Dominate: New Adult College Sport Romance (University of Gatica Series Book 5)
Page 5
He’d told her from the beginning that he wasn’t looking for anything serious. She’d known that she wouldn’t be able to hold to that, because she never could, but she had hoped that it would come naturally between them over time. That something serious. Apparently it hadn’t.
Maybe that’s why he’d been so confused about her issues with him dancing in a gaggle of other girls. If it wasn’t anything serious, what did it matter how many girls he had grinding up against him? Maybe he’d thought that she wouldn’t care.
The problem was, she did. And hearing him on the phone after the draft picks, she couldn’t help but wonder how many girls had been dancing close to him. How many girls had put their hands on him? Had he said anything to them, or had he felt secure in the knowledge that she wasn’t anywhere near to see what he was doing?
She’d thought that he seemed serious, but maybe she’d just been seeing what she wanted to see all this time. It wasn’t like she hadn’t known going in what it was going to be like. She should have remembered that.
He’d told her that she’d be able to move in with him in a few years. For just a moment, she thought about that, trying to reconcile it with her new certainty that he hadn’t been looking for anything serious, just like he’d originally said. But maybe that was just a way of appeasing her for now; they would never actually move in together.
Aileen had thought that she knew Tyler better that that. It just didn’t seem like him to get someone’s hopes up and then drop them. If he was that kind of person, she didn’t know him at all.
Cameras followed Tyler to practice. Aileen tried to ignore them despite the fact that she felt like she could feel them watching her, like eyes lingering over her skin. It wasn’t that she didn’t like cameras; it was just that with the news crews constantly orbiting around Tyler it was almost impossible to get a private moment, and they’d hardly had a chance to talk since he called her on the night of the draft. Every time she tried to get close to him, the media zoned in. She just wanted them all to go away for a while.
Motion out of the corner of her eye caught her attention, and she turned to see Tyler taking the lane beside her for sprints.
“Are you going to be allowed to run?” she asked. The question came out sharper than she had meant it to, but it was too late to call it back. “Now that you’ve been drafted? Won’t the NCAA see it as a conflict?” She kept her voice even, aside from that sharp little edge, and didn’t turn to look at him.
“I am, actually,” Tyler answered. “I’ve got a contract in my clause that will allow me to stay and graduate, and to keep running. So there’s no conflict.”
When she turned just enough to see his face, surprised, he looked like he wanted to say more, but there wasn’t time. Coach Anderson blew his whistle, and they all jumped forward into the sprint.
No conflict. Aileen turned that over in her thoughts as she raced down the track. So he would be preparing, and competing, with them. That was okay. She could live with that. She hoped.
Running didn’t feel like flying with her heart so heavy. Aileen almost stumbled, and Tyler passed her, head turning as he moved forward so that he could glance back at her with concern on his face. He looked like he wanted to stop and ask if she was okay, but Aileen waved him on.
The sprint ended, and they all slowed to a disorganized stop.
“You okay out there, Aileen?” Coach Anderson called.
“Just great, Coach,” she answered, very carefully not looking at Tyler or the shirt that was clinging to his abs and chest.
“That’s it, then,” the coach said. “Everyone fall out, and I’ll see you all tomorrow.”
Without speaking to anyone, Aileen headed for the locker room to get a couple of things that she’d stashed in there before practice. Everyone else had already gone, and for a minute she stood in the quiet, breathing in the scent of metal and sweat.
“Aileen,” a voice said behind her.
She whipped around to face Tyler. He was standing in the doorway to the dressing room, head lowered and hands stuffed in his pockets.
“Why are you avoiding me?”
Aileen stared at him. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
“And still, here I am,” Tyler said, strolling forward like he didn’t have a care in the world. “My question is still the same. Why are you avoiding me?”
“I’m not avoiding you,” Aileen protested.
“No? Because it sure feels like it to me. You only talk to me as much as you have to. You hardly look at me. What’s the problem?”
He was closer now, standing so near that she could almost feel the heat of his body. He still wore the cologne that had caught her attention from the moment that she first smelled it. She wanted to throw herself into his arms and feel them close around her, hard and safe. She wanted to know that things would turn out okay for them. Aileen didn’t say either of those things.
“You’re the one who refuses to be anywhere near me any time there are cameras around,” Aileen snapped.
“Because our private life isn’t a reality show,” Tyler answered, infuriatingly calm.
“Which is why I’m avoiding you. Because you can’t go anywhere without those cameras.” She wondered, actually, how he’d managed to get away from them for long enough to sneak into the locker room. They were pretty relentless.
“The cameras will go away eventually.”
“No,” Aileen said. “They won’t. You’re an NFL player now. You’re always going to be in the public spotlight. Someone is always going to want to have a camera on you. That’s just the way that it goes. Are you always going to avoid me in public?”
Tyler look shocked, and then upset. “Of course I’m not going to. I just want to make sure that we’re both in the same place before I go parading around in front of the media with it.”
“And what place is that?” Aileen demanded, crossing her arms over her chest.
The frustrated expression on Tyler’s face softened, but he shook his head. “I don’t really know, Aileen. You’re going to have to tell me that.”
She wasn’t any surer than he was. Aileen reached up and ran a hand through her hair, loosed from its tail after practice. “Honestly, I don’t really know what to do. Since you got drafted, everything feels different. You’re just going to end up so far away. And I’m scared that you’ll forget about me. In ten years you’ll be some famous figure I used to know or something. Like one of those stories that people tell about the glory days of college.”
“That’s not true,” Tyler said. “First off, you’re going to be just as famous as I am, and secondly, I could never forget about you.” Tyler took a step forward, and Aileen backed up, bumping against the cool metal of the lockers. His hands lifted, pressing against them, hemming her in on either side, and she could feel the warmth of his body against her own. “It's for you, Aileen,” he said, voice low. “Didn't you guess?”
“What's for me?”
“The clause. The one that says that I can stay here until graduation. That I can still compete. I made them put it into my contract so that I could stay with you.”
Aileen looked up into those amazing amber-green eyes that always managed to mesmerize her. Tyler leaned down, and she tipped her chin up, sighing as his lips pressed against hers. She opened for him, letting his tongue in to explore, tasting him. He was so familiar—his body pressed against her own, his kiss claiming her. She knew those things. As it always did, his touch left her wanting more.
But she didn't know if she could wait three years for that more. Wait weeks or months at a time for an opportunity to see him. And she didn’t want him giving anything up for her when she wasn’t even ready to say that she wanted a relationship. She wasn’t sure a relationship would survive everything else that was going on between them, around them, and she didn’t want to start one just to watch it end painfully a week or a month or even a year later. If she was going to have Tyler, she already knew that she wanted it to be forever.
“I love you,” Tyler said, reaching up to brush his fingertips against the curve of her cheek.
It was the first time he’d said it first.
Only the second time either of them had said it aloud. And it was already too late.
One of his hands slid down to curl around her hip, holding her in close to him, and Aileen let herself rest against the strength of his lean frame for just a moment.
“I love you, too,” she said, and hoped that he couldn't hear the way that her voice caught over the words. “I really do, Tyler.”
He leaned in and stole another kiss, and she let him take that one, too, her fingers curling around the nape of his neck to hold him there, her other hand wrapping around the bicep of the arm that reached down to hold her hip.
When they paused to breathe, she slipped out from under his arms and grabbed one of the clean towels from her locker, laying it out on the bench. Tyler’s eyebrows shot upward. “Here?” he asked.
Aileen smiled at him, and hoped he couldn’t see that the expression wasn’t entirely happy.
If she was going to end it, she wanted one more thing to remember him by.
Chapter 8
Tyler's mouth was soft and warm on hers as she drew him down over her on the towel-covered bench, his hand still resting on her hip, and Aileen ran her fingers through his hair, blinking back the sting of tears that threatened at the backs of her eyes. She wasn't going to let him see them. It would only make him feel worse.
“You know,” he said against her neck as his mouth moved down, his hands going to the hem of her shirt to start pulling it over her head, “I think we've had sex in almost every sports-related place on campus now.”
She would have laughed, any other time, and she tried to, but it came out a little weaker than she'd meant. He looked down at her, his eyebrows drawing together over those amazing eyes. She'd spent so much time trying to map the color in them, and even now she couldn't quite say with any certainty. They were always shifting. Grey then green then amber. She wanted to imprint them on her memory so that she would never forget looking into them like this.
Her heart clenched, and she forced the thoughts and the feeling away. If they were only going to have one last time, she wanted it to be good. She wanted it to be a memory that she could treasure, not one that she would regret.
She lifted her hands so that Tyler could pull the shirt over her head, arching her shoulders up off the bench. He dropped it on the floor, and she reached for his, sending it the same way.
He was as glorious under the shirt as she'd thought he was the first time she saw him, all those rippling muscles, and she traced them with her fingertips, feeling the ridges of them under her hands, the rise and fall of his breath.
“I want you,” she said, because she did. She would always want him.
Tyler smiled down at her. “Well that's a good thing, because I want you, too. You drive me crazy, you know that, Aileen?”
“Do I?” She managed a better laugh that time, and dragged him up for a kiss that started slow and became hungry. Needy. She was going to have to give this up and she wasn't ready, but better she end it before it became a chore for both of them. Something bitter and toxic, more painful than it was already going to be.
“Absolutely wild,” Tyler said when the kiss broke, and his voice was rough.
He tugged at the waistband of her shorts, and Aileen lifted her hips to let him take those off, too, kicking her shoes off the end of the bench when they were gone. Laid out under him in nothing but her underwear and sports bra, she breathed in the scent of his cologne and wrapped a leg around his thigh, urging him closer so that he straddled the bench between her legs.
Two of his long, slender fingers stroked up the curve of her under her panties, and Aileen pressed up into it, her body starting to sing with the pleasure of his touch. It didn't know or care that this would be the last time. It only wanted him and his hands and his mouth and his cock, and Aileen wasn't going to argue with that.
“Tyler,” she breathed, soft enough that if her voice cracked he wouldn't hear it.
“You want something?” he teased, smiling that brilliant smile at her.
“Yeah,” she said. “Told you already what it is. Now get to giving it.”
He laughed, and the sound pooled warm in Aileen's chest. She let out a slow breath, pushing herself up so that she could strip out of the sports bra, and then settling herself practically in his lap, kissing him hard.
His hands slid over her hips and up the bare curves of her waist to cradle her breasts, and he dipped his head to take one of her nipples into his mouth, making her gasp. Aileen wrapped her fingers around the nape of his neck again, wanting to hold him near. Wanting to never let him go. Warm lips brushed against the curve of one breast, then across the valley between them so that he could catch the other nipple gently between his teeth.
She didn't want gentle, Aileen realized suddenly. Her hands wrapped around his shoulders tight. “No more foreplay,” she ground out through her teeth.
Tyler lifted his head and looked up at her, and for a moment there was something like concern on his face, but she saw him push away whatever had made him uneasy, and he chuckled again. “Want it that bad, huh?”
“Yeah,” Aileen said, pushing him down onto his back on the towels. “I want it that bad.”
She yanked her panties down and off and then his shorts, and he reached up to hold her hips as she straddled him, guiding him into her where she was already wet with need. Both of them groaned, and his fingers tightened their hold. When he looked up at her, his eyes were dark and hot with want, and Aileen felt an answering heat growing in her belly, burning between her thighs. She lifted herself up and slid down again setting a fast pace, and he watched her through half-lidded eyes with his lips parted and his hips rocking up to meet her.
This was the way that she wanted to remember him: looking at her and only her. Wanting her just as much as she wanted him. She wanted to remember the way that he felt inside her, and the grasp of his hands on her hips. The burn in her thighs as she worked herself up and down on his length. The way his breath sounded, coming fast and tight with pleasure.
“Damn, Aileen. Have I told you that you're perfect?”
Not nearly enough, she might have answered if she could have found the levity, but she just shook her head, tossing a few loose strands of sweat-damp hair out of her face.
“Well, you are,” he said, and his hands slid up her back, guiding her to bend down so that their mouths could meet, the kiss much slower than the hard pace she'd set.
For a moment, her rhythm faltered and slowed to match, and they were rocking against each other, every nerve lighting up with pleasure. But it was too much like making love. Too much like the kind of sex that people who thought they were going to be together forever had, and Aileen couldn't take it. She broke the kiss, arching back to brace her hands against his thighs, and picked up the pace again. Tyler moaned her name like he was praying it, and god she was going to miss him. She was going to miss everything about him.
His hands were sliding over her thighs, curling around the backs of them so that he could run his short nails up over thin, ticklish skin, tracing lines that just barely stung in their wake. She wanted him to press them deeper, leave marks that she could remember him by. She wanted his touch to sink under her skin and stay there forever.
“Fuck,” she breathed, and he echoed the word.
One of his hands left the other lingering on the muscled curve where her thigh met her buttock and slid between them, fingers stroking over her clit. Aileen's hips bucked into the touch, and he rubbed a little more firmly. A whine slipped its way up from somewher
e behind her ribs and escaped through her clenched teeth, and he smiled.
“Love the sounds you make,” he said, soft, like it was a secret.
She rolled up to meet his touch, down onto his cock, and let herself make the sounds that were tangling up in her throat. If he wanted to hear them, she could give that to him. Give him something to remember her by the same way that she was storing up memories of him. She doubted they would last, not when he would have so many other choices once he started in the NFL, but she hoped that they would come into his mind sometimes. That he would think about her, and want her. Because she was going to be thinking about him, wherever she was, and it would be a comfort to think that maybe sometimes he was lying in his bed somewhere, remembering her and wishing that maybe they'd had a little longer. That maybe he would wrap his hands around himself and come with images of her behind his eyes. She wanted to give him that.
Her body wound itself tighter under the press of his thumb against her clit. He was just holding it there now, letting her do all the work. She was close, his cock inside her and his hands on her too much to keep resisting. Her pace picked up, lost its smooth, even cadence, and she knew that he could feel how close she was, too. His eyes, which had closed at some point as she moved over him, opened again, and he watched her like he was drinking her in.
“Come on, Aileen. Let go,” he said, low and smoky. “I want to feel you. All tight around me.”
She shuddered, and the pleasure pulled taut. It burned at the core of her. She moaned his name. His hands tightened on her hips, dragging her down hard, and that was it. It exploded outward, sparking along her nerves. He groaned under her, and she felt him follow.
The world reduced itself down to a single point.
When it expanded outward again, she was still straddling Tyler, his hands on her hips. She swayed a little. Her body wanted to sink down, lay against his chest, but she didn't let it. That would be too much like cuddling, and she wasn't going to send him that kind of signal. Not now. Carefully, she pulled off him, and reached for her underwear.