However, this time…
Oh, this time he fucked her back.
He really, really fucked her back. His hands went to the hollows of her hips, tugging roughly until she was sure she couldn’t take anymore. And then his fingers were searching out her clit and his hot moans of total abandoned pleasure were in her ears and she could, she could. She was coming again before she knew where she was, pussy tightening around his cock, cries of pleasure caught around the hand he put over her mouth.
God, when he put a hand over her mouth…
When he pulled her up, back almost to his front, that hand still on her clit…
There was nothing but pleasure after that. Nothing but him taking his pleasure, fierce and frantic enough that she would remember it forever. Just the sense of him wanting her, needing her—it was everything. It was the difference between the sex she’d had before, seedy and quick and without any thought to her beyond the hole she provided, and the sex she was having now. The idea that she mattered meant the world, and especially when he made it explicit.
“No one has ever made me feel the way you do,” he moaned against the side of her face, and then he was coming, she knew he was coming. He wasn’t silent, like other guys. He wasn’t furtive about it. He gasped her name in her ear, over and over. He told her he was doing it, now, just for her.
All for her.
As she sobbed, for all the things that could have been.
And everything they now were.
Chapter 21
She woke with him surrounding her, to the point where it was almost uncomfortable. His massive thigh was over her legs, as if he was trying to hug her with it, and she was pretty sure that heavy thing squashing her left shoulder was one of his chest muscles. It felt like a brick, when she pushed back against it—as did the arm he had looped around her waist. It was entirely possible she was going to die because he wanted to hug.
Yet somehow she couldn’t wipe the grin off her face.
Not even when his phone went off, and he fumbled for it.
He didn’t stop swamping her, after all. He just read the text while continuing to give her a hug with his leg and his chest, then sprawled back over her once he’d discovered it was Coach Parker and decided he didn’t give a shit. At all. He even informed her that he wasn’t replying as he snuggled down again.
Which made her very reluctant to say anything.
Almost too reluctant, considering how insanely comfortable being crushed to death was.
But in the end, she had to do it. Having that bull-headed, temple-vein-popping psycho mad at him was not something she wanted Tate to endure. Hell, she didn’t want to endure it¸ either, after the other day. She could still feel his spit landing on her cheek as he spat the word poisoned.
“You know you should really probably go see him. Just to let him know I haven’t murdered you and turned your body into a skin suit that I wear around campus to convince people you’re still alive.”
“That is a super elaborate plan to disguise my untimely death.”
“Thanks. I put a lot of thought into it back when I was sure you were out to get me.”
“It wouldn’t work though. Your wrestling skills are terrible.”
“I thought I wrestled you pretty good last night.”
“That’s true. Though I think the wrestling board might object to a bunch of your moves. Last I checked, squeezing someone to death with your pussy was not covered in any of the rule books.”
“Damn. That was going to be my secret weapon. Guess I’m going down hard.”
“Definitely going down hard. On the upside though, you’ll be rich after you do.”
“Why would I be—”
It was his expression that stopped her dead. That sheepish, I fucked up expression. Of course he tried to hide it by pulling away and flopping onto his back behind her, but it made no difference.
She knew exactly what he had been referring to, without having to ask.
“Oh my god, are you still in contact with those mobsters?”
The sheepish look deepened. Now it had a too-rapid head shake to go with it.
“Not in contact, exactly. That makes it sound like we do secret deals in shady alleys.”
“It doesn’t make it sound like that at all. You just made it sound like that by saying those words.”
He paused then and seemed to consider. She didn’t know why, however.
It didn’t make him sound more sensible.
“Okay, but you have to know that there was only one deal, and the alley was pretty well lit.”
“You have got to be kidding me. You agreed to throw a fight for them? Why, why, why would you do that? Why would you ever, ever do that? You could be arrested for wrestling fraud. Or gambling fraud. They might decide they want you to throw ten more matches, and if you don’t they remove one of your toes.”
“They’re not going to remove one of my toes, Letty.”
She honestly wasn’t sure what was worse: that he had done this, or that he was being all weary and withering with her about her perfectly reasonable horror.
“You say that, and then the next thing you know I’m digging through a Dumpster for your missing foot.”
“Now it’s my foot they’ve removed? Seems pretty unlikely when I definitely need both to wrestle.”
“Yeah, don’t worry. They’ll just take it after you’ve outstayed your welcome.”
“Sounds more like you’re just listing the plot points of most mobster movies.”
“Well, what else am I supposed to do? I’m a fat nerd from a small town. I have no fucking clue what the actual mob will do. Probably something with razors and salt and hammers and—”
He caught her flailing hands before she could go any further. Hell, he did it before she even knew she was doing it. She looked down and saw his big fists around hers and was surprised.
And then he spoke, and she got it.
“Letty, Letty. Stop. Calm down. It’s cool, okay. I’m handling it. I’m handling it.”
God, he sounded sure. Sure and soothing.
She just wished she could believe him.
“And if you don’t handle it, what then?”
“How is it possible to fail at handling it? All I have to do is go down.”
“I don’t know. You might slip.”
“Slip and accidentally win the match? It’s not possible, honey. I’d have to be fucking suicidal to somehow screw it up. I’d have to be out of my mind—like if you suddenly dropped dead.”
She snapped a look at him then.
Mostly to see if he was serious—which unfortunately he was.
“Don’t fucking say that. Don’t you fucking say that, you stupid shit.”
“Oh come on, you’re not really going to die.”
“And what if I do? You better promise me. You promise me now that upon my death you throw that fucking match so hard it hits the surface of Mars.”
“Okay, okay, I promise. I will. Better?” He held up two fingers. “Scout’s honor.”
But his expression seemed shadowed somehow, and didn’t back up what he was saying and doing.
“Not even remotely better. The opposite of better. I mean, there must have been some other option besides this. We talked about other options besides this. You were going to wait.”
“Yeah, I was going to wait back then, when I had no real clue what my life could actually be. But now I know different, don’t I? You’ve shown me exactly what I could have, and could be—not just some dumb jock asshole you hate, but a guy you like and admire. You think I want to wait to be that guy?”
“You already are that guy, Tate. You don’t have to quit the team to be him.”
“But I feel like I do. That’s the thing, honey. Every second I spend doing that shit isn’t just a second wasted on something I hate. It’s not just an obligation to help out my mom. It’s shit that takes me further away from you. Always, always it takes me further away from you.”
She turn
ed in his arms. She had to.
He needed to wholly see how crazy she thought this was, as well as hear it.
“Hey, I’m right here. I was right here before you ever put this on the table. I don’t need you to not be on the team to be happy with you. I just need you to be alive, Tate. Okay? We can’t be together if mobsters murder you. But we can be if you trust in my feelings for you and let me help dig you out of the holes you think you’re in. We could have put a plan in place, gone to admissions, looked at getting your tuition some other way, or maybe—”
“I did all of that. I looked into it all. It would have meant reapplying next fall and maybe working two jobs and getting loans and just a whole bunch of shit that boils down to not having all of this right here and now. And maybe never having it at all. Who knows what’ll happen if I’m basically gone for a year? Maybe you’ll find some other guy who doesn’t have to grind just to get by or—”
Now it was her turn to cut him off. Hard, and with vigorous hand gestures.
“Stop. Stop. Just stop. This is the worst, most ludicrous thing I’ve ever heard. Are you seriously saying you did this because you’re worried I won’t be happy with someone who works two jobs? Because if you are, I might have to murder you myself. It was bad enough when you said the reason you got yourself into this was to have a different life and be personally fulfilled. But to do it because you think I don’t believe in you or won’t stick around…I just don’t even know what to say to that.”
“You do know. Try: ‘Tate, you’re a dumbass.’ ”
“That’s the most maddening thing! You’re not a dumbass at all. You’re not any of the things you still seem to think you are, and if that’s my fault then let me make it super clear: I adore you. I think you’re amazing, no matter what you do. And if you’d never done any of this and just gone ahead with the plan you apparently knew you could do, I would have kept thinking you were amazing. I will always think you’re amazing now—because you are, in every way that a person can be.”
He covered his face with his hands as soon as he heard the last word, and he didn’t take them down when she nudged him. He didn’t even take them down when she shook him, finally, after what felt like a thousand years. She had to speak and break the silence.
“Tate—”
“Don’t talk. I need a second to compose myself.”
“Yeah, but your composing is adorable and I want to tell you that, too.”
“Goddamn it, stop. I can’t take anymore. I’m going to lose my shit.”
“I think you already have lost it. But that’s okay, because I’m pretty much doing the same thing.”
She was, too. Just watching him be like this was enough to do it.
And that was before he dropped his hands and shifted on the bed to completely face her.
Said things that left her wrecked, in all the ways anyone could be.
“I love you, Letty. I know it’s way too early to say that, but I do.”
“Yeah, you’re right. It is too early to say that. Pretty lucky then that I love you, too.”
“You do? Like, for real, or are you just saying that because I’m having a nervous breakdown?”
“I’m saying it because it’s true. How could I not love you? You get involved with the mob so you can spend more time with me. I don’t think many girls can say that their boyfriends did something that idiotic and dangerous just so they could watch more cheesy movies together in her dorm.”
“Watching cheesy movies together in your dorm has been responsible for the best moments of my whole shitty little life. And I know that’s probably pathetic to admit, and makes me at least sixty percent less cool, but it’s the truth. Everything else I’ve ever done doesn’t compare. It’s not even in the competition. I would trade away everything I have—money, my life, my peace of mind—just to sit beside you on this bed and hear you reply like what I said mattered to you. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
She threw her arms around him then. What else was there to do? He had said the most romantic, heartfelt words she had ever heard. His sincerity had never wavered, in either his soft gaze or his tone. Nothing could have ever been sweeter, or more real.
She could never have known in a million years that it was all just a lie.
—
She thought she would be nervous when Harrison got to their presentation. But when it came time to go up to the front, she didn’t get the usual shakes. There was no sense that everyone’s eyes would be judging her. The person who used to do that was up there with her. He squeezed her hand before they stood up, as though he knew what she might be thinking.
Most likely he did.
It was something he’d been very good at it, even when they were mortal enemies. He always knew just what would hurt the most, so she supposed it shouldn’t have surprised her that he understood the opposite, too. He knew what would make her feel the best. Like him calling her my learned colleague when he finished his part of their introduction, and squeezing her shoulder when she stuttered over the first part of the section they’d call the orgasmic double standard.
Not that she stuttered often. In fact it was surprisingly easy to go into the gorier details. She spoke clearly about the difference it made to the rating when a film showed a close-up of a woman’s face as she had an orgasm, and barely stumbled when she went into the examples they’d lined up. It was easy to talk about the rift between what movies implied about female sexuality, and even easier to listen to him talking when it came to his part of the main argument.
It made her realize, when he spoke, that this was the start. Seeing him be like this was the reason she had let him in—and especially so when every other guy seemed to have viewed the project as an excuse to look at boobs. That was the name of one presentation: breasts in the movies. The guys who had worked on it put up pie charts with various examples of bared boobs in different movies. There were categories like side, full frontal, nipples, and size. Everyone thought it was hilarious.
But Tate didn’t. He rolled his eyes and whispered, “Morons,” to her.
He was different.
She was absolutely certain he was different. That some seismic thing had occurred in him, still occasionally nameless and uncertain to her but definitely there. She had faith in it—of the same sort people had that the sun would rise the next day and their loved ones would return after work and school and play. It had become an easy thing, a taken-for-granted thing, to the point where she didn’t really understand what Professor Harrison was saying when she stopped by his office to thank him for putting them together.
“Well,” he said. “I do like to respect my students’ wishes.”
Though even then she didn’t fully grasp things.
She was still smiling when she asked, “Sorry, Professor. What wishes were those?”
“When students request to work together I see no reason not to accommodate them.”
“I’m not sure what you mean. I didn’t request for us to work together.”
She shook her head, a little half laugh threading through the words.
But she knew it wasn’t very convincing. Harrison glanced up from the books he was shuffling around on his desk as they talked, attention suddenly completely caught. As though he’d heard a warning beneath that fake sound of amusement, and wanted to see if her expression backed it up.
If she was frowning now—and she was.
Just a tiny one, but it was there.
“Oh? I assumed it was your choice, too. In fact, I believe Mr. Sullivan stated it was.”
“Tate stated that I chose to work with him? That I wanted to work with him?”
“Indeed, yes,” he said. “Though I can see by your expression that Mr. Sullivan was not entirely honest with me. Is that the case, Ms. Carmichael? Because if it is, I may have to take it up with that young man. I would very much disapprove of any trick you might be suggesting he has perpetrated here.”
“No, I don’t think…I don’t think that he…i
t wasn’t a trick.”
The frown had deepened now. And it had gathered a few extras—a clenched jaw, some folded arms, a suddenly hammering heart.
“I see. Then your working relationship was perfectly amicable?”
“Yes. Yeah, absolutely, it was great. It was really great.”
“And you had no problems with him at all.”
“No, god no, none. He was a perfect gentleman in every single way. You would never, ever have thought that he had…that he had created this situation, and certainly not for any awful reason.”
Her voice was strange by that point. Faraway, somehow, and robotic. And when she got to the end of the sentence, a part of it broke. The last word came out in several pieces, for reasons she tried not to think about. It probably wasn’t what it looked like anyway. It was just like Chad taking that picture—an accident, a mistake, a thing that he had nothing to do with. Hadn’t he punched him?
He had. He wouldn’t have punched him if this was all some elaborate game.
“I just remembered I have a thing to do, Professor. Thank you for your time.”
She didn’t wait for an answer. She just blundered through the lecture hall doors, dizzy with the dozens of crazy thoughts that were clamoring inside her head. For a second she actually had to lean against the wall in a stairwell somewhere and take deep breaths. Though it barely helped. Nothing helped—not even her phone buzzing to tell her that she had a message from Tate. I’ll be done in an hour, he said. Wait for me in my dorm, he said. Everything so innocent it should have been fine.
But instead she climbed the stairs to his room wondering what would be waiting for her there. Her mind kept going to the movie Carrie, and the weeks of planning they had done just to dump pigs’ blood on her head. How she might open the door and find herself covered in something. And even after she’d gone inside, she couldn’t quite shake that feeling. She trod carefully over the discarded sweatshirt on the floor between his bed and his desk, as if there could really possibly be something underneath.
A bear trap, just waiting to spring.
Never Sweeter (Dark Obsession #1) Page 21
