by Eva Ashwood
He wasn’t lying. I could feel it, the slick wetness soaking my panties as my inner muscles clenched tightly, demanding something I had never had yet. Something I was a little afraid of but craved with my entire being.
To be full. To be filled up.
To be made whole.
Part of me wanted Misael to tear his own clothes off, to line himself up and slide inside me, to steal my virginity and give me something so much better in return.
But he didn’t. Instead, gentle fingers tugged the fabric of my panties aside, and his mouth closed around my clit, his tongue lashing back and forth in a pattern that made me writhe on the floor.
Kace’s grip on me tightened, holding me still, and he flicked one of my nipples roughly, sending sensation zinging straight down to my core.
“Oh God!”
My arms flailed as I searched for something to hold on to. One hand latched onto Kace’s short hair, gripping the strands as hard as he was gripping mine, and the other hooked around Bishop’s neck, pulling him deeper into our kiss.
“Good girl,” Bish murmured, his lips barely separating from mine to speak. “Come for us.”
Then his hands cupped the sides of my face, holding me still while his tongue delved into my mouth over and over. At the same time, Misael stiffened his tongue, thrusting it inside me just like I’d imagined he might do with his cock.
And it was all too much.
A loud, naked cry tore from my lips as I came hard, twisting and jerking as I rode Misael’s face unabashedly, chasing every last bit of pleasure that rippled through my body.
“Jesus fuck, that’s hot,” Kace muttered, his voice strained.
Bishop’s kiss slowed a little, then he broke away, and before I knew what was happening, I was being pulled up onto the couch and wrapped in his arms.
I was still in my bra and panties, although my bra was a little twisted and my panties were soaked through. Kace grabbed a blanket off the back of the couch and draped it over me as Bish sat back, arranging my body so I was draped partially over him and partially over Kace.
Misael gave a satisfied smirk as he rose up on his knees and leaned in to kiss me thoroughly. He was hard—I could see his cock straining against his pants. And judging from what I felt beneath me, the other two boys were too.
But when I tried to roll over, reaching for them, Bishop grabbed my wrist in a firm hold.
“Not tonight, Princess. Misael was right, you’re exhausted. Get some sleep.”
I wanted to argue, wanted to show him I wasn’t tired at all. But before I could even form a thought on exactly how to do that, sleep was already creeping up on me, stealing me away.
All the events of the day finally caught up to me, piling on top of me like a mountain of bricks.
And I slept.
Twenty-Five
There was a pep in my step as I waited for Mom to be released from the hospital on Sunday. I leaned against the wall, humming to myself.
Giddiness was a new feeling. It was probably wildly inappropriate, given the reason why my mother was in the hospital to begin with. At the moment, I couldn’t say that I cared.
No, it wasn’t that I didn’t care. It was that I felt so good that the feeling inside me couldn’t be contained, so I didn’t try. I was still worried about her, still concerned. I still cared. But there were other feelings clamoring for attention inside my chest now too, strong feelings that I was still trying to process. The Lost Boys had stayed with me for most of the weekend, and it was as if having them around so much, having them in my home, in my space, had ingrained them in my skin.
As if they’d slipped inside my heart somehow.
Finally, Mom came out, accompanied by a doctor I didn’t recognize. The sight of her sobered me up in a rush. She still looked frail, almost fragile, like a glass doll that would break if I touched her too suddenly.
“Here we are.” The man beamed at me, his smile surprisingly bright—but I wasn’t going to shun a good attitude. Then his gaze flicked to my mom. “This is your daughter, you said?”
She nodded stiffly. “Yes.”
“Good.” He stuck out his hand to me. “I’m Dr. Paulson. I don’t want to bore you too much on the details, but I briefed your mother about aftercare, as well as a few resources for some long-term treatment.” Just from his tone, I could tell Mom hadn’t taken the suggestion of “long-term treatment” well. Mental illnesses weren’t something the elite had to worry about, as far as she and my father were concerned.
Or maybe they do, but no one ever talks about it.
I didn’t voice that thought out loud though. Instead, I nodded at the doctor. “Of course. Is there anything I need to be aware of—”
“I’d just like to get home,” Mom interjected. “As soon as possible.”
She strode past me, and I frowned. Before I turned to follow her, the doctor took my arm, a little line appearing between his brows as he bent his head toward me.
“I sent a packet along with her,” he said in a low voice. “It’s in her bag, so take care and read through it, even if she has no interest. I don’t believe we’ll be seeing a return, but with things like this, you can never be too certain. She seems to be a woman very much… out of her element right now.”
God. He didn’t know the half of it.
I thanked the doctor and dealt with Mom’s discharge paperwork, since she’d already left the building and didn’t look like she had any plans at all to come back in. When I met her outside, she stood beneath the entry canopy of the hospital with a look of trepidation. I could barely reconcile this woman with the one who had thrown elaborate parties for hundreds of guests and played the perfect hostess to them all. How is this the same person?
I slid my arm into hers, leading her out to the car. We were quiet, but I figured that was probably for the best. I had no idea what to say.
How do people come back from things like that? Is it better to act like nothing at all happened? Or to talk about it?
To my surprise, when we slid into the car, it was Mom who spoke up first.
“Don’t tell your father,” was all she said. “Don’t you ever tell your father.”
Mom said nothing else about the incident, and neither did I.
Her flippant demeanor about it was almost jarring. Aside from the cool way she had told me not to tell Dad, she snapped back into place like a rubber band. She was still far from the radiant, put-together woman of high society that I had come to know her as, but she also didn’t remain shut up in her room either. She was up before I was every morning, up and about, asking me about school and how things were going—I’d taken a few days off to stay with her and make sure she was okay.
It was a confusing switch, especially considering the fact that aside from knowing whether I was making good grades, Mom never showed an interest in my schooling before. She’d never had to; I’d been the perfect student, juggling strategic extracurriculars with a challenging course load and never letting anything fall behind.
Despite my trepidation about what this change in her meant, I tried to embrace it. If she was ready to try to make the best of our situation, that could only be good for both of us, and even though her energy often seemed forced, at least she was trying to accept things the way they were now.
Or at least, I thought she was.
The day before I was due to return to school, there was a knock at the door in the late afternoon. I was sitting at the kitchen table working on a paper I wanted to knock out so I wouldn’t be too behind when I got back to school. I glanced up when I heard the sound, but before I could stand, I heard Mom answer the door.
“Who… are you?”
Disdain and discomfort were apparent in her voice even from where I sat in the next room. And the sound of Bishop’s voice made me sit up straighter.
“We were wondering if Cora was in?”
It was the most politely I’d ever heard him speak. Ever. I hadn’t thought politeness was in his repertoire, but he soun
ded subdued and respectful. I stayed where I was, ears perked as I heard my mother make a sound somewhere between a grumble and a scoff.
“And who are you?”
“A friend from school.”
“Cora hasn’t mentioned any… friends from school.”
“To be fair, she’s a little shy.”
I snorted. I definitely wasn’t that when it came to school and the boys. Not even in the early days—but I supposed that wasn’t the actual point Bishop was trying to make. I closed up my textbook and stood, going to the door. I slipped in beside Mom, giving Bishop a smile.
“Hey, Bish.”
“You know this young man?” Mom asked me, not bothering to look down at me. Her gaze stayed keenly trained on Bishop, suspicious, like he was going to slither in here like a viper and bite something.
“Yeah. Of course I do, Mom. He’s a boy in my class.” I glanced to Bishop. “You can come in—”
“Aren’t you doing homework, Cordelia?” Mom interjected stiffly.
“Yes, but—”
“Then you need to make this quick and get back to it. Education is important, after all. It gets you places.”
I didn’t like the snooty tone Mom’s voice took on. Even when we were living at home, she’d never spoken like that to anyone I’d gone to school with, even people she didn’t necessarily like—usually because of their parents. I knew instantly why she wasn’t giving Bishop the respect she would have given them: because she thought he was beneath her.
I opened my mouth to say something, but Bishop spoke up.
“I actually just came by to drop off some homework for Cora.” He reached into his backpack and handed me a few packets of paper. “You know. So you don’t fall behind on your education.”
He hit the last word a little extra hard, and I saw something glint in his hazel eyes as his gaze flicked to my face quickly, but otherwise, he gave no indication that he’d heard or been bothered by the snobby undertones in my mom’s voice.
“See you at school, Cora.”
With a dip of his chin, Bishop turned and left.
Mom stood there and watched him walk all the way down the cracked front path and all the way across the street to his house. I thought the entire display was a little much, and more than a little uncalled for. When Bishop was gone and out of sight, and Mom had securely closed—and obnoxiously locked—the door, I turned to her with an angry glare.
“Mom, what the hell? That was uncalled for.”
Her eyebrows shot up, and a surprised little noise fell from her lips. Now that I thought about it, I didn’t think I’d ever truly talked back to her or Dad. Not once.
There had always been “yes, sirs” and “no, ma’ams” and even when I had pushed back a little, the words had never come out harshly. But she’d just insulted and run off someone I considered a friend… or a… something.
That was unacceptable. Especially when Bishop was the one who’d probably saved her life.
“Excuse me?” Mom’s voice was soft.
“That was uncalled for,” I repeated. “He’s a friend from school, and he was just coming by to drop off homework. He’s helping me. He wasn’t doing anything wrong.”
“He looks like trouble.”
I had never seen my mother turn her nose up at someone before, but I definitely saw the upturn in the way she looked away from me and back to the door—like she expected Bishop to just barrel on through it and wreak havoc. I openly rolled my eyes. He was trouble, but she didn’t know that, and she definitely didn’t know why or how.
“He is also the reason you were able to get to the hospital so fast after your accident,” I said bluntly, my voice growing hard. “So maybe next time he comes around, you should thank him.”
Mom’s eyes flashed with surprise and something like shame. But instead of softening, her expression just grew harder.
“I don’t want a boy like that around here or around you, Cordelia. I mean it.”
I had never snuck out of my house before.
Not when we were still living on the “good side” of Baltimore; not even when I was invited to college parties by guys at my school who were looking to get an in and a head start on mingling.
But there was a first time for everything.
In the few months since I’d started at Slateview, I had experienced more firsts than I had in the entire year before that. And tonight was another one as I opened up my bedroom window and slipped out of it.
Mom was safely asleep; all the sleeping pills we’d had in the house had been flushed down the toilet by Bishop when he’d cleaned up that first night while she was still in the hospital. It made me a little wary about sneaking out—we were closer to each other’s rooms in this house than in our old, sprawling mansion, and that meant that without sleep aids, she could very easily hear me.
On second thought, I don’t care if she hears me.
Landing smoothly on my feet below my window, I carefully closed it enough so that no animals or anything would be able to get in, but it wouldn’t be hard for me to slip back through when the time came. For a split second, I wondered what it would be like if I just stayed out all night and didn’t come back until morning, striding in through the front door to a mother who thought her daughter was comfortably still in bed.
Pushing those thoughts away, I crept across the street to Bishop’s house. His foster father was gone again—the man was seriously never home.
The streetlamps flickered above, casting a faded yellow over the cracked sidewalk as I stepped on it. A few moments later, I was knocking on Bishop’s door. As I waited, I had a vivid recollection of the last time I had popped over to his place unexpectedly, and I chewed on my lip, glad as hell that things were better this time around.
He answered the door—a beer in his hand. I raised a brow as he raised his.
“Well, well. Hello, Princess.”
I smirked, pushing inside.
“Hey. Can I crash here for a little?”
“Can you crash here? Picking up the lingo, I see.”
“Hey, Cora! S’up!”
In the living room, Misael lifted his chin from where he sat sprawled on the sofa next to Kace. They both seemed surprised but not unhappy to see me.
I smiled and gave a wave before turning to face Bishop as he closed the door.
“I just wanted to come over here and apologize for how my mom was earlier.”
Bishop waved it off and shrugged.
“It’s whatever. I figure it’s a plus that she didn’t call the police on me and only gave me a stern talking to.” His grin was sinful.
“Ooh, Bish got a talking to from our girl’s mooooom.” Misael cackled. Then he patted the sofa seat beside him. “But I guess that’s good? Means she’s up and about and stuff after everything, right? She’s okay?”
“I think she is,” I said, plopping onto the couch. The spicy scent of cloves and the warmth of his body made me unconsciously scoot a little closer to him, like I was trying to soak up his essence through my skin. “She has a little more… pep? I suppose. Enough that she was totally rude earlier.”
Bishop’s eyes glittered as he gazed down at me. He’d followed me into the living room but hadn’t sat down yet. “It’s nice to see you care, Princess.”
His voice had a teasing lilt, and I rolled my eyes at him.
“You should be so lucky that I care.”
“I never said I wasn’t.”
A deep blush crept up my cheeks, and I cleared my throat as Bishop arched a brow slightly and then turned to head for the kitchen. It wasn’t fair that sometimes, just sometimes, he was the weirdest, most alluring balance of dangerous and soft. It put me completely off balance and left me thinking about things I had no business even considering.
Like what it would be like to really be with these boys. Not just owned by them, not just in an arrangement that ensured my protection, not just… whatever this was.
But with them.
I settled more co
mfortably into the couch, and Misael put his arm over my shoulders, tugging me a little closer into his side. He pressed a kiss to my temple.
“Seriously though. Don’t tell me the only reason you came over here was to make sure Bish’s feelings weren’t hurt.” He chuckled. “That would be boring as fuck. And also a little lame. We all know Bish doesn’t have feelings.”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he yelped loudly. Bishop had come behind the couch and pressed a fresh, cold beer to the back of his neck. There was a faint smirk on Bishop’s lips, and he winked at me when our gazes met. I was sure my blush deepened, which only made him grin wider.
“Hey, why don’t we cut out of here?” he suggested. “We weren’t going to stay in tonight anyway. Since you’re here, might as well make it a party.”
We ended up all the way across town again, back at the warehouse we’d gone to the first time I’d “chilled” with the Lost Boys. It was a lot more relaxed this time. After all, we knew each other a lot better by now, and the darkness of the night and the whooping laughter of three boys with nothing better to do on a school night than hang out in abandoned buildings was actually… comforting.
I didn’t want to hang out around the rental house, having one-word conversations with my mother, or worse, having to listen to her trash people who had made it possible for me to survive in this world and even feel a little bit happy.
Of course, the excitement of hanging out was short lived. We’d only been there for about an hour when Bishop got a message. He groaned.
“What is it?” I glanced over, peeling absently at the label on my beer.
The warehouse was chilly and dimly lit, but there were enough missing chunks and holes in the walls to let light filter in from the street. It’d taken my eyes a little while to adjust, but now I could see the boys’ features easily through the shadows.
Bishop looked over to Kace and Misael. “Work,” he grumbled.
The other two frowned.
“Maaan, that sucks balls. Ask if he can meet us here? We got company.” Misael jerked his chin at me.