4. Evangeline
CHAPTER FOUR
evangeline
T he palatial home Wilder grew up in is shadowed and quiet as I walk up carpeted stairs and down a hallway.
Sounds from the backyard drift through open windows: squeals from the kids still in the pool, laughter and shouts from adults. My stomach grumbles at the scent of smoking wood chips. I should be outside helping my dad with the grill—it’s been a Sullivan tradition since I was a kid. But when he started prepping burgers, I decided to avoid the questions in his laser-like blue eyes and hid in a chair on the outskirts of the women.
Unfortunately, where I sat put me in Rose’s direct line of sight, and her concerned glances made my skin itch with guilt. Or maybe the itching was due to all the sun and chlorine in combination with my lack of sleep last night. Either way, when Wilder’s brother, River, walked over to ask Rose where he went and she said he was taking a nap, I slipped away with a mumbled excuse of needing the bathroom.
I just want to make sure he’s okay.
In the light of a new day, the certainty and conviction I felt last night are murky, clouded by a jumbled mix of anxiety, longing, and sadness. We both said hurtful things; it wasn’t the first time and likely won’t be the last. All I really feel right now is the pain of the distance between us. I don’t want to accept that a lifetime of friendship could be over, that the boy I grew up with has changed so much he’s now a stranger.
At the door of his old bedroom, I press my ear to the wood and hear soft music. My heart kicks against my ribs as I knock.
“Wilder?”
When seconds pass with no response, I turn the knob and push the door open a crack. He’s on the bed facing the window, his old gray comforter tangled around his jean-clad legs. From his deep, even breathing, he’s fast asleep.
I slip into the room and close the door behind me. Approaching the bed, I step out of my sandals and crawl onto the mattress, then lie down and press myself to his warm back. I want to put my arms around him. Hold him. But that would be breaking the rules. I’m already bending them by touching him through his clothes.
I don’t know how long I lie there, my cheek against his spine, but it’s long enough for my tears to darken his soft gray T-shirt.
“Are you crying on me, Fairy?”
His gravelly words throw my heart into my stomach. It takes me several tries to find my voice. “You haven’t called me that in years.”
When I was five, a kid in my class called me a freak because of my heterochromia. I developed an immediate and overwhelming insecurity about my eyes. I begged my parents to buy me an eyepatch and when they wouldn’t, I made one myself by gluing yarn to a piece of cardboard I’d cut from a cereal box. Then I refused to take it off my gray eye, even hiding it at night so they wouldn’t find it and throw it away.
My mom told Rose what was going on, and Wilder overheard the phone call. When our families gathered that weekend, he pulled me aside. With all the solemn authority in his seven-year-old self, he told me that my pale gray iris didn’t make me a freak. It made me a descendant of powerful fairies and meant I could see beyond the veil of the physical world to realities invisible to everyone else. Then he pulled off my homemade eyepatch and threw it away. I didn’t make another one, and I never felt self-conscious about my eyes again. He called me Fairy until I was ten and told him to stop.
Wilder shifts on the bed, rolling over until we face each other. Three electrified inches separate us. Afraid to see his eyes, I stare at the base of his throat where his pulse flutters close to his skin.
“I’m sorry about last night,” he whispers.
I close my eyes. “Me too. I don’t…” I swallow back the urge to sob. “I don’t want to lose you. I love making music with you—I do—but I can’t ignore what I’m feeling anymore. I’m not happy.”
“I know.” His tone is low and agonized. “I’ve been such a dick to you. Getting away from me is the right choice.”
“Why?” My voice aches like my heart. “Why do you say the things you do? Why can’t you stop?”
My eyes fly open at a touch on my jaw. He stares at his fingers like he isn’t sure they belong to him, but he doesn’t move them. Long, dark lashes flicker as his gaze lifts to mine.
The world around us blurs; we’re static figures in a shaken snow globe.
“I wish…” His throat bobs. “I wish I wasn’t so afraid.”
My brows draw together. “Of what?”
His thumb coasts across my cheek. Blood races to the gentle pressure as if my very essence wants to catch and trap his touch.
“Everything,” he whispers. “But mostly you.”
My whole body turns hot and prickly. “What? Why?”
The barest of smiles curves his lips. “Silly Fairy who sees so much and so little at the same time.”
His lips press to my forehead. Silky soft, dry, and warm. I freeze in shock, tingles radiating from the illicit contact and spreading down my limbs. My stomach swoops as his fingertips slide over my jaw. His hand forms a hot band around the side of my throat.
“I can’t be what you want me to be,” he murmurs as he draws away, “but not for the reason you think. Look at me, Fairy.”
I lift my gaze. The brown speckles in his green eyes are black as pitch around giant pupils. His cheekbones are flushed, his brow furrowed like he’s in pain. I’ve never seen this look on his face—abject hunger, spiraling torment.
“I’m poison.” His gaze locks onto my mouth. “Sometimes I think you’re the antidote, but at the end of the day, I won’t risk infecting you. That’s why I push you away. Not because I don’t want you. As much as I need you, I have to save you from me.”
Emotions punch me, one after the other: surprise, elation, sadness, confusion, anger. “What the fuck? That’s such bullshit.”
His eyes flare. “Oh yeah? You think your pussy will banish all my demons?”
To my horror, my eyes begin to sting. “I’ve never asked you to have sex with me or be my boyfriend. The only thing I wanted was your respect.”
I push backward, but he moves faster. One of his hands sears my bare thigh while the other whips up to reclaim my hair. He surges against me, bringing our bodies flush. I gasp at the unmistakable feel of his erection at the juncture of my thighs. That painful ache only he incites unfolds in my center, and a small, helpless sound escapes me.
“This happens every time you walk in a room,” he grinds out. “Every time you open that pouty mouth or give me those glistening ‘fuck me’ eyes. You make me insane . Don’t you get it? The problem is I do respect you. I respect your mind and talent more than anyone else on this planet does. You’re sacred to me, Evangeline. But your body? That, I want to disrespect in the worst fucking ways.”
Fear and uncertainty shiver through me, amplifying the sensation between my legs. I want him to kiss me. Take me. Ruin me.
I want to run as fast and far as I can.
His piercing stare tells me he knows exactly what I’m feeling. He always knows—he stole the book of my unspoken language years ago and memorized every word.
The fingers on my thigh clench and unclench, and he makes a sound in his throat that arrows between my legs. My hips twitch forward, primal need overruling reason. His nostrils flare, lips thinning, but he stays unmoving. A pillar of rigid heat and tensed muscle.
“You’re wet for me, aren’t you?” His voice purrs beneath my skin. “I bet you’re always wet for me, just like I’m always hard for you.”
Beyond reason, I nod, my gaze falling to his lips. Full and flushed, glistening from frustrated bites and swipes of his tongue. Two inches separate our mouths—two inches to freedom or catastrophe. I don’t know which awaits us, and I’m starting not to care.
His frown deepens, his eyes narrowing to glittering slits. More fear pours through me, equaled only by my body’s rising demand.
I say his name—a plea for him to stop this. Or finish it.
“You have no idea the depraved shit I want to do to you,” he whispers harshly. “What if how I treat your body disgusts you? Would you get over it? Would we go back to partners while I use other girls as substitutes? Could you handle that? I don’t think you could.”
I can’t breathe. Can’t think. My greatest fantasy and worst nightmare are colliding, stripping me of denial. He’s right—I couldn’t handle that. And I was right last night—this is toxic.
But I don’t move as he releases my hair. I don’t stop him when he lifts my leg over his hip and nestles his hardness against my center. And when his hips swivel against mine, the friction makes me moan. He does it again and again. A tease and a threat I want him to make good on.
I want it all. I want him to fill me with his body like he fills me with his art.
“Open those fairy eyes,” he demands.
My lashes part but immediately want to shutter again when I see his face. Too much. He’s too much. Beautiful and savage. A provoked god of destruction.
His grip on my thigh tightens to the point of pain. “Did Eddie make you come when you fucked?”
“I…” Words fail me as his thrusts push me inexorably toward a sensory cliff’s edge. Only this feeling is a thousand times more powerful than anything I’ve felt with my fingers.
“Answer me.”
“We didn’t have sex,” I gasp out.
I must imagine it, but it feels like he grows even thicker, harder. He makes a noise between a gasp and a groan, and my legs begin to shake.
“Goddammit, Evangeline,” he hisses.
He stills and releases my thigh. Before I feel the loss, his fingers dive between my legs from behind, yanking aside my cotton shorts and the gusset of my bikini bottoms, exposing me completely. I whimper as calloused fingertips graze my slit before confidently delving deeper. A finger pushes inside me, the invasion not deep but still shocking. My body tenses in resistance as he pulls it out and sinks it back in. His hand begins to move as well. Back and forth. Circling. Slowly at first, then faster. Discomfort shifts to a sparkling, consuming pleasure.
The sound of my wetness brings a mortified flush to my face. I duck my head against his chest.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he chants against my hair. “Tell me to stop.”
He doesn’t wait for an answer; I can’t speak, anyway. His forearm flexes rhythmically against my ass, marrying the movements of his hand to the sinuous, purposeful drives of his hips. His jean-trapped cock grinds against my exposed clit, sending confusing signals of pain through the haze of euphoria. I clutch his shirt, small, animalistic sounds riding each of my panting breaths.
Another finger sinks inside me. It hurts, too. And feels better than anything I’ve ever felt before.
“Eyes on me,” he demands.
My head weighs a thousand pounds as I lift it. His gaze flickers between my eyes, then drops to my lips.
“So beautiful,” he whispers.
Prickling sensation eats my fingers and toes. Between my legs, the pain fades, replaced by languorous, spreading heat. I feel loose, unfolded, possessed , as my hips jerk erratically against his.
Wilder licks his lips. “Fuck yes. Chase it, Fairy.”
My fingers dig into his chest. “Oh God?—”
“I’m your god right now, and I want this virgin cunt spasming around my fingers and gushing all over my hand. Give it to me.”
My mind recoils at his crass words, my head rearing back. His smile is slight, cruel, and knowing, his eyes hard on mine. I search his face frantically for anything familiar—any tenderness at all—but I can’t find it, and it’s too late to stop what my body has already claimed.
The orgasm sweeps through me. Devastating. Ecstatic. Humiliating. I smother my cries against his chest as I tremble and jerk, soaking his hand like he told me to.
I’m still pulsing, my senses floating, when he slips his fingers from my body and holds them between our faces. His skin glistens with my release. Eyes holding mine, he licks a line up his wet palm to the tip of one finger.
He groans. “You taste like sin.”
Opening my jaw with his other hand, he shoves the same two fingers that were inside me against my tongue. Startled, I pull back. Not from the flavor—unexpected but not bad—but from the invasiveness. He pushes them in more, hitting the back of my tongue and making me gag.
This time when I shove him away, he doesn’t resist. We stare at each other with a foot of space between us, both of us panting.
“Why?” My voice cracks.
His face remains marble, his eyes cold. “Go, Evangeline. Right now. Unless you want me to break you in half and make you choke on my cum.”
Horrified, I scramble off the bed, yanking my bikini bottoms and shorts back into place. I snatch my sandals off the floor and back away.
Wilder watches me with narrowed, frigid eyes.
“What’s wrong with you?” I whisper.
His brows lift mockingly. “According to a lot of women, absolutely nothing.”
My fingers tighten on my shoes as my eyes burn with unshed tears. “You know I’m not experienced. You were trying to shock me. You hurt me on purpose. Why would you do that?”
For a second, the mask over his eyes cracks. What I see makes my stomach bottom out—horror, self-loathing—before ice numbs everything. He sits up fast, feet thudding to the floor. I tense, ready to run, but he only grips the edge of the mattress, the tendons in his arms pronounced.
“You came to my room. Pressed your soft tits against my back. I got you off and you never once said no.” His lip curls in a sneer. “Not everything you hoped it would be? Well, I’m sorry to disappoint, but I did warn you.”
My mouth opens and closes. He rolls his eyes, then snatches his phone off the nightstand and swipes a few times. Ringing fills the room.
The line connects and a woman’s voice croons, “Hey you. What’s up?”
His eyes stay on my face as he says, “I need some relief. You free?”
“For you? Always.”
“My place in twenty.”
She giggles. “On my way.”
He disconnects.
“I hate you,” I tell him.
And this time, I mean it.