As I returned to my room with my gray boiled roast and stewed legumes, I realized I should have added:
“By the way, little man—you have no right to make me feel bad for Zephyr. To begin with, I only followed him to his room because I thought he was you!”
The beef was mostly palatable, but the legumes fell apart as soon as I speared them with my fork. I thought of something else:
“Incidentally, Brant, where the actual fuck were you while Zephyr was putting the moves on me?”
My assigned reading was out of the question. There was no way I could focus on mercantilism in the seventeenth century. By nine that night, I was fuming. Where the hell did Theo get off making me feel bad?
And more than that—why was I allowing myself to feel shitty?
“I have nothing to feel bad about, Theo. Even if I knew the boy taking me to bed wasn’t you, I don’t see a ring on my finger! I’m not your property. You had so many opportunities to carry me upstairs to your room, pull off my clothes, relieve my desire with your hands, your mouth, your body. If you had held me to the bed that night and made me feel those delicious sensations … well, you wouldn’t have been attacked. You’d have been too busy making me come while we made slow, passionate love.”
I was breathing through my mouth, I realized. I was almost panting.
Lying flat on my cot in my threadbare sleepshirt, my mind was swirling. I wasn’t thinking about telling off Theo anymore. I wasn’t thinking about Theo at all.
Memories were flowing back. The mix of scents in Zephyr’s room: candlewax, musky cologne, intermingling sweat, the dew on my thighs. I could feel his tingling fingertips gliding up my skin.
My own fingers were doing the same. They traced the elastic of my old cotton briefs. I wasn’t wearing underwear that night, so I wondered what it would feel like for a boy to peel them off me. Would Zephyr have done it slowly and sensually? No, he would have ripped them away.
I gasped as I slipped them off. Just the feeling of the chill evening air on my freshly exposed vulva was a delight. I’d withstood the temptation to touch myself since Zephyr and my mutual self-pleasure session last week. It felt grotesque to fantasize about him while Theo was still unconscious.
Now, I couldn’t care less.
My right hand played giddily at the junction of my thighs. I flicked back and forth over my clit, then allowed two fingers to tease my entrance. I’d never been this wet before, not even that night.
My left hand forced up my shirt and pinched my nipple hard. I could almost feel Zephyr’s teeth. It felt so good, the sharp pain as I squeezed. Rubbing myself faster, I twisted my nip hard and cried out.
“Oh, fuck,” I called to the darkness.
It felt like Zephyr had possessed my hands. I slapped my swelling breast hard enough to leave a pink welt. I slapped my face. I did it again, sharper. Enough to draw a tear. I felt Zephyr’s hard, muscular body against mine, mounting me.
“Fuck me,” I demanded, lost in my fantasy. “Make me come, you bastard.”
My whole body shook as I brought my left hand to my throat and squeezed as hard as I could.
I was coming. A quaking, rumbling orgasm exploded within me and reverberated through my body. Only my fingers clamped down on my voice box kept my scream from echoing down the hall. I had never felt a climax like that in my young life. It leveled me and left me flat.
Drifting to sleep on a soaked sheet, my pale body tingling in the cool of my utility closet chamber. As my eyes fluttered, I rolled my head to face the door. Only then did I notice the shadowy break in the light below the door. Someone was standing just outside. Were they listening?
As I considered that possibility, the shadow disappeared, and I heard footfalls down the hall.
Chapter 16
Biba
The first week of April brought spring break at Stormcloud Academy. That should have meant nothing to me. I wasn’t sailing around the Mediterranean on a yacht, clubbing in Barcelona, or sunning on the Cote d’Azur. I had neither the disposable income of my supposed peers nor any family. Spring break just meant that I had the school mostly to myself.
I say mostly because, thank heavens, there was one person to share my isolation with, the only person who understood my life: my school chum, Gail.
So, while the connected princelings of Stormcloud hopped into their Ferraris and chartered Cessnas to carry them to sunnier climes, Gail and I took long hikes, gorged on confections from the village chocolatier, and hung out in the student lounge in our jammies.