Evan
back in a strict ponytail, and with her dark glasses and white school shirt, she looks like the poster girl for academic excellence. She looks sophisticated, elegant—beautiful. I’m devastated to realise that even though it’s only been a few days, I’ve missed her.
But wanting Sophie and being angry at her are all mingled up, sending pure fire through my veins. Seeing her only whips my anger into a fervour. I cross the space between us in a few strides.
Before I can say anything, she glares up at me and exclaims, “You can’t talk to people like that!”
“I can if I want to, and I just did,” I retort. “What are you gonna do, report me for not minding my fucking manners?”
Her lips stretch into a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “That’s more your style, don’t you think?”
“I’ve apologised for that, though! What more do you want?”
I’m standing in front of her, practically towering over her, and yet I still somehow feel completely helpless.
“I didn’t want your apology then, and I don’t want anything from you now,” she says frostily. “So get out of my face and enjoy the rest of your life.”
Her gaze slides off me as if she’s dismissing me. She looks down at her exam paper as if her work is the only thing in the room. I reach down and snatch the paper from under her pen.
She looks up with a frown and a grimace. “What did you do that for?”
“I’ve not come here to be ignored!”
“Too fucking bad! I have work to do and you’re an unwelcome, unneeded and undesired distraction.”
She springs to her feet to grab the paper from my hand, but I yank my arm out of her reach. Now she’s standing, her anger a mirror to mine.
“Give it back,” she bites out.
“Why did you quit tutoring?”
The question spills out of me, uncontrollable. It’s been eating away at me since I found out. It devoured me the whole time it took me to come here and confront her.
“You don’t care about tutoring!” she explodes, her rough voice rougher the louder she gets. “You don’t care about your grades at all, you don’t care about anything but your stupid self and I’m sick and tired of wasting my time on you!”
“How is it a waste of time if I’ve been improving?”
“Doing decently in one exam doesn’t mean you’re improving—you’re just too stupid to realise everyone just sucks up to you because they’re scared of your parents!”
Heat rises in my cheeks. “Mr Houghton’s never sucked up to me. I got those grades because you helped me, and I’m improving, and—”
“If you wanted to improve, you’d be pulling your finger out and actually doing some work for once!”
“I have, though! I’ve done all the work you set me!” I stare at her, my heart beating so fast I almost have to catch my breath. “I don’t get where this is coming from?”
“Oh, you don’t?”
She side-steps the desk, standing right in front of me, looking up at me with total disdain twisting her face.
“Could it be coming from the fact that you’ve been making my life hell all these years? Or could it possibly be because you force me to waste my time tutoring you while you spend all your lessons fucking about? Or, I don’t know, could it be because you’re a shit person and you cost me my fucking job?”
Now it’s my turn to sneer at her. “Stop pretending that job was the be-all and end-all of your life, Sutton. You never even gave a shit about that job, I know you were just going there to flirt with that creep.”
Sophie’s face goes red so fast she looks like I’ve just slapped her across both cheeks. Her gaze falters. She takes a single step back, enough to tell me I struck true, enough to confirm all my suspicions.
Enough to make me hurt like shit.
“Freddy’s not a creep,” she says.
Freddy. His name, so common, so stupid, somehow makes him all the more real, like a deformed nightmare monster come to life.
My hatred for him bursts to life like a struck match.
“Hitting on an 18-year-old,” I spit out. “That’s exactly what I would call creepy.”
Her eyes are wide and incredulous as she watches me. For a moment, she’s completely speechless. Then her eyes narrow. She tilts her head, and her voice is soft and deadly when she speaks.
“That’s why you reported me? Because—what? Because you were jealous?”
I swallow hard. My face is hot—my chest is on fire. I’m not even embarrassed—Sophie is saying nothing more than the truth. I am fucking jealous, so jealous it hurts. And it almost feels good for her to finally acknowledge it, like scratching an unbearable itch I couldn’t reach myself.
I step forward, covering the distance she ceded earlier. I draw closer to her, pulled into the gravitational field of her presence. The smell of her is intoxicating, flooding me with memories of her hot mouth against mine, her pretty pussy against my tongue and around my cock. Desire sears me, scorching my mind, burning away all the things I planned to say.
Instead, words burst out of my mouth, unbidden. “Why would you pick some fucking creep, some complete nobody, when you could have me?”
It’s not at all what I had intended to say, but I can’t even control the flow of words pouring from my mouth. Her eyes are wide with frank shock. I want so badly to touch her I have to clench my fists to stop myself from reaching for her. She’s so tantalisingly close—she’s always so fucking, so torturously close, and yet always out of reach.
Why? Why can’t I just fucking have her?
“I don’t want you,” she snarls, answering both my questions, spoken and unspoken. The shock in her eyes fades, replaced by dark, cruel triumph. “Must be hard to swallow, huh? All the money and abs in the world—and I still don’t want you.”
I surge forward, finally allowing myself to touch her. Grabbing her by her waist, I pull her against me.
“Liar.” I take her face roughly in my hand, tilt it back. She stares up at me, unafraid. Something wild and burning is in her eyes. Her lips part wetly, as if she’s expecting me to kiss her. “You dirty fucking liar.”
Instead of kissing her, I tilt her head back further, exposing her neck, and I sink my teeth into the pale flesh. A rasp tears from her lips and her body arches against mine, sending a bolt of brutal arousal through me. Her fingers curl against my arms, digging into my muscles as she holds on tight to me. Me.
“You fucking want me,” I growl against her neck, pushing her roughly down onto a desk. I grind my hips into hers, my hard cock craving the heat of her. “You can lie until the day you fucking die, but your body doesn’t lie. You want me.”
She makes no reply. Her eyes are hooded as she stares up at me. Leaning on her elbows, she relaxes back against the desk, as though this is boring to her. I wrap my fingers around her throat. I don’t even want to hurt her, I just want her to feel something—anything. “Say it, Sutton.”
Her lips curl with scorn. “I fucking despise you.”
My cock hardens painfully at her words. I know she does—I’m beginning to suspect her hate for me might be the only reason she has for fucking me.
So I squeeze her neck, and her smile widens. I shove her skirt back. She’s not wearing tights today, just thigh-high black socks, plain as they come, and plain black boxers. But the ribbon of exposed flesh between her boxers and her socks is enough to make me painfully hard.
She doesn’t stop me when I slip my hand inside her boxers, and I quickly find out why. My fingers find the silken folds of her pussy; they are slippery with wetness. Savage triumph flares through me. She might hate me all she likes, but her body can’t lie the way she can.
I roughly pull her boxers off her. I want to fuck her so desperately I can hardly breathe. More than fucking her, I want to claim her, to pleasure her. I want her to know I’m the only one who could ever make her feel this way.
So I slide my fingers against her wet pussy, caressing her until she’s squirming against my hand. I smirk at her. “Do you despise this, too?”
She glares at me as I trace the line of her pussy to where her clit is, rubbing my thumb over the tiny spot. Her hips buck and a tiny gasp of surprise springs from her mouth. She bites down on her lip, but I keep touching her, building a slow, steady rhythm.
Suddenly, she reaches up, covering my face with her hand.
Dark anger and raw pleasure burn through me: she wants to come, but she doesn’t want to look at me. Because Sophie loves lying to herself so much, she probably wants to pretend it’s not me doing this to her.
“No.” I push her hand away and pin her back against the desk with my hand pressed to her chest. She grabs my arm with both hands but she’s not strong enough to push me off. I keep the pressure on even while I caress her clit, my gaze fixed on hers. “You can despise me all you like, Sutton, but you’re going to fucking look at me. You’re wet because it’s me doing this to you. You’re going to come because I’m the one touching you. Not some fucking random guy, not some nobody you think you like. Me.”
She must be close to orgasm, because her hips have stopped twitching and she’s grown very still, her entire body trembling, her eyes wide and glassy. Lowering myself against her, I pick up her hips, lifting her delicious pussy to my mouth.
“Come on, Sutton. Hate my guts and come for me.”
I flatten my tongue against her, tasting her, teasing her. Her hips roll against me, sensual, demanding, irresistible. So I kiss my way up her pussy, and stroke her clit with my tongue, slow at first, just to torment her. Her breath hitches, her thighs quiver around me. I sense how close she is to coming. It’s utterly tantalising—the only time I ever have Sophie truly within my power.
This power—the power of keeping her suspended on the edge of an orgasm, the power of making her come so hard she crumbles into a trembling mess—is like a fucking drug. I can’t get enough of it. I pick up the pace, stroking faster. It only takes a few laps of my tongue to send her crashing into her orgasm.
A hoarse cry tears from her lips and she bucks against me, her fingers curling in my hair. She grinds herself against my mouth, her trembling thighs squeezing my head. Then she slumps back down limply. She’s shaking all over, but she immediately shoves herself off the desk.
Her cheeks are crimson, and her tidy ponytail is dishevelled, dark strands sliding loose. She throws me a look that’s a mixture between shame and fury, and immediately begins to straighten his uniform.
“This doesn’t mean anything,” she says, her voice low and harsh. “We’re both old enough to know that sex has nothing to do with emotion.”
My heart is beating wildly—the taste of her is still on my tongue, which is blurring the clarity of thought I need right now. In the end, the only thing I can say is the truth. The painful, horrible truth.
“Don’t you know how much I like you?” My voice is barely above a whisper. “You’re all I fucking think about, all the time. I’d do anything you asked, Sophie, if only you…” I stop to brush my hand back through my hair. It’s damp with sweat. “If you were with me, you could have anything you wanted.”
“Right, I could have anything I wanted,” Sophie rasps, and her voice is much quieter now, and her eyes are sparkling almost like she’s about to cry, “up until the point you decide to move on and throw me aside like I’m nothing.”
I recoil. “I would never do that!”
“You fucking idiot!” she exclaims. She sounds furious, but tears are hanging like crystal pearls on her eyelashes. “You did do that!”
This stops me in my tracks. I drop her gaze because seeing her eyes full of tears again hurts like shit.
“That was different.”
“Sure,” she sneers, wiping her sleeve angrily across her face. “I’m sure you genuinely believe that.”
How can I tell her the truth? That I loved being friends with her, but that I had to choose between our friendship or Spearcrest? That I chose to keep Luca away from her over protecting her? That everything I’ve done so far has been a misguided attempt to keep her safe from him?
That even when I hated her, I still only ever wanted her?
In the end, between Sophie being happy and having Sophie to myself, I chose the latter. There’s no way I can explain any of this to her without sounding pathetic, and she already despises me enough.
She thinks I’m selfish and stupid and a liar—and some of those things are true—but she doesn’t need to realise every stupid choice I made was calculated to make her mine. Because ultimately, every choice I’ve made has only pushed her away.
Even making her come only seems to make her hate me more.
“I’m not going to beg you to be mine,” I say finally. “Not when I could have any girl I wanted.”
Hearing myself say this is like watching myself jump off a cliff into a shark-infested ocean. I watch myself hurtle to my doom without even being able to stop, knowing full well my pride, and not my brain, has just taken charge.
She smiles. Even before she can grab her stuff off her desk I can tell she’s done with the conversation.
“Then do exactly that,” she says, quite calmly, her rough voice like nails scratching along my skin, sending shivers down my back. “Have every girl you want, Evan. Enjoy yourself. And while you’re doing that, I’m going to spend time with someone I actually like, who actually likes me, and doesn’t try to hurt me at every chance he gets.”
She shoulders her backpack and then tries to barge past me, but I stop her, grabbing her arm.
“He’ll never make you feel the way I do,” I say in a low growl.
“No, you’re right.” She shakes her arm free from my grasp. The flush of her orgasm is still colouring her cheeks and neck, but her eyes are cold. “He’ll make me feel so much better.”
And then she leaves, slamming the study hall door loudly behind her.
