The Thrill of It (No Regrets Book 2) Read online

  Or really, like himself.

  Like my Trey.

  I pull my lips over my teeth, like he said to do, and I take him in further. I can feel myself start to gag, but then I relax my throat. I don’t know that this is my new favorite thing in the world, I don’t know that I’ve found a hobby like knitting is for Joanne, but I know this—he likes it.

  And he likes it because it’s me. Because I’m doing it. Because I’m licking him, tasting him, and wrapping my lips around his hard length, and he likes it because he’s not paying me and I’m not seducing him and there’s no agenda. We are just a guy and a girl trying to figure out what it’s like to be with someone when it’s not a game, when it’s not an addiction, when it’s not a transaction.

  Soon, as in seconds later, he grabs hard on my hair and moans loudly. “Fuck, Harley. Use your hand too. Grip me with your hand,” he tells me in a hoarse voice, pulling me close, but not too far that I gag. Because, let’s face it, he’s occupying a lot of my mouth right now and I had no clue I could open that wide. I wrap my hand around the base as I move my mouth up and down. He’s salty and musky, and it’s a scent I could get used to because it’s him and I want him. I want him so badly I am aching between my legs again. I am slippery wet because the sounds he’s making are the complete opposite of me. He’s loud as he curses and narrates everything. “Just like that. Oh God, Harley I’m going to come. I’m going to fucking come now.”

  I could finish him off in my hand, but I’ve gone all in. I’m not giving my first blow job in a half-baked, half-assed way. I’m going all the way. He comes in my mouth, and I swallow the taste of him.

  He shudders and hisses, and then he whistles. Yes, he actually whistles as I release him and slink up next to him. His eyes are closed, but his lips are curved into this crazy sexy grin, and he’s humming.

  “That’s adorable that you whistle after a blow job.”

  “I’m whistling a happy tune,” he murmurs. Soon he opens his eyes, and he looks drunk and happy. “Congratulations on your first blow job, Harley.”

  I roll my eyes, swat his shoulder. He grabs me and pulls my naked body next to his.

  “How was it?” I ask.

  “You want to know?”

  “Yes.”

  “You really want to know?”

  “Yes, idiot. That’s why I asked.”

  “Now, I’m gonna tell you. But you can’t get mad at me. And you can’t analyze it. And you can’t hold it against me.”

  I tense. “That’s not good.”

  “No. It is good. It was good, Harley,” he says, holding my gaze, looking intensely serious. “It was the best ever. Because it was you.”

  I melt and wriggle against him. Then he slips his hand between my legs, raising an eyebrow when he feels how wet I am. “You liked doing that to me evidently?”

  “Yes,” I say, and I feel no shame. I did like it. I like him.

  “A lot, huh?”

  He slides his thumb across me, and in an instant, I am gasping for breath.

  “Yes,” I pant.

  “So much that it made you this wet?” He draws a delicious line through all that wetness. I’m sure I’m coating his fingers right now, and I’m also sure I don’t care.

  Nor does he. Because he brings his fingers to his mouth, licks them, then returns them to me. “You’re so fucking delicious,” he tells me as he strokes me more, and I grab his shoulder to hold on. We’re lying next to each other, facing each other, and he slides his fingers across me, and I moan.

  “Oh,” I say, and I start to close my eyes and just let go, let myself feel what he’s doing to me.

  “Open your eyes, Harley,” he tells me, and I do. “I want to watch you when you come. I want you to look at me as I touch you.”

  I nod, whimpering heavily as he rubs his thumb against me where I want him most. I open my legs more for him, hooking my thigh over his as he runs his finger across me. I’m so aroused again, throbbing with heat, and I can’t believe I am already this ratcheted up after what he did to me, but I am.

  “Rock into me,” he tells me in a hot whisper as I dig my nails into his shoulder. “Rock into my hand. I want you to get off again. I want to be the one who makes you come again and again. I want to hear my name on your lips.”

  “Trey,” I whisper.

  “Like that,” he says, and I move again, arching into his hand while his eyes search me, knowing all my past, all my secrets, all my shame. And even so, he still wants to know everything about me, every part of me—and this part too. I grip his shoulder harder, needing to hold on to him as pleasure ripples through me, lighting me up like fireworks sparking through my whole body. My belly tightens and my breathing grows erratic as he sends me into another orgasm.

  “Trey,” I say, then I manage two more words. Words I have never said out loud to a man. “I’m coming.”

  “Yes, you are. You’re coming for me, Harley. You’re coming for me.”

  “I’m coming for you,” I repeat as the pleasure floods me, and I close my eyes, rocking into his hand, the spasms and aftershocks rolling through me.

  12

  Harley

  That’s how it goes for the next few days. We are together. We make it to our final classes and work. He takes me to the trees he planted for his brothers in Abingdon Square Park. We hold hands the whole time, until I see the trees. I let go of him so I can wrap my arms around one of the trees and kiss the small trunk, following suit with the other two. Then we return to his place and we touch each other more. He gives me more orgasms than I ever knew I could have, and I learn how he likes everything.

  We don’t go all the way though. I know we will. Just not yet.

  I even hear back from Miranda. She emails me on Thursday morning.

  The final file you sent has been received. The material contained in it has been approved. I will take care of everything from here. The terms of our agreement have been fulfilled.

  It’s over then. My debt is paid. The slate is wiped clean.

  I should feel as light as a balloon. I should feel buoyant, ready to float to the sky on a cotton candy cloud. But I feel oddly unsettled when I see the next email. It’s from my mother.

  I have to tell you about the story I’ve been trailing. Meeting with a source now. About to bust this wide open. Love, The Cleaner

  I remind myself that she’s investigating a congressman. That she busts big-time liars and cheaters. She’s probably going to call me soon and want to celebrate her next potential award-winning piece.

  But she’s not the only writer in the family. I can write again, and I can write for me.

  While Trey’s showering, I take out the notebook Joanne gave me, opening it to the first page. It’s fresh and white, like falling snow. I imagine a dusky night sky, stars twinkling, and a bright, shining moon. It’s cold, but a pair of walking, talking dogs joke about not needing jackets. It tickles a memory of when I was younger, of making up stories like this for someone. But who? I try to grasp at the memory, but it’s too hazy and it fades away. Still, the image is enough for me to go on, and I start jotting down notes for a new story. Because I can finally write what I want to write. Something simple, something magical, something for kids.

  When Trey steps out of the shower, a towel wrapped around his waist, he tips his forehead to the notebook. “You writing?”

  “Just playing around with some ideas,” I say.

  He sits down next to me on the futon, and I’m thoroughly distracted by the fresh, clean, sexy smell of him. I lean into his neck and plant a quick kiss there. He pulls at the strap on my tank top, and I’m pretty sure we’re about to go for another round of something.

  But he taps my shoulder instead. “Hey. Weren’t you going to tell me about your red ribbon? You were supposed to tell me what it meant to you.”

  I cast my eyes down. “You won’t like it.”

  The muscles in his arms tense. “It better not be for Cam.”

  I shake my head, then
raise my eyes to his. “It’s for my mom. It’s to remind me of her. She used to put this red ribbon in my hair when she did my hair for her parties,” I say, and as I tell the story, I hear it for the first time as a dispassionate observer. I was her pretty pony. Her little doll of a daughter. Then I became the prize to help her catch men.

  He blows a long stream of air from his lips, shaking his head. I swear I can feel the fumes of his anger. But he’s not mad at me. He’s mad at her. And maybe, just maybe, I am too. I didn’t want to be dressed up and paraded around. I didn’t want to be her wingwoman. I wanted to be her daughter.

  He grips my shoulders, then narrows his eyes. “When you’re ready, say the word. I’ll redo that tattoo for you.”

  “You will?”

  “Hell yeah. Almost one-quarter of our business is redoing tats from years ago. Covering them up. Reworking them. I can do something else for you. When you’re ready.”

  “Okay. I’ll think of something else.”

  “But thank you for telling me, and you’re right. I don’t like it. And I don’t like your mom. And I don’t like what she did to you. But that’s just the way it goes.” He points to my notebook. “Will you show me sometime what you’re working on? Because I’d be a hell of a lot more interested in your stories about animal magic, and why you are so drawn to those stories, than in that shit Miranda was making you write because you were covering up for your mom.”

  I nod. “Definitely. And check this out,” I say, closing the notebook and showing him the cover. “Joanne gave it to me. Isn’t this a cool heart drawing?”

  He traces the misshapen heart with his index finger. “That’s an awesome illustration. I love how it’s all stretched and pulled and twisted, but it’s still whole.”

  “It is still whole. It’s the ugly beautiful.”

  Trey raises an eyebrow. “The ugly beautiful?”

  “It’s this saying, I guess. Joanne told me about it. I think it means that beautiful things can come from an ugly place. It’s the flower that grows in a landfill. Or the stained-glass window in an abandoned apartment building. Or maybe,” I say, then take a beat, my heart skittering, “it’s meeting you in the middle of all the awfulness. Because you’re the most amazing thing that’s ever happened to me.”

  He closes his eyes briefly, then winces, as if the sentiment is too scary.

  Fear grips me. I’ve said too much. I want to take it all back, and time stands still in the uncertainty that I’ve ruined this moment.

  Then it revs up, and my heart is racing as he curves a hand around my neck and leans his forehead against mine in the most tender gesture. All the hairs on my arms are standing on end, and I’m coated in warmth and anticipation and something else too. Hope. The most painful, wondrous, delirious kind of hope, unlike anything I’ve ever felt before.

  “I’m falling for you in a big way, Harley, and I have no clue what to do about it but let it happen.”

  “Let’s let it happen.”

  “It’s happening, and I don’t want to stop it,” he says as he cups my cheeks. He brushes his lips to mine, and my breath catches at the softness, the sweetness.

  But the kiss is cut short when my phone rings loudly.

  My mother’s ringtone. I ignore it and return to Trey’s lips. But she calls again. And again. And again.

  I finally pick up. “Hi. What’s going on?”

  “I’ve been looking into a story. I saw some pages of a manuscript and—call it a reporter’s hunch—I feel like I might know the writer. Are you Layla?”

  My blood freezes, and my brain goes numb. The walls around all my secrets are cracking.

  Even when I try to escape her, I can’t. She is at the beginning and the end and the middle of every twist and turn and dead-end in this maze.

  Because Miranda is my mom’s editor too. And Miranda’s husband is Phil, the man my mother’s hung up on, the man she compares every other man to, and my Twenty-Four.

  13

  Memoirs of a Teenage Sex Addict

  I don’t know a thing about Nathan. I never met him, never saw him, never heard him. But I heard her. And hearing your mom have sex with men is bad enough. But hearing your mom have phone sex is worse, especially when you are only thirteen. There’s nothing grosser I can think of in the whole world than hearing my mom masturbate every night for two weeks with Nathan on the phone.

  “Oh Nathan, oh Nathan, oh Nathan.”

  I wanted to die.

  14

  Harley

  My past will never stop chasing me. It’s like a demon, a dark phantom, hunting me through the streets of New York, always ready to trip me, topple me, wrestle me to the ground. I wonder how long I will spend trying to outpace my past, trying to stay one—or many—steps ahead of what I have done. It’s exhausting, this race I’m running, and I’m crawling now, my knees scraping against the rough asphalt. I’m nowhere near the finish line.

  I stare at the door to my house. The cage I was raised in. It’s a big cage, but it’s a cage still, and my mom and I have been like two tigers in a pen at the zoo. Or maybe she’s the tiger and I’m the meal. That’s how I feel as I answer my summons.

  Blackmail is the gift that keeps on giving. Because it means you have something to hide. And as long as that something is hidden, you will always owe.

  I owe. I owe so much. I owe her everything.

  The real debt was never to Miranda. The real debt was to my mother.

  I open the door to my house. My mom is in the kitchen, stirring a large saucepan. Something hardens inside me—she’s still cooking for her lover, even while she’s planning on reaming me.

  “I’m making risotto,” she says in a warm voice when she sees me. But it’s not the tone that worries me. It’s what she’s not saying. Her usual greeting—You look so pretty.

  I walk to the kitchen, my legs feeling as if they have ankle weights on them.

  She’s wearing black pressed pants, a royal-blue blouse, and black pumps with shiny piping around the chunky heel. Her hair is blow-dried like she just stepped out of a salon. Her makeup has been applied with the perfection of a Hollywood stylist, long mascaraed lashes, smooth powdered skin, and lips outlined precisely in plum lip liner.

  “I bet it’s delish,” I say, and I’m not sure how I’m forming words, but somehow they’re coming out of my mouth as I take step after dreaded step into her kitchen, the sun spilling in through the windows, the counters bright and white. But it’s as if I’m being marched into the darkened, shadowy back office of a mob boss who I’ve crossed. He’ll play with the mouse, bat it around, toy with his dinner.

  Before he bites.

  “Do you want some?” She waves me into the kitchen, the sleeves of her blue blouse billowing as she gestures.

  “No, thanks. I ate.”

  “Good. Then we can get down to business. Because my heart tells me I’m mistaken, but my reporter’s instincts tell me I’m not. And my reporter’s instincts have never failed me before.”

  So we’re done with the niceties. The food has been offered, the greetings dispensed, and now we can get down to business.

  I gulp, vaguely aware that I’m shaking. I try to collect myself, to draw on the same strength I felt with Joanne, the same courage I found when I told Kristen my truths, and the same well I tapped into this morning with Trey.

  She places the spoon in a silver holder, turns down the heat on the stove, and then clasps her hands together, steepling her fingers. This is Barb Coleman, The Cleaner. This is the woman who confronts seedy politicians. This is the lady who will tear a lying scumbag to pieces with her pen, which has the teeth of a shark.

  I am in her crosshairs for the first time.

  “I have sources everywhere, Harley Coleman.” Her voice is cold and cruel. “And that includes at my publishing house. An assistant editor told me about a certain anonymously penned Memoirs of a Teenage Sex Addict,” she says bitterly, as if the title is vinegar on her tongue. “She thought I would find it part
icularly interesting, given my credentials in investigating call girls and sex trafficking.”

  I say nothing, but I don’t need to speak, because Barb Coleman is on her high and mighty soapbox.

  “So the editor showed me some of the pages she’d received for production. Naturally, names have been changed, and she didn’t know who the author was. Who this poor young teenage girl was. She thought I might be interested in looking into who’d written it, and if there was any sort of foul play involved.”

  I dig my nails into my palms, relying on my old tricks when I felt tempted. Now I need them to stay grounded. To make it through this inquisition alive.

  “I didn’t know who the girl was, either, at first. I didn’t know who the girl could be who told tawdry tales of masturbating in lingerie to clients. Or who informed a poorly-endowed man that he had a big penis. And I wasn’t sure at all who this girl was who led one of her clients around on a leash,” she says in her perfectly enunciated speech, sounding like a lawyer cross-examining a reluctant witness she’s about to corner in a lie. “But then I saw other parts. Sections about how her mother had tied a red ribbon in her hair. Stories about running into her mother’s lover in the hallway at home. And then came the pièce de résistance—the story of the carnival.”

  I try to shrink into the wall, willing myself to become dust and vapor.

  My mother narrows her eyes, breathing through her nostrils. “Did you really think I wouldn’t know that was you?”

  My jaw drops. That is what she has to say? I stumble through an answer, saying the first thing that comes to mind. “It never occurred to me you’d see it.”

  “So it is you? You’re Layla.”

  I could lie. I could try to spin a new tall tale. But what’s the point? I’m at the end of the rope, and it’s time she sees that I’m not beautiful. That I am ugly too. “Yes. I am Layla. I was a teenage call girl.”