I’d never seen him kiss a girl.
Christ, I don’t think I’d ever heard of him kissing one, either.
I flung my legs out of the bed, moving to sit next to Vaughn, hip-to-hip. I asked my next question without meeting his eyes.
“Was I your first kiss?”
That would mean Vaughn’s first kiss was at age eighteen, more or less. A prospect too ridiculous to be taken seriously. No guy gets blow jobs before kissing, surely.
He snorted, shaking his head. “Fuck off.”
“Tell me.”
“No, you weren’t my first kiss,” he snapped cruelly.
I said nothing. Maybe I got it wrong after all. There was a beat of silence before he opened his mouth again.
“You were the second one. I kissed Luna Rexroth at the pre-Christmas party at the Coles’ last year to spite Knight, so he’d finally make a move.”
My pulse kicked up again. He’d only kissed one girl in his entire life. Two, including me. And the first one didn’t even count. It seemed not only unlikely, but completely bonkers. Even I had kissed four guys. And I had no experience to speak of. Vaughn truly didn’t want anything to do with girls if he was that reluctant to be with them. But why?
“Maybe I’m asexual,” he said dispassionately.
I didn’t think he was. The way we kissed…there was magic there. The wild, untamed lust of two hot, mortal bodies connecting, exploding, desperate to claw each other out of our skin and blend together into something intimate and the same.
The same.
That’s why I couldn’t resist Vaughn’s kisses or when he laced his fingers in my hair or when he looked at me from across the room. When we touched, it felt like we were one entity, and that scared and thrilled me.
“I don’t want to fuck you. I don’t want to eat you out,” Vaughn said gravely, his throat bobbing.
He seemed like he was on the brink of an epiphany tonight. What had happened to make him like this?
“But I want to kiss you. A lot. And everywhere. And…” He frowned, rolling his eyes with a sigh. “I guess I don’t mind if you end up liking it when I do.”
I burst out laughing.
He wasn’t expecting that. His frown deepened, and he widened his eyes in annoyance. It seemed he couldn’t understand why I was flattered and thoroughly entertained by the idea that he was attracted to me so much, he was willing to break many of his rules. He had to come to terms with making someone else feel good. Christ, with this lad, I needed to be careful. Moments like this made me like Vaughn as a person, see past the persona. Luckily, they were few and far between, and I truly was incapable of falling in love.
“It’s not funny.”
“It is. You’re right, I shouldn’t leave here. You’re going to do the work for both of us, and I could use the time to work on my project. But as for kissing, I have a few inquiries before I make a decision regarding your offer.”
“It wasn’t an offer,” he snapped, as if horrified that I might take this as a compliment.
I shrugged, pointing at the door, in case he’d forgotten his way out.
He let out a heavy sigh. “Lay it on me.”
“Will you be kissing other girls?” I grabbed my pillow and hugged it to my midriff. Namely, Arabella.
“No.” He nearly shuddered, staring at me like I was mad. “’Course not.”
“Will you let them give you head?” I asked.
“Will you give me head?”
“No, not if you won’t go down on me.”
“Well, then, I guess, yeah. I’ll get head elsewhere.”
“Then we don’t have a deal.”
“Are you serious?” He pulled back to examine my face.
I shrugged. “I’m not asking for a ring, Vaughn. We both know this is going to be nothing more than fooling around, and I like making out with your sour arse. Now that I have nothing to do but work on my piece, I guess you could be a nice distraction until we get out of here. But I don’t want anything to do with you if you continue sticking your willy in other girls’ mouths.”
“Fine,” he spat, his lips thin with rage.
“Fine,” I said breezily, and somehow—somehow—I realized I had managed to convince myself during this conversation that this was a brilliant idea.
That it was grand that Vaughn had given me all this spare time.
That it was lovely we were going to kiss and fondle and maybe even shag each other.
There was no chance on Earth I was going to catch feels for Lucifer Junior. I didn’t want to fall in love. To get married. To have children. That’s why I’d tattooed Carlisle Prep’s motto on my inner thigh.
I even managed to tell myself that Vaughn flexing his muscles in front of Pope wouldn’t cause future problems, that I had both men under control.
In fact, the only bitter taste I couldn’t shake off was Papa’s betrayal. The way he’d hidden the truth about my internship from me. It felt like my father had compromised me to help my enemy, and I was furious with him.
Vaughn owed me nothing.
But my father? Oh, he did.
“And I mean, you could hurt me,” Vaughn continued, clearing his throat. “I mean, blood and shit, if that’s your jam.”
I don’t know why it saddened me so much that he offered me his pain as a token for our deal. I liked hurting him when he was hurting me. I wasn’t a connoisseur of pain, like him.
“I don’t want that.” The timbre of my voice reminded me of padding on tiptoes.
“Okay.”
“Now that we’ve got that out of the way.” I slapped my thighs, desperate to push the rage and disappointment with my father out of my consciousness. “Remember your first kiss with Luna?”
“Vaguely…” The ruby in his cheeks flared again. He wouldn’t look at me.
Oh, Vaughn.
“I want you to erase it from your memory.” I stood up, stepping between his legs and draping my arms around his neck. Slowly, I sank down, my knees straddling his waist. His breath hitched. Mine stopped completely. The air seemed thick and moist again. I settled on his hard-on, feeling the thick bulge pressed against my center.
“And all the ones with me that followed. This is your first kiss.” My lips fluttered over his as I spoke.
“Len.” My nickname dropped from his mouth into mine, hot and desperate.
His eyelids slid shut, despite his best efforts to stay in control.
But not mine. I stared at him as I kissed him, with eyes wide open.
There was nothing more beautiful than watching Vaughn Spencer let go.
VAUGHN
There.
I fucking did it.
I kissed a girl, and I liked it.
A whole fucking lot.
It wasn’t the first time I’d kissed Lenora Astalis. But now we had an arrangement, and I was going to milk the shit out of it until I finished this damn internship. I was going to kiss her, fuck her eventually, then get out of Carlisle Castle a normal person, sexually.
Maybe.
Fine, probably not.
After the conversation with Dad where he’d asked if I was gay, I knew I had to take a proactive step toward dipping my cock into more than one hole. People had started to notice, and I didn’t like that.
I spent the next couple weeks working from seven in the morning till nine at night. The sculpture was shaping up nicely. The heads were proportioned now, and I’d carved the faces in detail, down to the very last vein, crinkle, and freckle. Getting each individual hair right was going to take weeks, though. Having Lenora around in the studio would probably cut the time it took me to get shit done in half, but I didn’t want her help.
It looked good, though—the sculpture. Edgar had come to check on the piece a few times, muttering profanity all the way from the first door to the second about the fungal smell and creepy atmosphere. But he said my soul poured out of the sculpture.
“Keep this up, and you got yourself an easy sell. If you could sell it. As it happens, it is going to be Carlisle Prep’s property. Forever.”
Bet he wouldn’t be so smug if he knew that after I worked on my piece, I ran to my second shift: making his daughter, my other piece, moan my name every night.
The good thing about my working hours was I managed to avoid human interaction almost entirely. I woke up every morning at five-thirty, jogged, took a shower, went through my emails with my coffee—answering Dad, Mom, and Troy Brennan, AKA The Fixer, who’d started working on the Harry Fairhurst case—then locked myself in the cellar before classes started at eight a.m. By the time I finished working at nine p.m., people were already in their dorms. The dining hall was closed, and other than random punks who bowed down in my presence and the occasional dry-humping couple, I didn’t see a fucking face.
Not even Arabella’s.
Definitely not Rafferty Pope’s.
And, thank fuck, not Harry’s, either.
I was sure he kept his guard up despite my lack of presence in his life. He’d gone as far as framing my mother to make sure I wouldn’t retaliate, so I knew he wasn’t the dumbass I’d pegged him to be. However, just because I was silent about it didn’t mean I wasn’t working on taking him down.
Then there were the nights with Good Girl.
After a shower and an entire buttered loaf of bread and ham, I’d slip into her room and kiss her mouth.
And neck.
And eyes.
And hair.
I was ready for more—tasting her tits, maybe. I hadn’t touched them yet, but I’d been thinking about them since that day she got out of the pool naked.
Len made me rock hard, and that was both an unwelcome distraction and a relief. Each night, after hours of first base, I’d crawl back to my room, dizzy because all my blood was in my cock, and beat one off before passing out in bed. I came buckets. I hadn’t come often before my arrangement with Good Girl, and never this much. I’m talking enough to fill a milk carton. I had to Google that shit to see that it was normal.
For some reason, Lenora seemed perfectly content to kick me out as soon as we were done. Neither of us wanted anything more, so I wasn’t exactly fucking begging for spooning. She didn’t strike me as clingy or possessive, and I dug that.
I even started feeling a little sorry for hijacking her internship.
Okay, not really.
My streak of not seeing people in a castle full of fucking people ended on my sixth week at Carlisle Prep. It was ten past seven in the morning, and I strode down the fourth-floor hallway where all the interns, assistants, and staff resided.