The Rake (Boston Belles #4)(71)

“Thanks,” I groan. It feels so good. The stretch. His hands. Everything.

I’m going to hell.

“Yup.”

His thumbs touch the hem of my shorts as he draws circles on my skin. One time. Two times. On the third, I know it’s not accidental. I know we’re on the brink of something. I know this is not supposed to happen.

He picks up my foot and stretches my hamstring, pinning my foot next to my head. When he leans into me, I feel his penis pressed against my groin through our clothes. It feels like it’s pulsating. My mouth goes dry.

“So your wife lives with her mom now?” I ask loudly. I don’t know why. Maybe to distract him. Maybe to distract myself. Maybe to remind both of us that she exists.

“Yeah. We’re not on the best of terms. It’s not … we’re not really together.”

He releases me from the hamstring stretch. The tips of his thumbs are touching the hem of my panties under my shorts now. He stills. I swallow hard. Close my eyes.

“Emmabelle.”

It’s the first time he doesn’t call me Penrose. I don’t answer. I don’t breathe. I hate that a part of me wants this. I hate that my panties are damp again.

“I can make this really good for you, sweetie. But you can’t tell anyone, okay?”

My words are gone. Shriveled inside my throat. I know I should say no. I want to say no. But somehow I hear myself saying yes. I want to please him.

“I’ll get into a lot of trouble if people find out. But I know you want to. And … well, I’ve been wanting to for a while.”

A beat passes without either of us saying or doing anything. His thumbs on the sides of my panties feel weird. Foreign. But also … thrilling.

Just when I think he is going to pull my shorts down and remove my panties and enter me—the way I saw in a porn movie once—he tugs both to the side. A cool breeze passes over my vagina, letting me know that it is completely exposed to him.

I pop one eye open and watch him watching me, licking his lips.

“Fuck,” he says.

“I … I’m a virgin.”

But what I’m really trying to say is that I want to keep it that way. I’m not like Persy. I don’t wanna wait until marriage before I lose my virginity, but I want it to mean something. Not to think back in a few years and remember I gave it to someone who was expecting a child with someone else.

“Yeah, I know. I’ll never hurt you, sweetie.”

And then before I know it, he is crouched down, in front of his open truck, sucking my vagina into his mouth. I’m mortified. It feels so awkward. I want to push him away, but I also don’t want to look like a crybaby, especially after how good he’s been to me. How he always pays me extra attention, massages my legs, works on my knee.

I squeeze my eyes shut and remind myself that no one is going to know.

Not Persy. Not my parents. Not Ross and Sailor, my best friends. Definitely not the other harriers. If a tree falls in the middle of the woods and no one hears it … did it actually happen?

This will be our little secret.

The thing I take with me to the grave.

Everything feels wet between my legs. I don’t know if I like it or not. I mean, I like the attention, but … I don’t know. Not necessarily everything else.

After what feels like forever but is probably only ten minutes, he stops, turns around from me, and I see his arms flexing through his hoodie. He is rubbing one out. He finishes. I don’t see any of it, as his back is to me. He cleans himself off with baby wipes then returns to the trunk. By then, I’m sitting down on the edge again, legs dangling from it, like nothing happened.

We’re cool. Everything’s fine. He is not really with his wife, and this is consensual. It’s not like that news article at all. Besides, if it’s so bad, why does it feel so good?

“Hey.” He grins.

“Hi.”

Then he kisses me, tongue and all, and I taste the muskiness and earthiness of myself and his saliva—a mixture of things I’ve never tasted before.

That’s when I decide sin doesn’t taste so bad.





Seconds after Sweven slammed the door to her room with a loud bang, Louisa turned to me and said, “I’m not stupid, you know.”

“Never thought you were,” I said easily, taking a sip of my wine.

“You still haven’t touched me. Not even a kiss.”

It had been six dates. They were good dates too, although I was careful to be Respectable Devon around her. We did not discuss weird animals, and she did not tease me about my age or my language or my accent—and, come to think about it, my existence.

“I pride myself on my good behavior,” I said idly.

“You’re the biggest sinner of them all, and we both know that.” She offered me an impatient smile. “If you wanted me, you would’ve taken me by now.”

I leaned back in my seat, scanning her face pensively.

Louisa was on the cusp of looking her age, her skin had become thinner, clinging to her bones delicately, giving her an elegant, slightly malnourished look. She was a far cry from the plump-cheeked Sweven, with the dusting of freckles and flushed, healthy skin.

Louisa’s beauty had history, and wrinkles, and stories.

She was lovely in a way that was far more interesting than a bombshell who looked photoshopped within an inch of her life.