Our Muted Recklessness (Muted Hopelessness Book 2)

by Love Belvin

  “Forgot what?” Then it hit me. I covered my face, frustrated. “I’m not glass, Ashton. If it wasn’t okay I’d’ve beat your ass by now.”

  His head popped back and a welcomed smile lifted on his face. “Beat my ass? Whoa!”

  I sniffled. “Don’t trip. I’ve fucked up a couple of niggas in my neck of the woods.”

  “Well, I ain’t Millville, Nabby-girl. I’m Brick City.” His shoulders bounced with swag.

  “Yeah. By way of South Orange.” I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms over my chest.

  Ashton’s palms lifted in the air. “Best of both worlds. Momma raised me, though.” I couldn’t help but smile as I shook my head. “Let’s start working on this paper. It’s due in what? Three days.”

  My eyes closed in defeat. “I always seem to wait till the last minute.”

  “You’re an athlete,” he explained, powering on my laptop on my desk. “We work our asses off all day for the sport, and have to find time for the one thing that has us at this fine university.” He winked.

  I sighed, dragging myself to my desk. “Yeah, I guess. I’m still trying to figure out if I’m cut out for all of this.”

  “Trust me: you are. And I’m here to teach you the ropes.”

  I stilled at the desk chair, my eyes rolled up to him. “And what about when you leave? What about next semester when you’re not gonna be around anymore?”

  Ashton shrugged, looking confused. “My agent will work on what my life will be like next semester. I’ll let his competent team handle all that. But,” He gave a bow at the neck. “I’m here now. Let’s get it.”

  I slumped down in the hard ass wooden chair. In the corner of my eye, I saw Ashton pull his hoodie over his head. Then he kicked off his shower shoes and tossed himself on my bed.

  “Damn! I ain’t been on one of these twin-longs since… Freshman year, maybe?”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I sighed, fingering through the pages of his typed-up outline.

  Forty-five minutes later, I was more than halfway done with my rough draft. My eyes were swollen, too. A deep yawn escaped me, and my arms lifted in the air to stretch. When I felt the flash of pain I dropped my arms.

  “What’s that about?” Ashton’s voice was even deeper than it was when he kissed me earlier. He had to be tired.

  “The price I’m paying for not staying focused in the ring yesterday.” Slowly, I stood from the desk, closing the laptop shut. “That’s enough for me. I’m about to pop a Motrin for it.”

  “Yeah. You let Rodriguez think she was on your level.” His tone was so casual flowing from across the room.

  After a long pause, I turned to him. Ashton looked way too comfy on my bed. “Did you?”

  He laughed. “Nah. I watched the tape.”

  “Tape?”

  “The athletic program records most of the games or competitions. Coaches and A.D.s watch it for better instruction…improvements. I snuck in this afternoon, after my practice and watched.”

  “You can do that?”

  His eyes fell. “I’m Ashton Spencer. I can do whatever I want on this campus, according to some people.” He yawned, turning on his side. I watched him shape my pillow to his liking. “Turn the light down, please.”

  Confused, I blinked. Was he…? I mean… I’d stayed in Ashton’s dorm, but he’d never stayed here.

  “Samantha’s coming back after her shift,” I warned.

  Ashton yawned, snuggling into my pillows. “I’ll be outta here before then.”

  Chapter Nine

  -THEN-

  My eyes swung open when, subconsciously, I realized I’d fallen asleep. The light was dimmed and Tori was no longer at her desk near the foot of the bed. My nostrils contracted and my eyes rolled up to the left of me where I saw long, crossed nude legs leading up to cherry top hills. Next was her tight, but hella beautiful face. Her hand was at my scalp, fingering in a massage. While her touch was soft, those eyes narrowed in thought. Tori was pensive.

  “You got hit pretty bad in that game the other night.” Her voice was soft. Girly as I’d ever heard outside of her moaning while coming against my tongue. “I heard the assistant coaches talking about it earlier when I went to meet with my team. They were in their TV room screaming about it when I walked past.”

  I snorted. It was my team against the coaches, but I wouldn’t ruin a moment of Tori seeming to care about me. The shit excited the fuck out of me.

  “You got hurt, too.” I lifted her long t-shirt above her hips to just beneath her ample rotund breasts. Tori pulled in a deep breath from her nose and her body shivered. “Here.” I pointed to the magenta spots on the sides of her abdomen. She was markedly bruised.

  Our eyes danced against each other’s, and I saw when she swallowed nervously.

  “They said your line didn’t protect you.”

  “We weren’t focused.”

  “What does that mean?”

  I had to think of a way to simplify it for someone unfamiliar with football.

  “Meaning, for a couple of the plays, I ran the ball instead of throwing it, because I thought it would get us farther down the field. Then there were other plays when they assumed I’d run the ball myself, and I was simply waiting for a receiver—the running back—to open up for me. When my guys aren’t able to keep containment and protect me from the other team, clamming for the ball, I get hit—and possibly by several people.”

  Her forehead dimpled in confusion and…worry. Tori McNabb was concerned about me! Fuck. My dick twitched. I swear, I said I’d only kiss her ass to take what she should have made up for leaving me hanging since returning from Thanksgiving.

  “Don’t say it,” she murmured.

  “Say what?”

  “You ain’t gonna kiss me.” Her pupils swung on each syllable.

  My face widened when I realized she was mocking me from Thanksgiving night. “Is that what you want? For me to kiss you?”

  “It’s what you want. I can tell by how you’re…looking at me.”

  She knew.

  “Is that a problem?”

  Her face relaxed and lashes batted. “What we did was wrong, Spence.”

  Slowly, I shook my head. “What we did was right. We were wrong for doing it.”

  I saw her eyes twitter in their sockets as she processed that. Tori eventually nodded softly in agreement.

  “Then how do we make it stop?”

  My chest caved from the blow. I had no damn idea what was happening, but damn sure wanted nothing with her to stop.

  “Why do you want it to stop?” I should have been embarrassed by the fucking cry in that simple question.

  “Because I don’t want to be like my mother?” Her last few words spilled with the tiniest whisper.

  “Who is she that you don’t want to be like her?”

  “A whore.”

  My body tensed. That singular word packed a punch. “Why—what makes her a whore?”

  Tori hesitated, regard bouncing all around as she struggled. “She slept—sleeps—with married men. Always has. It’s wrong…and embarrassing for me.” I didn’t speak. Couldn’t. Tori had to deliver this on her own volition. “When you came to get me, that guy was the first one she did it with that brought me trouble. His daughters hated me. The most popular girls—family—in the neighborhood. They were bigger than me when everybody in the park found out. And they beat my ass almost every day their mother cried about her husband being in the trailer, a lot away from theirs with…my mother.”

  “For how long?”

  “Forever. Until I learned how to fight back. My Margaret used to come and get me all the time from school or the center—it’s what we called the playground in our park—when word got back to her that they were jumping me. She told me I had to stick up for myself and if I didn’t, I’d get beat up for the rest of my life because my mother wasn’t going to stop. When I asked my mother would she cut him off, she told me she loved him and wouldn’t lose him for his kids.”
/>   “His kids?”

  Tori nodded, gaze into the distance. “Not me. The kids. That hurt. She didn’t dismiss me, but she did. Her focus was on his kids and not me.”

  I recalled her answer to what made her get into boxing. “So that’s when you got tired of getting your ass kicked.”

  She nodded. “I didn’t learn to box, I learned to fight. It took a few more ass beatings, but I started winning. His oldest daughter tried to push me down at school when we were having a field day. Everyone laughed, even the history teacher covering our activity. She tried not to, but did. That was the first day I fought back and won.” I watched her fists clench. “After that day, they tried me twice more and lost.”

  “That was the end of your Ls?”

  She shook her head. “They jumped me a couple of times after I beat them up one-on-one. My cousins weren’t around to help then. But the fighting didn’t stop until my mother broke up with their dad.”

  “Was it a bad breakup?”

  Tori shrugged. “I was like twelve then. He just…stopped coming. And I was so fucking happy, Ashton. So happy.”

  “I’m sure.” I tossed my chin. “They stopped fuckin’ with you.”

  “And he stopped, too.” Her eyes were on me, gaze unequivocal.

  “Stopped what?”

  “Paul—the one I told you about—used to…touch me. He’s the first one who made me do things with him.”

  A wave of nausea washed over me and I closed my eyes, remembering her sharing about her torment. Swallowing convulsively helped me with not passing the hell out. “The first?”

  She nodded. “The other was my mother’s boyfriend, too.”

  A bolt of anger shot from my belly. “Who protected you?”

  Shaken, Tori flipped masks from sound and calm to closed, guarded, and temperamental, it felt. She leaned away, shrugged, and lifted one side of her mouth.

  “No one?” I pushed.

  Long seconds later, she shrugged again. “My Margaret.”

  “How?”

  Fuck patience for her to open up.

  “She figured it out one day—” Her face screwed. “—Look! I don’t wanna talk about that. I’m just telling you what’s been on my mind since Jersey. I’m trying to explain to you who I am.”

  I sat up. “Am I not here, captivated by your sharing?”

  “No. You’re here deciding how much baggage I have.”

  “How so?”

  Tori took a deep breath, closing her eyes and rolling them behind her lids. “I just wanted to tell you what we did was wrong. I don’t want to be that…” She dithered. “I’m not ready for sex.”

  She wasn’t making sense.

  “You’re not ready for sex, or you don’t want to relive infidelity against the most popular person in your community?”

  It happened again. Time suspended as we gazed into each other’s eyes.

  “I’m not ready for sex, but I don’t want to be the blame for you and Aivery not being what you’re going to be.” The aggression in her voice shrank.

  “And I’m not punk ass Paul. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “Why you say that?”

  “Because I’m not going to make things messy for you. And I’m damn sure not going to touch you in any way that will make you feel uncomfortable or violated.” The nasty words tasted like metallic on my tongue.

  The sibilant whisper of her rushed words seared through me. “You don’t. You never did.”

  Relief flushed through me. “Then you have to tell me what you’re feeling.”

  “I’m trying.” Tori shook her head, visibly frustrated. “I don’t know how to. I’m not used to this.”

  “Used to what? Speaking your feelings?” I scoffed. “You damn sure do when you want to cut through someone like a jagged blade with your damn words.”

  “Not like this. That’s not what I want to do with you.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  “I want to not have to think too hard or feel guilty when I think about you. I can’t help it. And it’s been driving me crazy since before Thanksgiving night.”

  “Good!” I grunted, sitting up and laying against the headboard. “We’re finally at an impasse together.”

  I couldn’t believe I was fucking pouting like an eleven-year-old. So much for that temporary high she gave from her concern about my condition.

  My lamenting stopped when a blue greeting card envelope crept into my periphery. I gazed over to her.

  “Margaret McNabb told me to never go without saying thank you when invited over to someone’s house for dinner.”

  I took the card and opened it. Certainly, it was thank you themed with balloons and bold font. Her tall, slender, and stick-like penmanship wrote out our names and the message “Your house is nice and the food was good. You was…nice, and good too.”

  A pleasure roll ascended my chest at the piquancy in her innocent expression. Before I could stop myself, my upper torso whipped over and I captured her by the side of the face. Her nose to my nose, our lips centimeters apart.

  “You were nice and good,” I corrected her grammar as my dick swelled again. “It’s second-person singular past tense. I’m about to bring it back present.”

  A cool smile broadened on her face. “I know it was wrong. I did it to grind your stupid grammar gears.”

  Totally taken by her sense of humor, I all but leaped to meet her mouth. I was both annoyed and turned on by her wisecrack. But so soon into it, I noticed her attention going to the left of me and the right of her. Tori was trying to communicate something to me. My gaze followed hers to the nightstand, where a gift bag sat. She must have put it there while I was asleep. No way I missed it earlier.

  I lifted from the bed. “That’s for me?”

  Tori shifted to her elbows and nodded, biting her top lip. “It goes with your card.”

  I reached over and grabbed the bag, pulling the white tissue paper out. Next, I lifted soft cotton material from it. Soon, I learned it was a pair of Versace boxer briefs.

  “I could only afford one.” Her voice was small.

  I opened them for full inspection. They were huge. I glanced inside for the size.

  “Extra-large?”

  Tori shrugged awkwardly. “I was judging by your…” Her chin ducked with reticence. “…dick size.”

  My brows shot up. “You think I’ve got a big dick, McNabb?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Bigger than I’ve seen.”

  My fucking chest opened to something so narcissistic. It was wrong because the only dicks Tori may have seen were mine and those of her violators. But fuck them. They didn’t deserve the acknowledgment, nor their dicks. If given the opportunity, I’d geld the motherfuckers with my bare hands and a sheep’s foot paring knife.

  Tori’s gaze upon me was unveiled. There was a longing in her eyes. One I couldn’t ignore.

  “You want my dick,” was a spoken revelation.

  “I don’t want to—”

  Taking her head into my hands, I pushed my tongue in her mouth, and this time Tori responded without reservation. Her breasts pushed into me expressly. Pressure coiled in my boxers nearing painful. As I ravaged her mouth, I flipped my body until I straddled her. My hands worked to pull her shirt above her breasts, taking great care at not disturbing her sides.

  My face worked down to her chin then neck, where I sucked while massaging the underside of her perfectly round tits with my thumbs. She lifted her hips in search of my dick, but my legs caged her thighs and her target was missed. My body ached from the hits on the field and the need of her. Both would be ignored in favor of the priority of her pleasure. I climbed down her thick, toned body, stopping when my face met her breasts.

  My tongue lanced her right nipple and she arched her spine, inadvertently serving them to me. Finally, I placed myself between her legs, and Tori released a mitigating sigh of satisfaction I was sure wasn’t deliberate. Reaching for the elastic of her tiny shorts, I pulled them down
her hips along with her panties. I sucked her puckered nipple while descending farther down her body until her clothes were from around her ankles.

  I shot back up to her nipples, enjoying the panting of my favorite tomboy. They were hard and her breasts so damn firm. Nothing compared to Tori’s tits. They were shaped to perfection unlike Aivery’s, and authentic, so dissimilar to NormaJean and a few others I’d had. As I graced her with mutual oral pleasure, her thighs quivered around me familiarly. She began to cry out hums unable to be faked by a novice and inexperienced boyish girl. That shit had my patience and pacing thrown out the fucking door.

  I traced her open mouth with the tip of my tongue. “Grip the bottom of the headboard.”

  I shuffled down between her contracted thighs, pushing them over my shoulders with reckless abandon and burying my face in her pussy. Damn. I couldn’t wait to taste it seasoned, hours after a shower or after a workout. But this flavor is what had been playing in the back of my mind every day since the first time I’d tasted it, days ago. The stark memory filled my brain and made my dick pulse with need. Her clit swollen, juices layering my lips and chin.

  I snaked my tongue inside of her, twirling and laving deep. I could feel by the intense throb in her pussy she was about to climax, so I pulled out and thrashed her clit until her hips lifted to my face and her palms left the headboard and gripped my lower arms as I rubbed her breasts. When her hips began to vibrate again, I lifted my face and went back below, dipping my tongue into her pussy. Her firm ass relaxing over the mattress told of her frustration. I wanted to stave off her orgasm for a while, and I did.

  When I was ready, my stiff tongue flickered her engorged button until her hips clenched. Then I stood on my knees, pulled down my sweats and boxers. Tori’s pupils visibly dilated at the sight of me. I clasped my palm around my dick, stroking it. Its sensitivity had my hips bucking and I decided against it. I lay my shaft between her wet folds and stroked up and down. My mouth sucked her right nipple. And fuck! She was so wet, so responsive to each stroke. If I wasn’t mistaken, she implored me for it. It took just four before Tori’s eyes closed tight and head tossed back as she threw herself onto me, fingers gripping my biceps with brute force. Watching her dance on my dick brought gratification unimaginable. Her mewls were uncultured and uncontrolled.