Page 100 of Fraud
“ARE YOU SORE?”KILLIAN ASKEDas we sat down on the floor in front of the coffee table, plates in hand.
I bit my lip, avoiding his question, as we pulled out food from bags and spread it out in front of us. I’d been a little surprised when he arrived back here with take-out Italian food rather than an armful of groceries like he’d promised, but after a delirious apology kiss, he’d explained he couldn’t wait to get back here.
To me.
“I did manage to grab a bottle of wine to go with our meal,” he explained, holding up a brown paper bag before setting it between us.
“Where did you go?” I asked, squinting to try and read the store label.
“Some wine store down the street,” he said.
“Oh! I’ve been there. It’s huge, isn’t it? I think I wandered around for a solid twenty minutes before anyone helped me. Did you have any luck finding anyone useful?”
His face darkened slightly. “No, none.”
I brushed it off, knowing how frustrating that megastore could be. “Well, I won’t blame you if the wine is bad then.”
He smiled, and a rich warmth painted his features as he looked at me. “You never answered my question.”
I felt heat spread across my face. “Yes, I’m sore.”
He stopped what he was doing, placing his fork down and turning to me. “Where?” he asked.
I couldn’t tell if he was asking out of concern or if this was another game of his.
So, I tried to explain the best way I could.
With words.
“Before my…well, before everything happened in college, during my freshman and sophomore years, I was a normal student. I went to parties, drank, and did many other stupid things.”
He smiled, a crooked kind of amusement tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Go on.”
“Anyway, if I was a typical college student, Jane was…” I tried to think of an appropriate adjective. “Atypical? No, that’s not right. Okay, let’s try this. If college were a sport, I would have been in the amateur league. But Jane? Jane was definitely a professional. By the second semester of our first year, she’d pretty much done everything there was to do.”
“Having met her,” he said, “it doesn’t surprise me.”
“Honestly, I think she was just repeating a lot of it from her boarding school days. But, as much as she was a professional partier, she was also always the one who seemed to have her shit together, you know? She’d decide when and if she wanted to get drunk while the rest of us went crazy as frequently as possible. I thought she was so cool because of that. I still do.”
“Is this an elaborate stall tactic?” he asked, that cocky grin returning.
“No.” I laughed. “I have a point, I swear.”
“Just checking.”
“Anyway, as you can probably guess, Jane had her fair share of—”
“Lovers?” he guessed.
“Yes.” I snorted. “She was actually kind of picky. She wouldn’t let just any drunk frat boy in her bed. In fact, I’m fairly certain she had a short affair with a professor during our junior year, but our relationship was a little touchy then.”
His eyes narrowed.
“I’d kept pushing her away. She wouldn’t have it,” I clarified. “But I remember, before all of that, when she’d come back to our dorm, how she’d stretch out in bed and go on and on about how wonderfully sore she was. Being the naive girl I was, I couldn’t fathom how you could equate pain with pleasure, and being a good friend, she’d always try to explain. But it never really made any sense. Until now,” I said.
His pupils deepened to a dark shade of blue as his breath hitched.
“I hurt everywhere,” I said. “Every muscle. It feels like my body ran a marathon. I’m tired and exhausted from the lack of sleep. I hurt in places I didn’t even know could hurt. But, despite all of that, I can’t stop grinning. Every time I close my eyes, I remember. Every time I look at you, I feel that flutter in my stomach, and those sore muscles and the exhaustion, it’s forgotten. Because all I want to do is feel your body on mine again.”
