I bucked against the force of my own orgasm, the power rocking me, and held on to him like he was the life raft keeping me from drowning. He pulled out of my mouth and grabbed my wrists, then slid to his knees in front of me. I pitched forward automatically and pressed my face into his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around my convulsing body, holding on to me.
“I can’t—please, take it out,” I panted, the intensity of sensation getting past the sanity point, but he held on tight, not allowing me to remove the vibrator.
“Shh, angel. You can. Come for me, again. You’re not done.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, water leaking from the corners. “Foster, please.”
But even as the begging word passed my lips, my body charged up another hill, and this time the orgasm was so intense, so breath stealing, that only silence emerged when I opened my mouth to cry out. I swayed in his arms as he whispered sexy, coaxing things against my ear.
Finally, when every ounce of strength seemed to exit my system, Foster gently slid the toy from me. Not even caring where I was, I moved my legs from under me and lay down on the floor, my head against his thigh and my body curled up on the rug in the fetal position. My blouse clung to my sweat-slicked skin. I was done. Not sleeping for much of last night, all the emotional upheaval of the previous day, and two orgasms had pushed me past any sense of decency.
Foster combed my hair with his fingers, caressing my scalp with long, luxurious strokes. A soft sigh escaped me. Somehow, lying there on the floor half-naked, my knees rug burned, and my jaw aching from the rough use, I’d never felt more comfortable or cherished. I could’ve slept there and been happy about it.
Foster traced my eyebrow with his finger. “You want me to run you a bath, or do you want to worry about that after you get some rest?”
“Rest,” I murmured.
“Good choice.” He extricated himself from under me and then turned me to lift me into his arms.
I didn’t fight it. If he wanted to lift me, so be it. He carried me into my bedroom and laid me on my unmade bed. I reached for my blouse, but he gently pushed my hands away.
“Let me.” He unbuttoned my blouse and took off my bra, brushing soft fingers against my still-beaded nipples. Then, he guided me down to my pillows and pulled the sheet and blanket over me.
“Are you staying?” I asked sleepily.
He rubbed a thumb over my cheekbone. “No, angel. I can’t. But come Tuesday, we’ll be spending a lot of time together. Take the next few days to enjoy the solitude . . . and the freedom.”
“If this is what captivity feels like, I think I’m becoming a fan.”
He chuckled softly, a warm, masculine sound that made me want to crawl back into his lap. “We’ll see what you think when you’re not high on post-orgasm, subspace bliss.”
“Mmm,” I murmured, fighting to keep my lids open.
He kissed my forehead. “Get some rest, angel.”
Then he was gone.
And so was I.
TWENTY-FOUR
“Marcela, this better be a joke,” my father warned. “If it is, it’s a particularly unfunny one.”
The acid in my stomach churned, and I shot Bailey an I’m dying here look. She gave me a weak double thumbs-up for me to keep at it. “Papá, the clinic needs me right now. It would be bad to leave them in a lurch.”
Lie. Lie. Lie. But somehow, even though I’d had the best of intentions when I dialed his number, I couldn’t bring myself to tell him the truth yet.
“I know of another clinic in a lurch,” my father said through what sounded like clenched teeth. “Mine. Tu familia.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, and Bailey poured me a second glass of wine in sympathy. “I know. But you’ve managed this long without me, surely—”
“How long do they need you for?” he asked, his tone clipped.
Indefinitely. “Uh, I’m not sure. They’re looking for a replacement. A couple more weeks?”
He muttered a slew of something I couldn’t understand. “You’ve put me in a bad spot, Marcela. The house is ready and sitting there, and I’ve been setting things up at the clinic, too. You better be here for your birthday. Your mamá has been planning a big family dinner, and I will not see her disappointed. Comprendes?”
“Yes, Papá,” I said, shrinking under that tone of his. “I promise I’ll be there for my birthday.”
Even if it wasn’t to stay. I pressed my face into the throw pillow I had in my lap. I was lying to my father. And leaving my family in a tough spot—for what? To have some crazy, kinky relationship with a boy? I was going to hell.
Worst. Daughter. Ever.
“Good night, Marcela,” my father said coolly.
“Good night. Tell Mamá I miss her.”
“Tell her yourself. Or are you too busy to call your own mother now?”
I swallowed past the dryness in my throat. “Of course not. I’ll call her tomorrow.”
The phone went dead.
I tossed the phone onto the love seat and groaned as I ran my hands over my face.
“That bad, huh?” Bailey asked from her cross-legged position on the floor. She twirled a forkful of spaghetti in the bowl she was holding. She looked so comfortable there hanging out in my apartment. I’d rarely invited her over because if I was home, I was studying. And usually she had to drag me to go out so I’d see something besides my four walls. But it was nice having her here now.
“I lied through my goddamn teeth,” I said, reaching for the glass of wine. “I don’t know how I’m going have this conversation. I thought I could, but how am I supposed to tell him I’m going to deviate from the path I’ve been planning all my life? He’ll hate me, Bay. Hate me.”
She frowned. “Your dad may get mad, but he won’t hate you. You’re just trying to live your own life.”
“No, you don’t know him. Forgiveness is not his strong suit.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, my sister, Luz, got pregnant at seventeen and . . . didn’t go through with the pregnancy. My dad cut her out of our family like she didn’t exist. She was just a kid who made a bad decision with her boyfriend, but there were no second chances. That was it. Done. He gave her money to get an apartment and then told her not to come home again.”
“Wow, that’s . . . harsh.”
“I know,” I said, between gulps of wine. “Now you know why I’m terrified to tell him. Luz has struggled every day since then—alone with no support around her. If Andre, my oldest brother, or I want to talk to her or see her, we have to do it on the sly without my parents knowing. She puts on a brave face and is too proud to accept money from any of us, but I can’t imagine what that must be like. My family is everything to me. Going through life without them being there, I don’t even want to think about it.”
Bailey set her bowl in her lap, sympathy crossing her features. “Your brothers wouldn’t disown you.”
I sighed. “No, they wouldn’t. But how could I walk away from my mom?”
“It’s not like you’re breaking the law or anything. You don’t think your mom would forgive you?”
“Not if my dad told her not to. She does everything he says without question. It nearly killed her when he kicked Luz out, but she didn’t stop him. Honor thy husband and all that crap. She just went to church and prayed for days on end, lighting candles and saying her rosary novena. I remember crying for my sister at night because I had no idea why they wouldn’t let her come home. I was too young at the time for them to tell me the real reason, so all I knew was that she did a ‘very bad thing.’ After that, I thought anytime I broke a rule, the same thing would happen to me.”
“Geez, talk about pressure. No wonder you’re such a straight arrow,” she said, shaking her head.
“Ha. Right. A straight a
rrow,” I scoffed. “Not so sure that label applies anymore.”
She cocked an eyebrow at me. “Seriously? You’re going to take a kickass job instead of going back home. It’s not like you’ve gone all Britney and shaved your head during a drug bender or something.”
I kicked back the last of my wine, letting the warmth of it burn through my chest before meeting Bailey’s gaze again. “I’m not exactly staying for the job alone.”
Her fork hovered halfway to her mouth, then after a beat, my comment apparently registered. She set the bowl and fork on the glass coffee table with a clank.
“Oh. My. God. There’s a guy, isn’t there? I knew it! You’ve been acting so weird lately.” She pushed up from the floor and plopped on the other side of the couch from me, her dinner forgotten and her eyes wide. “Is it Pike? Please God, tell me it is. Because, seriously, if you’ve seen him naked, I’m going to need detailed descriptions. And possibly drawings. How comfortable are you with hidden video? Because I’d be willing to pay you for that, too.”
I snorted. “Fangirl much?”
She grabbed a pillow and swung it at me. “Yes. Talk, bitch!”
I dodged the blow with an elbow and set down my empty glass. “Calm down. Lord, wine makes you mean, you know that?”
Bailey narrowed her eyes.
“Fine. No, it’s not Pike. We’re just friends. Though,”—I gave her a conspiratorial look—“I have seen him naked, and believe me, a drawing could not possibly do him justice.”
Bailey’s mouth formed a perfect O, making her look like one of those dolls that you squeeze to make sing, only no sound came out.
“But I’m kind of in a thing with his roommate, Foster,” I finished.
She closed her eyes and held up a finger in the I-need-a-moment gesture. When she opened her eyes again, she had the expression of a girl on a mission. “Let’s put a pin in that whole, I have a ‘thing’ with some guy you’ve never mentioned to me before. And rewind back to the part where you’ve seen Pike—the drummer of frigging Darkfall—naked.”
I curled my lips inward, debating on how much I should tell her. I’d never really had a friend I talked about sex things with. Well, mostly, because I had no sex things to actually share. And my closest friends back home were raised even more conservatively than I was—nice girls don’t talk about those things aloud. But Bailey had sure done her fair share of telling me about her escapades. She didn’t have much of a filter.
And though she’d prodded me about my reasons for not dating anyone, I’d never admitted to her that I’d been a virgin. Mainly because she would’ve staged her own version of The Bachelorette: Virgin Edition to get me laid. However, tonight the need to talk to someone about all that was going on in my life was filling me like helium, leaving me ready to burst. Maybe it was time to trust Bailey as a real friend instead of holding her at arm’s length like I’d been doing with everyone since I started school.
Plus, I had been studying the binder Foster had given me. It did say a good safety net to have in place was to make a friend you could trust aware of what you were doing so you could check in with that person when you were out with someone new. Foster wasn’t exactly new, but I figured the rule could still apply.
“So, okay,” I said, gathering my courage and pretending to study a chip in my nail polish so I didn’t have to look at her. “I sort of went out with both Pike and Foster the night of graduation. Your tequila was involved. And, you know, I didn’t come home until morning.”
A soft gasp. “Ho. Lee. Shit, Cela. Both of them?”
Blood rushed to my face as I braced for the judgment. “I didn’t sleep with Pike. We just fooled around but—”
“You are my fucking hero.”
My gaze snapped upward. “What?”
“Are you kidding me? I would lose my shit being within three feet of Pike. I could barely string a sentence together when he walked in the other day. And you, Ms. All Study and No Play, managed to snag not just him but his roommate, too? And I bet the roommate’s just as hot, right? The hot ones tend to group together.”
“So hot,” I said, sagging into the couch, relieved to get the confession out. “Like I can barely look at him without wanting to jump and squeal like a twelve-year-old with Bieber fever. It’s ridiculous.”
Bailey sighed wistfully. “Just rub it in, Medina.”
I rolled my eyes. “Like you don’t have dudes lining up.”
“Dudes, Cela, frat guys who want to show me how proficient they are at keg stands. Not smoking-hot rock stars.”
“Foster isn’t a rockstar. He’s a business guy, owns a company.”
“He owns a company.” She blinked then reached for a garlic breadstick, shoving a bite of it in her mouth and chewing a little furiously. “I love you, but I’m totally kind of hating you right now. So a sexy CEO, which means he has money and is smart. Oh, how you suffer. And now you have a ‘thing’ with him? What kind of thing? Obviously enough to keep you here.”
I looked at the closed binder sitting on the bottom shelf of the coffee table. I nodded at the wine bottle. “You better pour us both another glass. This may take a while.”
Her eyebrows disappeared beneath her bangs, but she filled up the glasses again.
I had a feeling it was going to sound even crazier out loud than it did in my head, but there was no turning back now. She’d either grill me for every last juicy detail or drag me to the campus psychologist for an eval. Here goes nothing.
—
Foster looked up from his laptop at the sound of ferocious growling. On the far side of the living room, Monty had his head sticking out from under the blanket in his dog bed, teeth bared, and Pike was standing over him in a bouncer stance, an odd expression on his face.
“What are you doing?”
“Projecting calm, dominant energy,” Pike said, his voice even as he looked forward and not at Monty or Foster.
“I don’t think Monty has the mental capacity to enter a Safe, Sane, and Consensual agreement with you. And to be honest, I think he may be a top.”
Pike turned then, his face contorting as he tried not to laugh. “Stop. I’m trying to send a message here.”
“Not sure he’s getting it.”
Monty snarled and snapped at Pike’s boot, and Pike bent over and touched Monty’s side with his fingers in a quick, snake-strike motion. “Tsch!”
Monty ducked his head and backed off.
“Ha!” Pike said, grinning at Foster. “Look at that. Shit actually works.”
Foster laughed. “And what shit would that be exactly?”
“Cela told me about how training dogs is all about teaching them to be calm and submissive so you can be the pack leader. And so I downloaded all these episodes of The Dog Whisperer. That dude could make Cujo turn into Benji. But I think it’s starting to work. That’s the first time Monty hasn’t gone into full attack mode when I corrected him. Your girlfriend’s a genius.”
“Cela’s not my gir—” Foster started, but then his lips clamped shut. He’d been about to correct Pike on the erroneous term. Foster didn’t have girlfriends. Not since the Darcy debacle. But wasn’t that exactly what Cela was going to be? He could dress it up with the D/s terms. She was his submissive. But this was so much more than a play partner at The Ranch. He was inviting her into his life. His throat narrowed a bit, making it hard to breathe for a moment.
“Uh-oh,” Pike said, stepping away from Monty’s bed. “I know that look. Don’t get all freaked out now. You brought this on yourself.”
“Brought it on myself?” He scowled. “You make it sound like I’ve come down with an illness.”
Pike plopped down in a chair and propped his heels on the coffee table. “Look, I’m not judging. I think Cela’s great and hot and smart and hot.”
“I got it,”
Foster said irritably.
He smirked. “But just be careful. She’s young and doesn’t know what she wants right now.”
“She knows. That’s why she’s staying here,” Foster said, the conviction in his tone faltering only slightly.
“For now,” Pike said with a frown. “You’ve dazzled a virgin with your worldly ways. Bravo, boy wonder. Big feat.”
Foster pushed his laptop closed with a loud snap, Pike’s sarcasm digging right under his skin. “Now wait a second—”
Pike held up a hand. “Hear me out. You remember me telling you about, Ms. Briarstone, my junior year math teacher?”
Foster leaned forward and slid his computer onto the table, annoyance pumping through him. “Yeah, you never shut up about her back then. You said she wore skirts that inspired even you to learn quadratic equations.”
Pike gave a wistful sigh and got a far-off look in his eye. “Ah, those pencil skirts. When she’d lean over her desk to grab her notes, you couldn’t see any panty line. Not one. I lost days of my life wondering what was beneath—something sexy or nothing at all?”
“What does this have to do with anything?”
He brought his gaze back to Foster. “Because the night of my junior prom, I didn’t fuck the girl I’d taken to the dance. I lost my virginity to Ms. Briarstone at a shitty little motel she drove me to outside of town.”
Foster’s brows dipped. “You told me you did it with Laurel Woods freshman year.”
“Yeah, well, I lied. Laurel was my first blow job.” He pulled his feet off the table and braced his forearms against his thighs. “But my point is that I lost my virginity and fell in fucking love, dude. I thought that was it. No one could ever be as hot or perfect as her. I mean, she wore thongs and garters and shit. No girl in high school was going to top that.”
Foster sniffed, having trouble picturing Pike with hearts in his eyes.
“But of course all that rush of feeling wasn’t real. It was just me being young and stupid and horny as shit. We fooled around a few more times, but the novelty eventually wore off and we moved on.”