Summer Seduction
Cruel Summer, Book 2
by Rachel Van Dyken
Copyright © 2018 RACHEL VAN DYKEN
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are fictitious in every regard. Any similarities to actual events and persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental. Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners, and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if any of these terms are used. Except for review purposes, the reproduction of this book in whole or part, electronically or mechanically, constitutes a copyright violation.
SUMMER SEDUCTION
Copyright © 2018 RACHEL VAN DYKEN
ISBN-13: 978-1-7321428-5-5
Cover Art by Jena Brignola
Formatting by Jill Sava, Love Affair With Fiction
Table of Contents
Front Matter
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
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Acknowledgements
About The Author
Also By Rachel Van Dyken
To summer crushes and the way they make us feel, to sunshine and first kisses and everything in between.
MY BODY WAS stiff.
My breathing heavy.
I could still feel her thighs clenching around me. The girl who had gotten away. The spoiled princess I used to hate. Now a woman with swollen lips staring at me as if I’d just pulled her heart from her body and ripped it to pieces — smiling at me all the while.
I lifted my hands to cup her face. “Ray—”
“Don’t you fucking touch me,” she said in a harsh whisper as more male laughter sounded around us.
We couldn’t leave.
If I left, people would assume the shower was empty. They would know.
If she left, the same thing would happen.
We were trapped in a wet sex-filled Hell.
I couldn’t tell if the moisture on her face was tears or water from the shower spray. All I knew was I had to fix it. I had to fix that look. I had to make it better.
Because as much as I wanted to be that guy — the one who used revenge sex to make the girl who’d hurt him in high school feel like shit — I wasn’t.
Not with her.
She was…
She had been…
Would always be…
Everything to me.
All it had taken was a succession of vulnerable moments followed by vulnerable moments where I saw the girl I used to know shadowed by the girl she was forced to be, and I was lost.
“Ray,” I tried again, lowering my voice. She let me touch her this time, but she refused to look at me. “It’s not what you think.”
She shook her head and then covered her breasts with her arms. Her eyes zeroed in on her lacy black underwear floating by my feet. They probably cost more than my entire wardrobe, those underwear. It was a weird thing to fixate on.
“It’s fine,” she whispered. “We both wanted it. We both got it. End of story.”
I clenched my jaw and cornered her against the wall. “Don’t fucking say that, Ray.”
She jerked her head to attention; her face was indifferent, her pretty blonde hair was wet and sticking to her cheeks. She’d never been more beautiful than after we were together. It was why she’d broken me, because she’d allowed me to let her bloom then closed up minutes later.
And they said history repeated itself.
“What?” She shrugged a shoulder. “It’s just sex, right?”
I narrowed my eyes. “You’re better than that, and you know it.”
“You aren’t,” she snapped. “What’s this about revenge sex and one-night stands? You know what? You wanted your revenge.” Her lips trembled. “Congratulations, you just got it.”
“Ray—”
“Fingers crossed you got me pregnant!” she shouted over her shoulder, picking up her wet underwear and tugging them on. “Bonus points if you tell the entire staff that you fucked me in the shower!”
I didn’t want to say they probably already knew since she was yelling so loud.
“Ray, stop…” I reached for her.
She jerked away from me, yanked open the curtain, and grabbed her shirt. She pulled it backward over her head. Leaving her caddy and everything but her flip-flops, she ran out past a wide-eyed Jackson and Brax.
The door to the bathroom closed.
I slammed my hand against the tile again and again.
“Dude…” Jackson looked between me and Brax. “What the hell, man?”
“I didn’t know she was in here.” Brax looked pale. “I swear, I had no idea, but hey, at least you finally did the deed. Now you can move on and—”
I punched him before he could say more, nabbing him in the right eye at least twice before Jackson pulled me off him.
“Chill the fuck out, Marlo!” he roared. “You can’t just punch your staff members. You’re the director!”
“I’m murdering him!” I seethed as visions of Ray’s face played on repeat in my head. Her pleasure. Her soft moans and gasps while I filled her. And then her pain. So much pain.
“Whoa.” Brax held his hands to his face. “Shit, that hurts. Marlo, I didn’t know, and even then, why the hell do you even care? You just got the best revenge possible, and you have witnesses. Need I remind you that this is the girl who broke your heart and embarrassed you in front of the entire student body after sleeping with you in high school? So what. At least it’s a drama camp for high schoolers, and you guys are college graduates. You only have six more weeks of this hell anyway. Just leave it.”
I wiped my face with my bare hands and grabbed my towel, wrapped it around my waist, and then shook out my right hand.
“What’s done is done,” Jackson said in a calm voice. “It doesn’t leave this room, all right?”
“Yeah.” I exhaled a pissed-off breath that did nothing to calm me down. I could still feel her on my skin, taste her on my tongue, and no sane part of me wanted to keep quiet about how good it was between us.
About how good it could have been if I hadn’t let my anger rule my emotions.
I didn’t look back as I made my way outside the bathroom. Every muscle was taut as I angrily shoved the door open to my cabin and dropped my towel to get dressed.
It was going to be a hell of a long day.
MY HANDS SHOOK as I tried to grab myself a cup of coffee. I hadn’t really showered, not the way a human is supposed to. And because of that, I smelled the sex between us.
No matter how many times I sipped the searing coffee in an effort to burn away his taste from my tongue, it existed. It was there.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
I closed off my mind to the way he’d looked at me — as if I was special.
The world was a cruel monster. I knew this. I just didn’t expect his hatred to run that deep for me, that he would pretend to care and then just strip away one of the only things I kept close to myself. He didn’t know that,
though.
He didn’t know that the only other guy I’d ever given myself to…
Had been him.
Willingly.
I’d gone willingly twice.
And both times had been burned for different reasons.
It was the universe telling me it was wrong. All of it.
I wiped a fallen tear that decided to make its presence known all over my makeup-free face. My skin felt hot to the touch, as if he’d somehow managed to bruise the outside as well as the inside. I wiped another tear, then another.
This was the time when a girl normally called her best friend, someone who cared about her, who wouldn’t judge her despite her bad choices. Or at the very least, went to her mom and proclaimed that all men should burn in Hell while said mom gave her ice cream and a hug.
I had no one to hug.
And I’d never felt so alone.
Not even when he had died.
Not even then.
Because at least that day my parents had hugged me.
It was the only time I’d ever felt truly close to them.
The best twenty-four hours of my life — when I had felt like I was a part of a family, where it was okay to grieve and shout how unfair the world was.
My stomach revolted as if preparing to puke.
He had touched me.
He’d made me feel alive.
Wanted.
Cherished.
And now I was used. Dirty. Just a game.
A revenge plot gone wrong. Or maybe for him, horribly right.
I couldn’t stop the shaking as my teeth started to chatter. Maybe it was possible to go into shock from heartache. Maybe that pain would get so severe I would just collapse against the coffee machine.
Would anyone even care if I did?
Would my parents even answer their phones?
“Hey…” Jen touched my arm. How long had she been standing there? “Are you okay?”
“Great,” I lied. “Just… fantastic.”
“Yeah, I cry when I’m feeling fantastic too,” she joked.
A warm summer breeze picked up as the door to the mess hall opened. It seduced me with its smell, with its promise of good things.
And then trampled all over me when I realized it was Marlo walking through those doors.
Our eyes locked.
His appeared just as sad as mine felt.
But that was impossible.
I was his revenge.
Cheers, asshole.
“Uh-oh…” Jen grabbed my free hand. “Tell me you guys didn’t…”
Tears. So many tears filled my eyes I couldn’t see her.
“Crap.” She took the coffee from my hand and pulled me toward the farthest corner of the room. “What happened?”
“The usual…” I sniffed. “So much sexual tension that you’re sick with it, so sick that the only thing you convince yourself will make you well is…” I shrugged. “I went to take a shower, he was there, one thing led to another, and…”
Jen winced. “At the risk of telling you something you already know, Marlo doesn’t have girlfriends. I mean, he’s really great at one-night stands. Let’s just say I’ve heard stories. He’s no Jackson — in that he’ll sleep with anything that looks fun — but he isn’t a saint either.”
I choked out a laugh. “Yeah, trust me. I know.”
“What am I missing?” She lowered her voice as Marlo walked by us to grab a cup of coffee. My damn body was betraying me just like my eyes. I refused to be that girl, the one who pined after the guy who wanted nothing more than to get his rocks off and talk about it to his friends.
He’d never been that guy.
I’d done that to him.
High school had ruined him; college had refined him.
My fault.
All my fault.
“Look, Marlo!” I hissed, slamming my hand on the locker door. “I don’t know what the hell you want from me! Do you want me to just admit to all of my friends we had sex?”
He glared. “It’s a start. Don’t you think?”
“It just… happened.” I lied through my teeth, already at risk of leaning toward him and begging for a kiss. “Plus, you know we can’t be seen together like this. You’ll just get thrown into another locker, and I’ll have to stand by and watch while you just let them make fun of you.”
“Watching’s just as bad as participating, princess,” he sneered. “And I don’t fight back because it proves nothing and gets me expelled, and I need scholarships. I’m a foster kid. I don’t have fucking options.”
I sighed. “Marlo, I’m sorry. Maybe we can hang out after school?”
“Oh my God, so I can maybe be like your secret fuck-buddy? Yeah, sign me up. Let me just go ask my foster mom if it’s cool that I’m going into prostitution for the richest family in town. There’s one way to pay for college!”
I slapped him so hard my palm stung. Then I gasped. “I’m sorry. I just reacted.”
“I hate you,” he whispered before walking off.
I knew he didn’t hear me say, “Sometimes, I hate me too.”
“Hey!” Jen waved a hand in front of my face. “Are you still with me?”
“Yeah.” No, I had been transported to five years ago when I’d made my first mistake in a long line of mistakes between me and Marlo.
He’d changed on the outside. Almost as if he had set out to prove to the world that he was its equal. And he did well. Too well. He was every girl’s walking dream. And my current nightmare.
“I’ll be fine.” I sighed. “I just need to process. That’s all.”
“What’s to process? He took you to O-land in the shower, and it looks like he’s ready to start a fight with anyone who looks in his direction. Must have either been really good or really bad.” She winked.
It was everything.
I squeezed my eyes shut as one last tear leaked out.
And when I opened them again, it was to see Marlo watching me with an equal amount of pain, laced with the ever-present hatred that would exist between us. Never to be eradicated.
Because pain is allowed residency for that long, it refuses to be ignored. It must be felt, it must be dealt with. And we’d only made it worse by letting our bodies talk and keeping our hearts out of the discussion completely.
AN EERIE CALM washed over me as I made my way back to my office that morning. I stared at all the perfect folders stacked on my desk, all the pictures of campers lining the walls.
The blue duffel, that my foster mom had sent with Ray to give me, was sitting on the chair in the corner.
I grabbed it and tugged at the worn zipper until it growled its way open.
I’d only glanced inside.
I moved some of the PowerBars around that she’d tossed in there, in search of something — anything — to anchor my thoughts to make my chest stop hurting. To keep me from running over to Ray’s cabin and demanding that she listen to my explanation.
Even when I had nothing.
Because what would I say?
“The plan was to hurt you.”
Mission accomplished?
I hadn’t been thinking of hurting her this morning. All I’d thought was, my God that woman is too pretty for words.
It hurt to look at her.
I’d seen all the wasted years in her eyes.
And I’d wanted her sadness to go away.
I still wanted to know who’d put it there in the first place.
Most of all, I wanted to make sure it was eradicated by my touch if it had been me. If I’d been the guilty party.
Fuck.
A sick feeling washed over me as I threw the duffel against the wall. PowerBars scattered out of it along with what looked like a photo album.
With a grunt, I knelt and swiped across the album’s cover. It didn’t say anything on the outside, and it was dirty as if it had been in storage for a long time.
I opened the first page.
And there we were.
&n
bsp; Me and Ray.
Laughing.
We were maybe ten.
It was the before.
Before middle school.
Before we’d known that social classes were decided by looks and name brands, by how a person talked and if you were considered cool.
She had an ice cream cone in her hand. Little drops of vanilla ice cream ran down her skin, and I was leaning in, trying to lick them off.
Damn, even at ten, I was trying to up my game with her.
I looked… happy.
And the shitty part was that I didn’t remember ever being truly happy when I was little. I was too busy being worried that I was going to get taken away from my foster mom. Too worried that my real mom would come searching for me and make me live with her.
Worried sick to my stomach that she would take me from Ray.
My first real friend.
My first real heartache.
We had sat together at school.
We’d eaten lunch together.
And then… we’d grown up.
And our childhood had shattered.
One day I’d been sharing my carrots.
The next day she’d flaunted lipstick.
That was how fast it had happened in my head.
And the days following that became harder and harder as I’d tried to stay friends with someone who was on the top rung of the social ladder while I still had holes in the only pair of Nikes that my foster mom could afford at the time.
I flipped through the rest of the pictures without a clue of what I was searching for. Justification maybe? Something that proved I was in the right and she was in the wrong.
The very last picture was high school graduation.
In the picture, I was surrounded by my foster mom and dad and the few fellow outcast friends that I’d had.
And then there was Ray, off in the corner.
No parents.
No friends.
She was staring down at her shoes, the ones with red soles.
Her fucking shoes that cost more than my parents’ rent.
I dropped the album back onto my desk as the guilt descended. Happy moments deserved to be filled with friends, with family.
I wondered how many happy moments in her life had been filled with silence.
And that damn thought haunted me the rest of the day.
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