But I meant what I said. I hated that he made me feel, that he’d ruined my plan to sail through life smoothly, without having to get hurt. I hated that he’d invited me to drown with him at his parents’ butterfly garden, and the stupid girl that I was, I had.

Now I needed air.

I slapped his face, hard, to break the kiss. He pulled away, shocked, but when he was about to pull out of me, I grabbed his bare butt cheeks—the only thing bare about him, we were both fully clothed—and drove him into me deeper.

“No. Give me an orgasm, and then leave me alone. I mean it, Hunter. We’re through.”

Something in his face changed just then.

I remembered an important thing Hunter had told me one day, when we were lying together in my bed.

“It’s true that I’ve never stayed with a woman, but it’s also true that women never stay with me. My mom neglected me. The revolving door of nannies didn’t help, either. My only sister used to ask my da for permission before calling me because he’d told her I was bad influence. Any other chick who noticed me wanted to either fuck my face or get access to my wallet. Women don’t think highly of me, but the truth is, I don’t think so highly of them, either.”

I was dumping him without even being with him, playing on the notion he hated the most—women leaving him unexpectedly.

And he wasn’t happy.

Hunter thrust into me again and again and again, the pleasure he awakened in my body at odds with the sharp pain I felt in my soul. I wanted to take the words back, but I didn’t want to sacrifice my happiness for his, either.

When the climax began to rock me back and forth, euphoria washing over my limbs, I felt him pulsating and twitching inside of me. He pulled out, held his engorged red cock in his fist, and extended my neck by tugging my hair back. My heart thundered in my chest. He pressed the tip of his wet cock—that smelled exactly like me—to my hairline and glided it down my face as he came in spurts, creating a line of his cum along my face. He stopped at my mouth, one eyebrow slanted, his eyes daring me to refuse him.

I opened my mouth obediently, and he shoved it in, finishing in my mouth.

I tilted my head back, letting it hit the back of my throat, then swallowed.

Hunter stood up swiftly and buckled himself. He’d opened his mouth to say something—something harsh, something he would undoubtedly regret—when the burgundy-velvet curtain engulfing us swiped open.

“Whoa,” Knight whistled. He stood to the side of the stage, slow-clapping us.

Luna was beside him, cupping her mouth, her eyes wide.

“Is that a thing? A babysitter with a happy ending?” Knight grinned.

I felt so much blood rushing to my face, I thought I was going to explode.

Hunter turned and walked away, not even bothering to answer his best friend or pick me up from the floor, with his cum still dripping from my chin.

The second I was done waving goodbye to Knight and Luna at the airport, I drove back to the apartment in Sailor’s car, applying major-ass self-restraint not to rip the wheel from its socket and throw it out the fucking window.

She wanted to bail on this arrangement now, when we were so close to the finish line? Yeah. No. Fuck this and fuck her.

Literally. I was going to. Punishingly. Because that’s how she liked it, and because I drew the line when her insecurities started messing with my sex life. Damn, I had pre-cum leaking from the tip of my cock, ninth grade-style, just from thinking about what I’d do to her.

When we’d gotten back home from the theater last night, I couldn’t help it. I’d waited until everyone was asleep, picked up the phone, and called Cillian. He sounded like he was at a busy restaurant, only that didn’t make any sense, because it was hella late. Everybody in the background spoke French. When I told him it was serious, he muttered under his breath and went outside. The noise of waves crashing on the shore filled my ears. Where the hell was he? Cannes? Monaco? Fucking heaven?

“You better be dying or talking with your mouth wrapped around the barrel of a gun. It’s three a.m.” I heard the flicker of a lighter as he lit a cigar. My brother didn’t do pot or cigarettes. Only King of Denmark cigars.

It may have been three a.m. in Boston, but not wherever the fuck he was. Was he in Europe? Did he use Da’s Gulfstreamer? Way to leave the carbon footprint of a thousand Nephilim in the name of exotic pussy. And to think I was the one with the bad rep between us two.

“Wishful thinking, brother. It is unlike you to be optimistic.” I adapted his flatline voice.

“Get to the point,” he hissed.

I paused.

“Promise not to snitch on me first.”

I was taking a big risk here, but I had no one to talk to about this. Knight wouldn’t understand. He’d known he was in love with Luna before he was out of diapers, a hopeless romantic. Vaughn wouldn’t, either. Fucker was so cold I doubted he loved his own mother.

That left me with my brother. A comfortable medium: deadly sociopathic, but with the ability to mimic and think like a normal human.

“What makes you think I care enough about what you’re about to say to promise you anything?” he asked, sounding entertained.

Cuntcuntcunt.

“Kill,” I warned.

“On with it, ceann beag. Gossip is beneath me.”

Everything is beneath you, I thought bitterly.