Page 48 of Rent: Paid in Full
He lets go of my hands and takes my head in both of his. Fingers rake through the hair on the back of my neck, holding me steady as he grazes my jaw with his teeth. My head lolls back. He licks my throat from my clavicle to the shell of my ear. Hard, then soft. Then softer and softer until he’s touching me so gently I can’t quite tell what’s really happening and what I’m imagining. I’m dizzy. Books, ceiling tiles, and fluorescent lighting are spiraling, moving in a slow circular motion. My legs feel unsteady. I’m rooted to the spot and in serious danger of lifting off and drifting into the ether.
He kisses my neck again. Hard. It feels good and bad and dangerous, but I’m struggling to concentrate on that because,for some reason, my idiot right hand has wrapped itself around Miller’s waist and is pulling him tightly against me. My hips buck, grinding my hard cock against his as he sucks the soft skin of my neck into his mouth.
“How much?” he rasps into my neck as he kisses me over and over. “Want you.”
“H-how much for what?” I’m pretty impressed I’ve managed to form words, but the tinny whine posing as my voice quickly reminds me I’m far from doing well.
He pulls back, dipping his gaze to my mouth and then fixing me with a look that makes me suspect my eyes are milliseconds from rolling back in my head.
“I want to be inside you,” he whispers and then laughs softly as if he’s amused himself. “No, I don’t want it. I need it. Just my tongue inside you.” I feel his breath on my ear, hot and desperate. It compromises me irrevocably. It takes all the faculties needed to make good decisions and drops them into a blender. “And my fingers.Please. How much?”
“Seven hundred dollars,” squeaks a person who sounds nothing like me.
The thing about losing your mind and acting impulsively is that you are still the one who has to deal with the consequences. They don’t just magically disappear. It doesn’t matter if you’re sorry or if you decide never to do something so stupid again. Consequences have a way of finding you and not letting you out of their grip until they’ve made you their bitch. That’s one of life’s harsh realities right there. It’s been hours since I saw Miller in the library. Time has passed. I should have recovered by now. I’m standing at Ben’s door. I’m here for a long overdue visit. I should be excited to see him and Nic, and it’s not that I’m not.It’s just that I’m still shaking inside from what Miller asked for. What he’s going to buy. What I’m going to sell.
I knock on the door and hear a muffled scramble as the people inside the room hastily pull themselves together.
“Holy shit!” shrieks Nicole, laughing so hard she almost falls over as she lets me in. “What attacked you?”
My thoughts have been coming in a little thick and woolly of late, but still, I have less than no idea what she means. Ben peeks over her shoulder, takes a good look at me, and then starts laughing too. His dark brown eyes water and his face turns pink before he’s able to stop himself.
I don’t love being laughed at, but I don’t mind it as much from these two. I would like to know what it’s about though. I really would.
It isn’t until Nic points at my neck that it occurs to me. Miller didn’t just kiss my neck. He kissed it hard. Sucked it hard. So hard I could feel my skin being dragged between his teeth. I slap a hand over my neck quickly as my face heats unbearably.
“Well,” says Ben, giving me a little nudge on the arm, “who was it?”
I open and close my mouth three or four times and then manage, “No one.”
They both laugh uproariously at that, and I can’t blame them. It’s a stupid answer, but it’s the best I can do.
“Seriously?” Nicole wails. “You’re not going to tell us?”
I mutter something about gentlemen and never telling, and thankfully, they move on. I hang out for a while, but I make my excuses and leave when they get ready to start the movie. It’s after ten, and now that I know it’s there, it feels like someone is holding a brand to my neck. I head back to the dorm in such a high temper about the neck situation that I almost forget what else I’m walking into.
“What the fuck?” I say, not for the first time today.
He tilts his head and takes in the mark he made on my neck. It makes him smile. A slow, sexy smile that makes me feel like the floor is caving in under my feet. When he doesn’t answer, I wave wildly at my neck and demand an answer through extreme overuse of my eyebrows.
“Had to do it,” he says with one of those careless one-shoulder shrugs. “Want everyone to know.”
“Know what?” I’m suddenly unable to tell if I’m tired or wired. I can’t tell if I want to fight or to fuck. The only thing I know for sure is that I want. I want so big and so hard and so deep that I can’t think of anything else.
I want crisp hundred-dollar bills. I want to hold cash in my hand, smooth the bills out, and tuck them in my wallet. I want to carry them around with me for a few days just to know that they’re there. That I have money. That I can spend it if I want to. I’m not even sure what I want to spend it on. Textbooks for next year or new clothes, probably, but more than that, I just want to enjoy the feeling of having a wallet full of money.
I want this time to be completely different from last time and the time before. And the time before that. I want to have my shit together. No goosebumps and trembling knees this time. No whining and greedily swallowing him down. No clinging to the sink, clenching my teeth to fight the urge to beg him for more. And definitely no wayward boners. Absolutely none of those. I want him to feel like shit afterward. Like he’s the one who’s been used. I want to see his eyes when he realizes he hasn’t won. I want to see that smug smile wiped off his face when he realizes I’ve taken his money and haven’t let him affect me at all.
That’s what I want.
“That you’re mine.”
It takes me a second to make sense of his words.
And shit. Speaking of wayward boners. There’s one now. A big one.
I make a mad dash for the bathroom, locking the door when I see him moving toward me in my peripheral vision. I shuck off my clothes and leave them on the floor as I get into the shower before the water is hot.
Yeah, that’s what I need.