“No secrets?” H
e cocks an eyebrow, his fingers laced together on the table.
“Am I getting suspended?” I pretend like I care. Like anything other than him matters.
“No. You’re not.” His voice is even. “Is she bullying you, Remi? I need to know. And I know you can hold your own, so it doesn’t matter that you can take it.”
“Mikaela doesn’t bully me,” I answer flatly, raising my gaze to meet his. “But she does deserve to be suspended for what she did today.”
He doesn’t even ask me what happened. He knows Mikaela and knows me. And somehow, even though I don’t want it to, it makes me feel so much better about everything. To have someone by my side who believes in me. In my character.
“She should be,” he snaps, like this doesn’t matter. Like nothing matters other than us. “But if she gets punished, so will you. I walked in on you on top of her, Remi.” Hearing him say my name at school seems so wrong, but so right. “I was doing it to protect you. But then you had to go and run that beautiful mouth of yours,” he says, walking up to my desk to drag my lower lip down with his thumb.
I try to act unaffected, but my breathing picks up, and I feel my nipples harden.
“That mouth of yours is going to get you in trouble,” he says more to himself than to me. “So…no secrets you said?”
“No more secrets.” Our eyes are boring into one another. He swings another chair around in front of me and sits forward with his elbows on my desk. There’s heat sizzling all around us. It’s the feeling he got me hooked on, my very first addiction. My only vice. The universe disappears again, and we’re being sucked into a small, white capsule that’s floating. I feel the pop, pop, pop in my belly. Pierce James can make my body dance without even moving. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who holds such power over me.
He slides his leg toward me and laces it with mine. Ankle-to-ankle. We’re still staring at each other.
“Don’t play with me, Stringer. I’m older, wiser, bigger, and more powerful than you,” he hisses, and a little moan escapes my lips. He’s too serious to even care about that. I sober up, shaking the weight of the lust from my shoulders.
“I can’t keep doing this. Begging for crumbs of affection when all you do is tell me how wrong we are. I can’t do the hot and cold thing. If you want me, take me.”
He pushes his leg between both my thighs, and because I’m a masochist, I spread them apart. My skirt is short, and there’s a nagging ache for him between them. The need to be filled with everything Pierce James to the brim, until I howl in pleasure and pain, is taking over every single inch of my body.
“You are a part of my life,” he says, almost with annoyance. Like he doesn’t want it to be true. And he doesn’t. I know that. In fact, he wishes he could still tell me to close those legs, take my backpack, and fuck off from his classroom. But he can’t, so instead, his angle travels upwards. That’s as much connection as we can get with a desk between us, and the door may be closed, but it isn’t locked.
“Not enough,” I say, looking at him under my thick, long lashes. My voice is a tender rasp, and his throat bobs in reaction. My hand drops between my legs, but I don’t touch myself this time. No. This time, it’s him who is going to pleasure me.
“Don’t do this,” he warns.
“Do what?”
“End this.”
“End what?” I press, blinking at him, doe-eyed and oh-so-innocent.
And just like that, without a warning, he storms up to his feet, bolts to the door, locks it from the inside, and turns around, still holding the knob with white knuckles.
“Sit on my desk,” he orders. Everything is strained suddenly. Everything. My nipples are tight and begging for me to touch myself to subdue some of the lust. My center is throbbing. My panties are completely wet. I want to keep still and play with him a little more, but my desire overrules every morsel of pride I was hanging onto. I walk over to his desk, hopping on it with my face toward the dry erase board. The word secret is still written there in red, circled with sunrays pointing out to other words: scandal, morals, mystery, and consequences. All the things we talked about in class.
It dawns on me that this is real. People are passing the locked door in the hallway. I hear shouting, the pinging of iPhones across the floor, and a few girls giggling and protesting when a bunch of guys dribble a basketball inside the school premises. I swallow hard, my eyes rolling backwards as I think of what’s about to happen.
He walks over to me. Slowly. He is still in charge. Or at least he makes me believe that he is. Pierce stops when his whole body is between my legs, his waist level with my sex.
“End what?” I repeat myself, because he still hasn’t answered me.
He leans forward and bites my lower lip with his straight, white teeth, whispering into my mouth, “Our secret.”
Then I feel his fingers—just the tips of them—drawing lazy circles on my knees. Like he’s in no hurry. Like it’s not a possibility that someone will try to open the door any minute. Like what we have is real. Shivers break down my spine and make my skin prickly when he deepens our kiss, and I lean backwards, my hands slapped on his desk, trying not to get crushed by him. His tongue devours my mouth, and he tastes like peppermint gum and the man I want inside me. One of his hands travels deeper into my inner thigh, and the other one clutches onto my hip, nailing me onto the table like I’d ever try to run away.
“I like our secret,” he growls into my mouth, his fingertips dancing in the sensitive area between my sex and my thigh. He pinches that bone there—or maybe it’s a muscle—and my whole core is about to explode.
“Why?” I rasp into his mouth, and his grasp on my waist only tightens, and it’s beginning to feel downright rough. Like he is trying to own me in some way. “Because it’s a dirty little secret?”
“There’s nothing dirty about it.” His fingers hook the damp fabric of my underwear, and I don’t even have time to feel embarrassed about my arousal that’s pretty much smeared all over his desk. “There’s nothing wrong about it.” He sucks hungrily on my throat, his stubble and teeth scratching my sensitive skin, and I’m about to lose it. “There’s nothing, Remington Stringer, but you.”