Dare Me

Fuck if I recognized the sounds that came out of my mouth. They were savage, guttural as she circled hips, grinding backwards against me. I growled every filthy word under the sun as I stared down in awe at her pussy fucking my cock. Her unreal body was showing me the true meaning of pure ecstasy and all I had to do was stand there and watch. I stared down at Lake, hips flexed, abs tight and fingers thrust in my hair as she downright fucking spoiled me. It was unreal – sight, sound and sensation as we figured out a new favorite position together. She was turning herself on and I had no idea I could be so still yet feel so good. I could stand there and watch all day. Hell, I tried. I was ready to cum ages ago but I staved off my orgasm to buy all the time I could because Lake was giving me a fucking show – the most incredible one I’d seen or felt in my life – and I wasn’t going to be the one to end it. Only when she came again did I finish with an explosion inside her, breathing deep into the back of her neck with every hot burst of pleasure that pierced through her. Our bodies pressed against each other as we panted. Her breasts shook in my hands as I squeezed them, both of us trying but failing to come back to Earth.

When we finally did, we lay on the floor. I watched her doze off on my chest – the only time she ever looked like an innocent angel. I smirked and she pouted something incoherent but defensive because she knew I was laughing her, but then, of course, she fell asleep. And as I watched her, the empty space felt a thousand times fuller than any other room in the house.

Chapter Ten

Lake

A week later, I was still riding the high of being with Callum.

It carried me so far off my feet that I barely understood how I’d gotten from his building in TriBeCa to the Flatiron District. It felt like I’d left the house five minutes ago. Maybe I floated there. Whatever it was, I didn’t care. I was just happy and I didn’t remember what it was like to feel this way. That first night in the empty room with Callum had been the kind of perfect that I had to keep reminding myself was real. And when I did, I’d feel my heart actually lift with the thrill of knowing that it was.

The next day, we walked around FIT, where I went to college for three years. We had lunch before going fabric shopping and leaving the store with yards and yards of silk, leather and jersey. As we passed by my old dorm, we looked up in unison to stare at my old window. I could’ve sworn I still saw his initials written in my nail polish on the fire escape. That fire escape. It wasn’t any ordinary one and I knew Callum remembered why from the way I looked back down to find him grinning.

I was guilty but grateful when he rescheduled work meetings for me. “Don’t worry. Oz is due to work some overtime,” he laughed. The amount of time Callum made for me had me feeling so pampered. And important. What time we didn’t spend together still served the purpose of us being together. I went shopping for lingerie to surprise him with. We went through the measures to lose the condoms. I booked my first Brazilian in ages. Despite the fact that I had my own bed, I found that he topped his own with some of the down pillows I preferred to his hard ones.

On Friday, Isabel delivered my things from her place and helped me unpack in my room down the hall from Callum’s. But she kept laughing as she hung up what little clothes I had in the closet. “It’s just so silly to keep all your things here when you don’t even stay here.” It was true. I stayed with him. It had been a wordless agreement between Callum and myself. The night after having sex in the empty room, we’d finished a few bottles of wine on the balcony and I’d ambled drunkenly to my own bedroom to brush my teeth, change and pass out. But the second I turned off the light and got into bed, it switched back on and I saw Callum shaking his head at me, eyelids heavy and smirking with amusement. He climbed onto my body, kissed me deeply for several minutes and then smiled as he murmured, “This isn’t where you sleep.” Then he lifted me out of bed and carried me down the hall. I’d slept every night of the week with him since.

And it honestly felt too good to be true. Better than even my imagination. While I was away, I’d lived on the fantasy of what things might be like when I came back. When I returned to Callum. The first year I was gone, the fantasies were just about being with him on that fire escape again, wrapped in his arms and my blanket. But within a couple years, I knew to imagine something post-college since we were getting past the age. I could see Callum being so devastatingly gorgeous now. But I could never picture what he was doing. All I knew was that he was never going back to anything related to wrestling and that always washed me with the darkest guilt, so I stopped trying to imagine his life. After awhile, my fantasies consisted mostly of being simply near Callum, imagining how time had changed his voice, his laugh, his body. It was the best survival tactic I could think of while I was living where I was. At night, on the ripped couch, it was my joyful fantasyland to drift into.

But the reality was so many million times better – to the point that I could hardly bear to part ways with Callum this morning. I had a feeling, despite the fact that neither of us acknowledged it, that he felt similarly because he popped back into the kitchen after saying goodbye, just to make sure I had money, knew where I was going, et cetera. He didn’t leave till Caroline called to remind him that he was meeting her. I didn’t take offense to the lack of an invitation. I was having some fancy dinner with Caroline soon and knew her well enough to know that she was using this lunch alone with Callum to freely grill him about me – how I was doing, whom I’d been talking to and if there was anything she could do to make me more comfortable. I’d reveled in that kind of attention when I was younger but toward the end of high school, I’d begun feeling apologetic about it, declining her offers of mani-pedis at our favorite spa or a girl’s weekend to Easthampto

n. So Caroline’s solution was to ask Callum what I needed, how I was doing. I knew that today’s lunch with him would be no different.

So to kill time, I decided to load up on T-shirts, jeans, pajamas, socks. Whatever Caroline would buy in excess for me if she found out I didn’t have. Earbuds in, I played music from an iPod shuffle they didn’t even make anymore. It was from high school – metallic pink with all the songs I listened to when I was sixteen to seventeen. Caroline had kept it all these years and given it to me the night of my welcome back dinner. “Little blast from the past for you.” She slipped it into my clutch with a giggle. “Figure you can save it for a nice stroll down memory lane.”

It did the trick. My brain was sufficiently launched back to junior year as my ears filled with old Alicia Keys and Maroon 5. I had some oldies stuff in there too – Fifties jazz I used to listen to with Caroline. I was practically skipping by the time “Cheek To Cheek” came on. It was the simplest pleasure I’d felt in awhile. Combined with the fact that I was already floating on cloud nine, I was having the time of my life, practically waltzing down the sidewalk.

But with a sudden lurch in my chest, I stopped dead at the corner of Nineteenth Street. My ears rang and I choked on instant panic.

I was being watched.

I’d spent enough time being followed to know what it felt like. I froze, my eyes scanning the street, my heart half-convinced I’d somehow see him. My stepbrother with his straw-like hair peeking out of a dirty Marlins cap. My pulse was still racing by the time I realized that it was impossible. He wasn’t here. Trish wasn’t here. I was in New York, not at Sunstone. I’d left that all behind, I was certain of that.

But then a hand gripped my shoulder. “Lake.” I thrashed. “Whoa, whoa – easy!”

Fear pressed my back into the limestone building behind me. Two women rushed defensively between me and whoever grabbed me. “Do you know him?” “Are you okay?” They asked their questions several times before I heard them. My lips stuttered something as my eyes focused on the man standing behind them, cringing over the scene and trying desperately to explain himself.

Theo.

“Oh my God,” I exhaled, the muscles in my chest relaxing. I never imagined I’d be relieved to see Theo Spencer. But between him and my stepbrother, I was sure I preferred to see him. I thanked the women who stepped in, apologizing profusely until they hesitantly left my side, looking over their shoulders as Theo, holding his hands up, said a dozen versions of “I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t realize I was going to scare you so bad, I’m so sorry, Lake,” he said, his light brown eyes flicking all over my face, up and down my body as he apologized. “Wow. Just…” A breath whooshed out his lips. “Wow. Lake. It’s crazy to finally see you.”

I could only nod, still stiff and wide-eyed. “What – were you following me?”

Theo loosened the collar of his blue Polo shirt. “Uh… technically?” he laughed sheepishly, running a hand through his dark hair, ruining the gelled style he’d been wearing since we were teenagers. “I, um, I heard you were staying with Callum and I went to the apartment to see if I could find you. You were just leaving when I got there, so I, uh,” he nodded at a silver Audi parked behind him, “followed from there.”

“Oh.” My voice was far away, my gaze floating off behind him.

“Christ, I’m so sorry. You must be sufficiently creeped out.”

I blinked. I probably should’ve been but I was still recovering from the startling thought of my stepbrother being in New York. The rest of my body was still taking its time to loosen and abandon that fight or flight mode. “It’s okay,” I said hastily, trying to concentrate on the fact that I was standing in front of Theo Spencer, my high school boyfriend-turned-bully. The brother of the scumbag who told me I had to “earn my keep” around his rich group of friends.

“Lake, I heard about what happened at my brother’s party. My party, technically, though it got shut down before I even got there.” He tried a nervous laugh to lighten the mood.

“Right,” I nodded, coming to. My instinct was to say sorry but I realized I didn’t actually want to. Whatever Nick got that night, he had deserved. “I’m sorry you didn’t get your party,” I finally said.

“That’s quite alright, I didn’t actually want it. Nick’s just trying to get on my good side because he wants to borrow my house in Ibiza for a couple months.”