Survival of the Richest (The Trust Fund Duet 1)

“Of course not. Anyone can see that. Christopher wouldn’t be walking around trying to tear apart the world with his bare hands if you had. Only a certain amount of denial feels good. The rest just fucking hurts.”

I lick my lips, and his gaze tracks my tongue. “Which one was the hallway?”

Only then do I realize I’ve been walking toward him, walking closer without realizing it. Almost two feet away right now. He’s a burning sun, and I’ve been cold for so long.

“It hurt,” he says, soft and almost dangerous, “reading the text.”

He isn’t diminished by telling the truth. That’s a trick I’d like him to teach me. It doesn’t make him seem weak, that he’s been hurt. Not with his shoulders this broad and his hands this scarred.

It makes me seem powerful, instead.

Powerful enough that I can reach out and touch him—the backs of my fingers against the scruff of his cheek. Soft when I stroke down. Prickly when I push back up. There’s terrain to be explored, to be tested against the will of my body.

My voice comes out a whisper. “I think you did come to say goodbye.”

Not with words.

His eyes tell me no, that he’s not giving up on this, but his body leans into me. That’s something you don’t think about, that the sun doesn’t just burn. It wants to warm you. I let my hand fall to the angle of his jaw, to the place where his shirt opens and reveals bronze skin.

I close my eyes, letting myself feel the joy that threatened when I heard the knock. If I’m honest with myself, there had been joy when I sent the text—thinking he would come for me. Hoping he would. If I could believe in love and trust and sex, if I thought any of it could last, I would have done more than hope. I’ve seen where it leads, and I don’t want to do that to him.

Maybe we can have one night.

You don’t face a lifetime of humiliation and hurt after one night, do you?

His eyelids are heavy now, because he knows what happens next. Some part of him came here to do this with me, because it might be the last chance. It could be the last time I see him, which makes my chest hollow out. That’s the empty space where promises could go.

He hooks two fingers in the waistband of my shorts, bringing me flush against his body. My stomach sucks in and then out, in and out, in and out, sensitive skin brushing bare knuckles. “Are you nervous?” he asks, his voice calm and deep.

It makes me laugh, how un-nervous he seems. I’m made up only of nerves, strung together with dreams and desire and a penchant for trouble. “We’re going to do it in a bed, after all.”

A small laugh. “To spice things up,” he says, echoing me.

The words seem less like a joke now. More prophetic. The library counter had been spontaneous and wild. This is different, almost unbearably intimate.

This close I can see the pale striations set into his blue eyes. I could dabble in a thousand shades of blue and never capture them on canvas.

With a sharp pang, I know that I’ll keep trying anyway.

It will be my new life’s work, this sky.

I don’t see him move. We’re too close for that; I feel him shift against me. Then his hand cups the back of my neck. His lips meet mine. I suck in a breath, drawing the scent of him into my body. He uses the moment to part my lips. There is no coaxing, no preamble. His lips bite over mine, telling me exactly how our bodies will move. His tongue presses inside, insistent. Gentle, his mouth tells me. I’m going to be gentle with you. His hand tips my head back, making it easier

for him to reach, keeping me from going anywhere. Gentle and implacable.

It’s like we never stopped that night in the hallway. This is what could have happened after, his tongue still salted from my body. His hand cupping my breast, his thumb and forefinger finding my nipple. A squeeze, enough to make me gasp. And harder, to whimper.

“I want you naked,” he murmurs against my lips.

He’s already had me with my skirts around my waist, leaning back against wallpaper. And he’s had me bent over a library counter. It’s more revealing to let him draw the black tank top over my head. There’s nothing underneath. No bra. Only my skin, flushed with arousal. My nipples hard and ruched from the way he touches me. I jump when those calluses brush the smooth curve underneath. It doesn’t stop him. He does it again, to see the way I move.

“I—I want—” I don’t know what I want, only that it hurts. Is this the good hurt he was talking about? It’s not exactly pain. It’s more like I’m going crazy.

“I’ll give it to you.” He bends his head to my breast, using his palm at my lower back to pull me toward him. His lips on my breast make me jerk—not away. I move closer. And then his lips close on my nipple, wet and hot and somehow bright. A cry comes out of me, a high pitch, a keen that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It sounds like grief, but it feels like heaven. He runs his teeth against my sensitive skin, and I gasp.

What a terrible deception. That he would give me what I wanted, but it only makes me want more. Is this how he feels about money, about power, always needing more?

A knock at the door makes me jump out of his hold.