“Hallie.”
“Shh,” she hushed, pressing a delicate kiss to my lips. “On your back, Wreck. I have a few things on you I’d like to lick.” She shoved me and followed with her weight, ending up with me on my back and her on top of me.
It was erasing my memories. Her on top of me. Her hair dark in the night falling around her shoulders. Body bare from the waist up. She looked like a temptress ready to destroy every single fucking thing I knew about myself. Even her eyes glimmered, catching the faint glow from the security lights outside.
Her head ducked a second before I felt her lips on my chest. My fist bunched what was left of her tank top. The heat of her lips and the buildup was as hedonic as mine on her. She found my abs and made slow work of dismantling me. Kissing the grooves, tasting the grooves, and biting the grooves. Nestling her tongue in my happy trail. Nipping her teeth on the indents in my abs. Every once in a while, she’d brush against my cock, and it took everything in me not to roll her over and impale her. I heard myself growl at the possibility, thrusting my hips unapologetically into her, feeling her tight pussy clench around me.
“Hallie!” I growled, gritting my teeth.
She kept going south. “I’ve never done this before. See? We have so many firsts together.” She started unloosening my Charming Knights sweatpants. “So, I’m probably going to suck at it.”
I rolled my eyes at her joke. “You don’t have to—”
“I want to. Trust me. You’re going to take my oral sex virginity. Don’t you want it?”
Fucking brat. “Yes.”
“Hips up.” She pulled them, along with my boxers, down my ass, paused to pull my socks off, and then tossed them somewhere in the dark. I watched her face as she took my bare body in. Her eyes widened comically in the dark, her teeth digging into her bottom lip. When her gaze shot to mine, there was a thick layer of lust discoloring them. “What do I do?”
“Put it into your mouth and suck.”
“That’s it?” She grabbed for me. My cock stood at attention, harder than it had ever been before. The feeling of her touch on my body was torture. “It’s not going to fit. Do I have to take the entire thing?”
She was lucky I was such an unfairly amazing bastard. Those kinds of questions could get a woman in to a lot of trouble. “Hals, open your mouth.” She did, her lips wide open like she was in shock, but her eyes weren’t shocked. They were dripping with want. I grabbed her face between my hands and guided her down, nestling the tip of my cock between her lips. It. Was. An. Awakening.
She closed her lips around me and sucked the tip of me into her mouth. Then she looked up at me with bad in her eyes and winked, taking half of me deep into her throat. My back arched off the bed. My eyes rolled into the back of my skull. My walls were down. My mouth had control of me now. My lust was an alternate universe, where everything pulsed red and black, and my pleasure was so deep I felt it in my bones.
She bobbed her head over me, dragging her tongue along my shaft as she took me even deeper. Like she’d done it before.
“You lied?” I growled, my pleasure shattering in the darkness when I realized she might’ve done this before.
Her head shook over me. “Porn,” came her muffled reply.
I relaxed, delving back into the red and black. My fingers wrapped in her hair, tangling the bronze strands around my fists as I guided her over me. I moved into her mouth, groaning when I heard her gag. I knew she probably needed air. But I didn’t give her any; she didn’t ask for it. When I felt my balls tighten, I released her hair and prepared myself. This orgasm wouldn’t be a lackluster release. This would rip me apart.
I was right.
13. SECRETS AND BOURBON
Hallie
I was in trouble.
Never had it felt so good to pleasure another person before. I knew mostly it had to do with Wreck. Wreck’s body, Wreck’s kiss, Wreck’s touch. I felt nothing but him tonight. There was no life outside of us.
But mostly, it was the way he felt pleasure. Fearfully. He squeezed his eyes shut to clench his muscles in anxiety. He didn’t just feel. Like his pleasure would become a punishment later. It made me want to pleasure him harder. Earn his moans, his groans.
His orgasm was beautiful. Hair matted with sweat, eyes clenched shut but just open enough to see that his eyes were rolling in the back of his head. The scent of his lust and cologne thick in the air. Body arched beneath me like I held his pleasure in my tongue. Hard, handsome face tensed with his release.
It was true beauty.
As his body calmed, his mouth continued to move. “I love you, Hallie…” he whispered, sounding drunk and lethargic, before his body sagged and his heavy breaths became snores.
If I weren’t covered in his semen, I might have thought more about that. I stared down at my chest helplessly. Porn didn’t teach me about that part. There was too much to swallow it all like I’d intended. I hadn’t been expecting it to be so hot and salty. I smiled as I showered, feeling a kind of good I hadn’t ever known. Power within my pleasure, confidence within my fragility. After brushing my teeth and throwing on a new pair of shorts and a cami, I gathered his clothes. When I lifted his sweats, his items fell out. I picked up his keys and phone to find that they’d been wrapped around a piece of cloth.
“My panties. Really, Wreck?” To pay him back, I found his boxers and stowed them in my dresser, then I put my panties back in his pocket along with his items and used my towel to wipe his body clean. There was a deep ache inside of me. I hadn’t meant to orgasm, but the extreme pleasure radiating from my nipples had been too much. Plus, he hadn’t simply licked me. He’d savored me. Lapping and tasting every single inch of my flesh like it was delectable. It was as erotic being loved as it was being devoured.
Passion and hunger weren’t emotions I knew. I wanted to with him. I felt an overwhelming desire for him that hadn’t existed before tonight. Feral, intense—dangerous.
I sat cross-legged beside his sleeping body. In sleep, he looked boyish with a dusting of man. His stubble was thicker. Reminders of it scraping against my chest as he licked me made me swallow hard. I traced his lips, swollen and pink from our kiss. I leaned over, unable to help myself, and kissed him. Feeling myself grow tired, I curled up against him and rested my head on his chest.
His body shifted, and he mumbled something unintelligible under his breath, his arm twitching beside him, like he was grabbing for me. Because it sounded a lot like my name he’d mumbled in his sleep. Not in conversation, but in longing.
“Hallie.”
***
My bones were soft when I woke up, melting in my sheets. The heat of the morning was on my back and cool of the A/C on my face. I felt light, free.
I wasn’t surprised to wake up alone. Cage had given me a lot last night. Waking up to me and facing that wasn’t going to happen. There was a note on his pillow in W’s handwriting on the back of my French pamphlet. I glared at the ripped section of my homework and read it over with sleepy eyes.
What did you do with my underwear? Leave the hoarding to me, please. It’s just plain creepy on you. I had something to do, but I’ll be back at seven to pick you up for Paulette’s.
Oh, and I thought about leaving you a gift this morning, but I’ll save it for tonight instead.
W
I flipped the paper open to find three words scrawled in French. Ma petite étoile.
“My little star,” I read, tracing the sure strokes of his handwriting. “Mon chevalier.”
My knight.
No white horse or shining armor—there was no saving going on here—but there was a battle, and it felt incredible to finally have someone to fight with.
I found my cell and sent him a text asking if he was at home and if I could stop by.
Wreck: I’ll be out all day.
I wanted to ask where he was. He hadn’t offered an explanation, which could mean nothing, but I’d come to learn that if Wreck didn’t want to talk, that wa
s because he had something to say. But I had no real intentions of delving today. I got my answer.
Me: Seven then
I got dressed quickly. It was after ten, he could be lying, but I got the impression he truly wasn’t around today. My body could somehow sense his absence. And I didn’t like it. I gathered some items, shoved them in my bag, and then got in my Audi, driving down the canyon and into downtown Charmant.
The sky was endlessly clear that morning, no clouds, no marks in the sky. Just blue and blue. It looked infinite. I didn’t buy into the illusion this morning. I wasn’t ever getting out of here.
I stopped and got a full-fat iced coffee dripping with caramel and a freaking bacon maple scone from Moore Beans, and I didn’t feel bad stuffing myself with garbage. Mother and Father had been doing it my entire life.
The Wreckmond mansion was as empty as mine when I pulled up. Two huge wastes of space. A combined square footage of over a 100,000, and we barely managed to fill a tenth.
The guard tower out front was empty, and the gates weren’t open. I tried to think like a creepy stalker. Obviously, W had been getting into my house with ease for years. Now I had to get into his. I backed the Audi up and parked it down the road behind the turn off, stuffing my arms full and tracing the edge of his property until I found what I was looking for. My property had a path cutting into the canyon as well, but they were so awkwardly placed you’d only know they were there if you were looking. No one got close enough to look but us.
I took the path right up to the drains for the pool. I pushed the gate open with ease and dashed past the groundkeeper’s station. The grass muffled my feet as I ran alongside the property. When I got to the deck, I took it carefully, peering in the straight line of windows to find the house empty. After trying the back door, I wondered if W had as much ease as I did breaking in.
I walked right up the stairs to his bedroom. I closed his door behind me and took a deep relieved breath. His room was dark; the black blinds were pulled tightly. I turned the light beside his desk on and stood there, his open laptop catching my attention. It looked like it was playing a video on loop. When I leaned down to get a better look, I felt my blood run cold.
“Holy…”
He was watching me. I heard my loud swallow in his quiet room. My entire body felt weightless with shock and confusion. Was that how he knew so much? Because he saw it? Had his want been so intense he found a way to squelch it? The camera had a perfect view of my room. Just high enough to get my bed, and low enough to watch me sleep, or study, or even masturbate.
Before I passed out, I sat on his bed, staring into my room from across the canyon. The pure breach of privacy was roiling in my stomach, creating a cocktail of rage and sadness. He hadn’t come to me, because he didn’t know how, didn’t think he could, or even worse, he’d known he could and wanted me his way before he had me my way.
This was such a different side of him. I wasn’t sure it was a good side either. I didn’t know what to do. If I touched it before I confronted him, things could go south. I wanted to figure out what to say before I approached him.
If I left my present, he’d know I saw it. Feeling sick and disappointed, I bundled my things and left the way I came in, settling in my car with the air on and trying to understand what would drive a man to such unhealthy lengths.
I didn’t want to see him tonight. Not when I was so confused. That was too far. Raging about Tristan and using me as a weapon had been two strikes, but a camera in my freaking room had been the final one. I was enraged at him. Why did he keep doing this to me? Taking me to great heights only to drag me back down. He made me alive and empowered one moment, and then trapped and controlled the next.
He hadn’t faked last night. That was a connection that could not be fabricated. The pleasure, the feral understanding between two wanting bodies, Cage and Hallie—that was realer than anything in my entire life. But he couldn’t fake that camera either.
W really was a stalker.
Who knew how long he’d watched me. Wanted me.
It was as heartbreaking as it was alarming.
I did something I never did. I called my father.
“Ben,” he answered.
He hadn’t looked at the caller ID. That or my own father didn’t have my number. And in seconds, my heart twisted. Wreck never said hello. He always knew it was me.
“Hi, Ben.”
“Hallie?” He sounded bored. “Something wrong? If so, call your mother. I’m busy.”
I absorbed his dismissal with poise. Inside, I wasn’t nearly as calm. “She’s not home. She’s in Brazil on business.”
He didn’t say anything for a second. “You’re sure?”
“That’s what she said on Monday.” Uh-oh, was I not supposed to say that? Wreck said my father knew. Maybe Wreck was wrong.
He cleared his throat. “What do you want?” he demanded. “I’m in New York still. Remind me to never outsource managing. Fucking idiots. Have you read your emails this past week? You and Cage have to go to Athens and sign off on the house today by five or we’ll have to deal with housing from the University. Alumni or not, they want the leasers not the buyers.” He sounded bitter and pissed.
I closed my eyes in fearful understanding. That’s where Wreck was. Signing off on the house we’d live in together during college at University of Georgia. My life wasn’t even mine.
“We’ll be there.”
“Good,” he said, and I thought he actually meant it. “How are things with him?” There was no real interest in his question, only a quiet order to make sure he liked what he heard.
“We’re going to dinner tonight.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know yet,” I lied. “It’s a surprise.” Damn if he burned Paulette’s down.
“Things moving along?”
“Yes, Father. My boyfriend and I are following the rules just fine.”
His anger filtered through the phone. “Watch your spoiled fucking mouth, Hallie. You’ll do what I say regardless of our deal. Remember that.”
Illa. I swallowed my reply. “Yes, Sir. I’m sorry.”
But he’d hung up already, leaving me with a dial tone and a sudden desire to see a man who wanted me, who cared enough to study me.
To crave me all those years.
Father could never take away my feelings. He could ruin them, he could manipulate them, but he could never take them.
He’d have to have any to understand how to ruin them.
That night, my insides set to destruct. A lifetime of this. With a man like Wreck who made my heart soar at the same time he moved around me in secret. I didn’t understand my tears. Didn’t get why the thought of him lying to me made my chest burn and my heart ache. I didn’t want that with him. Every time we were together, I was safe within my heart. I could feel and hope without fear of losing both. Not to mention how he made me feel. When he let his walls come down, there was something in him I had ached for my entire life.
Wreck and I could work. I knew it in my heart. Maybe that was stupid of me, maybe he would be the final element my star needed to explode, but my empty life under my father’s orders was going to destroy me soon enough. If I were going to self-destruct, I wanted to choose the way I collapsed.
I was slipping on my Christian Louboutin peep toe pumps when there was a knock on my door. I’d put in a lot of effort tonight. I needed a mask as large as Wreck’s secrets. My sleeveless black lace mini dress hugged my waist and bared my shoulders, just covering the bottom of my ass. I slathered my legs and arms in shimmering strawberry lotion and sprayed my favorite perfume on my neck and in my hair, which I’d done in a chignon bun style, pinning it in place with a diamond brooch.
When I turned to face Wreck, his mouth fell open. His eyes turned liquid royal blue as they traveled over my entire body. The immediate punch of lust I felt looking at him made my eyes sting—I’d never cry with as much makeup as I had on—because despite how I should feel, all I re
ally felt was betrayed and lied to.
He was wearing a fitted black and gray suit. Black jacket, black pants, deep charcoal shirt with a silk black tie. It made him look older, light stubble, all long and lean gorgeous man. My stomach muscles clenched at the sight of him. Even his hair was sexy tonight, styled with a part on the side like he belonged in the movie Titanic. I wanted to be his Rose suddenly, to go down loving someone with all my heart and soul.
I could hardly hold it together. I’d tried to keep love out of this. But love wasn’t concerned with my father’s rules. It was greater than my father, than his empire. It was free.
“You look…” His tongue darted out to lick his bottom lip. His liquid gaze shot to mine. “Stunning, Hallie.”
The rush of beauty I felt under his heated gaze added to the twisted painful fire burning in my blood. I wanted to eat him. To wrap myself around his suit and slowly take it off. To devour his hard sweat-slicked abs and feel his cock in my mouth. It was smooth hard musky rock, divine on my tongue and in my lust.
I didn’t respond. I didn’t know whether I’d cry or attack him, and neither was the response I needed.
“You ready?” He cleared his throat and stood back for me to exit my room. I slipped past him, careful not to touch.
I wanted so badly to touch.
So badly to implode.
He held open the door to his Mercedes and gave me his hand, helping me up and inside.
“You’re quiet tonight,” he said, pulling out of my front gates. When I didn’t say anything, I heard his fists tighten around the steering wheel. “What did I do now?”
The gall of him. He knew what he did but was so used to lying to me he wouldn’t even consider himself at fault. He was entitled, we both were, but there was a point in life where realizing your mistakes wasn’t a weakness, it was respecting yourself and anyone else who had to listen to your lies.
“I thought after last night something had changed between us.” I crossed my arms over my chest and stared outside as we headed into Downtown Charmant. The glow of lights shimmered off the glass offices and shops, golden at night.
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