She just keeps nodding at me, tears flowing out of her eyes. She finally says, “Yes . . . yes . . . I love you, too, Gavin.”
I smile. She cries. We sleep.
chapter fifteen
I watch her in the soft light of the rising dawn. I haven’t slept but a few hours. All I can do is stare at her while she sleeps. She is beautiful. She is innocent. She is mine.
My mind keeps going back to last night, to after she let me take her virginity. I half expected tears of regret, but it was quite the opposite. She surprised me with her admission of how wonderful I made the event for her. That it was better than she could have imagined. I suppose the fact that she orgasmed has something to do with it. She did shed some tears, but only over our mutual declarations of love.
We fell asleep holding each other. It was a foreign feeling, one I want to experience more of, but only with her. Only with Baylor. Last night was the first time I’d ever wanted a girl to stay the night. Hell, if I’m being honest, it wasn’t that I wanted her to stay—it was more like a primal need.
As she begins to stir, I trace her face with my eyes. I take in the light spattering of freckles across her nose that I can now see in the morning light streaming through my window. Her lips are still puffy with the evidence of our carnal lust for each other. The shape of her jaw reminds me of the bottom of a heart and her high cheekbones flatter her perfectly-sized face.
I allow my lips to follow the exact path laid by my eyes as I silently will last night not to be a dream.
Her eyes open slowly, followed by a slow grin that creeps up her face. Relief floods through me at her smile. It tells me that last night was not a mistake.
“Mornin,’ darlin’.” I frame her face with my hands, matting down her messy slept-on hair which I find undoubtedly sexy. I realize that I just want to keep her here all day. I want nothing more than to hole up in my bedroom with her, selfishly keeping her all to myself. I feel I’ve stumbled upon a hidden treasure, a precious gem that if shared with the world would cause chaos. Wars have been fought over women and I’m positive if anyone knew the true depth of Baylor’s existence, I would lose her to someone much more worthy.
I don’t deserve her. She’s everything that’s sweet and good. But I have no choice now. I have to be with her. She’s ruined me for all others. She fucking owns me.
“Morning,” she says shyly, bringing the sheet up to cover her exposed chest.
When she does this, it occurs to me that I hadn’t even noticed that her tits were showing. I was so focused on her face that I failed to recognize the very thing that would normally bring a man to his knees.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“I’m wonderful,” she says, and the appearance of her dimple tells me she speaks the truth.
She nuzzles into my neck and says, “I love the way you smell.”
I run my hand along her back making her shiver. I say, “I love the way your skin prickles under my touch.”
Muffled words come from where she has buried her face in me. “That’s because I love the way you touch me.”
“You’d better get used to it, because I plan on doing it a lot.”
She sighs at my words and turns on her side to cuddle into me, only to have her eyes go wide when her leg touches my morning wood.
I chuckle and then bask in the knowledge that I’m the first man she’s ever slept with, ever woken up next to . . . ever loved? Suddenly, my need to know overtakes my body’s inherent need to grind into her soft curves.
“Baylor, have you ever been in love before?”
She shakes her head into my shoulder. “No,” she confirms, bringing another surge of relief through my body. “You’re the first.”
“And hopefully the last,” I add. She raises her head up so that I can see her face when she smiles spectacularly at me as I silently wonder who the hell crawled into my head and has me thinking and spewing out all this romantic shit.
I shake my head, ridding it of any more ball-shrinking thoughts, and get back to more pressing matters. Like her soft curves pressing on my hard dick. “Please tell me you don’t have any plans today,” I say.
She looks me in the eyes. “Please tell me you have more condoms.”
I laugh as I wonder what happened to my sweet, innocent Baylor. Who is this sexually-charged woman who is undulating her thigh all over my dick? Then I remember the old saying about men wanting a good girl in the kitchen but a slut in the bedroom. Okay, so I wouldn’t go nearly as far as to say she’s acting like a slut. Maybe like a woman who has just been introduced to the Holy Grail or the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Something she wasn’t even sure existed.
I reach over and open the drawer in my nightstand and pull out the industrial-sized box of condoms, pouring them out onto the bed. Her eyes go wide and she exclaims, “It’s like Christmas!”
“And you’re the best goddamned present I’ve ever gotten in my life,” I say.
She blushes.
Good, I’m glad my sweet girl is still somewhere in there.
We lie in my bed, that is now illuminated by the afternoon sun. We’re broken from exhaustion and sore from sex, having used two more condoms.
“Darlin’, when you decide you’re gonna do something, you go all out, don’t you?” I tease.
“What is it they say? Go big or go home?” She laughs.
I grab her hand because it’s the only thing my body is physically capable of doing right now. “Never go home,” I say. “Stay here and go big. Over and over.”
She giggles. She thinks I’m kidding.
I reach for our phones that I retrieved earlier when I went down for a few bottles of water. I had put them on silent, but I know that both of us probably have a lot of questions being spewed our way since we’ve been MIA most of the day. I hand over her phone and we both tap away for a few minutes.
“You told Tori I wasn’t coming home?” She rises on an elbow as I continue lounging on my back.
“I texted her last night after you fell asleep. I didn’t want her to worry about you,” I explain. I had just sent a simple text as if it were from Baylor, telling Tori not to worry about her but that she wasn’t coming home. I can only imagine the barrage of texts she must have to sift through after that.
Baylor leans into me and places a kiss on my cheek. “Thank you,” she says. “That was really nice. I didn’t even think about the fact that she would freak out if I didn’t go home.” She studies me.
“What?” I ask.
“Are you sure you haven’t done this before?”
“What, have a girl sleep over?”
“No,” she says, with a fleeting look of disappointment. “Been a boyfriend. Are you sure you haven’t been a boyfriend before? You do it so well.”
Pride flows through me along with a sliver of guilt over the fact that instead of being a boyfriend, I was out being the man-whore of UNC. I pull her close and run my nose down her cheek. “No to both,” I say. “I’ve never been anyone’s boyfriend and I’ve never had a girl sleep over.”
“Huh?” she asks, her brow crinkled.
“You are the first on both counts,” I clarify.
“You’ve never had a girl sleep over?” she asks.
“Nope,” I say. “Never wanted one to stay that long—” I cut myself off when I realize what an ass that makes me sound like. I look at her with guilty eyes.
She sighs. “Gavin, I’m well aware of your past. And as long as it stays just that—your past—I’m willing to overlook it. Everyone deserves a chance to prove themselves after a mistake, or ten, or however many of them you made.” She visibly winces. “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know what number I am in the long line of notches on your bedpost.”
Well, it’s embarrassingly more than ten. I agree that she doesn’t need to know. I need every advantage I can get with this girl. She has to overlook a lot more than my sexual past and I know it. “Darlin’, you will never be anything other than number one for m
Her face brightens and then she looks down to her vibrating phone. “It’s Tori, I’d better get this.”
I nod at her and start going through my own texts and voicemails.
Shit. I forgot about the party at Karen’s sorority house. I know I told her we’d go, but I’m just not so sure how Baylor will feel about it. That’s not true. I’m pretty sure I know how Baylor will feel about it.
As soon as Bay gets off the phone, I ask, “Feel up to a party?”
“A party?” she asks, enthusiastically. “Sure, where?”
“It’s at the TriDelt house,” I say with a deliberate wince.
“A sorority party?” Her happy mood falters.
I drop my phone and grab her hand. “I know it’s not your thing. You are definitely not sorority and I don’t ever expect you to be like that. In fact, you’re quite the opposite. It’s one of the things I love about you. The ability to just be yourself,” I say. “But we’re together now and I want you to be in every part of my life.”
Her smile tells me she won’t put up a fight.
I take her phone from her hand and tug on her arms. “Come on, I want to take a shower with you.”
When she rolls out of bed, her leg gets tangled in the top sheet, snagging it off the bed, allowing us our first look at the result of our night together. My sheets have small blood stains in a couple of places. Baylor’s face flushes. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Gavin. I’ll replace them for you.”
I laugh. “You’re obviously way more concerned about the appearance of my sheets than I am,” I say. “Besides, they kind of hold a sentimental value now, don’t you think? And nobody but you and me will ever see them.” I pull her naked body into the bathroom behind me. “We’ll shower, then we can wash the sheets. Or just buy new ones.”
My shower is barely large enough for two, which is fine since I want as much of her body touching mine as possible. I squirt some body wash into my hands and slowly rub it down her arms, her hands, each individual finger. Her head falls back as she enjoys the massage, causing water to stream down from her drenched hair over her shoulders, making her look so damn hot I can barely stand to look at her.
The body wash allows my hands to easily flow over every slick curve of her. It’s not long before I give in to my carnal needs and bring my hands up to cup her gorgeous tits.
It dawns on me that using my shampoo and body wash will make her smell like me. The thought makes me even harder. But I know she must feel completely raw after last night and our marathon session this morning, so no matter how much I want to bury myself in her again, I won’t do it strictly for my pleasure.
I couldn’t give a shit about my pleasure anyway. I’ll spend my life trying to put that look on her face from last night. The look she bestowed upon me right after she gave me her virginity—right after I said I loved her—it was like she had just found out she won the fucking lottery.
After working on her tits and extracting porn-worthy moans out of her, my soap-slickened hands work their way down over her flat stomach. I reach her light-brown curls to find her clit throbbing almost as much as my dick. I work my thumb around in slow circles until she falls apart under my ministrations, shouting out God’s name along with mine as I almost blow my load just from watching her.
I want this. I want this all the time. I want her. Every damn day. A ridiculous thought pops into my head and before I can censor it, it comes out of my mouth. “Live with me over spring break.”
She looks at me, her eyes glazed over and still coming down from her orgasm. Her expression is a mixture of elation, surprise and confusion all at once.
I continue, “I know you were fixin’ to head home in a few weeks for break, but stay. Switch your plane ticket for when you leave for summer break. All of my roommates are leaving and we’d have the house to ourselves.”
She studies me for a minute. I can see the debate going on behind her eyes. Then a slow grin takes over her face and she reaches a hand out to grab my dick. She expertly jacks me off exactly the way I showed her, as if she’s done it a thousand times before. It doesn’t take long before I’m blasting my load into the warm rivets of water running off our combined bodies.
I’m pretty sure I have my answer.
chapter sixteen
What the hell was I thinking bringing Baylor to a sorority party? Walking through the front doors, all I can picture are those illustrations where you pick out the one thing that doesn’t belong with the others.
Bay might as well have shown up carrying a neon sign emblazoned with ‘OUTSIDER.’ It’s almost laughable how she stands out, but the funny thing is—I think she planned it that way.
Me, I’ve got on a pinstriped button-down polo, rolled up to the elbows and left open over a plain white t-shirt. It’s pretty much my usual attire which tends to blend in well with the Greeks.
Baylor’s never been one to care what others think of her. Still, in her nervousness over the party, I thought she might attempt to look like she fits in. So as I again look her over from head to toe, I’m in awe of the individuality she has never failed to express. She’s not wearing a short skirt or a tight designer dress paired perfectly with stilettos and a matching pedicure that would mirror what most of the girls in this house are wearing. No, my girl is dressed in faded jeans that are frayed at the cuff, converse sneakers and an adorable shirt that’s just tight enough to enhance her curves. When I picked her up earlier, I cracked up at the Dr. Seuss shirt that pictures The Cat in the Hat and says ‘Read a book – Stay in school.’ Apparently she was reading over my shoulder earlier today when Karen texted me asking if ‘Thing 2’ was coming to the party with me. I’m quite sure the shirt was deliberate.
I know she didn’t dress this way for me—she probably thought I expected her to conform, even if just for the night. I reach in my pocket and let my finger run over the rough etching of her engraved keychain. What she doesn’t know, and what I plan on telling her, as well as showing her later, is that I’ve never been more attracted to a girl than I am right now.
She’s left her hair down and the light-brown waves bounce effortlessly over her shoulders when she walks. She exudes an almost flawless beauty. She doesn’t even have to make an effort to garner attention. And based on the looks she’s already getting from several guys in the room, it’s gonna be a long fuckin’ night.
I spot Karen across the room talking with Angie and some other friends. They all stop and look our way. One by one, their jaws drop open as they look at the girl on my arm from head to toe as if she’d just arrived from another planet.
I wearily glance over at Baylor to see that she is watching their reaction to her as well. She turns to me and says, “They’d better close their mouths before they catch flies, or worse . . . frat-boy penises.”
My jaw is the one dropping now. Baylor and I laugh so hard, tears escape my eyes. God I love this girl.
“What’s so funny?” Karen asks, having snuck up on us during our fit of laughter.
“Nothing,” Bay and I say in unison as we wipe our tears.
I realize that although Karen and Baylor know a lot about each other from me, they’ve never actually met. I reach over and grab Baylor’s hand, not missing the fact that Karen watches the gesture with an eye roll. “Karen Thompson, meet Baylor Mitchell,” I say.
Baylor holds her other hand out to Karen. “It’s really nice to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Karen eyes Baylor’s outstretched hand for a beat before loosely shaking it with her own. I half expect their hands to gravitate apart—like when two magnets of similar charges attempt to join but can never physically connect. These girls are so completely different in every way but one—they both want my heart. I still feel guilty sometimes that I could never give Karen what she seems to want so badly. But being with Baylor makes me realize exactly what I would have been missing—what I was missing—what I think I would have gone my entire life without had I not met her. I was missing myself—something I can only be with her. The words from her keychain weigh heavily in my pocket.
“Yup, you too,” Karen says dismissively.
Karen makes a half-assed attempt at not being a complete bitch around Baylor, and Bay refrains from rolling her eyes at Karen’s numerous references to our wonderful childhood and close friendship. It’s a match made in heaven.
Karen eventually returns to her posse and I introduce Baylor to several people on our way to the keg. I have to reach behind me to make sure she’s still with me as we weave through the crowd. It’s refreshing to be with a girl who doesn’t have to drape herself all over me in public. Every other girl I’ve hooked up with at a party tried to join themselves to me at the hip, staking some sort of claim over me. Ironically, the one girl who doesn’t do this is the girl that owns me.
I get pulled to the side by a few guys from my team. I glance back at Baylor who nods at me to go ahead and speak to them. Pussy, I think. Did you really just ask your girl’s permission to talk to your friends?
Not a minute later, when I look back at her, I see Grayson Butler standing too close to her, sloshing around his beer all over the floor, bringing me flashbacks of that night of the football game.
In seconds, I’ve got Grayson pinned to the wall with beer spilled at his feet. I lean in close and grumble in his ear, “Not yours.”
He wiggles out of my loosening grip and spits out, “Fuck you, McBride. It’s not like she’s wearing a sign that says ‘Property Of’.”
“Well, now you know,” I say with clenched teeth. “So you can take your syph-dick and your overused pickup lines and try them on someone else.”
“Whatever,” he says. “It’s not like you haven’t done the same thing, Gavin. Quit being such a fucking hypocrite.” He walks off, refusing to pick up the red cup that he dropped during my assault.
“Syph-dick?” Baylor questions.
“Yeah, he caught syphilis from some chick last year earning him the name. Some guys are just too stupid to wrap it up,” I say. I quickly turn to her and add, “Always . . . I always did, Bay. I don’t want you to worry.”
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