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“I think we’ve got our audience’s attention, Sweets.”
O’Neal peeked at Auden over her shoulder, a flash of vulnerability in her eyes, the boldness falling away. Auden didn’t know whether to go to her and drag her away from Len or flip the fucking coffee table and leave the room. He swallowed, regret hitting him hard. “I’m sorry I pushed you to this, Shaq. Whatever you’re trying to do to get back at me, you don’t need to. I feel like shit already. This is my fault. I let you down in the exact way I was trying not to. I didn’t want you to get caught up in this.”
Her gaze searched his, confusion on her face. She shifted off of Lennox’s lap, staying next to him but turning fully toward Auden. “Caught up in what?”
His shoulders were aching from holding himself so rigid. He’d done such a good job of keeping who he was at home separate from who he was here. Bennette was his alternate universe, the place where he could play by different rules. College was supposed to be for experimenting, for getting the wildness out. He figured if he could indulge the darker urges he had during these few years at school, then when he went back home to take over the family business, he could fall back in line. Be normal. He’d have worked it out of his system.
The thought of O’Neal, someone from his life back home, knowing this side of him, seeing those secrets, made him want to fold in on himself. “I don’t know, just…everything.”
Lennox’s expression settled into one of disappointment at Auden’s dodge, but he didn’t say anything. They weren’t his secrets to tell.
O’Neal, on the other hand, was burning a hole in his head with her eyes. “Auden Blake, that answer is a thousand percent not good enough. What are you not telling me?” She put her hands out at her sides, her frustration obvious. “Are you seeing someone else? Selling drugs? Running a crime ring out of the back bedroom? Thought I was really terrible at sex and are afraid to tell me?”
He winced. “Of course, you weren’t.”
“Then what,” she prodded, “could possibly make it okay to sleep with me, yourfriend—act like you enjoyed it—and then literally not speak to me for two weeks? I didn’t think you were that kind of person.”
He gritted his teeth, holding onto his control by a thread. “You have no idea what kind of person I am.”
She scoffed. “Thentellme. Stop treating me like I’m some toddler who isn’t allowed at the big kid’s table. What could possibly make it okay to ghost me?”
“Fine. You want to know who I am? You want to know why I’m doing you a goddamned favor?” he said, his voice rising as he lost all sense of caution. “The night I slept with you was the first time I’ve slept with anyone in two years where there was no kink or where Len wasn’t in the room—or in the bed too.”
The words hung in the air—harsh and bright—and then crashed like glass between them. Her lips parted, and she sagged back against the couch as if he’d physically pushed her backward.
“I’ve been avoiding you since that night not because I didn’t enjoy it or because it didn’t mean something to me,” he went on, unable to stop now that he’d started. “I avoided you because I know myself. Know that no matter how much I liked what we did, I would only be okay with the basics—with vanilla sex—for so long. And to be frank, what we did, wasn’t all that vanilla to start. I touched you in front of Len. I got off on playing teacher to your student. I told you what a good girl you were. I took advantage of your willingness—your innocence.”
Bright spots appeared on her cheeks like the admission had slapped her.
“And you had no idea that stuff was not, like, typical.” He let out a breath. “The temptation to guide you into what I like would be too hard to resist. I already failed that test right out of the gate. I could tell you all of this stuff is normal, and you wouldn’t think to fact-check me because you have no experience. Plus, you have the remnants of some schoolgirl crush on me, so you want to please me, want my approval. That’s too much power for me to have.”
He rubbed his palms along his jeans, his hands sweaty and his heart pounding.
He pinned her with his gaze. “I wouldruinyou, O’Neal. I would take and take and take until whatever notions of normal sex and relationships you may have had the chance to discover with someone else were warped to fit mine.”
She was staring at him, her neck flushed even in the dim glow of the TV, a fawn in the headlights of his oncoming car.
“I would like to object to the use of the wordnormalin that speech,” Lennox said, clearly annoyed. “Fuck that word.”
Auden ignored Len and kept his attention on O’Neal. He could see that genius brain of hers trying to process and piece together what he’d said, to fill in the holes of what he wasn’t saying. But she didn’t have the reference points to fill in those blanks.
Her voice came out trembly when she spoke. “You’re scaring me. What do you meanruinme? What is it you’d want to do? I don’t understand.”
“I know,” Auden said, feeling stripped down and exposed. “I wouldn’t expect you to. Forget it.”
Her eyes narrowed, and she sat up a little straighter. “Don’t do that.”
“What?” he asked, exhaustion seeping into him at the soul level.
“Dismiss me.” The shakiness in her voice had hardened into a sharp point, her words turning into an arrow shot Auden’s way. “That’s not fair. You can’t tell me what you just did and then pat me on the head and say,you won’t understand, little girl.You thought I was woman enough to have sex with me—the least you can do is talk to me like I’m one.”
“She’s right,” Lennox said, his voice quiet but firm as a judge’s. “And you don’t need to be scared, Sweets. We’re kinky, not dangerous.” He looked to Auden, irritation there. “Auden just hasn’t accepted yet that his kinkdoesn’t mean he’s damaged.Man, your people are big into the shame game. All the self-flagellation. It’sexhausting.”
O’Neal gave Auden a frustrated look. “Your kink? What does that even mean? I hate feeling this stupid.”
Auden let out a long breath and ran a hand through his hair. This was the last kind of conversation he wanted to have with her, but she was right. He owed her truth. “You’re not stupid.”
“What he’s having trouble telling you,” Len said gently, “is that he and I like sexual activities that the mainstream would consider alternative and your families would probably consider horrifying.”
