Spring Fling

by Claudia Burgoa

  He didn’t feel like an eighteen-year-old boy. His body felt like a man’s, even bigger than I’d expected. I lowered my lips to his, and then he was on me, flipping me onto my back as he took over.

  “Took you long enough.” His voice was deeper with lust, his groan sounding like a man’s as I reached between us and stroked him.

  Oh, god.

  He wasn’t even wearing underwear.

  Reed was bigger than my ex, and I wasn’t quite sure he’d fit inside me, but I was too determined to let that stop me. I stroked him again, and my lips sought his, catching his cheek in the dark instead.

  His day-old stubble scratched my lips, longer than I was used to seeing, but I hadn’t seen him since I’d left for Christmas vacation last week. I tried to kiss his lips. He didn’t let me. Instead, he grabbed both my wrists in one hand, held them hostage above my head with a single palm, and sucked on my nipple through my bralette.

  His movements were confident. Experienced. Like he knew precisely how to make my body come to life. In all the years I’d pictured this moment, I’d never thought it’d be this feral, this instinctive, this good.

  Reed’s other hand explored my body like he knew exactly what to do with it. I whimpered as he tore my panties off, ripping them without a care. Pain lashed at the top of my ass, where the panties had snapped off, but he didn’t give me a chance to dwell on it.

  This.

  This was better than all my fantasies of Reed put together. It was passion. It was lust. It was all the reassurance I needed to make taking the first step worth it. I felt his need for me, and it drove confidence into my body like nothing else.

  Reed’s fingers slid up my inner thigh and found my pussy, sliding in with embarrassing ease.

  The adrenaline rushed to my head. Dizzying. All-consuming. Encouraging me to say things I’d never say otherwise. “I’ve wanted you for so long. You make me so wet. So, so wet. I’ve touched myself to you in the shower. In bed. In…” I hesitated before admitting, “… my ex-boyfriend’s bed.”

  He let out something like a laugh, a half snarl that sent shock waves straight to my core. “Fuck your boyfriend.”

  “Ex,” I corrected.

  “Don’t care,” he said, his voice still groggy and different from sleep, as he slid his finger out and pushed his erection into me.

  I bit my lower lip to hold back my moans, pressed my forehead against his shoulder, and closed my eyes, meeting each of his thrusts. One of his palms gripped my ass and squeezed while the other held my waist.

  He flipped us, so I sat on top of him. I moved on instinct, grinding my clit against his skin.

  “Atta girl.” He leaned back against his pillow as I placed each of my palms on his chest and took over. “Ride my cock.” His gruff voice was almost indistinguishable past the hoarse lust, so deep and different, his desire something I wanted to explore until I knew it just as well as I knew him.

  “I’m close,” I gasped.

  My fingers dug into the skin of his shoulders as each of his hands met my waist, and he took over from below, meeting me with so much force, it rattled the bed, and I feared his parents would hear.

  “Oh, God.” I leaned forward, buried my head against his neck, and whispered against his skin, “I’m coming. I’m coming, Reed.”

  He stumbled a moment, halting his thrusts, but I was too far gone to stop. I came on his cock, biting down on his shoulder to quiet my moans as he came with me. I’d been with other guys in the past, and they’d never made me come. They’d always felt like inexperienced teenagers, fumbling to clumsy completion, but Reed felt like a man.

  A part of me considered he felt better because I was in love with him and I’d never been in love with the other boys, but I dismissed the thought. The way he felt, the way his hands explored my body, the way he knew exactly what angle to push inside me… it couldn’t be my head making it up. We fit perfectly.

  We settled into silence as I came down from bliss. Reed’s cock, still a little hard, pressed deeper when he reached for the lamp on the nightstand. I blinked away the post-orgasm haze as the light flickered on. When my vision cleared and I finally got a look at him, I froze. Shock filtered through my system, and my jaw dropped, unable to process my life right now.

  Unable to process the man who was still inside me.

  Nash Prescott.

  Reed’s older brother.

  His thirty-year-old brother.

  A six-foot-two, hazel-eyed Adonis with short black hair and bedroom eyes that made you picture him naked if you looked long enough. Only he was actually naked and, I repeat, inside. Me.

  “Your pussy is soaking my brother’s bed,” he remarked, unfazed as he leaned back against his pillow and took in the sight of me—naked, vulnerable, his little brother’s best friend.

  “You—I—What—”

  “Surely that overpriced education did better than this.” Nash Prescott lived up to his reputation. Gorgeous. Arrogant. And a jerk.

  Only before today, I wouldn’t really know. He’d spent the entire time he lived here ignoring me. Except that one night. That night he’d managed to push all thoughts of Reed aside and make me focus on his gravitational pull, one more dangerous than that of any boy I’ve ever met. Only Nash Prescott wasn’t a boy. He was a man. One who made me feel like a little girl.

  I shook my head and pushed aside the embarrassment. “Did you know?”

  The sharp accusation didn’t faze him. “I figured it out when you moaned my brother’s name while coming around my cock.” His eyes dipped down as if to remind me I was still on his cock.

  I scrambled off of him, grabbing as much of the blanket as I could to cover my body. Not like it made a difference. He’d seen—and felt—it all. Mortified didn’t even begin to describe how I felt, but it was the thinly veiled disgust on his face that almost undid me.

  Was he disgusted by me or himself for fucking me? I wasn’t ugly. My auburn hair looked like it belonged in a Pantene commercial, my green eyes looked like two gems, and I had the bone structure of a model—slim and tall with breasts that teetered between a B and C depending on the time of month.

  It’s your age, I tried to assure myself.

  I’d just turned eighteen, and he was a man. But it wasn’t like either of us intended this, and I didn’t have the guts to ask him why he looked slightly sickened. He recovered quicker than I did.

  Nash didn’t bother covering himself as he ran a hand through his hair, like none of this fazed him, even though I’d seen the revulsion on his face.

  I faltered for something to say before settling on, “Who did you think I was?”

  “Abigail.”

  Abigail Lee. His on-again, off-again hookup from high school. Back in the day, every girl wanted to be Abigail Lee because every girl wanted Nash Prescott. When I was in elementary school, I used to watch girls ride their bikes past our house, knowing full well they had drivers and wouldn’t be caught dead riding their bikes if it weren’t for the pesky little fact that Nash Prescott lived here.

  “You fucked me thinking I was someone else?!” My hypocrisy wasn’t lost on me. So what if I thought he was his brother? It was different.

  Okay, it wasn’t any different, but for my sanity’s sake, I needed to believe it was.

  “Fuck,” he repeated, almost mocking me. “Dirty word for a goodie two shoes.”

  His amusement pissed me off. I raised my arm stupidly. I wasn’t going to hit him. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but it was a reflex, and it only served to amuse him more.

  “Easy, Tiger.” His amusement didn’t waiver as he desecrated two words he’d said to me years ago, during the only real conversation I’d ever had with him. I pushed the past away, not wanting to humanize him while I felt so vulnerable. He continued, either oblivious or uncaring, “I figured it out a second before you came. I wouldn’t have fucked you if I’d known it was you. I don’t fuck little girls.”

  I lifted my chin and glared at him. “I’
m not little. I’m eighteen.”

  Barely.

  The twelve-year age gap between us felt unbridgeable.

  Nash reached forward and pinched a budded nipple through the thin sheets, reminding me of how naked I was under this sheet. “These feel little to me.”

  I crossed my arms across my chest. “Aren’t you supposed to be in New York, opening some destined-to-fail business venture?”

  At least that’s what Reed had told me a few weeks ago. Not the destined-to-fail part, but I was feeling vulnerable right now, and I didn’t like it. It was a knee-jerk reaction, one bred into me through years of catty prep school drama, and I almost apologized but couldn’t quite bring myself to.

  His eyes hardened and he leaned back against the headboard, studying me with a scrutiny I wasn’t used to. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m in town for a business meeting, and Reed is spending the night at Madison’s, so I figured I’d crash in his room. I didn’t think I’d be accosted by an eighteen-year old.”

  I ignored his last jab as I swallowed my agony and buried it beside my pride.

  Madison.

  I’d thought Reed was over her.

  “Do you often come into my brother’s room, looking for a quick lay?”

  Never, I almost admitted. But I didn’t, because it made me feel vulnerable. The one night I’d chosen to profess my love for Reed had backfired in spectacular fashion, and Nash Prescott had the misfortune of witnessing it.

  “All the time,” I lied to save face. “He’s a better lay than you.”

  Another lie.

  I couldn’t imagine anyone being better at sex than Nash Prescott. He made my toes curl and my lungs burn from exhaustive pleasure. He pushed my body past its limits, and part of me wanted him to try again, just to see if the first time had been a fluke.

  Nash’s eyes narrowed as he studied me. “If he can make you come harder than you did around my cock, he deserves a medal,” he finally replied, his knowing eyes taking in my flushed skin and the way my lips parted at the word cock.

  For a startling moment, his arrogance fled, and he took me in. Really took me in. My whitened fingers clenching the sheets. The alarm in my eyes as they darted from Nash to the framed picture of me and Reed laughing on the wall. The way I did anything and everything I could to not look at his body, which was better than anything I’d ever seen in my life.

  It was pity I saw in Nash Prescott’s eyes as he glanced at the alarm clock on the nightstand and said, “Either sleep or leave. I have a meeting in a few hours.”

  His words were harsh, but I saw them for what they were. Pity. He was giving me an out, a way to leave without addressing any of the mortifying details that brought me here tonight.

  “You’re unbelievable,” I retorted, but they were halfhearted words, because if he treated me any differently, I’d probably cry.

  He nodded to the mess we made on the sheets. “I’ll be sure to explain how unbelievable we are to Reed when he asks how that got there.”

  “Don’t,” I begged.

  If he did that, Reed would never want me.

  But a part of me knew that Nash Prescott wouldn’t do that to me.

  The same way I remembered that day two years ago.

  Thump.

  Thump.

  Thump.

  And here I’d thought my heart only beat for Reed Prescott.

  Nash watched me for a moment, something like disappointment flickering in his eyes, before he reached over and switched off the light. “Get out of the room, Winthrop.”

  “Gladly, Prescott.”

  * * *

  Emery Winthrop

  Twenty-Two Years Old

  * * *

  The tension in my neck was another sign I needed to get my shit together or I’d die of a heart attack before I turned twenty-three. Thanks to shitty construction and my inability to afford AC bills, the heat sweltered in here despite the cool fifty degrees outside.

  “Emery, are you even listening to me?”

  I placed Reed on speakerphone, tossed the phone on my raggedy mattress, and massaged the back of my neck. “Yes. Sorry. I spaced out.”

  “You’ve been doing that a lot.”

  His evident frustration settled in my chest, the guilt nothing new to me. Reed and I had made a pact to attend Duke together. Instead, I’d left for Clifton University in Alabama without telling him. I’d needed to get out North Carolina. As far away from the Prescott brothers as my wallet would take me.

  Four years ago, that would have been far. But then Daddy went to jail for fraud a week before graduation, and the lumber business he owned—the same one that provided jobs for almost everyone in town—went out of business as all our family assets were seized.

  I’d graduated a semester early, and my six-month student loan grace period would end soon. I needed a job. Preferably one away from home, not that anyone in the state would give me one. The Winthrop name was radioactive in North Carolina.

  “You could work for Nash.”

  I shook my head, even though he couldn’t see me. “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  Because four years later, I’m still mortified.

  I hadn’t talked to Nash Prescott since that night in Reed’s bedroom. Not that we’d talked much before that. He was always Reed Prescott’s older brother to me. Unattainable. Forbidden. Something I’d never considered. Until he gave me the best sex I’d ever had.

  I shook my head and picked at the cheap threads of my swap meet sheets. “Because he’s your brother, and that’s weird.”

  Reed answered in that check-your-privilege tone of his, something he’d picked up from being my best friend during my high society days. “That’s a horrible reason to deny an opportunity most would kill for.”

  “Horribly valid.” I couldn’t be more petulant if I jutted my bottom lip out and whined.

  “Mature,” he remarked as a women’s voice drifted over the line in the background.

  I winced, absently rubbing at my chest, right above the spot that housed my jealous heart. “Is that Madison? Tell her I said, ‘hi.’”

  Whereas I’d ditched Reed for Clifton University, Madison had followed him to Duke. They’d been together since and were probably two seconds away from getting married and having perfectly behaved blonde-haired, blue-eyed babies. Not the chaotic red-haired, green-eyed demon children I’d probably give birth to.

  “She says you’d be a fool not to take a job with Nate.”

  “No, she didn’t.”

  “Okay, she didn’t, but I think you should. At the very least, maybe take one of his spring break internships for college seniors and new graduates. Nash doesn’t even need to know if you think it’s awkward. I can get his assistant to set it up for me. She owes me one.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I relented before ending the call.

  Truth was, I didn’t have much of a choice. I’d graduated early fall semester, and I still hadn’t found a job. There wasn’t a market for inexperienced event planners in Clifton, Alabama and there was nothing for me back in Eastridge, North Carolina. An internship at Prescott Hotels would give me a head start I’d be stupid to give up.

  I grabbed my phone and sent Reed a text.

  Emery: Fine. Set it up.

  Emery: Please. :-)

  I buried my face in my pillow and screamed before glaring at myself in the mirror. Desperation clashed with my red hair.

  * * *

  Emery Winthrop

  * * *

  Marble lobby. Over-the-top chandeliers. A floating pool built in the actual ocean. The hushed sound of the country's top point-one-percenters living their best lives. If a Caribbean resort and a luxury hotel had a baby, it would be the Prescott Hotel in Haling Cove, North Carolina.

  What had I said to Nash Prescott all those years ago?

  Aren’t you supposed to be in New York, opening some destined-to-fail business venture?

  Well, that business venture had turned into the
first Prescott Hotel, which soon turned into a second. Then a third. Then a forth. Until the Prescott Hotels brand became the most well-known and coveted luxury hotel company in the world.

  Which was why I didn’t feel particularly out of place at this masquerade party for North Carolina’s most elite. I’d grown up in this world, brushed elbows with probably every single person here.

  Except this time, I’d helped plan the event—and not in the sense that I’d ordered around Daddy’s staff and an overworked, underpaid event planner. I’d spent the past week running around Haling Cove, double-checking the floral arrangements, sitting in on the orchestral practices, and buying new eggshell-colored table cloths when the client, Matilda Astor—who recognized me from my society days and took advantage of my new position below her by ordering me around with a dumb smirk on her face—decided the old ones weren’t the right shade of white. Whatever grunt work needed to be done fell on my bony shoulders.

  And I was proud.

  Truly.

  If not exhausted and ready for it to end.

  I tracked down Elise, my boss for another week, near the open bar. The only woman in the room without a masquerade mask on.

  “You’re free to leave,” she said before I could ask.

  I tucked a red lock behind my ear and went to take off my mask but thought better of it. Nothing like being in a room full of people from my past. “How’d you know?”

  “You’ve lasted longer than most. Usually, the heels take my spring interns out after an hour.”

  “I’ve spent a lifetime in heels.” I didn’t elaborate as I grabbed a bottle of water from behind the bar and waved goodbye. “I’ll see you Monday?”

  She paused for a second as the lights flickered, a byproduct of the wicked storm brewing outside the hotel. Alarm ran through her eyes before she shook her head, dismissing the idea of a power outage, like rich people parties were untouchable. One of her assistants had mentioned she grew up in Arizona. I doubted they got this weather there.