by Becker Gray
Rhys noticed my scowl at the group on the other side of the fire, and then sighed. “I didn’t mean them, dumbass. I meant her father. The last thing you want is Headmaster Briggs associating rugby with whatever—” he gestured at Samantha, who was currently riding a Croft kid’s back like a horse and doing a shot at the same time “—this is.”
Fuck. He was right. Briggs had one goal, and one goal only—turn Pembroke into a fully-fledged Ivy mill. It was pretty close already; save for the kids who took eternal gap years and the ones who turned into social media influencers, most of us ended up at an Ivy or the international equivalent. But most wasn’t good enough for Briggs. Most wouldn’t bring in those sweet alumni dollars.
And the hard truth was as much as alumni loved the pride and the legacy of things like rugby and lacrosse and rowing, they didn’t bring the wow factor the way those college acceptance stats did.
Rhys was right. We were already in Briggs’ crosshairs. The last thing I needed was for him to catch Iris at a party that was practically sponsored by Gentleman Jack and Plan B.
Except then Iris appeared between the trees, and I forgot everything I needed.
Other than her.
I stepped forward, and Rhys caught my elbow. “Bad fucking idea, Constantine.”
I shook him off. “I’m not going to do anything stupid.”
“Define stupid,” Rhys muttered, but he didn’t try to stop me as I crossed the clearing to meet Iris.
The night was the first real night of the New England autumn—with a faint chill in the air and a restless breeze moving through the just-turning leaves above us. Which meant that Iris had bright pink cheeks as she stepped into the firelight. I wondered if her nipples were hard from the cold too.
I wondered if she’d let me warm them up for her.
She was wearing a good-girl outfit tonight—the kind of outfit that made a boy like me want to filthy her up. Thick black tights and a cute dress that looked like a sweater—long enough to be demure, but still short enough for me to easily reach under it if I wanted. Which I did.
She also had her bright hair in two braids again, and my hands flexed as I thought about taking them apart and sifting my fingers through her tresses. Rubbing my mouth against them.
God, she made me crazy. There were so many hot girls here—so many hot girls in the town not two miles away—and yet this girl was the one I couldn’t get enough of. This tiny, mouthy, hyper-disciplined waif of a girl.
Before I could grab her and haul her off into the darkness, Serafina, Sloane, and Aurora appeared behind her, their happy expressions melting into ferocious battle faces as they saw me.
“No,” Serafina said, striding past Iris to get straight to me. She put her finger against my chest. “You don’t get to bother her tonight.”
I held up my hands. “No bothering. I just want to talk about our project.”
“Un. Likely,” Aurora pronounced. “You’ve got that bothering look in your eye.”
“Guys, it’s okay,” Iris said, stepping closer to me and pushing Serafina’s finger down. “I promise. Keaton is going to be the perfect gentleman. Isn’t that right, Keaton?”
There was nothing gentlemanly about my thoughts right then, or the semi that was stiffening behind my fly, but I nodded. “As gentlemanly as Owen.”
Everyone except Iris groaned. Owen’s brooding addiction to manners was known to more than just us in the Hellfire Club. He wouldn’t be caught dead bothering a girl—he allowed girls to bother him and then made them tidy up before they left.
“Fine,” Serafina said. “Channel Owen. And if I find out you put one cleat out of line, I’m going to let Sloane murder you.”
I looked over to Sloane who was wearing a black leather jacket and the kind of boots you might wear to bury a body in.
“Deal,” I said, and then I grabbed Iris’s hand and tugged her away.
10
Keaton
I led her away from the fire and into the trees, where clusters of students lazed on Nantucket Looms blankets. There was the sound of lighters lighting up weed, the sounds of kissing and giggling, until it all faded away, and it was just me and Iris alone in the woods, with only the faint orange glow of the fire in the distance to show us where we came from. Iris yanked her hand out of mine as soon as we cleared the last of the sex-and-drugs blankets.
“Follow me into the woods said the Big Bad Wolf to Red Riding Hood,” Iris said.
“Shh,” I said, turning onto a little path between the trees. “You can almost hear it.”
“Hear what—oh! It’s a river!”
Iris ran down to the edge of the water excitedly.
River was being generous—it was a brook at best, narrow and splashy and shallow. But even I had to admit it was pretty, and even better, this part of it was surrounded by flat rocks and soft grass. Perfect for more Iris kisses.
I sat down on the grassy bank and then reached up for her. “Come here.”
She narrowed her eyes at me, choosing to sit far enough away that I couldn’t reach her without lunging. “We’re not making out again, Keaton.”
“Okay,” I said. “We can skip the kissing if you like. I don’t mind getting straight to the part where I make you come.”
The nearly full moon was bright enough that I could see her cheeks darken. “We said we weren’t going to do that again.”
“No, you said that.” I lifted an eyebrow at her. “I don’t recall agreeing to anything.”
“You agreed that we didn’t like each other.”
“And then I said that it has nothing to do with this,” I pointed out, moving my hand between us. “I can make your pussy feel good, and then you can get right back to hating me.”
“Wow. The moonlight makes you so romantic,” she said in a dry tone, turning back to look at the brook.
I was ready with a quip, I really was, but there was something about the way she looked right then, drawing her knees up to her chest and staring down at the water, that made the sarcastic words disappear.
She didn’t look sad, necessarily, but she looked—I didn’t know—lonely maybe. Or alone in her own thoughts.
I didn’t like the idea of her feeling lonely. I didn’t know why, because I obviously didn’t give a damn how she felt unless it ended with my mouth on her tits. But somehow, I found myself moving closer to her anyway. I found myself sliding an arm around her shoulders—not to yank her into my lap like I’d wanted to earlier—but simply to hold her close. To make sure she was warm. To make sure she knew she wasn’t actually alone.
I was probably a shit boyfriend, a shit friend, and a shit guy in general, but I could do this one thing. I could make someone feel like they weren’t the only person on the planet.
“You’re ruminative tonight, Big Red.”
“Ruminative is an awfully big word for a boy who can run as fast as you.”
Pleasure curled through my chest.
“Does that mean you’ve watched me run, Iris? Did you come to the game today?”
She ducked her head down, smiling a little at her knees. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?” I reached over and lifted her chin. “You watched me play?”
Another flush under those freckles. “Okay, yes. I watched. You have very nice legs.”
I laughed. “Is that all you took away from it, sweetheart? That rugby players wear shorts?”
“Well, and that you apparently have no fear.” She shook her head in disbelief. “I really thought you were going to leave that field on a stretcher.”
I shrugged like it was no big deal. Actually, I’d had to pop some Advil for a nasty bruise on my shoulder and there was a grassy scrape along one thigh that had stung like hell in the shower after the game, but my pride refused to tell her all that.
“Guess I’m just tough,” I said casually.
“Uh-huh,” she said, like she wasn’t buying it. And she probably wasn’t. She’d been able to see past my bullshit since the moment she stepped on
campus.
“You didn’t respond to my observation,” I reminded her. “Why so pensive? Most girls would already be in my lap by now.”
It was the wrong thing to say, and it earned me a fierce scowl. “Maybe I’m the only girl who happens to care that you’re dating Clara.”
God. This Clara thing. It was going to kill me, it really was—or at least my neglected erection. I wanted to tell Iris the truth—that Clara and I only pretended to date to keep our parents happy. That she needed the cover for dating the boy she really loved, who was too poor and too anonymous to ever win her parents’ approval.
That we were riding the lie until graduation, when we’d be free. Or at least freer than before.
I opened my mouth to say it all, and then I hesitated, remembering Rhys’s words from earlier. As much as I wanted this girl, as much as she dominated my thoughts, I couldn’t forget who her father was. I couldn’t forget that I barely knew her.
Clara had begged me to keep our real relationship terms a secret, and I’d honored that shit. Even the Hellfire Club didn’t know our relationship was fake. I didn’t know if Iris was the kind of girl who could keep a secret or not, and if she couldn’t—if she told Serafina or Aurora—then there was no telling how many other people would hear about it. And then I would’ve broken my oldest friend’s trust and screwed us both over with our parents.
Fuck.
“It’s complicated with Clara,” I finally said. “It’s not like I can’t do this, though. With you.”
She frowned at me. “That’s not how Clara made it sound.”
Dammit, Clara. “She’s worried about appearances, that’s all. No one can see us here. It can be our little secret.”
Iris turned back to the water, a thick red braid moving over her shoulder. “I don’t want to be a secret. I’m already an embarrassment to my parents.”
I scoffed. “That can’t possibly be true.”
She glared at me. “Want to bet?”
“You get amazing grades, you never get in trouble, you’re like straight from the Good Girl Factory. There’s no way they’re embarrassed.”
“They want me to be my older sister. They want me to go to Harvard or Brown or Dartmouth. They want me to study law. They want me to make them look better.”
“And you don’t want Harvard? You don’t want to be a lawyer?”
She blew out a long breath. “I want to do what I love, and I want to do it far away from here. I want to spend hours waiting for the perfect shot of fog rolling over the Seine. I want to go into the catacombs and picnic in the Tuileries and people-watch from a cafe while I’m eating delicious pastries. I want to fall in love with a French guy and walk through the city hand in hand and go to operas and ballets. I want to start my real life and start being who I really am.”
Fall in love with a French guy?
A wave of irritated possessiveness rolled through me, just at the thought of some hypothetical moron holding her hand and doing all that romantic crap with her.
She took a deep breath, looking surprised at herself. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I don’t normally go off like that.”
“I don’t mind,” I told her. Everything but the part about the French guy, at least.
“It’s silly.”
“It’s not silly. But you are wrong about something.”
Her eyebrow arched a little in defiance. “Oh really. I’m wrong about something? Care to mansplain myself to me?”
“I like it when you’re saucy,” I said, and I finally did what I’d wanted to do for the past ten minutes, and I scooped her into my lap.
This time, she let me.
“You’re not wrong about yourself, Iris, but you are wrong that there’s such a thing as real life. This, right now, is real life, and you have the power to make it the way you want. Are you always going to be what everyone else wants you to be?”
She tucked her head against my chest as I finished.
“Or are you going to do what might actually make you happy?” I asked her, more gently than I thought I was capable of—maybe it was because I was also asking myself at the same time.
Am I going to keep trying to please everyone else?
Even if it keeps me away from what I really want?
She tilted her head to look up at me. “And what do you think would make me happy, Keaton?” she asked. Her voice was soft, a little husky. Her pupils were huge pools of obsidian ringed in cobalt.
Fuck. I needed this. I needed her.
“I can make you happy,” I growled, tugging the hair ties off those terrible, wonderful braids. Terrible because they kept all that pretty, Titian hair locked away from me. Wonderful because they gave me moments like this, the moments when I got to free it and feel it tumbling cool and silky over my fingers. It was like the first pour from a good bottle of scotch. It was like the first firm stroke of my hand when I needed to get off. It was the promise of something decadent, with so much more decadence to come.
“Can you?” she whispered, sliding her hands up my chest. Through the thin fabric of my long-sleeved Baracuta tee, I could feel the warmth of her hands as they moved over my pectoral muscles to my collarbone and then to my neck. She stroked her fingers over a spot behind my ear, and I nearly had a heart attack.
I wanted her to do it forever.
I wanted to flip her over onto her back and nibble on her fingers until she begged me to make her come.
“I can make you very happy,” I informed her in a growl, moving her so that she properly straddled my lap and then working my hands into that mass of glorious hair.
“You shouldn’t,” she said, still whispering. “We shouldn’t do this.”
“We’re not doing anything.”
“You’re going to—” Her voice went shy and husky all at once. “You’re going to stick your hand in my panties and make me come again.”
“I promise not to make you come with my hands.” I said absolutely nothing about my tongue.
“We still shouldn’t—”
“Clara doesn’t have anything to do with us.”
“Us has to do with us. We don’t even like each other!”
My hands were still in her hair. “I like you plenty right now, Iris Briggs. Let me kiss you.”
Her lips parted, and I could see the hesitation and need warring on her face. She wanted it.
She just didn’t want to want it.
But then she shifted a little in my lap, lining up the hard ridge of my need against her center, and a heavy shudder moved through her body as she moved away again. “Just a kiss,” she murmured, drugged by the friction she’d felt between our lower halves. “Just one. Or two.”
I needed no other encouragement. I pulled her closer and took her mouth with my own.
It was everything I remembered.
It was as hot and sweet and wild; it was vicious and delicious. She tasted clean and sweet, like strawberries, and her lips were so soft, the kind of soft that wet dreams were made of. When she let my tongue past her lips to stroke against hers, heat surged down to my groin. I was so close to losing it and we hadn’t even done anything yet.
We’d kissed.
We’d kissed, and now I was trying not to come.
What was this girl doing to me?
There was too much of her I needed to touch—I needed her mouth and I needed the soft hollow of her neck and I needed my hands in her hair and I also needed them shaped to the curves of her tits.
I needed them on her hips, pressing her harder against me, and I needed them up her dress, where I could make her moan and whimper for me again.
“Keaton,” she murmured, dipping her face to suck at my neck. I tilted my head, offering more skin for her mouth, as I slid my hands down to her hips and guided her firmly against my lap. Now, with her dress pushed up and her legs wrapped around me, the soft warmth between her legs was once again pressed directly against my denim-covered erection.
“Oh my god,” she whispered, rocking against
it and shivering. “Oh my god. We shouldn’t . . .”
“Just for a while longer,” I said in between searing kisses. “Just a few more moments.”
She nodded her head, a small noise whimpering in the back of her throat as she screwed her hips against mine. “We’ll stop. Very soon.”
“That’s right,” I told her. “As soon as you want. Fuck, Iris, that feels so good.”
I moved my hands from her hips to her ass and helped her. Helped her grind down on me, watching her face as she did. Copper hair tumbled everywhere, and the moonlight caught along the tips of her long eyelashes. I seriously never thought about shit in this way, but she looked like a princess. Like a princess about to come from riding my lap.
“Feel good, baby?” I rasped, working her harder over me. My cock ached like a motherfucker, and my thighs were tight from trying to hold back the orgasm that wanted to hit like a tsunami. But I wouldn’t come until she did. No matter how good it felt to have her soft pussy grinding over me. No matter how sexy it was to feel her thighs around my hips.
No matter how fuckable she looked right now, with her lips parted and her eyes wide.
“Keaton,” she whispered, and then shuddered over me, rocking and rocking, her head dropping down to roll on my shoulder.
I held her tight, loving every fucking minute of it: her shivers and her pants, how eagerly she kept rubbing herself against me, as if she was chasing every last second of her orgasm.
The only thing I wished was that I could feel it for myself—that I had my fingers inside her, or my dick—
Shit.
Even just thinking about being inside had my cock leaking precum inside my boxers. While she was still coming down from her release, I rolled us back and over—fast enough to make her gasp, but careful enough to make sure she was comfortable—so that she was on her back and I was over her.
“I want to see you,” I said desperately, getting to my knees and pushing her dress back up to her hips. “I want to see where you came for me.”