Elle
I want to lie to myself and say I’m doing this because I have to. Because I want the interlude. Because I need a break, physically and mentally. Because I need Gant to tutor me in ballet. Because I need his ass to pay for the computer Rin ruined before Mum gets a bill and starts prying.
Before she finds out that there is no scholarship. Just Gant Auclair.
I can say all the above are my reasons for giving in, but the truth is that I want him to tutor me in more ways than just dance. It doesn’t mean anything other than normal teen angst, sheer stupidity, horniness and burnout.
A rite of passage.
I can still hate him, just like he hates me. And I can still want to fuck him, just like he wants to fuck me. I just have to put thoughts of love and romance to the side. Right now we’re in a battle of who can fuck the other the hardest and the best. Who can get the last laugh. The last cruel cackle. Because all of this is just a giant game to him and if I’m staying, I have no choice but to play. And if I have to play, I have to win. Dethroning aside, I need a backup plan. A safety net. And that’s when an insane thought comes to me.
I keep saying that I’m not Gant’s. That I’m not his stupid little doll he can play with wherever he feels like. But what if I become just that? What if I feed his ego and make him believe I want nothing more than to be toyed with?
What if I become his comfort? His safety blanket that he can let his guard down around. That he can whisper his deepest secrets to. Because so far, I know jack shit about him besides what everyone else already knows via Beaussip’s articles. But that’s not the true Gant. That’s just his persona. A mask we all wear.
Mine is Scholarship Slut. Gant’s little pawn.
That’s not who am, but I can just pretend.
I can be the good baby doll that he needs to get what I need in the meantime.
We’re standing so close that the back of my hand brushes his front, his hardened length as I unzip my skirt and it falls to the floor around my ankles. I would protest about it touching the earthy floor, but what did it matter? My skirt’s clean but it looks filthy anyway, like it’s growing fungus spots.
When I step out of the fabric, he kicks it away and drops to his knees.
Again, he’s taking his time to inspect every centimetre. I hate the way I watch him too, studying his expression for approval. His eyes settle on my ribs, on that indented scar where the car hit me the night of Madame’s death.
The night everything changed.
I can practically see the question swirling in his mind, but he lets it go for now, dropping his gaze to my panties that are level with his mouth.
He scowls. “Why do you wear these fucking awful panties? Period or not.”
My cheeks flame again. A heat rash climbing my neck. “They’re clean and they fit. No one’s meant to see them but me.”
“And me. And they don’t fit.” He curls a finger into the drooping waistline and exposes my slit to the cool night air.
“You said no touching,” I breathe.
“I’m not touching you,” he says, letting go of the fabric for emphasis. “Am I?”
Technically, he’s right.
“Throw them all away when you get back to the dorm. If you don’t like the ones I sent you, I’ll order more from another company.”
‘I don’t want any gifts from you! Tuition and computer fees aside’ is what I want to say. But little dolls love being dressed up. They love being admired and displayed by their owners.
“Something so beautiful shouldn’t be dressed up like it’s worthless. It doesn’t matter if no one else can see it but me. Don’t put trash on my pretty pussy.”
My cheeks warm. Does he always have to be so bloody crass?
And why must I like it? Why must my thighs clench as involuntarily tingles rush straight to my clit?
“Understood? Because it’s another one of my rules.”
I nod slowly.
“Why didn’t you wear one today?”
A lot of reasons.
I don’t want anything from you.
I’ve never owned anything so nice.
I’ve been trained to look and not touch.
I’m comfortable with what I already own. They suit me.
Those pretty colours, those soft fabrics… They feel like playing dress-up.
They feel like slapping lipstick on a pig.
But I’m not going to share my insecurities with Gant Auclair, of all people.
“There were so many options, I didn’t know where to start…What do you think I’ll look good in?” I ask. Play along. Play along. It’s all about surviving. It’s all about winning. “Lace? Silk?”
He smiles, his impossibly dark eyes somehow managing to darken. “Your ass is a heart shape so I like bottoms exposed. Falling out the fabric.”
For one second, I’m disappointed that his hands are tied. That he can’t grab my ass and squeeze it now.
“So wear the boyshorts under your skirt tomorrow. I like to see peeks of your skin so the lacey pair, although satin will do. Emerald looks the best on your pale skin and with your hair, so wear that shade. The narrower the gusset, the better. I want to bend you over and spread you wide and watch your pussy swallow the fabric. I like it when it’s barely contained like that leotard you wore in Stretch that you won’t wear ever again unless it’s inside our private session. Your pussy’s only for my viewing.”
“You keep saying how pretty it is, but you’ve never actually seen it bare. Not all of it anyway.”
That’s right, keeping egging him along.
“I would never have to. I want it. That makes it invaluable. Perfect. Beautiful.”
I jump as he nips my clit, and the sight of him on his knees, his face buried against my slit with a perfect view of his long, sooty lashes makes me stifle a moan.
He looks up at me and the devilish grin that splits his lips as he flicks me with the tip of his tongue lets me know this is exactly what he wants. Me to be transfixed on him.
“You said you wouldn’t touch me,” I say, suddenly hoarse. “This time you definitely are.”
“I said I wouldn’t touch you with my hands. Besides, you weren’t following orders. I said look at me.”
“Looking,” I mock his earlier sing-song tone from the dock and curl my fingers against the tabletop to keep from sliding them into his hair.
“Good. Remember the look on my face when I finally see what I’ve been dreaming about sinking into for two years. Focus on me the way I can’t stop focusing on you. Just see me. Only me. Because despite it all, it’s just you, Elle. It’s always just been you.”
Heat rushes to my core, my mind growing fuzzy from words that couldn’t be true.
It’s just a game.
It’s just bullshit to get you wet.
“You barely know me,” is all I manage to get out. My tongue suddenly feels thick and heavy.
“I think we have more in common than I’ve had with any single person I’ve ever met. I think that’s why I’m obsessed with you.”
“Obsessed with hatred?”
“Lately, I hate that I can’t escape you more than anything else.”
Well, if it isn’t the consequences of thine own actions.
“Then you shouldn’t have brought me here.”
“I bought you here for my own sanity.”
“You consider any of this sane?” I gesture around us to the grimy glasshouse and thousands of dripping candles.
His smile, which I don’t think is a smile at all, sends a shiver down my spine.
“It all makes perfect sense to me.”
That’s the troubling part.
“And about getting to know you more, I plan to do just that.” His eyes flick to my offending panties again. “Take them off and don’t ever put them on again.”
It must be the darkness, the seclusion, the hundreds of flickering candles that are putting me in a trance, because I want nothing more than to obey him in this moment. Hooking my fingers into the waistband, I pull, letting them fall into the dirt.
I study him. Drinking in the moment, he stares straight at my bare slit, his Adam’s apple bobbing, his lower lip disappearing between his teeth, his warm breath tickling my bare flesh as he releases it. But he doesn’t lean in to kiss me like I hope.
I’ve never craved anyone’s eyes on me. Even on the stage, I recessed into my own mind when I danced. But with Gant, I’m realizing more and more just how much I want to be seen by him. Like the first time we met when he watched me dance.
“See how well we get along when you just listen, Dove?” he asks, completely out of breath.
I may not see what he does, but I believe him.
I’m not a liar. His earlier words ring.
It’d be impossible to fake the emotions rippling through those irises that should be too dark for me to even see through, right?
“Get on the table.”
That’s the first time a protest threatens to tumble from my lips since I started to undress. I don’t think it’s bourgeois to want a little more luxury than the hard, human sacrificial table Sylo just got his nearly naked ass off of. It’s probably freezing, despite the hundreds of candles surrounding it.
“I thought we were starting off slow.”
“I just want to look, remember? That’s all.”
He says as if examining every pore on my body isn’t still insanely intimate.
“I think you want me to look. Your pretty pussy’s already gleaming in anticipation and I’ve barely touched you,” he says, gazing up at me beneath those dark lashes. “No matter how much you lie, your body won’t. I know you want to get up there, on that table like a sacrifice, and present yourself to me. So just do what you want and not what you think makes sense.”
I inhale sharply because he’s just read my damn mind.
“Be good and climb up, Dovey. Lay back. I want to see you wet and open.”
I hate the way the word dovey rolls off his tongue even more than dove and yet, more heat shoots to my clit. More moisture coats my upper thighs and I feel his eyes burning into my wetness as I oblige, crawling up onto the high table on all fours.
When I get onto my back, spread my legs and find the courage to look at him as he keeps ordering me to do, I see that he isn’t looking at me at all.
I follow his black eyes that twinkle in the candlelight to a grimy glass pane. It’s just shiny enough to make out our reflections. I’m obviously naked and vulnerable while he looms over me fully clothed and all in black, looking like an angel of darkness. Just the sight of him, looking so menacing even with his hands bound, sends a shiver through me.
I think he’s right about me after all.
Right that I like it when he chases me.
That I like how he lures me into these positions.
Right that I’m a little sick and twisted just the way he is.
I was wrong about something else, though. The table isn’t cold as the flames are giving off far more heat than I’d given them credit for. In fact, surrounded by them in a crescent now, it’s almost too warm given the heat surging through my veins.
When Gant breaks our stare in the glass, I expect him to immediately zoom in on my slit, but he doesn’t. He leans forward between my legs, dipping down so low to my face that I think he’s going to kiss me.
I want him to kiss me.
But he doesn’t. He breaks off a candle above my head and hovers it over my breasts.
“What are you—”
When the hot wax drips onto my left nipple, then my right, I arch and hiss and Gant hisses with me, admiring his work.
“You have to trust me if I’m going to be your tutor, Dove. For now, I want to hurt you, but only in ways you’ll enjoy.”
Before my spine fully relaxes, he does it again, dripping the wax straight down my sternum. My legs attempt to snap shut as my toes curl, but Gant positions himself further between them, keeping them spread.
When he moves the flame over my ribs, I squirm harder as the wax trickles into my indented scar that’s able to hold far more and for far longer.
“What caused it?” he asks, swiping the cooling wax away with his thumb.
I didn’t want to talk about that night.
Not now.
“A car accident.”
He pauses, tipping the candle up, so it stops dripping.
Fuck, I know he’s recessing back to his own car accident. The one he thinks I caused.
I should’ve lied. But despite Gant’s proclamation, I’m not a liar and I don’t want to start now. Not when it concerns the reason Gant hates me anyway. I always want to tell the truth whether he believes it or not.
“When?”
I hesitate. “The night that I leaked the email.”
Good. Take the accountability route. He’ll like that.
“You had an accident too.”
It’s not really a question, but I nod.
“When you were running away from me?”
“It’s what I deserve right?”
He doesn’t answer, his expression growing more distant by the second, and suddenly I’m cold. Freezing.
“Did you go to the hospital?”
“No.”
“That’s why it didn’t heal right,” he mutters to himself, his eyes dropping to the scar again. “You should’ve gone to the hospital.”
“I had a lot of other things to think about that night.”
“Were you really that scared of me? That you didn’t look before running into the traffic?”
“Can you blame me? Look at the lengths you went through just to lure me here.”
“You could’ve died too.”
It’s like I can see him leaving me even though I can reach out and touch him, and I do. I don’t know what possesses me, but the hollowness in his eyes scares me enough that I want to bring him back to me. I curl my hand behind his neck, pulling him down so we’re almost nose to nose.
“Gant?”
Wax spills across his fingers. So much of it that I’m sure the pain overrides the pleasure now. Still, he doesn’t reanimate. He’s as frozen as a statue beside his lips that mumble inaudibly, “dead”.
“Gant?” I whisper again. “I’m right here.”
“You could’ve…”
“But I didn’t.” I take the candle from him and use some of its dripping wax to stick it back onto the pile. Then I take his wax-covered fingers and press them over my left breast. Over my heart. “See? It’s still beating. I’m still here.”
“Elle?”
The confusion blooming in his eyes ignites a sudden desperation within me that I don’t think I’ve ever felt before.
Not when I’m being bullied.
Not even when I was being abused by Jarett.
Not when I’d spent every waking second practising for Beaulieu’s audition.
Never.
But it roils in my belly now so fiercely that I know I have to do something. So I lean forward and press my lips to his.
They’re soft but unyielding, so I lick them. Part them with my tongue and suck on his bottom lip before I bite it. Not hard enough to draw blood, but enough that he can’t ignore it.
He can’t ignore me.
Seconds tick by and then I’m shoved back, off my elbows and flat onto the table again. Gant’s bound hands slide over my head, and his elbows land by my ears as his warm tongue invades my mouth.
The weight of him, the inhale and exhale of his torso, his cock that stabs at my ass. All of it makes me want to hold on to him so tight, he’ll never leave me like that again.
Wait…
What the fuck?
This is Gant fucking Auclair! Not some sweet person who-
“Mmm,” A moan tears from my throat, my back arching again as he rubs against me, the fabric of his shirt dragging across my sensitive clit that’s throbbing, aching for more stimulation.
Just when I start to copy his ministrations, he stops, breaking our contact altogether.
“What are you doing?” he asks wickedly. “You’re trying to cheat.”
“What?” I ask bewildered, my legs hooking around his waist as I try to draw him closer again, but he holds firm.
“Rule four, you can only come when I say so.”
I’m about to protest when he grabs the candle again, trailing the wax lower and stopping short of my slit. But he spreads it along my mound like he’s an artist, taking his sweet time as I continue to buck against him.
“I knew you’d be responsive. Just look at you, spread wide. Dripping.” He cocks his head, admiring his handiwork.
The cooled wax looks like dried cum.
“I can’t wait until it’s real. Until I have you soaked, just like you plan to soak me. No barriers.”
“Gant.” I don’t know why I whisper his name. I don’t know why I like his filthy talk.
“Do you want me to blast it on your cunt?” He asks, sliding down so his face hovers inches above my sex. He’s so close I can feel his warm breath on my swollen clit. “Or your face? Or do you want it dripping from that tight hole? Which one?”
“Please,”
“You’re so fucking pretty,” he mutters. “I want to ruin you, make it all better, and then do it all over again until you can’t walk. But you’ll still beg me, won’t you? A pussy like this can take it.”
“Please…” I whimper again, damn near delirious.
Warm liquid squirts over me, but it isn’t mine. I sit up on my elbows in shock, watching a thick trail of spit stretch between Gant’s lips and mine. I should be revolted at the silvery thread that connects us until Gant licks his lips and breaks it. But the sensation of it running down my already-soaked slit and rolling slowly down the curve of my ass only excites me more.
“Please what?” he asks innocently as he straightens. “Touch you?”
I nod, my hair whipping against my back and shoulders from the force. I’d never been more sure about anything.
My fingers nest in his silky black hair as I bring his face so close that the tip of his nose bumps my clit and my eyes flutter shut.
He draws back. “I said keep your eyes open. Look at me.”
The snap in his voice causes them to fly open. That combined with the sight of his ethereal face cradled between my thighs, and the feel of his warm breath only makes me wetter.
I follow his orders, staring deep into his eyes.
“What is it you want from me Elle?” he asks, even as his lower lips brush my sex, making me shudder all over again.
“Touch me,” I say, licking my lips. “Please.”
A cruel smile splits his lips. “Just look at you. A wet, dripping wanton mess. All for me. All for the man you love to hate.”
“Please.”
“You’re so damn beautiful when you beg…so damn tempting,” he says and yet, he’s pulling away at the same time.
What the-
“What?” he asks casually, bringing the knot to his teeth and pulling easily so that the sash falls away. “I’m not a filthy little liar, remember? I promised not to touch you with my hands.”
I just gawk at him like an idiot.
Is he seriously fucking with me right now? I’m giving him free access and he’s choosing to punish us both?
“But the interlude…You can’t be serious,” I mutter, resisting the primal urge flaring within me to hook my leg around his damn neck and drag him face forward into my slit.
“I take the rules very seriously. Did you really think I’d reward you? That I’d fuck your greedy pussy with my tongue and let you gush? After you tried to let someone else play with you? With what’s mine?”
“Gant—”
“Do that again and I’ll make you watch them become prey in that web.”
Before I can ask, he turns on his phone light, so much brighter than the candles and points it at the domed ceiling.
Spiders creeping around gauzy webs scurry away, but there’s nowhere to go because there are thousands of them and thousands of encased prey dangling in gauzy cocoons. Strung right in the centre is an elaborate pulley system with a dangling manacle.
One spider was one thing, but this…this is enough to make my hair stand on end and question my sanity more than Gant’s. Because I’m not running away.
“And when they’re all settled with their new friends, I’ll fuck you beneath them. While you scream my name and they scream for a higher being to help them.”
I take in his words and they sink into my skull bitterly because I know they’re fucking true based on Sylo alone. His own freaking cousin.
“Don’t break my rules again,” He says before leaning in to kiss me as if he isn’t punishing me at the same time.
What’s worse, is I kiss him back, desperate for another crumb of his affection.
But when the seconds tick on and the feel of his soft lips wears off, I snap my legs shut, knocking his side with my inner thigh as I slide down from the table. Grabbing my filthy skirt, I shake it off before covering myself, but I heed his warning and leave my panties where they belong in the dirt.
He thinks not giving me an orgasm is a punishment? He must not know that my phone can vibrate.
The last thing I’m going to do is beg Gant, of all people, for anything ever again.
Because he’s already winning, and he knows it, that annoying, grating voice coos in my ear as I wrap my blazer around me, forgoing the torn button-down. But…he’s accidentally shown you his hand. His weakness. The accident haunts him far deeper than we thought.
And yet using the incident that I had a hand in, that involves such loss seems too low to use even on someone who gave me a golden shower.
Or is it?
That can remain to be seen.
When I slip on my loafers and storm towards the door, Gant slips in front of it, his expression utterly amused.
“We haven’t finished discussing our terms yet.”
Is that why he didn’t finish? He wants to make sure I agree to all his ridiculous conditions before he gives me an ounce of satisfaction again?
“You already gave me a laundry list of rules,” I snap. “Don’t you mean my terms?”
He shakes his head slowly. “Most of those were just givens.”
I’m not about to hurt my brain trying to understand how not coming unless Gant fucking Auclair says so is a given.
“About the privates, lessons start Monday afternoon. We’ll do a lot more than dancing but don’t get so excited Dove. I just mean we’ll get to know each other’s minds a lot better.”
I can feel the flush on my cheeks grow hotter. How the hell did he know what I was thinking?
“Why would you want to do that?”
“I told you, I think we have a lot in common and since we’re in an interlude, all we have is time. Every class I get to ask twenty-one questions and you have to answer all of them. Truthfully.”
I don’t trust myself to speak as I ball my ruined button down between my shaking fists.
“And each class has to end with a kiss,” he says, eyeing my lips.
Sure. He can kiss my ass.
“A passionate one. Like the one you just gave me on the table. One that can bring my soul back into my body.”
I freeze at that, hating the way my heart starts to ramp up again.
“I didn’t realise you had one.” It doesn’t come out as snarky as I’d intended. Instead, it’s barely a whisper.
“I didn’t realise it could come back.”