[Caspian’s POV]
* Columbia University, Spring 2018 *
The party is already chaos when I arrive—cheap champagne flowing, caps thrown, four years of academic pressure finally detonating into relief. Everyone's drunk on freedom and the particular brand of nostalgia that hits before you've even left.
I should be celebrating. Should be networking with the recruiters still lingering, cementing connections that will matter in my father's world. Instead, I'm searching faces in the crowd for one I've been searching for since freshman year.
Serena Vale. My greatest rival. My obsession.
Four years of watching her tear through arguments with the precision of a surgeon. Four years of engineering reasons to be near her—joining every debate team, every academic board she applied to, positioning myself as her opponent because being her enemy was the only role she'd let me play.
Four years of wanting her so badly it's carved a space inside my chest that nothing else fits into.
I find her on the balcony. Alone. Champagne glass dangling from her fingers like she's forgotten it's there. She's staring at the campus below with an expression I've never seen on her face before—lost, exhausted, stripped of the armor she wears in every debate hall.
Something in me breaks.
She doesn't look at me when I lean against the railing beside her. Just keeps staring at the quad where we've spent countless hours destroying each other with words.
"Come to gloat?" Her voice is rough. "Valedictorian. Final debate champion. You won everything."
"Did I?" The question comes out before I can stop it.
She finally looks at me. Really looks, and I see the champagne has made her eyes slightly unfocused, her guard lowered in a way I've never witnessed.
"I'm scared." She says it before I can continue, the words spilling out like confession. "I don't know who I am without Columbia. Without fighting you."
The admission hits like a physical blow. Because I've been carrying the same fear—that everything I am is defined by our rivalry, that without her to push against, I'm just another legacy kid playing at relevance.
"You're Serena Vale," I say. "You'll be brilliant anywhere. You don't need me for that."
"But what if I do?" Her eyes are too bright. Vulnerable in a way that makes my chest constrict. "What if the only time I feel like myself is when I'm arguing with you?"
Everything I've kept locked down for four years is clawing at my throat. Every careful word I've never let myself say.
"I've been fighting you because it's the only way I could be close to you."
She stares at me like I've spoken a language she doesn't recognize. "What?"
"Every debate. Every argument. Every time I engineered a reason to be your opponent." The words come faster now. "I did it because fighting you was the only way you'd look at me. The only way you'd see me."
"That's insane."
"I know."
"You made my life hell."
"I know that too."
She's closer now. Suddenly there's less space between us than there's been in four years. Close enough that I can smell her perfume underneath the champagne.
"I hated you," she whispers.
"I know."
"I thought about you every single day."
The admission destroys something in me. "Serena—"
She kisses me.
It's not gentle. It's four years of tension combusting. Her hands fisting in my shirt, pulling me closer, and I'm responding before thought, before reason, before any of the careful control I've maintained around her.
My hand cups her jaw, tilting her face up, and she makes a sound against my mouth that goes straight through me. Desperate. Hungry.
"Your room," I manage when we break apart. "We should—"
"Yes."
Her hand finds mine as we move through the party. Down hallways I've walked a thousand times but never like this, never with this purpose burning through my veins.
Her room is small. Walls covered in debate medals and academic certificates. Evidence of everything she's fought for while I had it handed to me.
Then she kisses me, and nothing else matters. The room smells like sweat and sin, heavy and thick enough to choke on. Her skin glistens under the dim light, slick with the kind of heat that makes my dick twitch like it’s got a mind of its own.
I’m kneeling between her thighs, my hands gripping her hips tight enough to bruise, and she’s spread wide open for me—begging, fucking begging for it. Her pussy is dripping, a fucking waterfall of desperate need, and I can’t tear my eyes away from the way her folds clench and pulse, hungry for something—anything—to fill her up.
I lean in, my breath hot against her swollen clit, and she whimpers, her hips jerking up off the fucking mattress. “Please,” she gasps, her voice breaking, and that’s all it takes for me to lose my goddamn mind.
My tongue flicks out, slow and deliberate, tracing the length of her slit from bottom to top, and she moans like I’ve fucking electrocuted her. I do it again, harder this time, dragging the flat of my tongue over her throbbing clit, and she arches her back so violently I’m surprised she doesn’t snap in half.
Her taste is intoxicating—sweet and salty and fucking perfect—and I bury my face deeper, feasting on her like a starving man.
Her hands clutch at the sheets, knuckles white, and I can feel her thighs trembling around my head as I suck her clit into my mouth, fucking worshiping her with my tongue. She’s close—so fucking close—and I slip two fingers inside her, curling them just right, and she screams my name like it’s the only word she knows.
I pull back, my fingers still buried deep inside her, and she whines, desperate. “Caspian, please—”
“You want it?” I growl, my voice rough with need. “Tell me.”
“Yes—fuck, yes, please, I need you—oh God, please—”
I don’t make her beg twice. I line up my cock, thick and throbbing, at her soaked entrance, and push in slowly, savoring the way her tight cunt stretches around me. She gasps, her nails digging into my shoulders, and I don’t stop until I’m buried to the hilt, her pussy sucking me in like it’s starving for me.
“Fuck,” I groan, my hips jerking involuntarily as her walls clench around me, hot and wet and perfect. I pull out slowly, savoring every inch, then slam back in, harder this time, and her scream echoes off the walls.
“Oh God—Caspian—yes, yes, fuck me—please—”
Her words fuel me, and I start fucking her in earnest, my cock pistoning in and out of her dripping cunt, her legs wrapped around my waist like she’s trying to keep me buried inside her forever. Each thrust sends her closer to the edge, and I can feel her tightening around me, her pussy clenching like she’s trying to milk me dry.
“You gonna come for me?” I growl, my hips never slowing.
“Yes—oh God, yes—”
I slam into her one last time, hitting her fucking G-spot, and she shatters, her pussy clamping down on me like a vice as she screams my name.
I watch her sleep as dawn seeps in—lashes shadowing her cheeks, a small smile on her lips.
Panic hits.
She was drunk—not stumbling, but unguarded. What if she wakes and regrets this? Regrets me? The thought is worse than four years of hating each other.
I ease away. She doesn’t stir. In the dim light I find my clothes, hands shaking as I button my shirt.
I can’t be here when she opens her eyes and this turns to ash.
I leave without looking back. If I do, I’ll stay, and staying means watching regret bloom when the champagne wears off.
Outside, campus is empty, sunrise gilding the buildings where we spent four years circling.
My chest feels hollow, like I left something essential in that room.
Better she hates me for leaving than despises me for staying.