11. Aurora
AURORA
If I had any sense, I would’ve walked away the second I saw Cole tonight. Instead, I did what I always do with him. Pushed. Snapped back. Let him get under my skin, and now I’m stuck in this too-small bathroom with him blocking the only way out.
I can’t stop replaying the way Cole pulled Jake off me and shoved him out into the hall, like he had the right to decide who touches me.
I didn’t want Jake. I just wanted to prove to myself that whatever was happening in my body out there had nothing to do with Cole.
That the heat under my skin was anger, not anything else.
That I could let some other guy touch me and feel absolutely nothing.
That Cole’s hands on me in the shop, the way his breath caught when I gave him a lap dance, didn’t affect me in the slightest.
So I took Jake into the bathroom and tried to drown all of that out. And maybe I could’ve kept pretending if Cole had stayed out there.
But he didn’t.
I square my shoulders and lift my chin, because the second I flinch, even a little, he wins.
“What are you talking about?” I snap.
His eyes drag over me, from my mouth down and back up again, and the look on his face makes heat crawl straight up my neck.
“You wanted attention tonight, right?” he says. The words brush against my skin, rough and rumbly, doing weird things to my stomach. “You came here with frat boy because you wanted Chase to hear about it. You wanted him to get jealous.”
“You’re delusional,” I tell him, attempting to shoot him a glare while struggling to breathe from the way he’s looking at me. “I don’t care about Chase.”
His mouth curves into an infuriating smirk that makes me want to claw it right off his face. His gaze drops to my mouth for half a second before lifting back to my eyes. “Oh,” he says, tilting his head. “So that was for my benefit?”
Heat rushes up my neck, straight into my cheeks. “Fuck you.”
The muscle in his jaw twitches when the corner of his lips lifts into a smirk. He looks almost… pleased.
“When?”
My brain stalls. “W–what?”
“Name the time and place,” he says, leaning in that last inch so I have to tilt my head back to keep looking at him. “You want to get back at him for fucking another girl? Here’s your shot.”
He’s joking, right? He has to be joking.
“You don’t even like me,” I shoot back.
He lifts a brow. “I don’t have to like you to want to fuck you.”
My breath catches, and his eyes flick to my chest like he can hear my pulse change.
“I’m never going to sleep with you.”
He hums, scanning my face. “Then you might want to try saying that without looking like you want me nine inches deep inside you.”
His words make heat curl low in my stomach, but I force a breath in through my nose, tighten my grip on the sink until the edge bites into my palms, and shoot him a glare.
“What the hell are you doing, Reaper?” I ask. “Since when do you want to fuck me?”
His jaw flexes, grinding so hard I can see it, and he’s looking at me like he can’t decide whether he wants to drag me closer or get me the hell out of his sight.
“Since I can’t stop thinking about what happened at the club,” he says, shoving a hand through his hair. “I need to get this shit out of my system so I can forget you.”
“You mean me,” I say, my throat going tight. “You need to get me out of your system.”
His eyes flick over my face, darkening, and there’s no separating the anger from the want. They’ve tangled together into something that makes it hard to breathe. “Just until I get bored of you,” he murmurs. “Shouldn’t take long.”
I swallow, my expression hardening. “I’m already bored of you,” I shoot back. “So—”
He lets out a groan, and then his hands fly to my hips. He spins me around so fast that a gasp slips out before I can stop it when he pulls me back into him. My stomach drops when I feel him hard through his jeans.
“Don’t lie to me, Viper.”
Our eyes meet in the mirror, and it’s so much worse than facing him straight on. I can see my own face, can see exactly how wide my eyes are, how my mouth parts at the feel of him pressing against me.
“You want this just as much as I do. And you know it’ll drive Chase insane when he hears the guy he hates the most fucked you.”
“No,” I snap, my spine going stiff. “I don’t want anyone else knowing about this.”
I mean to add there isn’t even going to be a this, but the words stick in my throat.
His jaw flexes. “You embarrassed of me or something?”
I twist my head to glare at him over my shoulder. “Do you want people knowing we’re—” I swallow hard, forcing it out anyway, even though it scrapes on the way up. “—sleeping together?”
“Hell no,” he says instantly, but then his eyes narrow. “But why don’t you want people knowing?”
I swallow again and lift my chin, even though my insides are a complete mess. “I’ve hated you for years, Cole. What do you think people would say if they found out I was—”
“Jumping on my dick?” he cuts in.
Heat rushes up my throat, but I shove it down before he can see it. “That is never happening,” I tell him.
He hums, and the sound rolls through him and into me.
“Trust me. It will,” he grits out. “You’ll be begging for it.”
“I don’t beg,” I snap, though there’s the slightest shake in my voice that I know he catches.
“You will for me.” His eyes burn into mine in the mirror as his hand slides slowly down my thigh. “Say yes, Viper, and I’ll have you on your knees, gagging, drooling, begging for my cock. You know you want it.”
I squeeze my eyes closed, every filthy word burrowing under my skin, my pulse slamming against my ribs and my brain screaming at me, every part of me split between what I’m supposed to say and what I actually want.
His mouth drops closer to my ear, his warm breath brushing my skin, and my stomach flips so hard I have to bite down on the sound trying to climb its way out of me.
“I’ll fuck you so deep you’ll scream for mercy,” he rumbles, his voice wrapping all the way around my spine. “And then you’ll beg me for more.”
A shiver runs straight down my back, my body reacting before my brain can catch up, before it can remind me why this is such a terrible idea.
“I am never going to sleep with you,” I grit out.
“Oh yeah?” He chuckles. “Then why are you gripping my hand?”
My eyes snap open.
I look down and—shit.
His hand is on my inner thigh, under the hem of my skirt, and my stomach drops when I see my own fingers wrapped around his, holding him in place.
I let go like it burns, pulling my hand back fast.
I turn my head away from him, staring hard at the sink, at the stupid faucet, at anything that isn’t the mirror, because if I meet his eyes right now, I’m going to do something reckless.
Cole laughs under his breath, leaning in again anyway, close enough that I feel him at my back. “You want to get revenge on your cheating ex?”
My heart slams hard enough that I feel it in my teeth. I want to deny it. Deny him. But I don’t move. I can’t. Not when I’m burning from the inside out, wanting something I already know I’ll hate myself for the second it’s over and still unable to make myself step back.
“Fucking his enemy would do that.”
He’s insane. Completely delusional. We’ve hated each other for years. There is no universe where a little chemistry wipes out every reason I can’t stand him.
He’s a dick, and I am never, ever sleeping with Cole Ellis.
At least, that’s what I mean to say.
But when I lift my head and meet his eyes, the only words that actually leave my mouth are,
“No one can know.”