“Do you like it?” I ask, watching him carefully. Duke’s words when they shunned me still echo in my head more than I care to admit.
“It’s the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen,” he says. “I’ll never need porn again.”
He drops his phone and dives between my legs, sucking and licking and moaning until I explode again, crying his name into the night sky. Finally he rises up, pushing into me again as he tugs my mouth open and fills it with the cum he just sucked from my pussy. I swallow, then capture his mouth, sliding my tongue over his to taste more of him. He goes hard and fast, and I whimper in pain at the soreness. I’m not used to being wanted so much, fucked so much. I’m raw and spent by the time he’s done.
“That has to be the last one,” I say, catching my breath as I lie there prickled with sweat, trying to cool down.
“Agreed,” he says. “My dick is sore. I think I’m chafing.”
“Cry me a river,” I tease, rolling my eyes. “Now I really won’t be able to walk for a week.”
“Good,” he says. “Now stop talking dirty. You’re making me hard again, and then we’ll have to suffer through another round.”
“What a terrible punishment,” I say with a dramatic sigh.
“Now you’re asking for it,” Colt says, tickling my sides until I beg for mercy.
Laughing, he releases me at last, drops the tailgate, and pulls me to the bottom of the truck bed. Together we look out over the pitch black of the abyss. Far below, I see a glimmering light blink on and off, then another, and another, as the year’s first fireflies twinkle to life.
“Look, they brought the stars to us,” I breathe.
“To you,” Colt says, pulling the blankets over us. “The whole world rearranges itself for a true queen.”
“Try telling the world that.”
“I will,” he says seriously. “I’m sorry I haven’t done anything for you at school.”
I give him a funny look. “You don’t have to do anything for me, Colt. I don’t want to be back in the elite. I hated it there.”
“Not even if you were on my arm?” he asks. “I could make it happen with a snap of my fingers. Haven’t you heard? I’m the true fucking king.”
“You’ve always been a king,” I point out. “Even when they took your crown.”
“Must be why you worshipped me in secret.”
“I did,” I say, laying my head on his shoulder. “If I could have chosen for myself, I would have chosen you every single time.”
“If I’d known, I would have chosen you even when I didn’t have a choice,” he says. “You’re Gloria Fucking Walton. Look at you. Come on. It was always you, Lo.”
I shiver at his words, and he slides onto my back, covering me with his warm body and resting on his elbows so he doesn’t crush me. He kisses the back of my neck, sending more tingles spiraling through me.
“I thought you hated me,” I admit.
“Maybe,” he says. “I hated you because I couldn’t have you. But I always wanted you.”
“And now you have me,” I say. “If you want me.”
“I’d have to be crazy not to,” he says, running his rough fingertips down my arm. “Now that I can choose, I’ll always choose you, Gloria Walton. Always.”
“And I choose you,” I say, my voice thick with emotion, because I’m thinking about Dixie, and where she fits into all this. Maybe he says the same things to her when they’re together, and that’s why she stays, even though she knows.
“Maybe we always had a choice,” I say. “Everything is a choice. I chose to join them to survive and protect my sisters. You chose your own way to do the same, to survive and protect your sister.”
“Not much of a choice.”
“Every day, we choose what’s best for that day,” I say, remembering something I said to Harper a million years ago. “Every day, you decide what’s worth fighting for. What’s worth keeping.”
“Then every day, I choose you,” he says, placing a kiss on my shoulder before wrapping an arm around my chest to squeeze me tight to him. “Because you’re worth keeping.”