The thought made her fluttery. Sensation and expectation and anticipation knotting into a quiver-inducing tangle. Making her moan in this needy, greedy, cock-muffled way. His fingers tightened in response. It hurt, but she’d never minded a little pain, if it was done right. And, just now, it was so right, melding with the aches in her knees and her jaw and—frankly—her clit until she was music. Everything she felt, pain and pleasure and lust and submission, conducted by him. Cole was starting to wish she’d been less wussy with her other partners. Because she wanted to make him feel right back. Come apart because of her and for her. Safe with her.Maybe if she did a lot of tongue and lip work it would be enough.She got to it. With gusto. Whatever her concerns about letting relative strangers block off her airway, she’d always enjoyed giving head. But with him, with Aiden Crux, it was…God. She felt like a Cosmo guide to oral sex: worshipping her (well
Cole didn't exactly fancy slinking back to the party covered in come. And her throat was in a bad way. She probably sounded like Johnny Cash. Besides, the best thing about the party - the only reason she was at the party - had just made extensive use of her mouth and gone home.As she hobbled back to her room, Cole catalogued her aches (mostly superficial) and sorted through her feelings (probably the same). It wasn't the first time and - assuming she lived the life she fully intended to live - it hopefully wouldn't be the last that she indulged in some no-strings, no-holds-barred entirely casual sex. It just happened to be the only time she'd been left so raw by it, physically and emotionally.On the other hand, it had also been... impossibly hot. Maybe the best sex she'd ever had. And, in some strange way, the truest. The closest to what she ached and dreamed of but didn't entirely know how to get. Which wasn't to say she hadn't messed around, online and off, let the occasional o
She gave Cole what, in the heat of the moment, she interpreted as an I know what you did last supper look. “You must have made quite an impression on him.” Cole probably mumbled something. And she probably said something in return. And then…oh whatever. Everything had vanished into this blur of awfulness where she felt weird and dirty and guilty and used in a way she just hadn’t before. As if she'd done something bad. And a little bit like everybody knew about it. Or at the very least darkly suspected. By the time the Master let her go, with congratulations and good wishes and apparently increased hope for her future success, she was trembly and nauseous with pretending to be okay. It was mainly shock. And newfound shame. And a kind of hopeless fury that she'd trusted him and, in return, he’d turned something good into something icky. Is that how he saw me? Someone who’d had sex with him in
Cole shoved through the front door of Hart & Associates — which didn't go as well as she might have hoped because it was revolving, and she had a hard enough time getting through those things when she was completely compos mentis — and then went plunging across the foyer. Everything was a haze of glass and steel and marble. Beautiful in a way, a godless cathedral, full of echoes and refracted light, but it was also the kind of space designed to make one feel shabby and small. Which, if you asked her, was an architectural dick move.She kept catching glimpses of herself in too many gleaming surfaces. Wildly out of place in Hart's Temple of Mammon in scruffy jeans and a T-shirt, and her favorite jacket — the velvet one she'd worn to the dinner, with holes in the elbows and all the nap worn away, her rainbow pride bracelets disappearing under the fraying sleeve. She hadn't even taken the time to engineer her hair so it was multidirectional and ridiculous. Basically, she looked
Cole tried to laugh, but it clogged in her throat. “You don’t know me, and prostitute blackmailer is where you went straight out of the gate? Is your glass half empty or what?” “Why else would you come here?” “God, because”—the truth exploded out of her—“I liked you, and...and you made me feel really cheap, okay?” “I know.” He rose to his feet, and then he was off again, toward the window. It was weird—compelling, in one way, painful in another—how much stillness there was in him. And how much restlessness at the same time. It made every room feel like a cage. “My behavior...it was inappropriate.” He was silent a moment. “It was wrong.” Was that what passed for a sorry in Aiden Crux Land? Except he seemed to be almost-sorry for completely the wrong thing. The one bit of this whole hideously humiliating business she definitely didn’t regret. “Wait. Are you talking about the blow job?” “It’s not my usual practice.”
Cole had always been kind of take it or leave it on kissing. She enjoyed it, of course, but in the way one enjoys canapés at a posh party. Very nice and everything, artful even, but wouldn’t some real food be better? It was hot on the dance floor—kissing, not canapés—tongues grinding like bodies, somebody’s fingers tangled in her hair, before they stumbled to their place, or hers, to finish things off. But mainly it was prelude to the good stuff. Not with Aiden Crux though. It was a no-mercy kiss. A brutal claiming, full of teeth and desperate hunger, forcing her surrender to his will and his passion.She strained toward him, opened to him, as if they were at the end of the journey, not the beginning. More than that, he made her forget there was a journey. There was only his mouth on hers, his hands holding her, his body pinning her. And just like that, everything she’d felt—listening to his voice on the phone, seeing those icy predator eyes of hi
He stepped away from the desk and crossed the room towards her. His shadow engulfed her but she wasn't threatened by it. Up close, like this, with nothing sexual between them, the difference in their heights seemed more than usually ludicrous. He put his hands on her shoulders. She didn't exactly feel infantilized by it, just physically small, which she didn't mind. But she also had a sense he was trying to be fraternal, which she, well, did. People who fucked her mouth didn't have the right to pretend they hadn't. “I think,” he murmured, “you underestimate my wickedness.”And, just like that, her irritation was gone. She grinned up at him. “Oh, I really hope I don’t.” “You don’t know me.” “Then let me.” Yeah. That was deliberate. Cole was hoping he would remember the last time she’d said that to him. For a moment, he seemed to soften, his touch turning almost into a caress. It wouldn’t have taken much, just a hint of pressure, to sen
Cole suddenly couldn’t breathe. She scrambled over her bed and threw open the window. It was right on the turn: that moment between evening and night, suspended in a golden haze. The air moved sluggishly. Tasted sticky. She rested her head against the edge of the casement. Too hot. Too cold. Too fucked. People were moving to and fro across the quad like incidentals in a T. S. Eliot poem. Friends and lovers scattered under the trees in the fading light. And she’d never felt so fucking alone. Rationally she could just about locate a non-panic-saturated part of her brain that believed she would definitely maybe sort of be okay. Yes, the next few weeks weren’t going to be very pleasant, and she wasn’t likely to do brilliantly, but it probably wasn’t going to be a complete disaster either. She was relatively clever, though not half as clever as she’d thought she was before she’d come to Oxford. She’d read quite a lot of books. And she’d been dashing off
“Hey now,” Cole protested. “He offered me money and the apartment.” “Like you were going to take it. How long was he with you? Did he know you at all?” “We were kind of in the middle of an argument at the time.” “Right. But it’s been over a week.” It had. And Cole had told herself she wasn’t hoping for anything. Except she must have been. Because now she felt silly.Ellery kicked the tree moodily. “Stop feeling sorry for him. I expect he’s feeling sorry enough for himself. Or Lancaster’s found him a new whipping girl.” “Don’t.” “Sorry.” “Did you really come all the way to Kinlochbervie to say ‘I told you so’?” “No.” She pulled her hood up and disappeared into its shadows. “I came to ask if you want to live with me.”Cole nearly fell off the swing. “Live with you?”“Yeah. Thought I should move out. Do some shit with my life or something.” “What sort of shit did you have in mind?”She kicked the tree again. And then, apparently finding
Everything hurt. The hours seemed like wild horses. Dawn broke around Cole. She spent most of the day on the sofa, crying herself out of tears, watching the sky turn tauntingly through shades of silver and gold. She tried to be brave, to be strong, to be less pathetically embarrassing. But her inner Scarlett O’Hara was AWOL—tomorrow being another day seemed like scant consolation. And while she sometimes tormented herself with idle fantasies of Aiden coming back, of sweeping her into his arms, full of sorrow and declarations of eternal devotion, she knew it wasn’t going to happen. She wasn’t sure she could ever bear pain like this again. Later… later… later… Her phone bleeped. And, like a fool, she scrabbled for it, wrecked with hope and fear and hope. It was Harper: “I MOVED MY FOOT!!!!!” **** She slept and didn’t sleep, and the hours sped and sluggished by. And finally, she rang home. Hazel picked up. “What’s wrong?” she said before Cole even had a chance to speak.
Cole swayed exhaustedly where she knelt. “Well, I'm not. And I don't How many times is you going to ignore me telling you that I love you? Because I do. I really do. And you can think all these awful things about yourself if you must. But nothing—nothing, do you hear me—will make me believe them.” “You can’t love me. You don’t know me.” “You mean, because I didn’t know about this? That’s only because you lied to me about it.” He paced restlessly, up and down that pristine room. This lost creature in Aiden Crux's skin. “I didn’t lie.” “I asked you outright. In Kinlochbervie.” “No. You asked if someone had hurt me. And they haven’t.” “Oh fucking hell.” She rubbed her hands against her burning eyes. “I could have hurt you. Don’t you realize how completely fucked it feels looking back at all the times I’ve pushed you on sex stuff with no clue about what happened to you?” “Well,” he drawled, “I did warn you that I’m a cruel
Cole glanced up. “I'm not. I mean, it wasn’t fun. But I trusts you. With the worst of me, as well as the best, and all the squishy ambiguous bits in between.” “Thank you,” he said, unexpectedly grave. “I hope to always honor that trust.” “As I will for you.” He didn’t respond. “So, y’know”—Cole nudged him gently—“your turn.” It took a long time, but he did eventually speak. The words coming slowly and painfully, like razor blades from his lips. “If I tell you, you’ll know what Eleanor said about me is right. That I’m sick and twisted and I ruin everything that’s good.” “She only said that because she was angry.” He shook his head. “No, she said it because it’s true. You see, she learned who she was when she was fourteen years old.” “What happened when—wait. When your father died?” “After that. When she seduced his business partner. His best friend.” Cole genuinely had no idea what to say. To
Cole pulled off a truly Ellery-worthy eye roll. “One cigarette a month is hardly going to kill him,” she said. “Is that what he told you? And you believed him?” Natasha asked. Now that she thought about it… he did tend to reach for his cigarettes once they’d sexed. And he’d smoked after dinner. And during Star Wars. And just now in the gCole. Oh fuck. Fuuuuuck.Natasha shook her head at her. “You poor, sweet girl. You don’t know him at all, do you?” “I… I’m in love with him,” she said, her voice barely audible. “I can see why you’d believe that. Aiden can be quite dazzling when he chooses. But you don’t understand anything about who he is. Or the damage you’re doing to him.” She tried to reply, to protest, to defend herself. Defend him. Defend them. But she had nothing. Aiden had de-clawed her with his secrets. Left her powerless and alone. “You deserve better,” Natasha went on softly. “He’s using you like his cigarettes. You
“I love it when you hurt me. I love everything you do. And everything you are,” Cole said. And that was when Aiden turned and drew her into his mouth. It was the teeniest bit awkward—he even nicked her slightly with the edge of his teeth, suggesting maybe he didn’t do this all that often. He certainly hadn’t with her before. Not that she’d minded. He made her come just fine. But…wow. He could have been actively terrible and she wouldn’t have cared: Aiden Crux was sucking her pussy. No teasing. Only his tongue sliding tight round her, his mouth soft and hot and perfect.Ohfuckohfuckohfuck. She was…Aiden was… Cole turned her head into her shoulder in an effort to muffle her noises. Which were at least as loud as when he’d been torturing her nipples, and probably even less dignified. Pain was one thing. She could take pain. But she was pleasure’s bitch. Hone
His fingers closed around her through her dress and squeezed until she bucked and moaned. Some of the anguish faded from her face, the tight lines of her brow and mouth yielding to desire, and something tender she might have called hope. “Don’t move,” he whispered, as he stepped away. “Okay.” Her heart thumped as eagerly as a puppy’s tail. She loved the anticipation that came with his commands. And she loved pleasing him. Of course, her nose started itching almost immediately. But she was determined and ignored it and held still as he had told her to. Aiden circled the pillar, leaving her standing there like Andromeda. Well, Andromeda if she had a massive erection. Then he drew her hands behind her and she felt the cool brush of silk against her skin.It encircled her wrists. Pulled taut. Oh my God. His bowtie. He was bondaging her with his own bowtie. She made a noise of surprise and exciteme
He didn’t quite flinch but he got that look: the closed down, I am a million miles away from you look I knew all too well. “I’ll leave you to enjoy it.” And, with that, he…went away. Again. Cole bit down on a gasp of frustration. She wanted to kick him in the shins. He couldn’t just fix what was probably years of hurt and misunderstanding with a single, and very small, gesture. Also, the fucker had barely spent five minutes with her. But she pushed all that aside and turned her very best and sparkliest smile on Ellery. “So what happens next? Do we all die of the plague?” Ellery sneered at the room. “Mm, here’s hoping.” “Wow, that’s the last time I RSVP to an invitation from you.” “I don’t mean it.” She sighed and with the air of a small child being forced to eat Brussels sprouts added, “Thank you for coming.” “I didn’t know you played the violin.” Ellery shrugged. “I’m brilliant. When I’m not rusty.” “
“What do you look for?” Cole asked. “The thing nobody else sees,” He replied, propping his hip casually against a piece of furniture she didn’t have a name for—something ornate and impressive, probably a credenza or vitrine or whatever. “Society photography comes down to one very simple principle. Anyone can take pictures of Kate Middleton and Lady Gaga. The trick is getting a picture of Kate Middleton with Lady Gaga.” “And have you?” “Not yet. But she’s a long way from dead, and hopefully so are they.” Cole laughed. In a strange way, the woman reminded her a little bit of Aiden. The same conviction, the same merciless drive, although focused and expressed very differently. She guessed it was becoming pretty apparent she had a type.But mainly Cole was grateful. Now, when she looked across the room, she met smiles. Flashes of recognition in other people’s eyes. She knew faces and names. She could have joined some of the conversations. Instead of drifting around pathetically. Stil