“Yes!” she cried out, and I pulled her up from the bed, kneeling down and bouncing her onto my dick.

“Ahh…that’s … so … fucking … good!” she cried out, biting her lips as she clung to me. She stared deeply in my eyes and then … she smacked me hard across my cheek.

I paused for a moment and looked to her. “Do it again.”

She smirked, slapping my other cheek.

The pain felt good.

Pulling out of her, my cock throbbed and twitched with need. But I had to fulfill another desire altogether.

“Get on your knees.” Without question, she moved onto all fours with her smooth, round ass facing me.

“Like this?” she questioned seductively, leaning over for me even more.

“Do you like to be smacked as much as you enjoy smacking me?” I ran my hand over her ass softly.

“Why don’t you find out?”

Who was this? The Amelia I remembered was so shy when we first had sex…but then again she was sixteen then.

SMACK.

Her hands clenched the sheets as her body shivered.

“It seems like I got my answer,” I whispered, moving her hair back over her shoulders.

She swallowed, taking a deep breath. “So what are you going to do now?”

SMACK.

SMACK.

“Fuck,” she cried out, dropping her head. I rubbed circles onto her now-red ass.

“We will get to that, but I want to see how much of this you can take.”

SMACK.

Her legs quivered under her.

SMACK.

She panted, her body rising and following with each deep breath.

SMACK.

“Harder.”

SMACK.

I felt the ache in my hand that time. But she still didn’t tell me to stop. Her ass was so red I was sure she would have begged me to end it. Instead, she bit her lips, and her eyes shifted to me, daring me to do it again.

“Again.”

SMACK.

SMACK.

“Ah!” She cried out. “Please…please fuck me.”

She didn’t have to ask a second time. Kissing both of her red cheeks, I grabbed her waist and slid into her, my eyes rolling back at how much wetter and tighter she was for me.

“God, you are amazing,” I told her, thrusting deeply into her as I kissed her back.

“So…good,” she said as she came for me.

Again, all I heard were our moans and grunts.

I can’t take this anymore. 

 I had been hard for her from the moment she kissed me. It had taken all my strength to hold back until now.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” I grunted as I thrust, coming at last.

I collapsed onto her. We were both covered in sweat, breathing in the scent of our sex. I couldn’t help but wonder what the hell I was going to do. It had taken me almost a decade of mindless and meaningless sex to get over my addiction to her…and now I was back to square one.

Amelia

Rolling onto my stomach, I knew he was awake, even though neither of us had spoken in the last hour. We’d just laid there still and naked in his bed. We may have had sex, but that solved none of our problems. I wanted to ask him what this meant for us now, but I was scared of the answer. So I asked something else entirely.

“What are the pills for?”

He was silent for a while, but that was fine. I had time. Finally, he sat up and sighed. I could hear him sitting up, but I didn’t turn to face him.

“I was diagnosed with panic disorder a few years ago,” he whispered into the darkness.

“That’s why you went to rehab?”

“I tried to get off the pills on my own and ended up having an episode. We’d thought it was better to use as a cover—”

“You’d rather people think you were on cocaine or something.”

“Anxiety isn’t exactly sexy, Amelia.”

Rolling back over, I glared at him. He reached for a pack of cigarettes on his nightstand.

“So to protect your bad-boy image, you’re willing to let people think you’re a drug addict.” He was such an idiot!

Lighting his cigarette, he shrugged. “Don’t blame me. Blame society.”

Reaching over him, I took the cigarette before he could hit it again, but he grabbed my hand.

“It helps to relax me,” he said seriously.

“It also helps lung cancer.”

He smirked. “Don’t worry—”

“Just because you tell me not to doesn’t mean I won’t.”

Sighing, he took the cigarette back and put it out on the nightstand. “Happy?”

Frowning, I laid back down.

Silence again.

There was just so much between us that it was hard to know where to start.

“Why do you hate Noah Sloan?” I questioned, even though it was weird talking about in him the third person.

He didn’t answer, but he did reach for another cigarette.

I didn’t bother asking him another question. I quietly watched him smoke naked beside me.

What were we now? I had no idea.

Would he hurt me? Most likely.

Would I still love him anyway? Yes.

Should I? No.

But what could I do? Even though I knew all this could blow up in my face at any moment, I still didn’t want to move. I really was a masochist.

Chapter Seven

Amelia

Six.

That’s how many days have passed since Noah and I slept together. I wanted to think it was just a coincidence that this week he and I were filming in separate locations within the city. But it didn’t feel like it. It felt like I was being avoided. He hadn’t left me in the morning like I had expected him to, but neither of us spoke. We just got ready to leave since we woke up late. Ollie was already waiting outside the door, less than pleased with me, but I didn’t care. I was waiting on Noah. Even now, when we were finally in the same room, there was tension between us. I stood on the other side of the studio booth, watching as they gave him a pair of headphones along with his script for the voiceovers we needed to do. He lifted up the page in front of him, reading over it only once before nodding to the director sitting at the soundboard.

“Start whenever you’re ready, Noah.”

Finally, his eyes stopped on mine, and he froze like he had seen a ghost…or the last person on earth he ever wanted to see.

“Noah?” the director shifted, confused. He glanced between us. Not wanting to distract him, I tried to leave, but the director stopped me. “Amelia, I’d like you to hear this. In this monologue, Damon is speaking to Blair. It will be good to catch your reaction right afterward, so go inside.”

I peeked back at Noah, but he was no longer looking at me. Inside, he adjusted this headphones as the sound coordinator handed me mine. I stood right across from him, a microphone the only thing between us now. Clearing his throat, he began.

“The scariest mask you will ever see is the face I was born with. Yes, it’s true: I could never dream at night before I met you. Around me, there was nothing but silence under the gaze of the full moon hovering in the center of darkness. The wind didn’t howl. The clouds never gathered. The stars were hidden … and then you appeared, and I didn’t need stars because you were like the sun. But the longer I stayed near you, the dimmer and darker you became. My demons became your demons because you try so hard to save me when it is so clear I’m meant to drown.” He paused, clenching his teeth. His hands gripped the small podium between us. He continued, “You’ve gotten too close, and now I’m hurting you because I don’t want to hurt you. You can’t take this much longer. So even though I promised not to, even though I don’t want to, I’m letting go because I have to. You’ll always be burned into my mind, stitched to my soul, and the owner of my heart, Ame—Blair Calliope Hawthorne.”

When he was done, I let go of the air I was holding in my lungs. It’s not me. He isn’t really talking to me. However, until he said Blair’s name, I just kept seeing him as Noah in front of me.