CHAPTER 73
Troy
“HEY WHERE ARE you going?” I’m barely finishing the sentence when Ana darts right past me, heading up the stairs, waving a hand in the air like she’s busy.
But when she doesn’t answer, I twist the knob, fear rippling through me at the silence and what that could mean, only to open the door to see her getting ready. In a dress that sits barely an inch over her ass.
“Is everything alright?” I ask when she twists around, her face covered in makeup, the kind I know she’d make fun of seeing on another girl.
Fake lashes, lots of eye liner, and a whole bunch of other stuff that has changed her entire face.
“Yup, why wouldn’t it be?” she replies like I’ve made up her suddenly weird behavior in my head, and that pisses me off.
Then she proceeds to slap on another layer of lip gloss to her already covered mouth, and the way she presses her lips together, letting it go with a loud pop makes it very obvious that whatever it is that’s bothering her since she came home has something to do with me.
“Did I do something?” I ask.
“No.”
I laugh, but it comes out snarky—the exact way I intended it.
Which upsets her but doesn’t bother me, not when she’s playing this stupid game with me.
Though, for a change, she switches up her typical move and doesn’t reply. Not verbally.
She grabs her purse on the nightstand, when I notice her strappy heels, the same ones she wore when we went to that party together, when we danced together, when she asked us to dance together—and she strides right toward the door with her eyes tilted down, but I block it.
She finally flicks her gaze up at me, livid, but I know her better, and I see something else in those blue eyes but can’t pinpoint just what.
“Please move,” she requests.
“Sure,” I say. “After you tell me what the hell has happened.”
She sighs, again like I’ve inflicted all this upon her.
“Nothing has happened, Troy. It’s a Saturday night, and I’m just going to a party.”
“Dressed like that?” I snap.
“Like what?” Her eyes grow wide. “A slut? That’s what you were going to say, right?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No, but your eyes did.”
She pushes my shoulders away, and I move because I’m in shock and also because this girl hates to feel like she’s being controlled.
So I decide to tag along.
“Who’s party is this?” I ask, moving after her down the stairs.
“Why, are you going to come as my chaperone again?” she laughs out.
“Well,” I jab, “considering you’re acting like a child tonight, you probably need one.”
I’m not exactly wearing party clothes—grey sneakers, dark jeans and a brown sweatshirt—but not missing the chance that she runs off and does something reckless that she’ll regret, I grab my keys and at least convince Ana not to take a fucking Uber.
_________
I wish I hadn’t come.
Not if it meant having to watch Ana dance with random guys at the busiest club in town, The Lounge.
This is just sex.
I keep telling myself as I sit restlessly at the bar with a perfect—torturous—view of her on the dance floor.
The speakers are already blaring the next filthy beat, meanwhile all I can hear in my head is “Slow Dancing in the Dark”.
I down my fifth cup of ice cold water, clenching my teeth into a lime slice when another guy, one who's decked in preppy clothes, starts getting handsy with her waist.
Tossing the ice around in my cup, watching the cubes violently turn into a flurry, the thought roams in my head, wondering if this was her strange way of hinting that she wants to have sex with other people.
Pulling the cup to my mouth as a small piece of ice drops right in, sucking on it, my gaze meets Ana’s.
Testing her.
To do more.
In front of me.
If that’s what she fucking wants.
As if testing me, she takes on that challenge, sliding her hands over the guy’s arms, and from the grin on the jackass’s face behind her, I can tell he’s enjoying having her hips tucked right against his.
My hand clamps around my glass so tight I nearly feel it break.
Then my brows pull together when Ana’s face softens, a glimmer of the girl I know appearing underneath it all.
And I don’t process quite what’s happening until her eyes flick down, and an arm touches my shoulder.
I look to my right, finding Chloe standing above me.
As she says a few strings of words I don’t hear, I glance back at Ana’s face and see it.
That she was trying to make me jealous.
That she is jealous.
In the most polite way I can, I cut the conversation short with Chloe, returning back to the girl who’s still looking at us from the corner of her eyes.
When I reach her and the guy who refuses to move, my ears pick up on their exchange. The end of their exchange.
“I’ll look you up,” he says. “What’s your last name?”
“Larsson,” I reply.
Ana snaps around, her eyes darting at me with bitterness.
“Ana Larsson?” The weasel has the audacity to even repeat. “That’s your name?”
“Now you know her name,” I say with a smile. “So you can walk away now.”
Ana punches my shoulder when the moron walks away.
What?
He was a moron for not knowing he was speaking to the Ana Petrov. Although, hearing my name next to hers was a bonus I didn’t expect. And I liked how it fucking sounded. I liked it a lot.
_________
Ana
“Why did you come up to me?” I ask Troy, frustrated. “Couldn’t you see we were talking?”
“Yeah, it looked like you were having a great time,” Troy says, his voice all mockery.
“How would you even know with Chloe stuck to your arm?”
“Because I was staring at you. And only you. And you fucking knew that. Didn’t you?” He smiles like he just used honesty to wipe out everything I said.
And I hate the way it works, the way it opens up my chest a little. Not when it’s supposed to be closed around him.
“This was a whole lot just to tell me you’re a little jealous, dearest,” he adds when I’m silent, and I nearly smack my purse over his head at that.
“I’m not jealous. Not a little. Not at all.” I shrug like it means nothing. “And you should’ve danced with Chloe,” I add before I start walking away. Barely into the hallway and Troy spins me around, pinning me against the wall.
“I didn’t want to,” he rasps.
My gaze drops to his mouth, and I hate myself for it because he notices, he notices how my legs open up a bit, how they let him push a thigh up between them, how my breath catches when his weight is there, just for me, to let go, use him the way he wants me to.
But then I remember all the girls who are obsessed with him. And how I never wanted to be one of them. Yet now I am.
Just another one of Troy Larsson’s sluts.
So I blink like he means nothing to me because he shouldn’t and he’s the same person I grew up with who wasn’t a good person before, my narrative freefalling in my head, my body trying its best to not jump ship.
“She wanted to dance with you,” I say, my voice bleak, cold.
“I didn’t want to,” Troy grinds out, his brows pulling together, the clean, spicy warmth from his neck dizzying me as “Physical” swallows up the tiny space. “Is that why you went up to that idiot who didn’t even know your name?”
“Well,” I snap without thought, “we’re not together, and we never made it clear if we would hook up with other people, so…”
“Well I’ll make it fucking clear now. I don’t share. Even if this is just sex to you, I’m not sharing you with anyone else.” To you. My heart swells at his blatant wording, quickly brushing it off. “Do you want to fuck other people?”
Between the loud music and his intoxicating scent, my willpower dampens for a moment, and I reply, “No.”
“Good,” he says like he’s pleased by the answer. “Neither do I.” Then he drops his leg between mine, reaching for my hand. “Let’s go.”
_________
Either the engine of his sports car is freakishly strong and I’d never noticed it before, or maybe it’s just my body that feels like pieces of lightning are poking out from every corner, but my clit throbs the whole way home, my legs twisting at each traffic light to stop from rubbing my hips over his leather seat.
Barely into his front door, and he takes us to the navy sofa sitting down first, pulling my weight right to his face that’s eye-level with my hips, my height taller with the heels.
With his knuckles, Troy caresses the sides of my legs, my thighs filling with goose bumps at the gentle touch.
A single kiss to my lower belly, and he looks up at me, and those green eyes nearly make me melt.
“You know I don’t view you as a slut, right?
” he says it like he means it, like he somehow knows what the girls at the rink said about me, but then he continues, “Earlier tonight, when you said I looked at you like you were one, I didn’t mean to, I just, you have no idea how fucking crazy it makes me to think about someone else touching you.
” He lets his hands—thank God—roam up my body, resting them just below my tits.
“And shit, I’m not the possessive type. I’ve never been.
But with you. I don’t want anyone else to see you like this.
I don’t want anyone else to touch these. ”
My eyes roll back when his fingers pinch my nipples, feeling my thong dripping already. He lifts himself up, still above me with his intimidating height.
“I don’t want anyone near this,” he rasps, before capturing my lips in an open mouth kiss, feeling his palms reach around me, squeezing my ass.
His hands stay there a little longer, until he knows it’s driven me crazy, before peeling the bottom of my dress up until it rests against my hips, exposing my ruined underwear.
When Troy falls to his knees, and has helped me slip out of my heels, I watch as his lips hover over my covered flesh, each breath he lets out tickling my skin. “And this right here.” He slides my thong to the side, exposing my pussy before he presses a light kiss right to my clit. “All. Mine.”
Oh my God.
I’m so soaked, he manages to slide two fingers right in me with ease.