by Kent, Rina
“Have I ever joked with you?”
“You know that my answer will be no, right?”
“No is a start, sweetheart.”
I gulp.
“Besides…” He places a hand on my thigh, his fingers trailing up. “Your mouth is a liar. I’m taking my answer from something that doesn’t lie.”
Chapter Fourteen
Aiden’s body pushes into mine.
It’s subtle as if he’s just leaning in to tell me a secret, but there’s nothing secretive about the way he’s gripping me.
In a fruitless attempt to get away from him, my back hits the wall. Aiden grabs both my wrists in a death grip against the cold wallpaper. He manoeuvres my legs so they’re lying on his hard thighs.
With this position, it’s impossible to fight him off. Every time I try to squirm free, he digs his fingers into my wrists until I wince in pain. Damn him and his brute strength.
I curse my stupidity for locking myself between him and the wall. Why the hell do I always find myself trapped with him?
He plants his large palm on my thigh in the small space between my skirt and my stockings. A wave of that strange awareness shoots down my spine. My skin heats and prickles with the tension crackling in the air.
My body’s reaction to him isn’t funny anymore. How the hell does he push those buttons?
“Aiden,” I hiss through my teeth.
“Hmm, sweetheart?” His intense eyes never leave my face as his fingers flex on my thigh, teasing, and threatening to go up.
“We’re in public.”
“And Iʼm supposed to care about that?”
Of course, he wouldn’t care.
Blood rushes in my veins at the possibility of being caught while Aiden is touching me. The older man is facing the window and he’s far enough that he can’t hear us, but if he deviates his head, or decides to leave, he’ll see everything.
“Say yes to my offer and I wouldn’t have to search for your body’s yes.”
“I canʼt just be yours.”
“Why not?”
“I hate you, thatʼs why.”
“Hmmm.”
Despite the humming, his tone is flat as he grips my thigh tighter.
“Aiden,” I grind my teeth, my vision bouncing between him and the old man.
“Letʼs play that choice game you love so much.”
“I donʼt love your games.”
He tilts his head to the side, watching me intently as his fingers draw circles on my inner thigh. “I think you do love them, but you just don’t love admitting it.”
I shake my head frantically.
“Be mine or Iʼll finger you so hard, so fast, that man will be calling for help when you come all over my fingers.”
My thighs clench, lips parting open.
My face must be as red as the blood rushing to it, but Aidenʼs expression remains unaffected.
How can he stay like that after the crude words he said? How can he start a riot in my body with mere words?
“Is that a yes, Frozen?”
“No,” The word falls from my lips in a murmur.
“Hmmm.” His fingers slide up my thigh. “I didn’t realise you were an exhibitionist, sweetheart. Does it turn you on to know we can be caught any minute? That man can turn around now.” He strokes my inner thigh, his thumb hovering over the edge of my underwear. “Or now.”
I kick my feet, trying to push him, but he only tightens his grip on me.
I close my eyes against the intrusive sensation. Every fibre of my logic is willing me to hate this, to consider it a violation, but… is it a violation if I want him to reach up? Is it a violation if his dirty words are causing an uncontrollable throb between my legs?
He leans in so his hot breaths brush against my throat. Goosebumps break over my skin as he murmurs in a low, husky voice, “Say yes.”
“Aiden…” I trail off not knowing what I want to tell him. Is it to stop? To keep going?
“That’s not the word. I need you to say yes.”
“Why?” I don’t even recognise my breathy voice.
“Say the word, Elsa.” He’s still speaking against my throat, and I tilt to the side as if giving him better access. To do what, I don’t know.
“You know, I could’ve threatened your family’s company. I know King Enterprises is their biggest contractor and they’d struggle and eventually go bankrupt with the amount of debt they currently owe to the bank. I have information that’ll keep Kimberly gravitating towards me and away from you. The only reason I didn’t destroy your life yet is because I’ve been saving it to the right moment. If I choose to, I’ll threaten everything you love and you’ll have no choice but to fall at my feet.”
With every word he says, my eyes blur with tears.
I want to believe he wouldn’t be able to do what he said, that they’re all empty threats.
But this is Aiden. He never promised something he didn’t follow up with.
This is his way to show me how weak I am in comparison to his strength.
But I don’t crumble and swallow my tears. He won’t be seeing my weakness.
“Then why aren’t you doing all that?” I ask.
“I’m offering you the chance to make the first move.”
“Why is that so important to you?”
“I’m testing a theory.” His fingers splay on the hem of my boy shorts, eliciting a zap of pleasure from the bottom of my stomach.
“What theory?” My voice is choked.
“That you like being forced to make any move. The rush turns you on, doesn’t it?”
God. He’s insane.
“No…” It’s my weakest ‘no’ of yet.
The double assault of his breaths against my throat and his fingers at the edge of my most sensitive part awakens a deep-seated throb. My thighs clench around his hand as if inviting him to the place that aches the most.
“No one in RES will come near you if you’re mine. You’ll spend a dream senior year.”
Damn him and his smooth ways. Just like with Aunt and Uncle, he’s telling me what I want to hear.
“I don’t want the dream year,” I hardly manage the words.
“Then what do you want, sweetheart?”
In some place in my mind, I know this is wrong. He is one million times wrong.
Wrong or right, my body doesn’t understand that. It’s enchanted to Aiden whether I like it or not. He’s turning my body against me.
Dickhead.
Sweat breaks on my forehead and my skin pulses as if begging to be touched by him.
“You won’t get anything out of me.”
“You should play smarter, not stronger.” Aiden’s lips brush against my throat, sending a violent chill down my back. “Admit your deepest darkest desires, Elsa.”
I don’t know if it’s because of his lips or the low-throaty, almost husky tone he said my name with, but I’m a goner.
A full-body shudder goes through me like I’m being pulled under a soundless, crashing wave.
I can’t even fight the pull anymore.
Aiden’s fingers trace the rim of my boy shorts, slowly slipping underneath. I whimper then hide my head in his shoulder to suppress the sound. I almost forgot that we aren’t alone.
The man’s presence is supposed to turn me off, but it has the complete opposite effect.
I’m burning and Aiden is my hell.
He cups me through my underwear. I sink my teeth in my lower lip to suppress the needy sounds clawing its way out.
“You’re fucking soaked,” Aiden growls against the side of my neck.
I arch my back as his thumb swipes up and down my folds through the cloth.
“What’s turning you on, sweetheart?” His lips find my ear and a small voice that resembles a moan leaves my throat. “Is it the public setting? The risk of getting caught? Or is it the fact that you’re completely under my mercy?”
All of that.
But that’s not all, isn’t it?
The main reason is… him.
I don’t think I would’ve had all these overpowering, crushing sensations if it were someone else.
His finger slips beneath my underwear and thrusts inside me. I bite his hard shoulder over the shirt.
Oh. God.
Is it supposed to feel so intimate and deep?
He thrusts another finger and I arch against him, my entire weight held by his.
“Aiden…” It’s supposed to be a warning, a protest, but it comes out as I moan.
“Admit it, Frozen.”
I shake my head, feeling a lump grow bigger and suffocating at the back of my throat.
He reaches his free hand up my stomach, stops to flick a hard, throbbing nipple over my shirt, before he wraps his fingers around my throat. He scissors his fingers inside me as he tightens his thumb at my neck’s pulse point.
“Would you rather admit it when you’re screaming my name?” he whispers in dark, hot words.
I bite my lower lip, staring at him with frantic, lust-filled eyes.
“Fight it all you like, but if I want you to scream, you’ll fucking scream, Elsa.”
His thumb rubs up and down my clitoris in slow circular movements as he thrusts his fingers inside me.
The triple assault against my clit, my walls and my neck and his hot breath brings me to the edge.
A wave builds inside me, doubling and magnifying until a chill of terror engulfs me.
What the hell is happening to me?
Aiden parts his fingers at my throat so his lips can find the pulse point. He sucks hard.
Everything spirals out of control.
I moan against his shoulder as that wave nearly hits the shore. I grind against his hand.
Just one more friction.
Just one touch.
The feeling is so, so close, and I never needed something as much as I need this foreign wave to hit me.
Aiden stops.
He slips his fingers from my stimulated nerves, withdraws his hand from under my skirt and releases my throat.
Emptiness engulfs me as he slides back against the cushion, giving me back the personal space he violated a few seconds ago.
I blink a few times.
Humiliation and frustration eat at my insides like burning acid.
Humiliation because I almost gave the arsehole my first sexual experience with another person in a damn coffee shop.
Frustration because he stopped. As if he didn’t touch me in the first place.
I don’t know who I should hate more. Myself or him.
I expect him to mock me and this time, I’d freaking deserve it. For a moment, I moaned. For a moment, I ground against him. For a moment, I wanted the depravity the arsehole offered.
Someone kill me.
Aiden keeps the unnerving eye contact as if he’s dissecting my soul, ripping it, and dancing in its remains.
Then he does something that shocks the freaking bejeesus out of me.
He brings his glistening index and middle fingers to his face — the same fingers that almost brought me to the edge — and sucks them into his mouth.
He flicks his tongue along the fingers and does a slow show of licking them clean.
Why is that so… hot?
Even if I want to look away, I can’t. My thighs tighten around my throbbing core and I feel like I’ll explode right here, right now.
After one last lick, he removes his fingers and flicks his tongue around his bottom lip.
I find myself transfixed by that bottom lip. That tongue.
I’m angling towards him against my better judgement.
“Do you realise how long I fantasised about your taste, sweetheart?” he grunts deep in his throat.
Unable to utter a word, I shake my head.
“I fantasised about locking you in a dark classroom, push you on a table, and pull your legs over my shoulders and suck you until you scream. I fantasised about kidnapping you from the track practice and pinning you against the tree in the back and fuck you until you pass out.”
“Aiden… stop...”
His dirty talk provokes a part of me I never thought existed.
His crude words will be the end of me.
It’ll be my damnation.
My descent into hell.
Not if I can stop it.
I place a trembling hand on his chest and I startle at the maddening heartbeat beneath the hot, hard muscles.
He appears so composed and in control that I never thought his pulse would be this… erratic. It’s almost as out of control as my own heartbeat.
“I can’t stop my fantasies, sweetheart.” He wraps his hand around mine that’s on his heart — his black, black heart. “But I won’t tell you the rest of them, do you know why?”
I shake my head once.
He yanks my hand away from his chest as if I burn him. “Because you’re not ready for those. I’ll tell you this, though.” He leans in to whisper in hot words. “You taste better than any fucking fantasy.”
Chapter Fifteen
A few days pass.
No matter how much I want things to go back to normal, they don’t.
Since that day in the coffee shop, Aiden hasn’t stopped texting me every night and morning.
The first strings of texts came that same night while I was watching Nat Geo with Uncle Jaxon.
Aiden: What did you have for dinner?
Aiden: We had pasta, but you were all I tasted on my tongue. I can’t stop thinking about my fingers inside your soaked walls as you whimpered. Pity I didn’t get to taste you properly and thrust my tongue inside that tight, little pussy.
Aiden: Next time, sweetheart.
I barely mumbled my goodnights to Uncle as I fled to my room.
He’s been sending those types of crude texts every night, and sometimes in the mornings.
I called him a psycho a few times. Insane at other times. But that only made him religious about his texts.
Dickhead.
Kim and I sit in the back garden for lunch. We’re both eating salad and watching the tall pine trees in the distance as she talks about her latest Korean soap opera with great details.
“Did you notice anything weird?” I ask when she finishes her retellings.
“Like what?” She chews on a mouthful of cucumber.
“Like no one calls you names anymore? Even Adam, the biggest bully of all bullies, passed you by this morning without a word.”
She grins, her mint-coloured hair flying in the wind. “My new look is shocking the hell out of them.”
As much as I love her new confidence, I don’t think that’s the case. Her new look didn’t stop Silver and her minions from bullying her at the start of school.
“Don’t you find it weird that all of this changed since Aiden comforted you in front of the entire school?”
If their king showed interest in her, they’d be signing off on their death certificates if they bothered her.
That’s Aiden. Those on his good side live in heaven, but the rest rot in hell.
“Well, yeah.” Her expression changes into something unreadable before she waggles her brows. “Maybe you should get comforted by him, too, so RES will get off your case, too.”
“Kim!” I hit her shoulder.
“What? Use them while you can, Ellie.”
“Is that what you’ve been doing with Aiden? Using him?”
She lifts her shoulder.
Kim isn’t the type of person who uses people. God. It’s as if I don’t know my best friend anymore.
“You do realise that Aiden King isn’t the type to be used, right?” I stab a fork at the bottom of my container. “He’ll read through your manipulations in no time.”
“Maybe we’re using each other.” She drops the container at her side and crunches a red apple.
Maybe we’re using each other?
What the hell is that supposed to mean?
“King played such an excellent game o
n Saturday. You should’ve seen the goal he scored.” Kim gushes. “Thirty metres away, can you believe that?”
I pause playing with my food. “You went to Elites’ game?”
“Uh, yeah? I told you I was going out on Saturday.”
“I thought it was to have dinner with your family.” My lips twist. “I also thought you quit going to their games.”
“I felt like going.” She shrugs. “And I’m so glad I did, King was a freaking star. So bright and dazzling. I can’t believe he doesn’t play in the Premier League like his cousin already.”
“Kim.” My throat dries as I stare at her with what must look like a horrified expression. “Do you hear yourself? You’re idolising Aiden fucking King right now.”
“What? He plays like a God. You can’t deny that.”
Yes, I can. That’s why I refuse to focus on him while he plays.
“Xander played like shit, though.” Kim’s pink-painted lips twist. “Fucking psycho almost got a red card for tackling an opponent so hard, he almost knocked his teeth out. But Kirian still wouldn’t shut up about him, can you believe that little shit?”
Kim’s little brother idolises Xander, and that always ticked her off.
“He’s just a kid.”
“He’s my baby brother, not his. Fucking arsehole.”
Then she launches into a full report on the game. It’s her usual thing, but this time, I notice the impressed tone whenever she talks about Aiden. Or maybe the impressed tone has always been there and I was too deaf to hear it.
I’m going to be sick to my stomach.
Just when I’m about to stop her, a shadow looms over us.
My head snaps up to find Ronan grinning down at us like an idiot.
“What do you want?” I snap.
“Relax, Frozen.” He slides beside a stunned Kim, smiling with unmistakable charm. “I come here in peace.”
Peace? He’s got to be freaking kidding me.
I search behind him and around the trees, expecting the devil to come out and play.
Nothing can convince me that this isn’t another one of Aiden’s depraved games.
I fold my arms over my chest. “Since when do you talk to us, Ronan?”
“Since Kim is a fan.” He grins at her, placing a stray strand behind her ear. “How come you never showed it before, chérie? You don’t have to be a closet fan.”