My eyes nearly cross when she rubs her thumb across the tip of my cock and then, before I can even begin to recover from that, she’s leaning forward and pulling me into her mouth.
“Fuck!” Once again my hands tangle in her hair, but this time it’s as much about finding something to hang on to as it is about angling her mouth where I want it. Because, if I’m honest, Ophelia doesn’t need any help. She knows exactly what she’s doing as she slides her tongue along the underside of my cock. As she hums deep in her throat. As she polishes the head of my dick with the very tip of her tongue.
“Ophelia, baby.” I can’t believe how close I am, or how fast she’s gotten me here. I tug at her hair, try to get her to listen so I can warn her that—
For one second her eyes meet mine, and I freeze at the control in them. Gone is the dark forest green of her arousal, and in its place is a hard malachite that is all calculation, all cool reason and determination.
It doesn’t make sense. When we were in the kitchen, she was into it. I know she was into it. I could feel it in the way her body moved against mine, hear it in the desperate little sounds she made deep in her throat. Hell, I could see it in the frantic beat of the pulse at the base of her neck.
So what the hell happened? How did she go from completely turned on to just going through the motions? And, more important, why?
She’s still going down on me, and while it feels good—obviously—the desperate heat of my own arousal has died as quickly as hers did. I know some guys don’t give a shit about whether the girls they fuck get off, but I’ve never been one of them. I may do a lot of girls, and I may not call afterward, but I always, always make sure they get something out of it, too. Otherwise, I might as well just use my hand.
“Ophelia, stop.”
She doesn’t listen. She sucks me deep into her throat, circles my dick with her tongue. Despite my best intentions, I flex my hips and drive my cock deeper into her mouth as an electric current of sensation shoots down my spine.
She makes an encouraging sound in the back of her throat and the vibrations set every one of my nerve endings on fire. My vision gets blurry and the driving need for release is a powerful drumbeat inside me. She’s good at this—really good—and part of me wants to just say fuck it and go with it. She obviously doesn’t have a problem with it happening.
Except, when I force myself to focus—when I shove the mind-numbing, knee-weakening pleasure back and just look at her—I can see the way her hands are shaking. I can see how tense she is. And before she looks down, I can see the glassy sheen of tears in her eyes.
That does it. I’m finished. “Ophelia, stop.”
Once again, she doesn’t listen, but this time I tug at her hair until she gets the message and slowly slides me out of her mouth.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, her voice hoarse and raspy from how deep she’d just taken me. “Don’t you want to finish?”
“What I want,” I say as I sink to the ground beside her, “is to know what the fuck is going on here.”
Chapter 8
Ophelia
I freeze at the demand, which sounds incredibly compelling when spoken in that sexy, yes-I-sold-my-soul-to-the-devil voice of Z’s. I don’t want to answer him, don’t want to say anything to him at all, but he’s not exactly in the mood to take no for an answer.
His hand comes to rest on the bottom of my chin and then he’s pressing up, forcing me to meet his eyes whether I want to or not.
“What’s going on, Ophelia? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” It’s a knee-jerk reaction, the answer I always give to that question even when it isn’t true.
Like now. I’ve rarely been less fine in my life, and the truth is, I don’t even know why. It was just a blow job, after all. Just sex. It had to happen again sometime, with someone. Why not now? Why not with Z? It’s not like he matters. It’s not like any of it matters.
“Really?” He cocks a brow. “Because you don’t look fine and I just don’t get it. You were into it. I know you were into it. And then … then you just weren’t anymore.”
I was into it. I wasn’t expecting to be, but it was hard not to get turned on with the way Z was touching me and kissing me, the way he paid attention to every single freaking thing my body did. Like he was looking for a road map to make sure I enjoyed it as much as he did. And I was enjoying it—a lot. At least until I remembered Remi. And the bet. And all the reasons I wasn’t supposed to like what was going on.
“What do you care?” The words slip out before I have a clue I’m going to say them. “As long as you get laid, as long as you win that stupid bet, why the hell do you care what’s going on in my head anyway?”
He stumbles back on his heels, his face blank with shock—and something else I just can’t place. “You know about the bet?”
“Damn right I do.”
“And you were going to sleep with me anyway?”
I try to look away, but he’s still got a firm grip on my chin. It kind of pisses me off, the way he thinks he has the right to touch me so proprietarily, and part of me wants to lash out. To knock him on his ass. But the more reasonable part acknowledges that I did just have his cock in my mouth, so he probably thinks that gives him some rights over me.
As if.
“Ophelia?” he prompts when I don’t say anything.
“Yeah, I was. So what?” This time I shove at his hand until he lets me go. I can’t handle being this close to him, can’t handle looking into those eyes that have gone so dark that I can barely distinguish the pupil from the iris.
Standing up, I grab my jeans and yank them up my legs. Having this discussion is bad enough. Having it when I’m nearly naked somehow makes it a million times worse.
After I find my turtleneck—hanging from the top of one of my lamps, for God’s sake—and slip it on, I turn to see that Z pulling up his own pants. I grab his shirt from where I took it off in the kitchen, fire it at him. Now that things have turned ugly, I can’t get him out of here fast enough.
Except Z seems in no hurry to leave, even after he yanks his shirt over his head. Instead, he walks over to where I’m standing and leans against the tiny bit of counter space I actually have in this place. I try not to look at him. The last thing I need to remember is Z kicking back in my kitchen, his arms and legs crossed in a pose that screams, Yes, I’m king of the fucking mountain, and I know I’m sexy as hell, too.
For long seconds he doesn’t say anything and neither do I. Then again, there’s not much to say, is there? He bet he could fuck me and I was prepared to let him win that bet because I knew it wouldn’t mean anything. It doesn’t say a whole hell of a lot good about either of us, does it?
When he finally does speak, it’s just one word. And though I should have been expecting it, I’m not, and I don’t have an answer—at least not one I want to share with him.
“Why?”
I don’t answer.
“Ophelia?”
I shrug, still refusing to look at him. I figure eventually he’ll let it go and just walk away. It’s what he’s known for, after all. It’s sure as hell what I’d do if I was in his place.
But it turns out Z’s got more sticking power than most people give him credit for, because he’s not budging. In fact, when I look at him out of the corner of my eye, he’s practically grown roots.
“I don’t know, okay?” I finally tell him. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”