Chapter 36
Thirty-Six
Scarlett
18 Years Old
‘A hotel room’ was what Colin had said. Instead, what they walked into wasn’t just a hotel room, but clearly the honeymoon suite. It looked as though Valentine’s Day had thrown up everywhere. The bed was a massive, pillowy heart shape spread with white linens. The wood console table against the wall had a bucket filled with ice and sparkling cider. Rose petals scattered across every inch of space.
So much to look at, and Scarlett could not pay attention to any of it as she shouted the same word in her head with varying tones to test its viability. Sex . They were finally back where they had started. She could finally give all of herself to Colin, and she wanted nothing more. After everything, she thought she couldn’t love him more, and then he had to go and defend her honor in the hallway, and she had fallen a little harder. Veins vibrating with excitement, she glanced around the room Colin had prepared for them, smiling at how far he had leaned into the cliché of it all. It was perfect.
“I don’t really get the point of rose petals,” Colin said, standing at the foot of the bed and frowning down at the torn-apart roses. “Do people just have sex on top of them, or do they have to break out of foreplay to then remove them all so they can lay down?” He adjusted the bag of ice they had gotten at the ice machine down the hallway on his knuckles.
“I think red is just a sexy color, and it looks pretty. It’s also the universal sign for ‘I want to have sex with you.’” Scarlett smiled nervously.
He reached out and picked up a handful of rose petals, letting them fall through his fingers as he nodded. “I guess it’s good they’re here, then, because that is true. I do want to have sex with you.”
“Great.” She picked up one of the petals and smoothed her thumb over it, trying to get a handle on her nerves that had skyrocketed since they had entered this room.
“After your bedroom window, paying Walker back for the auction, this hotel room, and all the added romantic flare, I’m going to have to get a job when I get to Maryland,” he said. “If you like it, though, it was worth it.”
“You did all this just for me, even though you don’t see the point?”
Colin nodded and sat down on the edge of the bed. He patted the spot next to him for her to sit, and Scarlett obeyed, plopping down with an overeager bounce. “I’ve done extensive research on this, and I confirmed a suspicion I’ve had for a long time despite the research on it being shaky at best. You’d think with it being one of the most important things in life that there would be more data and a more defined definition.”
“What?” Her eyebrows bunched together in confusion. “On sex? I imagine there’s quite a lot of research on that.”
“There could still be more on sex, but I’m not talking about that.”
“I’m really confused. What are we talking about, then?”
“The research on love,” Colin said simply, tossing his ice bag onto the nightstand. The words didn’t quite register in her head until he reached out and grabbed her hand, his body starting to sway. The excited rocking motion that was always her favorite confirmation that he was happy to be there with her.
“The research on love?” Her voice cracked as she repeated his words back with uncertainty.
Colin’s hand let go of hers and slid up to cup her cheek, his eyes meeting hers head-on. She blinked back at him, alarmed by the sudden eye contact that felt both strange and forced.
“I… uh.” Colin’s thick eyelashes fluttered once before he locked his gaze on her yet again. She squirmed this time, discomfort rolling up her spine.
“What is it? You’re kind of scaring me. Are you okay? Are you sick?” Scarlett pulled away from his touch and scanned his body for possible injury, taking special note of his hand to make sure it hadn’t swelled up too much. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” he replied adamantly. “I was just trying to look into your eyes and tell you I—” He met her eyes again and stalled.
“You… what?” Scarlett’s brain felt like it had rebooted ten times since the start of the conversation.
“I can’t think when I’m looking straight into your eyes like a deranged serial killer,” Colin said. “And I don’t get how that’s romantic and the best way to tell you I love you.”
She rebooted again. “W-what are you—do you?”
“You’re really cute when you stutter.” He shifted closer to her, and her breathing started to pick up. “I know I’m supposed to talk about love while looking deep into your eyes, but it feels so wrong. Can I please do it the way I want to do it?”
“Colin, I don’t know what the hell you’re even talking about.” Scarlett let out an exasperated breath. “You keep mentioning love, and I think I’m going to have a heart attack if you don’t tell me what you mean right now.”
Without a word, Colin folded her in his arms and pulled her head down to rest against his chest. He lowered them to the bed and scooted until her body was flush against his with only the burden of clothes between them. “This is better,” Colin murmured and kissed the top of her head. Affection flooded her system, and she had no choice but to lean into him even more, hear his heartbeat in his chest and smell the scent of his clean skin. “What I meant to say was that I love you. I have an entire packet of research and a typed summary with pictures if you want proof.”
A small sigh of relief exited her nose, and she closed her eyes, burying her nose into the warmth of his chest as she asked, “You love me?”
“I do. I think I have for a while, but I’m really sure I do now,” Colin said.
Every tight limb in her body relaxed, muscles she didn’t even know were stiff going slack as she whispered, “I love you, too, Colin. So much.”
His arms squeezed her tighter. “I was hoping you did.”
She giggled. “Do you want me to sign a contract as proof?”
“I didn’t think of that. Maybe I should have drawn one up.”
“No.” She tried to hold back another laugh. “I don’t need that.” If there had ever been a moment in her life that she had been happier, she couldn’t think of it. To finally know for certain that Colin felt the same way she did made her feel electric, her body buzzing with energy.
“Good.” He let out a long sigh and pressed his cheek into her hair. “I’m so tired.” The contrast of this statement and how she felt were so at odds that this, out of everything, felt like the most shocking thing he had said all night. When she thought about it a bit longer, though, she could see why. The loud noise had all but drained Colin of his energy, and the fight in the hallway had to have sucked even more life out of him. Emotions always seemed to hit Colin harder. He felt everything all at once, like the night at the lookout. Then, for a few days after, he pulled back a bit from conversation.
“Don’t go quiet on me, okay?” Scarlett begged. “You can’t tell me you love me and then ghost me.”
“What?” Colin’s tone held a sharp edge of confusion.
“You just… every time something emotional happens, you tend to shut down.”
“I just physically can’t be present sometimes, Scarlett.” The edge to his voice was gone, replaced with resignation. A bone-deep exhaustion. “It’s fatiguing to try to be normal constantly. It seems so easy for people to make conversation or share what they’re feeling, or look people in the eyes when they’re speaking, and for me, it’s like I don’t even know how I’m feeling until it explodes out. It’s a mess of confusing shit, and then I’m punching Harden in the face. I didn’t really realize I was that pissed off about it, but the way he was talking about you, and knowing everything he did to Piper? Harden doesn’t deserve to breathe the same air as my family. He doesn’t deserve to look at someone as beautiful as you or think about you like that, because he doesn’t care about you. I just fucking lost it. I’m sorry I can’t be normal. I’m—” His voice choked a bit, and he sucked in a breath of air. “I wanted to dance with you at the prom. I promised myself I would, and I couldn’t. I wanted to tell you that I love you with a big romantic gesture like they do in the movies, and then I wanted to make love to you, but I couldn’t, and right now I’m so tired that I can barely keep my eyes open, let alone perform anything sexual. My hand is throbbing, and I just want to sleep and hug you.”
“I don’t want you to be normal,” Scarlett soothed. “I just want you to tell me when you need to retreat so I don’t worry about you. It’s okay if you need to decompress.”
“I need to retreat,” Colin whispered.
“Retreat, then.” A secret smile snuck onto Scarlett’s face as she sat up. Colin didn’t move with her, his lean body spread out against the mattress and limbs haphazardly laying exactly where she had left them. She scooted toward the edge of the bed and pulled his foot into her lap from where it was dangling over the side. There was no movement from Colin, so she continued, unlacing his shoe and sliding it off. The process was repeated until she had his socks off, leaving both his feet bare. She moved up to his waist and unclasped his belt, unbuttoned his pants, and pulled down the zipper.
“I know you’re half asleep already, but I’m going to need you to lift your hips,” Scarlett said, keeping her tone calm and even. Without a word from him otherwise, Colin’s hips rose from the bed, and she slipped his pants and underwear down over his ass and proceeded to peel them from his legs. His shirt was next, and Colin put in a minimal amount of effort to lift his arms at the right times to help her. When he was fully undressed, she undressed herself, set her corsage on the nightstand, plucked all the rose petals off the bed, and folded their clothes the way she had seen him do before. When she pulled back the covers, Colin limply flopped around until he was under the sheets, and she crawled in bed next to him naked after shutting the lights off. She removed his glasses last, kissing his forehead and gently unhooking them from his ears before folding them and setting them with his clothes.
“I love you.” Colin’s voice was barely audible as his arm folded around her, her backside resting in a spoon against his crotch, his bare skin warm to the touch. She could feel it now, how tired her body felt. It had to only be around nine-thirty, but for once her brain felt unusually calm. There was always something to worry about, but at that very moment, her brain was quiet because she simply didn’t care about anything other than the here and now. Wrapped up with the boy she was in love with, who loved her back. The comfort from knowing that there was someone amongst the billions of people in the world whose heart was hers and hers alone, and he was sleeping right beside her, curled up with an adorable scrunch to his nose and one weighted arm draped across her stomach.
“I love you, too.”
“Scarlett?” Colin’s groggy voice pulled Scarlett out of her newest spiral since she had silenced her six a.m. alarm an hour ago. Usually, when that alarm went off, she would hit snooze so many times her finger got sore, but there were too many thoughts swirling around in her head to curl back into Colin and go to sleep again. Light was pouring in from a crack in the window, reminiscent of a spotlight that was ready to expose all her feelings.
She rolled onto her side and propped her head up on her hand. “Colin?”
“I’ve been watching you stare at the ceiling and toss yourself around for the last ten minutes,” he said. “What are you thinking about?”
“I’m thinking that I really, really love you, and I’m terrified,” Scarlett admitted.
“Why are you terrified? Did I do something to scare you?”
“No, but you’re leaving,” she said miserably. “We don’t have very long before you go to Maryland. What are we going to do? You really think we’ll be okay with long distance? You don’t even like it when I gently touch you. How are you going to be okay with that?”
Colin scooted closer and set his chin on the top of her head. “Come with me.”
Scarlett jerked her head back and looked up at him in surprise. “Come with you to Maryland?”
“Yes.”
“We’ve been dating for like three months, Colin. I assume you’ll be in a dorm room for at least your first year. What am I supposed to do? And what am I even going to do in Maryland?” A million questions sparked in her head with their own subcategories of worry.
“We’ll get you an apartment.” He sat up with a wide grin like he was imagining it, too. “If you want to enroll in community college, I’m sure you could do that. We’ll get you a place with a spare room that you can paint in. You can help me study for all my exams, and we’ll cuddle every night till we fall asleep, and my roommate will have the dorm mostly to himself.”
The hope of a future with Colin seemed more important than every other aspiration Scarlett had at that moment. It was all she really wanted. “This is… insane,” she whispered with an incredulous shake of her head.
“Is that a no?” Colin asked, the light dying behind his eyes. She lurched forward and kissed him deeply before pulling back and laughing.
Out of every question in her head about logistics or her fears, the most basic of all the questions seemed the most important. Did she want to go? The answer came so quickly to her mind that there was no other option but to accept.
“Okay.” She nodded. “I’ll move to Maryland with you.”
Colin pounced on her, his mouth descending in a million peppered kisses across her face as she giggled and squirmed under him until his lips found hers in a more indulgent press. She breathed him in, her fingers lacing into his hair and gripping.
“Red,” Colin murmured into her mouth. “Can we brush our teeth?” The heat developing in her core drained from her body in a flash, and she bolted up from the bed. Looking alarmed, Colin rolled off after her, frantically grabbing at his folded underwear on the nightstand and pulling them on. “What’s happening?” He jerked his head from side to side, searching for the problem as if the room were going to burst into flame.
Scarlett covered her mouth with her hand, mortification sinking in. “You basically told me my breath is bad.”
“So?” He pulled his eyebrows together. “It is bad. Mine probably is, too, considering the weird taste in my mouth. I wanted to brush my teeth immediately when I woke up, but I didn’t because you were doing that thinking and staring at the ceiling thing you do, and I thought I should check on you first.”
The heat in her cheeks lessened, and she let her shoulders sag a bit. “We were kissing, and it felt like we were going to go further when you said it, so it was embarrassing.”
“Oh.” Colin grimaced, rocking back on his heels. “Can you tell me how it’s embarrassing? I just thought we’d get out of bed, we’d brush our teeth, I’d throw some deodorant on, and then we’d have extremely passionate sex after we both smell and taste good.”
“Oh.” Scarlett bit her lip and looked down at her feet. “Yeah, that sounds nice.”
“What did I do wrong?”
“You weren’t really wrong, I guess,” Scarlett considered. “I just don’t like being told negative things about myself while we’re actively making out.”
“Okay, so how do I…?”
“You probably just could have stopped kissing me, gotten out of bed, and told me exactly what you just said. The ‘extremely passionate sex’ part was a nice touch.”
“That will definitely be happening.” Colin’s eyes flicked over her, and Scarlett realized she was standing in the middle of their hotel room in the morning light, completely naked.
A slow grin spread across her face. “I guess we should get to scrubbing our mouths raw, then.”
“More than just your mouth will be raw.” The comment was delivered in Colin’s usual dry tone, so Scarlett almost missed it until she replayed it back in her head, and she laughed out loud. The victory smile she got from Colin as they raced to the bathroom was like a reward. It was one of the things she loved about him. He didn’t smile often, but when he did, it was almost always in response to someone else laughing or smiling from something he’d said. Every time she got one of his elusive smiles, it felt like she, too, had accomplished something.
They silently brushed their teeth side by side in the mirror, and never had dental hygiene felt so sensual before. With the anticipation of what they were about to do hanging between them, every stroke of the bristles Scarlett used to scrape her tongue felt like a premonition for how she wanted to drag her tongue down Colin’s torso or over his cock. She could see Colin get repeatedly distracted by her breasts as she brushed and they bounced with her movements. His electric toothbrush vibrating the way she wanted her vibrator to between her legs. After a couple minutes, they quickly spat into the sink and moved through the remaining motions in a hurry.
By the time they made it to the bed, Scarlett was already so keyed up that she couldn’t imagine needing anything but Colin inside her immediately. “Passionate sex?” she asked, turning to Colin, who was already stripping off his underwear again and folding them.
“Tell me how you want it. I don’t care how we do it as long as you come and you like it this time.”
She inhaled before releasing everything she had learned about herself since the beginning of their experiment. “I want you to pin me down. I want you to use your hand on me first while you kiss me. I don’t want to come from your hand alone, though, just work me up until I beg you to go further. I want you to tell me what you’re doing or what you want to do to me while you’re doing it, and order me around. I like it when you’re direct and you tell me how it feels or what you see. Then, when you fuck me, I want it to be so deep it almost hurts. I’ll use my hand to help me finish when we’re getting close. And I want you to make it clear you love me when we’re finished.”
“Done,” Colin said, a condom perched between two fingers that he must have pulled out during her speech. His cock was already hard between his legs, and she watched him rip open the condom wrapper and slide the rubber over himself before he pointed to the mattress. “Get on the bed and lie down on your back with your knees up and spread apart.” Need blooming in her core like a dull ache, Scarlett crawled to the headboard and did exactly what he said, letting her legs fall open in a blatant display of herself. “Look at that, Red. You’re wet already. I brought lube, but I think I’ll have no problem this time. Even with how tight you are, I’ll be able to slide right in.”
“Fuck,” she said, the desperation in her voice already showing. “Tell me what you want.”
“I need to know I’m doing it right. I don’t want to guess if you’re enjoying it.” Colin dropped to his knees on top of the bed and maneuvered between her legs, his fingers sliding down the inside of her thigh. “I need you to like it this time, yeah?”
“Okay.” Scarlett bobbed her head fervently, arching toward his hand.
“But if you don’t, please tell me. Don’t try to push through.”
“I’m gonna like it, Colin. Please just—” She wiggled a bit. “Touch me.”
He did, his fingers finding her clit first and pressing in slow, sweeping circles. “Make some noise, Red.” Her eyes scrunched shut, and her mouth fell open on a moan as he slid his fingers down in a wet line from her clit. The push into her was slow at first, a tantalizing press as his long fingers bottomed out inside her. Then his thumb went back to work.
“Oh, God,” Scarlett panted, bucking her hips off the bed. Colin caught on to her usual antics and quickly pressed the broad expanse of his forearm down against her stomach, holding her in place and heightening the torture. She squirmed under his touch, moaning with each press and rub of his fingers.
“You remember the safe word?” Colin asked.
“Isn’t it just ‘stop?’” she managed to squeak out.
“Yeah.” He nodded. “You tell me to stop if you?—”
“Colin!” Scarlett practically yelled. “If you stop, I’ll die.”
Still carefully working her over, he said, “You can’t actually die from this unless you have a heart attack or there’s a freak accident.”
“It’s a hyperbole,” she gasped. “Colin. Please—I need—fill me.”
“Give me your wrists,” he ordered. The hands previously playing with and rubbing her own breasts snapped together as she held them out, exposed wrists up as an offering. She watched with rapt attention as he sat back on his heels, slowly pulled his fingers out of her, and lifted them to his lips to suck them into his mouth before using the same hand to lock her wrists together with his fingers digging into her skin. She liked the pressure, which wasn’t respectful in the slightest. He wasn’t gentle about pinning her wrists above her head, and she liked the minuscule amount of pain he caused. She didn’t think she could handle much more than what he was giving her, but riding the line between pain and pleasure was exactly what she wanted. His hips pinned the rest of her body down as he lined himself up, the head of his cock knocking against her entrance. “Breathe, Red.” She did just as he pushed in. There was no pain this time, just a fire between her legs that made her want to rock into him, but she couldn’t with his restraints. “Holy fuck,” Colin groaned. “Please tell me this feels good to you.”
“So good,” Scarlett confirmed, her voice shaky with pent-up desire. He started to thrust, and it was all she could do not to move against him. The strokes became more deliberate and deep as Colin got more confident and unhinged above her, the hold on her wrists loosening as they kept going. When his eyes slid shut and his mouth was left permanently ajar, she matched his energy by hooking her legs under his ass. He went even deeper, and her toes curled under the intense pressure.
“Are you going to touch yourself?” Colin panted.
“I don’t need to.” She shook her head. “I can get there like this. Keep going as deep as you—” Her words were cut off by a loud moan when he shoved so far into her that she could feel him in her stomach. “ Yes .”
With surprising tenderness, one of the hands at her side grasping at the bedding was met with Colin’s, his fingers lacing with hers as he rocked relentlessly into her. And it was maybe that contact more than anything else that set her off.
“I’m going to come,” Scarlett said in between quick breaths.
“Me too,” Colin rasped. His eyes were still closed, and each stroke felt deliberate, his face scrunching with the push and pull like he might break at any moment. His fingers curled against her knuckle in a massage-like press and released while he pulled back and dipped forward. “I need you to come on my cock, Red. Right now.”
“ Colin .” She jerked under him, palming her breast as the intense, building pressure came to a peak of ecstasy. Her body rode the line between agony and satisfaction for an unbearable amount of time before the tightening of her muscles and watching Colin’s face clench with his own orgasm finally sent her careening over the ledge. Every muscle spasmed as waves of a pulsating heat twisted and spread from her core. And when the most intense orgasm of her life finally ceased, she collapsed against the mattress, chest heaving.
They both winced when Colin removed himself, her intimate parts too sensitive to withstand the touch she had been begging for just moments ago. Colin flopped to her side on the bed, his own breaths ragged and uneven as he pulled off the used condom.
“You okay?” Scarlett finally asked.
Every other word he responded with was broken up by a deep breath. “That was amazing. Holy shit.”
“Yeah?”
“Oh, I forgot!” he exclaimed suddenly. His lips pecked at hers in a quick kiss before he delivered a casual, “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“We are going to have so much sex in Maryland.” Colin sighed happily.
“Our experiment will just continue on forever.” Scarlett grinned.
“We’re still grading our performance?” he inquired, and she could tell instantly that he was delighted by that thought. Combining sex and science was one of Colin’s favorite things.
With one fist raised in the air, she called out with a giggle, “Grab the comprehensive chart!”