Chapter 8
CHAPTER
EIGHT
BANON
I’m in a daze as I open the door to our shared bathroom and then shut it quietly behind me before entering my own room. My walls are darker than Val’s, a slate gray, with dark curtains. Sports posters pepper my walls—football players I admired once upon a time, but who now seem so… mortal.
I fall back onto my bed, my dick perfectly happy and satisfied, just like my heart is. Damn. I didn’t think sex could be like that. I didn’t think it could expose you so deeply, bring you so close to someone else that you feel like you can see inside them.
Tonight, I saw Valentina. I peered in through a window to her soul and she saw right into mine, and we danced our dance together in the way that rock songs talk about.
But it isn’t long of looking up at my ceiling before the darkness of the world outside pours in. What we did just now… it was the best thing to ever happen to me. And yet no one can find out. Nobody can know what Val and I have done together, the kinds of feelings we harbor toward each other.
I should fall asleep right away after a doozy like that, but those thoughts keep me up for hours. What would I say if Mom and Fred found out? Fuck. She’s his twenty-one-year-old daughter. He would certainly have some thoughts about that.
Falling asleep doesn’t register at all in my memory. What does is waking up to sun coming in my window, extra bright because it’s reflecting off the snow that fell last night.
My eyes feel heavy and laden from not sleeping. I drag myself out of bed, hoping for some coffee at least. Mom is already in the kitchen busying about, getting ready to make her famous pancakes.
“Oh, you look like you need this,” she says, grabbing a mug before I’ve even sat down at the table. She fills it up from the pot and deposits it in front of me, rubbing my back before returning to her work. I’ve never been much of a morning minotaur, and I love Mom even more for remembering that.
Then Fred comes in, as chipper as ever, and calls out, “Good morning, Banon!” He’s cheery now, but wait until he finds out I’m banging his daughter.
Goddamn it. It was so good, so fucking good, so absolutely right to be with her—and it might have been the biggest mistake of my life. I can’t even look Fred in the eye as he pulls out the eggs and starts cooking, not after what I did with Val last night.
I shouldn’t have done it. I should never have opened that door between us. I have to figure out how to shut it, for both of our safety, for the safety of this family.
VALENTINA
The next morning, I practically leap out of bed, completely rested and ready for the day. Sex with Banon last night was like the best drug possible. I slept like the dead, and right now, the world is my oyster. I am a new woman with a new lease on life.
I come out of my room bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. I smell eggs cooking, and I hope it comes with pancakes. Marissa makes the best banana nut pancakes.
As I come down the hall, I can hear my dad laughing as Marissa says, “And then Robert told him to find his own plumber!”
I’m clearly the last one to arrive. As I’d hoped, my stepmother is in front of the stovetop, flipping a pancake, a stack of cooked ones beside her. Dad is taking off the eggs and spooning them out onto plates. They both look cheery—but then I notice Banon at the table.
He’s leaned over his coffee, dark circles under his eyes. He glances up when I arrive, and his brows rise, his mouth twitching up in a smile. But then, as he looks around the kitchen where Dad and Marissa are busying about, it falls from his face and he stares down at the placemat.
The pep drops out of my step. I hope he doesn’t regret last night. Oh, god, I hope everything is all right after how we left it. It seemed like he was excited for the future, but now he looks like the Cryptkeeper.
“Good morning,” I say, forcing myself to sound chipper. I smile at Banon, hoping he’ll return it, but he simply drinks his orange juice.
“Morning, sunshine,” Dad says. “OJ?”
He pours me a glass of orange juice, and I join Banon at the table. We put the leaf away so I can sit close and not look too awkward. Under the table, I put a hand on Banon’s knee.
The minotaur tenses all over, his eyes darting to mine. He tips his head and then shakes it. A clear message: don’t do that.
My hand drops to my side. What’s going on? What happened?
So it was just a dream. Just a stupid fucking dream.
I try not to let it show on my face how miserable that feels, smiling and nodding when Dad and Marissa serve up the food. They talk to me and I do my best to process it, answering accordingly while the entire back of my brain wonders, Why? Why would he do that with me?
Maybe I was right. Maybe it was the ultimate humiliation, a joke he was playing on me, after all.
“Banon, will you take Val back to school on your way home?” Dad asks as I plate up bacon and pancakes, slathering them with maple syrup.
“Sure,” he says, then yawns. “No problem.”
I try to catch his eye, but Banon carefully looks away from me, and I become more certain that everything that happened in my childhood bedroom was a huge mistake.
But I maintain the facade as we finish breakfast, then head to my room to pack up.
Banon’s waiting by the front door and doesn’t speak as we head out to his car.
I don’t even know what to say when we shut the doors and he peels away from the curb. I’m too shocked, too hurt, to even open my mouth. I think over everything I might say as he speeds toward my school, but it all sounds pathetic.
I’m so pathetic, thinking he would love me in the light of day.
The entire ride is silent, all the way until Banon pulls up outside my dorm. I sit there in the passenger seat, unmoving, trying not to break down.
“Really?” I finally ask. “Like we don’t even know each other?”
“Val…” Banon grips the steering wheel tighter. “We can’t do this. I stayed up all night thinking about it, and I decided. We can’t.”
I knew it. I knew it was all too good, too right, and I couldn’t have that. Not with him.
“Cool.” I don’t know what else to say. “You decided on your own. So you’re gonna use me and toss me, like every girl you’ve ever fucked. Got it.”
His head swivels toward me. “It’s not like that.”
“Then how is it?” I am trying my damnedest not to cry, because he doesn’t deserve my tears. “Please, explain it to me. How you came to my room. How you told me beautiful lies, and now you regret it. Tell me all about it.”
He sets his broad teeth together and hisses between them. “We’ll be ostracized! Everyone will judge us. It will be a war all our lives just to be recognized. And that doesn’t even count my mom and your dad—what would they say? Wouldn’t they be… disgusted with us?”
He’s panting after laying it all out on the table. Of course, I know that he’s right. I didn’t want to think about it too hard, but it would be an uphill battle for us. Still, I wanted to try. I wanted to fight for this, because I thought I could believe in it.
But he doesn’t.
“I’m sorry,” he says, bowing his head. “I’m sorry I came to your room. I should never have said what I said on the park bench.”
It hurts even more, knowing that he regrets it.
“Valentina.” Banon turns fully in his seat, checking out the window over my shoulder before he leans down toward me. “I didn’t lie about anything. I love you. But I can’t have you.”
I don’t need to put up with this.
“If you loved me, you would try for me,” I say, getting my wits about me again. “I don’t care whether the world knows or not.”
I pull away from him, grabbing my backpack out of the footwell. I’m over this.
“You’d keep it a secret?” he asks as I grab the door handle. “You’d want that?”
I could just shake him.
“I want you.” I glare over my shoulder. “That’s it, Banon. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. I would rather have that than pretending nothing ever happened, and spending my whole life wondering what could have been.”
He’s quiet, simply watching me, his eyes searching mine for something. I know he knows it—the way we fit together, how it was life-altering in a way that can never be undone. What we did was irreversible, and we’ll both be haunted by it forever.
The sternness on Banon’s face falters, and he buckles forward.
“Whatever I have to do,” he says, sounding choked.
“If I get to keep you, I’ll do it. If it means I never tell another soul about you, I’ll do it.
” He reaches out and grabs my hand, squeezing it like it’s his very last lifeline.
“I’m sorry, Val. All I want is to keep you safe.
I don’t want you to destroy your reputation for me.
” He squints. “I already did that once.”
“Then no one will find out.” I peek out the window, too, to make sure we’re alone before putting my hands on his big muzzle and pulling him in for a kiss. It’s quick, so we don’t get caught, but exactly what I needed.
Putting on my backpack, I open the car door and step out.
“Next time Rich is gone at his girlfriend’s place,” Banon says in a low voice, “do you want to come over?”
“Just text me.” I hold up my phone. “I’ll be ready.”
I’m in my Calculus II class the next Monday when my phone buzzes in my pocket.
Rich is going on a date and won’t be back. Could I pick you up?
I glance at the prof before answering.
I’ll be ready at six.
Great. I’ll grab dinner on the way.
I’m buzzing throughout the rest of my classes, eager to get back to my room and change. I have the perfect bra and panty set, much cuter than what I was wearing the other night, though I doubt I’ll be wearing them for long.
Finally, I’m done. I take a quick shower and even blow-dry my hair, which requires borrowing a blow-dryer because I’ve never bothered to use one before. Then I slip on a cute dress with long sleeves and a pair of matching leggings with knee-high boots.
When Banon’s car stops at the curb, he rolls down the window and mimes removing a pair of sunglasses.
“Fire alarm’s about to go off,” he says as I open the door and hop in.
I glance around. “How do you know that? Did you see some smoke?”
A laugh bursts out of him, and Banon nearly falls forward against the steering wheel as he continues snorting like a bull. “No, I just meant you look hot.”
“Oh.” I feel like a dumbass. “What food did you get?”
“Thai. Your favorite, the massaman curry.”
“Perfect.” He does know me well.
When we get to the apartment, I manage to keep my hands to myself until we’re inside. Banon sets the food on the half wall in the entryway while I take off my boots, then he sweeps me into his arms and pins me against the door.
“Damn,” he mutters, one hand dragging over my tits, squeezing them and releasing them. “I want to rip your clothes off right fucking now.”
I grip the collar of his shirt. “Then do it.”
With a growl, Banon slips one hand under my dress and hikes it up, then pushes down my leggings with the other. He investigates my underwear between my legs, rubbing me through them. I twitch and gasp, and his mouth curves up in a smirk.
“This time, I get to hear you scream.” He pulls my panties down next, so both end up on the floor.
He unbuttons his jeans, sliding them down his ass just enough that his cock jumps free and his tail flicks wildly behind him.
That thick bull cock of his swells and rises between us.
Then he grabs me by the ass and lifts me into the air, slamming my back against the door.
“Are you ready for me, Valentina?” he asks, lining himself up without even using his hands. “Do you think your pussy can take me?”
“I know I can.” I reach down to position his cock right where it needs to be, and with a grunt, Banon slides home.