He rolled his hips between my thighs, his erection sliding along my thin leggings and his jeans.
“Look at me,” he said. I didn’t. Couldn’t. This moment was mine. The fact he was in it was completely irrelevant, or so I tried to tell myself. I kept my eyes closed, kissing him fiercely.
“Look. At. Me.” He took my hair in his fist and pulled hard, forcing me to stare at his face. Whatever he saw in my expression made him loosen his grip on me, but the intention was there. Alex Winslow played rough, in and out of bed.
“I apologize in advance.” He cocked his head to the side.
“For?”
“Ruining you for any other man on this planet. I’m going to fuck you, Indie. So hard you’ll think about me years from now, when you lie under your boring, missionary-loving husband. I will own every orgasm, every shiver, every wave of pleasure inside you. From here on out, it will be me. Just me. And for that, I truly am sorry.”
“You’re so cocky.” I ran my lips down his neck, and he did this thing, where he ground his jeans against my sex through our clothes fast and rough, creating so much friction my clit swelled and screamed for release.
“That doesn’t make me any less right.”
“Are you going to make me sign an NDA before we go to bed together?” I grinned, and for that, I got my chin bitten.
“When I fuck you, Stardust, you’ll scream so hard, the whole city will know I’m finally inside you.”
I raked my fingers along his broad back, and it felt good, marking him back. After all the times he’d taunted, teased, and messed with me, finally, it was my turn. He scarred me. I decorated him. But at the end of the day, we were both tainted by each other. “We’re not going to have sex. I’m not…super experienced.”
He pushed up from me, running his hand through his lightly stubbled jaw. “Are you a virgin?”
I shook my head. “Nope. Just…I haven’t been around much.”
“How many?”
That again? Ugh.
“One.”
“When?”
“High school. Junior year.”
“Give me his address when we get back to L.A. Promise, I just wanna talk.” He cocked one eyebrow up.
I laughed and swatted his chest, and he locked my wrist in his palm and brought it to his lips, breathing hard against it. I shivered again.
“Okay.” His tone was low. “No fucking tonight. We’ll take it slow.”
A kiss on the lips. The nose. The forehead.
Jesus Christ, heart.
I’m trying my best here, heart.
Enough, heart.
“I’m tired,” I said, even though it was a lie. I was buzzing and high and in need of a release. I wanted him to get the hell out so I could run to the bathtub and release the ache between my legs with my fingers.
He pushed off me without an argument. It shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. Alex Winslow was an accidental rock star. I knew it when I watched his bigger-than-life figure moving in the luxurious hotel room, and knew he didn’t belong there. He belonged in some dingy underground pub in the bowels of London, screaming to the microphone about anti-fascism and anarchy. He’d lost his soul somewhere along the way, and I was just another piggybank he shook, trying to see if what was inside resembled what he was looking for. And at that moment, I knew I’d take it.
He was going to break the pig, and I was going to let him.
“I found my well in the middle of the desert,” he said from the threshold of my open door. “Now it’s time to drink from it. Every. Single. Drop.”
Moscow, Russia
The plane ride was the closest thing to hell ever recorded on planet earth.
Partly because Blake and Jenna were yelling at each other in decibels that threatened to bring the aircraft down—she was on speaker, since Blake had to answer emails simultaneously—but mostly because Lucas insisted on not getting the memo that Stardust was not for the taking and lay beside her on the L-shaped sofa, gazing at the ceiling like a fucking John Green character and talking to her about life. Which was ironic, really, considering the fact I was about to end his if he kept throwing himself at her. Alfie was curled up beside me, playing a video game and making sure I didn’t use any of the laptops or mobile phones around us to go on the Internet. I was bored, and agitated, and fuck, hadn’t I told her she couldn’t hang out with Waitrose? Obviously, I had to put my point across more blatantly.
Because subtlety is clearly my forte.
“Ever seen a cockpit from the inside, Stardust?” I asked Indie from across the room, sprawled on a recliner high and plush as a cathedral.
She looked away from Lucas and at me lazily, putting her patched dress down. She was sewing every spare moment she had. Compulsively. Wasn’t that the only way to make art?