Page 23 of Gilded Fake

Maybe he didn’t cum, but he’s hard as a rock. He’s breathless for me. He’s looking at me like a caged animal about to rip through the bars and eat me alive. I know that look. I am that look—always wanting too much, falling too fast, loving without reciprocation; always hungry, never sated.

Heat shimmers through my limbs, and I begin to move again, slowly at first, then faster, watching his face as he struggles for control.

The game isn’t over until it’s over. I have fifteen minutes to get him there, and it doesn’t matter how many times I give in. It only matters that he does too.

He told me to show him what I’d do, so I show him, as much as I can with our clothes on. I ride him fast and hard until I’m out of breath, and then slow and sensuously until I can’t hold back again. But I keep going because I know he’s close too.

He drags in each inhale if through pain, labored but quick. His cock throbs under me each time I move. His eyes are wild, unfocused, mad with lust. As I moan out my orgasm, rising and falling against him, I throw my head back, letting my hair fall down behind me, swaying with my movements. When I straighten, resting a hand on his chest to steady my trembling body, his eyes fall closed, and his fists clench at his sides.

My clit is swollen and tender, so overstimulated I wince every time it drags across the soaked denim of his jeans. But I do it anyway. Nothing can stop me from finishing him off. I wouldn’t stop if the owners walked in right now, if they fired me on the spot, if they brought the whole town to see the mess I’ve made in his lap. I’d keep going, chasing his orgasm instead of mine. Watching him fall apart as the last threads of his control slip.

As he loses that struggle.

I rake my nails down his chest, gripping his belt and grinding on his tip. I feel it throb hard under me, and a rumbling, helpless moan rises in his chest. I whimper in relief when wet heat spreads under me, my clit throbbing uncontrollably in response.

“God damn,” he grunts, his hands releasing the chair and clamping onto me this time. He tugs aside the string covering my clit and entrance and lifts his hips, grinding against my bare flesh. He moans again, the sound echoing around the room, and moves my hips in tiny circles, smearing my pussy over the slippery mess we made. The sight of my bare, swollen flesh grinding in the white cream seeping through the fabric of his jeans is dirty and nasty and so fucking hot I think I’m going to cum again.

A wordless sound of pleasure slips from me, unbidden and primal, before I can stop it. Colt’s whole body shudders under mine, and he lifts his head at last, burying his face in my shoulder. He groans, his arms circling my body as he pulls me flush against him in a tight embrace. I can feel his heart hammering against my chest, racing in tandem with mine. My whole body is shaking and spent, and I have no idea how I’m going to dance after this. My legs feel as fluttery and delicate as moth wings, my core is throbbing painfully every few seconds, and my head is fucked six ways from Sunday.

I can’t stop seeing the absolute bliss on his face, bliss that I gave him. Can’t stop hearing the noises I drew from him, the sounds that make my whole body shiver with heat and swell with power at once. I made him lose control like that. I made him moan. I made him cum in his pants, can still feel the hot slickness of our combined release soaking my thighs, cooling under me.

“Damn you, Gloria Walton,” he murmurs into my neck, squeezing me harder, crushing me against him. “Damn you.”

The last song of the hour starts, time I would normally use to walk around the room working clients for one more tip, making them want me or ask me to meet up later. I always tell them I don’t do that. They can look but not touch. They get to want me, not have me.

I’ve never played this song for them, though. I put it on the end of my playlist just for Colt, and now I watch him, waiting for him to remember, to say something, do something, to show me he does. To bring up the admission I made in the locker room, to show me it meant something, anything, to him. How could he forget that week, forget when he was my wildest dream, and I was his? And if he doesn’t remember it, how can he not want to know?

When he doesn’t react, I slowly rise off his lap, adjusting my thong to cover my swollen, tender flesh. “The hour’s up,” I say, my throat aching.

He lets out a sort of dazed laugh as he looks down at his drenched lap. “Now I get to walk out of here looking like I pissed myself.”

My heart falls, shattering into a million shards in my chest. But like I told Gideon a million years ago, you just go on. I must keep dancing, because if I stop, I’ll sink into depths of despair I can’t even fathom. So one more time, I force a smile onto my face.

“Hey, you like humiliation,” I remind Colt, like it doesn’t bother me, like it doesn’t mean any more to me than it does to him.

“Humiliation?” he asks. “More like pride. Most of this is yours. It’s a fucking badge of honor.”

I turn away, trying to get myself under control, to not break down and fall apart the way I want to, need to. He’s making jokes and gloating, while I’m barely holding on, wrestling to keep the gate to my cage closed, the gilded bars now tarnished with soot from the scorching blasts of the tortured, feral beast inside. I can feel its rage building every day, its frustration, its helpless fury. It threatens to tear free, to trample the world, to leave nothing behind but a barren wasteland. And every day, the temptation to let it grows.

But I know when he walks out, impossible as it feels, I’ll keep dancing. Just like I did when we lost everything we’d ever known, my dad went to jail, and my mom wouldn’t even let me say goodbye to the boy I loved. Just like I did after every time the twins turned our way, and I stepped forward so they’d choose me instead of my sisters. Just like I did after every time Royal used me and walked away hollow eyed, leaving me alone to nurse my bruised body and tell myself that loving him was enough, even if he felt nothing. Just like I did after my best friend disappeared, and I thought she was dead, and I was eaten with guilt and grief for months. Just like I did after my brother died, and my mother kicked me out, and my sisters fucked the boy I once thought I’d love forever.

Just like I’ve done every time Colt has walked away and shown me that I’m not worth remembering.

I’m about to turn away when Colt grabs my wrist. “Wait,” he says, his eyes narrowing. “I know this song.”

I force a laugh. “Yeah, everyone knows this song. It’s Taylor Swift.”

“No,” he says slowly, shaking his head, his eyes hard. “I know it from you.”

“What do you mean, from me?” I ask, my world tilting on its axis. Suddenly I’m so dizzy I have to grab onto the bar along the stage so I don’t faint. I don’t know why I tempted fate. I knew he’d hate me for it. I should have just left my confession as it was, and let him go on pretending it never happened, that I never admitted it.

“From last year,” he says, staring at me with such unnerving intensity I can’t breathe. “When we fucked.”

I blink at him, my mind racing, trying to remember why I didn’t tell him before, when it might have made a difference. I thought he knew, that he was fucking with me, pretending to forget. But the look on his face in the locker room said otherwise. And now he’s done pretending nothing’s changed. He’s ready to make me pay.

He stares at me as I stand there, my heart plummeting as the song ends and silence fills the space between us, the only sounds those of the stormy night outside. The room feels cavernous suddenly, and yet, I’m suffocating, as if I’m trapped underground in a dark, airless cavern.

“You lied.” A dangerous fury burns white-hot in his blue gaze. “Why?”

---