The Envy of Idols (Rich Boys of Burberry Prep #3) - C.M. Stunich Page 0,103
I prop myself up on my elbows, and then … you know, turn over.
Zack chuckles, and the sound vibrates through me, taking over my entire body, right down to my blood and bones. He fits the condom on, and then touches his big hands to my hips. He positions himself against me, and I curl my fingers into the sheets. He isn’t quite as slow as Creed when he enters me, but I like it anyway, and a small sound escapes me.
Our bodies connect fully and I see starbursts.
“I’ve got you, Marnye,” he whispers as he begins to move, and before the night is over, I’ve shuddered, climaxed, and fallen apart in his arms more than once.
I fall asleep wrapped in the safety of his big, broad arms, his jacket still on my shoulders, his heart beating against my cheek.
There are no etiquette guides online for how to tell four of your boyfriends that you slept with number five. It just doesn’t exist.
“Were they pissed?” Miranda whispers, eyes wide as I sit on the couch in her and Creed’s apartment, wondering when he’s going to come back so I can see him before I head back to my own room.
“I just … I don’t understand how it works,” Lizzie says, grimacing slightly, her bouncy curls swept up into a high pony. She’s on the floor, twirling a spoon around in a container of ice cream. “I’m the jealous type I guess. I could never share.”
“Me neither,” I say with a guilty shrug of my shoulders. I curl my knees up on the couch and put my arms around them. “But I don’t have to. They’re not allowed to date anyone else, that’s how our arrangement works. I told them it was their punishment for all the things they’d done to me. For once in their spoiled, privileged little lives, they can’t have everything exactly when and how they want it.”
“I happen to think you’ve changed Creed for the better,” Miranda declares, and there’s a softness in her gaze that’s getting easier over time. The more time she spends with Jessie, the less she looks at me like that. Not that I mind. I just … unrequited love sucks.
I look over at Lizzie without meaning to and her amber eyes lock on mine.
Maybe Tristan’s love is requited? I have no idea. We don’t talk about Lizzie much.
“So,” Miranda begins and my head snaps up as I sense a bout of crassness ready to spill from her pretty lips, “did you and Tristan ever sleep together?”
“Mandy,” I grind out, but she waves me away. She’s just eaten one of the pot chocolates I got from Zayd during first year. I have yet to try any, but Miranda found them in my stuff and ate one about … forty-five minutes ago. Pretty sure the effects of the THC are kicking in now.
“It’s fine, we’re all girlfriends,” she says, and Andrew glances up from his phone screen. “What? You could be a girlfriend, too, if you’d stop sucking up to your dad and just tell him you want to bang Gary Jacobs.”
“Not ready for that, but ‘kay, thanks,” Andrew says, rolling his eyes and then giving Lizzie a look. “You don’t have to answer her question, you know.”
“I know,” Lizzie whispers, glancing back at me. “But it’s fine, I don’t mind. No, Tristan and I never had sex. We kissed, but … that’s pretty much it.” My heart soars, even though I feel like an asshole, and I do my best to clamp down on the emotion. Whether they did it together or not has nothing to do with my feelings toward Tristan.
I don’t know why I’m harping on this. I just went over it with Zack.
The past doesn’t matter except as a history lesson, a series of mistakes to be learned from. It’s the present that defines us, and the future we look toward with hope. Waxing poetic, again. I looked it up online, you know, spontaneous word vomit in the brain, and the number one symptom that kept coming up was love. Over and over and over again.
I chucked my phone against the wall in frustration and nearly broke it.
“So, they weren’t pissed?” Miranda asks, bringing us full circle back to the start of the conversation.
“Jealous, maybe,” I say, thinking of Zayd’s clenched jaw. “But not pissed at me. At each other, more like.”
“I wish I had a harem of girls fighting over me,” Lizzie says with a wistful sigh, just before