For Keeps. For Always.

by Haley Jenner

  Cum is leaking from the tip of my cock. I can feel it, ready to spurt ribbons into my boxers before it’s even had its own taste.

  “Brooks, I . . .”

  She stops, groaning long and loud.

  “I think . . .”

  Her body trembles.

  “I’m gonna come.”

  Lips finding her clit, I suck gently, and she cries out my name, her arm flying over her mouth as she bites into her skin to camouflage the sound.

  I drag my tongue against her once or twice more before she pushes my head away. “No more. I can’t. . . I, oh God.”

  Standing, I crawl over her sated body

  Mesmerized by my mouth, she reaches her hand up and drags her thumb along my lips as the heat of her climax clings to my face. She stares at her thumb in awe.

  “That was. . . unreal.”

  My grin feels as cocksure as I’m sure it looks. “You have a sweet-tasting pussy, Squirrel.” I grab at her wrist, sucking her thumb into my mouth to savor the taste.

  13

  HENLEY

  I feel drunk. Or high. Or both.

  My body is weightless—too heavy to move but light enough to float.

  Hellooooo, orgasm. It was definitely my pleasure to meet you.

  Brooks leans down to kiss me, the remnants of what we shared still clinging to his lips. He tastes like sin and sex and everything I never knew I was missing.

  He breaks our kiss, his eyes meeting mine, questions in his eyes.

  “Yes,” I tell him. “I want this.”

  He nods.

  He stands to move around his bed, searching through his side table to retrieve a black box. Moving up the bed, I watch as he fiddles with it, opening the seal.

  Retrieving a single condom, he drops the box to the side table, then climbs onto the bed with a coy smile.

  “Just so you know,” I tell him, sitting up. “I couldn’t imagine sharing this with anyone else. I’m glad it’s you, Brooks.”

  “I’m glad it’s me, too.”

  I push at his chest, and he laughs.

  “I’m glad it’s you, too, Henley,” he says seriously.

  “Can I touch you?” I ask tentatively. “Teach me what feels good.”

  He blinks long and hard, a soft groan falling from his lips.

  He kneels above me, looking far more formidable than a boy ever should. At seventeen, he’s tall and broad with a film of svelte muscle built under the soft tan of his skin. His blue eyes shine with a mischief and maturity that should be intimidating. Instead, it’s magnetic in a way that makes me want to do as he says and run away. Just him and me forever lost in the world, exploring.

  He’s hard in his boxers, the thick outline of his cock visible through the dark material. My mouth waters at the thought of seeing him—free and bare and hard for me. I never imagined I’d be so eager to see a naked penis. The truth be told, at seventeen, the thought should be daunting. But this is Brooks, and I’ve never trusted another human being like I do him.

  “Take it out, Henley. You want to touch it, touch it.”

  As strong as his words sound, there’s a desperation to them. A plea for me not to deny him.

  My fingers reach into his waistband timidly, skating along the firm touch of his stomach. Shifting closer, I tug at the cotton, pushing his boxers over his lean hips. Thankful for the freedom, the long, thick line of his cock strains forward, pointing toward me with a wet crown. He leaks with anticipation. Beading with white translucent drops that I lean forward to lick away.

  “Fucking God,” he bites out, grabbing on to his base, his knuckles white with the tight hold.

  “Like that?” I ask.

  “Mm,” he moans, the veins in his neck protruding with his limited restraint.

  Circling my lips over his crown, I suck lightly, dragging my tongue over the small slit in his head.

  His dick jerks against my tongue. “Fuck. Henley. Fuck.”

  Feeling braver at his reaction, I swallow more of him down. I gag slightly as he taps the back of my throat, and he growls out in approval.

  “Henley.” He cups my jaw. “Baby, you need to stop. I don’t wanna come like this.”

  Sliding himself out of my mouth, he holds up the condom in his hand. “I wanna do it buried inside you.”

  I nod, not trusting my voice to be strong enough to speak.

  “Tell me you’re sure,” he tests, leaning down to place a chaste kiss on my lips. “Because if you’re not, we’ll stop.”

  “No,” I utter huskily. “I don’t want to stop. I want this.”

  He kisses me again. This time longer. Deeper. More intimately. A promise to treat me with care, with love.

  Falling back onto the bed, he goes with me, unwilling to break the kiss.

  “Brooks,” I push.

  Eyes set on mine, he rips the small foil packet in his hand with his teeth. I watch in wonder as he pinches the rubber at its tip and stretches the length of it over his impressive size.

  Hand to one of my knees, he slides it up the bed, keeping it bent to open me up. Settling between my thighs, he rubs himself along my swollen nub, still sensitive from my earlier orgasm.

  I moan.

  Tip in, he clasps one of his hands in mine, refusing to break eye contact. He pushes in slowly, eyes rolling back in ecstasy at the tight grip of my pussy.

  “Jesus.”

  We both inhale sharply when he hits the resistance of my virginity, nudging against it softly before he takes my lips in a tender kiss. “Breathe.”

  He surges forward as I inhale, breaking through my barrier and pushing all the way in.

  My nostrils flare in pain, the sting traveling from my toes all the way to my face.

  “Breathe.” He kisses me again.

  I follow without thought, my lungs inflating and deflating in long, measured breaths.

  Rolling his hips, he works on stretching me, and I whimper and moan and wince and arch into him all at once.

  “You feel so fucking good, Squirrel. So fucking good.”

  He sounds ready to break. Ready to shatter into a billion pieces.

  “Brooks,” I urge. “I need you to move.”

  He exhales in relief. “Thank fuck.”

  He slides out, the movement so gradual, tiny waves of pleasure hit me at the tenderness of his touch.

  He thrusts forward almost immediately, a little harder, his jaw set tight, swallowing down the guttural groan that idles in his throat.

  Out.

  In.

  Out.

  In.

  Considering the tension in his arms and face, he’s barely holding on, but he fucks me nice and slow. Gentle strokes of his cock moving in and out of my body stir a fire in my stomach. The initial pain gives way to a soft ache, and that ache eventually gives way to tentative pleasure.

  “Henley, I’m gonna—”

  “Come,” I tell him, watching on in awe as his eyes close and the veins in his neck pulsate in time with his cock inside me.

  Dropping on top of me, he nuzzles into my neck, kissing my skin softly. We lay like that until our breathing evens out.

  I shift, but he shakes his head, halting me. “Give me a minute.”

  “For what?”

  “I’m not ready to let this moment pass just yet,” he confesses quietly. “Just one more minute.”

  I give him his minute. Sixty blissful seconds of us tied away where no one else can find us.

  “Henley,” he murmurs against my neck. “You know I love you, right?”

  My arms wrap around him. “Of course.”

  “Good,” he says. “I’d hate for you to ever think you wasted that—”

  “I love you, too,” I cut him off. “We’re for keeps.”

  “For always,” he echoes.

  14

  BROOKS

  I bring her into consciousness with my lips brushing along the dusting of freckles over her nose and cheeks. Sun kisses that she’s earned from countless hours outside,
befriending Mother Nature for no other reason than comfort.

  Her eyelashes flutter, and I kiss them too.

  She moans her approval, moving into me. “Hi.”

  “Hi,” I say back, my arm wrapping around her warm body to pull her closer to me still. Needing the line of her body pressed against mine. Wanting her to feel how hard she makes me.

  “Well, isn’t this sweet.”

  Henley and I startle apart at the same time.

  I wrap my sheet tighter around Henley’s naked body as panic settles in her eyes. Comfortable she’s covered, I twist my neck, glancing over my shoulder to where the facetious tone made its appearance.

  Evelyn sits in the large armchair housed in the corner of my room. Legs crossed, examining her nails; her interruption is both unwelcome and regrettable. Her body exudes calm, her foot kicking out softly over and over again in time with the tick of my clock.

  God knows how long she’s been sitting in my room. Watching, waiting. Inserting herself into a private moment she had no right to while likely plotting her revenge.

  “Evelyn,” Henley stutters.

  Evelyn lifts her eyes; sliced so heavily with hate she looks ready to burn everything around her. Her disdain for Henley has only grown over the years with her absence. A festering sore she can’t rid herself of. She could never move past the reality of Henley’s and my friendship. She wanted to replace her, a feat that I told her time and time again was impossible.

  “Hope you enjoyed your time with my boyfriend.” She maims the way she aimed to, Henley’s sharp intake of air evidence of that.

  My eyes close in respite.

  “I, uh, ummm. . .” Henley mumbles.

  Bile rushes up my throat, burning my esophagus in regret. Shamefully, not for what I did with Henley, but the fact that Evelyn is here stopping me from doing it again.

  “Evelyn,” I start, sitting up.

  “Save me the excuses, Brooks.” She stands. “You fucked your best friend without having the decency to end our relationship.”

  “Evelyn,” I try again, knowing she’s right. But it’s not as if I planned this. It just happened. Something I’m not exactly proud of, but something I won’t ever regret.

  “Funny that you wouldn’t sleep with me but jumped into bed with the very girl you told me not to worry about. We’re just friends, Evelyn,” she mimics a line I fed her again and again. One up until Henley arrived home, I wholeheartedly believed.

  She moves toward my bedroom door. “Joke’s on me,” she contemplates. “I guess I should've known better.”

  There’s no hurt in her tone. No pain at my betrayal. I wasn’t lying when I told Henley that Evelyn and I were nothing serious. But it’s obvious enough that Evelyn’s pride has been hit. It’s been decimated by the fact I couldn’t bring myself to touch her the way I would’ve given my life to do with Henley last night.

  She’s beautiful—there’s no denying that—and not used to rejection. To the reality of coming in second place. To anyone.

  “Go back to London, Henley. Your moping is the ultimate buzzkill.” She yawns. “Everyone was happier with you gone.”

  With that, she’s gone, and I reach for Henley in reassurance.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  Stumbling from my bed, she holds my sheet to her body, leaving me completely naked. She turns her back quickly, like she hadn’t touched and tasted and felt me all over her last night.

  “How could we forget you have a girlfriend? Oh, my God. I can’t believe we did that, Brooks. We’re horrible people.”

  “Henley.” I reach for her, but she moves out of my grasp in search of her clothes.

  “You cheated. We cheated.”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong,” I assure her.

  I did. The truth is, Evelyn didn’t even cross my thoughts last night. Nothing else existed in my world. Nothing but Henley.

  Whirling on me, hand still clinging to the sheet for dear life, her eyes widen in shock. “I knew you had a girlfriend. I knew that, and I let last night happen. I’m just as guilty as you are. I need to leave.”

  Dread claws at my chest. No. This wasn’t the plan. What happened was supposed to push us closer together, not farther apart.

  “What happened to for keeps? To for always?” I spit.

  She turns away from my animosity. “I forgot that you belonged to someone else.”

  Picking up the lamp on my bedside table, I throw it against the wall, watching it shatter into irredeemable pieces. The deafening crack stiffens her spine. “Give me a fucking break,” I sneer. “I’ve only ever belonged to you. In the same way you belong to me.”

  “Except that’s not true,” she tells me calmly, turning back to me. “You’re with Evelyn, and we did something unforgivable.”

  “Sometimes you have to do something unforgivable to find where you belong.”

  Her head shakes. “Not like this. You don’t break someone else to find your happy ending, Brooks. It doesn’t work like that.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says me.”

  I inhale through my nostrils, searching for calm. And my pants. Pulling them up my legs, I zip them up, leaving the top button undone as I move toward her.

  She steps back.

  “Please don’t cower away from me. Please don’t do that.”

  Her chin wobbles.

  “I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry I got so caught up in you that nothing else existed. I’m sorry that I don’t feel bad about what we did. It was the most alive and real I’ve felt since you left.”

  “It was wrong,” she whispers.

  “All of it?”

  She shrugs.

  “You regret me?” I can barely stomach the words as they find their way out.

  Her head shakes, but she won’t look at me, her gaze locked on her bare feet.

  “Look at me,” I demand.

  She won’t.

  “Look at me!” I yell.

  She finally lifts her head, tears track her cheeks.

  “You regret me?”

  “I don’t know!” she cries. “I don’t know,” she whispers again softly.

  Plopping my ass on the bed, I drop my head into my hands. “Wow.”

  “I should go.”

  A breath of silence.

  “Home,” she clarifies.

  I look up at her. “This is your home.”

  Lips pinched together, she moves her head from side to side. “No. It’s not. Not anymore.”

  “Stay,” I plead.

  “I can’t.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Both.”

  Retrieving her clothes, her soft sniffles follow her around my room. “My parents' marriage was a joke. It was built on lies and hurt and betrayal. I vowed I’d never be like that.”

  I cannot believe she’s forcing a connection between what we shared and what her parents were. They were full of hate and spite. We were consumed by love, by the affection we hold for one another. How can she not see that?

  “People make mistakes. We made a mistake. It doesn’t mean we should punish ourselves by not letting ourselves have what we want.”

  She sighs, a condescending sound that slices into me. “We’re teenagers, Brooks. I can’t run away, and neither can you. This . . .” She gestures back and forth between us. “It doesn’t work right now.”

  It doesn’t work.

  We don’t work.

  “And later?”

  A shrug. That’s all she gives me. A dismissive lift of her shoulders when our hearts are bleeding all over the floor.

  15

  HENLEY

  The flight back to London was shit.

  Scratch that, it was fucking torturous.

  All I wanted to do was cry. To curl up into the tiniest ball I could manage and wail.

  Instead, I stared blankly at the small screen, watching horror films in an attempt to erase all the sadness pumping through my veins.

  It didn’t work.

>   Not one little bit.

  “What is going on with your phone?” my mom finally snaps. “It’s driving me to insanity, Henley. Who is trying to contact you?”

  “Brooks,” I answer blankly.

  “And?”

  “And what?” I glance at her, the same void in my eyes that sits in my words. “I don’t feel like talking.”

  Her over-plucked eyebrows pull together. “You’ve been quiet since you came home. Did something happen?”

  Looking away before she could possibly read anything in my eyes, I continue to spoon cereal into my mouth. “No. I’m just jet-lagged.”

  “It’s that boy,” she speculates. “I don’t want to say I told you so—”

  “Then don’t.” I drop my spoon into my bowl roughly, the sound enough to make her wince as milk spills over the counter. “Please, just fucking don’t.”

  “Henley,” she chides.

  I walk from the kitchen, locking myself in my room and throwing the comforter over my head like I’ve done every day since I’ve been back.

  I miss him.

  In a way that causes a physical pain in my chest.

  My cell won’t stop.

  Texts.

  Calls.

  Addy: Yo. Call me. Why are you ignoring me?

  I don’t know? Maybe because I cheated with your friend’s boyfriend, and I’m hating on myself enough that I don’t need anyone else to add to that.

  My ringtone sounds, and I close my eyes.

  “Hi,” I speak into the device.

  “Henley. Fuck. Finally. What gives?”

  His voice brings a fresh wave of tears to my eyes, and I stuff my face into my pillow.

  “Are you there?” he pushes.

  “Yes,” I mumble into my pillow.

  “I can’t hear you.”

  I pull my face away from the cotton. “I’m here.”

  “Squirrel. Baby. Why are you cutting me out?”

  Squirrel.

  Baby.

  “Did you speak to Evelyn?”

  He sighs. “No. She won’t take my calls.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Henley,” he groans. “Stop.”