Nerdy Little Secret

by Aarons, Carrie

  “Jolie. We shouldn’t …” he says quietly.

  “And yet, I think we definitely should.” I nod my head vigorously. “Give me a term, come on, quiz me.”

  His eyes never leave mine. “What is a telomere?”

  I have to dig deep into my brain, but it comes to me. “Special, essential DNA sequences at both ends of each chromosome.”

  Mick clicks his tongue. “You’re right.”

  “Take it off, baby,” I taunt him.

  He bends down and comes up with a shoe. “Happy?”

  “Boooo. That’s a lame start. You could have begun with the shirt.” I give him a thumbs-down.

  “You have to earn that.” And the flirty side of my summer fling rears its attractive head.

  This guy is so fucking good-looking. Most would simply not see it, because it’s not obvious. He’s not a jock or a pretty boy. No, Mick’s good looks are the kind that sneak up on you, but once you see them, you can’t turn away. He’s gorgeous in that unique, model kind of way. Seriously, this guy could be gracing the runways of Milan while my football friends are flexing their muscles at a frat party.

  I get his next question correct too, and off comes the other shoe. Two socks later, and I know he’s about to stop throwing me softballs.

  “What is the difference between a diploid and a haploid?” Mick squares his jaw, thinking he has me.

  Shit, he might have stumped me. My brain feels fuzzy from the drinks, and from the anticipation of possibly seeing him shirtless. I have to close my eyes.

  “A haploid cell is a cell with chromosomes that come in homologous pairs. Homologous just means similar, but not identical. A diploid cell is a cell that has only one representative of each chromosome pair.”

  I hold my breath, and when he smiles like the devil, I know I’m wrong. “Nope. You had the definitions right, but unfortunately, you switched the terms. Diploids come in homologous pairs. Haploids only have one representative chromosome pair.”

  “Fuck,” I mutter, snapping my fingers. “Okay, give me another one.”

  “I think you should have to take something off. It’s only fair.” Mick raises an eyebrow, leveling me.

  Can’t argue with Mr. Logic over there. Never one to shy from a dare, I pick a big piece of clothing, just to show him up. My fingertips reach for the hem of my shirt, and slowly, I pull it over my head. While the material blocks my view of his face as it passes over my eyes, my skin tingles knowing he’s watching me.

  I toss it to the side when it’s off, sitting in nothing but a bra across the table from him.

  If someone lit a match in here, the whole place would ignite.

  We’re staring at each other like feral animals, Mick’s eyes on my tits and my breath coming out in labored puffs.

  “I should ask you another question.” He gulps.

  I nod. “Yeah.”

  In the next beat, we’re lunging for each other, chair legs scraping across the floor and our mouths crashing in the middle.

  18

  Mick

  We’re climbing over the table to get to each other.

  One second, we were sitting there, wading through a minefield of study questions and strip dares, and the next, we were kissing like our lives depended on it.

  Jolie’s tongue is in my mouth, and I give it right back to her, kissing her with such fervor that I think there might actually be sparks coming off of us. My hands mold to her bare torso, skating up and over her velvet skin to cup the lacy, hot pink bra she wears. My thumbs dig down into the half-moons, finding her nipples and circling them with the blunt tips of my fingers.

  She moans into my mouth, and if I wasn’t already rock hard, I am now. Standing, never detaching our mouths, I take her with me. I don’t want this table between us; I need to feel her pressed against me.

  Once we’re standing, Jolie begins to move us down the hall which I can only assume leads to her bedroom.

  It’s dumb, so dumb to be doing this. But I don’t care. I’m too deep now, my erection standing at full mast and all the warning signs chucked out the window.

  As we stumble past doors, our clothes come off. My shirt, her bra, my belt buckle, her leggings pushed down past her hips. By the time we make it to her room, which I barely get a chance to look around, we’re half naked and my fingers are lodged inside her.

  I remove them from pumping in and out of her as I push her gently on her bed, onto her back. And once her underwear is thrown behind me, I feast.

  “Mick!” Jolie sobs out as soon as my lips latch to the sensitive, engorged bud between her thighs.

  Jesus, I’ve missed the taste of her. And the sounds she makes when I scrape my teeth along her clit. Or how she squirms when I push my tongue inside her.

  It all seems to be moving so fast, and yet so slow. I taste her endlessly, until she’s gripping the sheets. Then Jolie is pulling me up by the shoulders and moving me onto my back as she removes my shorts and boxers along with them.

  Then her mouth comes down over me, and I’m a goner. She bobs up and down, sucking me with such force and precision that I have to dig my nails into my palms to keep from coming.

  “Condom,” I choke, because her mouth on my cock may just cause me to stroke out.

  Jolie sits up with a pop from her throat and it vibrates all the way down my shaft. She moves to her nightstand, pulling open the top drawer and producing a little foil packet. After handing it to me, she flips over onto her back.

  As I roll the condom on, it occurs me to that this is our first time in a bed. During the summer, we had sex behind cabins, in sheds, on the floor of the barn, and in the woods. Never did I have her in my bunk, and she never brought me in hers. Probably because there were ten-year-olds within earshot, but still.

  It’s strange to be alone with her, in the most intimate place a person could have sex, no unforeseen obstacles or waiting to get caught.

  Without another thought, I line myself up, dragging my protected tip from the top of her clit to the bottom of her slit. She lets out a ragged breath, and it’s only then do I push in.

  Her eyes flutter closed but mine are intensely trained on her face as I spread her legs wider.

  “I’ve missed you,” I murmur, not being able to get ahold of myself as my balls graze her ass.

  “Yes.” She loops her arms around my neck, opening her eyes.

  Usually, we laughed or joked during sex, taunted each other. It was a fun, forbidden thing, and so we felt giddy during it.

  Not this time. No, neither of us speaks. We simply stare, inhale the same breaths, and groan as I pump in and out of her. It feels … more. There’s something underlying here, a massive thing building between us that no one in the room wants to put a name to. Maybe it’s because we’ve let the sexual tension get so pent up. Maybe it’s because we’ve spent time as friends this time, before tearing each other’s clothes off.

  Or maybe it has been here all along. And now that we know there could be a future past the end of August, it’s planting its ideas and hopes in our hearts.

  My cock twitches inside her as I go deeper, faster. I brace both hands next to her head, pushing up so that I can rail into her body.

  I know she’s coming without her ever having to say it. She mewls that familiar cry in the back of her throat, and then her nails scratch down my back as she arches.

  Her face, that perfectly suspended bliss, is what tosses me over the edge. I grunt out my release as everything in me laser-focuses to the tip of my cock and I spurt into the condom.

  We breathe into each other, my forehead against her shoulder while I regain myself. When I can move, I flip over, pulling out of her and instantly feeling the warmth of her around me. My back hits the mattress, and I study the ceiling, trying to blink away the spots in my vision.

  “That was …” I breathe, unable to form thoughts.

  Jolie doesn’t say anything, and just as I’m about to look over to study her expression, the doorbell rings.

&nb
sp; “Shit, that’s the repair guy.”

  Jolie jumps up, hopping into her underwear and throwing on a random dress that hangs over the back of her desk chair.

  “How do you know?” I ask, amused as I watch her jump around the room frantically.

  “My roommates wouldn’t knock, they have keys. Um … hold on, okay?” She looks unsure as she leaves the room.

  I lie in her bed, a queen that feels much larger than my twin, but my feet still hang off the end. The sheets are white and feel expensive under my back, and the furniture in here does not match the threadbare carpet and wood-paneled walls resurrected from the seventies. On the tack board above her desks are hundreds of pictures from dozens of places all over the world. I see her at the Eiffel Tower, in front of the Trevi Fountain, riding a camel in some desert. I knew before I saw these photos that we were vastly different, but this just puts a period on it.

  My body is in bliss mode, and I know I should get up and get dressed, but it’s the first ten minutes I’ve had all semester to chill and be in the moment. So I take it.

  Listening to the muffled conversation out in the kitchen through Jolie’s closed bedroom door, my cock starts to stiffen again thinking about what just happened. I should be freaking out more than I am, because I promised myself I wouldn’t fall back into bed with her, but I’m not. It’s probably those two drinks. Or my numbed-out post-orgasm brain.

  Jolie slowly opens her door, coming back in with our discarded clothes in her hands. “So, uh, the repair guy is here …”

  She looks me up and down, and I see her eyes heat at the sight of my naked body. But there is also regret in those beautiful brown eyes.

  “Should I go?” I ask.

  A flicker of nausea hits my stomach, because the first thing I can think is that she doesn’t want her roommates to see me.

  “Um, I mean we could study in here? But I feel like we already completed the packet. What do you think?” she asks, leaving the decision up to me.

  I sit up. “Yeah, I mean, it’s getting late anyway. I should go.”

  “You don’t have to if you don’t—”

  “No, it’s fine—”

  We both pause, looking sheepishly at each other.

  “This isn’t something you’re going to regret, is it?” I ask, my honesty never knowing when to shut up.

  Jolie comes to sit down beside me, her face breaking with relief. “No. I just … we already talked about how we have a lot going on. We should … keep this casual. I think the last thing either of us can handle right now is defining this. You have your goals, and I have mine. We should focus on those.”

  As much as what she’s saying is logical, something I’m usually known best for, it still feels like she’s slicing my heart open with little tiny stabs. Kind of like she’s taking an envelope opener to it. Not enough to hurt if it’s just one, but the sting grows unbearable as she slashes more and more.

  “No, yeah, that makes sense.” I nod my head, giving her my best poker face.

  But those are things I said to her, and they do make sense. Except with what she just did, with the emotions neither of us can put words to, we just complicated things beyond belief.

  “So, keeping things casual?” she asks, holding out a hand for me to shake.

  I’m still naked, sitting in her bed, nothing casual about this. But I reach for her hand anyway. “Casual.”

  19

  Jolie

  “Why is the best pizza place in town at the back of a gas station?”

  Maddy asks this as she picks up her second slice of pepperoni, the grease dripping onto the plate.

  “It’s so true. Gross, but true.” Christine nods as we sit at a rickety table in the back of Rowan’s.

  Technically, Rowan’s is a gas station with a convenience store attached. But our freshman year they started serving pizza and fat sandwiches, or variations of sub rolls piled high with things like mozzarella sticks, cheesesteak, and french fries oozing with honey mustard. So while you sit there at one of the seven tables crammed into the side of the quickie mart, other students wander in to get a thirty rack of beer or candy bars to heal a roommate’s broken heart.

  We’re splitting a pie, half pepperoni and half sausage, before getting ready for our Friday night party. And I’m celebrating. I passed another biology quiz—and I got laid this week.

  It’s been two days since I dragged Mick into my bedroom, and my mind has been swirling with it. Not to mention, our texting has picked up. It no longer only includes scheduling study meetups, but now details about our days, and flirty messages when the sun goes down.

  What I really can’t stop thinking about, though, is the look on his face when he left my house. It was disappointed, almost rejected, even though he’d just fucked me with the force of a thousand racehorses.

  I said what I said to protect myself, and him. My heart was in that hookup way more than I bargained for. It felt like my chest cracked wide open when Mick stared down at me, as he was pushing himself inside me, connecting us. I could feel myself begin to melt in a way I never had, not even with him this summer.

  The emotion was foreign and strange, and with no indication of how Mick feels, I have to nip it in the bud.

  Plus, he has made it crystal clear before he started tutoring me again that he doesn’t want anything more. Maybe he thinks falling back into bed together is a mistake, or doesn’t want it to continue. He rejected me once, I can’t risk my ego for that again.

  And he shouldn’t have to make that decision. He’s already helped me pass biology thus far, and he’s clearly got something going on back home. He doesn’t need my problems, or the ones he won’t tell me about.

  It’s as if my mind conjures him, because the bell over the door dings upon someone’s arrival or exit. I look over my shoulder while Madison’s eyes are glued to the sports update on the TV. She’s the biggest female football fan I’ve ever met. Seriously, don’t challenge her on her pigskin knowledge.

  In walks a group of guys, all younger looking, with one sticking up out of the bunch. It takes me a minute, but I realize that Mick has just walked in with his roommates. Three guys, all in varying states of sweatpants, and then Mick is toward the back, wearing a sweatshirt with the solar system outlined on it.

  He doesn’t spot me, not until they’re at the counter ordering, and when they sit down, it’s clear he’s here to stay. Should I introduce him to my roommates? Go over and say hi? We did say we were keeping it casual. Maybe I’ll just see where he takes it.

  Those eyes, the color of a seafoam ocean spray, connect with mine and Mick gives a slow, smiling nod. I return it, and my roommates don’t see. Okay, so maybe he isn’t expecting me to get up and go over. It doesn’t look like he’s doing the same.

  Over the next half an hour, as we demolish our pizza and theirs is delivered to their table, I try to carry on the conversation with Christine and Madison. But with every passing second, I feel his gaze on my skin. I’m heated, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I was blushing. More than too often, I sneak glances over my shoulders, smiling when we both slip up at trying to be sneaky.

  It’s a game we’re playing, a flirty, secret game … not unlike the one we played at Camp Woodwin. Mick’s tongue darts out to wet his lower lip, I take a sip of my beer to cool myself down. It doesn’t work, I still feel like I’m sitting on a volcano, my thighs squirming on the plastic chair.

  My roommates discuss splitting a sundae to top it off and start discussing potential ice cream flavors. I can’t take it any longer and need to go to the bathroom to splash cold water on my face.

  “I’m going to the bathroom.” I stand on shaky legs and make my way to the darkened hall at the back of the store.

  It’s quiet back here, cooler than the front of the building where Mick sits taunting me.

  Except two seconds later, I hear footsteps behind me.

  I whirl around, and there he is. That tall, lean body blocking the doorframe to the rest of the store.r />
  “Hi,” he says from the entrance of the hallway.

  Those green eyes look me up and down, appreciating every inch.

  “Hi to you.” I nod, batting my eyelashes.

  “How was your pizza?” he asks.

  “Good. First time?” I say, and it’s laced with so much more innuendo than pizza.

  Mick shakes his head slowly, a cocky grin spreading on his lips. And before I know what he’s doing, he grabs my elbow and pulls me into the bathroom.

  It’s a single stall, and even though someone is sure to come knocking, he locks the door behind my back before pinning me to it.

  “I can’t stop thinking about you.” He breathes onto my lips as our noses touch.

  My panties are wet in an instant, something so familiar and taboo about our secret meetings like this. It brings me back to the summer; of camp days and sneaking around.

  “A quickie in a gas station bathroom? How desperate of us.” I mean it to come off teasing, but it sounds more breathy on the end of a moan.

  It’s because Mick’s fingers are flirting with the waistband of my jean shorts, and I want so badly to actually have that quickie I was taunting him about.

  “Well, when you keep looking at me like that …” he all but growls, planting a searing kiss on my lips.

  I break it off. “Says the guy who was licking his chops at me.”

  He laughs sarcastically. “It was the pizza. It’s just that. Good.”

  We both inhale and exhale at the same time, and then he seals his mouth to mine. The kiss is endless, slow and gentle but also intense and searching. My breath hitches in my throat when Mick pops the button on my shorts, sliding the zipper down.

  For a moment, I think I hear a voice in the hallway, but it must be an employee, because no one comes knocking.

  And then his fingers push past the elastic of my thong and are up inside me. Mick muffles my cry as those two thick digits pump into my wet heat, causing me to spasm around them. I’m dangerously close to the edge already.