Текст книги "Quarterback Bait "

Автор книги: Celia Loren

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 11 страниц)

 

Chapter Twenty-Two

Ash

 

My head was pounding, but it wasn't quite a headache yet. It was the prelude to a headache, one I assumed was coming later. Light pressed down on me from all sides, and I reached for something soft. Something familiar.

“OW!”

“Fuck! What?” The world crashed in, a blur. This was not my bed, or my pillow, or even my dorm. Then the big fat memory strolled in: karaoke.

Fuck. Me.

“I'm sorry,” I heard Landon say, as he hopped out of bed. “I was on the floor. My roommate Kyle put a dude on the extra bed. It's just—my back, and there's this game tomorrow...I didn't think you'd mind.” His sleepy face was at once contorted with worry. He bit his lip. I realized he'd been spooning me. A vague, dreamy sensation told me that we'd slept together all night long.

“Do you feel okay?” my step-brother asked, approaching the bed slowly. He wasn't wearing a shirt, I noticed. His six pack—which had seemed almost painted on in the car last night—looked impressively real under the lazy light of daybreak. I wanted to reach out and press my palm against his abs.

“Yeah,” I said instead, stretching my arms. Then it occurred to me to be self-conscious—I probably looked like a fucking train wreck. Put a few cocktails in me and I'm suddenly Girl Gone Wild. I stuck out my tongue, as an experiment.

Yup. Still blue.

“Landon,” I started. “Look—I'm really sorry about—whatever it is I did last night. I honestly didn't mean to...”

But he was already shaking his head and bending his knees so our faces were level again.

“Hush,” he murmured. His eyes were all concern. Shyly, he reached out and placed a palm on the wild, tangled thatch of my un-brushed hair. I felt...safe.

“You can stay here as long as you want,” he said. “And like, no funny business. Obviously.” He cracked a dorky grin. When his body shifted, I caught a whiff of his smell: sleep, and something muskier—the echo of Old Spice, applied the night before. His big brown eyes drank me in with tenderness. Something told me it was now or never.

I raised my chin, just slightly. It was easy. Our mouths fit together like puzzle pieces. He explored me gently at first, mouth pressing forward and back. I pictured an undulating jellyfish. I opened my eyes for a fraction of a second and saw that something like a smile hovered around his eyebrows.

I leaned back on the twin bed, inviting him forward. This time there was no hemming and hawing, no need to pretend. I wanted him and he wanted me and no one else was around this morning—ta-frickin-da. Gently, he rose above me and pressed his hands forward so he rested against the mattress. I slithered my fingers out from below the covers and made to tug his boxers toward me.

Still, he said nothing, even as he obeyed my little commands and began to climb into bed. His body was warm and hard and heavy on top of me, even with him bearing most of his weight in his flexed thighs. I let my exploring fingers dance all over his surface this time; he kissed me, and I tangled myself in the shaggy tips of his hair. He kissed me, and I dug my fingertips into the wings of his shoulder blades, the taut expanse of his middle, then the muscular, pert pans of his ass.

Landon rocked back on his knees once my hands began to fiddle with his waistband. He straddled my middle, and took a moment to gaze down at me. I wanted to laugh. We'd been fighting. I'd been hating his guts. Our family was ruined...yet, look at us now, world.

He started to rock back and forth above me—slowly at first, but with the muscular pressure of a 170lb football player who was maybe 9/10ths raw muscle. I was surprised at how hot I found it, his dry-humping me. He rocked forward on his hands until he was hovering above me, our faces separated by centimeters. I darted forward and bit his bottom lip, bringing it down toward mine. In an abrupt change of tempo, Landon brought both hands up to frame my face. He tilted my head back and kissed me deeply.

I thought of the great Rhett Butler line, from Gone with the Wind: “You should be kissed, and often, and by someone who knows how.” And then, I stopped thinking. It was happening to me.

Eventually, one skilled hand wound its way to my chest. Landon slipped himself up underneath my t-shirt—a borrowed t-shirt, I realized—and covered one swollen breast in warmth. I found myself bucking up against him, so we fell into humping again. He pinched my nipple between his thumb and forefinger, and I let out a little coo.

“You like that?” Landon whispered, his voice tickling my neck. “You like it when I hold your tit like that?”

I almost giggled at the word 'tit,' but something about Landon's voice made the sound die in my throat. His gruff tone was incredibly hot. In response, I moaned and pressed my crotch up towards his blooming erection. He tilted backwards again, affording me an eyeful of the muscular span of his chest, with its spattering of coiled hairs. He straddled me.

A man.

And all the while, Landon kept working on my nipple. I began to feel a wetness spreading between my legs. My body began to ache for penetration, for the admission of his thick cock. Reading me like a book, Landon positioned one knee between my thighs and began to nose himself towards my entrance, his hand still working my tit. I wanted it faster, though—I wanted it now. I sat up so quickly we nearly knocked heads, and quickly reached to my sides and yanked the grey “UT” shirt up over my head. My skin tingled for a second, exposed against the air conditioning, but I was covered just as quickly. When he mashed himself against me, I felt our nipples brush together. Something about all that sensitive flesh made me moan again.

“Fuck, Landon,” I heard myself cry. I was surprised, having never been a huge fan of the dirty talk before. It was a morning of firsts. His big head rustled against my neck again, nibbled softly at my collarbone. He bent lower and took one my breasts fully into his mouth. He began to suck.

I could still feel his hard-on, straining for love. I reached down and rummaged my way past the slit of his boxers. The girth and smoothness of his cock was as I had imagined it, as I had felt it the night before. Perfectly proportioned. I could not wait to have him inside me.

Landon, perhaps sensing my rising heartbeat, narrowed his mouth to one nipple. He gently took my sensitive flesh between his teeth, and left me dangling there for a moment, on the precipice between pleasure and pain. A first, delicious shock shot through my pussy. I was aware of more wetness, pooling between us. When I glanced down, I saw that the tip of him had begun to grow moist.

“Baby, will you please suck me?” Landon asked—though he didn't have to. Although I also hadn't made myself a reputation for being especially into fellatio, something about his perfect manhood begged my oral attention. I peeled my glistening chest away from his mouth, reluctantly, and fixed my attention on his cock. Slowly, I eased the wide head into my mouth. Landon responded by digging his fingers into the back of my head and shouting “YES!”

I suddenly felt like I couldn't take it anymore, the anticipation—so as my mouth fell into a rhythm, sucking up and down along his shaft, I slid one hand down into the waistband of my panties. I was wetter than I had ever been, and for a second this shocked me. Then, as I felt Landon's cock begin to knock against the back of my throat, bulging with want, I pressed up hard against my clit. The combination of actions almost made me come right then.

Landon looked down approvingly, nodding as he continued to thrust inside my mouth. “Yeah. Touch yourself. Touch yourself while you suck my big hard cock.”

It almost happened again. I felt myself pulsing and pulsing, desperate for release. But I was determined to hold off—I wanted him to make me come. He had promised, after all.

With effort, Landon pulled himself out of my warm, eager mouth. He was so hard that his member immediately rose skyward, pointing past his belly button. He brought my face close to his and kissed me deeply once more.

“Can I put this inside you?” he asked, as he came up for air. I nodded furiously. He reached down and began to tug at my panties. He grew impatient after a moment and dragged them down, fingernails scraping against the soft flesh of my legs.

I was quivering with lust by this point. He let me wait there, dangling himself in front of me like the proverbial carrot. Finally, Landon grinned and bent low, sliding himself inside me in one fluid, perfect motion. I felt myself widen as his shaft pressed inside. It hurt for a moment, but seconds later I was swallowed by pleasure. He fit perfectly.

Off my nod, Landon began to push slowly deeper. It was like my whole body was melting—I might have been made of butter. I took his ass in my hands and began to draw him in deeper; I widened my legs so he could move with more ease.

“Yes,” he cried, rocking faster now. “Oh, God. Oh, God, Ashleigh—your pussy is so tight and wet!”

Once again, I was shocked at my visceral reaction to his dirty talk—seemingly of their own accord, my hands had flown over my head to grip the headboard. Perhaps it was just the fact that he sounded so honest, so plaintive, when he spoke. Or perhaps it was just the fact that he was super fucking hot and I'd been wanting him for months.

I took moments to drink in the contours of his body. He moved with an athlete's grace, no matter how hard he was pounding me. Every muscle, every straining sinew, seemed artfully placed. Yes, every cell in my body seemed to insist. Yes! Take me. Fuck me so hard I forget my own name.

Landon dug his fingers into the meat of my hips, and began urging my body into the same quick time that he kept. The base of my skull thudded against the pine headboard, but I didn't mind the pain. I let my eyes flutter open and closed. I reached down and dug my fingers into my own breast, began massaging myself in time with his thrusts. I looked down and watched his mammoth dick entering me, sliding in and out, sticky and perfect and vast—then I looked up and saw his tender eyes scrunched up with concentration and lust. I tilted my body upward, wrapped my legs around him, and kissed him. I clung to the back of his neck.

“Oh, God!” Landon cried, his breath collapsing against my sweaty neck. His fingers dug into my back, so hard I felt the half-moons of his nails again. Then, I was filled with a sweet warmth. His member seemed to pulse inside me, in one last gasp.

I exhaled, victorious that I'd managed to make him come—but I took one look into my stepbrother's eyes and realized we weren't quite finished yet. He was still panting from release, but with the arch of an impish eyebrow, Landon scurried one muscular hand down the heaving expanse of my body, until two strong fingers had landed on the base of my clit. I shuddered with pleasure on the contact. To my shock, he was still rigid in my pussy.

“I want to make you squirt,” he murmured, voice husky and raw. A spasm of pleasure coursed through me—half the product of his words, half the product of his touch. Slowly but surely, Landon began to rock back and forth again. I felt him stiffening. The concert of movement his whirling fingers made, paired with the thrusting, was nearly too much to bear.

“Jesus,” I murmured, head falling back against the pillows again. I was sweating hard and fast from my temples. Landon reached his free hand across the expanse of my naked chest and began manipulating my other breast with the slow, loping motion he rubbed out on my mound.

“Just like that,” I heard myself say, and soon my hips were bucking, accomplices to the rhythm. Landon sped up. His thumb gently spread my folds, granting him deeper purchase into my wet heat. He rubbed and rubbed, faster and faster. I clawed at the bed below me like someone possessed.

“Yes,” Landon said, his voice firm, all command. As if by his own instruction, his cock began to push deeper and deeper. I was hovering on the tip, in a way I never had before. No boy, no vibrator, no memory had ever made me feel this good.

“Oh, FUCK!” I cried, pressing my shoulder blades into the damp bedspread. In one swift arc, my breasts tumbled forward—all the better for Landon's grip. I felt my legs part of their own accord—wider, I figured, than they ever had before. His fingers were racing one another now, roving in faster and faster circles. I opened my eyes for a split second to drink in his gyrating, taut body. The muscular span of his arms, hovering over me. The threads of chest hair spiraling down his perfect abs into the thatch of his magnificent cock.

I felt my legs tense, my eyes bulge. With a screech and a shiver, I came, clenching and releasing all at once—and yet again, we were flooded with the sweetness of our mingled juices.

The bed was tiny, and we both seemed to be expanding like bread—our lungs seemed to require huge gasps just to recover all the spent air. In the ensuing silence, I thought I heard the footsteps of a tentative roommate, out in the hall. At this, I started laughing.

“Oh, he owes me,” Landon whispered, tilting his sweaty face so he spoke directly into my ear. His morning stubble tickled. We tittered together, until the laughter snowballed into a full-on guffaw-fest. He would smile, and I would smile, and then we'd start up hooting like goblins again.

After the goofing had subsided, Landon rolled over and drew his index finger from the pearl of my sternum down my shaking body, passing first my breasts, then my belly, then the damp expanse of my lower body. His touch was light and sweet. Had my eyes been closed, I might have thought it was wind, or a feather. I turned to look him straight in his deep brown eyes and felt nothing but incredible peace.

“I'm glad we did this,” he said. Then, just as quickly, rolled his eyes. “Gah—I'm sorry. Is that super lame? Something a Dad would say?”

“You're not lame, Landy.”

“Glad you think so, Doll.” His eyes blinked slowly as he spoke my silly nickname. I leaned over and kissed him on the nose.

 “So,” Landon finally ventured, after a few dozy minutes had passed. “Did I live up to the hype?”

I reached across the tiny bed until I'd grabbed hold of a striped pillow. Then, I thwacked my stepbrother neatly across the face.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Landon

 

“What the fuck are you smiling about?” Clay murmured, through gritted teeth. It took a second to snap back down to earth. I shrugged, then waved away my buddy's attentions. A whole pile of MYOB, Clay.

“Boys, I know y'all have been paying close attention to your coach,” came the then-unwelcome voice of Special Teams Coach Yeardley, a tall, oily, skeleton-like man with bad teeth and a comb-over. “He's been talking about the scouts coming to watch the A & M game tomorrow. But then, because you're a useful and contributing member of the Longhorn community, you must know all about that. Landon.”

I wanted to throttle the sucker, but instead I nodded, tightly. As soon as Yeardley had wandered farther afield Clay raised his eyebrows at me, in a way I knew contained sympathy but also a willingness to lend our coach a break. His sarcasm hit a chord, after all. For assorted reasons, I had been super distracted the past seven days—or specifically, all the days leading up to the big A & M game, the one that would allegedly decide my future in the NFL. Or outside of it.

For starters, just about every minute I hadn't spent in practice these past few days had been spent with Pop. After Anya had decided she didn't want to press charges about the beating, Carson and I got together and had a pow-wow. Missus Bohemia herself had given me the names of a few anger management counselors she knew, several of whom had connections to the VA and would be willing to work with Pop on his insurance plan. “Landon, you have to do something about this,” she'd told me, when I'd protested. I was still so mad at the geezer that it seemed just as well that he be sent off to a funny farm. But Carson, something of an amateur shrink herself, had convinced me that I'd feel guilty forever if I abandoned the old man full-out in his time of need. She even got me to talk about some of my childhood shit with the Pastor, which was surprisingly freeing. It's not like I'm going to sign up for group therapy anytime soon or anything, but I must say—it did feel good to talk.

Anyways, I'd had to go crawling to just about every UT Professor I'd ever had and get them to vouch for my personal problems so I could get an extension on all my mid-terms while I shuffled Pop to and from therapy. That was no picnic. Fortunately, our school was sports-crazed enough that the whole Biology Department was willing to go to bat for a quarterback. Lucky break.

But the sessions were slow-going. Pop, styling himself as a man of the cloth, wasn't exactly sweet on the idea of psychotherapy. But when I'd finally found him, that fateful morning after—curled up in a miserable ball, clutching a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red that'd been some congregant's wedding present—he had expressed nothing but remorse for the way he'd treated Anya. I still get a cold feeling in my gut, any time I remember walking into the living room and seeing him look so small. “I want to change, son,” he'd actually told me, through a desperate mask of boozy drool and tears. That was the worst I'd ever seen him.

Third straw on the camel's back was then, of course, the fact that I had a new lady friend. Specifically, a lady friend who I couldn't go blabbing about to friends or meeting in public, for the following (very good) reasons: 1) Coach was in the mood to roll heads if he found out anyone was spending what he deemed to be “excessive time” with a member of the opposite sex. (“You can fall in love when football season ends, boys,” he liked to say. “For these last few weeks, consider your nuts in a vice.”) 2) The lady friend's mother and my father were still technically married, and dealing with a shit-ton of personal problems. Didn't seem like a good idea to add “By the way, I'm dating my sister!” to the long list of topics Pop and I had yet to explore in therapy.

As a result of all this BS, Doll and I had elected to kick it on the DL. This actually had its perks. Being with Ashleigh was nothing at all like being with Zora. The former never flinched away from my touch. She was proud of her body, and would walk around naked in my room like it was no big thing. And best of all—she actually seemed interested when I would go on at length about whatever geeky science thing was jazzing me that week from Earth Science class (the only one I dug), or the latest mini-gossip on the team. I was fascinated just to hear her talk about her classes. I truly believed, for the first time, that despite the age difference my girl was way smarter than me.

The first day we got together, Ash and I didn't get out of bed. We'd fuck, then fall asleep, then fuck, then order takeout, then watch some dumb movie on my laptop. Denny had texted me at 6:05 to ask why I was late to practice, and Doll had laughed at me from bed as I'd hastened to get dressed, hopping foot to foot. I'd waited to shower until I got home, so she could come in with me. I'd taken her from behind as our bodies were lathered with soap, one hand in the thatch of her dark wet hair, the other stroking the supple flesh of her pussy. My roommates definitely weren't pleased with the state of affairs (or the screaming) but then, what did they know about being smitten?

“Hey, Landon!” shouted a familiar voice. I snapped out of my reverie to see Denny, waving at me from the sidelines. The team was taking their time to disband after practice—fellas were congregating by the cooler while others made breaks for the locker room—but my old friend and confidant had elected to go off by himself. He toed the twenty yard line like a guy debating whether or not to ask some girl to prom. I was so surprised by his powerless stance that I forgot for a second that he'd swooped in and stolen my ex-girlfriend (before she'd technically been an ex-).

Curious, I moseyed over. Denny seemed relieved when I arrived at his side. Palms up, to indicate I meant him no trouble. His typically snarky expression seemed drained of joy today, and he didn't look like he'd been sleeping well. Come to think of it, during last night's game with Arkansas he'd made something like three errors. Neither of us were exactly lavishing in the team's good graces at the moment.

“Hey, man,” he repeated, shuffling in his cleats. I just crossed my arms. Let the sonofabitch work for it. Around us, most of the team dwindled back towards the locker rooms. On the opposite end of the field, the coaches bent their heads low in a dire-looking conference.

“I'm sorry,” my old pal blurted out finally, his whole pasty face flushing red. “About Zora, and everything. I feel like a shit. I've liked her for years, and I didn't think—I was just...” I raised my eyebrows, to gesture him forward—but that seemed to be about all the apology my bro could muster.

“I honestly didn't mean to hurt you, man. Never.” His tone had shifted. He sounded more plaintive, more sincere, than I'd ever known this fucking jokester to be. In a breath of clarity, I saw a vision of Doll in my mind's eye. Right about now, she'd be shuffling to her Intro to Classics class, probably in a hurry, probably straining to handle an armload of books. She'd be wearing those cute-ass little booty shorts, and she'd be asking her professor direct questions, brow all furrowed in that maddening way I'd come to recognize. It was like a fog was lifting. I snapped back to the field, to Denny, whining out his wimp's apology—and I decided it didn't matter. What did I care who Zora wanted to shack up with? I knew her, I knew Denny—they were total losers, but I wanted them to be happy. And nothing was going to rain on my fucking parade.

“Dude, we're tight,” I said slowly, cracking a grin. Denny's whole face collapsed with relief. We went in for a bro hug, and it felt good, I must admit. In a weird way, I'd missed this fucking idiot.

“You're aces, man. And hey—don't listen to what all these shit-stains say. We're gonna wipe the floor with the Aggies, and the Colorado coach is going to tap you, and everything's gonna be wavy-gravy. You'll see.”

“Yeah, whatever,” I said brightly. I mean, I knew how slim the odds were that I'd make first pick of my favorite team as a freshman in the NFL. And more and more, I didn't care. I could get to Colorado without football. I could do tons of things without football, and live a perfectly dandy life.

“Though I will say, your head does seem to be screwed on not-quite-tight, my brother.” Denny took his big arm and linked it around my neck in a half-nelson. “Come on! Tell your bro! What poon has got you trippin’ like this? Is this fucking Shakespeare-level love, or what?”

“Hey, man, I don't need to tell you what a man will put up with for a good time.” No sooner had I said this then I felt a wave of shame. Something had changed, somehow—talking about Ashleigh the way I used to talk about all the football groupie girls felt distinctly wrong. Denny, however, seemed pleased with the opportunity to conspire.

“Oh, do I. Zora's got these tight little...” I shot him a steel-melting look of caution, and Denny pulled his arm back. “But, err, right. You know all about that.”

We began to walk back towards the locker room in a tentative silence—a new color for our friendship, but a hopeful one. I decided we could continue if Denny could pass a confidence test; we always used to tell each other shit. I stopped in my tracks, scoured the field for coaches, and turned to face him.

“Okay, man. There is a girl. And—don't laugh, but it's Ashleigh. Err—Ashleigh Bennett.” Denny reached back to scratch his neck, not looking at me. We hovered under the hot noon sun for what felt like a minute, just being weird.

“My...well, you know. There's actually been a lot of weird shit going down with her—our—parents, and they're going to be spending some time apart. And Ash and I have this really weird connection, and I know it seems fast, but it's actually not...” I was totally babbling now, but something about Denny's flinty stance was making me crave his approval.

“Classic Sterling,” my old friend said finally. “You like something, you take it. Doesn't matter what the world will think, or how it will affect anyone else.”

“Dude. What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You seriously think dating your stepsister is a good idea? By anyone's estimate? I don't care if her nipples taste like beer and her pussy like honey, you're seriously gonna walk onto that field tomorrow and try to convince some representative from the NFL that you're a squeaky-clean, scandal-free candidate for a new standard in American football?”

“Where the fuck are you getting this, man? People date all the time! And if you're so concerned with the moral code of the NFL, you're really gonna hate this story about Ray Lewis that the whole world must've forgotten to tell you.”

“Is she even eighteen, Landy?! Christ!”

“Oh, my bad. I'm thinking of Michael Vick. Oh, I'm thinking of O.J. Simpson. Oh, I'm thinking of –”

“Will you cut the crap? For once?” In a fluid, furious gesture, Denny slammed his helmet down against the dirt so hard he drew a divot on the green. Across the field, our coaches looked up and shaded their eyes.

“Fine. Forget I said anything.” Feeling petulant and confused, I started to amble away from the fucking Tasmanian Devil. What had I even been thinking? Denny was a piece of shit, everyone knew it. Who needed him?

“Landon! Landon, listen!” I didn't turn, just kept walking—but his words carried. “You're so hard to be friends with, man. We all just watch you making these stupid fucking mistakes, over and over and over. You don't like Zora? Well, then why didn't you fucking break up with her when you had the chance? You really hate football so much, you hate this team? Well, no one is keeping you here! Your Dad messes you up? Then stop taking care of him! Don't let him leech off you like this for your whole fucking adult life!” I began to break into a run. Denny's words seemed to fall like raindrops on my back. “And for God sakes, man! You could have any girl in the whole state and you want your step-sister? Why do you make everything so goddamned hard for yourself?”

The locker room door clicked behind me with a metallic thud. For the first time all practice, I was seriously winded. It felt horrible.