Page 2 of Slick & Spooky
I hate that I am this obvious.
Joey sees through the mask. He refuses to let me coast on charm or name or theatrics. He knows when I’m full of shit, and he says it.
If Joey can see through me, then I’ve got no shot of fooling the one I actually want.
Knox Everett.
Human statue carved from marble and ambition.
Fraternity president and my biggest complication.
One mind-blowing night, and the ghost of it never really left. It’s like he’s stitched into the air around me.
He’s always close enough to feel, never close enough to touch.
Anyone from Florida will tell you the Fourth of July is basically a slow roast in patriotic colors, but that year it was hell with fireworks.
The air felt like soup, the backyard reeked of warm beer and over boiled hot dogs, and my tank top had literally fused to my skin. Despite all this my dad still dragged me along, because apparently, nothing says family bonding like sweating through your clothes in front of local politicians.
“Smile for the voters,” he said, as if sweating through my clothes was good press for his re-election kickoff.
He was running the same tired script.
Same barbecue, same photo ops, same only son dragged along to play the role of doting heir.
Mayor Roger Finley never wanted the real version of me. The messy, loud, complicated side that might make people whisper. Much like everyone else he wants the performance. The perfect, delicate ambassador of family values for the moments when the world was watching.
The world isalwayswatching.
Why else do you think I learned to bury the parts of me that didn’t serve the image?
That’s how I ended up in some random constituent’s backyard, turning on all the soft parts of myself for a crowd of retirees, bored housewives, and kids sticky with melted popsicles.
Heshould’ve been part of the blur. Just another body lost in the heat, in the stink of too many people standing too close, but Knox Everett doesn’t blend. He doesn’t even try. He didn’t smile or shout or do that thing people do when they want to be noticed. Somehow that made him impossible to ignore.
He came looking for a future in politics, the pre-law nephew of the host, desperate to impress. But my dad barely noticed him. Luckily, I did, and more importantly he noticed me.
While I was out there performing for everyone else, I accidentally tripped right into his orbit. I’d been so focused on keeping the world at arm’s length that I didn’t notice I was pulling him closer the whole time.
Everything warped at his edges. The party thinned, the voices dulled, but he stayed still. Watching until my skin burned hotter than the July heat. A sparkler dangling in one hand, Solo cup in the other, and his gaze raked over me like he had already decided that I was worth ruining his night for.
He never said it, but I know he felt a pull toward the part of me that didn’t fight or posture or pretend. The part that stayed soft.
It was obvious in the way he let me set the pace. The way he answered in clipped words, as if I might crack under anything heavier. With each kiss he offered, hidden from watching eyes, there was a restraint to it like softness was all I was allowed, even when what I wanted was ruin.
Thinking of it now makes my hole twitch, clamping down on the memory of his stretch. How his big uncut cock worked me open, how it left me aching and wanting more.
“I’ve been putting on this show for two and a half months and he still won’t crack,” I snap, hands on my hips.
“Like he could,” Joey fires back. “An active pledge getting railed by the president of the house? Escándalo.”
I flop down across my bed and let out a long breath. “None of this shit mattered over the summer.”
“You weren’t you then,” Joey says.
“Yeah I was.” I lean back on my hands. “Hell, I was more me. I was there with my fucking dad. He saw the good on paper version everyone gets.”
Joey raises a brow. “Exactly.”