Finally, he crawled up to kiss me. I could taste myself on his stubble and lips. His hardness pressed against my thigh and made me tremble. I instinctively reached down for him, but he placed his hand over mine with a chuckle.
“When we do that,” he breathed against my cheek, “It's going to be different.” He leaned in and kissed my ear before whispering, “I want you in a nice, soft bed where I can take you over and over again. I want you all night long.” He kissed my ear again and nibbled it swiftly. Another shudder racked my body.
Not long after, I went home in too much of a daze to even say hello to my mother. Seeing her lying comfortably in bed out of the corner of my eye, I walked straight to my bedroom to crawl into bed. My mind was racing. All I could do was think about everything he’d said, especially the bit about him taking me all night long.
I closed my eyes and thought about how intently he had watched me. I remembered how I squirmed against him, just before the moment I came. He made it clear he was fully focused on my pleasure and my pleasure alone, even when I tried to reach for him.
He was right. Asshole or not—I liked him that way.
I was on my bed, staring up at the ceiling and all I could do was think about what had just happened. It was all about her pleasure. I even stopped it from going further. Usually I was the type to go straight to fucking with no detours after getting so worked up. That’s how I operated and there were never any complaints in the past.
But with Ivy everything felt different. I wanted to savor things with her. I knew if I let things escalate when she reached for me, I would have ended up getting what I wanted. It would have felt more like it did with anybody else. For some reason, I liked the little game of chase the two of us were playing. The other problem was the thought of losing interest in her was almost terrifying to me. Any time I had sex with someone in the past, I quickly lost all interest. I turned to my side and stared out the balcony doors, one of which stood ajar.
RING!
“Shit.” I jumped, startled from my phone.
I swiped it off my nightstand. It was my father calling. This time, I couldn’t think of anything my dad could possibly chew me out for. He probably just wanted to chat. I gave it some thought for a second before pressing the ignore button. I changed into gym clothes and headed to the weight room to try and work out my frustrations.
On my way down the stairs, I ran into Noah.
“Tutoring this late?” He joked. I snorted and shook my head, making to continue going down the stairs but he held me up. “For real though, how is tutoring going?”
I tried to play it cool by shrugging, “Ah, you know.”
Noah immediately sensed something was up. After all, he was the only teammate who had looked at me curiously when I had been messing up all through practice. He was the one I wanted to avoid the most.
“Guess so,” he muttered unconvinced. He stared me down before finally asking, “She got a nice ass? Nice tits? She wear nerdy tutoring glasses?” He said as he elbowed me playfully.
“Hey man, don’t talk that way about her.”
I instantly felt hot and a little angry. I didn’t want Noah thinking about Ivy that way, or any way really. My thoughts had spilled out of my mouth before I could stop it from happening.
Noah jerked his head back and laughed in surprise. “So you went and got territorial, huh? That’s not normal, Bryce. I think it’s the books you gotta be hitting hard not your–” Noah stopped abruptly. He was teasing in good fun, but the look on my face made it clear that wasn’t okay.
I looked past Noah at the mirror behind him, seeing my red and angry face reflected. I was confused. Ivy wasn’t my girlfriend or anything, but I was getting all worked up over some senseless comments my friend was making. If it was any other woman we were talking about, I would have joined in. The conversation would have gotten raunchier by the second, eventually devolving into crude jokes thrown between us. This time, however, I wasn’t in the mood to joke around—not about Ivy, anyway.
Noah still didn’t let up. He smirked and casually mentioned, “My grades are starting to slip too. Maybe I can stop by the tutoring center too, help get it…err, them up.”
I felt my face burn, “Her slots are all full.” I cringed the moment I said it. I had set him up perfectly for another crass joke. “But she has a friend,” I blurted out before Noah had a chance to capitalize on a new joke. Normally I loved joking around like that, but there was something about Ivy that didn’t make it funny for me.
Noah arched his brow, but seemed to take the bait. "Is she cute?"
I honestly couldn’t say for sure even though I had spent almost an entire session talking to Stella, much to Ivy’s irritation. I realized I hadn't really noticed anybody else ever since the first time I met Ivy. A lump formed in my throat.
“Yea. I dunno…Maybe. You should call and check Stella’s schedule.” I muttered before hopping down the stairs and storming out the front door. I needed to get out of the house and I needed to work out my confusion, both of which had gotten worse in the last twenty minutes.
Unfortunately, the weightlifting wasn’t doing anything but making me angrier. The more I worked out, the more worked up I felt. Any thoughts of Ivy pushed me further until I finally decided to give up on using weights as a form of pseudo-therapy. It was obvious it wasn’t going to work. I finished my water and slammed it into the recycling bin before heading to the shower, cranking it all the way to cold and standing under the stream, shivering.
All I was sure of was one thing: life was a lot easier without all these things called feelings.
The following morning, I woke up with an immense sense of guilt weighing down heavily on my chest. I sat up and took in a few deep breaths, trying to calm down and fully wake my mind up. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t even checked on my mom when I got home. There was no excuse for it.
I hopped out of bed and threw on a light gown before walking out of my room to look for her. I heard rummaging outside so I walked toward the backdoor to find her out on the sun porch, repotting some plants and sporadically humming a happy tune. I leaned against the wall and smiled. I watched her for another minute or two. I was just so happy to see her up and moving, doing something she truly enjoyed with minimal pain.
When she straightened up to step out, I put on a somewhat serious face, “Mom you know you shouldn’t be in the sun too much.” I said, knowing the sun could cause lupus flare-ups.
I didn’t want my mother to be in more pain than she had to be. Even though the gardening work was great for her mental health, I couldn’t help voicing my concern. It was something I adopted during my years of being her caretaker. Mom handled it well, always, either by giving in or standing her ground. There was a mutual understanding between the two of us that it was okay and valid to voice concerns and feelings.
“Oh, you worry too much!” she mumbled as she dug her hands into the soil. “You’re a college student, dear. You should be out living your life, not just rotting away in the house with me because I’m ill.” She turned to smile sweetly at me.
“You can’t stop me from worrying.”
“But I can stop you from rotting,” She said with a grin. I loved to see her in such high spirits and back to her old spunky self. That was something that got more rare as time passed. “Although I may be too late on the push to get you out there,” she went on in a sort-of sing song tone. I immediately felt my cheeks burn. “I noticed you went straight to your room last night.”
My mouth opened and closed a couple times, before I placed my hands to my cheeks in vain efforts to cool them. I knew I was blushing like a mad woman. It was obvious something was going on in my life that I hadn’t told her about.
“I, uh. I…”
I was a stammering wreck.
Mom laughed with a little slap of her hand, “I’m just glad my daughter finally has a reason not to want to look her mother in the eye.” She straightened up and looked at me straight in the eyes with a knowi
ng smile. “I hope to meet him someday?”
I looked at her in shocked horror. That statement wasn’t a statement at all. It was a question. And I didn’t exactly have an answer for her either. I could never tell her what had happened with Landon and I. I also wasn’t sure I was willing to divulge how we met to begin with. But, more importantly, I wasn’t sure I was ready to admit how I really felt about him—even if I knew the truth deep down.
Landon had made me want to do things I would have scoffed at before. I took risks because of him, but he pushed me just the right amount, never too much. He had really gotten under my skin from day one, but back then I could have never seen anything like this coming. It was all surreal and, for that reason, there was nothing I could say to my mother. How could I even approach Landon and invite him to dinner or something? It seemed impossible to me.
In some ways, it felt like I was living two different lives. The thought of having those two lives meet felt terrifying.
“Um,” I said before clearing my throat. “I have to get to class.”
Mom laughed and waved me away, turning her attention back to the plants she was repotting. As I got dressed for class and made sure all my things were together in my messenger bag, a sense of relief settled on me. Any good day for my mother put me at ease; especially when I had to be on campus all day. I pulled my hair into a ponytail and tugged on the corners of my cardigan.
It was going to be a full day of classes and no tutoring. I wasn’t sure if I liked that or not. Ever since Landon started appearing on my schedule at the Tutoring Center I was unsure what the feeling in my stomach meant. Whether it was good or bad was still lost on me. All I knew was it only happened when my eyes landed on the name Landon Bryce printed on the daily schedule. And, every time, it would take every ounce of my self-control not to obsess over my upcoming session with him. It always turned out to be excruciatingly distracting when I worked with my other students. As I walked out of the house I realized it was probably no accident he always scheduled his sessions during my last available slot of the day.
I took my seat in my Political Science class and waited for the room to fill up. I always got there about ten minutes early to my first class. I liked to look over the key points of the chapter the professor would be covering, but I was too distracted to do that now.
My mind wandered to him, even as the professor started lecturing. I looked out the window to look at the football stadium. This was the first time I actually looked at the stadium, despite having sat in the same seat since the start of the semester. I stared at it for a long while, remembering my day in the stands with Landon.
Maybe it wasn’t as ugly as I originally thought it was. Maybe the clash of the modern look to the stadium wasn’t so bad with the old, classical buildings. It stood out. It was different and took some getting used to, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
I placed my chin on my hand, elbow propped on the table, as I continued to stare at the building. I did my best to force my memory with Landon at the stadium out of my head. Those thoughts were highly inappropriate to be thinking about in class. I squeezed my legs together and let out a little whimper, weakly disguised with a cough. I grabbed my book and stared at the words on the page until I was no longer thinking of Landon’s face between my legs.
I knew the big Homecoming Game was coming up in a few weeks. The hype on campus had already begun, but this was the first time I cared or even paid any attention to it. Not only did I have a reason to, I actually knew someone in the game. Well, I more than knew him.
I suppressed a giggle and pulled out my cell phone. I hid it under the desk as I opened up the browser and searched “Haywood University Homecoming Game.”
The first article I opened had a large picture of none other than Landon Bryce running with a football in hand, sporting the university team’s uniform. I stared at the picture. I would have never thought a man in a football uniform, a jock, would be so attractive to me. My mother was right in warning me not to easily dismiss others based off something so superficial. Now I was finally starting to get it.
I scrolled past the photo and skimmed through the article, quickly becoming aware of the fact that I was in way over my head. I knew nothing about the sport so I decided to start by searching the different football positions. Then I looked up the rules. I wanted to learn as much as possible before the big game, if not sooner. As I got lost in articles, blog posts, and informational pages I couldn’t believe how far I had gotten.
Did I actually want to impress Landon Bryce?
I didn’t know what had gotten into me, but I was done with the confusion and waiting around. I needed to actually do something. My answer to that was to hop in my car and zoom off to the Tutoring Center, obnoxiously double-parking just like I did the first time I stormed into there. This time however I had completely different intentions. I knew it was Ivy's day off, but there was something I needed to do that I could only do there. I walked in and was glad to see Stella sitting at her desk, thankfully not with a student.
Stella looked up from what she was doing and gave me a smile. I smiled as she motioned me over.
“Ivy’s off today,” she chirped.
“I know,” I responded, taking a seat next to her. She looked at me curiously.
“Umm okay. So what’s up, Mr. Bryce?”
“I need Ivy's address,” I said, cutting right to the chase.
Stella jerked her head back and crossed her arms. She looked at me, clearly sizing me up before cautioning, “She lives with her mom, you know.”
“I know, but I’m glad to know how easily you’re telling me her whole life story,” I joked.
Stella chuckled. “Like it’s not something you didn’t already know!” She pulled out a notepad and scribbled Ivy’s address down, ripping the paper off and handing it to me. “There, now you can leave me alone.” She grinned.
“What kind of friend just gives out addresses like this? I could be an axe murderer or something.”
Stella rolled her eyes, "Please, you don't want to kill her.” She leaned in with a smirk, “You want to fuck her and trust me, she needs to be fucked."
I stared at her in shock. As much as the two of us had joked around I wouldn’t have expected her to be so direct with me—even with her outspoken and bubbly personality. I wondered just how much she knew, but now wasn’t the time to ask, much less the place to have that sort of conversation. I swiped the paper off the desk and stuffed it in my pocket.
“Thanks,” I mumbled before practically jogging out of the Tutoring Center. It was probably for the best now not to address the last thing she said. I could still hear her laughing as the doors of the center closed behind me.
Emboldened, I got into my car and drove to the address. It was close to campus so it didn’t take long. I was on the opposite side of the street so I pulled in behind a car and turned to look at her house. I wanted to get out of my car, walk over there, and ring the doorbell but then something caught my eye. An older woman was in the front yard, gardening. I narrowed my eyes and shielded the sunlight with my hand on my forehead. The woman looked happy, but looked to be moving slowly with pain. I figured it was Ivy’s mother. For some reason I immediately got cold feet. I wasn’t ready to march up there and talk to the woman. I didn’t want to try and explain who I was.
I sat back in my seat and continued to glance at Ivy’s mother as I tried to figure out what to do next. I really wanted to see Ivy now. I watched as she dug into the soil of a potted plant. Ivy really must have been a strong woman to be able to take care of her mother and go to school. Not to mention, she worked at the tutoring center with what little free time she had.
Slowly, all the pieces started to come together in my head.
I went around in my fancy car and touted my status. I lived without a care in the world and whenever I had to put actual effort in to school I got pissed off. Meanwhile, there was someone like Ivy who found strength to move forward no matter how tough thing
s got. I wanted to see her even more now. I felt an even greater pull to her and was baffled that she could open up enough to be interested in a guy like me.
I drove back to my house and ran upstairs to my bedroom, ignoring the calls from the few teammates hanging out in the living room. I practically slammed my bedroom door shut and locked it. I pulled the small paper Stella gave me out of my pocket. It made me smile. She had written Ivy’s phone number down on it even though I specifically asked for her address. Making a mental note to thank Stella later, I grabbed my phone and opened up my messages. I tapped the screen after entering Ivy’s number, thinking about what to send her.
“Are you thinking about me as much as I’m thinking about you?” I smirked and sent it, flopping back on my bed as I waited for an answer. I waited.
And waited.
Fourth Down and Dirty: A Bad Boy Sports Romance Page 8
