by J. J. McAvoy
“Get on with what?” I asked.
“The part where you jerk me around. Where you are kind one moment and then you’re an asshole the next.” She drank straight from the bottle, her nose bunched up, and then she shook her whole body like a wet dog before focusing on me. “The part where I find myself falling in love with you all over again and you kick me to the curb. That part.”
“Amelia, tomorrow is going to be—”
“Austin told me to choose and I chose. I’m here. I’m always here. It’s been how many years, Noah? How long are you going to push me away? I can’t be with anyone else until I get closure from you. So tell me why? Why aren’t we together? Why are you taking pills? Stop being a little bitch and finally make a choice—”
“Why is it always so easy for you to say or do whatever the hell it is you want?” I didn’t want to do this now.
“Nope, you’re not going to blame me for this!” she said with tears in her eyes as she took another drink. “I want to know. Do you—have you ever loved me?”
“Amelia—”
“Answer the question, Noah.”
“Amelia—”
“Answer the question!” she said, her voice louder now.
“I—”
“Answer the—”
“Yes!” I shouted at her. “Yes, I am, I was, I will always be madly in love with you. I will always wonder what you are doing and be jealous of men around you because you are the one woman I’ve wanted to be with, but never could be!”
“Why?” she asked.
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. Instead, I looked anywhere but at her. However, she came closer, her hands on the sides of my face, and forced me to stare into her eyes.
“Why?” she repeated.
“Because I’m a mess,” I whispered, not caring that my eyes burned from how badly I was trying to stop the tears from falling.
“So am I.”
“No,” I chuckled bitterly. “You are silly and awkward and unconfident, but you aren’t a mess. You’ve never been a mess. From the very beginning, it was me dragging you down. I’m so broken I don’t know even know where to begin to piece myself together. So how do I look at you, let alone love you, when I can’t even love myself? I hate Noah Sloan.”
The truth would set you free, they said. However, admitting that out loud didn’t make me feel any better than keeping it in.
She closed the space between us, her lips on top of mine. Her breasts brushed against my chest as her hands moved back to my face and gripped my hair. She tasted like butterscotch, and I opened my mouth, wanting more of her. My hands slid to her hips and grabbed her ass under her dress.
“Do you feel better?” she whispered when we broke apart, breathing in one other deeply. “If not, fuck me until you do.”
She couldn’t be serious.
However, like she had read my mind, she stood up and took a step back, unzipping the dress she wore. Her blue eyes never broke contact with mine. Like I was in a trance, I stood up, unbuttoning my shirt. I licked my lips at the thought of kissing her skin. When her dress dropped, so did my belt. She stood in the middle of my room in nothing but her red lace bra and panties.
We shouldn’t be doing this. I could have given her a dozen reasons why, but I couldn’t think straight. Not with her like this.
“Stop,” I demanded when she reached back to undo her bra. “I want to do the honors.”
“As you wish,” she smirked, dropping her hands to her side.
If this was a dream, I was going to enjoy it to the fullest. Taking her hand, I spun her around, allowing myself to unclasp her bra and slide it off her shoulders. As I grabbed her breasts in my hands, she jumped, taking a breath. Her hands wandered into my pants, grabbing my cock, and my breath caught in my throat. I could see the desire and lust in her eyes that matched my own. Grabbing her thighs, I lifted her up, her legs wrapping around me automatically as I moved us to the bed. I kissed her, this time not as softly as she had kissed me. This kiss was dirty, wet, sexual, our tongues playful bashing against one other.
“Ah…” She moaned into my mouth, rubbing herself against me.
My lips traveled from her lips to her side of her jaw, and she arched her neck for me. Grinning at how eager she was, I bit her skin softly as I worked my way down her chest until her pink, hard nipple was between my teeth. I kissed it before moving to the other one.
“Noah…”
My tongue trailed down her stomach, causing her breathing to quicken. Her whole body trembled under me, which only turned me on more. Spreading her thighs, I sat up to see her face when I slid two of my fingers into her wet pussy.
“Mmm…” she moaned, her back lifting up.
“If I told you the things I wanted to do to you…” I whispered, my heart pounding against my chest.
“Fuck….Noah,” she cried out when I licked her clit. She grabbed my hair, and I held onto her thighs, pulling her closer to my face.
Jesus, she tasted good.
My fingers slid in and out her alongside my tongue. She rocked into my mouth, tugging harder on my hair. She was wet for me, and I never wanted to stop eating her out….but I was so fucking hard I couldn’t wait. Licking my lips, I sat up. Her body was covered in a thin film of sweat.
“Noah please…I need you.”
“You have me.” She’d always had me.
Positioning myself between her thighs, I tried—God did I try—to enter her slowly. But her pussy was fucking glorious. I couldn’t help but thrust forward hard, a wicked grin spreading across my lips as I felt how her body responded and arched up to me. Her nails dug into the skin of my shoulders, and her breasts rocked harshly as I fucked her. There were no words between us, just grunts and moans. I took out all of my anger and frustration on her poor pussy, slamming myself into her so hard that the bed moved and hammered against the wall. All I could smell was butterscotch, and all I could hear was the sound of our pleasure and skin smacking together. She matched each one of my thrusts.
“Yes!” she cried out, and I pulled her up from the bed, kneeling down and bouncing her onto my dick.
“Ahh…that’s … so … fucking … good!” she cried out, biting her lips as she clung to me. She stared deeply in my eyes and then … she smacked me hard across my cheek.
I paused for a moment and looked to her. “Do it again.”
She smirked, slapping my other cheek.
The pain felt good.
Pulling out of her, my cock throbbed and twitched with need. But I had to fulfill another desire altogether.
“Get on your knees.” Without question, she moved onto all fours with her smooth, round ass facing me.
“Like this?” she questioned seductively, leaning over for me even more.
“Do you like to be smacked as much as you enjoy smacking me?” I ran my hand over her ass softly.
“Why don’t you find out?”
Who was this? The Amelia I remembered was so shy when we first had sex…but then again she was sixteen then.
SMACK.
Her hands clenched the sheets as her body shivered.
“It seems like I got my answer,” I whispered, moving her hair back over her shoulders.
She swallowed, taking a deep breath. “So what are you going to do now?”
SMACK.
SMACK.
“Fuck,” she cried out, dropping her head. I rubbed circles onto her now-red ass.
“We will get to that, but I want to see how much of this you can take.”
SMACK.
Her legs quivered under her.
SMACK.
She panted, her body rising and following with each deep breath.
SMACK.
“Harder.”
SMACK.
I felt the ache in my hand that time. But she still didn’t tell me to stop. Her ass was so red I was sure she would have begged me to end it. Instead, she bit her lips, and her eyes shifted to me, daring me to do it again.
“Again.”<
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SMACK.
SMACK.
“Ah!” She cried out. “Please…please fuck me.”
She didn’t have to ask a second time. Kissing both of her red cheeks, I grabbed her waist and slid into her, my eyes rolling back at how much wetter and tighter she was for me.
“God, you are amazing,” I told her, thrusting deeply into her as I kissed her back.
“So…good,” she said as she came for me.
Again, all I heard were our moans and grunts.
I can’t take this anymore.
I had been hard for her from the moment she kissed me. It had taken all my strength to hold back until now.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I grunted as I thrust, coming at last.
I collapsed onto her. We were both covered in sweat, breathing in the scent of our sex. I couldn’t help but wonder what the hell I was going to do. It had taken me almost a decade of mindless and meaningless sex to get over my addiction to her…and now I was back to square one.
Amelia
Rolling onto my stomach, I knew he was awake, even though neither of us had spoken in the last hour. We’d just laid there still and naked in his bed. We may have had sex, but that solved none of our problems. I wanted to ask him what this meant for us now, but I was scared of the answer. So I asked something else entirely.
“What are the pills for?”
He was silent for a while, but that was fine. I had time. Finally, he sat up and sighed. I could hear him sitting up, but I didn’t turn to face him.
“I was diagnosed with panic disorder a few years ago,” he whispered into the darkness.
“That’s why you went to rehab?”
“I tried to get off the pills on my own and ended up having an episode. We’d thought it was better to use as a cover—”
“You’d rather people think you were on cocaine or something.”
“Anxiety isn’t exactly sexy, Amelia.”
Rolling back over, I glared at him. He reached for a pack of cigarettes on his nightstand.
“So to protect your bad-boy image, you’re willing to let people think you’re a drug addict.” He was such an idiot!
Lighting his cigarette, he shrugged. “Don’t blame me. Blame society.”
Reaching over him, I took the cigarette before he could hit it again, but he grabbed my hand.
“It helps to relax me,” he said seriously.
“It also helps lung cancer.”
He smirked. “Don’t worry—”
“Just because you tell me not to doesn’t mean I won’t.”
Sighing, he took the cigarette back and put it out on the nightstand. “Happy?”
Frowning, I laid back down.
Silence again.
There was just so much between us that it was hard to know where to start.
“Why do you hate Noah Sloan?” I questioned, even though it was weird talking about in him the third person.
He didn’t answer, but he did reach for another cigarette.
I didn’t bother asking him another question. I quietly watched him smoke naked beside me.
What were we now? I had no idea.
Would he hurt me? Most likely.
Would I still love him anyway? Yes.
Should I? No.
But what could I do? Even though I knew all this could blow up in my face at any moment, I still didn’t want to move. I really was a masochist.
Chapter Seven
Amelia
Six.
That’s how many days have passed since Noah and I slept together. I wanted to think it was just a coincidence that this week he and I were filming in separate locations within the city. But it didn’t feel like it. It felt like I was being avoided. He hadn’t left me in the morning like I had expected him to, but neither of us spoke. We just got ready to leave since we woke up late. Ollie was already waiting outside the door, less than pleased with me, but I didn’t care. I was waiting on Noah. Even now, when we were finally in the same room, there was tension between us. I stood on the other side of the studio booth, watching as they gave him a pair of headphones along with his script for the voiceovers we needed to do. He lifted up the page in front of him, reading over it only once before nodding to the director sitting at the soundboard.
“Start whenever you’re ready, Noah.”
Finally, his eyes stopped on mine, and he froze like he had seen a ghost…or the last person on earth he ever wanted to see.
“Noah?” the director shifted, confused. He glanced between us. Not wanting to distract him, I tried to leave, but the director stopped me. “Amelia, I’d like you to hear this. In this monologue, Damon is speaking to Blair. It will be good to catch your reaction right afterward, so go inside.”
I peeked back at Noah, but he was no longer looking at me. Inside, he adjusted this headphones as the sound coordinator handed me mine. I stood right across from him, a microphone the only thing between us now. Clearing his throat, he began.
“The scariest mask you will ever see is the face I was born with. Yes, it’s true: I could never dream at night before I met you. Around me, there was nothing but silence under the gaze of the full moon hovering in the center of darkness. The wind didn’t howl. The clouds never gathered. The stars were hidden … and then you appeared, and I didn’t need stars because you were like the sun. But the longer I stayed near you, the dimmer and darker you became. My demons became your demons because you try so hard to save me when it is so clear I’m meant to drown.” He paused, clenching his teeth. His hands gripped the small podium between us. He continued, “You’ve gotten too close, and now I’m hurting you because I don’t want to hurt you. You can’t take this much longer. So even though I promised not to, even though I don’t want to, I’m letting go because I have to. You’ll always be burned into my mind, stitched to my soul, and the owner of my heart, Ame—Blair Calliope Hawthorne.”
When he was done, I let go of the air I was holding in my lungs. It’s not me. He isn’t really talking to me. However, until he said Blair’s name, I just kept seeing him as Noah in front of me.
“Noah, do you mind repeating the last sentence?”
Nodding, he pinched his nose, took a deep breath, and repeated the line. “You’ll always be burned into my mind, stitched to my soul, and the owner of my heart, Blair Calliope Hawthorne.”
“Perfect. Now, Amelia, you’ve just gotten Damon’s letter. We are at the close of the movie, so you aren’t talking to him, but to the audience.”
I had to pick up the paper to read it over once more. My mind was blank again.
Screw it.
“Zane,” I said, as I held onto the headphones.
“Yeah? What’s the matter, Amelia?”
“Do you mind if I go off script here a little bit? I just don’t feel like Blair would respond like this. I can do the scripted version afterward if you like,” I said, my eyes never looking away from Noah’s. He lifted his eyebrow like he was tittering somewhere between amused and confused.
“Fine, go ahead.”
Nodding, I tried to find a confidence I didn’t have, to stand up straighter, almost ignorantly so. However, I couldn’t do it staring at him, so I closed my eyes and began.
“He’s one smooth-talking son of a bitch, ain’t he? He wants to break up. Yeah, sure! No hard feelings. I’ve been trying to leave this fool for years. After all, I’m good at being alone. You heard him: I’m the sun! I shine brighter than any other goddamn person. Why doesn’t anyone ever bother asking the sun if it likes being the sun? If it likes planets always orbiting around it and never near it, if it enjoys being so hot that you can only love it from a distance. What’s so good about being the fucking sun if you’re alone in the sky? I’m done with this analogy. Don’t label me. Don’t make choices for me. If you love me, then you love me even if we self-destruct! That’s what I’m going to say to him when I see him. I don’t know how far he’s gotten, but the thing about Damon and I is that we’re always going down the sa
me road. Sometimes I have to speed up to catch up to him…but I always catch up.”
When my eyes opened again, Noah was staring at me, but not like before. He wasn’t confused or amused. I wasn’t sure what he was, but he didn’t look away.
“Amelia…that was remarkable,” the director’s stunned voice replied directly into my ear.
“Thank you. Is there anything else?”
“No. All that’s left are the sex scenes to shoot,” he reminded us. Ollie had arranged that we would save those scenes for last, and we were finally here.
“Okay, I’ll rest until call time. Thanks, everyone,” I said, taking off my headphones. I grabbed my script without looking at him. I just walked away. It wasn’t like we could talk in there anyway. I had planned to come to his room again tonight.
I wasn’t expecting him to follow me out to the lobby.
“Amelia.” He grabbed my wrist, spinning me back to face him. “Wait, I—”
“Amelia!” said another voice.
Oh no….no. No. No. I knew that voice anywhere.
“Mom?” I looked back. She stuck out like a pig among wolves in a bright green cocktail dress with white gloves and a sun hat, even though it was September.
“Amelia, sweetheart!” She ran up to me, pulling me into a hug.
“Mom, what are you doing here?” Why? I told her not to come. I all but begged her. I should have known better.
“Oh, I missed you, and besides…” Her voice trailed off as her attention focused on Noah. “If it isn’t little Noah Sloan. Well maybe not, ‘little.’” Her eyes traveled up the length of his body. She looked like a dog staring at a bone.
“Mom!”
“I’m just kidding…jeez.” Turning to address him, she asked, “How are you, Noah? It’s been ages.”
“I’m fine. Amelia…I…ugh…you and your mother should spend time together. Call time isn’t until nine, so I’ll see you then.” He rubbed the back of his neck, and I wanted to laugh because it reminded me of the old him. He never knew how to talk to me when my mother was around. He’d either be really polite or just run off. But I didn’t blame him. If I could run, I would.