16. MATTHEWS

MATTHEWS

The party was much more than I had expected. With the cupcakes and banners, both Ella and Zoey made it seem like it was for a child, but when the bodies started rolling in, so did the chaos. It was a true frat experience. That’s what I was having. It was like a booze-soaked fever dream.

It wasn’t just the baseball team. There were people from all the facilities and teams. I even noticed Silas and Arlo tucked into a corner, laughing and watching over everything. Ella rested in his lap with her hand around the back of his neck, playing with his hair and chatting with the people around her. The lightness of their relationship made me jealous. Even when Julien was being a gentleman, it was always uncomfortable.

He was afraid of what people thought of us. Of what they thought of me.

An actor at heart, he was damn good at pretending, but it showed in the way he looked at other women. Leaked out in his comments about how much I eat and how little interest I had in the gym. But the mistake was in his ignorance. I loved my body. I hadn’t when I was younger. It was hard being around the athletic girls, seeing them move and fit into clothes that I couldn’t.

None of that mattered. Not after that night.

I loved my body, and Cael Cody showed me just how much he did, too.

My soft belly, my pillowed curves, and my beautiful thighs. There was so much of me to love, and it was Julien’s loss that he couldn’t see past the scale to understand that.

My eyes scanned the crowd below, my hands wrapped around the railing of the loft as I searched for him. The booze tingled in my fingertips, and the music thrummed through my limbs. The urges coursed through me, unable to resist just seeing him.

Eventually giving up, I wandered past a tight crowd playing darts and chanting Mitchell into the air as Zoey stood up against the dart board with a cupcake on top of her head.

“Do it, Baby!” Zoey laughed, balancing the cupcake and moving her hand away.

I stopped, turning my head just in time to see the dart slide clean through the cupcake.

They erupted into screaming and clapping as Van scooped her in his arms, and she smashed icing all over his face. Everyone at Harbor seemed so at peace with who they were, and it was weird to see such dynamics. I had come down expecting to find turmoil and heated secret fights in the locker room. But they weren’t that, and I shook my head, remembering what Silas said to me that first day. They were a family.

The sentiment should have brought me comfort, but the idea that I was right—that Cael had left Texas only to be welcomed into the arms of another family—made my stomach churn bitterly. I was glad he had found that, but he had done it without me.

Not a care in the world for his Clementine.

I pushed through the crowd in search of the bathroom, finding a line into the girls I turned and shrugged before pushing into the men's room. Cleaner than expected and empty . Dark blue subway tiles covered the bathroom from floor to ceiling, urinals lined the back wall, and there were a few stalls to my right across from the long counter of sinks.

The door closed with a click behind me and I steadied my hands on the side of the bathroom stall, closing my eyes. When I closed them he was there, staring up at me with those ocean eyes that screamed for undivided attention—the boy who had given himself to me that day, sitting waiting for me to welcome him back.

It was going to hurt.

But the fall would feel so good.

My mind wandered to him, the buzz of the alcohol taking control. It tangled with all the luscious, delicate memories from the night I offered up my girlhood. The memory of his body rolling into mine was forever burned into my memory. There hadn’t been a day gone by in the last seven years that Cael Cody hadn’t gotten me off.

I chewed on my lip, knowing I probably shouldn’t but I was so ridiculously pent up that I didn’t trust myself not to find comfort from someone at the party, or worse from Cael himself.

I unbuttoned my jeans and slid my hand into my pants between my underwear and skin, feeling the wetness engulf my hand. Cael Cody was running through the collection of underwear I brought. All having been dirted without his knowledge or his assistance.

The sheer thought of him had me sinking my finger deeper.

“Can I help?” his voice rolled through me, keeping my eyes screwed shut. I had been so consumed with my thoughts I hadn’t even noticed his arrival. Not the sound of the stall clicking open or shut, not the overwhelming smell of sweat and gummy bears. Nothing. He wasn’t there and then he just was.

His hands crawled down my ribcage and over my hips, fingertips begging to be let in. Warmth spread over me as he snaked down in the tight space between my hand and core.

Cael’s body tensed as I leaned back against him and wrapped my hand around his neck. His teeth finding my neck, he nibbled at the hot skin and sunk deeper. “Have you been walking around the party soaked all night?” He whispered.

His hand raked over my body, cupping my jaw in the palm of his hand.

“Answer me, Clementine.” The words were strangled as he bit down on my shoulder and sent shockwaves through me.

“All night,” I groaned as he dipped a finger into me, and I removed my hand to let him work. His lips roved over my hot skin, sneaking closer to my mouth. “No,” I turned away, “No kissing.”

A barrier to protect what shred of dignity and willpower I had left.

A boundary set to keep me from losing myself again.

Cael pulled his hand from the front of my jeans and flipped me around, pressing my back against the cool metal of the stall.

“Open your eyes,” he demanded. “Look at me and tell me no.”

I opened my eyes. He was so close that I could smell the difference between the sweat that rolled off of him and the laundry soap from his shirt. Little pieces of his dirty blond hair stuck to his neck, and the collar of his shirt was wet from all his dancing. Cael’s blue eyes followed me as I traced over those features, trying to find the boy I knew buried beneath this cocky, rude man that stood before me.

“No.” I cocked my head to the side. “Either follow my rules and finish the job or get out, Cael, and I’ll do it myself.”

“You’ll do it to the thoughts of my tongue in places that used to make you blush.” He tucked his mouth against my throat and sucked gently, whispering the words just loud enough to hear them over the muffled sounds of music and screaming.

“I don’t blush anymore.” I leaned against the stall, pushing my hips toward him. “Better hurry before we’re interrupted.”

“I want them to hear you,” he moaned and returned the friction with his own hips, rock hard beneath his jeans.

A rough growl left my lips in protest, the thought of someone walking in making my temperature rise. Two can play the game you’ve started, Cael. I’m not that nervous inexperienced girl you used to know.

“Scream for me?” He teased.

“Earn it.” I let my leg fall open and he smiled. “And do it before I get bored of this.”

“Patience, Plum.” The nickname made my toes curl in my shoes, and I swallowed down the urge to break my only rule. “I know she’s in there, you know,” he said quietly, pressing his hand back into my jeans. “That scared little girl, too afraid to take what she wanted. But I’ll admit, I do like the version of you that bites .”

“Liar,” I moaned.

Cael’s fingers curled into my core and brushed all the nerves deep inside. He pumped his hand faster, working the sensitive areas with a smirk on his face. He worked hard to keep to himself, ghosting over my lips but never touching them. He was enticing and intoxicating.

His hand raked over my throat as the main bathroom door swung open, and two guys stumbled in. Mischievous thoughts flickered across his blue eyes, and he rubbed the pad of his thumb over my bottom lip before slipping it into my mouth.

Cael worked me open, sliding in another finger and dragging a rough whimper from my throat that echoed into the open bathroom.

“Do you hear that man?” One of the guys mumbled.

“Give them a show, Plum,” Cael demanded, and I couldn’t deny the violent lust that dripped from his words.

Crying out in pleasure, begging him to move faster, he listened.

“You can do better than that,” I mumbled and sucked his thumb into my mouth.

“Holy shit, man,” one of the men whispered, and feet shuffled around in the bathroom.

Cael reacted to the challenge instantly. Thrusting faster, his grip on me became feral. His thumb worked at my clit and pulled a stream of moans and begging from me. My cheeks burned as my body pushed up against the bathroom stall and onto my tip toes.

“Cael,” I panted as he sank even deeper. The rings on his fingers rubbed against me, sending a thousand tiny sparks into my stomach where a fire had already raged. “Cael, don’t stop,” I begged louder.

“Atta boy, Cody!” A hand banged against the door.

Cael laughed before kissing a line down my neck. His tongue lapped at the sweat that beaded in the hollow of my throat. He circled my swollen clit with his thumb and bit down on the swell of my breast.

“Come for me, Clementine,” he mumbled, his thumb still pressed flat against my tongue as he kissed the sore spot where his teeth had marked.

My walls fluttered around his fingers, and the coil that wound deep in the pit of my stomach snapped at his words. I gripped his hips, digging my nails into whatever skin I could find to keep myself steady as he worked every last drop of pleasure from my exhausted body.

Cael pulled his hand from my mouth, snaking it around my back to support my wobbling knees, and slipped his hand from my soaked underwear. I watched as he popped the drenched fingers into his mouth and sucked.

“Some things never change,” he said when he removed them. “Still sweet as a plum.”

As the orgasm rolled through me, tickling at my fingertips and toes, the reality of what had just happened sunk in.

I was in so much trouble.