CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Zach
“It’s strange how our identity is connected to our surroundings. You don’t have a say in where you’re born, when you’re born, or to whom you’re born. You don’t have a say in many things, yet those things determine what your life will be like.
“I’ve always wondered what I’d do if I weren’t born in this family. If I didn’t have so much and wasn’t used to the best. Would I want money and power? Would I be more compassionate and less selfish?
“I’m not sure I want power anymore. Power is seductive, but just like any drug, you need it over and over, and if it slips out of your hands, it leaves you with devastation and emptiness.
Because power isolates you. It creates an island no one can reach.
And you always have to fight so it’s not taken away from you.
“I’m so tired of fighting. I’m tired of toxicity and dishonesty. I’m tired of always pretending.”
The video ended, and I stared at the screen of my laptop long after Blair’s voice stopped, unable to rip my gaze off her tear-streaked face.
I’d deceived Blair into thinking all her videos were gone when I threw her laptop in the pool.
I’d transferred them to a thumb drive before she showed up, and I’d been watching them ever since I returned to my room. It had been hours since then.
I hadn’t known that she was capable of something so profound, something so .
. . honest. The videos primarily focused on the power dynamics between what she referred to as “her world” and “the other side,” and how she felt lost and disconnected from the people around her.
It was as if I were watching a stranger.
The videos showed me a version of Blair I’d never known before, and it was the same version I’d seen earlier when she talked about her humanity and why she helped Emily, looking like she wasn’t a heartless monster I’d always believed her to be.
I wanted to kiss her at that moment. Fuck me, I wanted to kiss her so badly I could almost taste it even now. And I would have. I would’ve kissed her like some lovesick fool, as though whoever she really was mattered. It didn’t fucking matter.
But I still couldn’t get my eyes off her face on the screen. If she were someone I met just now and what I learned tonight was what I had to go by, I wouldn’t think twice about asking her out.
I leaned my head against the headrest of my chair, closing my eyes. Involuntarily, my thoughts went back to how she looked when she showed up at the pool’s edge earlier, her perfect ass and legs on full display, and my dick hardened in two seconds flat.
She was too fucking sexy for her own good. And the sounds she’d made when I touched her . . . I couldn’t get my mind off what happened in that gazebo or the way she looked when she came on my face.
My hand moved to my shorts of its own accord. A fantasy of me taking her right in that gazebo filled my vision, and I—
The knocks came on my door.
I flinched, removing my hand from my shorts. I checked the time on my laptop. It was past midnight.
Blair.
My cock twitched. I closed the lid on my laptop and went to open the door.
But it wasn’t Blair on the other side. It was Emily, and I swallowed an unexpected wave of disappointment. She wore a nightdress that allowed me to see her underwear, and I almost raised my brows.
“You’re awake,” she said with a smile. “I wasn’t sure if you’d gone to bed already.”
I shifted on my feet, resisting the urge to adjust myself. She couldn’t see my erection because the lights were off in my room and the hallway, and the only source of light was the moon, currently half shrouded in clouds.
“No. I’m still awake.”
She tilted her head as if waiting for the continuation of that sentence, but I remained quiet. She looked around me. “Are you busy with something? Did I come at a bad time?”
“No, I’m not busy.” I nodded at her ankle. “How’s your injury?”
“Better. It hurts less when I walk.” Her teeth gnawed at her lip. “Um, can I come in?”
I glanced at her breasts, then returned my gaze to her face to find a small smile playing on her lips.
It was clear to me from the moment we first met that she liked me.
She was always smiling or flirting with me or trying to engage me in conversation.
It was even more obvious when I carried her to her room after Blair took her to her family doctor, and she looked at me like I’d given her the stars.
She was cute, and she had a nice personality.
Maybe she could be a nice distraction from Blair and all the dark shit in my head.
“Sure,” I said, and then I immediately regretted it. I didn’t want to use her—unless she didn’t want anything serious.
I stepped aside so she could enter my room, but then I placed my hand on her shoulder to stop her. “I . . . am not ready for a relationship, if that’s what you’re looking for.”
It was too dark to be sure, but it seemed like she pressed her lips together into a grimace before she offered me a seductive smile and ran her fingers over my hand. “I’m just looking for fun. That’s all.”
I smiled back at her, then motioned for her to enter.
Her nightdress swished around her thighs, and it didn’t escape my notice how short it was. Or how it fell enticingly over her ass. But even as I stared at it, an image of Blair in that nightdress popped into my mind, her ass perfectly shaped underneath it, and my dick got hard again.
I barely closed the door behind me before Emily was on me, her lips crushing against mine.
Our tongues connected, and my hands went to her hips, bunching up the flimsy material in them as I drew her to me.
She pressed herself up to me and moaned into my mouth, but instead of losing myself in the kiss, all I could think about was how different she felt compared to Blair.
I wondered how Blair’s kiss would feel, and then soon it didn’t matter because all I could do was lose myself in Blair’s lips, in the feel of her against me, in her tongue slipping over mine, which stirred passion I hadn’t even known existed for her—
No, not Blair’s. Emily’s tongue was sliding against mine now.
I growled, exasperated, and grabbed Emily by the waist, half carrying her, half pushing her toward my bed. She slumped down on it, but before I could grab the hem of her dress to slide it off her, she shoved my shorts and boxers down and took my cock in her hand.
“I want to please you first.” She leaned in and wrapped her lips around my tip.
Fuck. My head went backward, my hand grabbing the back of her head.
Pleasure shot through me as she took me deep into her mouth, but as my eyes shuttered close, the image of Emily in front of me disappeared, and all I could see was Blair.
Blair on her knees for me, taking my cock deep into her mouth, sucking the pleasure out of me.
It was the same image I saw when I had my dick in Aurora’s mouth because it was the only way I could go through with it, and now the image got even more vivid.
Strong pleasure had me reach for Blair’s hair so I’d push myself deeper into her mouth.
Only this hair wasn’t short. It was long and the texture was different. I snapped my eyes open, seeing Emily work me with a gaze full of lust.
This didn’t feel right.
I pushed against her shoulder to stop her and moved away from her, tucking myself in.
“I’m sorry. I’m not in the mood.”
She stood from my bed, slow to hide her hurt expression. “Did I do something wrong?”
I slid my hand down my face. “You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s me.” I sighed. “It’s complicated.”
“I see.” She headed for the door, her eyes downcast. “I’m sorry for bothering you.”
“You’re not bothering me.” I pinched the place between my brows. “I’m sorry. I really am.”
“That’s okay.” She offered me a quick smile and slipped out of my room.
“Fuck.” I slammed my hand against the desk and dropped down in my chair. Fucking Blair.
I’d hooked up with girls several times over the past year, and I would’ve even dated some of them had it not been for my revenge. There was absolutely no reason for me not to sleep with Emily, so why the fuck did I stop?
The answer stared me right in the eyes as I opened the lid of my laptop, and Blair’s face met me again.
The earlier fantasy unfolded in front of my eyes again, and I let it play out until the end.
I didn’t even remember pushing my hand back into my shorts, already groaning with pleasure and leaking precum all over my hand, picturing her tasting me. Just the way I’d tasted her.
Fuck, her taste.
I stroked myself faster, imagining licking her sweet, little pussy all over right before I claimed her, burying myself deep into her.
And she would love it. Just like she loved every second of the pleasure I gave her, letting out those raspy, little sounds, her pussy tightening around my fingers like she wanted to swallow them all up and—
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
My cock burst, and I barely had enough time to reach for a tissue before ropes and ropes of my cum soaked it as I cried out her name.
And immediately, a wave of self-disgust came over me.
I glared at her face on my screen as the last tremor passed through me, hate searing my lungs, making me want to smash the screen. “I hate you, Blair Everett. I hate you so fucking much.”
But even as I said those words, the truth was blatantly obvious.
What I hated the most wasn’t her.
It was how, even after everything she did to me, even after marking me for life, both physically and mentally, she was deep under my skin.
How even once I was done with her, she would remain there, forever haunting me. Forever being a part of me.
And I doubted there would be anything I could do to stop it.