Page 13 of Privilege

Chapter Ten

Cara

It’s shocking to me that these people have this much money, given how much of it they spend on lavish parties and how little time they spend working.

Rich took me shopping, and I didn’t argue. If Dane hadn’t saved my ass, that first night would have been horribly embarrassing. Or more so, anyway.

What I’d pictured as a summer spent on the beach or by the pool has actually been a never-ending fashion show, only the runway is the entire Hamptons.

Even the boys wear sandals with straps made of pure bred goats, hand-fed by blind Himalayan monks.

Or at least I assume so, based on the price tags on some of this shit.

I can’t complain about the food at these things, and I have to admit that some of the dresses are ten out of fucking ten, but I have never been so bored in my entire life.

Including the semester of English where they made us read Chaucer.

I find myself longingly counting down the days until we head back to the other coast, the one where women actually eat the food and leggings aren’t a cardinal sin.

Rich is doing his usual social circuit routine. I’ve mapped it out almost to the minute at this point.

First, Evelyn severs his hand from my back and immediately steers him towards her viper pit to shake hands with the daughters of her friends, all of whom are usually dripping in diamonds.

Next, he is rescued by friends from school, other sons of the wealthy elite who he knows from summer socials, sports, or Dane’s dad’s business introductions. Lots of back clapping and jaw chuffing.

Here, there is usually a brief lull with which he can find his way back to me, ask me if I’m alright, and pop a xanax or an ativan to mask his dead eyes .

Then comes the food, during which time Rich is supposed to schmooze with more business associates and contacts, and I’m not supposed to eat.

I do anyway, to a regular chorus of your girl’s got an appetite, huh boy?

From the suits, at which point I excuse myself to go to the ladies room and smoke a joint.

Dessert is when Jamie or her cronies appear, often snagging Rich’s first dance of the evening.

I usually help myself to a generous smattering of dessert choices which coincides nicely with the munchies.

Occasionally, I’m hit on by bartenders or caterers.

Often, I’m invited to staff parties that sound one thousand times more fun than this.

We go home. Rich passes out. I study.

Repeat.

He’s wildly unhappy, and I understand why.

He’s got the lacrosse team, sure, but when I think back on it, Rich has never initiated a social activity in the entire time I’ve known him.

He’s always preferred going to the movies, ordering in pizza, or even making me breakfast in his very shiny kitchen over joining Lyle and Christian at frat parties, going out with the boys, or even going out to the campus pub .

Seeing him here, drowning in the neverending social show, I get why he prefers to lay low and keep quiet.

“Gimme some of that,” he says, appearing on the balcony of the resort and resting one hand on my back and taking my joint from me with the other.

“Can we go now?” I murmur.

The backs of his knuckles glide down my spine. Goosebumps raise on my exposed skin, the V of this dress scandalously low. I picked it because it reminds me of the yellow dress in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.

Rich takes a hit of my joint and motions for me to lean in close. I open my mouth for him and he exhales, the stream pouring from his lips and into my mouth. I inhale giddily, despite my pre-existing and very solid buzz.

His hand drops lower and firmly wraps around the curve of my ass. “You look amazing,” he says, voice low. His face is solemn, and he takes another hit.

“You look miserable,” I say, pushing my ass harder into his hand.

His lip twitches, and he drops the joint and stubs it out with his overpriced loafers.

“I have to stay a while longer,” he says, but his grip is tightening .

No. I don’t want to stay any longer, and I know Rich doesn’t either. This is our third—fourth? —event of the week. Enough. I step out of his grasp.

“Do you even like these people, Rich?”

He sighs and starts to remove his hand but I grab it and keep it crushed to me. I sway into him so our bodies are touching.

“We’re losing the summer,” I whisper.

He looks torn. In the morning, he’ll get all kinds of shit from Evelyn for disappearing this early in the game. We both know it. But I think he can tell from my face that if he doesn’t walk away from this with me right now, he is—for the first time—going to get shit from me.

He twists his hand out from under mine, but only to intertwine our fingers and nod at the fire exit for the balcony. “Let’s take a break then,” he says. Only a few weeks back to his old life and he’s already a politician.

I open my mouth to argue but he clamps his other hand down over my mouth and shakes his head.

“No arguments.”

I nod and he lets go, and we scurry towards the rickety metal ladder by the fire escape. He helps me down, no small feat in a dress this tight, and we take off along a pristine boardwalk into the darkness.

“I want to show you something,” he says.

He leads me over a weedy hill to what can’t be more than a glorified shed, tucked away from the wind beneath the entrance to the boardwalk. You’d never see it from above. It’s the kind of thing you have to be looking for to know it’s there.

“Dane and I used to come here all the time,” he says.

“To make out with girls, obviously,” I say. I touch the peeling paint, the rotting wooden posts that smell like salt.

“No,” he says.

“Liar.”

He smiles at me. “I’ve never brought a girl to this place, Cara. And I doubt he has either. Girls here…” He stares off at the resort in the distance. “This isn’t exactly five star,” he finally says.

“Why did you come here then?” I ask him.

“I don’t know,” he says, brow furrowing. “Dane loved it here, though.”

I smile. “You did too.”

“Huh? ”

“You loved it here,” I say. “I can tell. You wouldn’t have brought me here if you didn’t. So tell me why.”

I don’t expect him to answer. He’s never been great at answering questions, usually takes a while to circle back to them. In the beginning, when we first started dating, I’d poke and prod, but all it did was frustrate him. He’d usually find an unrelated excuse to leave shortly afterward.

Eventually, I figured out that all he needs is time. That he’ll always answer me, just not always right now.

To show him I understand, that I’d like to know the story someday but that I’m not putting him on the spot, I push him backwards into the post.

“Fuck me,” I tell him. “Right here. Right now.”

His eyes darken. “Cara, I don’t think—”

I mimic his motion from the balcony and reach up to clap a hand over his mouth. “I’m high. And horny. And we are all alone on this beach. So you can either fuck me, or sit back and watch me fuck myself.”

He’s all over me before I’ve even finished speaking, and hitches me up around his hips.

“Good choice,” I mutter, as he shoves me against the post .

He frantically undoes his belt buckle with one hand while I scramble to find leverage and hold myself up. The slit in the dress is high enough that we don’t have a problem, but I can’t find anything to hold on to.

“Hold on to me,” he says with a grin. “I am a varsity athlete, you know.”

I nip his lower lip while he adjusts our bodies and grips my ass to notch me properly to the right spot.

“Cara,” he moans, when he realizes I’m not wearing any panties. He shifts against me and groans.

“Yessssss,” I hiss, as his cock spears into me. No foreplay, no preamble, and lord knows I don’t need it. The sea breeze on my pussy, the rough wood at my back, and the sight of Rich’s blown pupils focused entirely on me is more than enough to have me ready for him.

He starts to thrust upward, his grunts louder than they should be in a public space but who am I to say so? It’s so fucking good, the way the base of his cock rocks against my g spot.

“Put your hands up,” he growls. I reach up and scramble to hold onto the round post while he steps a few inches backward and adjusts my hips like I weigh nothing.

He stretches me out between his body and the pillar, my back at a forty-five degree angle with the sand, and rolls me around his cock like I’m a damn hula hoop.

“Holy fuck Rich.” I’m breathless, and losing my strength. My thighs and calves start to shake from pleasure. “What are you doing? How are you doing that?”

“You’re so fucking perfect,” is all he mumbles, but it doesn’t matter—we’re both lost to the rhythm, his control over my hips a scream-worthy affair while he rubs me against his dick over, and over, and over until we tumble over the edge together.

My pussy milks him dry.

When I finally let my legs drop, he eases me off his dick and helps me stand.

My legs are a little wobbly, like a newborn deer.

I brush my palms over the silk dress and smooth it into place; my skin is sensitive from the weed and the fuck and the very expensive fabric.

I shiver at the feeling of his cum inside of me as we walk slowly back towards the resort.

He gives me a boost up onto the fire escape ladder so we can make a sneaky re-entry and pretend we never left, but just before I reach the last few rungs, he grabs my ankle .

“Wait,” he whispers.

He climbs a few more, his head in line with my shoulders, and dives beneath the slit in my dress.

“What are you doing?!”

But his fingers have already made their way to my pussy, where he pushes all of his cum that has dripped out of me on the walk back inside.

“Fuck.” I’m not sure if I say it out loud or not.

When he’s done, he nudges me forward and I step up onto the balcony distinctly more flustered than I’d planned.

“Rich!” some middle aged man calls, wandering over. “I’ve been looking for you!”

He stares straight at me when he reaches out and shakes the man’s hand. My cheeks flare, but his eyes sparkle with mischief for the first time in too long.

On the car ride home, Arnold at the helm, he stares absently out the window.

“I do love it there,” he finally says.

“Hmm?”

“The shack. I’ve always loved it there.” He turns to face me, and he looks tired.

“Why?” I ask, gently.

Something unreadable passes over his face. “Because it was ours. ”

“You and your brother’s?”

He kisses me gently, but doesn’t say anything else and turns back to the window. And if I weren’t half asleep, I’d swear that Arnold was staring me down in the rearview mirror, trying to tell me something.