by Sharpe, Elle
“I don’t care what you wear, as long as it comes off.”
“Wow, what a line.”
I scooted back, as much as I could manage. He gave a huff of frustration, as my t-shirt-covered breasts briefly brushed his lips and then moved out of range.
“Hey,” I said, looking him square in the face and bringing a hard edge back into my voice. “Why are you doing this?”
He looked like a fox ready to gobble up a nest of baby birds. Like he was about to lick his chops. Like he should have had an oversized knife and fork, and big white napkin on his neck, like in a cartoon.
“Why do you think, Norah?” he asked, rolling his eyes. Like the answer was so obvious. Like I was a moron.
I was a moron, I realized. This was what Ronan Baylor did. He charmed, he seduced, he brought people under his power. He probably got laid at every party he went to—all those better, more glamorous parties, out there in the “real world.”
I could just imagine it—him all over a series of hot, tall model-types, making them squirm and sigh under him, kissing off their Instagram-perfect makeup. After he finished with them he would smile like Satan and make a mental notch in his bedpost.
There weren’t any models or socialites or heiresses at this party, so he was making do with what he had. And making a conquest of a girl who hated him probably wasn’t bad for the ego either.
“You’re an asshole,” I said.
Just a neutral statement of fact. Except that I sounded too annoyed to be neutral. Annoyed, and a little bit scared. Ronan’s brand of asshole was scary. Powerful, scary, and very...stimulating. That was already painfully clear. Just calling him that sent a lightning spark of heat right through me.
He briefly looked a little bit…stung? But his face quickly became cool. Neutral.
“Does that mean you want me to stop?”
The words were calm and smooth, with just a hint of a challenge at the end. A tiny little hint of something like anger. It made me shiver, and forced me to squeeze my thighs together.
I lay back and closed my eyes, like that would let me pretend someone else was saying the word:
“No.”
He hesitated for just a moment. Then he leaned forward, and brought his hand down to press on my shoulder. Hard.
“Good,” he said against the shell of my ear. “Because I don’t want to.”
He turned my face to his, so close that we were breathing each other’s breaths. His pupils were black and huge.
“Fine. You’re right,” he said, his voice heavy. “I am an asshole.”
He found the button of my jeans and opened it.
“You know something about assholes?” he asked.
His fingers were traveling downwards—an invading army that met with no resistance. He brushed against a warm pool of wetness, and he smiled.
“Assholes always get what they want.”
“Oh,” I breathed out. I was so relieved when I felt him touch me. I felt like I had been waiting for this forever.
“You’re wet for me Norah.”
“Yes,” I agreed. No point in arguing. He was lording it over me, but I didn’t care anymore. I gave a resigned sigh. “Nothing I can do about it now.”
He made a soft, amused sound. His breath tickled at my lips.
“You’re a weirdo. You know that?”
He said it the way some other man might have said, “You’re gorgeous.” I moaned a little. Like the way I should have reacted if he’d said something nice.
“Yes,” I muttered, breathily. “Yes, I know.”
He was very skilled with his fingers. Far, far too skilled. He’d done this hundreds of times before, I reminded myself. With hundreds of women. He probably drew them in like flies to honey, and then forgot them instantly afterwards.
Jerk. The thought made me feel indignant. I rolled my hips forwards into his hand to express my anger.
His other hand moved from my shoulder and brushed down my side, then crept up to cup my breast. He found my nipple through my shirt, and pinched.
It might not be so bad to be forgotten, I thought. If he wasn’t going to remember anyway, there was no point trying to keep down the moans at the back of my throat. And I couldn’t stop myself from making them, even if I tried.
He was sliding into me like silk. I was coming unspooled around the rough, male skin of his fingers. Pleasure spiraled through me, expanding outwards. Welcoming and warm.
His dark eyes over mine brought every feeling in my body into sharp, straining focus. Stupid, smoke-gray eyes. So over the top. Eyes full of storms. Blood-and-thunder eyes.
I was pretty sure my last threads of sanity were snapping.
“You are such an asshole,” I whispered, scrunching my eyes closed. I didn’t sound mad about it this time. I sounded...something else. I wasn’t sure what.
Whatever it was, he heard it too. He groaned against my cheek, and pushed his hips forward against my leg. I felt his hardness on my thigh, straining against too much fabric.
“What else? Tell me more,” he murmured. He sounded sarcastic. Resentful. No. Commanding. Teasing? Savoring. Triumphant. “What am I, Norah? Tell me.”
“Smug, arrogant bastard.”
He rewarded me with harder strokes.
“I hate you,” I sighed. I arched my hips up to him. “I never liked you. And I will never, ever like you.”
I could hear my own voice getting higher. I couldn’t hold out much longer.
Completely against my will my hands floated up from the bed and gripped at Ronan’s jacket. I needed the firmness of his chest to brace myself against. I wanted to pull his whole body inside me.
“Hey Norah?” My name on his lips trembled through me. I could hear the vicious grin on his face, even though my eyes were closed tight. “You must hate me a lot.”
“Fuck you, Ronan. Fuck. Fuck.” I started shaking around his fingers, my hips convulsing.
I remembered Jen and Chris in the next room just in the nick of time, and bit down hard on my lip to keep from screaming. Instead I made a series of sort of choked wailing sounds, which were definitely super attractive. But in the moment, that didn’t matter. A thoroughly satisfying orgasm was wringing all the self-consciousness out of my body.
And then I was empty. Floating. Safely floating in the closed-eyes universe where only happy, hazy pleasure-feelings existed.
I kept my eyes closed as long as I could, but I knew I couldn’t lie there forever. Eventually I had to look at Ronan’s face again.
Reluctantly I let my eyelids flutter open. His ridiculously gorgeous features were waiting for me. So, so beautiful. Like looking at the sun.
I had expected that self-satisfied smirk, and the cruel twist at the corner of his mouth. But his eyes. His eyes were so intense. Not just victory eyes, or “I told you so eyes.” He was looking at me like...like he was stunned by me. Like I was something that he wanted. Badly.
No, that couldn’t possibly be right.
I really, really wanted to stop staring at those pretty eyes. But I was not able to do that.
Until I heard Chris throw up again in the other room.
“Ronan?” Jen called out from the other room. “Did you drive here? Do you have your car? Because I’m getting worried-”
Ronan leaned back and ran his free, unsoiled hand through his hair. He looked like a mad kid whose parents had just told him he couldn’t eat his cake until he finished his broccoli. I guess my body would have been the cake in this metaphor. For a second he looked at me with irritated longing. I could practically hear him salivating.
“-worried we might need to take him to the hospital. Just in case, you know?” Jen’s voice had a panicky edge that cut through my post-orgasm afterglow.
And then it didn’t take long for the horror to set in.
“Get out of my room!” I scream-whispered at Ronan. “Oh my God. First get your finger out from inside my body, and then leave this room as fast as possible!”
“Calm do
wn Norah,” Ronan said in a perfectly normal tone of voice.
His finger was still inside me. I pulled it out.
“We should not have been doing...that, while your friend was in there, practically dying of alcohol poisoning-”
“He’s not dying. If I thought he was dying I wouldn’t have left him- ”
“Get. Out. Jen and drunk Chris cannot know that you were in here.”
“Because of me being an asshole?” He raised a suggestive eyebrow at me.
“Yes. Very much because of that. I should not have been doing anything with you, at all, at any time or in any place.”
Ronan’s face went grim, and he let out a long, weary exhale.
“Now get out, before any other human beings bear witness to the fact that this occurred.”
“Fine,” he snapped. “I’ll just go check whether I need to take my sick friend to the hospital, like the huge asshole that I am.”
He walked to the door. To my alarm I realized that neither of us had ever closed it. He went back out to the living room and I followed after him, buttoning up my jeans as I went, still whispering angrily.
“And if you ever, EVER tell anyone that we did anything, I will send you to the hospital. Also, I really hope Chris is okay and that it isn’t serious and that he doesn’t need to go to the hospital and that he doesn’t die. But regardless, if you say a word I will murder your face.”
“Thanks, Norah, I get the idea.”
“Ronan are you still there?” Jen called.
“Yes, I’m here,” he said.
He didn’t spare me another glance. He disappeared into Jen’s room and slammed the door behind him.
Ronan
Jen was cuddled up against Chris, gently tipping tiny sips of water into his mouth. He looked bad enough that I became a little more concerned. Then I noticed the way he was purposefully snuggling up against Jen’s breasts, and I became a little less concerned.
“So, you threw up again did you?” I asked him.
He nodded weakly.
“And this kind young lady is still willing to be near you? You should be very grateful.”
“Does he look okay to you?” Jen asked.
All of the usual swagger had left her voice. She sounded sweetly concerned, and a little afraid. Chris was very lucky. And he had a very strange seduction strategy.
“Has he been having any trouble breathing? Is he losing consciousness?” I asked her.
“No and no.”
“Great, how’s his temperature?”
Jen got a goofy smile on her face, as she ran her fingers over Chris’s wrist.
“He’s pretty hot.”
A similar goofy smile appeared on Chris’s face.
“You’re pretty hot,” he mumbled back.
“All right guys, very cute, but what is his actual body temperature?”
Jen put her hand on his forehead.
“I don’t know, like, skin temperature?”
“I think he’s probably fine. I’ve definitely seen him worse. Chris, man, seriously, this has to stop.”
I sounded just about as irritated as I felt. Half of my brain was still back in the other room with Norah. With my rock-hard cock pressed against her leg as she came on my hand. I was still thinking about how she had cursed over and over under her breath to keep herself from screaming. I really wished I’d been able to find out what would have happened after that.
But maybe the exact same thing would have happened, even if Jen and Chris hadn’t interrupted. It was pretty obvious that Norah thought she’d made a huge mistake. She would probably have come to her senses no matter what, sooner or later.
Chris looked up at me guiltily, like a sad puppy looking at its mean owner.
“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry,”
“Take better care of yourself. I can’t watch you every second.”
I opened up my phone and made a FaceTime call. Once it was ringing I handed the phone to Jen.
“This is my private physician. He’ll walk you through an online check-up.”
She smiled up at me.
“Thank you so, so much.”
“No problem.”
I let Jen take charge when Dr. Carter got on the line. The man was very kind and patient with her, despite the late hour. Definitely worth the exorbitant fees he charged.
I made my way back towards the door, leaving Jen and Chris to play nurse and patient with each other. I should have been happier that Chris seemed fine. I should have been happy for him that a cute girl clearly liked him, even in his most embarrassing and repulsive state. But I couldn’t help mostly feeling irked.
Norah’s anxious face was waiting right outside the door when I pulled it open.
“Is he okay? Does he need to go to the hospital?”
Instead of answering I pulled the door closed behind me. Then I walked past without looking at her and sat down on the couch.
“He seems fine,” I said after a few moments. “Your friend is very worried because she’s in love with my friend. Which is sort of sweet, but also very annoying.”
She became very thoughtful as she took in this information.
“So, you think so too, huh? I guess it must be true then.”
She sounded pretty friendly, for someone who had just expressed disgust at the fact that I had touched her.
When I didn’t reply, she asked, “How do you know he’s okay? I still don’t think being a billionaire makes you a qualified medical professional.”
“I’m actually not a billionaire,” I corrected. “Yet. I’m the heir to a multi-billion-dollar corporation, but my current net worth is more like five-hundred million. After I take over as CEO, then I’ll be a billionaire.”
Norah crossed her arms and gave me an “Are you kidding me?” look.
“But that’s still plenty enough to have a private physician, who I just called. If he thinks Chris needs to go to the hospital we’ll go to the hospital.”
“You keep a private physician at your beck and call? Really?”
“Yup.”
“Ugh. Ew.”
“Yeah. Convenience. Health. Gross.”
Trust Norah to complain about me being helpful.
“If he needs to go to the hospital are you going to fly him there in your private jet? Or do all the fanciest rich people have teleportation machines now?”
“I’m behind the times. I still have a private jet.”
I stole a glance up at her. Her hair was frizzy on top from rolling on the bed. A tiny bit of blood rushed down to my groin when I noticed that. But aside from that you’d never know, looking at her, that anything had just happened between us.
She glanced backwards with interest at the closed door of Jen’s room.
“Jen and Chris, huh?” she said, shaking her head. “I never had any suspicions, until tonight.”
“Really?” I asked. “I thought it was pretty obvious.”
Norah slowly rotated her body, like some sort of sinister mannequin, until she was facing me again.
“Seriously man? Still?”
“Still what?”
“Why do you have to be like this?”
“Like what?”
“Like the world’s biggest know-it-all prick, that’s what.”
I let a cheeky glint briefly replace the anger in my eyes.
“You don’t seem to mind at certain times.”
Norah un-crossed her arms, very, very slowly. She walked up to where I was sitting on the couch, and let her shins bump against my knees. Then she crouched down in front of me, putting her fierce green eyes at the same level as mine. Green eyes to match her name.
When she spoke her voice was quiet, and as cold as the arctic tundra.
“Okay, I may have been unclear before, so let me be perfectly, unambiguously clear now. You are not ever going to refer to the thing that happened between us tonight, ever again. You are not going to tell anyone about it, you are not going to make jokes about it, you are not goi
ng to allude to it in any subtle or overt way. From this moment onwards, you and I functionally exist in a universe in which that-”
She gestured towards her bedroom with a disgusted wave of her hand.
“-did not happen. Pluck the memory out of your little wormy brain, and then hurl it straight into the void. Do not add my notch to your bedpost. Do not add my name to your mental list of conquests. Do not think you can waggle your eyebrows suggestively and make veiled references to ‘certain times’ every time you see me from now on. You do not get to hold this over my head. If you try, I will end you.
“Do I know how I will end you? No, I freely admit that I do not. But believe me, I will make it my mission to figure it out. I will find the thing that your cold dead multi-millionaire heart cares about, and I will use it to hurt you. So purge your memories or die, Baylor. Purge them or die. Do we understand each other?”
I could feel my fingernails digging murderously into the crappy fabric of Norah’s awful couch. God, I was an idiot. What the hell had I been thinking, trying to do anything with her?
She was obviously crazy. Not to mention ungrateful. After all, she had clearly enjoyed herself. A lot. If she thought I was going to be purging my personal memories of that, she was very much mistaken.
The look she was giving me was so...dirty. So full of hate. I hadn’t fully realized it before, but she must have really, truly hated me. Not just for fun, but deep in her soul. I could feel the force of it wafting off of her. It sparkled in the gold flecks in her green eyes. If she’d enjoyed herself with me just now it was in spite of that. Or maybe even because of it. But she’d been telling the truth before—she didn’t like me, and she never would.
Her opinion was completely unjustified, of course. That was the thing that made my stomach surge with rage. She didn’t know the first thing about me, but she was so sure that being touched by me was the most shameful thing that had ever happened to her?
Well, fine.
“You know what,” I said, taking what would be my last, hard look at those eyes, as far as I was concerned. “Nothing would make me happier than to forget you completely.”
PART(Y) II