Ambition, page 6
I roll my eyes and ignore the flush of heat barreling through me, and the smallest bit of elation at the thought of him sending Karia and Cosmo home. “Where is your dad now? I’m going to go talk to him. I’ll need to take your car.”
Von scoffs like that’s out of the question, despite the fact I’ve driven it before. He slips his hands into his pockets and looks away from me. “He had another meeting before Solemn. You’re not going anywhere. You need to rest, actually.” He looks at me again. “Really. Come watch something with me.” And before I can consider the sincerity of his offer, he turns away.
ISADORA
I freeze when I see Karia in the living room.
Dark as night, except for the reflection of the large, flat screen television, playing a horror movie by the looks of it. An altar floor, blood spattered in ominous drops over the polished wood. It’s quiet now, the movie, but my pulse is pounding in my ears as I stand there frozen in my own house, wearing white, loose shorts and the same color tank, hair down, the scent of my coconut oil body spray in my nose as I lift my glare to Von.
To his credit—very minimal credit—he is not sitting right beside her. She’s stretched out on the sectional, covered with one of my white fuzzy blankets, and Von is about two seats over, his gaze on mine in the dimness of the room.
Karia’s head is turned toward the back of the couch and I can see her eyes are closed and she must be sleeping but what the fuck.
On her other side, Cosmo’s green eyes lift from his phone to me, and his expression is odd. A half-smile, but something lazy and sensual about it. I wonder if he went out to smoke something besides tobacco. He’s into things like that.
“You just gonna stand there?” Von asks softly, as if he doesn’t want to wake Karia, and when I glance at the television and see a nun and priest having a low, hushed conversation, I realize he has turned the sound almost all the way down too.
All in the name of keeping Karia comfortable.
Well fuck this. This is my house.
I pad over in bare feet, the marble cold on my soles, and I intend to sit beside Cosmo but before I can get there, Von’s arms come around my waist and he yanks me back down into the small space between the arm of the sectional and himself.
I snap my head over to glare at him and see Cosmo smiling down at his phone, shaking his head slightly. It’s only then I realize Karia’s head is in his lap and his free hand is on her hair, his long fingers grazing her blonde strands.
I’ve seen Cosmo flirt with her over the years, but he flirts with anything that has a pulse, and Von’s hand was on her thigh earlier but maybe that was all for show.
I frown, turning to look at Von.
He raises his brows, daring me to ask what the fuck is up.
But I don’t give in. Instead, I reach over and grab another fuzzy blanket from the little black basket I keep of them beside the couch. I unfurl it over my legs and bring my knees to my chest, hiding my hands in the blanket, too.
I can feel Von’s eyes on me, but I don’t turn to him. I only stare ahead as the nun from earlier paces in some small corridor presumably of a church, on the TV. “I called Mads,” I tell Von truthfully. After I toweled off in my room. I know Cosmo is listening, but he won’t know precisely what I’m discussing. And if he does, fuck Von for bringing others here.
There’s a heartbeat of silence but Von shifts slightly in his seat, his thigh brushing my ankle from where my feet are on the couch, then he asks, “And?”
I glance over to Karia, the outline of her body curled into a tight ball under my comfortable ass blanket.
Once more, I look to Cosmo.
His chin is tilted down, eyes latched onto mine. “If this is some kind of cult shit, I can pretend I don’t hear anything or sign an NDA in blood or something.” He grins then, like he’d love to do just that, and I think of those tattoos on his back.
Von says, “Or I can just shoot you in the head if Isa gives you too much.”
When I look at him, my pulse flutters, and he’s staring back at me, eerily calm despite his threat that I’m not so sure is hollow.
His opposite arm is thrown over the back of the couch, like he was reaching toward Karia but her feet are still a ways from his hips and I hate the fact it makes me feel better.
He’s looking down at me with a blank expression, his gray eyes focused, lips lightly pressed together. He has these pouty, pink-red lips that are beautiful and full and make his face look so handsome and…
“He didn’t answer.” I lie, because for some reason, the way Von is looking at me right now, intent and devouring, I feel like if I tell him the truth—that I’m driving over to Mads’s house before Solemn begins just prior to sunset—he’ll try to sabotage it. And I want to know what he talked to Von about, since this is my work, and he won’t give me anything over a phone line.
“I told you what he said,” Von says calmly, still staring at me in the dimness of our house.
I drop my gaze to his collarbone, the freckles along his pale skin. The hard muscle of his chest, his triceps. The tightness of his abs.
I suck the inside of my cheek and I don’t think about the fact that last night when Theo Sancte asked if he could grab my hair and I let him and he jerked my head back and pulled my throat taut, I only thought of Von behind my closed eyes while Theo fucked me against the wall.
“Why did you really invite them over?” I ask under my breath, so quietly Cosmo won’t hear, to deflect from all those wicked thoughts of my best friend. The boy I watched wipe out on his bike when we were kids, then stand to his feet with two thumbs up and a stupid grin, blood leaking down his knees.
The boy who would always pop by my house unannounced when I had a boyfriend over and he would barge into my room without knocking and cut his eyes to the boy of the month and order him to leave and no one argued with Von.
No one but me.
“Don’t be rude, Isa,” Von chides softly. “Besides, I can’t kick her out after we wore her down.”
I cut my eyes to Von’s with his words, thinking of his and Cosmo’s hands all over her while I was in the shower.
But a smile tugs at the corner of his mouth and he says, “I’m joking. We didn’t…” His expression shifts to something serious, and he sighs, turning to watch the movie and his side profile is so gorgeous with light stubble and a strong jawline and those damn lips that I feel a surge of happiness with his stupid words. “We didn’t do anything,” he continues quietly.
“Why not?” I ask him.
His throat rolls and his jaw jumps and he still doesn’t look at me. “Last night…you drove me crazy.” He says it on a whisper.
But in my peripheral, I see Cosmo is glancing at us from under his long, dark lashes.
My pulse lurches inside my chest. “I wasn’t even here.”
“That’s the problem.”
“You knew what was happening.”
“It made it worse.” He still doesn’t look at me and his brows are drawn, and his lips are poking out a little.
I take a breath in, steadying myself as I grip the fuzz of my blanket tighter. “Listen. Ever since…that night…” I don’t have to tell him which one.
He blinks a few times but doesn’t turn toward me.
“Dad, your parents, Writhe… They’ve treated me like glass. Like I’m fragile, but like I can’t cut. Which I can.”
He nods once, shallowly, but the confirmation makes me feel good.
“And this is my in.” I keep my voice down but I know this much Cosmo can’t do anything with regardless. “They won’t give me the violent work, and I think it’s because maybe after that night they thought I was some sort of psychopath or something or—”
“No,” Von says softly, facing away. “They don’t think that. They just don’t want you to have to…experience any of it again. You were taken because you were bait to our parents and Writhe and—”
“That is exactly why we can’t be together. They take me, you come running, even if it’s not about you.” And none of this is even true, but I guess he doesn’t know. No one ever told him I wasn’t the bait to anyone but him.
He turns to look at me dead on then. “And I still will, together or not.”
My stomach flutters but I ignore it. “Maybe, but this makes it less obvious. No neon signs flashing, pointing at us.”
He rolls his eyes. “For me, there’s always a sign above you.”
“And what does it say right now?” I challenge him. “‘Here’s your best friend, the giant whore.’”
I hear Cosmo snort in the background but we both ignore him.
Von narrows his eyes. “You’re not giant.”
“Oh, but I’m a—”
He sits up then and the sudden movement stalls my words. Especially as he leans over and picks me up—blanket and all—and puts me in his fucking lap.
I immediately tense, ready to fight my way free, when his hands come to my hips, beneath the blanket, and his lips come to my ear.
“You’re not a whore, I understand you were only working,” he says softly, breath on my skin. “And I saw you earlier, in your room. You’re sore, and you’re tense.” His fingertips press softly against my hips. “Let me relax you, okay?”
“Von, what the fuck are you doing?” I ask it without looking at him, keeping my voice sharp. He does not relax me. If anything, he does the opposite. But getting worked over with a massage or some shit after my first night sleeping with someone for secrets was not on my bingo card for Von and I am highly confused.
He’s being reasonable, and he’s not that, not when it comes to me. The tension in our house on a daily basis isn’t extreme because I don’t flaunt my hookups and he doesn’t often bring girls over and the work I do for Writhe is usually—intentionally—mundane.
But I knew this would come to a head when I started really proving my worth.
Yet this…this doesn’t feel like what I expect from him.
He keeps kneading my hips and my eyes are glued on the TV, but I’m not watching a damn thing on it. Instead, I feel Cosmo watching us and it’s like the tension in the room grows so heavy.
“Really,” Von says softly, curving over me, his lips brushing my shoulder, exposed from my tank top. “I’m sorry for earlier. I just…” He pauses and I wonder if this is the moment we’ll fight again. But then he asks, “Are you okay?” And he says it lightly, so I know he means physically. “Can I just…help you?”
“Fine,” I answer, but decide to give him some truth and some guidance, if we’re really doing this. “My neck hurts a bit.”
For a moment, his hold tightens, and I wonder if he’s going to push me off but…he doesn’t. Slowly, he glides his hands up my waist, over my shirt, the fabric brushing my skin.
I arch my back a little, giving into the feel of his strong hands gliding up and over my shoulder blades, then his thumbs dig into my spine as he starts to massage me without holding back.
I gasp, sitting forward on his lap, my thighs spread on his, my hands curled tight in the blanket.
“This feel good?” he asks quietly.
“Yeah,” I manage to say, watching the nun on TV streak through a dark forest, glancing over her shoulder with wide, horrified eyes.
“You have so many knots here, Isadora.” Von’s low rumble and his touch has me closing my eyes, little hairs lifting on the back of my neck, like spiders waltzing softly on my skin.
“Yeah,” I mutter again, loving the feel of him working out the kinks. A low groan leaves my throat, and he doesn’t stop at all. Instead, he trails his hands lower down my back, slips under my shirt, then works deep into the muscle, his fingertips skimming my skin.
My cheeks heat and I glance at Karia but she hasn’t moved and when I lift my gaze to Cosmo, I see he’s not on his phone anymore.
And one of his hands is under the blanket over Karia’s body, his own leaned toward her, like he’s...
“Cosmo,” I whisper.
Von stills, his hands gripping me tight but no longer moving. I feel him turn his head toward our friends too, and for a moment, we both stare as Cosmo’s hand moves under the blanket and Karia shifts a little, making a tiny noise, her eyes fluttering but ultimately falling closed again.
“Do you like him watching?” Von whispers, and I tense in his lap, staring at Cosmo.
“Are you…” I trail off, glancing at Karia again as she whimpers.
This time, she flips to her back, and her eyes are open, locked onto mine.
A sleepy smile curves her lips as she shifts back, further into Cosmo’s lap. “It’s okay,” she says quietly, her voice thick with sleep. “I like when he fingers me awake.”
My pulse leaps to my throat and I swallow thickly as Von starts to move his hands again. I got this all wrong. Maybe Cosmo and Karia are a thing now. Maybe Von passed her off or she left him behind.
“Relax, Isadora,” Cosmo says quietly, his voice a little strained as he does something that makes Karia arch her spine off the couch. “Let Von touch you.”
Fuck.
I slowly drag my eyes to the television, and I melt into his touch again.
It’s not like I’m doing anything wrong anyway. And after last night, the fear, the anxiety, and the physical… I think I deserve this undoing.
Von’s hands trail lower, and he sets to work massaging my low back. I arch forward more, my hands dropping to his knees so I don’t shift off his lap.
It feels so damn good, like ecstasy for my muscles, and when he’s not running his mouth and instead is making me feel better, I fall into a different type of love with him all over again. And maybe I like that Karia wasn’t here for him. And maybe I do enjoy they’re watching. All four of us in our fucked-up little lives with our fucked-up friendships.
Von works me deep as the movie plays and I occasionally glance at the screen, watching a black-robed man following the nun deeper into the woods.
And when the man catches up to her and tackles her to the ground, Von’s fingers are on my hips, moving toward my thighs, fingertips on my bare skin as he squeezes my muscles there, under the blanket, hidden from our friends.
I stiffen a little in his lap, but he is not deterred.
He makes small circles with his hands, his thumbs brushing closer to my inner thighs, and I resist the urge to clamp my legs together.
Because warmth is building in my low belly and I feel safe with Von, and I am relaxed, and the reason I agreed to slut myself out for secrets is because I like sex. Couple that with the fact the last time Von and I had sex was over a year ago—when he got drunk after a kill for Writhe and I sank down onto his lap in his bed and started riding him—I feel like letting his fingers get even closer.
They brush against my center, quick and then gone as he keeps up the pretense of massaging my thighs. A soft moan leaves my lips the next time he does it, and I feel his chest press to my back as he leans in close.
“You’re going to have to be quiet. I don’t want them to hear you.” His voice is the softest whisper against my ear. “Now, tell me what you want, Isa.”
I turn to crack open my eyes and see Karia lying there, blonde wisps across her cheekbones, her lips parted as Cosmo works her over under the blanket, and this time, his gaze is dropped to her.
“Don’t look at them,” Von says. He glides his hands up to the waistband of my shorts, dipping his fingertips in but going no further. I’m not even wearing underwear because I didn’t think I would stay out here; I was going to grab another snack and go back and— “Don’t even think about them. They don’t exist. Tell me what you want.”
My knees tremble as my muscles tense and I think of last night and the thoughts of Von flashing behind closed eyelids. I’ve never pitied myself for this life I was born into. Never really thought of having it any other way, except in far-off, scattered blips of time. I like having goals, tasks, assignments. Knowing I’ve got family you shouldn’t fuck with.
And Von, who is as close as blood but…better.
I don’t answer him with words.
I circle as much of his wrist as I can and I guide him down, further into my shorts.
“Let go,” he says against the shell of my ear and I release him. “Widen your thighs.”
And I…do.
I let my knees slide off his legs and I lean back into him, comfortable but tense, too. Nervous and ready. Safe but full of a gnawing sort of lust.
His middle finger glides over my swollen clit and my eyes flash, unintentionally coming to the television screen.
The nun.
The priest.
He’s older, she’s maybe my age, on her knees in the dirt in the forest and he’s sitting back on his calves, her habit shoved up as he examines her, nodding his head once to indicate she should spread herself open for him with one hand.
The movie doesn’t show that part, her, but the imagery, the scene…fuck. It feels as forbidden as this, when Von curls his finger into me and I tilt my pelvis up, helping him hit deeper. A whimper leaves my lips and his other hand snakes around my body, coming to cover my mouth.
My eyes flutter closed as if beyond my control as I reach around and grip his hips, holding myself steady with the strength of his body.
“You want more?” he asks against my ear, hand still clamped firmly over my mouth.
I nod my head, a whimper coming from my lips against his skin.
He pushes another finger in and I grind against him, helping him finger fuck me. He’s so far inside, he uses the base of his hand to grind over my clit, circling me.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I moan the whisper of his name, melting into him as I fuck him back. He tightens his fingertips along my cheekbone, his voice hoarse in my ear. “Shh,” he says. “You don’t want them to hear you coming all over my fingers, Isa.”
I don’t think about them. I don’t care.
I flick my tongue out, licking Von’s palm, and I hear him groan against me as I shift back, grinding my ass on his erection, thick and hard beneath me. Everything about this moment is divine. He’s so far up inside of me, his palm circling me, sloppy noises from my cunt driving me closer to the edge as I tilt my head back, resting it against him, and he bites my jaw, teeth deep.
