Chapter 20

I haven’t fingered a girl this much since high school.

Taylor lies in my bed on her side, cheeks flushed and lips parted slightly. Her bra is tossed across my desk in the corner. Her shirt is pulled up to expose her perfect tits for me, jeans pushed down only enough for me to get my hand beneath her skimpy white panties. I haven’t even seen this girl fully naked yet, but she’s the most erotic thing I’ve ever witnessed. Blonde hair splayed over my pillow and warm little body wrapped around mine while she writhes against my hand. Her eyes clench tighter every time I swipe my thumb across her clit. I could do this all day.

“Stop.” Taylor pulls her mouth from mine and I freeze. Shit. Was I being too rough? It’s been a while since I screwed around with a virgin.

“Am I hurting you?” I ask immediately.

“No, it feels amazing.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. I just… I think I want to go down on you.”

“You think?” I clamp my teeth down on my lip to stop a laugh. That’s not usually how these conversations start. I mean, honestly, it usually isn’t much of a conversation at all.

She nods, appearing to grow more confident as the idea tumbles around her mind. She licks her lips, and my cock damn near tunnels through my jeans. “Yeah. I want to.”

“You don’t have to, you know.” I lift an eyebrow. “I don’t believe in transactional sex.”

“No, I know.” Taylor smiles at me, and there’s a conspiratorial glint in her eye. A girl about to set out on an adventure. It’s sort of cute, in a weird way. My babe’s first dick.

“All right, then.” I roll over onto my back and fold my arms behind my bed. “Make a man outta me, Taylor Marsh.”

Laughing softly, she crawls down my body and unbuttons my jeans, tugs them down with my boxers. I’ve been hard since she walked into my bedroom an hour ago, and my cock springs up to say hello.

Taylor bites her bottom lip as she takes me in her hand and carefully strokes my shaft. She says something, but I’m not listening because all my concentration is dedicated to not blowing my load. I’ve yanked it to this moment so many times since we met—getting her mouth on my cock, her Caribbean-blue eyes staring up at me while she sucks me off.

“Am I hurting you?” she mimics, giving me another gentle stroke. Teasing me. “Because you look like you’re in pain.”

“I’m in agony,” I mumble. “Don’t think I can survive this.”

“Good. Just don’t come in my hair,” she orders, and my answering laughter dies in my throat when she licks up the length of my dick.

I’m done for when she takes the head fully in between her pouty lips, her tongue working me over. I thread my fingers into her hair, encouraging her to go slower. She complies, the hot suction of her lips swallowing me up one millimeter at a time. By the time I’m buried nearly to the back of her throat, I’m sweating.

Jesus fucking Christ.

I use my free hand to swipe at the beads of sweat dotting my forehead. My breathing becomes labored when Taylor utilizes the same torturous pace to drag her mouth off my cock. Her tongue sweeps over the tip in a slow, seductive swirl, and I almost lose control right then and there.

Why did I think slow would be a better idea? Slow, fast, it doesn’t matter. I’m not going to last either way. I don’t know where she picked this up, but Taylor’s giving me the best head I’ve ever gotten.

“Fuck, babe, I’m close,” I grind through my teeth.

Lips glistening with moisture, Taylor releases me with a wet noise and sits up, still stroking my cock. Groaning, I grab the T-shirt hanging off my headboard and take my dick from her just as my entire body tightens and shudders. I come into the shirt, while Taylor sweetly kisses my chest, my neck, until I strain for her lips. Our tongues meet, and I kiss her hungrily as the aftershocks of release tremble through my body.

“Was that okay?” She breaks the kiss, smiling shyly. How this girl turns on a dime spins my head. From innocent virgin to dick whisperer and back again.

I let out a happy sigh. “Better than okay.” Then it dawns on me. “But I didn’t get you off. I can still—”

“I’m good.” Taylor snuggles up beside me, resting her head on my chest. Her fingers lazily travel across my stomach. “That was fun.”

“I’ll get you twice next time,” I say, and kiss her forehead while I toss the shirt into my hamper across the room.

Hooking up with Taylor has made foreplay fun again. Before this, either a chick was so anxious to get on my dick I’d barely get her name, or I was so amped to get her naked we wouldn’t even kiss. With Taylor, I don’t want to miss anything. I want to learn every inch of her body, give her every experience. I’m her first, and I want to make damn sure I do it right.

My phone vibrates on the nightstand beside Taylor. “Mind grabbing that?” I ask.

She hands it to me. An unknown number lights up onscreen, triggering a frown.

“Yeah?” I answer, continuing to run my hand through the length of Taylor’s hair.

“’Sup, brother.”

Every muscle in my body tenses up. Kai. That motherfucker. “How’d you get this number?” I ask coldly.

Taylor looks up at me with questioning eyes.

“Don’t be mad, bro. I talked it out of one of your boys at the club in Buffalo.” Bucky, I bet. That kid would give up his bank PIN if you asked nicely. “Bunch of fucking lightweights, those jocks.”

“Well, lose it. I told you before—”

“Easy, brother. I come in peace. Listen, I’m gonna be in Boston this weekend. Let’s meet up, talk it out. It’d be good for both of us.”

Yeah, right. With Kai, there’s only ever what’s good for him.

“Not interested.” I end the call and toss my phone to the floor. Damn it.

“Was it that guy again?” Looking concerned, Taylor unwraps herself from my side and sits up, adjusting her shirt and zipping up her jeans. “Kai?”

“It’s fine. Forget about it.” I say the words to her, but I’m really talking to myself. Ever since Kai reappeared that night after the tournament, I haven’t been able to shake the sense of dread knotting in my stomach.

“Conor. I know you’re holding something back.” When Taylor turns her gaze on me—sincere, vulnerable—I feel like such an asshole. “And if you’re not ready to tell me, or you don’t trust me with the information, that’s fine. But don’t act like it isn’t there.”

Fuck me.

“I’m sorry.” I lick my suddenly dry lips. If Taylor’s going to finally realize she’s too good for my dumb ass, it might as well be sooner rather than later. “I didn’t want to say anything because I like the person you think I am.”

A groove digs into her forehead. “What does that mean?”

It means that if Taylor knew what was good for her, she’d block my number.

“It means if you’d known me back then, you’d have been smart to run the other way.”

“I doubt that’s true,” she says, and it absolutely guts me. This girl has so much misplaced faith in me. “Just tell me. I’m sure it’s worse in my head.”

Fuck it.

“I’ve spent the last couple years trying to get away from Kai because I used to be him,” I admit. “I was in it up to my neck with him since we were kids. Letting him talk me into dumb shit, breaking into abandoned buildings, tagging, some shoplifting.” Fighting, smashing out car windows. “By high school Kai started getting into dealing. Just pot, mostly. It’s what people did, you know? Like, it didn’t feel wrong at the time. Sometime during sophomore year of high school, though, his older brother got locked up for chopping cars, and after Tommy went away, it seemed like Kai started speeding down the same path. Hanging out with some of his brother’s friends, missing weeks of school.”

I can’t read Taylor’s expression as I tell her all of this. And I’m still unable to bring myself to admit the worst of it, because I’m ashamed, embarrassed of what I was. Knowing it’s all still in me, under the surface. The stain that’s soaked through the carpet.

“Then my mom married Max and we moved out of the neighborhood. They sent me to a private school.” I shrug. “That got me away from Kai, for the most part. If it weren’t for that, I probably would’ve been locked up by now. Gotten into the same shit Kai started in on.”

Taylor stares at me for a long time. Silent, pensive. I don’t know I’m holding my breath until she releases hers.

“That’s it?”

No.

“Yes,” I say out loud. “I mean, yeah, basically.”

Christ, I’m an asshole. A coward.

“Everyone comes from somewhere, Conor. We’ve all screwed up, made mistakes.” Her tone is soft, but ringing with conviction. “I don’t care who you were before. Only who you choose to be now.”

I chuckle darkly. “That’s easy for you to say, though. You’re from Cambridge.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“You can’t understand what it’s like to be dirt poor one day and dropped off at a private school in loafers and a tie the next. I hated all those pretentious fucks driving goddamn Beamers and carrying Louis Vuitton backpacks. Every day I’d get dirty looks, hassled in the halls, and I’d be thinking to myself, man, it’d be so easy to jack their car and go joyriding, or loot all their rich kid toys they just left sitting in their gym lockers. It’s why I went to a state college in California, because I was tired of not belonging.” I shake my head wryly. “Then I end up here with all these East Coast old money types, and it’s the same shit. They smell poverty every time I walk into a room.”

“That’s not true,” she insists with a bit more bite in her voice. “No one who cares about you gives a damn if you grew up rich or not. Anyone who does isn’t your friend anyway, so fuck ’em. You belong here just as much as anybody.”

I wish I could believe that. Maybe for a little while I did believe it. But Kai creeping back into my life has reminded me, whether I like it or not, who I really am.