Chapter 14 – Leslie
It was Wednesday, AKA lit class, AKA I’d have to see Mason again. As I got ready in the bathroom, Lucy scampered in.
“Shit, shit, shit,” she muttered, headed straight to the toilet stalls.
I grinned to myself. A minute later, the toilet flushed and she headed over to the sinks next to me to wash her hands. She groaned when she looked at her face in the mirror.
“I’m so fucked.”
“Late to class?”
“Worse. I’m hungover and I have a meeting I’m already fifteen minutes late to. And the C— he’ll be pissed. And my head hurts too much for one of his lectures.”
The way she’d cut herself spiked my curiosity. “Who’s ‘he?’”
She threw her hair in a top bun and brushed her teeth furiously, speaking around the toothbrush. “My neverending nightmare. My warden. My jailer. It doesn’t matter, he’s going to make my life a living hell for this.”
“You’re being really vague. And kind of sketchy,” I observed, amused.
She snorted. “Like you aren’t sketchy about your stepbrother. Tell you what, I tell you about my personal hell, and you tell me about yours. Deal?”
I waffled. I’d already called her my friend when I was talking to my mom. It would be really nice if I could call her my friend for real. But could I trust her? Wouldn’t she judge me?
“Believe me, anything you’ve done doesn’t come close to what I’ve done—or what I want to do,” she muttered. “Judgment-free zone here.”
I smiled. “I’ll think about it. But you should probably get going.”
“Fuck!” With that Lucy spat out the toothpaste, wiped her face down with a towel, and tossed her shower caddy at me. “Can you hang onto this for me? I’ll come get it later, I have to go or I’m going to be sent to a damn convent. And I’m Jewish. That’s how bad this is gonna be.”
I laughed. “So am I. And sure. Room 312.”
She put her finger to her forehead as she backed out of the bathroom. “312. Got it, see you later, fellow Red Sea pedestrian, and thank you!”
Once she was gone, I sighed, feeling better than I had in a while. Maybe I could trust her.
But first I had to deal with seeing my own nightmare, as Lucy had so aptly put it.
When I got to class,Mason was already there. I made sure to take a seat as far away from him as possible—and the asshole stood up, grabbed his stuff, and crossed the room to take the seat next to mine, a coffee in his hand. I gaped at him, aware the whole room was watching, including the row of girls who clearly wanted him to sit by them, based on the way they glared at me.
At least Emily was out today. Thank goodness for small favors.
“What are you doing?” I asked him.
He didn’t answer, handing me the coffee.
I gaped at the coffee, too.
“Is it poisoned?”
He laughed. “No. Not even with almond milk. I had to go to three coffee shops to get you a lavender latte with oat milk.”
“You know what my coffee order is?”
“Butterfly, I know everything about you.”
With that jaw-dropper, he sprawled out in the seat next to mine, his leg butting up against my own.
He knew my coffee order? The butterflies in my stomach started to dance excitedly. He went to three (three!) coffee shops to get me exactly what I wanted? And of course, the latte was delicious. It tasted better than any I’d ever had, and try as I might, I couldn’t pretend it didn’t send warmth through me—and it wasn’t just the liquid, either. It felt like care.
Had a man ever shown care like this to me before?
This couldn’t be real.
What was Mason playing at?
“Short shorts, again?” he said darkly, but at least this time he didn’t lecture me.
No, what he did was worse. He started playing with the hem on my shorts, his touch transporting me back to the way his fingers had felt inside me. I grew embarrassingly wet.
“Stop it,” I hissed.
“Hey.” He shrugged. “You wore them. I can’t help that your legs are too sexy to keep my hands to myself. Can you blame a guy?”
Actually I could, and I was about to say something, when Professor Evans cleared her throat.
I tried to pay attention to what she was saying about the reading, but I kept getting distracted by Mason’s fingers whispering against my outer thigh. If that weren’t enough, he’d leaned his whole body into mine, so his arm brushed up against the side of my breast. The room was hot but my nipples still hardened, and I knew Mason saw because his nostrils flared and his breathing quickened.
We might as well have been alone in that room. Everyone else ceased to exist. All I could pay attention to was the heat pouring off of Mason’s body, the way his barely-there touch made me crave more. His lips quirked, like he knew what I was thinking, and I wanted to either punch or lick them, I wasn’t sure which.
“Pay attention, butterfly,” he murmured into my ear.
And then he bit it.
Heat flooded my core, making me wet from the shock of his bite. I trembled all over.
“Stop it,” I hissed.
In retaliation, his hand traveled from its moderately safe spot where it was tangled in my shorts hem, up over the top of my thigh to my inner thigh, and then..
And then…
And then he eased his fingers into my shorts. No one was looking, thank god, but as his fingers trailed their way up to my pussy, running over the seam of my panties, I had to bite my lip to contain the gasp that threatened to let loose. Since when was I an exhibitionist?
His fingers paused, a threat all of their own.
And even though I knew I had to shove his hand away, or scream or something—he was my stepbrother, for god’s sake, and I hated him, and we were in public! More public than the library!—I couldn’t bring myself to, just held my breath as he once again eased his fingers where they didn’t belong—underneath my panties so that they brushed my bare sex…just like Monday.
“I’ve changed my mind about your naked pussy,” he whispered, moving his pen around with his other hand like he was actually taking notes. “Now that I know no one’s been there, I like how sexy it feels to have nothing between my fingers and your skin.” His fingers trailed between my lips. I knew he could feel how wet I was.
He growled again, and I must’ve had some Pavlovian response now to that growl because I grew even wetter.
“All this for me, butterfly? You shouldn’t have.”
I shuddered in my seat as his fingers began to circle my clit, barely there brushes at first that began to heighten in intensity. I felt myself clenching and releasing, clenching and releasing, as my core tightened almost painfully, my nipples beaded, and I began to climb that mountain toward orgasm.
“Are you paying attention to the professor, butterfly? You don’t want to make a bad impression the first week.”
“Ms. Berger?” The professor called my name.
“Uh, yes?”
“What are your thoughts on the reading?”
The reading? Oh, right. I could barely remember what I’d read in preparation for class, so distracted by Mason, whose fingers had picked up in speed and intensity. And now everyone was watching. Could they tell what was happening?
God, I was going to come. In class. They were going to expel me, and Mason was just going to laugh.
“The Awakening, butterfly,” he prompted under his breath.
“It was interesting,” I squeaked, trying to shove his hand away. Instead, he just gripped my pussy tight in punishment, like he was claiming ownership.
“Mmhmm,” the professor said. “Interesting, how?”
I turned beet red, fumbling for something, anything, to say. “Well, the fact that so many women who embraced their sexuality and finding something for themselves, end up committing suicide in literature. I get that it’s supposed to be commentary, but what about them living happily ever after? Why do women always get punished for having good sex?”
People around me tittered. Oh god, I’d just humiliated myself.
“Hmm,” said the professor. “Interesting, indeed.”
She turned away to call on another student, and I released a relieved breath—or started to—but Mason had caught my clit between his fingers.
“Punished for having good sex,” he murmured, turning to look at me. As I stared into his deep blue eyes, entranced by the need I saw in them, he pinched. Hard. All the blood rushed to that tiny but powerful spot, and something about the combination of pain and pleasure, and the intensity in his eyes, made me almost tip over the edge?—
—just as everyone started gathering up their things.
Class had ended and I hadn’t even realized.
He released my clit and withdrew his hand, wiping my wetness on my bare thigh. I wanted to scream out of need and frustration. To beg.
But I wouldn’t beg. Not him. Not ever.
“I’d lick my fingers, but that might be a little obvious,” he told me, winking. “No coming.”
He gathered his things, dropping them in his backpack and slinging it over his shoulder. I stared after him in a state of confusion and desire.
I needed to come so badly, but for some reason, I listened to him. He’d broken something in me, and was slowly rebuilding it to his specifications.
I didn’t know how to stop him.
I wasn’t even sure I wanted to.