Chapter 22
SPACE I DON’T WANT
Maverick
Iwake up the next morning to the feel of something tickling my stomach. I blink a few times, my brain slow to come online—especially since I’m not in my own bed, or my house.
It only takes a few seconds before last night comes rushing back. Me showing up at Clover’s unannounced. The sex. So much sex. I figured after the first time she’d need a break, or some pillow talk, or maybe some sleep. But no.
All those months of avoiding, then dancing around each other made us voracious.
And she’s currently naked, kneeling beside me, hair sleep-messed and sex wild, her tongue pushing at her top lip. She runs a finger along my cock, which isn’t quite awake yet either, but will be soon.
“What are you doing?” My voice is raspy and thick with sleep.
She startles and gasps. “Oh my God! I thought you were still asleep.” Her cheeks flush with color.
“I was. Why are you creeping on my business?”
“Your business?” She arches a brow.
“Less-evolved head, penis maximus, Thor’s hammer—pick your preferred name for my favorite appendage.” I point to my cock, which is lying on my stomach, angled toward Clover.
She grins. “Thor’s hammer? Is that what you call your fuck stick?”
I bark out a laugh. “Fuck stick?”
“It’s actually more like a fuck log, but that doesn’t roll off the tongue quite so nicely.” She strokes a single finger from the tip to the base. “You know, this is like false advertising.”
I fold an arm behind my head. “How so?”
“Your soft is someone else’s generous hard.”
“I’m a grow-er who should be a show-er, is that what you mean?”
“Yes!” Her eyes light up. “That’s it exactly. Like, this should stay basically the same size and get hard. But it gets harder and bigger.”
“It’s the Waters curse,” I tell her.
She hums distractedly. “Curse?”
“Yeah. Apparently stupidly huge fuck sticks run in my family.”
“There must be a story that goes along with this.” She keeps petting my cock, stroking up and down the length with her fingertip, and every time she does it, it grows.
“There is.”
“Are you going to tell me?”
“Depends, I guess.”
“On?” She runs her finger around the crown and over the slit, where it’s weeping already.
“What you’re planning to do when I stop growing.”
She gives me a cheeky grin. “Log ride?”
I laugh, and my cock kicks under her touch. “Then I’ll tell you the story after. I need to get you ready.” I tap my lips. “Bring that pretty pussy up here so I can eat you before I fuck you.”
Forty-five minutes later, I’m standing in Clover’s kitchen in my dress pants and nothing else because she’s wearing my button-down.
The first thing she did was adjust the blinds so no one can see in.
I pour myself a glass of water and down it, then fill it again and down another.
It’s nine in the morning. The holiday break has officially started.
I have one last self-defense class to teach in a couple of hours, and then I’m supposed to head home for Christmas with my family.
That’s usually something I enjoy, but this year I’m not as excited to be in Lake Geneva when the person I want to spend time with—mostly naked—is standing right here.
Clover pushes up on her tiptoes, trying to snag the canister on the shelf second from the top. She’s not particularly tall. I could grab it for her, but instead, I pick her up by the waist, lifting her a foot off the ground so she can reach it.
“You could probably bench press me,” she says when I set her back on her feet.
“Oh yeah. You weigh what? A buck ten, a buck fifteen?”
“One twenty-five.”
“I could press you for sure.”
“I can lift a bag of potatoes over my head no problem.” She flexes her biceps with a grin and starts measuring out ingredients for pancakes.
I lean against the counter. “You know they have boxes of the stuff that only need water, right?”
“Sacrilege.” Her eyes are wide with horror. “Please tell me your diet doesn’t consist solely of things like mac and cheese and pizza.”
“Nah, we eat pretty good. My sister can cook, but she could also live off Lucky Charms. I need large quantities of carbs and protein, and my dad didn’t want me or my brothers to be those guys who couldn’t follow the directions on a package of pasta, so he used to take us to a cooking class once a month when we were kids.
And when we were teenagers, we all had to take a night a week and make the meal, which we were happy to do, because my mom basically burns everything.
She tries, but she cooks pork chops until they resemble shoe leather. ”
“What’s your favorite thing to cook?”
“I like to barbeque in the summer, but I make a mean pot of chili. I’m also a fan of crockpot meals because I can throw everything together before I leave in the morning, and it’s ready when I get home. And sometimes there are leftovers, unless Kody and my cousin come for dinner, which is often.”
She dumps a teaspoon of baking powder into the mixing bowl, sets it on the counter, and turns to me. “You are very un-twenty-one. When I was your age, I lived on ramen and peanut butter sandwiches.”
I shrug. “My mom eats like a ten-year-old. She’ll eat candy for breakfast. But when you grow up in a house with an elite athlete for a father, you learn a lot about feeding your body for your sport.”
“You’ve had to be responsible from a young age, haven’t you?”
“I’m not always responsible. See my shitty midterm grades this semester for details. And I’m pretty sure my advanced physiology exam didn’t go all that well.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because I was busy working on my creative writing story and studied the wrong things. I’m sure I still passed, but not with the grade I’m capable of.”
“I still don’t understand why you picked a second-year creative writing class when you’re in your final year of a kin degree, anyway.” She cracks an egg and drops it into a measuring cup, whisking it to break the yolk.
I bite the inside of my cheek. “I needed an elective, and I’m pretty decent at essays, so I figured that would come in handy for the class.
Although, essays and creative writing aren’t the same at all, which I now know.
I thought about taking an abnormal psych class, but it was at eight thirty on Monday morning, and creative writing was a night class. ”
Clover arches her brow at me.
“I also wasn’t so sure I wanted to look all that closely at the darkness I carry around with me.”
“I think the darkness comes from your family’s trauma, but what I see more of is your kindness and selflessness.”
“I think you’re looking at me through rose-colored glasses, or orgasm-tinted ones, maybe.” I try to brush it off with a joke, but Clover doesn’t let it go.
“You put other people before yourself all the time.”
“That’s because when I put myself first, the people I care about get hurt.” I sip my coffee.
“Do you mean what happened to your sister at the carnival?” Clover stops mixing batter to focus on me.
“That’s one instance, yeah. Lavender needed people to look out for her, and sometimes I resented that. And it frustrated me that my best friend was in love with her before he even understood the concept,” I admit.
“Those are normal, human emotions. We all have thoughts we shouldn’t, Maverick, feel things we’re ashamed of. Especially when we’re young.”
“I just wish I could take it back. If I hadn’t acted selfishly, everything might have been different. Lavender wouldn’t have endured all that trauma.”
“You all endured the trauma, Maverick. Every member of your family was a victim, including you.” She places a hand on my cheek, offering comfort I don’t think I deserve, but I want it all the same.
“It’s the what-ifs that are the hardest to deal with, you know? And now I have to go home, and the memories that float around up here . . .” I tap my temple. “Sometimes it’s more than I know what to do with.” I take her hand in mine. “The night I texted you, I tried to talk to my dad about it.”
“Was that a first?”
I nod.
“What did he say?”
I shake my head. “He jumped to the conclusion that something was wrong with Lavender, so I dropped it.”
“Oh.”
“I can never tell him the truth, Clover—that it was my fault. Never. He can’t know I left her behind on purpose. He’d never forgive me.”
Her expression turns sad. “I wish you could see the man you are, instead of the boy who made a mistake. I see you, all of you—the good, the bad, and the broken. You are kind, Maverick. You are sweet and gentle and selfless. You will do anything in your power to protect the people you care about, even if it means you shut yourself off from them. I hated not being able to be there for you when we talked about this the last time, but I was so scared of the way I felt and all the lines I was afraid to cross. I’m glad I get to be someone you can talk to now. ”
I fold her in my arms and rest my chin on top of her head. “Can we stay here in this bubble for the holidays and forget the rest of the world exists?”
“I wish I could, but I’m flying to Florida this evening to see my parents.”
I let her go and lean against the counter, glad to have a reason to change the subject, even if this one doesn’t make me feel any better. “How long will you be gone?”
“I’m staying for two weeks. I planned it months ago.” She sounds apologetic as she drops a pat of butter in the frying pan. “What about you? You’re going home? I don’t even know where that is.”
“My parents live out on Lake Geneva. It’s about a twenty-minute drive from your cabin in Pearl Bay. At least in the summer it is. We’ve got a lot of family out there. My dad’s former teammates are like extended family, so there are a lot of get-togethers.”
“They live there? I thought you were visiting your cousin.” Clover’s eyes flare as she pours batter into the pan.
“I usually spend part of my summer there, coaching kids’ hockey camp with my dad and Kody. That’ll end after this summer, though. Will you be back before New Year’s?” I don’t want this to be the only night I get with her, and I worry that two weeks is a lot of time to think.
“I will, yes.” She flips the pancakes and turns the burner to low.
“Do you have plans?”
“Nothing concrete.”
“Maybe you want to spend New Year’s with me? I could come back here, or we could meet up at your cabin?” I tuck her hair behind her ear. “We could have a naked weekend—or longer, depending. Just you and me, before the winter semester starts.”
Her hand comes up to cover mine. “I would like that.”
“Good. Me too.” I’m about to kiss her again, but the doorbell rings, and we both startle. “Is that your bestie?”
She glances at the clock and shakes her head. “She works Saturday mornings until eleven thirty, unless someone canceled a session.” She crosses over to the kitchen window and peeks out the blinds. “Shit. What the hell is he doing here now?”
I don’t like the tight feeling in my chest, or the sudden panic in her voice. “Is it your ex?”
“Yes. Dammit. I can’t answer the door like this.” She looks down at herself, wearing my shirt and nothing else, her hair a mess, smelling like me and sex.
“Do you want me to handle it?”
She presses her fingers to her temples. “No. Definitely not. He knows you’re my student.”
“I’m a student. Not your student anymore.”
“Still. The optics are terrible. Fuck.”
“Won’t he leave, eventually?”
“My car is in the driveway. He knows I’m here. Or that if I’m out, I can’t have gone very far.” She grabs my hand and pulls me through the living room, checking to make sure the back deck is empty before dragging me into her bedroom.
“What do you want me to do?” She’s right. The optics are bad. And her divorce is already complicated. While I don’t care if her not-quite-ex knows I’m sleeping with her, I can see why she doesn’t want him to know.
She pulls my shirt over her head and rushes to her dresser. She drags a pair of cotton panties up her thighs and grabs the mismatched bra from the floor while I put my shirt back on.
The doorbell rings again, followed by knocking. She pulls a sweater over her head and throws on discarded leggings she nabbed from the floor. “Can you leave through the sliding door?”
“Are you sure you want me to go?”
She pushes up on her toes and gives me a hasty peck on the lips. “He can’t know you were here. The implications are just too . . . I’m sorry, Maverick. I’ll call you later, okay?”