13. Dante #3
I grip her hips and drag her down. My tongue drags flat and wide through the full length of her, and her whole body jerks above me. I grip her thighs and pull her down harder.
Months of tables, doorways, press boxes, small rooms, and the memory of my hand stopping an inch from her jaw flash behind my eyes.
Cole is sitting in a meeting with the athletic director. Cole sent me here.
Her body is on my mouth, and his fingerprints are still fading on my hips from last week.
The thought hits and my hands lock on her thighs, my tongue pushing inside her, deep, while the sounds she makes above me break apart.
I flatten my tongue against her clit, broad and heavy. Her thighs clamp around my head. Her fist closes in my hair hard enough that my eyes water. I circle her clit, tight and fast, then suck it between my lips. She cries out, hips bucking against my face.
I let her ride it. Let her grind. My hands match her rhythm, pulling her down onto my mouth with every roll of her hips.
She's moving faster. Using me. I grip her thighs and hold on. She's trembling, both legs shaking around my head.
"Don't stop."
I increase the pressure and grip her thighs hard enough to leave fingerprints. She grinds against my face, her breathing fractured. Short. Sharp.
She breaks. Her whole body locks up, thighs clamping, back arching, hand yanking my hair. The sound is jagged. She clenches against my mouth in rhythmic pulses. I keep my tongue on her through it, lighter, slower, until her thighs loosen.
She lifts off me, shaking, then slides down my body until she's straddling my hips.
Her face is above mine, eyes unfocused and blown wide. My mouth is wet with her. She stares at it. Her thumb drags across my lower lip, slow, collecting the slick. She holds my gaze while she brings her thumb to her own mouth.
She reaches between us, wraps her hand around my cock, the barbells pressing against her palm. She positions me. The head presses against her entrance, hot, slick. She pauses for one breath, her thighs trembling against my hips.
She looks past me once.
Past her shoulder, across the studio, the nightstand sits beside the bed. Pill pack beside the lamp, current week punched through. The lamp she reads by and the things she keeps close while she sleeps.
She sinks down. Slow. Taking every inch.
Each barbell drags against her inner walls, the metal ridges creating a sensation that multiplies with every fraction she takes. She grips me so tight the descent feels endless. My hands find her hips and my fingers go white against her skin.
Her mouth opens. Her eyes flutter shut. Her head drops forward.
"Oh."
My grip on her hips goes involuntary, fingers digging in.
She bottoms out. I'm fully inside her. She's still for a moment, adjusting, her body pulsing around me. Then her hips shift. Her breath catches. Her nails dig into my chest, and I know when she finds the highest barbell from the inside because her face changes before she can hide it.
She rolls her hips. The drag of the barbells pulls a groan out of both of us. She adjusts the angle, searching, and when she finds the spot where the highest piercing presses exactly right on each stroke, her eyes go wide and unfocused. Her pace collapses from testing to desperate.
She plants her hands on my chest, nails in, and rides me. Each downstroke takes me to the hilt, each upstroke drags every piercing along her walls. She's tight, wet, and every clench drags metal against skin until my breath punches out of me.
I thrust up to meet her. The angle change pushes the barbells deeper. She cries out. Her nails rake down my chest hard enough to draw lines. I do it again, driving up while she slams down. The sound of our bodies is obscene. Wet. Rhythmic. Her voice breaking on sounds that have stopped being words.
"This isn't supposed to feel like this," she says.
Her hand grips my jaw, fingers pressing, tilting my face up. Her nails drag along my neck as her grip changes, forcing me to look at her while she takes me apart.
She rides me like punishment. Fast. Hard.
Each stroke a full withdrawal and a brutal drop.
I match her, hands bruising her hips, feet braced to drive up into her.
She leans back and changes the angle, the barbells dragging against her front wall.
Her whole body shudders. Her hands find my thighs behind her for balance, her back arching above me, and I grip her waist and bring her down harder.
She's close again. Thighs shaking around my hips. I slide one hand between us, press my thumb against her clit, and circle it fast and firm.
She shatters. Her body clamps down, tight, pulsing, squeezing around every piercing. Her mouth opens on a sound that starts as my name and dissolves into something wordless.
The pressure takes me over. My hips drive up one last time. I come inside her, and her name comes out of my mouth.
Maya.
The syllables tear out of my chest before I can catch them.
She collapses forward, forehead against my chest. Our lungs drag hard at the air, her body still clenching in small aftershocks around me.
She climbs off me fast enough to leave cold air where she was.
She stands and walks to the bathroom. I hear the tap run. When she comes back, her jaw is set, her chin level, her mouth too still. She takes a glass from the cabinet and fills it at the kitchen sink, but her hands aren't steady. The rim trembles against the counter when she sets it down.
She crosses to where her clothes landed and steps into her underwear. Then the tank top. Then the sweatshirt. Every layer covers more skin, and my hands curl against the rug while she hides it.
I watch anyway.
I watch her hands, her throat, the careful line of her mouth as she puts herself back together. Tables. Press boxes. Doorways. Her tea in my cabinet. Her articles in my phone. My hand at the back of her jaw. Now her voice has gone raw on my name.
I sit up, find my clothes, and pull them on.
She's at the kitchen counter with both hands around the glass.
"Cole can stop worrying," she says. "I'm fine."
"Maya."
"Don't." She sets the glass down. "Don't say my name like that. Not after what we just did. You don't get to say my name like it means something and then walk out and go back to Elm House and pretend this didn't happen."
"I'm not going to pretend."
"Yes, you are. Because you can't tell Cole. And if you can't tell Cole, then it didn't happen. That's how your rules work."
My teeth close hard enough for pain to cut through my jaw.
"What are you going to tell him?" she asks.
"That you're fine."
"And the rest?"
"There is no rest."
The words come out, and her mouth trembles once before it goes flat. I feel it in my own chest. I watched it happen and didn't stop the sentence before it landed.
"Get out," she says, quiet.
I walk to the door, open it, and stop in the frame.
"Lock your door," I say.
"Get out, Dante."
I get out.
The hallway. The stairs. My jaw locked. The cold air burns the mark on my jaw where her fingers pressed. The taste of her still in my mouth. Eight minutes across campus with crescent moons stinging under my shirt and rug burn pulling with every stride.
I walk into Elm House. Cole is on the couch. He looks up.
His eyes move across my face. The bruised lip.
The scratches at my collar where the shirt doesn't cover.
The mark on my jaw. I watch him catalog each one.
His expression shifts. His weight centers.
His breathing slows. The same controlled stillness he brings to reading a room when something in it has changed.
"Don't send me again," I say.
"What happened?"
"We talked. She's fine."
"You were gone almost two hours. I texted you twice before you answered. And you came back with marks on your face." He stays on the couch. His voice is quiet. "What happened, Dante?"
"Nothing that concerns you."
Cole's jaw sets before the silence finishes taking shape. His eyes go flat. The warmth drains from his face.
"Everything about Maya concerns me," he says. "Everything about you concerns me. So when you come home from her apartment with a bruised lip and tell me nothing happened, I need you to understand what you're actually saying."
I hold his eyes. He holds mine.
"Okay," he says. His voice has no warmth left in it.
He picks up his phone. Unlocks it. Types something.
"I'm going for a walk," he says.
He stands. Pulls on his jacket. Walks past me without touching me. No hand on my shoulder. No fingers at the back of my neck. His body passes mine like I'm furniture. The front door opens and shuts.
The house is empty. Her taste is still in my mouth. Cole's hand never landed on my shoulder. He typed something on that phone before he left, and I don't know who received it.