The Single Game

by Amanda Black

  “I’m sorry, Eden,” he said into my hair before he kissed the top of my head, squeezing me tighter. “Just the thought of him even thinking that he had a chance with you made me angry. I’ve never felt that before.”

  “I understand. I think if someone skanky like Ashley or Holly tried to put a move on you, I would lose my shit a little bit, too.”

  He laughed, and I felt the vibrations through my entire body.

  “Now,” I said, pulling back to smile up at him. “Would you like to see my room?”

  He nodded quickly, choking out a quiet “Yes.”

  “Follow me,” I said with a smile, grabbing his hand and leading him up the stairs.

  Chapter 17

  “So…this is my room,” I said nervously.

  I opened the door slowly and motioned Logan inside, closing it again behind us. He took small, tentative steps at first, looking around in wonder, as if the inside of a girl’s bedroom was more fascinating than anything he’d ever dared to dream about.

  “It looks like you,” he finally said after nearly a minute of silence.

  “Really? What makes you say that?”

  “I don’t know…the way the colors work together, and all of the pictures you have up. I just see a lot of your personality in it, I guess. It’s very warm and inviting.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Is this your mother, here?” he asked, pointing to a group of photos stuck to my corkboard.

  “Yeah, that’s her on the day her first book hit the shelves. I think my dad took it.” She looked beautiful as always with her long raven hair and her huge smile, holding up the smutty paperback proudly in the middle of a bookstore.

  “What’s going on in this one?” he chuckled, pointing to an old discolored photo in the center.

  “Ah, that’s my favorite picture,” I sighed, feeling a smile break out over my face. We both looked at the infant version of me with little black ringlets of hair stuck to my face, my round cheeks covered in smears of chocolate frosting, my tiny pink tongue licking even more off my fingers. My parents were seated on each side of me, both their heads thrown back in laughter. “I think my aunt Emma took it, but it could have been my grandma. It was my first birthday party.”

  “You were adorable,” he laughed, leaning in to look closer. “Good lord, they gave you your own whole cake, didn’t they?”

  “It was just a little thing, but yeah. They had a bigger cake for the rest of the party. That’s when they realized how much I like chocolate. I dug into that thing with my bare hands. I think I ended up wearing more than I ate, though.”

  “What makes this picture your favorite?”

  “I guess it’s the background story that gets to me when I look at it.” I blinked a few times, already feeling the traitorous moisture trying to creep in. “Whenever I would look at this picture when I was younger, my mom would always cry happy tears and make a point of telling me that this day was very special to everyone because I was her little miracle. It wasn’t until I was older that I got the full story from my Aunt Lily.”

  “What happened?”

  “I guess my parents tried for years to have a baby. My mom had some kind of condition that caused her to have a lot of really horrible miscarriages.”

  “Oh my God, I’m sorry.”

  “I guess they’d all but given up when I finally came along. My aunt said that it was a really tough pregnancy, but my mom fought like hell for me. She said that when my family all got together for my first birthday it was a major milestone for them…that all of that pain and heartache was finally worth something.”

  “That’s sort of beautiful,” Logan whispered. “In a sad way.”

  “I didn’t mean it to sound sad. This picture is one of the few things in the world that can make me happy, no matter how depressed I am. All I have to do is look at that one loving moment, frozen in time, and I remember that the world isn’t always crap.” I looked up at him again to make sure that he was following me. “It helps knock me out of those ‘poor me, why me’ days,” I smiled.

  “Wow, I need one of those,” he laughed. “If you love it so much, why don’t you have it in a frame? It’s getting yellowed like that.”

  “I know, I keep meaning to, but then I forget about it. I’ll buy one someday,” I shrugged.

  He walked around a bit more, paying close attention to every little thing he noticed. I watched as he flipped through old CDs and movies, stopping every once in a while to say that he had this one, too, or that he’d always wanted to see that one.

  I kept waiting to feel violated, not used to such close inspection, but all I felt was touched. Riley couldn’t have told me what color my bedspread was, but here Logan was taking a thorough inventory of my life, filing it away in hopes of getting to know me better.

  It made me want to rifle through his underwear drawer just to see what kind he liked.

  It made me want to dig up his old report cards just to read what comments the teachers wrote. I bet there were a few that said, Logan is a joy to have in class, but he’s so adorable that he’s become a distraction.

  “Mind if I sit?” he asked, gesturing to the foot of the bed.

  “No, go ahead.” I sat down next to him, attempting to look around at my walls through his eyes. Would he think I was an immature baby for having so much purple? Was it too messy? I sniffed the air quickly, making sure there wasn’t any dirty-laundry funk floating around.

  “I like your room,” he said finally. “It’s really comfortable here. It looks so lived in even though you only moved here a few months ago. You should see mine—my mother did all the decorating, so it looks more like a catalog display than a teen boy’s room. It’s nice, but sometimes it feels a bit…sterile.”

  “I’d love to see it. Will you show me when I come to dinner this weekend?”

  “So you haven’t chickened out yet?” he smiled.

  “No way. I’ll be there.”

  “I can’t wait,” he said softly, staring at my lips.

  Tilting my head up, I leaned in slightly, but only far enough to let him know he could kiss me. I wanted him to get comfortable with the idea of making the first move.

  When he lowered his lips to mine, he let out a little hum against my mouth, as if he were tasting his favorite dessert. I kissed him back eagerly, but I shifted too quickly to get closer to him, which caused us to lose our balance and topple back on the bed.

  We pulled apart laughing, and the light in his eyes as he looked at me was radiant.

  “Well, we’re already here. We might as well move up the rest of the way.” I started scooting up closer to my pillows at the head of the bed. When I got there, I patted the space next to me. “Come on, loverboy. Let’s see how good of a cuddler you are.”

  He laughed and crawled up after me. “Oh, I can cuddle like nobody’s business. I think,” he laughed. When he’d stretched out with his head on the pillow next to me, he reached over and pulled me close, settling my head on the magical sweet spot where his shoulder met his chest.

  I fit there perfectly, as if that spot were made just for me.

  His hand began stroking my hair, which felt amazing, causing me to burrow even closer to him. His warm lips kissed my forehead before he pulled back and sighed contentedly.

  “God, this is nice. I love holding you like this.” His voice was soft and gentle, more than a whisper, but just as intimate.

  “Mmhmmm,” I moaned, my eyes rolling back in my head at the feeling of his talented fingers massaging my scalp. After a few minutes his hand moved lower, stroking in long, soothing movements up and down my back.

  Oh, God.

  One thing was for certain: Logan gave good cuddles.

  Suddenly he began jostling around, digging his other hand into his pocket.

  “What are you doing?” I whined, hating the interruption.

  “This,” he smiled, holding up his iPhone. He clicked on the camera and turned it toward us, holding it up in the air over our head
s. We both looked up as he pushed the button, and when he brought it back down, he showed me the very first picture of us as a couple.

  We were smiling like goofy idiots, and there was no denying that we were both unbelievably happy.

  “There,” he said, putting his phone away. “Now I have my own pic to help with my ‘poor me, why me’ days.”

  “That’s your special picture?”

  “Sure. Now, whenever I get upset about anything, I only have to look at it to remember our first cuddle. And then I’ll be great, because I’ll remember that I have you, so nothing could ever be that bad.”

  “Are you for real?” I choked out past the rapidly forming lump in my throat.

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Because I’m still discovering how amazing you are.”

  Before he could say something even sweeter and make me bawl like a baby, I lunged at him, covering his mouth with so many kisses I lost count. At first they were small little pecks, but they quickly grew longer and more heated. Logan didn’t seem to have any complaints, adjusting our positions smoothly so he could slide his hands down and grip me around the waist. When I flicked the tip of my tongue against his lips he growled low in his chest before opening wider to me, eventually lowering his hands even more to squeeze and rub my ass while our tongues swirled around each other.

  “God…Eden,” he groaned, talking between the kisses he was trailing down my neck. “It’s not enough. I can’t get close enough to you.” I felt his hand slide down further from my ass to the back of my thigh, tugging and pulling until he had lifted my leg up over his hip. My inner thigh was then pressed right over the growing bulge in his jeans, causing him to buck his hips and hiss loudly between his teeth.

  I kissed him even deeper, reaching up to grip his hair at the back of his head, which he seemed to enjoy by the noises he was making. Holding him to me tightly, I started rolling backward slowly, hoping that he would take the hint and follow.

  Not only did Logan follow, but he began to lead.

  He rolled over on top of me, sliding his knee between my legs to part them before settling the rest of his weight on me. Loving the feel of him there, I instinctively wrapped my legs around his waist, moving myself against him.

  “Oh, God!” he gasped, burying his head in my neck as he ground his hips into me, rubbing his swollen erection back and forth.

  “Logan,” I breathed against his skin. “You feel so good, baby.” He groaned again when I called him baby, and I couldn’t resist slipping my hands around him to cup his ass, pulling him into me roughly.

  Many of the noises he made after that were incoherent, but no less sexy. Before long I felt his hand sliding up my shirt, pushing the material out of the way. I helped him pull it over my head, tossing it in the general vicinity of my clothes hamper. When he was left staring at my bra in wonderment, I yanked one of the cups down to expose my breast. His eyes went wide at the sight of my hardened nipple, and he wasted no time latching onto it like a starving child.

  There was nothing like the feeling of being surrounded by him, of him thrusting against me while he sucked and licked my tightened flesh.

  If he was blowing my mind this easily now, how the hell was I going to live through actually having sex with him?

  “You’re so hard,” I moaned into his ear before licking the outer shell.

  “For you…only for you.” He lined himself up more directly and began rocking his hips into mine more forcefully. “Eden… I want you so bad,” he panted, sweat forming on his brow. “I can’t tell you…how much I think about it…about finally being inside you.”

  “Oh, God!” I groaned.

  That was it, goddamn it!

  I needed more of him, right that second. Dry humping wasn’t enough.

  I needed to taste him. I needed it like oxygen.

  Grabbing his shoulders, I pushed and shoved until he was off me far enough that I could roll him over onto his back. Without any preamble I straddled his lap, grinding against him a few more times while kissing him senseless. He moaned and gripped my hips, guiding my movements with some sort of latent sex demon powers.

  “Yes,” he hissed. “I can’t wait to have you riding me for real.”

  “Why?” I moaned. I couldn’t help asking; he was turning me on so much with the way he was talking. He was starting to loosen up, and it was driving me crazy.

  “Because I am dying to look between us and watch you moving up and down on me,” he grunted, bucking his hips again as his thoughts pushed him closer to the edge.

  If I didn’t get his pants down soon he was going to make a mess.

  I somehow pulled away from the delicious friction, sliding farther back on his thighs so that I could get at the button on his jeans.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, the look of shock on his face almost comical. “I didn’t mean that we had to do that now… I just wanted to tell you what I was thinking.”

  “I want to show you what I’m thinking,” I purred, pulling his zipper down. I tugged at his jeans until they were down to his knees.

  Black boxer briefs. Mmmm.

  And there was an enormous tent situation going on without the jeans to hold him down.

  “Can I?” I asked, reaching for the elastic band. He gulped loudly, and instead of speaking he nodded quickly.

  I pulled his underwear down over his hips, unable to hide my groan at the sight of him springing free.

  So hard.

  So beautiful.

  “I want you to just lie back and enjoy this,” I instructed, reaching out and gripping him around the base. He shuddered at the contact, and I could see the moment he realized what was about to happen.

  “Oh, God, Eden, are you going to—holy fuck!” His question was cut off by the sensation of my slick, wet tongue sliding up the length of his shaft. When I reached the broad tip, I circled it a few times before slowly taking him into my mouth.

  “Oh my God oh my God oh my God,” he whimpered, but he never took his eyes off me while I devoured him. The look on his face was a perfect mixture of shock, pleasure, and amazement—it was an arousing combination.

  I took as much of him into my mouth as I could, loving the taste of him. I swirled my tongue around him as I began bobbing my head up and down, slowly at first, but quickly building up speed.

  “Eden, I can’t…oh, God, that’s too much!” I could feel his thighs beginning to shake, so I squeezed them with my hands to let him know it was okay to just enjoy it. He watched me intently as I picked up my pace, and before long he was reaching out to touch my face gently. His thumbs started brushing over the skin around my swollen lips as he watched himself disappearing between them. “That’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen,” he moaned.

  I picked up the pace, squeezing him harder with my mouth as I moved. His shaking had become almost violent, and his moans had turned into desperate pleas for release.

  “Baby…please…I’m gonna—oh fuck, I’m coming!” He threw his head back and practically howled in pleasure, spurting hot bursts of fluid down the back of my throat. I swallowed everything he gave me, still lapping him up as he began to soften.

  When I was sure he was finished, I tucked him back inside his boxer briefs and crawled up to rest my head on his shoulder again.

  “Thank you for letting me do that,” I said, kissing his neck.

  “You’re thanking me?” he laughed. “Shouldn’t I be thanking you? And like…kissing your feet? Erecting statues in your honor?”

  “You already erected something in my honor today, and that was more than enough,” I giggled.

  “Very funny,” he smirked, before his tone became serious. “What can I do for you, baby?” He gulped loudly before asking, “Do you want me to do that to you?”

  Oh, God, was this guy for real?

  “You…uh…you would do that?” For all of my prowess only minutes ago, I instantly felt like the inexperienced one.

  “Of course. Why do you sound so shocked?”<
br />
  “Well… I’ve always heard that most teenage guys won’t do that, so I never expected it.”

  “No one has ever done it for you before?” he asked, concern showing on his face.

  “God, don’t make it sound like I’ve been with a ton of people. There was just one before you, and he thought the idea of it was gross.”

  “Hey, come here.” He pulled me closer, kissing me gently. “I wasn’t trying to offend you. I have no idea who you were with before you moved here, and honestly, it’s not my business. I figured you were experienced, but I don’t really want too many gory details. What happened in the past is the past. I don’t care about anything before you and me, because that’s all it’s going to be from now on.”

  “That sounds good to me,” I smiled.

  “Will you let me try that with you? I’d really like to. I don’t think it sounds gross; I think it’s sexy.”

  I glanced over at the clock and saw that it was almost five p.m. “We can try it sometime, but not today.”

  “Why not? Don’t you trust me?”

  “Of course I do. It’s just that my dad will be getting home soon, so I should probably get you out of here.”

  “But what about you? You just totally rocked my world, and I don’t get to give you any payback at all? If you are half as turned on as I was, you’ve got to be in pain right now.”

  How right he was. I was swollen and throbbing and my body was begging for release.

  But it wasn’t worth getting caught.

  “It’ll have to wait,” I said, getting up and crossing the room, looking for a shirt to throw on so that I could go downstairs and start dinner.

  “Wow, I feel really selfish right now,” he said sadly, standing to pull up his jeans. “I never meant for this to be one-sided like that.”

  “Hey, don’t get bummed. I want you to leave here feeling happy about what we did, not depressed. I’ll be fine, I promise.”

  “I don’t think it’s possible for me to feel depressed after what you gave me today. I just wish I could return the favor.”