Chapter 17
Tyler
I waved to the crowd and stalked after Stella, who was beelining for a side door.
My lips tingled from the kiss, hands flexing with the need to have her in my grasp again.
I knew she felt it, too, this inexplicable, infuriating attraction, because her eyes kept falling to my lips while we were dancing, and her pupils had been huge, even as she insulted me.
I pushed through the door and stopped short. Stella was standing with a group of about ten other people, young people, or at least younger than most of the crowd in the ballroom, in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties.
“Nice moves,” an attractive man with dark, curly hair and full lips called out, his green eyes drinking me in.
“My parents forced us,” Stella explained. “Everyone, this is Theo. My boyfriend.” She was getting better at saying that word without tripping over it.
I smiled and joined them. “Please tell me there’s something stronger than wine and champagne in this house.”
A blond woman with large blue eyes and a pouty mouth motioned us down the hall. “This way. Cordelia keeps all the good stuff locked up when she has company. She doesn’t want anyone getting wasted and puking on one of her priceless rugs.”
“Again,” a brunette woman added, shooting a taunting glance at Stella.
“I’m sorry,” Stella said. “Who was it that set the lawn on fire at that same party?”
The brunette cackled. “Oh my god, I forgot about that.”
“Probably because you were blackout drunk,” a sandy-haired man told her.
Stella and I let the group precede us down the hall, and I tugged her elbow to slow her down enough that a gap opened between us and them.
“Who are my targets?” I asked, voice low.
“Everyone but AJ,” she said, pointing to the man who’d first greeted me. “The rest deserve you.”
“Now who’s being an ass—Ow!” She’d pinched my side.
The blond heard us and started to turn. I grabbed Stella around the waist, but she was already leaning toward me, and by the time the blond laid eyes on us, we were plastered together, my lips at Stella’s temple while she giggled softly like we hadn’t just been on the verge of fisticuffs.
The woman pivoted back around, and Stella immediately tried to put some space between us, but I held on. “Someone else might look.”
She made a disgruntled sound but stayed where she was, and we fell farther behind.
“We need to add more items to the list of rules,” she said, her words barely above a whisper.
I dropped my voice, too. “Like what?” It was easy to guess where this conversation was headed.
“No more kissing.”
I chuckled. So predictable. “Scared you’ll get used to it and be sad when our time comes to an end?”
“Please. You kiss like a dead fish.”
“Is that why you just moaned into my mouth?”
“I did not—” She took a deep breath. “I didn’t do that.”
I let out a quiet, high-pitched imitation of a porn moan, and Stella scrambled to clap her hands over my lips.
“Would you shut up?” she hissed.
I licked her palm.
She pulled her hand back with a horrified expression.
“Look at the bright side,” I said. “At least your moan wasn’t as embarrassing as the way you ground down on me that first time, like you hadn’t been dicked in a while.
” She went suspiciously quiet, and I tugged her to a stop, gleeful.
“Is that it? You’re going through a dry spell and are worried that if I kiss you too good, you’ll come in public? ”
Her eyes sparked with a mixture of fury and panic as she glanced down the hall, obviously worried someone might have overheard, but the group was disappearing through another side door.
Only when the last of them were gone did she spin back to me.
“Is this how you get your clients to pay up? You torture them with your presence until they finally snap and agree to give you whatever you want just to get away from you?”
“Aww, don’t be embarrassed,” I taunted. “Tell you what. I’ll do us both a favor and take the edge off for you. I’m sure most of your shitty attitude stems from the fact that it’s been so long since the last time you came.”
“Oh, please. You probably fuck like you’re scooting a chair closer to a table.”
“And you probably fuck like a bored fitness model bouncing on a stability ball.”
She clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a noise, but I could tell from the way her eyes crinkled that she was fighting back a laugh.
The sight made something snap inside me.
I hauled her up by the armpits. Thankfully, the skirt of her dress was loose enough that she was able to wrap her legs around my waist, making it real easy to pin her to the wall.
My dick, which had been rock-hard for longer than I cared to admit, ended up right where we both wanted it, pressed tight to her pussy.
This close, there was nowhere for her to hide, no way to keep me from seeing her pupils dilate or feel the way her thighs shook around me.
“Oh,” she said, a smug smile spreading over her face. “So it’s like that.” She rolled her hips over the length of my cock, and it was all I could do to hold still. “You’re not offering to get me off so I’ll be nicer to you. You’re offering because you’re desperate for me, aren’t you?”
“The only thing I’m desperate for is to shut you up, and I gotta say, the idea of using my dick to gag you? Real appealing right now.”
“You’re disgusting.” The words were spoken with what sounded like barely restrained lust.
“Hate me all you want, but don’t fucking lie to me, Stella.
” I shoved a hand between us, and as I suspected, the whisper-thin fabric of her dress was slightly damp from where it had been shoved against the V of her legs.
Unfortunately for her, I more than knew my way around a woman’s body, and with the barest flick of my fingers, I had her squirming, her body betraying her.
“You’re the one who’s desperate for me.”
“Uh . . . hello?”
We froze, heads whirling to see the blond hanging out of the open doorway thirty feet down the hall.
“You two coming in here?” She grinned. “Or coming out there?”
Stella shoved me off her so forcefully I almost stumbled. “Sorry!” she called. “Anytime we have two seconds together, he ends up begging for it.”
The blond cackled and disappeared from sight. Probably to go repeat what Stella just said. Goddamn it.
I let Stella go, needing a moment to gather myself.
What the actual fuck had I been thinking, pinning her to the wall like that?
If we hadn’t been interrupted, I might have slipped my hand beneath her dress and followed through on my threat to get her off just to prove she wasn’t as immune to me as she pretended to be.
Why? I asked myself. Why did it fucking matter what she did or how she felt? It wasn’t like I actually cared about her opinion.
Was this borne from my need to prove myself?
Or was this something else? My inability to accept that I was the only one who noticed this completely unwelcome attraction?
The only one who was as amused as I was infuriated?
Painful as it was to admit, fighting with Stella was the most locked-in I’d felt in months.
Normally, my thoughts were scattered, my mind racing in a million directions at once as I tried to stay on top of all the things I needed to do to ensure my next party was even more entertaining and extravagant than the last. But with Stella, I was hyperfocused, needing all my brainpower just to keep up with her whip-fast responses.
I never knew what she’d say next or how she’d react, and getting the upper hand with her had turned into an addiction.
Every time I succeeded in annoying her was like taking another hit.
Brat.
Would you shut the fuck up? I told that nagging little voice. I wasn’t a fucking brat.
I wasn’t.
Stella was just forbidden fruit. A dangerous distraction.
This arrangement was only temporary, and within a month or two, I’d disappear from her life, leaving ruin in my wake.
And Stella’s family would be among the casualties caught in the crossfire aimed at my true target.
That couldn’t be helped, and besides, Stella’s parents were far from innocent.
They kept terrible company, so who knew what other skeletons were hidden in their closet?
More likely than not, they deserved what I had planned.
■ ■ ■
Half an hour later, I was reclining in the billiards lounge, which was fancy, rich-person speak for a game room.
It was long and wide, with vaulted ceilings and dueling fireplaces at each end, now dormant in the summer heat.
A pool table sat beneath a gilded chandelier on the far side of the room.
Spread throughout the rest of the space were various games, including cribbage, chess, mah-jongg, and backgammon.
I even spotted a blackjack table and a roulette wheel.
Over in the corner, two people smoked hash by an open window.
Three others snorted lines off the antique coffee table beside me.
I felt like an extra on the set of a Cruel Intentions remake.
In the past thirty minutes, all I’d heard anyone do was gossip and complain about their first-world problems. The one topic that seemed taboo was Stella and Maddie’s encounter, and I found it fascinating how obviously everyone was avoiding it.
Was this another manners thing? They wouldn’t bring it up to Stella’s face, but once she left, it would become the center of discussion?
“Strickland,” a lazy voice drawled.
I shifted in my chair, finding AJ, the handsome one Stella said was off-limits, regarding me from a nearby loveseat. Out of all the insolent, entitled, boring assholes in the room, he seemed the most tolerable. The rest were just as bad as their parents.
“I don’t think I know anyone with that last name,” AJ said.
“And?” I raised a brow. “Trying to determine if I meet the right pedigree requirements to be in this room?”