6 - Emerson
~ 6 ~
EMERSON
The house had a different vibe with Fallon around, even though we barely saw her. Our practices were long, but her busy schedule seemed somehow even longer. We saw her for a few minutes in the morning, and sometimes later at night, if she wasn’t fulfilling intern hours at the local animal hospital. Once I ran into her in the middle of the day, when I was between classes and she was between real estate appointments, trying to find a new apartment. I was cutting studs to frame out the windows we planned to replace, and she was on her laptop, ignoring my circular saw.
We didn’t say all that much to each other. In fact, we didn’t say anything at all. But as I stood there in the shower, purging my body of the sweat and sawdust, I caught her in the upstairs hallway, peering in. Fallon had paused silently, on the way to her room. I let her stare at me for a while through the steam-covered enclosure, soaping my body with exaggerated movements and pretending to be oblivious of her presence. She rushed off eventually though, when I couldn’t stifle a laugh.
But like I said, the vibe was different. Dalton and Trey were a lot more mindful of what they said and did around the house. There was less boasting, less guy talk. It was like their usual streams of verbal bullshit were filtered through some weird lens, to make them more palatable for feminine consumption.
Not me, though.
I enjoyed Fallon being in the house because she was fun to look at, but I wasn’t about to change or alter my schedule. I used the upstairs bathroom exactly when I usually would, sometimes shoving her stuff to the side. She had so many products I didn’t know whether to be fascinated or amused. There were skin creams and eye masks and foaming face cleansers, in bottles and cans that always seemed to fall over whenever I reached for my razor to shave.
After three days in the house with her, I sensed an urgency to her that hadn’t been there before. Maybe she thought she was imposing. Or maybe she was tired of sharing a space with four eternally sweaty football players, and their never-ending cycle of not-so-great-smelling laundry .
This morning I was back from workouts early, and showering before class. In the limited space, I kicked over a bottle of strawberry-scented conditioner that hadn’t been there yesterday. It made me think of Fallon, Dalton’s best campus ‘girlfriend’ who was never really a girlfriend. I’d been calling her wallflower for years, because she seemed painfully shy. Which was why my heart nearly exploded as the bathroom door suddenly slammed into the opposite wall.
“SORRY! Sorry, didn’t mean that!”
I pulled the shower door open a few inches, just enough to see. Fallon was on the toilet, knees together, white lace panties around her ankles. I had to admit she was cute, even as she was doing her business.
“Sorry,” she said again, blushing. “Pee emergency. Couldn’t be helped.”
I willed my eyes to look away, but they weren’t listening. They still lingered on her bare thighs.
“And so you destroyed the door?”
“I didn’t destroy the door,” she shot back with a nervous laugh. “I just didn’t realize it opened that fast.”
The past few days I’d noticed a definite change in her demeanor. She’d been a bit edgier, overall. More carefree and nonchalant about things, as if she — or someone else — had flipped a switch in her brain.
I watched as she finished with a grateful sigh, bunched up some toilet paper, and did her thing. Then she stared back at me, expecting me to look away.
Yeah, right.
“Ummm, could you turn around?” she pleaded. “Or go back to showering, or…”
“C’mere,” I told her, letting my voice go low. “I want to show you something.”
I decided to have some fun with her — if she was into having fun, that is. Fallon paused, but fortunately not long enough to balk. Eventually she stood up, yanking her panties back up so quickly I barely got a flash of anything, which was disappointing. Then she crept over.
“What?”
I opened the enclosure door all the way, revealing my wet, shower-warm body. Before she could react, I took her hand and placed it on the flat, freshly-worked muscles of my stomach.
Fallon’s soft brown eyes never left mine. They stared back at me defiantly, as her mouth curled into a smirk.
“Your six-pack?” she scoffed. “You’re showing me your six-pack?”
Her hand stayed where it was, despite me letting go of her wrist.
“No. Lower.”
Had I moved, or had she? Either way, our faces drifted closer together in the swirling steam. I raised my arms overhead and grabbed the shower bar with both hands. The move stretched out my swollen lats, flaring my upper body into a sculpted V-shape.
“Go on. You have to find it yourself.”
Once again, I was sure she would retreat. Those pretty eyes would shift downward for a half-second, giving her a quick thrill before she broke for the hallway.
But I was dead wrong.
Instead, Fallon dragged her fingers slowly down over my abs… and even further than that. They lingered on the well-trimmed patch of hair just above my root, right before her hand closed over the steel-like girder of my morning hard-on.
She did all of this without breaking a single second of eye contact, too. I had to admit, I was pretty impressed.
“I woke up like this,” I told her. “It won’t go down.”
Fallon was so close I could feel her breath on my face. I admired her high cheekbones, her long eyelashes, her perfectly plump lips. Her palm felt wonderfully cool against my warm skin, as she pumped it once, up and down.
“Is this an everyday problem?” she murmured.
The hand wrapped around me tightened ever so slightly. I shrugged.
“It happens from time to time. Mostly when I sleep on my stomach.”
“So don’t sleep on your stomach.”
My heart was beating faster now. I knew she could feel it too, throbbing and twitching wildly against her palm.
“Too late now,” I sighed. Feeling bold, I shifted closer. “Got any ideas on what I should do about it?”
Her face was so close I could count the smattering of tiny brown freckles that rode both sides of her nose. And Dalton was right. Those freckles were sexy.
Fuck.
I wanted to kiss her. Grab her. Drag her into the shower, and make her mine. Our eyes were busy fucking each other savagely, even if our bodies weren’t.
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll think of something,” she chuckled.
She squeezed me once, firmly, sending shivers of electric pleasure rocketing all throughout my body. Then, deftly, she took my hand and replaced it where hers just was.
“Too bad I’m such a wallflower,” she cooed, adding a wicked smile. “Or maybe I could help you out with it.”
My heart sank as she sauntered back into the hallway with an evil laugh. It left me standing there alone beneath the spray, still throbbing, my mind recognizing the bitter irony of having been defeated by my own, well… hand.