Broken Pretty Things by Amber Faye
Chapter 41
Logan’s party…
She always saidshe loves to dance with me, but we’ve never really danced together. I dance with other people, and she dances with other people, but when it’s just the two of us, we mess around and try to make each other laugh.
This time I can’t stop watching her, twirling around, moving her hips, and wishing it was me she was holding eye contact with while she did it.
The Palace is full, music is blasting, and she’s swaying with Cole, pressing against his chest and then spinning away. She is completely fucking mesmerizing, and I don’t even realize I’m leaning against the wall and staring at her until Aurelia flounces over, arms folded, and leans beside me.
“They’re so in love,” she says, sounding as disappointed by the news as I feel. I don’t know if I agree; I don’t know that they have the same kind of intense chemistry, the easy fireworks, that Andie and I have always had. But I guess I don’t ever see them when they’re alone.
“You ever want something like that?” she asks, leaning closer to my ear to speak over the music.
“What, a relationship?” I ask. “Nah, nothing but trouble.” Andie spins on her heel, face lit up with laughter, and her hair hitting her cheek. It takes the breath from my lungs.
Aurelia hooks her arm through mine and rests her cheek on my shoulder. A powerful rosewater scent hits me from her long, shiny hair. “But they’re so happy,” she sighs.
The hits keep coming tonight.
The song ends and they wander over, looking dreamy-eyed and breathless. Like they just fucked. My muscles tense, but I smile. “I’ve gotta go talk to somebody,” Cole says, checking his phone and setting his jaw. For a second, I remember that day in the lakehouse. The strong sense that my friend has a few things he isn’t telling me, but I forget all about it when Andie shoots me a sweet smile.
“You want to dance? It’s Phaeleh.” She says that like I didn’t create the playlist. It’s one of our favorite songs.
“I don’t know how to dance,” I lie. She squints and tilts her head. We hold each other’s gaze, and it’s like Aurelia isn’t here.
“It’s easy,” she says slowly. “The man leads the woman around, pulling her close. And she tries to get away.” Her lip quirks upward. “But she doesn’t really want to. She always ends up right back in his arms.” I don’t answer at first, my mouth dry.
“I’m good just watching.” Then, “Right after I get another drink.” I give her my best smile. When I turn around, it falls off my face.
“Wait for me,” Aurelia squeals, and I hear the clip clop of her high heels as she chases me across the warehouse.
* * *
I greet Ransom with a nod.He’s trapped in conversation with a couple of old, identical white-haired guys at the back of the gala. He raises his champagne glass at me, a tiny movement, and looks comically glum.
“Gotta socialize with the right people,” Gunnar says in my ear. He’s either talking about his brother or about us, and it’s unclear which it is because he steers us to an older couple in expensive clothes, who look delighted to see him.
“Gunnar,” the lady drawls. She has long white hair in a nice twenties updo. The man gives him a nod. “So good to see you. Is this beautiful young lady your date?” She looks at me with a pleasant expression on her face, and I notice when recognition flashes behind her eyes and her smile falters. She stays polite.
“Yes,” Gunnar says. “Andrea, this is Mr and Mrs Zatkowsky.” I give them both a quick nod. I was raised doing stuff like this, but my mom no longer has a successful career in the arts here. Someone else runs the Torrent Bay gallery, and there’s no longer a reason for me to be here, sucking up to rich people.
I notice his hand slide into his pocket, and then a jolt thrums through me from my core. I squeeze my thighs together to muffle any possibility of sound, but the pressure just makes the sensation more intense, and I pull in a frantic breath. Subtly, I try to elbow Gunnar to get him to stop, but he wraps his arm around my waist.
For a minute or two, though it feels like forever, I stand wide-eyed beside him while he talks them through his plans for summer — not much, maybe an internship — and then college — a Politics degree from a respectable establishment.
The pressure builds and builds inside me, and the Zatkowskys finally see somebody else and move along. I’m too scared to unclench my thighs, crossed tight, even when he shuts off the vibrations. “Asshole,” I whisper. He smirks, and then leads me along the floor to somebody else.
Whenever anybody seems as though they recognize my name, or my face, Gunnar flips on the switch and makes my legs shake and my teeth clamp hard on my lower lip. I try to continue any conversations with people who will engage me, keeping my voice calm, but my cheeks and ears are getting redder and redder.
Thankfully, he gives me respite between every social interaction to come back to myself and take a few breaths.
“Why do you keep telling everybody you’re going to major in Politics?” I whisper after one particularly long conversation, leaning plenty of my shaky weight on him as we walk.
“Because I am,” he whispers back. “Mrs. Mayor,” he says warmly, holding out his hand as a fancy-looking lady opens her mouth to speak.
“Excuse us,” I say politely, and the mayor’s wife’s eyelids flare, unused to being dismissed, and I coax Gunnar to the corner of the large room. A string quartet plays something gentle, ambient, and slow right beside us. “Why did you change your plans? You don’t want to go into politics.”
He snorts, reaching into his pocket, and I pull his wrist away from the remote control. “Don’t try to shut me up,” I say. “Why are you doing something you don’t want to do?”
“You don’t know what I want to do.”
I consider it for a second. “Yes I do.”
He leans in close. “Andie,” he says, the fresh scent of his aftershave coming in waves. My senses are heightened right now, every element of him enhanced, and I let myself sink against his chest. “I think we’ve established by now that we really knew nothing about each other.”
The music beside us fades, and then quickens into a waltz. Torrent Bay residents, giggling, start to populate the dancefloor. Men and women, arms around each other, carefully following every step. I look around, wishing I could spot Hero or some other ally. This is getting excruciating in at least three ways.
“I knew you,” I say softly, and when he looks down at me, I lightly shake my head. “We knew each other. We still do.”
Irritation pulls his handsome features, and he leads me onto the dancefloor. “I always wanted to dance with you,” he says instead of responding, hooking one arm around my waist and clasping my hand in his. Roughly, he pulls me around the floor in a waltz.
I don’t answer, allowing him to lead me across the floor. People politely watch us, watch Gunnar’s practiced steps and not the stormclouds rolling over his face.
He leads me a few steps, and then leans in and brushes his lips over my ear. “I’m going to make you come in front of all these people.”
My thighs clench and I suck in a breath when he turns the vibrations on high, and then rejoins our hands together. He’s gripping me tight, leading me without giving me an inch of leeway, and it’s completely unnoticeable to anybody else that I couldn’t stop dancing if I tried. How nightmarish, to be trapped in an endless waltz in front of everybody in town, my pulse racing, my insides thrumming with vibration.
I’m so hypersensitive that every step I take sends a jolt from my heels up to my pussy. The strong grasp of his hand on mine, his arm tight around my waist, and his cheek against my cheek. Only he can hear my ragged breaths, feel my legs weakening, see my eyelids fluttering.
“I hate you, god, please don’t do this,” I hiss in his ear. He pulls back so he can smile at me, letting go of my hand so he can run his fingers through my hair.
Just behind him, I see Aurelia, Logan, Larissa. All dressed up and looking pristine, while I’m pink-faced and wild-eyed. They’re staring at us in shock, Larissa whispering something to Aurelia, but she doesn’t react. She’s frozen to the spot exactly how I was every time I saw them together.
This isn’t a plan to hurt me.
But it is a plan.
Gunnar pulls me tight, his arm still around my waist, his body pressed against mine so close he must be able to feel the vibrations too. I can feel him, hard and pressed up against me, and I bury my face in hot shame in his neck, gripping his powerful back as he steps me in circles.
And then his fingers trail up my tight dress, comb through my hair, and he presses his lips against mine. His tongue laps against mine before I even realize my lips are parted, my hot breaths coming in thready waves. Heat throbs through me from my core, my entire body shaking and my legs squeezing together hard as the unwanted orgasm rips through me.
I’m groaning softly into his mouth, meeting his kiss with hot, hard strokes of my own tongue, one hand gripping his hair and the other squeezing the back of his neck, willing him to keep me upright. When I look up, I spy Hero, gaping at me, too. I don’t have the emotional bandwidth to feel shame, or feel anything, except quivering aftershocks inside me and the taste of him on my lips.
Aurelia’s eyes have filled with tears. She takes a couple of steps across the dancefloor and I just about manage to duck before her hand flies out and catches Gunnar’s cheek with an echoing clap. He rears back, face contorted, and I realize he’s laughing. Breathlessly laughing.
“Fuck you, Gunnar Rayne,” she spits.
“Fuck you, Aurelia,” he says right back, dancing me away as onlookers gasp, still laughing as I slowly come back online. “Lying cunt.”