Harley’s hands reach up and slowly trail across the path of muscles that curve toward my belt, which she seamlessly unfastens and whips free from my pants. My hands fall to her lace-clad breasts, pinching at her pebbled nipples. Her back arches upward and I take the opportunity to remove the thin layer of material separating me from her perfection. I take my time with each peach-colored nipple, sucking, tugging, and biting, coercing a moan from her throat. I hate my initial thought of her beautiful sounds being a sign of weakness, but I push the observation away and lose myself within her lake blue eyes—mesmerized by the swirls of contradicting hues of blue.
I kneel upright and unbutton my pants, lowering them and my boxer briefs before tending to her loose-fitting jeans that easily slide down her waist. I tear her panties down her thighs, over her knees, and feel them slide the rest of the way to her ankles as I reach down to the ground for the pocket of my pants. I retrieve a condom I shamelessly hoped to use with her if we could manage to push aside our problematic indifference, which seems to be the case at the moment. Before I have the chance to tear the wrapper, Harley maneuvers her way down between my legs and wraps her wet, plump lips around my cock. Her tongue draws lines up and down my shaft, and I’m left on all fours, desperately trying to hold my weight up above her, though I may lose all strength soon if she keeps going. The head of my cock presses against the softness of her throat.
Holy shit. I'm done. I can't play this game anymore.
I pull out of her mouth and tear the wrapper off the condom, unravel it, slip it on, and plunge inside of her with little warning. There’s no question whether she’s ready for me since there is no tension against each thrust I make against her. Her moans return, and I place my hand around the side of her neck as I continue to inhale her exhaling pleas.
Her hands wrap around my torso, then she caressingly slides them down until she cups my ass firmly within her grip while not-so-gently pressing the tips of her fingernails into my flesh as she pulls me in deeper and harder. I continue pounding into her with so much uncontrolled force that I'm afraid of hurting her, but she pleadingly groans as if it's not enough.
Harley's hands slide back to my chest, and she pushes me in an attempt to switch positions, which I comply with. Her legs straddle my waist while settling into the new position. Without missing a beat, she’s rides me hard as she squeezes her breasts, pressing them up as her head falls back with pleasure. My hands clasp around her waist, guiding her movements into longer strides.
"You're so hard," she mutters, still grinding against me with the same quick pace, but she leans forward, dangling her breasts toward my chest before feathering her nipples across my pecs. With her lips hovering over my ear, she whispers, "Tell me how you found me."
I slap my hands against her ass, receiving a shriek of delight in return. "Tell me you aren't Harley," he demands through a breathless grunt.
"Why were you in a psych ward?" she moans through another unsteady whisper.
"For a crime I didn't commit," I say as if it were an exhale of air. "Oh, and I've had a thing for you since we were in class together." I flip her onto her back, regaining a sense of control without losing our place in depth or velocity. I slide my hand down between her legs, pinching her clit gently. "Come on, baby, tell me what I want to hear."
"I know you want me to tell you I'm Isabelle," she says, snaking her hands up and down my torso as she moves her lips to my neck, pausing her words to suck and bite with more pressure than I'd expect. "What do you want with me?" Her words are mumbled beneath my ear, and I’m having a hard time deciphering if she just confessed.
"I want you," I tell her, the words coming on their own accord—a lie that is no longer a lie. I have wanted her since we took class together almost two years ago.
"Finish," she tells me. As if her words are commanding my cock to do what she says, I spill into her, bucking and thrashing as her head hits the headboard before I have a chance to place my hand there to prevent another crash. As I empty my dark soul into hers, she moves against me faster, moaning, "I will never tell you I'm her. Ever." Her cries escape in the form of passion and pleasure mixed with only a hint of despair.
"Don't tell me, then," I rebut.
I fall against her chest and pull the comforter out from beneath us, wrapping it around our bodies while we take a minute to unfurl from the sexual interrogation we enforced.
"I'm not a stalker," I tell her.
"And Isabelle is not your ex-girlfriend," she counters.
17
Harley
While peeling my clothes off the floor, a feel a fleeting sense of awkwardness come over me, and I don't know what to say to Axel after that. We hardly know each other, and I don't typically sleep with men I don't know, especially those I’m kind of working for.
I pull my pants up and reach for my bra hanging off the nightstand, but I’m caught in a daze as I stop to watch him pull up his pants and weave his belt through the loops. He's been wearing suits and clothes that sort of cover what's beneath, which is a flawless canvas of muscles and intricately designed tattoos. He's kind of perfect, besides the whole convicted psychopath thing.
"Dr. Phillips was my psychologist and rehab mentor," he says. "You were in your masters’ program, and I was not even enrolled in your university, but it was part of my treatment to attend some of his classes." While rage begins to rise back through my gut, I try to keep calm, knowing his explanation is far from over. I fasten my bra and pull my shirt on. "I never wanted a psych career. I was just avoiding a life sentence in prison."
I have no clue how to wrap my head around anything he is saying. "A life sentence? What? What did you do?" Other than commit homicide, obviously.
"Nothing. I did nothing," he says. "I was set up. That's all there is to it."
How interesting. He was set up. I was set up. It seems a little too coincidental to me.
"Well, I don't remember you from class," I tell him, trying to catch my breath before I speak again. "So, what, you really think we were in the same class?" Some of my earlier college classes I took were filled with more than a hundred students sometimes, but not typically throughout my masters’ program.
"We sat beside each other for an entire semester," Axel tells me. He's lying. I would have remembered him. I think. "My hair was longer, and I had a beard and glasses." Still not ringing a bell. I attended school for four years and took more classes than I can count. However, with all the thousands of students who attended my school, he was watching me—he remembers me.
I'm pretty sure I'm about to be murdered.
"We made small talk every day," he says. "You introduced yourself on the first day, telling me how excited you were for that particular class we were in. At the time, I was wondering what person could be that excited about a Cognitive Neuropsychology class, but you had this wild passion in your eyes when you started talking about the shit I had no clue about. It was impressive and sparked a desire within me to learn more."
I'm struggling to remember this, but I do kind of recall talking to a guy in that class since we sat in the same seats the whole semester. I remember we had assigned seating for some reason, but that guy didn’t look like Axel, and I feel like I'd remember his name. If my memory serves me right, the guy sitting next to me in that particular class was scruffy, with overgrown hair and always in sweats—never quite interested in what Mason was teaching.
The lost look on my face provokes Axel to reach into his back pocket. He pulls out a worn, brown leather wallet and flips it open. Searching through his cards, he slides one out from the back and hands it over to me. It's a Boston University student ID. I examine it, instantly remembering the man he’s claiming to have once been. I remember now. How could I forget? We didn't just talk every day—we were friends. We'd stay after class some days and talk about the theories we were learning about, even though I remember wondering if he was truly as interested as I was. "I remember you, but your name wasn’t Axel." He went by Pierce I think. It didn’t ring a bell before now.