Chapter 5 Elle #3
“Well, flirting and finger fucking are two separate skill sets—” He grunts when I poke his jugular, chuckling. “I’m not just getting out of a relationship, no. Don’t worry. There are no jealous ex-partners waiting to accost you once you leave here.”
Cocking my head, I give him another once-over, trying to determine whether he’s telling the truth.
He did say he isn’t always honest, but I’m not sure he stands to gain anything other than a quick fuck.
It’s the same thing I’m gaining; there’s no power imbalance here.
Nothing he can lord over me at a later date.
Besides, none of this will matter in the morning anyway. I won’t be seeing him again.
He takes his cock in hand, adjusting the condom around the rigid length, and I wonder how he’s managed to stay hard this entire time. But before I can voice my question, he’s tugging me forward and lining us back up.
The tip slips through my glistening flesh before he presses in, and I grab his biceps as he eases me down with his hands on my hips.
There’s a slight pinch as I adjust to his size, but nothing like before.
Fuck, the stretch is a beautiful thing. I release a moan, tilting my pelvis at the same time he huffs a pathetic little noise.
“God, you feel so good—”
A buzzing sound splits the air, loud and obnoxious as it cuts off his words. His phone slides across the dash, lighting up with a name I can’t make out from my vantage.
“Shit.” He shifts forward, lodging more of himself inside me, and I bite down on my lip to keep from coming again so soon. A ragged breath escapes him as he pauses, fisting the sides of my dress to keep me in place.
“Ignore it,” I suggest.
“All right,” he agrees instantly, no question.
“Just like that?”
He nods, leaning back so the veins in his throat are exposed. They ripple as he swallows, and I tighten around him involuntarily, swiveling my hips slightly. “Just like that, temptress.”
The buzzing doesn’t cease, though, and after a few moments where the air is so heavy it feels like it could collapse right on top of us, he curses under his breath and snatches the phone from the dash.
Silently, I watch as he scans the screen, his green eyes darkening. “Is…everything okay?”
“Family stuff.”
“You have a family?”
“Most people do.” He glances at me, cringing. “Not…not a wife and kids kind though.”
I don’t say anything.
“I’m serious.” His jaw shifts as the phone buzzes again, and he tosses it to the back seat. “Sorry, Elle, but I’m afraid I need to go.”
I blink. “You what?”
“I’m needed elsewhere.”
“Your dick is currently in me.”
“Oh, I’m aware. But family emergencies don’t wait.” He grips my hips in both hands, hauling me off, and I wince at the sudden loss of pressure and fullness, then shake my head to try and clear that sensation.
It’s never felt like that before.
Like losing a limb.
Immediately, I’m annoyed, so when he tries to help resituate my dress straps, I shove his hands away and fix them myself.
This is so humiliating.
He sits back in his seat, wrenches off the condom, and sighs. “Elle, I didn’t mean—”
Shoving open the passenger door, I shake my head, gathering my coat in my arms. “Save it, Boy Scout. You’re not the first guy to use me, and you probably won’t be the last, because evidently I can’t learn a goddamn lesson.”
I scramble out of the car before he can reply and slam the door shut, ignoring the fact that he didn’t actually get anything out of the encounter, and watch him peel out of the parking lot without another word.
Wrapping my hair in a towel, I move down the hall, sliding a key into the lock of the door to let myself inside. After showering, exfoliating, and flossing, I feel like an entirely new person, able to nearly forget the embarrassment at Lethe’s.
Aurora’s sitting on her bed, her blond hair wrapped around heatless curlers as she paints her toenails pink. Her blue eyes find me as I discard my bathrobe and slippers, diving beneath the covers of my bed with my laptop.
I hadn’t expected her to be awake when I got back tonight considering the state she left the bar in, but in truth, she rarely seems to leave campus at all these days.
Most people at Avernia College go home for winter break, but Aurora transferred dorm rooms and claimed to have some online fashion show to work on, so she was still around when I got special permission to move in early.
Normally, the four dorms—Erebus, Cadmus, Rhadamanthus, and Blessed Hall, making up the aptly named Elysian Dorms—don’t allow anyone new in when there are no RAs, but the dean was willing to make an exception.
Or rather, my parents didn’t give him another option.
“How’re we doing?” Aurora asks, eyeing me with a lifted brow. She seems to have sobered up quite a bit.
“I’ll live,” I tell her, sliding my heating pad out from my pillow and fitting it over my stomach.
Those earlier cramps had been PMS, as it turns out. Or rather, an endo flare-up triggered by the early stage of my cycle.
The thing about chronic conditions like endometriosis is that even when the symptoms are only moderate, the threat of pain looms over you forever.
It consumes your life. Even a few years after my diagnosis with stage two, I still struggle to anticipate the days when the pain is tolerable, minimal, or excruciating.
And while I do think the idea of birth control is pro-feminist like I told that sexy stranger, it’s also loaded with its own issues and not a real fix. It doesn’t stop the disease from spreading, it just alleviates the symptoms.
There’s no cure, so all I can do in the meantime is manage it.
Orgasms sometimes help, so pairing my earlier encounter with the heating pad and pain meds I just took, I’m hoping I’ll be able to sleep tonight.
So long as I avoid dreaming about the Primordial Forest, that is.
“What’d you end up doing after we left?” Aurora continues.
“Oh. Um…nothing, really. Just drank a little and called an Uber. Fed a couple of wayward pigeons. I don’t really remember much beyond that. Must’ve had more to drink than I realized.”
“Ew. Birds are fucking terrifying.” Her nose scrunches up. “Anyway, don’t blame yourself. It’s Lethe’s, and why I avoid that place like the plague. No one ever seems to remember what they did once they leave.”
“Are you saying my memories will magically disappear?”
“Depends. Did you drink the tap water?”
I shoot her a horrified look. “When have you ever known me to do that?”
She laughs. “Fair enough. You really didn’t meet anyone when we left though? That seems so unlike the Noelle I remember.”
A flash of that stranger’s green gaze flickers in my mind, and panic seizes my chest at the thought of her knowing what I did. Of knowing he rejected me.
“Nah,” I lie, rolling to face the cement wall. “Just thought it’d be nice to hang out in one of the few attractions available in Fury Hill.”
She snorts. “Yeah. If Lucy hadn’t roped me into coming here, I’d be at Pratt and going to actual fashion shows and five-star restaurants on the weekends—not stuck here pretending everyone doesn’t wear the same polyester skirts and tweed jackets all the time.”
“We’re not that far from the city,” I point out. “You could go on weekend trips if you wanted.”
Aurora sighs. “Avernia might not be nearly as trendy and modern as Pratt, but the course loads are too intense. Why else do you think I stayed over break instead of back home visiting my mom and dad?”
Neither of us note that her parents—my aunt Lenny and uncle Jonas—made a special trip up to exchange Christmas presents or that we know the real reason she didn’t go home has less to do with homework and everything to do with Foxe James.
Not that I have room to talk. I left LA because of my mistakes after all.
I curl into my heating pad, exhaling heavily. Fuck, that feels good. The lingering pain is soothed by the warmth seeping into my skin, and I pull my knees up, keeping it in place.
Propping my head on a pillow, I open my laptop and sift through my favorites folder on some streaming site. I swipe past dozens of classics and musicals, eventually cuing up Casablanca. My favorite.
Focusing on Humphrey Bogart, I lie there for a while, desperately trying to keep my mind off the green-eyed stranger from earlier and the pleasure he wrung from me.
And the fact that I didn’t get his name at all.