Page 93 of The Bargain

Elias’s eyes are dark and full of laughter, and my cheeks burn from the cold outside, heart hammering. My body feels light and untethered, like I’m mid-fall, and maybe that’s exactly what I am. All these broken rules, missing the meeting, and now sneaking a boy into my room.

Who cares?

And then Elias and I are moving, the air between us like an elastic band stretched taut then snapped loose. Elias’s mouth falls hungrily on mine, and I kiss him back with equal greed. His tongue delves against mine, his breath practically a groan, and my hands scramble for the lapels of his blazer, pushing, tugging at his shirt, pulling impatiently at buttons. I’m filled with the destructive, incandescent urge to rip away anything that keeps me separate from him.

Neither of us takes the time to undress properly: we end up falling back onto my bed in a messy state of half-dress, Elias’s pants tugged open, his chest bare and covered with fresh red marks where I’ve dug my nails into his skin. My own skirt is bunched around my waist, my shirt unbuttoned and my bra pulled roughly up to reveal my breasts, which Elias is covering with wet, hungry kisses, leaving the nipples wet and hard as he moves down my chest, trailing kisses over my abdomen, my hips. His face disappears beneath my skirt, my underwear swept aside with a deft thumb, and I feel his mouth on me, hot and sloppy and insistent, tongue lapping at me until my hips are squirming so bad he has to pin them down with his hands.

“Elias.”

I come quickly, his name stuck in my throat, on my tongue. I come hard, in obliterating waves, in hot deep spasms, the muscles of my stomach rippling. My orgasm is still rushing through me in pulsating waves when Elias guides himself inside me, thrusting in with a wet squelch, a hoarse gasp escaping his mouth.

“Fuck, aah—” He gazes down at me with an expression like a drunk man. “Fuck, love, you feel so fucking good.” His thrusts are artless and harsh and frantic, the muscles in his arms straining, eyes rolling back into his head when I wrap my thighs around his hips to pull him closer. “God, fuck, Desdemona, love.” He leans down, catches my mouth in a kiss. “Love,” he whispers, hoarse and desperate, against my lips. “Love.”

Our gazes meet, and his eyes widen a fraction, pure panic. I wrap my arms around him, my heart suddenly wide open, a gaping, hungry grave in which to bury him.

“Please. Elias.”

He comes inside me, hard and uncontrolled, a broken whine unfurling from his throat as he buries himself into me with rough hard thrusts. I feel hot wetness deep inside me, and a sensation of pleasure and closeness so intense it brings hot, stinging tears into my eyes.

We lie tangled together on top of my bed without a word, catching our breaths. I wish I had a knife with which to carve out this moment from reality, a precious preserved slice of time, where he and I could stay forever.

Then Elias props himself up on one elbow and gazes down at me, the panic vanished from his expression, the familiar smirk tugging a corner of his lips.

“Naughty girl,” he whispers huskily. “You’ve done this before.”

“Of course not.”

I roll my eyes and squirm, wriggling myself around so that I’m lying on my stomach beneath him. A satisfying, hot wetness seeps out of me, and I feel Elias’s cock, still half-hard, rest on my hip as he reaches down and bites into my exposed shoulder.

I grin sleepily into my pillow and add, “But I would definitely do it again.”

“Better be with me,” Elias says, biting harder. Not hard enough to leave a mark. I wish he did.

“Who else?”

He laughs low in his throat. “Some Harvard fuckwit.”

“You better get into Harvard, then,” I tell him. “So you can be the Harvard fuckwit in question.”

Elias doesn’t say anything; I fall asleep waiting for his reply.

For the first time since returning to Spearcrest, I sleep the entire night all the way through, a warm, dreamless sleep. I wake up the following morning, naked, wiped clean and covered with blankets.

Elias is long gone.

The following week, as if summoned by my conversation with Elias, I receive my offer from Harvard. I’m not surprised to find out I was accepted into the selective DART programme: after all, my mother is an alumna, and my grandmother, Eleanor Knight, is a patron of the programme. My letter of recommendation was written by Alice Liu, Mum’s friend and another famous alumna of the programme.

I’m all but destined for it.

Maybe that’s why I feel no outrush of joy when I receive the letter, only a faint sense of having ticked something off a list. Well, that was all part of the plan, wasn’t it? Everything, according to plan.

Become head girl.

Achieve top grades.

Keep siblings out of trouble.

Get into Harvard Law School.