Sloane (14 page)

“So, whenever you go out with a guy, you don’t
usually wear a dress?”

“I never go out with guys.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Why not?”

“They don’t notice me.” I wrinkled up my nose. “I
used to think it was because of Silas. He’s kind of scary, and I
thought all the boys were too afraid of him to make a move. But
then he fell in love and moved to Austin, Texas. And still, no one
notices me.”

“You know what I think?”

“No.”

“I think you don’t want to be noticed.”

I narrowed my eyes. “That is not true.”

He shrugged. “I think you’re afraid to be noticed.
Every time
I
try to make a move with you, you shut me down.
You’ve got some sort of block.”

“I don’t have a block.” I glared at him. “I would let
other guys make moves, but just not
you
.”

“Because I’m awful.”

I took another drink, nodding over my glass.

He took a drink too, and then he set it down. “What
if I wasn’t awful?”

“But you are.” I was realizing that I might be a
little drunk, and that I was saying whatever I thought out loud.
God, I was drunk, and I was turning into Axel.

He ran his finger around the rim of his glass. “Maybe
I wasn’t always.”

I cocked my head to one side. “What do you mean?”

He looked away from me for the first time, almost as
if he was embarrassed. “Maybe a long time ago, I wasn’t the
slightest bit smug and self-centered.”

I giggled. “I find that hard to believe.”

He glanced at me again, and there was something shy
in his expression. “Well, maybe you should believe it.”

I surveyed him. “So, what changed? If you used to be
a nice guy, when did you turn into a jackass?”

“Jackass?” He raised his eyebrows. “I’m not a
jackass. I would never be anything so crass. Call me a vagabond,
call me a scoundrel, but not a jackass.” He shuddered.

I laughed. “Fine. What happened that turned you into
a wretched scalawag?”

He laughed too. “Scalawag. Now, that’s a word.”

I spread my hands. “I read shit from the 1800s. For
fun. So, you know, I got word skills.”

He drank some of his martini, still smiling. “Nothing
happened.”

“No?”

“It’s not as if I fell desperately in love with a
woman, and she broke my heart, although that did happen to me once.
I was twelve, and she was fourteen, and I was a virgin, and I
thought—”

“Wait a second,” I said. “You lost your virginity
when you were
twelve
?”

He thought about it. “I think so. Sixth grade. In the
headmaster’s office at The Windman School after hours. I was
enraptured with her.”

“Oh my God. You were a child.”

“I’ve never been a child.”

I giggled. “What?”

“Seriously,” he said. “People like me don’t have
childhoods in the same way as other people. When your father is as
rich as mine is, you can have anything imaginable, and it tends to
suck all the joy out of playing pretend.”

I took a drink of my martini. I wasn’t sure how to
take that. “Well, you know, when you grow up with absolutely
nothing, it’s kind of hard to know of anything to imagine.”

He gave me a funny look. I could have sworn there was
something like concern in his eyes. But it made me
uncomfortable.

“Anyway.” I went back to my drink. “Go back to what
you were saying.”

He touched my arm. “No. What was your childhood
like?”

I pulled my arm away. “We don’t have to talk about
that.”

“That bad, huh?”

I wouldn’t look at him.

He didn’t say anything.

I gulped down the rest of my martini. “My parents
were heroin addicts.” I looked up at him, waiting for his
reaction.

He simply held my gaze, not speaking. As if he was
waiting for me to continue.

“They weren’t always,” I said. “It started when Silas
and I were little. My dad’s parents died and and left them a lot of
money. Like a lot
lot
of money. Enough that they quit their
jobs and bought a big house and started throwing parties all the
time.”

Axel was still waiting.

I fiddled with my empty martini glass. “That’s when
it started. At the parties. And then they weren’t just high at the
parties, but all the time. And then we lost all of it. The house,
the money, the parties. When I was five years old, we were rich.
And by the time I was twelve, we were squatting in this abandoned
house on the outskirts of town. It had cracks in the walls, and the
wind used to come through them at night. Silas and I would curl up
for warmth under four or five blankets, and we’d talk about how we
were going to run away.”

Axel put his hand on top of mine. I peered into his
eyes, and they were pools of concern.

I snatched my hand away. “You don’t have to do
that.”

“Do what?”

“Pity me,” I said. “It all turned out okay. Silas and
I got away from them. I’m fine now.”

He nodded slowly.

“I am.” I grabbed the martini glass, but it was
empty. I set it back down.

Axel signaled the bartender to give me another
drink.

“Don’t act weird around me now,” I muttered.

He made a tent with his fingers and rested it against
his lips. “It’s only that it occurs to me that my
poor-little-rich-boy story probably will sound sort of stupid
compared to that.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Pain is pain. Anyway, I
had Silas back then.” I bit down on my lip. “Maybe that’s more than
what you had?”

He mused. “Maybe pain is too strong of a word.”

“Well, I want to know, though,” I said. “I want to
know about when you weren’t awful.”

“I’m not awful to everyone,” he said. “But I don’t
see the point in forming lasting romantic attachments. So, I guess
that’s why you think I’m awful to women.”

The bartender set another martini in front of me.

I took a drink. “You are.”

He smirked. “You really aren’t holding back right
now, are you?”

“You’re the one who said I wasn’t honest.”

“True.” He finished his own drink and nodded at the
bartender. “It’s the honesty that makes me awful, I guess. I
watched my parents’ relationship, and I watched what my father’s
infidelity did to my mother. She was beautiful and young when she
met him. She had a burgeoning career as a model. She came from
nothing, you know. Grew up in a tiny village in Sweden. She came to
America to pursue her dreams. And she got caught in my father’s
net. But she was a traditional sort of girl. She wasn’t going to
just shack up with him. She said if he wanted her, he had to marry
her, and for some reason I’ve never understood, my father did.”
Axel shrugged.

“He didn’t love her?”

“I don’t know. What does that even mean? He told her
he did. She believed him. But it was only a matter of time before
he lost interest in her. Of course, he waited until she was a young
mother, who didn’t want to abandon her son to pursue her career.
And by the time she felt she could try again, she simply was too
old to be a model. So, he stole it all from her. He married her,
but he ignores her. He doesn’t even bother to cover up his affairs.
And she feels trapped. He forced her to sign a very draconian
prenup, so that if she leaves, she’d have nothing. And she has no
way to support herself.”

I drank more of my martini. I could sympathize with
his mother’s situation. It didn’t sound ideal.

“That’s why I was insistent on starting my own
business,” said Axel. “I was supposed to be going to school and
majoring in pre-law, but I’m really not good at school. It was
taking too long to become a lawyer. So, I convinced my father to
give me a loan, and I picked something that I knew could turn a
profit.”

“Strippers.”

He laughed. “Well, naked chicks never go out of
style. I was able to pay my father back right away, and I’m making
money. My own money. I know it’s not the same as if I’d come from
nothing. Not everyone has a daddy to give them a loan like that.
But it’s the best I could do for my mother, you know?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I can see that.”

He picked up his glass. “But she won’t do it. She
won’t leave him. She’s too afraid. I told her I’d take care of her,
but that didn’t convince her.” He took a drink. “Not that any of it
matters, really. He’s got her trapped there, and she thinks if she
can convince herself she likes it, it won’t be so bad.” He set down
the glass. “But I would never do that. I would never put a woman
through that.”

I furrowed my brow. “But the way you treat
women—”

“Is honest,” he said. “I let them know up front that
I’m a bastard. I can’t be blamed if it doesn’t scare them
away.”

“Scare them away?” I raised my eyebrows. “Axel, you
practically mobbed me today. You wouldn’t let it go until I came
along.”

“Yeah, but that’s you. I don’t do this kind of thing
with most girls. I would never even explain this to most
girls.”

How was I supposed to take that? Was he saying that I
was different? Did he say that to all the girls?

He put his hand back on my knee. “Anyway, enough
about me. Let’s talk about you again. You’re so much more
interesting than me, anyway.”

I opened my mouth to tell him not to touch me, but
then I closed it.

His fingers crept up my thigh, just an inch at a
time. His touch excited me. It sent shivers of pleasure shooting
through me. It made it hard for me to think.

He leaned close. “Maybe you don’t want to be noticed
because you never have been, Sloane. Maybe you just don’t know what
it’s like.”

“I’ve—” My breath caught in my throat. “I’ve been
noticed.”

His fingers went higher, brushing against the
sensitive flesh of my upper thigh. “No,” he murmured. “Your parents
didn’t notice you, did they?”

“I…” It came out as a gasp.

“I notice you.” He leaned in to whisper in my ear. “I
can’t stop noticing you.”

* * *

We were on Axel’s couch, and I was underneath him,
and his body was between my legs. We were both wearing our clothes,
and I was kissing him. I had my fingers entwined in his hair, and
he had his hands on my legs. He had pushed up the skirt of my
dress, and he was stroking my outer thigh.

It felt great. I was pleasantly drunk, and I felt
loose and free. I loved the heft of his body resting against mine.
I loved the way his hands moved on my skin, pumping bliss through
my inebriated body. I loved the way it felt to kiss him. His lips
felt perfect against mine. It felt like we were all jumbled up
together, like our bodies were merged or something, and I didn’t
want it to stop.

Axel’s fingers eased under the band of my
panties.

I moaned. But I took a hand out of his hair and
reached down to push him away.

He broke the kiss. “What’s wrong?”

Oh, I didn’t want him to talk. If he talked, I’d have
to think, and if I had to think, I was going to come to the
conclusion that… “We can’t do this.”

He looked annoyed. “You can’t still be saying
that.”

“You’ve got me all confused.” What was he doing to
me? How had he managed to get me on my back on his couch? It was as
if he could cast a spell over me and make me forget anything
sensible.

He groaned. “Sloane, do not tease me like this.”

“That’s not what I’m doing.”

He took my hand and dragged it down his body, making
me touch his crotch. I could feel the outline of his penis,
straining against his pants. Oh, geez, he was really hard.

“That’s what you do to me,” he gasped in my ear. “I
don’t want to stop this.”

Touching Axel there was turning me on. It had been a
long time since I’d had sex, pretty much as long as it had been
since I’d been kissed. (They’d kind of happened at the same time.)
I had a trusty little bullet vibrator that took care of me when I
needed it, but it wasn’t the same thing. I remembered the feeling
of being pierced and filled by a man, and my whole body seemed to
convulse with desire for it.

Almost involuntarily, my fingers tightened around
him.

He shut his eyes, letting out a ragged breath.

I ran my hand over him, through his pants.

And it was as if he was unleashed. He began kissing
me furiously, and he put his hand back under my panties, sliding
over my sensitive skin.

It felt so good. My body arched against his, my head
burrowing back into the couch.

He kissed my neck. My collarbone. His fingers slipped
between my legs, finding my most sensitive place.

I moaned. My breathing sped up.

His touch glided against my clit, and I gasped and
gasped. He was really good at that. He knew just the right places
to caress, and he was gentle but insistent. He was driving me
crazy. I writhed beneath him, against him.

Of course he was good at it, though. He’d probably
had a lot of practice. He said he’d lost his virginity when he was
twelve. How many girls could he have slept with between then and
now?

That thought soured all the sensation.

Suddenly, it didn’t feel nearly as good. My eyes
snapped open. “Don’t.”

“Mmm?” Axel’s mouth was against my shoulder.

“How many?” I said.

“What?” His voice was constricted.

“How many girls have you done this to? How many on
this couch?”

He grunted, but his fingers stopped their assault on
my body. “I don’t want to talk about that right now.”

“Maybe I do.”

“I’m not thinking about other girls, Sloane,” he
murmured. “All I’m thinking about is your amazing body, about how
wet you are, and about how badly I want to—”

“Stop it.” I wriggled away from him.

He let out a noisy breath and got off the couch.

I tugged at my clothes, trying to reassemble
myself.

He walked out of the room.

I drew my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms
around them. I huddled on one corner of the couch, trying to catch
my breath. My body was still slightly aroused, and it was twitching
out its annoyance with me for stopping everything. But I was
relieved that I had, because I couldn’t believe that I’d allowed it
to go so far. This was Axel Whitman. He was not the kind of guy I
should be getting hot and heavy with.