The Evolution of Man (The Trust Fund Duet 2)

And even if those kinds of nonexcuses only work in my head, I didn’t realize how much I was relying on them before now. Before now when I have to place my body over Christopher’s face and lower my sex to his mouth. There’s too much action involved, too much knowledge.

I can’t, I can’t, at least until he says, “I’ve been dreaming about this. Since that night I held you naked in the cabin. I knew I shouldn’t think about you that way. I had just pulled you out of the goddamn water, but it was all I wanted. I dreamed about you waking up and kneeling down on top of me. I dreamed about how you would taste—salty from the bay, sweet from your sex. I’d lick you and lick you until you were dripping down my face, until I was slippery with you, and then you’d come, riding me hard enough I’d barely be able to breathe, and I’d reach down and grip my cock. That’s all it would take. I’d just hold myself and come while you moaned my name above me.”

“I want that too,” I breathe. None of my imaginary sex dreams prepared me for this, but every nerve ending has come awake. There’s an ache between my legs, and I’m afraid he’s ruined me. Something in me cracked when I heard him speak just now, and the only way I’ll ever be assuaged will be with a mouth under my spread legs while I rock my hips just how I want it.

Only, I would have though

t I’d have more power on top like this. His hands grasp my ass, somehow covering almost all of it, even though there should really be too much. He holds enough to mold my movements, to rock me to his beat instead of mine. It’s too fast at first, and I gasp above him. I don’t even have any balance, and I’m forced to hold on to the bars of the scaffolding that shoots up around us. The old rusty wheels complain at the pressure, but they hold still, locked into place.

He licks me through the cotton, but it does nothing to disguise the feel of him. It only seems to make it sharper, the wet fabric pressing into my folds, into my clit. All I can do is hold on as he searches for something that makes me squirm.

And then he bites me, teeth only slightly blunted through the cotton, right on my clit, and I scream a little, making birds fly up from somewhere in the library where they shouldn’t be. His hands pull me toward him again and again, there’s no escaping the sun-blinding pleasure, and then I’m coming, a mess of slick arousal sounding slippery against his lips.

Christopher doesn’t reach down to grasp his cock, even though I moan his name. Instead he flips me over so I’m on the ground looking up at the crack in the wall. A zipper. A tear. And then he’s above me, inside me, my legs spread so wide I’m almost bent in half. His face looks carved into sharp angles, his eyes hard black stone. Everything about this is too much. “I should be high for this,” I gasp, and I expect him to tell me that I shouldn’t be, not ever, it isn’t safe, isn’t legal.

“Later,” is all he manages to say, and it rings through my body like a bell. Keeping time, that bell. A promise that I’ll hear it again, and I arch my body up in gratitude.

His cock pushes deeper, and I have to squirm away from the fullness.

He seems to think I’m hurting, because he murmurs, “I’m sorry.” One hand curves beneath my neck, the other beneath the small of my back. He’s holding me up away from the ground even as he fucks me into it, shielding me even as he tears me apart.

I’m not expecting to come again, but then he shifts his hips. He hits some new angle, and my hands fly up above my head. It’s like I’m falling, even though I’m already at the bottom. My hand finds one pole of the scaffold, and I hold on tight. Pleasure rises inside me, sharp and sudden. Christopher quickens in three hard thrusts, and then he’s holding me so tight I can’t breathe, my climax taking me just as swiftly. I’m held suspended in the air by his embrace, floating beneath the shaky scaffold and the broken wall. It’s as if the whole building shudders when we come. There’s dust in my eyes. Dust, dust. That’s why they burn.

I’m not sure what I expected after sex beneath the scaffolding. Maybe that Christopher would disappear into the shadows, making me wonder if it was just a dream. Or maybe he’d say something mean about how rich girls don’t have feelings and I’d have to awkwardly flounce out of the building that I own, like that disaster of a dinner at Koi.

Instead he puts my clothing back to rights with careful determination. His expression remains grave even as his fingers brush my bare skin. Then he stands.

His shirt looks a little rumpled, his hair askew, but otherwise he doesn’t look like he just had sex. And he definitely doesn’t look like someone just came while sitting on his face.

“Come on,” he says, holding out his hand.

I narrow my eyes, untrusting. “Where are we going?”

“To my lair,” he says, his voice sardonic. “Where I’m going to have my way with you.”

When Christopher Bardot argues with me he’s attractive, but when he does this dry humor he’s downright irresistible. Somehow my cheeks are warm. “Haven’t you already done that?”

A dark gaze runs over my dress, leaving goose bumps in its wake. A heartbeat remains between my legs, an insistent throb where his cock has been. “Not nearly enough.”

“Lead the way,” I manage to say lightly, as if this is all a big joke. I have a lot of practice with that—pretending that life is a joke instead of tragic. “I’ve always wanted to see your lair.”

A light mist kisses my face when we step outside. My dress doesn’t warm me nearly as well as the jeans and T-shirt I usually wear. Cool night air slides up my legs, and I shiver in the black parking lot.

“Cold?” he asks, but he doesn’t wait for an answer. The jacket that had been slung over his arm drapes over my shoulders suffusing me with the scent of earth and sex and something purely Christopher. It should probably repel me, but I find myself drawing the material tighter around me.

He takes my hand again as we cross the parking lot, and even in the black of night I can’t help feeling safe. It reminds me of sinking, sinking into the ocean. And Christopher diving in to save me. It created an unbreakable line between whatever neuron in my brain between him and safety. When I’m scared I think of him—and how he would protect me. When I’m happy I wish he were with me to experience it, too. If it were anyone else I would have called this feeling love, but I don’t understand how my heart can betray me with someone who so clearly doesn’t love me back.

We cross the slippery gravel of the library’s parking lot and a cracked street. Then we’re standing in front of a half-built building that looks like it was transplanted out of upscale downtown. Frosted windows do nothing to obscure the marble floors inside or the wide bank of elevators.

“Is this what your half of the library built?” I ask, to remind myself that he only wants to use me. For money. For sex. Sometimes those are the same things, anyways.

It doesn’t mean he has feelings for me.

“Construction has been underway since you left,” he says, in a matter-of-fact voice. “My share of the money is sitting in a bank account. What do you think I should spend it on?”

I think of the way the scaffolding seemed to tremble with the aftershocks of our orgasms. The way the building seems to breathe harder every day, struggling to stay upright. All that money to house books, because knowledge is the only thing that has a chance in hell of saving the west side. I look around at the dilapidated buildings on either side, the way they seem to slouch beside the monument to commercial success between them. “Books,” I say simply.

He gives me an enigmatic smile. “Maybe then I’ll finally learn.”