That wasn’t entirely true. I did want him. Or, at the very least, I felt something deep inside that I’d never felt before. With Thomas, I’d gone along with things because it felt adult and daring and I knew he expected it of me, and I’d liked it when he kissed me and I’d liked it when he groped under my shirt and laid me back on the bed and it had felt like I was getting lost in something. Even though it’d never amounted to more than a few brief and unsatisfying fumbles in the dark, little more than Thomas moving briefly and finishing and leaving, it had made me aware that there could be…more.
I wanted thatmore.
It was a sure bet that Bax could give me more.
But I was terrified.
Thomas and Father were going to find me, sooner or later. If they caught me dallying with a local, especially someone like Baxter…oh, there’d be hell to pay.
But wouldn’t it be worth it? And couldn’t I have my fun and then leave and act like nothing had happened, that I’d gone off to get some space and was done?
I had my own money. Well, Father’s money, which I’d more or less stolen depending on how you looked at it, because even though he’d given it to me as an allowance, it was, technically, dependent on me obeying his rules. He tolerated me defying him in regard to Yale because he still hoped I’d change my mind, that I’d eventually end up toeing the line and marrying Thomas.
But god, Baxter made me feel…so much.
He was so different from anyone else, so big, so hard, so wild. He was totally free. He did what he wanted, said what he wanted, and he took what he wanted. But he wasn’t a pig about it. He seemed to genuinely care that I really wanted this.
“I don’t—I don’t know.”
“You don’t know,” he echoed.
I shook my head. “Unh-uh.” I was uncharacteristically inarticulate, for some reason.
“What aren’t you sure about?”
I stared up at him. “Everything. You. This. What I want. What I should do.”
“Keeping me stuck in no-man’s-land, huh, halfway between yes and no?”
I winced. “I’m sorry, Baxter. I just…I truly don’t know what to do.” I dared to touch him, to put my hands on his broad shoulders, feeling his warm skin and the rippling power of his muscles under my hands. “I…Iamattracted to you. And there is a part of me that—that does want to—to let you lead me into temptation. Truth be told, I’m already there—I’m very tempted. But—I don’t, I’m not—”
He laughed. “You don’t do things like this,” he filled in. “You’re not that kind of girl.”
I shook my head. “I don’t, and I’m really not.”
With one hand, he tugged at the waistband a little more, and now the line between my lower belly and bikini line was being teased, and with the other hand he reached up and tucked a lock of my hair away from my face and then brushed my cheekbone with the rough pad of his thumb. “Sweetheart? You couldn’t be more obviouslynotthat kind of girl.”
“It’s that obvious, is it?”
He laughed again and nodded. “Yeah, it kinda is.” He stared down at me, and I wasn’t sure if he was thinking, or assessing, or just looking at me. Deciding, maybe? “How about this: we’ll operate on the assumption that I’ve got a hair trigger when it comes to you saying no. Okay? So I’m gonna keep going, and when you really, truly want me to stop, you tell me. But don’t say it if you don’t mean it, because I’m not gonna play around. So I’ll keep on leading you into temptation, and you just follow my lead. Ask questions. Say what you want, if you figure that out. Or, just trust me and let me do things my way.”
“Your way? What is your way?”
His lips brushed mine again, a teasing hint of a kiss. “Oh, you’ll find out.” He tugged the waistband lower yet, and now the elastic, taut around my waist from the pressure of his pull, inched down in the back, sliding down over the top of my butt, baring the upper few inches, and now the slightest amount of my privates were exposed and my heart thundered wildly. “One thing you should know about me doing things my way, though, Eva: I’m the kinda guy who gets off on a woman’s pleasure. Meanin’ the harder you get off, the harder I get off.”
“I like the sound of that,” I whispered, unsure where the bold words had even come from.
God knows there’s been little enough pleasure in my life that didn’t come with expectations, I thought.
Or…so I’d thought.
But the way Baxter stiffened, and the way his eyes fixed on mine told me I’d accidentally said it out loud. “Babe, you really gotta explain that comment.”
“I just—” His eyes were fierce, fiery, and made me forget what I was saying, and then when I remembered, the unvarnished, unfiltered truth came out. “Everyone expects things of me. My father expects me to do everything his way, and do what he wants. Thomas expects me to marry him, to be his trophy wife, to go on his stupid dates and to sleep with him just because we have a history, and even my friends at Yale…they know who my father is, and they’ve all seen Thomas, and they want to be close to me because either they want a piece of my father’s influence and connections, or they’re hoping Thomas will notice them and forget about me, which would be fine by me, but they still just don’t seem genuine, and if I go hang out with them I’m always wondering what their angle is.”
I growled in frustration and anger, a snarl that’d been building up inside me for a long damn time. “And guys, god, don’t get me started on guys. They either want to sleep with me, or—like the girls—they want to get close to Father for his political and business connections…and with men it’s both: they try to sleep with me in hopes of getting close to Father. And when I don’t play their games, they’re gone. Like all I am to them is sex and networking. I’m not a virgin, but I haven’t had as much experience as I might wish simply because there are literally zero men with the slightest ability to evenpretendas if they like me for more than my cup size and their stupid fantasy of me putting out for them even when they put less than zero effort into wooing me. They think their daddy’s bank account and their trust funds and their portfolios and their internships and their fancy cars are enough to impress me, like I’m going to see the stupid shiny Porsche their father bought them and I’m going to just…just fall onto my back with my legs open and beg them to sleep with me, because fancy cars just impress mesodamn much.”
Baxter blinked at me. “Wow. That’s…a lot to unpack.”
