Page 31 of Privilege
“Not in this book.”
Jamie sits up and straddles the chair. It irritates me that she is intentionally trying to get me to look at her crotch. Even if Cara and I weren’t together, even if Cara weren’tright fucking there,I have no interest in Jamie like that. Not now. Not after last summer.
Was she always like this?I don’t remember her being so… desperate. I guess she didn’t have to be since we were already fucking.God this is uncomfortable.
I’ll hand it to Cara, she’s taking it all with grace. She hasn’t been overtly friendly, but she hasn’t been cold either. She’s always quiet when she’s reading, and I usually leave her to it. But I can tell that Jamie is struggling, unsure how to proceed with someone who is giving her neither positive nor negative attention.
A surge of pride warms my chest. Cara doesn’t need superficial confirmation from fake friends that she’s a good person. She doesn’t even have socialmedia—says it aggravates her and that posts are vanity exercises. Andshe’s not wrong.
I envy this. Her ability to be uncomfortable. To take it in stride, and to unfailingly continue existing exactly as herself.
Cara is the first real woman I’ve ever met.
The words start bubbling up in my throat, the ones that burn in the back of my throat when I’m inside her. But they always retreat, three little soldiers returning to base.We do not have the tactical advantage here.
I’ve never had the tactical advantage. Everyone has a secret strategy, a plan,an agenda.Everyone but Cara. Still, it’s hard to unlearn what you’ve known all your life:it’s a trick.
She dog-ears a page and tosses it on the ground. I know that look—theI give up, I can’t concentrate on thisface she makes that usually means she wants to masturbate or fuck. In this case, Jamie narrows her eyes and nods at the book.
“Are you studying religion?” she asks sweetly. “The Rich I know would never survive celibacy.”
My shoulders tense, wishing Jamie would just shut the fuck up. I glance at Dane, half-hopeful that he’ll say something. He could shutthis down in a heartbeat, make some snide remark that would get Jamie out of our hair, have her so pissed at him for the rest of the summer that she’d never come sniffing around again. But he’s busy frowning at his computer and frantically texting someone back and forth.
Cara looks Jamie right in the eye. “Celibacy is not a concern.”
God, I really do love you Cara.
Her face at the garden party on our first day bounces around in my head like a ping pong ball. I forgot how quickly the piranhas descend; I’d gotten caught up with my friends and left her to these joy-eating leeches. But she’d taken it all in stride as good as she takes my cock. When Jamie had started pawing at me, I’d felt Cara’s eyes on me from across the lawn but didn’t know what to do. And then Dane was hitting on her, and I bulldozed my way over and—
Washe hitting on her, though?
I frown, my brows pulling together. I wonder if he saw what Jamie was doing, saw me floundering like always under social pressure, and tried to bail me out.
Did he save my ass? Prevent a fight with Cara?
“Do you have a religious kink or something?” Jamie continues.
Cara shrugs. “It’s really not that kind of book. But if you’re curious about religious kink, you should listen to Jacob Morgan narratePriest.”
My lips twitch and the warmth in my chest expands. I’ve never known a girl withlesssexual hangups than Cara. She has a huge bookshelf full of all of her favourite smut. She’s even played some audiobooks in the car a few times. And I rememberPriest.The part with the sacramental oils—I had to pull us over for anot-so-restfulstop.
“Right, figured you’d be into that kind of thing,” Jamie says dismissively.
Cara looks genuinely confused. “Into having sex with my boyfriend?”
Jamie rolls her eyes in open exasperation. “Into freaky shit.” She turns to me. “You never needed all the bells and whistles with me, Richie.”
I blink in shock, and so does Cara. She looks like she’s been slapped in the face. The skin beneath her freckles reddens, and for the very first time she starts to lose her cool.
“Rich always did do me right,” Jamie says.
“Thanks for warming him up for me,” Cara snaps back.
My heart is thundering in my ears, anger boiling in my gut.
“We knocked off a lot of firsts together, didn’t we Richie?” Jamie says, not looking away from Cara. “Everything he knows, he learned from me.”
I start to rise from my seat—
