Thirty-Seven

EVERETT

Pine needles crunch beneath my feet and I’m genuinely terrified by the idea of Cora’s bare, naked body enduring any scratches, but at the same time, I am so alive.

I am so fucking alive right now.

She’s a blur of tan skin and black hair weaving through the gaps in the trees. Her body moves like a flame dancing on its wick, quick and unpredictable, dangerous and ephemeral all at once. She glances back to find me a few yards behind her, and her expression drips with excitement.

She loves this as much as I do.

I could catch her. I could have her pinned underneath me right now, squirming in the dirt. She’s little and I’m not. I’ve camped here for over a decade and know this part of the woods like the back of my hand. She’s been camping, like, twice, apparently. But watching Cora move sends my blood pumping.

The sun is setting through the trees, and night comes on quickly in this part of the state. The air is thinner. Colder. The chase feels more real.

When she rounds a bend, I pick up speed. I want to be close. I want her to hear me when I whisper, My fucking cunt to take when I want it. I reach out and graze Cora’s back with my fingertips, eliciting a gasp.

She runs faster, exceedingly determined as usual. I let her gain some distance, admiring the view of her body. She glances back again, and seeing the renewed distance between us, she lets out a triumphant laugh before flipping me off. Then she disappears behind a thick row of tulip poplars. When I round the trail past them, I don’t see her.

“Princess?” I call out, panting as I come to a standstill. “Aw, baby, did you hide?”

I almost miss the flash of movement in my periphery, but somehow, I have the wherewithal to dodge. Cora nearly hits her target—my goddamn back—but ends up dangling over my shoulder.

The little hellion tried to tackle me .

Getting my bearings, I grab for a handful of her hair, but she evades me and tries to run again. This time, I don’t let her get far.

The scream she releases when I lunge and grab her around the waist isn’t a scream of terror but frustration. I love it . I love when she’s worked up like this—when she detests me.

We tumble into the mossy dirt lining the trail with me on top of her, and Cora starts thrashing immediately.

“Fuck you,” she grits when I flip her onto her back.

Her breasts and stomach are filthy and pink, flushed with sweat and rose. With her wrists pinned under my hands, she’s not going anywhere. Satisfied, I dip down and lick her cheek and her temple, not being precious about it. I lick her like a wolf testing its prey—and she spits in my fucking face.

I freeze—and so does she.

Cora is wide eyed, watching as I release one of her wrists and slide my index finger over my cheek where I find her saliva.

She inhales and holds her breath—and for the first time, she’s wondering if she crossed a line.

When I take my saliva-slick finger and stick it in my mouth, watching her as I suck my finger like a popsicle melting in the dead of summer, she gets her answer.

Never .

Within a blink, I’m undoing my pants and she’s thrashing beneath me, pretending to struggle but clearly rubbing her naked pussy against my jeans.

“Open,” I order, kneeling over her face. I hold out my cock, dragging my piercing over her chin.

“Go fuck your own face,” she throws back in challenge.

“Can’t. Won’t. That’s why I have yours,” I reply before I slap my cock against her cheek. Again. And again. When she opens her mouth to gasp, I work my dick in between her lips. “That’s why I pay you.”

Cora sucks my cock the way only she can—with equal parts disdain and devotion. She takes all of me, lets my piercing hit the back of her throat, and she does it while she groans—while she runs her hands along my thighs, caressing me over denim.

“So pretty,” I mutter. “The prettiest thing I know. Letting me cock slap you and face fuck you in the dirt? You’re a sick, pretty thing.”

She swallows me down, spurring me, opening that throat I love. The feeling of her lips is hot salvation as usual, and my orgasm emerges so abruptly that it makes my stomach flip. She takes all of my release in her mouth, every last drop, never breaking the suction.

The moment I’m done, Cora shoves me off her with both hands and I go willingly. I’m bigger than her, but I’m so willing that it’s not even funny. Naked, she climbs over me, and her eyes bore into mine.

She shoves my undershirt up, exposing my body. Her hands are claws and they scrape the planes of my abdomen before she positions herself on top of my bare chest with her knees pinning my unbuttoned flannel shirt into the ground. With her pussy resting right on my abdomen, glistening and pierced and ready, she looms over me.

I’m transfixed as the sunset fades into twilight behind her. The faint illumination of the passing sun haloes her, peeking through the strands of her dark hair. She’s glowing—powerful and otherworldly like a deity to whom I’d willingly tithe every cent to my name. God, I am so in love, I realize. I’m so utterly and completely in love with this woman.

Cora—my Cora—raises her hand and taps the tip of one long black fingernail against my lower lip. I open my mouth immediately.

She leans further, pressing her naked body against my bare chest as she hovers her face over mine.

And she spits in my mouth.

I take it all—no uncertainty. My own cum. Her spit. She doesn’t even have to order me; I just do it. When I swallow, it’s with her small hand wrapped around my neck, her thumb caressing my Adam’s apple, and the words, “You’re such a slut for it, Everett Logan,” leaving her lips.

I’ve never done foreplay like this before. And yes, this is foreplay—because my next move is to push her onto my cock. I’m ready—I mean, I’ve been hard for the better part of a year—and I take her from below.

She lets me.

Cora throws her head back, and I grunt beneath her like an animal in heat. My fingers dig into her pristine skin, bruising and ferocious, and when I realize how roughly I’m handling her, I squeeze even harder. She moans .

“I want you to fuck me into pieces,” she tells me, stumbling over the words and gasping around the end of her sentence.

I do. I rail her until my body is aching and we’re both filthy with sweat and dirt, but I don’t stop—not until she gets what she needs. “Ride it,” I order. “You degraded yourself to get it, so use my cock.”

She raises and lowers herself, bouncing her perfect body on me and meeting every harried thrust of my pelvis.

“Amazing,” I praise her. “Imagine living with such a desperate, hungry cunt. Tell me what you want in that cunt.”

She palms her tits while she says, “Your pierced cock.”

“Such a greedy whore,” I grit. “You need to be full of cock?”

“Yes,” she manages, and the word is so wispy that I know she’s close. Her head tips back, her hair touches my thighs, and I want all of her.

“Up,” I order, slapping my hand against her bare ass cheek.

Eager, she turns around and takes it upon herself to work my jeans down to my boots. And when enough of my skin is showing to her satisfaction, Cora lowers herself back onto my cock.

“There it is,” I say, working against a groan while thrusting again. “You can take it. You always do.”

“Break me open. I want it.” When she looks at me over her shoulder, I’ve never witnessed an obscener sight in my life. She’s sucking on her fingertips, eyes hooded, wanton and lost to pleasure. She turns around again, and I feel it—her hand sliding between my legs and her fingers against my asshole. She plunges in.

Holy shit.

Cora fingers my asshole while she rides me, and the sensation is unreal. I’m not a religious man, but I’m certain the most powerful deity in the universe is the god of anal play—and Cora may be the messiah.

“Good boy,” she murmurs. “Look how well you take my fingers, baby boy.”

“More,” I grit. “Deeper.”

My body is at the tipping point, and when she presses the entire length of her slender fingers into me, my climax surges amid the vulgar sounds of us lost to our most carnal sides. The moans, the grunts, the screams—they surround me as I release inside of her, coming with reckless abandon while her fingers are buried in my asshole. It’s the most intense orgasm I’ve ever had, but I’m not ready to dwell on it.

I need to see her lose her mind like I did.

I wrap my other hand around her, finding her clit and her piercing. It only takes a few swipes before Cora cries out, coming while she’s filled to the brim with cock and fingers. Her pussy tightens around me, and the lean muscles in her back flicker and flex as she undulates, swirling her hips in ecstasy.

And then it’s quiet.

She’s moving gently, grinding her hips while she rides the fading embers of her climax, hands fixed on my knees. Eventually, she rolls off me, boneless.

I look over at the breathless, beautiful girl next to me. An eternity wouldn’t be long enough to catalog everything that makes her ethereal, but most important of all: She just gets me.

“You’re the best sex of my life, Cora Flores,” I say.

She snorts. “Same.”

“We’re probably going to want to do this for a while, aren’t we?”

“Awhile? I want to fuck you forever, Ev,” she murmurs.

The world stops.

Ev. Those two letters make me want to die with happiness, and my reaction is unprecedented. Getting into Princeton and later graduating from Harvard Law School. Getting my job at the EPA. Collecting enough signatures to get on the ballot for the primary. None of those major life events, the things I once intertwined with my very worth, have come remotely close to Cora saying two letters.

Ev, the name used exclusively by my two best friends—the only people I ever loved before I met her.

I’m not Everett. Not congressman. Not Governor Logan’s son. Ev.

I’ve never been more excited to tip her. It takes me a minute to work my jeans up my legs, and when I do, there’s a tinge of sensation in my asshole—a tinge I don’t hate.

My hands are unsteady when I take the velvet box out of my pocket, but I try to hide it. She notices anyway because she’s Cora. She doesn’t comment, but she does rest her cheek against my pectoral, curling around me.

I peel back the lid on the velvet box and for a moment, I worry she’s going to hate it.

On the contrary, her eyes light up. “You didn’t,” she murmurs, touching the left one with the tip of her finger.

Relieved, I nod. “Can I put them on you?”

Cora lays next to me on the ground with her hair fanned around her. Her breasts are exposed, and her nipples are perky and attentive like her body knows what I’m about to do.

My hands are steady as I unscrew the ball ends of the barbell piercings in her nipples and remove them one by one, sliding the metal out with the same care the most precise artisans apply to their crafts. Then I insert the new ones.

When I’m done, Cora’s breasts are topped in gold—my gold: diamond-inset barbells with a curved, semi-circular adornment on the bottom sporting a dangling gold charm engraved with the letter E.

She loves them, she tells me. She even lets me rest my head against her chest and fiddle with them as we lay in a sleeping bag by the fire hours later.

“I want you to win,” she whispers, speaking into the silence of the forest. She doesn’t look at me when she says it.

I focus on the expanse of sky over us—the uninterrupted sprawl of the constellations. “Me too,” I admit. “My father told me to make a statement saying I didn’t know about your lies and you’re not the company I keep.”

Cora is quiet. I hadn’t told her this part. “Is he right?” she finally asks. “Would that help?”

“Most likely.”

“Is he mad at you?”

“Furious,” I admit, recalling what happened in the privacy of his car after we left 24N—the plastic water bottle he hurled at me.

She’s quiet again before she says, “He’s a horrible man, Everett.”

“I know.”

“So why don’t you cut him out?”

Because I’m a coward. Because he made me—and he can destroy me. Because I’m not like Cora—I don’t know how to get away from him.

When I’m quiet for too long, she shifts, blocking my view of the stars. Her hand goes to my cheek. “You don’t need him. You could win the election without him—in spite of him.”

“He controls every resource I have. Every media connection. Every donor. Without him, I would have nothing.”

“Not true. Your money is yours. Your intelligence, your strategic mind, and the fact that you are the biggest asshole I’ve ever met but in a sexy way—they’re all yours . He can’t take them.” Cora traces my jaw. “And you have me.”

“I know I do,” I reply, smiling softly.

“You have me,” she repeats, dipping her chin, “and all our friends. You think I’d be anywhere without Valeria and Essie? No. Let us help you.”

All our friends . No shit.

I blink as the epiphany washes over me. I’ve clearly overlooked someone.

I rest my hand on hers. “You’re the most brilliant fucking person I’ve ever met,” I tell her. “Far and away. And I’m so damn glad I met you.”

A smile breaks across her face. “Do you know what you’re going to do?”

I nod. “I do. And it’s what we always knew it would come to.”