When she threads her fingers through my hair and switches angles, my restraint snaps. Like a frayed rope hanging by its last thread, I come, adding my climax to the mess on my clothes. Stars dance in my vision, swirling around my face like some sort of angelic aura, and it takes several erratic breaths for me to return from the high.
As I do, regret and fear wedge themselves between the euphoria.
Elle seems to register my feelings before I voice them. She frowns, climbing off my lap, and rolls her eyes. “Don’t say it. Please. I don’t…I don’t want to hear about how this was a mistake.”
A pang tears through my chest. “It wasn’t a mistake. Just…something that could get us in a lot of trouble.”
“Avernia can cover up literal murder when they put their minds to it, but you’re trying to convince me they’d actually fire you over something so trivial?”
“It’s the policy?—”
“It’sbullshit, Sutton. It’s you trying to put up a wall between us, although I’m not sure why. Maybe the people we just hid from have something to do with it, but either way, you’re a fucking liar. Maybe a coward too.”
Raw emotion makes her voice crack, and I clench my jaw because I can’t deny her accusation.
My fingers ache with the desire to grab her, feel her, make her cry out my name. But I don’t, reminding myself of Bellamy. Beckett. The curse.
Things I can’t really share but are thinly veiled excuses anyway. Ways for me to distract myself from the things this woman makes me feel and the things I’ve been avoiding for years.
I am a coward.
It’s just that no one ever really calls me out on it.
When I don’t reply, Elle glares at her hands, then brushes them off and pushes to her feet. “Okay. I’ll leave you alone.”
“Wait, I’ll walk you?—”
“No thanks. There are people on campus who aren’t too chicken to be with me, so I won’t force you to do it.” She rips the Band-Aid from her forehead, letting it fall on top of me. Dried blood stains the interior, and I ball it into my fist.
“People like Lexington?” I mutter.
“Maybe.” She shrugs. “But if you keep making excuses and refuse to admit you want me… I guess that isn’t really your business, is it?”
As she starts to leave the clearing, I stagger into a standing position, willing my dick to soften the rest of the way and ignoring the cool sensation of dried cum in my pants. “You need to stay out of these woods, Elle. If nothing else I say resonates with you, at least promise me you won’t come back.”
Her spine straightens, tensing beneath her hoodie as she crosses her arms. She says nothing, no acknowledgment of my words whatsoever, before she takes off toward campus, leaving me there wondering how long my resolve will actually hold out.
And where the fuck my mask went.
18
ELLE
When I finally make itback to campus, I’m grumbling to myself about how much I despise Sutton Dupont. I even make a mental note to consider withdrawing from his ridiculous class entirely, although that would throw a wrench in my academic plans.
It’s not even him I’m really mad at but myself for being so needy. Of course he wouldn’t want to get caught with a student. The consequences for him far outweigh anything that would happen to me if people saw us together, and I shouldn’t be pushing the boundaries like I have been.
That doesn’t make the rejection sting any less, but it does make me the clear asshole here.
Even if heislying and making excuses. His half-hearted rejections when he leans in for more of me and his refusal to deny it make that much obvious.
I recognize the signs of distraction and self-denial. I’m guilty of them myself, even now as I consider Sutton’s reasoning for hiding. He said he’d done it to keep us from being discovered, but I can’t erase the memory of the cloaked figures or rid myself of the images they embedded in my skull eight years prior.
But if we’d been in danger, a founding family member like Sutton would know about it. He certainly wouldn’t have kept me out there if that were the case.
Right?
As I pass beneath the broken gate, I nearly smack right into the dean and a tall, gangly man he’s chatting with.
