Jake Understood

by Penelope Ward

  “Stay? What do you mean?”

  “I mean…you were comfortable here. Just stay.”

  “You’re not mad at me?”

  “I didn’t say that. You shouldn’t have been snooping.”

  “I know. I’m really sorry.”

  I’m really not.

  My emotions were all over the place, and this situation was weakening me. As she relaxed into the bed again, that was all the encouragement I needed. All I wanted in the world was to feel her body next to mine, and I was going to let myself feel that tonight.

  Just one night.

  I knew I was lying to myself.

  I hadn’t noticed whether our roommates were even home. I walked over to the door and shut it so that they didn’t spot her in here. Feeling protective of her, I didn’t want them to get the wrong idea.

  Then, I shut off the light before removing my wet jacket and taking off my shirt. Even though my pants were a little damp, they stayed on because, well, stripping down to my underwear would have been pushing it.

  Tomorrow, I told myself. Starting tomorrow, I would follow through with my plan to distance myself from her. But tonight…tonight I just wanted to sleep next to her.

  “Scoot over,” I said.

  She turned onto her side instantly at my command without question. My chest pressed into her back, and her body molded into mine. She was so warm and soft, practically melting into me. I couldn’t resist locking my arm around her waist. We were spooning, and it felt better than anything I’d ever experienced with the opposite sex up until that point. It was sensually intimate and more comforting than anything I could ever remember feeling before. I hadn’t held anyone like that in years. But never had it felt like this—like home—to me.

  Unable to control all the feelings that were emerging, my breathing became heavier with each second. She was being fidgety all of a sudden and made me wonder if she wasn’t comfortable. “You’re moving around a lot. You okay with this, Nina? Would you rather go back to your bed?”

  “No. I want to stay.”

  Thank God. Because I seriously didn’t know how I could’ve let her go right then.

  “Good,” I said before tightening my grip on her side to reaffirm my own stance.

  I pulled her closer to me and tried to relax, burying my nose in her hair and taking a long whiff of what I imagined heaven smelled like. I breathed in and out slowly onto her neck. I wished I could taste her. I wished I could consume every inch of her.

  At one point, she pushed her soft ample ass into me, and I had to reposition myself so that her butt was against my leg and not my dick. Still, the brief heat of her against me made my cock swell. There was no way I could have kept this control while sandwiched in the crook of her ass. Forget what I said about home earlier…that would have been home.

  I was painfully hard. I hadn’t been with anyone since the day I laid eyes on Nina. She had me cock-whipped and didn’t even know it.

  Her sweet voice startled me. “Jake?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I really am sorry for invading your privacy.”

  “It’s okay, Nina.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Nina?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Your underwear drawer might get rearranged this week. That’s all I’m sayin.”

  My lips were pressed against her back, and I could feel her laughter vibrating against my mouth.

  I tightened my hold on her once again and over the next several minutes, her breathing slowed until she fell asleep in my arms.

  As tired as I was, I couldn’t sleep a wink. I kept thinking about how on Earth I was supposed to ever sleep alone again after knowing what this felt like. The thought of never getting to experience this again made my chest hurt, and the thought of having to alienate myself from her made me grab onto her even tighter.

  At one point, Nina moved in her sleep, and her ass once again managed to land right on top of my helpless dick, now straining through my pants.

  If smelling her hair was heaven, then my engorged cock getting stuck in this predicament was hell. It was a pleasurable form of torture, though, and I didn’t want to move this time. This was my last opportunity to feel her like this, and I was going to relish every second.

  I softly kissed her back as she slept, a feeling of dread growing with each minute.

  When the sun came up, she was still sleeping while I had to get up for work. I had a raging case of blue balls that would need to be taken care of in the shower, but it was all worth it. Everything about sleeping next to her last night was something I’d cherish for the rest of my life.

  I caressed her hair one last time before I had to leave. A fleeting thought made me feel sick inside. But it was reality.

  Whoever gets you someday is gonna be a lucky man.

  CHAPTER 7

  Past

  During the first couple of weeks after our little sleepover, I stayed true to my word. Aside from our tutoring sessions, every effort was made to stay away from Nina. We never talked about the night in my bed. It was as if it never happened.

  She would try to get closer to me, and my having to push her away broke my heart. Truthfully, I wanted nothing more than to let our connection grow organically and to see what could have been, but I’d resolved to do the right thing.

  The low point of that time was when she’d made me a batch of banana pudding one night. Nina started a conversation about her conservative upbringing and how liberated she was starting to feel living in New York despite her fears. She began asking me questions about my childhood and was really trying to get inside my head. Instead of opening up, I just shut down and changed the subject. I filled a small bowl and ate the dessert as quickly as I could then thanked her before escaping to my room. I felt like absolute crap for eating and running but not as badly as I felt once I realized that after that night, Nina had given up on trying.

  My message had finally gotten through to her loud and clear. Aside from the tutoring, she seemed to avoid me completely after the pudding encounter.

  Then, one Thursday evening, Nina was late for our study session. She knew I’d set certain rules, and number one was showing up on time. Despite my soft spot for her, when it came to the math, I ran a tight ship and took it very seriously, often coming across as a hardass.

  I planned to call her out on her tardiness, both because I wanted her to take the tutoring seriously and also because part of me was craving the attention I lost from her even though I’d pushed it away. Creating confrontation was, at least, an acceptable form of interaction for me. So, when she finally appeared at the doorway, I immediately gave her shit. On this particular night, for the first time, she decided to dish it out right back to me.

  “Well, look who decided to grace me with her presence,” I chided.

  Nina stood in the threshold. Her hair was wet as she clutched her books in front of her chest. She always did this thing where she hesitated to come in, like my room was a lion’s den or some shit.

  She wasn’t smiling. “I got stuck in a line at the market. Then, it started pouring rain. I got here as fast as I could.”

  The damp smell of the rain lingered on her body as she stood in the doorway.

  “You can come in, you know.”

  She stepped inside and sat on the bed. “Thank you.”

  As always, I sat away from her at my desk. Something was different about her attitude tonight. It seemed like she was pissed.

  I tried to lighten the mood. “You always seem to get caught in the rain, Nina. Why is that? It’s like you attract it. ”

  She paused and looked me straight in the eye. “I guess if the rain is attracted to me, what would that make you then…fire or something?”

  Shit.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she muttered under her breath.

  I knew what the fuck it meant. For the first time, she was calling me out on my hot and cold behavior toward her, exce
pt now she’d come to a conclusion that couldn’t have been more far off. She believed I wasn’t attracted to her when my problem was exactly the opposite.

  Just when things couldn’t have possibly gotten more tense, she took off her jacket. Her shirt was damp, allowing me a clearer view of the body beneath. A vision of pulling on that shirt with my teeth and sucking the water dry off of her beautiful tits caused blood to rush to my dick.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to change before we start?”

  I don’t think she knew that I could see right through the material.

  “No. I’m good.”

  Well, I’m not fucking good with this.

  I took out a shirt from my closet and threw it at her. “Here. Put this on.”

  “But…”

  I gritted my teeth and repeated, “Put it on.”

  She looked down at herself and blushed, finally realizing why I’d been so adamant about it. She took the shirt without further protest, and I turned away so she could change.

  She gave me the go ahead to turn back around. My breathing was rapid and quickened even further when my eyes landed on her breasts stretching against my shirt. It was the closest thing that I’d have to my body wrapped around her. She looked so fucking hot in it.

  I cleared my throat. “We should get started. Show me the assignment.”

  She handed me the textbook and some worksheets. “It’s on probability.”

  I rubbed my chin and wracked my brain for some ideas. I always came up with lessons of my own in addition to what homework Nina was given by her professor. She always seemed to pay better attention when she could relate to the examples.

  Doing something to break the tense mood was also going to be necessary.

  Grabbing a notepad, I wrote a few things down before flipping it around and showing it to her. “Okay…probability. One of these things has a greater likelihood than the other: Nina farts in her sleep. Nina talks in her sleep. Nina does nothing in her sleep.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I guess we’ll find out.”

  ***

  That night, I snuck another origami bat into Nina’s room.

  What I almost wrote:

  You’re lucky you’re cute,

  When you sleep and toot.

  And lucky I don’t mind,

  The silent but deadly kind.

  What I wished I could have written:

  To your rain, you said I was fire.

  If only I could show you my desire.

  Then, you’d clearly see,

  What it is you do to me.

  What I actually wrote:

  Rest assured, you neither fart nor talk in your sleep.

  But should you decide to start tonight,

  Mr. Bat won’t utter a peep.

  ***

  My plan to stay away from her suffered two major setbacks in the days that followed.

  The first was when Nina found out that she got her first A on a math exam. It was amazing but didn’t come as a total shock because she’d been busting her butt with studying lately.

  She was preparing a Bananas Foster dessert to thank me for helping her make the grade. That dessert was like crack to me.

  We were in the kitchen alone together. I was trying to help by peeling some of the bananas, but all I really ended up doing was distracting her. She was looking up at me while cutting and sliced her finger.

  It caused me actual physical pain to see her blood pouring out and triggered a visceral reaction in me. There was no towel in sight, so I wrapped her finger tightly in my shirt. Red kept seeping through and without thinking, I placed her finger in my mouth and started to suck the blood out.

  Okay. So, it wasn’t the most sanitary choice—a little insane maybe.

  I just wanted to make it better. You should have seen the dazed and confused look on her face. It was like she was outside of her body watching it all unfold.

  It wasn’t supposed to feel sexual; that wasn’t my intention. But without a doubt, it was stimulating because, let’s face it, having anything of hers in my mouth was going to have that effect. It wasn’t even so much my sucking on her finger as it was the way she was looking at me when I did it, like she wanted more of what I was giving her in that moment.

  By the time I slowly slid her finger out of my mouth, I was starting to get aroused, and I was pretty sure she was, too. Her cheeks were flushed as I removed my blood-covered shirt and used it to wrap her finger again as she looked down at my bare chest. Her lips were parted in that way they always were when she ogled me. She didn’t realize I noticed it.

  When she pointed out that I had some blood on my mouth, instead of wiping it with something, I intentionally licked it off as she watched every movement of my tongue slide across my lip. I swallowed it. I wanted her in a primal way, and I guess this was my way of expressing that, even though I wouldn’t consider acting on it in other ways.

  Still, I realized that wasn’t a normal manner of showing it. It was a complete loss of control, forever referred to in my mind as the “vampire incident.”

  ***

  The second major setback was what began the process of my complete undoing when it came to Nina.

  It was a Friday, and as usual, my bag was packed and ready to go with me at work for the weekend trip to Boston.

  I normally hopped a train after my shift ended, but that entire day, thoughts of Nina would not stop invading my brain. I started convincing myself that being friends with her would be better than nothing, especially since I couldn’t seem to stay away from her.

  Maybe we could be friends.

  Famous last words.

  I wanted so much to stay the weekend and just spend time with her.

  That night, as I was walking to the train station, I impulsively turned around and headed back to the apartment, deciding to take an early Saturday morning train instead so that we could hang out. I would ask her if she wanted to go out and eat or rent a movie. Those were harmless things, right?

  I loved lying to myself, apparently.

  Dropping my travel bag by the apartment door, I made my way down the hall. Nina’s bedroom door was open, and she was standing there looking at herself in the full-length mirror attached to her closet.

  My jaw dropped, and my heart pounded as I took her in. A tight dress hugged her voluptuous body. Her hair was cascading down her back in beautiful long curls that almost reached the top of her amazing ass.

  She was wearing stripper heels. Nina looked like she’d been kidnapped and done up by a tribe of whores.

  It was the hottest fucking thing I’d ever seen in my entire life.

  She hadn’t noticed me just outside the door, so I moved in closer. Her dress was bright purple, and I decided to make a dumb joke about it since telling her what I was really thinking might have gotten me arrested. “Nina, Barney the dinosaur called. He wants his skin back.”

  She flinched when she saw my reflection in the mirror. “Jake! What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be on your way to Boston.”

  “Nice to see you, too.”

  “Well, it’s just that you usually leave from work and—”

  I lied to her. “I missed the 5:15 Amtrak, so I might either catch the last train at 9:30 or just go in the morning.”

  “Oh.”

  She seemed absolutely shocked to see me and quite uncomfortable. Then, she turned around.

  She turned around.

  Fuck.

  My eyes unapologetically went where they needed to go. The dress had a plunging neckline that showed way too much of her massive cleavage. While the back view looked hot, the front view was downright indecent. My throat seemed to freeze. I knew I should have said something but couldn’t find the words. No other woman had so much as crossed my mind sexually since Nina entered my life. My earlier conclusion that staying friends was a good idea now seemed ludicrous as I stood there taking her in and praying away my erection. I sure had been lying to myself. My mouth was watering
for fuck’s sake. The truth was…I was starving for her. Only her.

  The way her chest was heaving as I looked at her, the way she always reacted to me made me feel like she wanted me that way, too.

  I forced myself to speak. “Nina…you look—”

  “Interesting?” She smiled in an attempt to lighten mood.

  My hungry eyes travelled slowly downward, taking in her tits and the way the material of her dress clung to her taut stomach. Her bare legs looked longer in heels. “That’s one way of putting it.”

  Our eyes met again. She could tell where my mind was. Hell, it couldn’t have been more obvious.

  “Jake!”

  I turned around to see our roommate, Tarah, enter the room but quickly returned my gaze back to Nina.

  “Tarah!” I said, mimicking her shocked tone of voice. Understandably, everyone seemed so surprised to see me here on a Friday night. It dawned on me that maybe they were getting ready to go out on a girls’ night.

  Would it have been wrong to invite myself?

  I plopped down on Nina’s bed and joked, “I didn’t know we were going out tonight, Nina.”

  “We…are not going anywhere,” Tarah said. “She is going on a date.”

  It was like my world stopped spinning when she said it.

  My head and ears began to throb as jealousy hit me like a ton of bricks.

  Get your shit together, Jake.

  I couldn’t.

  It was impossible to pretend that this news wasn’t wrecking me. As much as I’d tried to distance myself, as much as I knew Nina could never accept my life if she knew the truth…in my heart, I believed she was mine. Mine. It was the first time the realization of that deluded misconception really hit me.

  The only words that would come out of my mouth were, “I see.” My hands formed into fists to ward off the anger building inside me. “I suppose he’s taking you to the Vegas Strip in that outfit?”

  Tarah said something, but I didn’t even hear it because I was too busy staring at Nina, this time into her eyes. I wanted to carry her in my arms back to my room and cover her with my body. I had no right to feel this way and knew I needed to leave before I made a total fool of myself since I apparently couldn’t hide my jealousy. This had honestly never happened to me before. Maybe if I’d had a chance to practice this reaction when I was thirteen, I wouldn’t have been acting like a teenager right now.