Page 335 of Hell Hath No Fury
Rose found me in the shower, rock hard and with my hand splayed against the wall as I fought the desire to fuck my hand. The desire was so strong, it drowned out the sting radiating from the freshly inked skin on my back.
She opened the shower door, already undressed, and closed it behind her. Eyeing my erection, she bit her lips, then swayed closer to whisper to my damp bicep, “You’re so hard it looks like it hurts.”
Slinking beneath my arm, water sluicing over her face and down her body, she pressed herself into me. I knew what she wanted, and I wanted to give it to her. Instead, I gently pushed her shoulder, and she lowered to the tiled floor.
A tug and a firm squeeze, and then I was rubbing between her teeth and over her tongue. Rocking forward, I slowly fucked her mouth, but I couldn’t hold back. It was as if I still hadn’t expelled everything the previous night had stirred.
What seemed like only a minute later, I had her gagging, that eager tongue poisoning my rushing blood. A shiver drenched my entire body, and I groaned in warning, emptying myself down her throat.
“You swallowed,” I said, my chest heaving. “Why?”
Rose stood, swiping beneath her bottom lip and sucking the rogue drop from her finger with a serpentine smile.
I frowned, and she laughed. “Uptight much? I wanted to, duh.”
“You’ve never wanted to before.” I shouldn’t have said it. I knew I shouldn’t have even said a damn thing. But the words were out, floating among the steam and growing tension in the air.
“And now I do.” Rose stared at me for a moment. “What’s the problem, Coop? I hope you’re—”
“No.” I stopped us from going there, and then I stared too, taking in the concern lining her forehead and tightening hermouth. “It’s nothing, Pest,” I lied, then climbed out and toweled off.
I feigned sleep when she emerged from the bathroom and heard her leave.
CHAPTER THREE
Rose
“What are they for?” I asked.
Cooper thrust the bundle of weeds forward, his cheeks stained from the sun and running over here. He lived fifteen houses down the road and was never willing to wait for a ride. “For you, dummy.”
I scrunched my nose at them. “What am I gonna do with a bunch of weeds?”
He grinned, displaying a crooked front tooth. “Stick ’em in some water and think of me.”
I’d laughed so hard my belly had ached, but I’d done more than that.
We’d done it. We’d arrived. We were in.
To think I thought it had been a miracle we’d been granted the opportunity to do so together.
I could see what they’d done now, and why they’d done it. Like a stray, looming shadow awaiting the perfect moment to strike, I could feel it creeping closer to me. To us.
Supreme benefits at supreme costs.
The healing tattoo upon my back itched, but I ignored it. My fingers danced over the pressed flowers between the pages of my mother’s favorite Jane Austen novel, and I did the very thing I never seemed to be able to stop myself from doing, even after all these years.
I thought of Cooper Owens.
I thought of Cooper Owens and the many adventures we’d taken, through the paddocks behind his house and into the woods, campfires by the sea, and building tree forts his dad would always need to fix before we hurt ourselves yet again.
Of our first time inside this very bedroom days after my seventeenth birthday. I’d tried to cajole him into ridding our virginities sooner, but steadfast and ever the good boy his parents had raised him to be, he’d held out until we were both of legal age.
It was no wonder our initiation had spooked him. The memory of him jerking beneath me, his breathing more ragged than I’d ever heard before, couldn’t hide the fact that what we’d done had unsettled him.
And I couldn’t ignore the fact it’d awoken something inside me. Like petals upon a rose, I was unfolding, changing shape, and perhaps even blooming.
But not all things that bloomed survived.
