CAN’T WE JUST go park somewhere? Or go to my house like she suggested?
What was I thinking?
I gaze out the passenger side window, concentrating on keeping my hands on my lap instead of fidgeting, because all of these houses remind me of that feeling I’d been fighting since I was a kid. That there are places I don’t belong.
Smooth roads void of any puddles or potholes. Gates and trimmed hedges.
White houses.
White Rovers.
Lots of white people who will take one look at my last name and think I’m here to clean, cook, or rob something.
I look over at Clay, wishing she would’ve let me drive, so I wouldn’t feel so vulnerable right now with nothing to do; but then I catch sight of her toned, tanned thighs peeking out of her skirt, and I exhale, remembering. Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. I shake my head at myself.
She pulls into her driveway, and I look out at the oaks lining the circle, a fountain spilling water in the center. I scan the windows for lights.
Everything appears dark, except for the gaslit lanterns—one on each side of the front door and two more posted farther down the exterior to the left and right. I can’t see the third floor from inside the car, though.
Clay parks and climbs out.
“Are your parents home?” I ask, leaving my school bag in the car and following her.
“My dad, probably not.” She carries her bag, with her keys out as we head for the front door. “My mom won’t bother us.”
She unlocks the door and steps inside, lights immediately illuminating without Clay doing anything. I hesitate a moment as she heads for the small entryway table and drops her keys into a blue glass bowl.
“It doesn’t look like she’s home yet,” Clay says. “Her keys aren’t here.”
The hair on my arms rises, feeling the air conditioning escaping as I inhale the scent of new things.
Or really the scent of almost nothing. Like how a furniture store smells. Or a library or a car dealership. Like places where people don’t live.
My house smells like wet wood, the spiced rum Trace spilled all over the floor last week, and last night’s spaghetti.
I step inside, closing the door behind me, and hit the sensor on the wall, the lights dimming again. I feel a little safer in the dark. Just like Clay.
She spins around, dropping her bag to the floor, and I approach her, the only warm thing in this house.
“Are you hungry?” she asks.
The crystals of the chandelier clink overhead as the air circulates, and the stairwell looms behind her, both rooms on either side of the center hall dark, except for the moonlight streaming through the sheer curtains.
She drops her eyes, and I swear I see a blush.
“My mom always keeps so much food in the fridge,” she laughs, sounding nervous, “I don’t know why. She barely eats, and my dad’s hardly here.”
I don’t want food.
“I want to see your room,” I tell her.
I’m pretty sure she saw mine even before I invited her in. I can’t imagine she resisted the urge at Night Tide.
I’ll feel safer behind a closed door. Hopefully she doesn’t have a chandelier in there, too, and I can forget that I’m in the house of one of St. Carmen’s most influential families.
I cock my head, watching her. But then… I kind of like that I’m here. In the house of one of St. Carmen’s most influential families.
About to fuck their daughter.
I keep my smile to myself, loving that she’s suddenly nervous like it’s our first time.
Turning, she rounds the table and heads up the stairs, my eyes memorizing her body as I follow. When we reach the top, she veers left, and we head down a hallway, over hardwood floors decorated with white Persian runners and portraits on the walls in silver frames. Two blond kids on a beach, building a sandcastle. A little boy on her dad’s shoulder as Clay and her mom cheer next to him at a Florida State game. The two kids making faces for the camera under the water, in a pool.
Clay stops at the first door on the right, but I’m already staring ahead at the first door on the left, several feet farther down the hall. Dark blue, wooden letters that read HENRY hang on the door above a tin sign warning of “Gamer At Play—Do Not Disturb, No Girls Allowed (Except Mom)”.
She opens her door, but I tip my head toward her brother’s room. “Show me.”
She shifts, looking uneasy, but doesn’t budge.
I study her. “When’s the last time you were in there?”
“I don’t go in there.”
I know I shouldn’t press it. What happened to Clay is devastating and personal, but something pushes me toward her brother’s room, because I want more between us.
“No, just…” She calls, running up to catch me. “Another time, okay? Don’t ruin this. Don’t ruin tonight.”
“You were in my brother’s room,” I point out.
I saw the video. Everyone saw it. Macon wasn’t as livid as the rest of my brothers, though, because Macon doesn’t look for fights with frilly teenage girls who are just trying to get famous.
“Open the door, Clay.”
What happened to her brother had a profound impact on her. And on me, as it would turn out. I need this piece of her.
She opens the door, probably because she knows I’ll leave if she doesn’t.
I step inside, the room dim but the curtains open and shining moonlight on the floor. I walk into the room, keeping the lamps off and my feet gentle, as if too hard a step will be disrespectful.
His twin bed sits made without a single wrinkle on the blue duvet cover, the carpet beige, but everything else matches the bedspread. Light blue walls with white trim. Blue curtains. Bookshelves, posters, a desk with art supplies, and model cars and planes sit on shelves. A PS4 sits on a table under a flatscreen on the wall, and a gumball machine sits on top of his dresser, still half-full. A picture of him and some friends, or cousins maybe, stands next to it, all of them holding a papier-mâché planet they made in class or in summer camp. I lean in close, seeing the same smile on him that I see on Clay’s sometimes.
“He looked like he was going to be Jensen Ackles someday,” she says, sadness in her voice.
I look over, seeing she’s still hovering in the doorway, leaning against the frame.
“He was a cute kid,” I tell her.
“Dynamite personality, too.” She sighs, smiling and crossing her arms. “He would draw spiders on the toilet paper and replace my yogurt with mayo.”
I walk over toward the window, checking out his view. “And what did you do to deserve that?” I tease.
As if he was the instigator. If I know Clay at all, he was simply retaliating.
“I may have replaced the filling in his Oreos with toothpaste,” she says.
I grin.
The room is spotless. Tidy, clean, not a speck of dust. Someone cleans in here regularly, and I’m guessing it’s the one room Clay’s mom doesn’t let anyone touch but herself.
“You loved him a lot.”
“I didn’t realize how much.” She nods. “He was annoying and we fought a lot, but when he got sick, I almost couldn’t breathe.” I hear the tears thicken her voice. “It wasn’t fair for him to go through that. I just wanted it to stop.”
There’s no sign of his illness in this room. No medical equipment. No prescriptions. I have no idea if he died at home or passed in the hospital, but I can bet the family was with him every hour.
Clay’s breathing shakes, and I see her trying to hold back the tears. I walk over, taking her face in my hands.
“Why were you so patient with me?” she whispers. “So tolerant? I didn’t deserve it.”
I lean in, her silky hair brushing the backs of my hands. “Happy people don’t fixate on things they hate,” I explain. “They move on. I knew it was coming from somewhere, Clay.” I glide my hands down her body and circle her waist as we hold each other, and I stare into her eyes. “It doesn’t matter how much money we have or don’t have or how stable our home is. Anyone can have problems.”
I never thought Clay’s life was gold just because she’s rich and beautiful. Happy people don’t act how she did.
She kept up the façade for a long time, though. Resisting me.
“Why did you finally let it happen?” I ask, nearly brushing her nose and gazing at her mouth that I want so badly.
She kisses me softly. “Because for four years, if I wasn’t sleeping, I was thinking of you,” she murmurs. “And even then sometimes, in my dreams.”
Her mouth lingers on my cheek, and I know now what the tattoo means. The one on the inside of her finger and what she meant at the theater earlier when she didn’t think I heard her. Within this inch, I’m free .
It’s a paraphrase of a quote from V for Vendetta . A part of us that we’ll never sell—a small piece we keep to ourselves and covet and hold tightly for dear life, because it’s the only place inside of us we truly live.
Just an inch. But it’s ours.
“I wanted to be alone with you and touch you and smell you and talk to you with every part of my body, except my voice,” she says.
My eyelids flutter closed, and I understand. After years of her treatment, my pride is dented, because I should’ve told her to go to hell, but… There was always more. Almost as if I knew we’d be here eventually.
She bites my jaw gently, the heat and wet of her mouth sending tingles spiraling down to my stomach.
“Do you hear that?” she asks. And then kisses me where she bit. “And that?”
I nod. I hear you.
“Take me to your room,” I tell her.
“You should call home.” She continues to peck on my jaw. “Tell them you won’t be home tonight.”
“Later.”
Macon tracks my phone, so he never really worries.
She pulls me, backing up toward her bedroom as I pull the door closed behind me and follow. Her mouth covers mine, her moans sinking down my throat as we nearly trip over our feet.
I work my ponytail out, my long locks falling down around me, and Clay pushes me up against her desk, closing her door and locking it.
“You’re so beautiful.” She kisses me again and again, lifting my shirt over my head. “Especially on stage. God, you blew my mind tonight. I loved watching you.”
We keep the lights off, and I forget to even to look around to see if my predictions of either a white or pink color scheme are correct.
“I know someday everyone will be watching you,” she says, biting my ear. “As you play…” She pauses, thinking. “Mad Max surrendering to the animal inside you as you navigate the barren wasteland of Earth to avenge the death of your wife and child.”
I laugh, but she’s kissing and biting everything—my ear, my neck—and my head drops back, my eyes closing.
“Or maybe, you’ll be her love interest,” Clay teases. “A damsel in distress?”
Never. I’m always in charge.
But then I hear a click and feel something cold and sharp between my legs.
I go still, a jolt of surprise hitting me. Maybe I’m not always in charge, after all. “Clay?”
And just then, I register my blade missing from where it was hooked onto my skirt.
She holds it drawn, between my legs, as she glides her mouth up my neck and paws my breast with her other hand.
“You’re so pretty, Liv,” she breathes out. “You know you’re never getting away from me, right?”
Clay Collins presses her body into mine, kneading me—squeezing what’s hers—and inhaling my scent as she nibbles my neck.
“Say ‘yes, I know’,” she orders me.
“Yes.”
Holding the knife, she peels down my underwear. “You know you’re mine. Say yes.”
“Yes.”
My knees quiver, and I’m turned on but a little scared too, because her voice is more of a warning than a comfort. Like no matter how much I think I’ll stand up for myself and fight back, she’ll always have power over me.
Like she knows that she’ll be Mrs. Ames someday, and I’ll be working for her, part of my job taking place in her bed when her husband’s not around.
“Clay…”
But she releases my breast and grips my neck, instead. I gasp. “You’re never getting away from me, Jaeger,” she whispers and drags her tongue across my collarbone to my shoulder where she bites my bra strap. “Take it off.”
And at the moment, I want nothing more than to do everything she tells me to. I reach behind me and unhook my bra, the cool air caressing my nipples, and Clay’s warm hand covering one.
But before I know what’s happening, she’s swiping her arm across her desktop, sending everything crashing to the floor and bending me over the top of it.
I plant my hands on the desk on both sides of my head, sucking in air like I can’t catch my breath. She yanks my underwear, tearing them from my body, and then she lifts my skirt and spreads my legs.
“Clay…” I moan.
But her fist is in my hair, her hand palms my breast, and her mouth trails up and down my back, sucking, kissing, and biting like she’s starved.
I feel a flood of warmth between my legs as she presses into my ass.
“God, what are you doing?” The world tips sideways, and I close my eyes. “I’m so wet for you.”
“You’re never getting away from me,” she says again.
I know, baby. I know . God, what is she doing to me? Just when I think I’m in control, and I have a handle on her, she sweeps me away.
She rises, pulling me up with her, and whispers in my ear. “I love these.” She squeezes my breast, moving from one to the other as she kisses my shoulder. “They feel so good.”
I kiss her, tasting her with my tongue again and again.
But then I spot something on the floor, something she’d pushed off her desk. “You got film in that camera?” I ask.
She follows my gaze, seeing her vintage Edixa 35mm on the floor.
I got a video of her. Fair is fair, I guess.
“Take my picture,” I tell her.
A gleam hits her eyes, and she walks over and picks it up, blowing on the lens before adjusting the settings.
I lean over the desk again, propping myself up with my hands and leaving my skirt hiked up in the back where she left it. I push up on my tiptoes and let a little hair fall in my eyes as she starts some music, “Take Me to the River” playing. When she looks up again, her chest caves and she almost drops the camera.
“You okay?” I tease.
A lump moves up and down her throat as she takes in the sight of me, but slowly, she raises the camera to her face.
The camera clicks, and I almost smile at the thrill that runs through me. It feels like a touch, having your picture taken.
Tipping my chin down, I look at her as she snaps shot after shot, moving around my body and getting different angles. She gets a shot or two in the front and then moves behind me, diving in for a really naughty one I certainly hope she knows how to develop herself, because Walmart won’t touch these photos.
I peer at her over my shoulder as she snaps more shots, and then I turn around, scooting up onto the desktop, and slowly dragging my skirt up my thighs. I tease her as she watches and waits, knowing I don’t have anything on underneath as the camera falls away from her face and she’s captivated.
I don’t go all the way. I smile, pulling my skirt back down, but she drops the camera onto the carpet and rushes me all of a sudden. Gripping me under my arms and pulling me into her body, she kisses me hard. Her mouth moves over mine, and I hook an arm around her neck, pulling up her shirt with my other hand.
“Not yet,” she pants.
I kick off my shoes as she slips her hands underneath my skirt, locking her eyes onto mine as she touches me with her fingers.
“I’m dying to kiss it,” she murmurs, stroking me.
My eyelids flutter at her soft touch, loving how she touches. How she explores, because everything is new to her and with every touch, she learns who she is.
I love that I’m here for it.
The tip of her fingers play just inside me, teasing but not taking, and she pulls her hand back out, her fingertips glistening.
Her mouth falls open a little, watching herself rub her fingers together and rub me over her fingers, and I think she’ll lick it off, but she doesn’t. Instead, she slips it under her skirt and into her own underwear, rubbing me on herself. All over her.
“Clay…” My body shakes.
Pulling out her hand, she rolls her desk chair behind her and sits down, looking up at me. Spreading my legs, she hooks her arms around my thighs and yanks me down to her.
I whimper, startled as she pushes up my skirt and sinks her mouth between my legs.
“Don’t talk.” She bites my lip down there. “Just listen.”
I tip my head back. Oh, fuck.
My heart hammers, her tongue gliding up and down my pussy in slow, long strokes—taunting me, priming me—and I’m already so turned on, sitting here like her fucking meal.
Like her fingers, her tongue learns my body. Feeling its way over my flesh, stopping and playing when she feels my body respond, and it isn’t so much what she does but how she does it. The little moans that escape her when she covers my clit with her lips and sucks, patting it with her tongue to taste. How slowly she moves, taking her time and savoring. Mixing it up with light biting before she dips her tongue inside me, the tip making my blood turn to fire and my lungs shrink so small I can’t breathe.
She takes her time. She wants to know me.
She wants to please me.
“Clay…” I moan.
I thread my fingers through her hair and tip my head forward, loving to watch her go to town on me, her mouth moving more frenzied and faster, because she’s wet too. Her fingers dig into my ass, hauling me harder onto her mouth. I grunt as she jerks me again and again until I take the hint and roll my hips, fucking her lips and tongue.
“Come on, Jaeger,” she breathes out, grinning up at me. “Let me hear you. Make some noise.”
We have the whole house to ourselves. Why not?
She tongues me, I grip her hair, and we move in sync, my pussy grinding into her mouth.
I moan.
“Louder.”
My breasts shake as her tongue flicks over me, sending shivers down my spine.
“Fuck, Clay.”
“Louder, Jaeger,” she orders, using my last name again to remind me she’s my team captain and our soon-to-be prom queen, and she really likes slumming with the bad girl.
And I like it, too. Right now, her double life is such a turn on.
She rolls her tongue over me, groaning louder and louder, and I start letting my moans loose, and I don’t give a shit if anyone hears us in here.
She slips a finger just inside my opening, and I whimper again, watching her rise and press her forehead into mine.
“Liv,” she whispers, working it in farther inch by inch. “God, you make me crazy.”
“Fuck me,” I beg.
She squeezes my ass in one hand and rubs my clit with the other while the middle finger sinks inside me. “Right there?” she asks.
Her fingertip slips up low in my belly, and there’s an itch she almost reaches.
“A little…farther,” I gasp. “Curl your finger into me a little.”
She presses against me from the inside, burying herself to her knuckle, and I have to force my toes not to curl as pressure hits the spot.
“Oh, God, that’s it,” I tell her.
Yes. And in a moment, we’re kissing, panting, and she’s rolling her hips into me in time with her finger sliding in and out, caressing my G-spot.
She kisses me hard, bites my neck, licks my lips as her hips piston harder and faster, pushing her finger inside me with each thrust.
Where the fuck…?
I narrow my eyes, even as my orgasm starts to tease. “Where the hell did you learn all this?” I growl.
That fucking new girl Chloe wants her bad. I saw that with just one look.
I don’t think Clay would do that to me while we’re…
But she’s fucking good. How did she get so good? We’ve only done it a few times.
When she doesn’t answer, I grab her jaw. “Where the fuck, Clay?”
She startles. “I…I watched a…a movie.”
“A movie?”
She breathes over my mouth, thrusting into me and groaning herself, because everything is turning her on, too, and she’s liking this.
“Porn, okay? I watched a couple of porn videos.”
I cock an eyebrow. She’ll have to show me those. Most lesbian porn is made by men who do what they think looks good on camera instead of what actually feels good to women.
“Two fingers,” she says. “I’m going to put two in.”
“Clay…” But I don’t have to time to brace myself before she enters me again, this time thicker.
“Oh, God,” I moan.
She grinds into me, sliding in and back out and then in again, kissing and biting until the room is spinning.
“God, you’re so wet,” she whispers. “So hot.”
I yank her shirt up over her head, peeling it off before I pull down her lacy, pink bra.
I caress her breasts as she fucks me and leans down to suck on mine.
Her thumb rubs my nub, and I move into it, our rhythm growing faster.
A phone ring pierces the air, but neither of us stop. Her mouth on my nipple, I thread my fingers up the back of her scalp, under her hair, and kiss the top of her head.
“Would that be your boyfriend?” I whisper, teasing. “Hmm?”
God, what I wouldn’t give for Callum Ames to see his prom queen between my legs.
She thrusts, her tongue licking my hard nipple, and I hold her close. “Fuck me, Clay.”
The ringing keeps going, the pulse in my clit hammers, and heat pools in my belly as my orgasm crests. I brush my lips gently over hers. “He doesn’t need to know,” I tell her. “Just fuck me, Clay. Fuck me harder.”
I’ll still be sneaking off to screw her ten years from now, because that’s how much I love this with her. It’s perfect, and I hate how much I’ll sacrifice to keep it, but I know I won’t be able to stop.
She shakes, and I burst, crying out in the dark house, my orgasm exploding as her hips jolt into me like a car crash.
I press my mouth down on hers, her own cry filling me as she comes, and I taste the sweat on her lips.
I kiss her for a long time, her soft, wet skin feeding me food and water and air and I don’t need anything else.
I caress her face, my muscles burning and my skin overheating.
When her phone rings again, she pulls it out of her skirt and hurls it at the wall. I smile as she lays her head on my chest, and even though my arm is spaghetti and barely holding us up, I would never ask her to move. Not in a million years.
She breathes into my neck. “I don’t want to ever stop this,” she says.
I hold her to me and kiss her head again, my damp skin sticking to hers.
Whether it ends badly or it ends at all, I’m not sure I would do anything differently if I could. This feels too good to not have had it at all.
• • •
I wake with a start, blinking my eyes open in the dark.
It only takes a few seconds, but I register the sheer white canopy overhead, the frigid air conditioning, and the scent of Clay everywhere.
Her bedroom. Clay lays plastered to my body, more on top of me than off, our naked skin pressing together and her head resting on my shoulder. Our legs are entwined, and I look down at her face, feeling her breath on my chin.
I kind of have to go to the bathroom, but I don’t want to move her. My arms tighten around her, and I lightly brush my fingers down her smooth back.
God, her bed feels like a cloud. I could get used to this.
“You’re drunk!” a man yells somewhere down the hall.
I freeze, training my ears. Did Clay lock her door?
“Keep your voice down,” a woman snaps.
I glance over at the clock, reading one-oh-eight a.m., and try to be as still as possible. I should get out of here before her parents find me.
“Is she even home?” the man—Clay’s dad, I assume—asks. “Are you sure? I don’t think you know anything that’s going on with anyone but yourself!”
“How dare you!” Gigi yells. “How dare you! I’m the one here. You’re gone! You’re always gone!”
I hold Clay, wondering how often they don’t guard their volume to save her from hearing them.
“Grow up, Regina!” Mr. Collins growls. “I support you. I pay for that closet full of handbags and shoes. Now I gotta dry your tears because you need attention like a five-year-old?”
“I hate you!” she sobs.
I stop breathing for a second, hearing the tears and agony in her voice. Like she wishes he was dead.
“You don’t hate me,” he replies. “You hate that I finally decided not to let you drag me down with you.”
I swallow, but my mouth is dry. Clay’s breathing has changed, and I look down at her, just making out her eyes staring up at me.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, hearing everything I just heard.
“Don’t apologize, baby.” I hold her face and tuck her in close. “We all got our shit.”
“I finally gave up on you, because you know why?” her dad fires back. “We lost a son. We lost a son, and I needed you, and you know what you did? You went to a spa! You got a prescription! You spent Henry’s college fund redecorating this house and buying Clay a car! You wouldn’t come to me. You wouldn’t talk to me. You wouldn’t go to therapy with me. You’ve barely let me touch you in four years, Gigi, and when I did, you aborted the only chance we had to be a family again! I needed you! I needed that baby! I lost Henry, same as you!”
I hear her sob, and I try to picture it, but Clay’s mom has always seemed like an icicle, and I can’t.
“I run to her bed,” Mr. Collins continues, “because if I didn’t have that to look forward to, I wouldn’t be able to stick this out with you until Clay graduates.”
A slap reverberates through the door, and Clay buries her face in my neck, breathing hard.
A door slams and then moments later, another farther away, and a beam of headlights flashes out the window before disappearing.
“Clay.” I nudge her chin. “Look at me.”
But she shakes her head, her face still pressed into my skin as she shivers with tears.
“Clay,” I urge her, trying to tip her chin up. “Don’t hide from me. Not in here.”
I hold her for a moment and then look down at her, touching her face. “This could be it.”
She sniffles and lifts her eyes. “What?”
“The last time we see each other.”
She looks at me, and I don’t know if she understands, but I know she’s like glass right now. One crack will splinter off into a dozen, and I can’t lose her yet.
“Stay with me now,” I whisper. “Tonight is mine.”
She touches her lips to mine and in a way that’s so soft, it tingles over my entire body, she says, “Okay.”
We kiss, her fingers tracing the symbol on my bracelet, and I love being wrapped around her to the point where I don’t know my limbs from hers.
How am I ever going to leave her for school?
“Don’t sneak out before I wake up, okay?” she tells me. “We’ll go to school together.”
I hesitate, knowing her mother knows me. She’s on the school board. She would be aware of me since they voted on renovating the showers, because of me.
But Clay doesn’t want me to sneak out like I’d planned. “Promise?”
I touch her face again. “I’m not going to leave.”
