12. The Chocolate Made Me Do It

12

THE CHOCOLATE MADE ME DO IT

brISTOL

T hank you, Stephanie.

The second I rush Lila’s lips, it’s like I can taste the life-altering elixir of her mouth—the one I’m in desperate, greedy need of. The hunger’s no longer surface level; it’s something so inherently deep that I’m sure it’s been folded into my DNA from the very beginning. It hacks away at bone, uncovering the beating heart of a libido craving to consume something wholly, pinched between sharpened canines and blood-stained enamel. Unshakable, unfettered, unconditional.

I’m expecting resistance at first—maybe because my surprise siege caught her off guard, or because she’s really committing to this fake relationship bit—but her mouth exerts unrelenting pressure over mine, drawing me further in with a swipe of her tongue.

If I’m not careful, I’ll be rocking a woody before this photoshoot is over. Since she’s still holding the fragrance in her hand, I take it upon myself to run my fingers through her hair, pulling her head closer to me. She exhales the faintest of gasps, and I’m privileged enough to hear a genuine, keening moan rise from the depths of her throat. My cock kicks against the crotch of my swim trunks, prodding the bikini line that’s one critical slip away from showing me that perfect, pretty, pink pussy of hers. Her cleavage is smushed against my chest, accentuating the hills of her breasts barely contained by her nonexistent bikini top, and the buds of her nipples harden with a frisson of excitement. I lose myself in her, as simple as that. The heady jasmine scent that clings to her skin shackles me, corrupting common sense, filling my head with a noxious gas that no amount of fanning can air out.

I can’t hear the rest of the world anymore—everything’s distorted, as if I’m trapped in a fishbowl. I’m also rendered powerless by the heat of the sun and the blinding snippets of camera flash. Lila rakes my bottom lip between her teeth, pulls ever so slightly, and stalks the pop of movement with catlike eyes.

Fuck. I want her to draw blood, to claim me as hers. I can feel her squirm around on top of me, exacerbating the hardness pitching a very noticeable tent in navy nylon. She undulates her pelvis over mine, the hood of her clit catching on my boner, and something guttural localizes in the tight cavity of my chest. Since my mind’s obviously on a leave of absence, my hand inches instinctively down toward her backside, and I thank the Lord that Stephanie cuts through our sloppy, sex-drunk, spit-swapping sesh before we submit the rest of the crew to some very traumatizing images.

“Perfect! I got the pictures!” she announces.

Like a sleeper agent hearing their activation phrase, Lila instantly comes to and backpedals away from me. “Great!” she says breathlessly, setting the perfume on the boat’s deck.

The crew disperses for the night, heading to their designated rooms, and Lila’s about to metaphorically jump ship too when my fingers clamp down on her arms, keeping her in place.

“Let go of me, you disgusting heathen,” she snarls .

There’s the Lila I remember. Not some docile house cat purring in my lap—a mean, lean, man-eating machine.

I ignore her little nickname for me. “You know, that kiss didn’t feel very fake.”

“Yeah, because my acting skills were making up for you tongue-fucking me!”

“Hey, tongue-fucking is a two-person job!”

Since there are still some stragglers packing up equipment, we’re not entirely alone, and anyone could see the obvious situation burgeoning in my company-loaned trunks.

“I’m oily, sweaty, and irritable. I don’t have time to engage in ‘playful banter’ with you today. In fact, let’s skip the friendly foreplay in the future and just lock lips when there’s a lens pointed at us, alright?” Lila scooches the tiniest bit off me, but I don’t let her get very far.

“You can’t leave yet!” I whisper-hiss.

“Just because you were weaned from your mother’s teat too early doesn’t mean you can get cozy with mine.”

Ironically, her efforts to get off me are only making my hard-on worse, and it feels like an amateur acupuncturist has gone stab-happy on my dick, thin, fine-point needles pricking every sensitive inch of me.

I don’t have the patience nor the energy to argue with her right now. “Stop moving. You’re making it worse,” I groan, feeling the head of my cock spit pre-cum against the inside of my swimwear.

Not my best look, I’m aware.

Lila glances down with slitted eyes, unimpressed. “Didn’t wardrobe tell you to empty your pockets before the shoot? What the hell do you have in there, a rock?”

I gun her down with a steely glare, finding a new ego-inflating reason to keep her settled on top of me. “Something’s hard, but it’s not a rock. ”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“It’s a natural bodily response,” I defend.

She rolls her aquamarine eyes. “You seriously have that little of self-restraint?”

“When it comes to you, yes.”

Fuck. Why do I find her disagreeableness so hot? Why does my dick find the way she rolls her eyes so hot? Obsessed is an understatement. I need to fuck her so hard that her cunt remembers exactly how many inches I have.

“You want to talk about uncontrollable bodily responses? Let’s talk about those party poppers poking through your bikini top.”

Lila gasps, looks down at her overspilling tits, and uses her hand to cover the evidence of her arousal. “Oh, please. A chilly gust of wind could get my nipples hard. You’re nothing special.”

I scoff. “I can prove you wrong in less than an hour, angel.”

The last of the milling bodies disappear below deck, and once we’re finally alone, Lila lifts her pelvis off my hips, under-hands my dick with a slap, and grins devilishly at me. “Never. Going. To. Happen.”

“One bed? Seriously?”

This can’t be happening. How does a million-dollar yacht have a stateroom with only one bed?

“Ugh, this is unbelievable,” Lila grouses, finishing wiping herself off with a towel before flopping on the quilted bedspread.

I’m still trying to recover from the… incident …that happened twenty minutes ago, which means that I immediately avert my eyes when her tits recoil against her bikini top.

“It’s not that bad,” I say, inspecting the spacious, spotless room in front of us. Realistically, the space is big enough to fit two queen-sized beds with adequate legroom, but the architect apparently went for something far more intimate.

One king-sized bed sits in the middle, draped in snow-white sheets that are neatly tucked into the mahogany bedframe. A few decorative throw pillows boast a dark, sapphire blue, accenting the adjacent curtains that sandwich the stunning bay window overlooking the moonlit lake. Two lounge chairs are situated directly across from the bed, bracketing a small tabletop constructed from shards of sea glass. And a tray of lit candles flicker on the table, adorned by a basket of handcrafted toiletries and a stack of individually wrapped chocolate. Nightstands border either side of the bed, glossed in a pristine varnish that embellishes the natural beauty of the woodgrain, and vases filled with bushels of blue, flowering perennials welcome life into the otherwise vacant room. Lastly, the high ceiling is reflective and polished to perfection, pitted with tiny fluorescent lights.

I feel dirty just standing in here, and the lingering, earthy smell from the lake is quelled beneath the overwhelming—yet delightful—aroma of fresh lemongrass. After I’m done gawking at the extravagance, a shuffling noise sideswipes my attention, revealing a breathless Lila shucking the bedspread off the mattress and making herself a makeshift nest on the hard, cold floor.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I ask, glaring at the mess of fluffy cushioning she’s hoarding like some kind of crow.

“I’m not sleeping in the same bed as you, so I’m sleeping on the floor,” she explains matter-of-factly, pulling down one of the throw pillows.

Oh my God. This girl drives me fucking crazy. She’s determined to tweak her back just to spite me, and I’ll only accept a good back breakage if I’m the one doing it .

“You’re not sleeping on the floor, Lils,” I grumble, trying to smooth out the carnage she’s left on the now-unmade bed.

“I’m sure as shit not sleeping with yo?—”

Forced nonchalance blusters across my face, complete with a smile that feels too wide and unconvincing. “ I’ll sleep on the floor.”

I’d rather have us sleep next to each other like adults. Fuck, that’s a lie. I’d rather hold her for the rest of the night, bury my nose in her soft hair, and feel her belly balloon against my palms when she breathes. But I’d have a better chance of finding a saltwater fish in a freshwater lake than her ever calling a truce for the night.

Lila perks up, her hair mussed around her head and intrigue knitting her brows together. “ You are going to sleep on the floor?” she echoes disbelievingly.

I lean my shoulder against the wall, crossing my arms over my chest. “Yeah. You take the bed; I take the floor.”

Lila, tortuously on her hands and knees, snorts out a laugh. “You’re six two, Bristol. You won’t get any sleep on the floor.”

She remembers my height.

I shrug, the chilly night breeze useless in cooling the anxious flattery bringing pigment to my cheeks. “It’s fine. A little back pain never hurt anybody.”

I’d sacrifice anything in this world to make Lila comfortable. And to know that she’s getting a good night’s sleep is worth all the muscle cramps and neck cricks. Would I rather sleep in the bed with her? Of course, but we’re not there yet, and that’s okay.

We will be...eventually.

I’ll hold her in my arms again, and I’ll never have to mourn the absence of her. We’re not a flawless fit by any means—we don’t fit perfectly into each other’s arms like missing puzzle pieces. There’s a lot of shifting that has to take place for our bodies to align, but that’s reality. We contort ourselves to fit with one another, and that takes effort, intention. We make things work when the odds are stacked against us.

Lila fluffs up her pillow. “It’s fine. I don’t mind?—”

“Lila,” I growl in a warning tone, seconds away from picking her up and throwing her on the goddamn bed. No girl (of mine) is going to sleep on a hardwood floor when there’s a perfectly good king-size a few inches away.

“Jeez, alright. At least sleep in one of the chairs or something.”

I feel a smug little smirk tease the corners of my lips, but I know better than to flaunt it in front of Lila. She clambers up from her cloud pile, readjusts her swimsuit, and minces over to the mountain of chocolates.

“So…we’re not going to talk about the elephant in the room?” I ask, watching as she unwraps her post-photoshoot snack, the scent of rich cocoa pervading the room.

She bites off a chunk and chews loudly. “If you’re talking about your heat-seeking moisture missile getting ready for takeoff back there, then sure.”

That’s—I don’t even have the bandwidth to unpack that.

“That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“Hmm? Then I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she mumbles through a mouthful of chocolate, even going as far as licking the excess off her fingers—which is way too sexy to be legal.

My mind’s reverted to full caveman, and I know she’s saying something to me, but all I hear is warbled nonsense similar to the sound of the adults talking in the Charlie Brown cartoons. I watch as her tongue flicks out over the pad of her middle finger, and she slowly drags the digit down to her bottom lip, smearing her leftover lip gloss. She stares at me through her lashes while she does it—perfecting those dark-lined, dangerously seductive eyes—and probably doesn’t realize how ready my dick is for round two.

It’s hot in here. Oh, God. It’s really hot in here. I’d roll my sleeves up if I had any sleeves. I’m sweating in places that I shouldn’t sweat. Focus, dude! There are more important things at hand right now.

“I’ve never seen you panic like that before a shoot,” I elaborate, recalling the countless other times I visited her during local photoshoots—how she put on a confident face and never once indicated there was an internal freakout going on. Lila was always transparent with me about how she felt, and nervous was never an emotion I associated with her and modeling.

Suddenly needing something to calm my own nerves, I snatch one of the chocolates from off the table, ripping it open with a lot less grace than Lila did. I stuff it into my mouth, relaxing when the bittersweet richness hits my taste buds.

She swallows the last of her chocolate. “I wasn’t panicking. I just…got a little anxious. Preshoot jitters. You’d have them too if the world didn’t lick the goddamn ground you walk on.”

I can’t believe I’m even comparing the two, but Summit never withheld anything from me. If she was upset, I’d know it within a second. With Lila, it’s like I’m pulling teeth.

“You think you know everything about me, but you don’t.”

You don’t know about Summit. You don’t know about the crippling self-hatred I have for myself. You don’t know about the cowardice that threatens to destroy my life every day. You don’t know about the suffocating guilt that makes it impossible to breathe—unless you’re around.

“Like what, Bristol? You’re a straitlaced hockey player who’s as deep as a kiddy pool. Everything was always surface level with you. I poured my heart out to you about my father, about what it felt like to be left behind, and not only did you never once confide in me, but you did the same thing. You knew what he did, how it crushed my world, and then you still left.”

This is your time, man. Tell her about Summit. Tell her why you bailed. Reassure her that it wasn’t her. It was never her.

She flings her arm out exasperatedly. “See! You’re still shutting me out!” she yells, no doubt alerting the rest of the passengers to the loud argument currently taking place.

“I’m not!”

She laughs icily. “Yeah, sure.”

She stomps toward me, thrusts her finger into my chest, and nearly knocks me onto my ass. “I thought you’d respect me enough by now to tell me the truth.”

I grab her wrist, look down at her from my six-inch high ground, and hope that the hurricane of hurt forming inside of me isn’t strong enough to break through my neutral exterior. “I do respect you, Lila. I always have. And you want to know what I was thinking?”

She gulps at the conviction in my voice.

“That only a coward would walk away from you. Your dad was a coward, and I was an even bigger one. You deserve a man who sticks by your side no matter what, and I want to be that guy.”

Tears freckle her lower lashes, resplendent beneath the cabin lights. “I wanted you to be that guy too. But you showed me you couldn’t be.”

“Then let me prove to you I can.”

Lila hiccups, her long, flowing locks whipping across her now-flushed face. There’s a storm approaching the shore of her blue eyes, one that calls for endless rain. “I hate that I still miss being around you.”

Guilt overrides my bruised ego, and my mouth wilts into a frown. “I’m still the same person,” I state rockily, cotton clotting my throat .

“I know. That’s the problem.”

I relinquish her arm, and I sit on the bed with a sigh that feels like it’s been trapped in my chest for years. Silence encompasses the room, punctuated by the gentle rocking of waves beneath us. Lila’s footsteps are light as they shuffle over to me, and she occupies the seat next to me.

Neither of us say anything for a long time. Neither of us know what to say to make things better. We’re both…we’re both fighting the same battle that we fought a year ago. And with no clear victor, we’re going to continue fighting until the other’s covered in enough bloody wounds to plead mercy.

We’re going to be fake dating for months. I can’t keep sidestepping the truth. She’ll find out eventually, won’t she?

But how will that fare for you, Bristol? Do you really think she’ll forgive you for keeping this big of a secret from her? Do you really think you can just use your past as an excuse for breaking her heart? You’re trying to push her away, and you might actually be successful this time. She hates you now, but she’ll resent you later.

“Do you feel weird?” Lila asks out of nowhere, fidgeting with her hands, and doing some weird swivel motion with her hips.

She catches me off guard. “Uh, no? Why?”

She groans, folds one leg over the other, then unfolds it and folds the other leg over. And this is all while she’s making strange whining noises— sexy whining noises—and squirming her lower half against the welter of sheets. The gusset of her bikini bottom begins to ruck while the strings on her waist dip to a low-rise, revealing far more of her body than I think she realizes.

“Are you okay?” I question worriedly.

Lila’s pupils are twice their usual size, and a prominent rush of blood filters into her cheeks as she shakes her head sheepishly. She jostles the bed while I try to locate the source of the problem, and I don’t miss how stiff her nipples are despite the room temperature being in the high sixties.

“I feel…weird,” she confesses.

“Weird how? Weird I-think-I’m-about-to-have-a-heart-attack ? Or weird I-shouldn’t-have-eaten-that-lukewarm-shrimp ?”

She hesitates with a twist of her lips, deciding to plead the fifth as she hikes up her bikini strings and fixes what was almost a wardrobe malfunction.

The longer she holds out on me, the faster concern drills into my heart, and all my fix-it senses are flooding to the scene. “I don’t have time to play Twenty Questions with you, Lila.”

“I’m wet” is all she says, keeping her eyes downcast.

Come again? She’s not covered in any water. Plus, I’ve been with her this entire time. I would’ve known if she went for a late-night swim.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

I have a feeling Lila will lug this secret to her grave, but we don’t have that kind of time, and I don’t have that kind of patience. I’m about to interrogate her again when she leans back on her palms, showing me the damp spot that’s permeated the thin material of her bikini bottom.

She…she can’t possibly mean what I think she means. This room’s seen less action than a chess club on prom night.

I’ve gone braindead while I stare at her, unsure how to help the situation, unsure what she wants me to do about the situation.

“I think there’s something wrong with me,” she whimpers, though her voice is a sultry siren song leading me out to sea, promising to drown me once the undertow lassos my feet.

My libido is off the charts right now, sputtering weakly into the stratosphere before spontaneously combusting into millions of fragmented pieces. I have no idea how fucked I’ll be in the next few minutes, but with the angry way my cock is twitching in my trunks, it’s not looking good.

My throat clicks with a gulp—one that sounds louder than a ship horn. “There’s nothing wrong with you?—”

She nods her head before butterflying her legs open, revealing the cinched gusset of her bottom splitting her cunt in half, and her glistening, puffy lips engulf my line of sight, wetter than the motherfucking lake we’re floating on right now.

Fuck me.