I can’t tell whether he thinks I’m weird or not.
His hand rises from my neck to the back of my head, and he kisses my unmoving, frightened lips before he whispers, “I’ve done much stranger things, Rose.” I hear the smile in his words, and I immediately relax. “Your turn,” he says. And just like that, he brushes it off so I don’t keep fretting.
It felt good to share that, to be more open sexually. I think I could do this more often with him. It’s not so hard. “Truth or dare?” I ask, my knuckles whitening as I grip the bottle of my Patron, pent up the longer he touches me.
“Truth.”
“What rouses you more, my body or my brain?”
His eyes drift to the tops of my breasts while one hand slides up my nightgown, settling on my bottom above my panties. “Both, equally.”
If I wasn’t so intoxicated by his presence and the liquor, I would make him give me a definitive answer, but I let it slide.
“Truth or dare?” he asks.
The last truth was difficult, and I know he won’t make it any easier. So I say, “Dare.”
He exhales deeply, so very aroused. Places in my body are clenching that have never clenched before. “I dare you,” he says, “to let me take off your nightgown.”
Before I even nod, his hands slip all the way beneath the silk, and he slowly lifts the fabric over my head, my breasts visible for his intense, heady gaze. My nipples already stand at attention.
I love the way he’s staring at me. It makes me feel more than just beautiful. I feel like I’m his. Like no one else could possibly compare to me. He doesn’t even have to say the words. I see it in his eyes. I can practically read it in his mind.
I sit on his lap, only in black panties, while he’s fully clothed. I want to strip him, but when I try to take off his unbuttoned shirt, he grips my wrists hard in disapproval. Right, we’re still playing the game. “Truth or dare?” I ask him.
“Truth.”
My eyes narrow. “You were supposed to pick dare.” I’d love to see his cock again, but it stays hidden in his pants. Just staring at the large bulge makes me wet.
“But I didn’t.”
“Fine. If you could cut off any part of my body and store it in a jar, what would it be?”
“Your eyes.” He doesn’t miss a beat.
I glare.
“And they’d look at me just like that.” His fingers glide across my hip, but he stays away from my breasts on purpose. I’ve never wanted him to press against me so badly. “Truth or dare?”
“Dare.” I’ll do anything.
“Let me play with you for…” He checks his charcoal Rolex. “…ten minutes.” It’s as ambiguous as he wants it to be. And before I can ask or accept (which I would have), he has me pinned flat on my back.
His lips touch mine in a big inhale, causing my body to buck up and meet his.
And then his hand descends towards my belly, his mouth trailing my jaw to my breasts. He sucks my nipple and bites the bud, the pressure grasping my throat.
I want more force on my neck, but I can’t speak to ask for it.
I’m lost in these feelings.
He sits up for a second, on his knees. And then he splits my legs open. In one swift motion, he slides me forcibly towards him, my heat digging into the hardness beneath his slacks.
Holy shit…
I don’t want to shut my eyes, but my lids flutter with each rupturing nerve. His hand disappears beneath my panties, and he slips two large fingers inside of me, pulsing them with mastered speed.
“You’re incredibly wet, darling,” he says with a heavy breath. “You’ve been a bad girl, not giving your body what it craves.” He lifts me a little higher and rocks against me while he’s fully clothed. The force feels so damn good. He slaps the side of my thigh.
Fuck me.
My limbs are tight in his clutch, and it’s everything I can do not to scream. All the noises just lock tight in my chest. I think I’ve spent so much time holding in sounds when I touch myself that it’s hard to let go.
“Let me hear you.”
He rocks harder. I wish his pants were off. I wish I could see his ass that tightens as he pounds into me, in sync with his fingers.
He slaps me again, more towards my ass this time. I let out a wrangled cry that even surprises me.
“You liked that,” he says.
“God…yes…”
“God’s not in this bedroom, Rose.”
My arm covers my eyes. I barely hear his words. “Fuck…” My lips part in a silent scream. I clench my comforter, and a wetness seeps beneath my ass. I look up and see the tequila spilt all over the bed.
And I don’t even care.
“Connor,” I breathe. “…Connor…harder.”
I see his lips lift before my lids close again. And he obliges by quickening the movement of his fingers and slamming into me. Then his hand finds the length of my neck. I open my eyes as he wraps his fingers around my throat and squeezes so tight.
I can’t breathe.
All the blood rushes to my head. He chokes me, not hard enough to hurt me, but enough to be lightheaded. This is what I wanted only minutes earlier. The fact that he understood this without me asking—it drives me to a new point, a new climax that I have never, ever experienced before.
I come in a turbulent, blissful wave. I can feel myself contract around his fingers as he keeps them inside of me. A thin layer of sweat coats my body, and when he pulls out his fingers, he grips my chin, forcing me to look at him.
He makes me watch as he puts his fingers in his mouth, licking off the wetness from between my legs. The image kick-starts my sluggish breathing into a rapid-fire pattern.
When he takes his hand out, he says, “Just as I thought.”
“What?”
“I love the taste of you.” He leans over me and slips those same two fingers into my mouth. He licked most of me clean, and I taste mostly him—his mouthwash and minty breath. I suspect he knew I’d taste more of him than myself.
He checks his watch. “Three more minutes.” His lips skim my neck and he whispers, “What I could do to you in that time…”
And just as he slips his tongue into my mouth, a huge crash bangs against the wall. I jump in fright, accidentally biting him. Shit.
Connor places a hand on my collar, keeping my back to the mattress while he sits up. “I’m fine,” he assures me.
But I taste the bitter iron of blood. And I know it’s his. Before I can inspect his tongue, something else slams behind us again.
I flinch, but I glance back at him. “Let me see your tongue.”
“No.” In a single word he reminds me that I can’t push him around. “And my tongue is fine. You barely sliced it.”
Good.
The next crash in the wall comes with muffled yelling.
Connor stands from the bed, no longer hard. As he changes pants and underwear quickly, I realize he came too. I hadn’t even noticed. I was too enamored with my own climax.
“It’s probably just Lily and Loren screwing,” I tell him.
His eyes narrow at me. “I must have fingered the brains out of you.”
I frown.
“That’s Daisy’s room.”
I bolt upright and spring off the bed, grabbing a black silk robe. I slip it on and knot the tie at my waist. Another bang hits the wall hard. My heart leaps to my throat.
“You should stay here,” he tells me, zipping his black slacks.
I glare.
“It was worth a try.” He places a hand on the small of my back. “After you.”
* * *
The moment I reach the door frame with Connor, we find Scott standing here, watching the scene with crossed arms. Not doing a damn thing to stop whatever’s happening.
And then I look, and my jaw hits the floor.
A glass lamp is shattered on the ground, a bookshelf toppled over, any fragile knickknacks destroyed on the hardwood.
Ryke wrestles a
medium-built guy in the center of the room. I discern his age quickly. Forties. Red hair that sticks up from being pummeled. His lip is busted, and he manages to put up a good fight against Ryke, who’s shirtless in a pair of track pants. The man shoves Ryke back and flings two punches, one connecting with Ryke’s jaw.
“Get the fuck off me!” the guy yells.
And then Ryke socks him right in the gut. The man crumples forward, coughing.
Daisy is in the corner, smashing something on the ground, hidden behind her bed. I give Scott a long agonizing glare for being a horrible human being and just standing here. And I go to my sister’s aid while Connor tries to separate the guys.
“You motherfucking pervert,” Ryke sneers, grabbing him around the throat. He’s about to slam his head into the ground, but Connor grips Ryke’s wrist hard and throws him off.
All I can think is that Ryke found Daisy’s boyfriend. Who’s a gross older man. That’s my first assumption.
“Don’t wake up Lily and Lo,” Connor says in a hushed voice. “Calm down.”
Ryke’s features are so dark. He’s almost hard to look at.
And then the man tries to escape, about to sprint out the door, but Connor snatches him by the shirt and drags him in front of his body. The man struggles in Connor’s forceful grip.
Right when I reach Daisy, I realize what she’s smashing.
A camera.
Now on her knees, she slams the device repeatedly on the ground, little plastic pieces flying in every direction. She screams furiously each time the mangled lens meets the floor.
“Daisy,” I whisper, but I grab her arms before she hurts herself with the sharp debris.
She drops the remains of the broken camera and slowly sits, shivering in my arms. It wasn’t her boyfriend in her room, I realize now. It had to have been the paparazzi—what looks to be a stupid one, a loser who obviously has no concept of the law. I glance over my shoulder at Connor and Ryke.
Connor has his phone pressed to his ear while he grips the man’s shirt. Every time he struggles, Connor throttles him with one hand. Composed, tall and strong. He speaks quietly to someone on the other line.
I make out Connor’s words, “We need to keep this out of the tabloids…Lily and Lo don’t need to know. They feel guilty enough for the media attention…”
“What happened?” I ask Ryke who nears the bed. Scott continues to just stand by the fucking door, watching. It’s not as though this is being filmed. We’re in a bedroom, which means there aren’t cameras here.
“Daisy called me on her cell,” he says.
She stares at the ground, her face as pale as a sheet.
I shake her arms, not very maternal or soft, and she almost blows over with my force. “Daisy? Talk to me.”
“He barged in my room,” she says under her breath.
I collect her waist-length hair out of her face, trying not to freak out. “And?” I say, clenching my teeth. If he put a finger on her…
Her gorgeous face contorts in a series of violent emotions. “…he started taking pictures of me…I didn’t know what to do, so I called Ryke…” She shakes her head and tears splash onto the floorboards. “…I’m so tired…” I hold her to my chest while she begins to cry.
I look up at Ryke, and he stares at her with that same look I saw during the screening party. Concern. Dark empathy.
“Shh,” I whisper to her, combing my fingers through her hair. I rest my chin on her head and keep her close.
“…I’m so tired,” she says again, her voice trembling. When our mother’s not preoccupied with Lily’s wedding, she pulls Daisy in five different directions. She makes sure she’s booked for photo shoots, and for the past three weeks, Daisy has been working tirelessly. If she’s not at school, then our mom carts her to New York to visit her new modeling agency. I’ve hardly seen her at all this month.
I even had to convince our mother to let me throw Daisy a birthday party. She would’ve had to cancel one of her shoots so she could celebrate. It took four screaming matches over the phone before I won out. But that was just one free day I gained for her.
“What’s going on at school, Dais?” Ryke asks.
I glance over my shoulder to make sure Lily and Lo aren’t here. At least they’re still sleeping.
Daisy chokes on a sporadic breath. “I…I’m fine…really.”
I exchange a worried look with Ryke.
He mouths, It’s not fucking good.
I know, I mouth back.
But what can we do? She has to finish prep school, and I can only guess the kind of ridicule kids are casting on her. She’s famous now. Her sister is a sex addict, and she’s been painted as a sex-addict-to-be. Her photographs are everywhere—sometimes deliberately from modeling, other times not consented from paparazzi. It’s an abrupt change from her old life, and none of us can relate to her current situation. We’re all in our twenties, out of prep school by now. We don’t have to worry about bullying like that.
“We’re going to take care of this,” I tell her. I’m going to surround the fucking townhouse with security. We had iron fences and a guarded gate at our home in Princeton. We should have had better things in place here. “How’d he break through the front door?” I ask Ryke.
He glares. “I didn’t have time to fucking ask.”
My lips tighten. “Did he touch her?”
Ryke stares back down at Daisy. “Did he fucking touch you, Daisy?”
She shakes her head repeatedly. “No…I’m sorry…” She wipes her eyes quickly and tries to bottle her emotions.
“Don’t you ever fucking apologize for another guy’s offense,” he growls. He layers on a few more curse words as he glares at the ceiling.
Wow. Ryke jumped up twenty points in my book. Not for the swearing, to be clear. “When did you become such a feminist?” I ask him.
“Since I learned my alcoholic father cheated on my mother. Then he fucking left her so he could raise his bastard son.” The bitterness and resentment pours from his harsh words.
“I shouldn’t have asked.” His family tree is fucked up. I smooth Daisy’s hair.
Connor pads over to us, pocketing his phone. He no longer has the guy by the shirt. In fact, the man is gone. “Your father’s security came and took him,” he tells me. “He broke through the front door with a bump key.”
“We need—”
“Your father already hired extra security to stand outside. He’s taking care of the incident quietly. No one will know about this unless Scott decides to air it. He has footage of the man coming up the stairs and through the hallway.”
I look for Scott, but he’s gone too.
“Lily and Lo…” Daisy murmurs, rubbing her eyes.
“They won’t ever find out,” Ryke says. “This stays between the four of us.”
And Scott. But no one adds him or my father’s name to the mix.
And we don’t ask why Lily and Lo can’t know. It’s what Connor had told my father on the phone. The guilt would hurt them so much. The crazed media was spawned from Lily’s addiction being publicized. But I bear some of the guilt myself—for putting my sisters through a reality show with awful security, for ditching their bodyguards. But I can withstand that guilt and come out strong.
Lily and Lo can’t. They’re addicts. This is naturally going to tear them apart, and they could turn to their vices to numb the feelings. And none of us want that. We’ll be the walls that shield these terrible events from them. We can endure the pain for however long they need to heal.
It’s what the four of us agreed to the moment Lily was afraid to step out of the house and meet the world. The moment Lo looked sick each time he tried to convince her to go outside and face the coldhearted media.
There was a very dark point where we all believed they’d die together. Where they’d call it quits. There were moments where I wondered how any girl could endure what she was going through. And I think the only reason they both didn’t leave the world
was because they refused to leave it together.
Leaving separately—causing the other to suffer that horrific loss—I doubt that was even an option in their minds.
[ 22 ]
CONNOR COBALT
“What is it?” I ask Rose while I pay for the check at the crowded restaurant. The seven of us—Scott included, who feels more and more like a tagalong as Rose and I grow closer—ate out at Valentino’s for dinner.
The more popular Princesses of Philly becomes, the more press has latched onto us. Besides the drones of photographers outside, families in booths snap pictures of us with their phones as we sit at a long table.
But that’s not why Rose’s brows have pinched together. She cups her cell on her lap and concentrates on the blue-lit screen.
I hook my ankle to her chair and drag her closer to me.
“She’s relentless,” Rose says stiffly.
I read the text.
3 months and 24 days – Mom
“Should I even ask about wedding dress shopping?” Last time I questioned about the cake, Rose almost went manic, spouting off things that her mother told her in a discordant mess. I couldn’t understand anything she was saying, not even as she spoke in French. She kept pacing in our bedroom and breathing abnormally. It took me an entire hour to calm her down.
“Lily said she didn’t want to go,” she says. “I can get Daisy and Poppy to be fitted for bridesmaids’ dresses without Lily there, but I can’t just go pick out a wedding gown for her.” She stays relatively at ease, so she must have thought of a solution.
“And?”
“I’m going to sew her one,” she tells me. “I’ve been designing it for the past week. I think I can finish it in the amount of time I have left.”
I don’t want to reiterate what Frederick has been telling me, even though I know it’s true. She’s taken on too much. She’s not only planning Lily’s wedding and her bachelorette party, but she’s been working tirelessly on reviving Calloway Couture. She refuses to hire employees until her profit margin increases, so she’s tasked with all of the social media and inventory, not to mention calls from hopeful investors and department stores.
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