“He’s fine. You just need to stay out of his way.” Taylor gestures around the extravagant hotel lobby. “I could’ve paid for all this with my dad’s money, I guess, but it’s more fun to know it’s my own. Even more fun to know I didn’t have to go to business school and wear suits all day to do it. I can have tattoos. I can fuck whoever I want. If dealing with Zach’s attitude is the price I have to pay for that, then what do I care. Besides, he can be alright sometimes. He lets his guard down every once in a while and he’s a decent guy.”
“So why is he always trying to push everyone away?”
Taylor shrugged, but something told me he knew more than he was letting on. “Just because people come from money, doesn’t always mean they have perfect pasts.”
Another cryptic reference to Zach’s past. I remembered what Zach said about needing a time machine to fix what was broken with him. I remembered a bit of conversation I overheard eight years ago, too, the conversation that convinced Zach I knew some deep, dark, secret of his. He had never believed me when I said I didn’t understand what I heard, but it was true.
“It would take quite the past to justify the things Zach has done,” I said.
Taylor raised his eyebrows as if to say, yeah well, you’ve got a point there. “Not to be unnecessarily crude or anything,” he glanced at his phone, “but I’ve got, well, a few people who are probably waiting impatiently for me to get back to my room right about now.”
I found myself somewhere between cringing and grinning. It was kind of adorable that he was trying to spare me the indecency of saying he was about to go have an orgy while also being the kind of guy to have an orgy. “Um, well, you enjoy that.”
“Plan to. Though,” he said, raising his voice and turning his head toward the man he had been arguing with when I came in. “Would’ve been easier to have a good time if we had enough damn pillows!”
The man cleared his throat and pretended not to hear, which was probably for the best.
My phone buzzed while I was watching the fourth Harry Potter movie in my room—the best one. I braced myself against some sort of angry tirade from my sister, but then I saw the text was from Zach, which was even more surprising, because I hadn’t put him into my contacts list. Apparently that sneaky asshole had taken the liberty of plugging himself into my phone and also adding “<3” before and after his name. Little hearts? Really, Zach?
Despite the stupidity of it, I found myself grinning down at the screen.
<3 Zach <3: Dinner. And no, it’s still not optional.
We met at a small bar downtown. Zach had one of the drivers “deliver” me there, as he seemed to enjoy phrasing it. I almost expected him to look sour or try to talk to me about why I had rushed away after what felt dangerously close to a date in the museum. Instead, he just glared at me, like I was the one forcing him to be there.
“I hope you like hamburgers,” he said. “Because the food here kind of sucks, but the hamburgers are edible, at least.”
“So forcing me to come here was part of my punishment?”
He gave me a funny look somewhere between a smile and a frown. “You know, Gardener Girl, if you would stop looking for the worst in people, you might stop finding it so often.”
I barked a laugh, and his smile told me he meant for it to be funny. It was a slight continuation of the side of him I had seen earlier at the museum, and I felt myself put off-balance by it. I was ready for hateful Zach. I was ready for him to be cruel and horrible and push me away. I wasn’t ready for whatever this was, and I honestly wouldn’t have put it past him to be doing this all as an act just to catch me off-guard. I needed to remember to stay alert, because everything felt like a game with him. A twisted game, but a game nonetheless, and it was a game I don’t think Zach had ever lost. Only he knew all the rules, and he was born to play it.
“Okay, then,” I said, deciding to humor him. I could assume he was only pretending to be nice for his own reasons and act cold, or I could just take it for what it was. If he wanted to be enjoyable for a change, maybe I could pull a little psychology on him and reward the behavior—make him want to keep doing it. “If this isn’t punishment, I give up. Why are we here if the food is bad?”
“I wanted you to hear the band that’s playing.”
I raised my eyebrows. “For some reason, I took you as the type to only appreciate your own music. You mean you like other bands?”
He looked at me like I was an idiot. “Of course I like other music. It’s hard to enjoy your own music when you’ve already listened to it a thousand times in some way or another before it’s even a finished product. You hear the parts that gave you trouble or the places you aren’t entirely happy with instead of the whole song. Besides, I’m not so egotistical that I think my own music is the best.”
“I guess I can see that. Poems can be the same way. Could be,” I amended when I realized I still thought of myself as a poet in a way, even though I had hardly written a word of it since high school. “When I used to write them, I mean. I never really felt like some of the great poets could have experienced their poems the way someone seeing it for the first time could. That seemed like a kind of tragedy to me.”
We walked inside as Zach cocked an eyebrow at me. “Not that I particularly care, but what made you stop writing poetry?”
We took two seats at a table near the wall that was lit by an empty beer bottle with a single white string light shoved inside. The bar was crowded, and a group of four guys and a woman were getting their gear ready on stage. Small-time band, I figured, or they would have someone to set up for them. They were even doing their own sound checks.
“Not that you particularly care,” I said once we had sat and I had let him have a few moments to think about what a douchebag way of asking a question that was. If he was pretending to be nice, he was showing his lack of practice. “Why don’t you just admit you want to know more about me?”
“I thought I was supposed to be the cocky one.”
“And I also thought you were supposed to be too cool to care about anyone but yourself, but you’ve actually made an attempt at being decent today.”
He gave no sign of being bothered by what I had said, except that his nostrils flared slightly. “Maybe I’m just trying to find whatever way I can inside those pants of yours. It’s like Fort Fucking Knox.”
I didn’t take the bait. I recognized it for what it was. I never saw it when I was younger, but now I was starting to see what he did. It was like a reflex for him. When a conversation got too real or a relationship got too close to his heart, he’d say something like that, some offhanded, crude thing to push people away. He wanted to remind them that he was what all the stereotypes said he was.
“I’m not one of your groupies, Zach. Like it or not, I know you a little better than them. You’re not going to play this one off with a lame dirty joke. Why are you suddenly being halfway decent?”
He pursed his lips, nodding in a way that seemed to say he was impressed, at least a little. “You want a real answer? You go first. Why don’t you write poetry anymore?”
I felt way more pleased than I should have been to be asked a personal question by him. There was a hopeless, romantic part of my heart that wanted to like Zach ever since that kiss in my bedroom eight years ago—ever since I saw him standing there and felt like there was a different person hiding deep within the storm clouds in his eyes. It was a small thing, but I didn’t think I could remember a single time Zach had asked me a personal question that wasn’t sexual in some way, and it felt like progress.
But for every part of me that wanted to like him, there were more parts that should have been looking for ways to hurt him for all the things he had done. It was just hard to focus on them when it felt like I was finally cracking the code that was Zach Thornwood.
“I still like poetry, but I never liked the sad, melancholy stuff. Poetry was my escape. I didn’t exactly have a picture-perfect life, and when I found the right words, it
always felt like I was carving a little window in the world where I could look out and see a better place. It got harder and harder to dream of escaping, I guess. All the words I had were sad ones, so I stopped writing.” I laughed at myself then, shaking my head. “That sounds super cheesy. Sorry.”
“No,” said Zach, who looked deadly serious. The waitress came up, recognized Zach, and then opened her mouth to say something. He waved her away like she was a bothersome insect, and it was the first time I’d seen him blow off a fan. And he was doing it for me. “It doesn’t sound cheesy.”
I thought he was going to say more, but he only sat there, like he was as confused as I was with the turns this conversation had took, the turns this day had taken.
“Your turn,” I said. “What’s with you today. Not that I’m complaining, mind you.”
He sat back in his chair and sighed into his folded hands. “You remember that song I sang to you at the battle of the bands? ‘Standin’ alone in a crowded room?’ Remember that line?”
Chills prickled across my skin. Of course I remembered it. It was a memory I had revisited so many times, like a treasured book with pages worn and soft from years of use. “I think so,” I said.
“That’s… Well, it’s how I guess I feel. Sometimes,” he said, practically stumbling over his words. It was oddly adorable. Zach was actually talking about his feelings with me?
I nodded, hoping to encourage him to say more.
“Fuck,” he said, laughing. “Now I’m the one being cheesy.”
“Hey, you said it wasn’t cheesy. Remember?”
He grinned. “Let me ask you a question.” He was changing the subject, but I felt pretty sure there was no pressuring him to reveal more about what he was going to say, so I let him.
“Okay, go for it.”
“What happens if I admit I might have liked the kiss a little more than I let on? The other night.”
“Then I would ask why you still went back to your room with some random groupie instead of—”
“Instead of you?” he finished.
I closed my eyes, cursing myself for being so careless with my words and speaking before I thought. Yes. Instead of me. Why was she the one that got to have you? Why not me? Why hadn’t you fought to have me, even just a little?
“Nothing happened, Aribella.” His voice was soft, like he was admitting something he was ashamed of.
Then I realized he had used my name. Not Gardener Girl. Aribella. I replayed the sound in my head again and again, feeling my stomach swirl and flip. “What do you mean?” I asked.
He shook his head, his forehead creasing as he searched for the words. “She wasn’t you.”
Every last drop of moisture in my mouth evaporated. My heart thumped so noisily I worried he would hear, and I caught myself leaning closer with parted lips. “But I heard—”
“She was in my room for two or three minutes. I made some dumbass joke about room service, told her to undress, and then it all just hit me like a ton of fucking bricks. She wasn’t you. Look. I’m not making some romantic gesture here. This isn’t me saying I want to have a relationship.” He air-quoted that, like it was a dirty, silly word that he couldn’t even say without mocking. “I’m just saying that I didn’t fuck her.” He paused again, eyes hard and dazzling in the dim light of the bar. “I just wanted you.”
I licked my lips. “Hypothetically speaking, what happens if I let you have me? Do I get the night of my life and then a ticket back to Florida in the morning?”
“What happens is I lay you down, stand you up, or hold you sideways—doesn’t matter—I spread you out. I dive into you like it has been eight years since I first decided I wanted to fuck you. I had to fuck you. You say the word, and I’ll devour you, Aribella. Every last goddamn inch. That’s what happens.”
I tried to swallow but only produced an awkward clicking noise in my throat. “Hypothetically, of course,” I said quietly.
“Hypothetically,” he agreed.
Two minutes later, Zach had me pressed against a wall behind a door marked “Staff Only.” It had turned out to be a kind of maintenance room, and we could hear the band through the walls.
His hand pinned my wrists over my head and his face was inches from mine. Every nerve in my body screamed for his touch until my skin felt like glitter, prickling all over. I could worry about consequences and implications later. Eight years of momentum had led to this moment. We had derailed our course time and time again, but we were both on the same track, always heading for a collision. It wasn’t a matter of if, but when.
He kissed me in that hard, possessive way of his, like every touch of his lips was a mark to show the world that I had been claimed and they had better stay away.
“What are we doing?” I asked between kisses. The sound of the band began thumping through the wall behind my back.
“This is called foreplay,” he said slowly, like he was explaining something to a child. “First I get you so horny you can barely stand, then I—”
“I understand the concept,” I interrupt. “What is this. What does it mean?”
He shrugged. “It doesn’t have to mean anything. For once, stop trying to assign meaning to everything. Just experience it. Live it. Deal with the questions later.”
His words washed over me, hardly sinking into my mind because I was so preoccupied with his closeness. His body was hard against mine, warm and full of delicious promise. His length was rock-hard and pressing into my stomach, giving me no doubt where he wanted this night to go.
“What if it’s not that simple?”
He leaned forward, taking my lower lip between his teeth and pulling away slowly, leaving me with a slight sting and a burning hunger for more. “What if it is?” he asked.
I tried to channel some of his nonchalance. This wasn’t high school anymore. People did have casual sex. Casual relationships. Sometimes the lines didn’t have to be black and white. Couldn’t I just step into that world this one time?
Zach put his hand on the inside of my thigh, yanking my thoughts away from any doubts I had and bringing them straight to the neon sign flashing in my mind that said “Do it.”
So I let go. I relaxed my body, letting his hand swallow up my wrists and letting his other hand burn a trail up the inside of my thighs until he started to push my dress up, until he cupped me through my already-soaked panties.
He kissed my earlobe. “Your pussy doesn’t seem to be having doubts.”
“That was never the part of me you had to fight to win over,” I admitted.
“Fuck,” he rasped, fingers moving slowly and rhythmically against me. “I always knew you would be dirty for me when the time came. My filthy little gardener girl. Dirty from her hands to her mind.”
“I don’t see—oh God—how you would’ve thought that.”
He squeezed my wrists harder, lips still so close to my ear that I could feel them move as he spoke, as his fingers snuck up to the waistband of my panties and dove inside, spreading my slick arousal. “You were eye-fucking me from the first time you saw me. Admit it.”
“Liar,” I said.
He chuckled, and I felt the sound vibrating through his chest to mine. “I’m a lot of things, but I’ve never been a liar.”
I almost argued with him, but the sensations flooding me were too much to think, too much to speak. The only sounds that came from my mouth were unintelligible, moans so loud I was glad the band was blaring music to drown them out.
He finger-fucked me so hard I came while shaking and holding on to him to keep from falling down. My knees were like jelly, my brain like scrambled eggs as some distant, logical part of me was still trying to grapple with what this moment meant, what it implied about our future or lack thereof.
He sank to one knee like he was about to propose, then looked up at me with a wolfish grin. He held up his forefinger and middle finger, which were slick with my juices. Without looking away from me, he ran his tongue up them from base to tip, drinkin
g me in. He bit his lip and his grin widened. “Fuck you taste good. I need more.” He yanked my panties down in a quick motion, pulled them off of me completely, and then hooked his arms under my legs, dropping me down until my back was against the wall and my weight was on his shoulders. There was no time to think, no time to doubt or question.
“You have the sexiest pussy I’ve ever seen,” he growled before he kissed the insides of my thighs. His face was so close to my sex that I could feel the heat radiating from his skin on me there like a lingering promise of what was coming. I felt like I should be embarrassed or self-conscious, because it was the first time a guy had ever gone down on me, but all I could feel was anticipation.
When he put his lips to me, it was like time stopped. The warmth of his tongue in such an intimate place almost pushed me to climax instantaneously. I thought of all the wicked things that tongue had helped him orchestrate, and how watching him use it to please me felt so deliciously naughty. I hadn’t expected the sense of power to be so sexy.
He pulled my clit between his lips, circling it with his tongue before plunging it inside me and tongue-fucking me. It was too much, and I clenched around him, scissoring his head between my thighs when the orgasm came barreling through me like a freight train.
He eased me off his shoulders, grabbed my panties, and slid them back on with a mischievous glint in his eyes.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“It all ends when I fuck you, right?” he asked. “Well, I’m not ready for it to end. Not yet. Good foreplay takes a while, I hear. I plan to enjoy it.”
20
Zach
I could hardly believe the monumental act of self-control I put myself through two weeks ago, but I was glad for it now. I had Gardener Girl—Aribella—right there, ready for the taking. She was so horny and wet for me that I think she almost slapped me when I didn’t do more than finger fuck her. It felt weird thinking of her as anything other than Gardener Girl after so long, but if there had been one sure-fire sign that things had changed between us, it was that the old nickname felt odd on my tongue now.
Hate at First Sight Page 14