Текст книги "Sacked"
Автор книги: Jen Frederick
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11 Ellie
His voice is a low, husky sound that plucks at the already sensitive nerves under my skin. A small sliver of his chiseled abdomen is on display where his T-shirt rucks up. A sparse trail of dark hair arrows down to a shadowed space covered half by his hand and half by his pants. His hand pulls at his dick in hard, swift jerks, and I know in the space a heartbeat two things: I get why it’s called jacking it, and I’m not leaving unless the entire Warriors football team comes up and drags me away.
The most illicit, hot porn scene I have ever laid eyes on is taking place in full HD color in front of me. If the house went up in flames at this precise moment, I’d burn down with it because I can’t tear my gaze away.
The round, red head of his dick plays peek-a-boo with each twist of his wrist. I notice that he pauses right before he hits the top, almost flicking the ridged area of his circumcised head with a large finger, and that he drags his hand downward with more force that I’d think would feel pleasurable. Not for the first time, I’m struck by how very large he is.
Huge is not at all an overstatement. His fist is big, but it doesn’t completely cover his shaft. I clench my legs together, part in fear and part in arousal. Sweet baby Jesus, Tumblr did not prepare me for this.
“How does it feel?” The question slips out before I can stop it.
“Good. Real good. Better since you arrived.” His wrist flicks again in steady, even motions. The muscles in his forearms ripple with every down stroke and bunch together at the upstroke. He looks so beautiful and profane at the same time.
I struggled to gulp one breath after the other. There’s no air in this bathroom. It’s sucked up by Masters’ presence. I let out a shaky stream of air.
Masters groans and I feel it. The sound is like a touch, winding its way across my body and then under my skin.
“What are you thinking about?” I’m so screwed.
He doesn’t hesitate. “You. I’m thinking about you. I’m thinking about laying my tongue on your body for the first time. What you’d taste like. I’d want to lick you everywhere. I want to know what every inch of you tastes like.”
I must have whimpered because Masters lets out another low, rough noise. “You turned on, baby?”
I press my lips together, but can’t stop my head from nodding. If he touches me, he’ll know how aroused I am. My skin burns. My panties are wet. I’ve never felt so turned on and he hasn’t even laid a finger on me.
“I’m glad.” His voice sounds full of aching want. “I’m so close, baby. Help me. How would you want me to take care of you?”
“I…I don’t know,” I stutter out because this is completely new territory for me. I’ve never watched anyone touch themselves, at least not in real life. I’ve never heard anyone, ever, ask how they could take care of me. The sad truth is I don’t have much experience with what feels good either.
The guys I’ve slept with—all three of them—have been entirely forgettable. I can barely conjure the face of the guy I slept with the summer before I went to college. My junior college hookup was a guy I worked with in Alumni and Development.
“Nothing? You have no requests?” His motion has slowed again, the fierceness in his face lessening, which means he’s not as tuned into this moment.
A fierce yearning grips me. I want him to come. I feel ownership over his orgasm, as if I watch this then I can own him, and in that moment, I’d do anything to stoke his fire. There’s an honesty in his voice, the clear way he looks at me with need that I have never seen before, that loosens my lips and words that I have never spoken spill out of me.
“I know what I’d like to do to you,” I begin.
A small smile appears at the corners of his mouth. “That’s good. Tell me.”
“I’m not sure if I could take much in. You’re…big.” That’s an understatement, like saying he’s good at football. “I’d have to use my hands. I hear the tip is very sensitive.”
He nods. “Yeah. Right under here.”
His finger flicks that spot under the ruddy head of his dick. It’s so red it almost looks painful. His body quakes as he roughly jerks his hand up and down his shaft. I want to rush over and push his hands aside. Let me. I can do this really well.
Some vestige of self-protection exists, because my feet are nailed to the floor. I’m not leaving, but I can’t get closer either.
“I’d lay my tongue there then,” I say, shocking myself at the brazen words falling out of my mouth. I blame this on Masters too. His eyes gleam with approval.
“There isn’t a spot on your sweet body, Ellie, which I wouldn’t want to lay my tongue on.” His hand goes down. “I’m standing here wondering what you taste like.” Up again. “What the skin behind your ear feels like against my tongue.” Down. I feel dizzy. His tongue creeps out to rub against the middle of his lower lip. “Whether you are honey or mint or—” He breaks off with a deep guttural moan as if the idea feels too much for him. “I suspect I’ll be addicted.”
I’ll be addicted. As if it’s foregone conclusion for him, and those words, full of want and need and determination, are their own kind of aphrodisiac.
“I’d like to taste you, too. You look…weighty. Like, you on my tongue would be substantial.”
“That a good thing, baby?” His eyes are almost closed—just mere slits as he stares at me.
“Yeah,” I croak. I clear my throat and try again. “Yes. It’d feel like you made a mark.”
His eyes flutter shut and he swallows hard. I watch mesmerized as his Adam’s apple bobs up and down his throat. “Fuck, yes. I’d like to mark you.” He speeds up, his hand moving faster, squeezing harder. “I’d like to mark you with my mouth and with my come until everyone and anyone who came into contact with you would know you were mine.”
I gasp in shock at the same moment that he begins to come. He throws his head back as the long, ropey seed jets from his body into his waiting hand. He looks amazing, and I’ve never wanted anything so badly in my short life.
My body trembles from the aftershock of his orgasm. His eyes drop to mine—a laser beam holding me as captive as any rope.
“How was it?” I manage to eke out, despite having witnessed the most erotic scene of my entire life. The hoarseness of my voice, the genuine interest, takes away any flippancy I try to inject.
“Better than I’ve ever felt before,” he says again with his disarming honesty. “But not as good as it will be with you.”
12 Ellie
I'd like to say that I stand there boldly and have a rational discussion with Masters about what happened. I don’t. Oh, I stand there and gawk while he flushes some tissue down the toilet and washes his hands. I get a little lightheaded when he reaches down, calmly tucks his still sizeable shaft inside his shorts, and zips up. But the moment he takes a step in my direction, my hypnosis breaks and I flee like a chicken chased by a whole den of foxes. I hear him call my name, but I ignore it and sprint out of the bedroom. At the bottom of the stairs, I swell with relief when I see Jack leaning against the wall outside the room where he’d been playing the video game.
I grab his arm. “I’m ready to go.”
I don’t look behind me, afraid that I might see Masters and I’ll be caught up in his tractor beam of a personality. Jack, the prize brother that he is, doesn’t ask me a single question, but slips his phone into his front pocket and follows me out of the house.
“You didn't even want to see where I'm living?”
It’s not a sincere question. He wants to know why the hell I’m trotting down Carpenter Avenue like the house behind us caught on fire.
“Yes, tomorrow. Or the day after.” Or whenever Masters isn’t around.
It's as if he reads my mind, because he asks, “What’s going on with you and Masters?”
“Me and Masters? There’s nothing going on between the two of us. I barely know him,” I squeak. Truth is, I actually know a lot about him. He’s a good—no great—college football player. He’s got a sly sense of humor. He’s a good sport. He claims to be a virgin. He told me the hottest sexual experience of his life was me watching him masturbate. That lightheaded feeling comes over me again and I trip.
Jack catches me and sets me upright. With his hands around my shoulders like iron, I can’t do anything but stand there while he looks at me searchingly. “It didn't seem like nothing when he whispered in your ear before dinner. He made half the table move so he could sit across from you. You disappeared for a very long time and Ahmed said he saw Masters practically lose his virginity on the dance floor to a brunette.”
“Why does that brunette have to be me?” I pretend to be hurt by the accusation, but it doesn’t play with Jack.
“Ellie,” he says in gentle consternation, “I may be a terrible writer, and it might take me a couple hours to get through thirty pages in a textbook, but I can still add two and two together. I’m not dumb.”
“I know you’re not dumb.”
Jack hates it when his intelligence gets insulted. In middle school, he got flagged as slow, which infuriated our dad. He threw a fit, both at school and at home, which embarrassed and humiliated Jack. I started helping Jack then, slowly and silently. Anything to keep him from getting yelled at by Dad, anything to keep that destroyed look off Jack’s face.
It started innocently by proofing a paper, inserting commas, correcting homonyms, stuff like that. My mother caught me, and I thought I would get into big trouble. Instead she came in later and told me that I needed to do it for every paper. Then every open book test. Thank goodness I didn’t have to take the SAT for him. I’m not sure how we would have pulled that one off.
Jack doesn’t know. When I finished “proofing,” I’d put all the papers in a pretty binding and Jack would turn those in.
If he found out, he would kill me. He would absolutely murder me and leave my body out for the crows. I hate my parents, and worse, I hate myself for agreeing to the masquerade. Please let him have a breakout season.
“You know I don’t care. I want to know. I’d prefer to hear it from you than from someone in the locker room.”
“I thought you guys had a no girlfriends, wives, or sisters rule in the locker room.”
Jack scoffs. “That rule is fucked constantly. Back at Wyoming, one girl dated three of the players. If the players go there, then they have to chill out about the repercussions, and they did. It’s not ideal, but shit like that happens. If you were interested in Masters, I’d be okay.”
“How can you be?” I explode. “Don’t you remember what happened?”
“I remember that Travis Farrington was an asshole who threw away a chance at a state championship because he couldn’t get in your pants. That’s on him, not you.”
“Jack, you had to go to junior college for two years before you got your D1 scholarship!”
“So?”
“So!”
“Yeah, so? I went to the best juco in the nation. I played a shit ton of pro style, spread offense football. I racked up god-like numbers and got an offer from the best college program in the nation. Now, I’m a starting tight end for a team favored to at least make the playoffs, if not win it all outright. By my calculations, I should send Farrington a fucking gift basket. I won’t because he’s a douchebag. Look, if you want to be with Masters, be with him. Don’t let this stupid football thing stop you. Shit, he plays on defense. He’s not in charge of who throws me the ball and when. Plus that guy wants to win more than anything. As long as I’m valuable on the field, I could fuck goats in the locker room.”
“Is that a quote? Because it sounds like something Masters would say.”
Jack smirks. “There’s nothing going on, but you know the types of things he’d say?”
My shoulders slump. “I don't know what’s going on. It’s complicated. I didn’t mean to dance with him or anything. He came out of nowhere and wouldn’t take no for an answer.” Jack’s face tightens, so I hurry and add, “Not like that. He didn’t force me. I just…” I spread my hands. “I have no explanation for it.”
“I do.” He squeezes my shoulders and his quiet support seeps into me. “You wanted to, and that’s enough. You don’t have to have a reason. I already told you the past doesn’t mean shit to me.” He releases me and then slings an arm around my shoulder, propelling me down the sidewalk toward my apartment. “You and me got a new start at junior college, and we can keep it going here. Only two more years, and Mom and Dad won’t have any say in our lives.” Jack toes the line for me, too. “Enjoy yourself here. If Masters is the guy you want, if he wants you to be his first,” Jack chuckles at this, “then you should go for it. Just don’t tell me any details.”
Oh, Jack. His kindness kills me. Every giving, unselfish word that comes out of his mouth drives the stake deeper into my guilty heart. It does exactly the opposite of what his motivational speech intends to. If anything, I need to stay away from Masters even more. “It’s more than Farrington.”
“Then what is it?”
Because you always look at everything in a positive light. Because it’s naïve to think that Farrington did something unusual. If Masters decided your team should turn against you, then the entire team would shut you out and it would get a hundred times worse. Because I’m cheating for you and I’m scared that if I get close to someone on the team, my secret will slip out and that can’t happen.
Those are all the reasons I can’t give voice to. So I settle for a response that I’m not sure that Jack will even buy but it’s the only one I have right now.
“I just want someone who’s not an athlete.”
Jack sighs. “If that’s how you want to play it. We drew the short end of the stick when it comes to parents, but I’ve always had the team. You’ve only had me. It wouldn’t be a bad thing to have another person on your side, Ellie. Besides, you could do a lot worse than Masters. He’s a good leader. Very chill in the locker room. Easy to talk to. He knows everyone’s names, even the redshirt freshmen.”
“You date him if he’s so wonderful,” I retort. I want to talk myself out of my stupid attraction to Masters, not develop it.
“He doesn’t swing that way,” Jack grins. “Plus, I don’t do virgins. Too clingy.”
“You’re a jerk, Jack.”
He laughs and ruffles my hair. I wish I could lean into him, but Jack is right. I’ve relied on him far too long. It’s time for me to make my own way.
13 Knox
I slept like a baby. After Ellie left, I went straight to bed. I wasn’t lying when I told her it was the best orgasm I’d ever had. In fact, I’m a little concerned that I won’t be able to come without her around, now that I know what it could feel like.
I suspect that jacking off is all I’ll be doing in the foreseeable future. She’s skittish, and if I rush too fast I might be on the ass end of a hit it and quit it if she ever did give in.
About two seconds after my orgasm ran through me like a freight train, her eager, captive expression turned to embarrassment and then apprehension. I’m not sure if she is more afraid of me or what she’s feeling but we’ve got plenty of time to work that through.
In the morning, I get up and run five miles like it’s nothing, and then meet Matty at the weight room.
“That smoothie this morning tasted fucking awesome. What d’you think she put in it?” he asks.
I think back. “Spinach, because it looked green. Banana. Maybe strawberries?”
“Papaya,” Hammer grunts between blows of the sledgehammer on the tire. “Got to be because it tasted sweet.”
“Papaya? Where the fuck did that come from?” Matty scoffs. “It was pineapple.”
“We had pineapple three days ago, and this tasted sweeter, so it was something else.” Hammer jabs twenty pounds of iron in Matty’s direction. “Papaya is a sweeter fruit.”
“Where the fuck are they getting papaya?” Matty sits up and places his hands on his hips.
“Same place they’re getting the pineapple and bananas, dumbshit.”
I don’t know whether to laugh or ask Matty to hit me in the head with a fifty-pound weight. The conversation is ridiculous, but if Matty and Hammer weren’t arguing about something then it wouldn’t be a day ending in Y.
“Hey, Masters, got a minute?” Campbell steps up by the weight bench. I nod but don’t stop because I’m nearing the end of my second set of seated dumbbell front raise lifts with the twenty-pound weights.
“What’s up, Campbell?” I set the weights down on either side of the bench and reach for my water jug. Campbell doesn’t answer but looks pointedly at Matty and Hammer, who are still arguing.
“How do you even know if papaya is sweeter than pineapple?” Matty scowls.
Hammer lifts the sledgehammer over his head and brings it down on the tire. “Papaya has a higher fructose level.”
Jack and I exchange looks because neither of us can believe these two are still arguing about the fucking fruit.
“Matty, Hammer, I think Jesse needs some help.” Jesse didn’t need a damn thing, but it’s obvious Jack wants to talk privately, or as privately as you can in a weight room where fifty guys are lifting, throwing ropes, and doing chin ups.
Campbell lifts his chin in thanks as the guys wander off to see if Jesse can mediate their dispute. “What’s with the shrug before you do the dumbbell front raise?”
“Isolates the rotator cuff muscle.”
His eyebrows shoot up. “Nice. Didn’t learn that at juco.”
“Small weights, more reps are my recommendation but I suspect that you didn’t come to talk to me about that.”
“Yeah.” He drags a hand through his pretty boy hair—about the same shade as his sister’s. The other guys on the team are blind. Ellie and her brother have many similarities—the color of their hair, the deep brown of their eyes. Ellie's a lot shorter, but she’s got the same kind of internal strength that Campbell has. “I don’t know what’s going on with you and my sister. She’s an adult, so I can’t prevent her from dating anyone, but if you hurt her, I’ll come after you. I’m psyched to be playing here, but I’d give up my place on the team if that’s what it came to.”
If Campbell meant to scare me off, he’s not doing a good job of it. Knowing she’s got a brother who cares about her? That her brother is the kind of unselfish guy who’d put his family first? I rub a hand across my chin while I think of a good way to respond. I won’t lie and say I’m not interested, but I also don’t need to tell him that I intend to bone his sister into next year, or that I spend most of my down time thinking about her naked, spread, and ready.
“I watched your tapes when I heard we made you an offer and hoped you would be a solid fit here. When you showed up and worked your ass off without complaining once, I knew that Coach had made the right choice.”
“That’s real nice of you, Masters, but that’s got shit all to do with my sister. She’s…a sweet kid. She might talk a good game, but she’s pretty soft under that outer shell.”
“I hear you. And you absolutely should kick my ass if I hurt your sister, but I have no intention of hurting her. I’m dead serious about her.”
He looks confused. “You barely know her.”
“I know enough. Sometimes it happens in an instant and sometimes it grows. Like you said, she’s an adult and can make her own decisions, but I appreciate that you have her back and that she has yours. Reminds me of the relationship I have with my brother.”
I pick up my dumbbells and start my third and final set. Campbell stands there watching me.
“You need anything else?” I ask.
He looks suspicious but shakes his head no. Matty and Hammer must have been watching us like a hawk, because they reappear almost immediately.
“It’s papaya,” Jack says before he goes back to the offensive squad. “Saw her put it in this morning.”
“I knew it,” Hammer crows. He shoves his hand toward Matty. “You owe me two beers tonight.”
Of course they bet over what fruit got put in the smoothie. I wonder what bets they’ve made over me and Ellie. Then I think it’s better I don’t know, because I’d have to kick their asses and that wouldn’t do a hell of a lot for team unity.
14 Ellie
I don’t sleep well…at all. The whole night I keep replaying the bathroom scene in my head and it often morphs into something dirtier. Like Knox gesturing with his free hand to come closer. When I do, he points to the ground, and I fall to my knees and open my mouth.
Fortunately, Jack and his team stay busy for the next couple of days, and even better, he makes time for me away from the team after I turn down every single one of his dinner invitations.
I start my work on the Agrippa grant even though classes haven’t officially started. I’m fascinated by all the accommodations the law requires schools to give anyone deemed to have a learning disability. If my parents had tested Jack when he was younger, or if they had paid attention to how he did in school rather than on the field, his circumstances today could be so different. I can’t dwell on the past, but I can learn—in case Jack has a sudden change of heart.
While I can push the Jack thing to the back of my mind due to many years of practice, Masters is a different story. It takes until Sunday to convince myself that the Thursday night bathroom porn show was an aberration. We, despite having nothing to drink, got intoxicated on shit like the moonlight and the excitement of a new year. Those are weak justifications, but a girl has to have something to hold on to. Like Masters’ dick. A girl could really hold onto—
“You should try this on,” Riley says, interrupting my dirty thoughts. Thank goodness for that, because I need to get him out of my head.
Riley holds up a red strapless dress with a skirt that looks short enough to be a belt.
“I’d worry I’d ‘Lindsey Lohan’ everyone every time I moved.”
“It’d look good on you. You’ve got great legs.”
“And you look like a delicate fairy. I think you could pull that off. I need something longer, with more coverage. Why are we buying dresses anyway? Did we join a sorority and I missed it?”
“We’re not buying anything. We’re enjoying the scenery. How about this one?”
This one happens to be a one-armed body con dress that looks as wide as a stocking. I lift the price tag. “Two hundred dollars for a dress? I think not.”
“I could make something like this for about $20.”
“Make it like how?”
She shrugs and places the dress back onto the rack. “I sew a little.”
That’s what she does in her room when the door is closed? I smother a giggle. “Is that what you’ve got going on in there? I wondered what that humming noise was.”
“What did you think it was?”
“I don’t know. A really high-powered vibrator?”
“Seriously?” Her mouth falls open.
“No, God, I don’t know. It was a passing thought.” I grin. “There’s nothing wrong with a little mechanical assist. Helps you miss guys a lot less.”
“Well, this is good roommate information. When I hear a humming noise from your bedroom, I’ll make sure to leave a cigarette outside your door.”
I crack up. “And when I hear humming from your room, I’ll come in and watch.” Because I’m good at that, apparently. Soon Riley and I have both folded in half, laughing ridiculously loud between the Lycra and chiffon in the dress section. “Come on,” I gasp. “We need to get out of here before they kick us out.”
In the food court, over a diet soda and shared pretzel, I ask Riley how she got started sewing.
“We’re not very well off. I learned to make my own clothes.”
“That’s very Pretty in Pink of you,” I say admiringly.
She makes a disgusted face. “Molly Ringwald made a really ugly dress.”
“It netted her Andrew McCarthy, though.”
“True.” Riley drowns her pretzel bite in the cheese. “Anyway, I’m here on scholarship and I’ve got a work study job at the student center. This is a splurge for me.”
“A job and a full load? I’m impressed.”
She shrugs as if it isn’t a big deal. “What about you?”
“What about me? I don’t think my intramural softball team will demand too much from me.”
An uncertain look passes over her face but then it resolves into something like determination and she leans closer. “I saw your class schedule on the counter.”
Oh crap. I need to stop leaving stuff out. I’m not used to living with anyone. At junior college, we had dorm suites, which meant I had my own room. I need to treat my apartment like that—and keep my private stuff private. “Seven classes is a huge responsibility. Did your classes from your other school not transfer?”
I stare at my torn pretzel piece. “Some of those classes looked interesting and relevant to my major, so I asked around and found out I could audit them.”
“Ellie, I’m your roommate, which means whatever goes on in the apartment stays in the apartment.”
I don’t like perceptive people, I decide. Masters is like that, too. He can read every emotion that I have. I try to make a joke of it. “So if I’m Dexter, you’re okay?”
“If you’re eliminating terrible people and cleaning up after yourself, then yes, I’m on board.”
I glance into Riley’s warm hazel eyes and see nothing but acceptance. But I’m not ready to confess to a secret I’ve kept for nearly a decade. I don’t even know if Dad knows the full extent of the work I’ve done to keep Jack eligible, even in high school. It’s something that only my mom and I communicate about. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Good. How about we go to the bookstore? Wasn’t there a book you wanted to get?”
•••
There is, but I can’t find it on the shelf when we arrive at the store. Riley excuses herself to go look at the craft books while I hit the information desk.
“Do you have the latest book by M. Kannan? It’s a fantasy.”
“Sorry, that young man over there picked up the last copy.” The gray-haired lady points down the aisle toward a tall, imposing frame propped up in one of the chairs by the in-store cafe. A tall, imposing, familiar figure.
I march over before my warning system has time to power up and urge me to run for my life. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m gathering reading material. I asked this hot girl out to breakfast, but she turned me down. I think my potential topics of conversation were too limited.” Masters holds up a biography of our current president in one hand and the fantasy novel I’ve been waiting for an entire year to read. “Help me out here. If you had breakfast with a stud like me, which book would you rather discuss?”
“Masters, seriously, what are you doing here?” I refuse to let him charm me. He’s wearing his standard uniform of cargo shorts and dark T-shirt. This time the knit is a deep green that makes his eyes pop. I’ll pretend his mother bought him the shirt and not a former girlfriend, because it’s totally a color a woman would purchase.
“I’m buying a book.” He looks at his full hands. “Maybe two since you can't make up your mind either. What are you doing here, Ellie? You aren't following me, are you?”
“What?” I say a little too loud and heads turn our direction. “No, I am not following you,” I hiss in a much quieter voice.
He lowers his own voice and I have to lean in to hear him. “It's okay if you followed me. I approve of your stalking.”
“I’m not stalking you,” I bite out, but then because I want to buy the book in his left hand, I paste a smile on. “I think the biography. Why don't I go put that other book back for you? This book has sex in it.” I point to the novel.
“Good thing I'm over eighteen. It’s frustrating to want things that people hold out of your reach.” He shakes his head in mock dismay.
“Don’t you have practice?”
“Not today. It’s Sunday. Even football players get a day of rest.” He smiles but it dies off when I continue to glare at him. He sets both books down on the table. “I want you to go out with me.”
“I don’t date football players,” I answer automatically.
This concept is apparently so foreign to Masters he literally scratches his head. “So you had a bad past experience. We’re not all the same person.”
“It has nothing to do with a bad breakup and I know better than to say all football players are like one asshole.”
“So, you did date one.” He nods as if this is the answer to everything.
“Yes, but he didn't break my heart. Or at least not in the way you think he did.”
I felt hurt when I found out Travis had cheated on me, but I also felt glad to see the ass end of him. What made me angry was the way he treated Jack. That’s what pissed me off. That’s the warning I take with me.
The problem with Masters is that I’m very attracted to him, more so than a normal girl is attracted to a normal guy, which is why I can’t just walk away from him. I know that standing here having this conversation gives all the wrong signals. If I really didn’t want Masters, I’d walk away. We both know it.
“Okay. We have this thing,” I wave my finger between our bodies, “going on. I think the best thing we do is have sex, burn it out, and go on our own way. I won’t even tell a soul that we did it and you can continue with your virgin cover story.”
His face tightens. I don’t know if it’s because I accused him of lying or because I want to have sex without any emotional attachment, which is weird because most guys would jump up and down for joy at this offer. “If all I wanted was a quick lay, you and I both know I could get that without any effort. I want something more than that from you.”
“Welcome to disappointment. It’s character building.”
I force myself to turn around and walk away. The chair scrapes behind me, and then his big hand turns my shoulder and backs me up against the bookcase holding stories about dead girls hacked up by serial killers and other true crimes. Seems apt.
He leans down, so close I can smell him—a mix of warm male and citrus—and it’s so good my knees get a little weak. “I’m not experienced, but I know when a girl is into me, and you're into me. You want to play it casual, then that's how we play it...for now. But fair warning, I'm bringing everything I’ve got to tear down your resistance. My specialty is reading plays and then overcoming the barriers.”
I lock my legs to keep from falling over and pull out the biggest barrel I have. “Masters, there are things about me that if you knew, you wouldn’t want to spend another minute in my presence.”
He considers my words, the silence taking on heaviness, and part of me already aches for what I could have if I was any other girl at Western. “Have you killed anyone?” I can feel his eyes assessing me and I keep my gaze averted, afraid of what I’ll see in his moss green gaze.
