Page 34 of Once Upon a Dream
“Poppy?” The Senator smiled when he said my name, but the steel was there. That terrifying sharpness. Turns out my leash didn’t stretch far at all.
“You heard her,” the Irishman said from the shadows. “She needs a second.”
“I’m sorry, who are you?” Jim stepped into the light; he was smiling but it was the razor’s edge. Jim was blonde and blue eyed. He wore glasses that made him look smart. He worked out just enough that the suits he wore looked good.
Everything about him inspired comfort and confidence.
Voters loved him.
I’d never been so scared of someone in my life.
“I’m coming,” I said, and I stepped into the light with Jim Maywell the junior senator of New York who was 28 years older than me, and at midnight, we were announcing that I would be his wife.
Jim grabbed my hand too hard. But I expected it, and made my hand as small as I could in his. There was a trick to it funneling my fingers, so he couldn’t grind the bones together. I’d learned that fast. I wondered if that would be interesting on my application to the catering company.
Experience: eating canapes off trays and mitigating the pain my fiancé wanted to inflict on my body.
We stepped off the small patio into the doorway with the sound of the party filtering through the walls.
Don’t do it, I told myself. Don’t look. He’s not for you. Not ever.
But of course I
couldn’t stop myself, and I looked back over my shoulder, but the Irishman was gone.
Nothing was left of him but the taste of blood in my mouth.
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Red & White
1
Snow
The man’s head is heavy in my lap as I brush his hair. Scarlett is next to me working on his beard. She’d muttered something about beard oil when she’d first started, but between my hair products and hers, she’s managed to tame his beard into something, well…something sexy. It’s only a little longer than his jawline, and very neatly trimmed. With it smoothed and groomed, it’s easy to see his strong cheekbones and the line of his squared jaw. And his lips! I can’t resist touching them when Scarlett sits back on her heels to admire her handiwork.
She giggles as she watches me touch his mouth.
“What?” I ask, feeling heat rush to my face. I start brushing his longish hair again.
“Nothing, really,” she says. “I feel like we’re at a slumber party or something. Except instead of playing with each other’s hair, we’re playing with a complete stranger’s.”
An irresistibly handsome stranger, I think, and then I decide that I must have some kind of fairy godmother following me around and granting me wishes, because not only do I have a hot man’s head cradled in my lap, but I’m next to the girl I’ve been longing for since the day we both started working as GTAs for Professor Stoller. I look up at Scarlett from underneath my lashes, my body aching to touch every part of her. Her little snub nose and her pouting mouth painted a shade of red that would send men, women, and bulls charging at her.
The first time I saw her, her lips had been that same shade of red. Scarlett, like her name. She’d been in scuffed motorcycle boots and torn jeans, a plain white T-shirt slumping off one shoulder and knotted at her waist, and she’d been sitting cozily in another girl’s lap—straddling her, actually—playing with the girl’s hair while she regaled the girl with some hilarious story and the group around them laughed.
“Who’s she?” I’d asked my friend Camille. I’d only just started the graduate program at UT-Austin that week, and I hardly knew anyone, except for Camille, who’d gone to my high school down in Houston.
“Oh, her,” Camille said, her voice lowering to the I’ve got tea register. “That’s Scarlett Rosenthal. She’s slept with basically everyone in Austin.”
“That’s a statistical impossibility,” I murmured, glued to the sight of Scarlett’s sleek, denim-clad thighs sprawling over the other girl’s. I felt heat everywhere on my body, so much heat that I was sure it would sizzle against Camille’s skin.
“Well, she doesn’t do them one at a time, if you get what I’m saying,” Camille whispered, pulling back and giving me a raised eyebrow.
“I don’t think I do,” I admitted, confused.
