Don’t Love Me

by Doyle, S.

  “I’m pretty sure you weren’t,” I said. I moved toward her, cupped her cheeks in my palms, marveled at how soft her skin was, then bent to place a solid kiss right in the center of her forehead. “Happy Birthday, Ash.”

  She looked up at me. “That sucked.”

  I laughed.

  “I’m going to tell people you are the worst kisser ever.”

  “You are, huh?”

  “Yep. I’m going to ruin your reputation with all the girls in town by saying you give lousy head.”

  “Ash, shut up.” I bent again, and this time I kissed her lips. Just a soft kiss, nothing crazy, except she moved closer and slanted her head enough, I could take more if I wanted.

  I slid my hand around her neck this time and gave her another kiss. She opened her mouth and I thought, just for a second. I dipped my tongue inside and I could feel her body give this all-over shudder. It was never hard to remember Ash was a virgin. That everything I did to her was her first time because she wouldn’t let anyone else beside me get close.

  Bringing her in close, I lifted my head and changed the angle of my mouth. I sucked on her tongue and nibbled on her lips. I was no longer just doing it to shut her up. I grabbed her ass and pushed her against my erection, so I could grind against her a little while I took her mouth. When that wasn’t enough contact, I reached behind her to pull the door closed so I could push her up against something solid.

  I lifted her up and her legs wrapped around my waist, her arms around my neck. Then, because I could, I pulled the strap of her dress down her shoulder tugging on the material until her breast sprang free. She gasped, but I bent and sucked her hard nipple into my mouth, like a man starving.

  “Marc,” she whispered. “Oh god. Marc. Yes!”

  I licked her one last time then brought my mouth up to kiss her again. This time her tongue was pushing inside my mouth and I thought she wasn’t experienced enough to play this game. I was in charge. I was the one who would control this dance.

  I just needed to open the door, take her inside and…

  Fuck. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not with her. Never with her. I’d forbidden myself. But she tasted so damn good. It was like finding a forbidden fruit I didn’t know existed.

  I pushed her legs from around my waist. I waited until she was standing on her own, then I pulled away. Peeling her arms off my neck, I took a step back. I knew I was panting for air.

  She was also panting. Leaning against the door, her fucking naked left tit still out and jiggling with every breath she took.

  “Cover yourself,” I snapped. Because it was driving me nuts. Because I wanted to see and taste the other one. Because I wanted to fucking slam my dick so hard up inside her wet pussy it was making my hands tremble.

  I knew it. I’d always known she would be dangerous. My very own kryptonite.

  Except instead of pulling her dress up, she pushed the other strap down until both breasts were exposed to my gaze.

  I looked at her then. Her face was flushed. Her mouth was swollen. Her tits were full and high, and her nipples were so damn hard.

  “You can have me,” she said. “You know that.”

  No, I could never ever have her…because then I might decide she was something I could never lose.

  That anger, that strange rage whenever she offered a piece of herself to me, surfaced. When it did, it always meant I would lash out. Use my words to take chunks of flesh from her body. Or maybe this time, it would be more physical.

  I had this image of making her kneel on her front porch while I jacked myself all over her creamy naked tits. Maybe shoot some of my cum on her lips. Make her taste it.

  She would do it. She would do it for me.

  Almost immediately, the Hulk-like rage retreated. Instead, I stepped toward her and I gently pulled the straps of her dress up to both shoulders, the material now covering her chest.

  I placed a kiss in the center of her collar bone.

  “I don’t want to hurt you anymore, Ash. Don’t let me.”

  She sighed, and sank her fingers into my hair and, for a second, I let her do it. Let her press my head against her chest like she was the one offering me comfort. Then I pulled away.

  “Goodnight,” I said definitively.

  She hesitated, then said, “Night, Marc.” She turned and opened the door, walked inside, and quietly closed it behind her.

  I made my way around the big house, past the pool and the tennis courts, down to the carriage house. I wasn’t inside two seconds before stripping myself of every bit of clothing.

  I got in the shower. Considered turning the water to cold and icing down my raging hard on, but I didn’t think that would work. The way I felt now, I would be hard forever if I didn’t do something about it. I turned the hot water on and quickly started jacking myself off. I didn’t want to linger. I didn’t want to feel the build-up. I didn’t want to see Ash’s naked tits over and over again. Or remember what her nipple felt like in my mouth. Or her tongue.

  So damn good, so damn hot.

  “Fuck,” I shouted, as I came harder than I ever remember coming in my life. Like every orgasm leading up to this had been a tease, and, all this time, my body had been waiting for the real thing.

  When it was over, I leaned against the wall of the shower, spent. Wrecked.

  That’s what kissing Ashleigh felt like?

  What the hell would fucking her do to me?

  14

  The next morning

  Ashleigh

  I knocked on the carriage house door even though I had a key, because I wanted to give him a warning. A second to get ready to deal with me again after last night.

  The door opened and he was in a pair of board shorts and a T-shirt, wearing a sour expression I interpreted immediately.

  “Are you going to be weird?” I asked him.

  “For what? Kissing you or sucking on your tits?”

  I scrunched my nose and pushed past him into the carriage house. I knew George was still with my father, which meant we were alone.

  “You don’t have to be crude,” I said over my shoulder as he closed the door behind me.

  “Sorry. Guys say tits but I’ll clean it up for you. For sucking on your breast. Your nipple. Your areola. Is that better?”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and huffed at him.

  “Are you going to be weird?” he asked, even as he crossed his arms over his chest.

  “About what? You kissing me or sucking on my tits?”

  He snorted, and that officially moved us past weird.

  He flopped down on the couch, laying himself out so I couldn’t sit there, and crossed his arms behind his head. I took a seat in what I knew to be George’s recliner.

  “Okay, what’s up? What’s the big mystery?”

  “I wanted to let you know that…” This sucked. Just saying the words sucked. “I’m not going to Princeton this semester.”

  He sat up abruptly. “The fuck? Why not?”

  “Arthur thinks I’m not ready.”

  “Since when did you start referring to your father as Arthur?”

  I winced at the memory. “Not long before he told me I couldn’t go to Princeton. He doesn’t think I’m ready socially.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think I don’t have a choice. He’s already told Admissions and they’ve given my place to someone else.”

  He stood then, pacing in front of the couch. “That is absolute horseshit! You’ve been working towards this for years. You’re one of the smartest people I know. You’re going to kill it at school. What the hell are you supposed to do instead? Stay here in the castle?”

  I took a breath. “No, I’m going to a finishing school in Switzerland. Arthur thinks I need more polish.”

  He tilted his head back and laughed. “Oh, that is so fucking rich. Daddy is sending his princess to Switzerland instead of Princeton. And you are seriously going along with this?”

  “I told you. I d
on’t have a choice.”

  “Bullshit. You’re eighteen. You’re legal. You have all the choices in the world.”

  I clenched my jaw shut. “You don’t understand.”

  I should leave. I should get up and leave, because this was the part that was going to get nasty. He would never admit it, but my not being at Princeton with him was going to be upsetting. My being as far away as Switzerland would make it worse.

  It would feel like an abandonment, and Marc didn’t handle that well.

  “Oh, sure, I understand,” Marc said snidely. “You go to finishing school or daddy pulls the funds. What’s a girl supposed to do? Buy shoes off the discount rack?”

  This time I stood to confront him.

  “You know what, Marc? This is the part of the story where the princess runs off and the hero doesn’t even realize what he’s said or done to upset her. Fuck that! This isn’t about the money. If I don’t go to Switzerland, he’ll have you expelled from Princeton. And don’t think for a second he can’t do that.”

  That shut him up. Slowly, almost gingerly, he sat on the couch again. I moved to sit next to him.

  “Are you being serious right now?” he asked quietly. Like he couldn’t believe he’d actually gotten caught up in this Machiavellian scheme. But Marc’s childhood had been equally dramatic, so he knew something about ruthlessness.

  “Arthur has proven himself to be more coldblooded than I understood him to be. I thought he was just an absent father. Distant emotionally. Now, there’s another side to him I’m discovering. Yes, I think he’s deadly serious.”

  “George guessed this,” Marc told me. “He said it was like your father was preparing him for this eventuality. Probably so George wouldn’t freak out when it eventually did happen. This is so fucked up.”

  Marc stood and paced in front of me for several minutes until he stopped and looked at me. Based on the quality of his sneer, I knew what was coming.

  “Although you probably love this shit, right?”

  “What?!” I screeched. “You know how hard I’ve worked to earn Princeton. Not just going because my daddy could make it happen.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, throwing his hands up. “The sacrifice. All for me. Am I supposed to worship at your feet for doing this, Ash? Fall to my knees? Is that what you’re hoping for? Or am I supposed to play the hero and tell you I’ll quit school so he can’t hold it over your head?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s two years of finishing school, not hard labor at Guantanamo Bay. I’ll survive it.”

  “Because I’m not giving up Princeton!” he shouted at me. “It’s not just a college to me. It’s my fucking freedom from all of this!”

  Anger made me stand, too.

  “I know that! But you want to know why you chose finance? Why you want to work in a bank? It’s so you can make money! Because money is power and control, and you want as much of it as you can possibly get. This is the power money gets you, Marc! This is the power my father has right now.”

  His face got tight. His jaw clenched.

  “You could tell me to go fuck off,” he said. “You could tell your father to go fuck off. You don’t have to sacrifice your life for me. Don’t make me carry around that guilt.”

  I sighed and put my hands on his waist and rested my head against his chest. Something, before last night, he might not have let me do, but he wasn’t pushing me away.

  “If Arthur didn’t use you as leverage, he would have gone after George.”

  “George! He’s worked for him for over twenty years. Since before you were born!”

  “Right! And Arthur knows what he means to me. He might have threatened to fire him. Something. There’s no guilt for you, Marc. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to tell you. Maybe it should have been a silent sacrifice, but I couldn’t live with the idea of you thinking I would be okay with going to some damn finishing school instead of being with you at Princeton. I think I also needed you to know how merciless Arthur really is. If only to warn George.”

  I dropped my hands and stepped away.

  “Anyway, that’s it. That’s my news. You’ll be okay because we’ll still be in touch. I’ll call and text.”

  “I’ll be okay?” he asked, raising his eyebrow.

  “Yes. Remember? Me. Air,” I told him.

  I started to walk away when he reached for my hand. “I’ll get it done in a year. Double up on credits. Figure out what I have to do, but I’ll finish this degree as fast as I can.”

  I cupped his cheek and smiled. “See? Turns out you are the hero. Don’t jeopardize anything, Marc. For me, this is a couple of classes in fork etiquette and ballroom dancing. For you, this is your future.”

  He nodded, then squeezed my hand.

  “Your father has never wanted your happiness,” he said. “My mother was a dope addict who couldn’t help herself, but at least she loved me. Once upon a time.”

  I nodded grimly. There was nothing to say to that. So I left.

  * * *

  A few days later

  Marc

  “Marc, come put lotion on my back.”

  How many times had we done this? How many times had I vacuumed the pool, adjusted the chlorine levels, fixed that stupid fucking filter, while Ash had lounged around trying to tempt me with some version of a bikini?

  This should have been like all those other times when I brushed her off with some callous answer. When I made her think she didn’t affect me at all. Except that was harder to do now she knew what she did to me.

  She was leaving in a few weeks. Both her father and George were gone. It was just the two of us on the property. The reality was, I could be fucking her every second of every day I wasn’t working.

  She wanted it. I wanted it.

  Only I wouldn’t let myself go down that path because I said I never would.

  The memory of her taste in my mouth lingered. When I came now, it was always to thoughts of her. Like I couldn’t stop myself. I masturbated daily just to take the edge off.

  To stop myself from reaching. Touching.

  She was going to Switzerland for at least a year. Anything I did to her now, I would have a year to shake loose from. Hell, she would too, for that matter. Maybe a year away would make her realize I wasn’t some kind of destiny for her. Just the asshole kid she got stuck with when she was ten.

  Her. Air?

  She was delusional. I would be fine without her. I wouldn’t think about her at all unless she texted or called. I didn’t really know how easy or hard that would be…

  “Marc! Come on. My back”

  I set the vacuum down and walked over to where she was lying face-down on the lounger. The strings of her bikini had already been tugged free so that her back was naked, save for the small patch of cloth covering her ass.

  Part of a cheek escaped the material and I could see the faint remnants of the bruise I’d left there the other night when I’d lifted her against the door.

  She had a very squeezable ass.

  “You know I’m not the pool boy. And this isn’t some porn we’re acting out where I end up nailing you on this lounger.”

  She laughed and wiggled her whole body. Looking over her shoulder at me, she lifted her sunglasses off her head. “That sounds like fun. Want to do that instead?”

  “No,” I snapped, wondering why I’d even placed the thought in my head.

  “I just don’t want to burn. Please,” she said, holding out the tube of lotion with one hand while she covered her tits with the other

  “There’s no point in hiding them from me. I’ve already seen the goods.”

  “True,” she mused. “Maybe if you saw them again, it would put you in a better mood.”

  It would not. It would only make my balls ache that much more. I took the tube and squirted some lotion onto my palm. I rubbed my hand down her back in quick rough strokes, leaving white streaks of lotion that would only protect parts of her back.

  “You know you’
re going to have to be way more gentle when you take my virginity.”

  I lifted my hand away from her.

  She wasn’t looking at me when she said it. Just staring straight ahead. “Or maybe not. I mean, you know how you like to hurt me. Getting into bed with you would basically be me giving you permission to do it. It would be like all your dreams were coming true.”

  I sat on the lounger near her thighs and rested my hand on the small of her back.

  “Sex for a girl hurts the first time, Ash. I don’t think there is any getting around that.”

  Why was I even talking about this? There was no way, NO WAY, I was taking her virginity. But I started to rub my hand, more gently this time, over the streaks I’d left, to smooth out the lotion.

  “I know. I’ve talked to other girls about it. But they all said it was worth it. The way I felt the other night, the way you made me feel, I believe it. It was so intense. Didn’t you think it was intense?”

  After my orgasm in the shower, I’d jacked myself off three more times that night. Over and over again because I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

  “It was just a kiss,” I told her. “Not really a big deal.”

  “Maybe not for you. You do it all the time. But it was my first and I thought it rocked.”

  My hand stilled again, this time over her neck. She’d pulled her hair out of my way and had her head bent. “That was, seriously, your first kiss?”

  “Chris tried it after school one time, when George was late picking me up and I decided to walk home. But that doesn’t count because I didn’t want him to. I threatened him with biting his tongue off and he backed off.”

  “That fucker,” I muttered, even as I brought my other hand onto her back. Now I was rubbing her shoulders, using my thumbs to dig into her muscles until she groaned.

  “Of course I waited for you, Marc. I’ll wait for sex, too, until you decide you’re ready.”