by M. J. Fields
He takes her sweater and puts it over her head.
From under the sweater, she laughs as we walk away.
I look at Jamie, all sexy in a short red dress, red shoes, and red lips. When I wink at her, she rolls her eyes as she dramatically looks up at the ceiling, trying not to smile.
Downs, Tank, and Schooler join us as we walk on stage. Downs gives me a fist bump as he walks by, and Tank and Schooler follow suit. Together, we all turn and face the wall.
As the first note starts, Logan turns, mic in hand, and begins, “The sun goes down, the stars come out, and all that counts, is here and now. My universe will never be the same. I’m glad you came.”
My part starts, and I turn, seeing Jamie, Elle, Christy, and Lisa, all standing at the edge of the stage and smiling.
I step closer to the edge and bend down, eye to eye with Jamie, and begin to sing, “You cast a spell on me, spell on me. You hit me like the sky fell on me.”
I hold the mic out, and she sings, “Fell on me.”
I stand and watch her grin as I continue my part, looking into her beautiful brown eyes. “And I decided you look well on me, well on me.” I step forward, squat down, and run the back of my hand down her cheek, “So let’s go somewhere no one else can see you and me.”
I see her visibly shiver as I stand, and then Downs takes his turn.
When the song ends, Logan is the first off the stage, but I stay a bit longer, because I’m staring at her, and her at me, and she’s looking at me like she wants a little something more than an argument … again.
I like it. I like it a lot.
I don’t take the stairs; I jump off the stage in front of her.
“You can sing,” she says with a smile.
“I can do all sorts of things with my mouth,” I half-joke, and hers falls open. “Right now, I’m fighting the urge to kiss you.”
When Logan bumps into me as he pulls Elle behind him toward the bathroom, I start to follow, but she stops me.
“Let them have a minute alone.”
“He looks—”
“Like he’s sick of pretending he doesn’t like her?” She laughs. “He’s looked like that from day one, so let them be.”
“Then sing to me again.”
“Oh, player, you have things a bit confused.”
I laugh. “Like hell I do.”
She smirks.
When the music starts, I lose her briefly as she looks at the stage, closes her eyes and begins to sway. I watch the way her lips move, mouthing the lyrics. “Hold on. What’s the rush, what’s the rush? We’re not done, are we? ’Cause I don’t need to change this...”
I put one hand on her hip, and she opens her eyes. Looking into her telling eyes, I put my other hand on her opposite hip, step toward her and link my hands behind her.
She’s still singing, but now I can hear her. Her fucking voice is magical. Beyoncé, Britney, and whoever this is, she manages to sound just like them, or maybe they should try to sound more like her. Fuck if I know. All I really know is she sounds like perfection.
She links her hands behind my neck and leans in.
I’m not a bad dancer, but I’m certainly not as good as she is. But fuck if I’ll follow, and she clearly doesn’t want me to, so we just move, and we do it in a way that feels closer than we should be in public, and maybe even more intimate than I have ever been in private.
Dancing, who the hell would have thought that would be a thing for me? But it’s sexy. No, sensual. Whatever. It’s out of my comfort zone, but really damn comfortable.
When Elle flies past us, though, that connection is broken immediately. Then, when Logan pushes everyone in his path aside to get to her, we both let go of each other and hurry toward the table.
We get there in time to see Elle stabbing herself in the leg.
She looks at Logan as she stands and says, “Hothpita.”
“Oh God,” Jamie gasps. “Call an ambulance.”
Lisa yells, “Get an Uber.”
Christy freaks, chanting, “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.”
Jamie grabs her phone from the table and drops it. “Oh shit.”
“I got it.” I bend down, grab it, and hand it to her.
“Wogan …”
He swoops her up.
“I can wawk.”
“We’re coming with you,” Jamie says, grabbing her coat, and we all run to the door.
“No, I got her,” Logan yells from over his shoulder as he rushes to the door.
Once outside, Jamie kicks off her shoes and starts running barefoot toward them.
I grab her shoes and yell after her, “Jamie, he’ll take care of her. You’ll end up sick or with some jacked-up foot fungus.”
Logan has Elle in the truck and is pulling away when Jamie yells, “You call me if you need me.”
When I get beside her, she covers her face and starts shaking.
I wrap my arms around her and pull her in for a hug. “He’ll take care of her.”
“We’re squad; she needs us.”
“Where did they go?” Lisa asks.
“University Hospital is right around the corner.”
Jamie pushes off me and starts to run. “Let’s go.”
I catch up and grab her again. “He’s got her.”
She stops and wipes under her eyes.
“Weren’t you the one who just minutes ago told me—”
“I know, I know.” She sniffs back unshed tears.
“She has her phone. He has one, too. Let’s get you back to your place and just chill until we hear something.”
I kneel down. “Shoes, Jamie.”
She lifts her foot, and I cringe.
“Is she cut?” Christy asks.
“Yeah, she’s bleeding.” Lisa gags.
I touch her foot, and she whimpers.
“Well then,”—I stand, turn around, and squat back down—“your chariot has arrived.”
“I can’t ride you all the way—”
She stops when I laugh.
“Really?”
Lisa and Christy giggle.
She looks at them. “Really!” She looks back at me. “I’m not some tiny little thing, and you can’t carry me all the way there.”
I look back at her and scowl. “You’re perfect, and you’re wrong. You’d be shocked at how long I can let you ride.”
She smacks me.
“How long I can ride?” I ask.
“This isn’t a time to be funny.”
“I know, Flower, but it’s also not the time for you to bleed all over in the freezing cold or to doubt my endurance level.”
When she still hesitates, I reach around behind me, grab two hands full of ass, and lift her up. “Wrap your legs around me.”
“I can’t!” she squeals.
I squeeze her ass tightly. “My circumference hasn’t changed from a couple weeks—”
I stop when she covers my mouth with her hand and chuckle.
She leans in and whispers, “Do you have to do that in front of them?”
I look back and arch a brow.
She realizes right quick that she called us out the morning after and scrunches up her nose.
“We good?” I mumble into her hand.
She removes it from my face and nods.
I look at Christy and Lisa, who look wildly amused. “Can you ladies keep up?”
They nod.
“Let’s do this.”
I start jogging, and Jamie tightens her thighs around me.
I whisper over my shoulder, “You wanna push your tits against my back?”
She pinches my chest. “Shush.”
“When I pop wood because they’re bouncing around, don’t get offended.”
She pushes up against me, and I realize that may not help one damn bit.
As soon as we get to the dorms, my phone vibrates in my pocket, making my semi tingle. I laugh as I lean against the building, pushing her against the brick, and pull it out, seeing a
text from Logan.
-At the hospital, she’s gonna be fine. Her mom’s coming up. Let the girls know.
I hold it up so Jamie can see it, before I type back.
-Meeting the folks, huh?
He replies immediately with a middle finger emoji.
“He gets to meet her mom?” Jamie seethes.
I shove my phone in my pocket, grab her ankles, and step away from the building. “He had a vehicle there.”
I wait for Lisa to scan her card to unlock the door to the building.
“You can put me down.”
“Do you know the kinds of diseases you can catch from a fucking dorm, Jamie?”
“No, but I’m sure you do.” She laughs, and so do her girls.
“Which is why I’m always cautious, so let me know if you have latex allergies; I wouldn’t want to have to take you to University when your cooter swells up like Elle’s tongue.”
“You did not just call my vagina a cooter,” she huffs. “Or assume your penis is—”
“I won’t call your lady bits a cooter if you promise me to never call my cock a penis.”
Both Christy and Lisa are laughing as we step into the elevator.
When my phone vibrates again, I pin Jamie back against the wall, pull it out, and laugh when I see a pic of Elle with two thumbs-up, smiling.
“Oh my goodness, she’s in a hospital gown,” Jamie buries her head in my shoulder.
Christy snatches my phone. “Lemme see that.”
I laugh until I hear a familiar notification chime. I take it back.
Christy looks up at me. “Who’s that?”
“Not sure. Probably not important.” I push the phone back into my pocket.
“Aren’t you going to reply?” Lisa asks.
Thankfully, the elevator stops.
I nod. “Yeah, when we get inside your quad. And how the hell did you get a quad as first years anyway?”
Jamie
Once inside, Mitch toes off his sneakers and walks to the bathroom, still carrying me. He turns and sets me on the sink.
“Down, girl.” He takes the back of my head and pulls it down, so I’m eye level to his crotch.
“Mitchell Moore, I think you are really reaching—”
“Looking for a first-aid kit, not a blowjob. Come on, Flower; I’m much smoother than that.”
I turn my head and look up at him. “Top shelf. And I think I can handle it.”
He shakes his head as he grabs the small kit. “I’ve just developed a foot fetish, and I wanna know how it’s gonna play out.” He smiles down at me. “But now that you mention it.”
I sit here, looking at a man who ignores messages from who knows, a man who has, without words, confessed that he knows about that site, and who obviously is a player in every sense of the word. He’s a man who holds his head high and smiles … an almost blinding smile, like he hasn’t a worry in the world, aside from his obvious fascination with … me. All should be warning signs, yet I feel warm and gooey inside.
He reaches behind me and turns on the water, slides my ass down the countertop, lifts my foot up, and sets it in the sink. “Let that rinse your wound.” He then turns and opens the shower curtain. “Well, damn.”
I look over my shoulder. “What?”
“It’s like looking behind the curtains in Emerald City.” He picks up, opens, and smells one bottle of body wash after another until he finds one that he seems to like, because it elicits an, “Mmm …”.
He turns and holds out the lavender body wash. “This is you.”
“That’s evening me.”
“Remind me to sniff you in the morning, so I can guess which is morning you.”
“Who says you’re staying over?”
“I’ll take that as an invitation.”
“But it wasn’t.” I shake my head back and forth, trying not to laugh.
“Sometimes, you have to just let it happen, Flower.”
Christy pops her head in the doorway, holding up her phone. “Group message. She doesn’t want us to worry. Just an allergic reaction to peanuts.”
“She didn’t eat any peanuts,” I say.
“I did.” Mitch shakes his head, looking angry at himself. “Did she drink one of the beers I brought over?”
I touch his shoulder. “You didn’t know.”
He doesn’t look at me as he walks out of the room.
“Mitch, you didn’t know. Hell, we did and didn’t even think about it,” Christy calls behind him.
“Careless. Fucking stupid,” he sputters.
“She’s going to be okay.” I cover my mouth as I yawn.
He walks back in with a wad of paper towels, pulls my foot out from under the faucet, wets them, squirts some soap on them, folds the towel, and rubs it together. “This may sting.”
I reach over and lift his chin until he looks at me. “You didn’t know.”
“Still …”
“Mitch, you know now.”
“Don’t beat yourself up, big guy. Big game in two days; let the opposing team do that,” Christy jokes as she walks out.
He lifts my foot and looks at the bottom. “You have tweezers in the kit; wanna grab them?”
“Is something in there?”
“Glass, I think. You shouldn’t have kicked your shoes off. Hell, you shouldn’t be wearing fuck-me pumps out when it’s this cold.”
Handing him the tweezers, I laugh. “Fuck-me pumps?”
He looks up, serious as hell. “Guys like that shit. Guarantee all those assholes there wanna fuck you.”
I cross my arms. “Girls like to look pretty. Those shoes are—”
“This may hurt,” he cuts me off.
“Shit!”
“It’s out.” He grabs a handful of toilet paper, sets the shard of glass inside it, tosses it in the toilet, and flushes it. He walks back, lifts my foot, and starts washing it with the towels.
“I can—”
“I got it.”
He holds my foot under the water to rinse it, and then he grabs the alcohol pad. “This is gonna sting, but it’ll kill any of the shit that could have been on that glass.”
He’s right; it stings, but he moves quickly and puts antibiotic ointment on, and then a Hello Kitty Band-Aid.
“Thank you.”
“Of course.”
His phone chimes again. The same chime from before.
“You good?”
I nod.
“All right. I’m gonna head out.”
“Okay.”
He peers up at me. “What?”
I shake my head and slide off the counter. “Nothing, player. Thanks for the lift home and for doctoring up my foot.”
“Anytime.” He turns and walks out the bathroom door, saying goodnight to Lisa and Christy as he walks out the door.
I have no idea what just happened, but he turned from hot to cold in a millisecond, and it all had to do with a message he didn’t want us to see.
I clean up the sink and put away the first-aid kit while my foot throbs, my head spins, and my heart aches.
When I walk out, Lisa and Christy look at me.
“Is your foot okay? Lisa asks.
At the same time, Christy says, “He left abruptly, yeah?”
“Both yes.” I chuckle.
“Who’s JT?” Christy asks.
I shrug. “No idea. Why?”
“That’s what the message popped up as JT@JC.”
I laugh, hold my palms up, and shrug. “Still no idea.”
“That doesn’t bother you?” Christy asks.
Yes. Yes, it does, I think, but I say, “Of course not. He and I aren’t …” I shift my weight and apply too much pressure on my foot. “Fucking shit!”
I look up at them, both trying not to laugh, and I lose it.
After we laugh and talk about all we’ve been through in the short time we were out, we finally receive a group text from Elle, insisting she’s fine, and we decide to go to bed.
Afte
r a shower, a cup of hot herbal tea, and tossing and turning enough that I give up, I put on my tennis shoes, which hurts like hell, pull his sweatshirt over my head, and open the door.
“What are you—”
He reaches out, grabs the back of my head with one hand, my ass with the other, and pulls me into a searing kiss. I link my fingers behind his neck as he lifts me.
Tongue, teeth, lips, heat.
When my back hits something soft, I realize he carried me, by my ass, to my bedroom.
“Mitch?”
“Shush,” he says, pushing off me as he lifts my legs, one at a time, removing my tennis shoes. He gets up off the bed, brows knit as he looks me over. “You’re fucking with me hard, Flower.”
Before I have a chance to say a word, he leans down and kisses me hard then trails his lips down my neck, nipping through his sweatshirt at my breasts, down my waist. He grips my hips, pulling them up as he pushes his thumbs beneath the waistband of my leggings and begins pulling them down.
“So fucking into you,” he groans as he pulls them past my ass. “But this is it, Flower. No more until you stop mind fucking me.”
Bowing down, he kisses each inch of heated skin. “Leg out.”
With one leg free, I start to pull the other.
“Fuck that.” His head between my legs, he inhales, and hungrily buries his face between them.
Looking down in the dark, I watch as he licks my core over and over again, circling his tongue where I want it the most, avoiding the thrumming pulse as my wetness intensifies.
“Mitch, please.” I rock into his touch, but he continues avoiding the spot I want his attention the most.
“Please.” I grind against him, attempting to maneuver my body so that I can have him where I need him the most.
“It’s Moore, Flower. Mitch Moore.”
“Moore, please, Moore.”
He reaches up, grabs my pillow, and hands it to me. “You’re gonna need this.” Then he flicks his tongue over my clit.
I cry out as I grip the comforter beneath me.
“Pillow,” he mumbles against my heated flesh a split-second before he crashes his lips against me and sucks, detonating the desire only he has generated.
Reeling, burning, sweetly aching as he continues his pleasureful assault on my body, I cry out into a pillow over and over again.
Satisfied, sated, and a bit sore, I lie there, trying to catch my breath as he gets up off the bed.
