Filthy Vows Read online

  Copyright © 2019 by Alessandra Torre

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Editing: Marion Making Manuscripts

  Proofreading: JO’s Book Addiction

  Cover Design: Perfect Pear Creative Covers

  This one is for the Brads and the Elles.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Alessandra Torre

  Prologue

  “Are you sure about this?” My husband stood before me and put his finger under my chin, lifting it until my eyes met his. I wet my lips, the taste of champagne still on them, and nodded.

  “Open your knees.”

  Gripping the edge of the bed, I parted my legs, the silky fabric of my dress clinging to my inner thighs. His gaze dropped to the motion, and I could see his want battling with a reluctancy to take this next step.

  He sank to his knees before me. Running his hand down to my calf, he gave the muscle a possessive squeeze before undoing the satin strap of my right stiletto. Carefully, he removed the expensive shoe and set it aside, then moved to the left. In the dim bedroom light, I watched his features tighten in attentive concentration as his strong hands made quick work of the delicate heels.

  My bare feet settled on the wood floor as he ran his palms reverently up my bare legs, stopping at my open knees. His gaze flicked to mine. “Wider,” he said hoarsely, and pushed my knees further apart.

  I yielded, allowing him to stretch my legs open and lift my dress, draping it outside of my knees so that I was fully exposed. He smiled when he saw my lack of panties, and ran a tender hand across my damp folds. His fingers spread me, then pushed so deeply inside that the platinum glint of his wedding ring disappeared. I gasped at the intrusion and his eyes darkened at how wet and needy I was. “Tell me what you want.”

  I met his eyes. “Him.”

  He swore and his fingers withdrew, then pushed back in, pumping across my neediest point. “Where?”

  “Right here. On our bed.”

  My eyes dropped and I could see the instant and impressive response of his cock, stiffening at my words.

  “When?”

  I looked past him and at the man who sat against our dresser, his shoulders hunched, hands gripping the edge of the mahogany. His eyes met mine and he stood, his face tight with hunger and want.

  “Now.”

  1

  7 years earlier

  ELLE

  I used to be nonchalant about penises. Truth be told, I thought they were ugly. Misshapen. I had the same offhand relationship with them that I did with my period. A sort of oh. You again. I guess I can deal with you, assuming you aren’t too much of a pain. I’d dealt with seven penises before I heard about Easton North’s cock. The four-letter word had been so out of place at the long sorority house table that I’d choked on a crisp chunk of broccoli and had to chug a half-glass of iced tea just to wash it free.

  “Chelsea,” I chided, glancing around the dining hall for our sharp-nosed house mother. She had an uncanny ability to sniff out foul language, smuggled alcohol, and the smell of weed—all violations that carried strict punishments and monetary fines. Chelsea was already on her shit list, a situation the short blonde had dismissed with one toss of her French-manicured hand.

  “It’s true, Elle.” she insisted, oblivious to the way her sing-song voice carried. “I’m telling you, it was the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Pretty?” Laura examined the piece of salmon draped over her salad with the intensity of a surgeon. “That’s an interesting word to use.”

  I agreed, though to agree with Laura Pinn was paramount to social suicide. Agreement meant servitude, and once she sniffed out a potential flunky, she hunted and corralled them with the ruthlessness of a hyena.

  “It was just…” Chelsea sank against the back of the linen-wrapped chair and sighed, her features settling into the blissful look of a woman who has just gorged on too many desserts. I watched her with interest. “Perfection.” She finished. “Thick, beautiful, perfection.”

  I swallowed my own questions, certain that they would be covered by others. Sure enough, Ling perked up, lifting her attention off the thick calculus book before her and fixating on Chelsea. “I thought you were dating that soccer player.”

  “I was,” Chelsea mused. “But that was before Easton. Before I met IT.”

  IT seemed to be a reference to his cock. I shook a packet of Splenda into my tea and waited, curious to see where this conversation was going.

  She groaned. “You guys know me. It’s not like I have a thing for cocks. It’s just something about his.” She lifted her gaze to the ceiling and smiled as if picturing it above her.

  There was a long period of stunned silence where we digested the fact that Chelsea didn’t think she had a thing for dicks. The girl was our pledge class whore. She was the reason we scored the section 13 football block with Delt, the reason our house curfew had been changed to midnight, and the sole cause of a sorority-wide three-hour standards lecture on promiscuity. At one point poor Ling, who’d never been to second base, had blushed so deep that the speaker had stopped in alarm, certain she was choking.

  “You don’t have a thing for cocks?” I repeat, lowering my voice on the final word. “So…” I didn’t want to say it. I didn’t want to blurt out the question hammering inside every one of our sophomoric heads. So… why do you sleep with every guy who crosses your path?

  Chelsea straightened off the back of the chair and the overhead light glinted off a whitehead heavily coated in concealer. “I suppose you’ve been having sex with Jonah because you like his penis?” She said dryly.

  It was a valid point and I snapped my lips together, dropping my gaze off her whitehead and back to my salad. I was having sex with Jonah because I liked Jonah, and sex seemed to be that eventual outcome of any college relationship that survived three weeks. Jonah’s penis, out of the seven I’d seen, was the smallest—an observation I’d made to Chelsea in the back of a filthy cab, at 2:30 in the morning, drunk on tequila. An observation I’d hoped she had forgotten. She hadn’t.

  “Why is his penis so pretty?” Ling tilted her head, peering at Chelsea as she speared a cucumber from her bowl without looking. “Color? Texture? Girth? Shape?”

  Only Ling would ask about the texture of a penis, and Laura Pinn swooped on the opportunity, talons outstretched.

  “Ling,” she sniffed. “Why don’t you take your studying into the den and let the big girls talk?” She gave a delicate and generous smile, the sort that the wolf flashed right before he ate Little Red Riding Hood.

  I clamped a hand on Ling’s arm before she could move. “Fuck off, Laura.” I gave my own sweet smile. “Chelsea?” I raised my brows, urging her to answer the question before Laura Pinn blew a blood vessel.

  Chelsea’s gaze darted between the three of us like a freshman jaw on its first hit of cocaine. I could tell she was torn between the potential carnage of an impending fight and the juiciness of her story. She let me hang for one painful second, then sighed, that starstruck look returning to her eyes. “Okay, so you know how some heads are, like, mushrooms on the top of a shaft?”

  At Ling’s horrified look, she carried on, redirecting the next question to me.

  “And how others are smaller than the shaft, like a pencil eraser?”

  I nodded, though I had never examined my penises to this extent. Most of my interactions with them had been in the dark, my hand sweaty, contact minimal, the experiences short. Out of my seven, I could have potentially picked out three in a lineup, Jonah’s included. The head/shaft ratio of any of them… I had no idea.

  “His is perfect, not too big, not too small.”

  “Great,” Laura said dryly. “The Berenstain Bears of penises.”

  “Not Berenstain Bears,” Ling interjected. “Three Little Pigs.”

  “ANYWAY,” Chelsea continued. “It’s also rugged. Like, that seems like a weird word to describe a cock, but it’s so utterly masculine. He dropped his pants, and I swear to God, I wanted to just drop to my knees and worship it.”

  Laura, whose bitchiness levels rivaled her devotion to Jesus, paled at the false Gods picture that Chelsea was painting. I chewed on a forkful of salad and theorized that Chelsea had probably already been on her knees at that point.

  “And it’s big, obviously,” Chelsea carried on, unaware that conversations on both sides of our trio had stopped as the legend
of Easton grew. Pun intended. She dropped her fork with a clink against the bowl and held out her palms, spreading them a sizable distance apart until even Laura hissed with approval.

  “But honestly,” Chelsea continued airily, dropping her hands and plucking a crouton out of her salad. “It wasn’t that it was big, or beautiful, that really mattered. What mattered…” she paused for effect.

  The cliffhanger worked on all of us, including me. I eyed the clock at the end of the room, aware that I should have left three minutes ago. Stuffing another mouthful of salad into my mouth, I chewed faster and waited for Chelsea’s next words.

  “What mattered,” she repeated, leaning forward as if she was about to deliver the Holy Grail of gossip. “Was how he used it.”

  “Used his penis?” Ling asked stupidly, and for someone with the highest GPA in our pledge class, she was painfully dumb at times.

  “Yes, Ling. His penis.” Laura puffed out her cheeks and made a big show of picking up her Louis Vuitton satchel and sliding it over one shoulder. “Well, this was fun. Chelsea slept with someone else. Whoop Dee Do. I’ll spread the word.”

  I saw, in the brief moment when Chelsea’s eyebrows knitted together, the pain of the impact. The evidence cleared quickly and she laughed, meeting my eyes without responding to Laura.

  “Prude,” I muttered as soon as the Lilly Pulitzer-clad brunette was out of earshot.

  “Right?” Chelsea tucked the long part of her bangs behind her ear. “Anyways, it was amazing. Like, four orgasms amazing. I don’t know how I’ll find anyone to compare with it.”

  “Maybe you won’t have to,” Ling suggested. “Maybe you will get married and have babies and screw like bunnies until you’re old and wrinkly.” She giggled at us over the edge of her thick calculus textbook and I really loved her in that moment, despite her naiveté. Because the rest of us knew that Easton wouldn’t marry Chelsea. In the rules of college life, the male slut never marries the female slut. The male slut finds a good girl, someone untainted and naive, and moves her to the suburbs where he gives her 2.5 orgasms, three times a week, along with the shopping list.

  He would marry me, but Chelsea and Ling and bitchy Laura and I didn’t realize that yet. All we knew was that Easton North had a nice cock. And that simple fact was what, years later, got me into this mess.

  On my knees, between two men. My husband’s hand on the back of my head.

  2

  There was something in the air that night. A breathless anticipation. I felt it when I was getting ready, my hand hovering over the plain cotton panties before selecting the silk thong. I embraced it when I sidled up to the bar, my fake id pushed forward with brazen confidence, and ordered tequila shots instead of beers.

  It was three weeks before summer and we were restless, our thoughts warring between tan lines and exam dates, each weekend embraced with reckless abandon in anticipation of the slow summer ahead. Chelsea, four guys past Easton North, was going to chase a surfer up to Jersey for the summer. Laura had an internship at the Junior League of St Pete, and Ling would be studying abroad in Korea. I’d be the only one staying, my ice cream scooping gig paying the rent as I shuffled through two summer semesters that would knock out twelve easy credits.

  I liked the summers, liked the ability to find a parking spot without divine intervention, liked the easy familiarity that I found in my classmates, liked the house parties that weren’t packed to the vents with freshmen. But still, I felt the desperation like everyone else. The countdown before the year ended. The primal need for one last human connection before they were all gone.

  I could have counted down to the moment Chelsea vomited with freakish accuracy. All of the elements were there. Beer, then liquor. Never been sicker. Tequila followed by rum. Not so much fun. When she climbed onto the bar, her thick cork wedges crunching over a finger along the way, I braced for it. When she hung upside down from the glass rack, I winced. When she stumbled from the bar top and toward the bathroom, I steered her to the closest bush and still didn’t get her there in time.

  I watched the brown liquid splash precariously close to my new Steve Maddens and listened to the chant of a hundred drunk girls to Brown Eyed Girl’s chorus.

  “I’m fine,” she croaked, though no one was really asking.

  “Come on.” I tugged her upright and looked around for something to wipe off her chin with. “Stay right here. I’m going to get you a napkin.”

  She wobbled to the right and I carefully settled her into one of the bar’s wrought iron chairs. “Stay,” I instructed.

  I turned to head to the bar and ran into him. “Sorry,” I murmured, moving right.

  “Here.”

  It was just a word. Four letters. Innocent ones, but like Chelsea’s whispered curse in the middle of the sorority dining hall, they caught my attention in an instant. I looked up, and that was my mistake.

  Gorgeous trouble, that’s what he looked like. The innocent kind that wore polos and khakis to church on Sunday, then fucked you on their family’s yacht. The messy hair, Master’s baseball cap, strong jaw, and blue-eyed prom king kind. The sort that would toss someone like Jonah aside and fling a girl over his shoulder and spank her ass.

  Not that I was thinking about Jonah right then. After the last weekend, I wasn’t thinking about Jonah ever again. Ironically, that mental vow brought to mind the image of him, his tongue halfway down her throat, his hand squeezing her push-up bra boob. Thank God we’d decided to go out. Thank God I’d gone up to the upper deck. Thank God I’d seen them, before my heart had really fallen for him.

  “Here.” The guy’s hand moved and I focused in on the chunk of paper towels he held out.

  “Oh. Wow. Thanks.” A 4.0 average and I was sputtering out syllables like a toddler.

  “I’ll do it.” He pulled the napkins out of reach and crouched beside Chelsea, carefully wiping the thick cord of vomit off her chin. I winced at her non-reaction, her eyes on me, one hand swinging through the air toward me. “Let’s dance!” she cried out.

  Let’s not. I watched as he tapped at her knee, bringing her attention to him. “Chelsea? Let’s get you home. Come on. I’ll take you.”

  My surprise at his recognition of her was trumped by the alarming thought of her leaving with him. “No.” I worked my way in between them and hoisted her limp arm over my shoulder, struggling to pull her to her feet. “I’ve got her.”

  “Oh my GAWD,” Chelsea sang out, completely oblivious to the horrible breath she was blasting in our direction. “You guys are fighting over me! This is so cute.”

  The guy chuckled, a flash of white teeth showing, and discreetly tossed the dirty napkin in the closest black bagged trash can. “Adorable,” he agreed, taking her other arm and slinging it around his shoulder.

  He lifted her with ease, getting her through the exit gate and onto the sidewalk as I stumbled behind them, trying to keep up while he hefted a sizable amount of drunk Chelsea.

  “Wait,” I protested. “Stop.”

  He stopped, Chelsea kept going, and we both lunged to keep her upright.

  “I should probably just carry her,” he offered.

  “He is sooo strong,” Chelsea agreed.

  “I appreciate your help, but I’ve got it from here.” I fished in my back pocket for my phone. “I’ll call a cab. We’ll be fine.”

  He glanced down the dark street, then back toward the loud bar. A belch sounded from somewhere, followed by the thump of a cheap car radio. “I don’t feel right leaving you alone.”

  “Elle, E’s a gentleman!” Chelsea squawked.

  “My car’s right there. I’ll drive you to the sorority house.” He nodded toward a dark parking lot that looked like the perfect place to chop someone’s head off, assuming you wanted to use a late model BMW as the chopping block. “I’m sober,” he added.