sixteen
Rumor Has It… The official king and queen of WHPA are cementing their high school sweetheart and couple-to-beat status by tying the knot. Will they wait for her career to take off before the ceremony, or are they already planning the wedding of the century?
Gloria Walton
“What’s it going to be, butterfly?” Colt asks, swinging out of the parking lot of Cliff’s, where he just insisted on feeding me a steak dinner. “Coffee, bubble tea, or a root beer float? Choice is yours.”
“Damn,” I say. “That’s cold.”
He just laughs. “We can get something else if you want.”
“How can I pick between those?”
“Which will be best for stargazing?”
“Floats,” I decide.
“Good choice,” he says, reaching over to squeeze my knee.
“But as much as I’d love to make this day last even longer, I actually have to go to work. It’s Saturday night.”
“I already rented the room for the entire night,” he says with a smug grin, pulling into the drive-through for Two Scoops of Love . “That means you’re mine for the night.”
“I still have to work,” I protest.
“Why?” he asks, after ordering for us. “They got their money. What do they care if you’re in the room or not?”
“They might care.”
“Besides, how are you going to dance, when I have to carry you around?” he asks, handing me a float. “Am I supposed to run you around the stage, spinning you around, and showing you off to a bunch of empty seats?”
I laugh picturing it. “Fine. But if I get fired, I’ll lose my apartment, and then I’ll have to live in your attic like Rochester’s crazy wife.”
“Actually you’d be Jane,” he says, pulling away from the ice cream shoppe. “Dixie would be the crazy wife.”
“Lock the door and throw away the key, and all our problems will be solved,” I say, feeling like an evil bitch for the thought. But evil bitch was my main mode for long enough that it’s a comfortable place to return to all the same.
“Just as long as she doesn’t have her phone,” he says darkly. “That’s where she does the most damage.”
A minute later, he pulls up at the bubble tea shop.
“I’m not allowed to get drinks here anymore,” I admit.
“You are now,” he says, pulling up to the window. He orders and hands his Black Card through, and they don’t bat an eye. I smile sweetly at the asshole who refused to serve me when he hands our drinks through.
“I thought you were making me choose between the three options,” I say, setting my tea in the cup holder.
“Why choose?” he asks. “We’ll make a quick stop for coffee on the way out of town. And drink carriers.”
After fulfilling the promise, he pulls off the highway onto the dirt road to the quarry a few minutes later.
“Okay, I’ve been silent long enough,” I say. “I have to ask. What the fuck is up with your music?”
“We’re driving on a dirt road,” he points out, gesturing around. “We’re about to stargaze in the bed of my truck. Country music is the obvious soundtrack to the night.”
“Seems a little cliché.”
“A little?” he asks, reaching over to crank the volume. “You’re obviously not listening closely enough.”
We arrive at the quarry, where a couple other vehicles are already parked. At least there’s no party tonight, since it’s well past football season, a moment’s rest between prom and graduation. Everyone is studying for finals or preparing for their first internship, looking forward with anticipation and trepidation, the realization finally sinking in that it’s finally almost over.
We survived it, for better or worse. We’ll all gain our diplomas when we walk across that stage, but we’ve lost so much. Family members passed and friends moved away; some of us lost loves and lovers; survived traumas and trials; fell further than we knew we could. But the finish line is finally there, within reach, at the tips of our fingers. No one wants to risk fucking it up this close to the end.
Colt goes to set up the back of the truck again, then carries me around. “I don’t know how many stars we’ll see tonight,” he says, setting me on the tailgate and nodding to the sky, where the moon glows dully through a thin layer of rapidly moving clouds. “’Fraid it’s more like cloud-gazing.”
“I’m not here for the stars,” I say lightly.
“Is that right?” he asks, cracking a slow, appreciative smile as he looks me over.
“Are you?” I challenge.
He leans in and gives me a slow kiss, the smile still playing on his lips. When he pulls back, he slowly tucks my hair behind my ear. “Butterfly, I’d trade all the stars in the sky for the ones in your eyes when you look at me that way.”
“Does that work on all the girls?”
“I don’t know, does it?” he asks, opening a little cooler and handing me a beer before hopping up beside me. “I’m testing it on you before I take it to my other side chicks.”
I laugh and set the beer aside with the other drinks, holding the Styrofoam cup between my thighs as I stir the long spoon through the hole in the dome-shaped lid of my float.
“It was pretty good,” I admit. “A solid 7.5.”
He laughs and shakes his head, leaning back to work his fingers into the pocket of his jeans. I watch him, my mouth watering like it always does when he brings attention to those narrow hips. I can’t help picturing them without his jeans, the sharp angle of his hipbones, the V of muscle between, the tattoos… His perfect, smooth, pierced cock.
He slips something onto his tongue and takes a swallow of beer before setting it aside and picking up his own float. I think about commenting on the pills, then decide to leave it alone. It was only one, and he was mostly fine after taking at least a half dozen last night.
“A 7.5,” he mutters to himself, shaking his head. “Tough crowd.”
I shrug. “Or maybe you’re just used to girls who don’t make you work for it.”
“Oh, now I have to work for you?”
“Some parts of me.”
I wait for him to crack a joke about already getting my ass without effort, but he just frowns into his float. “Interesting.”
“Is that a dealbreaker?”
“No,” he says. “I’m not afraid of hard work.”
“You sure?” I ask. “Because I don’t think you’ve ever had to work for anything in your whole life.”
“That’s not true.”
“I’m not saying your life has been easy, at least not since I’ve known you. But work for something you really wanted? I don’t know.”
“I want things.”
“And you get them,” I point out. “Everything comes to you. You have money. A name. Looks. A girlfriend who adores you and would do anything in the world for you. Hell, you didn’t even have to propose—at least not that you remember.”
“Doesn’t count,” he says. “That’s not something I wanted.”
“Even getting your status back,” I go on. “You didn’t fight for that and win your place on the throne again. You held on until fortunes changed, and the elites placed the crown back on your head.”
He grins. “Why fight for something when you can wait for lady luck to smile on you again? I knew I’d have to get a winning hand again if I stayed in the game long enough.”
“So you agree with me.”
“Nah,” he says. “I worked my ass off to survive the past few years. That’s gotta count for something.”
“Yeah,” I admit. “It does. And like Harper says, maybe you just have to find something worth fighting for.”
“I think I found her,” he says quietly.
Our eyes meet, and the sparkling crackle of electricity in the air is almost palpable, like the air is charged before a lightning strike. He leans in, and I let my eyes flutter closed, my breath catching as his lips skim over mine. I have to brace a hand on the tailgate beside me so I don’t topple off it into the pit below.
After a second I pull back, clearing my throat and stirring my drink. “Even if it doesn’t come easy?” I ask, finding myself holding my breath for his answer.
His fingers move over to cover mine, ink swirling over his scarred skin, the stump of his middle finger blunt and terrible. We both turn to stare down at our mismatched hands for a long, silent moment.
“I didn’t choose easy,” he says at last. “I chose this.”
“You know how fucked up I am. After what I did to you…” I trail off, swallowing hard, unable to look at him with the shame swimming inside me. “Do you remember?” I whisper.
“I remember,” he says grimly. “And I guess… I guess I get it. Enough that I’m not pissed about it.”
“You should be,” I say. “It’s worse than what Dixie does. That’s the kind of fucked up I am. Do you really want to be with someone like that?”
“You think I’m not fucked up?”
“But I fucked you up,” I insist, my throat tightening. “What if I hurt you again? It’s not like you just have to fight another guy for me. I don’t want any other guys. But what about when you have to fight me for me? When you have to fight my demons?”
“We’ll fight them together.”
“It’s a lot to ask,” I say. “I’m a mess. That’s probably why there are no other guys to fight off.”
He cracks a grin. “You sure that’s why?”
“Shut up,” I say, giving his foot a playful push with mine.
“Look, I get it,” he says. “We all did what we had to do to survive. We’re all fucked up because of what we’ve done and had done to us. I know that. And I choose to love you anyway—not despite what you did, or because of it, but because I see who you are, Lo. That’s the girl I love. Even when you can’t see her, I do.”
My throat tightens so hard I can’t breathe. How can I be worthy of what he’s giving me, what he’s saying? But maybe that’s what he’s talking about. Maybe the girl I don’t see is worthy. Not the one I was, or the one I’ll become, but the one I am right now, broken and confused and unknowable even to myself.
“I don’t deserve you,” I choke out at last.
“Isn’t that what you meant at prom?” he asks. “You said girls just want someone to love them despite their flaws. I’m your someone, Lo. I see all of you—your sickness and your weakness and your meanness. It’s all part of you. I don’t love you despite it or because of it. I just love you. The whole fucked up package. I want all of it.”
“You don’t know what you’re signing up for,” I say, blinking back tears.
“I do,” he says. “I saw this documentary about lions once. This lioness got hurt, and her male lion stood over her licking her better. If anyone came up and threatened to get close, he’d scare them off, baring his razor-sharp teeth and snarling and roaring. And once they knew not to fuck with her and left, he’d go back to licking her like a kitten.”
“And you’re going to be my lion?”
“Damn right, I am,” he says. “Let someone try to get near you, and you’ll see.”
“You made that up,” I say, laughing despite myself. “You can’t lick someone better.”
“Or can you?” he asks, a wicked gleam in his eye. He pulls out the elastic in his hair, shaking his head to make his blond mane fall in waves around his face. “Want to be my lioness and find out?”
“How can I resist, when you let down your hair, you temptress, you.”
He growls and circles an arm around my waist, pulling me close. “I know, I look all majestic and shit. I’m a lion already. I’ve just been waiting for my lioness.”
We kiss.
We set our drinks aside without breaking contact, and we kiss.
Colt lays me back on the blankets, and we kiss.
After a while, he scoots me up and closes the tailgate, and I climb under the blanket, and he slides in with me, and we kiss.
He rolls on top of me, and we kiss.
He pulls my shorts aside and works his fingers into me, and I whimper through our kiss.
We fumble past our clothes, our breaths heavy and hot, our movements frantic, until our bare skin connects as intimately as our mouths. I wrap my legs around him, and he pushes into me, slow and deep, and still, we kiss.
We kiss until we’re both dizzy, and drunk, and dumb. Until we both shiver, and break, and cum.
Finally, he lifts his swollen lips from mine, burying his face in my shoulder. His breath is ragged in my ear, his heart racing mine, his cock still full and deep inside me, our bodies locked together in sweaty, primal need.
“I love you,” he whispers, his cock throbbing deep inside my core as an aftershock wracks his body. “God damn do I love you, Gloria Walton.”
“I love you too, Colt Darling,” I whisper, stroking his hair, my heart soaring and shattering at once, so full of love I think it’ll kill me. It takes me higher than any climax can, higher than racing in June Bug can, higher than any feeling in the world. It’s addictive, and crushing, and absolutely fucking terrifying.
I squeeze my legs around him, and he growls and grinds, his piercing tormenting mine.
“Can I stay inside you until I get hard again and fuck my own puddle of cum inside you?”
“Is that possible?”
He chuckles. “Yeah, butterfly. It’s possible. And it feels so fucking good. Like fucking a tube of hot yogurt.”
“Not even going to ask how you know what that feels like.” My voice is light, but I’m thinking about how he knows how much he likes this, waiting inside someone, fucking his own cum in and out of her. He must have done it with Dixie, and suddenly, I hate her with a newfound bitterness so intense I almost choke on it.
“Hey,” he says, rolling us onto our sides, still locked together. “What’s going on in that pretty head of yours?”
“Nothing,” I lie. “I’m fine.”
“And you told me that when you say that, you’re never fine.”
I curse myself for saying that, and him for remembering. He’s supposed to forget and ignore everything I say, to fuck me like everyone else, like I’m a secondary being, not human but a vessel they can fill with their hurt and hatred, unleash their desires and disgust upon, imprint with their most twisted fantasies and Freudian nightmares.
Colt taps a fingertip softly against my temple. “Knock-knock,” he whispers. “Let me in.”
“Sorry,” I say. “You can keep going. I just got in my head.”
The corner of his mouth lifts in a small, sad smile. “That sounds like a sign that I should stop.”
“It’s fine,” I assure him, pulling him closer with my legs. “Just finish. It’s my stuff. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Okay,” he says slowly. “But that’s beside the point. I don’t want to finish when you’re not into it. I want to hear your stuff, Gloria. Don’t you get that? I want all of it. All of you.”
“I was just being a jealous bitch,” I admit, unable to meet his earnest gaze. “It’s dumb. I know I’m not the first girl you’ve been with or the first girl you loved.”
“And I’m not your first,” he says. “Well, I was, technically. But I’m not the only guy you’ve fucked. I’m not the first guy you’ve loved.”
“No,” I admit. “I loved Rylan, even if it was a fantasy, a dumb first-love kind of delusion. And I guess I loved Royal too in some fucked up way.”
“And I loved Destiny in that simple, shallow, first-love way,” he says. “And Dixie in the fucked up way. But now I have you, and it’s different. Real.”
I swallow hard, dragging my gaze to his. “Really?” I whisper.
“Yeah,” he says, stroking my cheek. “Maybe some people get it right on their first try, but not everyone’s that lucky—or that type. I was young and dumb and in love, and it felt like it would last forever. But in reality, I probably would have fucked it up. I needed to be free and fuck around. I needed to grow, and I guess I’m a slow learner, because I needed to learn how to love someone and get it right. Hell, I still need to learn that. I want to learn it with you.”
My throat tightens, and I swallow, nodding once. “Me too,” I whisper, my voice choked with tears. “I choose you, Colt. I didn’t get to choose any of the others. I never chose anyone but you.”
“What about Royal?”
I shake my head. “No. I didn’t choose him any more than you chose Dixie. I loved him because I needed to love someone, and he chose me. From day one, he chose me. I could go along, or I could fight, but in the end, it wouldn’t have mattered. He always got what he wanted, and he wanted me, for reasons only he will ever really know.”
“I think I know.”
I draw back. “You do?”
“Yeah,” he says, sliding his hand under my neck and tugging me forward, pressing his lips to my forehead. “You’re fierce and strong and tough as hell. God, I thought you were fucking titanium for most of high school. You were so fucking mean. I never would have guessed all this was under there.”
“That was kind of the point,” I say, letting out a shaky laugh. “But I don’t think that’s what Royal saw. I think he saw that he and his brothers had broken us, and taking us in was his way of atoning in some way. I think he thought he was giving me something I genuinely wanted. But I never did.”
“I see that now,” he says. “Even the way you dress changed when you left the group. I dig the punk rock look, by the way. Is that the real you?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I’m not sure who I am without someone telling me.”
For a minute, we turn our head and stare up at the night sky. The moon is long gone, covered by a thickening layer of clouds.
“You probably would have been like Harper if they left you alone,” Colt muses after a bit. “A badass scholarship chick. No wonder y’all are friends.”
“Yeah,” I whisper. “Maybe.”
“I never really got it, why you stayed after that day in the basement,” he says. “Why you joined them.”
“I didn’t want to,” I say. “But I thought if I went along for a while, I could protect my sisters. I thought we’d have power at the top, and first chance we got, we could get out. That’s how it is at other schools. Popular girls can date any guy they want, and they might leave the group to sit with their new boyfriend. By the time I realized that no one had power at Willow Heights but the Dolces, it was too late. We knew too much, and they wouldn’t let us go. And the punishment for trying…” I break off with a shudder.
“I don’t think your sisters mind too much.”
“No, I guess not,” I say, feeling that hollow ache in my chest that comes whenever I think about them, or Dawson, or my parents. “Maybe things would have been different if we’d talked more, but they really only ever talked to each other. I didn’t know.”
I don’t cry for my sisters anymore, not even when they took Dixie’s side. Even their betrayal doesn’t hurt. I just feel sad for them.
“I’m sorry,” Colt says, drawing me in and holding me close, cradling the back of my head in one hand and wrapping his other arm tight around me. “I didn’t know, either. I didn’t know it was like that for you.”
“I did what I had to,” I say. “And I survived. Just like you.”
“Don’t jinx it,” he says. “We’ve still got a few weeks left until graduation.”
I think of Dixie, how mad she’d be if she found us right now. If she’d drug her own boyfriend to get a proposal, what would she do to him if she found out he was still cheating? What would she do to me?
A shiver works its way down my spine. Colt feels it, and he traces his fingertips down from the base of my neck to my tailbone. They linger, then slide lower, spreading wide across my ass. He nuzzles my ear and squeezes my soft flesh.
“Is that puddle I left inside you ready to be played in?”
My lids flutter closed, and I nod in assent.
He kisses along my jawline, down the column of my throat, grinding his cock inside me. I can feel the fullness of his girth now starting to harden again, to grow more unyielding, more demanding.
“Can I put a finger in your ass while I fuck you?” he asks, his breath hot on my neck. “I want to feel my cock wrecking your sloppy cunt from every angle.”
“Can you really feel that?”
He pulls my knee up over his hip and then palms my ass again, spreading me open. “See for yourself.”
“What do you mean?”
His eyes bore into mine. “Dip your finger into that cum-soaked cunt for me, pretty girl.”
“But… You’re still there.”
“And?”
I swallow, then slide a hand down, teasing my clit for a minute before obeying him. I work a finger into my opening, gasping at the stretch of having it inside me at the same time as his cock. I can feel his length, hard and fierce, and my own soft warmth, both us of slick with his cum. I wince at the painful stretch, and a tremor of pleasure goes through me.
Colt’s eyes are blazing. “Is it nice and coated?” he asks, his voice strained.
I nod.
“Now put it in your ass.”
I swallow. “Colt…”
“Butterfly.”
My finger is trembling as I reach back, touching the swollen ring of flesh he tore into last night. It’s still sore and stinging, the skin hot and puffy from being stretched so far.
“Is it in?” he asks, his cock throbbing inside me, thick and hard and ready to obliterate me from the front this time.
I shake my head, and he leans up on his elbow, pushing the blanket down so he can watch. Humiliation burns in my cheeks when he angles my hips so he can see my finger wetting my puckered entrance. But I see the lust blazing in his eyes, the way he wets his lips as he watches, like he’s imagining tasting me again, and it floods my core with heat instead of fear. I know that if I stop, he won’t make me go on. That I have a choice, just like when I choose him. And now, I choose to obey.
I push the tip of my finger past the snug ring of muscle, then pull it out, then in again, wetting it for entrance.
“That’s it, butterfly,” Colt growls, his fingers biting painfully into my flesh, the hot ridge of his cock straining against my walls. “Now be a good girl and push it in deep. Let me see you finger your ass hole while I take care of your juicy little cunt.”
“Yes, Daddy,” I tease, smiling up at him as I ease my finger in all the way.
“Fuck,” he groans, withdrawing and then pushing back inside me with one slow, deep grind. I feel it through the barrier of my own flesh, feel it slide past my finger as he buries it to the hilt, then the twinge of pain in my core as he claims my very depths. An involuntary moan of pure bliss slips from my lips, rolling out into the stillness, echoing into the abyss beyond the truck, whispering under the thick clouds that bear witness.
Colt pumps into my cum-drenched opening, our flesh connecting with an audible, soft slap in the quiet of the night. He fucks me good and deep, adding his finger to mine and driving into me harder and harder, until our bodies are slicked with sweat in the late spring humidity hanging low over us with the incessant buzz of insects. I throw my head back and cry out as I cum, letting my voice join the chorus, my legs pulling him closer, wanting to keep him inside forever.
He bends to find my throat, licking and sucking the sweat from my skin like he can’t get enough as he fills me with his own release. When he finally pulls out, he slides down the blankets and pushes my knees up, then groans, his eyes rolling back. “Goddamn, Lo,” he swears quietly. “That’s the hottest mess I’ve ever seen in my life. Can I take a picture?”
“I don’t really like thinking about how I look,” I admit. “Down there.”
“If you hate it, I’ll delete it.”
“No faces,” I stipulate.
“Just your pretty little pussy,” he agrees, digging his phone from the pocket of his jeans. I hold myself open for him, and he takes one, then holds it up for me to see. My pussy lips are swollen and red from the pounding, slicked with drops of his cum. My hole is filled with creamy white.
“Do you like it?” I ask, watching him carefully. Duke’s words when they shunned me still echo in my head more than I care to admit.
“It’s the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen,” he says. “I’ll never need porn again.”
He drops his phone and dives between my legs, sucking and licking and moaning until I explode again, crying his name into the night sky. Finally he rises up, pushing into me again as he tugs my mouth open and fills it with the cum he just sucked from my pussy. I swallow, then capture his mouth, sliding my tongue over his to taste more of him. He goes hard and fast, and I whimper in pain at the soreness. I’m not used to being wanted so much, fucked so much. I’m raw and spent by the time he’s done.
“That has to be the last one,” I say, catching my breath as I lie there prickled with sweat, trying to cool down.
“Agreed,” he says. “My dick is sore. I think I’m chafing.”
“Cry me a river,” I tease, rolling my eyes. “Now I really won’t be able to walk for a week.”
“Good,” he says. “Now stop talking dirty. You’re making me hard again, and then we’ll have to suffer through another round.”
“What a terrible punishment,” I say with a dramatic sigh.
“Now you’re asking for it,” Colt says, tickling my sides until I beg for mercy.
Laughing, he releases me at last, drops the tailgate, and pulls me to the bottom of the truck bed. Together we look out over the pitch black of the abyss. Far below, I see a glimmering light blink on and off, then another, and another, as the year’s first fireflies twinkle to life.
“Look, they brought the stars to us,” I breathe.
“To you,” Colt says, pulling the blankets over us. “The whole world rearranges itself for a true queen.”
“Try telling the world that.”
“I will,” he says seriously. “I’m sorry I haven’t done anything for you at school.”
I give him a funny look. “You don’t have to do anything for me, Colt. I don’t want to be back in the elite. I hated it there.”
“Not even if you were on my arm?” he asks. “I could make it happen with a snap of my fingers. Haven’t you heard? I’m the true fucking king.”
“You’ve always been a king,” I point out. “Even when they took your crown.”
“Must be why you worshipped me in secret.”
“I did,” I say, laying my head on his shoulder. “If I could have chosen for myself, I would have chosen you every single time.”
“If I’d known, I would have chosen you even when I didn’t have a choice,” he says. “You’re Gloria Fucking Walton. Look at you. Come on. It was always you, Lo.”
I shiver at his words, and he slides onto my back, covering me with his warm body and resting on his elbows so he doesn’t crush me. He kisses the back of my neck, sending more tingles spiraling through me.
“I thought you hated me,” I admit.
“Maybe,” he says. “I hated you because I couldn’t have you. But I always wanted you.”
“And now you have me,” I say. “If you want me.”
“I’d have to be crazy not to,” he says, running his rough fingertips down my arm. “Now that I can choose, I’ll always choose you, Gloria Walton. Always.”
“And I choose you,” I say, my voice thick with emotion, because I’m thinking about Dixie, and where she fits into all this. Maybe he says the same things to her when they’re together, and that’s why she stays, even though she knows.
“Maybe we always had a choice,” I say. “Everything is a choice. I chose to join them to survive and protect my sisters. You chose your own way to do the same, to survive and protect your sister.”
“Not much of a choice.”
“Every day, we choose what’s best for that day,” I say, remembering something I said to Harper a million years ago. “Every day, you decide what’s worth fighting for. What’s worth keeping.”
“Then every day, I choose you,” he says, placing a kiss on my shoulder before wrapping an arm around my chest to squeeze me tight to him. “Because you’re worth keeping.”
“Why would you do that?” I ask, my voice choked again. “You’re royalty in this town now, Colt. You’re the comeback kid. Everyone loves you. You could have anyone you wanted.”
“I don’t want anyone,” he says. “I want you.”
“I want you too,” I say again, feeling happy and sad at once. “Every single day.”
He rests his chin on my shoulder and lets out a contented sigh. “I might fall asleep here.”
“You’d crush me,” I protest, picking up my phone and thumbing it on. “Though we have been awake for at least thirty-six hours straight.”
“Why do you have that troll on your lock screen?”
“That’s Jackie Kennedy,” I say indignantly. “She’s beautiful.”
“If you say so,” he says. “Not my type.”
“What’s your type?” I ask. “Marilyn?”
“Guess so,” he says, rolling his hips against mine. “By the way, I am enjoying these new curves.”
“I noticed,” I say, grinning over my shoulder at him.
He runs his hand down my side, tickling my waist. “What happened to the Gloria Walton who was afraid to eat ice cream?”
“I ate her,” I say, giggling and elbowing his hand when he keeps tickling. “Or maybe you did.”
“I did,” he growls into my neck. “And she was delicious.”
His hand moves down to my thigh, and he pulls it aside, sliding his hand between. He dips his finger into the mess he left and lets out a long, low moan, his body melting onto mine.
“I swear when you make that sound I spontaneously cum,” I say, arching my back and pushing my ass against him.
“Can I do it again?” he asks.
“Every single day.”
“I mean eat you,” he says, stroking a finger through my messy slit and flicking the tip against my piercing.
Pain throbs in my core, and I shiver with longing. My voice comes out breathy when I answer again. “Every single day.”
“See, we don’t need stars in the sky,” he says, sliding off me. “We can make our own.”
“And how are we going to do that?”
“I’ll worry about that,” he says. “You just open your legs, close your eyes, and trust me. I’ll make you see so many stars you’ll think you’re in another galaxy.”
Hard as it may be to let go and trust after everything that’s happened to me, he’s the one person who can make me obey. Even though spreading my legs and closing my eyes is as hard as it would be to spread my arms, close my eyes, and fall into the abyss of the pit below us, going on the blind faith that he’d catch me, I can do it. For him, I can.
I can choose to trust him, even though I’ve been hurt before. I can choose to obey my king, to kneel, to worship at his altar. It’s my choice to make.
When he tells me to crawl, to beg, to swallow, it’s my choice to comply.
Afterwards, I choose to let him strip away my protections and leave me bare, defenseless, vulnerable for him. I choose to spread my arms and let myself fall into his blue-sky eyes, into the midnight black above, the storm-bruised clouds that swallow my cries like his hungry mouth. In this world and every other galaxy, I choose the stars he promised me.
If he hurts me again, I’ll still choose him. Every single day until forever, this time and next time and every time, I choose him.
Maybe it makes me a fool to trust again, especially to place my trust in a man who’s engaged to someone else. But there’s no woman more delusional than the love-drunk mistress who just heard the three little words she’s been dreaming of for a year and a half, as she hid her tears and watched him walk away with another woman every goddamn day. There’s no faith stronger than the blind faith that things will change, that they’ll be different this time, that he’ll finally leave her and really choose me.
And blind faith is the only one that really counts. That’s when surrender happens.
This is my choice—to lay down my weapons and surrender. I’m so tired from fighting not just him, but Dixie, the Dolces, and what I truly want. Tonight, I hand the keys to my enemy and let him in, let him have what he wants, even if that’s to destroy me. I let him tear down my walls, throw open my cage, and rampage my heart, my body, my soul, my dignity. I give myself up to the enemy, make him my king and my god. I place my fate and my faith in his hands and let myself fall into the abyss, knowing he’s as likely to catch me with the point of his sword as he is to catch me on the tip of his tongue like a snowflake.
Whether he gives me galaxies or death, whether he lifts me to my feet or conquers me, locks my cage when he’s done or sets me free… That is his choice.