Ritual - Palm South University

I grind my teeth. “I am.”

“You are what?”

I huff, sitting back on my heels and looking up at her with half of the spilled papers in my hands. “Bi.”

Her lips curl up slowly. “I knew it.”

“But, I’m with Brandon now,” I quickly add.

Sophie chuckles. “And I don’t blame you for shouting it from the rooftops any time you get a chance. Mr. Church is…” She shakes her head, whistling. “Let’s just say I’d let him put it where no man has put it before.”

“Watch it,” I warn, jaw tight.

“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” Sophie quickly adds, and then right in front of my face, she uncrosses her legs, spreading them just wide enough to show me a flash of her black panties before she leans forward and balances her elbows on her knees. Her eyes skate over the features of my face before they meet my gaze. “I’d let you fuck my ass, too. If you wanted.”

A zip of something hot and electric shoots straight down between my legs.

Sophie’s lips part, just barely, enough for her tongue to dart out and wet her lips again as she watches me. From this angle, I can see the mountains of her breasts, the black lace of her bra from where her silk blouse gapes at her neck.

And I’m rendered completely speechless.

Get up.

Get the fuck up and get the fuck out of this room.

But I’m under her spell.

Sophie spreads her legs again, this time lowering one knee to the ground, and then the other, placing one knee between mine. Her leg is warm and smooth as she presses my knees apart, just a little, and she picks up a few stranded sheets of paper as if that’s why she was on the floor.

But her eyes don’t leave mine.

And when she hands them to me, I hold onto them without moving an inch to put them in the folder, and her eyes flick to my lips.

She leans in.

I lean back.

At least, I want to. I should. But maybe I don’t at all. Maybe I sit there completely still, shocked, knowing I should move but not knowing how.

Maybe… I lean in, too.

And in what feels like a stolen breath of time, Sophie kisses me.

I know I feel the kiss.

I know I feel her lips on mine, slightly dry from her lipstick but warm and soft all the same. I know I feel her hands shakily resting on my thighs for balance, and her hot breath on mine, and the silk of her blouse as I hold onto her, too. I know I hear her whimper of a moan, and taste that moan on my tongue.

I know I’m present for every searing moment of it.

But I awake on the other side as if I’d blacked out, as if someone had drugged me, as if I’d been betrayed and violated in the worst possible way.

“No!”

I shove her backward, sending her flying to her elbows with a shocked curse. I stand as soon as she’s off me, swiping what’s left of the papers off the floor and hastily shoving them into the folders before I shove them into my bag.

“Fuck, Sophie. Fuck. What the hell was that?”

I’m still packing up my shit, and I wait for her to say something. To apologize. To leap up and beg me not to overreact, not to tell, not to freak out or hold it against her. I expect her to blame it on a moment of passion, or a late night, or a connection she felt through the interview.

But when I finally tug my bag onto my shoulder and look down at her, she’s not making any excuse at all.

She’s just lying there on her elbows staring up at me.

With the most wicked smile I’ve ever seen.

I shake my head, frowning at her with a mixture of horror and astonishment whirling inside me. It’s like she’s the devil or a witch or both wrapped into one, and I can’t reconcile the fact that I just fell victim to her spell.

“Stay away from me,” I warn.

And then I run out of the conference room to wash her lipstick off my mouth.I WAS AN ANXIOUS bundle of nerves the entire flight from Miami to LA.

It had been all I could do just to sit still, to drink the mimosas I’d ordered to help me cope with the fact that I was more nervous than I’d been in recent memory. And now that I’m on the ground in California, tugging my little carry-on luggage behind me in the airport and looking for Kip, I feel equal parts sick and elated.

I haven’t seen Kip since we parted ways after the summer, him coming here to UCLA while I went back to Palm South, and as silly as it seems, I’m nervous.

What if he’s changed?

What if he’s forgotten about me since he’s been here?