PROLOGUE #4
“You want it bad tonight, huh?” he says, but it’s not a question.
For some reason, I’m not ashamed to admit it, arching my back to spread myself open to him. “Yeah.”
I can hear his intake of breath behind me.
I wouldn’t have thought a guy like him needed any kind of praise or reassurance when he gets it all over campus and from the press.
Maybe he’s never heard praise from someone he wants to fuck.
When he grazes his tip up and down over my hole, I have to fight the urge to push back onto it.
I wanted the evening to last as long as possible, but to hell with drawing anything out anymore.
“Fuck me, Chris.”
His fingers grip my hip tighter, and he presses against and through my ring in one go. Sheets balled in my fists, I swallow a cry and gulp for breath.
“Shit, Remy,” he grits. “Shit.”
He must understand that expression about the mind being willing because he makes a pass over my ass with his warm palm while I wait for my body to relax.
He said my name. That helps. I love it when he says my name.
Dropping to my elbows, I bask in the scent of him, of us, in my room.
This empty space of memories. All the clutter and trinkets I acquired—none of them mattered.
All I ever needed, apparently, was this mattress and him.
Nudging my hips backward, I take more of him in.
He lets out a guttural breath and grips my hip again, gently this time, as though he doesn’t want to interrupt my plan.
“You’re a slut for me tonight, aren’t you?”
He doesn’t wait for an answer, thank goodness. I’m not about to admit that truth, but maybe I do anyway because, when he thrusts to meet me, I moan long and loud.
“Aw, yeah,” he concurs, sliding back and doing it again, hedging deeper this time.
We create a chorus of huffs, grunts, and groans—my body thrumming from head to toe—until his soft thatch of hair brushes flush against my ass. I am consumed completely. It’s a touching and yet overwhelming sensation.
Chris retreats a fraction, and I discover it’s so he can bend down over me. His palms land on either side of mine, his thick arms pressed against my own. Lips brushing against the side of my neck, he just stays that way, breathing heavily.
I know, I want to tell him. All the things you won’t or don’t know how to say—I know.
And then he moves like he can’t stand the deafening silence any longer than I can, his animalistic side taking over. The side of him that chews up and spits out anything resembling feelings and weakness. It’s the side that made him a winner and me a total slut for him, apparently.
He must know by my sounds when he’s found the best rhythm to tease my gland, because he shortens his thrusts.
He rocks back and forth over it several times, reducing me to a mess of whimpers and groans.
The man may have started out as a terrible top, but his dedication to perfecting game plays has paid off in the bedroom over the last two years.
“Is it good?” he huffs, warming my heart that he’s asking for a change. He’s been doing that more in the past few months.
I’m panting so hard my lungs are burning. Why is he trying to make me speak?
“You know…it is,” I get out, hooking my pinky over his index finger, not caring if the gesture is a penalty in the Chris Mightener rules of affection book.
He murmurs something, sounding almost annoyed, but there’s no way I imagined it. “Shouldn’t…think about this ass…so much.”
He thinks about me? About us? This?
Groaning, I push back onto him, not caring if it’s going to make me sore tomorrow. He curses under his breath and picks up his pace. Each slap of our skin nudges me forward until my arms give out. I sink onto the mattress, trying to hold my hips aloft so we won’t lose our connection.
His beautiful, heavy weight, settles onto me. He’s crushing me, but I’m in heaven.
Breathing? Who the hell needs to breathe when they can feel Chris’ pecs and abs brushing against their back as his cock repeatedly lays claim to their body?
I mumble into my pillow, needy, drunken-sounding syllables, and press my hand to the wall.
He clutches my wrist and nips at my earlobe.
The friction from my bedsheets isn’t helping my wish to prolong this.
Reaching beneath me, I find my cock and wrap my hand around it.
Something bashes into my elbow, and I feel rough fingers on my arm.
If he tells me not to touch my cock again, I’m going to have to find a way to ignore him.
He doesn’t, though. Instead, his hand wraps around mine, grazing against my stomach in the confined space.
“Come. Wanna feel you milk my cock one last time.”
I cry out—and possibly cry a little inside too. I do exactly as he asks, my body a servant to his desires. Fire rises up my legs. I feel the terrifying pressure on my bladder, and then I come. With each pulse, I clench around him.
I’ve seen game playbacks of him growling at opponents and decided I could no longer watch them without getting aroused.
He makes the same sound into the top of my shoulder, his heat erupting inside me.
Our flesh rubs together with each jerk of his body.
His open mouth moves to my cheek, panting against it.
Damn, he smells amazing. I lean into the touch like it’s an umbilical cord giving me life.
Graduation is supposed to be a time for celebrating. I can’t, though. How am I going to give this up?
Closing my eyes, I absorb every sound, every breath, each beat of his heart against my back.
I want to stay pressed into this mattress like a leaf in a scrapbook.
After several moments, however, he slips free from me.
It leaves behind a cruel mix of dizziness from my comedown and hollowness from his leaving.
Rolling to his side, the mattress dips next to me when he lands on his back. I turn my head and watch him search for something to clean up with. He finds the pack of baby wipes I left on the floor and catches me staring at the cock that was just inside me.
“That was overdue,” he says with a sigh.
Clearing my throat, I roll over and take the package from him. “Yeah.”
Gone is the appreciative excitement from earlier. A heavy silence falls over us.
“Your room looks strange, empty like this,” he comments, glancing the other way when I clean myself off. “When do you leave?”
“In the morning. Home for the summer to work, then I start my doctorate in the fall.”
I hear a disapproving grunt. “More school. You’re a glutton for punishment.”
I could say the same to him about football, but I don’t know how to un-glamorize the life that’s waiting for him. Suddenly, he sits up, covering his lap with his hands.
“Shit. We left the door open.”
“It’s fine. Jamie will be gone all night.” That seems to put him at ease, but I no longer have any patience for our rules if getting caught is more important than us parting ways. “Besides, it doesn’t matter anyway. He saw you crawling in the window earlier.”
“Shit.”
Okay, now I feel guilty, but can’t he see how ridiculous this total secrecy has been? Maybe I’m just bitter from feeling so raw right now. Like if I can’t have him, can I at least have the truth not be so thickly veiled?
“He won’t tell anyone,” I assure him. “He never has. He caught you doing it last year, actually.”
“And you didn’t say anything?”
Of course, I didn’t. He might have been so freaked out that he’d quit seeing me.
“He won’t talk,” I reaffirm, hating how downtrodden my voice sounds as I ignore the alarm in his voice.
I sit up and grab my shorts. Glancing over, I can see the gears turning in his head—the possibility of a dream he’s worked for years for being shattered by his secret.
My bitterness softens, and I take pity on him. “He knows I wanted my privacy.”
He processes my ruse of taking the blame and nods. “I should go.” Getting up, he pads over to his pile of clothes. “My parents are having a thing tomorrow.”
A thing. Not a graduation party. Not an NFL inception party.
Not a boring lunch to celebrate nothing in particular.
No further explanation needed for his secret hookup.
The barrier tape is back up between us—that damn agreement I made two years ago when I was drunk on the fact that he was even speaking to me.
I’ve lowered myself so far into the pity party well that I didn’t realize he’s already dressed and getting into his shoes.
Shit. This is it.
Rising, I don’t know if I’m doing a good job of not looking like my heart is in my throat.
I’m never going to see him again unless it’s on network television or I go to an NFL game.
Lately, I’ve been wishing that I’d told him two years ago how stupid I was for him and scared him off then instead of letting him get his hooks this deep into me.
Our gazes lock. He shifts in place, the corner of his mouth ticking up anxiously. Maybe he doesn’t know how to say goodbye either.
“Well…good luck with everything.” I force as much enthusiasm into the words as I can because I do wish him well. From the bottom of my breaking heart.
“Thanks. You too.” The words are at least soft and sincere. He even gives me one of those rare boyish smiles of his.
He does care. Some part of him. I knew I wasn’t wrong.
I raise my arms to hug him and lean in, hoping this kiss will be my shooting star, changing a fate that only magic can.
One of his heavy arms wraps around my shoulders, and the next thing I know, my face is practically smashed against his clavicle.
He gives me a squeeze and ruffles my hair with his other hand.
Okay…that was…awkward.
“And thanks for the arrangement. I don’t think I’d have gotten through the stress of the last two years without it.”
Arrangement? As in…the sex?
When he lets go, I don’t even have a chance to ask him to clarify or tell him he can call me whenever he wants. He’s already headed to my bedroom window. Opening it, he straddles the sill and slips through without a backward glance.
He’s…gone. He thanked me for our no-strings-attached sex and then left.
It’s me or football, and football has won again. It always does.
Right…
It’s done.
I repeat the words to myself again. It’s done.
I glance at my mussed sheets on the mattress which probably smell like him now. Would wrapping myself in them do me more harm than good?
I decide not to take my chances. Taking a leaf from Chris’ playbook, I leave the room without looking back. I need to see this for what it was—just a chapter of my life that’s now over. An agreement where I bit off more than I could chew.
Curling up on the couch, I close my eyes and cradle my arms around me.
I also have a future I’ve been working toward that starts tomorrow.
One that will be just as wonderful as I imagined it would be before I met Chris Mightener.
I hold on to that assurance. I grip it even tighter when a tear slips down my cheek.