six
Gloria Walton
Colt keeps staring at me like I’m a stranger, like I didn’t just push him over the edge, like he’s not standing there with my cum all over him—our cum.
“Last year?” he prompts, his eyes some fathomless void I’ve never seen, a stormy sky you could lose yourself in, one that swallows planes and never spits them out.
I can only nod. My throat is too tight, my whole body trembling with terror. I can’t lose him again. I can’t do it.
“I’m going to need you to say it.”
“I told you,” I whisper. “We fucked last year. During Bye Week. More than once. It was… Life changing.”
The confession hangs in the air between us, and I have to drop my gaze because the way he’s looking at me with such disbelief, such disgust, makes me want to sink into the ground and disappear.
Without a word, he turns on his heel and starts for the door.
“Colt,” I cry, jarred out of my trance of guilt and regret.
He doesn’t respond, so I rush after him, grabbing his arm.
“Colt,” I say again. “I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you before. I did. I was just afraid—”
“Fuck. You.”
I flinch at the coldness in his tone, the finality.
“Please,” I cry. “Just let me explain.”
“You had your chance,” he says. “I’m done asking for the truth from a fucking liar. I should have expected it. You’ve always been a fake. A pretty, hollow doll with nothing inside but venom.”
“I’m not,” I insist, horrified to feel hot tears stinging my eyes. “You know that.”
“I don’t know anything,” he says, yanking his arm from my grip. “Except that you’re exactly what I always thought—a demon queen with no soul.”
“That’s not fair,” I cry. “I wanted to tell you. But if the Dolces knew—”
“I’m not the Dolces.”
“I know, but if I told you, and you let it slip—”
“Because I can’t handle myself?” he asks. “Because I’m so mentally challenged that I wouldn’t know better than to open my big mouth and accidentally tell them I fucked their queen? That’s what you’re going to say, right?”
“No,” I say, swiping helplessly at the tears spilling down my cheeks. “The less people who knew, the better.”
“For who?”
“What?” I whisper.
“Better for who?” he asks.
I shake my head, trying to answer, but my throat is clogged with tears. “For you,” I finally manage to choke out. “They would have killed you, Colt. I couldn’t risk it—couldn’t risk you. ”
“You couldn’t risk yourself,” he snaps. “I asked you. I fucking asked you, point blank, Gloria. You lied through your pretty white teeth. More than once. You lied straight to my face. So why would I believe anything coming out of your mouth right now?”
“Because I’m not lying now,” I say, ignoring the tap that means someone’s waiting to come in, waiting for the next set. “I couldn’t tell you before, but now that they let me go, I don’t have to protect you.”
“Protect me?” he asks incredulously.
“I wanted to tell you,” I insist. “But I was afraid they’d hurt you. Believe me, I would have told you sooner if anything good could come of it.”
“And now that you think you can get something out of it, you’re telling me?” he asks. “You’re fucking unbelievable, Gloria.”
“That’s not why,” I say, so frustrated I could scream. Why can’t he see how dangerous it would have been for both of us?
“You didn’t tell me because it was better for you,” he says flatly. “Because you wanted to keep your spot as queen, and if anyone knew you fucked the pariah, you might lose it. If I knew, I might expose you. Is that it? You thought I’d tell Dixie, and she’s put it on her blog, and you’d be ruined.”
I open my mouth to tell him she already knows, but I have no right to ruin his relationship that way. Before I can say anything at all, another knock sounds. Colt gives me one more scathing look, a look that cuts me off at the knees and makes me feel small and despicable and utterly worthless. Then he turns and walks out.
“Colt,” I cry, running after him.
I shove past a group of a half dozen men waiting to come in, perfectly respectable and professional in their designer suits and expensive haircuts and name brand cologne. The very opposite of Colt Darling in every way, from his casual t-shirt and wet jeans to his unruly lion’s mane to his disfigured hand and the tattoos covering his neck. I should be in my dressing room getting ready to tempt them to sin, to tease them until they’re so desperate they offer me the keys to their Bentleys and Jaguars, offer me a life of luxury as their mistress, put me up in some fancy apartment where my only job is to spend their money and look pretty and make them feel young again when they slip away from their wives for an hour.
But the thought of them touching me makes my skin crawl, and I hate them for getting in my way, for looking at me like I’m the one who’s pathetic as I run out in a thong, my nipples showing through the wisps of lace, my -inch heels clattering on the marble floor.
Someone calls after me, one of the girls or maybe Ms. Scarlet, but I don’t stop. I run for the final door, the one that leads downstairs. Colt’s just disappearing through the exit at the bottom of the stairs when I reach the top.
“Colt, wait,” I call, but the door slams behind him, leaving me and my echo alone in the empty stairwell.
I charge down, not caring that I’m walking out on clients, that I’m about to run through the Downtown Diner basically naked, that Mr. North could lock me out of the club. All that matters is that Colt understands, that he knows I didn’t do it to hurt him.
I burst through the door into Mr. North’s office, ignoring the order he barks at me, and through Ms. Scarlet’s. I run into the diner, where Scarlet has “The Thunder Rolls” playing on the jukebox, which seems painfully apt as I race out into the torrential April downpour. I’m instantly drenched from head to toe in frigid water. Searching for Colt through the veil of rain, I desperately scan the parking lot. Finally I catch a glimpse of movement through the darkness and the sheets of water sluicing down.
His head is ducked against the onslaught as he cuts across the lot, through ribbons of red and silver light that shimmer across the wet asphalt in the dark, toward his truck, which is pulled up behind my Mustang.
“Colt,” I shout, running across the lot, water splashing onto my legs from where it’s puddling on the pavement. I catch up just as he’s passing my car, grab onto him so he won’t go. I don’t care if I look like a drowned rat that just washed up in the gutter. He has to know.
He yanks his arm away, like he can’t bear my touch, and my heart shatters. “What?” he demands, his voice as cold as the torrents of water battering us and bouncing off the nearby cars.
Suddenly I’m glad for the rain that hides my tears, for the darkness that hides my hurt. “Please just listen,” I beg.
“I’ve heard enough,” he says. “Despite the brain damage, I’m not stupid, Gloria. I know how girls like you think. You’re just like Dixie.”
I bristle at the comparison, my own anger rising. “Then maybe now I have a chance,” I snap back at him. “Since you’re obviously so in love with that psycho you can’t see what’s been staring you in the face all along.
“You—” He breaks off, fists clenched, then turns away to let out a wordless bellow of fury. I’ve never seen him lose his temper in all the time I’ve known him, through all the shit he’s endured. He’s always been too cool to care, even when we were grinding him into the ground. He barely flinched, barely fought back. Everything just rolls off him. But not this.
He turns back, rain streaking his chiseled features, his eyes burning with rage. “You lied to me when it benefitted you,” he spits out. “Now that you’re nothing, you have nothing to lose. You think because our positions have flipped and you’re the pariah, you can get something out of me. You think you can use me to get back in now that I’m a king. Is that it?”
I draw up to my full height on my -inch heels, so I’m only a few inches shorter than him. I wish I wasn’t basically naked now that the rain has drenched the tiny bits of fabric I wear. What was I thinking, chasing after him like a pathetic dog? I probably lost my job, and for what? So he could hurl the same insults at me that everyone else does, accuse me of chasing something that was only ever forced upon me?
“I never wanted a king,” I yell over the pounding rain. “I just wanted—I wanted—”
I want to say, “You.” To tell him what I wanted, what I still want. But I can’t say it.
“What?” he demands. “You wanted to be queen, but you didn’t want a king? You just tolerated them to get what you wanted, and they found out, and that’s why they dumped you?”
“No,” I say, slapping my hand down on June Bug’s roof in frustration. “I didn’t want any of it! I know that’s hard for you to believe because it means so much to you, but I never wanted to be queen. I never wanted to be anything but yours!”
He stares at me a long moment, absorbing the words I just said at the same time I do. I’m shaking from the cold, but the tears pouring from my eyes burn like acid. I take a shaky breath, knowing it’s too late to go back, to do damage control.
What does it matter anyway? The damage has been done for months, years.
He’s right about one thing. I have nothing to lose anymore.
“But you didn’t want that,” I say, spitting the bitter words at him. “So what difference does it make if I tell you we fucked once, or ten times, or a hundred? You’d still choose Dixie.”
“I didn’t know I had another choice,” he snaps. “You knew. You could have had me. But you chose yourself.”
“I could have had you?” I ask, a crazy, incredulous laugh bubbling up inside me. “How? You chose her. You always chose her. Do you think it was easy seeing you with her this year, and knowing you were happy so I couldn’t ruin that, while I was fucking miserable every god damn day because you didn’t even remember me?”
“Because you never told me,” he shouts, throwing his hands up.
“I couldn’t,” I scream back at him.
“Why?” he demands. “Because you thought I’d tell Dixie, and she’d destroy you? She did that already.”
“She already knows,” I snap. “That’s why she went after me like that. And yeah, I kept it from you, but she did too. At least I was trying to protect you, even if I did it in some fucked up way you’ll never understand. She’s supposed to be on your side, isn’t she?”
“Why would she keep that from me?” he asks, his voice quieter now, which only makes my breath hitch harder as I shudder violently from the cold.
“Because she didn’t want you to know,” I yell, throwing my hands up in frustration. “How can you not see this? She’s afraid you won’t choose her, so she didn’t give you that option.”
“And you’re telling me this now, hoping we’ll break up?” he asks. “Why? You know I still won’t choose you.”
“Because I—” I break off, interrupted by a bolt of lightning forking through the sky, followed instantly by a crack of thunder that shakes the ground. A gust of wind slams a curtain of water into us, so hard it knocks me back a step.
“What?” Colt presses. “You what, Gloria? Spit it out so I can walk away and never have to look at your face again.”
“I love you!” I scream the words at him, the rain slamming down so hard it almost drowns my voice. I won’t be silenced anymore, though. Not by the Dolces, not by him, not by god himself. “I fucking love you, okay?”
He takes a step back, staring at me like I’m suddenly a stranger.
“Is that what you want to hear?” I demand, the words I’ve held inside so long pouring out. “Because I do. I love you, and I’m sorry, I’ve tried to stop and I just—”
“You love yourself,” he says flatly.
“No,” I say, my voice so firm it surprises even me. It gives me more strength to know I can speak like that to him, the one person who always, always gets under my skin, makes my head spin, and leaves me a mess. So I keep going. “The Dolces may have made every other choice for me for the past two years, but they didn’t get to tell me how I feel. And you don’t either.”
He stares at me a long moment. “What, exactly, do you hope to gain by telling me that?”
I let out a growl of frustration. “Nothing! Not everyone is out to get something from you. The fact that you think they are says more about your relationship than it does about my motivations.”
“So what’s your motivation?” he demands. “You think I’m going to say it back?”
My heart drops to my toes. Even though I never thought that for an instant, some miniscule, irrational, primitive part of me had the barest sliver of hope…
“No,” I say firmly, cutting myself off from entertaining the possibility. “I would never expect that.”
“Good,” he says. “Because I don’t. You’re a despicable person.”
“Then that makes two of us. You think you’re so much better than me? A good person doesn’t kick someone when they’re down. A good person doesn’t do what you just did with me when he has a girlfriend.”
“You want to throw that in my face?” he demands, stepping closer. “Now? After what you did up there?”
I raise my chin and give him a cool look. “Just doing my job.”
“Bullshit,” he says, stepping even closer. He brushes back the hair plastered on my forehead, and I shiver from his touch, a whole new kind of shiver, so different from the ones quaking through me from the cold.
“Maybe.”
His eyes darken, and he wraps his fingers around my throat, backing me against the car and swaying against me. “Liar.”
I smile up at him, a thrilling surge of triumph swelling inside me even as despair flashes in the back of my mind. I can’t have him, and it will only end in heartbreak, but every time he touches me, he feeds my addiction, nourishes my parched soul like one more sip of water to someone dying of thirst. It sustains me in a way nothing else can.
He might not love me, but I live for these moments, for each touch, each smile, each cutting word he deals like a fatal blow. I would rather he tell me he hates me every day of my life than not have him speak to me at all. I can bear his hatred—I’ve been doing it for years. I can’t bear his absence.
“Is this what you want?” he growls. “Tell me the truth this time, and maybe you’ll get it.”
“How could I want a reject like you?”
“Fine,” he says, dropping his hand and starting to turn.
“No,” I cry, grabbing his arm and yanking him back. My heart is pounding so hard I think I’ll faint, but I can’t let him walk away. He can reject me a thousand times, but I have to take the chance. I will always take this chance. “You’re right. I want it.”
“What do you want?”
“I want you,” I say in a rush. “I want you throw me up against the car and fuck me so hard I can’t walk for a week.”
He grabs my throat again, shoves me back against the Mustang, and reaches down to yank his pants open. My core throbs in anticipation and my knees go weak at his sudden change of heart. I glance around at the darkened lot, sure someone will interrupt us, that something will stop us the way it always does. It’s too good to be true. There’s nothing but the cars and the rain and the diner, and the road beyond the lot, and here, there’s him and me. I’m lightheaded with disbelief and a yearning that pierces straight through my body and into the marrow of my bones.
Colt hooks his finger through the string between my legs, his knuckle brushing my skin, and I whimper like the desperate slut everyone says I am. The rain drumming on the roof of my car drowns it out, but he sees. His eyes bore into mine, and his jaw clenches before he curls his finger and rips away the fabric. He yanks my thigh aside and drives up into me in one quick, rough thrust.
I’m so shocked I can’t even breathe for a second. Then a strangled, animal cry tears from me, and I drop my head back on the car, my free leg rising to wrap around his hips, locking him to me. I’m so wet from the orgasms he already gave me that he slides all the way in with one push, burying himself to the hilt. The sensation is so intense I think I’m going to shatter. He grinds his pubic piercing against the one in my clit, his girth strains against my walls, and the piercings through his glans nudge against a spot so deep inside me I can’t breathe.
I give a helpless, shuddering cry of relief and bliss, my back arching as I seek friction.
“Fuck you, Gloria Walton,” he growls in my face, gripping my jaw, his mouth inches from mine, rain dripping off his nose. He draws back and slams into me again. “Fuck.” Again. “You.”
He keeps repeating it with each thrust, pounding into me harder and harder, until I’m afraid he’s going to crack the window, dent the metal. For once, I don’t care. I don’t care if he crushes my precious June Bug into a pile of rubble as long as he keeps fucking me in the wreckage. I want him to fuck me through the car, through the asphalt, straight into the ground. I want him to keep fucking me until I’m buried feet under, and then I want to die with him still inside me, driving into me like a madman, like he’s trying to rip my legs from their sockets and tear me in half with the force of his powerful body, his savage thrusts, his unleashed desire.
“Tell me what you are,” he demands. “I want to hear you admit it.”
“I’m a liar,” I agree, ready to say anything if he’ll keep fucking me like that, the thick head of his cock hitting the sweet spot deep inside that hurts so good.
“And?”
“And a fake.”
“And?” he growls, gripping my thigh even harder, slamming me up against the car.
“And a whore,” I gasp out.
“ My whore,” he snarls, his thrusts growing more savage. He grabs my chin and squeezes so hard his fingers bite in, making my mouth drop open to relieve the pain. “Say it. Tell me what you are.”
“Your whore,” I whisper.
“Atta girl,” he says, his eyes molten as he leans in so close each drop of rain splatters off his face onto mine. He relaxes his grip and slides his hand down the front of my neck, making me shudder violently against him. His breathing is labored, and he slows his pace, sliding his thick cock out and then pushing in slow and deep. “Now cum on my cock, my pretty little whore.”
I do. Helplessly, shamelessly, I squeeze my thighs around his hips and grind my clit against his pubic bone, moaning and whimpering as he claims me with each stroke until my walls clench and flutter, and my thick cum coats every inch of his bare cock as he plunges it into me in a maddening rhythm. His fingers cut into my thigh with crushing, bruising strength that makes me sob for relief as he pounds me harder, punishing every wrong I’ve ever done him, until at last, he throws his head back and roars into the night, the rain streaking down, the clouds roiling overhead. I feel his cock thicken, feel the molten heat of his rage pour into me as he erupts with volcanic force.
I’m wrecked, but my pussy pulses around him, hungry for it, demanding more.
“Suck my cum out with that demon cunt,” he growls, burying his face in my neck. “And say my name while you do it.”
“Colt,” I choke out. “My king, my god. I’m yours. I’m anything you want me to be. Just be mine.”
He pulls out, and I bite my lip to stifle a cry of protest. It’s too soon. I haven’t had enough, not even the beginning of enough.
Ignoring my clinging hands, he lays my naked, shivering body down in the back seat and steps back. Then he stands and looks down at me, taking his time, like he’s memorizing every inch of my body, my new curves that weren’t here the last time he looked at me that way, my wrecked cunt, my bruised thighs.
Finally he speaks. “That’s what you could have had.”
Then he closes my door, leaving me ruined and alone.