Clean Break

by Erin McLellan

  “So, Connor, what year are you?” Joel’s voice made me jump. It shouldn’t have been surprising that Joel would home in on the shy guy in the space.

  “Senior. You?”

  “Same. Any plans for after college?”

  “I’ll be managing my family’s farm and businesses. Here in Elkville,” he added, like an afterthought that tasted bad in his mouth.

  “Ah. You guys run cattle?”

  “Some. We have a registered red angus herd, but our biggest operation is crops—wheat, hay, and peanuts . . .”

  Joel, who’d grown up around agriculture shit like that, had all kinds of questions, but I tuned out. Connor answered Joel’s questions with short, emotionless responses, and I zeroed in on the way his mouth moved. His sharp jaw, the divot between his eyebrows when he frowned, the dimple I could barely see in his cheek when he twisted his lips to the side in thought.

  Did he have dimples when he smiled? God, I hoped so.

  I had to get out of here.

  I drained the rest of my beer, chucked the cup in the trash, and left the kitchen without a word. My bedroom was empty, thank God. Last time we’d had a party, I’d had to kick out a couple guys who’d snuck in there to smoke.

  Within minutes, Paulie slipped through the door and shut it behind him.

  “Do not let me go home with that guy,” I said before he could draw a breath. “Seriously, man. I cannot deal with another unrequited crush on Connor Blume.”

  I couldn’t contain this need to be in Connor’s space, in his face, around him in any way I was allowed. It was as if an invisible magnet was inside me, growing bigger and bigger, pushing on my chest. Pushing me toward him. I was honestly short of breath, winded. Connor Blume completely winded me.

  Paulie didn’t speak at first, which didn’t bode well for me. He was dangerous when he was being introspective. “Are you friends with him?”

  “No.”

  “But you invited him to a party at your house?”

  “Yeah. We’re class partners. He’d had a bad day.”

  “That’s a thing a friend would do.”

  I shot him a dirty look, and he grinned, flashing me a quick view of the gap between his front teeth. It would be a lot easier to get mad at Paulie if he weren’t cute as a fucking button.

  “Don’t let me go home with him,” I repeated.

  “Are you drunk?” he asked.

  “No.” I’d only had two cups of beer spread out over the evening. Maybe I’d feel better if I changed that. Maybe more beer would stop me from making a big-ass mistake.

  If only beer worked that way.

  “Then I have no idea why you’re asking for my help. You’re an unimpaired adult who is capable of making his own decisions.”

  Paulie with the truth bombs for the win.

  I threw my pillow at him.

  I was not going to sleep with Connor Blume. We were not friends. We were make-out buddies who were incapable of having a real conversation.

  Repeat ad nauseam until the end of time.

  Chapter Seven

  CONNOR

  My to-do list said, Have a normal conversation with Travis. I wasn’t sure if any of the conversations we’d had today counted. I needed to be more descriptive when I wrote out my lists at the beginning of the week.

  Have a normal conversation with Travis where you don’t want to bite his head off and he doesn’t insult you.

  Have a normal conversation with Travis that doesn’t end or begin with making out in a storage closet.

  Have a normal conversation with Travis about his bookcase full of books you’ve never heard of but want to know everything about because his explanations will be brash and funny and so stinking smart.

  He was avoiding me. I couldn’t say he was ignoring me because he’d greeted me by name, but every time we were close to each other, he moved away. Since arriving, I’d gleaned that this was a party in his honor. Everyone kept congratulating him.

  Desi knew lots of people here, so she’d left me to hold up a wall next to a bad painting of a dairy cow. When Desi and I used to go to parties together, she’d try to babysit me, but I’d eventually convinced her that she could flit around like the social butterfly she was. Didn’t mean I didn’t hate standing here alone.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t know people here either. Leighton was around somewhere, and Alex had made a brief appearance before meeting up with a guy from Grindr. I liked Travis’s housemate, Joel. He’d been chill without being invasive, but his boyfriend, Paulie, had stared as if he knew too much.

  I suspected all of Paulie’s knowledge of me had to do with my failed hookup with Travis last year and not what we’d been getting up to in our storage closet.

  If it weren’t for Travis, I’d have been long gone, but I was going to have that damn conversation with him. My to-do list demanded it.

  Travis was sitting on the floor in front of the sofa, chatting with an enby art student named Roy, who I knew through FarmOUT meetings. Roy had sharp, striking features that they played up with bright makeup against their dark skin. They were currently resting their hand on Travis’s leg. I squelched the impulse to be jealous.

  Out of nowhere, a man with a neon-orange sweatshirt popped up next to me and leaned against the wall on the other side of the ugly dairy cow. He was handsome in a bland, shiny way.

  “Hey, I’m David.”

  I nodded at him. “Connor. Nice to meet you.”

  He smiled. His teeth were very white. “Can I get you a drink? Beer maybe? I think they have Coke in the fridge too.”

  “No, I’m good.”

  He faltered for a second but then touched my elbow. “Are you a student here? I’m not sure we’ve ever met.”

  “Yeah, a senior. I’m an agribusiness, animal science double major.”

  “I’m a communications major. I want to be a newscaster.”

  That almost made me laugh. He had the smile for it.

  “David McDavid!” Paulie’s voice startled me so badly I jumped about a foot. Was Teeth Guy’s name David McDavid? That was weird. Sounded like a newscaster though. “I need to talk to you. Immediately. It’s important,” Paulie said.

  David seemed as alarmed as me. He mumbled, “This can’t be good,” as he passed me.

  I glanced around the party. Maybe it was time for me to call it a night.

  My gaze strayed toward Travis, and he was actually looking at me, his eyes wide and angry behind his glasses. He turned to speak to Roy, giving them a kiss on the cheek, but then he was up and moving toward me. In a few strides, he was right in front of me, standing too close.

  I wanted him closer.

  His lips tipped up into a smile. I had to stop myself from reaching out for him.

  I was so happy he was finally going to talk to me.

  I didn’t care if that made me pathetic when every ounce of my blood was surging and singing with excitement.

  He didn’t say anything, and my tongue felt stuck to the roof of my mouth. My emotions were so out of control, like a railcar loose on the tracks. I hated that feeling. But I knew it was safe to feel that way too, with only Travis close enough to witness it.

  He lifted one of his big hands and cupped my jaw, his thumb stroking over my cheek.

  “Dimples.” His voice was soft.

  “What?”

  “You have dimples when you smile.”

  I schooled the joy that was evidently radiating from my traitorous face, and he laughed.

  “No, don’t stop. You’re gorgeous when you smile.”

  Did three sentences about my dimples count as a conversation? Because I was pretty sure I was going to kiss him if he didn’t stop touching me, and I’d never kissed anyone in a room full of people in my entire life. Wasn’t sure I could pull it off with all the performance pressure.

  I grabbed his wrist, and his eyes lit up. He glanced around the room like he was searching for something.

  When he turned back to me, I hoped that he’d foun
d it.

  “Your house,” he said.

  “What?”

  Did this count as a conversation if the only thing I said was “what?”

  “I want to go to your house.”

  Oh. Well, okay, then. It was his party. I supposed he could leave if he wanted to.

  We didn’t talk as we walked from his house to my campus apartment. It was a short trek, but took forever with the silence between us. Travis had pulled me out of his house without a word to anyone. I had no idea what we were about to do, but I wanted it so much it terrified me.

  I stopped in my tracks when we reached the steps of my building. “Desi.”

  I’d left without telling her. Shit. Shit. Stupid. I rooted my cell out of my pocket and called her.

  She answered on a laugh, her voice booming through the speaker of my phone. “Connor, did you leave?”

  “Yeah. I’m sorry. Is that okay?” She was used to me leaving early, but I didn’t like the idea of abandoning her when she needed me. “Are you all right there by yourself?”

  “Yep! Leighton is currently trying one of Angie’s ear candles and we’re all waiting to see how much shit she pulls out of his head.”

  I had no idea what any of that meant. Travis laughed beside me, and the music of it strummed through me.

  “So you’ll be able to get home, no problem?” I asked.

  “Of course. Chel just got here, so I’ve got a buddy. Relax, Connor. I’ll be fine. I’m not even drunk.”

  “Okay. If you need me though, call. I can come back.”

  “Go to bed, you boring redneck. Love you.”

  She hung up.

  “Everything good?” Travis asked.

  I nodded. It was cold out, the air crisp, and Travis had pulled the cuffs of his coat over his hands to keep them warm. Nervous energy pitched into my stomach, and anxiety doused me. What if I screwed up whatever this was? Sex and hooking up and kissing—it all made me so nervous.

  Or maybe it was the inexperience that made me nervous. Either way.

  Normally, when I fooled around with someone, it was planned out in advance through messages on a dating app or texts. I knew exactly what was going to happen.

  Nothing with Travis had ever been planned. Not our fumbling non-hookup outside the Yard last year. Not our storage-closet liaisons. Not this.

  I used my student ID to key us into my building, and we rode the elevator up to the top floor. I made a list of things I wanted to do with him in my head.

  Kiss his collarbones

  Kiss his ears

  Kiss his nipples

  There were a lot of parts of him I wanted to touch with my mouth, basically.

  His balls

  That last thought made me dizzy.

  The hallway was deserted. I opened my door and led him inside.

  After seeing his cute little house full of personality and weird shit, he’d probably think my space was clinical and boring. Which it was.

  “This is nice,” he said. “I’ve never been in one of these apartments. I didn’t know they had a kitchenette.”

  “Thanks. I like it. My parents wanted me to live on campus rather than stay at home and commute to class, so I could have the full college experience.”

  I followed him into my living space, where there was barely enough room for a loveseat, a coffee table, an entertainment center, and a tiny kitchen table.

  Travis glanced around, and I held my breath, waiting for him to find a flaw.

  “Where’s your cockroach?”

  “What?”

  Travis didn’t wait for me to answer. He swung my bedroom door open and stormed inside. This was not going at all how I’d expected.

  By the time I’d caught up, he had the cockroach’s clear box in his hands. “Yours is smaller than mine.”

  I almost cracked a smile, but managed not to.

  “What did you name it?” he asked.

  “I didn’t.”

  He gasped and glared at me. His playful, offended act made my blood run hot. “That’s so cruel. It’s a living, breathing thing. It needs a name.”

  “You name it.” He was the creative one.

  He stared at it for a long moment. “Cressida.”

  “That sounds like a girl’s name.”

  He placed the box back down on my bookshelf and spun to face me. “It is.” He unzipped his coat and let it fall to the floor. An itchy sensation swamped my palms, but I shook it off. When his fingers strayed to the bottom of his hoodie, I knew I was in for it. I needed to assert some control, or all of this would happen too fast for me to enjoy it.

  “It’s a male. The cockroach. They don’t give out females because they don’t want to risk one laying eggs.”

  That derailed him a little. “His name is Cressida then. You said I could name it.”

  “Okay.” My heart was hammering so hard in my ears that my voice sounded distorted when it came out of my mouth.

  He scowled, so I stepped toward him to pick his coat up off the ground. I hung it on the doorknob of the closet. That was better.

  “We can fuck in the closet if that will make you more comfortable,” he said, his voice delicious with sarcasm. “Don’t want to disturb our pattern.”

  Anger, bright and welcome, shot through my veins. “Sit down. On the bed.”

  His smile was perfect, like he’d gotten exactly what he wanted. Made me want to kiss him until he couldn’t think of a single comeback. He was such a brat.

  He sat, but he also whipped his sweatshirt and T-shirt up and over his head, knocking his glasses all askew. My greedy gaze latched onto a swath of muscle, dark skin, and a dusting of black chest hair. His belly button made my mouth water.

  “Keep going,” he said. “You’re in control.”

  We needed to talk, to have a conversation, a real one, about what was about to happen because I’d never felt less in control in my entire life.

  I had a plan. I really did. I was going to sit down next to him, and kiss all over his chest and abs, and then ask him what he liked, what he wanted, so I’d know how to be in control in a way that he’d enjoy. We’d talk about boundaries and dislikes. I’d hint at the whole virgin thing. Then we’d fool around.

  Easy peasy.

  Instead, Travis opened his mouth and said, “I want you to spank me.”

  I fell on him like a starving man.

  TRAVIS

  The moment Connor crawled on top of me, fully fucking dressed, and kissed me, I knew this was going to be good. He was all pent-up energy and frustration and strength. It’d been a minute since I’d been with someone who could overpower me, and my skin was aching for his hands to hurt me in all the best ways.

  I dug the way he kissed. He was exploring my lips, claiming them, with soft brushes and tiny sips, filling me with anticipation for what was next. I liked that he didn’t just stick his tongue in my mouth. What he was doing felt way more deliberate than that.

  I tugged on his coat. I needed him undressed. He sat up and slid it off, throwing it onto the floor. Then he frowned at it.

  “If you get out of this bed to hang your fucking coat up, I’m leaving.” I reached up and tweaked his nipples through his shirt. He captured my wrists and pinned me to the bed.

  “Am I in charge?” he asked, his voice adorably earnest rather than demanding. I nodded. “Will you tell me if I do anything wrong? Or if you don’t like it?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do we need a code word?”

  “A safe word, you mean?”

  His cheeks bloomed pink, and I stretched as much as his hands would allow so I could kiss him.

  “Yes, a safe word,” he said against my lips.

  “How about my safe word is ‘stop.’ And my code word, when I like what you’re doing, is ‘harder, please, harder.’ Your safe word is also ‘stop,’ but your code word is ‘Travis is the best in the entire world.’”

  “That’s more than one word.” He bent down and bit my collarbone, but not bef
ore I caught a tiny flash of dimples.

  A moan clawed its way out of my throat, and I wasn’t sure if it was because of the enticing sting of pain or his smile.

  I whispered, “Harder, please, harder,” and he laughed, a sound that was so sweet and rough, I had the undeniable urge to hug him. Thank fuck he was still holding my hands down, so I couldn’t act on such a stupid impulse.

  He sat up again, straddling me and letting go of my arms, which was bad. These hands might do crazy shit if they were free—like caress his cheek or sift through his red hair.

  “Will you keep your hands there?” he asked.

  “Sure.” At least I’d try.

  “No moving them.” He was getting bossy now, which was exactly what I wanted. I wanted him to douse himself in the control I could tell he craved.

  “Aye, aye, captain.”

  His fingers trembled over my throat, which sent a different rush of need through me. But he didn’t linger, trailing his hand down my chest so lightly I shivered. By the time he reached my ribs, I was squirming and out of breath. I craved something sharp.

  His mouth found the curve of my ribcage, and he bit me. A harsh, hungry groan tumbled out of my mouth. When he released my skin, the sensation rushed back in, and I melted.

  “Harder,” I breathed.

  “You sure?”

  “Fuck yes.”

  He moved down my abdomen, alternating between soft kisses and sharp nips. Then he licked my belly button. It was over so quickly, my brain wasn’t sure what had happened, but my body was on board. I arched hard, and sensation shot through my limbs. My fingers and toes tingled.

  “Um, whoa,” I said.

  “You liked that.” His voice was soft and slow, like he was blitzed.

  “Yeah.”

  He’d never licked me, or used his tongue at all, so that had surprised me, but I was also pretty sure no one had ever licked my belly button before. It’d felt too good to comprehend.

  He traced my navel with his thumb, and I whined desperately. The noise seemed to snap him into gear because he tugged open my jeans and slid them down, leaving my briefs behind. He made fast work of my shoes and socks, throwing them into a pile with my jeans on the floor.