The Boy on the Bridge

by Sam Mariano

  My legs shake. I can hardly hold myself up. Pleasure assaults me seemingly from two different places.

  As he teases my clit, I feel tiny tremor after tiny tremor of pleasure, but as he keeps fucking me at this magical angle, I can also feel myself building to a deeper quake.

  “Hunter,” I murmur, half cry, half whine.

  “Let it happen, baby.”

  I let out a little whimper, burying my face in the pillow as he flicks my clit. I grab overhead for something to hold onto and end up squeezing my pillow as the tremors move through my body, weakening my legs.

  Then Hunter drives into me, and the big explosion happens.

  At the same time, he assaults my clit.

  I scream as a white hot explosion shakes my whole body. I don’t whine, I don’t whimper, I scream. My whole body convulses and writhes with abandon. I squeeze my eyes closed and just try to process the volcanic trail of pleasure moving through my body.

  Faintly, I hear Hunter groan, feel his fingers dig into my hips as he drives into my convulsing pussy.

  He comes inside me, but I don’t even care.

  When he collapses onto the bed next to me, I’m almost too weak and satisfied to move, but I pull myself closer to him so he can hold me. I need to be close to him.

  Seeming to understand, Hunter turns on his side and pulls me into his protective embrace. He lovingly caresses my hair, kissing the crown of my head and asking, “You okay?”

  “Mm-hmm,” I murmur weakly.

  “I thought about pulling out, but… couldn’t convince myself it was worth it.”

  “It wasn’t,” I murmur against his chest. “It’s okay. I wanted you to come inside me. If I’m pregnant, I’m pregnant. Fuck it.”

  Chuckling, he says, “Wow, that must have been some orgasm.”

  It was.

  If he asked me to marry him right now, I’d say yes.

  Since he actually might if I let him onto my absolute powerlessness against him at the moment, I smile wordlessly and close my eyes.

  Chapter Forty Nine

  Riley

  When I wake up the next morning, I’m wrapped up in Hunter’s strong arms.

  He wakes up shortly after I do and starts to kiss my neck. I feel his cock hardening against my backside, and I wiggle against it to make him even harder.

  Grabbing a handful of my ass, Hunter leans in and murmurs, “I think it’s time for a shower.”

  I don’t think he’s really eager to get clean, but I roll out of bed and follow him anyway.

  While I was unsure about shower sex walking into the bathroom, once we’re in the shower and I’m watching the water beat down on his muscular back and shoulders, watching it flow down the cut ridges of his muscular torso….

  I guess it’s no surprise I wind up pinned against the wall with my legs wrapped around him, making pitiful noises of pleasure as he pounds his cock into me.

  I’ve never been fucked first thing in the morning before, but it turns out, it’s better than coffee. I don’t even drink any when we wander downstairs for breakfast.

  We keep it simple with oatmeal and fresh fruit this morning. I’m feeling a little less blasé about the fact that he has now fucked me twice without a condom this weekend, but I’m not freaking out about it now that I’m technically on birth control.

  While I’m doing an overview of the times Hunter has made me reckless, I glance up at him eating breakfast across the table from me. He looks so handsome with his hair mussed, still damp from the shower. I like the intimacy of having breakfast with him.

  I wish I could just let myself enjoy it, but apparently, I can’t.

  My mind wanders into darker, more haunted corners.

  I wonder if Valerie ever looked at him across the breakfast table like this, enjoying a quiet, intimate morning with him after a night of sex and cuddles.

  Hunter looks up and catches my gaze.

  His brown eyes warm and he gives me a little smile.

  I look down so he doesn’t notice my blue eyes don’t do the same.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Of course,” he answers, obviously not knowing what’s on my mind.

  I bite down on my bottom lip, anxious about letting the words out into the universe. If I ask and he says no, then I’ll feel better, but if the answer is yes…

  I definitely will not feel better.

  “Did you ever—I mean, did she ever—” I stop with an aggravated huff and try again. “Did you ever spend the night with Valerie?”

  “No,” he answers, but too readily. It makes me wonder if he’s telling the truth.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yep.” Reaching across the table, he grabs his orange juice and takes a sip. “I know I mentioned maybe going to her famous sleepover party in middle school, but I didn’t make it. I had to go to Italy before it happened that year.”

  “I didn’t mean in middle school. I meant since you’ve been back. While you were… together.”

  He shakes his head. “No.”

  “Would you lie just to make me feel better?”

  Hunter looks at me for several seconds before answering. “No. I want you to love me despite the worst things I’ve done. Covering my tracks to protect your feelings wouldn’t accomplish that.”

  I find his answer a little dissatisfying, but I’m not sure why. Looking at my bowl as I scoop up a spoonful of oatmeal and a sliced strawberry, I say, “I do love you.”

  The but hangs in the air between us, but neither of us feels like entertaining it right now, so we don’t.

  ___

  Since I am staying at Hunter’s all weekend, we have to do our weekend homework together at his house.

  I am not sad about it.

  As much as I’ve enjoyed lazing around and exchanging orgasms, I’m happy to finally put some clothes on and use more than just the pleasure center of my brain for a while.

  Hunter seems less enthusiastic about it, but I’m full of sunshine as we spread out our study materials on his massive dining room table. Hunter brought down an extra laptop—who has an extra laptop?—in case I need it.

  I might for our English assignment, but I still need to wrap my head around that one.

  Hunter looks so handsome as he cracks open a gently read copy of The Great Gatsby and reads a page to refresh his memory.

  “We should read together later,” I tell him.

  “Gatsby?”

  “No, we already read that. I don’t mean a school book, I mean for fun. Surely you have books.”

  “I mean... yes, but I still don’t read much outside of school. Did you not bring a book for the weekend? I’m a little shocked.”

  “No, I did, but I only brought one for me, not for you,” I say, flashing him a smile.

  “Considering we are not under house arrest, we could also go out to a bookstore and pick something up if we wanted to. I doubt I’ll read, but if you want to, that’s cool with me.”

  “I want you to read something you’ll like, too. I can’t read by myself while you do nothing. That would be rude.”

  “It wouldn’t be rude, I have other stuff I can do. I need to check in on social media at some point this weekend anyway so no one thinks I died.”

  I roll my eyes, but let the topic go so we can get started on our homework.

  Opening my notebook to a fresh page, I ask, “On a scale from 1 to 10, how nerdy is it that I’m excited to do homework with you?”

  Hunter looks at me and smirks. “Off the charts.”

  “Well, I am,” I say unashamedly as I dig out my own copy of Gatsby. “Wanna start with English? I haven’t really been looking forward to this assignment, but I guess it’s good strategy to get the thing I’m dreading most out of the way first.”

  Hunter cocks an eyebrow at me as he opens his laptop. “You’re dreading the writing assignment most? Wouldn’t have guessed that. You love to read.”

  “I do, but I don’t love this book, and I really don’t lov
e the assignment the teacher gave us.”

  Technically, we have a choice between two options for our assignment, but I don’t like either of them. We can either write Gatsby’s letter to Daisy—there was a pivotal letter given to her in the book, but the reader never got to find out what it said—or rewrite the ending of the book.

  “Know which one you’re going to do yet?” Hunter asks.

  I nod. “I’m going to write the letter from Gatsby. You?”

  “I’m going to rewrite the ending.”

  I pause to look up at him in horror. “What?”

  He looks over, frowning slightly when he catches sight of my face. “What?”

  “You’re going to change the ending of a book you didn’t write?”

  He regards me warily, then types his password into his laptop. “That’s the plan.”

  I shake my head, turning my attention to my notebook and grabbing my pen. “I’m not sure we can be friends anymore.”

  “Friends?”

  Ignoring his disbelief, I go on. “I don’t believe in changing the ending of books, even if I don’t like the way things turned out. Hunger Games is a perfect example. Obviously, I don’t like the way that trilogy ended and I wish she would’ve taken it in a different direction, but I still wouldn’t change it.”

  “You wouldn’t put Katniss and Gale together if you could?” he asks, his skepticism clear.

  I shake my head. “Nope. They’re not my characters. I have my opinions about them, but they’re influenced by all the crap I bring to the table, you know? There are obviously a lot of people who don’t feel the way I do about it. Beyond that, even though I love the books and I’ve read them multiple times, I only have a partial understanding of the characters and their journey. I can’t know the characters as well as the person who created them and wrote their story. Socrates had this opinion about books, he didn’t like them because you can’t have a conversation with a book, you know? You can’t clear anything up. You can’t ask the characters how they feel about things they don’t share with you, you can’t ask them why they do the things they do or what they would do in some situation they don’t encounter on the pages of the story.” I’m really just getting started, but when I look up at Hunter and see the clear amusement on his handsome face, I realize I’m about to launch into a full blown book rant. “Anyway… that’s why I don’t much appreciate either of these assignments. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.”

  Hunter shakes his head, his eyes still glinting with amusement as he shifts his gaze to his laptop. “I love you.”

  I smile cheekily. “I love you, too, friend.”

  He slides me an unamused look. “You know, I was gonna let that slide…”

  Before he can pick it up now, I ask, “Out of curiosity, why did you choose to change the ending? That seems like a much more complicated option. I picked the letter because it was easy and I want to phone this one in.”

  “Well… I didn’t consult Socrates first,” he teases.

  My cheeks warm.

  “But my reason’s a lot simpler. I just want to give the guy a chance to pull his head out of his ass and find someone better than Daisy to chase after.”

  “Daisy is kind of the worst,” I say, a little apologetically.

  “He didn’t really love her. I don’t need to have a dialogue with a page of text to glean that. He was infatuated with the idea of her, but that’s not love. He would’ve ended up miserable if he would have actually got her. She did him a favor by marrying that other guy, showed him where he stood. It’s too bad he didn’t see it that way, accept that she’d shown her true colors. He could’ve moved on. He could’ve found someone who actually cared about him, someone he loved deeper than the surface-level bullshit he felt for Daisy.”

  I nod, agreeing with pretty much all of that. “How are you going to get around Wilson’s motivation?”

  He glances over at me. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, if you want Gatsby to get a chance to meet someone else, you’re obviously saving him. But Wilson is still who he is, right? So, how are you saving Gatsby without sacrificing another character’s established motivation? If Gatsby flees, that’s out of character for him. If Wilson doesn’t come after him, that’s out of character for him. This is why it’s hard to change an ending. It has to make sense, or it’s going to drive me crazy.”

  Hunter smirks. “Do you want to do my homework for me, Riley? It might be easier. I certainly wouldn’t mind.”

  I pout. “No. I don’t even like the assignment.”

  “You’ve thought it through more than I have,” he says. “You can even half-ass it. Mrs. Dowd loves me. I’ll probably get a better grade than you even if yours is a thousand times better.”

  I roll my eyes. “No kidding. She’s the worst.”

  “I don’t think she likes women,” he says.

  “Not ones who aren’t nuns, at least.”

  “It’s decided,” Hunter says, closing his laptop. “You’re gonna do my English assignment for me.”

  “I don’t think we decided that.” I flip to the chapter where Daisy gets the letter so I can make a few notes. “I’ll be your critique partner if you want. You can bounce your ideas off me and I’ll help you iron out the wrinkles, but I’m not going to do all the work for you.”

  Hunter grabs his phone and kicks back to theatrically dig in on me doing his work for him, but when he does, his expression shifts.

  I do a double-take when I see him scowling at his phone screen.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  His gaze flickers to mine. He seems to instinctively turn his phone screen away from me. “Nothing.”

  I scowl. “Nothing?”

  He’s lying.

  “What is it?” I ask, not even waiting for him to feed me more bullshit. “Or, who is it?”

  “Who is what?”

  “You turned your phone screen like you didn’t want me to see it. Off the top of my head, I can think of exactly one reason you would do that, so… who texted you? Is it Valerie?”

  His tone is dismissive, but his face is unconvincing. “No, it’s—I’m—Uh…”

  My jaw drops a little as Hunter Maxwell stammers.

  “It’s nothing you need to worry about right now,” he says. “Let’s just enjoy the weekend without bringing our shit into it, all right?”

  “No. I’d like to know what’s on your phone that you felt the impulse to hide from me. Either you can show me, or I can pack my bag and go home, because now this is all I’m going to think about until I know what it is.”

  “It’s nothing, Riley.” He shakes his head, looking a little irritated. “Some asshole posted a picture of you and Sherlock at the party. You guys are walking down the hall toward a bedroom with you in that short-ass skirt. He has his arm around you. It looks like you’re going to hook up, and someone sent it to me. That’s all.”

  My stomach drops. “Oh.”

  That was not what I was expecting.

  “Don’t really want to talk about him,” Hunter says, irritation flickering through his gaze. “Figured you didn’t either, so…”

  I look down at my paper, unsure what to say.

  “Why does he have his hand on your hip?” Hunter suddenly asks, looking hard at the picture on his phone. “You said he tricked you.”

  Now the shoe’s on the other foot, because I don’t have a satisfying answer to that question. “He did. I told you, it all happened so fast. I told him he shouldn’t touch me, that if you saw, you’d get the wrong idea. He did it anyway.”

  “It doesn’t look like you’re exactly fighting him off,” Hunter remarks.

  “I didn’t fight him off. That would’ve been ridiculous. It was a casual, fleeting touch. You’re looking at a snapshot of a split second, Hunter. A picture obviously posted by someone wanting to cause trouble.”

  He kills the screen and puts his phone down on the table with a thud. His jaw is locked, his eyes angry as he opens up his l
aptop again.

  “What are you doing?” I ask him.

  “Starting this fucking homework,” he mutters. “Apparently, I have a lot of work to do.”

  I’m partially relieved that he wants to set aside the Sherlock crap and get back to our homework, but I can see he’s mad, and I feel bad. Especially because I’m the one who pushed, but when he turned the screen like that… what was I supposed to think?

  “Maybe you should write the letter instead,” I offer lightly, trying to bring his mood back down. “Less work that way.”

  “Nah, I’m gonna rewrite the ending. I’ll have Gatsby’s neighbor Sherlock stop over for a night cap and his ass is going to get shot instead.”

  Biting back a smile, I shake my head. “That’s terrible.”

  “Well, he should’ve kept his fucking lips to himself.”

  “He did,” I say lightly. “Unless he kissed Daisy?”

  “Fuck Daisy.”

  A thought occurs to me, one that whispered through my mind when he had such strong feelings about Gatsby and Daisy. I was reluctant to ask then, but his fuck Daisy sentiment makes it feel more imperative that I clear up the doubt in my own mind.

  “I’m not your Daisy, right?”

  His gaze flickers to mine. “Of course you’re not Daisy. Daisy is a vapid asshole who cares more about wealth and appearances than people. What part of that could possibly be you?”

  “Okay, okay—I was just making sure.”

  “I know they say there’s no such thing as a dumb question, but…”

  I shoot him an unamused look. “I know I’m not like Daisy, I just wanted to make sure you didn’t think I was. That’s all.”

  “No. You’re a lot of things, Riley Bishop, but shallow is not one of them,” he mutters, making it sound much less like a compliment than it really is.

  “You’re grumpy,” I point out, as if he doesn’t already know. Dialing up the sweetness several notches, I all but bat my eyelashes at him. “Want me to give you a shoulder rub while you get started? Work out some of that tension?”

  He’s still annoyed, but not so annoyed he’ll turn down physical affection. “You just want to watch what I’m writing over my shoulder.”