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The bedroom is empty when I enter it. I don’t know why I expected to find Hawthorn in bed waiting for me. Maybe I just hoped he’d still be there, that he’d tell me he wanted more, that he wanted me. But that was a foolish dream. Scanning the space, I search for any trace of him, but all I find is the tripod still positioned at the end of the bed. The empty tripod. My heart starts to thud in my chest as I search for the camera, but it’s not here.
For a moment, I worry that he’s taken the camera, but he wouldn’t do that. He wants me to break the will for my sister, he wouldn’t take the only proof I have that I’m no longer a virgin. Opening the bedroom door, I walk into the living room, and the breath I’d pretended I hadn’t been holding bursts from me in a relieved huff as I spot him sitting shirtless on the couch, the video camera in his hands.
His body is unbelievable, I was so consumed by him that I barely noticed it earlier when he took his shirt off. But now that I have a chance to observe him, it’s impossible to miss his rich tan skin and muscled chest. In this quiet moment, he’s almost impossibly beautiful, his defined jaw clenched, his short, deep auburn hair so dark I’d thought it was brown until he was above me, his face only inches from mine while our bodies were joined together.
He doesn’t look like an eighteen-year-old boy, he looks like a man, and I have to swallow down the desire that’s sparking back to life just from looking at him.
I felt the smattering of hair on his chest, but I didn’t take the time to look when my face was pillowing on his pecs, but I can see it now, along with a tattoo over his heart. I’ve always assumed I didn’t like tattoos—not that I’ve ever seen one in real life. But as I try to decipher what his is, I realize I don’t hate it. I’ve spent years listening to my mother’s disgust at them, and until this moment, I didn’t realize that her influence had tempered my opinion.
If I knew him better, or at all, I’d cross the room to him and ask to look at it properly, but our moment of intimacy has ended, and now we’re just two strangers who aren’t quite as defined enemies as we were a few hours ago.
He hasn’t noticed me yet; his eyes are on the camera in his hands. His lips are parted slightly, and I swallow thickly, squeezing my legs together when he drags his teeth over his full bottom lip as he watches.
When I hear the sound of my own voice, I realize he’s watching the tape of us. Horrified, my feet move without thought, and I rush across the room, snatching the camera from his hands and clutching it to my chest while I fumble to turn the video off.
“What are you doing?” I shriek.
His smile is slow and languorous. “You know what I’m doing, Princess. Why don’t you sit down? We can watch it together.”
“No,” I gasp, mortified by the idea of watching a video of us having sex. “It’s bad enough that it even exists. That it even happened. I never want to watch it!” I shout, my voice becoming cold and angry and so much like my mother’s that I internally cringe at the sound.
“Wow. Would you look at that? It took less than an hour for all that sweet, sexy innocence to wear off,” he drawls bitterly, leaning back on the sofa, his body language mockingly relaxed, like he doesn’t have a care in the world. “For a minute, I thought a good fuck might have rattled that stick up your ass loose and had you becoming an almost decent person, obviously, I was wrong.”
His barb hits, and I inhale sharply, hurt stabbing at my chest. I don’t know why I care. Nothing’s changed between us just because we’ve now seen each other naked. We’re not friends or lovers, and this was just sex. An act between two consenting adults, a means to an end. “We both know I’m not a decent person, Hawthorn. A few orgasms were never going to change that,” I barb back, hating how I sound, but needing the familiar mask of spoiled superiority to hide behind.
Crossing to the furthest seat away from him, I perch on the edge of the couch and look at the video camera. My hands shake as I check that the video is still there, playing it for a second to make sure it works before turning it off and placing it in my lap. I can feel his eyes on me, but I don’t look at him.
I can’t stay here. I need to get away—away from him and all these feelings that are swirling around inside of me.
Pulling my cell out, I turn it on, ignoring the barrage of missed calls and text notifications that appear. Clicking into the Uber app, I order myself a cab, relieved when it says that the driver will be here in less than five minutes.
Rising gracefully from the couch, I lift my chin and ignore Hawthorn’s probing gaze as I make my way back to the bedroom. I don’t know why I came back here. The smell of sex and sweat fills my nose, and I have to blink back the tears that threaten to spill from my eyes as memories of Hawthorn and me together consume my thoughts. Inhaling sharply, I check the app and see the car icon slowly moving closer to the marina. Glancing around the room, I check to see if I left anything, but instead, my eyes land on the bloodstain on the bedsheets. I hadn’t noticed it when I came out of the bathroom earlier, but now it’s all I can see. The bright red stain is impossible to ignore against the white sheets. My eyes widen as I fixate on it. I’m not a virgin anymore. Despite knowing that it happened, feeling it in my body, and having a video to prove it, until this moment, as I stare at the evidence on the sheets, I hadn’t really processed that I had sex.
My chest tightens as panic swells inside of me, and before I even realize what I’m doing, I’m ripping the sheets from the bed and balling them up as small as I can get them. Shoving the camera into my purse, I hook it over my wrist, holding the sheets to my chest as I run from the bedroom.
“I’m going to find a trash can,” I announce, rushing past Hawthorn, darting through the door and onto the deck of the boat. Spotting my shoes, I shove my feet into them, then descend the slim gangway that leads down onto the marina.
Trying to maintain what little dignity I have left, I stride over to the huge dumpsters on the other side of the parking lot, open the lid, and throw the sheets inside before slamming it closed again.
With my eyes tightly shut, I suck in a sharp gasp. I need to leave, to get away from here and everything that’s happened inside that boat. My cell beeps, and I glance down at the screen, almost crying with gratitude when I see a text telling me my Uber driver has arrived.
Glancing back at Hawthorn’s boat, I find him standing on the deck watching me, his arms crossed over his bare chest, his expression hard and shuttered. Lifting my hand in the biggest asshole move ever, I wave at him. “Thank you for the help!” I shout, then I turn and exit the marina, climbing straight into the waiting cab without looking back.
7
HAWTHORN
What the fuck just happened? Did she seriously just say, “Thank you for the help,” and then leave without another word?
When she darted through the boat carrying a bundle of fabric, I’d followed her, wondering what the hell she was doing. I watched as she rushed across the parking lot to the dumpster and threw the sheets off my bed into the trash. But I wasn’t expecting her to jump into a cab and then just leave.
Even though she’s gone, I can’t seem to tear my eyes away from the parking lot, like if I’m still staring, she might magically reappear and we could start the last thirty minutes over again.
I don’t understand how we went from her being asleep in my arms, her naked body tangled with mine, my cum still dripping out of her freshly devirginized cunt, to her leaving without anything other than a fucking, “Thank you for the help.”
Anger courses through my veins until I’m pacing the deck, my hands balled into fists at my sides. I knew she was a cold-hearted bitch, but this, this is beyond anything I thought she was capable of. Forcing my feet to stop moving, I shake my head. This is exactly what I should have expected. Penelope Rhodes is a manipulative, calculating bitch. She needed something from me, and now she doesn’t, simple as that.
It was stupid of me to believe for even a second that this was more than it actually was. She asked me to help her solve a problem, and I did. She needed to not be a virgin, and now she isn’t. It was just sex—out of this world, blow my mind sex, but still, just sex.
