turn around and face him. I want to ask him if it hurts, knowing I fucked Alex. I want to ask him what he wants from me.

  But it’s his turn to speak. Not mine.

  Yet when he does, I almost wish he hadn’t. I almost wish I had kept my fucking mouth shut.

  “Why do you want me, Zara?”

  Shame washes over me in a hot, uncomfortable wave, replacing the fear. The dread. The shiver. My hands feel clammy, my heart is racing too fast. Uncomfortably fast. I need water. That’s probably why I came here. That’s probably what I was looking for.

  Water.

  “Why do you want me, Zara?”

  Because I can’t have you? Because you’re taboo? My ex’s best friend? Because you see me? Because you pulled me out of the very same pool you held me down in?