by Hazel Kelly
I thought he might say more about the site since he built it, but the word dazzling marked the extent of his humblebrag.
“In exchange for the drinks you’ve enjoyed tonight,” Carter said. “We ask only that you take a few flyers to pass out on campus and take home to your parents, who I’m sure have even better taste than you.”
“Especially your mom!” the same idiot jeered.
Carter shot him a stop-lowering-the-tone-fuckface look, and the guy stayed quiet after that.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t say the same about the two corset-clad sorority girls next to me, who I didn’t even notice until I heard Carter’s name escape one of their pouty mouths.
“God, what I would do to that boy if I got him alone,” one of them said, staring up at him like she was ready to sell her soul for a chance to suck his dick.
“You know he'd be up for it, too,” her curly-haired friend said. “I heard he's a total freak.”
“Apparently, he made Britney come four times in one night.”
Who the fuck is Britney? I reached up to loosen my choker only to find I wasn't wearing one. My throat was just closing up from the inside. And so were the walls. They were caving in so fast I could feel it in my ribcage.
“Once would be enough for me,” Curls whispered.
“Not me,” Red Lips said. “I'd want to date him for at least a little while.”
Curls shook her head. “Impossible. You can't tame a wild animal.”
I pulled my phone out, pretended to be suddenly startled by something I found, and turned to Zoey. “I'm really sorry, but I have to leave.”
Her face furrowed. “What?”
“It's an emergency.” If I don't get some fresh air I'm going to faint on this sticky-ass floor.
“Yeah right,” she said. “Tell Romeo I said hi.”
“It's not that,” I said, feeling like I was about to burst into tears. “It's Sadie.” I hated to use her as an excuse again, but she was the only person besides Zoey who I would drop anything for. Well, maybe there was one other person, but I really didn't want to think about that now.
She groaned. “She should get a therapist and stop dicking you around like this.”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Carter said, extending a palm towards Logan. “The man of the hour!”
The whole room whooped and cheered.
“I'm so sorry,” I said. “Tell Logan I said congratulations again.”
“It would mean more coming from you,” she said, clearly pissed at me. Not that I could blame her.
“I told him earlier,” I said, but she refused to look at me again.
I pushed my way through the crowd towards the front door, not knowing whether I planned to walk ten miles in the cold or just go home and cry myself to sleep. All I knew was that I felt pathetic. And that I needed to think.
I mean, it's not like I was mad at Carter. He hadn't done anything wrong. Or at least, he hadn't done anything I'd asked him not to do. Then again, maybe the problem was that I had no idea what he had or hadn't done, and the not knowing was killing me.
If only he would say something really mean to me or flirt with another girl in front of me. Something to keep my obsessing at bay. But he'd never done anything of the sort. On the contrary, he'd treated me better than every actual boyfriend I ever had.
He was interested in me, cared about my feelings, cared about my pleasure. And when he was with me, I felt like the prettiest girl in the whole world, like I really was lit from within. I even felt like that when he wasn't around, when he was- what- out making some other girl feel like that? Or simply not thinking of me at all?
I took a deep breath when I got to the sidewalk and looked both ways.
There were a few students out, most of them walking with their heads down, small billows of hot breath coming out their mouths so they looked like train cars chugging along. And, naturally, there were also small groups of loud revelers going to and from the campus bars that were only a few blocks away.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I took it out, hoping it was Sadie inviting me somewhere or a quick text from Zoey that would let me know she wasn't too angry with me. But it was neither.
You better be going around to the back stairs, because if you aren't in my room when I get up there, I'm going to be pissed.
My chest loosened, and I looked over my shoulder. I didn't even think he'd seen me leave.
And if that's exactly what I'm doing? I asked.
The moving dots popped up on the screen so I knew he was typing, and I walked along the sidewalk into the closest shadow to wait for his response.
Then I'm going to eat Reese's off your perfect body until you beg for more.
I smiled, suddenly oblivious to the way the cold air was burning the inside of my nose.
Maybe thinking could wait.
T W E N T Y F O U R
- Carter -
I hurried upstairs, stripped down to my boxers, and lay on my side across the bed, cocking one knee to get into the cheesiest, most overtly sexual pose I could think of. Then I messed up my hair and waited for Nina’s arrival.
Her soft knock came a moment later.
“Come in.”
She burst out laughing as soon as she saw my pouty expression, her electric gaze sweeping down my dramatically posed body. “What if I'd been someone else?” she asked, slipping inside and locking the door behind her.
“It was a risk I was willing to take to impress you,” I said, hopping up and going over to help her out of her clothes.
She blushed and blinked at me, her eyes slightly red from a night of heavy partying. “I'm conflicted now,” she said, pulling her green earmuffs off as she glanced at the bed and then back at me.
“Conflicted?” I unzipped her jacket without tearing my eyes from hers.
“I don't want you to think a sexy pose is all it takes to seduce me.”
I leaned forward to whisper in her ear, pushing her jacket off her shoulders at the same time. “You underestimate me.” I could feel the cool winter air still clinging to her flushed cheek, so I pressed the side of my face against hers and raised a hand to heat the other.
“What are you doing?”
“Warming up your cheeks,” I said, pulling my face back and lifting my other hand so I could admire her face while I did it.
She stared back at me but didn't say anything as the quiet tension between us grew louder.
I broke it with a kiss, keeping her face in my hands for a second before dropping one down to where her heart was pounding in her neck.
When I tried to pull back, she leaned forward, as if my kiss were her only source of breath.
My lips spread into a smile and I whispered her name.
“What?”
“Let's play a game.”
“Later,” she said. “Right now I need you.”
It was as close to begging as she'd come yet, and while the immediate reaction of my dick didn’t surprise me, her words triggered another sensation, too. An unexpected pang. In my heart.
“Please.”
“Don't worry,” I said, somewhat unnerved at the realization that I wanted her back as much as she wanted me. Needed me. Those words. No woman had ever said them to me with such sincerity. Or if they had, I didn’t hear it. Not like I did when those words passed over Nina's lips. It almost felt like they were spoken at a special frequency that only I could hear. “It's a naked game.”
“Oh, well if it's a naked game,” she joked, pulling her sweater off over her head to reveal a pale pink bra that drew my eyes straight to her cleavage.
“Your pants, too,” I said, stepping forward to trace the lacy edges of her bra with my fingertips.
She undid her fly and wiggled her jeans over her hips while I freed her breasts. “I can't get them off the rest of the way while you're doing that,” she said, watching as I groped her soft tits and tweaked her puckered nipples between my fingers.
“Then your ankles shall remain bound,
” I said, like some sort of medieval warlord as I scooped her up and tossed her gently on the bed.
She leaned up and reached for her ankles.
“Leave it,” I said, swatting her hands away. “Lie down.”
She did as I asked- as if she'd trusted me her whole life- and laid her head on a pillow at the top of the bed, her silky blonde hair glowing outwards like a halo. “What's the game?”
I grabbed a bag of Reese's Pieces from my nightstand drawer. “It's the Reese’s Game you've come to know and love.”
Her eyes smiled.
“With the added challenge of concentration,” I said, crawling over her and positioning her arms out to her sides.
She looked up at me with the face of an angel, her chest rising and falling beneath me. “Concentration?”
“Yeah,” I said, setting the first Reese's piece in the hollow of her throat before trailing a line down to her belly button. “So we both have to answer the questions, as usual, but your goal is to keep the candy where it is, and mine is to make you squirm.”
“Oh dear,” she said as I laid a candy on her forearm, her elbow, and her shoulder. “I don't think I'm going to be very good at this.”
“You will be,” I said, closing her eyes gently with my fingertips and laying a candy shell on each one. “Just remember that the better you are, the better I have to be.”
“How will I know what color the pieces are if I can’t see?”
“You'll have to trust me.” I laid two fingers on the outside of her panties- right over her slit- and dragged them up towards her clit, and the moment her breath parted her lips, I dropped a candy in her mouth.
“Thanks,” she said, smiling as she crunched it. “So who goes first?”
“Age before beauty,” I said, shifting on the bed. “The first one is yellow.” I bent down and kissed it off her wrist, letting my tongue swirl across her flesh before I pulled away.
“What's your question?” she asked.
“When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?”
“I wanted to be a ballerina and drive trains.”
I laughed. “Two uniforms I think you'd look exceptionally hot in.”
“My dad used to take me to watch the trains, and I'd count the cars while he…” She trailed off and her smile fell away.
“What?”
“He was a fun drunk then.”
“The next one's orange.” I scratched it off her arm just hard enough to mark her flesh and dragged it across her bottom lip before I let her suck it into her mouth.
“I dare you to do the ones on my eyes next,” she said.
“You don't think it's more fun when your blindfolded?”
“No. I waited all week to see you.”
There was that fucking pang again. “Okay,” I said, lowering my mouth over her nearest eye. “It's a brown one,” I said, licking across her eyelid so I could scoop it up against the bridge of her nose before plucking the other off carefully. “So is yours.”
“Thanks for not making me confess something to you with one eye open.”
“Sure,” I said, trying not to lose my nerve.
“What's your confession?” she asked, her body still as she turned her head towards me.
“My mom's a drunk, too.”
Her eyebrows drew close. “Really?”
I nodded.
“Since when?”
“I’m not exactly sure. I didn’t really grasp the extent of the problem until I hit high school.”
“I'm so sorry, Carter.” Her tone was sincere, but there was no pity in it, which I appreciated.
“Me too.”
“That's why you volunteer at the clinic. Because you can’t help her.”
“Yeah,” I said, relieved at her reaction but regretful that the game wasn't exactly going according to plan. “What's your confession?” I asked, slipping the second brown candy in her mouth and hoping she would change the subject.
“I thought about you while I was touching myself yesterday.”
Better. “Go on.”
“I imagined that I was on my knees in the shower.”
My heart rate jumped.
“And you were fucking my mouth.”
I dropped my eyes to her lips. “Say that again.”
“You were fucking. My. Mouth.”
I reached between her legs, my dick threatening to tear through my boxers as I found her wet slit. “Tell me more.”
Her eyes stayed on mine, sparkling in the dim light. “There was water streaming down your body and then over my face and neck.”
I parted her swollen lips and slid two fingers inside her.
Her breath hitched before she spoke again. “And you had my wet hair in your clenched fist.”
“Did you like that?” I asked, laying the fingers of my free hand on her neck before sliding them down over her breasts and belly and hips like the water in her fantasy might've flowed.
“I couldn't get enough,” she said, struggling not to squirm as I forced my fingers deeper. “No matter how rough you fucked me- no matter how hard I sucked- it was never enough.”
“The next one's orange,” I said, snatching the Reese's from the dip between her collarbones. “Show me.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, her eyelids growing heavy.
“Show me how you touched yourself,” I said, still stirring her insides with my fingers.
“But the Reese's will move. And I'll lose.”
“There are no losers in this game, Nina. Just show me.”
She looked nervous all of a sudden as she stretched her fingertips towards the headboard.
“I need you to show me,” I said, pulling my hand from her and raising my wet fingers to my lips.
She watched as I licked them and slid them into my mouth, sucking her sweet taste from them while I watched her right back.
Her flushed chest panted fast, but her hand moved slowly down to her swollen bud.
I pushed her knees apart so I could watch more closely, but her ankles were still bound, so I pulled her pants and underwear the rest of the way off and spread her legs wide. Then I crawled between them as she bit her lip and dipped the tips of her delicate fingers in her dripping slit.
Within seconds, I was hypnotized, unable to look away as she dragged her fingertips up one side of her clit over and over, crushing it before me with a tenderness I wasn’t expecting.
“Are you just going to watch or are you going to help?”
Fuck me. “I thought you Southern girls had manners?”
“Please,” she said, letting me hear the need in her voice. “Help me.”
I rose up on my knees and pulled my boxers off to get some cool air on my balls. Then I slid my fingers inside her again, taking mental notes as I watched how she got herself off.
Her fingers moved on autopilot, her hand bumping mine as I thrust deeper and deeper into her warm center. “Yes,” she moaned. “That's so good.”
I could feel her body’s temperature rising every time she clenched around me, could feel the potential energy pooling where our eager fingers met.
She groaned and closed her eyes, her lips falling apart in a way that stoked the desire burning inside me. Soon, the look of bliss on her face was so intense I had to stroke myself to ease the ache I felt for her, gently thumbing the bead of want that squeezed from the tip of my stiff cock.
“I'm close,” she said, forcing her eyes open and looking past the trail of candy on her torso to where we were touching her together and where I was now touching myself. “Fuck,” she whispered, locking her glassy gaze on my dick.
“Come for me,” I said, admiring every curve of her body from her hips to her breasts to her lips. “Come hard for me.”
She stared at me for a few seconds. “Carter, I-” Her head fell back against the pillow and her back arched, causing the candies to roll off her body onto the bed.
Her own hand fell away, and she was left bucking and writhing on mine, a
s if she were being shocked over and over again.
I kept stroking myself and watched her body shake, watched her eyelids flicker, watched the woman I adored lose control in front of me. And in that moment, I pretended she was mine alone.
Her hand found my wrist and held it still as she panted before me, her every heavy breath ruining me for other women.
I pulled my hand back and sucked my fingers clean again, my cock surging at the subtle sweetness of her silk.
She caught me enjoying her taste, and her eyes shied from mine.
“What?” I asked. “You're not the only one who can't get enough.”
She felt around the bed for the missing candies, tossing a few in her mouth before sitting up and holding one out to me.
It was orange.
She laid it on my tongue and then kissed me, tasting herself as we shared it between us.
When the shell finally began to soften, she pulled back, and I swallowed it with a smile.
Without a word, she flipped over and reached for my bedside drawer, her smooth body stretching across my bed before she returned with a condom.
I watched as she opened it and pressed it against the tip of my dick, my hard shaft stretching it taut as she rolled it down.
“I dare you to fuck me already,” she said, her tone playful and inviting.
I moved over her as she lay back on the pillow and bent her legs, her knees tight against my hips. “You're so beautiful it hurts,” I said, my eyes sweeping across her face.
“So are you.” She dragged a hand down my cheek and then reached between her legs to where my cock was straining against her mound. “Especially when you fuck me.”
I swelled in her hand as she teased herself with my head before guiding me to her entrance, her eyes begging me to sink inside.
So I did, causing us both to exhale sharply.
Once I was buried deep, she tilted her hips up and wrapped her legs around my back.
I sank even further until I was totally lost in her.
“Are you okay?” she asked, her voice soft and clear.
“Yeah.” I rested my forehead on hers. “You just feel so good.” I knew she wanted me to fuck her, and I knew how, but I just- I don't know. I didn't want it to be over that fast. I pulled myself together and straightened my arms, drawing my hips back so I could rock into her.
