Chapter 25
Stella
Theo, much to my horror, carried me all the way upstairs to my apartment.
“Where’s the bathroom?” he asked, still holding me.
“Fuuuck you,” Amos answered.
Theo jerked around, clearly looking for another person.
“It’s just Amos,” I told him. “And it’s over there,” I added, pointing.
“Treat, Snack Bitch?” Amos called.
“In a minute.”
“Treat, treat, treat?”
Theo turned toward the bathroom. “Sunshine has just been dethroned.”
“If you call me Snack Bitch, I swear to God, Theo . . .” I’d had about all I could take tonight.
We passed through the living room, and he paused just long enough to get a good look at Amos in his cage. “Why would anyone ever want to keep a bird as a pet?”
“He was my grandmother’s.” I dropped my voice, not wanting Amos to overhear the next part even though I knew he probably wouldn’t understand it. “And no one else in the family wanted him.”
Theo grunted and shouldered open the bedroom door, passing into the en suite and setting me down beside the shower while he turned it on.
“I’m fine now,” I told him. “You can leave.”
He shot me a look like I was stupid. “Please. It’s not anything I haven’t seen before, and if your mother has taught me anything besides how to mispronounce even the most basic words, it’s that you suck at taking care of yourself. Where do you keep your trash bags?”
“Beneath the kitchen sink,” I grumbled.
He left the room, and I crossed my arms over my chest, starting to shiver again, suddenly freezing without his body heat.
I needed to get out of this ruined dress, but I had a feeling Theo meant for me to put it straight in the trash, so I stripped off just the bodice because the wet fabric clinging to my breasts felt like the coldest part of me.
A minute later, I heard a rustling sound before he slipped back in.
“Here,” he said, dropping to a crouch with the bag open. “Step out of the dress.”
The sight of him, practically kneeling at my feet, hit me like a bulldozer. This obnoxious, proud asshole was actually trying to help someone other than himself for once, and I couldn’t decide if I was touched or turned on.
Definitely Stockholm syndrome, I thought.
I’d been forced to endure the presence of my blackmailer for so long that the lines were starting to blur between us.
Physically? They’d been fucked since our first disastrous run-in.
But after what he’d just revealed about his mother, I felt myself softening toward him emotionally, too.
I wanted to know more. Crack open his brain and sift through the matter until I understood what made him tick, all the traumas that had led to him being such a mean, closed-off person.
He glanced up at me. “I’m trying to help you. Quit looking at me like you’re back to planning my death.”
“Have you heard my mom say ‘murderer’?”
“No.”
“She pronounces it mer-dare-er.” I told him, pushing down the waist of the dress.
“Here.” He guided my hand to his shoulder.
I braced myself on it and stepped out of the dress. He kept his eyes downcast, gathering the fabric into the trash bag. My bra and underwear soon followed. Setting the bag aside, he went to pull the shower curtain open, and my hand slipped free from him as he stood.
“Get in,” he ordered.
“Only if you say please.”
Annoyance swept over his face. “Stella, your fucking lips are blue. This isn’t the time for jokes.”
I glanced in the mirror. I’d been steadfastly ignoring my reflection, and yikes, for good reason. I looked like a corpse. Black-rimmed eyes, parchment-paper skin, bones sticking out, and yup, blue lips.
“Please get into the shower,” Theo said, low and ardent and, oh god, I liked the sound of him saying please like that.
He gave me a gentle shove forward, and I managed to stumble in, hissing when the hot water met my frigid skin.
He jerked his head inside. “What happened?”
“Nothing. Water’s hot.”
He pulled back, leaving the curtain open a crack, and started yanking off his clothes, muttering darkly under his breath about stupid, stubborn women insisting on contracting hypothermia.
“I couldn’t get back in that car,” I said.
He shut up.
I probably should have turned my head away and given him some privacy, but the sight of Theo stripping made the threat of hypothermia worth it.
He pulled his shirt off, bending to shove it into the garbage bag, and I had my first real glimpse of his wide back, his skin puckered with goose bumps, muscles flexing.
My gaze snagged on three small imperfections: circular scars that were about the size of . . . cigarettes.
Jesus Christ, what had this man been through?
He kicked off his ruined shoes next, and then undid his slacks. With a shove, they fell to the floor along with his boxers, and he faced me, fully naked.
“Move,” he said.
I stepped forward, letting him climb in behind me. He wrapped his arms around my chest and he pulled me backward, all the way down to the shower floor, positioning me right in front of him so I had his warmth at my back and the hot water hitting my front.
A full-body shudder wracked through me, and he held me tighter.
He growled. “If you end up with pneumonia . . .”
“You know you can’t actually get sick from being cold and wet, right? That’s just a myth.”
“Maybe so, but it can weaken your immune system, making you more susceptible to illnesses, and you’re already sick.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but he cut me off.
“Stop arguing with me. You need all the energy you can spare to heat your body back up.”
“I’m fine,” I lied. “You don’t need to do this. Despite what my mom told you, I can take care of myself.”
He snorted.
“I can,” I argued. “And you hate me, so why the hell are you sitting here trying to—”
He clapped his hand over my face, covering both my mouth and nose. “Shhh. Go to sleep.”
I tried slapping at him, but he grabbed my hands out of the air with his free one and pinned my wrists to my stomach.
“I already told you I don’t hate you,” he said. “Stop fishing for compliments. It’s pathetic.”
I bit his palm. His hand stayed where it was, and I felt his dick twitch behind me, confirming that he liked it. Oh, no. Had I been right this whole time? Did Theo have some sort of pain or degradation kink, and I’d been unwittingly feeding into it?
The long history of our arguments unspooled through my mind. In the tattoo shop. At the Italian restaurant. At my parents’ place. Hell, every time we’d been around each other for the past month. All our toxic texts and emails and death glares.
Had Theo been turned on every time? The thought made me want to clench my thighs together. Because all I could picture was his cock fully erect, tucked into his waistband to hide it from sight while we insulted each other.
I bit his hand harder.
He hissed in a breath and finally let me go, and I could feel his dick swelling at my lower back. What in the entire fuck was I supposed to do with this new information? Or did I even need to do anything with it?
“What you said earlier,” I began.
He released his hold on my wrists to push my hair aside and started kneading my shoulders. “What, specifically? We’ve said a lot of things to each other tonight.”
I closed my eyes. His fingers felt like heaven, stroking over my skin in circles, just the right amount of pressure.
Between that, the water, and the heat of his body, I was finally starting to defrost, finally starting to unwind from how tightly coiled I’d been all night.
Maddie. Theo and I fighting worse than usual.
The almost–car accident. They’d sent my adrenaline sky-high, which masked my gastritis symptoms, but I knew the crash was coming, and honestly?
Theo telling me we were done couldn’t have come at a better time, because I didn’t think I could keep this up for much longer without serious, lasting consequences to my health.
His thumbs stroked up my spine, one on either side, and then started rubbing slow circles over the top of my back.
I let out a low noise and dropped my chin to my chest, only to catch sight of his thick thighs framing mine.
Tentatively, I reached out and put my hands on them, forcing my fingers to keep still instead of tracing the long lines of his muscles.
Part of my art courses had included anatomy, and even years later, I was still fascinated by the way the human body was put together.
“Stella,” Theo said.
“Mmm?”
“What were you about to say?”
“Lower.”
He dropped his voice. “What were you about to—”
I elbowed him.
His hands slid down my spine.
“I was talking about when you said we were done,” I clarified. “What did you mean, exactly? And don’t start another fight. I’m too tired.”
“I meant exactly that. No more parties or public events together. I want my money back, but not if it means you suffer this much for it. Like I said, I try to avoid physical torture.”
“But mental torture is okay?”
“Yes, and I think I’ve put up with more than enough of it from you. I need a break.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” I said, my tone flat. “What if you don’t recoup your losses?”
“I will.”
“But what if you don’t?”
He sighed, kneading his way back up my spine. “Stella, just drop it. One way or another, I’ll get what I’m after, but you don’t have to worry about it anymore.”
I waited for the elation his sentence should have caused, but I must have been through too much shit tonight to feel joy, because all I felt was numb. Not even relieved.
“Do you promise?” I said.
“Yes.”
I turned in his arms.
“What are you—”
I kissed him. Maybe just to be reckless, maybe just to feel something, or maybe because I’d been fighting the urge to kiss him again for so long that I couldn’t fight it any longer.
Theo froze for half a second, but then he groaned, deep and guttural, and yanked me the rest of the way onto his lap. His lips opened, our tongues brushed, and—yes. This was what I wanted. This was what I needed.
His hands fell to my ass, fingers digging in.
I lifted mine to his face and tilted his head back to get a better angle.
He was an annoyingly good kisser, knew when to push deeper, when to draw back.
When to nip at my lower lip in a way that spiked my lust. Unable to help myself, I rolled my hips, dragging my pussy over the entire length of his cock and pausing at the top to feel the swell of his head prod my entrance before forcing myself back down.
He pulled me into him, dick straining between us, and I swirled my hips as much as he allowed, the friction of his skin against my clit enough to make me lightheaded.
He shuddered, his mouth moving faster, forcing me to keep up.
I might have been the one who started this, I might have just escalated it, but I was under no illusion that he didn’t have the power to rip control from my hands.
And yet he let me have my fun, allowed me to tease and torment us both by rolling my hips again and again, my nipple rings dragging over his chest every time I moved.
With a gasp, I leaned back to stare down at him, my hips working in a circle, his cock straining beneath me.
Goddamn it, why did he have to be so beautiful?
The water had slicked his hair back, leaving nothing to distract from the sharp angles of his cheekbones, that pouty mouth.
His eyes held another challenge, another dare, like he didn’t think I could do this.
That I would change my mind or chicken out, leaving the question of how good it could be between us unanswered.
But if he was being serious, and this was the last night I’d ever see him, I saw no reason to hold back.
No reason to pretend I hadn’t wanted him since the first time he’d walked into my shop.
Was it messed up? Borderline pathetic to lust after my blackmailer?
Maybe, but right now, I didn’t give a shit.
I was choosing problematic over safe, letting myself be reckless and stupid one more time before I had to go back to living the most boring, cautious life imaginable.
I bent forward and bit his lower lip. “I want you, Theo.”
The devil was in his grin as he stared up at me. “I’ve been waiting weeks for you say that.”
“Then why didn’t you say it first?”
His smile widened. “Because I couldn’t be the first one to break.”
I tried to climb off him.
He called my bluff, yanking me back into place and holding me there, his eyes dropping to my tits, tongue slipping out to wet his lower lip.
“I couldn’t let you know how bad I wanted it.
” He squeezed my hips and ground upward.
“That every time I said something to piss you off, it was because I was thinking about fucking you and needed you to put me in my place.”
A blush crept across my cheeks. “You must have been thinking about it constantly.”
He dragged his gaze up to mine, his eyes almost black they were so dark.
“Yes. That night in the restaurant, I imagined dropping to my knees and licking your pussy right there at the table. And then outside that first party, when I got you up on that car. I was desperate to pull your panties aside and get you off where anyone might catch us.”
I braced my hands on his chest, meeting his renewed thrusts, feeling my slickness start to coat his shaft with every dirty word that fell from his mouth. I wanted him inside me, so bad, but knew I couldn’t take him yet.
“At Cordelia’s,” he continued, “when AJ said you’d shared people between you? That became my new obsession.” He shook his head and leaned forward, fastening his mouth on my breast, tongue swirling my nipple in a languorous stroke before he flicked the ring pierced through it.
I cried out, grinding down, desperate for friction.
With a groan, he shifted back, using his grip to help me. “I couldn’t believe it when it actually happened. Kept thinking you were going to panic and run out of the room.”
“I couldn’t let you win,” I said, breathless. I wanted his mouth back on me.
His gaze turned scorching. “Don’t lie. You wanted it, too.”
“Yes.” The word was a breathy confession.
“How did it feel?” he asked. “To have us both inside you.”
“So good.” The words were close to a sob, I’d held them in so long.
“But once wasn’t enough, was it?” he said. “And now you can’t stop thinking about the three of us together again, can you?”
I shook my head.
“I can’t stop thinking about it either,” he said. “You in the middle again, he and I so deep inside your ass and cunt we can feel each other moving.”
Oh, god.
I scrambled backward, landing on the floor of the tub between his legs. We stared at each other, chests heaving, the silence so loud it was deafening.
He rose to his feet, water sluicing off his big, beautiful body, and extended a hand to me.
“Get up here. I want you warm and clean before I fuck you.”