Gagged (11 page)

The vibrator he gave me is still in my drawer. I used it Wednesday night, too — and then yesterday twice: once in the morning and again at night, after one sexy dream and before another.
 

He’s looking at me like he knows. Like he’s been there, like he is in my dreams, standing over me and adjusting his cufflinks while I writhe with spread legs, his gift making me come. It’s been half a week since I’ve seen him, but his ghost seems to always be with me, under my skin. It’s like he infected me when we met, and now I can’t shake his hateful image no matter how much I try.
 

I always see his face when I come. It’s always his cock I imagine when I slip the vibrator inside me. I imagine its tip erupting everywhere: in my pussy, on my breasts, even in my mouth. I don’t think I’d ever do that last one in life, if I ever manage to pop my troublesome cherry, but it’s there when I close my eyes.
 

Now, trying not to look at Caspian in the flesh, I keep meeting his hard blue eyes.
 

And he smiles.
 

The motherfucker
smiles
like he knows exactly what I’ve been up to, what I’ve been (and, honestly, still am) thinking.
 

The thought is a downward spiral. I can’t
not
think those private thoughts now that I’ve told myself to never think them again, lest Caspian see something on my face that lets him figure it out. While I look into his eyes, trying to summon hate, I imagine him standing. Unfastening his belt and opening his pants. Sliding his big, thick dick between my lips while everyone at the reception watches, then coming down my throat.
 

I swallow. I feel dizzy.
 

The bell saves me, and the formal presentation on the stage breaks up. I’m almost fooled into believing that’s all there is, but then Jasmine is grabbing my hand yet again, hopping up and down about something I didn’t hear.
 

The big partition separating us from the room next door slides back, and there’s the band, already set up on a small stage apparently assembled by invisible elves. There’s a dance floor already cleared, and the lights behind the partition are closed. My head is still spinning when Hunter Altman returns to the mic and makes the reveal that Jasmine already blew: that one of the country’s hottest acts came up with Hunter in his helicopter, and they’ll be staying for the night.
 

He reminds us that the bar is open, and that all the drinks are free.
 

I see a few of the people onstage object, as if they didn’t precisely know what was coming. But they’ve been dismissed if they choose to go, and the implication is clear: This calm gathering is about to devolve into some serious fun, and stuffy types need not interfere. It’s stopped being a USF event and is now a Hunter Altman party, with our generous financial host, Caspian White, footing the bill.
 

I’ve never, ever heard of Caspian White doing anything like this. He doesn’t host millionaire events and doesn’t do charity. He doesn’t sponsor students or build libraries or stadiums. And yet here he is, hosting some stupid honors reception that’s about to become a well-behaved throw-down.
 

I watch Caspian watch me. I don’t like that whatever happened on Monday, in his office, has prompted him to throw this little event on Friday. It’s too obsessive. It’s so much worse than dropping a vibrator off on my doorstep.
 

But then I realize something very, very wrong.
 

Caspian didn’t meet me Monday and then decide to see me at a party on Friday.
 

It’s the other way around.
 

This reception — the one that feels like it might as well be in my honor — has been scheduled for months.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

A
URORA

I’
M
HALFWAY
TO
THE
DOOR
when a tall, broad man steps in front of me and says, “You’re Aurora, right? Jasmine’s friend?”

The guy seems familiar, but I can’t quite place him. I’m still trying to figure it out, and extract myself from this disturbing vertigo, when Jasmine comes up behind me and says,
“James!”
 

The hot guy from Caspian’s office. Of course. His personal assistant or whatever, who Jasmine keeps going on and on about. She even had an epiphany about James on Wednesday, when she wondered aloud if he picked out the vibrator for Caspian to give me, or if he was the one who delivered it. She acted like the package was for her, and that it was chocolates — or anything romantic rather than creepy — instead of a sex toy. Then she went into the garage to rescue the vibrator, figuring the thing was wasted on me but might contain flecks of James. I figured this was stretching and a bit much even for Jasmine, but fortunately I’d already taken out the trash, and Jasmine got to keep believing the offending toy went with it instead of finding a home in my bedroom.
 

Jasmine had two glasses of wine during the presentation, so she’s even friendlier than usual. As far as I heard, the two of them just talked while she waited for Caspian, but still she cuts right to the chase and hugs him like a long-lost friend.
 

“What are you doing here?” She’s pulled partly away but still has her arms around his neck. They’re staring into each other’s eyes, and I want to tell them to kiss already.
 

But they separate, Jasmine still staring at him like a puppy, and he says, “I’m Caspian’s assistant. I had to be here.” He glances at me, must decide I’m safe with the forthcoming secret, and in a lower voice adds, “But I wanted to come anyway. Thought you might be here.”
 

Jasmine giggles, looking away.
 

“Buy you a drink?” he asks.
 

“Drinks are free, courtesy of your boss.”
 

“Buy you
two
drinks, then?”
 

She giggles again. They head off toward the bar, actually holding hands. I’m left by the door, watching them. I should go, but I wasn’t counting on James. Jasmine isn’t drunk yet, but she’ll be there soon, and James the Assistant is an unknown quantity. I don’t trust anything that comes out of Caspian’s office, and Jasmine has already bought in to whatever he’s offering. The strange second phase to our honors ceremony — the after-party to the event that had no business resembling a party — is just getting underway, but I can already sense the tone. They’ve re-closed the partition. With the lights low in here and dance effects spraying the walls in multicolored arcs, we seem to have unwittingly ended up in a nightclub. The stodgy people are going home, and the youth are staying to mosh for the band. With the addition of alcohol, anything could happen if I’m not here to protect Jasmine from her own terrible judgment.
 

I’m about to chase her down and demand we leave — or at least that we listen chastely from the back of the hall with our hands in our laps and our grinding hips immobilized — when I hear a silver voice slide over my shoulder like liquid.
 

“Congratulations,” it says.
 

I turn, nodding to Caspian and fighting the feeling that my heartbeat might be visible.
 

“Thanks.”
 

“I had no idea you had such high honors. You’re quite the student.”
 

“Mmm-hmm.” My eyes are scanning for Jasmine, but the band is preparing to start and there’s a pit slowly forming in the floor’s middle, its individual members invisible in the gloom.
 

I see movement from Caspian. He must’ve reached out to grab someone’s arm because when I look back he’s reeling in a man wearing a sharp, slim cut dark blue blazer over an untucked blue-patterned dress shirt. He’s in jeans, the toes of pointed gray mini-boots peeking from beneath. He has a big silver watch and is slighter than Caspian but still looks like a movie star … or the rock mogul that he actually is.
 

“Aurora, I want to introduce you to Hunter Altman.”
 

Altman extends a hand. I take it reluctantly, knowing I’m losing seconds. I need to get the hell out of here, but I can’t do it without Jasmine, now that James is here.
 

“Nice to meet you.” Hunter’s features are dark, and his smile goes sideways. He has a great look, and I can see why the media likes him despite his well-publicized self-destructive streak. He’s older than both of us but not by much. Thirty at most, probably a few years younger.

“Likewise,” I say. But I’m barely paying attention.
 

“And congratulations. On your honors and all.” But he gives Caspian this little sarcastic smile when he says it, as if this is a private joke between them.
 

“I guess thank you for bringing Blonde Ambition. They’re my roommate’s favorite band.”
 

“You guess?” Caspian says.
 

Hunter waves it away. “You’re welcome.” He downs half his drink. I wonder how many he’s already had. The stories about Altman are wild. The stories about his
parties
are wild. The way the gossip magazines paint them, they’re all drugs and liquor and sex. But this is a reputable place, and we’ve just finished a respectable function for honors students, so that’s not what’s prickling my scalp right now — I’m not worried that Jasmine, duly lubricated, will soon be plunged into peer pressure with questionable consequences, am I?

“I had to ask him to come, Aurora,” Caspian says. “Hunter throws the
best
parties. When I found out that Blonde Ambition was Jasmine’s favorite band, I had to request them, too.”
 

“How did you know that?”
 

“James told me. He’s … quite taken with her.” Then Caspian gives this predatory smile, looking out into the silhouettes in the dance pit, not quite dancing yet. The smile says he knows exactly what’s going to happen in there, once the lights turn low. What might
already
be happening. It’s dark enough that once the music starts and bodies are moving, nobody would know which touching was appropriate and which wasn’t. Or perhaps more likely, no one would care.
 

“Aren’t you going to thank me?” He asks.
 

“Thank you,” I say. “And thank you too, Mr. Altman.” But I’m still searching. The band is gathering their instruments. Once they start playing, it’ll be too loud to talk. Once they all start moving, it’ll be so much harder to drag Jasmine away.
 

“Don’t thank me just yet,” Hunter says.
 

And then he’s gone, leaving me alone with Caspian.

The music starts. It’s almost deafening, bodies beginning to swirl.
 

Caspian leans forward. His breath on my neck is exactly as I imagined it last night, in bed with closed eyes.
 

“Would you like to dance?”
 

But when I look back up at him, I see that horrible, horrible thing still there in his eyes. He looks like a spider ready to catch a stupid, naive little fly.
 

I leave him. I move into the dancing throng but can’t find Jasmine or James. I end up at the bar, with Caspian right beside me.
 

“They’re consenting adults,” he says. “You can go if you want to go, and she’ll find her way home … happy and satisfied, I’m sure.”
 

But I won’t leave, because I have to keep looking for Jasmine. I have to save her. I have to be here when she returns from wherever she’s gone, doing whatever it is she’s doing with the man she’s so clearly attracted to.
 

That’s the only reason I’m staying. It’s not because a deviant part of me keeps sneaking glances at Caspian, wondering what he’ll try next.
 

“I’ll get you a drink,”
he shout-says into my ear.
 

“No, you absolutely won’t,”
I say back.
 

I’m smarter than that, with a level head on my shoulders. I’m a good girl who makes intelligent decisions. I’d never let a strange man give me an open drink because he might slip something into it. And I’d never run off with a strange man like Jasmine did, because he might slip something into
me
.
 

But I sure as hell won’t stand here with my hands shaking, nerves pulling my strings. So I order my liquid courage to get through this vigil with my wits intact.
 

And then I order another.
 

And another.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A
URORA

J
ASMINE
SHOWS
UP
SOME
TIME
later, drunk, with James. When I ask her where they went, she turns and laughs. It should bother me (I’m usually like a protective older sister, which Jasmine says makes me adept at blocking cocks), but it doesn’t. Because by then I’m also halfway drunk.
 

“Are you shitfaced?”
Jasmine shout-asks. I ask her to repeat it, and she does, shouting louder, but instead of answering I laugh because the question itself strikes me as hilarious.
 

“You are! You’re shitfaced!”
 

“I am not.” Then I hold my face straight for maybe five seconds, but it all falls apart and I practically spit in her face when I start laughing again.

“Can you believe this?” she says. “Best school party ever!”
 

And that, too, is hilarious, because this
is
a school party, and not in the way that people usually have college parties. This started as something officially sanctioned, with the big gay dean in his little bow tie giving speeches, with Gloria Denim from the counselor’s office who’s always reminded me of my elementary school lunch lady dressed in something from a thousand years ago — actually trimmed with lace — and there were parents clapping with well-bred applause. But now look what happened. I’m sure Jasmine and James ran off so he could finger her at least, and it doesn’t bother me as much as usual because what the hell, best official college party ever.