by C. R. Jane
The professor took a step forward, as if he was going to try and help me, and I maneuvered as fast as I could to my seat, not wanting to cause a scene.
Professor Brady looked at me with a frown before he began to talk about this week’s writing prompt. As usual, I was able to immerse myself in his words and began writing as soon as he gave us the okay.
The class passed by in a flash.
“Everly, can you stay after for a moment?” Professor Brady asked right after the bell had rung to signal the end of class.
I nodded, frowning as the rest of the class left the room, some of them giving me furtive glances that I didn’t want to try and understand.
“What’s up, Professor?” I asked after I finagled myself and my crutches through the desks and up to his desk at the front of the room.
“I wanted to talk about the story you did last week, but I also wanted to make sure you were okay.” Professor Brady’s hazel eyes bore into me, and I shifted uncomfortably under his stare.
“I’m fine. I have a concussion and a bruised leg…but it could have been a lot worse.”
“You know you can let me know if you ever need help,” he said, leaning towards me. I had always been the most comfortable around Professor Brady, even considering him a friend. That’s why it was weird the strange prickles going down my spine at the way he was looking at me.
There was just…more in his gaze than usual.
But I had to be imagining that, right? I had hit my head pretty hard just a day ago.
But then he leaned towards me and pushed a piece of hair behind my ear. My breath froze in my body. No, no, no. What was he doing?
Couldn’t I just have one thing in my life that was okay?
I took a step back, and his face fell a bit in disappointment, like he’d been expecting me to jump into his embrace with his touch.
“What about my paper did you want to talk about?” I asked, keeping my voice neutral.
He pushed my paper across his desk towards me, a bright red A gleaming at the top of it. As I reached out to grab it, his hand covered mine, lightly stroking the skin.
“I’d like to talk about the progress you’ve made this semester, preferably at dinner?”
I opened my mouth and then closed it. My words had been failing me the last few days.
“Everly—” Jackson’s voice echoed through the doorway, making Professor Brady and I both jump. I pulled my hand out from under the professor’s, my cheeks burning as if Jackson had just caught me doing something wrong.
“Mr. Parker, are you here to talk to me?” Professor Brady asked calmly, like Jackson hadn’t just walked in on him propositioning a student.
“Just coming to pick up Everly,” Jackson answered coldly, intense dislike written all over his face.
“I didn’t know you were friends with Ms. James.”
“Hmm, that’s interesting.”
I grabbed my paper and my backpack, and crutched over to the doorway where Jackson was waiting.
“Think about what I said,” Professor Brady said sinfully behind me.
I waved at him over my shoulder, unable to turn around and face him after what had just happened.
Why me?
Jackson waited until we had turned the corner, and then he pushed me into an empty classroom.
“Moving onto professors, Everly?” he asked mockingly as he pushed me against the wall, leaning against me until I had nowhere to go. His voice was dark and threatening…threaded with danger.
“I-It wasn’t what it looked like,” I stammered, glaring at the audacity of him daring to accuse me of something…once again.
“You belong to me. How do I get that through your pretty little head?”
I opened my mouth to object that I most certainly did not belong to him, and then he crushed his lips against mine. I opened my mouth to allow him access, and he plundered my mouth fiercely with deep swipes of his tongue. We were all lips, teeth, and tongue, arms desperately pulling at one another like a dam had broken and we couldn’t be controlled.
His left hand trailed down my skirt in the back. He slipped under the fabric of my thong and gripped me from behind as he ground himself against me. When he slipped a finger into me, I cried out. His mouth quickly swallowed the sound of my desire.
We were suddenly both fumbling with each other’s clothes, and I found myself sliding my hand into his briefs and stroking his length, obviously having lost my mind.
“Just like that,” he breathed against my lips, his gaze hooded and lust-ridden.
Jackson trailed his lips down my neck while he hiked my skirt up and pulled my underwear to the side.
“Mine,” he whispered against my skin as he bit down on my shoulder. My chest was heaving as I watched the feral gleam in his eyes.
He picked me up just then, his arms under my legs and ass as he spread my legs wide. Suddenly, he was on his knees, my legs supported by his shoulders, and he licked me, dipping his tongue inside me. It was too much, yet not enough. I struggled to close my legs, the sensations coming from his ministrations bordering on that line between pain and pleasure. His strong hands prevented me from closing them.
I gripped his hair as he swirled his tongue along my clit.
“So fucking perfect,” he breathed against my sensitive skin, the sound of his voice sending me spiraling towards the cliff I was desperate to jump off.
He lapped at me like I was his favorite dessert, and then he pressed down hard, sucking with all his might and sending me shattering into a million pieces.
I convulsed against the wall, but before I could recover, he stood up, releasing his length from his briefs. One second passed before he impaled me with one quick thrust, stretching me wide as he started to hammer into me, the room echoing the sound of our hips slapping against each other and our shared moans.
His lips met mine again, and I could taste myself on him, eliciting a whimper that I should be embarrassed of… It sounded so needy.
His eyes held mine, they were dark with possession and want…for me.
He continued to slam in and out of me feverishly. My pleasure built with every stroke, and I lifted my hips to meet his thrusts. I closed my eyes, and a sharp “Look at me,” sounded throughout the room.
“This is so good. We’re so good. I’m never going to get enough. You’re mine. You’re mine,” he chanted, never taking his sapphire eyes off of me.
This was more than a quick fuck, I realized. This was more.
I didn’t want it to be more.
He shifted, changing the angle of penetration, and that was all it took. I split open, screaming out loud as my entire body splintered and fell in a burst of pleasure.
There was only him.
There was only us.
He continued to move against me, and spirals of light started to build in me once again. His perfect thrusts sent me shooting off into the stars, and this time, he followed me, his jaw setting, his teeth clenching down as he let out what almost resembled a roar.
I felt his heat touch my insides, and then he stilled, leaning his weight against me, his chest rising and falling rapidly…the sound of his out of control breaths reverberating in my ears.
It didn’t take long for the guilt to hit. And then the disgust quickly followed.
Especially when he pulled out and I actually felt empty, like I needed him inside of me to feel whole.
He tucked himself back into his pants and then set me down, his hand floating up to gently caress my face.
I turned my head away from him, unable to look at him, to see the disgust echoed in his gaze that I’m sure was all over mine.
With shaking hands, I grabbed a pack of wipes I kept in my backpack. Before I could use the wipe, Jackson grabbed it and gently cleaned me.
“I’d rather you not clean up. I’d rather you smelled like me all day.”
The door to the classroom opened just then, and a wide-eyed girl that was in my English literature class about fell over wh
en she saw us. Jackson’s hand was still up my skirt.
“Sssorry,” she said as she scrambled away, the door slamming closed behind her.
“I’ve got to go to class, Jackson,” I told him, pushing his hands away as I grabbed my backpack and my crutches, stumbling all over the place as I did so.
“Everly, we need to talk—”
“We don’t need to talk. How I end up having sex with you in a restaurant bathroom, the library stacks…against the wall of a freaking classroom…that says so much about how we don’t need to talk. We just need to stay away from each other. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. Every word you give me is a pretty lie followed with an insult. Fuck,” I said again as I made my way out of the classroom, struggling with the heavy door as I did so.
I went to the rest of my classes somehow.
And I’m pretty sure I smelled like him for the rest of the day.
Just like he’d wanted.
CHAPTER TEN
Jackson
“A classroom, huh?” Caiden asked as I walked into my living room.
“What the fuck?” I snarled, jumping in my boots because my brother was sitting in the dark in my fucking living room.
I was going to have to get his key back if this was what I could expect.
Caiden stood up and stalked towards me, a crazy glimmer in his eyes. “A classroom, huh? Had to do it so the whole campus would find out and know she belonged to you. Jackson always has to get his way. He can’t ever leave anything for the rest of us mere mortals.” He stood toe to toe with me, and for a second, I worried I would have to fight my brother.
“You promised, Jackson,” he hissed.
Anger drowned out the rational part of my brain. “I didn’t fucking promise anything, Caiden. You’ve been asleep for two fucking years, a lot changed before you woke up.”
“I was asleep because that girl destroyed me,” he roared.
He stalked towards the front door and threw it open as I ran after him.
“And now it seems you want to destroy me too. Thanks, brother,” he spat before slamming the door with a loud bang.
I groaned as I leaned my forehead against the door and listened to the sound of him speeding off. All I could hope was that he wouldn’t get into a car accident on the way home.
I slid down the door until I was sitting, leaning against it.
Fuck.
I could smell her all over my clothes.
I could still taste her.
She was everywhere, infecting me until I’d lost the ability for rational thought.
She was everything. And she should be nothing.
What the fuck was I doing?
And then I remembered the journals.
Maybe they would hold the key to carving out the piece of me that Everly owned.
Fuck, I hoped so.
Everly
My journals. They were gone. I’d come back to my room to write down the clusterfuck that had taken place today as a way to calm myself.
And they weren’t anywhere. I’d made a mess of my side of the room looking for them, and then I’d started going through Melanie’s stuff to see if the bitch had hidden them as a joke.
Obviously, it wasn’t the best thing to keep freaking journals in your room when you had a psychotic roommate…but I didn’t exactly have a home to stash them in.
I needed to find her. I would get the truth out one way or another. I opened my door, prepared to fly off in a rage and comb the whole campus even on my crutches.
And there she was.
Talking to Caiden.
Right outside our room.
Caiden’s gaze flicked to me, and he didn’t look surprised to see me. Like he knew where I slept all along and he’d just been biding his time to see me.
And what was he doing with Melanie of all people?
Her attention was fixed on him, and she was salivating like he was the most delicious thing she’d ever seen and all she could contemplate in life was how best to eat him.
I wasn’t kidding. She really looked like that.
The sound of the door closing behind me caught her attention, and Melanie glared at me.
“What are you doing here?”
“Um, is that a real question? I live here,” I told her, trying to keep my gaze averted from Caiden.
“Hey, Everly,” he said quietly. My eyes closed unbidden as I remembered when that voice used to be one that I loved the most.
And then the memory of that voice screaming at me in the car that night quickly dispelled any good feelings I might have had in my moment of weakness.
“Caiden,” I responded stiffly. “I need to talk to you,” I told Melanie.
“Well, I’m busy.”
“Did you take my journals?” I asked, shifting uncomfortably under Caiden’s gaze. He was well acquainted with my affinity for journaling, as I had spent hours in his room writing while he was doing homework.
Melanie’s gaze glimmered maliciously. “Journals? How cute. But no, I have no interest in whatever inane ideas you have going on in your head.”
I searched her face for any signs of deceit. There was the usual hate and annoyance, but nothing that signaled that she was lying to me. And I could usually tell.
But if she hadn’t taken them, then who had?
I stepped backwards to return to the room, but my curiosity over how Melanie and Caiden knew each other had me acting stupid.
“So…how do you know each other?” I asked quietly.
Something glimmered in Caiden’s gaze, as if my question had given him pleasure.
“We just met,” Melanie responded quickly.
Lie. She’d just lied to me. She always smoothed her hair behind her left ear when she lied. I’d learned that months ago.
But why would she lie about that? What did it matter if she’d known Caiden for longer than a day?
And why would she care if I knew?
“Cool,” I said shortly, backing away quickly to go back into the room.
“Have fun today in class?” Caiden’s voice floated after me.
I froze. He couldn’t know…could he?
“It was fine,” I told him tightly, not turning around to look at him. I disappeared into my room and closed the door as fast as I could, Melanie’s cruel laughter echoing around me.
My head hurt from constantly being on guard at this fucking school.
My phone rang just then. It was Landry. I sighed, not knowing what to do. I’m sure that girl had spread it all over campus, if Caiden and Melanie both knew what had happened with Jackson today. Despite what Lane had said about Landry knowing what was going on, I couldn’t help but feel guilty.
“Hello?” I answered, trying to keep my voice light and guilt free.
“Hi, sweetheart.” Well, that was good. He didn’t sound mad. Maybe he didn’t know. Although maybe I wanted him to know so I didn’t have to tell him myself what happened. “How are you feeling?”
“Crutches were great today, but the swelling’s gone down a lot.”
“That’s good,” he said faintly, as if he wasn’t really paying attention.
Awkward silence ensued.
“I still can’t believe that happened at the party. The team’s been questioning everyone. We haven’t talked to anyone who saw you fall.”
“Yeah, it seemed like people were pretty occupied up on that floor.”
More awkward silence.
“So, I heard something today…”
Ahh, here it was.
“Something about you and Jackson…and a classroom.”
“Landry,” I said softly, feeling so terrible that I just couldn’t find it in myself to pick him over Jackson every time it came up.
“Just let me talk,” he ordered, his voice speeding up. “Obviously, it fucking sucks to hear something like that. I mean you and I have only kissed. I thought we were finally going somewhere…”
I prepared for the goodbye, stiffening my shoulders, even though he cou
ldn’t see me.
“But obviously, I’m doing something wrong. I just need to try harder. Hockey’s over now, and I’ll be able to give you the attention you deserve.”
I had no idea what to say. I had fucked another guy against a wall in a classroom, and he still wanted to date me? What the hell?
“Jackson and I…” I began, needing to explain that I didn’t know what was going on with me and him, that I didn’t know when…if ever…I would be able to finally say goodbye to Jackson, even when I knew he was doing nothing but ruining my soul.
“I couldn’t compete before, because I didn’t know it was a competition. But I know Jackson. He’s an asshole to his very core. He’ll mess up, and I won’t. You’ll see.”
“Oh, Landry.”
“Anyways, breakfast tomorrow?” he hurried on before I could say anything. “I’ll meet you at your dorm so I can help you carry your bag.”
“Sounds good,” I said softly, and then he was gone and I was beating myself on the head with my phone, wondering what was broken inside of me that I couldn’t just get myself to fall for a guy like Landry.
Of course, it was at that moment that my phone beeped, signaling an incoming text.
It was Jackson.
Jackson: I need to talk to you. Now. It’s important.
Me: Where?
Jackson: My place. Please.
What was that I’d just been telling myself? I hesitated, thinking that maybe this was the moment I could take a stand. This was the moment I could say goodbye to Jackson Parker.
But the way he’d said “please.” He never said please.
Just this last time, I promised myself.
I didn’t know why I bothered to lie to myself anymore.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Jackson
It was all I could do to hold on. This time, I could feel myself turning black. I could feel the darkness threatening like a storm on the horizon.
I’d read every word. I’d read every ugly, awful word. Words that destroyed me. Words that changed the fabric of my soul, twisting it and shaping it into something that it should have been all along.
