2. False Home.

"Sit on your study chair, please," Aaron said casually.

I was already past refusing him. I was hypnotized. I walked toward him without meaning to.

Like a gentleman, he pulled out the chair for me since he was leaning against the table.

I sat down and breathed in his scent. A shiver of longing went through me. My toes curled. My heart skipped every other beat.

He stood over me, his size taking up most of the room.

"Breathe," he told me gently. "Slowly, Cassandra. You look pale."

I nodded. Before I could do anything else, he lifted me out of the chair and set me carefully on the table.

He leaned in close. He was so tall that he barely had to look up at me even when I sat above him.

"Is this okay?" he asked quietly.

"Why are you asking now?"

"Because I want to hear you say it."

"Yes," I whispered. It was barely a sound.

"Louder."

"Aaron!"

"Good." His smile was slow and satisfied. "That's all I wanted."

My dorm room was mine alone. Aaron had made sure of that, because he knew how people treated me when he wasn't around. We had all the privacy we needed. Or all he needed.

I wore a short, multicolored cotton skirt and a black tank top. I had wanted to spend the last day of school just being at school, but that plan had changed.

In his arms I grew calmer. I breathed in his scent again. He was so big that I could feel the heat of his body, and it made me dizzy.

I bit my lip as his hand slid up my side and found my breast. His thumb moved slowly, and my whole body melted under that touch alone.

He pushed me back until I was resting against the wall. The cold of the wall and the heat of my skin fought each other.

His other arm circled my thigh and drew my waist against him. He kissed my knee, then my thigh, and kept going, slowly, one kiss after another.

I was shivering with pleasure.

He slid my skirt away. I felt his lips press through the thin cotton between my legs and I hissed softly.

A dizziness took me. An unexpected moan escaped.

"You smell wonderful," he murmured, and I squirmed as his breath trailed along my inner thigh.

The way he took his time was driving me insane.

Before I could react, I heard the soft rip of fabric.

I yelped, not in pain, but in shock. That was one of my favorite pairs!

But I had no time to complain.

His mouth was on me, warm and hungry, and my head fell back against the wall. I gasped at the sensation filling my body and my soul.

His tongue teased and explored while his hands held my legs apart. My toes curled. My legs trembled.

I gritted my teeth to stay quiet. I was terrified anyone in that building would hear. Half the girls here were trolls who called themselves students.

A sweet, aching pressure built through my stomach, my spine, everywhere. I could no longer tell where it started.

I just wanted it to end. I couldn't take any more.

"Aaron!" I begged, and something inside me snapped.

I shook through it, wave after wave, nearly fainting from pleasure and pain. When I came back to myself, my legs were locked around his shoulders and my fingers were tangled in his hair.

The table was a mess. Aaron's face was flushed and damp. I let go of his hair and loosened my legs.

He looked up at me with a hungry but satisfied smile.

I pulled off my tank top and wiped his face with it.

Then I turned and hurried into the bathroom to freshen up.

I wanted to run, but my knees were shaking. I felt suddenly self-conscious. He had made everything worse with what he did.

With what I had let him do to me.

It was how bold it was. The risk of getting caught in the girls' dormitory had thrilled me so much that I felt guilty. I was already thinking about making more bets with him.

"You want more," he said matter-of-factly through the door.

"I don't."

"You do."

"Go away, Aaron."

"I'm not going anywhere."

I didn't answer again. I just slid to the bathroom floor and pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes. My skin was still burning. My pulse hadn't slowed down. I could still feel exactly where his hands had been.

What have I done? I screamed inside.

This could not happen again. I wasn't sure I could resist if he touched me like that a second time.

I wanted more than his mouth and his hands. I wanted him completely.

But if that happened, it would destroy everything. Aaron's reputation, my mother's happiness, the first comfort she'd found after years of suffering.

Us together would ruin everything.

It was never going to happen, and that hurt. I got up and washed his scent off me before my mother could notice.

That was how bad it was. I couldn't even carry his scent on my skin.

When I came out, Aaron had already packed the rest of my clothes and laid out the outfit he wanted me to wear.

"You packed everything," I said.

"You were taking forever."

"You folded my sweaters."

"Badly." He glanced at the neat pile and shrugged. "Wear the blue one. It looks good on you."

He said it so casually, as if he hadn't just turned my whole world upside down, that it made me want to cry and laugh at the same time.

I was suddenly sad. It felt like I was going back to prison.

Home.

A place that felt like a cage. A place where my opinions didn't matter. A place where I had to shrink to let people push me around.

A place where I was a burden.

A false home.