Sweet Ache

by K. Bromberg

  Because nice and slow is sometimes good but a no-holds-barred, fist in my hair, back up against the wall quickie is most definitely a good thing. And that sure as hell appears to be where we’re headed.

  Yes, professor…. Please, school me. Here. Now. Hard. Fast.

  The words flicker through my mind, incomplete thoughts as we are drawn toward each other’s flames, knowing damn well we’re going to get burned.

  “God, I want you,” he growls into my mouth as my hands match his, pulling our bodies together, nails digging into heated skin, mouths meeting again with a volatile passion.

  He presses me back against the wall as our fingers fumble with clothing. My hands undo his button and zipper to push down his jeans and grab his rock-hard cock as he uses his feet to knock my feet apart so that he can pull my panties aside. He dips his fingers between my folds and tightens the one hand in my hair, another groan falling from his lips as he finds me wet and ready for him from just his kiss alone.

  His fingers touch me where I want them the most, the place that has ached the past few nights when I’ve gone to bed thinking about him while his melodic timbre speaks to me on the other end of the phone line. The pads of his fingers rub gently over my clit, adding a slight friction to the already sensitized nub there. The pleasure of his hand and his mouth on me causes my legs to slightly buckle from the sensations he’s evoking in me.

  “That good, huh?” He murmurs against my lips as he releases my hair to slip his arm around my waist to help support me as I succumb to his dexterous fingers. He laughs as I arch my hips out toward him in a begging motion when he removes his touch. “Gotta make sure it counts,” he murmurs seductively, my lips showing the ghost of a smile.

  He slips his other hand off my back and I stand there, shoulders against the wall, pelvis thrust forward, skirt askew, and body humming. My eyes flash open to catch his, their gray color burning black, lids heavy with desire. “I told myself I could wait until after class”—I hear the telltale rip of foil, my eyes widening with the sound because that means I’m getting more than just fingers … I’m getting all of him—“but I can’t.” He says the last words with a pained restraint before glancing down to jacket himself. “I just can’t.”

  His mouth is on mine again as his fingers grip my hips and direct me to the side until my ass hits a small console behind me. I cry out, having forgotten it was there in the darkness, and then acquiesce to his physical commands as he helps lift me up on the shallow top of it. The cabinet is so narrow that my backside sits halfway off it, so I lean my back against the wall, thighs framing his muscular torso and hands gripping the edge as he lines his dick up to my entrance.

  He teases me with his head, slowly pushing into me and then withdrawing several times. I groan out in frustration, my body amped up on the thought of him fucking me senseless. He kisses me again, demanding and possessive. “Quin … I have to have you,” he moans as his hands grip my thighs, pulling them apart at the same time he thrusts all the way into me.

  My cry of ecstasy drowns out his groan of pleasure as my body welcomes the girth of his dick slamming into me, nerves singing, body stretching, endorphins surging. I’m writhing against him in jerking movements, my backside half off the console adding to the depth he can reach with my weight bearing down some on where our bodies meet.

  “Easy, Q,” he says, his voice gravelly as it scrapes over my eardrums, his obvious pleasure a turn-on. I glance down to where his dick is slowly pulling out of me. My arousal glistens against the faint light at his back and it’s sexy as hell to see the evidence of what he does to me, what he makes me want more and more.

  I look back up to the salacious look in his eyes and know he’s turned on by the fact that I like to watch him slide in and out of me. We hold each other’s gaze as he moves slowly back in and it’s like one big chain reaction of electricity from my core out to my fingers and toes with every movement of his.

  Fixated on the eroticism of the moment, I glance back down to watch us. I’m so turned on by everything—the man before me, the idea of being here and doing this when we shouldn’t be, the pleasure he’s most definitely bringing me—that I purposefully squeeze my muscles around his dick when he begins to withdraw so that the wide crest of his head has trouble pulling all the way out.

  I love the groan he emits and the way his head falls back at the sensation, giving me a glimpse of his strong jaw and Adam’s apple before looking back up and straight into my eyes. “Keep doing that sweetness and I’m going to come quick and hard.”

  Wanting to watch him, I fight the urge to close my own eyes as I’m swamped with the sensation of him bottoming out inside me and holding there in a silent dare. “Quick and hard?” I whisper, leaning forward, muscles contracting again with the movement. “Yes, please.”

  His eyebrows arch and a libidinous smirk curls up one corner of his mouth. “Fuck …” He moans the word out as desire and my comment snap the restraint he was barely holding on to. “Hold tight, Q.”

  And the minute the words are out of his mouth he begins to move at a demanding pace, the cabinet hitting smartly into the wall behind me with each thrust. The small space fills with the hushed sounds of our desire, the slap of skin on skin, and the console rattling from the force. My hands grip the edge for support as I open my eyes to see his face pulled tight with pleasure, eyes closed, shoulders tense.

  He obliterates everything else so that I can focus only on him, on this, and the way he’s manipulating my body. All three pull me under the frenzied state of bliss so that I’m almost drugged when my orgasm hits me in an earthquake of sensation that reverberates through me and then comes back to slam into its epicenter once more.

  I manage a broken cry of pleasure before suppressing it when I realize where we are. And it’s almost as if the minute my sex starts contracting around him, when he knows I’ve had mine, Hawkin sets a punishing pace for himself to chase his own climax.

  He’s sexy as hell when he comes, head thrown back, fingers unknowingly bruising the tender flesh of my thighs to match the marks he left there this weekend, and he releases a feral groan that resonates in my ears and scores my memory.

  He rests his head on my shoulder as we both catch our breath. “Class,” he murmurs as a reminder to himself where we are before lifting his head and pressing a chaste kiss to my lips as he slips out of me. “Holy shit, you’re incredible.”

  He shakes his head before glancing down to remove the condom and clean himself up, while my ego and emotions soar from his compliment. I slowly dismount the console, testing the stability of my legs since he’s just rocked my world.

  He zips up and looks at me watching him. “That was right up there with cookies ’n cream,” he says with a raise of his eyebrows and a flash of a grin. I laugh that this was as good to him as his beloved ice cream. “Take your time; I’ve got to act like we weren’t just in here doing …” He just shakes his head, his sudden shyness adorable in so many ways.

  “Oh, I brought you something,” I tell him when suddenly the irony of it hits me and causes me to smile. “It’s in the front part of my backpack.”

  He looks at me, eyebrows knitted in curiosity. “What is it?”

  “A box of Good and Plenty,” I deadpan, trying to fight the smirk but failing miserably, thinking of the suggestive nature of the candy’s title.

  He throws his head back and laughs heartily, the sound reverberating deep within me. “Oh I’ll give you good and plenty, all right,” he says crossing the short distance to me before grabbing me and placing another kiss on my lips. “I believe I just did.” He steps back, smug smile on his lips, and just shakes his head before he walks away.

  I sag against the cabinet, a replay of the explosive and incredible sex we just had running through my mind over and over already.

  Because it was that good.

  Incredible really. I swear my heart skips a beat at even the thought, and I try to tell myself it has to be the newness of him, plus our inh
erent physicality together, that makes our sex so goddamn incredible. I rationalize that there is no way I could have feelings for him beyond the earthmoving sex we’ve had that makes it just seem that much more.

  It’s a futile attempt. I know I’m lying to myself. I’ve had good sex before—nothing like this, but still good—and I know my insides didn’t twist and flutter from it like they are right now.

  I’m falling for Hawkin, the epitome of everything I told myself I’d never fall for.

  Shit.

  Chapter 19

  HAWKIN

  I scrub my hand over my jaw as I contemplate how to answer the question one of the students has asked me, and I realize I can still smell the scent of Quin’s pussy on my fingers. Fuck me.

  Talk about a way to lighten the somber memory of today’s anniversary.

  And ease the anxiety over the judge sitting in the very top row of the auditorium, watching my every move to make sure that I’m fulfilling my obligation.

  I force myself to concentrate on not screwing up, not on how little Miss Q just screwed me senseless in the alcove over to my right, but fuck if it’s not hard to do. Especially with her scent now seared in my psyche.

  So I glance over to where she sits, head down, working on whatever she works on while I lecture, and I lose my train of thought. Well of course you did, dipshit. All you can think about is diving back beneath that skirt as soon as class is over. And God how I love her affinity for sexy-ass skirts.

  I must be silent for too long because she glances up and meets my eyes before averting them quickly. But I catch the little smile that plays on her lips as she returns to pretending like she doesn’t care. Fuck if it’s not sexy and calls on me to have her again.

  Yes, please. The sound of her voice saying that replays in my head as I refocus despite not being able to stop my own secretive smile at knowing what only she knows happened before class. I begin to give an answer, explain just how recreational drug use in Hollywood is the equivalent to putting a fat kid in a candy store and telling him to choose just one item, when a motion at the top of the steps catches my eye.

  Why the hell is he here? And of course if I didn’t have Quin’s pussy numbing my mind the reason would be front and center.

  Hunter slides into a seat in an aisle a third of the way down the banked rows. He has a baseball cap low over his eyes so one wouldn’t immediately make the connection that he was here, but I know my brother, recognize his clothes and his presence. Besides, I notice him only because everyone else is so busy looking at me.

  Including the judge. How much more of a clusterfuck can this be?

  As Hunter looks up and meets my gaze, the intense look on his face tells me why he’s here. My brother who uses everything else to help him forget—sex, booze, drugs, pushing my buttons—is here because today of all days, the anniversary of Dad’s suicide, he’s going to abuse the one thing he can without risking jail time. Me. Deep down I know somehow, some way, Hunter is here to try to hurt me for the fate he screwed himself out of but blames me for instead.

  Jealousy is a mean, nasty bitch.

  He flashes me a smarmy smirk, and I know I’m right. Fucking stellar. Is he here to try to rub my face in how he succeeded in making me bend when I shouldn’t have, take the blame for him, fulfill my promise to complete the seminar, to save his ass? My gut is uneasy with the possibilities and so I look away without giving him any reaction and continue on with my explanation to the class.

  I don’t need this shit but I pull my head back from thoughts about Hunter because if I blow this lecture with the judge here then I’m the one fucking up, the one not fulfilling my promise to Dad to protect him.

  The one who is weak.

  And I know it’s fucked-up logic, deep down in my core I know it is, but it doesn’t make it any less powerful when history has already decided your fate today.

  I trudge through the rest of the lecture, think I do pretty well considering the pressure coming at me from what feels like every angle, and roll my shoulders at the line of students waiting to speak to me after class. I’m not in the mood to be on in front of everyone, particularly not when I have the three people I don’t want interacting all within fingertip range: the one person deciding my fate, the one person I want in every sense of the word, and the one person I don’t want to deal with watching my every movement beneath his ball cap. My eyes keep flickering between them and the students in front of me.

  Axe can tell I’m irritated and cuts the line off the same time that Quin starts packing up her bag. I make the rounds, catch sight of the judge as he pulls out his cell phone, and then look over to Hunt to find his grin wide, and eyes settling on Quinlan. When he looks back toward me, he gives me a subtle thumbs-up that causes dread to pour through me.

  Vince is right, isn’t he? My brother will go after anything I want except for my music because the band protects me like a shield that he knows he’ll never break through. The one thing he hates the most—my success—he can’t touch, so he goes after anything else he can in my life.

  And by the way he keeps eyeing Quinlan I know just how he plans to go about hurting me.

  So what do I do now? Cause a scene where I can’t control what my brother will say and have the judge overhear something that might be damaging and fuck up all of this time I’ve put into trying to pay my penance? Lead him right to Quin like a dog to a bone? Neither is an acceptable option.

  My mind whirls as I try to wrap my head around the smartest thing to do. Of course it would be to tell Quinlan what his modus operandi is but I can’t do that right now, not with the judge sitting up there listening to every word and smart enough to conclude that I’m lying about the drug charge. On the flip side, if I show Hunter that I really am into Quin for more than the quick fuck I explained our little hallway groping at the house to be, he’ll be all over her to hurt me.

  To get me back for kicking him out of the band and then signing the record deal without him.

  And his immediate reaction? Instead of getting the help I set up for him so that he could earn his way back into the band’s good graces, he took the one woman besides our mother that I’ve ever allowed myself to feel anything beyond mutual companionship for and tried to ruin me by hurting her.

  Because fucking our band manager’s sister, my then girlfriend, and getting her pregnant and dropping her once the damage was done … Yeah, those were fucking stellar moves. Telling her to get an abortion or else he’d go public about one of her little fetishes was even better. Losing our manager over it was just the icing on the cake.

  Whatever I have that he wants, he takes on his own terms. At any cost is his motto.

  I glance up at the next person in line the same time I see Quinlan stand and pull her bag onto her shoulder. The judge is still staring at his phone, still within earshot, and Hunter leans forward in his chair to watch the action unfold between her and me, completely oblivious to our third-party observer. My head is a mess, striving for a course of action that will cause minimal consequences for me, plus avoid any heartache for Quin. I just hope that somehow she will get the hint, see my twin up in the audience, and figure out between his actions last time and his presence this time what I’m doing.

  It’s a long fucking stretch of an assumption but it’s all I’ve got.

  “Hey, Hawke,” the sorority girl Quinlan called Delta Sig says as she sways her body from side to side, chest forward so that I can see just how perfectly her letters bend across her more-than-handful-size tits. I stare at her, a moment of regret causing me to pause when I see Quin walking toward us, eyebrows furrowed in curiosity how I’m going to handle perky sorority girl now that I’m having smoking-hot sex with her in the school alcoves.

  And shit, I’ve done nothing more than kiss sorority girl, and since the exchange was less than memorable her name escapes me momentarily. Hunt is now on the move, slowly walking down the stairs, his eyes tracking Quinlan as she walks my way, her short skirt showcasing her killer legs,
and fuck me because I know my brother’s enjoying the sight of them right now.

  I look back at Delta Sig and smile softly although I know it doesn’t reach my eyes. She’s so caught up in the idea of me she won’t notice the difference anyway. “Hey, how’s it going?”

  “Good. Good,” she says, twisting her hands in front of her and all I can think about is the damn candy sitting on the table behind me that Quinlan brought me. Fuck, how am I going to do this? “I brought you some Skittles since I saw you like sweet things.”

  Just like you, right? This isn’t my first rodeo, so of course my mind fills in the blanks for her. She reaches out a bag to me. “Thanks,” I say as I take it and toss it on the table behind me.

  Delta Sig bites her bottom lip in a calculated move that I’ve seen more times than I care to count. God, the girl just tries too damn hard. When you wear a sign screaming I want you to fuck me so I can brag about it … Yeah, it’s not very appealing to me. “I was wondering if you wanted to go out for a beer at Sully’s Pub.” She takes a step closer, bottom lip back between her teeth again. “And then we could head back to my place if you want.”

  And there she goes and gives me an opening and an out that I can’t refuse. My head is screaming no, telling me to find another way to get Hunt to fuck off and leave me so I can drag Quin right back to that console and work some of my emotional duress out while fucking her tight, hot pussy until I feel better. But I know I have to play this game or else she’ll be the consequence.

  The judge clears his throat and I glance up to see his attention focused back on me. Shit.

  I can feel Hunt’s stare as he stands on the bottom step at Quin’s back. I can see Quin staring at me in my periphery, and Delta Sig is begging me with her big blue eyes that are smoked up a bit too much for a school day. She definitely had her plan of action today and I know I’m an asshole for using it to get me out of this situation and then turn her down without giving her the other kind of action she’s hoping for.