Give You Up (Dumas University Book 1)

by Ashlyn Mathews

  Pretty boy my ass. I will fuck up any guy who lays claim to Syn, tatted, rough, and mean edge to them or not.

  Throughout the night, more girls come up to me, asking for my number or a dance. I politely decline. I am not here for them. I’m here to keep my girl safe even if what she’s doing with the mohawk dude strays from the very definition of safe.

  Syn and the douchebags move the action off the dance floor and grab seats along the periphery inside a booth. Syn slides in first, followed by Mohawk. His friend takes a spot across from them. The friend must have said something funny. Syn laughs, and stretching her arm across the table, she meets the friend halfway and sets her small hand in his big one.

  I narrow my eyes. Suspicion burns through me. Does she know these guys on a personal level? I down my beer and wave the bartender over. I put in an order for a mojito, a drink that will cool my temper. The beer isn’t cutting it. I guzzle the mojito and then ask for another. The bartender doesn’t blink. Just brings me another and another. I see double. Grind my teeth when Syn throws her head back and laughs. She is leaning so far into Mohawk’s body, she might as well have climbed onto his lap.

  Fuck, why’s she gotta get so close? I yank out my cell phone, ready to text her what the hell is she doing getting comfortable with the dirtbags, but the dudes rise from their seats.

  Numbers are exchanged from the way they’re tapping on the screens of their cells. I miss seeing what happens next. Mohawk’s body is in the way, but I can use my imagination just fine. His hand goes up. His head goes down. He’s putting his mouth on my girl’s.

  Damn him. And Syn? I’ll forgive Syn this time. It’s an act. A show. Fuck, how many times will I tell myself that? The thing is, it’s not an act. I’m not clueless.

  Syn has history with those dirtbags. What kind of history? Is Mohawk an ex-boyfriend? Is he the guy who had Syn not liking sex? From the flush on her skin and the lingering smile on her face when the dude moves out of the way, giving me an unobstructed view of Syn, she definitely liked whatever history they had and can have again.

  The dude glances over his shoulder. He regrets not taking her with him. I smirk. Sorry, buddy. Syn is my girl.

  She stays at the table when she should be making her way to me. Then it hits me. Those bastards left her with the tab. When I get ahold of those good-for-nothing mother-effers . . . Mentally shaking off my anger, I wave a server over and nod at Syn sitting primly with her hands clasped on top of the table.

  “I’d like to pay her tab.”

  “Should I tell her who made the payment?”

  “No need.”

  “Will do.”

  The server doesn’t head over to Syn’s table right away, and that is fine by me. Drink in one hand, I lean back against the bar and study Syn, ignoring the woman sitting next to me, shooting furtive glances and smiles my way.

  Syn is wearing down her bottom lip with her teeth and rubbing at the rings. Her gaze is downcast. An ache starts in my chest, threatening to overtake me. I get my girl. Understand what she is going through. I’ve seen this side of her many times in the past. Uncertainty. She wants to bare her soul but is afraid of being judged.

  What did those douchebags say to her? What shitty thing happened to her in the past that made her associate with the likes of those two?

  Done with staying away from her, I settle my tab and saunter over to her table. Girls reach for me. Ask for my number. Some are more forward, sidling up to me and rubbing their tits on my arm as I pass by them. I ignore them and barge past another group of women. They vie for my attention, and I politely decline their advances, knowing their type well.

  They are looking to take a guy home. For him to fuck her senseless. They’ve probably made a bet to see which one catches my eye, who I’ll bang into oblivion first.

  Had I not run into Syn at Bayside, I would take them up on their offer and sleep through the group of friends. Tap each one once, then rope them into a threesome or a foursome.

  Now? Now, there is only one girl for me. I won’t be like my dad. I aim to keep my dick in my pants. Unless my girl wants to play with it. Wants to stroke my B-man. Take him in her mouth. Do dirty things to him. Stroke my cock from head to base with her luscious mouth, the metal adorning her bottom lip cool on my flesh.

  The server is at the table when I reach for Syn’s hand. Giving me a grateful smile, the server having told her the tab’s been taken care of, I lead Syn onto the dance floor.

  I don’t give a flying fuck that the song is a fast beat. I pull her into my arms and clasp her head to my shoulder.

  The women who propositioned me with their fuck-me bedroom eyes and lingering caresses stare at Syn with disbelief on their faces that I chose her over them. I get it. Got the same look from the guys all the time when Syn and I dated in high school.

  Those jealous bastards didn’t think I was worth Syn’s time. That we were too different. She was the nice, quiet one. I’m the loudmouth with the temper. Lucky for me, I had the talent to cream the non-believers on and off the field with my talent for throwing the ball and throwing punches.

  The women staring at us are wondering what her appeal is for me, with her tats and face piercings. Can’t they see Syn is beautiful inside and out? I pull her closer to me. They can go to hell for all I care.

  A sigh of contentment slips from her lips, the sound rising above the music, and I am in heaven.

  Her in my arms feels right.

  “Syn. Babe.”

  She glances up at me. The uncertainty on her face is as clear as newly washed glass.

  “It was all pretend. Please believe me.”

  “I do, Pixie Dust.”

  “Thank you.”

  “For what, baby?”

  “For this.” She clings to me. “I needed your arms wrapped around me in a bad way, Taron.”

  Her mouth finds my flesh, just above the collar of my buttoned-up shirt. Hot need pulses through me, amped up by her body pressed into mine and the thumping beat.

  “Take me back to the hotel. Make love to me.”

  She doesn’t have to ask me twice.

  Back at the hotel, I make love to her nice and slow. Worship her from head to toe. She begs to go down on me. To take my length in her mouth. To give it to me good. Her small mouth would be tight as a fist around my big cock.

  But I don’t give in to her desperation or this need of hers to please me. Her wanting to please me is also something I picked up on early in our friendship, then later she as my girl.

  The desperate girl who aims to please me is a throwback from our past, and I am not interested in revisiting it. Not anymore.

  When Syn gave me the reason she kissed Grady, I got some semblance of closure. The rest—the reason she ghosted me, the reason she got nervous when I brought up family secrets—can wait. If I have my way, I can wait a lifetime for Syn’s reasons and secrets.

  What I’m unwilling to wait a lifetime for is showing her who I belong to. I gently tell her I’ll bypass the BJ this time. She gives such great blow, I’ll blow my load before I can make her come. It’s the truth.

  Either way, what I said makes her happy. Is a win-win when I eat her out until she screams my name. She begs me to slide my cock inside her. Stretch and fill her sinful hole with my thick fingers the same time I mouth and suck on her pussy lips.

  I will do whatever the fuck she wants. I lap up her pussy juices. Finger her pussy until she breaks around me, her inner muscles a vise on my fingers. I save her puckered hole for last.

  Lubing her up with the juices flowing from her pussy, I tease her opening with my thumb pressed against the fleshy, sensitive hole. She squirms on my finger. I up the pressure. Slip my finger inside. The tight muscles hug my finger. She is tight, her little hole virginal.

  I am the first to touch her here. Touch her sinful hole with my fingers and my tongue. I slip my finger in and out, teasing and stretching the wound-up hole of nerves and taut muscles. Her body quivers. She moans and backs her
ass up.

  My cock grows thicker, longer.

  She is pouring from her pussy. Her pussy lips are engorged. Syn is wet. Begging. A groan slips from my core, and there is no way I will last. I need inside her. I bend her over the wide armchair. Slide inside her tight wet pussy in one thrust. Her back arches. Her slender legs shake. She clutches the chair’s arms. Her inner muscles milk me for all I’m worth.

  Pressure uncoils in my groin. My balls tighten. Grabbing her hair with one hand and slinging my other arm across her stomach, I yank her head back the same time I drive into her from behind with my cock.

  “Taron. Please. Oh, God, please, now.”

  She reaches up and claws her nails down my arm. Clenches my hand in hers. Clenches her inner muscles. The pain from her nails digging in my hand. Her tight wet pussy owning my dick with every thrust from me. I tip back my head. Drive into her over and over, my legs growing weak as all the blood goes to my engorged cock.

  “Fuck. Fuck. I’m coming, baby.”

  She comes hard, and I follow.

  My body bent over hers, she says words that make me forget I am having the best sex of my life.

  “You are mine, Taron Vaughn. I will never give you up.”

  25

  Syn

  “So all these yellows are for your old shifts at the library?”

  “Yes.” I move my computer mouse over my old schedule.

  Taron and I are sitting at my desk. We arrived back in Dumas this afternoon.

  “I could delete the series and clean up my calendar, but the yellow is a reminder of what happened to Natalie.”

  “And every time you open your calendar, you want a reminder of why you’re putting yourself out there, spending time with that bastard.”

  One arm on the back of my chair, he slides his index finger over the red bar that takes up half of this upcoming Saturday.

  “Midnight is okay with having these bastards working for him?”

  It’s what Hunter and Rhett had asked of me.

  “He has to be. He wanted the reason, and without my prompting, Rhett gave it.”

  After we made love last night, I filled Taron in on what I discussed with Rhett and Hunter. I didn’t hold anything back except for my history with the two guys. Taron’s number of sex partners is high, and his sexual encounters, raunchy, from what the girls he’s slept with have posted online, but that doesn’t mean I am ready to kiss and tell my sordid past.

  If I do, I’ll want to tell him of my miscarriage and pregnancy. That’s just how I am. One truth spills from me, and then another, and soon, I will be giving him my mom’s deathbed confession, that she slept with Taron’s dad.

  That Taron’s dad was one of her regular clients. How can I destroy his pristine view of his loving and kind father? I can’t. The other kids said mean things behind his back. Accused his dad of cheating. But again, what if my mom is spinning more lies? What if she’s doing so out of spite, to get back at Taron’s mom for somehow coming between her and Gary?

  A love triangle? My mom’s secret life as an escort? Gary in love with Taron’s mom and Taron’s mom hiding her feelings for him, staying instead in a loveless marriage? It’s enough to give me a headache, a real one, and not the small lie I told Taron and Dom.

  “Hey, you okay, Pixie Dust?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “Your fingers are digging into my thigh, babe.”

  I glance down. Sure enough, I have a death grip on Taron’s leg. I relax my hold on him.

  “Sorry about that. I was thinking over how we can bring Rhett in proximity to Natalie without a full-blown disaster happening. If it were me in her shoes, I would bawl, then go for his balls with my hands, followed by a swift kick to the balls.”

  Taron’s gaze drops to my hand on his thigh. Goes high until he is looking at my mouth. He licks his lips.

  “You’re turning me on with the tough talk.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Hell yeah.”

  “Show me.” I caress up and down his thigh.

  Not one to back down from a challenge or pass up the chance of touching me, Taron picks up my chair and sets it down so that we are knee to knee. He leans in, and keeping his eyes on mine, he coasts his fingers over my skin, from the sensitive spot behind my ear to the crook of my neck. I tremble from his soft caress. Sigh when his mouth follows the same path.

  Ache with fiery need when he slides the strap of my tank top and bra down my arm. What he is doing with his mouth, leaving behind wet kisses, is what I would like him to do to my sex.

  I clamp my legs together. Close my eyes. Feel everything. His soft warm lips on my heated flesh. His fingers interlacing with mine. His mouth on the points of my knuckles. The tip of his tongue whispering over each ring on my right hand.

  “Taron.”

  “Babe, I want you.”

  “I want you too.”

  “Where should I take you this time?”

  Dare cancelled on me, instructing me to spend the day with Taron. That we can regroup in the evening for a barbeque and a pool party. I was fine with that. So was Taron. We were so fine with the change of plan and the free time that we made love on my bed, the couch, in the shower, and me with my ass hanging off the kitchen table.

  Afterward, we wiped down every surface we made love on. Except we missed something. I open my eyes. Taron’s white T-shirt is a crumpled stained mess on my bedroom floor. I should have kicked his shirt under my bed.

  He has so many shirts, he wouldn’t miss one, anyway. I stare at the shirt for too long. Taron picks up on my anxiety and looks where I’m looking. The bloodstain on his shirt is glaringly obvious with the sun shining in through the windows above my bed.

  “Did I hurt you?” He caresses down the side of my face.

  “You didn’t. You inside me feels so good. But there are times I bleed after sex. If you don’t want to do it anymore, I understand. It’s my fault my body is sensitive.”

  I stare at my hands balled in my lap. Here comes the judgement. That I’m strange. Or not woman enough to take a man’s erection without bleeding.

  “Sensitive? Babe, if your pussy cocooning and milking my cock until I can’t think worth a damn is ‘sensitive,’ then we’ll be doing it until the moon stops circling the earth.”

  “That’s never.” I lift my head. “Or at least, not in our lifetime.”

  “Exactly.” He scoots back his chair, picks me up under the arms, and suddenly, I am on top of him on the bed, looking down into eyes filled with earnestness, heat, and a flare of anger.

  “Did some bastard tell you the bleeding is your fault?”

  “Yes. He said I was weird. That he shouldn’t have brought me home. That I was too small for him. Um, he was the same exact build as you.”

  “Shit.”

  Jaw clamped, he interlocks his hands behind his head. I rest my chin on the tops of my hands that is resting on his chest. We stare at one another. He shakes his head.

  “I don’t like speaking of other guys you’ve been with. The thought of you with anyone else kills me, has me wishing them a rough hit to the balls, but the thing is, you bleeding isn’t your fault. Maybe I went too deep. If I hurt you, tell me to stop. I never want to hurt you, Syn.”

  He doesn’t think I’m weird. Doesn’t believe I am at fault for the bloodstain on his shirt. He accepts me for me, including my compulsion to plan my life down to color-coding it. He also trusts me to tell him when I hurt rather than lie there and take thrusts that go so deep, I swear my ovaries bounce.

  “Will you do that, babe? Tell me when something I do or say hurts you? Or makes you hate on me? Or makes you want to give me up? I don’t ever want you to give me up. But if I give you reason to, I want you to give me the chance to explain. For us to talk through your concerns rather than running away from me.”

  Everything he just said is everything I imagined him saying over and over in my head had I gone to him and told him what my mother confessed on her deathbed. That who I th
ought was my dad wasn’t. And that my mom led a secret life as an escort.

  I press a kiss to his mouth. “Yes, I’ll tell.”

  “Thank you, Syn. That is all I ever want from you. Is for you to give me a chance even if you never tell me where you were those months you left Mossy Rock.”

  That’s the thing. I do want to tell him. Have to tell him what part Hunter and Rhett played in my life.

  “He’s your ex-boyfriend? He convinced you to have a threesome with his cousin? What a prick.”

  Taron didn’t call me a slut. Did not accuse me of being a cheater when I told him Rhett and I went back on our word to Hunter and slept together right after Hunter and I were done having sex. Two men. Same sexual encounter. What he says next gets me hot and bothered. Is the reason I am so turned on by him.

  “If I were him, I wouldn’t share you for jack shit. Even if a guy offered me a million dollars to have a night with you, I’d tell him to fuck off. You are mine, Pixie Dust. I don’t share. Ever. What your ex did is crazy stupid, and he deserved what he got.”

  I tell him the next part. The godawful part. Something I have never told anyone because what Hunter did shredded my heart to pieces. Unable to look him in the eye, I toy with the collar of his T-shirt. Tug at his sleeve. This is the part that I didn’t get closure from. Instead, I did what I do best. I ran away and ghosted Hunter.

  “I gave Hunter your rings, Taron. It was my olive branch to him. To get him to forgive me by showing him I would do anything for him.”

  Taron smooths his hand over my hair, as though comforting me. “What’d he ask for, Pixie Dust?”

  “He asked me to watch him have sex with a girl I thought was my friend.”

  “Fuck. Shit, babe. I’m sorry.” He tugs me up under my arms and kisses me breathless.

  After what seems like minutes of endless pecks and devouring kisses, we break apart. His eyes are glazed over with desire. I look at him through hooded eyes. His gaze dips to my mouth. I run the tip of my tongue over the strip of metal hugging my bottom lip. He groans, the sound stroking my core and shooting heat to my girl parts. I want him. Want his thickness stretching my inner walls. Want his hot and capable mouth on my sex. But we have more to talk about.