Evan
asleep that night, too excited to keep my eyes closed. I roll restlessly around my bed, kicking my blankets off, pulling them back on, sitting up, lying back down. A heady, dizzy excitement fills me like an electric current.
Of all the times I’ve gone toe-to-toe with Sutton, I’ve never once emerged with such a staggering victory. More than a victory—a prize. Even our kiss at the party barely counts as a victory, not when she left me standing alone in the trees with a hard cock and a mind full of questions.
This time, I’ve not just managed to beat her, to win against her, but I’ve managed to win something off her.
A date.
A date with Sutton.
A date with Suttton wouldn’t be like a normal date with a normal girl. I wouldn’t take her out because I like her, because I want to buy her flowers and hold her hand. A date with Sutton would be like fighting her on a completely different battlefield, with a whole new set of weapons.
Because I don’t have to like Sutton to want her. In fact, the more I dislike about her, the more she mocks me and scratches at me with the talons of her words, the more I want her.
I want to hold Sophie, touch her and kiss her again, just to prove to her I can. I want to kiss every part of her she hides beneath her tidy uniform, her baggy sweaters. I want to make out with her in my car until she’s so turned on she has to beg me even though she hates me.
Just thinking about it makes me painfully, achingly hard.
I slide my hand into my boxers. My cock twitches at my touch. My head is full of all the things I want to do with Sophie, all the things I want to do to her.
Her room is only a couple of doors away. She’d probably be disgusted if she knew I was touching myself thinking about her. But her proximity only makes this more forbidden, more tantalising.
Wrapping my fingers around my cock, I close my eyes.
What would I do if Sophie were to walk in right now? I’d look her right in the eyes, touching myself. Willing her to know my cock is hard for her. Pulling on my cock, pushing myself closer to the edge.
What if she came closer? I can think of a thousand things I’d do. Kissing a wet line from Sophie’s mouth to her throat, tasting her pulse. Exposing Sophie’s breasts to admire the colour of her nipples, to suck on them until they hardened under my tongue. Pushing up her skirt to reveal the pale skin of her upper thighs, licking her through her underwear, teasing her clit, making her squirm.
My eyes are clenched tight and I’m pumping my cock hard, now.
Sophie is so fucking harsh, so hard to crack, I couldn’t possibly go easy on her. I couldn’t just suck on her nipples—I’d have to bite them. I couldn’t just slide my fingers between her legs—I’d have to bury my face there. It could never be just sex with Sophie—it would have to be fucking.
Hard, rough fucking.
I’d have to fuck her hard enough to knock every thought from her head, to make her forget how much she dislikes me, to ensure she could never want another guy. I’d have to fuck her hard enough to make her scream, to break her voice, to make her shake in my arms.
I’d have to fuck her until she threw her head back and came on my cock and—
I come with a cry of surprise—I come so hard my back arches off the bed. My eyes blink slowly open as I try to catch my breath, and then clarity sets. I’m in big fucking trouble.
“Fuck.”
The next morning, I wake up both happy and sheepish. Luckily, Sophie’s already gone by the time I pull on my clothes and amble downstairs to rifle around the kitchen for some breakfast. The relief I feel is short-lived, though. On one hand, I don’t have to face her knowing I jacked off to thoughts of making out with her in my car, but on the other hand… I’m not going to see her all day.
She ends up working every day until Christmas Eve. I try to stay busy while she’s out, but it’s getting harder and harder to not spend every waking hour thinking about her.
Spending time with Sophie is like eating when you’re starving, except that no matter how satisfied you are while eating, you’re left feeling even hungrier than before. No matter how many evenings I spend with her, cooking with her or playing video games or just lounging around while she reads a book, I just end up wanting to spend more time with her.
Christmas Eve finally comes, and it must be a pretty special day because it’s the first time Sophie accepts my offer to pick her up from work. To be fair, it’s also been hailing through most of the day, and the cold is brutal by UK standards.
So I throw on a big sweatshirt and get in the car, trying my best to forget about all the fantasies I’ve had featuring the tinted glass and reclining seats.
I park up outside her café and try to peer through the strings of Christmas lights dangling inside the window. I’m desperately curious to see who she works with, but all I can make out are plants and the outline of big armchairs.
A minute later, Sophie comes running out of the door, holding two cups in her mittened hands. I reach over her seat to open the door, and she slumps inside with a sigh and hands me a paper cup.
“What’s this?” I ask, taking the cup.
“It’s hot chocolate and arsenic,” she answers drily.
“What do you mean?”
She rolls her eyes. “I’m joking. It’s hot chocolate, marshmallows and cream.”
“For me?”
“Evan,” she says, giving me the kind of impatient look she would give me when teaching me Shakespeare, with a tilt of the head and a raised eyebrow. “Yes, it’s for you. I made it myself. Happy Christmas Eve.”
She holds up her cup and taps it against mine, then takes a deep sip.
My heart clenches uncomfortably, and my throat suddenly feels a little swollen. I’m not one to get emotional, but for some reason, this hits me right in my feelings. I swallow hard and take a sip.
The drink is hot and creamy and sweet, warming me up straight away.
“How is it?” she asks without looking at me.
I cast her a quick grin and start the car. “It’s hot and sweet—like you.”
She laughs almost reluctantly. “Oh wow, how very smooth.”
“I thought so too. Practising for that date of ours.”
“I can already tell it’s going to be life-changing.”
“Really?”
She gives a low, rough laugh. “No.”
We spend the rest of the drive in a sort of amicable silence. When we get to the house, we go around the rooms turning on the Christmas lights. Then Sophie lights candles while I light the fire in the big fireplace. We carry armfuls of food and alcohol into the living room and settle ourselves on the soft rug in front of the fire. I offer to put on some Christmas music on the big speakers, but Sophie grimaces.
“I know you love Christmas, but please. No Christmas music. I’d rather you shoot me between the eyes.”
“It’s because you’ve not had enough alcohol yet,” I tell her, making myself a pile of cushions to lean against as I recline on the rug. “At Knight family Christmases, everyone would be tipsy before nightfall on Christmas Eve.”
She laughs and extends her glass towards me to let me pour her a drink. “My family just play board games and make passive-aggressive comments.”
I fill her cup, put the bottle away and stand. “Hey, we can do that too!”
I rush over to one of my mom’s expensive cabinets and grab a stash of board game boxes. I dump them in front of Sophie and slump back into my mountain of cushions. Sophie tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and rifles through the boxes: Scrabble, Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, Cluedo.
She runs her hand over the glossy, colourful cardboard with a little frown.
“These look brand new,” she says, looking up.
I shrug. “Yeah, my mom wanted to do this family night every weekend where we would all have dinner as a family and play games, but that didn’t last very long.”
“You and your sister weren’t up for it?”
“No, nothing like that. We were all up for it. But Mom and Dad had calls to take, and sometimes they had to work, and Adele sometimes had cello lessons, so in the end, Mom just accepted that family night just would have to wait.”
She’s looking at me with a slight frown that’s not her usual expression of stern disapproval, but more of a look of polite concern. I grin at her and say, a little mischievously, “Don’t give me that look, Sutton. This isn’t exactly a sob story when I live in a million-dollar house, right?”
She rolls her eyes and holds up the pile of games. “You want to play or not?”
We spend the next half hour working out which game to play. Most of them need too many players anyway, so Sophie sets those aside. We agree Monopoly is too much of a time investment and vow to play it tomorrow instead and just start earlier.
I veto Scrabble straightaway.
“Come on, you’re a walking fucking dictionary. I can’t compete.”
“My vocabulary’s the least of your worries,” she says, holding up the box. “Your mum seems to have bought the British version of Scrabble.”
“And?”
“And your spelling is still pretty bloody American, especially given how long you’ve been studying here.”
I give her a dirty look, but can’t really contradict her. In the end, we settle on Trivial Pursuit. I relax back into my cushions, one arm behind my head.
“Feeling confident?” she asks, pausing as she sets up the game.
I grin. “You’ll get stuck on the Sports section for so long it’ll give me plenty of time to catch up, smart-ass.”
She gives me the middle finger, which is unexpected coming from her and a little sexy.
There’s something particularly pretty about her today: she’s wearing black tights, a short denim skirt and a big grey sweater that looks irresistibly soft. She’s tied her hair back in a low, messy knot, and her cheeks are flushed from either the heat or the alcohol, reminding me of how she looked on the night of the party.
I need to stop getting distracted by her if I hope to get anywhere in this game. Or if I’m hoping to get through the night without embarrassing myself…
Sophie starts off exactly as one might expect: savagely competitive and mercilessly efficient. She pile-drives through the first half of the game with intimidating fervour. I’m not all that bothered about winning, mostly I’m just trying not to seem too stupid and not to let Sophie notice just how tipsy I’m gradually getting.
As the game goes on, however, it becomes pretty obvious that Sophie is getting quite tipsy herself.
She gives me long, glassy looks when I read the questions to her and then starts going off on wild lecture-like tangents instead of answering. When I get the answers to my own questions wrong, Sophie leans over to whisper clues and anagrams of the answers to help me.
Soon, I realise that Sophie Sutton isn’t quite so competitive at all when she’s had a few drinks.
“Come on, Evan, come on,” she says, patting my arm bracingly when I get stuck. “You’ve got this. You’ve got this, okay? Look, you’re already catching up with me.”
Just as I predicted, she’s been stuck on Sports for ages now, giving me time to slowly catch up to her. Of course, it’s not too hard catching up with her when she’s practically telling me the answers, but there’s something too endearing about her attempts to motivate me.
While I’m still lying in my initial position propped against a pile of cushions, Sophie has been slowly collapsing as the game has gone on: at first she was sitting with her legs tucked under her, then she went lower, propping herself on one elbow, then she was lying on her side, now she’s lying on her stomach, her chin cupped in one hand.
“Do you really think I can win this?” I ask her in my most heartfelt tone. “I’m not as smart as you.”
“Bullshit!” she exclaims, tapping my shoulder. “You’re smarter than you look. You just have to work harder. But I’m here to help, ok?”
“Ok, ok. But what do I get if I win?” I ask her, wondering how much I can push my luck.
“You can have more wine,” she says with a smirk.
“No, no, I’m pretty drunk.”
She laughs out loud, a big goofy laugh that makes my insides all warm and gooey.
“What are you talking about?” she exclaims. “You’re not pretty drunk, I’m pretty drunk!”
“I can see that,” I say, unable to stop myself from laughing. I sit up from my pile of cushions to lean over her and speak before my courage evaporates. “If I win, will you let me kiss you again?”
She shakes her head and sits up to face me. At first, I think she’s going to make one of her usual caustic replies, but she doesn’t. She leans forward, narrowing her dark eyes at me, and her lips curl into a slow grin.
The soft rainbow glow of the Christmas lights halos her pretty face like some strange angel as she speaks in a low, scratchy voice.
“You don’t have to win for that.”
